The Martian Child by David Gerrold (story, novel, movie)

First appeared in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's F&SF. Reprinted by Pamela Sargent. Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and HOMer Awards. Finalist for Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. 

Summary & Commentary with Spoilers (although this isn't much a spoiler kind of story)

Apparently based on true (or not?) events, the tale relates a single man's difficulties in finding, adopting, and raising a son--one who has a number of developmental issues yet is still intelligent. The story at the end suggests this is not a true story although possibly tangentially related. The novel, however, suggests a closer alignment with reality.

I'd been meaning to read this for a while, considering all the awards it gathered to its bosom. However, it wasn't reprinted except to be included in an award anthology. The story maintains interest for SF name-droppings--those who directly and indirectly (through written work or past behavior) influenced the narrator's decisions to raise the child. It isn't really SF except it does involve SF figures.

It is "interstitional" and metafictional in that it uses genre (and perhaps genre is necessary to fully appreciate it) but it isn't SF, especially since it tries hard to erase any connection to SF that it might establish (that is, we might briefly wonder whether the child is truly from Mars).

So why did it win so many awards? It's hard to say from this distance. It may be telling that it wasn't reprinted indicating the lack of SF content (not that that should be a measure of quality). The story ends where the movie begins: with the protagonist's realizing he aligns with the boy's oddity. It also hopes that the boy's Martian wish comes true: that it wins awards. Award voters obliged.

The novel, on the other hand, uses SF more essentially in how the path of a story might influence the narrator. This was one of the primary strengths of the novel--that and some strong scenes, particularly the first meeting with the dog and the way jokes evolve upon the boy's consciousness: from a lack of understanding to the glimmers of comprehension.

The movie had the best closure and actually made me tear up a little (the novel's was similar but lacked the movie's active plunge). At first I wasn't sure if it earned the emotion but decided that it had. Some critics agreed; others did not.

Another thing I liked about the movie is that they played up the interstitiality of whether the boy is or is not from Mars. When you look at the deleted scenes, you can see that they were looking for ways to strengthen that connection and the closure plays on this uncertainty. The movie's SF movie (movie within a movie) isn't well utilized, so it should have jettisoned or rooted into for more connections.

Maybe it's the nerd in me but, although I love the belt keeping him on Earth to prevent the pull of Martian gravity (which makes a great symbol for the kid's fearing of losing his adopted dad), it doesn't make sense in terms of science where Mars has a lower gravity. At points, the kid is a scientific prodigy and seems aware of how the cosmos works, but at other times he's just an average, scientifically confused boy.

Still, all of these formats are touching. If you have time, pursue the novel over the story. The novel received no award attention apparently. The story must have hit the award voters right in the zeitgeist but the novel had lost those voters.

Marriage, Money and Class

After hitting the trifecta of stressors early this year, I exhumed the literary classic novels (and some plays and narrative poems) to uncover large structure meaning of what this world is supposed to be about. I've had crises of faith before where I dove into scriptures seeking answers, so this wasn't new. But I hadn't ever asked what do most authors in history think the point of life was.

Now the Bible is a curious document and doesn't really say what the point of this life is except as transition period to the next although some suggest that the point of this life is God, which is true enough as far as ancillary activities (or perhaps the motivator of primary activities), but what about primary activities themselves? What should they be?

For most novelists, the point of life has been the struggle for marriage, money, and attain one's class (one can only surpass one's station in life only through luck and marriage). Few writers seem vested in the spiritual realm (Tolstoy being one)--possibly because religion was too divisive.

The most curious fact for most of these books is that each one--marriage, money and class--is largely magical. How does one fall in love? It's just a thing that happens. No reason is involved (or if reason is involved, it's criminal, such as the pursuit of money or class). The closest that uses reasoning about why people fall in love might be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë where some explain why they're in love (or not) although the primary couple isn't fully explained.

I forget the Trollope novel, but one has a guy who falls for a woman who pressures him into marriage. He likes her, but isn't ready for marriage. Once he commits himself, however, it becomes scandalous that he doesn't want to marry her until he earns enough money. Later, he falls for a higher class woman and does the unthinkable: He rescinds his offer of marriage in order to marry into class. Then he suddenly gets a raise and prefers the first woman he proposed to, but he is far too scandalous now to marry. And he ends up with no woman and loses his attractiveness.

But why should this be scandalous to change one's mind before marriage? This is never explained but accepted. Women, though, can change their minds up until marriage, however. Perhaps this is their primary power. This becomes a major issue in Dickens and Tolstoy novels although in Tolstoy it also becomes scandalous that Natasha changes her mind before marriage. In twentieth century movies like The Graduate, this change of mind is not only accepted but also cheered.

Class also conveys a social magic just by its presence. If the king or queen wanders into a hospital, then one should expect an amelioration of pain. Their random assortment of genes somehow has them touched by God. If I exaggerate, it isn't by much.

Money is a curious, powerful but lower pursuit. It too is magical in that there is no explanation of how one attains a large sum except often through a rich dead relative, which at the end of a novel usually falls into the lap of a poor sap who has been a good soul. But the monied themselves are often striving to reach up, which is seen as vulgar but sometimes necessary. The relatively poor but high class might, with reluctance, marry below themselves. It is the job of the monied to help out these poor, high classed to return them to their former glory.

Now a classy guy can gamble away his family's fortune which makes him foolish, morally lax, yet pitiable. If a poor guy does the same, he gets what he deserves.

All nineteenth century writers buck against the idea of class not marrying below themselves. Dickens is quietly subversive in that his best characters end up having to work for their money (as opposed to being lackadaisical rich just because you belong to a certain class). Writers like Henry James wrestle against his English predecessors in his work by coming from the angle that the monied may be the true moral center, albeit still there to support the classed who are lovely fools.

In twentieth-century America, we abandoned class in favor of "status" or job where factory owner > doctor > lawyer > architect > etc. Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy has an interesting examination of these topics from this new American point of view.

Many Mary Higgins Clark suspense movies (I read a few novels when I was a kid) support a very traditional view of marriage, money and status. And they are still magical quantities. [Note: I refrain from discussing the quality of these films except as a sociological lens to examine the world we live in--to see how we see the world.]

A curious phenomenon is society's increasing separation from the original trio of life pursuits. Where does an Edgar Allan Poe story fit into this schemata? Maybe these represent quirky returns to the spiritual via various physical or mental crises.

One store's forgotten 1970s hit by Herbert Hunter spouted lyrics that sounded something like "I was born to love you. You were born to tear my heart apart." Very strange. Is this desire or his belief in what reality is or should be? Considering the long history of those who have laid claims on our life's purpose, where does such a world-view come from? Is the lyric-writer (and those who buy into this philosophy) asking for a life of pain? Well, it wouldn't surprise me that I got the lyrics wrong as I can't find them online.

What should the point of life on Earth be?

Words and Meaning: Literally, Science Fiction, and the False Positive

The Case of "Literally"

I've heard people complain about people's misuse of "literally"--that is, a usage that had nothing to do with a thing's "literal"-ness--but I'd never heard it myself. When I did recently, I wondered what she meant by its usage. The speaker had just relayed an unbelievable story where the actors had done something baffling and annoying and she ended the tale with "literally."

I concluded her usage meant it as an intensifer like "very much so" as in "Not only is it what I just said, but also very much what I just said." I looked up the term in Merriam-Webster, and maybe "used to emphasize the truth and accuracy of a statement or description" would fit, but not in the sense used in their example where just one word was meant: "The party was attended by literally hundreds of people" where the term only refers to "hundreds." She referred to her whole statement as if to say, "Can you believe that?"

Apparently, "literal" comes from the Latin word for "letter," so maybe it was her way of saying "Everything happened as it happened to the letter. Can you believe that craziness?"

The Case of "Science Fiction"

Someone asked for people's definition of science fiction. The problem with "science fiction" is what do people mean by it since it has so many definitions.

Early on, back in Gernsback's "scientifiction" day, it would have emphasized the science. Later--perhaps due to the poor quality of work produced initially--it is used by some as a pejorative suggesting anything that isn't true or couldn't happen--the opposite of what most readers of the stuff would call it. For a third group of people, who don't see it pejoratively, it still includes fantasy, which it does not for serious fans.

The most usual definition of "science fiction" for those who read it and aren't looking to quibble is something that hasn't happened but could happen or could have happened, given the right conditions. One almost has to contrast it with its kissing cousin "fantasy" to come up with a useful definition. 

It is presumed the more rigorous although writers probably spend relative amounts of work on both although it often requires specialized knowledge.

Contrast two stories involving fairies where they existed among our ancestors: one might be SF while the other fantasy simply through the focus on science and never allowing a magical explanation to suffice for why it existed or what it could do.

It's interesting though that we often allow one "fudge factor" or one imaginary impossibility or sometimes allow what used to be allowed in SF but is no longer considered acceptable (FTL or ESP) despite there still being a possibility that something might allow those to become acceptable scientific possibilities one day.

In pondering the second above-mentioned meaning of the term "science fiction," I suspect the pejorative user of intends us not to believe whatever was said: "That's just science fiction." They could have simply said that something was "fiction" and conveyed the same content. But they didn't. So what was the word "science" doing for them? Like "literally" above, it served as an intensifier like "very" or maybe "way beyond." 

In both cases, what is said negatively or pejoratively, may actually be a back-handed compliment, where "letters" and "science" are asked to be seen as increasing a thing's inherent properties.

The Case of "Yeah, Right" or "Yeah Yeah" or that old linguistic joke

You've probably heard the joke about the professor who said there is no language that uses a double positive to mean a negative and someone in the audience says "Yeah, right" or "Yeah, yeah." When I first heard it, it was a professor heckling another professor at a conference although recently I read it as a student heckling his teacher, which seems to be a common joke format where the intelligence of the one being taught exceeds that of the one teaching--a situation that seems to delight an audience.

Anyway, we're supposed to take away from the joke the idea that language is more strange and supple than we suppose--a good point--but the heckler's words seemed a little glib to be taken as a valuable refutation of the speaker's point. I've heard the joke told two ways. Since the story has been told two ways, I'll address both.

1. The Case of "Yeah, right"

What's problematic here is that it was the tone that conveyed the meaning, not the words. In fact, "Yeah, right" is actually a double agreement with a speaker, shortened from "Yes, that is right." There's a reason why the parts are separated by a comma. When we say "No, he didn't" that is grammatically correct and not a double negative. We could also say, "Yes, he didn't" and mean the same thing. The "Yes" and "no" address the speaker's comment in some fashion and the second is a separate statement.

Sarcasm is what inverts/subverts the meaning of the words. I can imagine that there would be a situation where the meaning of words can be subverted by a gesture, not tone. Say, someone says deadpan, "I love until death us do part," and points a gun at the "loved" one. Or someone says, "I'm listening" while playing video games.

2. The Slightly Different (or Wholly Different?) Case of "Yeah, yeah"

One might also use the sarcasm explanation here, but this case is more complicated because it's hard to know what a speaker means exactly. 

One use I've heard is where "Yeah" can be used any number of times and mean the same thing. Usually, the speaker is talking over another speaker to suggest that that guy should shut up. She or he's heard it all before or isn't interested in what's being said. One could say this is sarcasm, or possibly the term "yeah" in this case begins with a negative value.

In the Learner's Dictionary, they point out that "yeah" can be used to show disagreement: "Oh, yeah?"

If it's spelled "yah," it's word of contempt or derision.

When I was a child, my grandmother used the word as a verb as in "Stop 'yah-ing' [or 'yeah-ing'] at each other," which seemed to be a cognate for complain, nag, bicker, argue, etc. I looked for that use online, but haven't found it.

In any of the above cases, if the term begins as a negative, it does not refute the professor's statement that a double positive becomes a negative.  I'm not sure how an informal word could come to have nearly opposite meanings, but possibly the different meanings began life as two words with different origins but similar sounds.

Howl: movie, poem and poet Allen Ginsberg

the material so described is dangerous to some unspecified, susceptible reader. It is interesting that the person applying such standards of censorship rarely feels as if their own physical or moral health is in jeopardy. The desire to censor is not limited, however, to crackpots and bigots. There is in most of us the desire to make the world conform to our own views. And it takes all of the force of our own reason as well as our legal institutions to defy so human an urge.... You will either add to liberal, educating thinking or by your decision you will add fuel to the fire of ignorance.

The above is a quote from the movie Howl, which claims that every word uttered in the movie was uttered by that person in real life, so presumably this monologue was uttered in the courtroom when the book was on trial for obscenity. (There are adult situations in the film and alternative lifestyles, so do with that what you will.)

Howl is a poem, is a movie, is a biography. It can be viewed as an explication of the poem itself. It gives readings of the poem, followed by interviews and scenes acted out as described to add historical and biographic context to the work. It also has animations of the surreal imagery described in the poem. In the trial, critics critique and explicate the work with varying degrees of success.

The poem marks a turning point in Allen Ginsberg's life and his art--a time where he clicked from confusion about himself and uncertainty about his art into clarity.

The trial went in Ginsberg's favor (and 90% of the movie does, too), but it's interesting that sometimes the film backs up the opposition’s point of view by having Ginsberg say that sometimes he doesn't know what he meant, as well as having Ginsberg's [recreated] audience revel more in the obscenities. Now one might say they were reveling in the rebelling against the moral authority that calls it obscenity, but even here Ginsberg said he just wanted to write a poem his father wouldn't approve of, with no hope of getting it published.

The movie has fantastic cuts, forcing viewers to pause and think about what’s been said, giving weight to certain lines.

What the film did not address are the main strengths of the poem, which is the bold voice and strong sound (they are working mostly from quotations in that time period—which limits what they can do):

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

First, we have the bold opening salvo, which seems both a proclamation of grandeur (not unlike Whitman's claims) and a political call to action--that this generation is going through something unique in its time although if the movie is to be believed, he’s referring to his friends like the one mentioned in the dedication, who hadn’t had much cultural relevance up to the writing of the poem. But still it’s told with such authority that we buy into its claims.

Rhythm and sound play a major part in the poem’s memorability: all the “n” and “m” consonance and alliterations. The lineation of the poem follows, as the movie pointed out, Walt Whitman, who (as the movie did not point out) was following the Biblical rhythms one might find in the King James Bible.

Also, a big component of the poem’s resonance is the culturally transgressive nature of this outlier generation, which probably rang an even stronger bell with the 60s generation that followed his Beats. The drugs seem a quest for transcendence—religious and otherwise, aids to plumb jazz and their world. It is curious that in 1955-6, there were still [asterisked] words that the poet felt should not be printed.

A closing quote (the opening and closing quotes have past, present and future relevance):

Life is not encased in one formula whereby everyone acts the same and conforms to a particular pattern. No two persons think alike.... An author should be real in treating his subject and be allowed to express his thoughts and ideas in his own words.

Ending in Misery: Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop: book and movie

 This was up for the Booker Prize.

Obviously, spoilers will be involved.

This a good book—a short one—although I’m not sure I’d read it again. It was recently made into a movie as well with interesting variations that may or may not be considered significant.

Summary

Basically, Florence, a woman has always dreamed of opening a bookshop and has done so in a small seaside town, around the publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s famed and controversial Lolita since that figures in, somewhat. She goes through legal expense to rehabilitate a house that had been abandoned for over five years.

After months, she’s finally able to open the shop and invited to attend a party of the local important person. She thinks it is to celebrate the opening of her bookshop. Instead, she is told that the house, though long abandoned, had been intended to be used as a local arts center that might also present lectures. In the movie, Florence gives the offer to reroute her dreams no quarter. In the book, though, Florence entertains the idea until she realizes that she is not intended as the arts center’s leader but Milo North. More on this later.

She befriends Mr. Brundish, the town’s recluse, who has had rumors spread about his divorce although the truth is less romantic. He's is a shut-in and does not leave his house.  In the book, he is highly respected for some unnamed reason (perhaps for his age and living so long in the village). The town’s respect for the recluse, therefore, impresses the town that he corresponds with the bookshop owner. It is made clear that the recluse has difficulty moving—which makes his sudden demise less surprising. Florence asks him for advice on whether she should sell Lolita in town, and he says yes, because it’s a good book—the controversy is irrelevant to whether it should be sold.

Florence also befriends a young girl, Christine, who works for Florence at the shop. Christine plays a larger role in the movie than the book—not just that she’s young and working, and just because she’s working in the same shop as the book Lolita is sold in. Mrs. Gamart appears to have, we readers suppose, brought in an investigation whether the girl should be employed at the bookshop.

Mr. Brundish knows what Mrs. Gamart is up to and leaves his house to tell her to stop, but he dies on the walk back home. In the movie he tells Florence what he plans to do. In the book he does not. This is critical in that in the book, the owner accepts the Colonel’s lie (his? or his wife’s?) that Mr. Brundish supported the local arts center over the bookshop, which wouldn’t make sense if she thought about it since the guy’s a shut-in. In the movie, she knows and doesn’t confront the Colonel about the lie but does yell at him to get out.

Meanwhile, the bookshop has to close since Mrs. Gamart has a nephew in parliament who creates a law about historical buildings being taken from owners for historical importance. The house is old but, as the recluse pointed out, has no historical relevance, but it’s still taken from the owner. Worse, she has to give the house away since the house uninhabitable (even though she lives in it) because the basement has water in it. In the movie, the owner had hoped to start a bookshop in a different town with her inventory, but the inability to sell her home and shop leaves her destitute. Her book inventory has to be sold off.

Quote

 "You're working too hard, Florence," Milo said....

"Surely you have to succeed, if you give everything you have." 

"I don't see why. Everyone has to give everything they have eventually. They have to die. Dying can't be called a success."

Analysis

What’s interesting is the ending—the utter desolation we feel for the woman. In the movie, there’s the consolation prize—if it can be called that—of the young girl setting the house on fire and being influenced to read herself and to start a bookshop of her own. Not so in the book. She believes the important person that even her one ally in town disapproves of her bookshop.

This is where the quote comes in. What does it mean to work hard and yet not succeed? We have this expectation that all things work out for good if we only work hard, but what if it doesn’t? This is the potent and poignant point of the work.

I asked others what they thought of such an ending: Would it disappoint them? One offered that that’s life, another that her working hard to achieve her goal alone should be the consolation prize. Trying is the thing. Yet I don’t think we’re meant to feel that since we are made to feel each successive blow for our protagonist’s complete dismantling.

Another possibility is that maybe the bookshop owner’s problem was her unwillingness to work within the current power structure. But that’s hard to swallow since the power structure here is corrupt—willing to lie and connive to get what they want (for free). Moreover, in in the book the owner does consider making the shop into an arts center for a brief while until she learns she’s to be excluded. Perhaps she could have pursued this angle a little harder than she does, but her complete demise—the financial tragedy of her life’s dream—seems to be the thing we are to mourn.