A story prominently, and surprisingly, features astrology. ~~

Having enjoyed Michael Shaara's novel The Herald (see HERE) I made a point of acquiring the only other of his sci-fi work I could find: a novella or long short story Conquest Over Time. It had first appeared in a magazine, Fantastic Universe in 1956, has been re-published by Aegypan Press in a very slim volume. I sent to the UK for my bound copy, but note now that the story can be downloaded free - just Google the title if interested.

The title, Conquest Over Time, had led me to expect a different kind of tale. If that title fits at all it's only very obliquely. I was surprised to find that this is a story in which astrology plays a major part in the plot!

Nutshell synopsis:
Set in the far distant future. Civilisations both humanoid and other have spread far and wide across the universe. Our hero, Pat Travis, is the future's version of a big-time travelling salesman - bidding for commercial contracts on far-flung worlds, his job known as Contact Man: "one of the most hazardous occupations in history. Each new planet was wholly and completely new, there were no rules, and what you learned on all the rest meant nothing. You went from a matriarchy which refused absolutely to deal with men (the tenth ship to arrive had a lady doctor and therefore got the contract), to a planet where the earth was sacred and you couldn't dig a hole in it so mining was out, to a planet which considered your visit the end of the world and promptly committed mass suicide." So the job of Contact Man required many skills and plenty of luck. Travis had the reputation of being lucky, until he arrived on Diomed III, peopled by humanoids.

The inhabitants of Diomed III called their planet Mert, and lived their lives by strict astrological guidelines, believed that a person is exactly what his horoscope (calculated using their own alien astrological data), says he/she is. These people consulted astrology for every major decision, and by ill chance Travis had arrived on their planet on one of the worst-aspected days in history. (That's as far as I'll go with the plot to avoid spoiling it for others)

Although at the time of writing this story Michael Shaara, hadn't honed his craft to the high level of his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Killer Angels (1974) or the book I read recently The Herald (1981), he still had the knack of drawing in and holding on to the reader. He must have had some basic knowledge of astrology too - or more likely had consulted astrology text books - to have come up with this idea and developed it so well.

Snip:

"There are the seven planets" Navel was saying gravely, "and the two lights - that is, the sun and the moon. The first planet, that nearest the sun, is called Rym. Rym is the planet of intellect, of the ordinary mind. Second is Lyndal, the planet of love, beauty, parties marriage and things of a gentle nature. Third is Fors, planet of action, strife. Fourth is Bonken, planet of beneficence, of gain, money, health. Next comes Huck, orb of necessity, the Greater Infortune, which brings men most trouble of all. Then Weepen, planet of illusion, of dreamers and poets and, poorly aspected, liars and cheats. And finally there is Sharb, planet of genius, of sudden cataclysms."
"I see", Travis murmured.
"But it is not only these planets and their aspects which is important, it is also to be considered such houses and signs as through which these planets transit...." She went on, but Travis was having difficulty following her.

It's very clear that the author simply re-named our own planets - which was a bit of a cop-out. A writer with more in-depth knowledge and more confidence in their subject might have been able to invent a slightly different line-up of planetary "influences". Although, having said that, I'm not sure that a different set would have brought forth a race of humanoids. Hmmm. Tricky!

In case anyone is wondering, by the way, how the two could communicate in the same language, it was done via a device used by Travis, attached behind his ear.

PS:
Other novels with astrology prominent in their theme were listed in a post of January 2007: - see Novels Featuring Astrology.

Variations on a Theme: Mankind's Further Evolution

I've recently read Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End followed immediately by Michael Shaara's The Herald (Michael Shaara was the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Killer Angels adapted for the movie Gettysburg (my post on that movie is linked).

Childhood's End and The Herald can be classed as apocalyptic/dystopian/science fiction novels. Science fiction was right in Arthur C. Clarke's wheelhouse, and though Michael Shaara's most famous book was historical (other end of the scale) he did write some other sci-fi stories and at least one other sci-fi novel - strange combination, history and science fiction!

I enjoy apocalyptic/dystopian novels and some sci-fi, though not all. Enjoying tales of dystopia is perverse of me I guess. I've tried to work out why, but can't quite unravel it. These stories don't scare me at all, or give me bad dreams as reading horror tales of zombies, werewolves or blood-sucking vampires might. The novels sell well, many from decades past have come to be called classics (think:Fahrenheit 451, 1984 The Handmaid's Tale).

I wasn't aware of it when I started reading, but Childhood's End and The Herald have loosely similar themes (apart from straightforward dystopia) : the improvement and further evolution of man, albeit by different means.

BEWARE SPOILERS.

The Herald (1981) was later re-titled The Noah Conspiracy and had a revised ending (I don't yet know how it differs from the original, but can hazard a guess). Storyline: a scientist plans to create an improved version of the human race, which will involve killing millions of people. The tale unfolds gradually, starting with the pilot of a private aircraft flying into a small US airport and finding it deserted. The reader is left, for much of the book, with the pilot attempting to find out exactly what's going on. We discover, eventually, a genetic scientist’s plan to create a "better" human race, eliminating negative traits which threaten, over time, to cause the death of the whole species. His plan will involve the mass killing of many millions of people, but will ensure survival of the race.

I found the novel a very easy read and a book I could not put down. I read most of it in one sitting (unusual for me), only stopped because it was dinner time.

The original title of the novel The Herald refers to words of
Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, poet etc. An extract from his Thus Spoke Zarathustra by explanation:

Zarathustra’s Prologue:
When Zarathustra arrived at the edge of the forest, he came upon a town. Many people had gathered there in the marketplace to see a tightrope walker who had promised a performance. The crowd, believing that Zarathustra was the ringmaster come to introduce the tightrope walker, gathered around to listen. And Zarathustra spoke to the people:

I teach you the Overman! Mankind is something to be overcome. What have you done to overcome mankind?

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves. Do you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and revert back to the beast rather than overcome mankind? What is the ape to a man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just so shall a man be to the Overman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

Even the wisest among you is only a confusion and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I ask you to become phantoms or plants?

Behold, I teach you the Overman! The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beg of you my brothers, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them! ........................................Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the Overman!"

Childhood's End first published in 1953 wasn't such an easy read, but still enjoyable. I balked a bit when the author changed his cast of characters a third of the way through the novel.

The story is told in three parts, spanning the period roughly mid-20th century to 2075. The author could have been echoing or projecting, via analogy, the troubled situation around the time of the story's conception: cold war, segregation, possibility of nuclear annihilation, uneasy years when the horrors of World War 2 were still fresh in memory.

Standard sci-fi ingredients begin the novel: huge space ships positioned over the world's major cities, ships populated by a race known as The Overlords, who never show themselves to humans, but communicate with human representatives. The Overlords were not here to take over the planet for our gold or other reserves, or to enslave the human race. Instead they seemed to be intent on saving us from ourselves. Over time they solve our major troubles: war, famine, segregation, crime and poverty become things of the past. Any resistance is quashed by direct application of CIA-style "soft power". Utopia is born. Whether that was a Good Thing is a matter for philosophical perusal - maybe a bit of astrological perusal also. Would it be possible to erase our natural instincts of aggression, greed, lust (drawn from the planetary position of Earth)? And would it be A Good Thing to deny us the ability to choose for ourselves, to choose wrong decisions, create destructive items, wreak havoc, jump to mistaken conclusions, but also to attempt to create solutions to overcome what our weaknesses had wrought?

We begin to see the outcome in the remaining two phases of the story, set in the following 100 or so years. The Overlords revealed themselves. Humans were horrified to find the alien beings looked incredibly like illustrations encountered somewhere long ago, in a far less benign role! They tell humans that their purpose is to protect them from "powers and forces that lie among the stars – forces beyond anything that you can ever imagine…. ‘It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man."

During the story's final phase, ten years later, Earth's children discover paranormal skills, fall into catatonia after strange dreams, and eventually withdraw from contact with parents. Overlords reveal that their job as servants of The Overmind, is to shepherd humanity into its next stage of development, though The Overlords, for unexplained reasons, cannot progress. Humanity in its current form has reached the end of its existence; the newly cultivated species will join The Overmind, Earth will be no more.

I was particularly taken by a very clever twist - the explanation of the Overlord's physical appearance.

The book can be read as a straightforward sci-fi tale, or can also be seen as a network of analogies, some more obvious than others, and, it must be remembered, seen from the viewpoint of the author in the early 1950s.

The huge spaceships forever hovering over all major cities = a world state fostering social justice. Add some prescience on the part of Arthur C. Clarke and translate them as super-sized corporations, enforcing sterility via their own opaque motivations. Interwoven, too is the ancient vision of of angels/demons hovering over mankind.

Astrologers believe that our individuality is defined, in part, by the position of the Sun, Moon and planets at the exact time and in the exact place where we were born. Whether that individuality could be so easily stripped from us, as a race, by benign means, is something this book might be asking us to consider. What did Arthur C. Clarke think of astrology? Not a lot, it seems. And that's a pity. See HERE

As far as I know, early sci-fi authors, while envisioning flying cars, alien beings and inter-galactic flight, didn't ever mention something as wildly unbelievable as The Internet, smart phones, i-pods, Facebook, Twitter. Already I'm beginning to feel that today's young generation belong to a subtly different race from the one to which I belong myself. This type of feeling can only spread, even to those many years my junior, in coming years. Perhaps this is the "shift in consciousness" some seem to expect....beginning with the end of the current cycle in the Mayan calendar?

Generals (again).....but these at Gettysburg

On our trip into Arkansas a few weeks ago I bought, for a couple of dollars, a two-tape VHS set of the 1993 movie Gettysburg - 4hours 14 mins long! I let the set remain in our pile of "to watch" items, kept moving it to the bottom, regretted buying it - asked myself why I did. I dislike most war movies - about any war. I think my motive lay in the interests of continued education in things American. Anyway - we watched it - turns out it was $2 well-spent!

Gettysburg, about an epic battle in Pennsylvania during the Civil War, focuses on just three days at the beginning of July 1863, when a mighty confrontation between the Confederacy forces and The Union army took place, a battle which historians say was decisive in the eventual outcome of the Civil war....yet that war went on for another two years.

The film is based on Michael Shaara's meticulously researched 1974 novel The Killer Angels. It has also been shown on TV as a mini-series.

The story is told from the viewpoint of the Generals and Officers on both sides of the north/south divide, rather from the points of view of ordinary soldiers.

Maybe all the talk of Generals during the last week, or reports of secession petitions currently being prepared by several states, subconsciously led me to choose this movie when asked the regular question, "What shall we watch tonight then, there's nothing on TV".

One thing the movie taught me: in 1863 Generals were Generals, with no time for canoodling with their biographers or corresponding with wanna-be whatevers.

Linked Wikipedia articles about the film and the book contain all relevant facts, which I'll not re-hash here; also there are several reviews on-line from the 1990s and later.

I'll limit my own observations to matters I found particularly memorable. Acting honours have to be dished out equally to those portraying all main roles: Martin Sheen, Tom Berenger(whatever happend to him?) Jeff Daniels and Richard Jordan all did sterling work.... as did my old favourite Sam Eliott, looking and sounding as at home as ever in such a setting.

The film's focus is not, mercifully, on blood, gore and severed limbs (though there are some of those). The horror aspect was, while not played down completely, not graphically and obscenely pushed full-on into the audience's faces. Focus was trained on tactics, plans, and motivations. For this reason the movie has been shown in schools, and has proved invaluable to re-enactment groups - many of which were in the supporting cast of thousands. Battle scenes are amazing!

Two things I remember best: the mainly fictional character of "Buster" (name's an anachronism) Kilrain, private in the Union army under command of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels). Chamberlain is obviously very fond of the old rascal - nicely played by Kevin Conway with a strong Irish accent. I loved one of Buster's speeches early in the movie. I feel sure it must come directly from the novel:
Yes, it did - found it at Goodreads:

Kilrain ~~~

“The truth is, Colonel, that there's no divine spark, bless you. There's many a man alive no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you've seen them hang each other...Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality? The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. no two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf nor a tree. There's many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I'm Kilrain, and I God damn all gentlemen. I don't know who me father was and I don't give a damn. There's only one aristocracy, and that's right here - " he tapped his white skull with a thick finger - "and YOU, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don't even know it. You are damned good at everything I've seen you do, a lovely soldier, an honest man, and you got a good heart on you too, which is rare in clever men. Strange thing. I'm not a clever man meself, but I know it when I run across it. The strange and marvelous thing about you, Colonel darlin', is that you believe in mankind, even preachers, whereas when you've got my great experience of the world you will have learned that good men are rare, much rarer than you think.”

Secondly, and rather surprisingly, there's an English character in the movie: one Arthur Fremantle (Lieutenant Colonel, British Coldstream Guards). He's an interesting character historically (See Wikipedia HERE)

In the film Fremantle is portrayed far too stereotypically, and rather comically, English upper-crust for my taste. No doubt he was all of that - but I doubt he'd have wandered about the camp with a china cup and saucer (little finger ready to be raised no doubt). His accent was painful - in reality I suspect it wasn't quite as bad as that! I understand, too, that there was an error in portraying him wearing the red dress uniform. He had been travelling for a long time, had sold all his luggage at a point earlier. He'd have been dressed in some kind of 19th century traveller's garb - dusty and well-worn. For me this was the single weakness in an otherwise very strong movie.

A quote of Fremantle's (from Goodreads, and the novel)

“The great experiment. In democracy. The equality of rabble. In not much more than a generation they have come back to CLASS. As the French have done. What a tragic thing, that Revolution. Bloody George was a bloody fool. But no matter. The experiment doesn't work. Give them fifty years, and all that equality rot is gone. Here they have the same love of the land and of tradition, of the right form, of breeding, in their horses, their women. Of course slavery is a bit embarrassing, but that, of course, will go. But the point is they do it all exactly as we do in Europe. And the North does not. THAT'S what the war is really about. The North has those huge bloody cities and a thousand religions, and the only aristocracy is the aristocracy of wealth. The Northerner doesn't give a damn for tradition, or breeding, or the Old Country. He hates the Old Country. Odd. You very rarely hear a Southerner refer to "the Old Country". In that painted way a German does. Or an Italian. Well, of course, the South IS the Old Country. They haven't left Europe. They've merely transplanted it. And THAT'S what the war is about.”

Those two quotes come from the novel and the film, and were written by Michael Shaara in the 1970s. He was speaking with a level of hindsight not available in 1863 - that needs to be kept in mind, but in no way de-values the words.

An interesting aside - there's a piece published just last month at Bangor (Maine) Daily News website, by Michael Shaara's son, Jeff:

Michael Shaara identified with Brewer’s Joshua Chamberlain.