Out of the Silent Planet
C S Lewis
1938
Science Fiction
In Short: Elwin Ransom, Professor of Philology, is kidnapped on a walking tour and taken to the planet Malacandra (Mars) by a pair of immoral scientists, intended as a human sacrifice. While there, Ransom escapes, and forms strong bonds with the people of the planet, eventually meeting Oyarsa, ruler of Malacandra.
My Review:
Out of the Silent Planet is fantastic, in all senses of the word. Not only is it rich in detail and a beautiful, beautifully described world, but it is an early version of science fiction - almost more fantasy than science fiction. Its technology hovers between amusing and impressive, but its ideas and story are what carry it along.
The plot is simple: Ransom, captured and taken to Mars by two scientists, escapes and is led eventually to Mars' leader. The story is straightforward, with no divergences. Ransom's walking tour through the English countryside is not quite waved away as a frame for the actual story, but it's a certainly carefully constructed excuse for the story to happen. No one knows where Ransom is or how to contact him, his sabbatical is a year long, and he's got no relatives to ask after him. Clearly, he is the perfect specimen for a kidnapping-for-human-Martian-sacrifice.
The journey to Mars is, in fact, where the beauty begins. Ransom notes how bright it is on the shuttle, and one of our Depraved Scientists asks nastily, "forgotten the sun?" Space is painted as bright, as clear, as freer than Earth. Malacandra - alternately, Mars - is similar. Ransom is struck by its beauty: its green mountains, its pale sky, its bright purple trees, its many valleys and forests and streams. It is a paradise almost of the Romantic era, with a few tweaks: lush "greenery" (purplery?) abounds, the ground is never muddy and always covered in Martian heather (pale pink), and in the night, Jupiter rises in a shine of glory through the asteroid belt.
Lewis builds narratives that can work both at an allegorical level and a story level. So it is with his Narnia series, and so, of course, it is with his Space Trilogy. Mars has three types of people, all independant species, all sentient and rational. They live under and serve the eldil (who may be considered lesser angels), who live under and serve Oyarsa (presumably a greater angel/archangel), who answers to Maleldil (= God). The allegory is not clear at the beginning, but by the time Ransom stands in front of Oyarsa, explaining his journey and apologizing for his fellow Earth-people, the dialogue makes it clear. Stories that mention a great eldil that fell, and had to be bound, and how freely all Martian people give to each other and naturally, instinctually do right - all these stories are clear allegories that, while religious in nature, fit well to the universe they're constructed to.
Ransom is impressed by the Martian people, but also intimidated by them and automatically others them. He admits frequently how little he understands them, but makes mention of getting used to them. "It was a long time until I learned to read the Malacandran face," he says. But his philological background is his breakthrough: from his first encounter with a Malacandran, he begins learning the langauge immediately. "Handra" means "earth" - "Malac" has yet to be defined. People are "hnau", and the different types of Martian people all have their own names, and languages. Very little culture, though: science fiction this might be, but Lewis holds to the old belief that nature and technology stand in opposition.
Out of the Silent Planet is first in a series of three. It may easily be read alone, and indeed the next book was written five years later. It is worth reading, if only for the imagery. Despite my own thoughts on allegory being similar to Tolkein's ("I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence."), I didn't mind it in this book: the double-reading of Malacandra's spiritual hierarchy is neither preachy nor does it obstruct the narrative. It grows out of the narrative, and is fairly unobjectionable.
Finally, it is a good story, well-written, on a beautiful and alien world. What more can one want from Science Fiction?
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Bar Fight at the Prop
Well, then there was the time I got into a bar-fight stone-cold sober.
The club-and-bar was Chinese, which meant it was crammed into a place about the size of my bedroom back at home, only a little longer and a little fatter. It was mostly dark, with lights under the tables and along the walls at waist-level, and behind the bar, so you couldn’t see much too well, and everyone’s face was bottom-lit, so we all looked funny – everybody with little triangles of light on their faces except the dancers, who blent into one great roiling strobe-lit mass.
The place was called Propaganda.
I didn’t drink back then, which for a college student was weird. The rest of the Americans kept asking me, “don’t you want something?” “c’mon, I’ll pay for it.” “not even just a coke?” No, not even just a coke – the Prop didn’t have a cover charge, so they scalped on drinks. I wasn’t paying twenty kuai for a coke, not when you could get one for five kuai at the convenience store next-door.
For an American, China is cheap. So when we, all Americans, all here to study, had dinner back on campus, it was maybe 20 kuai a head - $2.50 per person. And when we, all Americans, all here to "study," returned to our rooms, it was fairly inevitable that, on the way back, someone or other would suggest, "hey, guys! Wanna go to the Prop tonight?"
Most of us did. The ones who didn't - well, it was obvious why they didn't come along. Two married women. One geek. The chaperoning professor. Everyone else piled together by the glass doors to outside, waited impatiently for Things to be dropped off in Rooms, then, in a conglomerate amoeba, rounded the dorm's corner, passed through the campus gate, and started down Chengfu Lu toward Wudaokou.
Any and every city has its own districts, each with reputations to uphold. Wudaokou is known as the student district, for the ten-some major colleges within walking distance; its reputation, of course, is built on what students want. Restaurants. Tea shops. Clubs. Clothings stores. Food stores. Stores for everything else - one devoted to cell phones, another to combs, a third to wispy clothing. Food carts stop in the middle of the sidewalks - or, if they're more enterprising, the streets. People and bicycles and food and tiny buildings and cars all crowd on the once white, but now spit-grey sidewalk tiles. The metro line runs overhead, and the train tracks run below-beside it; trains run by periodically. Passenger trains are always red.
This being a city, nothing stops running at night. Wudaokou picks up, in fact: the night market opens; people drag blankets full of clothes, books, writing pads, fruit, baby toys, candles, scarves, everythings, and spread out like picnics on the sidewalk. Bicycles park in long, rusty rows, and outside Cool Hangouts crowds of young people stand and smoke and talk.
The Prop was definitely Cool. It couldn't have been more than fifteen feet wide, squished between a Seven-Eleven on the one side and a tea-shop on the other. (The Seven-Eleven was deemed almost as Cool as the Prop, actually.) It served as club and bar for both foreigners and locals - for any students coming by. The cover charge was 25 kuai - three dollars.
Propaganda outside was small, city-soot-stained, with a big red star hung by the door and tall iron shutters soldered above. Propaganda inside was smaller - there was a bar, there were booths, and the space between the two was just enough for one person to walk, or two people to squeeze past each other. Everything was done up in blue light, and at the back, there were stairs down.
We, still in our group, took the stairs down. A huge, heavy steel door was at the bottom; shoving it open brought a blast of music. We, still grouped, piled through.
A bar is a bar is a bar, so of course people started drinking. I didn't. I went and danced, then got tired and sat. There were tables and chairs down here, and our group commandeered one, and the drinkers huddled around it territorially like it was Home Base. They tagged foreigners to come and talk with us; they mostly ignored locals, since none of this group spoke Chinese all that well. (Of course: we'd left the geek back at the dorm.)
The evening wore on, and got drunker and drunker. I was on my second "naw, you go ahead and dance, I'm tired," my fourth " no, go ahead, keep talking, it's fine," - everyone talks to the sober person - and my two hundredth "no, I don't want to drink," when finally, and probably understandably, I accepted. "Fine, if you really wanna get me a Coke, sure."
The boy who'd been badgering me went to the bar, pleased as punch he'd finally gotten me to get something. Well, gotten to get me something, but when you've had sixteen shots as 30 kuai apiece, you don't mind details like that so much. He came back, balancing two more shots in one hand, and stretched out the Coke to me in the other. "Sure y'don't want something in that?"
"Yes," I said, and smiled patiently (god! boys!) and took the drink.
Here, of course, shenanigans struck. As will often happen in crowded rooms, there was a break in the noise, or maybe in the drunk-listening continuum. What happened was that Dan, the guy next to the one that'd gotten me the Coke, heard that it wasn't spiked.
"Aw, man, that's no fun!" he said, and tipped his own drink into my cup.
Both drinks were overfull. And I didn't want Coke and vodka all over me, so I shoved the drink back at Dan. "Dude, what the hell're you doing?"
Dan probably thought - I don't even know what he probably thought. But maybe he got knocked from behind, or maybe he was just pissed his ploy hadn't worked; he shoved the glass back at me ("I ain't takin' that, it's yours") and then I back at him and somewhere in there someone dropped the glass, splashing coke and vodka over both of us anyhow, and getting broken glass all over besides.
Dan, of course, barely noticed. He just kept yelling, and I, not about to be out-yelled by a drunk, kept yelling back. Someone with more sense than both of us shoved us out of the room, through the heavy steel door, up the stairs, through the blue room, and out onto the sidewalk.
And that's where we both shut up. Because in the crowded night market, Chinese people selling and buying and walking three abreast and stopping to smoke by the Prop - yeah, they were all interested in seeing a tall black guy and a small white girl yell at each other while picking broken glass off their jeans.
The first thing you learn as a foreigner in China is this: you are a novelty.
And as drunk as Dan was, he was as tired of being a novelty as I was. So we simmered down. We had a civil discussion about drunkness and China and the existance or nonexistance of ADD and ADHD and our places in the school and the universe and why we were here and where was everyone else.
Everyone else was back inside, except for the guy who'd steered us out. He was off smoking with the locals, watching us, and being watched watching us.
We talked. Dan, exhausted, or maybe just drunk, sat down, then lay back on the sidewalk to continue the discussion. And I, smelling like smoke and bar and Coke and vodka, tiny scratches on my fingers from picking glass slivers out of my jeans - I was just spiteful enough not to tell him: Chinese sidewalks are spit-grey for a reason.
[words: 1321]
[due: 2/10/2010]
The club-and-bar was Chinese, which meant it was crammed into a place about the size of my bedroom back at home, only a little longer and a little fatter. It was mostly dark, with lights under the tables and along the walls at waist-level, and behind the bar, so you couldn’t see much too well, and everyone’s face was bottom-lit, so we all looked funny – everybody with little triangles of light on their faces except the dancers, who blent into one great roiling strobe-lit mass.
The place was called Propaganda.
I didn’t drink back then, which for a college student was weird. The rest of the Americans kept asking me, “don’t you want something?” “c’mon, I’ll pay for it.” “not even just a coke?” No, not even just a coke – the Prop didn’t have a cover charge, so they scalped on drinks. I wasn’t paying twenty kuai for a coke, not when you could get one for five kuai at the convenience store next-door.
For an American, China is cheap. So when we, all Americans, all here to study, had dinner back on campus, it was maybe 20 kuai a head - $2.50 per person. And when we, all Americans, all here to "study," returned to our rooms, it was fairly inevitable that, on the way back, someone or other would suggest, "hey, guys! Wanna go to the Prop tonight?"
Most of us did. The ones who didn't - well, it was obvious why they didn't come along. Two married women. One geek. The chaperoning professor. Everyone else piled together by the glass doors to outside, waited impatiently for Things to be dropped off in Rooms, then, in a conglomerate amoeba, rounded the dorm's corner, passed through the campus gate, and started down Chengfu Lu toward Wudaokou.
Any and every city has its own districts, each with reputations to uphold. Wudaokou is known as the student district, for the ten-some major colleges within walking distance; its reputation, of course, is built on what students want. Restaurants. Tea shops. Clubs. Clothings stores. Food stores. Stores for everything else - one devoted to cell phones, another to combs, a third to wispy clothing. Food carts stop in the middle of the sidewalks - or, if they're more enterprising, the streets. People and bicycles and food and tiny buildings and cars all crowd on the once white, but now spit-grey sidewalk tiles. The metro line runs overhead, and the train tracks run below-beside it; trains run by periodically. Passenger trains are always red.
This being a city, nothing stops running at night. Wudaokou picks up, in fact: the night market opens; people drag blankets full of clothes, books, writing pads, fruit, baby toys, candles, scarves, everythings, and spread out like picnics on the sidewalk. Bicycles park in long, rusty rows, and outside Cool Hangouts crowds of young people stand and smoke and talk.
The Prop was definitely Cool. It couldn't have been more than fifteen feet wide, squished between a Seven-Eleven on the one side and a tea-shop on the other. (The Seven-Eleven was deemed almost as Cool as the Prop, actually.) It served as club and bar for both foreigners and locals - for any students coming by. The cover charge was 25 kuai - three dollars.
Propaganda outside was small, city-soot-stained, with a big red star hung by the door and tall iron shutters soldered above. Propaganda inside was smaller - there was a bar, there were booths, and the space between the two was just enough for one person to walk, or two people to squeeze past each other. Everything was done up in blue light, and at the back, there were stairs down.
We, still in our group, took the stairs down. A huge, heavy steel door was at the bottom; shoving it open brought a blast of music. We, still grouped, piled through.
A bar is a bar is a bar, so of course people started drinking. I didn't. I went and danced, then got tired and sat. There were tables and chairs down here, and our group commandeered one, and the drinkers huddled around it territorially like it was Home Base. They tagged foreigners to come and talk with us; they mostly ignored locals, since none of this group spoke Chinese all that well. (Of course: we'd left the geek back at the dorm.)
The evening wore on, and got drunker and drunker. I was on my second "naw, you go ahead and dance, I'm tired," my fourth " no, go ahead, keep talking, it's fine," - everyone talks to the sober person - and my two hundredth "no, I don't want to drink," when finally, and probably understandably, I accepted. "Fine, if you really wanna get me a Coke, sure."
The boy who'd been badgering me went to the bar, pleased as punch he'd finally gotten me to get something. Well, gotten to get me something, but when you've had sixteen shots as 30 kuai apiece, you don't mind details like that so much. He came back, balancing two more shots in one hand, and stretched out the Coke to me in the other. "Sure y'don't want something in that?"
"Yes," I said, and smiled patiently (god! boys!) and took the drink.
Here, of course, shenanigans struck. As will often happen in crowded rooms, there was a break in the noise, or maybe in the drunk-listening continuum. What happened was that Dan, the guy next to the one that'd gotten me the Coke, heard that it wasn't spiked.
"Aw, man, that's no fun!" he said, and tipped his own drink into my cup.
Both drinks were overfull. And I didn't want Coke and vodka all over me, so I shoved the drink back at Dan. "Dude, what the hell're you doing?"
Dan probably thought - I don't even know what he probably thought. But maybe he got knocked from behind, or maybe he was just pissed his ploy hadn't worked; he shoved the glass back at me ("I ain't takin' that, it's yours") and then I back at him and somewhere in there someone dropped the glass, splashing coke and vodka over both of us anyhow, and getting broken glass all over besides.
Dan, of course, barely noticed. He just kept yelling, and I, not about to be out-yelled by a drunk, kept yelling back. Someone with more sense than both of us shoved us out of the room, through the heavy steel door, up the stairs, through the blue room, and out onto the sidewalk.
And that's where we both shut up. Because in the crowded night market, Chinese people selling and buying and walking three abreast and stopping to smoke by the Prop - yeah, they were all interested in seeing a tall black guy and a small white girl yell at each other while picking broken glass off their jeans.
The first thing you learn as a foreigner in China is this: you are a novelty.
And as drunk as Dan was, he was as tired of being a novelty as I was. So we simmered down. We had a civil discussion about drunkness and China and the existance or nonexistance of ADD and ADHD and our places in the school and the universe and why we were here and where was everyone else.
Everyone else was back inside, except for the guy who'd steered us out. He was off smoking with the locals, watching us, and being watched watching us.
We talked. Dan, exhausted, or maybe just drunk, sat down, then lay back on the sidewalk to continue the discussion. And I, smelling like smoke and bar and Coke and vodka, tiny scratches on my fingers from picking glass slivers out of my jeans - I was just spiteful enough not to tell him: Chinese sidewalks are spit-grey for a reason.
[words: 1321]
[due: 2/10/2010]
Saturday, February 6, 2010
for feb24
Note to self:
For Feb. 24th, the sketch of a person performing activity - if we can write ourselves, then I'll be writing how it is to knock snow off pine branches with another pine branch.
For Feb. 24th, the sketch of a person performing activity - if we can write ourselves, then I'll be writing how it is to knock snow off pine branches with another pine branch.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
more thoughts on Bar Fight at the Prop
More thoughts on Bar Fight at the Prop:
---- More details. Don't just jump into the action - describe the place in a couple more words; describe the evening, describe the dorm? Where did we come from.
---- The dialogue can be approximated. (I certainly don't remember all of it after three years.) The action should be as close to how I remember it as I can.
---- Suspense?
---- Conclusion. It ended in a silly argument - how to fit that in?
---- More details. Don't just jump into the action - describe the place in a couple more words; describe the evening, describe the dorm? Where did we come from.
---- The dialogue can be approximated. (I certainly don't remember all of it after three years.) The action should be as close to how I remember it as I can.
---- Suspense?
---- Conclusion. It ended in a silly argument - how to fit that in?
Monday, February 1, 2010
outline for Nonfiction Story Assignment
[outline for nonfiction story]
~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~
story: the bar"fight" at the Prop: China, ending
~:~:~:~:~
Well, then there was the time I got into a bar-fight stone-cold sober.
The club-and-bar was Chinese, which meant it was crammed into a place about the size of my bedroom back at home, only a little longer and a little fatter. It was mostly dark, with lights under the tables and along the walls at waist-level, and behind the bar, so you couldn’t see much too well, and everyone’s face was bottom-lit, so we all looked funny – everybody with little triangles of light on their faces except the dancers, who blent into one great roiling strobe-lit mass.
The place was called Propaganda.
I didn’t drink back then, which for a college student was weird. The rest of the Americans kept asking me, “don’t you want something?” “c’mon, I’ll pay for it.” “not even just a coke?” No, not even just a coke – the Prop didn’t have a cover charge, so they scalped on drinks. I wasn’t paying twenty kuai for a coke, not when you could get one for five kuai at the convenience store next-door.
~:~:~:~:~:~:~
(next: the actual dialogue between me and Dan and John(?).)
("crazy americans")
(John's drunk story when we walking back.)
setup --- dialogue --- more descrip at end?
~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~
story: the bar"fight" at the Prop: China, ending
~:~:~:~:~
Well, then there was the time I got into a bar-fight stone-cold sober.
The club-and-bar was Chinese, which meant it was crammed into a place about the size of my bedroom back at home, only a little longer and a little fatter. It was mostly dark, with lights under the tables and along the walls at waist-level, and behind the bar, so you couldn’t see much too well, and everyone’s face was bottom-lit, so we all looked funny – everybody with little triangles of light on their faces except the dancers, who blent into one great roiling strobe-lit mass.
The place was called Propaganda.
I didn’t drink back then, which for a college student was weird. The rest of the Americans kept asking me, “don’t you want something?” “c’mon, I’ll pay for it.” “not even just a coke?” No, not even just a coke – the Prop didn’t have a cover charge, so they scalped on drinks. I wasn’t paying twenty kuai for a coke, not when you could get one for five kuai at the convenience store next-door.
~:~:~:~:~:~:~
(next: the actual dialogue between me and Dan and John(?).)
("crazy americans")
(John's drunk story when we walking back.)
setup --- dialogue --- more descrip at end?
Five and a Half Hours
Five and a half hour later, I wake up.
I'm groggy and sticky-eyed, my braids are tangled in pillow, and I know however much more snoozing I do, it's not getting any better than this. So I get up, go to the bathroom, and make a list. Get these one-two-three-four -fifteen-sixteen-seventeen items done. The first is coffee. Okay, go.
(Five and a half hours after what? After more "I love you"s and more "please find someone else"s. Five an a half hours after I call my friend on the phone and talk for another hour and a half, losing sleep for both of us all the while but this is what friends are for, right? I go to bed relieved.)
Large mocha Frappuchino. Cold sweet coffe with chocolate in it. The barista forgets, and has to be asked, to pour chocolate sauce on top. "The more chocolate the better," I tell her. "Like a lot of things in life." It sounds sort of profound, ten minutes after I've woken up.
(On the way back to the dorm I pass the place we talked last night. I can see our footprints, close to each other, facing each other. He takes every chance he can get to hug me, because he's always afraid it'll be the last. I always want it to be.)
Back at my dorm I cross the first item off my list. "-COFFEE!" The more items, the more I feel I've achieved. I stop on my way to the stairs to watch the silent TV, on the food channel. Eggs with tomatoes in, drizzled with greens and set aside. A shepard's pie - no, baked penne. I know what's in that - onion, garlic, salt, sausages, tomatoes, penne, cheese, and breadcrumbs. It looks damn good.
(I need him not to love me. I need him not to give up on life. Goddamn, there is no answer.)
God, that penne looks good.
I'm groggy and sticky-eyed, my braids are tangled in pillow, and I know however much more snoozing I do, it's not getting any better than this. So I get up, go to the bathroom, and make a list. Get these one-two-three-four -fifteen-sixteen-seventeen items done. The first is coffee. Okay, go.
(Five and a half hours after what? After more "I love you"s and more "please find someone else"s. Five an a half hours after I call my friend on the phone and talk for another hour and a half, losing sleep for both of us all the while but this is what friends are for, right? I go to bed relieved.)
Large mocha Frappuchino. Cold sweet coffe with chocolate in it. The barista forgets, and has to be asked, to pour chocolate sauce on top. "The more chocolate the better," I tell her. "Like a lot of things in life." It sounds sort of profound, ten minutes after I've woken up.
(On the way back to the dorm I pass the place we talked last night. I can see our footprints, close to each other, facing each other. He takes every chance he can get to hug me, because he's always afraid it'll be the last. I always want it to be.)
Back at my dorm I cross the first item off my list. "-COFFEE!" The more items, the more I feel I've achieved. I stop on my way to the stairs to watch the silent TV, on the food channel. Eggs with tomatoes in, drizzled with greens and set aside. A shepard's pie - no, baked penne. I know what's in that - onion, garlic, salt, sausages, tomatoes, penne, cheese, and breadcrumbs. It looks damn good.
(I need him not to love me. I need him not to give up on life. Goddamn, there is no answer.)
God, that penne looks good.
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