Explaining Fan Behavior: Why some things get devotion

Here's a question: why do some fictional worlds and properties attract incredibly devoted fans? I mean, some do, and others don't.

There are many, many reasons a fandom becomes big or assumes the form it ultimately does, including a combination of luck and visibility...although that's not quite what I asked. What is it about the properties themselves? What do they all have in common?

According to the unofficial history of Star Trek by Bob Justman, the first Star Trek convention was far from a spontaneous gathering. It was run by Gene Roddenberry himself and he rustled people in from all over. In other words, part of the reason Trek fans are so big and organized is (partially) because of talented huckster Gene Roddenberry's talent for self-promotion.

Lord of the Rings was a low seller in a niche genre that didn't even have a name yet for an entire decade, released at the same time as now-forgotten Thomas Burnett Swann's Minotaur books or Mervyn Peake... until LotR was rediscovered by the 1960s counterculture. The hippies found the story's themes of hostility to modernism, love of nature, and longing for an imaginary past were all right up their style.

Star Wars had the good luck to be a big studio distributed movie, so millions of butts were going to be in chairs to watch it no matter what. But it success is not just because of that. Part of the reason it was a big hit, a phenom we're still talking about now, was it was the right story at the right time. The Western was now passé, previously the #1 action genre and the single greatest American source of stories about ourselves and our self-concept as a country, as well as our battles of good versus evil. The entire 1970s were filled with grim, adult, director driven movies. Star Wars was a battle of good versus evil not seen since Errol Flynn stopped swashbuckling, with fairytale characters like a wizard and pirate. It was, in short, the right kind of story at the right moment.

And on a lighter note, part of the reason furry fandom is so oddly sex crazed and gay friendly, is because the first furry conventions in the early 1980s were put together by a flamboyantly gay swinger/S&M lover who actually invited just released prisoners from jail to show up! This jailhouse gay and S&M attracted others into the same scene, repulsed others that didn't care for it, and in general set the tone for years later.

Okay, okay, back to my original question: why do some fictional worlds inspire so much devotion and others don't? What do they all have in common that get people to still think about them?  After all, the hippies came and went, but Lord of the Rings is still around, and there are still kids in high schools today writing notes in Dwarf runes.

If you look at the really BIG fan groups out there, like Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and the Marvel and DC Universes, you find that people are so obsessive about them because these worlds have built up enough detail that it's possible they're engrossing and "full" enough to capture the attention.

The more real a story feels, the more engaged you are. Just like significant descriptive details in a book bring a scene to life, the richer and more developed a world is, the more minutiae fans can collect like stamps, the more devoted your fans will be.

Here's a secret: hardcore fans like their world and devote so much time to it because they think it's real. 

…Okay, that's obviously not literally true, except for a tiny handful of seriously mentally ill people.

But really involving worlds and stories are set in places that make you FEEL like they're real, have verisimilitude, that the stories don't end the instant the book is closed or the movie ends. There's plenty going on to make you think about it later on, or talk about it with friends aneven have fights over nitpick details, and curiosity over some of its unexplained mysteries. This is why fictional worlds can be such an engrossing diversion. This is why people get very curious and so very passionate.

We fans do this not because we think the story is literally real, but because we like suspension of disbelief. Because when people tell us a story, we want to believe it. That's the difference between a liar and a storyteller: people are by default suspicious of liars, but want to believe a story.

This is also why adaptations can sometimes be frustrating for fans. Because we believe there is a reality behind these characters and worlds that do not vary or change. A reality that is independent of the free market, cultural, and business forces that take place in our own world.

Even disagreements and fights between fans are based on the idea characters are independent of us readers/viewers, solid and concrete. People have disagreements about whether Spider-Man would or wouldn't behave a certain way. This disagreement is only possible at all because everyone agrees there is a "correct" way for Spider-Man to act.

Okay, now, here, we've reached the first of definition of continuity:

Continuity (or canon) is just another word for verisimilitude, a consistency that makes the world feel more real, by making the world feel as if it continues beyond the boundary of the specific narrow focus of any one single story.

An individual story, by definition, have a laser pinprick focus and economy. Stories can't be "about" everything. Look at a map of Middle Earth and see how much of the place our heroes actually DIDN'T go, even in a story as sprawling as Lord of the Rings.

The purpose of continuity and consistent canon is to dispel the artifice of stories, that a world is not just a series of empty plywood "Potemkin villages" that live when tourists pass by and are yanked down just behind us when we leave.

This is why Sherlock Holmes fans are so fascinated by the tantalizing hints Sir Conan Doyle dropped about cases only mentioned in passing we never got to actually read about. Because it implies Sherlock Holmes and Watson are alive, are doing things when we're not looking. They have a reality independent of what they're doing when the "camera" is on them.

"It's just a story"

Contrary to popular belief, being a fan, even a detail oriented one, is a good thing for the same reason any hobby not pursued to the exclusion of responsibilities is a good thing: because you get out what you put in. Cool detachment eliminates the entire point of a whole story, where you want to be passionate and care about what's going on.

That's why I've always thought there's something oddly inhuman, so defeating to the entire purpose of fiction of any kind, with people who respond to certain kinds of criticisms with, "who cares, it's just a story. Consistency doesn't matter because it's all fictional in the end." It shows a kind of brutal cynicism I don't like, that whoever said it doesn't feel the world is real. It's all a put up job. If it isn't real, why get engrossed or involved?

Why care?

I don't get that argument. If you don't care, why read a story at all? Why read a series long term?

This is also why fans find continuity glitches so galling. They tatter and undermine the suspension of disbelief fiction needs and imply something doesn't have verisimilitude. They create a "trust" issue.

This is also why fans are fascinated by cross-overs. The fact that Spider-Man can swing on the rooftops of Marvel Manhattan and cross paths with Daredevil going the other way makes the Marvel Universe feel more real.

Why Do Fans Like the Obscure?

This is also why fans get tickled pink when obscure characters and minutiae show up, why Star Trek fans smile a bit when a Next Generation episode mentions the Tholians in passing, or when people are delighted to see a minor character like Stingray or D-Man in the background of an Avengers mission.

Those of us that aren't children know, but only at an intellectual level, that stories aren't real, and are artifices with a very narrow focus, that the Tholians were just created to be bad guys for one episode way back when in the old show, and Stingray was an Avenger only used in one story that needed an underwater guy, and that a good portion of super-villains, especially unpopular ones, will never be seen much again after their first story.

Mentioning obscuros again dispels that artifice we're intellectually aware is there ("this is just a story"), and reminds us, to our joy, that the world is real, that these characters are still around and doing something even when we're not looking. The Tholians are out there, somewhere, up to mischief. Stingray can be called up at any time by the Avengers when needed.

In short, the world goes from something we like to something we believe. 

And that's the difference between just liking something, and being a fan.

Review: Heinlein's "Rocket Ship Galileo"

Rocket Ship Galileo was written in 1947 and yet it spoke to me for many reasons.

The book is about some American kids who, with traditional Yankee know-how, develop a rocketship in their own backyard to travel to the Moon. As astounding as that premise is, Heinlein makes you believe in it and here's why:

The boys are shaped by a defining event that changed their entire worldview. A couple years before, they heard about the atomic weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The boys are "bitten by mathematics, science and engineering like it's a bug," with a rapacious, devouring hunger and greed for knowledge. As a person with a science background I've never heard it put better.

The boys have clueless parents that just don't get it, though. It's not that their parents are stupid, it's that they don't understand how the world changed in 1945 with the power of the atom and still have that old way of thinking that means they just don't "get" the boys.

The book was written in 1947 but it's easy to see how a lot of people today can identify with it. I certainly can. I have absolute genius and brilliant parents with PhDs…but who need help plugging in their wifi network and they think everyone on the internet is some kind of rapist. People that are older and younger than myself probably had and (are having) similar epiphanies about science and technology those more set in their ways don't get.

In fact, when I went to visit older relatives for Thanksgiving, I remembered it's been a while since I've seen anybody with actual DVDs in their home. The technology seems so old fashioned. Not because it's been superseded by some other format like HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, which are just steps sideways and equally old-fashioned. But because of streaming, technology like the iPod, and online software purchases, it seems downright retro to require a physical format at all to "own" some media.

Reading Rocket Ship Galileo, Heinlein's first novel ever, is a little shocking because it's hard to imagine Heinlein as a young person. I'm so used to him being the dignified, classy old man of science fiction not unlike his wise old man characters. For one thing, it's one of the few stories of Heinlein's to show the energetic fan-boy enthusiasm and influence of E. E. Smith, with the plot having some similarities to Smith's Skylark of Space, another novel about All-American amateurs who build their own rocket ship.

Smith had a lot of passion but he was very amateurish – Skylark was an awkwardly written adventure story. "Rocket Ship Galileo," even at that early stage of Heinlein's career, was about something.

(Interesting side note: Smith published "Skylark of Space" in the same issue of Amazing Stories as Phillip Francis Nowlan's "Armageddon 2419," the first Buck Rogers novel. In fact, Buck Rogers even got the cover over Skylark!)

Even Heinlein's usual stock character of the wise old man the hero bonds with and learns from was (are you ready?) a recent college graduate, a cool, hip younger relative who "gets it." You know how they say old age is always 15 years older than you are now?

The main plot comes when arriving on the Moon, where there are Nazis who used advanced rocketry and went to the Moon to plot their return and revenge, which isn't farfetched considering how advanced Nazi rocketry was towards the end.

Recently, I saw the proof-of-concept special effects reel trailer for "Iron Sky," a low budget movie about the Nazis returning from space, a project the creators are trying to get money to fund. This reminds me a little of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, another big budget movie that started as a five minute special effects reel, a film that was tragically overshadowed by the release of Sin City a few months later.

I'm withholding an opinion on Iron Sky because…how can you have an opinion based on nothing? A special effects/proof of concept reel, even a viral one, is just that.




Still, a few warning signs jump out at me from the trailer. One of which is, there aren't any characters in it. Who's the main character, the hero we're supposed to root for? His girlfriend? Is there like a main Nazi leader, like a "Darth Vader" type?

We don't see that, and that tells me the people making this are too much in love with the idea of the story (Nazis from the Moon, an idea which was cribbed from Rocket Ship Galileo anyway) as opposed to the stuff you need when something becomes an actual movie as opposed to a demo reel.

Review: Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men"

A lot of people have criticized Stapledon's "Last and First Men" for having no characters, but that doesn't mean it has no characterization, because his characterization is of entire races and peoples. That's the ambitious sweep of Last and First Men, which gives us the entirety of human history, over 2 billion years worth.

Robert Bloch once described horror as a kind of mystery story where God is the detective. If that's true, then "Last and First Men" is a tragedy where the main character is the entire human race. Not just one human race, but several: in the enormous span of time the book glibly and speedily covers, the human race assumes many weird forms, some naturally evolved, but others as the products of genetic engineering (though that term is never used) by the previous race.

Here's my favorite part of the story, and it is not only one of the high points of the book but also typical of its storytelling, and based on this you can determine for yourself if the book is for you.

After the destruction of the earth and mankind moves to Venus, the Seventh Men develop, a carefree, child-like race of graceful fliers with arms that have batlike wings. Of all the races of humans, the Seventh Men emerge as the most sympathetic: the most content, pleasant-spirited…no matter what terror happened, the sheer exultation of flight made them forget their troubles.

After thousands of years, because of an environmental problem, many Seventh Men are born without wings. This crippled race are sent to do hard work, but as they're of a race psychologically made for flight, the flightless crippled race were bitter, angry sorts cooped in labs incapable of happiness, a race of miserly industrialists who clutter up every inch of watery Venus's land space with their factories, who over time vow to eliminate flight as a pointless, dead-end future.

The final conflict is an awful genocide, with the carefree flying men mowed down as they futiley attempt to escape enemies in speedier airplanes with machine guns. The last of the Flying Men were a slave race to jealous masters who ordered all winged infants destroyed.

The defiant rebellion of the last Flying Men ended in tragedy, as related here:

Their leaders, conferring together, saw clearly that the day of Flying Man was done, and that it would be more fitting for a high-souled race to die at once than to drag on in subjection to contemptuous masters. They therefore ordered the population to take part in an act of racial suicide that should at least make death a noble gesture of freedom. The people received the message while they were resting on the stony moorland. A wail of sorrow broke from them. It was checked by the speaker, who bade them strive to see, even on the ground, the beauty of the thing that was to be done. They could not see it; but they knew that if they had the strength to take wing again they would see it clearly, almost as soon as their tired muscles bore them aloft. There was no time to waste, for many were already faint with hunger, and anxious lest they should fail to rise. At the appointed signal the whole population rose into the air with a deep roar of wings. Sorrow was left behind. Even the children, when their mothers explained what was to be done, accepted their fate with zest; though, had they learned of it on the ground, they would have been terror-stricken. The company now flew steadily west, forming themselves into a double file many miles long. The cone of a volcano appeared over the horizon, and rose as they approached. The leaders pressed on towards its ruddy smoke plume; and unflinchingly, couple by couple, the whole multitude darted into its fiery breath and vanished. So ended the career of Flying Man.

In the middle of all this there are some outright fantastic bits of imagery, like for instance, an era when a subspecies of man devolve into baboons, or a weird speciation on the high-gravity of Neptune which forces men to all fours, one primitive race of quadrupedal men who have tusks and another quadruped human race hunts them to extinction for their ivory. The most nightmarish were the Fourth Men, a race of superintelligent, immortal and terrifyingly unsentimental, coldblooded and casually genocidal brains the size of Volkswagens.

Because there are different human species, and the book takes a lengthy "God's-Eye-View," the book does not concern itself with even the character of individual civilizations, but rather the character of entire races.

For instance, the God's Eye View reduces the history of our own race, the First Men, into a story about the conflict between our brutal, animal nature and our better and more civilized instincts. Just when one is about to be prominent, some accident of history results in the other side of our nature taking over.

The person giving us this story is a being of tremendous intellect billions of years in the future. I was absolutely dreading this, because an author's true philosophical and personal views are ironically, never more on display when they try to write a person above human understanding giving a comment on modern times – these beings may be above human limits in thinking, but their writers sure aren't. That is, 19th Century novels with characters of this type always come off laughable because their "like unto an amoeba" beings are still tight-assed 19th Century people to the eyes of modern readers.

In fact, it's often difficult to read for this reason, of all things…the Bible…and not come away with the idea that God is a cruel and vindictive bully. But then, what do you expect from Bronze Age nomadic cultures?

In "Last and First Men," sometimes this perspective works and sometimes it doesn't. It was written at an interesting time in history, when the Western neurosis about sex was obvious for what it was and actually could be talked about. A gigantic world war between France and Britain for instance, began again when a beautiful young Princess was the victim of an airplane accident, which brought from the British a cry for revenge against the totally innocent French. In essence, the sensationalist press used sexual imagery to create fear and a desire for aggression and revenge, in much the same way "missing white women" are overhyped in Fox News and other media.

The idea this kind of primitive sexual fascination is a really a primeval rage trigger-instinct would never have occurred to a Victorian mind, and is often invisible to easily provoked people today; it does sound like an observation a more intelligent being from the distant future would make.

Then again, there was the usual Brit science fiction stuff about how a world dominated by Americans (by 1932 a foregone conclusion) would be awful, cultureless and money-mad. This is a British Isles prejudice as petty as their nursery-hatred of Catholics, which I can't imagine any superior mind from the future ever subscribing to – it's bleed over into the character from the author, the literary equivalent of spotting a zipper in a monster movie.

Judging by the writings of their intellectual class across the political spectrum from Tory V.S. Naipaul or liberal Roy Arundhati to C.S. Lewis (whose petty fixations and snipings at the American education system prove what I've always thought: he was an innovative storyteller but a very limited mind), no other nation hates America more, and yet no other nation is considered a close American bosom buddy despite the fact the Brits had one of the evilest empires in history, invented the concentration camp (what, you think it was the Germans?), and in their front and center writings available in public for anyone to read, hate us like poison actively to this day in a way that makes the endearingly contrarian French mind's prejudices look downright innocent in comparison. Maybe those limey bastards are right: Americans don't really read much, or else we'd know how much they loathe us.

On the other hand, a few other details are so forward thinking it's almost shocking to imagine this book was written in 1932. For instance, the ultimate disaster that destroys our technical civilization is the end of fossil fuels. Also, he laughed at the idea World War I would be the "war to end all wars," and even called it one of the least destructive of the later conflicts, put forth a scenario where Americans and Chinese dueled over world influence, and in the days before the atomic bomb, put forth the idea of a superweapon that would destroy all mankind. And all that's in the early chapters dealing with us, the First Men.

Some of the alien-minded human races in the distant future had incredibly inhuman cultures and thought-processes. For instance, the Second Men were doomed by a sort of existential crisis and lack of confidence that honestly, I actually don't even understand.

The most fascinating of the human species - other than the childlike Flying Men and their tragic final fate at the hands of their more pragmatic, industrialist-minded yet bitter and envious brethren – was possibly the Eighteenth Men, or the Last Men, who look not like one race, but many, and have an incredible diversity of appearance.

We are both more human and more animal. The primitive explorer might be more readily impressed by our animality than our humanity, so much of our humanity would lie beyond his grasp. He would perhaps at first regard us as a degraded type. He would call us faun-like, and in particular cases, ape-like, bear-like, ox-like, marsupial, or elephantine.

Moreover, if our observer were himself at all sensitive to facial expression, he would come to recognize in every one of our innumerable physiognomic types an indescribable but distinctively human look, the visible sign of that inward and spiritual grace which is not wholly absent from his own species. He would perhaps say, "These men that are beasts are surely gods also." He would be reminded of those old Egyptian deities with animal heads.

I wonder if the idea of the Last Men possibly inspired Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's the Inhumans from Fantastic Four. After all, both read widely and it is possible to see a lot of early 20th Century science fiction influences in them.

Like John Carter of Mars, this 1932 novel is a book of incredible influence to early generations of science fiction writers and is due anyday to be rediscovered. Though some could be accused of missing the point, like C.S. Lewis, who loved this book but felt the need to talk back to it with "Out of the Silent Planet." Lewis even called the book Satanic – a laughably embarrassing insult for a 20th Century person to slug, right up there with accusing someone of being a witch.

In a part of the book that Lewis did not like, the Fifth Men – a race of moral and intellectual supermen – discover the earth will be rendered uninhabitable, and so they construct a plan to move to Venus. The trouble is that Venus already has an aquatic intelligent inhabited race who fight against the human attempt to make it habitable, as that would be the death of them. Therefore, in a choice prompted by survival, the extremely moral Fifth Men are responsible for the crime of exterminating an entire intelligent race, a black deed that weighs on their guilty consciences.

It was an awful situation – extermination or survival - especially for a race as enlightened as the Fifth Men, and a crime that Stapledon presents without judgment or comment. It was far from presented to the audience as a "correct" course of action, but a bad situation. Nowhere in the book was it presented as a "good" thing to do.

This is a common mistake made by people that choose to police our culture who have no understanding of how art works. They're so used to moral judgment they assume that merely by having something in a story the creators must be in favor of it. A story with violence? They must be gorehounds. A story with rape? The creators must be sickos that like violence against women!

I'm looking squarely at you, Gail Simone. You have great storytelling gifts and your comics are a delight, but your "Women in Refrigerators" site (to which I am not linking because that site does not deserve even any miniscule traffic I can create) is pointlessly incendiary, and presented out of context, all this so-called violence is as meaningless as mentioning the existence of violence or sex in movies. Context tells us whether sex is drama or pornography.

C.S. Lewis was against genocide motivated by greed, eh? Well, I'm sure he had plenty to say, then, about the artificial famines created in India which killed millions in times of plenty to drive up the cost of British grain, or the entire history of abused Ireland, or the hundreds of thousands of Dinka killed to clear settler rights in Kenya, right? No? Didn't say a peep? Well, that's the Brits for you – buttinsky critics of every empire except their own, which ironically (or perhaps predictably) is the worst one of all.

In Out of the Silent Planet, an overly ambitious scientist wants to save the human race by killing all the Martians and settling humans on Mars. The book portrays him as not a very nice person and tries to condemn this viewpoint – except it's not one that Stapledon had!

Sheesh, Lou. You gotta read what the guy says. And that's advice for everybody else. This book is definitely worth reading.

Leigh Brackett's original 1978 "Empire Strikes Back" script

Leigh Brackett's original script for "The Empire Strikes Back" is something I've sought after in a lifetime of being a Star Wars fan. This wasn't just another movie, it was the high point of the entire franchise. What secrets did the script contain?

Recently, I read it and I got a chance to find out. It was not what I was expecting at all.

Who is Leigh Brackett?

Leigh Brackett was all of seventy years old when she wrote the original script for the Star Wars Sequel (the name hadn't even been picked up), and one of the many people from Hollywood's Golden Age who was tapped in the 1970s when blockbuster, mass market pictures came back into vogue, just like "Exorcist" director William Friedkin was a student of Howard Hawks.

Brackett wrote the scripts for arguably the greatest Western and film noirs of all time: Rio Bravo and the Big Sleep.

Brackett is one of those authors, like Hemingway, that's bigger than the stories they wrote. She always "power-dressed," long before that expression came into vogue, loved driving her red sportscar way too fast on California curves. There was a famous story were Leigh played volleyball with the boys in Muscle Beach, California and held her own.

Saying you're a fan of pulp science fiction of the Golden Age is tantamount to admitting you're a fan of Leigh Brackett, just like saying you like Silver Age Marvel Comics means you like Jack Kirby. People forget that the vaguely denigrating term "space opera" started out as praise, a way of separating the wheat from the chaff, a way of telling apart the usual hokey "Adventure" sex-and-shooting romps from the Leigh Brackett-type moody, atmospheric adventure science fiction thrillers.

It was especially shocking to read Leigh Brackett and discover she wrote (anti-) heroes in a voice shockingly similar to Star Wars's scene-stealing, coolest character, Han Solo. One particular antihero character, Rick in "Nemesis from Terra," had a moment so "Han Solo" it was a little chilling, especially when you imagine it was written in 1944.

While on the run in a cave network under Mars with his lady friend, he reached in the darkness and grabbed her.

"Which wrist did I grab?"

"Left."

"We go left. And baby, we'd better hope you're lucky!"

Since the prequels came out, I had another reason to want to read the Leigh Brackett script for "Empire Strikes Back." With the prequels, it was absolutely inarguable that George Lucas had absolute creative control. And those lousy movies were the result? A lot of fans started to wonder if maybe George's role in the success of the original movies was a little overrated. If Star Wars wasn't great because of his contributions, then who else was it? Laurence Kasdan? "Empire Strikes Back" director Irving Kirschner? Producer Gary Kurtz?

It's become a common argument among fans that Leigh Brackett, not George Lucas or screenwriter Laurence Kasdan, was responsible for the strong story of "The Empire Strikes Back." In an interview in Starlog around 1980, George Lucas claimed that it was Leigh Brackett's idea that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. Ever since Brackett's death in 1978, Lucas has given her a gradually smaller and smaller role in the history of Star Wars; currently Lucasfilm claims that Brackett's script was rejected in its entirety as unsuitable, and George Lucas only kept her name on the script credit as a favor to her widower husband, "Planet Smasher" Ed Hamilton. That's a pretty interesting claim considering that the screen writers' guild rules determines when a writer gets credit!

The Structure

First things first: the basic structure of the Brackett script is ultimately identical to the finished film. The differences are in the details.

All the beats of the final film are there: Luke is captured on an ice planet, the Rebels have to evacuate because of upcoming Imperial attack (although in this script the Rebels can't buy a break and get a double-whammy of Imperial troops and unstoppable, unfriendly ice monsters as well), and there's an escape into asteroids, Han and the Princess fall in love, and Luke goes to train as a Jedi Knight under some mysterious weirdo. All roads lead to Cloud City, where Darth Vader has captured Han and Leia due to Lando selling them out, and ultimately the climax is a lightsaber duel between Luke and Darth Vader where Luke is tempted by evil.

Yoda is there (named "Minch," a froglike old bog planet dweller that trained Obi-Wan), as is the Emperor…here he's his usual self as a hood wearing old sorcerer. Apparently this was the point where the idea the Emperor was a powerless figurehead pawn of a powerful military junta, present in the original Star Wars novelization among other pre "Empire Strikes Back" places, was ditched.

One of my favorite scenes shows something I was always curious about: Darth Vader's castle. Darth Vader has some gargoyle-like pets that he feeds, delighting in their greed and cruelty.

Lando

The most surprising element of the script had to do with Lando, here called Lando Kadar. As opposed to a charming but untrustworthy rake who tried to go legit and became successful, Lando in Leigh Brackett's script is a man who "went native," like Jake Sully in "Avatar," accepted by and becoming a leader of a tribe of primitives who live on the Cloud world and fly aerial manta rays.

A lot of people believe Lando was created for a very cynical reason: a big criticism of the original Star Wars was there weren't any black people in it. But there's not a single word about Lando's race in the script. The description of Lando Kadar is that he was so good looking, like Rudolph Valentino, he seems almost a little unreal.

Originally we hear that Lando Kadar was some kind of refugee from the Clone Wars. That's when the bombshell is dropped: Lando Kadar was a clone, from a planet of clones.

Han Solo, Dialed Back

One of the more disappointing things about the script is that Han Solo in this movie is a seriously subdued, "big brother" figure that seems very bland, without his trademark pride, gambler's arrogance, coolness and desire for independence. Han Solo is strongly on the Rebels' side, and isn't conflicted about it at all. Some of his character defining moments, like running the blockade of Imperial ships, leading them into an asteroid field and so on, are absent. This was one of the biggest surprises because practically every single hero Leigh Brackett ever wrote was basically Han Solo. Obviously I wouldn't expect a first draft to be perfect, and a few more rewrites were needed.

Han got a really interesting piece of business: we learn his estranged stepfather was a wealthy interstellar shipping magnate that might be the most powerful person in the galaxy after the Emperor and Darth Vader, and the Rebels need his help. This mission is set up at the end, where Han leaves in the Falcon. I always thought this was interesting because what little we've heard about Han's stepfather reminds me of the Fu Manchu-esque Prince Xizor in "Shadows of the Empire," who was also a shipping magnate and was also the third most powerful and influential guy in the galaxy.

There is one important character that isn't mentioned at all: Boba Fett, and there was no dark cliffhanger with Han Solo trapped in chocolate. Considering the original version of the Star Wars script had Darth Vader as an evil, quiet and menacing bounty hunter, I'm inclined to think this might have been Lucas's idea.

Luke Skywalker is "Rocky"

It's hard to imagine how a boy pilot who blew up the Death Star could possibly be an underdog again after proving himself in such an amazing way, but the Brackett story knocks Luke down a peg in the beginning to build him up. By the end of the story he's humbled, more aware of his shortcomings, but also more adult and wise.

The story starts with Luke getting his ass kicked by ice monsters, just like in the final film. And it goes downhill from there – he tells Leia he loves her and she rejects him, because of her duties (leaving him to think "she's a princess and I'm a farm boy from Tattooine"). And then, in a very subtle way, she leaves Luke to "help out" (ha, ha) Han Solo…

One of my favorite parts of the original Brackett script was how Luke drew his lightsaber to fight an ice monster and got his ass kicked.

Han Solo then tells Luke that Ben Kenobi was a good guy but he filled Luke's head with nonsense, and even for the Jedi Knights, lightsabers were entirely ceremonial weapons and are not the most practical in real fights. This is really funny to me, because I always found the idea that someone with a sword was invincible against people with guns was just a little unbelievable, and come the prequels, the lightsaber was so overused and overpowered it became boring. To have someone at this early stage flat out say they're romantic and sentimental but not a very practical weapon, well, it rings absolutely true.

Therefore, when Luke starts training on the unnamed bog planet, when the ghost of Ben Kenobi tells him he has potential and greatness, Luke was a little suspicious of him. "I'm nobody," he says.

Leigh Brackett's Star Wars sequel script had an infinitely more complex and intriguing view of the Force than the later films. When Luke asks what the Dark Side of the Force is, Yoda tells them the Dark Side isn't something external, but your own personal Dark Side and worst characteristics, insecurities, wrath, hatred and vices. Giving in to these traits is destroying yourself.

Was Darth Vader Luke Skywalker's Father?

Short answer: no, not in this script.

If Luke being Darth Vader's son was Brackett's idea, it wasn't here. And it isn't just a question of that line not being there. In one scene on the bog planet, Obi-Wan introduces Luke to the ghost of his real dead father. The moment is as earth-shattering for Luke as it is for us.

Amazingly of all, Luke's Father tells him he has a sister, who in the script was given the name "Nellith."

During the final confrontation, hoping to unleash Luke's evil side, Vader taunts him with the knowledge that he killed his father.

"You don't stand a chance against me. …No more than your Father did, anyway."

Vader plays to Luke's vanity as well as his rage and wrath, hoping to get Luke to use the Dark Side so Luke could say he killed the great Darth Vader. In the end Luke gives in to wrath and rage, and as a result, he betrays his Jedi oath, a crushing moment where Luke believes he ought to die.

All in all, Darth Vader's temptation of Luke was much better done in this script because he had something to tempt Luke with.

The Chabad Lubavich and Creationism

As a college undergrad, I was a part of the FIU Chabad Lubavich chapter, and on a couple of weeks when my Mother was out of town, I even celebrated Passover with them. I've spent dozens of free Chabad dinners there at the Rabbi's house. I have nothing but good and pleasant memories about my association with that organization, and the friendships I made through the Chabad.

Though I currently have no religious beliefs, being Jewish is a part of who I am whether I like it or not and is something I can either fight and rebel against (unproductively) or embrace as a part of my identity. Besides, God must love us secular Jews. After all, He made so many.

As someone with a science and education background, however, it deeply troubles me that Chabad is the only remaining Hasidic group, indeed, the only remaining group of Judaism that still rejects evolutionary origin for life, and continues to endorse some really crackpot Young Earth theories (6,000 year old creationism).

I always found this ironic, because Judaism (including hard-assed, traditionalist Orthodox and Conservative Judaism!) have never had any compatibility problems between science and religious beliefs.

And what's more, the Jewish tradition has always endorsed an old earth anyway, and that time, to God, meant something totally different than it would to humans. In the 11th Century, Rabbi Moishe bin Asher used Kabbalah to divine that the earth was billions and billions of years old, and many midrashim have argued there were previous successive creations that were destroyed by God as unsuitable and incomplete. There have been other Medieval that claim that Adam was the last of a thousand prior generations, but he was significant in that he was the first to have the breath of God, a soul within him.

The primary voice for this rejection was one of the major figures in the history in the history of Judaism, the Rebbe Lubavich, who had enormous influence over the Chabad as its spiritual founder. Many believed the Rebbe was in fact, the Messiah (Moshiach), a view that is downright bizarre for the primary reason that he died! Well, I guess that answers that question! Along with Bar Kochba, Jacob Frank, Shabbetai Tzevi, and a certain Rabbi from the 1st century that shall remain nameless (wink, wink) the Rebbe died without fulfilling any of the Messianic prophecies.

This seems like an unfair non-sequitur since most Chabadniks didn't believe the Rebbe was Moshiach even when he was alive, but it is nonetheless relevant because the Rebbe was not a superman and he could be wrong and at times he said various misinformed things about the process of science and evolution. He once claimed that "evolution has not the slightest shred of evidence behind it," which even honest creationists must admit is untrue.

More importantly, I would not go to the Rebbe for advice on science. The divine nature of Torah is totally unfalsifiable and therefore outside any possible means of scientific investigation. The origins of human beings, however, are within the boundaries of the material world: things within the material world require materialist explanations.

The Rebbe believed that biological evolution eliminated the meaning and purpose of existence, if we were just an "accident," then who cares about moral responsibility? As a Chabad rabbi stated in this article:

"We have to be aware of the effects of our beliefs. If we believe that humans came about by accident, then life has no meaning. There can be no meaning to something that happens by chance. A random explosion or mutation cannot give us purpose. My life, your life and all human history has no real significance whatsoever. Whether I live a good life or one full of evil makes no difference. It is all a big accident anyway.

We only have purpose if we were created on purpose. Our lives only have meaning if we were created by a meaningful being. If we teach our children that they were created on purpose with a purpose, then they will know that more is expected from them than from an animal."

Whether something gives us meaning or purpose is irrelevant as to whether it is true or not. Whether something makes children behave themselves is irrelevant as to whether it is true or not (and there are many disobedient children from religious families and obedient children from non-religious families).

But more importantly, if human creation is what gives us purpose, why can't evolution give us a purpose? The fact is we're human, the first creature on earth able to make moral choices, and that ability alone implies duties and personal responsibilities. There does not need to be a contradiction between belief in a God and belief in what is revealed to us by science.

A digital watch in a Western

I had an interesting conversation a while ago with a friend, where we saw together a godawful vampire movie set in the Old West, Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance. It was sheer masochism on my part: I heard Ewe Boll was bad, but I wanted to see how bad.

I don’t think I’ll be surprising anyone by saying that it was in fact, as bad as everybody says.

For example, in one scene, there’s an extra that quite visibly is wearing a digital watch. A digital watch in the Old West! The guy wasn’t even hidden in the background, either: he was front and center and the watch was unmistakable.

Something about that error just pissed me off even more than ordinary goofs, because it was the kind of sloppy mistake that’s made when the people making a film just don’t care.

A friend of mine that watched the film with me was baffled by how much the watch thing got to me and laughed it off. “So what, baby? It’s a movie about vampires, and you’re on about a digital watch being unrealistic?”

That comment totally took me totally off guard. Implicit in it is the idea that as something is a vampire movie, a crass error made in it is somehow less of a crass error.

That comment is also symptomatic of a mentality that science fiction and fantasy fans frequently suffer from: underestimating the importance of suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief is like trust: it can be broken, and it is hard to regain when lost. Like trust, suspension of disbelief is never just “given” away, and must be earned. The more we are convinced of the reality of a story, the more we’re emotionally involved. The more we’re emotionally envolved, the more moving and entertaining a novel or movie experience is.

1. If an error is unacceptable in any other type of fiction, it shouldn’t be acceptable in science fiction or fantasy, either. SF and Fantasy shouldn’t be treated differently from any other genre, or held up to different standards than any other genre. No one should ever say “he acts that way because it’s science fiction.” Characterization is just as important in SF (and for that matter, action/adventure) as it is in regular fiction.

2. Science fiction and fantasy have an even greater obligation to be “realistic” than so-called “realistic” genres. In “plausible” espionage fiction, legal thrillers, or detective stories, suspension of disbelief is easier because the story could happen. SF has to work harder because it features elements not present in everyday life. For another example, in superhero comics, just because characters wear costumes and fire proton beams doesn't mean they're exempt from the responsibility of plausibility.

3. Science fiction and fantasy work according to rules and those rules are just as important as the rules of the real world. If having a watch in a Western is sloppy and takes a person out of the reality of the film, then having multiple versions of Atlantis existing simultaneously with totally different properties (as happened in DC during the sixties) is every bit as bad.

For a somewhat more contentious example, having Yoda fight with a lightsaber, as he did in the prequels, is a mistake every bit as bad as the digital watch, because Yoda was never shown as having a laser sword all through his appearances in the original movies, never trained Luke Skywalker in the use of a lightsaber (all those other things were more important) and as Yoda was a wise, spiritual teacher that taught the Force as something wondrous and beyond the physical, having Yoda fight with a lightsaber contradicts the very essence of the character. Just because Yoda is a fictional character and a fictional alien in a fictional galaxy doesn’t change the fact that going against his nature is a very, very real error.

Avatar: you loved the movie, now read the books!

In a world of people that make movies as products without passion, it's great to see someone like James Cameron. With Titanic and the Abyss, it was obvious he had a lot of enthusiasm for the ocean, marine biology, and for history. With Avatar, he showed a real and profound love for science fiction to the point where it is actually able to trace the geneology of some of his ideas.

MANTA'S GIFT. Timothy Zahn.

"Manta's Gift" is the story of a quadriplegic that is placed into the body of a flying manta-ray like creature that lives in the dense atmosphere of Jupiter, with the secret mission of observing them and reporting their technical secrets.

Manta's Gift has various elements in common with Avatar: a quadriplegic given a second chance by the opportunity to become an alien, an earth company that wants a spy to get something they want from extraterrestrials, an emphasis on creating a well-developed and thought through ecology and biology as opposed to an emphasis on physics and new gadgetry. It's really hard to talk about Manta's Gift in a spoiler-free way, but like Avatar, it deals with a problem of conscience.

What's interesting and extraordinary about "Manta's Gift" are not the similarities to Avatar, but the differences: the quadriplegic hero was actually placed into a body in the womb and so he "grows up" in this race and later learns of his connection to earth.

Leigh Brackett's Mars Stories

Brackett's stories are like a reverse War of the Worlds: humans go and conquer Mars. They're stories about the colonial experience and the resentment of have-nots for haves, the resentment of ancient traditional societies for new arrivals and corporations and vice-versa. There's a lot of influence in Brackett of Clark Ashton Smith and the Weird Tales writers, in the sense that her Mars is atmospheric, dead, and eerie. For instance, Brackett's Mars has a winged race, a staple of adventure science fiction, but instead of awe-inspiring they're creatures of terror: batlike night-shadows that live in a crumbling city.

As much as the premise of Leigh Brackett's Mars stories sound like Avatar (mining companies against native people) the differences are even more interesting. For one, while, Brackett's Martians look human in the time-honored Burroughs tradition, her Martians are too weird to possibly be jack-off fodder for nerds the way Zoe Saldana's character was. Heroines of the stories tend to be gutsy earth-women. And it should be said, Brackett's females were very interesting, more like tough two-fisted girl spies that can shoot a gun if called for.

H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy"

"Little Fuzzy" has many of the themes of Avatar: a scientist trying to protect the dignity of an alien race against a company that wants to exploit the resources of a world and deny the humanlike status of the primitive natives. Because whether the Fuzzies are sentient or not is a real question that has to be successfully argued and communication isn't possible, the hero has to prove their rights as beings...a common science fiction theme going back to Isaac Asimov. At some level, science fiction is about affirming the dignity of beings different from ourselves. The applicability to the real world speaks for itself, and it's something that always made me argue that SF is a forward-thinking genre.

It's actually pretty shocking that, considering the paucity of the public domain, that something written in the 1960s would already be expired, but "Little Fuzzy" is available entirely online. Though the reason is actually quite hideous: HBP committed suicide in the 1960s (supposedly to screw his ex-wife out of his life insurance by voiding it) and so his copywrights were allowed to lapse.

You know, "Star Wars" was actually pretty cool once

There was a time when "Return of the Jedi" was considered the worst of the Star Wars movies. I can only bitterly laugh at how naive we all were.

I've been angry at Star Wars ever since the prequels were released. They came to symbolize for me everything that is wrong with our current film culture: showy, grotesque, bloated movies that emphasize action and special effects over characters and story that the audience can get emotionally involved in.

It took a while, but recently, on one of my quieter days, I saw the original Star Wars movies again. And you know something? They were actually something! I can see why my brother's generation thought they were the greatest things of all time, especially in an era when nobody made escapist, smart adventure films aimed at teenagers and adults, let alone science fiction movies! They weren't b-movies either...Star Wars had a way of making their imitators look like shabby copies.

The movies were incredibly smart. They didn't have any cute little kids, which doom the ability to take anything seriously. There were no comic relief characters. Wisecracking Han Solo and the dry, deadpan Princess Leia were funny enough just by being who they were. Sure, there were those two lovable gay robots, R2-D2 and C3P-0, but the humor came from them being who they were: C3P-0 was timid, cowardly, and fussy, whereas R2-D2 was a spunky, courageous little runt firebrand that followed orders from humans, but the way he thought was best.

It was possible to love the characters because of what close friends they were. Han Solo and Luke were friends that risked their lives for each other; and C3P-0 and R2-D2 fought each other constantly but they needed each other.

The dialogue was quotable. Huge swaths of the Empire Strikes Back are watchable not just because of the special effects, but by another element that is even harder to do: the chemistry and witty, confrontational rapid-fire repartee between Han Solo and Princess Leia. My favorite was this great scene from "Return of the Jedi"

HAN SOLO: "Hey, kid! How are things?"

LUKE: "Oh, same as always."

HAN SOLO: "That bad, huh?"

A few insights that I had when watching the films:

1) Most characters in the original series were human beings.

This was one example of a place where the limitations of money became a strength. In general, if there isn't a really compelling reason to make a character a non-human alien...don't do it! In the prequel films, to say nothing of science fiction in general, some characters are aliens or monsters or robots just because. This is a problem because there is much, much more to creating a likable or distinctive character than just making them a weird alien race. The use of makeup, prosthetics, and worst of all, CGI, became a crutch. Why give someone distinctive mannerisms or a personality the audience can like when you could just give them a squid's head or make them a cartoon rabbit or a four-armed fat-ass running a fifties diner?

The fact that the majority of characters in the original Star Wars were humans also lent some believability to it all. Aliens were used sparingly, or to used for specific effect heighten the exoticism of certain moments (like the cantina scene or Jabba's palace), but the fact that the characters were all humans instead of cartoon rabbits gave Star Wars a real maturity and believability. Yoda and Chewbacca were both weird creatures, but that was done with a point in mind: Yoda was a small, weird little thing because that subverted our expectations that a great warrior would be someone mighty and physically imposing. Likewise, Chewbacca's character is a big scary animalistic monster, but who is also strong, friendly, loving, and loyal. They were aliens, but there was a reason for that.

2) Lightsabers were used sparingly.

I hadn't realized this before, but Luke Skywalker and others use the lightsaber amazingly rarely, and it was typically his last resort - even when confronted with something as scary as the rancor in the "Return of the Jedi," he defeated it entirely by his wits instead of by pulling out his laser sword gadget. It also made me think about what exactly made the lightsaber cool in the first place.

The lightsaber was a cool and wondrous science fiction device because it was underused. It flickers on the screen for brief moments through most of the film, and really builds up to the sensational duels that typically happen at the end. One of the problems with the prequel films is that constant use of lightsabers, so not only does this weapon seem debased and ordinary, but ultimately, all action scenes end up looking alike.

3) Boba Fett was awesome.

Boba Fett was a minor character that immediately set our imaginations on fire. He dressed like an Ancient Roman. He had more gadgets than Iron Man and Batman combined. He had an aura of quiet coolness. And best of all, he went down in Star Wars history as the bounty hunter that outsmarted Han Solo.

The character was obviously based on Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name," who also dabbled in bounty hunting. It wouldn't surprise me if the notes in the script were for a "Clint Eastwood type." It also goes to show that despite the fact Westerns have disappeared it's impossible to understand 20th Century film without them.

4) Darth Vader was frightening.

Like Tarzan and Superman, Darth Vader has been weakened by familiarity and his transformation into a pop culture icon and a symbol just like the Coca-Cola logo, to the point where it's almost shocking to go back and discover what a supremely awesome creation he was. Watching Darth Vader in the original movies is like watching Godzilla 1985 or the 1954 film: a reminder that this character was meant to be terrifying, surrounded with an aura of unstoppability and dread.

Before his helmet was a pez dispenser, Darth Vader was a frightening figure of pure intimidation, a hideously disfigured, ruthless evil sorcerer. During his battle with Luke in "Empire Strikes Back," Vader was toying with him: he could have killed Luke at any time. Darth Vader's hunches are always right, and he is absolutely unforgiving of failure. With his unnatural powers, he can choke and kill and even render the attacks of heroes superfluous. Who can forget the tantalizing scene where Darth Vader's bald, hideously disfigured head was seen briefly? Darth Vader and his personality totally dominates the action of "Empire Strikes Back." The interesting thing is that "Empire Strikes Back" is sort of like a reverse-Lord of the Rings: the good guys never win once.

Here's something I always wondered about Darth Vader: how come they never really used or mentioned again, after "Star Wars," that he was a supremely skilled, ice-cold starfighter pilot? That was always one of the most distinctive things about him: he wasn't above getting his hands dirty. In fact, Darth Vader was like a cross between Doctor Doom and the Red Baron.

The revelation that Vader was Luke Skywalker's father was so shocking, so effective, that I have trouble believing it was entirely Lucas's idea. In several interviews in 1980, Lucas flat out said it was Leigh Brackett's idea...though the more distance was put between him and that cool old lady's death, the more the story changed. Vader being Luke's father turned the character around and made us see him in a totally different light: instead of an uncomplicated embodiment of evil, he was a person with a connection to others.

People like to say that it's good when a character is "complicated," but what does that actually mean? Complexity is when someone is a combination of characteristics, some of which are contradictory - like when the Rutger Hauer cyborg in Blade Runner showed compassion, or when Nazi villains in war movies are shown as good fathers.

By the way, I was absolutely shocked that Vader actually died a hero, something that I had totally forgotten.

5) I actually liked Princess Leia.

Here's what I think is genius about the casting of Carrie Fisher Simon: she was not a knockout babe blonde bombshell, or a sexy exotic Latina or something like that. She was petite and slim, more like Audrey Hepburn than like, say, Kim Basinger or Elle MacPherson. She was such an oddball casting choice it had entertainment value for that reason alone. Carrie Fisher has an ethnicity that is undisguisable, like Joe Pantoliano, who never plays just guys, but always Italian guys. Even in a galaxy far, far away Carrie Fisher is almost comically Jewish.

Princess Leia could have been the campiest character in movie history: a snotty, entitled princess that uses the royal "we." Instead, she was almost like a gutsy female spy, good with a blaster, with a dry, caustic, sarcastic sense of humor. There are only occasionally moments that anything like haughtiness comes out, which they did with a great light touch, like when she calls Han Solo a scoundrel. It was little, subtle things that made Princess Leia memorable: at the beginning of "Empire Strikes Back," for instance, she was running a computer console along with the working stiffs on the hellish Hoth base. She gave off the vibe of a dedicated, competent and professional person with good organization and management skills.

Above all, the key word to her characterization is subtlety, yet she never feels like she doesn't have any personality. I was amazed at how much I liked her character.

"That's no moon...that's a space station."

One of the great parts about Amazing Stories are the seldom-reprinted back covers, which regularly had some artist's conception of a future bit of technology. Since it's Amazing Stories under Palmer's editorship, they were wrong about nearly everything, of course...

Avatar, Fringe, and the Pulps

“Do not duplicate the masters, but seek what they sought.”

- Basho

My review of both "Avatar" and "Fringe" is linked by a single thread: if something was truly done in the true style and spirit of pulp fiction, it would be absolutely unrecognizable as “pulp” unless you really look deeply.

Things that duplicate the accoutrements of pulp – slouched fedoras, wisecracking private dicks, leggy dames, (and on the pulp science fiction side of the fence) water-cooler robots, Ming the Merciless style bwa-ha-ha Saturday afternoon serial foes, (and on the hero pulp side of the fence) over the top doomsday devices and square jawed he-men – if these were done today they’d be camp, a joke…it would compromise the very sincerity, the very real seriousness that is the strongest element of the true pulps. Something that takes pulp seriously wouldn’t have these elements, so it would be hard to identify them as truly in the pulp spirit.

Here’s the extraordinary thing about pulps I don’t think people realize: 1) they were very state of the art to the point where viewing the most crucial thing about them as period anachronisms does them a disservice; and 2) unlike with the comics, there was an emphasis on plausibility. Doc Savage’s world was exaggerated and “bigger than life,” but most of his stories could have really happened. It’s easy to get a cheap chuckle out of the sheer ludicrousness Doc Savage defeating a polar bear with his bare fists (at least if you hear about it out of context), and forget that The Polar Treasure actually explained how he could do it in a way that made me go, “a-ha! That…actually makes sense. That could happen in real life.” What’s more, it’s worth pointing out that all of Doc Savage’s gadgets…all of them…either existed at the time the stories were written, or came into existence 10-20 years later. I minored in Geology, and after reading “The Man Who Shook the Earth,” I really wonder why that earthshaking device didn’t work in reality.

Even the Shadow, easily the most over the top and weird of the pulp heroes, had extremely subtle, muted abilities, to the point that (and I know how this flies in the face of common wisdom but I’m being dead serious here) I have never been entirely, 100% convinced that the Shadow even had any real powers at all. Some of his abilities were pretty weird, but the most interesting thing about the Shadow is how opaque he is to the reader, and so this gives everything he does some ambiguity. Ordinary hypnotism, gadgetry, sleight of hand and stage magic may do just as well to explain his headscratching feats. After all, there are some people that think David Blaine and Houdini had real powers.

This is why I think a lot of efforts to reproduce the pulps have been monstrously insincere. Too much attention has been paid to making worlds that look like Frank R. Paul Amazing Stories covers, and too little attention has been paid to the crucial fact that what was important here wasn’t the design sense, but that people actually thought this is what the future would really be like. Wouldn’t it be more in the spirit of the science fiction pulps and their sense of wonder to try to honestly conjecture what the future would really be like based on state of the art information we have now, and it would violate their spirit to just copy the pulps’ outdated penis-rocket designs for nostalgia purposes?

A while back, I was a member of an internet forum about Pre-Crisis Superman comics, a character that I have always been a fan of. Here’s the link, since they were cool enough to link to my blog. The major reason I eventually stopped posting there was because of the creeping realization that what defined Pre-Crisis Superman for these people wasn’t a certain style of storytelling, characterization or continuity, but superficial, nostalgic irrelevancies – unimportant and at times embarrassing elements they defend to the death. Why? Because for them, Superman is in fact, all about the wrapping paper, not the package: Super-Pets, and goofy duels between Superman and Hercules for the hand of Lois Lane.

(Dave - I know you read this, and I don't mean you, because of your capacity for critical thinking.)

I didn’t get the appeal of barely-there non-elements like Beppo the Super-Monkey, embraced by others for the same smarmy reason fans of the 80s decade get misty-eyed about the “Superbowl Shuffle,” so consequently there was an extremely unfair attitude that I failed the purity test and therefore did not "really" like Pre-Crisis Superman. (That, and the fact I'm really not crazy about Al Plastino.) What I think was wonderful about the first Superman film, and what made it so groundbreaking, is that that movie was totally convinced it could happen. The first line in the film was, intentionally, “this is no fantasy.” The tagline was “You will believe a man can fly.”

Incidentally, I also expect to have someone say that since I don't care for rockets shaped like dicks or Ming the Merciless, that I'm not a "real" pulp science fiction fan either.

With the science fiction pulps, only the bad stories were formulaic. When we think of pulp science fiction, we think of the same wish-fulfillment John Carter of Mars/Flash Gordon story over and over. In fact, the science fiction pulps were very innovative and unpredictable. Take A. Bertram Chandler’s “Giant Killer,” published in 1945. You don’t realize at first that the story is told from the perspective of rats inside a spaceship that have acquired intelligence. Then you have arguably the greatest novel of the Golden Age, Jack Williamson’s “Humanoids,” which is all the more frightening because the evil robots actually win in the end – no comfortable, cheeseball Hollywood victory here. My favorite science fiction novel of all time, A. E. van Vogt’s 1940 “Slan,” did have a lot in common with the traditional yarn about the Wesley Crusher-esque boy genius that saved the day with gadgets, but it is still read today because it is an anti-prejudice story told from the perspective of a persecuted outsider. Who the hell today reads formulaic tripe like Gernsback’s “Ralph 124C41+?” Even the Lensmen, at one point considered the greatest science fiction serial of all time, have been mostly forgotten!

The ultimate point here is this: if the pulp spirit is innovation, wouldn’t it (ironically) kill that spirit, to try and excruciatingly duplicate the typical pulp clichés like the wisecracking two-fisted scientist and the breathtakingly beautiful native Chieftain’s Daughter?

Here’s the thing I think needs to be remembered about things that drew on the movie serials: Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were actually nothing at all like the Saturday afternoon serials. They made an effort to create unique and fleshed out characters, tell unique stories, and they strove to be unpredictable as much as possible. The Star Wars universe was made with the thought it could actually exist. They were hardly throwback or “retro” projects. There was a sincerity behind them that wasn’t found in other serial-inspired work, and there is a reason “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” is nowhere near as beloved as “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Nostalgia is the enemy of real creativity.

All of this (finally!) brings me to Avatar and Fringe.

“Fringe” is a pulp series and nobody even knows it – it eschews the fedoras for the things that actually made the pulps “pulp.” The first episode begins with a horrifying and mysteriously unexplained infection on an airplane that turns people into fleshless skeletons. This, by the way, is the beginning of something like 30 Doc Savage novels. Fringe is about G-Men, the most pulp of all professions, who investigate cases of science misuse so lurid and horrific I keep expecting the Spider to pop up somewhere. “Fringe” goes for bleeding-edge science developments to justify their unusual cases, another example of the pulp era’s main tools to suspend disbelief: cutting-edge technology and the appeal to plausibility. One of the main characters is a mad scientist, another pulp staple, but in the tradition of the pulps, who tried to be innovative, the series shows what a real-life mad scientist would actually be like.

“Avatar” excited me because James Cameron obviously read the same science fiction I did and was inspired by very much the same things. This is John Carter of Mars, but a story that ditched the reactionary and backward attitudes and actually embraced a conscience. It embraced scientific plausibility and actually gave an explanation for why giant flying monsters are possible (short answer: low gravity and a thick atmosphere) and created a realistic ecosystem. It’s the smartest science movie since “Jurassic Park.” The irony here is that when they actually do make “John Carter of Mars,” people are going to say what a rip off it is of Avatar!

At the end of the day, the pulp tradition is alive and well: not as fossilized and ossified “retro” or nostalgic material, but as a living, breathing thing that continually adapts and changes to its environment and context. Changing to one’s environment doesn’t destroy pulp: it IS pulp and always has been.