John Lindal’s Blog

Time Trap

I just finished Keith Laumer’s Time Trap, published by Baen Books. I found it interesting that Laumer’s time trap worked exactly the same way as in Groundhog Day: It reset every 24 hours, but you remembered everything from the previous cycles. If you were hurt or killed, you woke up whole again at the reset.

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes

I’ve only read the review in Science News, but the following struck me as amazingly similar to A Case of Conscience, in which a Jesuit priest has a crisis of faith after encountering an alien race that lacks any concept of God:

[Daniel L.] Everett portrays these masters of jungle survival [the Pirahã] as a generally jovial bunch who have no creation myths or storytelling traditions. They live in the present and believe only in what they and their comrades directly observe — a cultural characteristic that leads Everett to abandon his own faith.

The Gripping Hand

Back when I read the books, I was deeply impressed by The Mote in God’s Eye, but The Gripping Hand was quite a let down. Mote is essentially a horror story which leaves you hanging, terrified that the genie might get out of the bottle. The Moties will clearly reproduce without end and overrun the galaxy if they ever get out of their solar system. The sequel was such a let down because it resolves this terror by invoking birth control.

I believe these two books were written for very different reasons. Mote was good, old fashioned science fiction asking a terrible What if…? The sequel seems to be primarily motivated by politics — it seeks to assure westerners that Arabs really aren’t all that bad. They just have a different way of doing business, and if they can be convinced to accept birth control, they won’t take over the world. (From what little I know, Islam isn’t big on contraception, so they have over population problems.) The book does this by:

• making a big point about how Jews and Muslims used to face the same direction during prayer, and when in orbit around another planet, Mecca and Jerusalem are essentially in the same direction
• showing how the Arab way of doing business (or at least, how it is depicted in the book) saves the day because it is compatible with the Motie way of thinking

A Case of Conscience

I found myself thinking about this book again this morning after I woke up from a dream which I intend to write up as a short story. It has been years since I read the book, but I still remember it fondly because it is so wonderfully constructed.

The central puzzle of the book is whether a planet of aliens who appear to be both sinless and without any concept of God explodes because of an exorcism by a Jesuit priest or because a scientist who is hell-bent on exploiting the planet’s natural resources to build nuclear weapons miscalculated and blew it up.

The beauty of this puzzle is that, as we wrestle with it, we parallel the Jesuit priest’s wrestling at the beginning of the book with a paradox from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. To me, it was clear that the Jesuit should have been focusing on the problem of the alien planet instead of the paradox, which turned out to be entirely contrived, due to missing punctuation. Parallel to this, I believe the author intended the message that we should be trying to solve the problems humanity faces rather than the entirely contrived puzzle posed by A Case of Conscience! The author hammered this home in the second half of the book where, after returning to Earth, the priest struggled with the puzzle of the aliens instead of focusing on the obvious problem of humanity’s suffering: everybody lives in nuclear shelters and riots are a constant problem.

Prince Caspian

If you love Narnia, don’t see this movie.

OK, so much for the executive summary. The extended previews on Disney Channel sounded wrong, and I re-read the book to confirm this, so I went to the theater with very low expectations. However, nothing could have prepared me for something this abysmal. Peter Jackson has moved down to #2 on my Worst Butchers In History list. Yes, as unbelievable as it sounds, this movie is worse than Peter Jackson’s anti-accomplishment. The reason is simply that, while The Lord of the Rings is a deep and intricate story, the Narnia series is so simple. Each book has one main theme. If you throw that out the window, there is nothing left.

The first book is about Christ dying for our sins. To my eternal astonishment, they got that movie right.

The second book is about Faith, both by people who have never experienced Christ, but who feel deep in their soul that the message is true, and those who have not experienced Christ in a while, in the middle of a so called dry spell. And about the Joy of discovering or re-uniting with Christ.

This movie had neither.

Instead of Prince Caspian and his army hanging on to hope while sustaining mounting losses, finally blowing Queen Susan’s horn in their darkest hour, and then having to hang on to hope even a bit longer before help finally arrived, the children meet Caspian at the beginning of the movie and proceed to invade Miraz’ castle with disastrous results.

Instead of Lucy and Susan romping with Aslan to reawaken the trees and the rest of Old Narnia, Susan leads the archers in the final battle while Lucy actually goes in search of Aslan, as if He were some random lion who lives in the woods, rather than the Creator and Driving Force of Narnia.

Reepicheep was OK. All the other characters were hopelessly distorted.

Lord of the Rings

It occurred to me today that perhaps The Lord of the Rings no longer can be made into a successful movie. Today’s audiences want main characters to whom they can relate, but The Lord of the Rings is built on ancient legends from a time when people needed characters who could inspire because they were a cut above the ordinary.

This does not excuse Peter Jackson’s mangling of Tolkien’s masterpiece, but perhaps it does explain why Gandalf was made a bumbling fool and Aragorn was portrayed as reluctant to reforge Narsil. The real Gandalf was a tactician on par with Niven’s Pak Protectors, while Aragorn was a living embodiment of Nobility — both so far beyond human ken that it is excusable to label their motivations as alien.

I do think the story could be faithfully told on the screen, but it would be necessary to frame it with characters who clearly convey their awe of the tale and their reverence for characters like Gandalf and Aragorn. These frame characters would be the ones to whom today’s audiences could relate.

Problems with Potter?

A random comment I found somewhere on the web a few days ago set me off on a hunt for discussion on the Harry Potter series. What I found is that the debate over the virtues of the series is still raging after all these years. I remember hearing about a pastor in Texas wanting to burn the first Harry Potter book many years ago.

Now, I know that we all like to live in our own version of reality — Douglas Adams made this point quite cleverly with the Total Perspective Vortex — but I cannot understand why people get so hung up on the magick in the Harry Potter books, unless they are like one person I heard of who allegedly believed that the special effects in the old TV series Bewitched were real.

J.K. Rowling is writing a fantasy story. It is based on assumptions that are not true in our world, namely that magick is real, and that some people are born with the power, like it or not. In the first book, Harry causes several strange things to happen, e.g., sending Dudley into the snake exhibit, without realizing what he is doing — and without a wand. Under these circumstances, it would be irresponsible not to have schools devoted to teaching kids how to use their power — both technically, for control, and ethically, to avoid abuse. In the books, the Dark Arts are only considered acceptable by those who are not hampered by moral scruples. Hogwarts only teaches defense against the Dark Arts and only out of necessity. While one might grumble that God is absent from the books, morality certainly is not.

Rowling’s magick has nothing to do with the oft-quoted commandments in the Bible banning witchcraft because our world works differently. Nobody is born with power, as far as I know. If magick does actually exist in our world, then it appears to be accessible only by dealing with supernatural beings — beings not from our world. The Biblical commandment forbids making deals with such supernatural beings — demons, if you will — and this is for our safety. Demons do not have our best interest at heart!

Rowling’s magick should instead be compared with our technology. We are born with the ability to create both wonders, e.g., modern medicine, and nightmares, e.g., modern warfare. Under these circumstances, it would be irresponsible not to have schools devoted to teaching kids how to use this power — both technically and ethically. We only developed the nuclear bomb out of necessity, because Nazi Germany was trying to invent it, too!

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I went to see Narnia this morning. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see it after the Lord of the Rings debacle, but since I love the books so much, I couldn’t resist.

I’m happy to report that they got it right.

Sure, they changed things — lots of things. At the beginning, I was grumbling about casting choices and all sorts of details. But part way through, after they successfully pulled off a particularly wild deviation which initially had me writhing in my seat, I realized that there was hope. This team was not the usual gang of idiots. And when I saw the expression on Aslan’s face after negotiating with the White Witch over Edmund’s life, I knew that they understood the book.

In retrospect, I cannot think of a single core detail which they missed or changed. Granted, I have not read the book in quite a while, but all the changes and omissions helped the story flow and the characters develop smoothly within the 2 hour time window. Unlike another director who shall remain nameless, Andrew Adamson (of Shrek fame) knows how to tell a good story in a reasonable amount of time. He deserves special kudos for not Disnefying the climax, even though it was a Disney film. Even the battle tactics were good!

So, if you love the books, go see the movie. It’s not the book, but it’s true to the book. And if you’ve been looking for a conversation starter, take a friend along.

It may be too much to ask that they do the same for the other 6 books, but C.S. Lewis would surely support us in praying for such a miracle.