Modern Dragons, continued
Doug
a couple now.
First up is the short story "The Day of the Dragon" by Guy Endore,
written in 1934. Spoilers ahoy:
The story concerns the under-appreciated and
frequently-taken-advantage-of biologist Professor Crabshaw who is
cajoled by his social-climbing wife and the narrator (a journalist)
into becoming a shill for populist media defending absurd science
claims. Although intially resistant to the idea, once he gets a taste
of fame and fortune he wholeheartedly plunges into writing
psuedo-science stories for the masses.
I really enjoyed this aspect of the story; it feels amazingly
prescient, anticipating the Von Danikens of the past decades. Of
course, Crabshaw is ostracized by his peers. In order to repair his
reputation, his uses his new-found wealth to do experiments on
alligators. His theory is that the two-chambered alligator heart is
deficient, resulting in "auto-intoxication", so he goes about creating
a four-chambered version. After many failed attempts, he finally
manages to create two healthy specimens. The result is a pair of
healthy, fully-functioning alligators who are no longer constrained by
their pre-existing "medical condition" and develop into their full
potential. In short, they turn into dragons.
Crabshaw's carefully-planned revelation to his university bosses and
the press is a bust when they discover the dragons have disappeared.
No one believes his story, even when monsters attack the Miss America
pageant in Atlantic City. This is where the story comes apart. Soon
Crabshaw is winging his way around the world astride his dragons, who
travel as fast as supersonic jets, and he sends cablegrams back to his
wife. Soon the cablegrams stop and dragons begin wholesale
destruction of human civilization while breeding like rabbits.
I generally grant older SF a lot of leeway since most of the
information we take for granted today simply didn't exist back in the
day. Unfortunately, Endore shoots his own tale down with a couple of
sentences late in the story: "No one would try my simple explanation
and see if alligators could really be cured of their heart trouble and
become dragons. The mere suggestion was dismissed at once on the
grounds that acquired characteristics were not inherited, whereas
these dragons bred true." There's the problem - Endore *knew* his
idea wouldn't work, yet he did it anyway. Of course this is pre-DNA
and genetic engineering, but Wells' Moreau already existed and some
things were already known. Despite this fatal flaw, it's mostly a
good story, but it's a shame he wasn't able to make the mental leap.
The book _Dragons, An Introduction to the Modern Infestation_ by
Pamela Wharton Blanpied is just a failure. The conceit here is that
Dragons have existed all along and that man's expansion led to a
direct conflict with them for territory, resulting in clashes and
great loss of life on both sides. Blanpied goes for the humorous side
of this, but it's really not that funny. Humor is a personal thing,
of course, but this one fails the test. The truism "brevity is the
soul of wit" is ignored by Blanpied, who drives her semi-funny joke
into the ground. Although the text states that "photos of dragons are
commonplace" and there are ample descriptions of cities being laid
waste, she offers more than a dozen stock photos of scenery with spots
circled or indicated by arrows where dragons are supposedly lurking.
Needless to say, there's nothing in the photos. It's lazy and after
the second one it isn't funny any more. It would be far more
interesting to reinterpret existing photos in a dragon-infestation
context (burned buildings, inexplicable cattle mutilations, etc.), or
to doctor photos in the Boilerplate style.
http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/ Not a very interesting attempt.
To answer a question raised earlier, this is an American edition,
published by Warner Books.
The 1980 short story collection _Dragons of Darkness_ is a companion
piece to _Dragons of Light_, both edited by Orson Scott Card. The
book is illustrated throughout by various artists, which was a nice
surprise. Halfway through, I seem to have misplaced this book (we're
getting ready to move cross country), which isn't a great idea since
it's a library book. However, the only story which pertains to modern
dragons in America is a weak attempt by Ben Bova to write a funny
"dragon meets the mob" story. As I said above, humor is personal, and
this story failed to tickle my fancy. The Glen Cook story which opens
the book is quite good, and is a classic fantasy. The story "The
Thermals of August" only uses the word dragon, not the creature
itself, and "Negwenya" takes place in apartheid South Africa with a
dragon only hinted at, but very well done. Hopefully I can find it
and finish it before the big move.
No spoilers:
_Dragons of the Cuyahoga_ by S. Andrew Swann is the best of the bunch
so far. It's a natural companion to Mike Resnick's hard-boiled
fantasy _Stalking the Unicorn_, and if you liked that one (as I did),
then you'll like this one.
It concerns jaded journalist Kline Maxwell who lives in Cleveland
which is the site of a portal connecting our world to a fantasy
kingdom. It's a noirish tale with the requisite first-person
narrative utilizing ultra-cool language and hard-bitten dialogue.
It's a tremendously fun story, complete with bad-ass elves, talking
dragons, interworld politics, Maxwell's unstable family life,
kidnappings and a murder mystery.
I read this in bits and pieces over a few days while sitting in
various hospitals and doctors' offices while my girlfriend underwent
various procedures (everything turned out fine, thankfully) so I never
kept up with the mystery and didn't figure it out before the
denouement. I don't mind that one bit, since the resolution of both
the book and real-life medical stuff were satisfactory.
I couldn't shake the notion that Swann was writing about a
thinly-disguished real-life incident, but I was never able to put my
finger on it. If that isn't the case, my admiration of the author
goes up, because despite the over-the-top fantasy elements, it feels
real. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but there you have it.
That's it so far.
Doug
Andrew Plotkin
> The book _Dragons, An Introduction to the Modern Infestation_ by
> Pamela Wharton Blanpied is just a failure. The conceit here is that
> Dragons have existed all along and that man's expansion led to a
> direct conflict with them for territory, resulting in clashes and
> great loss of life on both sides. Blanpied goes for the humorous side
> of this, but it's really not that funny. Humor is a personal thing,
> of course, but this one fails the test. The truism "brevity is the
> soul of wit" is ignored by Blanpied, who drives her semi-funny joke
> into the ground.
I also found this recently, but I enjoyed it a lot.
It's not trying to be a screamingly hilarious book (although someone
described it so, here). It's a sneakily funny book whose joke is
simply that the author is being plausible as possible about the
scenario of dragons re-emerging in modern history. First the reaction
of the press, then various armies, then the cattle-ranchers... then
someone discovers a hoard of dragon-gold, and *everyone* reacts to
that... etc. All in the style of a somewhat stuffy academic paper,
complete with ugly charts.
This is fine, and I was happy to read it. The reason I recommend the
book, however, is that the author slowly drifts from being silly about
dragons to writing the story of the dragonologists, and it's... just
well-written. These are a few people who simply love dragons,
personally and scientifically, and this comes across on the page.
It's the ultimate extension of the joke: what if there were dragons?
Well, the US government would logically react this way, and the
Canadian cattle industry would logically react that way... and a few
people would logically react with utter wonder and fascination. So
Wharton *does that*.
I thought it was very fine. The best jokes are the ones that the
creator takes trouble to make real.
I was also strongly reminded of Diane Duane's dragons in _The Door
into Shadow_. Which was written four years later, so I suspect a
homage to Wharton. (An homage?)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Diane Duane
wrote:
>I was also strongly reminded of Diane Duane's dragons in _The Door
>into Shadow_. Which was written four years later, so I suspect a
>homage to Wharton. (An homage?)
Never heard of her until now. Sorry...
best! D.
The Owl Springs Partnership / County Wicklow, Ireland
http://www.owlsprings.com / Now launching:
Young Wizards on the Web / http://www.youngwizards.net
Konrad Gaertner
>
> On Wed, 14 Aug 2002 15:25:50 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com>
> wrote:
>
> >I was also strongly reminded of Diane Duane's dragons in _The Door
> >into Shadow_. Which was written four years later, so I suspect a
> >homage to Wharton. (An homage?)
>
> Never heard of her until now. Sorry...
I saw this, and my first thought was: "Someone who's never heard of
Diane Duane??" Then I noticed the sig.
--KG
Andrew Plotkin
> On Wed, 14 Aug 2002 15:25:50 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com>
> wrote:
>>I was also strongly reminded of Diane Duane's dragons in _The Door
>>into Shadow_. Which was written four years later, so I suspect a
>>homage to Wharton. (An homage?)
> Never heard of her until now. Sorry...
Ha. So much for my theories.
(Consider it homework, if you like.)
Diane Duane
wrote:
>> Never heard of her until now. Sorry...
>
>I saw this, and my first thought was: "Someone who's never heard of
>Diane Duane??"
It wouldn't be a shooting offense, as far as I know. :)