The Political Science of the Atomic Bomb

Fallout

1932 - 1960

I grabbed this book off the library shelf recently. I probably had an armful of Justice League trade paperbacks and felt like I could use something a tad more educational in the stack.

Once again I was faced with a story that covered a long time span. Whereas I will often go by the end era, I read this book retroactively (having already moved into the seventies). In some cases I would simply make a note in my timeline file, so that my personal robot could remind me twenty years from now that I should read it. But I delved in recklessly, and I'm glad I did.

My official book review covers this graphic novel very well, so I will simply copy it here for anyone interested in my analysis of a comic written about J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard, the "fathers" of nuclear energy. But before I lose casual readers, I'd love to comment on my favorite section: Szilard was a reknown scientist, but Ottaviani makes much of his skill as a futurist and visionary- In particular his fascination with The World Set Free by HG Wells, a book said to foretell nuclear weapons. In one of the less linear sections of the book, we see Szilard's vision of a future utopia:

There is other artwork and storytelling that is more striking and emotionally hard-hitting, but the sci-fi fanatic in me loved stumbling upon this world of fantasy in the mind of a man whose visions helped shape the modern world.

Here is the review I wrote January 20, 2011:

A factual and scientific overview of the Manhatten Project composed with art from multiple graphic novel artists and a dramatic narrative from author Ottaviani. This book reviews the historical and scientific aspects of the creation of the atom bomb, but also takes a very keen look at the effect of the creation on the consciousnesses of the creators and the lasting effects on their lives.

Many writers have found the graphic novel forum to be a very effective way of communicating to a wider audience but also of using the artistic structure to convey themes that usually can only come across in movies- and sometimes poorly at that. Ottaviani takes full advantage of the fluid nature of a graphic medium to transport the reader both into actual times and places of the past, but also into the minds and moods of the characters. He tinkers with the facts but is true to the events and goes as far as appending explanations of every change and why it was done. At times the loose flow is hard to follow, and makes you wish that Fallout could be made into a motion picture to get a fuller effect of the sights and sounds that the writer and artists are expressing.

Readers of Fallout will draw inevitable comparisons to Maus, a prior graphic novel about World War II, and Ottaviani admits it as an influence is his source material. The comparison is unfair; Maus is an original masterpiece, where Fallout is a spin-off of sorts. Nonetheless, Fallout is a worthy inheritor of the legacy, and encapsulates a less traumatic but equally devestating aspect of the war.

I recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn more about one of the most devestating and powerful weapons ever devised- which would be just about anyone I know.

Casting the Runes

1931



Another tribute to Aleister Crowley, this short story is about people who cross the path of a dark wizard and the subsequent curses that befall them.

This short short story was written by M.R. James, the prominant ghost story writer of the antiquated early 1900's. James is known for being a ghost story writer. And an antiquarian. No, really.

This story is short enough that I read it online during my lunch break at work. It's antiquated enough that I couldn't find it on my book review websites a year ago when I read it.
(Doing an image search on the word short generally comes up with pictures of short hairdos and short skirts. I went with a skirt pic because sex sells. And I'm making so much money off this blog!!!!)

Despite the shortness of this shorty short short story, it rocks. Well, it's Crowley, man. And he's bad-ass. Evil. Hateful. And he was real. Yeah, suck that Vader.

Anyway, that's my blog for the day. Sorry it's kinda short.

Deities & Demigods

Knowing that I have some sort of copy of the old D&D handbook 'Deities & Demigods', I had hoped to scan a picture of the Cthuhlu pages into my last HP Lovecraft blog post. But while searching D&D online today for other unnamed and unspeakable reasons, I came across this chestnut from an old favorite blog page, Something Awful. I think these guys cover the topic well enough as is!

Dungeons & Dragons: Deities & Demigods (Cthulhu Edition)

Enjoy!

Cthulhu Mythos (or How I Learned To Love the Yuggoth)

1920's

HP Lovecraft: Tales

H.P. Lovecraft! YES! I had no familiarity with this man's writings beyond knowing that he was an under-appreciated horror writer, friend of the guy who created Conan, and had a primary monster, Cthulhu, which I was hard pressed to get much information about online.

And there's the beauty of Lovecraft. To learn about the forbidden mysteries of his universe will leave you a wrecked, insane man. Turns out our world is teeming with all sorts of alien, inter-dimensional, ancient magical monsters and under-world gods who are biding their time to take our brains into outer space, turn our children into giant retards, subjugate mankind into subservience and just generally creep us out. But you rarely get to see these guys! Mostly you just hear their names in ancient forbidden texts, hear some scraping sounds, have the eerie feeling that you're being watched in your sleep, and then you find out your professor friend who had been studying the Necronomicon has disappeared leaving nothing behind but some spongy green footprints on his rug. It's the fact that Lovecraft leaves the best parts of his creations to the imagination which has helped fuel both his popularity, as well as the popular conceit that his wild and ficticious tales are, in fact, a way of covering up very real events and creatures.

The sad part of Lovecraft's legacy is the lack of movie adaptations- a lack both in quantity and quality. I recently tried watching the movie In Search of Lovecraft and was horribly bored and disinterested by the home-movie quality of it; I'm sure it was just about to get interesting, too. To be honest, I haven't checked out everything there is on DVD, I think there is a documentary that ought to be worthwhile. The stiff writing style, heavy focus on scientific pondering over action, and overall trend toward UNHAPPY ENDINGS makes Lovecraft very hard to adapt. In a suprising twist of timeliness, the recent big budget adaptation of Lovecraft's 'At the Mountains of Madness' by Guillermo del Toro has just been cancelled, or at least put on hold. Why? Because del Toro wants an R rating. I guess I understand the concept that adult movies bring in less money than Toy Story, but would anyone question making a Saw movie or Stephen King movie R rated? It's HORROR, people. Making a Lovecraft film family-friendly would assure low profits- because it would SUCK. Sure, the bulk of the movie may be scientists struggling to survive in the artic and then exploring a deserted alien city... but it wouldn't be Lovecraft if they didn't eventually stumble upon something that would make the audience scream and then throw up all that popcorn they ate.


Book review-wise, it's hard to recommend Lovecraft even when you love him. Aside from a stiff 1920's writing style, a lot of his stories involve some doctor-type finding an old dusty journal that belonged to some old doctor-type who has written detailed notes on his research. After reading that type of turn of the century prose long enough to nearly fall asleep ten times, someone gets their brain removed or turns into a monster and you're wondering WTF. So the truth is it's a lot of work to read, and the overall theme that the protagonists generally wish themselves dead after gaining knowledge of the universe around them makes Lovecraft hard to feel warm and fuzzy about. But nonetheless, it is awesome.

Given Lovecraft's moderate success, he would probably have not imagined the inspiration most modern horror writers attribute to him now. For a guy like me who gets off on esoteric references and crossover, Lovecraft's world is a playland of multidimensional and magical possibilities. Some of his creations were featured in the first two editions of the D&D Dieties and Demigods handbooks. There is a Call of Cthulhu Lovecraft RPG game where the only way to win is to gain knowledge of the unknown, and consequently all player characters go insane upon winning the game. I could go on and on. But as far as crossovers go, let's just say that it's no coincidence that Batman's local asylum is named after a town in Lovecraft's books that hosts quite a few bizarre inhabitants. And if memory serves, Lovecraft was fond of inserting sly references to the Hyborian Age of Conan, as much as Howard slyly inserted dark gods from the netherworld into his writings, and actually wrote a few Cthulhu stories himself.
The book series I am currently reading, The Illuminatis! Trilogy, contains heavy Lovecraft referencing, as well as references to a lot of my other blog content as part of- well, I'll save that for another post.

In conclusion- while HP Lovecraft may not fit the fancy of readers of contemporary pop horror, or fans of slasher flicks and torture-porn, true devotees of the occult and things that go bump in the middle of the night need to get schooled on the master.