Fun Facts and Trivia Part Three: Episodes 7-9

Lots of background going on here!

6642: One of my many hobbies is microscopy, and this little fellow-being is actual footage of a Vorticella (a protozoan) I took with my Celestron 44340 Digital Microscope. He/she/it was a particularly exciting find in a drop of stagnant water from outside. Just proves that the world can be a pretty eerie place, as in eerie-weird-and-wonderful, not eerie-stalked-by-shadows-with-evil-intent.

How to be a Detective: The little detective book that Squeaky and the Crane use is an homage to Buster Keaton, probably one of the (if not the) greatest visual comedians ever to have a building fall on him (although there’s also Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Chan....). All of his films are in the Public Domain and pretty readily available, but getting a good print isn’t as easy. He was inventive, funny, moving and always surprising, designing and performing all of his own stunts, some of which will blow you away even today. The still I used is from “Sherlock Jr.”.

The books that Yorick envisions being absorbed into his “repository” (I guess he invented the personal computer) include such titles as “The Dirt on Dirt”, “A Cultural Atlas of La La Land”, “Field Guide to Rusty Implements”, “Uneducated Guesses”, “A Fool’s Guide to Fool’s Gold”, “The Complete History of Inner Tubes”, “An Investigation into and Review of Studies About Studies”, “Lunar Faze”, “Krel Inventions and You” and, of course, “The Voyage of the Golden Hinder” and “The Life and Times of Yorick, late of Denmark”.

The texts that the Anachronauts refer to when planning their moon trip are interesting in themselves. Perhaps the most fun is Cyrano de Bergerac’s A Voyage to the Moon (1657). The full text is easy to access online. There are some pretty strange and very amusing passages, not the least being when he explains that it is wonderful that everyone on the moon has big noses (like him) because “a great nose is the mark of a Witty, Courteous, Affable, Generous and Liberal Man”. He describes some metal clockwork books that are “made wholly for the Ears and not the Eyes” which can be wound up to listen to stories (early audio books!). Towns are moved about by sails, bellows or large screws to take advantage of seasonal changes, changes in the weather or greener pastures. Some of the inhabitants communicate by musical sounds and he gives their names in musical notation. They take nutrition by inhaling the vapours of cooked food. And he does go on about ostriches. There are really too many interesting passages to mention. Read it, but be warned that the language (in translation) is very dated and might take some wading through. Watch for the impression he makes on the first lunar inhabitants he meets; it’s hilarious!

Kepler’s Somnium (“Dream”) is much more curious: scientific observances from his time cloaked in a weird semi-autobiographical fantasy. Bertie seems fascinated by it.

The whole lunar trip is a tip of the hat to classic books, movies and serials. Completely inaccurate and unscientific, it gives free rein to playful impossibilities: fantasy rather than science-fiction. Palus Somni, however, is a real area on the moon, and translates as “Marsh of a Dream”. That name has fascinated me since I was a teenager first becoming interested in astronomy. It sounds like something from Dunsany rather than true hard science. It’s also rather strange looking: an elongated diamond-shaped feature of a decidedly different colour than its surroundings. Good place for a Convergence.

There is an interesting “coincidence” concerning the calendar for the Convergence...which will become clearer later on, like around episode 22!

There is a quick reference to The Martian (but not in so many words; look for a tuber) and to kaiju (Japanese giant-monster movies), film noir, classic TV, etc., etc. Oh, and of course, all classic space-travel sci-fi has the mandatory meteor storm...except ours.

*****

“Research” for a film like this is fun; poking about and following obscure tangents and strange paths. I read lots of lunar travel fantasies and came across other weird and wonderful things: lunar travel hoaxes by the likes of Poe, the first references to “flying saucers” inspired by Kenneth Arnold’s famous sightings, the history of armillaries, Retrofuturism, faux nostalgia, Tsiolkovsky’s theories of jet propulsion (a real scientist refuting Verne’s idea of being launched from a cannon!), “theories” about the moon’s gravitational effect on humans (astronomer George Abell explains that a mosquito sitting on your arm exerts a more powerful gravitational pull on you than the moon does), real moonrats (large possum-like critters from Sumatra; they look a bit like the Killer Shrews and are oddly fascinating), Gumby’s A Trip to the Moon (a more unselfconsciously surreal short film you’re unlikely to find), the Harmonic Convergence happenings of 1987, Googie (NOT Google) architecture; well, you get the idea. The planning is almost as much fun as actually making the film, and expands my knowledge of trivia immensely (most important!).