How Not To Do Something

The Sylvester Stallone Judge Dredd film and the later Dredd film are object lessons in how to do something wrong and in how it can be done right. It is worth seeing both to appreciate the contrast.

I would not recommend that anyone read Isaac Asimov's Robots and Empire future history, incorporating his Foundation series, in its entirety. However, anyone who has done so can make a Judge Dredd-Dredd comparison by then reading in its entirety Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, incorporating his Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry series. I say this yet again because recent re-readings have reconfirmed my conviction of it.

Anderson presents:

an Empire that is interstellar but not Galactic;

many intelligent races, inhabiting fully realized planetary environments;

an auctorial grasp pf the complexities of socioeconomic interactions - and not just an elite group who, we are told, can mathematically formulate and manipulate such interactions;

a more realistic understanding of what social theoreticians can and cannot do and of what might be done to ameliorate the consequences of imminent social collapse;

vivid descriptions and concrete characterization.

Condor, Machu Picchu, Lucifer, Judge Dredd, Gate Of The Sun, Hamlet

"The Year of the Ransom," 15 April 1610.

"A condor wheeled afar." (p. 720)

"Machu Picchu was mightiness in stone. What would the civilization that had created it have done, if fate had allowed it to live?" (p. 721)

There is an alternative history, if you like. Answers can only be speculative.

A Time Patrolman shoots an Exaltationist sentry from his hovering timecycle:

"The man dropped charred from his mount and fell as Lucifer fell." (ibid.)

See Isaiah 14: 12-14: a Biblical reference.

Motonobu says that, if the Patrol agents had come sooner, then they could have prevented any of the Exaltationists from escaping. Everard replies that they could not do what they had not done and reminds his colleague that, "'We are the law...,'" (p. 722) thus making himself sound like Judge Dredd. (Scroll down.)

When Motonobu asks how they will catch Castelar, Everard does not reply but sees:

"...the Gate of the Sun on its ridge, etched black against heaven." (ibid.)

Blackness against heaven symbolizes the obstacles to catching Castelar.

Earlier in the narrative (22 May 1987), there was a Shakespearean reference:

"What dreams may come..." (p. 710)

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause
-copied from here.

Connections

Please bear with me. Yesterday (since we have just passed midnight), I posted once early in the day, then attended the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal, Cumbria, just north of here - before you get to Scotland.

Some people I was with at the Festival discussed which Doctor Who they preferred so I said that I preferred the original, HG Wells' Time Traveler. A young guy then surprised me by saying that he had enjoyed reading, on someone else's recommendation, Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men. I took the opportunity to recommend Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and future histories and also referred him to this blog so my time was not wasted from the point of view of blogging. (Guy, if you read this, please comment and tell us what you think?)

My time was not wasted in any case because, of all the events and activities at the Festival, the ones that I attended yesterday were:

four talented, well-informed writers and artists that I had never heard of before talking about how they had adapted Cervantes, Victor Hugo, HP Lovecraft, Conan Doyle and Shakespeare into comic strips;

the creators of Judge Dredd introducing, in a cinema patrolled by two Judges, a high quality short fan film followed by the second feature film which authentically transfers Dredd, Anderson and Megacity One onto the screen;

a stage adaptation of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta;

chance conversations with known writers and artists in the display rooms or on the streets.

And there is more today. Yesterday involved three kinds of adaptations:

from prose to comic strip;
from comic strip to screen;
from comic strip to stage.

Finally, Poul Anderson's prose would adapt very well to both comic strip and screen.

Dictatorships

"If the king, for example, or the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, took it into their hearts that parliamentary government had outlived its role and that parliament should be replaced by a dictatorship, the king or the commander-in-chief would very swiftly come under observation by the Constitutional Protection Unit."

-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (London, 2010), CHAPTER 12, p. 293.

 

A contemporary thriller can show a conspiracy to overthrow democracy but not a successful conspiracy. Sf is not limited to the here and now. In Robert Heinlein's Future History, an attempted military coup is defeated but later an elected President establishes a theocracy, becoming the First Prophet. In John Wagner's Judge Dredd, the Judges overthrow democracy in the name of the Constitution. In Poul Anderson's Starfarers, a military coup is successful so that henceforward every newly elected President has a permanent unelected Adviser. Sf authors continue the discussion and speculation into alternative futures.

Continuity Issues II

When Judge Dredd was adapted from the British comic paper, 2000 AD, to an American comic book, someone commented that the story was set several centuries earlier or later than it had been in the original version. Maybe this change in the dates was just an up front signal to the readers that here they were reading stories set in a different continuity. There is an unwritten rule that when a story is adapted from page to screen, the continuity changes. The same principle might apply to some page-to-page adaptations.

Poul Anderson's Kith future history exists in two continuities. The original versions of some of Anderson's Technic History stories do not fit into the continuity of the emergent future history series. Conceivably, later Time Patrol stories show the Patrol agents guarding an altered version of their history without realizing it.

The Devil's Game: Interval Three

The Devil's Game, pp. 80-96.

"The servants flitted about, setting forth bowls of iced gazpacho followed by a chicken escabeche." (p. 82) (See The Food Thread.)

Read Poul Anderson and learn.

"'La Loi, c'est moi.'" (p. 83)

- said by Louis XIV and Judge Dredd.

"'Scheherazade...'" (p. 83)

"The man at the head of the table smiled, a dusty expression." (p. 83)

What is a dusty expression?

Korea also provided opportunities for post-war crime. (pp. 84-85)

Haverner's study contains:

"...filing cabinets..., reference shelves, functional modern chairs, a bloc of the latest equipment for sending orders and retrieving information around the globe." (p. 86)

Published in 1980, The Devil's Game does not have PCs or the Internet. Some of Anderson's fictional futures have "infotrieves."

When Haverner tells it like it is to Nordberg:

"Somewhere a macaw, starled out of sleep, screeched." (p. 87)

Anderson's character interactions and dialogues are often punctuated by natural sounds, the wind, a storm or, in this case, a screech.

"The click of latch as his door was opened, of fluffy blue mules on his floor, brought Larry awake." (p. 89)

I am not sure what the fluffy blue mules are doing on Larry's floor in this sentence.

We have exhausted not this "Interval" but perhaps my ability to extract information from it this evening.

Who Is It?

A powerful idea in popular fiction is the clandestine organization run by a mysterious masked or anonymous figure whose face and identity may or may not be revealed in the concluding episode of a series. (There are a couple of good guys whose faces we never see: the Lone Ranger and Judge Dredd - except when the latter was played by Sylvester Stallone.)

In Poul Anderson's The Long Way Home (St Albans, Herts, 1975):

the Terrestrial Technate is, we are told, run by a computer, the Technon, which is not seen until maybe near the end of the novel;

the human colonials of the League of Alpha Centauri are secretly controlled by the concealed inhabitants of a Jovoid planet in one of the Centaurian planetary systems;

the interstellar traders of the Commercial Society are controlled at a distance by concealed bureaucrats whom they never see - recruits into the bureaucracy simply disappear.

Anderson is (almost) overdoing the idea of the mysterious, secretive leadership. We are free to speculate, for example, whether the Technon really controls the Society and whether it has any covert dealings with the real rulers of Alpha Centauri but the only way to find out is to continue reading.

Urban Futures

Last night, I saw Future Shock, which was then discussed by former 2000 AD Editor, Andy Diggle.

National generalizations: Americans respect heroes and authority whereas Brits are iconoclastic. The anti-authoritarian ethos of the British sf comic, 2000 AD, has affected American superheroes and sf films.

I think of British sf as a literary tradition:

Mary Shelley
HG Wells
Olaf Stapledon
CS Lewis
Brian Aldiss -

- but have not kept up with more recent authors. However, 2000 AD is one current manifestation.

What is the future of urban civilization?

The Time Machine and The Sleeper Wakes by Wells;
The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov;
A Torrent Of Faces by James Blish and Norman L Knight;
The Corridors Of Time and other works by Poul Anderson;
Judge Dredd's Megacity One.

Rapid Technological Advances

(What is the book beneath?)

Poul Anderson, "The Children of Fortune." See here.

Taylor, Oregon, the capital city of the North America Union, has made remarkable advances during the mere twenty nine years since World War III:

rearing buildings, rushing steel traffic, hastening crowds, blinking signs, constant noise (the way New York is described in "Time Patrol");

on a mountainside above the city, a cluster of large buildings with curving lines, flat planes, enormous windows and smooth, pastel, plastic fronts;

"'...turning out some fine new machines...'" (3, p. 84);

a lot of gadgets in a private home, including a color television, a visiplate and a chair that molds itself to the body (see Futuristic Furniture);

synthetic sponges;

moving murals in a tavern;

gamete deposits;

a tall capitol building with many columned tiers in its own parks and gardens;

inside the building, an automatic elevator and door and a clear plastic wall overlooking city and mountains;

the President and his cabinet remind me of the UN in the Psychotechnic History, rulers of a high tech society in the wake of a nuclear war - another example of this is Judge Dredd and his colleagues.

I suspect that many of the advances are due to the genius of Alaric Wayne but will have to continue rereading to confirm this.