It's October, my busy month, and I'm swamped at work every weekend... time to set up a post in advance. Halloween being right around the corner, I figure I'll post something appropriately creepy... One of my prized possessions is a copy of the first paperback edition of Katharine Briggs' British Folk Tales and Legends: A Sampler, a gift that my father purchased for me while on a business trip that took him to London. Yeah, I was a nerd from day one.
One of the most outré bits of folklore in the book involved the Hand of Glory, a black-magic talisman used by thieves breaking into a house or business. Creating a hand of glory is a grisly affair, involving the amputation of a hanged murderer's hand. From clergyman and folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould's monumental Curious Myths of the Middle Ages:
The Hand of Glory .. is the hand of a man who has been hung, and it is prepared in the following manner: Wrap the hand in a piece of winding-sheet, drawing it tight, so as to squeeze out the little blood which may remain; then place it in an earthenware vessel with saltpeter, salt, and long pepper, all carefully and thoroughly powdered. Let it remain a fortnight in this pickle till it is well dried, then expose it to the sun in the dog-days, till it is completely parched, or, if the sun be not powerful enough, dry it in an oven heated with vervain and fern. Next make a candle with the fat of a hung man, virgin-wax, and Lapland sesame.
In this particular tale of the hand of glory, the hand has the power to render the sleeping unwakeable and to open all locks:
Several stories of this terrible hand are related in [William] Henderson's Folklore of the Northern Counties of England. I will only quote one, which was told me by a laboring man in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and which is the same story as that given by Martin Anthony Delrio in his Disquisitiones Magicæ, in 1593, and which is printed in the Appendix to that book of M. Henderson.
One dark night, after the house had been closed, there came a tap at the door of a lone inn, in the midst of a barren moor. The door was opened, and there stood without, shivering and shaking, a poor beggar, his rags soaked with rain, and his hands white with cold. He asked piteously for a lodging, and it was cheerfully granted him; though there was not a spare bed in the house, he might lie along on the mat before the kitchen fire, and welcome.
All in the house went to bed except the servant lassie, who from the kitchen could see into the large room through a small pane of glass let into the door. When everyone save the beggar was out of the room, she observed the man draw himself up from the floor, seat himself at the table, extract a brown withered human hand from his pocket, and set it upright in the candlestick; he then anointed the fingers, and, applying a match to them, they began to flame.
Filled with horror, the girl rushed up the back stairs, and endeavored to arouse her master and the men of the house; but all in vain, they slept a charmed sleep; and finding all her efforts ineffectual, she hastened downstairs again. Looking again through the small window, she observed the fingers of the hand flaming, but the thumb gave no light: this was because one of the inmates of the house was not asleep.
The hand cannot be extinguished through conventional means:
The beggar began collecting all the valuables of the house into a large sack -- no lock withstood the application of the flaming hand. Then, putting it down, the man entered an adjoining apartment. The moment he was gone, the girl rushed in, and seizing the hand, attempted to extinguish the quivering yellow flames, which wavered at the fingers' ends. She blew at them in vain; she poured some drops from a beer-jug over them, but that only made the fingers burn the brighter; she cast some water upon them, but still without extinguishing the light. As a last resource, she caught up a jug of milk, and dashing it over the four lambent flames, they went out immediately.
Uttering a piercing cry, she rushed to the door of the room the beggar had entered, and locked it. The whole house was aroused, and the thief was secured and hung.
The Hand of Glory has made it into several modern works of fiction- in my mind, most notably in John Bellair's The House with a Clock in its Walls. A variation on the theme plays a major role in Charles Stross' 'Laundry' books, in which the talismans can provide protection from observation and be used as projectile weapons- in a further deconstruction of the trope, they can be made from pigeon feet. The hand of glory also figures prominently in the 'weird tale' Dead Man's Hand by Manly Wade Wellman, a tale which also introduces Wellman's take on a particularly 'Lovecraftian' subject- the survival of hostile not-quite-humans in what Robert E. Howard dubbed the dark corners of the earth.
The hand of glory lends its name to the title of a Smithereens song I first heard as a high schooler, the lyrics of which the title of this post references:
The Smithereens song is actually a cover of a song by the late Jimmy Silva.. As Smithereens drummer Dennis Diken explained to music journalist Joe Clark:
Joe: All right. What is the song "Hand of Glory" about, and what are the damn fucking lyrics that I can't understand?
Dennis: I'll give you Jim Silva's number. You can call him. He's the guy who wrote that.
Pat: Jimmy Silva was a--
Joe: He sung it. He must know.
Pat: I sung it. I always felt I did a very piss-poor interpretation.
Dennis: It's an obscure kind of lyric. It's about this medieval ritual to ward off evil spirits froma a person's house, where you take the hand of a freshly-hung felon, chop it off, pickle it with these various herbs and things in, dip it in tallow, light the fingers, run around the house several times, and what it's supposed to do is, for a robber that wants to rob the house, it makes the people inside the house asleep.
Jim: No, it's an unborn hand. It's a--
Dennis: Well, that's another interpretation of it. So there''s your answer.
Pat: But anyway, to make a long story short
Jim: That's some weird shit, man!
Joe: [Laugh] That's even weirder than what I thought it was [namely, finding a severed hand in a railway yard]!
Pat: I could never get behind the lyric of that song. It was more the type of song that had a lot of energy live and it always went over great, and we thought we'd give it a shot in the studio, and it wound up on the album.
I hadn't heard the original before, but the Smithereens cover is a pretty faithful rendition:
I love it, I'm going to have to second musician Scott McCaughey's take on the song- the combination of macabre subject matter with a nice jangle-pop song is particularly appealing to me.
Now, to make things even creepier, Yorkshire's Whitby Museum has a purported hand of glory in its collection. Don't go to sleep tonight!
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query house clock walls. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query house clock walls. Sort by date Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2016
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Terror Trifecta
Hey, while poking around the t00bz, I found something season-appropriate which touches on several of my interests. I've never seen Once Upon a Midnight Scary, but it is narrated by Vincent Price, the second part of the anthology is a truncated (I kill me!) version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and the third part is an adaptation of The House with a Clock in its Walls by Bastard fave John Bellairs. I can't vouch for the entertainment value of the show, but it contains elements which pique my interest:
While I've written pretty extensively on Bellairs' The Face in the Frost, I haven't written about The House with a Clock in its Walls- I may have to put up a review of the book for another weekend.
In the interest of full disclosure, I composed this post last night.
While I've written pretty extensively on Bellairs' The Face in the Frost, I haven't written about The House with a Clock in its Walls- I may have to put up a review of the book for another weekend.
In the interest of full disclosure, I composed this post last night.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Book to Which I Alluded Earlier, The Face in the Frost
In an earlier post, I mentioned ordering a book that I'd had my eye on for months. Well, I finally have my hands on Magic Mirrors: The High Fantasy and Low Parody of John Bellairs. John Bellairs was perhaps best known for his supernatural thrillers for children, starting with The House with a Clock in its Walls.
Magic Mirrors begins with The Face in the Frost, published in 1969, a fantasy novel, which manages to be comic and unsettling by turns. The book starts out cheerfully enough, with an elaborate description of the bizarre home of Prospero, the book's protagonist, which would do a Jack Vance proud:
Inside the house were such things as trouble antique-dealers' dreams: a brass St. Bernard with a clock in its side, and a red tongue that went in and out with the ticks as the tail wagged; a five-foot iron statue of a tastefully draped lady playing a violin (the statue was labelled "Inspiration"); mahogany chests covered with leering cherub faces and tiger mouths that bit you if you put your finger in the wrong place; a cherrywood bedstead with a bassoon carved into one of the fat headposts, so that it could be played as you lay in bed and meditated; and much more junk; and deep closets crammed with things that peered out of the darkness off the edges of shelves, frightening the wits out of the wizard as he poked around looking for jars of mandrake root or dwarf hair in aspic. In the long, high living room--heated by a wide-mouthed green-stone fireplace--were the usual paraphernalia of a practicing wizard: alembics, spiraling copper coils, alcohol lamps--all burping, sputtering, and glurping as red, purple, and green liquids boiled, dripped, or just slurched uncertainly in their containers. On a shelf over the experiment table was the inevitable skull, which the wizard put there to remind him of death, though it usually reminded him that he needed to go to the dentist. One wall of the room was lined with bookshelves, and on them you could find titles such as Six Centuries of English Spells, Nameless Horrors and What to Do About Them, An Answer for Night-Hags, and, of course, the dreaded Krankenhammer of Stefan Schimpf, the mad cobbler of Mainz.
Prospero's peaceful, contemplative life is interrupted by some mildly off-putting phenomena, and the visit of his friend Roger Bacon, who has come to consult with Prospero about a mysterious book that Prospero had asked him about (there's a funny aside as Roger narrates his misadventure with his brazen head). The two embark on an investigation into the provenance of the book, which takes them to the library of another eccentric wizard (a comic interlude, with another humorous allusion to HPL's works), where they realize that an old colleague of Prospero's is behind the phenomena which have been hounding him. This precipitates a perilous errand to obtain a magical bauble co-created by Prospero and his former acquaintance.
After the whimsical opening, Bellairs plunges the reader into some truly unsettling scenes, as the sorcerous attacks on Prospero increase in intensity, and their focus shifts from unnerving the wizard to a more lethal bent. This particular scene gives a taste of Bellairs' ability to put a subtle chill up the reader's spine:
He had not gone a mile when he saw, off in a clearing beyond some beech trees, the light of a campfire. At least there’ll be someone to talk to, he thought, and he stepped off the road into the swishing wet grass. But as Prospero got near the fire, he saw that there was no one tending it and that it was burning in a very strange way. The flames moved back and forth as if blown by suddenly shifting breezes. As he watched, the movement became rhythmical. Prospero looked about him with growing fear, and he noticed that there was a little stream running nearby. He was drawn by what he first took to be a reflection of the firelight on the water. But as he knelt by the stream, he saw that the faint glow came from beneath the surface of the water. There, on the bottom, in a speckled green trembling light, was a smooth triangular stone, and on it was painted his face. The moving water was slowly flaking away the paint, or whatever it was, and the face appeared to be slowly decomposing. He saw a thin film, like a piece of dead skin, wriggle off the portrait-mask and float away down the stream. And the face underneath… Prospero felt his own hands on his wet cheeks.
Against all his instinct, he plunged his own hands into the greasy-feeling, incredibly cold water and picked up the stone. Without looking at it, and holding it at arm’s length as if it were a rotten dead bird, he took it to the fire, which was dancing faster now- it was moving to the rhythm of his own heartbeat. He knew the words that must have been said. “When the fire dies, let him die too.”
He pulled a burning stick out of the fire and held it to the painted stone as he carefully recited a spell he could just barely remember. When the face on the stone was completely blackened, the thing turned into an awful viscous mush in his hand, like a potato left in a damp dark cellar. With a disgusted shudder and a quick jerk of his left arm, Prospero threw the pulpy thing into the stream, where it hit with a gulping sound. Now the whole stream began to boil, and out of the lurching, hissing water rose a smoke shape with arms. It moved toward Prospero and settled around him in swaying layers of mist. He felt as if his eyes were made of blank white chalk. And the thing was throbbing, to pump the life out of him. Prospero stared with open eyes into that stony nothingness, and he shouted a word that sorcerers can only speak a few times in their lives. The whiteness began to break, and he could see night through the cracking clouds. Now he began to speak like someone reciting a lesson: “Michael Scott is buried in Melrose Abbey. A light burns in his tomb day and night. And it is stronger than your freezing white. Go! In his name, go!”
As the narrative moves along, the protagonists realize that their enemy has stumbled upon sorceries that have the power to warp the fabric of reality- night terrors abound, causing a frightened populace to dismantle the social order. In one particularly horrible scene, Bellairs shows that evil need not take a sorcerous form:
“We’re going over to the north to burn that town… Bow…what’s its name?”
“Bishop’s Bowes,” said the innkeeper. “Why are you doing this?”
“We’ve finally figured out what’s going on. Town’s full of evil people. Witches. I have an order here from Duke Harald to burn it to the ground. Here, look at it. Not that you have anything to say in this.”
He unrolled a long parchment that trailed lead and yellow wax seals on twisted strings of skin. The signature, a cross with a letter on each point, was so large that it covered a quarter of the page.
“They deserve it, too,” the leader went on. “You’ve seen the things. Half the people in Wellfont are afraid to go down into their own cellars. Shadows moving, screams from kettles when there isn’t any fire. Well, a little fire’ll teach ‘em. A couple of my men are out getting wood for torches. Do you have any pitch?”
“In the basement. I use it on the roof.”
“That’s fine. We’re going to use it on the roof, too.” He laughed, spitting flecks of brown beer on the muddy floor.
It's tempting to make the point that this was written while the Vietnam War raged, (it was published in the year that the investigations into the My Lai massacre took place so news of My Lai could not have been a direct influence), but, sadly, John Bellairs is not around to verify if this was meant allegorically.
After that particular bit of dialogue, the supernatural horrors seem a little less horrific, although Bellairs still describes them with his characteristic flair:
In the roadside towns, the wizards picked up stories and rumors. One man told how frost formed on the windows at night, though it was only the middle of September. There were no scrolls or intricate fern leaves, no branching overlaid star clusters; instead, people saw seasick wavy lines, disturbing maps that melted into each other and always seemed on the verge of some recognizable but fearful shape. At dawn, the frost melted, always in the same way. At first, two black eyeholes formed, and then a long steam-lipped mouth that spread and ate up the wandering white picture.
If there's one flaw with The Face in the Frost, it is that the climactic confrontation takes place off-stage. At one point, in a twist that will have some readers cringing (but which I loved), a fleeing Prospero stumbles into a most unusual place, and (less felicitously, though Madonna would approve of this) ***SPOILERS REDACTED***. The end is rather abrupt, which is also the major flaw of The House with a Clock in its Walls.
While Magic Mirrors, at $25, is pretty steep in price (I prefer paperbacks anyway), I'd recommend it for any fans of Bellairs' young-adult fiction, fans of the "Harry Potter" books (which I still haven't read), or fans of "weird fiction" who don't mind comic relief (Bellairs' protagonists are the sort of scholarly types that HPL wrote about, though they know what to do about Nameless Horrors). Anybody not into this sort of genre fiction would be better off either ignoring this review, or trying interlibrary loan to get an old Ace Paperbacks edition of The Face in the Frost.
Perhaps, I'll tackle the other portions of the book in a later post. I've been going on about this book for quite some time.
Magic Mirrors begins with The Face in the Frost, published in 1969, a fantasy novel, which manages to be comic and unsettling by turns. The book starts out cheerfully enough, with an elaborate description of the bizarre home of Prospero, the book's protagonist, which would do a Jack Vance proud:
Inside the house were such things as trouble antique-dealers' dreams: a brass St. Bernard with a clock in its side, and a red tongue that went in and out with the ticks as the tail wagged; a five-foot iron statue of a tastefully draped lady playing a violin (the statue was labelled "Inspiration"); mahogany chests covered with leering cherub faces and tiger mouths that bit you if you put your finger in the wrong place; a cherrywood bedstead with a bassoon carved into one of the fat headposts, so that it could be played as you lay in bed and meditated; and much more junk; and deep closets crammed with things that peered out of the darkness off the edges of shelves, frightening the wits out of the wizard as he poked around looking for jars of mandrake root or dwarf hair in aspic. In the long, high living room--heated by a wide-mouthed green-stone fireplace--were the usual paraphernalia of a practicing wizard: alembics, spiraling copper coils, alcohol lamps--all burping, sputtering, and glurping as red, purple, and green liquids boiled, dripped, or just slurched uncertainly in their containers. On a shelf over the experiment table was the inevitable skull, which the wizard put there to remind him of death, though it usually reminded him that he needed to go to the dentist. One wall of the room was lined with bookshelves, and on them you could find titles such as Six Centuries of English Spells, Nameless Horrors and What to Do About Them, An Answer for Night-Hags, and, of course, the dreaded Krankenhammer of Stefan Schimpf, the mad cobbler of Mainz.
Prospero's peaceful, contemplative life is interrupted by some mildly off-putting phenomena, and the visit of his friend Roger Bacon, who has come to consult with Prospero about a mysterious book that Prospero had asked him about (there's a funny aside as Roger narrates his misadventure with his brazen head). The two embark on an investigation into the provenance of the book, which takes them to the library of another eccentric wizard (a comic interlude, with another humorous allusion to HPL's works), where they realize that an old colleague of Prospero's is behind the phenomena which have been hounding him. This precipitates a perilous errand to obtain a magical bauble co-created by Prospero and his former acquaintance.
After the whimsical opening, Bellairs plunges the reader into some truly unsettling scenes, as the sorcerous attacks on Prospero increase in intensity, and their focus shifts from unnerving the wizard to a more lethal bent. This particular scene gives a taste of Bellairs' ability to put a subtle chill up the reader's spine:
He had not gone a mile when he saw, off in a clearing beyond some beech trees, the light of a campfire. At least there’ll be someone to talk to, he thought, and he stepped off the road into the swishing wet grass. But as Prospero got near the fire, he saw that there was no one tending it and that it was burning in a very strange way. The flames moved back and forth as if blown by suddenly shifting breezes. As he watched, the movement became rhythmical. Prospero looked about him with growing fear, and he noticed that there was a little stream running nearby. He was drawn by what he first took to be a reflection of the firelight on the water. But as he knelt by the stream, he saw that the faint glow came from beneath the surface of the water. There, on the bottom, in a speckled green trembling light, was a smooth triangular stone, and on it was painted his face. The moving water was slowly flaking away the paint, or whatever it was, and the face appeared to be slowly decomposing. He saw a thin film, like a piece of dead skin, wriggle off the portrait-mask and float away down the stream. And the face underneath… Prospero felt his own hands on his wet cheeks.
Against all his instinct, he plunged his own hands into the greasy-feeling, incredibly cold water and picked up the stone. Without looking at it, and holding it at arm’s length as if it were a rotten dead bird, he took it to the fire, which was dancing faster now- it was moving to the rhythm of his own heartbeat. He knew the words that must have been said. “When the fire dies, let him die too.”
He pulled a burning stick out of the fire and held it to the painted stone as he carefully recited a spell he could just barely remember. When the face on the stone was completely blackened, the thing turned into an awful viscous mush in his hand, like a potato left in a damp dark cellar. With a disgusted shudder and a quick jerk of his left arm, Prospero threw the pulpy thing into the stream, where it hit with a gulping sound. Now the whole stream began to boil, and out of the lurching, hissing water rose a smoke shape with arms. It moved toward Prospero and settled around him in swaying layers of mist. He felt as if his eyes were made of blank white chalk. And the thing was throbbing, to pump the life out of him. Prospero stared with open eyes into that stony nothingness, and he shouted a word that sorcerers can only speak a few times in their lives. The whiteness began to break, and he could see night through the cracking clouds. Now he began to speak like someone reciting a lesson: “Michael Scott is buried in Melrose Abbey. A light burns in his tomb day and night. And it is stronger than your freezing white. Go! In his name, go!”
As the narrative moves along, the protagonists realize that their enemy has stumbled upon sorceries that have the power to warp the fabric of reality- night terrors abound, causing a frightened populace to dismantle the social order. In one particularly horrible scene, Bellairs shows that evil need not take a sorcerous form:
“We’re going over to the north to burn that town… Bow…what’s its name?”
“Bishop’s Bowes,” said the innkeeper. “Why are you doing this?”
“We’ve finally figured out what’s going on. Town’s full of evil people. Witches. I have an order here from Duke Harald to burn it to the ground. Here, look at it. Not that you have anything to say in this.”
He unrolled a long parchment that trailed lead and yellow wax seals on twisted strings of skin. The signature, a cross with a letter on each point, was so large that it covered a quarter of the page.
“They deserve it, too,” the leader went on. “You’ve seen the things. Half the people in Wellfont are afraid to go down into their own cellars. Shadows moving, screams from kettles when there isn’t any fire. Well, a little fire’ll teach ‘em. A couple of my men are out getting wood for torches. Do you have any pitch?”
“In the basement. I use it on the roof.”
“That’s fine. We’re going to use it on the roof, too.” He laughed, spitting flecks of brown beer on the muddy floor.
It's tempting to make the point that this was written while the Vietnam War raged, (it was published in the year that the investigations into the My Lai massacre took place so news of My Lai could not have been a direct influence), but, sadly, John Bellairs is not around to verify if this was meant allegorically.
After that particular bit of dialogue, the supernatural horrors seem a little less horrific, although Bellairs still describes them with his characteristic flair:
In the roadside towns, the wizards picked up stories and rumors. One man told how frost formed on the windows at night, though it was only the middle of September. There were no scrolls or intricate fern leaves, no branching overlaid star clusters; instead, people saw seasick wavy lines, disturbing maps that melted into each other and always seemed on the verge of some recognizable but fearful shape. At dawn, the frost melted, always in the same way. At first, two black eyeholes formed, and then a long steam-lipped mouth that spread and ate up the wandering white picture.
If there's one flaw with The Face in the Frost, it is that the climactic confrontation takes place off-stage. At one point, in a twist that will have some readers cringing (but which I loved), a fleeing Prospero stumbles into a most unusual place, and (less felicitously, though Madonna would approve of this) ***SPOILERS REDACTED***. The end is rather abrupt, which is also the major flaw of The House with a Clock in its Walls.
While Magic Mirrors, at $25, is pretty steep in price (I prefer paperbacks anyway), I'd recommend it for any fans of Bellairs' young-adult fiction, fans of the "Harry Potter" books (which I still haven't read), or fans of "weird fiction" who don't mind comic relief (Bellairs' protagonists are the sort of scholarly types that HPL wrote about, though they know what to do about Nameless Horrors). Anybody not into this sort of genre fiction would be better off either ignoring this review, or trying interlibrary loan to get an old Ace Paperbacks edition of The Face in the Frost.
Perhaps, I'll tackle the other portions of the book in a later post. I've been going on about this book for quite some time.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Secret Science Club Post-Lecture Recap: Quantum Physics, It's What's for Breakfast
Last night, I headed down to the beautiful Bell House, in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, for this month's Secret Science Club lecture featuring Dr Chad Orzel, of Union College's physics and astronomy department. Besides teaching at Union College, Dr Orzel has written science books for the general public, including How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and his newly released Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects. Last night's lecture riffed off of Breakfast with Einstein, the central trope of which is an exploration of the role of physics in a typical American's morning routine.
Dr Orzel began his lecture with a declaration- you may thing that quantum physics is weird and exotic, remote from everyday life. This is a self-inflicted wound on the part of physicists, with even popular science writers publishing books with words such as 'enigma' and 'puzzle' in the title. Physicist Niels Bohr notably said: "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Dr Orzel quipped that scientists inhabit the same world that everyone else does- they glean clues from everyday objects. He started with breakfast, specifically the glow of the heating elements of an electric toaster. The color of the glow is not dependent on the material of the element, but on its temperature. The color of an object dependent on its temperature was expressed by Wien's law. Black-body radiation is the thermal radiation emitted from an opaque, non reflective body :
The physics behind the problem of the black-body radiation spectrum is a hard problem to crack- there is a lack of radiation at ultraviolet wavelengths. A simple, obvious approach doesn't work to solve the problem. Black-body radiation can be modeled using a box with a small hole in it- light entering the box bounces around inside before escaping, most of the entering light gets absorbed by the walls of the box- what an observer sees in the hole doesn't depend on what entered- there is only a tiny leak of light from outside. A good analogy of this box model is a pipe organ- the pipes of an organ can be considered boxes with holes, only certain sound frequencies can occur in specific pipes, which accounts for the different pitches they produce. As waves travel back and forth, they interfere with each other, creating peaks and valleys. The symbol for wavelength is a lowercase lambda, with a single wave being defined as the distance for a wave to attain a peak, then descend to a valley, and return to the starting point. A single up-and-down motion is half a wave:
Light works in a similar manner as sound does- shorter wavelengths have longer frequencies. With the interaction of waves bouncing around within a box, there are lots of ways to produce various wavelengths. With the interaction of waves, a heating object, according to the classical physics model of the time, should emit an infinite amount of ultraviolet light and x-rays. Since this does not occur, this model was termed the ultraviolet catastrophe- Dr Orzel joked that this would be a great band name. Max Planck resorted to a 'desperate trick' to resolve the problem of black-body radiation, proposing that there were 'oscillators' in the walls of the box producing light, each oscillation having a characteristic energy which it can emit only in multiples of one. Planck was never quite satisfied with his 'solution' to the problem of black-body radiation. Quantum processes eliminate the problem, eliminating high energy. Dr Orzel then showed us an infamous image illustrating black-body radiation. Planck thought his solution was ugly, an inelegant trick. An 'obscure patent clerk in Switzerland', as Dr Orzel joked, proposed another solution- though light acted as waves, it was also made of particles, dubbed photons. A look at hot objects like toaster heating elements resulted in the start of quantum physics.
The second part of the morning routine which Dr Orzel invoked in his lecture was a beeping alarm clock. Neils Bohr observed that atoms of a particular element absorb and emit light at certain frequencies, each element has its own spectrum, producing bright bands at certain wavelengths:
By observing the different spectra, new elements could be identified. Dr Orzel advised us to think of electrons orbiting an atom's nucleus- an electron emits light when it moves from a high energy orbit to a low energy orbit. He described electrons as being 'happier' in certain orbital states, emitting light as they move between sites. Time is measured by the oscillations of cesium atoms, with one second being equivalent to 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium atom. The U.S. Time Reference site derives the official time from atomic clocks, in which cesium atoms are cooled down, then released into a vacuum cavity in which they interact with microwave sources which measure oscillations- one of these atomic clocks could run continuously for one billion years before deviating by one second. Cell phones interact sync with these atomic clocks. A plug-in alarm clock syncs up with the alternating current from the wall outlet, sixty cycles per second. Dr Orzel quipped that even a cheap alarm clock uses quantum physics.
Dr Orzel joked that it takes three things to make a talk, so he moved onto his third example of everyday quantum physics- the internet. Computer operation depends on the most infamous thought experiment ever conceived, the Schrödinger's cat though experiment. In this thought experiment, a cat is placed in a diabolical device, a box equipped with a source of poison which can be triggered by the radioactive decay of an element also placed within the box. There is a fifty percent chance of the radioactive decay triggering the release of the poison within an hour. At the end of the hour, will the cat be alive or dead? According to quantum theory, the cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened, and the state of the cat is observed. According to Bohr, the special state of electrons explain the light bands of the spectrum, but this can't explain all states. Bohr attempted to find reasons why some states are special. In 1923, Louis de Broglie theorized that electrons, while particles, have the properties of waves, and that special states are due to oscillations. The theory that electrons behave as waves can be empirically tested through the 2 slit experiment- light shone through a barrier with two slits will create light and dark spots, an interference pattern. Atoms emitted through two slits will also create an interference pattern reminiscent of light waves. As hydrogen waves move through space, they spread out and electrons are shared between atoms over time, and electrical bonds are shared through atoms. The uncertainty of which electrons belong to which atoms are similar to the uncertainty about whether that cat in the box is alive or dead. A computer's silicon chips work via the control of electrons moving through a solid- the internet exists, as Dr Orzel joked for cat pictures, and because of Schrödinger's cat.
Dr Orzel wrapped up his lecture by stating that the ordinary activities we engage in every day are quantum at their roots, but that the discovery of quantum mechanics was a towering intellectual achievement, and that the people responsible for quantum theory are titans. Dr Orzel ended his lecture with a beautiful statement- he doesn't want to drag quantum theory down to the mundane level, he wants to elevate everyday occurrences.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session. The first question involved the relationship between quantum mechanics and the standard model- quantum mechanics involves very small things, while the standard model works for bigger things. He noted that there is a smooth transition between quantum and standard wave models. Another question involved the possibility of quantum computing, which has generated a lot of buzz- the idea behind it is that the quantum mechanics can be mapped onto traditional systems so that a value can be either 0 or 1 or both. This would be useful for computing large values rapidly, and would be invaluable for code-breaking. Some bastard in the audience, wanting to open up a can of worms, asked whether Dr Orzel thought that string theory has any theoretical value- Dr Orzel, with good humor, noted that string theory has opened up some useful mathematical queries, but has not modeled anything. The following question involved the many worlds hypothesis, which posits that all possible measurements of atoms can occur- electrons are in many states, observers are in many states, and instruments are in many states. Heady stuff, that... A question regarding relativity elicited a funny response from Dr Orzel- quantum physics and special relativity play well together, up to fifteen decimal places, but quantum physics doesn't play well with general relativity. The problem is that quantum physics is 'spiky', and spikiness doesn't mesh well with the smooth spacetime of general relativity. Black holes are the one phenomenon where both play well together. Regarding math- physics depends on the, as Eugene Wigner put it, 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'- the rapidly increasing computational power available to researchers has had a great effect on the sciences. The last question of the night involved quantum entanglement, Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance'- if two entangled particles are separated, even at great distances, effecting one will effect the other in similar fashion- the action will occur faster than the speed of light, even over arbitrarily large distances. The particles are in an uncertain state until measured, which prevents entanglement from being used for faster-than-light communication... the confirmation takes place at a rate slower than the speed of light. Well, so much for the ansible...
Dr Orzel delivered a great lecture- mindbending concepts served up as sweetly as a plate of waffles. His bringing the everyday tasks of a morning to the lofty heights of quantum theory was done with charm and humor. Put succinctly, he knocked it out of the park. Kudos to the good doctor, Margaret and Dorian, and the staff of the beautiful Bell House. Dr Orzel has a lot of videos on YouTube explaining various concepts in physics. Here is the video which is the precursor to his speech of last night:
Start your day with SCIENCE!
Dr Orzel began his lecture with a declaration- you may thing that quantum physics is weird and exotic, remote from everyday life. This is a self-inflicted wound on the part of physicists, with even popular science writers publishing books with words such as 'enigma' and 'puzzle' in the title. Physicist Niels Bohr notably said: "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Dr Orzel quipped that scientists inhabit the same world that everyone else does- they glean clues from everyday objects. He started with breakfast, specifically the glow of the heating elements of an electric toaster. The color of the glow is not dependent on the material of the element, but on its temperature. The color of an object dependent on its temperature was expressed by Wien's law. Black-body radiation is the thermal radiation emitted from an opaque, non reflective body :
The physics behind the problem of the black-body radiation spectrum is a hard problem to crack- there is a lack of radiation at ultraviolet wavelengths. A simple, obvious approach doesn't work to solve the problem. Black-body radiation can be modeled using a box with a small hole in it- light entering the box bounces around inside before escaping, most of the entering light gets absorbed by the walls of the box- what an observer sees in the hole doesn't depend on what entered- there is only a tiny leak of light from outside. A good analogy of this box model is a pipe organ- the pipes of an organ can be considered boxes with holes, only certain sound frequencies can occur in specific pipes, which accounts for the different pitches they produce. As waves travel back and forth, they interfere with each other, creating peaks and valleys. The symbol for wavelength is a lowercase lambda, with a single wave being defined as the distance for a wave to attain a peak, then descend to a valley, and return to the starting point. A single up-and-down motion is half a wave:
Light works in a similar manner as sound does- shorter wavelengths have longer frequencies. With the interaction of waves bouncing around within a box, there are lots of ways to produce various wavelengths. With the interaction of waves, a heating object, according to the classical physics model of the time, should emit an infinite amount of ultraviolet light and x-rays. Since this does not occur, this model was termed the ultraviolet catastrophe- Dr Orzel joked that this would be a great band name. Max Planck resorted to a 'desperate trick' to resolve the problem of black-body radiation, proposing that there were 'oscillators' in the walls of the box producing light, each oscillation having a characteristic energy which it can emit only in multiples of one. Planck was never quite satisfied with his 'solution' to the problem of black-body radiation. Quantum processes eliminate the problem, eliminating high energy. Dr Orzel then showed us an infamous image illustrating black-body radiation. Planck thought his solution was ugly, an inelegant trick. An 'obscure patent clerk in Switzerland', as Dr Orzel joked, proposed another solution- though light acted as waves, it was also made of particles, dubbed photons. A look at hot objects like toaster heating elements resulted in the start of quantum physics.
The second part of the morning routine which Dr Orzel invoked in his lecture was a beeping alarm clock. Neils Bohr observed that atoms of a particular element absorb and emit light at certain frequencies, each element has its own spectrum, producing bright bands at certain wavelengths:
By observing the different spectra, new elements could be identified. Dr Orzel advised us to think of electrons orbiting an atom's nucleus- an electron emits light when it moves from a high energy orbit to a low energy orbit. He described electrons as being 'happier' in certain orbital states, emitting light as they move between sites. Time is measured by the oscillations of cesium atoms, with one second being equivalent to 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium atom. The U.S. Time Reference site derives the official time from atomic clocks, in which cesium atoms are cooled down, then released into a vacuum cavity in which they interact with microwave sources which measure oscillations- one of these atomic clocks could run continuously for one billion years before deviating by one second. Cell phones interact sync with these atomic clocks. A plug-in alarm clock syncs up with the alternating current from the wall outlet, sixty cycles per second. Dr Orzel quipped that even a cheap alarm clock uses quantum physics.
Dr Orzel joked that it takes three things to make a talk, so he moved onto his third example of everyday quantum physics- the internet. Computer operation depends on the most infamous thought experiment ever conceived, the Schrödinger's cat though experiment. In this thought experiment, a cat is placed in a diabolical device, a box equipped with a source of poison which can be triggered by the radioactive decay of an element also placed within the box. There is a fifty percent chance of the radioactive decay triggering the release of the poison within an hour. At the end of the hour, will the cat be alive or dead? According to quantum theory, the cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened, and the state of the cat is observed. According to Bohr, the special state of electrons explain the light bands of the spectrum, but this can't explain all states. Bohr attempted to find reasons why some states are special. In 1923, Louis de Broglie theorized that electrons, while particles, have the properties of waves, and that special states are due to oscillations. The theory that electrons behave as waves can be empirically tested through the 2 slit experiment- light shone through a barrier with two slits will create light and dark spots, an interference pattern. Atoms emitted through two slits will also create an interference pattern reminiscent of light waves. As hydrogen waves move through space, they spread out and electrons are shared between atoms over time, and electrical bonds are shared through atoms. The uncertainty of which electrons belong to which atoms are similar to the uncertainty about whether that cat in the box is alive or dead. A computer's silicon chips work via the control of electrons moving through a solid- the internet exists, as Dr Orzel joked for cat pictures, and because of Schrödinger's cat.
Dr Orzel wrapped up his lecture by stating that the ordinary activities we engage in every day are quantum at their roots, but that the discovery of quantum mechanics was a towering intellectual achievement, and that the people responsible for quantum theory are titans. Dr Orzel ended his lecture with a beautiful statement- he doesn't want to drag quantum theory down to the mundane level, he wants to elevate everyday occurrences.
The lecture was followed by a Q&A session. The first question involved the relationship between quantum mechanics and the standard model- quantum mechanics involves very small things, while the standard model works for bigger things. He noted that there is a smooth transition between quantum and standard wave models. Another question involved the possibility of quantum computing, which has generated a lot of buzz- the idea behind it is that the quantum mechanics can be mapped onto traditional systems so that a value can be either 0 or 1 or both. This would be useful for computing large values rapidly, and would be invaluable for code-breaking. Some bastard in the audience, wanting to open up a can of worms, asked whether Dr Orzel thought that string theory has any theoretical value- Dr Orzel, with good humor, noted that string theory has opened up some useful mathematical queries, but has not modeled anything. The following question involved the many worlds hypothesis, which posits that all possible measurements of atoms can occur- electrons are in many states, observers are in many states, and instruments are in many states. Heady stuff, that... A question regarding relativity elicited a funny response from Dr Orzel- quantum physics and special relativity play well together, up to fifteen decimal places, but quantum physics doesn't play well with general relativity. The problem is that quantum physics is 'spiky', and spikiness doesn't mesh well with the smooth spacetime of general relativity. Black holes are the one phenomenon where both play well together. Regarding math- physics depends on the, as Eugene Wigner put it, 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'- the rapidly increasing computational power available to researchers has had a great effect on the sciences. The last question of the night involved quantum entanglement, Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance'- if two entangled particles are separated, even at great distances, effecting one will effect the other in similar fashion- the action will occur faster than the speed of light, even over arbitrarily large distances. The particles are in an uncertain state until measured, which prevents entanglement from being used for faster-than-light communication... the confirmation takes place at a rate slower than the speed of light. Well, so much for the ansible...
Dr Orzel delivered a great lecture- mindbending concepts served up as sweetly as a plate of waffles. His bringing the everyday tasks of a morning to the lofty heights of quantum theory was done with charm and humor. Put succinctly, he knocked it out of the park. Kudos to the good doctor, Margaret and Dorian, and the staff of the beautiful Bell House. Dr Orzel has a lot of videos on YouTube explaining various concepts in physics. Here is the video which is the precursor to his speech of last night:
Start your day with SCIENCE!
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Bibliophile's Angst- Lending a Cherished Book
I have a friend and co-worker who is such a bibliophile that she'd probably bleed ink were she cut. In one of our conversations, which invariably lead to the subject of books, I mentioned John Bellairs and she said she was a big fan. I then told her that an omnibus edition had been published of Bellairs' fiction for adults, and that it included an unfinished draft of a sequel to The Face in the Frost, the existence of which she was unaware. Well, now I've gone and done it... I feel compelled to lend her my copy of Magic Mirrors. Hey, I know where she works, so the odds that she'll scarper off with it are pretty slim. Now I guess I have to put up a review for the unfinished sequel, the title of which is The Dolphin Cross.
The Face in the Frost is, at its core, the story of an investigation- the protagonists, Prospero and Roger Bacon, become aware of a threat to their (particularly Prospero's) continued well-being, and seek to determine the nature of the threat. Throughout the course of the narrative, they are unsure of the nature of the threat, though they journey on to its potential source in a desperate attempt to counter it.
The Dolphin Cross takes place a few months after the end of The Face in the Frost, after Prospero and Roger Bacon (with some unlooked-for help) have thwarted the evil machinations against them (the nature of the threat is never made explicit). While working outside his improbable house (a line from The Face in the Frost comes to mind- "I do not think, Prospero," he said, "that one should attribute a very high degree of reality to your house."), Prospero becomes aware of the movements of armies throughout the kingdom in which he lives, and he is eventually attacked by a mysterious knight of a singular nature. While catching up with news of local happenings at a nearby tavern, he is separated from his all-important wizard's staff. Thus handicapped, he is unable to fend off another attack and is exiled (like the Prospero you are thinking of) to a remote island. Much of the manuscript is a prison narrative, with Prospero alternately killing time, and devising a means to escape from his captivity. All the while, his sympathetic but unrelenting jailer lets fall snippets of information regarding a new claimant to the throne of the disunited kingdom who seems to wish to bring all of the petty fiefdoms under his rule. Bellairs' description of the disposition of Prospero's country is an inspired bit of lunacy:
The South Kingdom, where Prospero lived, was an insane mélange of tiny princedoms, dukedoms, free cities, fiefs, independent farms, and toll-free bishoprics. The only extant map of the whole domain was done by Abraham Ortelius, cartographer to King Gorm the Wonderworker, the ruler of one of these miniature principalities. The "Measles Map", as it was called in the rather small intellectual community of the South, looked like a picture of something in the last stages of a malignant and disfiguring disease. Blotches of purple rot crept across streams and fields. Pimples and boils popped up everywhere in realistic colors, for when Ortelius had to depict, say, a kingdom within a dukedom within a princedom, he always used pink for the outer ring, red for the next, and bright pustular yellow for the pimple's head. The largest of these nations was about the size of Connecticut, while the smallest was only half an acre. It was called Bedd, and whenever Prospero looked at the map- there was a copy tacked up in his living room- he imagined the crabby old Bishop of Bedd peering over the top of his brass fourposter, threatening all comers to try and do him out of his rightful fief. Or frightful reef. Or something. You couldn't look at the Measles Map for very long without getting the giggles.
So, for much of the narrative, our protagonist sits in lonely exile on a tiny, remote island, until he is able to escape with the aid of a magical MacGuffin which he finds when he makes a thorough search of his environs. Meanwhile, there is a brief interlude in which Roger Bacon discovers that his friend is in danger through the agency of a magic alarm bottle, and departs from his abbey in Scotland. The plot resumes with Prospero safely ashore, where he poses as an itinerant leech-gatherer until he gives his wizardly avocation away by using a trick to cheat at a game, thereby gaining the attention of an angry mob. Escaping the mob, he makes his way to a nearby island where he falls into the clutches of one of Bellairs' most memorable villains, a malignant wizard who calls himself "The Bishop". The scene in which Prospero dines with The Bishop is like a creepy spin on a scene in a "James Bond" movie, in which the spy dines with the supercriminal... the description of the table setting allows Bellairs to indulge in some of his signature creepiness:
What else was there? Hmm. Well, over there was a covered dish of some kind. It was shaped like a duck, with overlapping layers of copper feathers and an ivory bill. One leg was missing. Prospero stared at the thing. For an object that was obviously artificial, it had a very lifelike air. He wondered why. Maybe it was the way the glass eyes caught the firelight. Prospero looked around some more. Near him, behind a small covered dish, stood a sugar bowl shaped like a badger- a badger with the top of his skull cut away. Prospero winced. He had an owl-shaped cookie jar at home, and the head was removable. But he never felt that he was beheading the owl when he reached in to get a cookie. These dishes were obviously made of china, porcelain, and metal, but they all seemed real. And the things they were shaped like were maimed, twisted, mutilated. Prospero felt that he was staring at the display case of a sadistic taxidermist.
The fragment ends with Prospero's escape from The Bishop, and Prospero's parting view of the Bishop's home is another of Bellairs' architectural flights of fancy:
The castle was something to stare at. It looked like what Buckingham Palace might look like if it ever went on a two-week drunk. Essentially, it was a big stone strongbox covered with cornices and pediments and balustrades and balls and vases. But instead of being all triangles and rectangles and squares, as such places usually are, it was droopy crescents and parallelograms and lurching unidentifable shapes. Every angle was out of kilter. Here and there, in niches and in split pediments, Prospero saw busts, and even at this distance he could tell that they were meant to be busts of the Bishop. But some were covered with spider webs and some dripped moss; one was only a half-face split down the middle. The whole building seemed to be afflicted with some horrible stone disease, so that the gray surface was covered with blisters and blotches. A low dome of green copper sprawled across the roof of the building, and from the center of the dome a column of black smoke rose.
The Dolphin Cross went unfinished due to Bellairs' concentration on writing successful children's thrillers (his young adult fiction career began with The House with a Clock in its Walls). The published draft of this, the first third of the book, is a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been. While it's not the equal of The Face in the Frost (it's a draft, so it's not very polished), it does feature Bellairs' trademark blend of humor and horror, though the horror is not quite as unsettling as that in "TFitF". The dangers presented in the plot are more concrete, less existential. There is, though, one moment in which I had to pause in my reading to howl "NOOOO!!!", an experience which most Bellairs fans would no doubt share, especially since the book is unfinished, so the actuality of the plot hook remains up in the air.
Now, here I am, looking at my cherished copy of Magic Mirrors, questioning the wisdom of letting it out of my sight for an instant. I know I can trust my friend, like I said, I know where she works. Yeah, I have to lend it out... I know the exact moment when she'll pause in her reading and howl "NOOOO!!!"
The Face in the Frost is, at its core, the story of an investigation- the protagonists, Prospero and Roger Bacon, become aware of a threat to their (particularly Prospero's) continued well-being, and seek to determine the nature of the threat. Throughout the course of the narrative, they are unsure of the nature of the threat, though they journey on to its potential source in a desperate attempt to counter it.
The Dolphin Cross takes place a few months after the end of The Face in the Frost, after Prospero and Roger Bacon (with some unlooked-for help) have thwarted the evil machinations against them (the nature of the threat is never made explicit). While working outside his improbable house (a line from The Face in the Frost comes to mind- "I do not think, Prospero," he said, "that one should attribute a very high degree of reality to your house."), Prospero becomes aware of the movements of armies throughout the kingdom in which he lives, and he is eventually attacked by a mysterious knight of a singular nature. While catching up with news of local happenings at a nearby tavern, he is separated from his all-important wizard's staff. Thus handicapped, he is unable to fend off another attack and is exiled (like the Prospero you are thinking of) to a remote island. Much of the manuscript is a prison narrative, with Prospero alternately killing time, and devising a means to escape from his captivity. All the while, his sympathetic but unrelenting jailer lets fall snippets of information regarding a new claimant to the throne of the disunited kingdom who seems to wish to bring all of the petty fiefdoms under his rule. Bellairs' description of the disposition of Prospero's country is an inspired bit of lunacy:
The South Kingdom, where Prospero lived, was an insane mélange of tiny princedoms, dukedoms, free cities, fiefs, independent farms, and toll-free bishoprics. The only extant map of the whole domain was done by Abraham Ortelius, cartographer to King Gorm the Wonderworker, the ruler of one of these miniature principalities. The "Measles Map", as it was called in the rather small intellectual community of the South, looked like a picture of something in the last stages of a malignant and disfiguring disease. Blotches of purple rot crept across streams and fields. Pimples and boils popped up everywhere in realistic colors, for when Ortelius had to depict, say, a kingdom within a dukedom within a princedom, he always used pink for the outer ring, red for the next, and bright pustular yellow for the pimple's head. The largest of these nations was about the size of Connecticut, while the smallest was only half an acre. It was called Bedd, and whenever Prospero looked at the map- there was a copy tacked up in his living room- he imagined the crabby old Bishop of Bedd peering over the top of his brass fourposter, threatening all comers to try and do him out of his rightful fief. Or frightful reef. Or something. You couldn't look at the Measles Map for very long without getting the giggles.
So, for much of the narrative, our protagonist sits in lonely exile on a tiny, remote island, until he is able to escape with the aid of a magical MacGuffin which he finds when he makes a thorough search of his environs. Meanwhile, there is a brief interlude in which Roger Bacon discovers that his friend is in danger through the agency of a magic alarm bottle, and departs from his abbey in Scotland. The plot resumes with Prospero safely ashore, where he poses as an itinerant leech-gatherer until he gives his wizardly avocation away by using a trick to cheat at a game, thereby gaining the attention of an angry mob. Escaping the mob, he makes his way to a nearby island where he falls into the clutches of one of Bellairs' most memorable villains, a malignant wizard who calls himself "The Bishop". The scene in which Prospero dines with The Bishop is like a creepy spin on a scene in a "James Bond" movie, in which the spy dines with the supercriminal... the description of the table setting allows Bellairs to indulge in some of his signature creepiness:
What else was there? Hmm. Well, over there was a covered dish of some kind. It was shaped like a duck, with overlapping layers of copper feathers and an ivory bill. One leg was missing. Prospero stared at the thing. For an object that was obviously artificial, it had a very lifelike air. He wondered why. Maybe it was the way the glass eyes caught the firelight. Prospero looked around some more. Near him, behind a small covered dish, stood a sugar bowl shaped like a badger- a badger with the top of his skull cut away. Prospero winced. He had an owl-shaped cookie jar at home, and the head was removable. But he never felt that he was beheading the owl when he reached in to get a cookie. These dishes were obviously made of china, porcelain, and metal, but they all seemed real. And the things they were shaped like were maimed, twisted, mutilated. Prospero felt that he was staring at the display case of a sadistic taxidermist.
The fragment ends with Prospero's escape from The Bishop, and Prospero's parting view of the Bishop's home is another of Bellairs' architectural flights of fancy:
The castle was something to stare at. It looked like what Buckingham Palace might look like if it ever went on a two-week drunk. Essentially, it was a big stone strongbox covered with cornices and pediments and balustrades and balls and vases. But instead of being all triangles and rectangles and squares, as such places usually are, it was droopy crescents and parallelograms and lurching unidentifable shapes. Every angle was out of kilter. Here and there, in niches and in split pediments, Prospero saw busts, and even at this distance he could tell that they were meant to be busts of the Bishop. But some were covered with spider webs and some dripped moss; one was only a half-face split down the middle. The whole building seemed to be afflicted with some horrible stone disease, so that the gray surface was covered with blisters and blotches. A low dome of green copper sprawled across the roof of the building, and from the center of the dome a column of black smoke rose.
The Dolphin Cross went unfinished due to Bellairs' concentration on writing successful children's thrillers (his young adult fiction career began with The House with a Clock in its Walls). The published draft of this, the first third of the book, is a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been. While it's not the equal of The Face in the Frost (it's a draft, so it's not very polished), it does feature Bellairs' trademark blend of humor and horror, though the horror is not quite as unsettling as that in "TFitF". The dangers presented in the plot are more concrete, less existential. There is, though, one moment in which I had to pause in my reading to howl "NOOOO!!!", an experience which most Bellairs fans would no doubt share, especially since the book is unfinished, so the actuality of the plot hook remains up in the air.
Now, here I am, looking at my cherished copy of Magic Mirrors, questioning the wisdom of letting it out of my sight for an instant. I know I can trust my friend, like I said, I know where she works. Yeah, I have to lend it out... I know the exact moment when she'll pause in her reading and howl "NOOOO!!!"
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Smut Recommendation
A couple of weeks ago, in a thread at the mothership, Smut Clyde had this to say about Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness:
The way BBBB feels about “Face in the Frost” is how I feel about Fritz Leiber’s “Our Lady of Darkness”, his homage to CAS.
With a recommendation like that (I've lauded The Face in the Frost more times than I can remember at this point), I figured I'd have to revisit the novella, because it had been ages since I'd read it. I'm most familiar with Leiber's Nehwon stories, featuring his swashbuckling duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and lately I'd read his tributes to H.P. Lovecraft (with whome Leiber corresponded), such as The Terror from the Depths and the touching To Arkham and the Stars- the latter story subverts the whole "cosmic evil" theme of Lovecraft's mythos and ends on a sentimental, optimistic note.
Anyway, it had been a while since I'd read any of Fritz Leiber's contemporary urban dark fantasy, so I got my hands on Our Lady of Darkness. The novella is Fritz Leiber's "love letter" to the City of San Francisco and to the "Weird Tale" author Clark Ashton Smith. The protagonist is an author who is just getting over a long bout of alcoholism after the death of his wife. During his "hazy" days, he acquired two extremely rare volumes from a used bookstore- the first being a journal which may belong to Smith, the second being Megapolisomancy, an exceedingly rare book (the reason for its rarity is explained in the narrative) that posits an occult "science" of urban development:
He handed her the one that had been open, saying, "That's just about the most fascinating book of pseudoscience I've ever seen—it has some genuine insights mixed with the hokum. No date, but printed about 1900, I'd judge."
"'Megapolisomancy,'" she pronounced carefully. "Now what would that be? Telling the future from . . . from cities?"
"From big cities," he said, nodding.
"Oh, yes, the mega."
He went on. "Telling the future and all other sorts of things. And apparently making magic, too, from that knowledge. Though de Castries calls it a 'new science,' as if he were a second Galileo. Anyhow, this de Castries is very much concerned about the 'vast amounts' of steel and paper that are being accumulated in big cities. And coal oil (kerosene) and natural gas. And electricity, too, if you can believe it—he carefully figures out just how much electricity is in how many thousands of miles of wire, how many tons of illuminating gas in tanks, how much steel in the new skyscrapers, how much paper for government records and yellow journalism, and so on."
"My-oh-my," Cal commented. "I wonder what he'd think if he were alive today."
"His direst predictions vindicated, no doubt. He did speculate about the growing menace of automobiles and gasoline, but especially electric cars carrying buckets of direct electricity around in batteries. He came so close to anticipating our modern concern about pollution—he even talks of 'the vast congeries of gigantic fuming vats' of sulphuric acid needed to manufacture steel. But what he was most agitated about was the psychological or spiritual (he calls them 'paramental') effects of all that stuff accumulating in big cities, its sheer liquid and solid mass."
"A real proto-hippie," Cal put it. "What sort of man was he? Where did he live? What else did he do?"
"There's absolutely no indication in the book of any of those things," Franz told her, "and I've never turned up another reference to him. In his book he refers to New England and eastern Canada quite a bit, and New York City, but only in a general way. He also mentioned Paris (he had it in for the Eiffel Tower) and France a few times. And Egypt."
In the course of the novella, the protagonist becomes obsessed with observing the Sutro Tower and Corona Heights, where he spies a mysterious brown-clad figure which he originally takes to be a "robed hierophant"- stoned priest of a modern sun god dancing around an accidental high-set Stonehenge.
As the plot moves forward, he becomes more obsessed with the brown-clad figure on Corona Heights and makes a trek to the crown of the hill to find the "priest", a course of action which ends on a surprising note for the protagonist. He also attempts to verify the provenance of the journal he attributes to CAS, paying a call on a burnt-out counterculture figure who is able to fill him in on some of the details of the life of the author of Megapolisomancy, and his relation to Clark Ashton Smith.
The narrative builds to a climax as the protagonist runs afoul of the "paramental" forces conjured up by the urban landscape, in conjunction with his own mind. As things come to head, his "salvation" hinges on verifying whether his home is the building alluded to in the journal, and determining if he can use this knowledge to ward off the paramentals.
The novella is, like everything I've read by Leiber, great fun. It conjured up other works in my head, which is always a good thing, as I love to spot allusions. The protagonist's fascination with the heights across the city from his apartment evoked H.P. Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark. The "paramentals" of the tale reminded me of Clark Ashton Smith's Genius Loci and Leiber's own Smoke Ghost. The whole "megapolisomancy" angle reminded me of the game played by Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, in which they posit that the great towers built throughout history were designed to track "telluric currents"- I wonder if Eco was inspired by Our Lady of Darkness. The search for the McGuffin which can help the protagonist lay to rest the paramentals besieging him reminded me of John Bellairs' wonderfully eerie The House with a Clock in Its Walls, while the final paramental manifestation was reminiscent of M.R. James' Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad, though with a somewhat comic twist.
Our Lady of Darkness works on a bunch of levels- it works as a supernatural thriller, it works as a loving tribute to the city in which it is set, it works as an homage to a favored author, it works as a part of a greater "weird" literary tradition, it even works as a comedy, on some levels. One way in which I knew that I was hooked from the get-go is that the novella sent me rushing off to look up the Sutro Tower and Corona Heights. For me, that's a sure sign that I care enough to put the book into a greater context.
Thanks, Smut! Now, regarding the post title, did you dirty little lambies think that this would be a pr0n review?
The way BBBB feels about “Face in the Frost” is how I feel about Fritz Leiber’s “Our Lady of Darkness”, his homage to CAS.
With a recommendation like that (I've lauded The Face in the Frost more times than I can remember at this point), I figured I'd have to revisit the novella, because it had been ages since I'd read it. I'm most familiar with Leiber's Nehwon stories, featuring his swashbuckling duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and lately I'd read his tributes to H.P. Lovecraft (with whome Leiber corresponded), such as The Terror from the Depths and the touching To Arkham and the Stars- the latter story subverts the whole "cosmic evil" theme of Lovecraft's mythos and ends on a sentimental, optimistic note.
Anyway, it had been a while since I'd read any of Fritz Leiber's contemporary urban dark fantasy, so I got my hands on Our Lady of Darkness. The novella is Fritz Leiber's "love letter" to the City of San Francisco and to the "Weird Tale" author Clark Ashton Smith. The protagonist is an author who is just getting over a long bout of alcoholism after the death of his wife. During his "hazy" days, he acquired two extremely rare volumes from a used bookstore- the first being a journal which may belong to Smith, the second being Megapolisomancy, an exceedingly rare book (the reason for its rarity is explained in the narrative) that posits an occult "science" of urban development:
He handed her the one that had been open, saying, "That's just about the most fascinating book of pseudoscience I've ever seen—it has some genuine insights mixed with the hokum. No date, but printed about 1900, I'd judge."
"'Megapolisomancy,'" she pronounced carefully. "Now what would that be? Telling the future from . . . from cities?"
"From big cities," he said, nodding.
"Oh, yes, the mega."
He went on. "Telling the future and all other sorts of things. And apparently making magic, too, from that knowledge. Though de Castries calls it a 'new science,' as if he were a second Galileo. Anyhow, this de Castries is very much concerned about the 'vast amounts' of steel and paper that are being accumulated in big cities. And coal oil (kerosene) and natural gas. And electricity, too, if you can believe it—he carefully figures out just how much electricity is in how many thousands of miles of wire, how many tons of illuminating gas in tanks, how much steel in the new skyscrapers, how much paper for government records and yellow journalism, and so on."
"My-oh-my," Cal commented. "I wonder what he'd think if he were alive today."
"His direst predictions vindicated, no doubt. He did speculate about the growing menace of automobiles and gasoline, but especially electric cars carrying buckets of direct electricity around in batteries. He came so close to anticipating our modern concern about pollution—he even talks of 'the vast congeries of gigantic fuming vats' of sulphuric acid needed to manufacture steel. But what he was most agitated about was the psychological or spiritual (he calls them 'paramental') effects of all that stuff accumulating in big cities, its sheer liquid and solid mass."
"A real proto-hippie," Cal put it. "What sort of man was he? Where did he live? What else did he do?"
"There's absolutely no indication in the book of any of those things," Franz told her, "and I've never turned up another reference to him. In his book he refers to New England and eastern Canada quite a bit, and New York City, but only in a general way. He also mentioned Paris (he had it in for the Eiffel Tower) and France a few times. And Egypt."
In the course of the novella, the protagonist becomes obsessed with observing the Sutro Tower and Corona Heights, where he spies a mysterious brown-clad figure which he originally takes to be a "robed hierophant"- stoned priest of a modern sun god dancing around an accidental high-set Stonehenge.
As the plot moves forward, he becomes more obsessed with the brown-clad figure on Corona Heights and makes a trek to the crown of the hill to find the "priest", a course of action which ends on a surprising note for the protagonist. He also attempts to verify the provenance of the journal he attributes to CAS, paying a call on a burnt-out counterculture figure who is able to fill him in on some of the details of the life of the author of Megapolisomancy, and his relation to Clark Ashton Smith.
The narrative builds to a climax as the protagonist runs afoul of the "paramental" forces conjured up by the urban landscape, in conjunction with his own mind. As things come to head, his "salvation" hinges on verifying whether his home is the building alluded to in the journal, and determining if he can use this knowledge to ward off the paramentals.
The novella is, like everything I've read by Leiber, great fun. It conjured up other works in my head, which is always a good thing, as I love to spot allusions. The protagonist's fascination with the heights across the city from his apartment evoked H.P. Lovecraft's The Haunter of the Dark. The "paramentals" of the tale reminded me of Clark Ashton Smith's Genius Loci and Leiber's own Smoke Ghost. The whole "megapolisomancy" angle reminded me of the game played by Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, in which they posit that the great towers built throughout history were designed to track "telluric currents"- I wonder if Eco was inspired by Our Lady of Darkness. The search for the McGuffin which can help the protagonist lay to rest the paramentals besieging him reminded me of John Bellairs' wonderfully eerie The House with a Clock in Its Walls, while the final paramental manifestation was reminiscent of M.R. James' Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad, though with a somewhat comic twist.
Our Lady of Darkness works on a bunch of levels- it works as a supernatural thriller, it works as a loving tribute to the city in which it is set, it works as an homage to a favored author, it works as a part of a greater "weird" literary tradition, it even works as a comedy, on some levels. One way in which I knew that I was hooked from the get-go is that the novella sent me rushing off to look up the Sutro Tower and Corona Heights. For me, that's a sure sign that I care enough to put the book into a greater context.
Thanks, Smut! Now, regarding the post title, did you dirty little lambies think that this would be a pr0n review?
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