The Invisible Library

Over at io9, theres an interesting discussion as to why most movies about going to Mars turn out to be either boring as all get out, or a tedious rehashing of pulp sci-fi tropes from eons past. I made the observation in comments there that boiled down the answer to two basic concepts: 1) doing Mars realistically is boring. and 2) this leads to ancient alien artifacts and time travel, which dumps us into pulp hell. The caveat being that, unless your source material was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and you just go for it, naked sword fights and all, it’s going to blow.

One of the commenters at io9, Zantor, made the astute observation that a problem that faces Martian Tales in particular and all of sci-fi as a genre is the death by a thousand cuts from Occam’s Razor. That is, the more we learn about Mars and the Universe in general, the less plausible all of this Space Opera nonsense becomes:

The first cut was understanding the Moon. With that knowledge, a “world” of fantastic possibilities was dealt a crushing blow. No more “Solarnites”, Green women in space bikinis, evil Moon empires bent on Earth conquest or even giant mice. Once we knew that none of this was no longer possible, all that remained was little more than the challenge of man surviving in a hostile environment. That adventure wore thin pretty fast, ending a 50 year legacy of fantastic films and adventures made when on the Moon, anything was possible.Now the possibilities for “Angry Red Planet” have fallen beneath a similar fate.

The more we learn about our neighbors in space, that same curse follows us, restricting what can be presented as fantastic and possible.

Although the Universe is endless, the laws of nature and physics are not. sci-fi may ultimately be stifled by the fulfillment and understanding of the vision it seeks to explore.

Which is a valid point. Burroughs based a lot of his ideas about Barsoom on popular misconceptions about the Red Planet, with it’s canals and seas and jungles. Today we would probably reclassify Burrough’s Barsoom series and a lot of old school (and current era) space opera as Science Fantasy. Which is fine with me though it may rub some folk the wrong way. Tough shit though. I like my reality plausible and am comfortable with fantasy borrowing from science rather than simply parodying medievalism. It’s the 21st century and there’s no reason our escapist fantasy shouldn’t be inspired by paleofuturism rather than creative anachronism. it’s all about imagination and what you want to do with it.
But back to Mars:

This got me thinking about the Barsoom Series. Specifically, what struck me was that the politics that make up the plot of most fo the Mars books (well, the first three, anyway) is analogous to current Middle Eastern politics in some respects and could very well serve as a guiding plot map for any adaptation of the Burroughs series.

First, you have the red Martians, who are descendants of a once vast and ancient empire, much like the Iranians of today are the vestigial descendants of the Persian Empire. Then you have the Green Tharks, who are tribal and territorial like the Mujhadin of Afghanistan. Along comes John Carter, stumbling in from Earth and getting tangled up in the ongoing strife. Carter is a fascinating character as he isn’t just some American hick but a soldier of fortune who fought in the American Civil War, not for honor or glory or nativist politics but just because he thought war might be fun and wanted to get rich.* Carter falls in first with the Tharks, earning their respect with his fighting prowess. he later falls for Deja Thoris, Princess of Helium and one of the rulers of the red Martians. it is through his doing that the Red Martians and the green Tharks unite against their common enemies, The Yellow (Chinese), White (Anglo-Americans) and Black (Lybians) Martians who have unified loosely to wipe out the Red Martians and Tharks in a racist purge and divvy up their resources and territory among themselves. Naturally, each of these three groups plans to back stab the other two.

There’s a long and tangled history of trying to make films out of the Barsoom books. At one point, there was going to be a Ray Harryhausen, stop motion series, a sort of cross between the original King Kong and Flash Gordon serials. That never happened. Then there was going to be a Bob Clampett animated version. Which fell through. A lot f these pictures never happened because of the daunting technical aspects. Try to picture a live action film with twelve foot tall, four armed Martians before the advent of CGI. It’s not a pretty picture, even if they could have been done Jason and the Argonauts style, with people fighting stop motion puppets. Several hands have tried to make the project work and it’s even rumored that Pixar may be thinking about it, which could work, because it’s Pixar, but I hope they don’t because they’d have to tone down the politics, nudity and blood. And without that, we’re right back where we started with Red Planet and Ghosts of Mars. And who wants that?

_________
* He of course learns this is not so and, dejected form his experiences in the war, goes West to find his fortune in gold mining. His claim is jumped by Indians and fleeing his attackers, Carter hides in a cave, where he is overcome by a strange gas and, by a method alien and unknowable, is transported bodily to Mars.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 8:51 pm and is filed under The Future!!, Cinema, Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.