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!

Captain Opposite

I've noticed an interesting approach to writing genre characters, one which also applies to roleplaying games and other media as well: take an iconic character and make up someone who is as opposite to that character as possible.

When Michael Moorcock wanted to write a "sword and sorcery" epic, he didn't make his main character a clone of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. Instead he made up Elric of Melnibone, who is Conan's opposite in almost every way. Where Conan is a barbarian, Elric is the scion of his world's most advanced and decadent civilization. Where Conan is a warrior who enjoys a good fight, Elric is skilled in magic and intrigue as much as swordplay. Conan fights his way to the throne of Aquilonia, while Elric begins as a hereditary Emperor and ultimately abandons his throne and kingdom.

When Patrick O'Brian began writing a series of Napoleonic-era sea stories based on the life of Thomas Cochrane, he didn't make his main character a clone of C.S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower. Instead he made up Jack Aubrey. Where Hornblower is a progressive Whig with suspiciously 20th-Century attitudes, Aubrey is a reactionary Tory. Where Hornblower is tone-deaf, Aubrey is a skilled musician. Where Hornblower is diffident and shy with women (mostly), Aubrey is an enthusiastic womanizer. And where Hornblower is isolated and lonely in command, Aubrey has the constant friendship of Stephen Maturin.

Some authors even do it to themselves. L. Frank Baum's first Oz novel centered on Dorothy, a girl from Kansas swept off to Oz by a tornado and trying desperately to return home. His second centered on Tip, a boy native to Oz who is running away from home. With the help of magic, Dorothy gets back to Kansas and resumes her old life. Tip is transformed into Ozma and begins an entirely new existence as a Lovely Girl Ruler. 

One of my mottoes is "Constraints inspire creativity," and I think this is a perfect example. Using the "Captain Opposite" method one gets two sets of constraints, and their intersection can generate wonderful creativity. The first constraint is of course making the character the opposite of an iconic genre character. But it goes beyond simple negation. The second constraint is that Captain Opposite still has to work as a genre character himself. 

After all, making a sea captain who isn't Horatio Hornblower should be pretty easy: make him incompetent, cowardly, arrogant, and ultimately a failure. (And in fact George MacDonald Fraser did just that with his Harry Flashman.) But what makes Aubrey a classic character in his own right is that he is Hornblower's foil — but also his equal. He works as the anti-Hornblower but still gets to do all the Cochrane-inspired exploits. (In fact, my personal opinion is that by stripping away Hornblower's anachronistic ideas about personal hygiene and democracy, O'Brian makes Aubrey a more realistic and vivid character.)

Similarly, Moorcock's Elric still works as a Sword 'n Sorcery hero, despite being the kind of person Conan routinely beheaded in his own climactic battles. Howard famously made Conan the sort of person whose first instinct is to fight his way out of a situation, which was perfect for the pulp action stories Howard wanted to tell. Moorcock's Elric, by contrast, hates the vampiric magical sword which keeps him alive. His efforts to avoid fighting get him into more and more trouble — and build the reader's anticipation for the inevitable moment when he does finally pull out Stormbringer and start swinging.

So, here's an exercise for the next time you're writing in a genre with iconic characters: try to create a Captain Opposite. An anti-Sherlock Holmes who still solves baffling crimes, an anti- James Bond who still thwarts Britain's secret foes, maybe even an anti-Batman who still battles supervillains. If you can think of other examples I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

 

Convention Report: Albacon 2017

(". . . Featuring ME!")

I drove west through sleet, rain, and fog — but no snow, which was a huge relief as I was in a car without snow tires — to Albany, which looks as if someone decided to drop the 1960s capital city of a large post-colonial nation into the middle of a standard-issue Rust Belt American industrial region.

Because of my programming schedule I decided to have a substantial lunch before starting. The convention hotel, the mostly harmless Albany Airport Best Western, is on the Wolf Road commercial strip in northwestern Albany, so I could pick from just about every restaurant chain in existence, alternating with big-box stores, office parks, and nail salons. Nevertheless I managed to find a real gem: Maharaja Indian Restaurant, where I had a spicy, delicious, and gratifyingly cheap buffet lunch including a couple of dishes I've never seen before. Heartily recommended.

Then the convention!

My first program event was a critiquing panel, part of the Albacon writing workshop series. We only had one submission, a nifty little ghost story which I expect to see in print some time soon. It's a good thing there only was one story, because between the need to have the author read it aloud, and then allow six of us to bloviate on how it might be improved (summary: a couple of minor tweaks, then send it in!) there wasn't much time left for anything else.

The second event was about "Lost SF Themes" — concepts in science fiction which have more or less fallen by the wayside, either because of new scientific knowledge, social shifts, or changes in literary fashion. Science fictioneers love to pat ourselves on the back for some of our forward-looking predictions, but there are some embarassing skeletons in our closet. Psionics is the best-known one, but there's also a certain amount of embarassed throat-clearing whenever anyone brings up concepts like eugenics.

Nowadays, of course, it's a sure-fire identifying marker for the Bad Guys in a story, but there was a time when eugenics was one of the scientifical science things which would bring about a better world. Doc Smith's Kimball Kinnison was the result of a long super-scientific breeding program by the all-wise and benevolent Arisians, and Heinlein's immortal Lazarus Long came out of a secretive Victorian-era project by the Howard Foundation. Even a post-World War II work like Frank Herbert's Dune featured a hero who is the end result of a breeding program, and it's presented as at least morally neutral.

I spent the rest of Friday evening doing some socializing, first at the Ice Cream Social and then at the Art Show Reception. Albacon's not a big convention, so I think I managed to at least nod and say hi to all the other attendees. The ratio of "pros" to "fans" is probably greater than 1:1, and it's a wonderful opportunity for aspiring writers to interact with more experienced professionals with no barriers at all.

Saturday I rose early and had an enormous breakfast at Denny's. I think it was called the Self-Loathing Special or something like that. It was enough to fuel me for the rest of the day, which was good as I didn't really have time in my schedule for meals.

In mid-morning I did a reading from my current work-in-progress. I had to read from my laptop screen because (as one can see here) I didn't notice before the convention started that I would be doing a reading at all. This was the first time anyone but myself has seen or heard anything from the new book, and I was relieved to see it went over well.

Next up was the extremely fun panel "We're Off to See L. Frank Baum." I almost feel as if I need to apologize to the other panelists, except for fellow Oz obsessive Ryk E. Spoor. With two big loud Oz fans on the panel, I'm afraid the others may have been drowned out by the Ryk & Jim Show. I would happily have gone on for another hour if we had been allowed to. (I did take the opportunity to introduce a new batch of Oz enthusiasts to my theories about Agent Diggs and the unfolding secrets of Project CYCLONE.)

The bulk of the afternoon was devoted to my 7th-Edition Call of Cthulhu adventure, "The Drowned City." Net result: one character insane AND gruesomely killed by a tentacled horror, so I think we can count it as a success.

I had just enough time to dash out to my car and drop off the game bag before hurrying over to my next panel, on the Most Influential Games of All Time. Turns out I need not have rushed — the instructions to the panelists had us in the wrong room, and the correct room was still in use as the Costume Contest awards were given out. Still, we managed to start only fifteen minutes late. That was an excellent panel, and not merely due to my expert moderating. The five panelists brought an interestingly diverse array of knowledge and opinions to the table. I know I learned some things about the history of certain game concepts and mechanics.

And then . . . I left. I would have enjoyed the chance to stay longer, but I knew that a two-hour drive over the Berkshires with a chance of sleet and icy roads made leaving early the wisest decision. I definitely had fun for the twenty-four conscious hours I spent at Albacon this year, and there's a good chance I'll be there next time. Any science fiction fans within driving range of Albany should go.

Albacon 2017, Featuring ME!

On Friday and Saturday, March 31-April 1 I'll be a guest at Albacon 2017, the long-running convention in New York's capital city. There's a really impressive lineup of people attending: Charles E. Gannon, Stephen Hickman, Lawrence M. Schoen, Ken Altabef, Ken Burnside, Debra Doyle, Jim MacDonald, Chuck Rothman, Ryk E. Spoor, Ian Randall Strock, and many more.

But enough about them. Let's talk about me. I'm going to be doing a bunch of literary-type panels, and running a Call of Cthulhu session. Here's my schedule:

Friday, March 31, 4:00 p.m.: Writing workshop Critiquing Panel. Five pro writers provide suggestions, criticism, and analysis of stories submitted by con participants.

6:00 p.m.: Lost SF Themes. Four SF writers talk about tropes and ideas which were once standard elements of science fiction but now are passé.

8:00 p.m.: Ice Cream Social. Come enjoy some sugary treats and watch respected SF authors spill chocolate sauce on their neckties.

9:00 p.m.: Art Show Reception. A more grown-up meet-and-mingle against a backdrop of works by fan and professional artists.

Saturday, April 1, 12:00 noon: We're Off to See L. Frank Baum. An appreciation of the Oz books and the growing canon of pastiches and adaptations in various media.

1:00 p.m.: Autographing. Bring anything and I'll sign it.

2:00 p.m.: The Drowned City. A Call of Cthulhu adventure for up to 6 players, set in the flooded streets and empty houses of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Characters will be provided.

6:00 p.m.: The Most Influential Games of All Time. Six writers and game designers discuss which games have had the biggest influence on the gaming hobby and pop culture in general.

 

If you can't make it to the convention, the next best thing to meeting me in person is to buy my ebook!

Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 8 (whew!)

Having finished the story several chapters earlier, Mr. Baum piles anticlimax on anticlimax by cutting away from the adventurers in the Nome Kingdom to the magical fairyland of Oz, where Ozma has been watching the whole thing on her Magic Picture.

I have to say Ozma is a little uncomfortably voyeuristic here. It's one thing for her to check in on Dorothy at a pre-arranged time every day — that's by Dorothy's own request and the little Kansas girl does have a habit of wandering into hair-raising adventures even when her friend the Lovely Girl Ruler isn't jerking her around by sorcery. But we have no hint that the Shaggy Man has any such arrangement in place.

Who else does Ozma watch on her Magic Picture? Perhaps a better question would be who doesn't Ozma watch? She could be watching you, right now.

I guess being an immortal and nearly-omnipotent Girl Ruler must get a little dull from time to time, so Ozma has to seek vicarious excitement through the Magic Picture. Since she will never grow old, and apparently will never have a family of her own, Ozma's life is kind of static and frozen. Only the Magic Picture can let her experience true joy and sorrow.

Anyway. Ozma has the Wizard (who has learned real magic and is no longer a humbug) magic the Oogaboolings back to Oogaboo. Then Ozma calls the Shaggy Man by means of a magic wireless telephone invented by the Wizard. That's right: they have cell service in Oz! This is a fantastically useful idea which I believe L. Frank Baum forgot about completely and never used in any of his Oz books again.

Shaggy refuses to come back to Oz because he has promised to stay with Betsy and Hank. Ozma dithers a bit but eventually decides to add Betsy to her collection of captive humans young friends in the palace. Seriously, Ozma is giving me the creeps in this book.

We wind up with an entirely unnecessary scene of the various talking animals bragging about how awesome their respective human pals are — Hank can talk now, and we even learn that Toto has been able to talk ever since his first visit to Oz but prefers not to.

And there Tik-Tok of Oz ends, and I for one am glad to be done with it. Overall, I have to say this is probably the weakest of Baum's Oz books. It's certainly the weakest one I've looked at in this series of blog posts. It has a lot of recycled material, rushes in spots where some exposition would be nice, is stuffed with padding in other spots, has a weird and unsatisfying structure, and — worst of all — the title character barely appears in it at all!

Only some of those flaws can be attributed to Mr. Baum's monomania about stage adaptations. That may account for some of the paucity of descriptions and the lack of any "big budget" magical wonders. But there's no excuse for throwing in a literal deus ex machina ending two-thirds of the way through the book, and then running out the clock, so to speak, with a lot of padding and fanservice.

There are some nice bits: Queen Ann's small-time kingdom and grandiose plan of world domination are a hoot, and it's a shame such a fun character gets tossed into a pit and ignored for most of the book. The mysterious land at the other end of the Hollow Tube (if Oz is in the Pacific between California and Australia — not far from Ponape — then the Grand Jinjin Tititi-Hoochoo's realm lies somewhere in the Sahara, which is certainly a good place to hide a magical fairyland) has some nice touches. I liked the Swiftian notion of a kingdom ruled by its only private citizen, although working that same joke just a few chapters after introducing the officer-heavy Army of Oogaboo does undercut the satire quite a bit.

Frankly (heh), I think Mr. Baum was just writing this one to meet a deadline. It feels tired. Other than the Roses at the beginning, there are no randomly hostile freaks or wacky wayside tribes. The only clever bits of fairy magic are recycled from other books. I hope the next book has more of the old magic. This one gets a gentleman's C.

 

For a pair of stories deserving a much higher grade, buy my new ebook!

Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 7

When last we left Our Heroes, the villainous Nome King had just transformed the Shaggy Man into a dove, transformed the Rose Princess Ozga into a fiddle (not that anyone really cares), chained up Quox the dragon, and was preparing to force Polychrome to marry him and stay in the underground kingdom forever! How will they escape this dreadful peril?

Pretty quickly, actually. Mr. Baum throws away all possible suspense and tension by just resolving all the problems by magic. Quox reveals that his gaudy rap-singer amulet was enchanted by Tititi-Hoochoo and has neutralized Ruggedo's magic powers. He pops it open and a half a dozen animated eggs emerge. Nomes dread eggs above all else, and the animated eggs drive all of Ruggedo's henchmen out of the throne room before chasing the sinister monarch out of the kingdom altogether. The dragon's amulet also reverses the enchantments wrought by Ruggedo, so that the Shaggy Man is no longer a dove and the Rose Princess Ozga is no longer a fiddle (not that it makes much difference).

Kaliko fetches Betsy and Hank from their hiding place, and then the dragon appoints him to be the new Nome King in place of Ruggedo. The villain is defeated, all is well, so the book must be over, right?

Nope. This odd mid-book climax is sort of a call-back to the original Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Most people don't remember (because they're thinking of the movie) but in that novel the Wicked Witch is defeated and the Wizard flies away about two-thirds of the way through the book, and then there's a lot of tedious filler before Dorothy actually gets back to Kansas.

It's hard to figure out why Mr. Baum does that in this story, since it's apparently recycled from the very neatly-plotted Ozma of Oz. One would think that a stage play would put an even greater premium on building to a suspenseful and satisfying climax in the last act.

Anyway, having defeated the villain, Our Heroes go searching for the Shaggy Man's brother and the Army of Oogaboo. Quox, his mission accomplished, slides off back to the other side of the world via the Hollow Tube.

Ex-King Ruggedo inadvertently leads them to the Shaggy Man's brother, because he sneaks back to fill his pockets with jewels in the Metal Forest, a vast underground treasury where SMB is also imprisoned. Polychrome spots him entering via a secret door (Difficulty Class 20, according to my D&D books, but Nomes probably have the same +2 racial bonus to find secret doors that Dwarves have).

Within the Metal Forest, Polychrome, Shaggy, Betsy et al come across the Officer Corps of Oogaboo in the process of roughing up ex-King Ruggedo. Queen Ann and the other Oogabooicans are all tattered because of their long crawl over sharp rocks in the tunnel, and are desperate to find a way out of the Metal Forest, even though it is full of the kind of plunder they went out into the world to acquire by conquest.

Ruggedo is sent off to exile again — this time with his pockets full of jewels, so at least his retirement will be well-financed — and our heroes push onward. They find the Shaggy Man's brother after exactly zero searching and difficulty, but now a new problem arises: the ex-Nome King Ruggedo enchanted him to make him horribly ugly, and thanks to Tititi-Hoochoo's punishment there is no way for that enchantment to be reversed! The poor Ugly One (as the Nomes dubbed him) has to wear a mask to hide his face.

We also get some more recycled material: remember the lunch-box and dinner-pail trees in Ozma of Oz? L. Frank Baum did. One corner of the Metal Forest is a grove of trees bearing Three-Course Nuts, which come in three sections. One part is soup, one part is the entree, and last is the dessert. It was a neat idea the first time, and it's still a neat idea. Baum's description of the trees in Ozma is much more detailed and interesting. That's a problem I keep noticing in this book: Baum is, frankly, phoning it in. Things are told rather than shown, problems are resolved with disappointing quickness, as if he's in a hurry to just get the thing over with.

They stumble across Ruggedo again and he reveals the secret of reversing the uglification enchantment: the kiss of a Mortal Maid who had once been a Fairy, or maybe one who still is a Fairy, or still a Mortal; he can't remember now that he has lost his powers. Fortunately, the team includes Betsy (Mortal Maid), Ozga (Mortal Maid and ex-Fairy), and Polychrome (full-time Fairy with salary and benefits). The third time is the charm, so to speak, so the Ugly One can resume his true identify as The Shaggy Man's Brother.

Good-hearted Kaliko agrees to let Ruggedo stay on as a common Nome, the Rainbow descends nearby and Polychrome rejoins her sisters (no doubt with a reprise of the Daughters of the Rainbow dance number from the first act).

Poor Betsy, Hank, Shaggy, His Brother, Tik-Tok, Ozga, ex-Pfc. Files, Queen Ann, and the Oogaboolitans bemoan the fact that they are stuck in the Nome Kingdom so far from home. Ann in particular is ready to give up conquering the world and wants to return to her little kingdom.

I'm not sure why this is the case. Her campaign has been almost uniformly victorious. Aside from having to crawl through a rocky tunnel and tear up her spiffy uniform, she hasn't really endured any hardship, and the raid on the Nome Kingdom brought her to the Metal Forest, where jewels and precious metals literally grow on trees. Compared to Ann, her predecessor Cecil Rhodes was a failure at imperialism.

Next Time: Wizardry Ex Machina!

 

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Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 6

Queen Ann Soforth's invasion of the Nome Kingdom gets off to a rocky start. (Get it? Rocky? It's funny because the Nome King rules a kingdom of minerals. That's kind of like rocks, see? Laugh, damn you!)

The Nome King tries to capture the Army of Oogaboo in a pit trap (Challenge Rating 1, according to my D&D books); Tik-Tok avoids it but his superior officers and Queen Ann herself fail their dice rolls and fall in. Tik-Tok marches straight on into the Nome King's throne room and informs Ruggedo that he has been conquered. Ruggedo declines, and there's a bit of a stand-off at gunpoint, but the Tarantino moment ends quickly when Betsy and Hank wander in.

The Nome King threatens Betsy, and she almost approaches Dorothy-esque levels of insouciance. The Nome King's steward Kaliko disables Tik-Tok, but a swift kick from Hank the Mule prevents General Guph from capturing Betsy. In the confusion, Kaliko, who is a decent enough chap even though he works for a megalomaniacal tyrant, leads Betsy to a small cavern refuge and supplies her with mushrooms and mineral bread with "petroleum butter."

Historical Digression: Petroleum butter was a reference Baum's audience would have recognized. Back in 1848 the inventor and entrepreneur Samuel Kier began marketing two patent medicines: Kier's Rock Oil, and Kier's Petroleum Butter. Patients were supposed to drink the Rock Oil, but the Butter was applied topically. Now since the main ingredient of Kier's Rock Oil was actual petroleum refined from a salt water well Kier owned in Pennsylvania, its medical benefits were limited to violent purging from both ends. Unsurprisingly, Kier's medical products were money-losers, so he switched to refining kerosene from his oil well and selling it as lamp fuel. With the price of whale oil surging at the time, Kier's kerosene was a hit, and the American oil business was born. Petroleum butter apparently lingered on as a skin protectant and treatment for burns, and we know it now as petroleum jelly. 

Anyway. Betsy stays hidden in her cosy cavern, but Queen Ann is more resourceful. She and her officers can't climb out of the pit, but she finds a side-passage and boldly leads her command structure into it. It's a literal Dungeon Crawl!

The Shaggy Man, waiting outside with Polychrome, Ex-Pfc. Files, and Ozga the Rose Princess, happens to mention that he intends to use the Love Magnet to overcome Ruggedo if Tik-Tok fails to conquer him. But the Shaggy Man has not reckoned with the Surveillance State — in the person of Ruggedo's henchman the Long-Eared Hearer. The Hearer hears about the Magnet and informs Ruggedo, who prepares a trap.

Shaggy gets tired of waiting, goes inside — and walks right into the Nome King's trap. He gets snared in ropes so that he can't reach the Love Magnet and wave it around to make Ruggedo love him. (This is a slight change from Baum's earlier depictions of the Shaggy Man's magic item: in past volumes just having it on him made people love him. Now he has to show it.) For some reason Files and Ozga follow him and also get captured by Nomes.

Polychrome, smart Cloud Fairy girl that she is, tries to wake the dragon, but Quox is too sleepy, and his hide is too invulnerable. So she goes to have a look at Ruggedo's throne room herself. The lovely Rainbow's Daughter doesn't need a magic magnet to make Ruggedo fall in love with her. He offers to let her captive friends go if she'll agree to stay and be his queen.

Ruggedo the Nome King is in good company here: another well-known underground monarch, Hades, also fell in love with a divine maiden of the upper world and used all his magic powers to capture her. In the case of Hades it was Persephone, and he was only able to keep her in his underground realm by trickery for half the year. (Presumably during her six months of absence the gloomy king of the shades of the dead played a lot of videogames and ordered takeout a lot.)

For a good-hearted fairy maiden, Polychrome is actually kind of hard-nosed: she won't stay in the underground kingdom even to save her friends — and her fairy powers make it quite impossible for Ruggedo's Nomes to capture her. So he decides to up the ante, and proposes to torture his other captives if Polychrome refuses to stay. But Ann et al have gotten out of the pit and cannot be found, and Betsy and Hank are safely hidden from the Nome King's Gestapo.

He does manage to transform the Shaggy Man into a dove, and with Ex-Pfc. Files and Ozga at his mercy, Polychrome flees again to fetch the dragon. This time she manages to wake him, and Quox storms into the Nome King's cavern. But once again Ruggedo, like all good supervillains, has a trap prepared, and the dragon is wrapped in heavy chains held by a thousand Nomes.

Evil has triumphed! Poor Ozga has been turned into a fiddle and Files into a bow! Can nothing stop the Nome King's reign of terror? Don't miss our next thrilling episode!

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Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 4

And now we meet the great arch-villain of the Oz books once again: Ruggedo the Nome King — alias Roquat, as he was originally known. I don't know why L. Frank Baum changed the Nome King's name; the in-story explanation is that Roquat forgo his original name upon drinking the memory-erasing Water of Oblivion in The Emerald City of Oz, and so had to come up with a new one. Personally, I prefer Roquat, if only because Ruggedo isn't particularly rugged, and the new name isn't a good match.

Like any good supervillain, Ruggedo can detect the approach of enemies from afar, and has defenses ready. He first tries to halt the combined Oz/Oklahoma/Oogaboo incursion by activating the Rubber Country, which he hopes will bounce them away. But our heroes get through with only a little physical comedy. A little Googling indicates that the technology to make a proto-trampoline called a "bouncing bed" was already part of theatrical stagecraft at the time Baum wrote Tik-Tok of Oz, so I guess he wrote this section with that in mind.

The Rubber Country having failed, Ruggedo employs his ultimate weapon: the Hollow Tube. The Tube is nothing less than a tunnel which passes right through the center of the Earth! As Polychrome explains as the entire party falls down the Tube, it was built by a wizard to allow him to travel more conveniently, but the first time he used it, he shot out the other end and collided with a star.

Thankfully, the heroes emerge with much less residual velocity, and tumble safely to the ground on the other side of the world. What's interesting is that Baum's physics is pretty correct here: if something were to fall through the center of a solid sphere, it would accelerate on the way down (though the force of acceleration would steadily decrease to zero) and then decelerate on the upward leg, emerging with a net velocity close to zero.

Of course, air resistance would utterly negate this, limiting the tube-travellers' speed to the point at which drag counteracts acceleration, so they'd never reach the other side but instead oscillate back and forth several times before coming to rest in zero gravity at the center of the planet.

Perhaps the same magic which keeps the mass of the Earth from collapsing the Hollow Tube (and which protects travellers from the 5400° Centigrade temperature at the center of the planet) also negates air resistance, as it only takes the party an hour to reach the opposite side of the planet. That's pretty close to correct, which makes me wonder if Mr. Baum consulted someone to do the math for him — possibly at the nearby Throop Institute, better known today as Cal Tech.

On the far side of the world they meet a Peculiar Person (with Baumian Capitals), who wears a crown and a scarlet robe decorated with a dragon's head emblem. His limbs are different colors — yellow, green, blue, and pink — and his feet are jet black. The Person leads them to a huge palace called the Private Residence. Just as the Army of Oogaboo has twenty officers and one private, this country is populated entirely by kings and queens, which means the ruler is he sole Private Citizen.

It helps that the Private Citizen is Tititi Hoochoo, the Great Jinjin, which means he's roughly as powerful as Galactus. When the Great Jinjin learns that it was Ruggedo who was responsible for sending the travellers against their will through the forbidden Hollow Tube, he resolves to punish the Nome King, and then vanishes.

His visitors, still a bit intimidated, are given the hospitality of the land. Betsy Bobbin and Polychrome are guests of the Queen of Light, who lives in a crystal palace and is attended by six lovely maidens, each representing a different form of light: Sunlight, Moonlight, Starlight, Daylight, Firelight, and Electra. Each one's costume is, of course, described in minute detail by Mr. Baum. (Presumably they could be played on stage by some of the same chorines who wore the Rose costumes earlier.)

The Queen of Light explains that this country is another Fairyland, and the maidens aren't just costumed attendants but actual fairy personifications of light. Polychrome seems to be at least vaguely familiar with them, being fellow fairies and all, but Betsy is full of questions until bedtime.

After the travellers fall into the Tube, Tik-Tok of Oz finally starts to get good. Baum's no longer recycling old material, and when he lets his imagination go wild about fairies he can really deliver the goods. Tititi-Hoochoo is properly intimidating, and the maidens of Light are a wonderful bit of new mythology. Before undertaking this Ozblogging exercise, I hadn't read Tik-Tok of Oz since some time in the 1970s, and had no memory of the earlier chapters. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if I had ever read it before. But the land beyond the Tube was familiar territory. That's the part I remember after forty years.

Next time: the Instrument of Vengeance!

 

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Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 3

Chapter Seven begins with a nice bit of Baum's own particular fairy mythology. The Rain King gets too much water in his basin and it spills over, causing rain on Earth. Then the Rainbow arrives, and the Rainbow's Daughters dance on the bow, daring each other to touch the ground. And — as happens so very often — Polychrome, the most adventurous of the Rainbow's Daughters, lingers too long on the ground and gets left behind when the Rainbow leaves again. (Again, it's easy to imagine this as a musical number on stage.)

Polychrome is lamenting her carelessness when Betsy, Hank, Ozga the Rose Princess, and the Shaggy Man come along. There's a little comic wordplay, and the Shaggy Man wins over the disconsolate Polychrome with his Love Magnet. (I've already mentioned elsewhere that the Love Magnet turns every scene involving the Shaggy Man into a mass of sleazy innuendo.) Neither Shaggy nor Polychrome remember their previous meeting in The Road to Oz, which may be due to Mr. Baum trying not to remind his readers how much material he's recycling here. She agrees to accompany them to search for the entrance to the kingdom of Ruggedo the Nome King.

The five of them wander about for a while before stumbling across an abandoned well. Hank spies something at the bottom of the well and does the classic Lassie maneuver until the others come over to look, and then the Shaggy Man hauls out Tik-Tok, the clockwork man!

Shaggy actually remembers Tik-Tok, and Betsy follows the directions printed on the clockwork man's back to wind up his speech, thought, and action workings. Once he's wound, Tik-Tok relates (in his in-im-it-able sty-le) that Ozma located Shaggy's brother by means of the Magic Picture and sent Tik-Tok to help Shaggy find him, but the Nome King found Tik-Tok first and pitched him down the well.

Despite having been sent to help Shaggy locate the Nome King's realm, Tik-Tok doesn't know where the entrance is, and the six of them are standing around trying to decide what to do when they are interrupted by the sound of marching feet.

The Oogaboo Expeditionary Force has arrived! Private Files plants a flag and announces that this territory has been conquered by Oogaboo. Queen Ann orders him to conquer the Shaggy Man et al, but Files is too much of a gentleman to take arms against Betsy, Ozga, and Polychrome. Hank the mule and the Love Magnet are too much for the Army of Oogaboo, and the Shaggy Man talks them into helping conquer the Nome King — who is, he points out, extremely rich and thus will furnish lots of plunder.

Since World War I hadn't actually gotten rolling when Mr. Baum wrote this book, I wonder if the Oogabooan campaign of world conquest isn't a little dig at the scramble for colonies among the Great Powers of Europe (plus America and Japan). Strangers showing up, planting a flag, and informing the locals that they had just been added to somebody's Empire was a feature of life in Africa, the South Pacific, and parts of Asia in the late 19th century.

The United States had recently joined the club by taking the Philippines and Puerto Rico away from Spain, and had joined in the multinational mission to Peking to put down the Boxer Rebellion. President Theodore Roosevelt had sent a fleet of American battleships on a round-the-world cruise not unlike the march of Queen Ann's Army.

Because of her sole Private's mutiny, Queen Ann's Army is unable to fight, but Tik-Tok volunteers to take the job. The question of finding the Nome King's cavern is solved when ex-Private Files suggests that the Rose Princess Ozga ask some of the nearby flowers. Being a flower herself, she can talk to them. She does, and a stand of daisies point the way.

Let me now point out that our story currently has eight major protagonists (Queen Ann, ex-Pfc Files, Betsy, Hank, the Shaggy Man, ex-Princess Ozga, and Tik-Tok) along with twenty supporting characters (the officers of Ann's Army). That's a huge cast for a stage play and a rather unwieldy one for a short novel. Why is ex-Princess Ozga in this story at all? Polychrome could do all the "lovely fairy maiden" jobs (and has a much more colorful personality; Ozga's a bit of a wallflower).

Thinking about it, this is a feature of many Oz books, and I'm not sure why Mr. Baum felt it necessary to cram so many speaking parts into his later stories. Was it just padding? If six or eight people have to introduce themselves every time they encounter some new wacky wayside tribe or band of randomly hostile freaks, that's good for an extra page or two per chapter. Or was he being governed by his dreams of making the books into shows? But I can't really think why he would want to crowd his stage — each extra character meant an actor who'd want a paycheck. Perhaps he was playing to his strengths: Baum was good at creating interesting characters, and maybe he found that easier than plotting.

Next time: Nomes!

 

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