The Multiverse Trope

I'm hoping the Multiverse in Doctor Strange isn't what we expect. I was fine back in the 60s with Earth-1 and Earth-2 but now it's (a) complicated beyond belief ~ how many offspring of Scott and Jean of the X-Men from different timelines are there? (b) overused ~ it seems that's all comics are about now (c) cheapens the whole concept ~ crossing the multiverse should not be as easy as crossing the street.

The multiverse theory is being disputed now in favor of one universe with patches where different laws apply, expanding too fast for us ever reaching another patch; and different laws does not mean alternate universe counterparts, it means different laws, like molecules not able to form, no gravity, or enough lethal radiation to kill any living organism. Feige was very specific about time travel not affecting the timeline (EG Tony Stark's daughter not erased.) Loki in Endgame doesn't appear to have stepped out of the timeline to create a new one; since his TV series will take place in history he is just time traveling. He could still end up back where he started. In Doctor Strange the extradimensional worlds seemed to fit the different laws theory ~ worlds so different that Dormammu could exist. I'm hoping the Multiverse of Madness means universes maddeningly different from ours, not just the tired old alternate universes trope.

WELCOME BACK!

It has been a while since I last updated STORIESARESIGNPOSTS. There were moves, illness and financial troubles, but it's time to type more words.

I'm a fan of old time comics, science fiction and fantasy. I've started two new Facebook groups you may find of interest ~ Retro Rockets and SteamPulp ~ for writing projects.

Retro Rockets members and I will be putting together a recurring anthology of pulp SF called SOLAR STORIES. I don't call this "science fiction", because the "science" is based on what we thought we knew back in the pulp era, the 1930s into the 1950s.I call the genre science fantasy because like most heroic fantasy it is set in a distant realm somewhere in time and space ~ a realm that never was and can't exist given what we now know.

The setting for most of the stories is the Solar system, but not the Solar system as it is. This is the Solar system that real scientists speculated it might be, back then. All nine planets are inhabitable and inhabited. Mars in its red deserts hides the ruins of an ancient and mighty civilization. Venus is part world-ocean and part jungled swamplands, where fearsome beasts including lizard men and dinosaurs lurk.

You can get anywhere in the system in hours, days at most, in rocket ships from small personal cruisers to huge passenger liners ~ but the asteroid lanes are infested with pirates. Ray guns, disintigrators, tractor beams and paralysis guns are the weapons of the day, and communications between planets are instantaneous.

UFO MYTHOLOGY

The first alien abduction occured in 1930. Big eyed, big headed beings abducted a woman named Wilma Deering and give her a physical examination. This appeared in the Buck Rogers comic strip, but fit all the tropes of later abduction stories. 

The big headed, small bodied Greys derive from nothing more than what people like HG Wells postulated as the evolution of future man.

The first “real” abduction was recorded in 1961. Their memories of it were brought out under hypnosis. However what most documentaries don’t tell you is that the doctor who hypnotized Barney and Betty Hill stated that the memories were not real, that Betty had been obssessed with UFOs long before this,(most people who are abducted  already believe in UFOs). Or  that Barney’s description of the aliens matched “the galaxy being” from an episode of The Outer Limits that he’d seen a week before, or that he changed his story when he found that it didn’t match Betty’s.

It’s amazing then that later abduction cases followed the same pattern as the first, false, one.

Similarly, the first “flying saucers” reported by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 were not saucers at all. He described “dewdrop” or “tear” shaped objects that skimmed through the sky like saucers on water. But despite the misunderstanding, the term flying saucers caught on, and everybody started seeing saucers. The first crop circles were an admitted fake but people are still seeing them. 

 

Movies and TV have played a large part in the UFO myth since then. Missing time, alien implants, and wiped memories all appeared in 50s movies before they were reported in “real life”. Nobody was “beamed up” until after Star Trek. In fact, the aliens’ mission on Earth ~ to create human hybrids because the aliens can’t feel emotions ~ is Mr Spock! Reptilian shapeshifters first appeared on “V” in 1983. And now that Stargate is cancelled, people are seeing Stargates.

I had two UFO experiences - a V-formation of disc shaped objects that turned out to be ducks, and a night sighting near the airport: a saucer shaped object with lights on the sides and a dome that rose straight up. It was an airplane with lights on its wings and cockpit. It was coming at me at an angle that made it appear to be rising upwards.

The principle called Occam's Razor is abused by UFOlogists as saying "the simplest answer is usually true"; if it looks like an alien spaceship, it probably is. That's not what Occam's Razor says. More like, to solve a problem, you should select the solution with the fewest assumptions. Atmospheric phenomena, misinterpretations, hoaxes and delusions are things we know exist. Aliens, advanced civilizations, interstellar travel, and mind wiping are (huge) 

assumptions.

UFOlogists don't seem to believe their own hype. They make no attempt to prove anything. There are "UFO hotspots" where multiple sightings occur, but they don't set up bases with radar and a light plane. Usually the same victim is abducted again and again, but they don't have abductees wear a wire, or set up an alarm system. So the aliens have the ability to turn off technology; fine, set up something that sends a signal and when the signal is interrupted, send in a team. 

So, no, I don’t believe in alien abductions or ancient aliens. This is not to say that I don’t believe in alien life elsewhere, but there is no compelling evidence that they’ve been here. Space is so vast and time so deep that two alien races may never meet or even learn of each others’ existence.

MULES AND WITCH HUNTS

It hardly seems like it was 2014 since I last published!

I am going to combine my political blog LIES AND DAMNED LIES with STORIESARESIGNPOSTS somewhat, at least as long as Donald Trump and Russia threaten our democracy ... and by "our" I mean the world's.

It looks as if the Trump empire is crumbling already though. The so-called "Witch Hunt" is indicting and imprisoning Trump's mob one by one. Trump continues to try and distract with Space Forces, Deep States, rallies and now, bringing up Hillary Clinton's emails - again.

One of the most famous science fiction series is Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION. a group called the Psycohistorians sets up the Foundation to bring order to the galaxy. They believe that trends in large societies can be predicted mathematically. Everything runs according to plan ... until The Mule is born. Psychohistory cannot predict the actions of an individual, and The Mule is a mutant with powerful psychic abilities. He can reach into the minds of others and "adjust" their emotions, individually or en masse, and win them to his cause - which is conquest.

I see Donald Trump as The Mule. Not that he has any psychic powers, but he does seem able to seize the minds of his followers enough to get them to vote against their own best interests, even to make the religious believe that this racist, lying, womanizing, foul mouthed, cheating you-know-what has been "raised up by God to save America". If democracy had any long term plan, Trump is disrupting it just as The Mule disrupted the Foundation. 

It's almost mythic. Look at the names of the characters.

Trump: British slang for fart.

Vladimir:  ruler of the world  (besides, it sounds like Voldemort)

Mitch (McConnell): urban slang for man-bitch

Robert (Mueller): famed, bright; shining; Mueller means miller (sifting the facts like a miller sifts grain?)

Peter (Strzok): solid as a rock

Barack (Obama): means lightning, but there's more to it. Barack or Baraq was the name of Mohammed's winged horse, who carried the prophet up to Heaven where he met Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other religious figures. A great metaphor for relations between religions.

At any rate, it looks like the long nightmare is drawing to a close. But Republicans and Russians are full of dirty tricks. To purge the voter rolls they have used everything from disenrolling voters for made up reasons to pretending that Russian hacking isn't happening.
Dr McCoy's advice is solid.

Call your local party and make sure you are registered. Get an early ballot or go out to vote on November 6.

As for me, I'm getting my Munchkins ready to sing.

STORIESARESIGNPOSTS hasn't been a particularly political blog. We'll be back next time with a take on one of biggest myths of the 20th and 21st centuries: UFOlogy.

SAY HELLO TO KAMALA KHAN

I don't like zombie movies. It's not the creepiness or the guts and gore. As I stated in my post on The Hunger Games (http://storiesaresignposts.blogspot.com/2012/12/what-makes-heroine.html), they reinforce and encourage the us-against-them mentality. There's no dealing with zombies (and a lot of video game enemies), no negotiation, no common ground. It makes it easier for the edgers who hold the power in society to get otherwise peaceable people to kill their enemies if they can paint the enemies as less than human. Once you realize that "they" are people like you, it can be harder to kill a fellow human being.

That's why books like the ones I'm reviewing today are so important. Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel PERSEOPLIS (also an animated film) show the recent history of Iran and its political issues through the eyes of Marjane as a young girl. She shows how she felt when, overnight, the boys and the girls in her school were segregated into seperate classes and head scarves were made mandatory for the girls. She later experiences the horrors of death, destruction and injustice personally, all the while maintaining her love for freedom and western culture (denim jackets, Iron Maiden and Michael Jackson).

PERSIA BLUES by Dara Naraghi and Brent Bowman is a young adult graphic novel with a similar theme of daily life in Iran, interspersed with the adventures of the heroine's alter ego, a sort of female Conan in ancient Persia.

I've mentioned THE 99 in previous posts (http://storiesaresignposts.blogspot.com/2007/12/in-city-of-all-faiths.html). This wonderful series of comics involves super-powered people from all over the world, but Dr Naif Al-Mutawa created their powers based on the 99 attributes of Allah. The series has them working together for good, despite their differences. Unfortunately THE 99 is no longer published as paper comic books, but they are available as online comics (http://www.the99.org/)

Marvel's new title MS MARVEL may be the most important of this kind of storytelling. Marvel is a major force in comics, movies and TV. It gets more attention. The new Ms Marvel is Kamala Khan, a Pakistani muslim girl living with her family in Jersey City. Her origin is tied to Marvel's Inhumans, Avengers and Captain Marvel titles, so she's hard to ignore if you're a Marvel universe fan. And it's a fun read. Her parents are strictly religious, but Kamala is into normal teenage girl pursuits: parties, texting, being popular, and she's a huge Avengers fan. When she gains shapeshifting powers from the Inhumans' Terrigen Mist, she makes herself a super hero, but it's not the powers or the heroics that are important here. Like the other books, it reveals that, muslim or no, her wants and dreams are no different from anybody else's. Getting readers, especially young readers, to see this is what we need to save the world.

"I believe in my neighbors.
I know their faults and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults." - Robert A Heinlein, 

MORALITY

            I recently attended a discussion on Biblical morality.  When the Bible tacitly approves of such things as slavery, genocide and rape, they explained that such things were common in the days when the Bible was written because of the scarceness of land, water, and livestock, etc.

          When I’m arguing with people who say that without a god (and his punishment/reward system) atheists cannot possibly have any morals, I usually respond in two ways. One, that a carrot-and-stick is no basis for morality; if their god took away the threat of Hell, how morally would they behave? Second, that their god condoned a lot of things that we view as immoral today; thus if their unchanging god changed his mind again, and decided that such things were okay, would they blindly obey him?

          Thing is, that second argument may be closer to the truth in real world terms. Global warming may create a lack of land, water and food. I’m not confident that we wouldn’t change our minds and decide that the old evils were good after all.

          Look how easily we shed our own morals on things like unjustified invasions, torture, legal rights and privacy after 9/11. It was okay – because we were the good guys fighting the good fight against, not fellow humans, but bad guys.  

          The old comics and pulp science fiction I read were pretty naïve. If anything as disastrous as climate change threatened the world, a coalition of the greatest minds on Earth would have convened to deal with it. Everybody would have survived.

          In the so-called real world, the only plan anyone has for dealing with disaster is the Pentagon’s papers on “resource wars.”

          Climate change is a real threat in more ways than one. We might lose our comfortable style of living, our superpower status and our easy access to oil, habitable land and even water. All the population of the Earth is in the same boat. And all we’re doing is plotting ways to take away what we need from other people!

          I fear worse than resource losses. We could lose our souls.

          The Klingons had it right. “Only a fool fights in a burning house.”

         

         

WHAT MAKES A HEROINE

I was disappointed with reaction from some of the comics and sf fans' base to the film of THE HUNGER GAMES.  I couldn't believe that they wanted to know why Katniss didn't just use her forestry and bow skills to kill everybody else and win.  That she didn't was the whole point of the story.  Just killing and winning - which would have meant taking out Rue and Peeta herself - would have been giving the Capitol what they wanted, a new champion and the continuation of the Games.  She wouldn't have been a heroine at all, and I don't think the books would have sold as phenomenally well as they did.  She made the powers that be do things her way, and that's why she is a heroine.  A hero/ine doesn't just go along for the ride, she shakes up the status quo.

There is a sad trend in popular sf and fantasy to portray violence as the only means of resolving conflicts.  You can see it reflected in shooter video games and action and zombie movies to name a few.  The enemy is faceless and nonhuman so it's ok to kill them.  That's the only way to survive.  Peace is never an option.  You can't negotiate with the Flood or the Heartless or the Darkspawn or the undead.  Even the new STAR TREK movies are about blowing up supervillains; the tv series strove to resolve confrontations peacefully, but that doesn't make good action movies.  Neil Degrasse Tyson said, "If you carry around a hammer, all problems begin to look like nails."

Please note that I am not saying that violent video games or movies cause violence or hate  -  people like Osama bin Laden, Adolph Hitler and Fred Phelps did not grow up playing video games.  But it reflects and reinforces the already existing feeling that our perceived enemies are not like us, fags or ragheads or gooks or Jews or infidels or whatever hate words are being used.  It's a mental state that's been with us since prehistory but it's one that we can survive without.  A while ago the government had a leaked plan for how to survive climate change or the loss of natural fuels, land or water.  It was all about Resource Wars, fighting over them. Nothing about any sharing or cooperation between nations so that everybody lives.  Even the Klingons had a proverb: "Only a fool fights in a burning house." A lot of sf/fantasy from Trek to comic books used to be above that kind of thinking.

And now we have drone weapons that you can kill with impersonally without ever seeing your victims' faces.  Remember how outraged you feel when some sick shooter in Colorado or Connecticut kills innocent men, women and kids?  Happens all the time in places like Pakistan, and we can't understand why they hate us.

Today's heroes are a violent lot.  Superheroes used to have a personal code against killing.  They won as often as not by outsmarting the bad guys - not just by being meaner and harder.  In the scene above Green Lantern proved Sinestro (the red guy for non comics fans) wrong by sealing him in a big green bubble (hey, it's a comic book; point was, GL didn't kill him.  It's no more unbelievable than Batman dodging assault weapons fire or Wolverine carving up a hundred ninjas.) 

The idea that enemies are not like us so we have to kill them is something the human race needs to put behind us. The only ones who profit are the political hawks and religious fanatics who use it to send people to fight their wars and the rich who only want to carve up what's left.  Why, as some would have Katniss do, give them what they want?