John C. Wright's Journal

LOOKING BACKWARD 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy is something of a historical curiosity that science fiction readers might find curious.

It is among the earliest of science fiction books, but shares more in common with GULLIVER’S TRAVELS by Swift, or UTOPIA by More, or even the TIMAEUS of Plato than it does with genre fiction.

It is not witty nor satirical nor philosophical like these works, nor worth reading. But it is a lecture dressed in the garb of a traveler’s tale of a far land, in this case, a land lurking in the undiscovered future rather than on an undiscovered island.

It is a description in detail of the proposed utopia to be brought on by a socialist World Monopoly written in the heavy-handed lecturing style of a finger-wagging insufferably smug young intellectual. (Bellamy was 37 when he wrote this, but his style is that of a youth ten or twenty years his junior.)

The work has one or two clever bits of writing, but otherwise, is best left to rot on the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

The book is unbearably foolish, jejune, dull and unreadable.

Literally unreadable in my case. I could not wade through the whole mass of vomitously and venomously idiotic writing.

Honesty requires I confess my review below does not purport to be a thorough nor even honest, merely a collection of spleenish reactions provoked by passages of a work  I could not tolerate nor finish.

A closer study of the work by someone with a stronger stomach might adduce a more favorable opinion.

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I have been re-watching the classic Disney animated features in order, from SNOW WHITE onward. The well-deserved immortal fame of these films hardly requires any additional comment, but, as a professionally opinionated curmudgeon, at some point, I may write up reviews of each.

For now, I wish only to pen a critique of SWORD IN THE STONE, which was bland and boilerplate, badly-drawn, badly-adapted, and badly-told.

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Surely no one is impatient for a book review from one hundred eighty years ago, and no one will mind if I add material. The Penny Dreadful tale of Spring-Heeled Jack is interesting, at least to me, because it is the precursor of similar nocturnal avengers, as The Shadow and The Batman, and because the great difference between the Penny Dreadfuls of 1840 and the Pulps of 1930.

I took the liberty of adding the following paragraphs to my review from earlier this week:

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Spring-Heeled Jack

The Terror of London

First published in The Boy’s Standard, London, in the 1840’s.

From such odd acorns are mighty oaks to grow!

I have once or twice heard tell of the penny dreadful story of Spring-Heeled Jack, which was the first example, perhaps the inspiration, for such pulp heroes as The Shadow and The Spider, who are, in turn, the inspiration for The Batman and similar nocturnal vigilantes. So I resolved to seek it out to read it.

Spring-Heeled Jack is himself not a fictional character, any more than Jack the Ripper, but one who, like him, was incorporated into fictional stories later, including science fiction stories.

If the fictional Spring-Heeled Jack has landed fewer guest star spots in science fiction or steampunk, it is because the original news stories were also less famous: although, at the time, they caused considerable commotion and stir among the London suburbs.

Newspaper reports of Spring-Heeled Jack ran from 1838 to 1904, from one end of the reign of Queen Victoria to the other, where he seems to be a ghost, or a devil, or a bear. What to make of those reports is beyond the scope of this column, which is concerned only with a story review.

Whether the real Spring-Heeled Jack, if he were real, was a prankster or a lunatic or an extraterrestrial, the reader must turn to wiser sources to seek out that answer.

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TOP GUN MAVERICK (2022),  directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Tom Cruise is remarkable for being a direct sequel, true and spirit and form, to the famous TOP GUN (1986) from three decades and a half earlier, directed by Tony Scott.

A successful sequel is a paradox, for it must be the same as the original, but not the same. It must follow the same spirit and form, cover the same material, but taken from a new coign of vantage, or delving deeper into the original theme.

TOP GUN MAVERICK is just such a successful paradox. To see why, consider why TOP GUN was successful.

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The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis (2021) directed by Norman Stone and starring Max McLean, is a biopic of C.S. Lewis based on the one-man stage play of the same name by Max McLean, which in turn is based on Lewis’ memoir Surprised by Joy.

The title comes from a quote found in Surprised by Joy:

That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

And the film is the story of how he came to this point.

The subtitle is oddly incorrect, as this story has been told before, and by C.S. Lewis. The Most Reluctant Convert tells only those events with a direct bearing on his conversion story. This leaves out a very great deal indeed of C.S. Lewis’ biography. For example, in this film there is no mention of his horrid boarding school life, his writing career, or marriage, no mention of the meetings of the Inklings.

Be that as it may, a conversion story is like a love story, or, rather, it is a love story, but one where the suitor is God and the lost soul is the beloved, and it is fitting to end when the beloved is won. So it is here: the final scene, the final word, is when Lewis takes the Eucharist in his teeth.

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RRR (2022) is an overseas larger-than-life adventure drama, coming from the Tegulu-speaking film industry in India, known informally as Tollywood.

This film was strongly recommended to me, and I am glad to report the recommendations were sound.

Good films are getting so hard to find these days, it is a relief to encounter one filled with epic action, visual splendor, song and dance, well paced, well plotted, based on themes of courage, honor, patriotism.

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Among the infinite multiverse, we happen to live in a timeline where it was decided to make a film that is both attractive and repellant, which cannot be dismissed, because it is brilliant, but cannot be recommended, because it is ugly and absurd.

If I may indulge in excessive understatement, this film is difficult to assess.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022) is an absurdist science fiction action-comedy, directed by  Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

It is funny, but also bitter. It is deep, but dark. Not for children.

Would that I lived in the nearby parallel timeline, one perhaps not far away, where only a few images, lines, or plot points were only slightly different, this film would have a strong recommendation from me.

As it is, I can only recommend it to viewers with a different sense of taste or sense of decency from my own: but those viewers, I can assure you, will enjoy this film as a masterpiece and triumph, because the film actually is moving, wildly original, and deep.

If you are like me, however, you might enjoy it if you overlook the way it looks, if you overlook the uncritical affirmation of sexual deviance as a norm, and if you can ignore several of the grotesque excesses, including trouserless men with pixelated rumps sodomizing themselves with phallic desk ornaments during a fight scene, played for laughs.

And, if you are like me, you will think the depth does not go deep enough to make up for this gross unsightliness.

More than wildly original, this film is insanely original, if not just insane. If you can find yourself in sympathy with the insanity, you will enjoy this film tremendously; if not, you will be confused, perhaps offended.

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I rarely see movies these days, because most are evil, stupid, disgusting, and, more unforgivably, because most are dull, but when bug exterminators drove me and several guests, including young children, from my house for an afternoon, we beguiled away the hours at the local matinee.

Great was our fortune, for we saw a showing of DC League of Super Pets. It was charming, but not deep, with one or two moments of sincere emotion, much lighthearted fun.

Yes, there are the obligatory leftwing sucker-punches or public service announcements in favor of unsightly sexual perversion, but these are minor and few. Nonetheless, they are there, so please find the Chinese or Arabian cut of this film, if it exists. Why the filth is edited out for our enemies but showered on our children, I leave for the reader to deduce.

You have to love dogs to love this film, and you have to think stupid dogs are lovable. Since this is most of humanity, the film should do well.

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Recent columns in this space reviewed the seminal science fiction adventure novellas of Anthony Rogers, namely ARMAGEDDON 2419 A.D. and its sequel AIRLORDS OF HAN by Phillip Francis Nowlan. It seems fitting to review the author’s adaptation of his tale into a daily comic strip, which catapulted his protagonist widespread success and enduring fame.

The pulp tales were written in a dull but workmanlike fashion, and should have been forgotten even by aficionados of early science fiction, save that from this inauspicious seed grew the first and perhaps most famous of fictional space-adventure heroes, namely, Buck Rogers, whose name, in many ears, for many years, was synonymous with science fiction itself.

Other space-heroes who might compete for the title of most famous, Flash Gordon or Luke Skywalker, must admit that they are imitators or homages to the comic strips or film serials of Buck Rogers, following in his footsteps.

In terms of literary merit, the Anthony Rogers stories of  Phillip Francis Nowlan are far inferior to the work of contemporaries, such as A. Merritt, Jack Williamson and E.E. Doc Smith. Ironically, they are also inferior to the Comic Strip penned by Phil Nowlan and drawn by Dick Calkins.

This is one of the rare occasions where adapting a work to a new medium improves it.

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AIRLORDS OF HAN by Philip Francis Nowlan is the second half of the seminal Buck Rogers story. It appeared in the March 1929 issues of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories.

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I thought it proper to post a review of a work, as of post time, ninety-four years old. 

ARMAGEDDON 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan is a title only devout aficionados of early science fiction might recognize, whereas everyone, even a muggle, has heard of Buck Rogers. Indeed, in days gone by, the phrase “The Buck Rogers Stuff” was the by-word for science fiction.

It is strange that so memorable a character comes from a short novel so unmemorable.

While the work for its time contains the essential properties of solidly speculative Science Fiction, and some astonishingly fine futurism, it is astonishingly bland and ill-composed. In all due justice, it suffers indeed from the drawbacks for which many a literary critic dismissed the whole genre of SF as juvenile trash, and these are not drawbacks to be excused by the different tastes of different audience in different decades.

Or, I should say, some of those drawbacks. There is one aspect of this little novella which any fan of the genre would do well to study, if you want to understand the soul of science fiction. This yarn has it.

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