Just The Caffeine Talking

Notes on The Lost Road

I recently acquired a copy of The Lost Road, an unfinished work by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited and extensively annotated by his son Christopher Tolkien. The origin of the work is very interesting: according to Tolkien's own account, it grew out of a conversation he had with his close friend C.S. Lewis. "Tollers," Lewis told him, "There is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves."

The two of them decided that Lewis would write a space travel story and Tolkien would write a time travel story. Some versions of the story I've seen indicate they flipped a coin to see who would do which.

Lewis wrote Out of the Silent Planet, which he followed with a couple of sequels to create his astounding "Space Trilogy." Tolkien began The Lost Road, a story of a modern person's mind being cast back in time to the time of the fall of Numenor (aka Atlantis). He began a draft but ultimately gave up on it and decided to concentrate on The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings.

So . . . what if the coin flip had gone the other way? What if Lewis took on the job of writing a time travel story, and Tolkien cast his attention to outer space?

A time travel story by C.S. Lewis is certainly an intriguing prospect. I expect he would have focused on a historical period, probably the Middle Ages, allowing some contemporary characters from the 1930s to interact with the medieval world.

But J.R.R. Tolkien writing about outer space . . . ? What would that have been like? He wouldn't have been able to use his extensive "Middle Earth" legendarium as source material, as he did with The Lost Road.

 I suspect that Tolkien would have looked to Mars for his space story, just as Lewis did for Out of the Silent Planet. I also suspect he would not have had much patience for the mechanics of space travel, not even the technobabble handwaving that Lewis used.

Which raises the interesting question of whether Tolkien would have done as Lewis did, and send a contemporary human to another planet — or would he have done as he did in his fantasy works, telling a story entirely from within an alien culture? Tolkien being Tolkien, that would presumably require him to invent the entire language and mythology of his Martians, including poems and songs and folk tales.

But what kind of Martians would Tolkien have created? By the 1930s, science fiction was starting to move away from the idea of "men on other planets" toward the concept of extraterrestrials as the product of alien evolution in alien environments. Would Tolkien have gone along with that?

If he chose to write about a human civilization on Mars, we would have something very much like E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ourobouros, but with better names. I'm not sure how Tolkien would have addressed the question of whether the other planets of the Solar System are "fallen" worlds like Earth, or remain "unfallen." I suspect the former — his Middle-Earth stories mention ancient evils from outside the world, which would certainly provide perils enough for heroes to overcome.

That would be moderately interesting, but I find myself wondering how J.R.R. Tolkien might have handled a genuinely non-human species and culture. While I doubt he spent much time reading Amazing Stories or Astounding, he certainly must have been familiar with the works of H.G. Wells, like The War of the Worlds or The First Men in the Moon, both of which featured very non-human aliens.

So perhaps his space story would have involved some Martians — maybe bird-like beings, or insects — undertaking an arduous journey across the landscape of the Red Planet, on some mission to save the planet from some ancient horror from deep space.

The real question is whether Tolkien's heart would have been in the task, as it obviously was when he wrote The Lord of the Rings. Frankly I suspect it would not have been, but one can dream. A science fiction novel with the impact and quality of The Lord of the Rings, published in the 1940s, would have had a huge impact on the field. Science Fiction might have begun edging toward literary respectability a generation earlier than in our history.

It would also mean that science fiction would retain much more of a British flavor than it did historically. Instead of Asimov-Clarke-Heinlein as SF's "Big Three" of postwar SF we might remember Clarke-Tolkien-Wyndham in those roles, with Heinlein as an American also-ran.

And if science fiction remains "quintessentially British" would that in turn have affected national attitudes and policies? Would the Union Jack have been the first flag on the Moon, carried aboard a British Interplanetary Society atomic rocketship? Naturally the rest of the Commonwealth would be involved, with spacecraft launching from Woomera in Australia and specialists from four continents participating.

Why, we might even see an eccentric South African tycoon bankrolling a voyage to Mars by now . . .

The Lost Manuscripts of Lemuel Gulliver, Part the Second

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the exciting discovery in Oxford's Bodleian Library of unpublished notes and drafts by the 18th Century explorer and naturalist Dr. Lemuel Gulliver. That first post included Gulliver's discussion of how the difference in scale affected the architecture and habits of the Lilliputians. This excerpt is concerned with their dietary habits.

Concerning the Habits of the Lilliputians while at Table, I own I must admit they are the most gluttonous Nation I have ever had occasion to observe.

Immediately upon rising, each one breaks his fast with a cold Collation of Meat, Eggs, divers Sweets, accompanied by Beer, as the pangs of Hunger permit no delay for cooking. This first breakfast is followed at midmorning by a second, which any Englishman would consider more than ample for a dinner; with Soups, roast Fowl, Puddings, and suchlike Viands in great Abundance. At midday they take a Luncheon of smoked Meats or Fish, Eggs, and Nuts, all in considerable Quantities. At the setting of the Sun they dine, and those dinners are as great as the other meals of the day in combination. Even the meanest of Lilliputians has a dinner of three or four removes, with courses of Fish, Soup, roast Meat androast Fowl, &c. In the evening before retiring, these insatiable Lilliputians sup upon bowls of Porridge or Beans. All these immense meals are accompanied by Cheeses and Sweets.¹

I did notice some curious lacunae in the Diet of the Lilliputians. They have little Appetite for Bread, and never consume Greens or Herbs, save as a kind of Garnish to the great platters of Flesh they devour. Nor do they enjoy any sort of Fruit in its natural state, but must needs cook all Fruits and Vegetables into a veritable Pap, often stirred with Cream or Butter.

I had the Occasion to ask my neighbor Dr. Darwin if there might be some Defect in the Digestion common to Lilliputians which would explain their insatiable Hunger.

"The only Defect is the small Stature of these Lilliputians, Dr. Gulliver," was his reply to me. "One may observe in Nature that the tiniest Creatures have greater Appetites than large ones. My own Pigeons eat more Corn in proportion to their weight than my Geese. The ratio, based on my own Observations, appears to be the cubic power of the fourth root of the weight of the Animal."²

I asked him to explain that in greater detail.

"Certainly. You yourself weigh some thirteen stone, I should judge. You mentioned that Lilliputian gentlemen typically weigh about two ounces. If your respective Appetites were in proportion to your weights, one would expect that a Lilliputian would eat only 1/1728th as much as yourself — which would amount to less than a fiftieth of an ounce per day. Obviously, however, you did not observe that."

I said that their Appetites were very much of an opposite character.

Dr. Darwin continued: "If my Observations are correct, a Lilliputian one-twelfth of your height would require food in the amount of 1/268 of what you yourself would consume. If an active Englishman such as yourself eats two pounds of food every day, if not more (here Dr. Darwin absent-mindedly patted his own considerable Paunch), then a Lilliputian would thrive upon an eighth of an ounce. That would amount to one-sixteenth of his own weight, or the equivalent of more than ten pounds of food per day for a man of your size!"

"That accounts for the Quantities eaten by the Lilliputians, but I am curious as to whether their dietary Preferences might also have a physical Origin," I said to him.

"I consider it indisputable," said he. "If you examine any domestic animals you will quickly note that those creatures which eat a coarse diet of Grass or even Oats devote a much greater Proportion of their bodily weight to Organs of Digestion, than those which thrive upon Flesh. These Lilliputians must consume the very richest of foods, and must cook them so as to make them as digestible as possible. I suspect that a Lilliputian condemned to live by Bread alone might eat all day yet become weak for Want of food!"

"This explains a matter which had long puzzled me," I said. "During my time in the Kingdom of Lilliput, there was seldom much great Difficulty in supplying my wants, as the Lilliputians maintained great Storehouses of victuals. I now see that compared to them, my own Appetite was comparitively meagre, and thus easily satisfied by them."

¹It is possible that J.R.R. Tolkein may have read or heard of the Gulliver manuscripts during his decades as a professor at Oxford, as the similarity in eating habits between the Lilliputians and his Hobbits is striking. 

²Historians of science should take note that Erasmus Darwin here anticipates Kleiber's Law by nearly two centuries.

The Lost Manuscripts of Lemuel Gulliver, Part the First

Historians and students of literature were tremendously excited by the recent announcement by Oxford University that several volumes of unpublished notes by Lemuel Gulliver had been found in the Bodleian Library. 

Dr. Gulliver was a little-known 18th-century explorer, the first European to visit Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and other lands of the Pacific. His accounts of those voyages were edited and published by the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, and for many years were considered to be purely fictional, until those islands became important battlegrounds during the Second World War.

The notebooks discovered in the Bodelian Library contain much material which Swift elected to leave out of the popular edition of Gulliver's works. Evidently Swift, no scientist himself, thought the public would be bored by Dr. Gulliver's observations and theories on the biology of the peoples he encountered. These new discoveries restore Dr. Lemuel Gulliver to his proper place as a naturalist and early investigator of the field of biomechanics.

Here's the first deleted section, from his manuscript on Lilliput:

During my stay in Lilliput, I was continually astonished by a singular feature of the Architecture in that Kingdom, namely the utter Absence of stairs  or other means of climbing from one floor to another within a dwelling. Remarkably, this Absence did not discommode the Lilliputians in the slightest degree. To ascend, they simply leapt from one story to the next, without any sign of undue Exertion or loss of dignity. I even witnessed an elderly Lilliputian, his hair whitened and his back bent with age, vault up to his Chamber on the third floor of his house in a single bound!

In a like manner, the Lilliputians I observed did not trouble to climb downstairs — indeed, there were none to climb — but simply flung themselves out the nearest Window if they wished to alight upon the Ground.  Several times I witnessed Lilliputians in the Towns leaping across the Streets from one upper-storey window to another, showing no fear of falling, and if they did chance to miss their Aim and tumble to the ground, they showed no ill Effect of their misadventure.

Several Learned Gentlemen among the Lilliputians and Blefuscudians reported to me that none of their Race has any fear of a fall, as they can alight safely, no matter the height from which they have fallen. Indeed, they thought my natural Caution in going up and down to be unmanly, and I was occasionally the object of Ridicule for it.

Upon my return to England, I had the occasion to mention this remarkable Circumstance to my neighbor Dr. Erasmus Darwin.  He informed me that this Conduct of the Lilliputians is perfectly natural, and is a necessary Consequence of their extraordinary Diminution.

"Consider, Dr. Gulliver," (said Dr. Darwin to me) "that the weight of a man is in proportion to his volume,  if we assume that there be no material difference between the Lilliputians and ourselves but only one of scale. Therefore a Gentleman of Lilliput, proportioned like yourself but having a height of only six inches, would weigh but 1/1728 of what you do, or slightly less than two Ounces, that being the cubic power of 1/12."

I replied that this Weight was precisely that of such Gentlemen of Lilliput as I had occasion to place upon the Scales.

"But consider, Dr. Gulliver: the active Power of the Muscles is in proportion to their Area in cross-section. Our Lilliputian Gentleman's leg muscles would be 1/144th the size of yours in Area, and thus in Strength, as that is the square of 1/12." As he spoke he made some rapid calculations with a lead pencil upon a sheet of foolscap.

"Surely that cannot be right," I interjected.  "For that would mean he would be twelve times as strong as I, in proportion to his size."

"That is exactly right, Dr. Gulliver. He would indeed be stronger — in proportion. If you yourself are able to leap to a height of (let us say) three feet, that is, a height equal to one-half your own, then a Lilliputian would be capable of leaping twelve times as far in proportion, or six times his own height. In fact, the proportions cancel themselves out, so we are faced with the startling conclusion that a Lilliputian can leap as high as you yourself, Dr. Gulliver! The people of Lilliput have no need of stairs, for to jump up a Storey requires no greater effort for them than for you to ascend a single step."

Post-PhilCon Report: Oceans of Space

Last weekend's Virtual PhilCon went very well, and gave me a couple of 'blog post ideas. This is the first.

On Saturday the 21st, I moderated the panel on "The Oceans of Space." Moderating was easy because there was only one other panelist, the brilliant and charming Kelli Fitzpatrick. We had a pretty good audience, too. 

The topic of that panel was aquatic science fiction, and I guess I got tapped because I wrote A Darkling Sea. Both Ms. Fitzpatrick and I made up lists of ocean-themed SF for the discussion*, and both of us were struck by how short our respective lists were. There simply isn't as much oceanic science fiction out there. Which is odd, given that one of the taproot texts for the whole science fiction genre is Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. 

So: why is there so little underwater science fiction? I can think of three main reasons.

Number One: It's not science fiction. If you write a story of undersea adventure aboard a submarine, that's a sea story, or a "technothriller," not a science fiction story. Even if your tale has a madman with a futuristic undersea base, and super-tech undersea vehicles, that's still technothriller territory. Consider the works of Clive Cussler, who wrote undersea adventures for thirty years. His books included such things as unknown elements with fantastic properties, sonic weapons, a secret moonbase, and a vast array of apocalyptic plots. But Cussler's books aren't in the science fiction section of the bookstore. They're thrillers, ostensibly set in the contemporary world. Apparently weird goings-on in the ocean are normal.

Number Two: It's limited. Oceans on Earth are fascinating places — but they don't have strange new worlds and new civilizations. Quite simply, you can't really hang a novel on a newly-discovered species of cephalopod. You can put the story into an ocean on another planet (as I did) but that's a lot of work. Trust me on that.

Number Three: Symbolism. When you fly up into space you are literally ascending into the heavens. You are leaving Earth and Earthly cares behind. In SF you are soaring among the stars. But underwater? It's dark. It's cold. You're both literally and metaphorically under pressure. If space travel is a metaphor for liberation and transcendance; going deep underwater is a metaphor for confinement, blindness, and death.

So if you want to write a swashbuckling futuristic sea story, you can do it — but send the pitch to a publisher of technothrillers, not science fiction. If you want to write stories about alien contact underwater you can do it — but you'll have to create an entire alien world. And if you want to write a story with a big honking metaphor for death in it, there's your topic.

*Here's my list:

The Man Who Counts/War of the Wing-Men, by Poul Anderson

The Godwhale, T.J. Bass

Startide Rising, David Brin

A Darkling Sea, James L. Cambias

The Deep Range, Arthur C. Clarke

"The Maracot Deep," Arthur Conan Doyle

Dragon in the Sea/Under Pressure, Frank Herbert

Half the Day is Night, Maureen McHugh

The Face of the Waters, Robert Silverberg

A Door Into Ocean, Joan Slonczewski

OceanSpace, Allen Steele

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne

The Kraken Wakes, John Wyndham

"The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth," Roger Zelazny

 

 

Godel Operation Now Up at Amazon!

My first Tale of the Billion Worlds, The Godel Operation, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. The official publication date is May 4 of 2021, but it's always a good idea to get at the head of the line. 

If you want a sneak preview of The Godel Operation, tune in to my reading session on the virtual PhilCon convention, at 4:00 p.m. this coming Sunday, November 22. I'll be reading the first chapter. Come meet Daslakh, Zee, the Penguin, Zee's Imaginary Girlfriend, and the other quadrillion inhabitants of the Billion Worlds.

PhilCon 2020 Goes Virtual

This year's PhilCon — the venerable Philadelphia-era science fiction con now in its 84th year — is going to be all-online. On the plus side that means no New Jersey traffic and mall food; on the minus side it means no spontaneous conversations in the hotel lobby, no room parties, and no basic human contact. But a virtual convention is better than none at all. 

Still, as in past years I will be participating, from my office in Massachusetts. Here's my schedule:

 

Friday November 20, 5:30 p.m.: Online Gaming: Not Just for Pandemics

Michael Ryan (moderator), Robert Hranek, James L. Cambias, Debby Lieven

The four of us will be discussing how the ongoing epidemic has affected how people play games -- will we go back to tabletops and rec rooms again, or is online gaming the future?

 

8:30 p.m.: From the Iron Bank to CHOAM: Business in Fiction

James L. Cambias (moderating), Anthony Dobranski, Elektra Hammond, Tom Doyle, Ian Randal Strock

A panel about the role of business and economics in fantastic fiction. How does a world's economy affect the stories one can tell? What does fiction get right and wrong?

 

Saturday November 20, 5:30 p.m.: The Oceans of Space

James L. Cambias, Tom Purdom, Kelli Fitzpatrick

I think I'm moderating this one. The three of us will discuss famous maritime science fiction, and how new discoveries in and beyond the Solar System may influence future ocean stories.

 

Sunday November 21, 1:00 p.m.: The Search for the Philosophers' Stone

Robert Hranek (moderator), Anastasia Klimchynskaya, James Prego, James L. Cambias, Elizabeth Crowens

We'll look at the history of alchemy, how discoveries in chemistry and physics changed our understanding of how matter works, and look at some other concepts which have shifted over time.

 

4:00 p.m.: Reading

I'll give con goers a glimpse into my forthcoming novel The Godel Operation, and the amazing far-future setting The Billion Worlds.

The Godel Operation Is Coming!

The Godel Operation, the first full-length tale of the Billion Worlds, is on the Baen release schedule for May 2021. I'm already working on a second Billion Worlds novel and a short story. 

Best of all, we have cover art! Watch this space for new developments as the release date gets closer.

Notes on the Invisible Man

On Friday evenings my wife and I have a regular Movie Night. We've been doing it ever since it became impossible to go out to a real movie theater, and I expect we'll continue after (if) they re-open. To avoid conflicts over what to watch — or, worse yet, an "Abilene Paradox" situation where in an effort to find common ground we would end up seeing something that neither of us wanted to watch — we adopted a simple system. She picks the movie one week, I pick the next, we both watch whatever was picked, and no argument. It works pretty well and I recommend it.

Two weeks ago we watched the 1933 film The Invisible Man, directed by the peerless James Whale, based on H.G. Wells's 1897 novel. It was Claude Rains's breakout role — which is a testament to his physical acting and his amazing voice, because his face only appears for about five seconds at the very end.

As it was quite short, only 90 minutes or so, we spent a little time afterward looking at the special features on the disk, including the inevitable "making of" documentary. Like most specimens of the genre, this one included a couple of film critics trying to act like intellectuals, discussing the metaphorical significance of the Invisible Man in the film and Wells's novel.

And, as so many people do when discussing H.G. Wells, they kind of ran off the road into a ditch. One of them intoned quite solemnly that since H.G. Wells was a "progressive," the book is obviously about how oppressed "others" in society are "invisible."

Oppression as invisiblity was a great metaphor when Ralph Ellison used it for his 1952 novel about being black in America, Invisible Man (no "the"). But I don't think it has much relevance to Wells's book.

Why not? Several reasons.

First, Griffin, the Invisible Man of the title, isn't an "outsider" in the novel. He's short of cash for his research, but he's still a gentleman. An English gentleman in the 1890s was the ultimate insider, part of the class that literally ruled the world. He bosses around his social inferiors with unshakeable assurance and nobody thinks the worse of him for it.

Second, until he starts robbing houses and threatening to murder people, the people in the novel are very accomodating of Griffin. When he checks into a small country inn, all wrapped up to hide his invisibility, the proprietor isn't shocked or frightened — she's pleased at the unexpected windfall of a customer in the off-season. And when she glimpses his bandage-wrapped face she makes a point of mentioning that she has helped care for people with injuries before.

(By contrast, the film does make Griffin very much an outsider — a frightening intruder at the inn, the object of fear and suspicion from the start. Insert boilerplate reference to James Whale's sexuality here, although I suspect the real reason was that Whale was making a horror movie. That means something in the movie has to be scary, and the titular Invisible Man is the obvious choice. Also, Whale apparently loved to film Una O'Connor having hysterics in front of the camera, and she got the chance to really let it rip in this one.)

Finally, the novel has three genuine outsiders in it, and H.G. Wells does not treat them with much sympathy. The first is a tramp, "Mr. Thomas Marvel," who is depicted as ignorant, cowardly, and dishonest. Griffin, the Invisible Man, bullies Marvel into being his henchman, but he betrays and robs Griffin at the earliest opportunity, ultimately getting away with money and the scientist's notebooks which he cannot understand.

The second is Griffin's landlord in London, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, who is also depicted as ignorant and cowardly, and gets his house set on fire. The third outsider is the "hunchback," the owner of a small and struggling costume shop in London. Unlike the other two, he is shown to be brave and resourceful, but Griffin beats and robs him anyway.

Griffin isn't the outsider, he's the one beating up outsiders — and the author invites the reader to sympathize with him when he does.

So, if it wasn't a parable against "othering" people, what axe was H.G. Wells grinding in The Invisible Man? Because this is H.G. Wells we're talking about, so there's definitely an axe and it's definitely going to get very thoroughly ground.

Well, it's important to remember that Wells's readers would instantly recognize the source of his idea of an Invisible Man. It's in The Republic, by Plato: the Ring of Gyges, which makes its wearer invisible. In Plato's dialog, his brother Glaucon uses it as part of a thought experiment about morality. The ring of invisibility meant that the wearer could commit any crime — in Gyges's case, seducing a queen and murdering a king to take the throne — with no fear of punishment. Nobody could identify the criminal, nobody could capture him. Glaucon posits that only the fear of punishment makes men behave justly, and with the Ring of Gyges any man would be unjust and feel no guilt.

As Plato has Glaucon say, "If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice." (Note that Glaucon is asking Socrates to defend justice as a worthwhile good for its own sake; he's just "steelmanning" the side of injustice.)

Socrates's reply goes on for the rest of The Republic, and digresses into the organization of an ideal state, music, the role of fiction, and various other topics. You should read it, if you haven't. Any educated Englishman of the 1890s would know the story of the magic ring and be familiar with the rest of the book.

Now, H.G. Wells was a hard-core materialist. He didn't have any truck with God or divine justice. So, for a materialist, how to answer Glaucon's question? In a Godless universe, is justice merely a social construct, a kind of "mutual assured destruction" system in which humans agree to behave justly because they don't want to be the victims of injustice?

I think The Invisible Man is Wells's attempt to provide an answer. He does that by trying to refute the very premise of the Ring of Gyges: no man can truly escape the consequences of his actions. Not even an Invisible Man.

The novel constantly emphasizes the practical difficulties of Griffin's invisibility. He can't wear clothes, he can't carry things. If his feet get muddy someone will notice. In a crowded city like London he must be hyper-alert because nobody will avoid bumping him, and no driver will swerve to avoid running hi down. What should be a superpower is a curse.

The one deliberate murder Griffin personally commits in the novel is of a gentleman in the countryside who apparently catches sight of something the invisible man is carrying, and keeps following, trying to figure out what's going on. Griffin is already shown to be paranoid and psychopathic, but the thing which drives him to smash a man to death with an iron fence post is that his victim won't leave him alone. He's an invisible man who can't get any privacy!

And ultimately Griffin's "reign of terror" is ended by a road-mender hitting him with a shovel. No superweapon needed. The very idea of a man — even one with the power of invisibility — setting himself in opposition to society and conquering it is shown as absurd, the fantasy of a madman. Ordinary people are quite capable of stopping the invisible man, and I think that was Wells's entire point. People can get away with crimes only if the rest of us allow it.  

A Pirate's Life for Me!

With the approach of Talk Like a Pirate day (Sept. 19) I'm pleased to be able to talk about pirates. In this case, space pirates. Baen Books has just released a new anthology of classic space-pirate yarns, called Cosmic Corsairs. It's edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio, and features some excellent piratical science fiction — including a Fritz Leiber story which has never been reprinted since it appeared in 1941. 

I'm particularly excited because the volume includes my short story "To the Barbary Shore," which eventually grew into my second novel Corsair. You can read my own "How I Did It" post about the genesis of that story, and you can listen to the Baen Free Radio Hour podcast about the new anthology.

The book's available everywhere, so go get it!

Another Cup of Tea

The complete "Teatime Readings" series is now available for viewing on YouTube. You can see them here. Or you can skip right to my reading from The Initiate.

There's a lot of good stuff and some interesting comments and conversation. Check it out.