East African Adventures

I recently finished Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s memoirs, My Reminisces of East Africa, written by the famous German general of World War I. 

 In the late 1800s, Imperial Germany attempted to catch up with England and France in acquiring overseas colonies.  What they wound up with was: a small slice of China (Tsingtao), the Bismarck Islands in the Pacific, and in Africa, Cameroon, German South-West Africa (known today as Namibia), and German East Africa, better known today as Tanzania.  Mount Kilimanjaro is just north and features heavily in the earlier portions of the story.

 By 1914, the drums of war were beating in Europe – and by August, the war had begun.  PvLV found himself stranded in GEA, and knowing the mastery of the seas which the Royal Navy had earned, and notwithstanding an aggressive ship-building crusade by the Kaiser leading up to WWI, had maintained, he realized that GEA would not likely receive any supplies or reinforcements.

 I had mentioned in my Malaysian blog recently about the strategic impact of the guerillas vs. the Japanese.  In this case, PvLV specifically realized that it would take heroic efforts to keep GEA from being overrun by the British – indeed, Cameroon and GSWA were easily taken by Commonwealth forces.   So his idea was: if we can keep the British pinned down here in East Africa, forcing them to devote forces chasing after us, that means that many fewer men can be fighting our comrades in the trenches of France. 

 His forces usually consisted of a small but substantial core of German soldiers, leavened out with Askaris – native Africans.  Whereas the Germans of WWII were highly racist, even attempting to eradicate assimilated German Jews, PvLV had nothing but praise for his African troops and much admiration for the local people.  Due to supply issues, many of his troops were equipped with earlier 1871 model Mauser rifles which used black powder, and only a small number of the new Gewehr 98 models using modern smokeless powder.  They also took naval guns off the Konigsberg and mounted them on wheels.  But over half their weapons were captured from their enemies.

 Initially he succeeded at making raids into Kenya and Uganda, and fighting off various invasions from those countries, and Belgian attacks from the Congo (now known as Zaire).   Part of the irony was that many Commonwealth forces were from South Africa, led by General Smuts – former Boer guerillas now chasing down German guerilla forces.  Other Commonwealth forces were Indians, the King’s African Rifles, regular British units, British Askaris, and Allied units of Belgians and Portuguese.

Eventually the Commonwealth forces squeezed his forces out of GEA altogether: in 1917 PvLV abandoned any fixed bases, trimmed off excess forces leaving them behind in GEA, and ventured south into Portuguese East Africa (now known as Mozambique).  He romped around, capturing Portuguese supply bases, food, rifles, ammunition, artillery, and basically causing havoc wherever he went. PvLV found the Portuguese to be rarely well led and usually having poor morale.  But the British went into Mozambique after him.  The Brits would frequently have their own column marching parallel to his.  Like Rommel in North Africa, PvLV often found that the best defense was a good offense, so he would pick off British units he found understrength and leave the area before any reinforcements could arrive; and like Rommel he was pretty much stuck working with what he already had, while the British could resupply their forces at will, pulling out decimated units and replacing them with fresh troops – a luxury the Germans could not afford in either war.  

PvLV turned north, returning to GEA, then west into northern Rhodesia (now known as Zambia), which was British territory.   At this time his forces, though considerably reduced by attrition, were still at large and undefeated, when the Brits sent him notice of the Armistice (November 11, 1918).  He surrendered and was returned to Germany, one of its few heroes – very much Germany’s own Lawrence of Arabia.

 The African Queen.  I decided to check out this 1951 film with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.  Far from the suave character of “Casablanca”, Bogart here plays Charlie Allnut, a colorful and boozing ship captain with whom Hepburn teams up after her brother dies.  She and him were missionaries until a German colonial unit invaded early in the war and caused all sorts of problems.  Yet another “uptight lady meets irresistible manly rogue” movie (see “Australia” and “Gone With the Wind”), but here the romance blossoms rather early.  Rose Sayer (Hepburn) is burning with desire for revenge against the Germans, so she cooks up a bizarre scheme to rig the African Queen with torpedoes to blow up a German steamer, the Louisa, which had been dominating the lake.  Of course, getting TO the lake requires a dangerous journey through the river and rapids, which Allnut is ill-inclined to attempt, until he’s shamed into obedience by this courageous (or is she just plain crazy?) woman.  I got the impression that Rose had been bored shitless as a missionary and relishes this opportunity for adventure.  The Germans are ruthless and cruel, with no mention or sign of Lettow-Vorbeck.  He does, however, appear in some episodes of “The Young Indiana Jones”.    

Blues vs. Rock

Sorry, I ran out of Christmassy things to ramble on about.  I was going to do a blog on blues guitarists, but it occurred to me, after listening without much emotion and reaction to the undeniably excellent Stevie Ray Vaughan – while still being impressed, after all these years, with AC/DC or Mick Taylor (much as I rant that Exile on Main Street is highly overrated) – that there are two classes of blues guitarists.

 The first are the blues purists.  For these guitarists, blues is not a means, but an ends in itself.  They devote themselves to 12 bar blues, which is nice, but wears dull after the 10^th song.  It’s a real challenge to make it interesting when you won’t step outside the box. 

 Prime examples: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter, Peter Green, and Frank Marino [notice all of these are popularly known by their own names rather than associated with bands, except for Green, with pre-Rumours Fleetwood Mac].   I read Steve Miller bust on Joe Bonamassa, describing him as “making perfect copies of Picassos”, faithfully recreating past blues guitarists works, yet contributing nothing new or original of his own.  Of these, I’ve seen Frank Marino in concert twice, and his shows are very good, but be ready for 2-3 hours of practically nonstop jamming.  I have albums by all these blues guitarists and listen to them, I just prefer rock guitarists – as described below.

 The second type of blues guitarists are rock guitarists who have obvious blues backgrounds, influences, and sounds, but whom are primarily focused on making rock music.  Blues are not an ends in themselves but merely the means by which they produce their songs and music; some, like Ritchie Blackmore, will add considerable classical influences to their mix – it’s ironic that Yngwie Malmsteen should mimic Blackmore so much, because I haven’t heard Malmsteen competently execute any blues solos; he’s a classical guitarist who plays classical scales at 100 mph.  Notice these guitarists are associated with particular bands and not as solo artists.

 Prime examples: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Jeff Beck (solo), Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple). Angus Young (AC/DC), David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Robbie Krieger (Doors), Duane Allman (Allman Brothers), Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones), Billy Gibbons (ZZTop), Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Dave Murray (Iron Maiden), Glenn Tipton (Judas Priest), even Frank Hannon (Tesla), Slash (Guns’n Roses, Velvet Revolver) and Tom Keifer (Cinderella)

 Outside this dichotomy I put two guitarists: Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.   To call Hendrix a blues guitarist is like calling Oprah a “talk show host” or Hitler a “political figure”.  He was so much more than that.  It’s remarkable that he only had THREE studio albums.  Clapton started off as a blues purist, but then went commercial.  Although he still considers himself a blues guitarist – and certainly consistently markets himself as such – his career has been a constant effort to put the blues into a commercially viable and popular context. 

B-24 Liberator

Earlier I wrote about the better-known Allied bomber of WWII, the B-17 Flying Fortress.  It’s time to revisit the topic by discussing its less popular, but more highly produced, rival the B-24 Liberator. 

 My uncle flew a B-24 in the Pacific during WWII – he was the pilot, at age 18.  He managed to survive to tell the tales.  And the father of my former boss bailed out of a B-24 over Europe.  His squadron had been given a new bomber to replace the patched up one which had survived countless missions – only to have the new one shot down on its first mission.  With his parachute on, he bailed from the top of the plane, was whisked back over the twin tail, and was captured on the ground in December 1944, serving the rest of the war in a Stalag.  More famous B-24 crew members were pilot Jimmy Stewart (the actor) and US 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern.

 Many, though not all, of the B-24’s were produced by Ford at its Willow Run plant.  The bomber saw action in all theaters of war (Jack Nicholson: “…all walks of life”), being predominant in the Pacific and famous for the low-level raids of the Ploesti oil fields in Romania in 1943; the raids suffered heavy losses, yet the refineries were back up to full capacity after only a month.  In addition to standard bombing raids on German industry and Romanian oil, the B-24 also performed supply missions (they dropped supplies to Chapman’s teams in Malaysia) and dropped Resistance agents by parachutes through the belly turret hole (also in Malaysia). 

 Like the B-17, the B-24 had an impressive array of .50 cal armament, including front and rear turrets, a belly turret, and waist gunners.  Despite the obvious claustrophobia and fact that the belly gunner could only enter or leave the turret during flight, studies showed the belly gunner had the lowest fatality rate; however, other studies showed the belly turret being mostly useless, and on later models it was omitted without any change in bomber casualties. 

 The B-24 had its Davis wing high up, a twin tail, and rollaway bomb bay doors and a larger payload than the B-17.   The powerplant was the Pratt & Whitney R-1830, a 1000 HP, 1,830 cubic inch (30 L) 14 cylinder, two row radial engine.  Just as the B-24 ended up as the highest produced Allied aircraft of WWII, the R-1830 was the highest produced aircraft engine.  In the B-24, the engine was turbo-supercharged.

 The B-17 gets most of the attention.  Surely, as an airplane it’s much more aethestically pleasing: it simply looks like a very large plane, but its proportions are right.  The B-24 was ridiculed as “the box the B-17 came in”, and it’s hard to argue that it’s certainly not as pretty as its rival.  It was faster, could carry more, but could not fly as high, as easily, or endure as much damage or punishment as the B-17.  But surely its story has as a much right to be told as the B-17.

Wait Til Your Father Gets Home

My buddy Dave referred me to an older animated movie, “The Point”, which has Ringo Starr as the main voice, which in turn reminded me of this one and led me to rent the first season from Netflix.  I did so before Tom Bosley died, but his passing ended up being an interesting coincidence.

 This was an animated series from 1972 to 1974 in the US, courtesy of Hanna-Barbera, the same folks who gave us the Flintstones, Jetsons, and Scooby Doo.  This was considerably more adult fare, a biting social commentary on the state of the nation (California in particular) in 1972-74 (3 seasons), of which season 1 is on DVD.

 It centers on a small suburban family, the Doyles.  The father, Harry (Tom Bosley), is self-employed.  Mother, Irma, stays home and cooks, cleans, raises the kids, a typical American suburban housewife.  The older son Chet is a slacker whose job search efforts are few and far between.  The daughter Alice is…well, Peg from “The Family Guy” is probably based on her.  She could stand to lose a few pounds.  The younger son Jackie, voiced by Jackie Earl Haley, better known these days as Rorshach from “The Watchmen”, is quite the schemer, described by my friend Dave as a prototype Ferengi, the avaricious aliens from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.    

 Harry winds up stuck in the middle between his arch-liberal teenage kids and his next-door neighbor Ralph (voiced by Jack Burns) who seems to have a NY accent despite the California setting.  I’ve noticed that Chet’s politics seems less sincere than an excuse not to work, whereas Alice sincerely believes in her new ideas – even joining a commune briefly; Ralph correctly makes the link between “commune” and “communist” but incorrectly assumes they’re all nudist colonies (!).  The mother is tolerant without agreeing.  For his part, Ralph sees conspiracies everywhere – mostly Russkis and Red Chinese, to whom he attributes Pearl Harbor (???) - and mobilizes a local militia neighborhood watch including an Army chaplain, a jeep, a tank, and an oversexed old woman referred to as “Whittaker”.  I don’t recall seeing Ralph’s wife, and he says his son is away at military school.  For his part, Harry rebuffs and complains about the kids’ socialism but also accuses Ralph of being “a prime candidate for a brain transplant.”

 If there is one mantra, one recurring theme repeated ad nauseam, particularly through the voice of reason – the father – it’s that “this country is going down the toilet”.  And it seems that, at every point in history, that sentiment is consistently felt.  I recall an episode of “Dobie Gillis”, the TV show Bob Denver was on before “Gilligan’s Island” (for which he’s known as the title character).  Denver, as Maynard, some beatnik (proto-hippie) is obsessed with nuclear war (this must have been around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis).  He’s freaking out.  So Gillis reads him a letter, full of doom and woe, the end of the world is near, etc. (very articulate and melodramatic), prompting excited grunts of approval and agreement from Maynard.  Then Gillis reveals that the letter in question was written in 1905!  Some things never change.  The Harry Doyle’s laments fall short of Maynard’s hysterics, but the idea is certainly similar.

 While we’re on the topic of “lost HB cartoons” (NOT a topic I want to explore at length, as that would take a book, not a blog), I recall “Roman Holidays”, which ran in the 70s on Saturday mornings.  It was similar to “Wait” except set in ancient Rome (“wait until Pater returns to the Domus?”).  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be on Netflix, and the YouTube episodes are in Portuguese (???).

The Jungle Is Neutral

This is the book the SS referred to in The Devil’s Guard.  It was written by Spencer Chapman, a British officer during WWII, about his experiences in the jungle of Malaysia escaping the Japanese from 1942-45.

 Malaysia.  The Japanese invaded Malaysia in December 1941, on the way to Singapore, which they also captured.  They remained in control of Malaysia when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in August 1945.

 Guerillas.   Most of these were Chinese communists.  They seemed to care more about arguing esoteric politics than …fighting Japanese.  They rarely had enough personnel or weapons – or scarcely any training in how to actually fight – to take on the Japanese.  These units were as likely to be running from one camp to the next to get away from Jap armies than they were actually attacking or ambushing Japanese.  This is one front where the guerillas were little more than a nuisance.  The native Malays, the aboriginine Sakais, and local Sikhs and other ethnic groups were at best occasionally hostile to the Japanese, mostly neutral, and often (especially the Sikhs) pro-Japanese.  The Chinese hated the Japanese the most and had the most intense antipathy, sufficient to take up arms against them – a motivation lacking in most other ethnic groups, including the Malays. 

            Possibly the most ambitious claim which could be made about the Chinese guerillas in Malaysia during WWII is that, to the extent they represented an armed force in opposition to Japanese occupation, the Japanese had to station regular forces in Malaysia to counter guerilla activity, which could otherwise have been fighting to the death on Iwo Jima or Okinawa.  This seems to be most ambitious strategic goal or result of most guerilla armies.  Historically, the French seem to be the only country whose conventional forces ever get beaten by guerillas; most recently in 1954, even in Haiti in the early 1800s.   We defeated the English with conventional forces assisted by the French; we left Vietnam in 1973, 4 years after the Viet Cong were wiped out in the Tet Offensive.

            Spencer’s original plan when he was in Malaysia during the Japanese invasion was to stay behind and organize guerilla resistance to the Japanese.  He would ideally coordinate units and train them, and act as a liaison with the British outside Malaysia – ideally in Ceylon (Sri Lanka).  As a practical matter he spent most of his time traveling through the jungle from various camps or laid up incapacitated with malaria, tick-typhus, or other jungle diseases. 

 Malaria.  More than the Japanese, Chapman’s biggest foe as a practical matter was malaria.  Since food was always a problem, vitamin deficiencies were also an issue.  He diligently studied the jungle, its plants, animals, and idiosyncrasies, and even then was still prey to malaria and was frequently too sick to do much of anything. 

  Ultimately he decided that “the jungle is neutral”, neither inherently hostile to humans nor a natural paradise to be absent-mindedly enjoyed without fear or danger.  Chapman felt that overstating the dangers or the beauties of the jungle, in either direction, was fatal – in the former case, a self-fulfilling prophecy. His attitude probably saved his life.

 Japanese.  Having invaded and occupied Malaysia, the Japanese made sporadic efforts to wipe out the guerillas, with mixed success.  The British only returned after the Japanese surrender and accepted the surrender of local forces which had been bypassed by the Allies’ island-hopping.  Japanese anti-insurgency efforts seemed to be “send in a huge force to wipe out literally everyone you find”, not particularly selective, beheading everyone and not concerned about winning “hearts and minds”.

 Post-War Emergency.  As noted earlier, I had been referred to this by the Devil’s Guard book.  I had been aware of the 1948-60 war, but had been unaware that this book only dealt with WWII.  In fact, Chapman’s book ends abruptly in 1945, and since the guerilla war began in 1948 and lasted until 1960 – long beyond the Vietnamese war which ended in 1954 – the SS men in northern Vietnam could not have benefited from any accounts of the success of the Malaysian counterinsurgency even if they wanted to. 

            The most important difference was that the Viet Minh were Vietnamese, the same ethnic group as the North Vietnamese (and South Vietnamese).  The Malayans insurgents were Chinese, and Chapman notes that no one seemed to have any problem distinguishing Chinese from Malays.  Because of Japanese atrocities in China from 1937 onwards, the Chinese had a definite beef against the Japanese, quite apart from any Communist ideology, whereas the Malays didn’t seem to care enough to fight against the Japanese.  The Japanese mostly left the Malays alone except for counter-insurgency strikes, meaning whatever atrocities Japanese committed against Malays was due to activities of the Chinese guerillas, hardly a situation which would prompt any Malays to identify with, much less support, the guerillas. 

            In fact, the British had ample help from the Malays in their fight against the guerillas, who seemed to be 99% Chinese.  So these Chinese guerillas were ignoring the advice of their own leader, Mao, about “fish swimming in the ocean”, just as Lenin ignored Marx’s opinion that Russia was backwards, quasi-feudal, far from ripe for proletarian revolution; the prime candidates were the US and Western Europe, those countries most advanced in capitalism.  About the only time Marxists seem to follow their own ideology was in Spain, where they supported the bourgeois capitalist democracy against Franco, and discouraged the anarchists.  Even there, many of the moderate democrats were wary that the PSUC (main Communist Party, which had Stalin’s support) was trying to turn Spain into a Soviet satellite.  Time and time again – Russia, Spain, Malaysia, China, Cuba, Vietnam – the Reds show their prime concern is power for its own sake and zero interest or concern for the workers and peasants. 

Thanksgiving

Funny, in all these years in posting blogs, including holiday-themed blogs, I’ve yet to post one on Thanksgiving.  Well, it’s clearly time.

 Here’s another “American” holiday, in this case associated with those thankful Pilgrims who survived to thank God for good food and friendly Indians.  But people everywhere can express gratitude and appreciation, virtues I hardly imagine are unique to Pilgrims.  Speaking of Pilgrims, I found out that they made a movie of Solomon Kane, Robert E. Howard’s bad-ass Pilgrim character.  Now if only I could find it….

 Dad.  My father used to cook the dinner.  He knew where to get the turkey, made his own stuffing, and got the production going in time for the dinner.  There was never any drama, emergencies, stress, or any doubt that he would successfully achieve the Dinner.  And he repeated this impressive task for Christmas dinner again a month later.  We can only hope to emulate him now that he’s gone: R.I.P.

 Turkey.  Clearly the centerpiece of a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner is the turkey.  I zone out about the sizes and simply focus on my preference: the white breast meat.  You can have the drumsticks – 2, 4, 6, 8 (?? Is it a turkey or a spider?), however many a turkey might have nowadays. 

 Stuffing.  I actually like the stuffing more than the turkey itself.  Yum yum.

 Others.  Mashed potatoes are fine, but I could do without cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie.

 Football.  NFL, not college.  In my case I get to see the Lions lose, but they are rarely a competitive threat to my beloved Vikings, more a target of pity than scorn.  What the Cowboys do is not my concern (unless it’s beating the Packers or Bears).  I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Vikings play on Thanksgiving (“Thank Odin this Vinland is ripe with ample game and friendly Skraelings!”).

 Macy’s Thanksgiving’s Day Parade.  I practically never watch this.  I’ve never been in Manhattan at this time; the closest was Merrick, Long Island in the 70s.  My Dad would put the parade on TV in the morning as he was making his initial preparations.  The balloons are interesting and charming – intriguing to see which characters are deemed worthy of balloons.  No Asterix?  No Refridgerator Johnny?  No Iron Maiden Eddie?  No AC/DC Whole Lotta Rosie? As you imagine, the balloons are mostly for kids’ entertainment and thus predictably wholesome.  Likewise for the fur-wrapped commentators, offering comments so dull and wholesome they’re calculated to put everyone right back to sleep again.  And don’t get me started on the marching bands (too late!).  If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.  They all have the goofy band uniforms (vaguely reminiscent of War of 1812 uniforms), majorettes twirling batons and wearing way too much, the goofy Sousaphones (“Activision reports sluggish sales of Sousaphone Hero”), and the predictably dull John Philip Sousa marches, with the exception of “Liberty Bell”, probably more infamous as the theme of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (chosen because “Liberty Bell”, by that time – 1969 – was in the public domain).  So this particular school, from Midwest Nebraska or Idaho finally managed to get its marching band – which looks exactly like all the others marching down the street in Manhattan – to the parade?  Whoopee for them, it’s their 15 minutes of fame!  But no one else need pay much attention.   Here’s an idea – instead of sending your marching band to the parade, how about sending your high school football team to play the Lions or Cowboys?  Even odds of beating the Lions…but seeing how the Cowboys almost beat the Saints, that game would be one I’d rather avoid.

 College.  Back at University of Maryland, the Thanksgiving weekend was too short to justify a trip back to Paris (winter break was 4 weeks, and summer break was, of course, the entire summer) so we’d have to hang tight and stay in the dorms, which were empty and dark.  Freshman year (1987) my Mom came into town and helped me buy a Fender Stratocaster.  Sophomore to senior years, my buddy Jean (John) came down from Boston U. (his mom was also in Paris) and joined Phil and my brother for dinner with my aunt and uncle over at Skyline – just down the street from where I live now.

 Dave.  My University of Maryland colleague who moved back up to Long Island after graduation in 1990 and has remained on The Island (with all organs, save maybe his liver, intact) ever since.  One of his sisters lives in Falls Church close to me, so for a few years he’d come down to visit his family there.  The Friday after TG would be spent seeing a movie, buying CDs or comics, and otherwise catching up on politics and music since the prior year.  Now his TG plans tend to involve Florida (no, no voting!) so my Fridays are back at the office where the secretary growls about being there instead of the mall. 

Philip K Dick

PKD was an American science fiction writer, mostly writing in the 1950s up to the late 70s.  By now I’ve read enough of his stories and books to make some sort of appraisal thereof, and a meaningful evaluation, though I still haven’t read all of them by now.

 Background.  Born in 1928, died in 1982, he is typically associated with Berkeley, well known as a bastion of left wing extremism (home of Country Joe (“Stalin”) among others).  Virtually his entire writing career concerned science fiction.  My closest comparison to him is Robert Heinlein.

 Themes.  Dick was less concerned with the specifics of technology than Heinlein.  Nor is there nearly as much sex in Dick’s books compared to Heinlein’s.  The topics Dick liked to address:

1.         Totalitarian dictatorships supported by high technology.  In his view, as societies grew more technologically advanced, the government improved its ability to spy on its own people.

2.         Anarchy & corruption.  By corruption I mean the gradual breakdown of technology – nothing works anymore and no one knows how to fix it.  As freedom and decentralization increase, technology decreases and approaches nature – anarchy and technology are treated as polar opposites.  Especially since technology is so closely related to dictatorship, people are uncertain, in a later anarchist society, whether to embrace technology again, although they sense some value in it for its own sake.

3.         Altered consciousness and alternate reality.  What is really going on?  Are we perceiving the real world, or something else? And how can we know for certain?  More so than any other writer, PKD’s stories often have you wondering, “what is really going on???”

4.         Robot self-awareness.  Particularly in “Second Variety”, this idea that robots achieve self-awareness and man’s creations turn against him.  Robots create more robots, and so on.  In “James P. Crow”, robots run the country, while humans are substandard – discriminated against and kept down – and no one can remember that it used to be the other way around, until Crow (taking an ironic pseudonym) manages to reveal the truth.

5.         Time travel, reverse time flow, paradoxes.  Time travel is as much an element of PKD’s stories as any other sci-fi writers, and he’s as likely to address the issues of causation as anyone else.

6.         His take on capitalism is more along the lines of, “damn incessant advertising for stuff we really don’t need”, and planned obsolescence.  He doesn’t seem to take on the system per se. 

7.         Many of his stories have an abrupt plot swerve at the very end, almost a “gotcha!” like “The Twilight Zone”.

 Short Stories.  He has more than I can count (121).  I read no less than 5 separate compendiums of them.  Clearly addressing them all would be useless, but here are the best – aside from the ones which were made into movies, which I’ll address separately.

 he Turning Wheel.  Asians as mystics controlling a futuristic anti-technology society; Caucasians are reduced to a small underground of lower class caste who actually understand technology.

 The Last of the Masters.  …is actually a robot, in charge of the last bastion of technology-driven, totalitarian dictatorship left on the planet.   A small team of anarchists emerges from the wilderness and takes on the Master in his home base.  This is the biggest “technology = totalitarianism” vs. “anarchists = nature” story.

 Exhibit Piece.  Mindf**k!  Bureaucrat/scientist can’t tell if the museum exhibit of a suburban home from several centuries ago is simply an exhibit piece…or if this is his real home and family.

 Pay For the Printer.  Another “dying world where nothing works anymore and almost no one knows how to fix anything” story.

 War Veteran.  Time-travel paradox involving a war between Earth, Mars and Venus.  By the end, the truth is revealed.

 Colony.  This is another paranoia trip: an intelligent alien race, very deadly and very aggressive, knows how to mimic inanimate objects.

 Nanny.  In the future, nannies are robots.  In addition to being loved by the children and taking care of them as well as any human possibly could, they have combat capabilities to defeat other robot nannies.  This means that parents have to constantly upgrade and trade in for newer, deadlier models.  The children are not at risk, but last year’s model certainly is!

 Holy Quarrel.  The computer running society develops self-awareness (yet again) and becomes a religious fanatic.

 Orpheus with Clay Feet.  A writer is considered too untalented to write his own material, so he’s initially sent back in time to serve as a muse to someone important.  Except that he screws that up so spectacularly, that they decide to send him back to Munich in 1924 to un-inspire Adolf Hitler.

 Waterspider.  A team from the future has to go back to the past to contact Poul Anderson at a convention of sci-fi writers in the 1950s.  This story seems like a “call-out” to a who’s who of sci-fi:  Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Robert Bloch, even himself (“Phil Dick”, as author of The Defenders).

 Beyond Lies the Wub.  The Wub is a very intelligent alien which produces odd effects when eaten.

 Not By Its Cover.  The Wub returns – with odd effects when its hide is used to bind books such as the Bible.

 Pre-Persons.  I could never imagine a story about abortions could be funny, but this one was.  Apparently the pro-choice movement succeeds in extending the time for legal abortions to the age of 12.  “Boobs are obsolete, like the Pontiac GTO.” 

 Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked.  A cynical “Wind in the Willows” meets “Married With Children” story.

 Faith of Our Fathers.  Apparently the Red Chinese managed to take over – and is continually dosing the entire population with LSD.  The resistance develops a drug which counteracts the LSD – yet the “normal” state perception varies, while the LSD perception is constant. 

 The Variable Man.  Astonishingly good story; they manage to get someone from the past, Cole, to fix their rocket in the future, to assist in the war against Proxima Centauri.  Cole has an amazing intuitive ability to not only figure out how things work, but also repair them and even improve them.  Lots of excitement and combat. 

 The Eye of the Sibyl.   A Roman noble is reincarnated in the future – his modern counterpart displays a natural inclination to cite Latin without realizing why.  I liked this concept of the “collective unconscious”, inheriting not merely genes but social and cultural memories.

 The Defenders.  After a nuclear war between the US and USSR, the survivors burrow underground and allow robot surrogates to continue the war above by proxy.  Eventually the humans discover that the surface had cooled and recovered long ago, but they had been lied to by the robots.

 Books.  He had 36, but of these I’ve only read a handful.

 The Man in the High Castle.  I described this earlier in my blog about alternate history stories in which Germany won World War II.  The Nazis run the East Coast of the US, the Japanese run the West Coast, and the middle is still independent.  Everyone consults the I Ching for guidance.  Fairly good, but not his best work.

 Now Wait For Last Year.  I liked this one.  It turns out that Earth is a former colony of an alien race and humans are not indigenous to Earth.  The humans from the original home planet (the Starmen) finally managed to reestablish contact with Earth, but treat the Terrans as second-class idiots.  They’re involved in a war with reegs (insectoid race like preying mantis) but the reegs come off as more sympathetic than the arrogant Starmen.  The main character ends up taking a drug which induces time travel – and even meets himself.  Very intriguing.

 Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.  A popular TV/radio celebrity wakes up one morning to find his identity completely erased – no one recognizes him and his name is absent from every database.  Ultimately the answer lies with a policeman’s incestuous sister.

 Ubik.  Easily the biggest mindfuck book of all.  Joe Chip goes to the moon on a mission from Gene Lassiter, which goes horribly wrong.  From then on, things start getting weirder and weirder.  Towards the end we FINALLY get told what is really going on, and the truth is still strange and screwed up.  If they ever made this into a movie, “Inception” would get a run for its money.

 Movies.  Some of his stories have been made into movies, with varying levels of faithfulness to the original story and commercial success.

 Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).  Easily the most popular movie, a real cult film.  The book has several elements missing from the movie: this whole business of robot animals (real animals are so rare as to be priceless, and even synthetic animals are valuable enough that a catalog of values – like the Blue Book – exists with regard to them) and Mercerism.  Deckard (played in the movie by Harrison Ford) sleeps with Rachel (Sean Young in the movie) a replicant who does not know she is.  His job is to track down replicants (androids) illegally on Earth – and kill them.  For their part, the replicants are dangerous and do not cooperate. 

 Screamers (Second Variety).  In a futuristic war, the robots originally developed by one side to help them win the war eventually develop self-awareness, begin fighting both sides equally, and develop new three new varieties of androids.  The first and third varieties are a wounded soldier and a 10 year old boy, but the “second variety” remains unindentified and at large.  More of this “who is human, who is really a killer robot assassin paranoia”.  The main character in the movie is played by Paul Weller.  Although the movie changes the human sides to fictional countries/companies, in the story the two sides are simply the US and USSR.

 Total Recall (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale).  Here the story takes place all on Earth and all issues are resolved at home.   A bored Earthbound citizen goes to a memory implant clinic to have memories of a fictional Mars vacation artificially implanted in his consciousness – only to find that he had already been to Mars and subjected to memory erasing treatment by whatever government agency he worked for.  The movie uses the story as a basis for a much larger story, in which the man (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) goes back to Mars and gets involved in the mess there.  For this I’d recommend reading the story then watching the movie.

 Paycheck (same).  This has a similar memory-wiping deal; the story and movie are identical in basic plot but change the ultimate ending.  A high-skilled technician finishes a major project for his firm and finds, to his surprise, that instead of the expected fat paycheck, he’s opted to forgo that in exchange for the contents of an envelope which he left himself before undergoing the memory wipe – these contents are a bewildering collection of seemingly unrelated and worthless items.  The idea is that the contents of the package, when used correctly, will allow him to achieve a result 100x better than his mere paycheck would have been, if he can only figure out these clues he left himself.   Ben Affleck stars in the movie.  This is another one where reading the story first, then the book, makes sense.

 Minority Report (same).  In the future, crimes are solved before they’re even committed, by a “pre-crime” division which relies on a mysterious trio of psychics who predict future crimes.  Unfortunately, the main investigator, Anderton (Tom Cruise in the movie) finds himself implicated in a murder and then has to escape his own police force and find out what’s going on.  In the story he winds up committing the murder anyway (!) to salvage the pre-crime system. “Minority report” refers to the procedure of logging, but officially ignoring, the report of the third psychic when his/her report conflicts with the other two – Anderton finds that the minority report on his own “crime”, which might explain what is going on, is missing, i.e. he may have been set up by his rival (played in the movie by Colin Farrell). 

 A Scanner Darkly (same).  This Dick’s very intriguing critique of LSD and drug use, in this case a mysterious drug called Substance D, which doesn’t seem to directly correlate to anything we know of, but most closely resembles LSD; Substance D is highly addictive, LSD is not.  The main doper, Robert Arctor (played in the film by Keanu Reeves) is also a narc assigned to investigate his own house.  Down at the DEA headquarters he wears a sophisticated shapeshifting costume which warps his voice and disguises his identity.  He watches surveillance camera footage of events occurring at his own house, including himself.  His biggest problem is with his housemate James Barris, extravagantly portrayed in the movie (seriously underrated Oscar-worthy performance) by Robert Downey Jr.  Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder are also major characters.  The movie uses a unique rotoscope technique.

Halloween & Elections

I decided to add two otherwise unrelated topics together as neither would be timely the week after.  And since Election Day is traditionally the first Tuesday in November, naturally that comes right on the heels of Halloween, which is always October 31.  If your party did poorly in the Election, the mock fright and terror of Halloween turn into something more real and substantial just a few days later.

 Halloween.  Surprise, surprise, I did not go trick-or-treating this year (no, not even as Angus Young).  I handed out candy to the boys and girls coming to my brother’s doorway, as his wife took his three children out to the neighborhood in search of free candy, solicited by means of the following costumes: iPod, Jango Fett (minus helmet you can’t see out of) and pink Batgirl.  They were all very cute, as were the charming children who graciously accepted the candy I dispensed, all name-brand and none of it raisins, apples, or other “nature’s candy” (which leads itself more to tampering than the standard candy does).  The parents were discreetly behind them. 

 For my part, I recall T-or-T’ing in Montgomery Village growing up.  Our costumes were purchased from the local People’s Drugs (now known as CVS) and came in cardboard boxes.  They had a plastic mask covering the face and secured by a flimsy rubber band stapled to the mask, plus a one-size-fits-most kids coverall fastening in the back.  Casper (the Friendly Ghost), Popeye (the sailor, can of spinach not included), Spiderman, Superman, Batman, were all the costumes I remember.  We’d get in fights if two boys showed up as the same superhero: “I’m the real one.  You’re a fake!”

 Some of the kids T-or-T’ing in my building were on the teenage side.  I recall in Paris, the kids couldn’t abandon T-or-T’ing soon enough as “ah, that’s for kids”.  Now it seems at least some of them – probably Middle Eastern kids who didn’t have that growing up in Iraq of Afghanistan – would prefer to bury their pride and enjoy themselves.  Amen to that, I agree 100%.

 In fact, why not bifurcate it?  Allow the adults to dress up too, and go door to door with their children.  Their bag gets filled from a separate stash:  cigarettes, condoms, free Viagra and Cialis samples, you know, adult stuff.  Why should the kids have all the fun?

 Years ago I did go to a costume party for adults, dressed as Angus Young (of course); as a costume, it’s fairly simple: I already have black shorts, black sneakers (often the same Reeboks that Angus wears), a blue blazer, and plenty of white shirts and ties.  Although I wouldn’t carry a $800-$1600 Gibson SG around, I do have the same guitar he plays – and bought it because I’m such a big AC/DC and Black Sabbath fan.  My friend sneered, “no one will know who you’re supposed to be.”  It turned out the only one who didn’t know, was his own friend Paul, dressed as a “naughty vicar”.  Everyone else referred to me as “Angus!”

 Another year we went as KISS.  I was Gene Simmons, Matt was Ace Frehley, and Phil was Paul Stanley; I suppose if Ken had been around he could have been Peter Criss.  We wore wigs, but the elaborate stage costumes were well beyond our capability.  No matter, the makeup was so well done – Phil even put an authentic topknot in my Gene wig – that the results were still stunning.  It’s too bad we can’t find the pictures we took.

 I also learned that Europe now celebrates Halloween, which strikes me as very ironic.  To me, Halloween is a custom harking to medieval Europe, not modern America, in spirit if not historical tradition.  It would be like us having a Pharoah Day, with Anubis, Set, Osiris, Isis, etc. and pyramids everywhere, and only years later would Egypt follow suit and start to do likewise.

 Voting.  Topic two, coming just days after Halloween.   My ballot consisted of one person-vs-person election (US House of Representatives), a bond issue, and a few dull and arcane constitutional questions (I picture Graham Chapman in Zulu garb, repeating once again in an Indian accent that “we are still holding out for a constitutional settlement.”) 

            They changed the polling location.  I was not notified by mail – I had to find out at my old polling place.  I was told they posted a notice on the bulletin board in my building, but I ignore those notices which are mostly about deaths of people I don’t know or more solicitations to trade in traditional incandescent bulbs for the new compact fluorescent ones.  Be that as it may, I found the new place, which wasn’t very far away.  Some of the old people had trouble choosing “machine or paper?”  If that choice stumps you, voting may be even harder.  Imagine the poor guy stuck in line after Brett Favre.

            Jim Moran is my entrenched Democrat Congressman, who was faced by Patrick Murray, the Republican challenger.  If Murray fails, it’s not for lack of exposure: his road signs were huge and ubiquitous.  While I did see Moran signs around, I think his followers probably assumed their man would win anyway and didn’t try too hard.

            There was no Libertarian running in my district.  The only third party candidate was an Independent Green – independent of who?  Beijing?  Havana?  Or North Korea?  The Greens are obviously Red.

            This gets me to my major issue with this.  I don’t fault people for voting against Libertarians if they are sincerely hostile to the party’s pro-capitalist ideology and plain do not agree with them.  What I have a problem with are Republicans (and some Democrats) who (A) are aware of the Libertarians and what they stand for, (B) agree with the Libertarian candidate’s platform 80-100%, and (C) are well aware that neither major party sincerely advocates its own positions, who (D) STILL vote Republican or Democrat because “the third party doesn’t have a chance.”

            I look at the Republicans and Democrats, and from what I can see, 95% of the candidates have no sincere desire to advance any particular political agenda (in Hillary Clinton’s case, I’d say that’s actually a good thing).  For every Ron Paul or Paul Wellstone who really cares, there are dozens of other Jack Johnsons and John Jacksons who simply want to be elected for the sake of a JOB. 

            The GOP wraps itself in the flag, but doesn’t even give the soldiers body armor or support veterans’ rights.  They talk about supporting “capitalism” and opposing “socialism”, but support big business getting bailouts, protectionism, and all sorts of cronyist corporate welfare bullshit.  Ayn Rand once noted that the one thing worse than being capably attacked is being ineptly defended, and the Republicans defend capitalism in a way which suggests they’re not really trying.  It was their bailing on the “Contract With America” in 1994 which pushed me firmly into the Libertarian camp.

            The Democrats try to turn cowardice into a virtue; and they don’t care about the common working man or the environment.  They would have us believe that Joe SixPack is finally going to get a fair deal under their administration, but once in power their blue collar supporters are quickly forgotten.  We should also recognize how much money big business pours into Democratic candidates – hedging their bets by supporting both sides.  Wake up: both sides are in bed with big business and no meaningful change will be forthcoming so long as that is true.  This business of the Democrats supporting the American working class is just more bullshit.

            Probably the most onerous segment of the Democratic camp is the teachers’ unions.  Talk about SCUM.  These people claim to have the childrens’ interests at heart, yet they oppose voucher systems, oppose any reform of the public school system, oppose anything which threatens their own economic interests.  The Democratic leaders insist that ordinary American parents send their children to crappy public schools, then put their OWN children into private schools.  Note: it’s not the teachers per se I have a problem with, it’s their damn unions.

 Close Calls.  There’s a lot of talk about “rational indifference” in the elections, where wide margins mean that individual votes have hardly any impact, so why bother voting?  Yet in 2000, we woke up the next morning after Election Day and they STILL didn’t know who won.  And in this election, several elections were still undecided the next day.  All I can say is: your polling station is probably just a few blocks from where you live – assuming you even registered to vote – bring a good book in case there’s a line, and VOTE.  If it makes a difference, fine.  If not, there’s another election in 2 years.

 School Elections.  Back in school it was fairly obvious that elections were essentially popularity contests.  But look at our own Presidential elections:  Obama, who was popular, beat McCain, who was not.  Bush, who was popular, beat two colorless dweebs that only equally colorless dweebs felt any passion for.  Dukakis and Mondale were candidates only left-wing Democrats could love.  Rand Paul has 10x the charisma of his father, who appears to favor freedom only because the alternative “costs too much”.  I fail to see how the grumpy old man who doesn’t want to pay for anything was going to beat Chocolate “WE CAN!” Jesus. 

            The Monarchist Party at the University of Maryland put the whole thing in proper perspective: they treated the whole thing as a huge joke.  King Tom’s key platform?  A moat of beer around the campus.  Needless to say, we’re still waiting.  But once in power the Monarchists simply did what the prior administrations did: distribute the student activities funds to the various student organizations, a fairly trivial and mundane task which each such administration could handle without much drama or fuss.  This was true whether it was the Monarchists, or some other party which claimed to take the whole thing seriously and make all sorts of grandiose promises made with a straight face, none of which they could actually deliver, any more than the Monarchists had any real ability to provide that moat of beer.  This is why I consistently voted Monarchist across the ballot.  Unfortunately, I’m not aware that any of the Monarchists actually entered politics in Maryland or elsewhere, but I’d certainly vote for whoever came across a ballot in front of me.  They’d probably be Libertarian anyway.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I was referred to C.S. Lewis by my brother, through the backdoor of The Great Divorce, Lewis’ story about Heaven and Hell.   Although I had read the Elric books by Moorcock, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and the Silmarillion) by Tolkien, I had never read any of Lewis’ books.  I had seen “Prince Caspian” on DVD, but my impression of Lewis was that he was “Tolkien Lite”, very much a childlike, less sophisticated variant of Tolkien.  But if I could handle 7 Harry Potter books, surely Lewis was not beyond my tolerance.

 The Chronicles of Narnia are the books for which he’s most well-known. This order is completely different than the actual publishing order and was established after all seven books were published.

 The Magician’s Nephew.  Nominally the first book, Lewis wrote this after LWW as a prequel.  He introduces us to Aslan, the White Witch, Digory Kirke (the “Professor” in LWW), and Narnia, which actually Aslan brought into existence here.  I followed my brother’s advice and read this after LWW.

 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [hereinafter, LWW].  Clearly the Dark Side of the Moon of Lewis’ series.  The Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy – are introduced to the magical world of Narnia via a magic wardrobe portal.  Narnia is a magic land of centaurs, fauns, satyrs, dwarves, an evil White Witch, and the ever-popular talking lion, Aslan.  It starts out as a land of perpetual winter and snow – but no Christmas – but as Aslan’s power grows, spring returns and the snowmelts.  There is even a London lamp-post in the middle of nowhere. Theoretically you could get by with only reading this book, as it stands alone well on its own; indeed, Lewis wrote this one first and originally did not plan on writing any sequels. 

 The Horse and His Boy.  This is somewhat of a sidetrack to introduce the Calormenes to us, who are Lewis’ cartoonish, fairy-tale analogs to Earth’s Muslims/Saracens – think “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”.  They worship Tash, a deity whose true nature is revealed in The Last Battle.  Although they seem to have a rivalry with Narnia, to call them villains or enemies to Narnia is a bit of a stretch.  Tactically, the story involves two talking horses and a “Prince and the Pauper” plot with a noble-born boy, Shasta, who escapes his humble upbringing in the Muslim world and finds his twin Narnian prince brother.  He’s accompanied by Aravis, a stuck-up little Jasmine princess trying to escape an arranged marriage to some loathsome old noble.
  

 Prince Caspian.  Narnia has been taken over by an outside king, Miraz, and his Hamlet-like nephew Caspian enlists the aid of the oppressed talking Narnian animals – and eventually the assistance of Peter, Edmund, and Lucy – in overthrowing Miraz and liberating Narnia.  This has been made into a movie by the same people who made LWW.

 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  A punk-like kid, Eustace Scrubb, the cousin of the Pevensies, is pulled into this adventure along with Edmund and Lucy, joining Prince Caspian on a voyage to the eastern seas to find his 7 uncles, lords who were banished by Miraz, also to discover exactly what lies in the eastern seas of Narnia (possibly Aslan’s homeland).  Along the way, Scrubb turns into a dragon and learns not to be a spoiled punk-ass.  This story has a very Star Trek (original series and movie VI) kind of flavor to it; it’s one of the better ones.  Sure enough, it’s due out in digital 3D on December 10.

 The Silver Chair.  Scrubb returns and pulls in Jill Pole (I love that name – Lewis would have done well to provide stage names for exotic dancers) who are enlisted by Aslan to rescue Caspian’s grandson, who had been captured and enchanted (not yet seduced, it seems) by a successor Evil Witch to the White Witch; this one uses a magical chair instead of candy.  They are assisted by Puddleglum, a depressing, tall and skinny elf-like creature. 

 The Last Battle.  This is the last story.  Scrubb returns again with Jill to Narnia.  It seems that a talking ape, Shift, has persuaded his donkey pal Puzzle to put on a lion’s skin and impersonate Aslan.  Claiming to be Aslan’s “mouthpiece”, as it were, Shift invites the Calormenes to enslave all the talking animals of Narnia.  Tirian, a direct descendant of Caspian, gets Scrubb and Jill to assist him in the resistance to Shift’s new form of tyranny, and they manage to fix everything.  Remarkably, the deity whom the Calormenes worship, Tash, is revealed to be something close to Satan; however, Aslan explains that “good deeds done in the name of Tash are in fact done in my name, whereas evil deeds done in my name are in fact done for Tash”, echoing Dante’s concept of “virtuous pagans”. Another remarkable element is that once Puzzle is revealed to the Dwarves to be a fake Aslan, the Dwarves then refuse to accept the existence of the real Aslan.  Anyhow, Lewis wraps everything up with this story in a grand climactic finale which ties up all the loose ends and ensures there will NOT be an eighth book.  No word on a movie of this, or whether Eddie Murphy will voice Puzzle.

 The stories are nicely illustrated by Pauline Baynes, in a manner reminiscent of Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland stories.  They were published around the same time as Lord of the Rings (early-to-mid 1950s), and Lewis and Tolkien were good friends and colleagues at Oxford.

 Narnia.  Unlike Middle Earth, which Tolkien apparently intended as a very old version of Earth, Narnia is a parallel dimension.  It gets confusing, because within the “world” of Narnia is a nation of Narnia, separate from some other nations such as the Calormenes.  The nation of Narnia is meant to be what we think of as fairy tale Europe, a romanticized and glamorized Camelot-type Euro-centric nation of blond haired, blue eyed Northern Europeans, as opposed to the swarthy, dark-skinned, Tash-worshipping Calormenes.  In Prince Caspian, the ruling class is said to Telmarines, as distinct from Narnians, but where the Telmarines come from is never quite explained. 

 Animals.  There are several classes of animals.  In Magician’s Nephew, Aslan separated the animals into talking, intelligent ones, who are slightly larger than their nontalking nonintelligent counterparts.  There are also giants, halfway between mythical giants and the Norse “jotuns”.  There are fauns, satyrs, centaurs (Greek mythology), dwarves, dragons, etc.  I don’t recognize any races or animals specifically created by Lewis; he seemed to be recycling familiar types of monsters and creatures, types the readers would probably already be familiar with from other stories.

 Cast of Characters

Aslan.  Instead of a tall guy with a beard and robes, the Jesus figure of Narnia is a huge, talking lion of immense wisdom and virtual omnipotence.  Aslan tends to stay in the background and ever-so-conveniently come out when he’s most needed.  He is the one who manages to get the Earthbound characters back and forth from Narnia.  Like Jesus, he has the ability to rise from the dead.

 The White Witch.  She is first inadvertently awakened by Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, escapes to late nineteenth century London, and returns to the newly created Narnia.  Eventually she is defeated in LWW.

 Prince Caspian.  I find the “Princes” to be fairly interchangeable, differing only by generation.  Rilian, the prince of Silver Chair, is his son, and Tirian (Last Battle) is his descendant.

 The Earth Kids. The Earth kids spend years in Narnia, grow up, and then get magically returned to England where they discover that mere minutes have passed there.  They return to Narnia after a year in England and discover that hundreds of years have passed in Narnia.  The “Prince” they befriended in the prior adventure is long dead, and the prince they befriend in the next one is his son, grandson, or heir.  The Earth period, though, is WWII England; I liked how they added the Blitz, with Heinkel He111s dropping their loads over London, to the first movie.

 Peter.  He is the eldest of the Pevensie children and the wisest.  He ends up as High King. 

 Susan.  The older girl.  Later on she’s absent and slammed as being more interested in “nylons and lipstick” than Narnia.

 Edmund.  The younger brother.  In LWW he’s seduced by the White Witch, not by sex but with “Turkish Delight”, a sugary snack popular ages ago in England.  It has an effect on him which in a modern context would be considered crack or crystal meth.  After some “Turkish Delight” rehab he recovers and is OK from there on in.

 Lucy.  The younger sister.  She is the one who initially discovers the magical wardrobe, and unlike Susan does not forsake Narnia when she grows older in England.

 Eustace Scrubb.  He is the cousin of the Pevensies.  His parents are vegetarian atheist liberals with New Age ideas, who prefer to let children do as they please (no discipline whatsoever) and send the boy off to liberal school; no wonder he’s a spoiled punk brat to begin with.  Scrubb is introduced in Voyage, and becomes the main character thereafter.  He meets Jill Pole, who has been mercilessly bullied by the other children.

 Jill Pole.   Scrubb’s female companion in the last few books, almost indistinguishable from Polly Plummer.

 Polly Plummer.  Digory Kirke’s companion in The Magician’s Nephew, a generic girl character.

 Digory Kirke.  He first appears as a boy in The Magician’s Nephew, then as the wizened Professor in LWW, and has a brief cameo in The Last Battle.  Strategically not much of an important character.

 Allegories.  My brother remarked how Tolkien hated allegories and went out of his way to make sure Middle Earth had no clear God vs. Satan; even Sauron is not clearly the Devil.  Lewis himself denied any allegorical intent, insisting that the themes wrote themselves, so to speak.  But the allegories seem too obvious to ignore.  Aslan is blatantly a Jesus-type figure.  The Calormenes are clearly Muslims.

 Occasionally I’ll be at the gym in the morning and stuck on a treadmill in front of a TV tuned to children’s programming.  Unlike movies, which have substantial elements which appeal to adult intelligences, TV shows seem to wield their morals with a sledgehammer and practically zero subtlety.  Lewis’ morality is likewise front and center, impossible to miss.  Having read the seven Harry Potter books by now, and now the 7 (same number!) Narnia books, it’s likewise impossible to miss the clear Lewis influence in J.K. Rowling, far more so than anything Tolkien may have contributed.