Pixel Scroll 3/30/17 Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Scroll

(1) WAX TREK. The Orange County Register’s Keith Sharon should get a Pulitzer Prize for the first line of his article “$80,000 later, why this trio gave up their ‘Star Trek’ wax figures, Enterprise replica”:

Mr. Spock’s head cooled in a wooden crate for 10 years before someone noticed something was wrong.

Equally good is the rest of the article — about the fate of the wax Star Trek crew since the defunct Movieland Wax Museum sold its exhibits in 2006.

Steve and Lori had 24 hours to decide whether they wanted to pay about $40,000 for Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Uhura, Dr. McCoy, Chekov and Scott. Or they could buy just one, or just a few.

They went to Don Jose’s restaurant and had margaritas over dinner. They knew other people wanted to buy the individuals in the crew. One guy wanted to put Spock in a bar. Another guy wanted to put Captain Kirk in his house. So they decided to buy them all, to keep the crew together. They made it their mission to save the crew of the Enterprise.

“Let’s protect them,” Steve told Lori.

“We took them home and put them in our dining room,” Lori said.

That’s when it got weird. Steve couldn’t stand the life-like eyes looking at him all the time.

“We put paper bags over their heads,” Steve said.

 

Steve Greenthal puts on the head of his Captain Kirk wax figure at the Fullerton Airport before donating them to the Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum on Saturday, March 25, 2017. The figures were purchased when the Movieland Wax Museum went out of business. (Photo by Nick Agro, Orange County Register/SCNG)

(2) NOT ENOUGH HAMMER. Ursula K. Le Guin reviews Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology for The Guardian and finds it very well-written but wanting in some ways:

Gaiman plays down the extreme strangeness of some of the material and defuses its bleakness by a degree of self-satire. There is a good deal of humour in the stories, the kind most children like – seeing a braggart take a pratfall, watching the cunning little fellow outwit the big dumb bully. Gaiman handles this splendidly. Yet I wonder if he tries too hard to tame something intractably feral, to domesticate a troll.

… What finally left me feeling dissatisfied is, paradoxically, the pleasant, ingratiating way in which he tells it. These gods are not only mortal, they’re a bit banal. They talk a great deal, in a conversational tone that descends sometimes to smart-ass repartee. This chattiness will be familiar to an audience accustomed to animated film and graphic narrative, which have grown heavy with dialogue, and in which disrespect is generally treated as a virtue. But it trivialises, and I felt sometimes that this vigorous, robust, good-natured version of the mythos gives us everything but the very essence of it, the heart.

(3) FROM BUFFY TO BATGIRL. Joss Whedon is in talks to do a Batgirl movie says The Hollywood Reporter.

Whedon is in negotiations to write, direct and produce a Batgirl stand-alone movie for Warner Bros., adding another heroine to the studio’s DC cinematic universe.

Warner Bros. Pictures president Toby Emmerich will oversee the project, along with Jon Berg and Geoff Johns….

Batgirl will be the second female superhero stand-alone in Warner Bros. DCU (Wonder Woman will hit theaters on June 2). Whedon has long been credited as a pioneering voice for female-focused genre fare, having created the hit TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer two decades ago.

(4) DIETZ ESTATE SALE. Over 300 sf/f collectible books and other items from Frank Dietz’ are for sale on eBay. Dietz passed away in 2013.

He was chairman of the first 14 Lunacons, and was Fan Guest of Honor at the 2007 Lunacon. His activities as “Station Luna,” an effort to record the proceedings of many World SF Conventions, continued for many years. He recorded events at the 1951 Worldcon in New Orleans.

(5) WOTF IN TOWN. Ron Collins reports on Day 2 of the annual Writers of the Future Workshop.

“It’s a little overwhelming,” Andrew Peery told me during a break after the opening session. He meant it in a good way. Peery, from North Carolina, is the 4th quarter first prize winner. The group had just walked through the Author Services Hall of Writers and been given a presentation of past judges throughout the contest’s history. People here have asked me how things have changed in the 18 years since my last visit. One thing that’s different is that the list of judges has gotten a little longer and a little more prominent. It’s very cool to think about.

One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the purpose of the workshop.

“Our goal in this workshop is to help you train yourself to be a professional writer,” Dave Farland said in his opening remarks. He and Tim [Powers] then covered several topics, focusing on things like how to develop writerly habits, how stories are structured, and how to create and use suspense. And that was just before lunch. Along the way the two of them did a little brotherly bickering about the speed with this things should be done. “If you’re here, we already know you’re good,” Dave said. “But now we want to help you think about producing that good work more quickly.” Tim, followed that up with: “My first drafts take forever and are never any good.” Then he explained why that was just fine by him. I’ve seen that before, but, yeah, it holds up on second viewing! It’s always great to see how creativity is different for two such high-caliber artists.

Other authors have written about Day 1 and Day 3.

(6) EGYPT IN SF. Tim Powers was recently interviewed by Rachel Connor and described his preparation.

Rachel: I was first introduced to your work when I read The Anubis Gates, a historical fiction with time-travel, Victorian corruption and ancient Egyptian folklore. Can you tell us a little about your approach to historical fiction? What is it about a certain period of time that intrigues you?

Tim: A novel for me generally starts with something I stumble across in recreational non-fiction reading. I’ll notice some peculiarity — like Edison working on a phone to talk to dead people with, or Albert Einstein going to a séance — and I’ll start to wonder if a story might not be built around what I’m reading.

If I come across another oddity or two — like Edison’s last breath being preserved in a test tube in a museum in Michigan, or Einstein turning out to have had a secret daughter who disappears from history in 1902 — I’ll decide that this isn’t recreational reading after all, but research for a book.

For The Anubis Gates, it was a note in one of Lord Byron’s letters. He said that several people had recognized him in London at a particular date in 1810, when at that time he was in fact in Turkey, very sick with a fever.

I wondered how he might have a doppelganger, and started reading all about Byron, and his doctor in Turkey, and London at the time, looking for clues

(7) EVERY JOT AND TITTLE. Tom Easton and Michael Burstein’s collaborative short story Sofer Pete” has been published in Nature

The visitors were crowded against one wall of bookcases, facing a large table on which was stretched a long piece of parchment. An inkwell filled with black ink sat off to the side. A hand holding a traditional goose-quill pen moved over the parchment, leaving rows of Hebrew characters behind it more quickly than a human hand ever could.

Because the hand did not belong to a human. The gleaming metal hand belonged to a humanoid robot seated on the other side of the table. Its name was Pete.

(8) THANKS DAD! Most people know Joe Hill’s father is Stephen King. Here’s what happened when young Joe turned to him for advice….

(9) “EVERY WINDOW’S A SEAT”. How much will people pay to be in space for a few minutes? “Jeff Bezos just revealed a mock-up of the spacecraft his rocket company will use to take tourists into space”.

Each launch will rocket a handful of wealthy tourists more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth on a roughly 11-minute trip.

Near the top of a high arc, the rocket will detach from the space capsule, which will fall toward the ground, granting passengers about four minutes of weightlessness and letting them take in an incredible view of the fringes of our planet’s outer atmosphere.

(10) GHOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST. The BBC says the animated Ghost in the Shell was good, but the live-action is better.

The Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell isn’t just one of the most acclaimed science-fiction cartoons ever made, it’s one of the most acclaimed science-fiction films, full stop. Conceptually and visually breathtaking, Mamoru Oshii’s cyberpunk detective flick bridged the gap between analogue blockbusters and digital ones, between Blade Runner and The Terminator, with their cyborgs and androids, and The Matrix and Avatar, with their body-swaps and virtual realities. The makers of The Matrix, in particular, were happy to acknowledge that they were following in Oshii’s future-noir footsteps.

The question is, then, is it worth bothering with a belated live-action version? Considering that the cartoon is now a cult classic, and that several other films have taken its innovations and run with them, can a mega-budget Hollywood remake have anything of its own to offer? The answer to both questions is a definite yes.

(11) RELAUNCH. First reuse of a SpaceX recoverable boosterNPR reports:

SpaceX launched a communications satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using a rocket stage that has already been to space and back. SpaceX is betting that this kind of recycling will lower its costs and revolutionize space flight.

(12) NOT FIVE? At the B&N Sci-FI & Fantasy Blog, Corinna Lawson shares the four rules that tell her “How to Know When It’s Okay to Read a Series out of Order”.

  1. When the character arcs are resolved by book’s end

In Sins of Empire, there are three leads, and all set out on emotional journeys that are fully resolved by book’s end.

Meanwhile, ASoIaF readers are still waiting to see what happens via-à-vis Jamie Lannister’s redemption arc, whether the Khaleesi will ever seize her birthright, if Tyrion’s suffering will amount to anything, or if Jon Snow will ever stop flailing about and realize who and what he is.

In Bujold’s The Warrior’s Apprentice, a young man who dreams of being a soldier finds more than he bargained for, and, at the end, his journey has a resolution, despite a fair dozen books that follow.

But Bishop’s Others, series, well, readers have been waiting for four books to see what happens with Simon and Meg, and though their patience is rewarded, it took four other books to get there.

(13) REVIEW HAIKU. Aaron Pound begins with a 17-syllable plot summary, then goes on to tell why he loved Kelly Sue DeConnick’s graphic story Pretty Deadly, Vol. 1: The Shrike.

Full review: I must confess that I obtained this book almost solely because it was written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, and at this point I am pretty much willing to at least take a look at anything she writes. Pretty Deadly not only met the high expectations I have for work from DeConnick, it exceeded them. This is, quite bluntly, mythic storytelling that manages to be both epic in scale and simultaneously intensely personal. Told via a combination of tight and brilliant writing from DeConnick and stunningly beautiful and evocative artwork from Emma Rios, this story presents a violent and visceral enigma shrouded in mystery wrapped up in magic, gunfights, and swordplay.

(14) THREE SHALL BE THE NUMBER THOU SHALT COUNT. This is a public service announcement from N.K. Jemisin.

(15) KORSHAK COLLECTION. An exhibit from “The Korshak Collection: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature” will be on display April 10-May 16 at the Albin O Kuhn Library and Gallery on the University of Maryland Baltimore County campus. The collection, now owned by Stephen Korshak, was started by his father Erle Korshak, past Worldcon chair and founder of the imprint Shasta Publishers, and has its own impressive website.

Truly a vision of the fantastic, this exhibition is an amazing exploration of both illustrative art and the evolution of the visual landscape of science fiction and fantasy literature. Featuring work by both American and European artists and spanning more than a century, these vivid illustrations bring to life adventures, beings, and worlds conjured in novels such as Don Quixote, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Tarzan, and pulp magazines including Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Fantastic Adventures, and Wonder Stories. Accomplishing far more than simply guiding readers in their explorations of new and sometimes bizarre realms, the range and impact of these illustrations is far-reaching.

The exhibition will also include books, pulp magazines, and other items drawn from UMBC’s Rosenfeld Collection, revealing how the illustrations in the Korshak Collection were meant to appear when encountered as artifacts of material culture.

(16) BEYOND ORWELL. The 2084 Kickstarter has funded. The collection —

features 11 stories from leading science fiction writers who were all asked the same question – what will our world look like 67 years from now? The anthology features new and exclusive stories from:

Jeff Noon, Christopher Priest, James Smythe, Lavie Tidhar, Aliya Whiteley, David Hutchinson, Cassandra Khaw, Desirina Boskovich, Anne Charnock, Ian Hocking, and Oliver Langmead.

(17) BOOKS WERE SOLD. This is John Scalzi’s executive summary of The Collapsing Empire’s first week:

So, in sum: Top selling science fiction hardcover in the US, second-best-selling audio book in the US, my highest debut on the USA Today bestseller list, and a TV deal.

That’s a pretty good week, y’all.

Fuller details at the post.

(18) JURY CALL. The Shadow Clarke Jury continues to review its Clarke Award picks.

I put this novel on my shadow shortlist after reading the opening chapters on Amazon, because I was fascinated by the premise: the seemingly inexplicable overnight irruption of masses of full-grown trees into our familiar world. I said, when I explained my choices, that I was intrigued because it reminded me somewhat of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, in which the world is transformed, first by meteors, which cause mass blindness, and then by the apparently coordinated escape of the triffids, seizing the opportunities afforded by this new blindness. I was curious to see how much The Trees might be in conversation with Triffids more than half a century on.

De Abaitua wrote one of the most complex and difficult novels from 2015, If Then, and I still find myself wondering about it at random times. I was so taken by that strange novel about an algorithmic society in decay—a novel that feels so uneven on the surface, yet so complete in substance—I couldn’t articulate my thoughts well enough to write a decent review. Since then, The Destructives has been on my “most anticipateds” list. Placed on a Clarke award shortlist only once before, for The Red Men in 2008, de Abaitua was unaccountably left off the list for If Then in 2016. The Destructives is the latest piece in this abstract thematic series and, given its scope, it seems primed to make up for last year’s Clarke snub.

Any work of fiction is a formal exercise in the controlled release and withholding of information. What is withheld and for how long is a key element in how we read the work and even how we classify it. To give an obvious example, in a detective story in the classical mode it is essential that the identity of the killer is withheld until the last page, the structure of the novel is therefore dictated by the need to steadily release information that leads towards this conclusion without actually pre-empting it. How successful the novel is depends upon the skill with which this information is managed. If too much is given away so that readers can guess whodunnit too early, the work is adjudged a failure; similarly, if too little is revealed so that the denouement comes out of the blue, it is seen as a cheat and again the work fails.

In a recent article for the Guardian, ‘How to build a feminist utopia’, Naomi Alderman briefly sets out some pragmatic measures for helping pave the way to a world in which genitals, hormones and gender identification don’t matter because ‘everyone gets to be both vulnerable and tough, aggressive and nurturing, effortlessly confident and inclusively consensus-building, compassionate and dominant’. Among suggestions such as trying to establish equal parenting as the norm and teaching boys to be able to express their emotions, she also proposes teaching every girl self-defence at school from the age of five to sixteen. In effect, this is what happens in The Power when it becomes apparent that a generation of teenage girls across the world have developed the capacity to emit electric shocks. The only difference is that this doesn’t just allow the girls to defend themselves against male violence but instead enables them to become the aggressors.

(19) STATUARY GRIPE. Copied to Twitter, a grumpy letter to the editor from a “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” type about a proposed Terry Pratchett statue.

(20) TV IS COMING. HBO’s latest series promo, Game of Thrones Season 7: Long Walk.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, rcade, Rob Thornton, Cat Eldridge, Mark-kitteh, David K.M.Klaus, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

201 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 3/30/17 Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Scroll

  1. One of the problems surrounding the cultural appropriation issue here is the question of who is allowed to use a particular story. Most “Americans” are a mixture of several ethnic backgrounds, can ones with the “right” background write stories that draw upon the mythology and folklore of those ethnicities, or is that reserved to people who are actually living in the countries directly associated with those ethnicities?

    I know, for example, that a chunk of my ancestry is Welsh. Can I write stories using the Mabinogion as inspiration, or would that be cultural appropriation? Is that close enough to “generic Celtic” that I could draw upon Irish mythology as well? Or continental Celtic mythology? I know that a fair amount of my ancestors were French, so can I use stories taken from French folklore (which, as Cora points out above, would include many stories from Grimm’s Fairy Tales)?

    Jack Kirby was of Austrian descent, and the Norse pantheon also had influence among Germanic peoples – is that close enough for him to make stories based on them? Does the fact that he was of Austrian Jewish descent change this calculus? Does the fact that I count some people of Saxon provenance among my ancestors mean I could work with Nordic-German mythology?

    The question one has to answer when one goes down this road is “how close does one have to be for the use of these influences to not be considered cultural appropriation”? Because in the U.S., there are a lot of people who can claim a variety of backgrounds.

  2. I know, for example, that a chunk of my ancestry is Welsh. Can I write stories using the Mabinogion as inspiration, or would that be cultural appropriation?

    And my ancestors are mainly from the England/Scotland/Ireland area, so I suppose I can write about this hammer god but as for the other hammer god, I can’t touch this.

  3. And my ancestors are mainly from the England/Scotland/Ireland area, so I suppose I can write about this hammer god but as for the other hammer god, I can’t touch this.

    Well, do you have Anglo-Saxon heritage? Because this set of gods would seem to be okay as well.

  4. I think “cultural appropriation” is just another one of those well-meaning ideas that simply doesn’t work in practice. Instead of attacking people whose only goal is to write good stories that will entertain people, we should focus our fire on people whose motives are unquestionably evil. It’s not like there’s a shortage of them.

  5. @Darren
    but as for the other hammer god, I can’t touch this.

    You truly are 2 Legit 2 Quit.

  6. And come August, I’ll be telling a story or stories from cultural traditions that I have no part in. (I’m particularly taken by a Vietnamese story that reminds me of Kipling’s Just So Stories; in this case it’s how the tiger got his stripes…. (Thanks again, Hampus!)

    I’m a white American. My ancestry is mostly Bohemian, Swedish, and Norwegian, with a certain amount of English and random other European countries thrown in. Should I not tell this story because of cultural appropriation? Or should I explain in the introduction that this is a traditional Vietnamese story, and just tell it, so American kids can learn folk tales that originated in other parts of the world? (I’m really not trying to be disingenuous, here; I don’t know where to draw the line. I *think* this is ok, but I’m willing to be schooled otherwise.)

  7. The worst case of cultural appropriation is, of course, Grand Theft Rainbow. (It is nice to see somebody stand up for the god Ishtar and her jeweled necklace for a change.)

  8. Things like this I always see as a challenge to prove the power of my Google-Fu.

    A West German movie called Aschenputtel from 1955 that was dubbed into English in 1966.
    Skimming through it, it seems that you are off quite a bit on the details (to be expected with such an old memory) but there is no question this is it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB95Z3pasns

    Surrender to my superior technique, Grasshopper!

    I don’t recall ever watching this one and Aschenputtel is merely the German name for Cinderella. The Cinderella film adaptation most Germans are familiar with these days, since it’s always on around Christmas, is the Czech/East German film Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella, which is lovely, even if it takes a lot of liberties with the story and/or mixes in elements of a different fairy tale.

    Regarding cultural apporopriation, the problem isn’t so much that someone writes about a culture/mythology that is not their own, cause most writers have done that at some point. It becomes a problem when it’s cluelessly or offensively done, when it overshadows the “original” versions, when the author of a retelling claims to have reinvented the wheel (“I wrote the first truly feminist fairy tale retelling – Buy my book”) , when someone Americansplains their own culture/mythology to the people they borrowed from or when bits about the “originals” that offend or annoy Americans for some reason are used to psychoanalyse a whole culture, e.g. “Look at the bloody German fairy tales, no wonder they are all Nazis” or “The Norse myths are so nihilistic and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales are so depressing, no wonder Scandinavians are depressed alcoholics.” And yes, I’ve come across all of these in some form.

    But if you don’t do that, feel free to write fairy tale retellings or Norse mythology retellings or whatever. Though it might take a while to persuade me to read them, because there are so many bad versions out there.

  9. Andrew M:

    “Which calendar shift are you referring to? I know of none that would shift a feast by eight days. Certainly the end of Saturnalia came about the same time as Sol Invictus/Christmas, which would no doubt help one festival to take on qualities of the other”

    The change to 25th of December was done by Emperor Domitian. I was wrong in writing that it was a change in answer to a change in calendar though.

  10. Darren, this movie is from the right era, and it has “coo-kit-y-coo,” but I don’t think it’s the same movie. What may seem like signs of identity might just be proof of a common tradition I’m not hip to. The doves might be standard issue.

    I’m not finding any partial foot amputations in my searching about, and I don’t see any evil puddingheads eating sausages at the (curtailed) end, or any candidate through the movie for the post of henchdummy.

    It’s entertaining, but I don’t think I’ve seen it before.

  11. Aaron:

    I think that is questions that can’t get exact answers. It is fluid, but I do think it mostly has to do with how much you respect the culture or the original stories. I do not think Kirby showed any kind of respect in his version. Space aliens. Bah. But Gaiman showed respect in American Gods.

    Note that I’m not saying that Marvel’s Thor shouldn’t have been created or that it should be changed. I do think we will have to accept weird and WTF takes on our gods. And be able to laugh or shake our heads at them. The only thing I care for is that people actually try to understand our feelings and also laugh and shake their heads at the versions when they understand the reason.

    And then continue to enjoy the stuff if it is good enough.

    (apart from changing Thor to being a title and not a person. That should never have been done. Arrrrrgh!!! If I meet the writer who made that change, I will scream)

  12. Well, Frankenstein was changed from being the name of the scientist to being the name of the monster, so it’s not like messing up the names is unusual in the genre.

  13. Darren, this movie is from the right era, and it has “coo-kit-y-coo,” but I don’t think it’s the same movie.

    Hm. Googling for “coo-kit-y-coo”, I see that there are only two hits–this thread, and you asking in 2005 at Making Light. Are you bananas213 here, too?

    There may be a version out there that has no (English language) record on Google, but you might also conciser the possibility that your memory has been corrupted by something else you’ve seen or read.in a Shazam or alternate ending of Big sense. (That “coo-kit-y-coo” seems pretty diagnostic.)

  14. It is fluid, but I do think it mostly has to do with how much you respect the culture or the original stories. I do not think Kirby showed any kind of respect in his version.

    But why shouldn’t Kirby have free reign to do what he wishes with the stories? They are, after all, part of his cultural heritage, through his Austrian ancestry. Why should respect be the issue in that case? Why shouldn’t Jason Aaron, the author who changed Thor to a title for his story, be able to do that? Would it have been okay for a Swedish writer to do that? For all I know, Jason could have Swedish ancestry. Or he might not – but does it matter that much?

  15. All kinds of possibilities, but I watched this movie with my sisters and we all have memories of it. The details I don’t see carried through are more indicative of the movie’s failure to be the one I remember than they are of my failure to recognize the movie now. Perhaps there’s a different dub that uses the source material differently.

    Milton DeLugg was in several things I liked, like “Tomorrow on The Children’s Corner,” and some 50s TV, and didn’t he play “Happy Kyne,” the bandleader on “Fernwood 2Night”?

  16. @Hampus Eckerman–

    Note that I’m not saying that Marvel’s Thor shouldn’t have been created or that it should be changed. I do think we will have to accept weird and WTF takes on our gods. And be able to laugh or shake our heads at them. The only thing I care for is that people actually try to understand our feelings and also laugh and shake their heads at the versions when they understand the reason.

    And then continue to enjoy the stuff if it is good enough.

    Yes. This.

    I’m offended that the Japanese have made Christmas Eve into Valentine’s Day. I don’t think that means they have to stop. And if I found out that there was some Japanese romantic holiday that just coincided or almost coincided with it, and they wound up getting merged and that’s why Christmas Eve became their big romantic holiday, I would just laugh at the coincidence and think, this weird stuff can happen when cultures collide.

  17. Aaron:

    “But why shouldn’t Kirby have free reign to do what he wishes with the stories? “

    Has anyone said he shouldn’t? I’m not sure who you are arguing against. As to “part of his cultural heritage, through his Austrian ancestry”, I have absolutely no idea if this is true or not. But I do think there is a difference between having ancestors from somewhere and still being emotionally connected to the culture of the ancestors. And I do think there is a difference between writing about some heritage from a culture with respect and to do it while on acid.

    Gaiman wrote with respect in American Gods. Kirby wrote while on acid for Marvel.

  18. Also, as far as I know, Kirby was a jew. I’m not sure we can automatically draw the conclusion that a person of austrian jewish heritage has a cultural connection to the norse gods. To be honest, I have no knowledge of how widespread the worship of Thor was in Austria.

    And again, note that I’m not saying that he shouldn’t have written Marvel’s Thor as he did.

  19. There are a whoooole lot more people culturally and religiously affiliated with Christmas as a religious holiday who have every right to be offended that the Japanese have turned it into Valentine’s and mixed up Santa and Jesus. About 2 billion. But nobody’s out there whining (well I’m sure some are), stomping their feet, and ordering that they HAVE TO STOP. Even though billions of people believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world, the Son of God, and fervently believe in Him as Lord.

    And as Aaron said, your average American can claim a lot of heritages. I myself am “ancestrally entitled” to English, Norwegian, Dutch (o hello there Thor/Donar), Highland Scots (woo hoo, Scottish, Irish, and Viking stories), Lowland Scots (more Germanic/Scandinavian), a smidge of Iroquois (Turtle Island, Crow, Flying Head, wampum, the League) (which puts me on both sides of the French and Indian War), Ashkenazi Jewish (golems!), and a couple flavors of Christian. I speak a little Scottish Gaelic, my brother speaks some Norwegian. And yet I’m regarded as a boring generic white person.

    I know some 20-somethings who are half Norwegian and half Japanese (grandparents from those countries), born and raised in Minnesota. Do they have to decide between Viking sagas, Kojiki, and Paul Bunyan?

    How about the millions of Irish-Italian and Irish-Mexican people? Black Hispanic? White Hispanic? The native-haole-Japanese-Chinese people of Hawaii and their Spam musubi? The Puerto Rican/Hawaiian family who run a fun restaurant? The Malaysian/Peruvian family who run a great combo restaurant? The Afghan-Americans who observe Ramadan and play baseball?

    @Darren Garrison: Hee. Good link.

    Also, I want to commend Kip W. for this title.

  20. Since d’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths gets mentioned here occasionally, did anyone pick up d’Aulaires’ Book of Norwegian Folk Tales? The University of Minnesota Press released it last July. It was originally published in 1938. (I gave it as a Christmas gift and read a few of the stories before wrapping.) Might fit in with the folk tales discussion.

  21. Greg Hullender:

    “Well, Frankenstein was changed from being the name of the scientist to being the name of the monster, so it’s not like messing up the names is unusual in the genre.”

    I thought his name was Frankenstein. Abby Normal Frankenstein.

  22. Greg Hullender:

    “@Hampus I hope we get a chance to see your kitten when we’re in Stockholm this summer!”

    Well, I guess we could have luhcn/dinner/something at my place. It is in the suburbs though, 20 min from the center by subway. It is mostly a matter of what you want to prioritize to see while on such a short holiday. But I guess it is a very nice alternative if it is raining. 😉

    If you are trying to make some list of what to see beforehand, I can make additions to it of what you might have missed or just places that are not tourist attractions by themselves, but nice places to go for a stroll.

  23. Hm. Googling for “coo-kit-y-coo”, I see that there are only two hits–this thread, and you asking in 2005 at Making Light. Are you bananas213 here, too?

    There may be a version out there that has no (English language) record on Google, but you might also conciser the possibility that your memory has been corrupted by something else you’ve seen or read.in a Shazam or alternate ending of Big sense. (That “coo-kit-y-coo” seems pretty diagnostic.)

    In the Grimm’s version, the doves say (coo?) “Rucke-di-guh, rucke-di-guh, there’s blood in the shoe”, while the stepsisters chop off toes and heels to make the shoe fit, so most German film adaptations will have that bit.

  24. Hampus Eckerman: To be honest, I have no knowledge of how widespread the worship of Thor was in Austria.

    The armies of Gustavus Adolphus got around, so there could be lots of people who are genetically linked to Thor worshippers who don’t even know it.

  25. Regarding Jack Kirby’s Austrian Jewish heritage, there was a “back to our Germanic roots” movement in the German speaking world in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which resulted in collections of Norse myths and sagas, often lavishly illustrated, in Norse inspired art and also in Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

    Kirby’s Austrian immigrant parents might well have been culturally familiar with the Norse myths in their 19th century German/Austrian interpretation. They very likely were at least familiar with Wagner’s Ring Cycle, in spite of Wagner’s vicious anti-semitism, since knowledge of music and opera was pretty much de rigeur for the educated petit bourgoisie. Stan Lee comes from similar European Jewish immigrant background and was probably culturally familiar with the Norse myths as well.

    Lee’s and Kirby’s Thor comics of the 1960s visually look like a mix of 19th and early 20th century performances of the Ring Cycle and other Wagner operas, the illustrations found in 19th and early 20th century collections of myths and fairytales, Frank R. Paul’s illustrations for the SF pulps of the 1920s and 1930s, the Wizard of Oz (Kirby’s Asgard looks a lot like Emerald City), mixed with a large dose of psychedelia.

  26. Mike Glyer:

    “The armies of Gustavus Adolphus got around, so there could be lots of people who are genetically linked to Thor worshippers who don’t even know it.”

    I’m not one of those who link culture to genes. 😛

    Cora:

    Good point!

  27. The doves have a chorus role, pointing out obviousness in rhyme. “Coo-kit-y coo! / There’s blood on the shoe! This is not the girl for you!”

    My siblings and I saw that movie somewhere around 1978-1982 and quoted that gruesome song for years as “Coodle coo coo, there’s blood on the shoe.” I think this sounds like the movie we saw, a 1955 West German version.

  28. Hampus Eckerman: I’m not one of those who link culture to genes.

    Well, you know how easily confused I am. Somebody must have been talking about it, because suddenly all these genealogies started materializing in the comments.

  29. Mike Glyer:

    “Well, you know how easily confused I am. Somebody must have been talking about it, because suddenly all these genealogies started materializing in the comments.”

    That reminds me. My grandmas sister told her that she had started with geneology. My grandma was susprised, because our family had allready paid a hefty sum for a professional to do it. And her sister said; “No, no, I’m starting at the other end. I’m starting with Odin”.

    Next time my grandma met her and asked her how it was going, she said she was done. She had linked Odin to our family.

    That is creative Fantasy! 😉

  30. Also, as far as I know, Kirby was a jew. I’m not sure we can automatically draw the conclusion that a person of austrian jewish heritage has a cultural connection to the norse gods.

    Are you saying that Austrian Jews aren’t culturally linked to pre-Christian Germanic religious traditions?

  31. I’m saying that I have no idea if Kirby felt culturally connected.

  32. Darren, it is not I. I should send the YouTube link to that version of the movie out to my sisters and see if they remember it. It wouldn’t be the first time they overruled me on some matter of memory.

  33. This was interesting. Marvel’s Thor was actually the third Kirby created.

    http://comicsalliance.com/jack-kirbys-thor/

    And they all look as if they just walked out of a stereotypical pre-WWII Wagner performance.

    Coincidentally, Fritz Lang’s two part silent epic Die Nibelungen, which came out in 1924, might also have been a formative influence on young Jack Kirby. And Lang’s Siegfried looks a bit like Kirby’s Thor.

  34. Darren, it is not I. I should send the YouTube link to that version of the movie out to my sisters and see if they remember it. It wouldn’t be the first time they overruled me on some matter of memory.

    There is also a candy-coloured Soviet Cinderella adaptation from 1947 as well as another East German one from the 1960s. It’s definitely not Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella, though.

  35. Ah, Soviet children’s fantasy movies! We lucked out in the town we lived in in Massachusetts—lots of Russians in the area, and the library had a spin rack of Russian movies. JACK FROST, LAND OF CROOKED MIRRORS, and several others checked out and copied, and in several instances, ripped to my hard drive. (The live-action material is somehow more interesting than most of their animation.)

  36. @Hampus Eckerman: Did you ever look at your great-aunt’s results, and if so were they plausible at the root? I have the vague impression that there’s no canonical line to humans, the Norse gods being more remote than (e.g.) Zeus. OTOH, she was not alone in such endeavors; I’ve seen a scroll produced for a post-Conquest English king, tracing him back to at least David (possibly Adam).

  37. I do not think Kirby showed any kind of respect in his version. Space aliens. Bah.

    The idea that Marvel’s Asgardians are actually some sort of space aliens is from the movies, after Kirby was dead and long after he stopped working on Thor. His version of Thor fought space aliens, as well as trolls, frost giants, Norn magic and more.

    But his version of the gods and men had the traditional Norse origin, more or less — Buri, Bor, Odin, the cow, Surtur, Aske, Embla — with various wrinkles scripted in by Stan, who didn’t have the same knowledge of the material.

    The big changes in Kirby’s Thor were his hair color (not Kirby’s doing), Sif’s hair color (and she was properly blonde the first time we saw her) and a fair amount of confusion about the order things happened in. It’s not super-faithful to the Eddas, but most of the stuff you’ve been grumbling about was introduced long after Kirby was gone.

  38. I have the vague impression that there’s no canonical line to humans, the Norse gods being more remote than (e.g.) Zeus.

    Humans were created out of tree trunks, but Odin did a lot of wandering, including among humans, and was said to have many sons, only a few of which we know by name. The Norse gods may have lived in a different world from humans, but they got around.

  39. My first encounter with Thor was the Marvel Comics version, so you can imagine my bemusement on reading library books on Norse mythology later. He rode in a cart? Pulled by goats?

  40. Clip Hitchcock:

    “@Hampus Eckerman: Did you ever look at your great-aunt’s results, and if so were they plausible at the root?”

    No, I didn’t. But if I remember correctly, she used some bragging from a norwegian king that she then tried to follow to our family. Plausible? Not at all. 😀

  41. My first encounter with Thor was the Marvel Comics version, so you can imagine my bemusement on reading library books on Norse mythology later. He rode in a cart? Pulled by goats?

    My first encounter was in books of mythology, so when I ran into the comics I was baffled as to him flying with the hammer, and when they finally brought the goat-cart in I was delighted.

  42. “The big changes in Kirby’s Thor were his hair color (not Kirby’s doing), Sif’s hair color (and she was properly blonde the first time we saw her) and a fair amount of confusion about the order things happened in. It’s not super-faithful to the Eddas, but most of the stuff you’ve been grumbling about was introduced long after Kirby was gone.”

    The big changes were his whole design. The horrendous version of Asgård made everything look like futuristic technobuildings. The destroyer looked like a robot. Mjölner was transformed to a sledgehammer. And so on. The whole look-and-feel was just so totally off that it can only be categorized as an enormous WTF.

    “My first encounter was in books of mythology, so when I ran into the comics I was baffled as to him flying with the hammer, and when they finally brought the goat-cart in I was delighted.”

    Oh, I missed that one! 😀

  43. @Greg Hullender: (taking liberties with adaptations)

    I am reminded of the author who, when a fan groused about how an adaptation had “ruined” the author’s books, pointed to the shelf of books and observed that nothing in them had changed, so how could they be ruined?

    Certain narrative devices work better in one medium than another. The “Ritual of Chüd” section of Stephen King’s It, for example, uses sentences that break across ever-shorter sections to blur the difference between 1958 and 1985 in a way that no visual medium ever could. Similarly, a smutty author of my acquaintance likes to leave race and gender ambiguous in some stories, postponing the reveal until after most people have probably formed a mental image of the character. Again, that’s hard to do when people can see the character in the first five minutes of a movie.

    As to your point about very distorted versions, I think that’s one reason the Cthulhu Mythos is as popular as it is. I picked up an anthology several years ago called Hastur Pussycat, Kill! Kill! that was all about twisted takes on the Mythos – a fun read, an evidence that the setting is as protean as some of its inhabitants.

    On the wider issue of cultural appropriation, I grew up believing that America was/should be a big ol’ melting pot – a place that accepted people from all over, cherished the new “ingredients” they brought to the table, and encouraged everyone to mix and mingle those ideas to create something new and unique. It was even embodied in our national motto: “out of many, one.”

    As a result, I dislike the cultural balkanization that I see today, where something can be Mine Not Yours Or His Or Hers. When one makes stew, one doesn’t expect the carrots and potatoes to resist absorbing the flavors of the onions and meat – and when one makes art and puts it out into the world, one should expect it to influence others and be reflected in what they create. Yes, respect for the cultures of others is good – but if I have to scrutinize my heritage before observing that Coyote teaches us the value of a good prank, something has gone seriously amiss.

    And I have no doubt whatsoever that Coyote and Loki are laughing their asses off about the whole situation (to say nothing of The Situation) over a pint, a wineskin, or whatever Hermes brought back from his latest excursion.

  44. The big changes were his whole design. The horrendous version of Asgård made everything look like futuristic technobuildings. The destroyer looked like a robot. Mjölner was transformed to a sledgehammer. And so on. The whole look-and-feel was just so totally off that it can only be categorized as an enormous WTF.

    Like I said, Kirby’s Asgard is Emerald City mixed with Frank R. Paul’s SF art from the 1920s and 1930s. Pretty to look at, but not Asgard as we know it.

  45. Hampus:

    No, I didn’t. But if I remember correctly, she used some bragging from a norwegian king that she then tried to follow to our family. Plausible? Not at all. ?

    The Ynglinge saga – the first part of Heimskringla – links Odin to Harald Hårfagre (Harald Fairhair) and the rest of the Norwegian viking kings.

    I am not sure to what extent this is an “original” myth or wholly created by Snorri – but the way Snorri tells it is almost certainly a Christian invention by Snorri Sturlason. He does not tell it in the sense of a god fathering a child on a mortal woman, instead Snorri changes Odin into a legendary king who led his people from the East and into Scandinavia. (If I remember correctly Snorri also connects Odin to some Trojan king.)

    Attempting to connect yourself to Harald Fairhair have been a fairly common idea among Norwegian amateur genealogist. As far as I know the lines most commonly used are almost certainly the result of embellishment by late-medieval/early modern noble families, trying to increase their status by claiming royal ancestry. On the other hand, it’s highly likely that Harald have a great number of descendants, so even if the specific lines of descents are false it’s probably true that most Norwegians and even Scandinavians descend from him.

  46. @Rev. Bob: “Hastur Pussycat, Kill! Kill!” Hehehe. Cute title, I hadn’t seen it.

  47. @Kendall:

    I cannot, in good conscience, recommend buying it on Amazon. I mean, it was cool, but not $200 worth of cool. I’m pretty sure at least one of the stories has been reprinted, though… at least, I think that’s where I read the “Elder Gods as mobsters” story that I’ve since seen elsewhere.

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