Florence McLandburgh's The Automaton Ear

"Seeing is believing." Taken broadly, that old axiom articulates the virtues and limitations of empiricism. The "sight" is the information that can be gleaned through the use of the physical senses of sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. A functional empiricism underlies two of the most important ventures in democratic society: science and justice.

In justice, it is the requirements of physical evidence and reliable, corroborated witnesses. It is also implicit to the principles of legal impartiality, presumption of innocence, and trial by jury, which together signify the importance of sufficient evidence adjudicated objectively. Looked at this way, it is easy to see how the concept of "social justice" is increasingly antithetical to actual justice... Under "social justice," guilt is presumed on the basis of assigned group identity (which is itself guilty of collective group crimes) and emotion supplants evidence in the court of public opinion.

In science, only what can be observed about the physical universe is what can be taken as valid information about it. Of course there are more ways than science to perceive insights about the experience of existence - such as aesthetics, ethics, and religion - but science deals with a particularly narrow subject matter, being the physical universe. Many of the same processes are at work in science as in the processes of justice. Physical evidence is an obvious requirement, as are multiple independent researchers to corroborate findings. The trial by jury becomes the peer reviewed scientific journal, where findings must first pass the editorial board whereupon they are published for the rigorous dispute of the scientific community. At all points, objectivity is desired and the transparency of the Scientific Method encourages multiple researchers to check up on each other's work.

To carry on its experiments, science has produced ever more elaborate tools to increase the scope of the physical senses. What is the telescope, after all, but a giant eye that allows one to see further (and in more spectra) than the normal, unaided eye? The connection between time and space creates the mind-rattling conundrum that what we see through a telescope is not what is happening right now, but rather, is a glimpse into the past. All those beautiful images brought to us by the Hubble Space Telescope are actually images of things that happened millions, even billions, of years ago... However long it took the light from those nebulae to reach us here on Earth. Where our telescopes read a barren rocky exoplanet 500 million light years away, it may, at this very moment, be teeming with its own brand of dinosaur that we won't see for another half-a-billion years.

Now what if we could do that for sound?

In a sense we already do. The first thing an alien civilization is going to hear from us are the first  radio broadcasts from a century ago. This was illustrated dramatically in the beginning of the 1997 film Contact. Florence McLandburgh wondered this same question quite early on in the history of Scientific Romances. Her 1873 short story The Automaton Ear sticks closer to home in its depiction of a scientist who builds an elaborate ear trumpet designed to amplify the faint vibrations of terrestrial events millennia ago.

However, despite this entire preamble, the subject of The Automaton Ear is not the device itself nor its cultural and scientific ramifications. Instead, it is a character study of scientific monomania. It is the autobiography of a mad scientist.

Most Victorian-Edwardian Scientific Romances begin with an outside observer being inducted into the mysteries of the scientist or explorer. The archetype is Professor Arronax, Conseil, and Ned Land being taken aboard Captain Nemo's submarine. Passepartout was the entry point into Phileas Fogg's trip around the world, and Ned Malone was the entry point into Professor Challenger's lost world. The scientist or explorer is almost always the Other who dominates the story told by a narrator. Only in a handful of rare circumstances, like H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, is the scientist themselves the narrator.

I would imagine that, in most cases, this literary device exists to build a sense of intrigue as the mystery of the scientist and their invention unfolds. More likely than not, there is also an underpinning of writers recognizing that it is easier to write about a genius than to pretend to be one. The greatest flaw that writers of geniuses fall into is sub-genius characterizations who tend to come off as undeservedly egotistical Mary Sues.  It's difficult to pass off a character as the most brilliant poet or scientist or whatever, if the writer is clearly not. 

McLandburgh bypasses this problem by setting out to examine the deleterious effects of monomania on her inventors' mind. It is less about the ways and means of the invention itself than on the obsession that drives him to madness.

The Automaton Ear was first published in Scribner's Monthly in May 1873, then again in Florence McLandburgh's only published book, The Automaton Ear and Other Sketches, in 1876.  It appears here as it did in Scribner's. Click on the image, and then right-click and tap "Open image in new tab," to see a larger version.

Clement Fezandié's Through the Earth, Parts III and IV

The bold experiment of drilling a tunnel through the earth complete, parts III and IV of Clement Fezandié's Through the Earth follow young William Swindon's experiences as he makes the perilous first voyage. In a footnote, the author assures us that his text has been double-checked for accuracy by a professor of Applied Mechanics, and what he describes is a fairly accurate impression of artificial weightlessness created through extended freefall. It's much the same process used by NASA to train astronauts, though in the real-world case it is induced by plummeting a special airplane into freefall. It is also how space shuttles and other bodies achieve orbit. Technically they are constantly falling towards the earth, but the earth curves away beneath them before they can land. 

These chapters appear as they originally did in the March and April 1898 editions of St. Nicholas Magazine, with illustrations of William A. Mackay. After the serial completed, Fezandié and St. Nicholas Magazine's parent company, The Century Co., republished it as a book with some additional chapters of background and incident. 

Clement Fezandié's Through the Earth, Parts I and II

What would be the most efficient way to pass from one side of the earth to the other? That's the old trick of the two dimensional map: you'd think it would be a straight line, but on a globe that translates into the curved line of airline flight paths. In the 19th century, there was no expedient way to circumnavigate the globe. Jules Verne showed that it could theoretically be done in 80 days, but the average traveler would be spending many more months at it. 

But what if you could just go through the earth?  

That is the question being broached by Clement Fezandié in this four-part serial that was published in the January-April 1898 volumes of St. Nicholas Magazine. The first two parts, presented here as they originally appeared, with illustrations by William A. Mackay (more famous for his role in developing ship camouflage for the US Navy), focus on the theory and construction of a tube from New York to Australia through the earth's core, and how people and freight may be moved along such a hazardous route.

Click on each page to see a larger version, and join us again next week for parts III and IV! 

Red Dead Redemption's Weird Western World

The original Red Dead Redemption, released in 2010 by Rockstar Games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, is considered by many to be a high-water mark in video gaming. Following the "open world" format of Rockstar's infamous Grand Theft Auto series, the mean streets of major modern metropoli were replaced with the Wild West of Italian cinema. Furthermore, the chain of events was given the compelling story of John Marston, a former outlaw who is forced to hunt down his old gang members across Mexico and the fictional State of New Austin after the government takes his family hostage. The game became a perfect example of the growing propensity for video games to transcend film as the art form of the 21st century. Beautifully rendered environments coupled with engaging storytelling and characters that literally involve the player for hours upon hours of entertainment. 

Red Dead Redemption release trailer.

Advances in technology have meant that no video game is truly complete. Indeed, the "day one update" phenomena has shown that most games aren't even fully debugged and ready to run when they are sold. But where there is extra money to make, downloadable content (DLC) is soon to follow. Picking up before Red Dead Redemption's epilogue, the Undead Nightmare DLC (2010) throws a supernatural curve into Marston's settled life. Just when he thought his family was safe, both his wife and son succumb to a zombie plague breaking out across the frontier. Naturally, it is up to the former outlaw to solve a mystery going back to ancient Aztec worship of the Sun. 

Along the way, Marston encounters even more strangeness. As the world is ripped asunder by a zombie apocalypse, the Four Horsemen's steeds roam the Earth. Marston has the option of taming War, Famine, Pestilence and Death, each with their own unique effects on the brain-eating hordes. Somewhere out there in the wilds is also a unicorn that trails a rainbow behind it as you ride. Joining him are jackalope and chupacabra, and a pathos-inspiring episode with Sasquatch. A new mythology for the zombies does not exactly utilize the creature's largely forgotten origins in Voodoo shamanism, but does draw the modern metaphor of cosmic nihilism and urban distress further back in that direction.  

Undead Nightmare trailer.

Undead Nightmare was criticized from some quarters upon its release, as a number of fans of the original game felt that it undermined Red Dead Redemption's realism to jump on the zombie bandwagon. On the one hand, this realism is overstated: the West was not nearly as wild and bloodthirsty as cinema has made it out to be. Red Dead is an interactive Western movie, pulling tropes and archetypes from Hollywood's gunslingers. A truly realistic Western game would involve an unrelenting tedium of plowing land, driving cattle, and months-long bounty hunts. Violent and gritty does not equate to realistic, and it's surprising to learn that anyone has thought that way since the 1990's. Rockstar already sacrificed realism for an entertaining product.

Apparently those critics were a minor voice, because the more recently released prequel Red Dead Redemption II (2018) for Xbox One and Playstation 4 goes much further in integrating elements of the Weird Western into their otherwise more realistic game. In this installment set in 1899, 13 years before Red Dead Redemption, you play Arthur Morgan, the enforcer of John Martson's old gang. After a robbery gone wrong, the gang is on the lam and trekking across the American landscape to avoid Pinkertons and bounty hunters. We see the gang both at the height of its power and through its fall into madness, despair, and death. 

Red Dead Redemption II release trailer.

The game pushes beyond the tropes of the Spaghetti Western to be a much more realistic take on true Western life. Opportunities for fastpaced, bloodthirsty gunplay are further between and resource management becomes a much more significant part of the game. You have to watch out for the well-being of the camp, your horse, and your character, meaning there is more hunting, crafting, bathing, feeding, and brushing going on. The world of Red Dead Redemption II is much more fully and beautifully realized as well. Its sprawling map is a microcosom of the United States, with regions identifiable to actual parts of the country. The city of Saint Denis is a stand-in for New Orleans, surrounded by bayous and neighbouring the red earth of the post-Civil War American South. North is "Roanoke", replicating the Appalachians and Hudson Valley. To the West are ranges of mountains reflecting the Sierra Nevadas and Canadian Rocky Mountains. Tucked in the midst of the mountains is a small tribute to the geyser basins of Yellowstone. In the middle of the map is the eerily accurate "Heartlands" that look exactly like what one would see driving through the grasslands and badlands of the prairies. New Austin returns as the equivalent of Texas.

Throughout this immense world are a plethora of sights and strangers that get weirder and weirder as the game progresses. The original game had its share of odd characters, eccentrics mostly. The only clearly supernatural figure in Red Dead Redemption was the mysterious Stranger, an unkillable, top-hatted gentleman who appears to know everything about John Marston's past... and future. It was a statement by him that provided the seed for Red Dead Redemption II's precipitating incident. Yet he is poorly defined and there is much speculation as to whether he is God, or Satan, or something else entirely. Much like the stranger in the Clint Eastwood film High Plains Drifter (1973), there are hints as to who this Stranger could be, but overall he is an encounter with the Unknown beyond human ken.

Compilation of scenes with the Stranger.

By contrast,  Red Dead Redemption II goes balls to the wall nuts at times. Extraterrestrial visitors appear at least three times in the sky, first above the ruined shack of a Heaven's Gate-style suicide cult. A ghost in the swamps outside Saint Denis eternally relives her tragic tale of lost love and suicide. Speaking of Saint Denis, what would a proxy of New Orleans be without a vampire? Sasquatch bones can be sighted in a mountain cave, a horrific Moreauesque experiment can be found in a deserted house, high in the hills is a witch's hovel with a cauldron brewing, and human sacrifices by pagan cults dot the landscape, as do ancient fossils, Viking burials, pirate wrecks, and crashed flying machines. A side mission has you searching for mysterious rock carvings of Zeppelins and atomic bomb explosions for a man who looks and talks like he is from the 1920's. Another mission has you performing tasks for a Tesla-like genius, culminating in the discovery of an automaton that looks like a cross between Boilerplate and Bender. 
The following videos by LegacyKillaHD showcase some the various Easter eggs and where to find them, though (more) spoilers ahead for those waiting to find them for themselves...

Jules Verne's Facing the Flag

Facing the Flag (Face au drapeau) is one of Jules Verne's lesser known works yet one of those in the late stages of his career that are more prescient for their insights into human behaviour than for their technological speculation. It is a slight work, only 180 pages soaking wet, and had the pleasure of being adapted into an equally obscure film by Czech auteur Karel Zeman that was translated into English as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (which is the greatest non-Hollywood adaptation of Verne, if not the the greatest adaptation period). Nevertheless, published in 1896, it contains seeds of ideas that are becoming frighteningly relevant now: unaccountable madmen wielding weapons of mass destruction.

The mad scientist and his small, but powerful, invention.
Image: Léon Benett.

René Clair's Paris Qui Dort

A lone worker at the top of the Eiffel Tower awakens one morning to find that everyone else has not. By some strange machination, the world seems frozen. Thefts are paused mid-chase, romances are paused mid-kiss, the unsleeping city of Paris is dead asleep. Soon, a plane full of passengers lands and these survivors of some mysterious experiment make the best of their situation, making free use of everything the City of Lights has to offer.

Paris Qui Dort (Paris Asleep or The Crazy Ray in English releases) was one of the first films of French cinema pioneer René Clair. Typically focused on comedy, Clair was also renowned as an innovator and auteur. His first film - Entr'acte - was created as part of a Dadaist ballet in 1924 and began a long career of manipulating and playing with the dynamics and effects of film. Paris Qui Dort, released the same year, does the same with its premise of an absent-minded scientist shutting the world off and on with mysterious rays.