Great Influencers: H.G. Wells--The Time Machine

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine

Hello! Once again, I've come to spread some Wellsian joy. I know that you're all so excited that you can't contain yourselves so let's get to it! Yes, I do realise that I'm talking to the imaginary audience in my head again, but take that as your regular reminder that I'm a few fries short of a Happy Meal. I'm barmy but not as barmy as Barnabas the Barmy from Harry Potter who tried to teach trolls ballet (his tapestry is across from the Room of Requirement just FYI) and yes, I'm aware that is quite a jump. What do Harry Potter and The Time Machine have to do with one another? Absolutely nothing although it does illustrate that my brain moves in mysterious ways.

Moving on! I've chosen yet another classic Wells text that illustrates what an influential writer he was. If you haven't read my previous post on The War of the Worlds and want to gain a bit of insight into Wells as an author then you can find it here: H.G Wells: The War of the Worlds.

For a start, I have a bit of background for this here famous novel. The Time Machine was originally published in serial form in The New Review from January to May of 1895 before being gathered into a single work in the same year. Prior to his work on The Time Machine, Wells had examined notions of time travel in two earlier stories that were unfinished. In 1888, he published Chronic Argonauts from April to June in the Science Schools Journal, a student magazine put out by the Royal College of Science. This was actually the first appearance of a machine used to travel through time and involved a scientist named Nebogipfel who invented and used it. Nebogipfel is the precursor for the Time Traveller in Wells's later novel. A newly written version, which loosely linked elements of an account together, was called The Time Traveller's Story from March to June of 1894 in The National Observer. This story introduced the Eloi and the Morlocks, suggesting that the Eloi were the descendants of the aristocratic leisure classes. No conclusion was written for it as at that time as Wells had been contracted to rewrite the narrative and add bits to it to be published the following year in The New Review.

The Time Machine introduced certain concepts that have survived to enter modern pop culture in one way or another. While this novel introduced the notion of a time machine, it was far from the first to focus on travelling through time. Time travel has existed as an idea since antiquity, although not always in ways with which we're familiar. The idea of time passing without a person's knowledge is a common enough narrative device. Typically, a character fall asleep only to discover upon waking that the world they knew has changed drastically. Such an example of this would be the tale of Rip Van Winkle.

The alternative way of moving forward in time typically involves a character journeying to a special place that is magical or otherwise otherworldly. Usually these narratives involve characters spending what seems like a relatively short period of time in such a place but discovering that many years have passed in their home. To name just a few examples, such stories can be found in Hindu mythology, Japanese tales (Urashima Tarō), and in Irish mythology in the story of Tír na nÓg.

There were also old concepts about going backwards in time typically with a dream sequence or going to bed. A relatively modern example of such can be seen in A Christmas Carol when Ebeneezer Scrooge takes a trip with the Ghost of Christmas Past.

The idea of a machine that travels in time (either forward or back) has become pretty commonplace now but of course, it was unique to Wells at the time. He also differed from his contemporaries because of his visions of the future as he based them on very contemporary Victorian ideas. When the Time Traveller moves far into the future to view the Earth as it comes to an end, he is drawing on ideas involving entropy and the heat death of the universe. Such ideas are based around the laws of thermodynamics, which are still used today (although don't take my word as gospel) and because of them, it is believed that the sun's mass will increase and turn it into a red giant. It's also believed that Mercury and Venus will be swallowed by the star as it expands. Plant life will die for the most part, as will most animal life and the atmosphere would grow thinner. When the Time Traveller travels into the far future, he observes something very like this, the Earth becoming locked with one side facing the now red sun.

This particular scenario in science-fiction is described as Dying Earth and it has its own sub-genre within the wider science-fiction genre. We like to watch the Earth die in the far future because we're bizarrely morbid creatures. In the case of The Time Machine, it isn't just the Earth that Wells likes to show dying but also mankind as we know it. The Time Traveller initially travels to 802,701 AD where he discovers the descendants of humans in the form of the Eloi and the Morlocks, and I'll talk more about those in a moment. When he leaves the Eloi and the Morlocks, the Time Traveller makes a number of trips to the future, some of which were deleted after publication in novel format. There was a particular trip that was added as padding when it was serialised where he encounters kangaroo-like creatures that seem to be the further descendants. Finally, the world becomes even more unrecognisable, reducing the animal life to large crabs and finally to a blob-like creature. Which brings me on to my next point.

Another contemporary belief when Wells wrote The Time Machine was that if something could evolve into a new form then it could also go back the other way and decline, becoming a simpler, less complex organism. This idea was called degeneration theory. These days, degeneration is accepted in medicine in the case of what are known as 'degenerative diseases', which cause the body to decline such as in the case of Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis and even cancer. T. H. Huxley (known as Darwin's Bulldog) believed that if the world would inevitably cool to the point of freezing then during the cooling period, simpler organisms would adapt and survive rather than humans. Wells attended lectures by Huxley at the Normal School of Science and was greatly influenced by him.

Based on Huxley's ideas of degeneration, Wells showed a future where humans no longer existed but were replaced by simpler and simpler organisms from the humanoid Eloi and the ape-like Morlocks down to blobs that bore no resemblance to man. However, in the case of the Eloi and the Morlocks, Wells wasn't simply showing the degeneration of organisms but was also highlighting what known as 'social Darwinism'. Wells believed that social structures could affect the future of humanity, specifically the class structure.

The Time Traveller posits that the Eloi are the descendants of the Victorian upper classes, those who did not have to work and lived lives of leisure. On the other hand, the Morlocks who dwell underground are viewed as descendants of the lower classes due to the fact that they work with the machines, tend to the Eloi and have adapted to living in darkness. At the time of writing, many working class people were being forced to live in subterranean conditions and deprived of light, and Wells showed that the Morlocks might be the logical result. The names of the two species might provide some further insight into these social ideas. 'Eloi' is the plural of 'Elohim' in OT Hebrew, which means 'lesser gods'. 'Morlock' has far more uncertain origins. It resembles 'mollocks', a word for 'miner' (underground!), and the Scots word for 'rubbish'. It might also come from the 'Morlachs', a group of rural Serbs and Croatians, who were basically regarded as backwards or primitive. It's entirely possible that all of these terms influenced the name, but all of them have negative and low-classed meanings.

Somehow, The Time Machine has managed to maintain popularity and fame in current popular culture and has had a great deal of influence, despite being removed from its original cultural context of over 100 years ago. The key thing about the novel that allowed it to survive up to the present day was its popularity in its own time. The question is, what made The Time Machine so popular so that it could endure? Well, there are plenty of factors that could have contributed to it and we'll never know for sure unless we get a time machine, travel back to 1895 or so and conduct some surveys.

However, some things that we do know is that it dealt with contemporary fears involving evolution, degeneration and the end of the world. It was also far enough in the future that it couldn't easily be dismissed and even today, it is still far enough removed that we can't say that something like that may not arise. At the same time, it provided insight into society of the time, namely in regard to the class system and the over reliance upon certain individuals to provide for society as a whole. Even today, we can relate to that as their are people who work the land, process food and manufacture goods, and if these people vanished, society as a whole would be unable to provide for itself. Think of what happens when a strike occurs and you get the picture. Think about the miners' strikes in the UK (most recently the major one from 1984-85) or even the many recent transport strikes in Ireland. Those in society who benefit from such labour don't take it well when the providers stop providing.

Aside from those factors, Wells also did something that was unusual at the time but which can still interest present readers. Thanks to Huxley's influence, Wells made the effort to make science marketable to the masses in what would now be termed 'pop science'. Rather than using very technical arguments and examples, Wells provided explanations and created scenarios that made science interesting and more accessible to those outside of the scientific community. While some of the science has since been proven inaccurate, much of it is still valid and it provides a reader with engaging material. It also made it easy to adapt to visual media, which helped immortalise it. It should also be noted that it has a cliffhanger of epic proportions, even by today's standards because what on earth happened to the Time Traveller?!

Well, technically Stephen Baxter provided an explanation in the sequel, Time Ships, which was authorised by the Wells estate for the 100th publication anniversary in 1995. It's technically canon and I haven't read it but it sounds totally wild!

So now that I've blathered on for a year and a day, I should get to why this novel is influential. This is what you've all been waiting for kids!

1) Time machines
Not only was Wells the first writer to use a device for time travel but he was also the first to name it (duh, he was the first!) and it happens to have stuck. We are forever indebted to Wells for coining the term 'time machine' and automatically linking every use of it to the original 1895 narrative.

2) Adaptations and inspired narratives
The Time Machine has been turned into a teleplay, a whole host of radio adaptations and broadcasts, films, a CD audio drama (made in 1994 starring Leonard Nimoy), comics and graphic novels, and a whole host of unauthorised sequels.

It has inspired video games and has been paid homage to in episodes of various TV shows including Wishbone and Futurama.

3) Doctor Who
An eccentric scientist uses a machine that can travel through time while accompanied by a more 'primitive' female who dotes on him (soon to be her, woot!), hm... sounds oddly familiar, I wonder why? Golly gosh! Could it possibly be inspired by... The Time Machine. 

There's actually a comic strip story that names a man who's implied to be the Time Traveller from Wells's story. Wells himself actually made an appearance in Timelash (broadcast in 1985) where he had an encounter with the Doctor and it was implied that he wrote The Time Machine as a result of the events that he witnesses. Which came first, the Time Traveller or the Doctor? In the real world, that's a pretty easy question to answer.

4) Back to the Future Franchise
An eccentric scientist uses a machine that can travel through time... wait a second, this is some serious déjà vu going on. Okay, we're minus a female companion who doesn't really understand our scientist and he's got the crazy hair that seems to align him with Albert Einstein, but let's face it, it reeks of The Time Machine.

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Now, I could list many, many different time travel narratives that have popped up over the years and owe a legacy to Wells in one way or another and that's just in regard to The Time Machine. Wells wrote many influential narratives and honestly, he got everywhere like a bad rash. Well... with fewer negative connotations. I could talk about awakening a certain itch in humanity's imagination but I don't think I want to stretch this metaphor, thanks.

On that note, I've said all that I'm going to say about The Time Machine (and good riddance, you say, you imaginary people in my head) but I will blather on about Wells again with more on degeneracy and the bestiality of man when I write all about The Island of Dr Moreau. I can't make any promises about when that'll happen and in the meantime, I may well write about a whole manner of other things because I have been reading many, many books of late and I want to talk about all of them at once so we'll go where my weird brain takes me.

Congratulations if you managed to make it down here because I do talk a lot of strange nonsense. Ciao for now.

Great Influencers: H.G. Wells--The War of the Worlds

H.G. Wells--The War of the Worlds

Recently to my absolute horror, I mentioned The War of the Worlds to someone and they were not aware that it was a book. Instead, they seemed to think that the concept came from the infamous radio drama based on the novel that was directed and narrated by Orson Welles in 1938. The fact that people might not be aware of Wells and his novels alarms me but also saddens me so I've learned that 1) I cannot make assumptions about these things and 2) I definitely need to discuss the original influences.

Herbert George Wells was a British writer who started writing "scientific romances" (known as science fiction today) in the 1890s. Now in spite of the name, these works don't involve love affairs with beautiful alien women on faraway moons or a scientist having a heated love affair with his Bunsen Burner (I'm sorry for making that joke but at the same time, I'm really not sorry at all). Back in the day, "romance" was used to describe things that were fanciful or to describe things that diverged from reality somewhat. I suppose it was a way of separating it from "real Literature", like the highly realistic works of Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Calling something a romance was basically a clear indication that it wasn't a serious work. Basically, it was considered trashy. Since then, science fiction has certainly had its fair share of accusations of trashiness and went through a period where you could find tonnes of it published in pulp magazines. In other words, it was printed very cheaply on very poor quality, low cost paper, because it was considered disposable.

I digress a little bit here so let's rewind a bit to Wells's era. It's the end of the Victorian era, the British are a little afraid that their empire might collapse at any moment and they've realised that Queen Victoria might not actually live forever. Basically, being the end of the century, people are having a bit of an existential crisis. Think of the run-up to the millennium but minus Y2K and that kind of thing. That being said, in the same way that some people thought that the computers were going to go whacko when 2000 hit and enslave us all, late-Victorian literature shows a real paranoia that someone was going to enslave/kill the British. It should also be noted now that as far as Britain was concerned, they were the world at this moment in time. That's something that's very important to understand, especially in relation to The War of the Worlds.

Britain had an empire and in the 1890s, it was quite a large one. Furthermore, they had major influence in the parts of the world that they didn't have under their control. When it came to trade and economics, Britain had so much international power that they honestly thought that they were the world. London was considered to be the most important capital in the world. I'm sure that some other capitals of the time would be willing to argue against that but from a British standpoint, that's what they thought. Actually, believe it or not, some of that sentiment still holds as after that attack in Westminster a few months ago, I heard a British politician call London the most important capital in the world. I definitely had a weird moment where I thought we'd gone back 120 years or so and managed to keep current technology.

Getting off the point a little bit here again.

Literature in the 1880s and 1890s reflected a lot of contemporary anxieties. Britain had sent their army into many different countries and beaten them into submission before taking their children and educating them in the British-style. This was beginning to come back to bite them. They'd managed to create a class within subjugated countries that understood exactly what had been done to their motherlands and were feeling more than a little resentful. Hence, you get things like Dracula, The Beetle, She and more, where a foreigner comes close to taking control of Britain. 

Enter the ALIENS!

Considering that everyone seemed to be taking a pop at Britain, invasion from outer space was definitely something that had to be considered because late Victorians had reason to believe that they weren't alone! Yeah, you might think that the theme tune from The Twilight Zone or The X-Files should be playing right now but this was a genuine belief at the time. Victorians thought that there might be a race of extraterrestrials living on Mars.

This fun idea was greatly popularised by an exceptionally rich American who took up the hobby of spreading claims that actually had no real basis in fact. Remember that this is over 100 years ago so no, it isn't the guy with the horrific spray tan and something on his head that may once have been another living creature (OR plot twist, IT MIGHT STILL BE ALIVE). Totally different rich American who had more money than sense and somehow got people to listen to him. The man in this case was called Percival Lowell.

Going back a little bit to 1877, Mars was in opposition with Earth. This meant that it was on one side of Earth while the Sun was on the other side of it, the three bodies being in line with one another at the time. As such, Mars was pretty close and the technology of the day presented a rare new glimpse of its surface. During the opposition, an Italian astronomer by the name of Giovanni Schiaparelli realised that there were a number of lines on the surface of Mars. Now, Schiaparelli saw these lines and called them "channels", which he saw as a natural occurrence caused by different processes on the planet's surface. However, he was an Italian and so, shockingly, he spoke Italian. So when he recorded his findings, he used the Italian word canali, which was mistranslated as canals. This got some people thinking that there were artificially made canals on Mars and thus, intelligent life!

Enter Percival Lowell, an American with far too much money and free time on his hands. He spent the 1880s travelling in the Orient, particularly Japan, and thus thought that he could enlighten the Western world with his great knowledge. He wrote a few books on the Occult in Japan and wrote a book about Korea before he found a new interest to throw money at, namely astronomy. I'm being a little bit scathing of him here, which isn't entirely fair given that the observatory that he founded (yes, he was that rich) went on to discover a number of important things, such as Pluto, albeit after his death.

Anyway, he founded an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona after reading some interesting theories about Martian canals and he somehow came to the conclusion that the canals were built by intelligent life for the purpose of water conservation because Mars was dying. Now, if that seems like a bit of a jump from "there may be canals on Mars", you'd be right. I can't fathom how he came to that rather complex idea but he did gain a great deal of praise for the idea. He did have a serious detractor from the start, namely the Welsh man, Alfred Russel Wallace, who seems to be largely forgotten by many as the co-author of On the Origin of Species. He's the guy who worked out the theory of evolution at the same time as Charles Darwin!

It turned out that Wallace was entirely correct in pointing out that Mars would be an exceptionally cold planet and had little atmosphere (Lowell seemed to think that the equator of Mars had the same temperatures as southern England at certain times of the year), thus making intelligent lifeforms an impossibility. The world didn't disprove Lowell's theory until 1909 and there were some people who had taken his ideas to heart.

H.G. Wells was a rather intelligent man who had studied under Thomas Huxley, also known as "Darwin's Bulldog" and whose grandson, Aldous Huxley went on to write Brave New World. Given that Wells was exposed to other men of science, particularly those involved in biology, he may have deemed Lowell's theory as highly improbable. At the same time, he may have had complete fate in it. Whether he believed in the idea or not is unimportant, as it was only the concept of Martian life that acted as the springboard for his idea of a Martian invasion in The War of the Worlds.

So we have a bit of an idea about why the Martians were the interesting invaders that Wells chose but why did he choose an alien invasion in the first place? You could say that the time was right for aliens to do that sort of thing in fiction and given how paranoid Britain was, they certainly thought everyone would be aggressive towards them as the world power. Really though, Wells had just moved to Woking in Surrey, the very town that would become the ground zero for the Martian invasion in The War of the Worlds. Apparently, Wells was out walking in Woking with his brother discussing Britain's colonial activities, namely invasion for the sake of land and how the natives were so easily felled. The specific example that Wells gives in the opening chapter of his now famous novel points to Tasmania and how Britain decimated its native population in the space of 50 years.

What does Tasmania and Woking have to do with aliens? Well, the way the Wells brothers saw it, they imagined a superior power, in this case aliens, coming to Woking and decimating them in a similar way the British had done to the Tasmanians. That's right, Wells basically places Britain in the shoes of the natives of the many countries that they'd invaded. Do the Martians have better technology, do they seem deadly efficient and uncaring, literally sucking the life blood of the humans they find? Guess what? The British did exactly the same thing. They entered a county, killed with little thought for the possible intelligence of the natives and took everything that they wanted: slaves, resources, land. While the Martians drink human blood (yeah, they're the sci-fi vampires of the time), the British sucked the life out of a new "colony". It's terrifying but it's also a fantastic piece of social commentary, and believe me, Wells loved social commentary!

So now that your minds have been blown by learning that The War of the Worlds is all about the British being colonial arseholes (that's a technical, very academic term!) and getting a taste of their own medicine, let's move onto some other little interesting aspects.

Wait a second... I'm not supposed to be doing the assumption thing so let me do a quick overview of what The War of the Worlds is actually about.

So the year is... um... well, it's all left a bit vague but I think it's either very contemporary (the novel was first serialised in Pearson's Magazine in 1897 and published as a whole in 1898) or it's just after the century changed. Let's just say that it's turn of the century and leave it at that! So we have a narrator who's a writer living in Woking who basically talks about the folly of mankind for thinking that we were superior and for not realising that the Martians were watching us and coveting our planet!

*cue the dramatic music*

All jokes aside, the narrator basically outlines how the Martian invasion came about. First, they witnessed flashes of light from Mars and then a few days later, the first cylinder arrived. The cylinders are cylindrical space ships, probably more like escape pods rather than actual ships you could pilot. Anyway, the first cylinder crashes in Woking and everyone gets really excited right up until the cylinder opens and horrible, blobby head things with tentacles plop out. They aren't pretty and then they stick something out of the crater that their crash landing created and kill a few hundred people around the pit. This particular weapon of destruction is what the narrator calls a heat ray which super heats and burns everything in its path, except the narrator, which is a very lucky thing indeed for the reader!

The Woking Martian, credit to diamond geezer

So there's a great deal of panic, the army gets called in and of course, everyone thinks that the British army will be far superior to these blobby alien things but more cylinders fall and the ones that originally landed construct a huge three-legged fighting machine, or tripod. As a visual, I've included the sculpture of "The Martian" by Michael Condron that now resides in Woking. Anyway, the Martian fighting machines tear across the countryside around Woking, eventually going on to London to cause a great deal of death and destruction. A great deal of the book involves the animalistic reactions of humans who would literally run over one another in their desire to put as much distance between themselves as death. Also there's a point where a man stays out in the middle of the road, picking up gold and ends up having his back broken because he's ultimately too distrusting of everyone so he doesn't ask for help and he's shown to be greedy.

Plaque for "The Martian", credit to sarflondondunc

Ultimately, humans are shown to be terrified animals who don't possess the technology to deal with big fighting machines, heat rays and poison gas clouds, and the Martians themselves are no match for Earth's micro-organisms. The germs get them basically so they all die and humanity is left to reverse-engineer their technology. While the technology they gain is beneficial, the British are left with something like PTSD as they realise that another attack could come again at any moment.

When you think about it, it's a pretty grim invasion narrative and the toll taken on the British people in the aftermath of the Martian invasion, is very like that found among people in post-colonial nations. Well, predicted, Mr Wells!

Before I go off on a tangent about post-colonialism, let's keep on point here. What did Herbert George do with The War of the Worlds and why am I calling him a great influencer? Well, imaginary voices in my head that I'm still talking to, Wells basically set out the template for the alien invasion narrative. So if you have ever come across an alien invasion narrative where humans are up against some pretty nasty odds, you've got Wells to thank. He wasn't the first to write about aliens or superior beings to humans but his contribution was certainly one of the most memorable. Certain motifs that he used have become quite commonplace in some areas of sci-fi. Just by taking the image of the fighting machines, you can find a number of specific examples.

1) John Christopher's The Tripods series

You may recall that I earlier called the Martian fighting machines "tripods". Well, that's due to the fact that beginning in 1967, a number of young adult novels began appearing that were written by John Christopher about an Earth under the control of big, three-legged fighting machines called Tripods. Hm, let's see, have we ever come across a concept like that before... Big, three-legged machines, alien invaders, take over Earth... Oh my it sounds just like The War of the Worlds!

There are differences of course but the Tripods don't exactly come across as a unique invention when you realise it was quite famously done 70 years before PLUS it gained renewed fame when Orson Welles adapted the novel to a radio drama that made it seem like America was being invaded and the broadcasts were real. That sort of thing tends to stick in people's memory a little bit. So it's safe to say that Christopher was inspired by Wells's novel. Ultimately at the end of his series, it turns out that Earth's atmosphere kills The Masters (the series' aliens) when they're exposed to it, which isn't miles away from the Martians being killed by the micro-organisms in the natural terrestrial environment.

AT-AT, credit to Jason Kneen

This series of novels spawned a number of comic books and a TV series. The TV series also drew inspiration from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (which I'll definitely write about at some stage!) in that The Masters in fact serve alien beings made of pure energy, which is like Clarke's Overlords serving a giant energy being.

2) Star Wars franchise

The franchise that really requires no introduction, Star Wars has a number of fighting machines such as the AT-AT and the AT-ST, commonly known as Walkers. It makes sense that the franchise would draw upon an image that somehow wormed its way into the mainstream. The Martian fighting machines get everywhere.

3) TV Shows and other films

Aliens in Chicken Little

Chicken Little has alien fighting machines that have a lot in common with Martian fighting machines. They go around on multiple tentacles instead of just three legs but they're clearly something to fear. Honestly, the aliens in that film are probably most inspired by Christopher's Masters given the three eyes but hey, we've already established that Christopher was inspired by Wells so I'll take it! To be fair though, the aliens in Chicken Little are basically just heads, which is what the Martians are, except they have tentacles as well.

Boglodite ships in Men in Black 3

Men in Black 3 contains a possible present where the Boglodites invade Earth because Boris the Animal escapes prison, goes into the past and kills Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) so that a series of precautions don't happen thus allowing his race to mount an invasion. That's really not important. However, the Boglodite ships do have tentacle things. Okay, I'll admit, they look more like jellyfish and they are flying but I'm saying they could be inspired by Wells so don't tell me otherwise. I Want to Believe! Um... different popular franchise.

Moving on!

A lot of alien fighting machines have appeared, pretty much everywhere when it comes to TV in particular. Obviously you have Mechs in Falling Skies but you also have the robot that Zim pilots during Operation Impending Doom 1 in Invader Zim so these things aren't always done seriously. Hey Arnold! had a Halloween special that revolved around The War of the Worlds and honestly those fighting machines get everywhere.

While it doesn't fall into my films and TV section, it should be noted that in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, the triffids have some things in common with Wells's Martians that seem too close to be coincidental. While the triffids are plants and don't operate technology, they do get around on three appendages as the Martian tripods do. Furthermore, they suck the juices of human beings. Admittedly, they wait until they die and have decomposed a bit, extracting food from them in a manner similar to a Venus Fly Trap, but it counts! They're seen herding humans as the Martians do and they even come with their own weapons, a lashing sting that can instantly kill to parallel the Martian heat ray. More of a home-grown invasion than an extraterrestrial one but it's still worth thinking about...

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Aliens with telepathy? Yeah, Wells's Martians could do that. Ugly aliens with weird tentacles? I'm looking at you Predator franchise, but also Wells did that. Alien invasion narratives that follow one or two plucky characters that seem to survive against impossible odds? Yeah, Wells did that. Something like Independence Day definitely falls into that category although it was preceded by the novel Ender's Game, which it definitely owes a debt too, but that's a story for another blog post. Independence Day does use a computer virus to bring down the aliens and that certainly seems like a homage to what kills off Wells's Martians.

Basically, aside from scaring the absolute beejaysus (a nice, phonetically spelled, technical term) out of people, The War of the Worlds helped inspire a whole genre of science-fiction, namely the invasion narrative, led to a whole slew of adaptations including films, radio broadcasts and a sequel written 119 years later.

Sequel?! Yes, believe it or not, the estate of Wells has authorised Stephen Baxter to write a sequel to The War of the Worlds, which has been newly published this year and goes by the cheery title of The Massacre of Mankind. It's safe to say that they don't invite the Martians over for a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. I'll definitely jump on it at some point for the sake of curiosity but you'll be glad to know that a lot of the cover art I've seen for it revolves around the tripods. Baxter also drew inspiration from The War of the Worlds (and multiple other Wellsian works) for the authorised sequel of The Time Machine, The Time Ships, which was published in 1995.

Considering the wealth of imagination that Wells passed on with just one novel, you can imagine how important his various works are. However, you don't have to rely on imagination because I'm going to be writing about other Wellsian novels, with the next one taking a little step back in time (I'm hilarious) to 1895 and The Time Machine.

Notoriously, I've managed to go off topic or sort of tangentially to it throughout this blog post but I would just like to point out that there have been numerous, sometimes reputable fan-fictions written over the years that combine The War of the Worlds and Arthur Conan Doyle's character of Sherlock Holmes. This is a real thing, you should look it up. The most famous Victorian detective... and ALIENS!

Oh that final glorious note, I will love you and leave you and hopefully you won't hate me eternally for talking forever. I'm clearly not that much of an academic because who in the heck talks like this?!

The Land Remembers: Folk Horror and "Hekla's Children"

The eye-catching front cover of Hekla's Children

Hekla's Children by James Brogden

It's been well over a month since I've read this now, but I've been giving myself the chance to fully absorb it and letting my brain mull over things in the background. It's difficult to say what this post is exactly, as it's swinging somewhere between a review and an insight into things like folk horror or mythical horror.

The novel is a relatively new release as it came out in Ireland and the UK in March. As a result, I'm not inclined to provide any spoilers as I highly doubt many have had the opportunity to read it as yet. It's quite possible that it has slipped beneath the radar of many people. I was lucky enough to find it while browsing in the exceptionally large Eason store on O'Connell Street but to my horror, I've found that many bookstores (including the Eason in St. Stephen's Green Shopping Centre) do not seem to have a horror section set aside. Alas, I consider it a minor miracle when bookstores can adequately separate fantasy and science-fiction novels rather than lumping them both under one section labelled either science-fiction or fantasy, although I've seen more of the former than the latter. I consider it fate that I was in the right place at the right time and frankly the cover hit me quite hard. The whole thing screamed horror at me (which is good because it was in the horror section so it was doing it's job) and I was fascinated by an image that suggested I was looking up from the bottom or a well. The cover hooked me and the blurb did the rest. After that, there was no chance of me leaving without buying it and I'm glad to say that that was a very good decision on my part so GO ME!

So what exactly is Hekla's Children about? An excellent question imaginary audience! (Yeah, yeah, I should probably get those voices in my head checked out but they're useful at times)

Hekla's Children follows the mystery surrounding the disappearance of four teenagers while on a trip in Sutton Park. One of the teens reappears 24 hours later with no memory of what happened and the teacher who was supposed to have been watching them that day ends up haunted by what happened. Fast forward a decade and the teacher in question is still working with teens although he isn't a teacher anymore and he keeps thinking that he sees the teenagers that were lost. He's long been suspected by the families of the missing children for having murdered them and so when a body turns up in Sutton Park, everyone jumps to conclusions. Without giving much away, the body turns out to be a 3000 year old bog mummy that is definitely not what it appears to be and things are linked back an incident that occurs in the Bronze Age that has startling implications for the modern world.

The mystery is a gripping one and honestly, even if you think you've worked it out, Brogden manages to throw something your way that leaves you reeling and questioning everything. There's some trippy time stuff and you might think at more than one point that you might have given leave of your senses but despite that, it's actually easy to believe that such a thing is occurring right under our noses and no one is ever the wiser.

Hekla Volcano, photo credit to Alan Moore

Obviously I don't want to give away aspects of the plot, although believe me I'll write an in-depth analysis in the future, but I can give you some interesting background. The 'Hekla' in the title refers to a particular volcano in southern Iceland. It was actually known as the "Gateway to Hell" during Medieval Times so as you can tell, it has had a bit of a fearsome reputation over the years. It's quite possible that knowledge of some of its older eruptions were passed down in the oral tradition but we know through a number of scientific discoveries that it had some major eruptions in the BC era. One of the more recent ones, which occurred during the Bronze Age was known as Hekla-3 and it is that specific eruption to which Brogden's novel refers.

Hekla-3 was a devastating eruption that threw a great deal of volcanic ash and other debris into the atmosphere. You might remember the serious disruptions to air travel that was caused in 2010 by the eruptions of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull. However, that was considered minor volcanic activity. Consider that ash cloud but on a phenomenal scale, such a large scale in fact that the temperatures of northern parts of the world would have been affected for a few years afterwards. Some trees dating from that period have been shown to have had minimal growth for about a decade and the evidence is in the tree rings. Bogs have been shown to have preserved some of the volcanic ash, which ties nicely into the story within the novel as the bog in Sutton Park preserves the past. Brogden's title doesn't refer to what's preserved but rather to the effects of that eruption.

After Hekla's eruption, the temperatures in mainland Britain would have dropped dramatically, making the winters harsher and the summers cooler and shorter. The misery of such a landscape is what Brogden tries to capture in the Bronze Age segments of the narrative and don't worry, he does explain that one for his readers. He also explains the main 'villain' of his story, the afaugh.

Cannibalism is a taboo and a serious one in many cultures. For years, many people believed that so-called "primitive" cultures indulged in cannibalism. While in some, it is indeed a common practice, many cultures hold it in contempt. Often areas that undergo periods of extreme weather where starvation could be an issue have cannibalism taboos that have manifested in interesting ways. Certain areas of the northern US and Canada have wendigo mythology. A wendigo was supposed to be a spirit that would eat people and was associated with cold winter regions, particularly linked to famine and starvation. As people feared the need and even possible desire to eat their fellows, the wendigo seemed to provide the shape for such fears.

Interestingly, while the wendigo was considered a spirit, it either had human characteristics or possessed a human being, meaning that the thing natives truly feared was the idea of their neighbours turning around and eating them or vice-versa. The wendigo was a greedy, merciless creature and that was certainly something to be frightened of. It was better to point to a mysterious creature out in the woods and fear being eaten or turned into one than to fear your own neighbour in difficult winters.

The idea of turning into a wendigo is a real one. There is such a thing as Wendigo psychosis, which has been found in the areas where the wendigo myth is prevalent. Such a psychosis leads people to desire to kill and eat the flesh of those around them and when you disapprove of cannibalism that's a pretty scary deal.

The Inuits have the Atshen, another cannibal spirit that hunts in cold regions and there are many more. Of course, cannibal stories are prevalent in many parts of the world--Native American culture is a particularly rich source--but it this particular sort of spirit is associated with starvation and cold. Although it eats out of greed rather than necessity, it is still a creature of famine, eating all it can but never being satisfied. The afaugh of Hekla's Children draws roots from just such a tradition.

The idea of sacrifice is also one that permeates Brogden's narrative, linking it with the likes of the famous burning in The Wicker Man. The folk (horror) tradition is strong in this one.

Hekla's Children is very, very British and also quite contemporary but interestingly, Brogden claims to have been inspired by a source that came from somewhere quite far away. Brogden was originally from Tasmania, spending his teens in Australia before he finally settled in Britain. As a result, there's definitely a bit of a Aboriginal Dreamtime flavour to the narrative but the source he names is a novel from 1967 called Picnic at Hanging Rock. The novel was written by Joan Lindsey and was set around 1900. The plot involves the disappearance of a group of female students from an Australian women's college. While the mystery is never solved, the ending is left ambiguous and the story is framed as a true one. Interestingly, after Lindsey's death, a chapter that was removed from the novel was published, explaining what actually happened to the missing young women. While I haven't read it myself, the excised chapter seems to follow a similar concept as Brogden's novel. No spoilers though! If you want to know about it, you have to read one of them and even then, Brogden's novel doesn't go the same way, they just have some things in common.

I bring up that particular novel not just because Brogden claims it as an inspiration but also due to the effect it had in Australia. Being viewed as a story that may have happened, Picnic at Hanging Rock has gained a folkloric status in the country. While Australia might not seem as old as somewhere like Britain (native peoples don't count; ask anyone who took their "empty" lands) but it can still carry stories that hark back to something older than current civilisation.

The land remembers.

On that note, I've said all I'm going to say for the moment with all my rambling but I would highly recommend Hekla's Children if you're a fan of horror, the supernatural or anything a little out there and a little weird. If you read Lovecraft... well, he's a very special brand of weird but you might like this if you like him AND with the added bonus of an author not hating everything that moves. Ah, I won't pick on poor Howard but suspend your disbelief and read this!

Octavia E. Butler's "Kindred": A sci-fi neo-slave narrative

Kindred

CW: racism, slavery, minor spoilers

So the title is far from snappy or even witty, but it's certainly accurate. You may be wondering how science-fiction and slave narrative go together. If you're considering a set-up where aliens are keeping human slaves or something then you're on entirely the wrong track. As in so far off where you should be that if you were supposed to be following a path through a forest, you'd probably be hanging upside down from a tree several hundred yards from where you're meant to be. Also probably very high up the tree, it'd be a very tall tree.

Science-fiction can be difficult to nail down as a concept sometimes and there are definitely people who would denounce certain works typically shoved under the umbrella as being too "softcore" to be real science-fiction. Kindred holds an interesting position as it can be difficult to sort it into a specific genre. In fact, people will argue until the cows come home about where it belongs and in some circles it even transcends lowly genre fiction (I do not consider it low but in the Literature with a capital L community, genre fiction is often considered as such) to be classed as Literature. Well, Literature given that it's supposed to be a cut above the rest of fiction. As in, it's deemed as being a work that's good for everyone to read, stuff that should be read by the educated elite rather than the stupid working-class people who only consume trash... or something. Needless to say, I don't believe in the elitism of such classifications. Popular literature can be immensely valuable for any class of person and I'm more inclined to stick Kindred under popular literature. The fun thing about that is that I can stick it in as many categories as I think it can fit into and you can cry about it if you like. The bottom line is that you're entitled to your own opinion but this is most definitely my own and I'm sticking to my guns.

Slight digression aside, Kindred involves time travel so I view it as science-fiction. There's no time machine involved, no technological science but it does involve an unusual mechanism whereby the novel's protagonist travels back well over a century from her own time. How this is done is never explained or even investigated but it is central to the plot. Actually, there wouldn't be a plot without it. So if there's no scientific explanation, no technology, no rational investigation, why is it science-fiction, I hear you ask?

Well, imaginary audience speaking in my head (I should probably get that checked out), it is a work of fiction that involves a concept that is typically treated scientifically or an attempt is made to come up with a scientific explanation. You can class it as weird fiction if you prefer or call it time travel fiction if you want to be super precise but as I've already said, neat categorisation is not my aim here. Additionally, it's a neo-slave narrative. "Neo" of course means "new" but thank goodness, it doesn't mean that slavery has made a comeback. No, it simply means that someone is writing in the style of the old slave narratives but are producing it in a modern contemporary setting.

Slave narratives were written by former slaves before Abolition who escaped to the northern States in America. They told their life stories and they were published by those advocating for the abolition of slavery. One of the most famous stories was written by Frederick Douglass, a former slave who gave a number of inspirational talks and speeches about the plight of the slaves still trapped in the antebellum South.

I'm going to break down the book into nice neat sections so you can skim through them and see for yourself if it would interest you.

Author: Octavia E. Butler, one of the first African American women to break into the science fiction genre in a big way.

Published: 1979

Genre: Science-fiction, time-travel; African-American literature, neo-slave narrative

Premise: An African-American woman suddenly develops the ability to travel back to the antebellum South. This ability is totally outside of her control and is connected to a white ancestor of hers, who unknowingly calls her into the past when is life is in danger.

Setting: Brief insight into 1970s America but mainly takes place in the antebellum South over a number of decades after 1810 or so. The present for Dana, the main character, is California in 1976.

Background: Butler wrote the novel in response to certain sentiments that arose in connection to the Civil Rights movement. Certain African-American activists blamed previous generations of African-Americans for allowing themselves to be treated as second-class citizens. As far as these activists were concerned, if their parents and grandparents hadn't been so complacent then African-Americans would have achieved equal rights years earlier than they did.

Butler was enraged by this idea, explaining that previous generations had had to endure harsher treatment and that if a contemporary African-American person was transported back to the time of slavery, they would find it extremely difficult to cope with such conditions. Furthermore, she thought that these same activists would have become "complacent" in order to survive if they'd been in the same position as their ancestors. Butler sought to demonstrate the truth of such an idea and this is how she came up with the premise for Kindred

The developed the narrative of slavery by drawing on her own family history--her grandmother had worked on a plantation and her mother had been a house maid from the age of ten--and researching slave narratives written by former slaves like Frederick Douglass. Not wanting to alienate her audience, it was necessary to tone down the level of violence that would have been authentic to that time period. However, there are still many aspects in the novel that could upset an audience, either explained explicitly or inferred. These include rape, whipping, racist language/attitudes and dehumanisation of African-Americans.

Some of my general thoughts: The novel was critically acclaimed and I think that the praise for Kindred is definitely deserved. When Butler started getting published in 1971, she was one of the few active African-American science-fiction writers at that time. The only other prominent African-American writer of the same period (that I'm aware of at least) was Samuel R. Delany, who began publishing in 1962. Science-fiction was a firmly established white genre and it was also a very masculine genre that had historically painted minor ethnicities in negative or demeaning ways. As such, the notion of a black man writing in it, never mind a woman, was a pretty groundbreaking thing! There had been other black male sci-fi writers before Delany but they had been controversial figures--and believe me when I say that Delany did not escape controversy--within the African-American community.

The focus of African-American writing had been to foreground and prioritise black experience but namely realistic experience. Don't get me wrong, there were certainly fantastical elements in various speculative works, but the key thing was to convey true black experiences free from the prejudices and stereotypes of white American culture. Writers like Delany who wrote about outer space crews and didn't seem to write many black characters were seen as traitors to the community. I'm digressing a tad.

Anyway, as I was saying, science-fiction was both white and masculine and it was this hypermasculinity that led writers like Joanna Russ and Butler to the genre to try to provide fairer female representation. For Butler, there was the added allure of improving the representations of people of colour like herself. Unlike Delany, however, Butler received a more positive attitude from her community as her writing foregrounded the point of view of black women. Her narrative was praised for foregrounding black experience, for bringing the brutalities of slavery to light for a broader audience and for revealing the plights of black women in the antebellum period.

Some of the topics she included in her novel are quite sensitive ones and at the time of publication, some of them were still sore points in America at the time. Something that frequently appears in her work is the inclusion of interracial relationships and Kindred contains two of them, although they're very, very different. While her main focus is the past, she still manages to draw attention to the negative attitudes to interracial marriage in the 1970s. Butler was never someone to shy away from the flaws of human beings and this novel is an excellent showcase of her ability to paint striking portraits of the human character. She breathes life into her characters to such an extent that it is easy for a reader to empathise with and relate to them. Anybody who reads it has ample opportunity to understand the legacy that slavery has left behind and the repercussions that are felt to this day.

Butler certainly achieved what she set out to do and while the novel starts slowly, it is well worth a read and I would recommend it rather highly. Furthermore, if you haven't read any of Butler's work before or aren't a hardcore sci-fi fan then it's a good book to get into and a good introduction to Butler.

Ring: Japanese Horror, Effects in the West and the Hollywood Franchise

Ring

Given that I've recently read the novel and the new film in the franchise, Rings, came out last Friday (in Europe anyway), it seemed fitting that I start this blog with Ring. I'll give some background but I don't plan on lecturing you to death on it. It'll be interesting, I promise so don't worry.

Even if you haven't seen it, there's no doubt that the image of a girl or young woman crawling out of a TV set and suffering a bad hair day is a familiar one. The film that you know is probably The Ring (2002) or maybe its sequel The Ring Two (2005), the American-made films. I could be wrong though because you might be familiar with the Japanese film from 1998. Regardless of what film version you may know (there are quite a few), they can all be traced back to Koji Suzuki's 1991 novel, Ring.

Ring is the first in a trilogy of books that revolve around a cursed videotape that exactly one week later leads to the dead of anyone who watches it unless they can carry out a particular task. If you've seen the films or know their premise then you have a rough idea of how the whole thing works. However, as with many adaptations of novels, there are some big differences between the novel and what appears (or comes out) of the screen.

There are going to be spoilers below so if you don't want anything spoiled for you then don't read on! There are obviously going to be spoilers, this is the whole point of this so if you don't want them, leave now! I mean, why are you even still reading this?!

Now that the spoiler warning has been given, we'll be moving on.

The novel follows a journalist, Asakawa, who investigates the sudden death of four teenagers who all died on the same day at exactly the same time from heart failure. Retracing their steps to a log cabin in a resort, he watches a cursed video tape, which will lead to his death in exactly a week of viewing. Making a copy of the tape, Asakawa shows it to his friend, Ryuji, and they team up to find out where it came from and how to save themselves. They discover that the images on the tape were recorded by a person rather than a camera and trace their origin to a psychic named Sadako who has been missing for 30 years. They learn that Sadako could produce nensha, or thought photography, which allowed her to imprint images onto the video tape and cursed it in the first place. They discover that Sadako was raped, strangled and then thrown down a well while still alive and that the well is right under the log cabin where the four teenagers and Asakawa watched the tape. During her slow death, Sadako's hatred lingered and turned into a potent curse against the world. Asakawa and Ryuji retrieve her body and return it to her family, believing that they've broken the curse when Asakawa passes his week's deadline and survives. However, after Ryuji dies, Asakawa realises that he only survived because he made a copy of the tape and passed the curse onto a new person. The novel ends with Asakawa rushing away to try to save his wife and child who had inadvertently cursed themselves.

That's a fairly basic outline of the novel but it has multiple layers, many of which failed to make it into the film adaptations.

Sadako is intersex

While tracing the course of Sadako's history, Asakawa and Ryuji manage to find and confront the man who raped and killed her. The novel goes to great lengths to explain how beautiful Sadako was and her rapist tries to use such beauty as justification for what he did because he "just couldn't help it". He also tries to explain it away by saying that his smallpox infection--which he didn't even know he had at the time--had made him lose his mind. Ludicrous and unbelievable as those excuses are, after raping her, Doctor Nagao (yeah, he's a doctor, he should be a responsible member of society but he isn't. I'll talk more about him later) realises that Sadako has fully formed testicles as well as a vagina. The book terms this as "pseudohermaphroditism" but it would now fall under the label of "intersex". Basically, despite her feminine features and breasts, Sadako is technically male but one who has androgen insensitivity syndrome. Her body made testosterone but rejected it so that when puberty hit, she went through female rather than male puberty.

Now, you may be wondering why such a detail is relevant. Within the novel, it appears to provide the doctor with something of an excuse (yes, excuses again) for throttling her and throwing her down a well; he's basically disgusted by her. However, beyond that it's not entirely clear what it's wider purpose is. Is it supposed to other her by showing her "wrongness" or is it supposed to humanise her by making her appear to be some manner of victim? The detail doesn't seem to affect Asakawa's opinion of her but her rape and death cause him to pity her, not the fact she was intersex. Beyond the doctor's obvious disgust, Sadako being intersex doesn't seem to faze anyone and it doesn't appear to have much of a purpose either. However, Asakawa and Ryuji speculate that Sadako probably had a strong desire to have a child, something that wasn't possible with her condition. One of the images from the tape, one of Sadako's memories, shows an old woman predicting that Sadako will give birth, something that she seemed to dwell on when she was dying. Presumably, Sadako would have known that she couldn't actually conceive. The novel implies that her sexual organs were male regardless of external appearance so if she didn't have ovaries or a womb, she couldn't menstruate. Failing to bleed on a monthly basis would have been something of a giveaway and the prediction of her giving birth clearly dwelt on her mind or it wouldn't have been projected onto the tape. You might be wondering what that has to do with anything. Well, it's entirely possible that realising she was dying and that the prediction hadn't come true, she consciously, or possibly subconsciously, birthed something else in a less traditional sense. Namely, her psychic powers threw out the curse, which eventually found a medium in a video tape when the cabin was built over the spot where she died. The curse is her baby in a weird way. However, there's more to this baby than psychic powers, which leads me to...

Pseudoscience

I promised that I'd talk about Doctor Nagao again so here we go. As I touched on before, Nagao had smallpox. In fact, he's named as the last person in Japan to have had smallpox. In case you don't know, smallpox was a dreadful dangerous disease that either left people scarred with marks from spots or killed them. Basically, it was the demon version of chickenpox and it was usually a killer. It was a major problem and some major medical breakthroughs were made while trying to get rid of it. After all, the idea of vaccination came about because of smallpox, as a similar but non-fatal disease, cowpox, was injected into patients. Once you'd had one, you couldn't get the other. Given what an issue smallpox was, as soon as doctors had a way to stop people from getting it, there was a world effort to eradicate it through vaccination. The vaccination was so successful that smallpox cannot be found in the world naturally anymore, with the only surviving examples being kept in labs.

What does smallpox have to do with this Japanese horror story? Well, this is a kicker. It's important that Nagao is named as the last person in Japan to have smallpox because when he rapes Sadako, he gives it to her. Now, if Suzuki's reasoning is to be believed, smallpox was a bit annoyed about being eradicated so it combined with Sadako's hatred of the world and together they birthed the Ring Virus, which ends up on the cursed video tape. Yes, a virus is apparently sentient and decides it's not going down without a fight. It sounds a bit off the wall but this is Suzuki's "scientific" explanation for the whole novel. It explains why the tape needs to be copied, as viruses need to reproduce (actually, replicate is a more accurate term given that viruses get their hosts to make more of viruses) and how in the other two novels in the series, it can mutate in a weird way.

If you're reading a horror novel, you're usually willing to suspend disbelief but that's usually for a supernatural cause. If Sadako was a demon who cursed a tape, it might be easier to swallow but the bizarre attempt to explain the phenomenon in a scientific way is a bit bonkers. It is definitely not an explanation that I like and feel like it would almost have been better if Sadako's psychic powers were solely responsible. It's strange as heck but it seems important for Suzuki that he explain things as best as he can, which brings me onto...

Supernatural Powers

The important thing about Sadako is that she has amazing psychic powers and Suzuki uses Asakawa and Ryuji to trace some of her history. Sadako is by no means the first in her family to have such abilities, although they are certainly the strongest. Her mother, Shizuko, seemingly developed various powers after rescuing a statue of a religious figure that had been thrown into the sea by American soldiers. Shizuko's abilities included an ability to gain brief insights into the future and being able to "see" things that were hidden, such as the numbers that appeared on dice in a lead bowl. Shizuko worked with Professor Yamamura, Sadako's father, in his investigation of psychic powers but was deemed a fraud and hounded by the media when she failed at a public demonstration. This failure is a possible cause for Shizuko's subsequent suicide and Sadako's hatred of people, given how the public had ridiculed her mother. Sadako inherited a magnified version of her mother's powers, including stronger precognition (she predicts the exact date and time that a volcano on her home island of Izu will erupt) and the ability to imprint and manipulate certain mediums. Sadako's powers were discovered and catalogued after she mentally printed an image of her own name (in the appropriate Japanese characters) onto blank film. She could project images onto a TV set, even when it wasn't on so really making a cursed video tape was a cinch!

What's interesting about the powers discussed in the novel is that they are based on the accounts of real people! Chizuko Mifune was a psychic woman in the early 1900s, who was discovered by Professor Tomokichi Fukurai in 1910. Chizuko, whose name is reminiscent of Sadako's mother, Shizuko, was supposed to be able to read messages that were sealed away in envelopes. However, like Shizuko, she was ridiculed and branded as a fraud, as many believed that she'd had access to the envelopes. A few months later, Chizuko committed suicide by ingesting poison, far less dramatic than Shizuko's suicide by volcano although just as deadly and tragic. At the time of her death, Chizuko was just 24.

Professor Fukurai didn't allow the failure of Chizuko to affect his work but instead moved onto Ikuko Nagao, a young woman who could create nensha or images with the power of her thoughts. She also gave a public demonstration, which ultimately turned out badly and the stress of the event caused a brain fever from which she subsequently died. Fukurai was obviously very dedicated to his research and didn't seem to care who was affected as he continued to work with other women capable of thought photography. One such woman actually provides the name for Ring's antagonist--Sadako Takahashi. Takahashi never became as sinister as her fictional counterpart although she didn't turn out to be what Fukurai had hoped either. Ultimately, Fukurai's ideas never caught on but his research did provide an interesting basis for Suzuki's novel.

Japanese folklore

While the novel draws inspiration from real people in Japan's past, the 1998 film, Ringu, uses imagery from Japanese folklore, particularly in regard of ghost stories. After all, you need to remember that Sadako is dead and as a result, the film's director, Hideo Nakata, used visuals that were traditionally frightening for a Japanese audience. While most Westerners would be unfamiliar with the folklore pertaining to Japanese spirits, or yurei, the haunting images of Nakata's film succeeded in appealing and frightening a Western audience, thereby making it sufficiently popular for Hollywood to make its own adaptation.

Japanese ghosts are different to those found in the West. Obviously there are cultural differences and this is clearly reflected in folklore and stories surrounding spirits. Every human being has a reikon (霊魂), or soul. When a person dies, they pass on to the afterlife after their reikon has been enshrined at a Shinto or Buddhist shrine. Provided that the correct rites are performed, that person can enjoy a peaceful post-death existence. Those who don't have those rites performed or who feel sufficiently strong emotions after their deaths, are trapped in limbo. They cannot truly return to the world of the living but they cannot continue to the afterlife until they've been appeased. Spirits that remain want something although it isn't always easy or possible to give them it. 

An onryo (怨霊), or vengeful spirit, seems to match Sadako. Onryo usually have a bone to pick with the living and often arise from those who meet violent ends. Sometimes they seek revenge on murderers or those who otherwise wronged them but other times, there is no way to appease them and exorcism becomes necessary. Sadako's ghost is not appeased by having her body returned to her family and her motive for remaining among the living does not involve revenge--at least, she doesn't try to get back at her rapist and murderer. Given that she hates all of humanity, her spirit would probably only leave of its own accord if every person on earth was dead. However, an onryo usually haunts a specific location or person, which in this case would be the videotape but no one attempts to exorcise Sadako and her will from it.

The films seem to draw on another bit of Japanese folklore to provide the visuals for Sadako, or Samara as she is in the American adaptations. Sadako has an appearance that is a pretty

Ghost of Oyuki

standard representation of the Japanese yueri. In fact there is a famous painting that has come to epitomise the standard image of the ghost in Japan. The Ghost of Oyuki (Yūreizu: Oyuki no Maboroshi (幽霊図(お雪の幻) was painted by Maruyama Ōkyo in 1750. Apparently, Oyuki had been a geisha lover of his who had died young. Her yurei is supposed to have visited him one night and hovered at the foot of his bed. Her image so haunted (ha!) him afterwards that he felt it necessary to paint her portrait. The painting is known for the yurei's long, dishevelled black hair, the pallor of the skin, the white burial kimono and, interestingly, the absence of feet. When it comes to spirits, it is quite normal for them to be female. As a result, it makes sense that Sadako would also fall into this category, even though she is not technically female. 

While this is a very general representation, the 1998 Ringu pays homage to a particular type of yurei, who was an onryo from a story known as Yotsuya Kaidan. The versions of the story vary but they all involve a beautiful young woman named Oiwa who is poisoned by her husband, Iemon, who wishes to marry another woman. Rather than killing her, the poison disfigures her and causes her left eye to droop. This characteristic is often exaggerated in kabuki plays, making Oiwa's appearance a distinctive one. Depending on the version, Oiwa 

Oiwa from Yotsuya Kaidan. Clearly not horrifying...

either kills herself by accident or is killed by her husband. Regardless, she vows revenge on Iemon and returns as a onryo to get back at him. He eventually goes mad and she apparently continues to haunt the earth to this day. Now while you have this delightful image in your

Sadako is watching you!

head, here's something for you to draw parallels with: Sadako's eye. After Sadako climbs out of Ryuji's TV and does a nice little ghostly shuffle (she has feet), we get a wonderful close-up of Sadako's eye through the mad mop of hair. Maybe you watched the film and thought it was kind of funny but if you were terrified by it (it is rather unsettling) then you can now be unsettled by the roots it has in Japanese culture. Nakata did not pull these images out of nowhere and once you have the context, it actually makes the whole situation a lot worse. Such an image was used in the Hollywood The Ring but instead of Sadako, the wild eye images appear on horses. Knew there was a reason that I didn't like horses!

Even without the cultural context, Sadako's emergence from the TV clearly did something that was attractive to a Western audience. In fact, The Ring became the first in a series of remakes of Japanese films or J-horror. So ghosts of this sort clearly freak a Western audience out just as much as their Japanese counterparts but what else is there that might be missing a little extra significance to a Western audience.

Wells! Sadako's body ends up down one and she's seen climbing out of one before she climbs out of the TV so what's the significance? Well, it's common for water to feature in stories or artwork about the dead. In fact, Suzuki has another story that was adapted into film, Dark Water. There's good reason for that because water is often used to symbolise the spirit world. So if you have a ghost standing in water, or a living person wading through water in a horror film, guess what? They're actually moving through the spirit realm. Hence, Sadako climbing out of water (the well) is actually her climbing out of the world of the dead, much as a corpse might pull itself out of the grave. It also means that when Asakawa ends up standing in water at the bottom of the well and sifting around for Sadako's bones, he's actually standing on the cusp of the spirit world, a notion that's given credence by the fact that he's due to die at any moment and is sharing the space with a malevolent ghost.

Basically, in Japanese stories, if someone tells you not to play in the water, it may be a very good idea to listen to them. There's definitely something strange about the water!

So having successfully terrorised you with images of ghosts with their eyes sliding down their faces, I hope that you've learned something interesting and might be willing to go out into the world to pass on the knowledge. Also following the blog would be nice but that's entirely up to you--depends how much of my rambling you can put up with really!