Happy 50th annivesary, Sputnik

[veronica_rich]

"We'll have space vehicles ... capsules to sail off in rockets - devices that create giant explosions...explosions that are so...powerful that they..."

"... they break the pull of the earth's gravity and send their projectile through outer space."

-characters Doc Brown and Clara Clayton from "Back to the Future III" paraphrasing Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon 1867
(Incidentally, Amazon? You suck. This novel was NOT published in 2007 by NuVision Publications.)

A great example of how one dreamer inspired other art ... as well as science itself.

Although, while doing a search for Verne, I found this interesting editorial about science fiction, the narrow-mindedness of Dali, and (M)Ann(ish) Coulter, of all things.

Serendipity and Salvador Dali

By Scott Edelman

I've heard many sins laid at the feet of science fiction before, but accusing an entire literary genre of murder is a new one for me. Salvador Dali, creator of extreme artwork, held extreme views as well, one of which I discovered quoted in the introduction to a new translation of one of Jules Verne's earliest works, The Begum's Millions (which was recently reviewed by John Clute on this site).


"Every time someone dies, it is Jules Verne's fault," wrote the artist in Dali on Dali. "He is responsible for the desire for interplanetary voyages, good only for boy scouts or for amateur underwater fishermen. If the fabulous sums wasted on these conquests were spent on biological research, nobody on our planet would die anymore. Therefore, I repeat, each time someone dies it is Jules Verne's fault."

It made me think less of Dali, an artist I have always admired, when I found this passage so many decades after he wrote it. How could the old surrealist not have realized that he and Verne were in the same business, the distribution of dreams? Whether I'm contemplating Dali's melting clocks or Verne's gravity-defying vehicles, I am still being transported to worlds not like ours.

Accuse Verne of murder? If we're going to start doing that, we might as well accuse all creative artists, including Dali, of the crime of causing us to ignore the real world during the moments that we appreciate their art. Whatever Verne's supposed offenses, Dali was a co-conspirator in them, and should have known it.

Coulter doesn't like us either

As you can tell, I got worked up over this quote. But there are some who would consider my fuming unjust, and would have us believe that hidden beneath Dali's seemingly sincere statement was a jester saying, "I keed! I keed!"

Or so I learned a few weeks after that initial discovery, when the mail brought a copy of the book Jules Verne: Journeys in Writing, by Timothy Unwin. I was still incensed over Dali's attack on Jules Verne and, through him, on all of us, when I came across Unwin's completely opposite analysis of the quote. He called those offending words a "supremely ironic take." He says that Dali "wrote mischievously." Personally, I see no intended irony or mischief here.

But I had to ask myself—was Dali playing me? He always liked to use his art to stir controversy, to invite a passionate response. Could that be what was happening? Had his tongue been firmly in cheek?

I don't think so. He may have been hammering away at us with hyberbole, but I take the underlying emotion as real. I've heard it many times before. Science fiction is a childish thing, a time-waster, not serious. It was an attitude shared by many of Dali's generation, and so it is wrong to try to divest him of it just because we now live in a time when science fiction is considered more seriously.

Luckily, now that science fiction has taken over the world, this has become an ancient attitude, right? I took comfort in the fact that such an opinion had gone the way of the dinosaurs and could not survive to this day, particularly not now that we've all benefited so from the science that science fiction has inspired.

Or so I thought ...

Enter Ann Coulter, the political pundit most recently in the news for saying that "We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens' creme brulee." I just found out that she recently also made disparaging comments about us by comparing science-fiction fans to jihadists. Or rather, what's worse, she disparaged jihadists by comparing them to us.

"These guys are klutzes," she wrote of the terrorists. "Nerds. Dweebs. In the Las Vegas of life they're at the convention center with the other Star Trek fans."

I guess I should consider it a form of progress that instead of being called murderers, we're now being compared to terrorists. But you know ... somehow I don't.

Thank you, Ann Coulter. Suddenly, Salvador Dali didn't seem so bad after all.


Copyright 2007 scifi.com

Given recent interests, maybe I should read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea next ... *G*

Comments

[yoiebear.livejournal.com]

No one ever said Coulter *cough* bitch *cough* has a brain. She's probably one of the dumbest people out there. What bothers me most is people listen to her like she knows what she's talking about.
When her book entitled "How to talk to a Liberal (if you have to)" dropped, I felt like writing a response entitled "How to talk to a Conservative Media Whore (if you must)."

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

Ann COulter needs to remember that us "Trekkies" and "Trekkers" are responsible for many of the things she porbably takes for granted, like cell phones (that's the only thing I can recall off the top of my head), and that if it weren't for loberals, she wouldn't even have the right to vote, let alone what to do with her own body.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I suspect there's some truth to the rumor that she's a man in disguise. It's the only way I can credit her behavior - the knowledge that she'd still have full rights and privileges even if the women's vote was taken away tomorrow.

[yoiebear.livejournal.com]

I read a quote from (it will make me ill to type her name again) which said women should not have the right to vote.
In that case, we shouldn't have the right to speak, either.

[venusinchains.livejournal.com]

The Dali thing is just sad. I know nothing about him, but I kinda hope he was trying to be ironic (or that he changed his mind not too long after, when I'm sure someone explained the facts to him). There is a lot of money spent on the space program, and some of it probably is being wasted in some way, but that's usually the case in even the most altruistic projects. And there are far worse things to support than NASA - things like Desert Fox (or whatever they're calling it now).

Ann Coulter is almost funny. She reminds me of my grandmother - who used to insist at full volume in crowded places that women should know their station in life. I swear, all the men in the family were scared to death of her. Lucky for them (or not so lucky, if you're fully aware of how it affects us all), she was fighting for the rights of The Patriarchy. *sigh*

Can women like that honestly not see the contradictions of their practices?

The star trek thing is just a Prissy, self-important woman trying to belittle her enemies (terrorists, I think) by linking them with a group she considers powerless (convention-goers). She obviously has no concept of how extensive fandom is, and the powerful position some of its members hold.

[yoiebear.livejournal.com]

Women like the blonde bimbo are media and attention whores and don't care what they say sounds like. They just want to be heard.

[finding-neo.livejournal.com]

People just can't handle the fact that the geeks HAVE inherited the Earth.

Bill Gates, anyone?

BTW, Bill Maher used to have Ann on his show occasionally. He does not anymore.