What? There's no Santa Claus?

...or rather, no Howard W. Campbell?

Coming off of Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo, I'd gotten into the habit of assuming that characters who are fleetingly referred to are either entirely real (you just can't make this stuff up!) or based on someone real. So imagine my disappointment when I discover that there was not a prominent American expatriate from Schenectady working in the Nazi propaganda department.

Oh, well. I guess the important thing is that Howard W. Campbell was entirely believable in the sense that I was not shocked by his existence. After all, there were (and still are) plenty of Nazi sympathizers and Nazi party members in the United States, so the concept of one working for Goebbels is not out of the question.

Campbell was originally created for one of Vonnegut's earlier works, Mother Night (1961, eight years before SH5), but he fits in well with one of the messages of the later work: anybody can do terrible things.

...okay, that sounded a bit like a motivational poster.

In order to shy away from a traditional view of the war, Vonnegut muddles the lines of who exactly is fighting whom and avoids identifying one particular side as "Committer of Atrocities". The American soliders are miserable; the Germans are equally miserable, and save Billy from his own squad. The bombing of Dresden is senseless and horrible, but those candles are always burning in the background. Billy is an American taking shelter with Germans from an American and British bombing raid; Campbell is an American working for the Germans, just another part of the blurred boundaries.

But still, it's a bit of a letdown that Vonnegut had to invent the character instead of ripping him straight from history.

The Tralfamadorians' MG/YA cousins?

(MG = Middle Grade, YA = Young Adult. I wasn't quite sure what to qualify the book in question as; I read it during elementary school, but they probably wouldn't let public-schoolers anywhere near it until eighth grade. I'm just bad at gauging reading level. I will henceforth refer to it as a kids' book, since any audience younger than me is clearly composed of kids.)

As I read through Slaughterhouse-Five, I couldn't help but notice that the Tralfamadorians have some stylistic similarities to an alien species I had encountered before: the Boov from Adam Rex's middle-grade/young-adult novel The True Meaning of Smekday, which to this day remains one of the few books I have read more than once. That's how good it is. Adam Rex writes some weeeeeiiiiiird kids' books. But they're really good. He also illustrates them.

Smekday involves a girl named Gratuity, a cat named pig, and a (male) alien named J.Lo traveling in a (hovering) car called Slushious. Needless to say, it's not all that serious of a book.

The Boov (pronounced Bo-o-ov, according to the alien character who is rather rude in his ignorance of the International Phonetic Alphabet) don't have much of a direct relationship to the Tralfamadorians except for glovelike body parts and a general theme of lavatory about their appearance. They don't live in the fourth dimension; they don't see everything all at once; they don't say "So it goes". The Boov are presented flat-out comically, with malapropisms in their speech (the bomb is going to explore!), condescending treatment of humans (sending them to human preserves and feeding them milkshakes), general ineptitude (a second alien race is on its way to destroy Earth because a Boov technician accidentally sent them a recording of an offensive children's song), and odd affinities (they like to wear oranges on their feet). They don't have much to offer in the way of deep philosophical insights about the meaning of time, and they actually don't have such a hard time understanding things the way humans do. Instead, the similarities I see between the Boov and the Tralfamadorians are more tangential, including passing references and stylistic features.

The main passage of SH5 that made me become literarily unstuck and jump to Rex's book was where the Tralfamadorians react to Billy's inspiring speech about everyone living in harmony. The adorable little gloved plungers close their hands over their eyes because Billy has just said something very stupid; they then explain that they themselves are actually more dangerous to the galaxy than humans are, since they destroy the universe while testing new fuels for their flying saucers. Specifically, a Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button and the whole universe disappears.

This passage reminded me of the Boov's own mishaps in space exploration, featuring a Koobish (a type of alien livestock used as a test animal) named Peeches who leans on the Big Red Button Labeled NO, leading to the complete loss of the mission... sort of. I can't tell you what happens to it without spoiling things.

Okay, okay, so maybe not a big connection; just pressing buttons and making bad things happen. But this at least got me thinking about some other connections. Both species view humans as animals, placing them in zoos or herding them off to preserves in Arizona. Both try to focus on the happy parts of life and block out sadness, failure, and mistakes, and yet both are also somewhat defeatist and realize when they can't change something; the Tralfamadorians' destruction of the universe and the Boov losing control of Earth against the invading Gorog. Throw in some weird technology and an astounding number of sexes, and you can see where I might be getting ideas about these two being related somehow.

Since Adam Rex wrote Smekday much later than Kurt Vonnegut wrote SH5, I'll assume a non-Tralfamadorian concept of time and conclude that Adam Rex hid some Vonnegut references throughout his book, and if I go back and read it again, I'll probably find more than just the ones I immediately remembered while going through SH5.

Of course, I could email Adam Rex and ask him about this. He seems like the kind of guy who would answer email from fans.

As one last interesting note, The True Meaning of Smekday is being made into a Dreamworks animated movie. I'm sure they'll ruin it. For one thing, they've retitled it Home (can people really not handle "smek"?) and J.Lo has been possibly been renamed "Oh", perhaps because the female human known as "J. Lo" has been cast as Gratuity's mother, and it would be confusing (BUT OH SO HILARIOUSLY METAFICTIONAL!!!) to have Jim Parson's character share a name with his costar--especially since in the book there is a brief exchange where Gratuity points out that J.Lo is the name of a human actress.


I wonder what they'll do with the parts where J.Lo (the alien) directly adresses the reader to explain certain aspects of Boov history and culture through comic strips?

Basically, if they stay true to the book, it will probably not be popular with a general audience (due to sheer weirdness) but will become a cult classic kids' film. If they try to tone it down a bit, it will be the usual bland silliness you expect from an animated movie that tries to be new and different.

Anyway... I'm judgmental about movies. And Smekday is great. Go read it.

Silliness and Science Fiction...

...do they weaken a message?

This blog post mostly consists of me musing and asking you all for answers. Just warning you.

Today in class we questioned whether Vonnegut can tackle issues like war and and the meaning of life while including flying saucers, toilet plungers, and two-bit sci-fi writers. Does the silliness detract from the seriousness?

Just to get that out of the way, I'll just say that I am of the belief that if you can't take a joke about something, you can't take it seriously, either. Vonnegut's writing style panders perfectly to me. This blog post will not focus on the use of humor to discuss serious topics.

Instead, I'm musing about the inclusion of science fiction, or rather why that might set off some peoples' alarm bells for anti-seriousness.

Maybe it's just because I've been raised in a pro-sci-fi household, but I've never really understood why it's sometimes not considered a "serious" genre (example: while researching education issues and methods for a paper sophomore year, I found out that many educators discourage children from reading adventure, fantasy, and sci-fi). I've often found science fiction to be a much more approachable way to tackle tough philosophical issues than through "literary fiction" (poorly defined term... refers to fiction which has nothing outstanding to identify it by except the fact that it is written?) Vonnegut's characters' use of science fiction for reinventing themselves and their world is something I see as entirely valid: science fiction can look at a potential future to try to make sense of the present.

Most of the time, I'm not complaining about sci-fi not being serious--instead, I'm complaining about certain incredibly-non-serious-and-non-sci-fi things being labeled as sci-fi and thus giving it a bad image (John Carter of Mars, James Cameron's Avatar, The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey, The Host by Stephanie Meyer... the list goes on and on). Are these kinds of works the reason for people disregarding the genre? Too much sex, explosions, Pocahontas, and White Man's Burden in Space obscuring the public's view? I suppose the definition of sci-fi is up for grabs. Here's the one I'll provide: works of fiction that focus on the impact of scientific discoveries and technological developments on society and the human condition. This can be anything from the invention of time travel to newfound political relations with aliens.

Is "real" sci-fi just too weird to appeal to a broader audience? Do the more extrapolated or fantastical elements distance the story too much from the real world? Is it a matter of, "Well, that's someone's imagined future, and they're probably wrong about a bunch of stuff"?

If anyone would like to comment with some reasons why sci-fi is unrelatable or lessens the seriousness of a work's central message, I'd love to hear them. And I promise that I won't give you terrifyingly rabid backlash. I'll give you mild-mannered, constructive backlash.

The Novel as a Museum Exhibit

Ishmael Reed's Ragtime has an unusual variety of footnotes, images, definitions, citations, newspaper clippings, and other such non-narrative bits thrown in with the somewhat jumbled story. This certainly throws some readers off, and some may find this format to be objectionable, but I actually like the way Reed tells the story. It seems almost like an exhibit at a history museum, where artifacts are displayed next to descriptions of the world they were part of and there is an occasional helpful little placard explaining what the heck some of these things are.

I can think of a few other novels that could be construed as having this layout. One is 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson, which takes advantage of its miscellaneous extra documents to explain some of the technologies and cultural norms present in its science-fiction setting (such as a section from a do-it-yourself book on how to colonize an asteroid).

The other novel, which many more of you have likely heard of, is The Hithchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This one is somewhat more structured in its use of extra documentation than 2312, but still: every once in awhile, we get a break from the usual adventures so we can read a section of the eponymous encyclopedia that tells us the wonders of towels, dolphins, mice, the Infinite Improbability Drive, species that are mostly harmless, and Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters.

I happen to like the story + supporting documents approach enough that I've considered using it for one of my own long-term writing projects.

And when I say long-term, I mean long-term.

In sixth grade or so I created a set of characters who I just kept on thinking up stories for (Note "thinking up," not "writing." There are very few finished stories). Thing is, as I got older, my writing style and writing tastes changed, and I kept reimagining not only plotlines but also the themes and setting these characters existed in. If you placed the original characters in a room with their more recent incarnations, they wouldn't recognize each other. Or be able to breathe the same atmosphere, for that matter.

Here's the short explanation of the premise: The current rendition (unfinished, as always) features two sentient alien species living in a major political mess on a large moon orbiting a gas giant in a distant solar system. Then one day, a human spaceship discovers their civilization, and the political mess just gets worse. Some characters are trying to use humanity's new diplomatic influence to bring peace to the moon. Others are trying to use humanity's superior technology to bring peace in an entirely different way. And of course, humanity is busy with its own war against a fourth sentient species, and would greatly appreciate any help from its new acquaintances.

Anyway, since I prefer to write in the first person, the problem is: who do I use as a narrator?

The original alien character who's stuck with the story for six years?
The human journalist?
Or one of the other characters involved?

The answer is Yes.

It's potentially confusing (Mumbo Jumbo certainly is), but ideally I'd throw in a couple of historical documents and narrator's notes into the story. The original alien character would be primary narrator; after all, he's sort of the center of attention. The journalist can be passed off as the document's translator, adding her own notes to explain certain aspects of alien society and even filling in accounts of events she was present at but the alien character wasn't. And to give human readers the full story, she'll include a number of historical documents from the time.

Gimmicky? Sort of. But does it accomplish what I'm looking for? Yes.

That's probably similar to what went through Ishmael Reed's head when he was deciding what "extras" to add into Mumbo Jumbo.*


*which, I must point out, I have found to be far less confusing than Mr. Mitchell's warnings suggested it would be.

Doctorow, Mieville, Oblivion, and the art of Homagiarism

Homagiarism (ɒmɨdʒərɪzɨm) - n. The act of ripping off someone else for your own creative purposes.

In Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow took the name and basic story arc for Coalhouse Walker, Jr. from a novel written a century and a half earlier by German author Heinrich von Kleist. Is that even legal?

Well, yes.

But is it okay? Is there something wrong with Ragtime because it uses someone else's plot? I understand that there are those of you who say that there are no original ideas in fiction, and postmodernists can probably barf up some stuff along the lines of "does it really matter that someone else wrote it first?", but still: Doctorow used someone else's material. This is something that can be great in some circumstances, and terrible in others. Let's view this dichotomy through two examples.

RAILSEA

This young-adult novel by China Mieville takes cues from a very recognizable source: Moby-Dick. The most obvious reference is that there's a captain who lost an appendage and gained a vendetta in a harpoon battle with a large white animal. At first, the book seems to be a rewrite of Herman Melville's (note Melville, not Mieville; I'll call them CM and HM so you don't get confused) novel set in a thoroughly weird universe of endless expanses of railroads and overgrown subterranean mammals. This is not exactly a striking new concept in the world of fiction; anything that was ever famous spawned remakes (or at least sales pitches) as "xyz IN SPACE!" or "xyz AT A MODERN HIGH SCHOOL!" or "xyz UNDER THE SEA!" or "xyz ON AN AIRPLANE!" (or in the case of Airport '77, on an airplane under the sea).
Some people evidently like to reread the same plot over and over again. Some people evidently think that transpositions are the best way to get kids to read/watch fuddy-duddy old works of fiction like Shakespeare. I am not one of those people.
However, CM gets away with his use of HM's premise because 1) he throws in plenty of his own stuff on top of it, and 2) he puts a clever twist on the end of the Ahab vs Moby plotline (I can't explain it without spoiling a great part of the book... but it's clever). In fact, with pirates, monsters, weird technology, and a search for the edge of the earth, good old Moby-Dick gets so deeply buried that you don't notice it's there.
CM homagiarized correctly by taking a premise and plot as things to modify and build off of. Now we look at an example of how homagiarism can go very, very badly.

OBLIVION

I watched this movie without knowing that it was meant to homage just about everything, so my initial reaction was that it had no original content whatsoever. Even now that I know that all of the ripped-off scenes were entirely intentional, it seems like a dumb idea. Here's a list of all the works I noticed were referenced (all were caught on my first time viewing the film; they aren't buried too deeply.)
The Phantom Menace, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Dune, Planet of the Apes, Tron, 2012, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Portal, Gattaca, Independence Day, Wall-E, Top Gun, The Matrix, Logan's Run.
I HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN ALL OF THOSE FILMS (or played that video game), AND I STILL CAUGHT THE REFERENCES! Oblivion takes the most iconic scenes/ideas/props/sets/voices from these works and jams them together into one big, sad excuse for science fiction. The problem is that there is very little (if any) original content to pad the references, and all of the homagarized bits are taken almost exactly in their original forms--no clever twists here.
Granted, there was one reference that I actually thought was clever: the slanted Statue of Liberty from Planet of the Apes. This was okay for two reasons: 1) it is probably the most recognizable post-apocalyptic image of all, and 2) it shows up for just a moment--they fly past it during a chase scene.

RAGTIME

So does Doctorow get away with it? Does he have a good example of homagiarism? His transposition of von Kleists' story is pretty straightforward, but it's intertwined with other stories in the novel. In the end, the thing that makes Doctorow's homagiarism acceptable is that the source he takes "influence" from is not widely known. For one thing, it doesn't automatically trigger something in our brain that says, "Hey, wait a minute! They already did that in (insert fiction here)!". But it also makes it clear that Doctorow is not just using the homagiarized story to try and jump on a bandwagon; it's not, "This was popular, so let's remake it" (ahem*Michael Bay*ahem), it's "Hm. This is an interesting story. I bet I could use it somehow...". It seems like a more genuine form of reuse... though maybe Doctorow could have at least mentioned in a preface or end note that he used von Kleist's story?

Didn't his highschool librarian tell him to always cite his sources?

PS: Interestingly enough, both Railsea and Oblivion are metafiction! The narrator of Railsea occasionally interjects to comment on the progress of the story, and Oblivion's innumerous references ensure that the viewer is constantly reminded: "Hey, I saw that in a sci-fi film once--OH WAIT: THIS IS A SCI-FI* FILM! OMG LOL." (or something like that). Additionally, the inclusion of Tom Cruise's sunglasses from Top Gun remind the viewer that the character onscreen is really just Tom Cruise putting on a persona.

*I do not endorse the labeling of Oblivion as science fiction.

The Wrong Bird, and What is Allowed to be Fictional

So there I am, reading chapter 10, when all of a sudden Doctorow starts talking about the Eskimos eating auks and fulmars. Then he mentions auklets. My bird brain immediately starts nitpicking.

There are no, and never have been, auklets on the East Coast.

In fact, there are only two birds that could be called "auks" in the Atlantic Ocean, and one of them (the razorbill) can't really be described as "small and inoffensive", leaving us with only one possibility for what Doctorow is referring to: the dovekie (Alle alle), which is technically neither an auk nor an auklet. Sure enough, there is an Inuit dish that involves packing hundreds of dovekies into sealskins and letting them ferment, as mentioned in Ragtime.

But who calls the dovekie an auklet?

Near as I can tell, one source. From 1919, which based on ngrams is about the time that the word "auklet" really caught on in literature. This particular source only uses the word "auklet" once, while the rest of the time it uses the term dovekie. The autobiography of Peary's assistant, Donald Baxter MacMillan, uses the terms little auk, dovekie, ice bird, rotch, and bullbird, but not auklet.

So take that, E.L. Doctorow! You used the wrong name for the bird!

...but why the heck am I more hung up about the word auklet (putting my obvious ornithological obsessions aside), than, say, the fact that Freud and Jung take a boat together through the Tunnel of Love? What if E.L. Doctorow actually had his taxonomy straight and meant to have west coast seabirds getting eaten by Eskimos in Greenland? Is that more implausible than anything else in the book?

Well, not really. But it would definitely seem to be more fictional, since it doesn't appear intentional.

If Doctorow has a historical figure do something we have no proof they ever did, it's part of the story. He's in full control of the characters' actions. The places they go actually exist. The cars the ride in are the kind of cars people would have ridden in (fun fact: electric cars were actually pretty common before gasoline engines got quiet and efficient enough to be practical). There's plenty of real history (Stanford White's murder, Evelyn Nesbit having a connection to anarchists, views on unions, etc) thrown in to fit the story we know--Ragtime could have happened, it's just in between the parts of history that got written down.

Auklets (real auklets, not dovekies) on the east coast would be perfectly fine if this were surrealist or alternate history. But since everything else is (reasonably) tightly conforming to the real world, it would just seem out of place. With historical figures, Doctorow can say "Yeah, I'm making this stuff up, but it could have happened," but auklets on the east coast would be "Oh, and by the way--I'm disregarding some aspects of nature, just 'cause."

This might just be my science fiction brain talking, but it seems that the author can make up anything that truly matters to the story, while passing details have to stick closer to fact. The line between fiction and BS lies in whether or not the made-up stuff is gratuitous.

I apologize to anyone who is a fan of surrealism.

-----------------
Miscellany:

• Taxonomy tip: Fulmars look like gulls, but aren't actually related to them. Alcids (auks, auklets, murres, guillemots, puffins, etc) look nothing like gulls, but are pretty closely related to them.
• Don't look up pictures of dovekies. If you do, you will never be able to forgive Peary, Father, and the Eskimos for being heartless killers.
• The described way of killing "auks" is probably accurate. I mean, you'd die too if a giant hand wrapped around you and stopped your heart from beating. It's like the five point palm exploding heart technique for birds.
• The Eskimo dish involving pickled "auk" is called kiviaq.

The Split

Posts older than this one pertain to the 20th Century Novel. Posts more recent than this one pertain to History as Fiction. Just so you know.