Retrofuturism 26: A Look Back at the 2010s

 

I have a long-running series on this blog which relates past styles to future sensibilities. It is interesting to see what survives these days for the sake of stylistic nostalgia, past any functional or practical requirements.

Sometimes, the historical stylistic element refers to an old technology, indicating a mental and emotional human lag in the face of exponential innovation.

Today's superb example came from Substack: the 981 Retro Express Wireless, Mechanical Gaming Vintage Typewriter Keyboard (hat tip: Ozarklore). On embarking upon the writing of this post, I was shocked to find that the 'Retrofuturism' series proper hasn't been updated here since 2013. Looking back, I see that the best posts relating to this topic confirm that retro-futurism was a 2010s' trend. It appears that the period from the late 2010s through 2022 dampened historical curiosity in relation to technology. This could be due to intensified political debates and the global pandemic, which dominated popular attention for seven years.

Here are some of my old posts highlighting retro-futuristic 2010s' projects which either did not survive into the 2020s, or may have borne fruit, but their signals got lost in the noise from the early part of this decade. For example, the incredible video game, Gorgoa, demonstrates that even in accelerated environments, real human accomplishments still take years to complete. Perhaps we can take heart in that:

•  The Next Tetris: Gorgoa (13 January 2013): an amazing-looking retro-futuristic game that won several awards in 2018 after its 2017 launch.
• Retrofuturism 23: Baby Boomers and Alien Astronauts (10 January 2013): a retrospective on 1960s' and 1970s' spiritual esoteric spiritualism as projected upon space exploration. With Gigi Young's series on Mars Mysteries on Youtube, we see that interest in this topic is still going strong. My work on my new novel serial, Vampire Daddy, falls in the same category (shameless plug). Vampire Daddy not only draws on my earlier discussions of how space exploration relates to religious, spiritual and esoteric topics, but it also refers to other retro-futuristic themes I discussed, such as the Slavonic Gothic, Russian Space Art, and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books from the first decade of the 20th century. 

 

The Warlords of Mars (1914). Source: JW Knott Books. 

• Shameless plug, continued: as a tribute to Burroughs, I recently did an AI rendering of my characters, Lexi and Primeva, in the style of John Carter and Dejah Thorus, echoing the classic Barsoom renderings of  the 1910s, with hints of later 1960s' and 1970s' interpretations, now reworked again in the 2010s and 2020s. Of course, many others have paid homage to Burroughs. Marv Wolfman - whose work I have covered extensively here - wrote a Marvel comic from 1977 to 1979 which expanded on Burroughs' work. There were also a couple of series from Dark Horse and notable Warlord of Mars series from Dynamite, which sparked a lawsuit from the Burroughs' estate. Disney released a troubled adaptation, John Carter, in 2012. Comic Book Treasury put it best, that Burroughs' Barsoom series is "one of the most influential science fiction and fantasy tales of the 20th Century." You can read Burroughs' Mars books here. Librivox recordings are here and here. The Encyclopedia Barsoomia Wiki is here.

 

Lexi and Primeva. Source: My own prompting, on Dall-e. 

Other highlights from my 'Retrofuturism' series (I clearly had trouble deciding on whether or not to hyphenate the term): 

• Retrofuturism 19: Last Master of a Martial Art Reborn (16 November 2011): the 17th century Sikh martial art of Shastar Vidya (ਸ਼ਸਤਰ-ਵਿੱਦਿਆ), which frightened the British imperial authorities so much that they banned it, survives in akharas (training gymnasiums) and the tradition is still discussed on the Web.
• Five Fabulous Web Comics You Shouldn't Miss (28 October 2010): sadly, all of these great Web comics are no longer running. These projects all died before or during covid. Web comics evidently were enterprises of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which peaked by the 2010s: Bill Walko's The Hero Busine$$ (ended 2023); Jon Rosenberg's Scenes from a Metaverse (ended 2021); Kit Roebuck's (aka Adam Reed's) Nine Planets without Intelligent Life (ended 2025); Larry Latham's Lovecraft is Missing (ended 2014); Jesse Recklaw's Slow Wave (ended 2012). And we definitely should never forget the fantastic Tozo - The Public Servant, from David O'Connell (since 2018, the main website has belonged to a gambling site, but there are vestiges of O'Connell's work at that URL on the subpages).

In 2023, Chris Yeh predicted on Linked In that AI would lead to a "Cambrian explosion" of online comics and graphic novels. Instead, artistic and literary communities launched into painful debates over how and when to justify AI usage in the creative arts. As a result, the Cambrian explosion didn't happen.

The appetite for the past is still there as we collide with the future. But is it legitimate to ape the past with a technology that radically erases that past? My friend C. recently told me that 'Throwback Thursdays' was created by AI developers to encourage people to post photographs from the pre-Internet era to train artificial intelligences. We are on the other side of a watershed moment.

Retro-futurism in the last decade recalled craftsmanship, popular tastes, cultural memories, and artistic traditions like long-form content writing, print graphics and illustration. The trend was part of a brief flowering of purely- or mainly-human creative activities, ironically expressed through technologically-enabled media. That could only really be done in the 2010s, when human creative practices overlapped nearly exactly with forms of technology which were just advanced enough to channel human outputs globally. But technology at that point did not yet surpass, erase, overwhelm or supersede the human. Now it potentially does.

The retro-futuristic trend was part of the 2010s' last gasp of purely human creativity in the pre-AI age. Will AI revive retro-futurism above its 2010s' heights? Or will this peculiar form of techno-cultural nostalgia become a badge of anti-AI sentiment? Perhaps AI will bring us to some state of compromise between the purely human and pure machine. Only time will tell.

See all my posts on Retro-Futurism. Also here.

Coronavirus Fragments 12: No Fate But What We Make

Anti-COVID19 measures in Pakistan. Video Source: 4chan.

If you look at anything this week, please see this summary of medical research articles on nCov. At a glance, it gives you a broad understanding of the symptoms and complications of COVID19:

COVID-19 ANALYSIS AND SUMMARY

Image Source: NYT via 4chan.

There is a good piece at the NYT about the virus's genome, here, which points out that the end of the RNA strand concludes with a long string of a's.

Complications

The complications of COVID19 are horrifying. The latest medical article which stands out in that regard was published on 31 March 2020 in Radiology: COVID-19–associated Acute Hemorrhagic Necrotizing Encephalopathy: CT and MRI Features (https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.2020201187). This might explain why people who are functioning normally drop in their tracks, as in the account from the US and Ireland, below.

Click to enlarge. Image Source: 4chan.

The earliest mention of coronavirus in Hubei province appears now to be 18 September 2019 (see image below). Chatter from China is turning hostile, as from one anon on 31 March 2020:

"The arrogance displayed by the Western powers is beyond disgraceful and only shows the real condition of the Western nations blindly adhering to the nonsensical leftist notions of human rights without sufficiently accentuating human sacrifice and the necessity to collectivize so as to truly arrive at the societal prosperity. The West is perpetually immersed in the miasma of hedonistic stupor and instead of trying to lift its own populations from the mire of degeneracy and senseless consumerism, the Western administrations eagerly encourage rampant consumerism with a view to perpetuating their own tenuous rule. The fact that people of the West find the conduct of the Chinese administration problematic is most ironic given Western democracies' absolute lack of regard for their own native populations whose real condition is concealed under a flimsy guise of human rights and consumerist rights. The West is going to get what they're asking for, way sooner than they expect. All people responsible for contemptible acts of brazen imperialism against People's Republic of China shall soon face harsh, but just consequences."

Click to enlarge. Image Source: 4chan.

There are deniers on the Internet who are saying that the virus is a hoax or a mild flu, an excuse to implement police states. I don't doubt the totalitarian bent of a budding global technocracy. Still, people have trouble understanding the seriousness of the virus. This was made worse by the fact that that authorities and the MSM initially played down the dangers of COVID19.

Stay home cuz this is reality. (1 April 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

In the video above, a Brooklyn man witnessed bodies being removed from Brooklyn Hospital at 10:40 a.m. on Sunday, 29 March 2020. This was not news on the Internet or television from far away. For this man, Brooklyn, New York is the bottom line. It is real reality, and in that real reality, there are clearly so many people dying from COVID19 that the hospital's morgue is overflowing. On 31 March 2020, a tent was erected over the entrance to the hospital's freezer truck, to conceal hospital staff as they drop off bodies.

NYPD ESCORT FOR AMBULANCE WITH CORONAVIRUS PATIENTS IN NEW YORK CITY (3 April 2020). Video Source: Bitchute.

NYPD IN NEW YORK CITY ENFORCING SOCIAL DISTANCING (3 April 2020). Video Source: Bitchute.

MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL IN NEW YORK CITY WITH CORONAVIRUS PATIENTS (3 April 2020). Video Source: Bitchute.

⚠️#CoronaVirus Update⚠️#Spain is on the verge on passing #Italy with the most deceased COVID-19 patients per day.

It's been 800+ for a few days now.

This is the new hospital in #Madrid #COVID19 #COVID2019 #COVIDー19 #COVID_19 pic.twitter.com/ipmyVaeNPd

— Ghassan (@Baltahji) April 2, 2020

#CoronaUpdate | Kerala makes a mark. Elderly Couple aged 93 & 88 who were tested for COVID 19 along with other age related ailments & remained critical have now discharged from hospital. pic.twitter.com/8COoBDpck5

— Shailaja Teacher (@shailajateacher) April 3, 2020

My #COVID19 experience:

40/50s common, not just elderly. Elev RR, sats 80s but alert/talking/appear well. Present late. Deteriorate~day 7. Radiological changes progress rapidly w/sudden deterioration (hours). Lac often ok.

Morally heartwrenching & the storm has barely started..

— Becks Cranfield (@EmergencyMedDr) April 2, 2020

Thieves raid 92-year-old woman's home in coronavirus scam, tricking her into believing her neighbour had died https://t.co/kVLfmMeRhS

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) April 3, 2020

Due to #COVID19 lockdown, many people are starving. I receive countless calls from struggling families. Some boda boda riders are helping us pick items from supermarkets & deliver to some elderly, PWDs & families of slain comrades. We've now asked the @MinofHealthUG to pick items pic.twitter.com/QIuAH9y2kJ

— BOBI WINE (@HEBobiwine) April 3, 2020

Not only is the pandemic real, but it is highlighting and testing weaknesses and blind spots in our societies. The insensitivity shown by some toward the elderly is terrible. My heart goes out to every person who is alone in a nursing home as this disease ravages these institutions, especially if these older people are cut off from their friends and families. Older people are devalued because of their limited productive capacity in a broken system. Those who use that metric to decide who will live and die exhibit the bankrupt mindset of a bankrupt economy.

Covid-19: Fury as Toby Young says saving elderly is 'irresponsible' use of cash https://t.co/3bJUmCyL6C

— sue#NHSLove (@SueSuezep) March 31, 2020

Pivot away from the Macro, toward the Micro

That bankrupt economy will likely collapse. The time frame for the pandemic is likely two years, followed by an economic depression, social transformation, and possible wars. Life is not likely to return to 'normal' as we knew it for another decade.

We need to recover lost skills, lost techniques in food cultivation, preparation and storage. We need to rebuild lost industrial capabilities. And we need to stop expecting our governments to do everything for us and the mainstream media to spoonfeed us pablum information. Individuals have to evolve, as do their governments.

Blaming our leaders is a coping mechanism, and provides a false illusion of control which in fact weakens us. With our eyes always fixed in fear on top-down political action and abstraction, we become weak and susceptible to totalitarianism. Stop blaming the evil fascist President Trump, or the cabal, or the Deep State. Focus on the microcosm. Work online to develop and strengthen community-level networks and initiatives in the virtual space. Reach out by telephone to ensure that seniors, impoverished and isolated people in your community are supported and protected.

Coronavirus Testing at Croke Park, Dublin

Coronavirus Testing Centre In Dublin Ireland (24 March 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

Coronavirus Fragments 11: The Hidden Blessings of Disillusionment

Image Source: 4chan.

Like the German prepper above with normies looking on, we are divided between those who believe official and unofficial narratives about the nCov pandemic. Sadly, the prepper - who looks like a lunatic - is right, and those around him are wrong.

For those with confidence in our authorities, it is hard to imagine that Underground information could be true, when it is not properly verified or connected to mainstream reports.

#coronavirusontario #COVID19Ontario #SocialDistanacing pic.twitter.com/U0nrxYbnPc

— Nancy Henry (@nancyhenry_) March 22, 2020

That division between citizens depends on whether the system has been good to them. Only those who have previously been thrust into the outer darkness believe that the darkness is there. Some libertarian commentators think the darkness is real, but the virus is not; they believe that the pandemic will be a red pill for a lot of people, as the 2008 recession or 9/11 were for others before them. Most economic commentators agree that the 'everything bubble' was unsustainable; the economy will collapse and never be the same again.

Image Source: pinterest.

New Post at The Dragonfly: Lessons from Dune in Pandemic Survival

Image Source: Worthpoint.

I have a new post up at The Dragonfly:

The Golden Path of the Divine Masculine
The post explores the idea that the coronavirus epidemic raises questions about humanity's survival and it examines the Dune books' formula for that survival, the 'golden path.' I discuss the golden path already afoot in virtual communities. I also comment on the challenges which this viral outbreak poses to the principles of the current order.

"The spice must flow." Image Source: Reddit.

See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.


See all posts in the What's Left Over? series on materialism and anti-materialism in technological advancement.

See Spot Run

Mass. State Police Tested Out Boston Dynamics’ Spot The Robot Dog. (26 November 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

Boston Dynamics have perfected their robot dog, Spot, which can open doors and enter homes. In April of this year, BD's CEO, Marc Raibert, announced that Spot and another robot, Handle, were coming to the commercial market in 2019.

The Best Robots on Four Legs with Marc Raibert (Boston Dynamics) (19 April 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

In September, Boston Dynamics announced they would begin leasing Spot to select organizations and individuals. The robot dogs are working with were just tested by the Massachusetts State Police bomb squad. The police used the robots in two real life incidents.

In the video below, RT commentator Michael William Lebron, aka Lionel, fears that the robots could begin operating autonomously if their AI control systems were to get out of control.

Police robots designed to be 'cute' and 'familiar' – Lionel (27 November 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

New Post at The Dragonfly: The Long Gameplay

Image Source: imdb.

I have a new post up at The Dragonfly:

The Long Gameplay

This post on video gamers' skills peripherally considers a topic I have been discussing on this blog, namely, that the way we interact with technology is intimate, disturbing, and involves a global meditation on our species' long term survival.

The human-tech interface concerns how we use tools to augment our five senses. I suspect that two camps will emerge from this process. One group, the anti-materialists, will use technology to enhance our organic capabilities. The other group, the materialists, will evolve into cyborgs and will cultivate artificial versions of those organic capabilities.

Image Source: imdb.

The People Who Want to Microchip People

Image Source: CBS News.

In an earlier post, I noted how the BBC is promoting human microchipping as well as larger tech-body implants. Their poster boy for this cause, colour blind guy, Neil Harbisson, merits a special 'cyborg' passport status.

Image Source: NYT.

Image Source: Munsell Color.

The subcutaneous chip was first developed by Siemens in the United States. The human microchip implant was invented by Kevin Warwick: "He is known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, and has also done research concerning robotics." You can read backgrounders on human microchip technology, here and here.

If this practice becomes widely accepted, it will become an automatic, mainstream practice, and children will be microchipped at birth. There are already brain chips which can affect moods and behaviour. Let this go further, and subcutaneous implants will become an organic user interface. They will also constitute an assault on the integrity of the bodies and minds of individuals both as individuals, and as members of society. Soon, it won't be necessary to talk about human rights and freedoms, because the preconditions for them will be medically removed and technically absent. For a disturbing, unconfirmed original sources on this endgame, see here.

The BBC promoting microchipping for Humans (29 January 2015). Video Source: Youtube.

The Body, Colonized

China Behavior Rating System V/S Sweden Microchip implants | Must watch technology (18 June 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Of course, rhetoric which promotes rights and freedoms will remain. The political speeches will continue, but rights and freedoms will be erased in reality. Lip service will be paid to these archaic constructions until it is no longer necessary to do so, and people have forgotten them, or been reprogrammed. Expect whatever slavery that follows to be labeled as a new type of freedom. The Chinese have a saying about manipulation and the acquisition of power: point to a deer, and call it a horse.

Human microchipping is part of a new field called 'biointerfaced nano-engineering.' Another catch-all term is 'wearables,' created by firms like Proteus and MC10. This is not the path to convenience, progress or enlightenment. It is the path to slavery. Although it seems that the human body must become the next technological platform, it is not inevitable. Do not do it. Do not accept it.

This post is not a Luddite screed. It is a plea to save the best potentials of technology and keep them on a course that will not destroy us. We are entering a new stage in the Tech Revolution, in which we have to learn to take responsibility for progress and innovation. Thus far, citizens have been accepting actors on the receiving end of research projects released via big tech companies. These were experimental prototypes, presented as exciting consumer goods. Electronic goods were marketed with various political and socio-economic messages to make them palatable in the capitalist endeavour to build self-identity from the outside in.

Image Source: Go into the Story.

We were entranced in the first decades of the Tech Revolution by the gadgets and rapid software upgrades. Most people believed in the opening act that they acted as consumers inside the pre-existing capitalist model. They did not understand that that old system had already been effectively outdated and internally destroyed; only an illusory shell of that model persists as a form of mass behavioural control.

We can all be forgiven for assuming that consumerism was how tech was introduced into our reality. But it never was.

Although glitzy, futuristic marketing campaigns created the illusion that technology turned people into empowered, connected consumers, each new level of hardware and software between the 1980s and the 2010s blinded technophiles to the fact that they were never consumers at all. They were increasingly-conditioned lab rats, running through monitored environments, inside the biggest human behavioural study ever conducted.

Now, things must change. It is time to wake up. It is time to grow up. We can be forgiven for trusting those big corporations, helmed by intelligence agencies and Promethean research groups, as benevolent guides in the opening act of the Tech Revolution.

Image Source: Film Connection.

But we cannot be forgiven if we sleepwalk into Act Two, and deliver our children into immersive slavery. In transhumanism, the commodity is not the microchip or its successor technologies. The commodity will be a new type of interbody imperialism and colonization, developed under the banner of building safer, more efficient societies. This will be a coercive, predictable, micro-legalized system, based on live feed maps of humankind's biological processes, mass consciousness, and psychological and physical reactions as a collective of living beings.

There has to be a moment when we recognize that the integrity of our bodies and souls is worth more than a few everyday conveniences. We are not meant to become 'the Borg.' Planting a gadget in your body is not a form of self-improvement that is good for the environment. To believe this reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the body as an environment in itself, and of the body as an organism functioning within the larger natural environment.

I suspect that what will happen is that humankind will split into two camps. One group will absorb technology fully into the mind and body with erotic abandon. They will love the quasi-sexual interface, and will mistake the enhanced experience for an authentic upgrade.

Can Energy Be Moral?

Scientists have begun to prove that quantum entanglement can be demonstrated at macro levels. Could the same be said for the observer effect? Image Source: Develop Good Habits.

To my readers, I have a new post up at Vocal Media, concerning 2018 scientific research which has proven that quantum entanglement can be taken to the macro level:

How Many Saints Are There in Outer Space?

In that post, I argue that the endgame of the current Tech Revolution is to reach a Kardashev Civilization Level I, in which a tech-harmonized global society would be able to consume and harness the energy of the entire planet.

Space and Struggle to Become Responsible

Vice President Pence Unveils U.S. Space Force Plans (C-SPAN) (9 August 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

The news is full of space headlines. On 9 August, the American Vice President Mike Pence announced that the United States will build a sixth branch of its armed forces, a "space force" to "prepare for the next battlefield." The full statement is here.

In Millennial Eyes 6: The Antarctic Fourth Reich and the Great Game

Frank Hurley's photograph, taken between 1914 and 1916, of Antarctic explorer Dr. Leonard Hussey with Samson - one of the Canadian sled-dogs on Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Endurance expedition. Image Source: Pinterest via Royal Geographical Society.

Today's post continues my coverage of the Millennial Antarctic Fourth Reich conspiracy theory and its meaning in terms of Internet psycho-politics. In this case, I will describe how this conspiracy theory relates to the revival of the 19th century contest between Britain and Russia for Asian lands and wealth: the Great Game.

I argue that Antarctica now replaces Central Asia, to serve as a cipher in a new virtual Great Game. The Antarctic Fourth Reich conspiracy theory appears to be an alarming Russian-sourced or pro-Russian form of propaganda, which endorses and then moves past the pro-Trump agenda, to encourage Americans to destroy their own country from within. The Fourth Reich theory also channels a folkloric and racist renewal of Anglospheric nationalism, in which Vladimir Putin is viewed as a strategic ally.

The Fourth Reich conspiracy theory depends heavily on the Nazis' merger of the occult, politics, and technology. Secrets of the Third Reich: The Rediscovery of Vimanas (uploaded 11 February 2013). Video Source: Youtube.

The conspiracy theory also seeks to isolate the Anglosphere from the Europeans. It hinges on the supposed historic continuation of German Nazism (with a conspicuous, ahistorical failure to mention Italian fascism, Japan, or affiliated Axis powers from World War II) and returns Anglospheric opinion of the Russians to the sympathetic year of 1944.

Despite the apparent Russian dominance of this online extravaganza, the Anglospheric aspect of the Fourth Reich narrative has an elusive introspective quality which may excise the Russian factor and even nationalist racism. That is, something about this conspiracy theory involves America, the UK, and affiliated Commonwealth countries chewing over internal identity in light of contemporary politics and evolving global techno-economies and societies. The outcome of that muddled cultural reevaluation may be completely independent and unexpected, regardless of whether or not the Russians try to interfere with, or benefit from, this process.

Good Morning Pyongyang

Good Morning Pyongyang, North Korea © by Alexandre Spalaikovitch/Yemaya Productions. Reproduced non-commercially under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.

Today's post reveals the incredible city-wide wake-up call broadcast at 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. in Pyongyang, North Korea. It looks and sounds a lot like Blade Runner, which drew heavily from 1980s' Asian aesthetic influences. Compare to my similar posts, 1968 on the Way to 2019 and Kowloon Walled City, the Faux and the Real. See this interview for some reflections from North Korean defectors on what life was like there before they left for South Korea, by way of China.

It's 5:00am in Pyongyang, North Korea. Listen to the alarm that wakes the area https://t.co/Bdu709ngq4

— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) April 25, 2017

Stargate Tweets, Mysteries and Rumours

A Stargate? Image Source: Twitter / iReport/CNN.

At present, there is a very strange dis/information eruption on Twitter, coming from a single account, KibBitzLaw. Whoever is running this account is mingling a giant conspiracy theory with current affairs at breakneck pace (hat tip: The Outer Light). This person is threatening top level officials with information leaks of the most outlandish kind. WikiLeaks is mentioned, as is Chelsea / Bradley Manning. The Tweeter also apparently visited 4chan today, archived here, and stated: "This is not a joke." Tonight's tweets were dedicated to Seth Rich, the murdered Democratic National Committee staffer.

Alright, who is ready for #STARGATE truth?

— victoryofthelight (@KibBitzLaw) May 15, 2017

There are weirdos all over the Internet, so one more ranting conspiracy theorist should not matter. The only problem is that this account - which was created in March, 2009 - for some time had, as its first and only follower, former president Barack Obama. The account was previously followed by members of the mainstream media and Democrats running for Congress. It lay quiet for some time, with some tweets during the US election in 2016, and suddenly exploded with activity this month. The account was mentioned today (14 May 2017) on Reddit, here.

WikiLeaks: Vault 7 Tests the CIA

Image Source: The Intercept.

This morning at 9 a.m. Eastern, WikiLeaks released the biggest intelligence information dump in history (here). The dump of 8,761 documents, dating from 2013 to 2016, and entitled 'Vault 7' reveals how the US Central Intelligence Agency spies on citizens through almost all consumer technology. The CIA hacks, and can control, modern cars and trucks, iPhones, iPads, and Android phones.

Preview of Speculative Reality

Increasingly impressed with anyone who manages to write near-future SF under these conditions pic.twitter.com/pGWT69EeZB

— rosa would have won (@Kosmogrrrl) February 17, 2017

This tweet is a preview of an upcoming post on perception, experience and speculative reality.

Time and Politics 21: Visits from the Dark-Haired Girl

The Dark Haired Girl by Philip K. Dick (published posthumously in 1989). In his Exegesis (published posthumously 2011), Dick admitted that the dark-haired girl who showed him the larger frame of spacetime and predicted totalitarian America was his dead twin sister. Image Source: Wiki.

This post follows on my post on Wuthering Heights, The Brontë Effect (16 September 2016), to explore the implications of inhabiting time as it really as, not as we perceive it. The 'Brontë Effect,' as I coined the term with reference to Dia Sobin's words, describes the 'reverberating Gestalt' one experiences after reading a work of powerful fiction such as Wuthering Heights, which makes one aware of compressed or overlapping time, temporal identities, and spacetime continua in different perceived realities.

To cross the boundaries, first of immediate, everyday perception, then of whole dimensions, then of multiverses, sounds far-fetched, but I have discussed what it means to live in reality while perceiving time in its whole dimensionality, and not as an arrow, here. From the 19th to the 20th centuries, the fourth dimension has been portrayed by writers elsewhere - by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, Robert Heinlein, among many others - and notably by Philip K. Dick in "A World of Talent" (1954), which I have described here. In that story, a precognitive boy is terrified by appearances of 'others.' At first, the reader assumes the boy is schizoid and hallucinating, but these are in fact other versions of himself at different ages. He can see all versions of himself, past, present and future.

A single event in time, perceived by an observer: "Subdivision of Minkowski spacetime with respect to an event in four disjoint sets. The light cone, the absolute future, the absolute past, and elsewhere. The terminology is from Sard (1970)." Image Source: Wiki.

Multiple events in time, perceived by an observer who is moving through spacetime. In the fourth dimension, an 'event' is an intersection between space and time, following a continuum, with each event causally relative to the next: "In modern physics, space and time are unified in a four-dimensional Minkowski continuum called spacetime, whose metric treats the time dimension differently from the three spatial dimensions." The above gif shows "[t]he momentarily co-moving inertial frames along the trajectory ('world line') of a rapidly accelerating observer (center). The vertical direction indicates time, while the horizontal indicates distance, the dashed line is the spacetime of the observer. The small dots are specific events in spacetime."

Our souls know a larger experience of space and time; and stories about souls raise perceptional and ethical questions about that larger experience. In an interview, one of Dick's ex-wives, Kleo Mini, stated that all of Dick's novels concerned the "internal workings of the soul .... He wrote about people's souls, not a word I use lightly."

Dick was fascinated by self-alienation and social alienation, the blind spot when you recognized neither your own soul, nor your place in the world. To survive that moral test, he considered how characters' souls might be externalized and projected back at them as different characters - exactly as Catherine and Heathcliff are projected upon one another in Wuthering Heights. In Dick's view, if your soul was personified outside you, you might fall in love with it, but you would not necessarily accept everything about it. You might hate it and not reconcile with it, which would be heart-breaking, torturous, and tragic.

Image Source: Frith Luton.

Image Source: Carl Jung.

Dick was influenced by unsolved soul puzzles with numinous qualities, which he first encountered in the work of science fiction writer, A. E. van Vogt, and later in the writings of Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who thought that people were haunted by the shadow sides of their souls. Jung argued that for people to become psychologically and socially healthy, they must reconcile with their shadow. He further claimed that these shadows could embody an outer experience with the opposite gender in the anima or animus.

In Jung's hetero-assumed schema, when men and women went out into the world seeking love, they encountered opposite-gendered characterizations of their own souls. Jung theorized that men projected their soul's inner female back upon themselves; and women projected their inner male back upon themselves. Better love relationships depended on an ability to reconcile with one's opposite-gendered soul mirrors, such that one found increasingly sophisticated versions of one's mirror in the world. Men could progress through four anima soul shadow archetypes: Eve (the object of desire, who also reflects the security or insecurity around the man's mother); Helen (a woman who is externally able and beautiful, but internally lacking in virtue, faith, or imagination); Mary (a virtuous woman, who differentiates between lust and love); and Sophia (a woman of wisdom, who encompasses positive and negative qualities without being condemned). For women, the challenge was develop her inner masculine, so that she would externally find a man of physical power; then a capable man of action, a war hero or hunter; then a man of the mind, a professor, clergyman or orator; and finally, a man of hermetic enlightenment, one who could awaken in the woman a spiritual reconciliation between her soul's conscious and unconscious.

Image Source: Find a Grave.

In Jungian terms, the love relationship was a moral path in which a human being developed his or her own soul. Love was always self-referential, a struggle to improve and expand oneself spiritually, while other people became external reflections of, and catalysts in, the individual's internal process. All of this hinged on coping with the unseen, and interacting concretely or nebulously with elements of ourselves which exist beyond our linear experience of time. For Dick, the shadow anima was embodied not in a lover or wife, but in his twin sister, Jane Charlotte Dick, who died in infancy. Her presence haunted him all his life. She took form in characters in his work; he granted her far-seeing and Deus ex Machina roles. He further considered temporal aspects of the projected soul because Jane was dead. She was Philip's phantom agent, reporting from the other side. Because of Jane's influence on the famous author, she also inspired other writers. Perhaps this was why Dick considered the anima-animus not in terms of romance - as in Wuthering Heights - but in terms of society and politics.

Image of the Day: Godzilla: Rage Across Time

Image Source: Nerdist.

Now trending on Twitter, THAT is a comic book cover! This is IDW's Godzilla: Rage Across Time #1, written by Jeremy Robinson, with art by Matt Frank, published 24 August 2016. The book sees the giant lizard transported to different time periods, and is getting rave reviews from sites such as The Moon is a Dead World. Outright Geekery explains how a 1950s' nuclear monster has traveled in this first issue back to the 13th century:

"In 1954 Ishiro Honda unleashed his atom bomb allegory Gojira on the world. In the sixty years that followed the titular character of that terrifying monster-noir has been many things; archetypal force of nature, protector of children, even a militant environmentalist (Gojira vs Hedorah aka Godzilla vs The Smog Monster). ... Beyond all of that however, the irrepressible king of all daikaiju has become a beloved international cultural icon. In his homeland, the big guy has become something akin to a traditional folktale.

It is this aspect of Godzilla that is at the forefront of this first issue of IDW’s Godzilla Rage Across Time. A new mini-series that puts everyone’s favorite radioactive giant badass lizard into various historic periods. ... [In the first issue,] writer Jeremy Robinson and artist Matt Frank ... set this first installment in the land of Godzilla’s birth during the first Mongol invasion of 1274.

Kublai Khan’s horde, along with two evil kaiju, have arrived at Hakata Bay under the command of 'Dragon Master' Zhenjin Khan. Two feuding heroes, samurai Gorou Suda and ninja Akio of the Bamboo Forest must go on a quest to save Japan by awakening a mighty champion who will vanquish the invaders."

Need a kaiju fix? Godzilla: Rage Across Time #1 might be artist Matt Frank's best work. vi… https://t.co/pXpd2SZIdb pic.twitter.com/HrjmGWw2HV

— Ꮸ Ꮍ Ꮹ N Ꮜ Ꭶ (@Cygnus76) August 24, 2016

Godzilla: Rage Across Time #1 (page 1) © IDW. Click to enlarge. Image Source: deviantART. Full opening page preview at SciFi Japan.

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The Canals of Earth

A great cover for Martian Comics #5 (2016) with art by David A. Frizell is a homage to the classic film, A Voyage to the Moon (1902). Image Source: Martian Lit.

See images today from a Kickstarter campaign for a comic book about Martians' view of Earth, The Canals of Earth!

"Humans have long looked to the sky and wondered about Mars. What if someone was looking back? The Canals of Earth is the story of how Mars sees Earth, running from Martian prehistory to its space age. We begin in Martian prehistory, when Martians looked to the skies and imagined Earth as a goddess. We see some of the Martian mythology about Earth, tied to the invention of writing. We then see Martian science-fiction, in which they imagined aliens in their own image."

This comic, fifth in the series Martian Comics (2014-present; details here) is written by Julian Darius, with art by Mansjur Daman and colours by Diego Rodriguez. Darius has a doctorate in English Literature and founded the Sequart Organization, which promotes sequential artwork in graphic novels and comic books as a legitimate art form. You can still support the Canals of Earth project here until 27 April 2016.

While the imagery of the comic's cover is taken from the turn-of-the-century French film, A Voyage to the Moon (see it below), the book's title is taken from late 19th century studies that there were canals on Mars, based on observations of the Red Planet by astronomers Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910), Percival Lowell (1855-1916), and Charles E. Burton (1846-1882).

First page (click to enlarge). Image Source: Martian Lit.

Martian Comics #5. Image Source: Kickstarter.

Kickstarter promo video, Martian Comics #5, The Canals of Earth!

The iconic image of the Man in the Moon from Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902). Image Source: Wiki.

Anniversaries: The Last Voyage of the Space Shuttle Discovery

Video Source: William Shatner via Youtube.

It seems like yesterday, but on 9 March 2011, five years ago today, the first of three American space shuttles retired. Above, hear William Shatner's wake-up call to the crew of Discovery on 7 March 2011, while they were still in orbit, but soon to come home for the final time.

In 1990, the Discovery crew installed and later maintained the Hubble Space Telescope, which hugely expanded our view of the stars. Image Source: flickr.

Built in 1979, the spacecraft was named after four great ships from the European age of exploration: she took her name from HMS Discovery, commanded by Captain James Cook during his final voyage from 1776 to 1779; Henry Hudson's Discovery, used in 1610–1611 to explore Hudson's Bay and search for the Northwest Passage; the HMS Discovery of the 1875–1876 British Arctic Expedition to the North Pole; and RRS Discovery, which led the 1901–1904 "Discovery Expedition" to Antarctica.

Image Source: The Atlantic.