Lester del Rey, ‘Marooned on Mars’ (1952)

 Marooned on Mars (1952) was the first of several titles Lester del Rey wrote in the 1950s for the John C Winston line of science fiction adventures, aimed at younger readers (what we would nowadays call YA). Teenage Chuck Svenson, a citizen of the Moon, is too young to join the first manned voyage to Mars; so he stows away aboard the rocket ship Eros. The crew know he is doing this, and approve, because they respect Chuck, and think the authorities made the wrong call in denying him a spot. After quite a lot of faffing around in space (the story only gets to actual Mars about half way through the 200-page novel) the Eros lands. The expedition discovers ruined Martian cities, motile plants and monkey-like Martians with enormous eyes and names like Sptz-Rrll and Tchkh. Some of the Martians are old and wise, but the younger Martians get carried away and loot the Eros of vital parts. It looks as though the whole team will be, as per the title, marooned. Chuck is filled with remorse: by stowing away, and so using up more of the air supply and resources than was planned for, he worries he has doomed the whole expedition. He imagines the graves of the other crew members, and a gallows for himself as punishment for in-effect murdering everyone. But it all works out in the end: Chuck, who is the only person able to liaise between humans and Martians, negotiates a kind of truce, getting to be acting Captain on the strength of this. The Martians help repair the damage they have done. The Eros lifts off for home and the novel closes looking forward to a trade treaty between Earth and Mars:

Things would work out, Chuck was sure. Earth could give Mars the metal and the power needed, and some of the Martian plants would pay for all the trouble, with more than equal value. Both cultures could become richer because of the relationship. Men from Earth and men from Mars could rise together— some day even to the stars that filled the sky overhead. [209]

So all's well that end's well. It's straightforward stuff, and charmingly dated. Del Rey's 1950s idiom gives the 21st-century reader the pleasures of many an inadvertent obscenity: ‘Chuck knew better than to try to pump the man’ [6]; ‘Chuck touched helmets with Dick ... “I'll ride you back,” Dick suggested. He went down with Chuck’ [22]; ‘The Eros sent a tentative spurt shooting from its tubes’ [37]; ‘“Chuck, come back here and help me with these space-happy bums!”’ [53]; ‘Chuck tried to imagine how Dick had managed to get it up’ [91] and so on. Juvenile of me to find this stuff amusing, I know, but there you go. I like the description of the Eros's pilot, Nat Rothman, which implies that he keeps the mission moustache in a box, and shares it out amongst the crew as need dictates:

The pilot was a medium-built man of dark complexion, with the only mustache in the crew. Tonight, the mustache stretched out over a smile broad enough to show all his teeth, matching the grin of Dick Steele. [56]

And there's a healthy quota of wandering eyeballs:

‘The smile slipped from William Svensen's face, and his eyes darted suddenly toward Jeff Foldingchair.’ [12]

‘They went on to the ladder leading up to the ship's air lock, and Chuck's eyes followed the four figures up and into the ship.’ [36]

‘His eyes fell on Chuck's smile.’ [205]

The cover-art for the first edition, by Hungarian-American artist Paul Orban, is rather more atmospheric than the paperback edition, at the head of this post.

Davesiès de Pontès' Wonky Beowulph

 

Madame Lucien Davesiès de Pontès published a French-language history of Germanic literature in 1854. It was translated into English as Poets and Poetry of Germany: Biographical and Critical Notices (Chapman and Hall, 1858). Davesiès de Pontès was a celebrated translator of German literature into French—she translated Goethe's Egmont, the Nibelungenlied and the works of Theodor Körner—and well-placed to write a complete history of German literature. But my guess is: her English wasn't so good as her German. Above is her summary of Beowulf. Evidently she has not read this poem in its original Anglo Saxon. What she has done, as per her footnote, is read John Mitchell Kemble's A Translation of the Anglo-Saxon Poem of Beowulf (1837), the first version of the work in modern English. But she hasn't read it very closely, or understood it very well, because her summary garbles the original: Grendel is ‘a terrible giant’, Grendel's mother a ‘sorceress’ who lives not beneath a lake but among ‘dismal swamps’, and the story ends when Beowulph (sic: Kemble has the name as Beowulf) tracks down both mother and son and kills them both. No third act to the story, and no dragon. Kemble's translation isn't flawless, but none of these errors are in it: that's Davesiès de Pontès' carelessness.

Tolkien and Scott: a Brief Note

David Demaret, 'Éowyn versus the Nazgul' (2019)

 

Like everyone of his generation who read, Tolkien read Walter Scott (it’s really remarkable actually how far Scott has fallen, from being one of the most popular and widely read authors in the world to today’s obscurity). And when Tolkien came to write his own fiction he worked a basically Scottian template. In this old blog, I discuss [you need to scroll down a few paragraphs] some of the ways in which The Lord of the Rings is an exercise in Scottian writing, with its leisurely, peripatetic narrative, it’s middling, ‘wavering’ (that is, ‘waverley’) protagonist caught between opposing forces at a moment of great historical interest (fictional history in Tolkien’s case, but still), its narrative set against a backdrop of deeper time, and its textual strategies of prose and inset verse — in all this, Tolkien as writer was working in the idiom established by Scott. But I think he took various other, more specific things from Scott too. Small things (the name Proudfoot for a bourgeois family from Fair Maid of Perth, say) and some bigger things.

1. In this post  I argue that Tolkien's Black Riders, or more specifically the scene where the Black Riders chase Aragorn and Frodo across the landscape to the Ford of Bruinen, is drawn from Quentin Durward, where Scott's Black Riders chase Quentin and Isabelle across a spacious medieval landscape of field, forest and river.

2. And here, at greater length, I argue that the episode in which the fellowship passes over the snowy pass of Caradhras reworks a very similar scene in Anne of Geierstein, or The Maiden of the Mist (1829)

Here's another small thing. At the end of A Legend of Montrose (1819), Allan M’Aulay, pitiless warrior, an individual possessed of magical abilities, strikes down the Highland Lord, old Ranald MacEagh, on the battlefield. ‘M’Aulay, setting his foot on him, was about to pass the broadsword through his body, when the point of the weapon was struck up by a third party, who suddenly interposed’. The intervention is by a humble—that is, non-noble—character, the mercenary Dalgetty. Then we get:

“Fool!” said Allan, “stand aside, and dare not to come between the tiger and his prey!”

But Dalgetty defends Ranald. In the great battle towards the end of The Lord of the Rings, the Witch King of Angmar, pitiless, possessed of magical abilities, strikes down the Lord of Rohan, old Théoden, and is about to finish him when Éowyn suddenly interposes. Then we get:

“Begone!” A cold voice answered: “come not between the Nazgul and his prey! … Thou fool.”

What Is The Earliest "Egyptian Mummy" Story?

I have several times encountered the claim that the earliest story of undead mummies is Jane C. Loudon's The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827): a novel in which an Egyptian mummy named Cheops is brought back in to life in 22nd century Britain. But is it really the earliest example of the Mummy sub-genre? It seems Loudon may

have drawn inspiration from the general fashion for anything pharaonic, inspired by the French researches during the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt; the 1821 public unwrappings of Egyptian mummies in a theatre near Piccadilly, which she may have attended as a girl; and, very likely, the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. As Shelley had written of Frankenstein's creation, ‘A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch,’ which may have triggered her later concept. In any case, at many points Loudon deals in greater clarity with elements from the earlier book such as the loathing for the much-desired object and the immediate arrest for crime and attempt to lie one's way out of it.

There's been some work on the way Loudon writes in reaction to Frankenstein. But I'm curious about prior stories of, specifically, mummies.

Here's one, from Gabrielle de Paban's Histoire des fantomes et des démons (1819).

This volume includes a story called ‘Les Deux Momies’:

Le prince de Radziville, dans son voyage de Jérusalem, raconte une chose fort singulière, dont il a été le témoin:

Il avait acheté en Egypte deux momies, l'une d'homme et l'autre de femme, et les avait enfermées fort secrètement dans des caisses, qu'il fit mettredansson vaisseau, lorsqu'il s'embarqua à Alexandrie pour revenir en Europe. Il n'y avait que lui et deux domestiques qui le sussent, parce que les Turcs ne permettent que difficilement qu'on emporte ces momies, croyant que les chrétiens s'en servent, pour des opérations magiques. Lorsqu'on fut en mer, il s'éleva une tempête, qui revint à plusieurs reprises, avec tant de violence, que le pilote désespérait de sauver son vaisseau. Tout le monde était dans l'attente d'un naufrage prochain et inévitable. Un bon prêtre polonais, qui accompagnait le prince de Radziville, récitaît les prières convenables à une telle circonstance; le prince et sa suite y répondaient. Mais le prêtre était tourmenté, disait-il, par deux spectres, (un homme et une femme), noirs et hideux, qui le harcelaient et le menaçaient de le faire mourir. On crut d'abord que la frayeur et le danger du naufrage lui avaient troublé l'imagination. Le calme étant revenu, il parut tranquille; mais la tempête recommença bientôt; alors ces fantômes le tourmentèrent plus fort qu'auparavant; et il n'en fut délivré, que quand on eut jeté les deux momies à la mer: ce qui fit en niême temps cesser la tempête.

The prince of Radziwiłł, in his Travels to Jerusalem, recounts a very singular thing, which he personally witnessed:

He had purchased two mummies in Egypt, one of a man and one a woman, and had locked them very secretly in boxes, which he had stowed in his ship when he embarked from Alexandria to return to Europe. Only he and two servants knew about this, because the Turks are disinclined to permit these mummies to be taken away, believing that Christians use them for magical operations. When they were at sea a storm arose, which returned several times, with so much violence that the pilot despaired of saving his ship. Everyone was expecting an imminent and inevitable shipwreck. A good Polish priest, who accompanied the Radziwiłł family, recited the prayers appropriate to such a circumstance; the prince and his entourage responded. But the priest was tormented, he said, by two specters—a man and a woman—black and hideous—who harassed him and threatened to kill him. At first it was believed that the fear and danger of the shipwreck had disturbed his imagination. Calm weather having returned, the priest seemed himself to settle down; but the storm soon began again; then these ghosts tormented him more than before; a terror from which he was only relieved when the two mummies were thrown into the sea: which at the same time caused the storm to cease.

It is possible that Loudon was aware of this story from this 1819 French retelling, but the story itself is much older. The Prince to whom de Paban refers is Mikołaj Krzysztof Sierotka Radziwiłł (1549-1616), who travelled widely in the Holy Land, Syria, Egypt, Crete, Cyprus, Italy and Greece, and afterwards wrote an account of his voyaging: Hierosolymitana peregrinatio illvstrissimi domini Nicolai Christophori Radzivili (1601). It's from this volume that de Paban has sourced her story.

Indeed, Radziwiłł's book has quite a lot to say about mummies.

Et nos ad pyramidem quandam altiorem in soramen decem & ampliùs ulnas profundum nos eâdem ratione demisimus; ubi in petra reperimus plura alia antra ad longum excisa, in quibus multa hominum cadavera erant sepulta, è quibus mumia, quam vocant, petitur Affirmant ea corpora sive balsamo, sive aliis diversarum herbarum unguentis condita fuisse; que qualia suerint, discurrant medici: apparet certe aliquid egregium & singulare fuisse, quandoquidem à tribus annorum millibus absque, minimi alicuius membri putrefactione eiusmodi corpora integra in hanc usque diem conservantur. .

So we descended into a certain pyramid, to a depth of ten and more cubits; where we found in the rock several other long-cut caverns, in which many corpses of men were buried, and where the mummies, as they are called, are to be found. Let the doctors hurry to examine how they are stitched together and with what balsams and unguents they are preserved. It certainly appears that there is something excellent and unique about the process, since after three thousand years, without the slightest putrefaction of any member, these bodies are preserved intact to this day. [Hierosolymitana peregrinatio, 190-91]

Radziwiłł records that he took two mummies away with him (Emeram tunc temporis ab iisdem Arabibus duo corpora maris & femine duobus Cecchinis, quæ ibidem in tumbis reposita inueneramus: de quibus quid actum fit posteà, cùm Alexandriâ nauigaremus, dicetur inferiùs; ‘At that time I purchased from these same Arabs two corpses, a man and a woman, both of the Cheops era, which we had found there deposited in tombs. What happened afterwards, when we set sail from Alexandria, will be told below.’) What did happen? Read on and find out:

Quamobrem diligenter admonentur ij, qui res in nauem inferunt, ne Mumiam secum accipiant: cuius rei ca redditur ratio. Quandoquidem Mumia, Ethnicorum sunt cadauera, in quibus idola, vt dictum est superiùs, reconduntur: dubium non est, quin in cura & potestate Dæmonum, prout & animæ ipsorum, sint constituta: qui numquam ab eis, etiamsi de loco in locum transferantur, recedere solent. Cùm Cairi in antrum, ubi eiusmodi cadauera sunt condita, me demisissem, duo integra corpora, vt iam diximus, maris & feminæ, pretio empta acceperam ... que ut commodiùs deferri possent, quodlibet in tres partes divulsum, in capsas maiores ex corticibus arborum siccatis confectas, imponendum curaui: ita ut sex eiusmodi capsas Mumia refertas haberem: in septima verò erant idola sitilia iisdem illis corporibus copulari solita. Cùm igitur de periculo deportationis ex nautis intellexissem, consului negotiatores mihi notos, quid mihi agendum suaderent, et num vera essent, quæ nautæ dicerent. Multi affirmabant rem ita se habere: multi pro fabulis hæc ducebant, affirmantes, quòd ipsimet in Italiam sæpissimè Mumias per mare deportarunt, neque tamen in vllum periculum hoc nomine inciderunt. Persuasione igitur illorum adductus decreui corpora hæc mecum asportare, vt in Europa ostenderem, qua ratione condîta reperiantur. Quamobrem nihil ea de re cum nauclero communicans, septem capsas illas Mumiarum, cum rebus aliis in nauem inserri iussi. Sed parum absuit, quin statim in magnas difficultates incidis sem. ...Cùm itaque priori tempestate iactaremur, nullus nostrûm de Mumia hac meminerat. Erat mecum in eadem navi Sacerdos Polonus Simon Albimontanus, qui patentes Regis Stephani literas habebat, & sepulchrum Dominicum visitauerat. In Mumiis illis viderant, nec de illo Sacerdoti indicare poterant, mirari accuratiùs cœpimus. Certissimum enim erat, neminem servitorum de cadaueribus istis sciuisse, præter duos illos, qui secretum hoc nemini proculdubiò, extraneo præfertim, aperuerant. Sed nec tunc quidem Mumia nobis in mentem venerat. Postremò totus conturbatus, pallidus, & tremens Sacerdos ad me accurrit, exposuitque quàm họrret.dum in modum à spectris hisce inter orandum exagi tetur, immò laceretur. Tandem incidit mihi, fortè illum hæc pati occasione corporum istorum Mumiaticorum. Misi itaque ad nauarchum, ut inferiorem Saitiæ nauis partem nobis recludi iuberet, caussam tamen reticendo: volebam siquidem capsas illas Mumiarum clàm in mare proijcere. Sed nauarchus respondit, se id facere non posse propter ingentes fluctus, qui Saitiam ita operiebant, ut omnes madesieremus ... Et videbamus quidem apertè periculum maximum instare; si nauis aperiretur: ex alia parte Presbyter de spectrorum vexatione mirum in modum lamentabatur. Nefciebamus itaque quid nobis agendum effet. Ubi verò S. Germanus apparere, & ventus contrarius subsidere cœpit; cùm iam illucesceret, nauem aperiri iussi. Et spectris nihilominùs Sacerdoti molestiam inferentibus, septem capsas illas in mare proijci iussi. Quod vbi factum, nauarchus statim ad me accurrit, percunctans quidnam abiecissemus: numquid Mumiam? Fassus sum. Expauit illicò vehementer; sed posteà se recolligens erat recreatus; & certò promittebat, nos tempestatem ampliùs non habituros. Et non frustrà hæc prędixit. Nam licet apud insulam Carpathos insurrexerat, minùs vehemens tamen fuit, & S. Germano semel apparente, statim cessauit. Dixit mihi posteà nauarchus, quo tempore ad eum mittebam ut nauem aperiret, etiamsi illi dictum fuisset, id propter Mumiam fieri, numquam tamen aperturum fuisse, propter undarum infurgentium impetum: & quod iam certò nos interituros credebat, momentum tantùm demersionis expectans. Quærebat & Sacerdos, quidnam in mare proiectum fuisset. Cumque illi dixissem, maiore etiam timore correptus, tamquam vir Ecclesiasticus arguere me cœpit, quòd Ethnicorum corpora circumferre veritus non fucrim, propter quæ tantum vexationis pertulerit; nec aliam spectrorum apparentium caussam fuisse. Ego reprehensionem boni Sacerdotis grato animo suscepi

But those who bring things onto their ship should be carefully warned not to take a mummy with them: the reason for this is given here. Since mummies are the corpses of the peoples of this region, in which idols, as has been said above, are worshipped: there is no doubt that they are placed in the care and power of demons, and their souls have never withdrawn from them, even when they are transferred from place to place ... When I had let myself down into the cave of Cairo, where such corpses were buried, I had taken two whole bodies, as we have already said, of a man and a woman, bought at a price ... which, in order that they might be conveniently carried, each was torn into three parts, and placed in large boxes made of the dried bark of trees, I took care to put them in these containers: so that I had six such mummy boxes filled: and in the seventh were the various idols associated by custom with those same bodies. But when I had heard, from certain sailors, of the danger of shipping these items, I consulted the businessmen known to me, asking of them what they advised me to do, and whether what the sailors said were true. Some affirmed that this was the case: others insisted the stories were mere fables, telling me they had often brought mummies to Italy by sea, and yet they had not run into any such peril on that account. Therefore, being persuaded by them, I resolved to take these bodies away with me, that I might show them in Europe, just as I had found them preserved. So, communicating nothing of the matter with the shipowner, I ordered those seven boxes of mummies to be loaded onto the ship, along with my other things. But it was not long before we ran into great difficulties ... When, therefore, we were tossed about in this storm, none of us thought of the mummy. 

Simon Albimontanus, a Polish priest, was in the same ship with us, carrying letters from King Stephen, in order to visit the tomb of Dominicus. It was most certain that none of the servants knew of these corpses, except those two, who doubtless had revealed this secret to no one, especially to a stranger. But not even then did we think of the Mummy. Then the priest, very troubled, pale, and trembling, ran to me, and told me his story. At last I realised that he was suffering these hauntings because of the bodies of these mummies. I therefore sent to the captain to order the ship's hold be opened for us, although I did not tell him why: of course, I wanted to throw those boxes of mummies into the sea. But the sailor replied that he could not do so, on account of the size of the waves, which did indeed crash over the decks in such a way that we were all wet ... And truly we could see it would be a grave and pressing danger if we were to open the hold of the ship. At the same time, here was the priest, lamenting in a most strange way about being harassed by these ghosts. When at last St. Germanus became visible, and the contrary wind began to subside, and dawn had broken, I ordered the ship's hold to be opened. And since the spectres were continuing to cause great trouble to the priest, I commanded those seven boxes be thrown into the sea. When this was done the captain immediately ran to me, inquiring what exactly we had thrown away. Was it a mummy? I admitted the truth. He was at first utterly terrified; but afterwards, recollecting himself, somewhat regained his good senses; and he promised me with absolute assurance that we had seen the last of the great storm. In this he proved correct. For although the storm had risen near the island of the Carpathians, it lessened in ferocity once we approached St. Germanus, and then abruptly ceased. The captain told me afterwards that when I first told him to open up the ship, even if he had been informed then that I needed this done to dispose of the mummy, he could not have opened the hold, owing to the onslaught of the raging waves, and that he now believed we would certainly have perished, with capsize inevitable. After that the priest came and asked me what it was we had thrown into the sea. When I had told him, he was seized with even greater fear, and began to lecture me, in the way priests will, that I ought never to have carried the corpses from those lands with me, since doing so must have been the cause he had had to endure so much harassment. I accepted the good priest's rebuke with a grateful heart. [Hierosolymitana peregrinatio, 233]

This 1601 story is, surely, the earliest Mummy tale. Or is there an earlier?

Did Wells Read Kepler's "Somnium"?

 

It seems as if the answer must be: yes, because Wells uses a quotation from Kepler as the epigraph to War of the Worlds (1898), and incorporates references to the Somnium into The First Men in the Moon (1901). Bedford and Cavour are discussing the likelihood that the moon is hollow, as they travel there in their anti-gravity spacecraft.

“Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmosphere within, and at the centre of its caverns a sea.

“One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, one knew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too, that it was sister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable that it should be different in composition. The inference that it was hollowed out was as clear as day. And yet one never saw it as a fact. Kepler, of course——”

His voice had the interest now of a man who has discovered a pretty sequence of reasoning.

“Yes,” he said, “Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all.” [First Men in the Moon, 143]

The Subvolvani are one of two alien species mentioned in Kepler's Somnium (1634). So maybe Wells did read Kepler's strange little proto-science-fiction novel.

But how? Somnium was written in Latin, and not translated into English until the twentieth-century. It was little discussed in nineteenth-century: an obscurity, copies of the (posthumously published) 1634 edition very rare. David Lake is puzzled:

Since 1965 we can all read Kepler’s marvellous work in John Lear’s English translation; but I am puzzled to know how Wells read him. There was a German translation by Ludwig Gunther, Leipzig 1898; Wells may have read this, or the original Latin, or possibly some popularizing summary of the work. But he certainly had some contact with the Latin text, for he makes Cavor say “Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all”. Subvolvani is Kepler’s invented Latin name for the inhabitants of Subvolva, the nearside hemisphere of the Moon; they are so called because they live under Volva, which they see revolving. Science fiction always delights in neologisms, even in Latin. [David Lake, ‘Mr Bedford’s Brush with God: Fantastic Tradition and Mysticism in The First Men in the Moon,’ The Wellsian (1990), 4-5]

I'm puzzled too. Wells had a little Latin, something he picked up under the tutelage of Horace Byatt, at Midhurst Grammar School in 1883: he took these lessons because Latin was considered needful for a dispensing chemist, and Wells at that time was apprenticed to Samuel Cowap in his Midhurst chemist's shop. But the education he received was rudimentary, and I do not believe Wells had the fluency or range in the language to be able to read Kepler's novel right through, even were he able to get hold of a copy of what was, at this point, a rare and expensive volume. Nor do I see him reading Ludwig Gunther's German version, a book not published in the UK, in a language Wells did not speak. So this must mean Wells encountered Kepler's dream-moon, with its hollow, inhabited body and subvolvan aliens, at second hand. Where, though? Despite Lake's speculation, there weren't any popularizing summaries of the work published in the nineteenth-century. There are references to the Somnium here and there, but nothing very detailed.

So, I don't think Wells knew Kepler's novel. Which is to say, my answer to the question posed in this blogpost's title is: no. Cavour's reference to Sub-volvans, with that hyphen, is a tell (Kepler doesn't hyphenate the name) as is the fact that he mentions only one of the two alien peoples in Somnium but not the other:

Though the fixed stars appear everywhere in Levania, just as they do to us, nonetheless there are such pronounced differences in the motion and the magnitudes of the visible planets that the inhabitants of that world have an entirely original system of astronomy. So, just as Earthly geographers divide the world's globe into five zones depending on their astral phenomena so Levania is divided into two hemispheres: Subvolva and Privolva. The Subvolvans are eternally blessed by the light from Volva—which is to say, from our Earth—which assumes the role of a Moon to them. But the Privolvans are forever deprived the Earth. The circle dividing these hemispheres, which is called the divisor, is not unlike the Earthly meridian passing as it does through the solstices and the poles. [Kepler, Somnium]

Why no Privolvani in First Men in the Moon? Wells knew of Kepler's work, that it posited a moon inhabited by alien beings, but he did not actually know the work itself.

One source for his knowledge of Kepler is certainly Richard Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. I mentioned that the epigraph to War of the Worlds is a quotation from Kepler, but Wells is clear that he's not quoting Somnium directly:

“But who shall dwell in these Worlds if they be inhabited?
... Are we or they Lords of the World? ... And how are all things made for man?”
Kepler (quoted in “The Anatomy of Melancholy”).

So Wells clearly read, or at least browsed in (the best way to read it) Burton 1621 miscellany. Here's the passage that supplied Wells' epigraph:

Kepler will by no means admit of Brunus's infinite worlds, or that the fixed stars should be so many suns, with their compassing planets, yet the said Kepler between jest and earnest in his perspectives, lunar geography, et somnio suo, dissertat. cum nunc. sider. [ie. the Somnium] seems in part to agree with this, and partly to contradict; for the planets, he yields them to be inhabited, he doubts of the stars; and so doth Tycho in his astronomical epistles, out of a consideration of their vastity and greatness, break out into some such like speeches, that he will never believe those great and huge bodies were made to no other use than this that we perceive, to illuminate the earth, a point insensible in respect of the whole. But who shall dwell in these vast bodies, earths, worlds, “if they be inhabited? rational creatures?” as Kepler demands, “or have they souls to be saved? or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they lords of the world? And how are all things made for man?” [Anatomy of Melancholy, II. 2.3]

You can see how Wells slightly alters the original for his purposes. But Burton doesn't mention Subvolvans, or Privolvans; he talks of Kepler's ‘Saturnine and Jovial inhabitants’, the saturnine presumably being the (sad) Privolvans, deprived of Earth overhead, and the Jovial the Subvolvans.

I think the source for Wells's reference in The First Men in the Moon is Thomas Gwyn Elger. I think Wells read Elgers The Moon: A full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features (1895) in preparation for writing his moon-set fantasia. Indeed, we know that Wells did read this book, because he quotes from it in an article he published in 1895: ‘The Visibility of Change in the Moon’ Knowledge 18 (Oct 1895), 230-31. [The article is about the possibility of volcanoes on the moon, and Wells addresses the fact that nobody has observed any such eruption by saying that such activity might very well go on unobserved: ‘As Mr. Elger has pointed out, objects as large as Monte Nuovo or Jorullo might come into existence in many regions without anyone being the wiser, and a catastrophe as extensive as the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii might still escape detection.’ This is from Elger's The Moon, p.37: ‘might not objects as large as Monte Nuovo or Jorullo come into existence in many regions without any one being the wiser? It would certainly have needed a persistent lunar astronomer, and one furnished with a very perfect telescope, to have noted the changes that have occurred within the old crater-ring of Somma or among the Santorin group during the past thirty years, or even to have detected the effects resulting from the great catastrophe in A.D. 79, at Vesuvius; yet these objects are no larger than many which, if they were situated on our satellite, would be termed comparatively small, if not insignificant.’]

One of the things Elger discusses are lunar rills:

The significance of the word rille in German, a groove or furrow, describes with considerable accuracy the usual appearance of the objects to which it is applied, consisting as they do of long narrow channels, with sides more or less steep, and sometimes vertical. They often extend for hundreds of miles in approximately straight lines over portions of the moon's surface, frequently traversing in their course ridges, craters, and even more formidable obstacles, without any apparent check or interruption, though their ends are sometimes marked by a mound or crater. Their length ranges from ten or twelve to three hundred miles or more (as in the great Sirsalis rill), their breadth, which is very variable within certain limits, from less than half a mile to more than two, and their depth (which must necessarily remain to a great extent problematical) from 100 to 400 yards.

What are these rills? Elger doesn't know:

Of the actual nature of the lunar rills we are, it must be confessed, supremely ignorant. With some of the early observers it was a very favourite notion that they are artificial works, constructed presumably by Kepler's sub-volvani, or by other intelligences. There is perhaps some excuse to be made for the freaks of an exuberant fancy in regard to objects which, if we ignore for a moment their enormous dimensions, judged by a terrestrial standard, certainly have, in their apparent absence of any physical relation to neighbouring objects, all the appearance of being works of art rather than of nature. The keen-sighted and very imaginative Gruithuisen believed that in some instances they represent roads cut through interminable forests, and in others the dried-up beds of once mighty rivers. [Elger, The Moon (1895), 22]

Here is sub-volvani, with the egregious hyphen, in a context in which it is clear that the word is the name for an alien species dwelling in Kepler's moon. It tells us nothing more, doesn't mention Kepler's privolvans, but it's enough for Wells to be able to drop the word into his novel.

This gives us another pointer to the novel. Where do Bedford and Cavour land, when they land on the moon? This is what we are told:

For a flash Cavor opened a window moonward, and we saw that we were dropping towards a huge central crater with a number of minor craters grouped in a sort of cross about it. And then again Cavor flung our little sphere open to the scorching, blinding sun. I think he was using the sun’s attraction as a brake ... There came a jar, and then we were rolling over and over.

The Moon contains Elger's own lunar map, in four sections, with a diameter of 18 inches: ‘It is much less complex than the maps of Neison, Schmidt, Mädler, and Lohrmann, and for that reason, one of the most usable lunar maps ever produced. Printed with the maria in green, and with easily legible type, it is still an ideal reference map (Ashworth).’ I picture Wells poring over this map looking for a place to land his adventurers. He chooses an Eastward location because he wants to describe the lunar sunrise immediately after they land. Copernicus catches his eye:

So that's where they come down: a large crater with a rough cross of smaller craters around it. Also, who is this little chap, with his surprised expression and large right hand, emerging nervously from behind the ink blot?

Looks like one of Wells's picshuas.

Proximus Caesar

 

Proximus Caesar is the big villain of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), the fourth instalment of the Planet of the Apes reboot franchise. He is the tyrannical king of the Coastal Ape Colony, a rogue clan of apes that claim to follow the ways and teachings of the late Caesar—the Moses-figure, who in the first trilogy led the apes to their promised land, played by Andy Serkis in a mo-cap suit. The new movie is set many generations after Caesar's death, and Proximus is claiming to inherit Caesar's mantle. Hence his name, which the movie clearly thinks means ‘the next Caesar’, Caesar's successor, next-in-line.

It doesn't, though. Proximus means next in a purely spatial sense: nearest-to, alongside, adjoining. But the name, or title, invented for this character isn't supposed to mean that this new Caesar occupies a physical propinquity to the long-dead original Caesar. It is clearly intended to point to a temporal succession. Heir to Caesar. Caesar's rightful successor. What the film wanted was Successor Caesar, or perhaps Hereditarius Caesar. But the scriptwriter presumably typed ‘next Caesar’ into Google Translate or equivalent and copied-down proximus from the list of options. This is indicative of a larger problem with online resources like Google Translate, of course; although one might think that a budget of $160 million dollars for the making of a movie might mean there was a modest fee available to pay someone to check the script's Latin. 

Chris Foss, “Diary of a Spaceperson” (London: Guild Publishing 1990)

 

Foss, born in 1946 on Guernsey, trained as an architecture student before becoming a professional artist. He produced many deftly realist black-and-white illustrations of copulating couples for Alex Comfort's erotic manual The Joy of Sex (1972), and also produced a large number of full colour paintings as book covers through the 1970s and 1980s, mostly science fiction. He worked with an airbrush, an adapted air-operated tool that atomizes and sprays paint with varying degrees of spread and focus, enabling him to create very fine gradations and shadings, mist effects and sheens, spotlights and starbursts. His architectural training is evident in the structural solidity and scale of his spaceships, the extrapolated flying-building quality.

By and large Foss did not attempt actually to illustrate the specific action of the book. He was not a fan of science fiction and preferred not to read the works he was commissioned to paint, working instead purely on his own inspiration. The lack of fit between cover and story has puzzled some readers, although I would say it adds to the mystique and glamour.

His fame grew through the 1980s, with Foss illustrating album covers, working on visualisations and designs for Jodorowsky’s celebrated, unmade Dune and also on the Traveller games. His work as cover-artist continued. Then, in 1990, he produced Diary of a Spaceperson.

There’s a moment in Monty Python’s Holy Grail film when Arthur and his kerrniggetts encounter the enchanter Tim, played with a exaggerated Scots accent and much wide-eyed mugging and scowling by John Cleese. Tim mops and mows, warns the group of the monstrous rabbit that awaits them, and shoots flames and explosions from his magic staff. Then Graham Chapman's Arthur turns his head to his men, and comments, sotto voce: ‘what an eccentric performance’.

That’s how I feel about this book.

One can imagine the publisher’s meeting out of which the idea came: ‘Hey, how about a large format full-colour book that reprints some of Chris Foss’s most magnificent SF cover artworks, blowing them up to full-page and double-page spreads!’ ‘Great idea!’ ‘And interspersed with those, we could bung in a bunch of soft-core pencil drawings of attractive young women with their tits out!’ ‘We could—wait, what?’ ‘And to tie it all together, a storyline—about a lovely young woman called J, just the letter, travelling the galaxy having various adventures! With her tits out! The stories can all take place inside Chris’s artwork!’ ‘Well ... I mean—shall we get a proper SF author to write the text?’ ‘No, no, I’m sure Chris can handle that himself.’ ‘Really? He’s on record as saying he’s no great fan of SF.’ ‘No matter! Art by Foss! Text by Foss! Naked breasts by Foss! It’s a winner!’

 And that is what we have. The story is told in the form of diary entries, printed in an irksome handwriting font that is genuinely hard to read. J moves from place to place, locations and plot determined by pre-existing Foss art. So, for example: there are a couple of Foss canvases of gigantic structures or spaceships against oceanic background. Therefore the story sends J to ‘New Venice’, a water-world.

By way of adding a little dramatic tension here, J is given an aversion to water: ‘I don’t believe it!’ she confines to her diary. ‘Assigned to Venice! That land of DIVS, PEABRAINS and NO HOPERS. What’s more I can’t stand water.’ Arriving at New Venice, this sentiment is reiterated. ‘WATER, at least Venice’s version of water—I DO NOT LIKE IT.’ In what ways the water of New Venice differs from regular H2O is not disclosed to us. J's water aversion has no narrative consequences. Indeed there is no real story on Venice. Peabrains, no-hopers and divs, oh my!

Then there’s this great Foss painting of a spaceship hauling ice through space, so the story sends J there, as a space-lumberjack, ‘marshalling in the Berg Park. Frozen water—YUGH!’ A page later and she's off to a planet upon which 10km tall cities, in constant motion, roll around a planetary railway track, ever keeping under the planet’s two suns to fuel their solar power.

We’re told that if a city in any way slows down it must be blown up, blasted off the track so as not to get in the way of the cities coming along behind. This perhaps doesn’t seem the most efficient use of resources, but there we go. J is there for a page and a half and then, away.

The randomly peripatetic adventures—kidnapped, topless, by space pirates! Marooned on a jungle planet, also topless! Caught in the middle of a space battle! Inseminated by an alien! (‘the reactor’s white hot, we’re pumping lead and my stomach has definitely got something inside it!! For God’s sake, humans are not supposed to be able to be fertilised by aliens’ ... stomach?)—is too bitty and inconclusive to hold the attention. Foss’s space-art is magnificent, but is demeaned, rather, by being forced to dance attendance on this piddling episodic story. And the many pencil-sketches of topless young women are just skeezy. You can see the lubricious cynicism of the pairing: you know who likes science fiction? Teenage boys. You know what else teenage boys like? Boobies. Let's combine them! It'll be a smash! It's Flasher Gordon. It's The Empire Strips Off. It's Book of the New Page-3-of-the-Sun. It's The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Nudity.

Foss’s grasp of science-fiction manifests a rather charming ineptness. At one point J travels to ‘Stasco 3, one of the biggest planets in this part of the sky, twice the size of the Earth’s sun’. Big! The sun's equatorial surface gravity is 274 m/s^2, 28 times earthly gravity, so one would assume Stasco 3 is going to be a squash and a squeeze. But no: J arrives, wanders happily around, although it takes her a little while to adjust to the new atmosphere (‘I tried a few breaths and had to have medication for my lungs’). This is how people dress on Stasco:

And that’s the one constant. On more than one occasion, J, wandering through some space-port or metropolis, is mugged at gunpoint, the thieves stealing all her money and all her clothes from the waist up. You think I’m joking, but I’m honestly not. It happens repeatedly. It’s like Kenny Everett’s flamboyant film-star being interviewed by Parkinson: ‘…and then suddenly all my clothes fall off!’

It's all done in the best Foss-ible taste.