I remember my second year at university. All of my friends wanted to go down to the field and initiate the freshmen, cover them with whipped cream and blue dye, make them do stupid things, just humiliate them and get them horribly drunk. I looked at these people – my friends, good friends – and they were practically foaming at the mouth, intimidating these kids.I don’t know. It was like rape.
Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993)
These kids were only a year younger than us, just a year, but we had had it done to us, and so it was our turn. It was our turn to be bullies. That’s what we were trained to do. We called it a rite of passage or some bullshit about growing up, but it was just rape. And it doesn’t stop there. It’s in everything we do, in school, at work, buying groceries, getting on a plane, walking in the street.
Occupy Wall Street
We learn to accept it. We learn to give it back. Worse than that, we learn to derive pleasure from giving it back. We feel justified in giving it back.That’s why I don’t have faith in us. We’re more infantile than when we were kids.
Continuing in my science fiction research, I have begun Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris. Made into a film by both Andrei Tarkovsky and Steven Soderbergh, it is the story of a planet with a living consciousness, Gaia in the extreme. Although the writing is dense at times, the narrative is artfully dream-like, almost in a trance. Most impressively, the notion of a living mass conscious comes across as an effective precursor for what we are heading for here, our collective and unspoken mission to be eternally plugged in.
Oblivion epitomizes everything about science fiction that makes the genre frustratingly mediocre at best. The biggest problem is the complete lack of originality, beginning with the predictable post-apocalyptic setting first seen in Planet of the Apes – the poor old Statue of Liberty buried yet again;a hodge-podge of futuristic themes, combining The Matrix (machines taking over), Total Recall (memory problems) and Moon (clones running the show); the inevitable twist (clones/machines who care) derivative of everything from Terminator to Short Circuit; and the sickeningly silly ending of the vanquished evil mother-ship, reminiscent of Star Wars and everything since.While there might be a few decent plot reveals, they always turn to disappointment and the endless parade of effects. In the end, it isn’t anything more than a vehicle for Mr. Cruise. Which leads me to the real question: What’s next? Might he be interested in piloting The Ark?
I have always been fascinated by the idea of traveling around the world by water. It is an incredibly exotic and slightly terrifying thing to do. I am working out such a scene for The Ark. The question is which type of boat to use. Manpower? Windpower? Or horsepower?
Personally, I don’t understand tattoos. As much as I might be fascinated by Hannah Arendt at the moment, I think it would be a mistake to get a tattoo. The same is true for Kiribati.
Kiribatan flag
It’s even true for Victoria’s Secret. All of that said, a tattoo can be good short form for an aspect of a character in fiction. It’s a device I am toying with at the moment in The Ark. One character is a video game addict. Another says little. And the last, ironically, overstates.
The story of The Ark has drifted briefly into the Pacific Ocean and a collection of islands known as Kiribati. The location is one of the poorest nations in the world and is best known by Westerners as the site of The Battle of Tarawa in World War IIand the most likely nation to vanish due to global warming. Book your tickets quick.
While not everything is true in fiction – hence the word – writing is based on what I know. It’s a guessing game. The following is the first draft of a dialogue from The Ark:
“I ruined my knee when I was a kid, skiing in Vermont, torn acl, mcl, everything. I had arthritis after that. No cartilage, 15%, something like that. It was just bone on bone. I had to have a replacement.” He cut the seal meat into strips, twirled one length around his thumb and chewed. “I sat on the edge of the plastic mattress in that green paper dress and the surgeon drew a pair of red x’s on the side of my knee. There was a nurse with a clipboard of forms and the anesthesiologist with more. Everyone was wearing those plastic shower caps.” He pulled a bit off. It looked like fur. “And then I decided I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to surrender. I wouldn’t sign. The surgeon stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. He explained everything to me like I was a child. But I wouldn’t do it. And so he left. Everyone did. No one came for a while after that.”
“You didn’t have the surgery?”
“No.” He thrust his hands back and forth in front of him, miming. “I did the elliptical instead.”
“What’s that?”
“The machine. I worked out every day and took cartilage pills.” He ate the rest of the meat. “It’s fine now. Still. No running though. I can only dream about that.”
“You were afraid you’d die?”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t know. I remember the feeling as a kid, when I had the first surgery. I woke up cold. They had monitors attached to my chest. I wasn’t going to surrender just because they said I should.”
“I broke my hand. They put me out before I knew it.”
“You have to sign.”
“It was in Newfoundland.”
He tore off another strip. “It’s probably better like that.”
I did ruin my knee in my younger days and use the elliptical daily; however I’ve never backed out of a surgery, skied in Vermont nor eaten seal meat…as of yet.
I liked this topic too much. “And they actually believe they will be something good.”
