Quite Quotable

Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid. A strong country needs smart people. 

Carl Sagan, Contact

Quite Quotable

“Intelligence resembles insanity only on the stupid.” 

Harry Harrison, The Technicolor Time Machine

The Great Tarzan Adventure #8: Tarzan the Terrible

Let me say up front that Tarzan the Terrible has earned top ranking as my favorite of the series.  Yep, one finally beat out Beasts.  It has everything I love going for it: a lost world yarn, an undiscovered civilization, and dinosaurs!  This book reads like Burroughs’ imagination unleashed.  (Perhaps that would have been a better name for it!)  While he is referred to as “the Terrible” throughout the book, to me, this is the first time he has truly acted like a Lord of the Jungle.  Tarzan has dropped his cruel streak finally, and we see him acting out of love and fear for Jane, who was abducted in the previous volume.  But we also get to see Tarzan fighting for a sense of what’s right.    

Oh, and then there was another thing I loved about this book, but first I have to say –  *SPOLERS!*

Here’s what I liked:

• Pal-ul-don: I really enjoyed this lost world.  Burroughs described it superbly, with its vast swamped-surrounded jungle, cliff dweller lodgings, and the fabulous walled city.  This is the lost world tale I’ve been waiting for.  Everything is eerily familiar yet strangely different.  I hope to see more of it in future volumes. 
• The Waz-don and the Ho-don: Theses tribes are the perfect inhabitants for a lost world.  I was very surprised, too, when this “sub-human” folk with their monkey-tails, hands and feet turned out to be quite the opposite.  I don’t know that there’s anything beyond one being white and hairless and the other covered with black fur. I’m sure someone has read something into it.  (And the fact that the whites lived in the city while the blacks lived in the cliff-dwellings.)    I simply enjoyed the experience.  Both were equally intelligent and both had their good and bad traits.  Only in appearance did they differ from the “outside” world.  And tech level, of course.
• Dinosaurs: Okay, so this was a big selling point for me from the cover.  I wanted a lost valley with dinosaurs.  Well, they were there – things called Gryfs.  These were actually omnivorous triceratops, which was okay, but then there were some kind of giant ape-men who could control them with sticks.  Sort of took the thunder out of them, but they were cool nonetheless.
• Korak: The Killer returns!  I was so glad to see him again.  Even though he did not officially appear until the end of the book, we have glimpses of a mysterious tracker throughout the story.  I knew it was Korak all along, but it was thrilling to be verified.  Maybe we’ll get to see more of him in the next book (see last paragraph below).

Were there things I didn’t like?  Sure.  The story definitely moved at the pace of plot convenience at times.  Jane was lost, not only in Africa, but in a lost world in Africa.  She’s found in less than two hundred fifty pages.  Not complaining too much since any writer today probably would have done it in three 1000 page volumes at the least.  When Tarzan finds her, takes her away, she’s captured again pretty easily.  Tarzan always meets who he needs to or who can best help him, too.  Again, a minor complaint compared to the sense of wonder Burroughs creates.    

Yep, I really, really liked this one.  Terrible actually read like a fantasy novel.  It was filled with vivid scenes and images, and we have a hero that acts truly heroic.  While the conflict is pretty black and white, it does not diminish the story one bit.  If anything, it highlights the archetypal nature of Tarzan.

Next up is volume 9, Tarzan and the Golden Lion.  I glimpsed over Wikipedia, which stated that this one caps off the story that began in Untamed.  Maybe I just became so enthralled with the thrill ride, but I felt this one ended quite nicely.  Anyway, hope to see you there!

DragonCon: Paradigm Shift

Attending DragonCon has become a family tradition.  I started attending over twenty years ago; my wife has been to nineteen. My daughter has been every year since her birth.  I’ve seen changes over that time, some good, some not so, but the biggest, most startling change happened right underneath my nose.  I don’t know that I would have noticed it except for the events that happened at the end of the con this year.

The conevntion has always been a vacation for us, a time to relax as school starts back (my wife and I teach), and as we’ve gotten older – and since the little one has come along – we’ve moved away from the central craziness of the original hotels to the relative quietness of the Sheraton.  We have to walk a bit more, but, hey, it’s peaceful at night and we don’t have to fight for an elevator.  As the con winded down, we would always call to make our reservations for the next year, something you could never do in one of the other host hotels.  Been doing it for as long as we’ve been staying there.  Never had a problem.  Never until this year.  And that’s when it hit me: DragonCon had become huge.

Every year, the con had gotten bigger.  It had spread out a little more.  It had gotten more and more guests.  But none of that registered until I failed to get a room this year.  It struck me then how things had acually changed.  I remembered how I used to be able to go to any panel I wanted to attend.  Even those with the “big stars.”  All I had to do was show up a few minutes before and I’d get a seat.  It was usually toward the back, but it was a seat.  This year, and the few previous, if I wanted to see someone like Sir Patrick, I had to be in lines hours in advanced.  I therefore sought out the smaller, more obscure panels this year.  Full houses.  I tried tp get into one about commercial space flight – turned away.

So here’s my major gripes with the new DragonCon:

• Massive lines to big events. Yep, if you want to see big names, you’re going to have to sacrifice other events.  Never really had to do that before.  I was used to walking from one event to another.  Now, it’s hours of standing – people are not allowed to sit because of fire regs.  This was the first year, too, I had to stand in line to get on an escalator.
• Total stand still.  Trying to get through the lobby of the Marriott sometimes is horrible at best.  There are times, esepcially in evening when the cosplayers come out, that you cannot even move.  I’ve had to stand for minutes out a time, just to go through the lobby.  And the walkways between hotels are great for the most part, but when it rains, everyone tries to use them.  They clog up too.  Makes for a very unpleasant experience when all you’re trying to do is get from point A to point B.
• Displacement of writers and comics.  This is the saddest one for me.  Don’t want to be all hipster, but I remember when the writers and comic guests ruled the con.  They still do to an extent when you get a name like Salvatore.  But the grand old men like Niven and McDevitt are pushed to the nether regions.  On a good note, these are the few panels you can always get into.  Writers created and drove SF&F, but now they’re being replaced by movie stars and glamor girls.  The comic artist have their location, too, but try to buy a comic – good luck.  They were five comic dealers this year.  The con started out comic heavy.  I reckon SDCC is going through the same transition.
• Mad dash for rooms.   Then there’s the mad dash for hotel rooms.  This is the first year I’ve purchased memberships without having a room.  My usual spot sold out for next year’s DragonCon weeks before this year’s even started.  And when the hosts hotels open blocks for the con-goers, servers crash and phone lines are jammed for hours while the rooms disappear in minutes.  I feel like I’m being pushed away from something that I felt I belonged to.  Rooms are available a mile or two away, but that’s just too inconvient for the family.  Before, we would separate, meet, and come and go as we pleased.  Those days may be gone for good.

Yep, I had an epiphany.  If I’m going to have a “full” con experience next year, I’m going to have to change my way of thinking.  I’m happy for the producers and staff.  They are undoubtedly sucessful, and they make lots of happy people.  But I’m going to have to change my way of thinking.  It’s not my little vacation anymore.  It’s an event, and I’ll have to get out and tangle with everyone to get those panels and to secure that room. 

I really don’t know if DragonCon will get as big as SDCC.  It doesn’t seem to be the corporate entity that ComicCon has become.  That makes me glad.  DragonCon, at least, still seems to be for the fans and by the fans.  There’s just a lot more of them now.  A whole lot more.

Nerd Props to . . .

David Bowie

David Bowie has done much to bring SF & F to the masses.  I mean, who hasn’t heard Major Tom’s plight in Space Oddity at least once in their lifetime?   A lot of rockers dabble in SF&F, though, right?  But then Bowie went and did that album about an alien stranded on earth who becomes a rock star.  Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars landed upon unsuspecting masses, and what appeared to be just another glam rock album turned out to be a wonder-filled SF parable songs like Moonage Daydream and Suffragette City.  The album pretty much kickstarted Bowie into superstar status, and while he could have pretty much done anything he wanted to at that point, he did it again.  Sort of.  The follow up to Ziggy was Diamond Dogs, a kind of surreal, Orwellian nightmare that sported a mutated, half-man, half-dog,  Ziggy-like Bowie on the cover, and the songs range from the apocalyptic visions Diamond Dogs to the discoish sounds of 1984.  Even though he metamorphosed into the Thin White Duke shortly thereafter, we are forever grateful to him for these rock and SF masterpieces.

                                       So Nerd Props to you, David Bowie!