In William Dexter's Children Of The Void, some characters are shown moving pictures of themselves performing actions that they have not performed and are not going to perform so how could such pictures have been taken? When I read Dexter's novel in the 1960s, it did not occur to me that the pictures might simply have been faked with what we now call Computer-Generated Imagery. I now find Dexter's text ambiguous but there is at least the suggestion of viewing events that merely might have been.
This idea is also in Asimov's incoherent time travel novel, The End Of Eternity, and Superman had a computer screen that showed him his life on Krypton if it had not exploded although, when Alan Moore revived this idea, he wisely replaced the external screen with an internal vision.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
In strict logic I am skeptical Superman could have KNOWN what his life on Krypton would have been if the planet had not been destroyed. He (and we) can't know what has never come to pass. All Superman could do was speculate about how his life might have been different.
Sean
Sean,
Yes. The computer supposedly (impossibly) computed what would have happened. Alan Moore showed Kal-El experiencing a wish-fulfillment that changes into a nightmare as Jor-El is mocked for his incorrect prophecy and laments the passing of the Krypton that he remembers from his youth, i.e., from the older, naiver, comics.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Maybe that's why I never really cared for the Superman comics as a boy. It's possible I had some dim awareness of how illogical and absurd the plot was.
Sean
Sean,
I was aware of implausibilities but most people said, "It's just comics," whereas there is no reason why graphic fiction/sequential art story-telling should be less intelligent than prose or drama. Alan Moore re-created comics characters by thinking about them.
Superman should be put in the real world. Clark and Lois should report from the Middle East. Clark should have to think about how and when to use his powers. There is a story in which he prevents soldiers from killing civilians but does not depose the military dictator because he has to ask himself what would be the consequences if he did that.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And the scenarios, as outlined by this summary of Alan Moore's work, does make the Superman mythos less ridiculous.
Sean
Post a Comment