Have you ever watched a science fiction movie, let’s say Species, where there was a scene where something came out of a test tube and ended up covering the room in an instant? You know, like maybe a couple of grams in the tube, which breaks on the floor releasing the thing that grows into a couple of hundred kilograms of alien badness before the incineration system takes it out. And have you ever asked yourself where the biomass came from in a room full of machinery, with we hope not too much in the way of humidity (which is bad for the equipment), with nothing to eat but the two humans who were in protective suits in the room? And they didn’t look like they had lost any weight during the creature’s growth. So just where does all that extra mass come from. I’m sure there are a lot of young men out there trying to gain weight for football who would like to know the answer to that one. After all, they’re trying desperately to put on a few pounds a week, so they won’t be broken in half by the real blue chippers on the field. And here’s a creature that seems to inhale mass from out of nowhere. Something similar happens in Alien, where a small creature bursts out of the chest of its host after maybe taking in a couple of kilograms of nourishment. It runs away and is later found at larger than human size after having eaten, as far as we know, nothing, except maybe some emergency rations in a locker somewhere. And the alien has some really different protein structures in its body, as shown by the almost universal acid if bleeds, and the cellular structure to hold in that acid. Meaning? That it must have a hell of a metabolism to change proteins so radically. Now the blob does a better job of showing where the mass for its growth is coming from. After all, the damned protoplasmic creature (which is probably impossible for other reasons that are not the focus of this blog entry) eats voraciously. In fact, its eats everything it can get its body around. But again, it must have some kind of metabolism to change proteins, haul its heavy ass around, and do other kinds of blob like stuff. We know that most meat eaters on our world might get a tenth of the food they eat to convert to body mass. The rest is burned up to run the metabolism. And even if the blob is cold, with a lower metabolism, it still couldn’t do better than one third of its food into body mass, now could it?
Now in fantasy there is really no need to explain the mechanism. It’s magic after all. Dragons turn into people and back to dragons and we don’t know where the mass goes to. Another dimension, a dragon cupboard in the kitchen, it don’t matter, because it’s magic. Same as Bruce Banner turning from a hundred fifty pound man to the ton of Hulk. But it would be nice if science fiction, which is supposed to be based in some way, shape or form on science after all, either gave an explanation for the inexplicable, or toned it down so that some semblance of reality was achieved. At least for those of us who give a damn.
The Hulk
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While vampires are the rock stars of the undead world, and zombies the everyman turned monster, and even mummies get some respect, ghouls seem to be the red headed stepchild of the monster world. A check of the movie databases reveal hundreds of movies about vampires made worldwide, zombies as the newest craze with scores of recent movies, and even mummies with movies in the double digits. I think there was one old black and white feature titled The Ghoul, and little else. It is the same in literature, with vampires commanding overwhelming attention and ghouls little if any mention. Robert E Howard seemed to like the idea of ghouls, featuring ghoul like creatures in several Conan stories, and Carter and De Camp placed them in at least one of the novels they wrote about the big Cimmerian. The ghouls in Howard were said to be stronger than human, with hair like wire, but they crunched satisfactorily when hit with a broadsword. There were also ghouls used in several of the old Gold Box D&D games, especially in sections that required the player to examine graveyards or deserted areas of town. Not all ghouls were stronger than human. Some were described as being weak creatures who overwhelmed their prey by force of numbers, sort of like zombies. Or, if the prey were dead bodies, there was no overwhelming necessary.
I guess one of the reasons for the dearth of ghouls in literature and film is the low threat level of the creatures. In most cases they can be avoided by not going into graveyards, especially at night, something most sensible people have no trouble doing. Or stay out of the haunted pass or woods that everyone in the area warns about. Vampires frequent clubs and dancing establishments, at least according to the movies, and zombies can come right into your yard and living room. No self respecting ghoul is going to be found in your yard unless you are throwing the mother-in-law’s body in the dumpster. Also, while vampires and zombies feed on the living, and mummies just kill the living out of sheer cursedness or out of revenge, ghouls are mostly carrion eaters. I mean they won’t pass up a meal if it happens to go walking by, but they prefer their meat tenderized through the process of decay. Hey, I guess whatever floats your boat.
I personally would like to see more of the ghoul. Not in my back yard, of course, but in the literature and movies of our time. It would be something different than the same old blood sucker or brain eater, even fresher than the much more sparsely done bandage wrapped priest or prince. Surely someone could come up with a good storyline that would fit with modern times. Maybe ghouls haunting the subways of New York or London, or people disappearing while walking by the graveyard of small town USA (you know, because there aren’t enough bodies being buried there). But I’m sure there’s an area waiting to be tapped by a person with the right imagination. So maybe another form of undead can join the ranks of the celebrated vampires and zombies.
When I was a child I used to read a lot. Still do, though my tastes have changed just a little. But from the age of eight to fifteen I would read any piece of fantastic literature I could get my hands on. Comics were of course a favorite, and I would even read the letters to the editor in the back of each one. I remember one in particular in The Incredible Hulk. The writer commented on how it was impossible for the Hulk to pick up a castle and throw it at the army he was fighting. Not because he wasn’t strong enough. No, the Hulk was that powerful. Instead the writer, who was an engineering student at some major University, commented on how the structure itself would not hold together while lifted out of the ground by a pair of hands, no matter how over sized. The structure, which had been designed to sit on a large flat piece of ground, would fall apart, and the Hulk would find himself holding onto a couple of handfuls of stone while the castle fell in pieces on him and around him. And of course he would get even more pissed, but even the anger of the green beast couldn’t change the laws of physics. I also remember, though at a latter age, how Larry Niven fielded questions from engineering students about the properties of Scrinth, the marvelous substance that was the matrix of Ringworld. Someone had done the math and shown that it was impossible for a structure of any conceivable matter to hold together under the forces it had to endure. Niven had commented that it was almost impossible to come up with some high tech idea that someone couldn’t shoot down. Another famous example of a fan finding fault through factual analysis was the famous treatise on the power of the Death Star. You know, the moon sized station from Star Wars that could totally destroy Earth sized planets with a one second blast. This analysis has appeared in many places on the net, and the analyzer, who I think was a physics student, took into account the force of gravity, mass of the planet, and many other factors. Definitely something I couldn’t have done. He found that to totally destroy an Earth sized planet, meaning to blast it into pieces that did not fall back into a globe and form a new, if somewhat lifeless, planet, required half the energy produced by the sun for a year. The author made a remark about the capacitors of the Death Star, but plainly he was pointing out that such a weapon was impossible using any kind of tech as we understood it.
Now I try to make my work as technically factual as possible, as long as it doesn’t destroy a good story. I was trained in psychology, with a minor and some more in biology. I still know enough physics and chemistry to not make any huge errors, I hope. And some things I just put down to faith that we will solve insurmountable problems, at least problems for our current tech. I used inertial compensators in spaceships, with no idea how they would work, because they are necessary to advance the story. I figure that inertia would be converted to heat, so now I have another problem, like how to get rid of all that heat. I hand wave it away, because I figure that it will either be solved or not. But again I try to make whatever is factual in the story fit the known facts. No magical fifth or sixth fundamental forces of nature. Then I read the work of other authors, some of them doing quite well, and the responses of their readers, and wonder why I even bother. I might find the mistakes in the works of others, but the fans either do not or don’t care if they do.
A couple of years ago I was reading a series by a well known writer about an interstellar conflict started by turning a gas giant into a star. Now the technology used seemed a little over the top, but who can say it was not possible, moving a neutron star through a wormhole into the heart of the gas giant. Now I believe the result would have been to add the mass of the gas giant to the outside of the neutron star as a new layer of neutronium, but in the story the compression resulted in the gas giant sustaining fusion and becoming the life giving light to its moons. I guess it could happen. But the error that destroyed my suspension of belief was that the new gas giant/star, which now had a mass much greater than the star it orbited, was still orbiting that star. What I am sure would have happened is that solar system would have rearranged its orbits to compensate for the greater mass that now ruled the system. I wondered how many people actually caught that error, and how many cared who did. More recently I read a novel in which the premise was that colony ships had been sent to nearby stars because an asteroid was about to hit the Earth. Now from what I have read, most experts agree that once we have gotten interplanetary travel pretty much under control we will not have to worry about random rocks striking the Earth. We will detect them and we will move them. So it didn’t make sense that we would have interstellar travel, even sublight, and have to worry about a rock striking the Earth, especially if it gives us enough time to equip ten expeditions to other stars. Now I was surprised that a book would be based on such a poor premise, but I was even more surprised by some of the reviews of this book, in which readers said it was based on such a believable premise. I guess they don’t read the views of the experts on the future dangers of asteroid strikes.
Now all writers make mistakes. The physicists make errors with biology, the biologists with physics, and on and on. I try to make my work as accurate as possible within the constraints of the story. I will still use handwavium or unobtanium when necessary to move the story forward. I will not make people float off a world for no know reason, or fighters bank in vacuum, or G class stars go supernova as part of their natural evolution. I know I will make mistakes, and hope that my readers point them out in a non-obnoxious manner. But reading some of the things I have read, and seeing what is put on the screen, silver and small, makes me wonder if anyone really cares. I know that I do, and I will continue to try to make my stories make sense.
I went to see the new Batman movie last weekend. Now it was not a bad movie, and I don’t want to give that impression. In my opinion it was also not one of the best movies of all time nor a masterpiece. Maybe I was expecting too much. It was mostly entertaining, which is the prime aim of a comic or superhero movie. And it was very dark, almost too dark. There was little in the way of humor in this movie. I went to see the Avengers again at the $3 theater the day after seeing The Dark Knight, and I found The Avengers, a movie I considered much superior, to be chocked full of humor. Humor made me care for the characters. After two hours of pure darkness I really didn’t care what happened to Batman, or the fine citizens of Gotham City. I just wanted them out of their misery. The Avengers was a longer movie that could have been even longer. The Dark Knight was too long for what they tried to do with the material. People clapped enthusiastically at the end of The Avengers. I was among them. People clapped politely at the end of The Dark Knight, and I was not on board.
One of the major problems with the movie, in my opinion, was the overuse of flashbacks. At one point I thought I was watching a remake of Sleeping With The Enemy. A couple of flashbacks in a film are fine. But too many are just, too many, no other way to say it. And when they did a flashback toward the end of the movie, the climax, totally slowing down the action to present a vignette of the childhood of the villain, I almost lost it. Why, oh why did you have to present such an action breaker right in the middle of the action. I also wondered throughout the movie what had happened to the Batman of old. The one who was so acrobatic and well equipped, with a utility belt of gadgets. All he used in this movie was a batarang (once) and some sleep darts sort of shaped like bats. And he fought like a flat footed slugger. I kind of miss the old representation of Batman.
Before the movie they showed a preview of Man of Steel, the upcoming Superman movie. While watching the scenes of the water and the fishing boat at the beginning I got kind of excited, thinking this might be a movie about Aquaman. But no, it is another reboot of Superman. D C seems to be caught in a cycle of making movies about their two main characters, and only those two. Superman, Batman, Superman, Batman. How many times can we watch different takes on Superman’s upbringing? What about the other heroes of the D C Universe? The Flash, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, The Martian Manhunter. Maybe even the Justice League. Sure, they did a Green Lantern movie, but that was the only deviation from the Superman-Batman franchise. D C could learn a lesson from Marvel, which is now basking in the profits from their multiple hero movies. The Hulk, Thor, Iron-Man, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Captain America, The X-Men and derivatives. They’ve even done Blade and Ghost Rider, and will soon be releasing an Ant-Man movie. And all the while D C is stuck in a rut with their two big headliners. Wonder what the next Batman reboot will be like? Maybe they can get Adam West to play Alfred.
