RIP Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

So, I have never actually read one of his books. Yet. But Jurassic Park has always been on my Must Read list, considering the movie was pretty much one of the greatest things I have ever witnessed. Thank you for Jurassic Park. If I can contribute something half as awesome to the world one day, I will be content.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, people are no longer born, but mass produced in bottles. They are manufactured and conditioned to belong to various classes and be perfectly content with whichever caste they were created for. The World State motto is thus:

Community. Identity. Stability.

Individuality is not an option, the family unit has been abolished and everyone belongs to everyone else. “No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy – to preserve you from having any emotions at all.” And for those moments where natural bliss cannot be achieved, there is the perfect drug, soma. “Better a gram than a damn.” Society is stable and everyone is perfectly content and/or blissful.

Except for Bernard, a member of the alpha class with a penchant for being alone and preferring misery over soma (“I’d rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”) Bernard gets the unique opportunity to visit a savage reservation – a place where live births still occur, complete with the family unit, hunting, religion, dirt and disease. There he meets John, who feels like an outsider because of his ability to read. Bernard feels like an outsider because of his ability to think for himself. For the purposes of a social experiment, John is allowed to come to civilization under the watch of Bernard.

So basically you have John absorbing this new “civilized” way of life and comparing it to his “primitive” ideas and lifestyle, while Bernard is not so loud in criticizing the world system when it gives him fame.

I think my favorite part was when John learned to read Shakespeare. Through reading Shakespeare he found the ability to define and express his feelings with words, which thus made his feelings more real. You know…let’s just go with the excerpt here. For the record, Popé is his mother’s “boyfriend.”

“He hated Popé more and more. A man can smile and smile and be a villain. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindles villain. What did the words exactly mean? He only half knew. But their magic was strong and went of rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated Popé before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic. These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken – they gave him a reason for hating Popé; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Popé himself more real.”

-pg 110

I love that…the words made Popé more real. Reminds me of something C.S Lewis said: “The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define.”

There’s more things to write about here – an infinite amount, almost – but maybe I’ll write another post sometime, cause I’m tired. l8er m8s.

Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D

For what it is, Journey to the Center of the Earth isn’t horrendous. It’s entertaining enough – just don’t expect much plot or character development and you’ll be fine. I went mainly for the 3D DINOSAURS which were friggin’ sweet, but they might have caught the short end of finances ’cause the T-Rex only has like, a 3 minute spot. There was no Great Saurian Combat in the ocean, just some Great Saurian Fish Eating…which was not bad, but just not the same.

However, I did like how they acknowledged the original book and didn’t pretend this movie was a direct adaptation. There’s even a part where Brenden Fraser is reading out loud from the book as he is exploring with his nephew and guide (Hannah, as opposed to Hans – clever).

I have to say though, the landscape at the center of the earth was really well done. For the most part, it looked a lot like how I had pictured it.

They attempted in no way to explain the science, of course. They go to the center of the earth and back in like, 2 days, whereas in the book it took 6 months or something. It didn’t remotely care to explain how our explorer’s heads didn’t implode as they rapidly fell a billion feet below sea level or explode on their way up – but that wasn’t the point. The point was to see a lot of cool 3D stuff, which they succeeded at, I’d say. Although they could have cut a lot of the mine-car scene and given the Saurians more time….

Oh, and I wanted Brenden Fraser to get eaten by the end of it. Everyone’s one-liners were brutal, but his especially. I was rooting for the dinosaur that was chasing him….

Anyways, I give it 3/5.

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

I’m volunteering at a camp all next week, so I figured I’d put in another post before I left. =)

I remember I read a super condensed and abridged version of this when I was a kid and absolutely loved it – enough so that I made a little skit based off this story for me and two of my friends. Adventure stories have always been my favorite – give me dinosaurs and perilous caverns over a drama any day.

Anyways, I found this unabridged version at a second hand bookstore for a dollar; I picked it up and started reading immediately. The first thing that struck me was Jules Verne’s sense of humor. Harry’s deadpan statements of the obvious are priceless!

“I looked rather anxiously around. If the animals were as exaggerated as the plants, the matter would certainly be serious.”
-pg 159

The basic story follows like this: An old piece of parchment with Icelandic writing on it falls out of one of Professor Hardwigg’s old books. The professor calls his nephew Harry to help him interpret the message. The message turns out to be written by a certain Arne Saknussemm a few hundred years earlier, which states that he had made it to the center of the earth through the volcano Mount Sneffels in Iceland. The professor, overwhelmed with enthusiasm, undertakes the same journey, dragging Harry along with him. Before descending into the crater of Mount Sneffels they hire a man named Hans to be their guide. And thus they descend into the earth’s crust…

I learned a whole bunch of vocabulary words this year, but never bothered remembering half of them because, really, when are you ever going to come across the word abnegation?

When you’re reading Jules Verne, that’s when. This dude has a seriously amazing vocabulary, I was blown away every time I turned the page. But don’t let that be intimidating– the esoteric words don’t hinder you from following the story at all.

Anyways, since this book deals a whole lot with geology I had to note a few things. Verne definitely promotes the geological column in this book, but also mentions the Divine Architect and the Creator. I gather he might have believed in the Gap theory, where the days of creation weren’t 24 hour days, but millions of years. Or maybe he’s one of those people who believed that God used evolution to create things? He never says anything specific about evolution though…he talks about the geological column and different “periods of creation”…so gather what you will.

Anyways, this is a quote from Professor Hardwigg talking about a massive cave he and his companions have found themselves in:
“…the mighty Architect of the Universe has constructed it of solid materials. Man, even in his highest flights of vivid and poetic imagination never thought of such things! What are the fine arches of our bridges, what vaulted roofs of our cathedrals, to that mighty dome above us, and beneath which floats an ocean with its shores and calms and tides.”
-pg 166

Also, Chapter 30 has the best title in the history of chapter titles: Great Saurian Combat.

Dude.

I actually can’t wait to see Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D solely for 3D dinosaurs. The rest of it is going to suck, I know, but watching a dinosaur come RIGHT AT YOU might be worth it.

Anyways, Jules Verne is totally my hero now and I can’t wait to read another one of his books soon!

About Lewis’ Space Trilogy

All Scripture is inspired by God. I believe that. However, Christ preached plainly but also in parables. So is it wrong to create works of fiction to better interpret truth, just as a theologian might write a commentary? No, I don’t believe so. I guess you would call it an allegory, like Pilgrim’s Progress; like Piers Plowman; like Everyman.

Thus what would be so wrong about Narnia, Lewis’ Space Trilogy, or even Dekker’s Circle Trilogy? Providing the theology is sound, I mean.

There’s one things I feel I must explain, if to myself. The “gods” in Lewis’ Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength) were not worshipped. They weren’t exactly ‘gods’ either, but Lewis used that term to best explain them. I think he meant that they are beings separate from humans, a bit above angels, but certainly not anywhere on par with the only true omnipotent God.

I doubt that there are really any of these ‘god’ entities – unlike angels. It doesn’t quite line up with good theology. The point is that Lewis took the belief of planets being entities or ‘gods’ from the pagans and reinterpreted them into entities that existed but were subservant to God, like all creation.

Lewis actually looks at things from different perspectives, instead of twisting the things to fit into those certain perspectives. As much as there are solid ideas and beliefs presented in The Space Trilogy, I find there is just as much theological speculation - questions as much for the author as well as the reader - rather than ideas and beliefs that Lewis truly believed in and was trying to convince you to believe in as well.

So…what is the verdict? There are some characters and situations that are allegorical to the “truth,” what we know, Christian theology…and then some characters and situations delve into the mysteries God has not revealed to us, such as space, entities and life on other planets. Hence, there is speculation, because that is all Lewis really could do. As far as I know, he didn’t contradict anything known about space at the time, and as far as I know, he didn’t contradict anything the Bible says about space and the entities God created (After all, vague references to “principalities and powers” leave room for discussion). Thus, if we have extremely limited knowledge on the subject, who is to say what speculation is right or wrong? Lewis merely takes advantage of this and fills with color where there is no black and white.

Character sketch: Mark Studdock

A brief character sketch of Mark Studdock, one of the main characters in That Hideous Strength by C.S Lewis.

Mark, a young sociologist employed by Bracton College, had always sacrificed whatever made him truly happy for position and the “inner circle.” He always sought praise and strategic association with those more prestigous than he. Psychologically speaking, you could say he was not very confident. Always needing association, position and recognition was what let him be so easily influenced and used by the fellows at Bracton and eventually the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E).

Mark’s character began to change in the prison cell with periodic visits to the Objective Room. The twisted and distorted nature of the room made him aware of its opposite – the “normal.” He began to regret sacrificing the things and people he truly enjoyed for the “inner circle” – his wife, Jane, and his friend, Arthur Denniston.

The climax in this change would be when he was called to “trample and insult” an almost life-size wooden crucifix. Mark realized that regardless of faith and religious implications this man (Jesus) actually existed and had been killed in this manner. The crucifix was a picture of what happened “when the Straight met the Crooked, a picture of what the Crooked did to the Straight – what it would do to him if he remained straight.”

He realized that perhaps it would always be that way, the crooked dashing the straight to peices, but he didn’t quite care anymore. His heart had been turned to embrace the Straight and the “normal” and he refused to disfigure the carving.

Then I decided to ramble on a bit more and try to peice together some main points of the trilogy…except it’s been a long time since I read the first two, so it’s probably not the best.