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THE UNIVERSE IS A BIG PLACE, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST

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THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS OF ALL TIME

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.” (Philip Jose Farmer), “Venus on the Half Shell“

Venus on the Half-Shell is a science fiction novel by Philip José Farmer, writing pseudonymously as “Kilgore Trout,” a fictional recurring character in many of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. This book first appeared as a lengthy fictitious “excerpt”—written by Vonnegut, but attributed to Trout—in Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965). With Vonnegut’s permission, Farmer expanded the fragment into an entire standalone novel (including, as an in-joke, a scene that incorporates all of Vonnegut’s original text). Farmer’s story was first published in two parts beginning in the December 1974 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The plot, in which Earth is destroyed by cosmic bureaucrats doing routine maintenance and the sole human survivor goes on a quest to find the “Definitive Answer to the Ultimate Question,” bears some resemblance to the later Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, first launched as a radio serial in 1979.

According to Farmer’s introduction in Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, Vonnegut was initially reluctant to allow the project, but finally relented. After publication, a poorly-worded magazine article gave Vonnegut the impression that Farmer had planned to write the story regardless of his permission, which angered Vonnegut. Also, it was popularly assumed that Vonnegut wrote the book. This problem was solved by the book being reprinted under Farmer’s by-line.

A common element to this novel is the origin of many of the characters’ and locations’ names. Farmer “put in a lot of references to literature and fictional authors… Most of the alien names in Venus were formed by transposing the letters of English or non-English words.”[1]

The title and paperback cover art are a reference to an Italian Renaissance tempera painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, which depicts the birth of the goddess Venus as her rising from the sea on a scallop shell.

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100 MILLION SPECIES

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Mankind is only one SPECIES of life on Earth.  According the leading “scientific authorities”:  ...the “estimated total number of species on Earth is 6.5 million species found on land, and 2.2 million (about 25 percent of the total) dwelling in the ocean depths.  However, a study, published by PLoS Biology, says a staggering 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and cataloged.”  

If we do the math, we learn that 8.7 million is roughly 80% – 90% of ONE HUNDRED MILLION species on this planet.  That’s a LOT of life!  How many even MORE bizarre life forms are as yet undiscovered?  And how many more might there be living throughout the rest of our own galaxy?  (I won’t mention the whole universe….).  

Many more imagined creatures are described in science fiction stories on other planets and galaxies.  But, very few of these fictional “monstrosities” are as strange and bizarre at the real creatures that inhabit the microcosm on our own planet.  Here are pictures of a few common insects viewed with the aid of an electron microscope.  It is a challenge to imagine creatures more bizarre than these!

electron-microscope

army_ant

electro_microscope-flea

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SCIENCE FICTION CULT-URE

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“Science fiction” is NOT “science”, but it is DEFINITELY fiction.  The problem has become that people BELIEVE what they see on film, and internet in the form of “electronic media”.  Visual effects technology has become so advanced that “virtual reality” has become “reality”.

“Belief” is the foundation of mind-control. It has always been basis of power for religions.  There have literally been THOUSANDS of “gods” and religions in written history of Earth.  Modern “Science Fiction Cult-ure” has become a new “religion”.  It is often referred to as the “new age” culture or consciousness.  Please remember that every “religion” is created by people, just like you and me.

A enormous library of books, films, videos, TV shows, etc. about extraterrestrials, time travel, black holes, and a vast array of “theoretical history” have become “mainstream media” mania since the 1960s with the introduction of Star Trek on national TV.  Since then, a vast “UFO CULT-ure” has been created by film, television and and Youtube.  The phenomena is literally “mind-boggling”.

I suggest that we not lose touch with “real reality” and allow ourselves to become overwhelmed with “virtual reality”.  Take a walk outside, go to a forest, or to the beach… make direct physical and visual contract with solid objects in nature.  Let’s get REAL about reality. Don’t get sucked in to the “religion” of Science Fiction.

 

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THEY LIVE

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OBEYThey Live is a 1988 American science fiction-horror film directed by John Carpenter.  The film follows a nameless drifter referred to as “Nada”, who discovers the ruling class within the moneyed elite are in fact aliens managing human social affairs through the use of a signal on top of the TV broadcast, concealing their appearance and subliminal messages in mass media.   This is a clip from the famous “sunglasses” scene: “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass.  And, I’m all out of bubble bum….”

The idea for They Live came from two sources: a short story called “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the 1960s, involving an alien invasion in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a story called “Nada” from the Alien Encounters comic book.  John Carpenter describes Nelson’s story as “…a D.O.A. type of story, in which a man is put in a trance by a stage hypnotist. When he awakens, he realizes that the entire human race has been hypnotized, and that alien creatures are controlling humanity. He has only until eight o’clock in the morning to solve the problem.

The more political elements of the film are derived from Carpenter’s growing distaste with the ever-increasing commercialization of 1980s popular culture and politics. He remarked, “I began watching TV again. I quickly realized that everything we see is designed to sell us something… It’s all about wanting us to buy something. The only thing they want to do is take our money.” To this end, Carpenter thought of sunglasses as being the tool to seeing the truth, which “is seen in black and white. It’s as if the aliens have colorized us. That means, of course, that Ted Turner is really a monster from outer space.” (Turner had received some bad press in the 1980s for colorizing classic black-and-white movies.) The director commented on the alien threat in an interview, “They want to own all our businesses. A Universal executive asked me, ‘Where’s the threat in that? We all sell out every day.’ I ended up using that line in the film.” The aliens were deliberately made to look like ghouls according to Carpenter, who said: “The creatures are corrupting us, so they, themselves, are corruptions of human beings.”

Because the screenplay was the product of so many sources: a short story, a comic book, and input from cast and crew, Carpenter decided to use the pseudonym “Frank Armitage,” an allusion to one of the filmmaker’s favorite writers, H. P. Lovecraft (Frank Armitage is a character in Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror). Carpenter has always felt a close kinship with Lovecraft’s worldview and according to the director, “Lovecraft wrote about the hidden world, the “world underneath.” His stories were about gods who are repressed, who were once on Earth and are now coming back. The world underneath has a great deal to do with They Live.” — (Wikipedia.org)