Just The Caffeine Talking

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!

 

If you like stories with stuff Mr. Baum never thought of, buy my new ebook!

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!

For two short stories involving captured creatures and daring escapes, buy my new ebook!

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!

 

For two more memorable stories, buy my new ebook!

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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Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 2

In Chapter Four the scene shifts to a ship caught in a terrible storm. Betsy Bobbin is introduced and falls overboard in one sentence, followed by a thin, sad-faced mule named Hank. Then the ship explodes and sinks (well, it is 1914 . . . ). Betsy and Hank climb onto some floating wreckage. Betsy falls asleep, and when she wakes up the storm has cleared and he makeshift raft is approaching a coastline covered in flowers.

If you read Ozma of Oz, this section may strike you as kind of . . . familiar. In that book, Dorothy is swept overboard from a ship bound for Australia (which does not explode), and floats to safety in a chicken coop, accompanied by the incomparable hen Billina. Turn Dorothy into Betsy and Billina into Hank, and rush through the whole thing as if you're trying to save typewriter ribbons, and you've pretty much got this chapter.

And if you know anything about the stage and early film versions of the Oz stories, you know how often small animals were replaced by larger ones, as hiring some aspiring comic actor like Hal Roach to wear an animal costume was a lot cheaper than getting trained dogs or live donkeys to behave on stage or on camera. So Billina had to become Hank, and since Dorothy has already become a Princess of Oz, she's not going to be cruising around on exploding ships, with or without a mule. Enter Betsy Bobbin.

It would be easy to say that Betsy is just a "re-skinned" Dorothy — she's a little girl from Oklahoma with a devoted animal friend and a tendency to get into dangerous situations in magical lands. But Betsy, while certainly courageous, lacks Dorothy's aura of unstoppability. It's difficult to imagine her tossing a bucket of water at a Wicked Witch, or telling off Princess Langwidere when threatened with decapitation.

Betsy and Hank wash ashore in a pretty countryside, but there is no one around. There is, however, an imposing greenhouse, and the two castaways take a look inside, hoping to find a gardener. Instead they find a bunch of giant Roses (note the Baumian Capital Letters) with the faces of pretty girls. The Roses inform Betsy that she and Hank have arrived in the Rose Kingdom (duh) — and that non-Roses are not allowed in that land.

Now since the Roses are plants growing in pots inside a greenhouse, and don't seem to have hands, you'd think that Betsy and Hank aren't in much peril. But you'd be wrong: enter the Royal Gardener (capitalized). He's a funny little man dressed in rose-colored costume with ribbons in his hair, who repeats the warning that Betsy and Hank must leave — when he isn't having hysterics and falling over at the sound of Hank's bray.

The confrontation with this entirely un-terrifying threat is interrupted by the shattering of the glass roof of the greenhouse as a man falls from the sky. It's not just any man, though, it's the Shaggy Man, with his Love Magnet. Unlike most people who smash through a glass roof (in either direction) the Shaggy Man is quite calm and unhurt. The Royal Gardener immediately demands that the Shaggy Man also leave the Rose Kingdom on pain of death, but Hank kicks the little man outside long enough for the Shaggy Man to inform Betsy of some key points:

1.) The wonderful Land of Oz she has read about in Baum's books is real,

2.) The Shaggy Man is a pal of Ozma et al (evidently Betsy only read the earlier books in the series), and

3.) He's looking for his brother, who disappeared in a mine in Colorado.

The Shaggy Man is convinced that his brother was captured by the Nome King, and has come to the Rose Kingdom looking for a way to find the Metal Monarch. The Gardener insists they must leave, and even the Love Magnet can't dissuade him from his duty, but he does admit that at the moment there isn't actually a Ruler of the Rose Kingdom, because none of the royal Roses in the Royal Garden are ripe yet.

. . . Except that Betsy comes across a Princess who looks ripe, and picks her. But the Roses of the Rose Kingdom insist on a King rather than a Princess, and poor Ozga (the Rose Princess) is obliged to accompany Betsy, Hank, and the Shaggy Man into exile.

It's hard not to notice how "stagy" this whole sequence is. The Roses could be played by chorus girls in costume, the Royal Gardener scenes are full of comic slapstick, and most of the action is conveniently indoors. As usual, Baum even helpfully gives costume details for the speaking parts. Most of Baum's ventures into stage and cinema were financial disasters, and it's kind of a shame to see him constraining his fantasy stories to fit a medium he never really got the hang of.

It's also hard not to notice that Mr. Baum is really blatantly recycling material here. The whole Rose Kingdom sequence is taken almost verbatim from the Mangaboo section of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. You've got a kingdom of plant people, a political crisis due to a lack of ripe rulers, and the brash outsiders defying the rules to pick a vegetable Princess. There's also the crash-landing of a familiar character which interrupts a tense moment.

Self-plagiarism aside, we can assume that the sentient plants of the Rose Kingdom are related to the Mangaboos — either a closely-related subspecies or a strain cultivated by generations of (non-Rose) Royal Gardeners. Interestingly, it appears that only the Royal Roses are fully humanoid and capable of movement; the other Roses grow in pots. This makes me wonder if the Royal Roses are sort of like the "royalty" of ants and wasps: the mobile, reproduction-capable members of the hive. Perhaps Royal Roses can travel about to cross-pollinate with other Rose colonies.

Anyway, Our Heroes cross over the drawbridge leading out of the Rose Kingdom, now intent on locating the Shaggy Man's brother.

Next time: Even More Characters!

 

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Ozblogging: Tik-Tok of Oz, Part 1

It has been nearly four years since my last Ozblogging effort, but since Oz is a timeless fairyland we can pick up where we left off as if nothing had happened.

Tik-Tok of Oz (first published in 1914) has a rather complicated history: it's an Oz book based on a stage show written by L. Frank Baum, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, which in turn was based loosely on the book Ozma of Oz. But over the course of two adaptations Baum made so many changes and threw in so many new story elements that Tik-Tok of Oz has only the faintest resemblance to its grandparent Ozma.

The chapter titles are charmingly alliterative, running from "Ann's Army" through "Tik-Tok Tackles a Tough Task" and "The Jinjin's Just Judgement" all the way to "The Land of Love." It is dedicated to Louis F. Gottschalk, who composed the music for the stage show The Tik Tok Man of Oz, and later was one of Baum's partners in the Oz Film Manufacturing Company. He wrote musical scores for several silent Oz movies made by the Oz company. Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk should not be confused with his more famous uncle Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the New Orleans-born composer who died in 1869.

Our story opens in the tiny mountain valley of Oogaboo, an isolated and quasi-autonomous province of the greater Land of Oz. Oogaboo is ruled by the ambitious and dissatisfied Queen Ann Soforth. She is ambitious because her kingdom has only 89 inhabitants, and is dissatisfied because she has to sweep the floor herself while her younger sister lazes in the hammock out in the yard.

So, in a grimly prophetic move (did I mention the book was published in 1914?) Queen Ann Soforth decides to go forth on a campaign of conquest and plunder. She intends to start by conquering Oz, then the rest of the world, and possibly the Moon as well, if she can figure out how to get there.

Of course, if you're going to conquer the world, you need an army. Ann recruits most of the male population of Oogaboo to be in her expeditionary force. She has to let most of them be generals and colonels in order to persuade them to join, but the equally ambitious and warlike Jo Files agrees to be the sole private in the Army of Oogaboo, so that he can win glory by doing all the fighting.

The imbalance in size between Oz and Oogaboo is offset by Oogaboo's superior military organization: both armies are top-heavy, but Ann actually has a private in her army, while Ozma's own military has none at all. Nattily turned-out in a green unform with gold braid and a purple plume, Queen Ann accompanies her army as it marches forth on a bid for interplanetary domination.

Queen Ann Soforth is of course making one of the classic blunders of grand strategy: convincing herself that the quality of her troops can overcome their numerical disadvantage. This happens over and over throughout history: some leader decides that bushido spirit or Nordic blood or the dialectical forces of history will allow a small army to beat a bigger one. It does sometimes happen, but it seldom lasts. Charles XII of Sweden's army routinely beat much bigger Russian forces during the Great Northern War of 1700. He beat the Russians and Saxons so soundly that eventually he ran out of Swedes and had to go home again.

Of course, even the biggest battalions are pretty much irrelevant given that Oz is defended by the might of Glinda the Good. In this novel her seat of power has inexplicably moved north of the Emerald City, but since the Good Witch of the North has dropped out of Baum's novels since the birthday party in Road to Oz, maybe Glinda has taken over her territory as well.

Glinda, of course, has magical intelligence-gathering systems in place which tell her everything going on anywhere in the world, so she's on top of the Oogaboo situation from the beginning. She uses her space-warping magic to bend the road out of Oogaboo away from the rest of Oz, depositing Queen Ann and her Expeditionary Force in some desolate land beyond the Deadly Desert which guards the kingdom. Glinda is so helpful she doesn't even bother to inform Ozma, the lovely Girl Ruler and her nominal sovereign. In modern parlance, Glinda is a rogue agency.

The Expeditionary Force does manage to acquit itself well in battle against a vaguely dragon-like creature called a Rak, which surrounds itself with a dark cloud of salt-and-pepper scented breath. Private Files blasts it out of the sky with his musket, and the Army of Oogaboo heartlessly ignores the Rak's polite requests to stay around until it recovers and can eat them properly. Cheered by their victory, the Oogabooans make camp.

I don't know if the Rak is Baum's take on the gigantic Roc of middle-eastern folklore, a bird so vast it hunts elephants to feed to its chicks. This one is big enough to lie atop the entire officer corps of Oogaboo, but isn't heavy enough to crush them. It is very polite, though.

Next time: Deja Vu!

 

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