Just The Caffeine Talking

Ozblogging: The Scarecrow of Oz, Part 2

(Sorry for the delay: in retrospect I shouldn't have started this series right before a pair of back-to-back trips. Thanks for your patience.)

The Ork doesn't like being stuck in any cave, even one with a couple of humans in it for company, so he insists on exploring the dark tunnel at the back of the chamber. The team push their way through and eventually the tunnel ends — right in the middle of a tall cliff face overlooking a vast pitch-dark cavern. The Ork flies down to explore, and eventually ferries Trot and Cap'n Bill down to the cave floor, where they soon find another passage.

This all sounds a little familiar to anyone who's read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz — a series of caves which serve as survival puzzles, house wacky wayside tribes, or contain groups of randomly hostile freaks. And where did Dorothy and the Wizard's underground adventures take place? Why, in a series of vast caverns deep under California — exactly where Trot and Cap'n Bill are wandering! Presumably, with a good hex map and careful record-keeping, the two of them might find the right passage leading to the Valley of the Gargoyles, or the vegetable people in their glass city, or the Vale of Voe with its invisible bears.

It strikes me that there's a ton of potential crossover material here. In fiction there's a surprisingly self-consistent depiction of underground civilizations in the western United States. H.P. Lovecraft's "revision" for Hazel Heald, "The Mound," describes an enormous underground cave civilization under Oklahoma, the sinister realm of K'n-Yan, which lies above the even nastier abyss of N'Kai. It certainly seems possible that the California caves are just an outlying part of the main realm of K'n-Yan.

A very similar subterranean phantom empire made a move against the surface world in 1935, sending masked "Thunder Riders" to wreak havoc. Fortunately for all surface-dwelling folk, singing cowboy Gene Autry was able to foil their schemes and inspire a rebellion among the oppressed subterranean proletariat, before going on to serve in the Air Corps in World War II.

And all of these underground dwellers are doubtless examples of the "Deros," or DEtrimental RObots, sadistic mutant beings who plague surface dwellers with thought projections, and occasionally kidnap them for horrid purposes. They're described at greater length in the writings of Richard Shaver, appearing in Amazing Stories in 1950.   

Happily for Trot and Cap'n Bill, their journey does not lead them into the clutches of K'n-Yan or the Deros. Instead they march for hours through seemingly endless tunnels, as their very limited supply of food and candles shrinks alarmingly.

Eventually they find a shaft of daylight entering the dark tunnel, but it shines down a long vertical well. Fortunately the Ork's propellor tail has a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1, so he is able to fly up the narrow shaft carrying Trot and Cap'n Bill. They emerge in a lovely landscape near the sea. This new land has fruit trees and melon vines, which solves their logistical problems.

A bit of exploring establishes that they are on an island, but it isn't uninhabited. Trot spots a shed-like building and the two of them go to see who lives there. (The Ork has flown off as his feet are sore after so much walking in tunnels, and flying lets him rest them.)

The island's sole inhabitant is a little man with a long pointed beard. His name is Pessim, and he is "the Observer." As his name suggests, Pessim sees the worst in everything, and worries about imaginary dangers. Despite these qualifications he does not have a well-paid job at CNN. His relentless negativity soon grates on his visitors, especially Cap'n Bill.

Suddenly the three of them are plagued by what seems to be a large bee, buzzing about them and refusing to be driven away. Only when Trot gets a good look at it that they realize what it is: it's the Ork, only miniaturized somehow. Perched on Trot's shoulder the Ork explains what happened: as he was flying about the island he spotted a bush laden with lavender berries, and stopped to try one. Immediately he began to shrink, went in search of help.

The Observer finds this hilarious. He explains that the same thing happened to him when his neighbors exiled him to the island. He ate a lavender berry and shrank, but unlike the Ork he couldn't fly, so had to struggle along on the ground, dodging hungry wildlife. Eventually he decided to find another shrinking berry and reduce himself out of existence altogether. But the berries he found were dark purple rather than lavender, and restored him to full size.

After some difficulty they persuade Pessim to show where the dark purple berries grow, and the Ork is soon back to normal.

The three travelers stay on the island for a few days, until they can no longer stand Pessim's company. Unfortunately they don't have the tools to build a boat, and neither does the Observer. Then the Ork has a happy inspiration: use the lavender berries to reduce Trot and Cap'n Bill to a convenient size for him to carry, and then he will fly them off the island. They can bring along a few purple berries to get back to normal once they've crossed the sea.

This touches on something I've noticed in other Oz books: Baum likes to use his magical wonders as puzzle solutions. It's very reminiscent of how roleplaying game players think, especially in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons. I know that the Oz books are not listed in Gary Gygax's famous "Appendix N" of inspirational reading, but I have a strong suspicion that he read the Oz books as a child. Except for the lower body count (though the Oz books do have their share of violent mayhem) Baum's adventures could easily be products of the old TSR company.

With his miniaturized passengers the Ork flies across the sea, bypasses an island, and eventually lands on a mountain top (which to any modern air traveler sounds like a very bad place to choose). As soon as Trot and Cap'n Bill are back to full size again, they poke around the mountain and discover its sole resident: the Bumpy Man.

The Bumpy Man is called that because he is bumpy. Even his bumps have bumps. He is a Mountain Ear, which is to say, his job is to hear things and tell them to the volcanic mountain he lives on, thereby preventing it from erupting. After a jolly song he invites the travelers to stay for dinner. According to the Bumpy Man the travelers have arrived in the famous land of Mo, which they have never heard of. But he has never heard of California, either, so they're even.

Mo is a diabetic's nightmare of a country. All the food is candy — the Bumpy Man serves them molten molasses candy for dinner — and it rains lemonade rather than water. How anything survives in a land where the average ph is somewhere around that of stomach acid is never explained.

Somewhat stickily, our heroes go to sleep.

Next Time: Adventures!

Ozblogging: The Scarecrow of Oz, Part 1

Well, it has been more than six years since I blogged about one of the Oz books, so it's time to head down the Yellow Brick Road again and tackle a new one. This time we're looking at The Scarecrow of Oz, the eighth of the Oz novels written by L. Frank Baum. It was published in 1915, and apparently draws some elements from the script for the 1914 film His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz, produced by one L. Frank Baum for the Oz Film Manufacturing Company.

A personal note: for a long time I was a strong purist about accuracy and "canon" in Oz film adaptations — which in practice meant I mostly griped about the movies. Then I learned about Baum's own film versions and realized he didn't give a damn about fidelity himself, so I'm inclined to take a more charitable view. (That being said, I'm still not happy about Oz the Great and Powerful.)

The Scarecrow of Oz gets moving right away. We are introduced to a little girl named Trot, and her best friend Cap'n Bill, who lives in the boarding-house kept by Trot's mother and is devoted to the girl. Baum alludes to "many strange adventures" that the two have already had. "It is said" that Trot was marked at birth by the fairies and is able to "see and do many wonderful things."

Bill is an old (though "not so very old") sailor, retired from the sea due to having lost a leg in an accident. He doesn't get a cool cybernetic tin replacement, just a wood peg leg. I'm not really sure why losing a leg makes him incapable of working at sea any longer — this is 1915, after all. Even if he can't work aboard a sailing vessel there are plenty of steamers afloat.

The two of them head out in Bill's rowboat to visit one of the "great caves" along this un-named stretch of coast. Based on names, attire, and speech patterns one can assume Trot and Cap'n Bill are both Americans, but what part of America are they in? The story begins with the two of them sitting under an acacia tree, which rules out Maine, and that's about the only place on the East Coast where one could find caves by the sea.

California, however, has both acacia trees and sea caves — and in 1915 it could also boast L. Frank Baum as a resident, so it seems pretty clear that Trot and Cap'n Bill are rowing around on an oddly pacific Pacific Ocean. The very calmness of the sea worries Cap'n Bill, in fact — and his misgivings are soon validated as their boat is caught by an unexpected whirlpool and the two are sucked underwater!

Down in the depths Trot is "almost sure that unseen arms" are helping protect and guide her, as she and Bill are drawn down and down, then rise again but in a slanting direction so that they surface in an undersea cave. Like all useful caves in fiction and roleplaying games, this one is lit by a green glow and has breathable air and a comfortable temperature.

After recovering from their ordeal and drying out, the two go exploring and find a dark passage at the back of the cave. It might lead to safety — or it might lead someplace worse. They decide to remain in the cave. Cap'n Bill has some ship's biscuit and is able to catch some fish, but they don't have much in the way of fresh water to drink.

The two of them sleep, and breakfast on biscuit, but then they are startled to see, emerging from the pool that leads to the ocean, "the most curious creature either of them had ever beheld."

"It wasn't a fish, Trot decided, nor was it a beast. It had wings, though, and queer wings they were: shaped like an inverted chopping-bowl and covered with tough skin instead of feathers. It had four legs — much like the legs of a stork, only double the number — and its head was shaped a good deal like that of a poll parrot, with a beak that curved downward in front and upward at the edges, and was half bill and half mouth. But to call it a bird was out of the question, because it had no feathers whatever except a crest of wavy plumes of a scarlet color on the very top of its head. The strange creature must have weighed as much as Cap'n Bill, and as it floundered and struggled to get out of the water to the sandy beach it was so big and unusual that both Trot and her companion stared at it in wonder — in wonder that was not unmixed with fear."

(Later, Baum adds: "Perhaps the most curious thing about the creature was its tail, or what ought to have been its tail. This queer arrangement of skin, bones and muscle was shaped like the propellers used on boats and airships, having fan-like surfaces and being pivoted to its body.")

This, it transpires, is an Ork. We know this, because when Trot wonders aloud what it might be, the Ork tells her he's an Ork. Apparently the Ork also got sucked into the whirlpool, and also got helped by mermaids, but wound up in an empty cavern with no exit. Seeking escape, the Ork dove back into the sea and swam as far as the cavern holding Trot and Cap'n Bill.

The Ork (whose name is Flipper, but that's quickly forgotten) explains that he left his home in Orkland, motivated by curiosity about those strange creatures called Men. Unfortunately, as he flew, the Ork was attacked by birds, had to evade airships, and lost track of where he was.

And now for a massive digression concerning the word Ork. If you type that into a search engine, the first result is likely to be a link to the game Warhammer 40,000 or its associated universe. In WH40K, the Orks are an alien species — a sentient kind of fungus, in fact — who basically act like English football hooligans and wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other. (As opposed to the humans, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or the Eldar, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or the minions of Chaos, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or . . . well, pretty much every species in the 40K universe.)

The Warhammer 40,000 Orks got their name from a monster race in the original Warhammer fantasy wargame. Those Orks were of course just J.R.R. Tolkein's Orcs with the serial number filed off to thwart over-zealous holders of Tolkein licenses. Tolkein, scholar that he was, derived his Orcs from an old English word for a monster, descended from an Old English word "orcneas," which may derive from some even more ancient root that also gave us "ogre," the Roman evil spirit "Orcus," and possibly the word "Orca" for what are also known as killer whales. Which means, of course, that if any over-zealous holders of Tolkein licenses tried to claim ownership of the name "Orc," the defense team might well want to summon the shade of J.R.R.T. himself to explain why it's actually public domain already. Plus William Blake.

However, I sincerely doubt there's any connection between L. Frank Baum's Orks and Tolkein's Orcs, or any of their linguistic ancestors. For one thing, when Baum wrote The Scarecrow of Oz, Tolkein was too busy dodging German shells on the Western Front to be writing much about Orcs or anything else. And for another, Baum was perfectly capable of creating weird creature names of his own, like Erbs, the Gump, Knooks, Rylls, and the Woozy. Now, to be candid, Baum did often phone it in by simply describing a character using Capital Letters and leaving it at that. That's how we get the Scarecrow, the Glass Cat, the Foolish Owl, the Dainty China People, and so forth. But when he felt like it, he could nomenclate with the best of them and I'm reasonably certain the Ork was an original creation that just happened to echo an ancient word.

Next time: tunnels and tails!