A few weeks back for the first time in ages I watched the movie 'Dune' (1984) and as is my habit on this blog it triggered off memories of an irritation associated with the movie that I felt a desire to air. That irritation came not from the movie itself, but from the critiques of it. I remember a friend of mine back in the late 1980s and early 1990s who could not hear reference to the movie without complaining that it was 'a torso', too heavily edited to allow it to be rational. I have read and heard similar criticisms that it diverges away from the novel. That latter comment seems to be levelled at any television or movie telling of a well-known book whether it be the Sharpe or Hornblower series on television or the Harry Potter movies. Whilst modern technology allows the creation of very elaborate settings, what can be conjured up in words on a page will always exceed even what can be produced using the latest CGI technology, though the gap is far narrower than it was even a decade ago let alone back in the 1980s.
People mistakenly think that movies are vast and can encompass a novel. This is generally not the case. You can make a movie of a short story or a slim novel. A classic Agatha Christie novel of 60-70,000 words provides more than enough for a full-length movie, of 90 minutes to 2 hours' duration. The first novel in the 'Dune' series, i.e. 'Dune' (1965) written by Frank Herbert (1920-86) is 412 pages long, at my estimate probably 100,000 words, which could easily supply a 3 hour long movie even if the content was not as complex as it is in 'Dune'. A detective story such as Christie's often use stereotypes and tropes, and in the movies even casting particular actors in certain roles, in order to speed up the audience's engagement with what we are being introduced to. Look at 'The Lord of the Rings' cycle. The books are not as long as the Dune books and certainly not the Harry Potter books (usually 700-800 pages long) but because of the setting and parallel stories this provided enough material for 9 hours' worth of movie (2001-3). Making the eight Harry Potter movies (2001-12) based on seven such lengthy novels has needed the suppression of sub-plots and removal of certain characters and even then you are left with lengthy movies. Since the mid-1960s the length of novels has grown and now whereas 200 pages would be the norm now 400-800 pages is typical; naturally this will impinge on any visual media production based on them.
The average novel these days needs a mini-series to give it a worthwhile airing and this is ultimately what has happened to 'Dune' with 'Frank Herbert's Dune' in 2000 running at 4-5 hours in total depending on the version you watch. The second and third novels in the series ('Dune Messiah' (1969) and 'Children of Dune' (1976)) formed the basis of a 2003 mini-series 'Frank Herbert's Children of Dune' which was another 4 hours in duration. So, you might say, 'alright contemporary novels are too large to make the basis of a movie so David Lynch should not have bothered with his 1984 effort'. This is where today's posting comes in. My view and I certainly am not alone in this, is that the 1984 movie was worthwhile simply because it was tight.
The key problem with the Dune series is that certain elements are greater than the sum of its parts. Herbert is best as an author in his short work not in the bloated novels that came from the success of the first Dune book. After 'Children of Dune' there was 'God Emperor of Dune' (1981), 'Heretics of Dune' (1984) and 'Chapterhouse: Dune' (1985). I read all these books in a single year in the 1990s and soon lost the will to continue; I only completed them because I had bought them and in the hope that they would recapture the original excitement, the failed to do so. They are overloaded with stodgy text and the ideas run out. By the end even though people say the final book is a 'cliffhanger' you basically do not care what happens next, all the life has been sucked out of the concepts. Of course, financially it was in Herbert's interests to keep writing because these books were bestsellers, but I believe that they would be more appreciated if there had only ever been the first book. There are some sparky passages but everything quickly becomes laboured which is not surprising when you have covered thousands of pages even if they straddle centuries. Thus, a movie of just over 2 hours to almost 3 hours, depending on which cut you watch, keeps the flabbiness down and concentrates on the elements which drew readers to Herbert's work in the first place. Interestingly Herbert seems to have known this himself. Wikipedia gives an interesting quote from Herbert when interviewed by Kevin J. Anderson, saying 'They've got it. It begins as Dune does. And I hear my dialogue all the way through. There are some interpretations and liberties, but you're gonna come out knowing you've seen Dune.' Herbert was more supportive of the movie than many of his fans.
The trouble is that the Dune series like The Lord of the Rings and to a lesser extent, the Harry Potter stories, has almost become the property of the fanatical fans who love nothing than to pore over the minutiae so as to eke out the buzz they first got from engaging with the stories. It is unsurprising that there was 'The Dune Encyclopedia' (1984) which was like an encyclopedia of a real universe and in some ways with its short (and not so short entries) is more readable than the novels. In addition, Herbert's son, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson have produced prequels 'Dune: House Atreides' (1999), 'Dune: House Harkonnen' (2000) and 'Dune: House Corrino' (2001) set a short time before 'Dune'; 'Dune: The Butlerian Jihad' (2002), 'Dune: The Machine Crusade' (2003), and 'Dune: The Battle of Corrin' (2004) set 10,000 years before 'Dune' and then two books which drawing on Frank Herbert's notes apparently complete the first cycle: 'Hunters of Dune' (2006) and 'Sandworms of Dune' (2007). Then there are the so-called 'interquels', books set between events shown in the original five books: 'Paul of Dune' (2008), 'The Winds of Dune' (2009) with two others promised. The pair have also written four short stories set in the Dune universe. A phrase involving a dead horse and flogging comes to mind. However, it is clear that there is such a loyal fanbase that these things can continue to be produced. Saying that I cannot comment on the quality not having read any of the Herbert & Anderson books and I accept they may be good in their own right. However, this focus on all the tiny details and exploring these as far as is humanly possible is why the 1984 movie is then seen as being dismembered or not being sufficiently authentic.
In this context I want to stick up for the movie. I think Lynch with his eye for the visually striking was ideal as director for this movie. He kept it pacy and though it is rather front loaded in terms of setting the context of the struggles between House Harkonnen (backed by the galactic emperor) and House Atreides which has spawned a messiah, this pays off and to have adhered to the book too closely would have meant rather repetitive battle scenes at the end. Herbert conjures up a wealth of characters with a range of motivations. While some of them are typical they do catch our attention and Lynch communicates this with who he selects to play them and thus I believe derives the true essence of 'Dune' rather than the blow-by-blow reproduction that many fans seemed to expect but would have been tedious.
Herbert engaged readers by conjuring up a universe which differed from what they expected from a science fiction story and remember he did this in 1965 before the appearance of the more experimental science fiction of the late 1960s and early 1970s in my mind focused in particular on Michael Moorcock. Herbert was an antidote to the hard science Asimovian science fiction. He showed a universe with many parallels to our own. The houses remind us of Renaissance Italy city-states with a different family ruling a planet, though with a Russian-Polish-German styling (well captured by Lynch) even their council is called the Landsraad (very similar to the German Landsrat).
The bulk of Herbert's influences, however, come from the Middle East. Remember this was a time in which the word 'jihad' was unknown to most of Europe and the USA and no-one had heard of units like Fedaykin (from Feda'yin) certainly far fewer among the US population than post-colonial Britain which had until recently ruled over Iraq, Jordan and Palestine. Arrakis is a desert planet and the obsession over the narcotic melange, 'spice', can easily be seen as an analogy to oil in the Middle East; the spice even helps space travel in the way oil processed allowed road, rail, sea and air travel on Earth in the post-war period. The emperor of the galaxy is the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. Padishah is the Farsi (i.e. Iranian) word for 'great king' ; it was also applied to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Now Saddam Hussein is well-remembered we can see a name not too far from his in this emperor of Herbert's books. Iran was the focus of tensions between the Russians and the British and then in the Cold War between the Soviets and the Americans; control of oil was the issue. It is easy for an American author writing at the height of the Cold War to have the Harkonnens as some stand-ins for the USSR and the Atreides as more Anglo-American in approach.
Of course, being a decent author, Herbert does not make a simple analogy and everyone can see other parallels from the region, notably between the rise of Paul Atreides to be leader of the Fremen people of Arakkis and the career of the British officer T.E. Lawrence ('Lawrence of Arabia') who led the Arabs in the overthrow of their Ottoman rulers during the First World War. David Lean's movie 'Lawrence of Arabia' was released in 1962, just three years before 'Dune' was published. Yet again, though, Herbert mixes in other elements and though the Fremen might be considered to be parallel to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formed in 1964; one can also see parallels to the Jewish terrorist groups trying to expel the British from Palestine in order to establish the state of Israel in 1948; especially in terms of the female fighters, notably Chani (it is an Jewish contraction of the name Channah [who in the Old Testament is the mother of Samuel and wife of Elkanahr] which was a traditional one among Jewish women; the women called Chani these days, especially in the USA seem predominantly to have been named that due to the Dune series) who ultimately becomes Paul Atreides's wife. There is a feminist critique of the Dune series in that the women appear mainly as 'witches' shown predominantly as members of the Bene Gesserit clairvoyant order and other female roles such as the emperor's daughter and other noblewomen are characteristic of medieval/early modern roles, e.g. either as abbesses or as consorts to produce heirs. Even Chani ends up in such a role though she is an active freedom fighter too. Saying that Herbert was writing in the mid-1960s before the feminist movement had taken off and his women are certainly a step on from the more brainless beauties of some of the science fiction around at the time.
By weaving together unfamiliar references to the 20th century Middle East with elements from 19th century and Renaissance Europe, Herbert was able to create a real flavour for his science fiction, which is clear engaged people in the way that J.R.R. Tolkien did through using Nordic legends to create his Middle Earth. Herbert intentionally stepped away from the 'hard' science fiction and whilst there are laser guns and spaceships there are elements that emphasise the non-technical. Following the Butlerian Jihad ten centuries before what is shown in 'Dune' technology is held in suspicion (after a machine ordered the termination of a foetus, topic which clearly chimes with many in the USA) and so other methods are used. Notable are the mentats, i.e. human computers whose minds are accelerated by an addictive narcotic. Of course, before the 1940s the word 'computer' in our world did not refer to a machine but to a person who did calculations. The Atreides develop sonic rather than laser weapons, powered by trigger words. Herbert refers to Zen Buddhism (and even creates a philosophy Zensunni combining Zen with Sunni strain of Islam) and the shout (kihai) a person doing Karate makes when they strike can easily be seen as being a parallel of this. In individual combat people have personal force shields that bounce off laser fire or fast moving bullets, only a slowly moving blade or boring bullet can penetrate, so allowing individual combat back into a science fiction setting (and one can see parallels in the light sabre combat of the Star Wars series). This is a useful device because it allows old fashioned heroics back into science fiction stories. For space travel, space is 'folded' by the mutant pilots of the Guild. The use of wormholes and folding of space is now part of mainstream astronomical physics discussions with people such as Stephen Hawking talking about them. Herbert as any good science fiction writer has extrapolated ideas that began coming out with Albert Einstein and interestingly developed them in a direction which science has subsequently explored.
Thus we have a rich setting that even now differs from a lot of science fiction we see. I feel David Lynch captures that context and certainly makes it visually stunning. The scene of Shaddam IV in audience with a Guild pilot who arrives in a very steampunk holding tank surrounded by engineered attendants sums this up. A lot of the sets have a steampunk/dieselpunk feel to them suggesting that high technology can become baroque as time passes a trend that is alive now even stronger than in the 1980s.
The Harkonnen are shown as exploitative and evil. They are also polluters and this puts them out of step with the Fremen and to some lesser extent the Atreides who are more in step with their environment. The bloated, infected Baron Harkonnen whilst being in the model of bad guys of the past takes it to a new clinical level in the movie. His subjects are fitted with plugs in their hearts which can be removed at a whim instantly killing the victim; which the baron does to one servant early on for the fun of it. Harkonnen manipulates Dr. Wellington Yueh into betraying the Atreides by torturing his wife. Capturing the Atreides mentat, Thufir Hawat, Harkonnen enslaves him by introducing a slow-acting poison into his body. Lynch does wonderfully in showing us quickly the setting of these people and their behaviour. The same applies throughout with the Atreides and the Fremen, we can quickly engage with groups rivalling for the control of resources. This is not dismembered, this is trying to communicate something new to us efficiently. Even those who had read the novels need to be able to engage with how the movie presents such things.
Lynch is served by some good actors, notably Freddie Jones as Hawat and Dean Stockwell as Yueh, both, along with Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides were long-term collaborators with Lynch. Other notable players are Kenneth Macmillan as Baron Harkonnen. Sting as his nephew Feyd Rautha, Patrick Stewart as Atreides officer Gurney Halleck and not bad is Max von Sydow as environmental scientist Dr. Kynes. Sean Young is good as Chani but gets too little screen time. The romance between Chani and Paul is the one element people regret being edited out, but I suppose that it would have been seen to slow the action element of the movie which takes off once Paul is rescued by the Fremen. The weakest acting comes from Jose Ferrer as the emperor, perhaps because he is underwritten and from both MacLachlan and Jürgen Prochnow as Paul's father Duke Leto Atreides. Francesca Annis as his concubine and Paul's mother, Jessica about passes. I think part of the problem is that the as the 'good guys' the Atreides appear weak in the shadow of the horrific Harkonnen, but that is a flaw of the original material as much as of the screenplay.
Given the technological limitations of 1984 Lynch is able to give us bloated mutants folding space and 'worms' as large as office blocks and as long as a street rising up from the sands of Arakkis. There are hundreds of troops battling and in the climax of the movie we feel the epic conflict of the style of 'Lawrence of Arabia'. This contrasts with the claustrophobia of the earlier phases of the movie in the corridors of various palaces and even underground among the Fremen. In a movie the length of 'Dune'; in one hours longer no-one could encompass everything from the novel, but Lynch succeeds in both giving us the main elements of the novel and showing us a large dose of its intriguing style. I am sure a lot of people have been encouraged to read the novel off the back of seeing the movie. The trouble for Herbert's legacy was that he was too successful too soon. Winning the Hugo and Nebula awards right off meant no-one was going to restrain him and we ended up with a bloated series that means the gems of ideas and portrayals of people, places and actions are lost in all the bulk. Tighter, more edited novels would have continued the impact of the first much more effectively. Hence I feel that Lynch's 'Dune', rather than being a dismembered 'torso' of a movie is in fact a distilled essence that brings out the talent of Herbert's imagination effectively.
Showing posts with label 'Dune'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'Dune'. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Enjoying 'Avatar' At Home
Whilst the movie 'Avatar' (2009) may have attracted record breaking takings at cinemas, there have been rather desultory comments that 'well, the story is too simplistic', 'it will not look any good on your television at home'. Not all of us can afford to go to the cinema, the woman who lives in my house cannot sit comfortably on the seats and her son cannot sit in the same place to get through the average cinema advertisements let along a full-length movie, so for all of us in our house, seeing the movie, 'Avatar' at the cinema was not an option. So we rented the DVD. We have an average non-high definition television which I bought from Asda about two years ago for £179 so we certainly do not have a 'home cinema' set-up. However, all three of us, utterly enjoyed 'Avatar'.
The merging of the CGI generated characters and the live action ones was seamless and consequently you suspended your disbelief almost immediately that you were not watching a credible world. Of course, the planet, Pandora, is utterly beautiful, which is the point. It subscribes to many fantasy staples such as a 'home tree' in which the members of one tribe all live in a single vast tree; there are flying mountains like you encounter in 'World of Warcraft' and there are dragons. However, all of these elements are given narrative validity and are incredibly well portrayed. Even watching these things on a basic home television they draw you in. I think thought has gone into the ecology of Pandora, with for example the indigenous people being larger but more slender than humans because the gravity of the planet is less than that of Earth. You see different elements of the fauna and flora including predators and scavengers and a range of different plants. The ultra-violet aspects of the spectrum seem important there as they are for insects on Earth.
As to the story, well, the accusations could equally be levelled at movies such as 'Dances with Wolves' (1990) or 'The Last Samurai' (2003) with the added advantage that not knowing the history of Pandora you cannot be certain of the outcome and especially who will live or die. The story, as in those two movies, is of a soldier who has suffered from the wars he has been in, sent into a kind of military role, but one in which he encounters a set of indigenous people (in this case the large, blue-skinned, Na'vi) and is won over to the way that they approach things to the extent that he fights alongside them. It might be an established story, but 'Avatar' brings a freshness to it. There are reminders too of the movie, 'Dune' (1984) especially in terms of an outsider becoming a kind of messiah for an indigenous people and leading them into battle riding a particularly strong creature which has religious aspects for those people.
'Avatar' references lots of different elements of the Hollywood back catalogue, whilst seeming to bring a fresh approach. One element is stories about interaction with Amerindians (the riding of horse-like creatures, the use of bows and 'war paint' in particular), and I would point to 'A Man Called Horse' (1970) as a classic point of reference. There is also a lot of referencing to Vietnam war movies, with the Colonel Quaritch being like colonels from most Vietnam war movies (though of course, in 'Apocalypse Now' (1979) it is a colonel who goes over to the locals; Quaritch is more like Robert Duval's Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Kilgore from that movie), and especially Lieutenant-Colonel TC McQueen in 'Space Above and Beyond' (1995-6) and in particular the use of helicopters flying over jungle references so many Vietnam scenes.
Sigourney Weaver's presence as the lead scientist allowing the downloading of people's consciousnesses into their grown Na'vi avatar bodies is interesting as in the environmental themes the moves seems to reference her 'Gorillas in the Mist' (1988) and with her character smoking, the presence of large humanoid appearing robots that users ride and the role of a corporation in leading dangerous exploitation to her role in 'Alien' (1979) and especially 'Aliens' (1986). Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge as the corporate man is very reminiscent of Paul Reiser as Carter Burke in 'Aliens'.
The movie naturally does portray the damage that seeking out resources in wildernesses results in and we can all see parallels to gold prospecting in the Amazon and even at a distance seeking control of oil in Iraq in this movie. Perhaps this is why the story has caused more ructions in the USA where it seems to be trying to win you over to the side of those the US military tends to stamp all over and so somehow is 'unpatriotic'. The Papacy has seen its references to the connectivity of all life on the planet, the Gaia principle, as ungodly, but then, again, it reminds us of The Force in the 'Star Wars' movies. The ability of Na'vi to 'interface' directly with certain creatures is a novel approach. As the environmentalist perspective is one seen as having been shown before, we do not actually hear about this take on stories a great deal these days. As fighting the baddies is seen as the norm, no-one challenges yet another movie in which characters who are parallel to Arabs or the Chinese are again battered.
I think 'Avatar' handles the issues more subtly and also brings up the fact that there will be people who do not want to be Westernised and that does not make them deserving of destruction. The progression of the lead character, Corporal Jake Sully played by Sam Worthington, to an appreciation of the environment is steady and credible. The fact that he cannot walk is an interesting element, obviously making his transfer into a non-disabled body appealing, but this must be the first time in a while that I can remember the hero in a movie being disabled, only Tom Cruise in 'Born on the Fourth of July' (1989) about a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran, comes to mind; and I suppose the super-hero movie, 'Daredevil' (2003) which features a blind lawyer as the hero.
The concept of downloading yourself into a body, well clearly there is 'The Matrix' triology (1999-2003) in that, but the shift into a physical body rather than a virtual one is another step. With series like 'Code Lyoko' running on UK television and 'Cosmic Quantum Ray' too, the 8-year old viewer in my house was more than happy to accept people being up or downloaded into other forms and DNA was not a mystery to him either when it was said the Na'vi avatar bodies were grown from this, so that they resemble the people who 'drive' them. This allowed him to get into the story quickly without having to analyse how it all was possible.
I would suggest that if you have not seen 'Avatar' that you are not put off by desultory reviews, certainly if you could get into 'Dancing with Wolves' or 'The Last Samurai'. I think in terms of story and how it engages you it is certainly better than a lot of movies being pumped out at the moment. I recommend you go and rent it and I am sure many of you will enjoy it.
The merging of the CGI generated characters and the live action ones was seamless and consequently you suspended your disbelief almost immediately that you were not watching a credible world. Of course, the planet, Pandora, is utterly beautiful, which is the point. It subscribes to many fantasy staples such as a 'home tree' in which the members of one tribe all live in a single vast tree; there are flying mountains like you encounter in 'World of Warcraft' and there are dragons. However, all of these elements are given narrative validity and are incredibly well portrayed. Even watching these things on a basic home television they draw you in. I think thought has gone into the ecology of Pandora, with for example the indigenous people being larger but more slender than humans because the gravity of the planet is less than that of Earth. You see different elements of the fauna and flora including predators and scavengers and a range of different plants. The ultra-violet aspects of the spectrum seem important there as they are for insects on Earth.
As to the story, well, the accusations could equally be levelled at movies such as 'Dances with Wolves' (1990) or 'The Last Samurai' (2003) with the added advantage that not knowing the history of Pandora you cannot be certain of the outcome and especially who will live or die. The story, as in those two movies, is of a soldier who has suffered from the wars he has been in, sent into a kind of military role, but one in which he encounters a set of indigenous people (in this case the large, blue-skinned, Na'vi) and is won over to the way that they approach things to the extent that he fights alongside them. It might be an established story, but 'Avatar' brings a freshness to it. There are reminders too of the movie, 'Dune' (1984) especially in terms of an outsider becoming a kind of messiah for an indigenous people and leading them into battle riding a particularly strong creature which has religious aspects for those people.
'Avatar' references lots of different elements of the Hollywood back catalogue, whilst seeming to bring a fresh approach. One element is stories about interaction with Amerindians (the riding of horse-like creatures, the use of bows and 'war paint' in particular), and I would point to 'A Man Called Horse' (1970) as a classic point of reference. There is also a lot of referencing to Vietnam war movies, with the Colonel Quaritch being like colonels from most Vietnam war movies (though of course, in 'Apocalypse Now' (1979) it is a colonel who goes over to the locals; Quaritch is more like Robert Duval's Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Kilgore from that movie), and especially Lieutenant-Colonel TC McQueen in 'Space Above and Beyond' (1995-6) and in particular the use of helicopters flying over jungle references so many Vietnam scenes.
Sigourney Weaver's presence as the lead scientist allowing the downloading of people's consciousnesses into their grown Na'vi avatar bodies is interesting as in the environmental themes the moves seems to reference her 'Gorillas in the Mist' (1988) and with her character smoking, the presence of large humanoid appearing robots that users ride and the role of a corporation in leading dangerous exploitation to her role in 'Alien' (1979) and especially 'Aliens' (1986). Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge as the corporate man is very reminiscent of Paul Reiser as Carter Burke in 'Aliens'.
The movie naturally does portray the damage that seeking out resources in wildernesses results in and we can all see parallels to gold prospecting in the Amazon and even at a distance seeking control of oil in Iraq in this movie. Perhaps this is why the story has caused more ructions in the USA where it seems to be trying to win you over to the side of those the US military tends to stamp all over and so somehow is 'unpatriotic'. The Papacy has seen its references to the connectivity of all life on the planet, the Gaia principle, as ungodly, but then, again, it reminds us of The Force in the 'Star Wars' movies. The ability of Na'vi to 'interface' directly with certain creatures is a novel approach. As the environmentalist perspective is one seen as having been shown before, we do not actually hear about this take on stories a great deal these days. As fighting the baddies is seen as the norm, no-one challenges yet another movie in which characters who are parallel to Arabs or the Chinese are again battered.
I think 'Avatar' handles the issues more subtly and also brings up the fact that there will be people who do not want to be Westernised and that does not make them deserving of destruction. The progression of the lead character, Corporal Jake Sully played by Sam Worthington, to an appreciation of the environment is steady and credible. The fact that he cannot walk is an interesting element, obviously making his transfer into a non-disabled body appealing, but this must be the first time in a while that I can remember the hero in a movie being disabled, only Tom Cruise in 'Born on the Fourth of July' (1989) about a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran, comes to mind; and I suppose the super-hero movie, 'Daredevil' (2003) which features a blind lawyer as the hero.
The concept of downloading yourself into a body, well clearly there is 'The Matrix' triology (1999-2003) in that, but the shift into a physical body rather than a virtual one is another step. With series like 'Code Lyoko' running on UK television and 'Cosmic Quantum Ray' too, the 8-year old viewer in my house was more than happy to accept people being up or downloaded into other forms and DNA was not a mystery to him either when it was said the Na'vi avatar bodies were grown from this, so that they resemble the people who 'drive' them. This allowed him to get into the story quickly without having to analyse how it all was possible.
I would suggest that if you have not seen 'Avatar' that you are not put off by desultory reviews, certainly if you could get into 'Dancing with Wolves' or 'The Last Samurai'. I think in terms of story and how it engages you it is certainly better than a lot of movies being pumped out at the moment. I recommend you go and rent it and I am sure many of you will enjoy it.
Thursday, 24 April 2008
The Little Death that can Kill a Decent Life
The other day I heard that the term 'the little death' was applied to orgasms, and I will start by stating clearly that that is not what I will be discussing in this posting. My view is that the term refers to fear. Given that I am affected greatly by movie references, I probably gathered this from the movie 'Dune' (1984) in which characters refer to fear in this way. Maybe that is drawn from US culture (or given the nature of that film, Arabic culture). The premise of this posting is based on another movie quote, this one taken from 'Strictly Ballroom' (1992) in which a character says, apparently translating from Spanish, that 'a life lived in fear is a life half-lived'. Throughout my life I have aimed to shape my behaviour by such tenets and even the statement by Dolores Ibárruri ('La Pasionara'), a female Spanish politician and soldier who said in 1936 that 'the Spanish people would rather die on its feet than live on its knees' and this was translated into a statement for individuals as on the mural of 'La Pasionara' in Glasgow painted by Arthur Dooley 1971-7. I must say that throughout my life I have utterly failed to live up to any of those statements and in fact have always bottled out of even mildly challenging situations, to the extent that I have a phobia of seeing people embarrassed on television and will turn away or even leave the room.
I can speak in public, talk with strangers, but certainly am phobic of any circumstances even leading to mild embarrassment let alone humiliation. People also believe I am a pessimist, though as you will see from this blog I am very unfortunate in the number of minor things that go wrong in my life and the unnecessary hassle from people. This element is exacerbated by not being very co-ordinated so dropping and breaking things, even walking into furniture, doors, etc. and having a poor memory so I forget to do things and where I have left items. Writing all these traits out actually makes me feel less condemnatory of myself and actually recognise that it is quite an achievement to get through the average day at work.
Maybe it is not simply my fear of what could go wrong which has hampered my life, but that is the one element I can alert you to and encourage you to reflect on what a fear of embarrassment and/or failure might be stopping you doing. In addition, when doing the posting about songs that trigger off nostalgia for me, I recognise that a great deal of it stemmed from missed opportunities in my life. These fall into two broad categories, giving up on establishing relationships and not travelling.
I have always got on well with women and am told that when I write female characters in my stories they are done well. I have always had both male and female friends. Some of the latter, naturally I have hoped would turn into girlfriends. Astoundingly given my unattractive appearance and unpleasant scars on my body, I actually attracted quite a lot of interest from women.
When I was 10 I actually had a 'girlfriend' to the extent that we held hands and kissed each other on the cheek and called ourselves girlfriend/boyfriend to the extent that we knew what that was. We would sit together and play together at break time. However, 10 is too young and I had to endure increasing ridicule from other boys who at that age would have nothing to do with girls. If I had waited four years they probably would have been jealous. Helen was beautiful with lovely long black hair, pale skin and freckles and was very intelligent and had a spirit of adventure, but the ridicule kept me awake at night and I began to spurn her, having no knowledge of how to break off a relationship. She did not understand why I was behaving that way and I was grilled by her parents and my own. Fortunately she went off to a private school. I met her again nine years later, with the hair cut short, and apologised and of course she said it was nothing, her life had moved on a great deal and whereas I in my terribly introspective way still felt guilty for the upset I had caused her, for her it was by now a tiny element of her childhood days. The last I heard she had been in Japan for six years teaching English, suggesting she had retained her adventurous spirit, but that was probably 14 years ago.
That incident then stopped me asking a woman out ever again until I was in my mid-20s. I knew that I had little chance if I asked a woman out and that even if I was not humiliated by her, then I would be by other people or I would screw up the relationship and upset her. I also felt that any other man she would encounter would be preferable to her than me, so I would withdraw even in a basis of a relationship began whenever any other available man appeared on the scene. My feelings of not being able to get it right began fading in the mid-1990s when I was living in Oxford, but were totally reinforced by my treatment at the hands of two women I asked out there. The first rejected me because my job was as a civil servant earning only £8,500 per year and she was incredulous that I worked in such a job and made it clear she could not date anyone who did such a lowly profession. The second was worse. She felt offended that I considered myself to be worthy to ask her out and insisted angrily, via her housemates that I make an apology to her for doing so, in writing which I did.
Such incidents set me back ten years. There were women who were interested in me, but of course I always seemed to go after those who seemed to despise me for one aspect or another. At the time when I rejected advances from women I gave no thought to what impact I made on them I just selfishly thought about why I kept behaving in the same way and how I had avoided some imagined mistake I would have made that would have distressed the woman even further than my rejection. I guess for most modern women, being rejected by one man features very minimally in their life experiences, if at all, and that thought consoles me.
At the age of 16, having had six years with no sight of any relationship (bar some girls at school who when I appeared ill seemed to want to nurse me, not the sound basis for a teenage romance) there was Fahana whose political views were in step with mine (a rarity in my home district). Again, she was very attractive and intelligent, and for some reason and I cannot identify why I reacted so negatively whenever she came and sat near me and made it clear she wanted a relationship. I guess it had to come down to irrational fear, but that made me appear to be so badly behaved. I seemed to be a racist because I could give no rational basis for not wanting to go out with her and she probably felt rather rejected as she was a quiet soul and of course that was the last thing I would have wanted to make her feel, given as teenagers we were all feeling awkward and to some extent spurned by society.
I did not learn from that lesson. When I moved on to college there were a number of women I was interested in and may have been amenable to being asked out, but I could never do it. Then there was Liz, probably the biggest mistake of my life. She was a quiet but fashionable and to me appeared a sophisticated woman with her own style. We chatted easily and she asked me out three times, once via a friend and then twice directly. I do not know why but I always made excuses despite the fact that I was burning to go on even just one date with her. By this time I was 18 and was conscious that compared to the other male students around me I was inexperienced in the ways of women and I always feared I would be a disappointment. I imagine now that actually most of the other students both female and male were less experienced that I envisaged, but no-one tried to convince me of that at the time. Being no good at football in the preceding years at school I had fallen in with the nerds on computers and playing 'Dungeons & Dragons' so there were no friends around to encourage me with Liz. Fortunately after realising she was not going to get anywhere with me she moved on which heartened me a little.
The problem was that I missed yet another opportunity to get any experience in a relationship and time was beginning to run out as once you pass your early 20s no woman is going to pay attention to a man who at least has the basics of kissing, sex and being a reasonable partner. In fact the first woman I slept with was furious when she found out that I had been a virgin when I slept with her. To finish off my college years there was Heather but she was too obsessed with horses to have any time for men and I was not the only one rejected by her. All I got was some pleasant cycle rides home with her.
University followed the same pattern of me chasing unsuitable or disinterested women such as Belinda, Judy, Saskia yet at the same time, notably with Barbara and Rachel, ignoring until they had lost interest women that something could have started with. The one I messed up most with was Anneli, an initially shy woman two years below me, who quickly transformed into a sweet but trendy woman that I fell head-over-heels for. I kept doing odd romantic things that never really came off and that I never followed up. We even went on a date to a university ball, but when she encountered a male friend, I assumed that she would be better off with him and so left them. They did go for a walk by the lake afterwards, so maybe I read his signals better than I read hers. After I had moved on to Oxford she invited me back and it was clear she had a lot of male interest. She wanted me to stay the night, though not to sleep together, but I went home in the evening and wondered what would have happened if I had stayed. I recognise now that that was probably my romantic nature and nothing would have happened, I had screwed up any chance I had had the year before, probably bewildering the poor woman. I do search out these people occasionally online and found the only reference to her was that in 2002 that she had married a wealthy Oxford graduate from a family of admirals and scientists and property developers, so I hope life is treating her well.
Another was Gabrielle who I had met in Germany, a friend of the Liz on her way to Hungary who I mentioned in my last posting. Gabrielle was often in unsuitable relationships so unavailable, but when we both ended up in Norwich we were naturally friends and I ended up in a weird role where I would go shopping with her and do domestic things even buy crockery and household supplies, go to cafes as if I was her husband (or maybe I got it wrong and she saw me as simply like a female friend). Then when between relationships she asked me to stay the night, but knowing me, the minute I saw her contraceptive pills by the bed I ran off, fearful that my incompetence in sex would annoy her. Of course she might not have wanted sex anyway, but what I am saying is that fear stopped me even finding out or seeing if the kind of marital relationship could gain other aspects. Of course many relationships never get very far, you may have a few dates and it come to nothing, but two things: at least then you will know rather than wonder, and even one date is better than none at all.
To go to university with no sexual experience can be a disadvantage, to leave it with none is really too late. The next decade was very lean with me asking out a number of work colleagues and receiving polite rejections with sweet smiles and mad rushing up to women on the underground or in car parks and asking them out because I had been attracted to them in the queue in the supermarket, probably very scary for them. There was Kashifa, but she turned out very quickly to have very politically unsound views regarding Jews so I dropped her not only as a potential girlfriend but as a friend too. Illaria a seemingly very sweet woman who I loved from a distance at work until she revealed actually that she viewed me as very child-like, unsophisticated and the only interest she would expend on me was in a pitying way in order to teach me how to do something I was clearly incapable of doing. She saw all British very much in the same light anyway.
Things did not turn around until another Helen, this time in London. She was in an established relationship that led to marriage but a relationship between us developed, throwing her into doubt about whether she was naturally promiscuous and had been unaware of the fact and a whole lot more. We worked together and then lunched together and things grew from that. I knew a relationship with her would be immoral and I broke it off with her before anything physical developed though she had told me she had been thinking about it. It was not anything to do with pride about not wanting to be 'the other man', more I kept thinking about how I would feel if I was in her partner's position. Even then I bottled out sending her a letter breaking it off, but she ran into me on the way to postbox and it all came out. Her partner was incredibly good about it, unsurprisingly rather prickly, but his manner seems to have enabled him to have got through it and 13 years later they are married parents. The thing about this Helen was that she showed me that I had characteristics that could actually attract a woman, which I had been increasingly unwilling to believe and after her I got into dating agencies and so on and quite a few different dates and even short (sexless) relationships that stop loneliness. I think these days if I saw a woman I was attracted to I would have no fear of asking her out and certainly if one asked me I would not run away in fear, after all what is one date, the worst that can happen is that it goes badly, the best quite a bit more. Many women work on a 3-date principle, they actually have no interest in seeing you in the long-term but like to have 3 dates with you to have someone to accompany them to a restaurant/exhibition/movie they otherwise would not go to. After Date 3 is when things begin to shift either to a conclusion or the beginning of a real relationship.
So fear certainly screwed up my relationships, upset in the short term a number of women and meant that I was ill-equipped for being a male adult in the decades I lived through. Relationships can be fearful, but never turn your back on anyone who shows an interest in you. Many times it will not be the love of your life, but remember if you feel uncomfortable then they must feel ten times worse, go out with them you might have fun. I have found that the women I get on with best in relationships are always very different to the ones I expect so I recommend being open to all the sorts of women you might encounter. Adjust the gender in these sentences as appopriate for your orientation. If you really cannot bear to envisage going out with a person who asks or are attached and they are oblivious to the fact, be firm and snuff out any embers of hope straight off, but ensure you are tactful and polite, never be angry or demand an apology or treat them as if they were scum not fit to even be on the bottom of your shoe, they are only trying to make their way in life after all. See their interest as a compliment not some kind of insult.
The other aspect in which I feel my life was held back by fear was in terms of travel. In terms of disposable income I had far more at certain times in the past than I do now, yet worried about money I turned down invitations to attend weddings in South Africa, Malta and Germany which would have been interesting experiences and in the case of South Africa and Malta those are two countries I have never been to. Even when I was abroad my social unease and my appalling lack of ability with languages stopped me going to events, notably in Germany. Occasionally I would have flashes of courage as when really exploring Berlin's Goth scene and I can only attribute that to the warmth of the people I met on the scene. The only other occasion was in fact when I was at my poorest in that room over the chipshop when I simply set off on my bicycle to France and toured around the Nord, Pas-de-Calais and Somme departements stopping at youth hostels and in rooms over bars. I have no idea where the courage for that came from.
I know in the UK we get horror stories of people being killed or dying abroad but you can be run over in your own home town in the UK. Despite at the age of 24, paying to train to be teach English as a foreign language I found immediately that I had no courage to go abroad and try and get a job. It could have taken me anywhere, into Europe, to Asia, South America, even Africa if I had chosen, but I did not even get to Slovakia. I simply ignored all the jobs on offer that family members and friends passed on to me, saying that I was constantly rejected (in fact even if I had applied that may have been the case as even now I only get an interview for every 25 jobs I apply for and usually have to apply for over 120 jobs before I get one) but in fact I never applied for any of them and instead got a job moving furniture which paid £104 (€135; US$208) per week, which was bad even in the early 1990s. I worried I would be lonely in a strange country with people speaking another language, but in fact I was pretty much like that wherever I ended up in the UK (especially Milton Keynes). I know it would have been tough because I do not make friends easily and relationships as noted here were even harder, so I certainly would not have had the experiences of friends who met their future partners while teaching in France or elsewhere. Yet, at least I would have experienced a different life. I suppose the difficulties I experienced in West Germany with the authorities (I was almost drafted in the Army) where in fact I made loads of (British and Irish) friends probably also weighed heavily against me. Instead I lived at home with my parents and this added to the real sense that I had not really grown up which simply further undermined my ability to deal with women and life's challenges. I suppose you have to face some hardships and discomfort to mature (this is going to be a major problem for current schoolchildren even more cut off from the challenges of the real world as they grow up than even I was).
Even putting aside working abroad, in terms of going on holiday, fear of crime ,especially in Eastern Europe scared me off going to visit Prague and Budapest (both of which I really wanted to visit) let alone going into Russia in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s when things were all still changing. In fact when I heard from two younger women about their exploits unharmed through Russia in fact I felt even more humiliated that I had not done what they had done and came to the pig-headed decision that I could go nowhere without being totally robbed and murdered (I think scare stories on the television did not help), consequently I had only one holiday between 1990 and 1999 and that was in a house rented in Normandy for a week, hardly adventurous (when I went to Prague in 2003 with my work, I found it had far less crime than I had even seen in the UK and people were very friendly and I had a great time. Even then it was still incredibly cheap to stay, visit places and eat out so would have been ideal when I was on a student-sized budget). I once saw an advert on an underground station showing a dreary elderly couple saying 'we almost went to Istanbul once' and I used to take that as a warning to me. As the advert said, 'you never regret the place you have been only missing out on those you have never been to' or some such words. I have never been to Istanbul, St. Petersburg or Budapest.
I used to say it was my friends, all of whom were unadventurous and even more disorganised than me, so never sorted themselves out to get on holiday, bar that trip in 1995 to Normandy. They did not like 'roughing it' in the slightest and on the other hand I was never going to be as robust as my brother spending six months in an army truck going coast-to-coast West to East across the middle of Africa. I alway assume it is me who will get food poisoning, malaria, be robbed or shot. It might be but most of those things (bar malaria) certainly could happen to me here in the UK. I did have some bad experiences such as losing my inter-rail ticket in West Germany in 1988, but I got home quickly and safely, so even my much commented upon bad luck did not entirely ruin things. Trips to the weddings would have been even safer and yet at least exposed me to some other countries, people and cultures.
I regret the lost years of the 1990s when fear stopped me exploring more of the world at a time when I had the time to do those things and also could access discounts for young people. Instead I sat at home, bored and lonely watching programmes reinforcing my fears. Of course if I had found the right woman (any one of the two Helens or the Liz for Hungary would have suited admirably; though of course trips with a partner can severely strain relationships, I know one woman as a consequence who always leaves her husband behind and holidays with female friends) or even just some friends of either sex to go with it would have been very different, but I never mix with people who have any enthusiasm to stray outside the UK. Their fear is greater than mine I recognise or maybe it is simply disinterest and my problem has been the desire to travel and yet not having the courage to do so. Now it is too late as the Belgian fiasco proved. I recommend ignore all the media horror stories, get out there, see places, be the person that when you turn 70 you can say 'do you remember that time when we were in Istanbul?' and not be like me, resembling the dreary couple on the poster who never went anywhere.
This posting has been about facing fears, because they are the little deaths, they chip away at the potential richness of your life until what is left is a dull mundane thing which is not worth living anyway, a state, which as regular readers will know, I have got to. Asking out a couple of people each year, going on one decent trip per year, these are not great tasks, but they could lead to having a much richer existence and hence one that is worth living.
I can speak in public, talk with strangers, but certainly am phobic of any circumstances even leading to mild embarrassment let alone humiliation. People also believe I am a pessimist, though as you will see from this blog I am very unfortunate in the number of minor things that go wrong in my life and the unnecessary hassle from people. This element is exacerbated by not being very co-ordinated so dropping and breaking things, even walking into furniture, doors, etc. and having a poor memory so I forget to do things and where I have left items. Writing all these traits out actually makes me feel less condemnatory of myself and actually recognise that it is quite an achievement to get through the average day at work.
Maybe it is not simply my fear of what could go wrong which has hampered my life, but that is the one element I can alert you to and encourage you to reflect on what a fear of embarrassment and/or failure might be stopping you doing. In addition, when doing the posting about songs that trigger off nostalgia for me, I recognise that a great deal of it stemmed from missed opportunities in my life. These fall into two broad categories, giving up on establishing relationships and not travelling.
I have always got on well with women and am told that when I write female characters in my stories they are done well. I have always had both male and female friends. Some of the latter, naturally I have hoped would turn into girlfriends. Astoundingly given my unattractive appearance and unpleasant scars on my body, I actually attracted quite a lot of interest from women.
When I was 10 I actually had a 'girlfriend' to the extent that we held hands and kissed each other on the cheek and called ourselves girlfriend/boyfriend to the extent that we knew what that was. We would sit together and play together at break time. However, 10 is too young and I had to endure increasing ridicule from other boys who at that age would have nothing to do with girls. If I had waited four years they probably would have been jealous. Helen was beautiful with lovely long black hair, pale skin and freckles and was very intelligent and had a spirit of adventure, but the ridicule kept me awake at night and I began to spurn her, having no knowledge of how to break off a relationship. She did not understand why I was behaving that way and I was grilled by her parents and my own. Fortunately she went off to a private school. I met her again nine years later, with the hair cut short, and apologised and of course she said it was nothing, her life had moved on a great deal and whereas I in my terribly introspective way still felt guilty for the upset I had caused her, for her it was by now a tiny element of her childhood days. The last I heard she had been in Japan for six years teaching English, suggesting she had retained her adventurous spirit, but that was probably 14 years ago.
That incident then stopped me asking a woman out ever again until I was in my mid-20s. I knew that I had little chance if I asked a woman out and that even if I was not humiliated by her, then I would be by other people or I would screw up the relationship and upset her. I also felt that any other man she would encounter would be preferable to her than me, so I would withdraw even in a basis of a relationship began whenever any other available man appeared on the scene. My feelings of not being able to get it right began fading in the mid-1990s when I was living in Oxford, but were totally reinforced by my treatment at the hands of two women I asked out there. The first rejected me because my job was as a civil servant earning only £8,500 per year and she was incredulous that I worked in such a job and made it clear she could not date anyone who did such a lowly profession. The second was worse. She felt offended that I considered myself to be worthy to ask her out and insisted angrily, via her housemates that I make an apology to her for doing so, in writing which I did.
Such incidents set me back ten years. There were women who were interested in me, but of course I always seemed to go after those who seemed to despise me for one aspect or another. At the time when I rejected advances from women I gave no thought to what impact I made on them I just selfishly thought about why I kept behaving in the same way and how I had avoided some imagined mistake I would have made that would have distressed the woman even further than my rejection. I guess for most modern women, being rejected by one man features very minimally in their life experiences, if at all, and that thought consoles me.
At the age of 16, having had six years with no sight of any relationship (bar some girls at school who when I appeared ill seemed to want to nurse me, not the sound basis for a teenage romance) there was Fahana whose political views were in step with mine (a rarity in my home district). Again, she was very attractive and intelligent, and for some reason and I cannot identify why I reacted so negatively whenever she came and sat near me and made it clear she wanted a relationship. I guess it had to come down to irrational fear, but that made me appear to be so badly behaved. I seemed to be a racist because I could give no rational basis for not wanting to go out with her and she probably felt rather rejected as she was a quiet soul and of course that was the last thing I would have wanted to make her feel, given as teenagers we were all feeling awkward and to some extent spurned by society.
I did not learn from that lesson. When I moved on to college there were a number of women I was interested in and may have been amenable to being asked out, but I could never do it. Then there was Liz, probably the biggest mistake of my life. She was a quiet but fashionable and to me appeared a sophisticated woman with her own style. We chatted easily and she asked me out three times, once via a friend and then twice directly. I do not know why but I always made excuses despite the fact that I was burning to go on even just one date with her. By this time I was 18 and was conscious that compared to the other male students around me I was inexperienced in the ways of women and I always feared I would be a disappointment. I imagine now that actually most of the other students both female and male were less experienced that I envisaged, but no-one tried to convince me of that at the time. Being no good at football in the preceding years at school I had fallen in with the nerds on computers and playing 'Dungeons & Dragons' so there were no friends around to encourage me with Liz. Fortunately after realising she was not going to get anywhere with me she moved on which heartened me a little.
The problem was that I missed yet another opportunity to get any experience in a relationship and time was beginning to run out as once you pass your early 20s no woman is going to pay attention to a man who at least has the basics of kissing, sex and being a reasonable partner. In fact the first woman I slept with was furious when she found out that I had been a virgin when I slept with her. To finish off my college years there was Heather but she was too obsessed with horses to have any time for men and I was not the only one rejected by her. All I got was some pleasant cycle rides home with her.
University followed the same pattern of me chasing unsuitable or disinterested women such as Belinda, Judy, Saskia yet at the same time, notably with Barbara and Rachel, ignoring until they had lost interest women that something could have started with. The one I messed up most with was Anneli, an initially shy woman two years below me, who quickly transformed into a sweet but trendy woman that I fell head-over-heels for. I kept doing odd romantic things that never really came off and that I never followed up. We even went on a date to a university ball, but when she encountered a male friend, I assumed that she would be better off with him and so left them. They did go for a walk by the lake afterwards, so maybe I read his signals better than I read hers. After I had moved on to Oxford she invited me back and it was clear she had a lot of male interest. She wanted me to stay the night, though not to sleep together, but I went home in the evening and wondered what would have happened if I had stayed. I recognise now that that was probably my romantic nature and nothing would have happened, I had screwed up any chance I had had the year before, probably bewildering the poor woman. I do search out these people occasionally online and found the only reference to her was that in 2002 that she had married a wealthy Oxford graduate from a family of admirals and scientists and property developers, so I hope life is treating her well.
Another was Gabrielle who I had met in Germany, a friend of the Liz on her way to Hungary who I mentioned in my last posting. Gabrielle was often in unsuitable relationships so unavailable, but when we both ended up in Norwich we were naturally friends and I ended up in a weird role where I would go shopping with her and do domestic things even buy crockery and household supplies, go to cafes as if I was her husband (or maybe I got it wrong and she saw me as simply like a female friend). Then when between relationships she asked me to stay the night, but knowing me, the minute I saw her contraceptive pills by the bed I ran off, fearful that my incompetence in sex would annoy her. Of course she might not have wanted sex anyway, but what I am saying is that fear stopped me even finding out or seeing if the kind of marital relationship could gain other aspects. Of course many relationships never get very far, you may have a few dates and it come to nothing, but two things: at least then you will know rather than wonder, and even one date is better than none at all.
To go to university with no sexual experience can be a disadvantage, to leave it with none is really too late. The next decade was very lean with me asking out a number of work colleagues and receiving polite rejections with sweet smiles and mad rushing up to women on the underground or in car parks and asking them out because I had been attracted to them in the queue in the supermarket, probably very scary for them. There was Kashifa, but she turned out very quickly to have very politically unsound views regarding Jews so I dropped her not only as a potential girlfriend but as a friend too. Illaria a seemingly very sweet woman who I loved from a distance at work until she revealed actually that she viewed me as very child-like, unsophisticated and the only interest she would expend on me was in a pitying way in order to teach me how to do something I was clearly incapable of doing. She saw all British very much in the same light anyway.
Things did not turn around until another Helen, this time in London. She was in an established relationship that led to marriage but a relationship between us developed, throwing her into doubt about whether she was naturally promiscuous and had been unaware of the fact and a whole lot more. We worked together and then lunched together and things grew from that. I knew a relationship with her would be immoral and I broke it off with her before anything physical developed though she had told me she had been thinking about it. It was not anything to do with pride about not wanting to be 'the other man', more I kept thinking about how I would feel if I was in her partner's position. Even then I bottled out sending her a letter breaking it off, but she ran into me on the way to postbox and it all came out. Her partner was incredibly good about it, unsurprisingly rather prickly, but his manner seems to have enabled him to have got through it and 13 years later they are married parents. The thing about this Helen was that she showed me that I had characteristics that could actually attract a woman, which I had been increasingly unwilling to believe and after her I got into dating agencies and so on and quite a few different dates and even short (sexless) relationships that stop loneliness. I think these days if I saw a woman I was attracted to I would have no fear of asking her out and certainly if one asked me I would not run away in fear, after all what is one date, the worst that can happen is that it goes badly, the best quite a bit more. Many women work on a 3-date principle, they actually have no interest in seeing you in the long-term but like to have 3 dates with you to have someone to accompany them to a restaurant/exhibition/movie they otherwise would not go to. After Date 3 is when things begin to shift either to a conclusion or the beginning of a real relationship.
So fear certainly screwed up my relationships, upset in the short term a number of women and meant that I was ill-equipped for being a male adult in the decades I lived through. Relationships can be fearful, but never turn your back on anyone who shows an interest in you. Many times it will not be the love of your life, but remember if you feel uncomfortable then they must feel ten times worse, go out with them you might have fun. I have found that the women I get on with best in relationships are always very different to the ones I expect so I recommend being open to all the sorts of women you might encounter. Adjust the gender in these sentences as appopriate for your orientation. If you really cannot bear to envisage going out with a person who asks or are attached and they are oblivious to the fact, be firm and snuff out any embers of hope straight off, but ensure you are tactful and polite, never be angry or demand an apology or treat them as if they were scum not fit to even be on the bottom of your shoe, they are only trying to make their way in life after all. See their interest as a compliment not some kind of insult.
The other aspect in which I feel my life was held back by fear was in terms of travel. In terms of disposable income I had far more at certain times in the past than I do now, yet worried about money I turned down invitations to attend weddings in South Africa, Malta and Germany which would have been interesting experiences and in the case of South Africa and Malta those are two countries I have never been to. Even when I was abroad my social unease and my appalling lack of ability with languages stopped me going to events, notably in Germany. Occasionally I would have flashes of courage as when really exploring Berlin's Goth scene and I can only attribute that to the warmth of the people I met on the scene. The only other occasion was in fact when I was at my poorest in that room over the chipshop when I simply set off on my bicycle to France and toured around the Nord, Pas-de-Calais and Somme departements stopping at youth hostels and in rooms over bars. I have no idea where the courage for that came from.
I know in the UK we get horror stories of people being killed or dying abroad but you can be run over in your own home town in the UK. Despite at the age of 24, paying to train to be teach English as a foreign language I found immediately that I had no courage to go abroad and try and get a job. It could have taken me anywhere, into Europe, to Asia, South America, even Africa if I had chosen, but I did not even get to Slovakia. I simply ignored all the jobs on offer that family members and friends passed on to me, saying that I was constantly rejected (in fact even if I had applied that may have been the case as even now I only get an interview for every 25 jobs I apply for and usually have to apply for over 120 jobs before I get one) but in fact I never applied for any of them and instead got a job moving furniture which paid £104 (€135; US$208) per week, which was bad even in the early 1990s. I worried I would be lonely in a strange country with people speaking another language, but in fact I was pretty much like that wherever I ended up in the UK (especially Milton Keynes). I know it would have been tough because I do not make friends easily and relationships as noted here were even harder, so I certainly would not have had the experiences of friends who met their future partners while teaching in France or elsewhere. Yet, at least I would have experienced a different life. I suppose the difficulties I experienced in West Germany with the authorities (I was almost drafted in the Army) where in fact I made loads of (British and Irish) friends probably also weighed heavily against me. Instead I lived at home with my parents and this added to the real sense that I had not really grown up which simply further undermined my ability to deal with women and life's challenges. I suppose you have to face some hardships and discomfort to mature (this is going to be a major problem for current schoolchildren even more cut off from the challenges of the real world as they grow up than even I was).
Even putting aside working abroad, in terms of going on holiday, fear of crime ,especially in Eastern Europe scared me off going to visit Prague and Budapest (both of which I really wanted to visit) let alone going into Russia in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s when things were all still changing. In fact when I heard from two younger women about their exploits unharmed through Russia in fact I felt even more humiliated that I had not done what they had done and came to the pig-headed decision that I could go nowhere without being totally robbed and murdered (I think scare stories on the television did not help), consequently I had only one holiday between 1990 and 1999 and that was in a house rented in Normandy for a week, hardly adventurous (when I went to Prague in 2003 with my work, I found it had far less crime than I had even seen in the UK and people were very friendly and I had a great time. Even then it was still incredibly cheap to stay, visit places and eat out so would have been ideal when I was on a student-sized budget). I once saw an advert on an underground station showing a dreary elderly couple saying 'we almost went to Istanbul once' and I used to take that as a warning to me. As the advert said, 'you never regret the place you have been only missing out on those you have never been to' or some such words. I have never been to Istanbul, St. Petersburg or Budapest.
I used to say it was my friends, all of whom were unadventurous and even more disorganised than me, so never sorted themselves out to get on holiday, bar that trip in 1995 to Normandy. They did not like 'roughing it' in the slightest and on the other hand I was never going to be as robust as my brother spending six months in an army truck going coast-to-coast West to East across the middle of Africa. I alway assume it is me who will get food poisoning, malaria, be robbed or shot. It might be but most of those things (bar malaria) certainly could happen to me here in the UK. I did have some bad experiences such as losing my inter-rail ticket in West Germany in 1988, but I got home quickly and safely, so even my much commented upon bad luck did not entirely ruin things. Trips to the weddings would have been even safer and yet at least exposed me to some other countries, people and cultures.
I regret the lost years of the 1990s when fear stopped me exploring more of the world at a time when I had the time to do those things and also could access discounts for young people. Instead I sat at home, bored and lonely watching programmes reinforcing my fears. Of course if I had found the right woman (any one of the two Helens or the Liz for Hungary would have suited admirably; though of course trips with a partner can severely strain relationships, I know one woman as a consequence who always leaves her husband behind and holidays with female friends) or even just some friends of either sex to go with it would have been very different, but I never mix with people who have any enthusiasm to stray outside the UK. Their fear is greater than mine I recognise or maybe it is simply disinterest and my problem has been the desire to travel and yet not having the courage to do so. Now it is too late as the Belgian fiasco proved. I recommend ignore all the media horror stories, get out there, see places, be the person that when you turn 70 you can say 'do you remember that time when we were in Istanbul?' and not be like me, resembling the dreary couple on the poster who never went anywhere.
This posting has been about facing fears, because they are the little deaths, they chip away at the potential richness of your life until what is left is a dull mundane thing which is not worth living anyway, a state, which as regular readers will know, I have got to. Asking out a couple of people each year, going on one decent trip per year, these are not great tasks, but they could lead to having a much richer existence and hence one that is worth living.
Friday, 28 December 2007
What Do 'Director's Cut' Versions Add?
Being off work for an extended period for the Christmas/New Year break is allowing me to catch up on DVD watching and return to some old favourites too. Today I watched 'The Good German' (2007) a reasonable attempt to make a version of those black and white thrillers set in Berlin and Vienna at the end of the Second World War such as 'Berlin Express' (1948) and 'The Third Man' (1949) and even 'Popiół i Diament' ('Ashes and Diamonds' - 1958) though that is set in Poland and has no US characters; a similar recent project was 'Europa' (also known as 'Zentropa' - 1991) which is pretty surreal at times but like 'The Good German' features an American getting mixed up with a German woman with secrets. Anyway, 'The Good German' is not bad, but it needs a bit more verve as it seems to drag at times. The real reason for referencing was not to discuss its own merits but because seeing it reminded me of a poorly informed review of the movie 'The Innocent' (1993) which had poor reviews. It is set in Berlin in 1955 when the Americans were trying to tap Soviet phone lines. Anyway, whatever the flaws of the movie (which I have never seen but I read the book) the most ill-informed criticism was that Isabella Rossellini who plays Maria Eckdorf was too old for the part (she was 40 when the film was released; Maria Eckdorf is 36 in the book, not 30 as some essays say) as clearly the reviewer assumed the innocent of the title had to be the female character when in fact it is the 25-year old Leonard Marnham. You cannot effectively criticise a movie, especially one taken from a book if you do not know what it is aspiring too. The most humourous example of this came in one critic's review of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' (1990) in which he admired the film but said he could not understand why they had relocated the action to 17th century France as opposed to 20th century Jersey. He had mixed it up with the long-running UK television series 'Bergerac' (1981-1991; 87 episodes) which featured a contemporary detective working on the island of Jersey.
Anyway, sorry for that aside, some comments that I have wanted to introduce but did not seem worthy of their own posting. It brings me to the focus on this posting which is about 'director's cut' versions of movies. Though some of these pre-date the advent of DVDs it is the increased capacity of the DVD format which has meant a desire to fill them with hours of 'extras' ironically stretching sometimes on to a second, third or fourth disk. The usefulness or interestingness of these can vary considerably. The section of deleted scenes for 'Blade II' (2002) has very cynical commentary about the director grabbing any discarded piece of footage to fill up the disks, though one clip does reveal a deeper relationship between Blade and the vampire Nyssa. The deleted scenes for 'Spy Game' (2001) I found really fascinating as it showed a lot more about the characters and especially the love triangle which does not feature in the main version of the movie. In addition, it is interesting to check out the locations, none of them are where they are supposed to be in the film and Oxford prison (at the time a closed British prison but which is now a restaurant complex) stands in for a prison in China very well.
I recently watched the so-called 'Extended Editions' of 'The Bourne Identity' (2002) and 'The Bourne Supremacy' (2004) and I do not know why they did not count as directors' cuts, maybe because the initiative came from the company rather than the director. I do not know how much time they add but they certainly flesh out certain aspects especially the part of Nicky played by Julia Stiles and it stops her seemingly popping up out of nowhere. I know it is bad for movies to drag but in ones of this kind in which there is a lot of background to unravel, a little more footage filling in characters, especially the ones who are going to appear in the sequels, really helps the viewer.
Directors' cuts effectively put some or a lot of the deleted scenes back into the main movie. The length of film people can tolerate seems to fluctuate. It did seem that around 90 minutes was the top limit for a multiplex successful film then someone released 'Titanic' (1997) at 194 minutes, i.e. 3 hours 14 minutes which is beginning to approach the length of a Bollywood movie. Its popularity showed that people are willing to watch longer versions of films. In addition, there was the thing that the 'director's cut' as opposed to the 'exploitative, movie company cut' is closer to what the director intended. The most famous was probably 'Blade Runner: The Director's Cut' (1992) for which the director Ridley Scott put back in deleted scenes from 'Blade Runner' (1982) which suggest that Rick Deckard, the hero of the movie, is actually a replicant (i.e. android) like those he is hunting down. It also removed the 'happy' ending of Rick and Rachel flying away from the grime of Los Angeles to a green wilderness using footage shot for another film. I agree with including these changes, but I did dislike the removal of the voice over by Harrison Ford who plays Deckard. The reason for this is his explanations filled out the details of the dystopian world that is shown in the film (a heavily polluted, derelict Los Angeles of 2019 - only 12 years away now) and also link back to the classic 'hard boiled' detective novels of 1930s-50s and American film noir movies of the 1940s-50s which often include soliloquies (i.e. the hero(ine) effectively addressing the audience directly) and so gave it a futuristic spin on an established genre helping to make it a classic. Anyway, this year, a second director's cut of 'Blade Runner' called 'Blade Runner: The Final Cut' has been released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original release.
I accept that editing for commercial reasons or so the average audience does not get lost in the director's or the scriptwriter's complex story, does take the movie away from what was intended. However, saying that it does not mean it creates an unsuccessful product. I had a friend who termed the released version of 'Dune' (1984) 'a torso' in his view because so much had been cut from. The movie ran to 137 minutes anyway and a 189-minute version was produced though not approved of by the director David Lynch (partly because it pads out the movie by repeating some scenes rather adding back in many deleted scenes). The trouble is that the book is hundreds of pages long with innumerable characters and sub-plots. It is complex enough to watch as a mini-series and would have lost the audience in your average cinema. Thus, for purists and those knowledgeable of the 'Dune' arc it may have been been butchered but for the average cinemagoer it is an imaginative, exciting and visually impressive film.
Finally this brings me to the director's cut I have just watched, which is another from Ridley Scott. His 'Kingdom of Heaven' (2003) was reasonably successful. It is about a blacksmith, Bailian, in 1184/5 (between the 2nd and 3rd Crusades) travelling from France to Palestine to inherit his father's barony and being caught up in the battle for Jerusalem around the period of the death of the Crusader King Baldwin IV. It was criticised at the time for playing around a little with history. The Templars are shown as being more blood thirsty than they were but the behaviour of many of the people featured such as Reynald de Chatillon, Guy de Lusignan, Almaric de Lusignan - Constable of Jerusalem (called Tiberias in the movie after one of his other titles presumably so there is no confusion with Guy or with Almaric who is the hero's sidekick), Queen Sibylla, King Baldwin IV are portrayed pretty accurately as we can tell. The movie was unpopular in the USA as at the time of the war in Iraq it seemed to be too sympathetic to the Muslim side, though Salah-al-Din was renowned for his chivalrous behaviour. The original version of the movie had drama with both battles and political scandals, a romance between Sibylla and Bailian and spectacular scenery.
In 2005 a 4-disk director's cut version was released. There are obviously loads of extras but it is the 45 minutes which have been restored to the main film which have made a huge difference and change the whole dynamic of the film. It shows throughout how removing even a few minutes can alter a film greatly. In the new version you see far more about Balian's background and realise that the priest is actually his brother who betrayed the suicide of Balian's wife (following the death of her child) and that Balian's father was brother of the lord of the manor. You also see what changes Balian brings to his barony; King Baldwin's part which was restricted to a few interchanges with Balian in the original is deepened too and you realise that beneath the make-up (Baldwin was a leper) that it is Edward Norton playing him. The relationship between Sibylla and Balian is made far more convincing by the extended portrayal of its development and this makes more logic in terms of the choices the characters make. Sibylla's son, also Baldwin was missing from the original cut but his reappearance just in a few scenes make Sibylla's motivations and actions clearer. In many ways it is the same film, but it is also a different film and it is quite astounding that for 45 extra minutes you get a much deeper story. Ridley Scott is always good on visuals, but there is not much additional material in the battle scenes, it is the small scale stuff of people talking to each other, showing their connections to others and behaving in certain ways that make this director's cut a worthwhile one to watch even if you have seen the original version.
I know that other director's cut versions may not be so successful, but I am certainly going to keep my mind open to viewing them if they can add something as successfully as Scott has done in returning to 'Kingdom of Heaven'.
Anyway, sorry for that aside, some comments that I have wanted to introduce but did not seem worthy of their own posting. It brings me to the focus on this posting which is about 'director's cut' versions of movies. Though some of these pre-date the advent of DVDs it is the increased capacity of the DVD format which has meant a desire to fill them with hours of 'extras' ironically stretching sometimes on to a second, third or fourth disk. The usefulness or interestingness of these can vary considerably. The section of deleted scenes for 'Blade II' (2002) has very cynical commentary about the director grabbing any discarded piece of footage to fill up the disks, though one clip does reveal a deeper relationship between Blade and the vampire Nyssa. The deleted scenes for 'Spy Game' (2001) I found really fascinating as it showed a lot more about the characters and especially the love triangle which does not feature in the main version of the movie. In addition, it is interesting to check out the locations, none of them are where they are supposed to be in the film and Oxford prison (at the time a closed British prison but which is now a restaurant complex) stands in for a prison in China very well.
I recently watched the so-called 'Extended Editions' of 'The Bourne Identity' (2002) and 'The Bourne Supremacy' (2004) and I do not know why they did not count as directors' cuts, maybe because the initiative came from the company rather than the director. I do not know how much time they add but they certainly flesh out certain aspects especially the part of Nicky played by Julia Stiles and it stops her seemingly popping up out of nowhere. I know it is bad for movies to drag but in ones of this kind in which there is a lot of background to unravel, a little more footage filling in characters, especially the ones who are going to appear in the sequels, really helps the viewer.
Directors' cuts effectively put some or a lot of the deleted scenes back into the main movie. The length of film people can tolerate seems to fluctuate. It did seem that around 90 minutes was the top limit for a multiplex successful film then someone released 'Titanic' (1997) at 194 minutes, i.e. 3 hours 14 minutes which is beginning to approach the length of a Bollywood movie. Its popularity showed that people are willing to watch longer versions of films. In addition, there was the thing that the 'director's cut' as opposed to the 'exploitative, movie company cut' is closer to what the director intended. The most famous was probably 'Blade Runner: The Director's Cut' (1992) for which the director Ridley Scott put back in deleted scenes from 'Blade Runner' (1982) which suggest that Rick Deckard, the hero of the movie, is actually a replicant (i.e. android) like those he is hunting down. It also removed the 'happy' ending of Rick and Rachel flying away from the grime of Los Angeles to a green wilderness using footage shot for another film. I agree with including these changes, but I did dislike the removal of the voice over by Harrison Ford who plays Deckard. The reason for this is his explanations filled out the details of the dystopian world that is shown in the film (a heavily polluted, derelict Los Angeles of 2019 - only 12 years away now) and also link back to the classic 'hard boiled' detective novels of 1930s-50s and American film noir movies of the 1940s-50s which often include soliloquies (i.e. the hero(ine) effectively addressing the audience directly) and so gave it a futuristic spin on an established genre helping to make it a classic. Anyway, this year, a second director's cut of 'Blade Runner' called 'Blade Runner: The Final Cut' has been released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original release.
I accept that editing for commercial reasons or so the average audience does not get lost in the director's or the scriptwriter's complex story, does take the movie away from what was intended. However, saying that it does not mean it creates an unsuccessful product. I had a friend who termed the released version of 'Dune' (1984) 'a torso' in his view because so much had been cut from. The movie ran to 137 minutes anyway and a 189-minute version was produced though not approved of by the director David Lynch (partly because it pads out the movie by repeating some scenes rather adding back in many deleted scenes). The trouble is that the book is hundreds of pages long with innumerable characters and sub-plots. It is complex enough to watch as a mini-series and would have lost the audience in your average cinema. Thus, for purists and those knowledgeable of the 'Dune' arc it may have been been butchered but for the average cinemagoer it is an imaginative, exciting and visually impressive film.
Finally this brings me to the director's cut I have just watched, which is another from Ridley Scott. His 'Kingdom of Heaven' (2003) was reasonably successful. It is about a blacksmith, Bailian, in 1184/5 (between the 2nd and 3rd Crusades) travelling from France to Palestine to inherit his father's barony and being caught up in the battle for Jerusalem around the period of the death of the Crusader King Baldwin IV. It was criticised at the time for playing around a little with history. The Templars are shown as being more blood thirsty than they were but the behaviour of many of the people featured such as Reynald de Chatillon, Guy de Lusignan, Almaric de Lusignan - Constable of Jerusalem (called Tiberias in the movie after one of his other titles presumably so there is no confusion with Guy or with Almaric who is the hero's sidekick), Queen Sibylla, King Baldwin IV are portrayed pretty accurately as we can tell. The movie was unpopular in the USA as at the time of the war in Iraq it seemed to be too sympathetic to the Muslim side, though Salah-al-Din was renowned for his chivalrous behaviour. The original version of the movie had drama with both battles and political scandals, a romance between Sibylla and Bailian and spectacular scenery.
In 2005 a 4-disk director's cut version was released. There are obviously loads of extras but it is the 45 minutes which have been restored to the main film which have made a huge difference and change the whole dynamic of the film. It shows throughout how removing even a few minutes can alter a film greatly. In the new version you see far more about Balian's background and realise that the priest is actually his brother who betrayed the suicide of Balian's wife (following the death of her child) and that Balian's father was brother of the lord of the manor. You also see what changes Balian brings to his barony; King Baldwin's part which was restricted to a few interchanges with Balian in the original is deepened too and you realise that beneath the make-up (Baldwin was a leper) that it is Edward Norton playing him. The relationship between Sibylla and Balian is made far more convincing by the extended portrayal of its development and this makes more logic in terms of the choices the characters make. Sibylla's son, also Baldwin was missing from the original cut but his reappearance just in a few scenes make Sibylla's motivations and actions clearer. In many ways it is the same film, but it is also a different film and it is quite astounding that for 45 extra minutes you get a much deeper story. Ridley Scott is always good on visuals, but there is not much additional material in the battle scenes, it is the small scale stuff of people talking to each other, showing their connections to others and behaving in certain ways that make this director's cut a worthwhile one to watch even if you have seen the original version.
I know that other director's cut versions may not be so successful, but I am certainly going to keep my mind open to viewing them if they can add something as successfully as Scott has done in returning to 'Kingdom of Heaven'.
Wednesday, 15 August 2007
An Atlas of Imaginary Worlds 2: Large continents and deserts
Now, aside from Middle Earth and Narnia most imaginary places have far less mapping. I have been unable to find a single map of Ruritania (though you can find a print font called Ruritania, very ornate) featured in Anthony Hope's 'A Prisoner of Zenda' (1894) and 'Rupert of Hentzau' (1898).
In terms of the nature of the worlds drawn, probably the most similar to that of Tolkien and Lewis is in the Conan the Cimmerian (aka Conan the Barbarian) stories (Conan was the name of four of the Dukes of Brittany in the Middle Ages) initially by Robert E. Howard (1906-1936). They are robust epic adventures of a barbarian warrior. There are over 50 novels and other stories written by a number of authors (including L. Sprague de Camp), so search the internet if you are interested. Anyway, these stories are set on the world of Hyboria (or Hyborea). It has large continents for lots of riding across. One fascination as you can see, has been by fans to map this world over our own. Many of the names of places in the world come from our own history such as Stygia (Hercules was supposed to have cleaned the Stygian stables), Aquilonia (is reminiscient of Aquitaine, a region of South-West France), Kush (as in the Hindu Kush), Asgard (which is where the gods lived in Norse myths), the Pictish Wilderness (the Picts occupied Scotland at the time of the Romans), Corinthia (Corinth was a leading city of Ancient Greece), Argos (was the name of Jason and the Argonauts ship and is now a retail store in the UK too), Shem (is a piece of text that powers golems in Jewish legends), Ophir (is a wealthy country mentioned in the Old Testament), Iranistan is pretty self-obvious, Vendhya (like the Vindhya Mountains in west-central India; Vindhya Pradesh was a state of India 1948-56), Khitai is like the name the Byzantines gave to China and so on.
In terms of the nature of the worlds drawn, probably the most similar to that of Tolkien and Lewis is in the Conan the Cimmerian (aka Conan the Barbarian) stories (Conan was the name of four of the Dukes of Brittany in the Middle Ages) initially by Robert E. Howard (1906-1936). They are robust epic adventures of a barbarian warrior. There are over 50 novels and other stories written by a number of authors (including L. Sprague de Camp), so search the internet if you are interested. Anyway, these stories are set on the world of Hyboria (or Hyborea). It has large continents for lots of riding across. One fascination as you can see, has been by fans to map this world over our own. Many of the names of places in the world come from our own history such as Stygia (Hercules was supposed to have cleaned the Stygian stables), Aquilonia (is reminiscient of Aquitaine, a region of South-West France), Kush (as in the Hindu Kush), Asgard (which is where the gods lived in Norse myths), the Pictish Wilderness (the Picts occupied Scotland at the time of the Romans), Corinthia (Corinth was a leading city of Ancient Greece), Argos (was the name of Jason and the Argonauts ship and is now a retail store in the UK too), Shem (is a piece of text that powers golems in Jewish legends), Ophir (is a wealthy country mentioned in the Old Testament), Iranistan is pretty self-obvious, Vendhya (like the Vindhya Mountains in west-central India; Vindhya Pradesh was a state of India 1948-56), Khitai is like the name the Byzantines gave to China and so on.
These maps of Hyboria transpose our world and our Europe onto the main imaginary continent:
A more recent world is the one created for the online gaming environment World of Warcraft which started in 2001. It has three large continents: Kalimdor in the West, Northrend, not surprisingly in the North and the Eastern Kingdoms (Lordaeron, Khaz Modan and Azeroth) in the East, with an huge maelstrom apparently between them. There are no apparent archiepelagos but lots of large islands. The Eastern Kingdoms seem particularly well endowed with no less than three inland seas with islands in them. I imagine these locations allow 'zoning' of particularly tough creatures or missions in the game. This is the world that millions of people directly or indirectly are involved in, making it have as much impact, probably, as Middle Earth and Narnia.
This seems to be the 'Underground' map of the World of Warcraft showing its transport links. From what I gather there is a steampunk element and that continents are connected by both traditional sailing ships but also airships named Zeppelins (presumably in this world Zeppelin was a gnome technician or something) and people can also fly on large bats and manticores between certain towns.
Another a large single 'continent' is a place called the Isle of Lodoss. This started as records of role-playing games in Japan from 1986 onwards but under Ryo Mizuno has evolved into manga comics and fantasy novels by various authors under the sort of umbrella designation of 'Record of Lodoss War'. Given its background in 'Dungeons & Dragons' it is probably unsurprising that it has a similar outline to Hyboria. It is difficult to judge scale and given the title 'Isle' or 'Island' maybe this would be more accurate placed in the islands and archipelagos posting, but I will leave it here for now:
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950; the author of 'Tarzan') envisioned civilizations on planets in our solar system, notably Barsoom which was their version of Mars. Here are a couple of maps of what he envisoned its geography to be, the latter with an overlay of actual places on our Mars with their names in red compared to the Barsoomian blue ones. The books were serialised in comics shown by the first sate but then turned into novels which are the second dates I give for them: 'A Princess of Mars' (1912/1917), 'The Gods of Mars' (1913/1918), 'The Warlord of Mars' (1913-14/1919), 'Thuvia, Maid of Mars' (1916/1920), 'The Chessmen of Mars' (1922/1922), 'The Master Mind of Mars' (1927/1928), 'A Fighting Man of Mars' (1930/1931), 'Swords of Mars' (1934-5/1936), 'Synthetic Men of Mars' (1939/1940), 'Llana of Gathol' (1940/1948). Then John Coleman Burroughs took over: 'John Carter and the Giant of Mars' (1941/1964) and 'Skeleton Men of Jupiter' (1943 - no novel). Burroughs also produced a series set on Venus and there have been seven novels set in his Pellucidar, a land at beneath the Earth's crust, in line with the hollow Earth theories of the first half of the 20th century, including even a crossover with Tarzan going there. Burroughs also produced 'The Land that Time Forgot' (1918) and 'The People that Time Forgot' (also 1918) turned into movies in 1975 and 1977 respectively about an island inhabited by dinosaurs and cavepeople (very much like Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World' (1912) and more recently 'Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time' by James Gurney (1992) and 19 sequels and other books set there by him and other authors that have followed).
The science ficiton and fantasy author Michael Moorcock has said he was very influenced by Burroughs and once edited a Tarzan magazine. However, as we will see, Moorcock's world of the Young Kingdoms is in sharp contrast to the desert Barsoom. More in that category is the world of Arrakis, created by Frank Herbert (1920-1986) in the 'Dune' series. In his books (and as with other successful science fiction authors others have taken up his world after his death), 'Dune' (1986), 'Dune Messiah (1969), 'Children of Dune' (1976), 'God Emperor of Dune' (1981), 'Heretics of Dune' (1984) and 'Chapterhouse: Dune' (1985) he featured this desert world and much of the culture draws on Arabic and Islamic culture with words like Padishah (similar to the Turkish and Egyptian leaders called Pashas and the Persian/Iranian Shahs though it is portrayed as a dynastic name), Fedaykin (from the word Fedayeen for an elite guerilla fighter, which is coming back into use in current affairs, outside Herbert's worlds because of its use by Islamist fighters) and Sardaukar coming from Arabic language (though searching the internet these days you would have thought Herbert invented them himself), Zensunni (which combines Zen Buddhism with Sunni Islam).
It is quite refreshing to have a world not so shaped by North European-North American outlooks. There are a few other influences such as in the Landsraad (reminiscent of the German Landsrat parliament) and the rival Houses are rather like those of Renaissance Italy. Though there are masses of websites devoted to the Dune setting, few seem to run to maps, I suppose a huge desert does not open up many opportunities for the kind of rivers and mountains fantasy mapmakers love. This then is a map of the Arrakis, central to the Dune cycle; followed by the one from the board game produced by Avalon Hill in 1979 which is much more colourful:
In terms of availability (and you can tell when you have lots of fans because they will map your worlds for you), probably tied next with Howard et al and Hyboria, is Anne McCaffrey with Pern - her world of dragonriders which features in a whole series of novels by her and her son Todd: Dragonflight (1968), 'Dragonquest' (1970), 'Dragonsong' (1976), 'Dragonsinger' (1977), 'The White Dragon' (1978), 'Dragondrums' (1979), 'Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern' (1983), 'Nerillka's Story' (1986), 'Dragonsdawn' (1988), 'The Renegades of Pern' (1989), 'All the Weyrs of Pern' (1991), 'The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall' (1993), 'The Dolphins of Pern' (1994), 'Red Star Rising' (also known as 'Dragonseye', 1997), 'The Masterharper of Pern' (1998), 'The Skies of Pern' (2001), 'Dragon's Kin' (2003), 'Dragonsblood' (2005), 'Dragon Harper' (2007), 'After the Fall' (2008). There have been short stories and some of these books are anthologies. The stories mix science fiction of arrivals on a planet with fantasy elements of dragon riding. As you can see, McCaffrey's world has large continents but also sea and that moves us into the next category of world's which I will look at in the following posting.
The final one which seemed to me pretty much like Pern is Glorantha. This was the setting of the game 'Runequest' a fantasy role-playing game which was the second most popular after 'Dungeons & Dragons' and aimed to have a more distinctive culture from the reliance on elves, dwarfs, trolls and dragons. Note that Pern has its 'Passes' as eras and you can read about Middle Earth in its Third Age, well Glorantha was set in its Second Age, possibly to reflect that it was modelled on Bronze Age rather than Medieval culture, (which I guess could be seen as a continuation of the Iron Age in terms of metallurgy so the third age after the Stone and Bronze Ages) used in so many fantasy worlds. Like Pern there is a central sea and large continents North and South, but like the worlds seen in my next post it also has islands. The third map is a political one of the northern continent, Genertela.
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