When I taught science fiction

There are any number of reasons why I miss my home. One of them is books.

The books I would teach, I mean. Don't get me wrong, just about everything I teach involves a book or two given that composition is my discipline, but it was different at Saint Joseph's College. Not only did the Core program allow me to teach many volumes included in the Great Books canon, I also got to teach bona fide texts of science fiction, obviously my favorite genre.

Elysium, I tell you.

As the waning but humid days of August are upon us and school is back in session, it dawns on me that I am unlikely to teach these books ever again. So, with no small degree of sadness, I thought I would blog a post that looks at each one of these books and how they fit in the curriculum.

Feed by M.T. Anderson
Titus and his teen friends go to the Moon to party and all they got was a stupid hack.
In this future, everyone has a implant in their brains that grants them constant connection to the Internet. Imagine a nonstop Facebook or Twitter feed in your mind, hence the name. But what happens when it all goes wrong? As with any text, one of my main questions to students is one of authorial exigency. Why did the writer feel compelled to write the text in the first place? Well, we were lucky enough to have M.T. Anderson appear via Skype to answer just this question. He said that he wrote Feed to address the subject of literacy. What happens when we stop reading and writing and just get the Internet delivered into our heads? I also found it interesting how many students grew frustrated with the language of the book. Anderson wrote much of it in the vernacular of a teenager in that future, meaning he made up quite a bit of slang. The students didn't know how to interpret a lot of it. I asked them then how they think they might sound today to generations past?
This book prompted many questions of just what technology may be doing to us. If nothing else, it allowed me the opportunity to lecture on transhumanism.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
This is of course a classic of dystopian fiction. Huxley, "The greatest writer in English of the 20th Century" according to the Chicago Tribune, deftly paints a future where all humans come about through genetic engineering, are placed at birth in a caste system, and are subsequently amused to death by drugs and media. The number of questions raised by this text number in the thousands. Is science the answer to everything? Exactly what comments is the writer trying to make on Communism, the "assembly line" model of living, and how a society should be ordered (if it should be ordered at all)? I knocked out quite a fun lecture on this one as well, attempting to sell students on the Brave New World while feigning being stoned on soma the whole time (it was really Mike and Ikes). My edition of the text has a nifty introduction by Christopher Hitchens, but if you're an audio learner, the audiobook is available on YouTube.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Another dystopian classic. In this future, reading is illegal and books are burned by a totalitarian government. The people dispatched to do this burning are ironically called "firemen." One of these firemen, a man named Guy Montag, meets a former English teacher who dares to still read. Montag's life is changed. This stranger he barely knows is infinitely more intriguing to Montag than his wife of many years who just sits at home and watches TV. How can Montag go back to his old life upon encountering this sage?
Those English teachers. Always causing trouble. But I digress...
This is a cautionary fable by a masterful writer. I would mandate it be read by all college students nationwide. What happens when technology advances to a point where reading is no longer required? Why would anyone make reading illegal? What book would you memorize in order to preserve it?

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
I realize that many genre purists might find this to be a dicey inclusion. Isn't this really gothic horror, brought about as the result of a ghost story? Well it's a definite yes on the horror aspect and a better-think-about-it on the ghost story contest. At the same time however, others point to Shelley's masterpiece as an early example of science fiction. Think about it. The very title is synonymous with the phrase "science has gone too far." Just because we can, does that mean we should? Victor Frankenstein's creation is a cautionary reminder for anyone who dares to go too far. By the way, I was asked if it bothers me that so many people call the Creature from the book "Frankenstein" when that's really the name of the creator. I told them that the English professor in me is quite cheesed at it, yes. However, the kid in me who loves monster movies thinks it's A-OK. Speaking of which, I'll show you just how sci-fi Frankenstein can be. Go right now and watch Toho's Frankenstein Conquers the World...

I know these books will always be with me as both a reader and a writer. I hope that I am given the opportunity to teach one of them, any one of them, again. Failing that, I hope that I can create the opportunity to teach them. If nothing else, I hope that this post may prompt someone who has yet to read any of these science fiction books to check them out and give them a try.

Might want to try memorizing the book while you're at it. The way things are going, the firemen might show up any day now.

Until next time, my best.


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This Sunday in 1958, a legend was born

On August 28th, 1958, a legend entered the American popular consciousness.

And a six year-old Jon Nichols couldn't have been happier.

A construction crew was building a road near Bluff Creek, California. Jerry Crew, one of the workers, arrived on the site amid the tall pines early that morning on the 28th. He was shocked at what he found. Next to his bulldozer was a trail of 16-inch long footprints in the mud. Eventually, plaster casts were made of the prints (see above pic). Someone informed a local newspaper and the paper ran a story, calling the mysterious maker of footprints, "Bigfoot." Although the article also spoke to local Native Americans about their centuries old legends of an "ape man" called "Sasquatch" said to roam the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, it was of course the name "Bigfoot" that stuck. The rest is history.

The whole idea captivated me in my childhood. I checked out copious books from the library on the subject, I sat glued to Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of episodes that tracked Bigfoot and his Asian relative, the Yeti, and I can still remember holding the phone when my dear Grandma told me Bigfoot had been seen near her farm in Ohio. Who knows how many times I watched the Patterson Film during that era, footage that was shot by the way near Bluff Creek. Here's the iconic still from the film.

Why my fascination? I think for the same basic reason that the legend has endured for so long. That is, we love telling stories. It's in our collective make-up to compose narratives, whether they be oral or written, and to tell them to one another. Few things could be more compelling than the idea of a half-human/half-ape creature, whether incogitant or sentient, living in what few wild places still remain on our continent. That may be another factor. Like the accounts of werewolves or "dogmen," the idea of Bigfoot may serve as a link to our primal past. While we are ostensibly more civilized these days, humans are still animals by nature. Maybe we still wish we were still roaming the woods as "wild men."

Note how many stories involve what might lurk in "the woods."

As for the reality of Bigfoot itself, well...it doesn't look good. While there are many sightings and legends that predate Western contact, there still isn't much solid, concrete evidence for creature. If there is, then somebody should probably get it through peer review because they have an amazing scientific discovery on their hands. I can just imagine the National Geographic special on it now.

Oh the initial footprint findings in 1958? Well...the construction crew's boss, a man named Ray Wallace who had a penchant for practical jokes, was long suspected of faking the prints with wooden cut-outs tied to his boots. His family confirmed this was the case after his death in 2002.

Just the same, if I ever find myself in a wilderness again, I'll always be wondering what's behind the trees.

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The eclipse of 2017

Photo from National Geographic.


So we had an eclipse today.

Did you hear about it? More likely, did you see it?

I did. Or as much as one could around here anyway. In the Chicago area we only had about 80% darkness. A thick covering of rain-rich clouds added to the effect but obscured much of the eclipse itself. Didn't bother me as I didn't expect much from the whole affair. No glasses for me and I certainly didn't poke holes in any cereal boxes. If anything, I anticipated a sky that would amount to little more than a cloudy day. That's why I was so shocked when I stepped outside.

It was eerie. None of the natural light seemed...right. I noticed a drop in temperature from an hour earlier and a spike in humidity. As I walked through a parking lot, I looked over at someone else. He looked up at the sky and then glanced about our surroundings. He caught me looking. We both smirked and exchanged expressions seeming to convey, "weird, right?" There was a haze in the air, completing the almost paranormal sense of displacement, of shifting into a parallel world that looks like ours but isn't quite.

Shadows formed in strange ways on the ground. These shadows are a source of speculation in astronomy. It's thought by many that these shadows are due to turbulence in the atmosphere. Another school of thought says that they may be formed by sound. "Infrasound" to be exact. That's sound at a frequency too low for human ears to hear. Remember I said it felt cooler? From BBC: "This rapid cooling of the air sets up a difference in pressure. The potential energy associated with this pressure difference then escapes as high-intensity infrasound."

That's one notion, anyway. As I got in my car, passed by other vehicles with their headlights on and driving in what amounted to twilight conditions, it was easy for me to see how this phenomena has been associated with the occult since time immemorial. If someone didn't know what was going on, they might be forgiven for heading to the nearest church, dropping to their knees, and asking for absolution for all the petty crimes and misdemeanors of life before the end finally arrives. I halfway feared we'd be hearing by now about some cult somewhere whose members chose to commit mass suicide via cyanide-laced pudding during this astronomical event. I told this to someone and they said we should try to find them and stop them before it's too late. She joked that we should call shoe stores and check their stock. "Black Nikes. You got 'em? What, you sold out? When? Where?" That is of course a Heaven's Gate joke.

Flat Earthers are having quite a time of it. They appear honestly befuddled by the powerful yet well-understood astronomical occurrence we call an eclipse. My personal choice for the most disturbing quote from that article? "I really, really don't know what the moon is."

Shudder.

Looking back on the positive side, this was a welcome respite. The eclipse led the news headlines all morning, radio stations served up themed songs for an eclipse soundtrack, and someone shipped Bonnie Tyler out on a cruise ship to the point of totality where she could belt out her hit in the middle of the Atlantic. The Adler Planetarium was packed. Kids were outside learning about astronomy and I saw neighbors interacting with each other who seldom wave hello on any other day. For once, nobody was focused on politics or any of the other awful things in the world. It was something really positive and if you want to see what I mean, look no further than Chicago's very own Tommy Skilling. 

I hope we don't have to wait for the 2024 eclipse to feel that way again.




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Dogmen of Michigan

Pic from a Google image search. If it's yours and you want it removed, let me know.

Chad, a friend and former colleague of mine, has now moved into cryptid central.

The faculty of my former college have been scattered to the four winds for reasons you know by now. Chad was fortunate enough to land a professor's position at a college in Michigan. Exciting news and a relief for his family for sure...until he learned his new home was right smackdab in the middle of the Dogman's lair. He jokingly referred to it on Facebook and I commented that I had indeed heard of the alleged creature.

Of course I have. The Weird is kinda my thing. And I've been tempted to research Dogmen for a while now, mostly due to their purported appearance.

Why? Because the most efficient way I have to describe these supposed creatures is "a werewolf." Witnesses report a hairy, bipedal creature as high as seven feet tall with the head of a canine but the torso of a human. Their legs are even said to be bent in the manner of a dog's hind legs.  A Dogman is also said to utter a terrifying, inhuman howl. The following size comparison chart comes from the North American Dogman Project:

In Michigan, stories of Dogmen are said to go back to the time of the Odawa tribes, the narratives later propagated among lumberjacks and farmers. Dogmen really didn't seem to enter the public consciousness of Michigan until a man named Steve Cook came along.

Cook was a radio DJ at WTCM in Traverse City. He recorded a song called "The Legend of the Dogman."

But...

"I made it up completely from my own imagination as an April Fools' prank for the radio and stumbled my way to a legend that goes back all the way to Native American times." he said.

Nonetheless, he received hundreds of reports from people once the song aired, all claiming to have seen Dogmen. It is important to note that Cook is "tremendously skeptical" about the nature of these reports. 

Dogmen are not confined to Michigan but rather appear to roam the whole of the Upper Midwest. In fact I first learned of the creatures via what came to be known as the "Beast of Bray Road." Bray Road is a rural road near Elkhorn, Wisconsin, just over the Illinois border. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the area became host to numerous Dogman sightings. Local newspaper reporter Linda Godfrey was assigned to investigate. While initially skeptical, Godfrey became a convert and eventually wrote a book about the sightings, The Beast of Bray Road. I really must read it one day.

If you're looking for a central depository of sightings, look no further than DogmanEncounters.com

From that site:

"Have you seen a creature that looked like a Werewolf? If you have, you’re not crazy and you’re not alone. What you saw wasn’t a Werewolf. It’s what’s called a “Dogman.”  More people than you’ll ever know have had Dogman encounters. Unfortunately, most of them don’t know who they can talk to about their encounters. That’s where I come in. My name is Vic Cundiff and I help Dogman eyewitnesses deal with the trauma of their Dogman encounters. If you’re a Dogman eyewitness, you now have someone you can turn to for help. Me!"

Good to know he's out there for us. You got that link bookmarked, Chad? Good.

Are there really Dogmen? Is there a species of humanoid, bipedal canines hidden and lurking in arboreal and paludal regions the Great Lakes? Offhand, I'd have to say I doubt it. There would have to be substantial physical evidence for me to begin to accept such a notion. Then again, I have not studiously read each of the witness accounts.

In a way, I don't want to. While I'm not prepared to become a flag-carrying cryptid believer, I also don't want to know that they're not real. You see, this kid grew up loving monster movies and stories. Werewolves were among my most favorite variety of monsters. The idea that there could a species of werewolf-like creatures out there somewhere in the wooded confines of my geographical backyard, well...my inner ten year-old is agog. 

I think that may be the key to much of this. We are all writers. In one way or another we are constantly composing and constantly telling stories to one another. After all, what is a job interview but a moment where you must tell stories? Trust me, I'm acutely aware of this by now. The notion of the werewolf itself arises in part from our need to tell stories. I don't immediately doubt that Native Americans of the region told Dogmen tales as it would seem natural.

Also, humans are animals. Another colleague of mine wrote a book about how we are biologically "born expecting the Pleistocene," or an epoch far less civilized than what we currently have. Are Dogmen and werewolf stories just compositions expressing our "wild side"? I think that may be. I also think, as is also echoed on Skeptoid, there are deep connections between the accounts and the standard narratives of urban legends. See at that link the report of a young couple that went "parking" at Bray Road. At any rate, Dogmen could be a big potted stew of all of the above. It might also be that the Dogmen are beings somewhere on John Keel's "superspectrum," passing between our dimension and others.

Me? I'm going to just play pretend that there are werewolves on the prowl. Might not be good for livestock keepers, chihuahua owners, and my friend Chad, but as I said, this once-young monster/sci-fi kid chooses to revel in the idea. 

Seriously Chad, best of luck to you and your wife. I wish the best to both of you in your new home. Keep your eyes open around town for something that looks like this: 

(An alleged security camera still posted at North American Dogman Project.)






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The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Summer is a time for reading.

Or at least that's as tradition holds. I used to read voraciously, a book tucked somewhere on my personage at all times. Then a disaster came along and pretty much destroyed my concentration for the longest while. Still, I eventually reverted to one of my sanctuaries for troubled times: the library. As I perused the shelves, I came upon a most engaging series of books.

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is series where contemporary writers mash-up literature's greatest detective with/against other literary and historical figures of the 19th Century, such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Jack the Ripper. I have been, and probably always will be, a fan of narrative mash-ups. As a kid I delighted whenever I'd see King Kong vs Godzilla listed in the TV Guide (I'm aware just how much that single sentence dates me.) As a teen geekboy, I was overjoyed when I learned that Dark Horse Comics was writing a series of Aliens vs Predator comics, a concept that seemed so explosively exciting yet obvious all at the same time. Ditto for DC's Batman vs Dracula. My very first foray into writing as a young lad was a mash-up. I had Sherlock Holmes (no kidding) meet Captain Nemo. Naturally, I was drawn in to the FAOSH concept. In fact, I couldn't make up my mind as to which titles to read first.

Before we go on any further, a word about my particular tastes regarding the Holmes mythos. I'm something of a purist. The Robert Downey Jr movies are fun and Benedict Cumberbatch is great in everything he does, but my Holmes will always be Basil Rathbone and my Watson will always be Nigel Bruce. I believe that those actors and their corresponding films were the closest in keeping with the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original literature. That means they aren't slam-bang action yarns and they're not especially brooding. I also believe that the source books are also somewhat unique in that they break a few rules of what is considered to be "good" writing. In the whole of the Holmes collection, there might be two pages worth of character development. Nevertheless, the stories work. The reader is drawn into the story, cares about the characters, and more than anything else, wants to see just how Holmes deduces the solution to the mystery at hand. It works. My point being, all of these literary sensibilities are in my mind when evaluating a new entry to the mythos.

Loren D. Estleman gets it. He is the writer of Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, the first title of the FAOSH series that I selected (how could I not?) I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I might not have heard of Estleman before taking this book from the shelf, but he is an award winning mystery author. Indeed, the mythos of both Holmes and Dracula were in capable hands the whole the time.

Remember when I said my seven year-old self wrote (or tried to, anyway) a mash-up of Sherlock Holmes and Captain Nemo? Well, I distinctly remember taking "voice" into consideration. When I wrote dialogue, I asked "did it sound like Holmes?" I was writing my thoughts to come out of his mouth, but it needed to sound like he was saying them. I would later do the same with action figures of various characters, making certain that their rhetorical choices were in keeping with their personalities. I was engaging in composition theory and didn't even know it.

Safe to say, Estleman captured the voice of not only the characters, but also the style and presentation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. Same goes for the Dracula characters, although I would argue that's a somewhat easier task as they are a bit less distinctive, save for the Count himself of course.

The story begins more or less where the English portion of Bram Stoker's Dracula picks up. A schooner called the Demeter sails into a harbor with not a single man on board...save for the corpse of the captain, lashed to the wheel and drained of blood. Sherlock Holmes sets off to solve the riddle of this mystery ship and that inevitably brings him to meet the characters of Dracula. Yes, we get to see Holmes interact with Van Helsing, even if briefly. It's amusing to find that the two don't especially get along that well. Of course we also see Holmes go one-on-one with the lord of vampires.

While it's solid, fun read for the most part, it does tend to drag at the end. The author has a protracted chase sequence that is ostensibly meant to be thrilling, but I found it to have the opposite effect. Instead of biting my nails, I kept grumbling "get on with it, man." On the plus side, remember what I said about character development? Well, Estleman has a marvelous moment where Dracula confronts Watson, asking why he would sacrifice so much for Holmes. "Sherlock Holmes is my friend," Watson replies plainly...and Dracula is absolutely flummoxed. Love it,

I also checked out the War of the Worlds installment of the series, written by Manly Wade Wellman and his son, Wade Wellman.

I had read a bit of Manly Wade Wellman's "weird tales" in college, thanks to my theater director. While I didn't have strong recollections of the prose style one way or another, I was interested enough to see how he would mash up Conan Doyle with the H.G. Wells story that I likewise love. The writers do this in part via another Conan Doyle character, Professor Challenger from The Lost World and a few other books I admittedly have not read. Anyway, Challenger joins Holmes and Watson as Martian cylinders fall on England and eventually London is in flames.

While this was entertaining to read, the writing lacked description and there were missed opportunities for turns of phrase. It also didn't seem quite Holmes enough. I don't mean that the authors didn't capture the voice. They were at least as good as Estleman in that regard. No, this just didn't quite seem to fit the Sherlock Holmes milieu once you get past the first quarter of the book.  What I really liked was a series of chapters that could only have been executed with the written word and not with cinema.

Holmes comes into the possession of a crystal egg. He and Professor Challenger examine it and find that they can see a whole other landscape through the crystal. For pages the two go on evaluating what it could or couldn't be and eventually deduce that they must be looking at the planet Mars. I was engrossed as I read of how they eventually came to the conclusion, even though the very title of the book was something of a natural spoiler. That's good writing.

One other handy feature of this series is that each book comes with preview pages of another installment in the series. I managed to read part of one before my copy was due back at the library. It was for The Ectoplasmic Man. This one features Holmes meeting the real-life escape artist, Harry Houdini. Houdini has been framed and sent to prison for espionage. Holmes vows to clear him and go after blackmailers bent on menacing the Prince of Wales.

TL;DR It's on the whole a fun, if modestly written, series for anyone who loves Sherlock Holmes. Next time, more weirdness.

Take care everyone.


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Mothman in Chicago

Source of image: http://www.cryptozoo.ru/news/letajushhie_monstry/1-0-50


This is a momentous blog post!

I have co-blogged with others before, but never with my own brother.
That's right. Two! Two Nichols men. All for the price of one.

Michael entered the blogosphere back in May with Forest Dweller Thoughts. There he examines the many spiritual and cultural facets of the human experience, mostly through an academic lens. In this, the first of what I hope will be a series of posts co-blogged with him, we consider a most serious matter.

Mothman.

I've blogged before about how my interest in the paranormal started at quite a young age. It all started for me with books on UFOs and cryptids from the children's section of the library. Invariably, Michael would read the books I brought home and vice versa, thus cementing our own shared interests in the subjects. We read plenty of accounts of creatures, weirdness, and things that go bump in the night that subsequently kept us up at night, fearing those said same bumps. One of those narratives invovled an unknown creature called "Mothman." It immediately captured our imaginations.

In 1966 in the West Virginia dorp of Point Pleasant, a blizzard of bizarre occurrences took place. There were UFO sightings, eerie synchronicities, psychic phenomena, and encounters with strange entities. One of these entities was called "Mothman."

On November 15th, 1966, two teenage couples were driving at night by what was then known as "the TNT area" outside of Point Pleasant. The region earned this name due to the presence of an old World War II munitions plant and dump. On that lonely road, the couples claimed (and still claim to this day) that they saw a black, humanoid creature with wings and eyes that glowed red when hit with the beams of their car's headlights. It swooped down and followed their car, giving them all quite a fright. They reported the incident to police and the story made its way into the press. The media dubbed the creature "Mothman" partly due to the purported shape of the wings and because Batman starring Adam West was a big hit on TV at the time.

Sightings of Mothman continued in tandem with all of the other paranormal activity already mentioned. This attracted the attention of writer and researcher, John Keel. He spent a fair amount of time in Point Pleasant, talking to witnesses and doing investigations. The product of this research was his landmark book, The Mothman Prophecies. Both Michael and I first encountered this text in...of all places...our high school library I recommend this book for a number of reasons. If you have interest in the paranormal, Keel's theories are challenging and worthy of deep consideration (the idea of the "superspectrum" is one I've steadily grown to see as a fitting explanation for instances of the truly bizarre.) If you are not, then the book is entertaining in and of itself as Keel is a sharp writer. The man lived the paranormal and his portrayal of the entity Indrid Cold will stay with you.

So why are Michael and I writing about Mothman now?

For one, a somewhat bizarre synchronicity not unlike the kind described in The Mothman Prophecies. happened with us. I contacted Michael to see if he would be interested in a co-blogged Mothman post. When I asked, he replied that he just happened to have been re-reading The Mothman Prophecies. Coincidence? Synchronicity? Paranormal weirdness? I'll let you decide.

Why did I ask him about Mothman? Well, turns out Mothman has been sighted where I live: the greater Chicago area.

Since April, there have been 21 sightings of the creature...or something similar to it...all across the region. It's been seen near the Adler Planetarium, the Willis Tower (Sears Tower, for you out of towners), and in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. It's also been sighted in the outlying Chicagoland area, such as Hegewisch Park. The witnesses have described it as an enormous bat or owl, alternatively as a man in a suit or...as the name would imply...a cross between a moth and a man. What seems to be a consistent feature are the glowing red eyes that seem to "look right through you" as described by one Chicago woman who claimed to encounter the being while walking her dog in the park. This all seems to parallel what was seen in Point Pleasant.

"People say it moves its head and its legs. It acts like it's living. If it was a suit it would need some kind of jet pack. It's got some propulsion to it. It flaps its wings and accelerates," said paranormal researcher, Len Strickler to the Chicago Tribune.

Here is a map of the most recent sightings via the site, The Mothman Wikia:

These sightings might not bode well for Chicago.

You see, Mothman's appearance is said to be a harbinger of disaster. In the case of Point Pleasant, it was the December 1967 collapse of the Silver Springs Bridge. Keel describes this bridge's collapse into the Ohio River and the ensuing deaths of 35 people in macabre detail (wrapped Christmas presents floating in the water.) Sightings of a Mothman-like creature are rumored to have occurred in Chernobyl in the days leading up to the nuclear disaster. There are even those who claimed to have seen Mothman flitting between the towers of the World Trade Center on the night before 9/11. What does this mean for Chicago?

Well let's see. Highest tax rate in the nation, highest murder rate in the nation, godawful traffic, an impending economic collapse, people moving out of Illinois in droves....I'd say Mothman might be a little too late.

So what is Mothman? Keel suspected it is a "superspectrum" being that shares the Earth with us. Others believe it to be interdimensional or extraterrestrial in nature. Joe Nickell offers a bit more down-to-earth explanation: maybe the reason a few witnesses think it looked like an owl is because it actually was an owl. Mothman may even speak to the deeper spiritual nature of humanity as reflected in myths such as the Garuda. For an in-depth exploration of that subject, please head over to Michael's blog right now.

In the meantime, this will all certainly be on my mind. I walk my dogs. Sometimes at night. Often in a park.

I'll keep you updated.


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