Tim Powers and the Space Hippies

His nightmarish image of the far future year of 1984 is a comment on totalitarianism, but the term “Orwellian” is used these days because Orwell also made a particularly insightful comment on the nature of the abuse of language for political ends. Because Orwell was not as pessimistic as he should have been, he did not foresee was a voluntary subjection to a program of Newspeak, enforced as a code of puritan politeness in the middle, not of a hideous totalitarianism, but of a relatively healthy democracy. Orwell is still readable as he ever was, his dark humor and grim insights still as bracing.

Perhaps the moral here is that to the degree that comments on the issues of the day can be made to be comments on the universal issues of every day, they will not soon grow trite and dated.

One Will Stape, a writer at The American Chronicle comments here that Gene Roddenberry was a big hippie, but that the show was all the better for it, hippies being intellectual and concerned with real issues like racism and the Viet Nam war. In other words, this is the opposite of what Tim Powers says. With all due respect to Mr. Stape, this kind of talk makes me want to get in touch with my Inner Hardhat, and go out and break a two-by-four over the unwashed and unshaven hair of a jobless flower child. Give me a break.

There were a lot of things that made that show a cherished favorite for three generations of viewers, especially for those of us who grew up to be Vulcans. But the intrusive political comments were the weakest aspect of the show. The show where The Riddler is black on one side and white on the other is a perfectly enjoyable episode, because it shows the futility and self-destructive nature of hate; nor, let it be said, is his enemy Loki portrayed in the light most favorable to reformers and rebels. As drama, the scene where the two Cheronians reveal the reason for their race hatred, (“Are you blind? He is Black on the Right Side. All his people are Black on the Right Side”) as drama, I say, the scene is brilliant. As commentary on what fuels race-hatred, it is trite and shallow. The conflicts of cultures and peoples have deep roots in history and prehistory, and have to be overcome with a Martin Luther Kingian level of moral strength. If race hatred were caused by triviality, curing it would be trivial. This episode is (in my opinion) one of the better ones precisely because it reaches a more universal theme than the faddish political concerns of the hippies.

I also seem to recall an episode where the space-hippies (including Chekoff’s cutie-pie girlfriend) discover their attempt to go back to Eden is futile: for the way is barred by an angel with a sword of flame, or, at least, by poisonous fruit. I also seem to recall an episode where Klingons and Federalists (who DO we call members of the Federation? Feds? Federales?) are supplying arms to either side of a local conflict, and the solution is not to pull out and permit a Vietnam-style bloodbath, but to continue the grinding, horrific business of war: this is hardly the standard hippie position on the issue of Peace and Love.

I have heard the abortive theory that WIZARD OF OZ was a commentary by L Frank Baum on William Jennings Bryan and the Gold Standard — rubbish, of course. Baum explicitly said his purpose in writing was to craft an American fairy tale without the grimness and morbidity of European fairytales, a goal he achieved admirably — but let us suppose that this theory were true, and Baum had been writing about the issues of his day, now forgotten. The surrounding story touches an eternal theme: the Great and Powerful Oz is sometimes a mere carnival huckster, and the splendid Emerald City only looks green because you are wearing green-colored glasses.

(For those of you who read the book, the Emerald City is not, in the first book, really made of Emerald; and, unlike in the movie, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion continue to be fooled by the Wizard even after they discover his fakery– he stuffs the Scarecrow’s head with bran, pins and needles, and tells him he now has brains; he puts a tin heart in the tin man; and feeds the Lion a bowl of broth he tells the beast contains courage.)

But not to wander from the theme: even a book that makes a comment on some now-forgotten issue of its day will still be read and loved if it makes a comment on some issue not so strictly bound by time.

Oddly enough, tragedy seems to age less badly than comedy: ANTIGONE by Sophicles still has power to awe and horrify, whereas Aristophanes’ THE CLOUDS did not have (for me, at least) a single chuckle in it, and I simply detested Rabelais GARGANTUA & PANTEGRUEL. Dante I am rereading, so, as recently as this morning, I notice the great Italian poet has something to say about the issues of my day, something sublime.

I wonder how well science fiction tragedies versus science fiction comedies will hold up a hundred years from now, or a thousand.