Another Merger

I have just had lunch with a former work colleague. She had met another former colleague who had informed her that Lancashire Young People's Service is about to merge with two other County Council agencies called Early Intervention, which was being set up when some of us were leaving LYPS, and CAPSS (Children and Parenting Support Service), with further loss of jobs, this time at managerial level.

I mention this here because it is the latest stage of a process described in the posts, "To And Through A Career," "A Career And Beyond" and "Reorganizations" on this blog back in May last year. I am intrigued that the process continues indefinitely without ever reaching a satisfactory conclusion. Political change seems imminent and will undoubtedly lead to yet more reorganizations of public services. What we have been through would have seemed impossible when I started to train for Careers work back in 1988.

Addendum, 6 June 2014: Today, a conversation with another former colleague revealed that YPS, which has apparently retained that set of initials after all, works alongside Children's Centres under the overall heading of Well Being, Prevention and Early Help but, next year, YPS and Children's Centres will merge as Family Support.

Lack Of Preparation for Life

I emerged from secondary school in 1967, aged 18:

immature, inexperienced, indoctrinated, ignorant, repressed, uninformed, misinformed, misled yet opinionated but otherwise discouraged and demoralized;
unprepared for higher education, work, life or personal relationships;
unable to speak any foreign language although I had supposedly been taught one for the previous six years (however, "French" was a subject to be passed, not a language to be spoken).

Did I get anything from school apart from University entrance exam passes? An introduction, but only an introduction, to study, spirituality and sport. I did not want the sport. I had to develop personal study skills at University several years later. I have changed my spiritual practice twice since birth:

our starting point is determined by parents or society;
we might experiment with an alternative early in life;
we then find which path is most beneficial for us.

So two changes is far from excessive.

What was wrong with that school education? I soon came to disagree with schools that are fee-paying, boarding, single sex or denominational. So the answer is everything.

10/7/13: Any education is an interaction between the institution and each individual. I started out with very definite personal failings and limitations which were exacerbated by the education.

SMERSH And SPECTRE

The first seven of Ian Fleming's twelve James Bond novels form a complete SMERSH sequence although the Russian organization of that name is not present in all of the seven. In fact, it is Bond's immediate adversary in only three of the novels but the sequence begins and ends with SMERSH and its role in the opening volume is not as main opponent but rather as a sinister background presence. It executes Bond's adversary, Le Chiffre, and defines Bond's motivation throughout subsequent volumes. SMERSH means "Death to Spies." Bond's attitude becomes "Death to SMERSH." The sequence begins and ends thus:

Volume I, Casino Royale, introduces Bond and SMERSH to the reader and to each other;
Vol VII, Goldfinger, describes Bond's fourth encounter with SMERSH.

While writing the fifth novel, From Russia, With Love, Fleming had decided to end it and thus the series with the unexpected death of Bond. In fact, the novel as published does end with what retroactively has to be regarded as merely an apparent death, like that of Sherlock Holmes. Rosa Klebb, Head of Operations for SMERSH, kicks Bond with a poisoned knife after:

Bond had thwarted Russian Intelligence three times and the American Spangled Mob once (i.e., the contents of the first four novels);
SMERSH had retaliated for the Russians by attempting to assassinate Bond and to discredit British Intelligence;
Bond had thwarted this Plan by killing the SMERSH Chief Executioner, Donovan Grant, and arresting Klebb.

Thus, the one and only sequence of Bond novels would have begun and ended thus:

Vol I, Bond and SMERSH meet;
Vol V, Bond decisively defeats SMERSH which, however, succeeds in killing him after all right at the end.

However:

Vol VI, Dr No, explains how Bond survived and describes what happened during his recuperation in Jamaica;
Vol VII, as above.

We learn that the fourth encounter with SMERSH was also the last only when reading the first volume of the second sequence which begins and ends thus:

Vol VIII, Thunderball, discloses that Krushchev had disbanded SMERSH but some of its former members joined the independent organization, SPECTRE, founded and led by Ernst Stavro Blofeld;
Vol XII, The Man With The Golden Gun, ends with Bond fully reinstated in the Secret Service after he:

had destroyed SPECTRE;
had spent a fruitless year hunting Blofeld;
had drafted a letter of resignation from the Service;
had destroyed a revived SPECTRE;
was married but immediately widowed;
went to pieces, nearly getting himself and others killed;
was about to be fired by M;
lost his 00 number and was sent to Japan on a diplomatic mission;
found and killed Blofeld in Japan;
suffered physical trauma and amnesia;
lived for a year as a Japanese fisherman while his obituary appeared in The Times;
traveled from Japan to Russia in search of his identity;
was arrested, recognized, interrogated and brainwashed;
returned to London to kill M but failed;
was de-brainwashed, then sent to Jamaica in order to kill or be killed by the assassin, Scaramanga;
killed Scaramanga, while taking a poisoned bullet in the stomach and losing consciousness;
recuperated;
declined a knighthood.

Can Bond possibly be the same person after going through all that? He would have been ready to start a third sequence of novels if his author had not died but Fleming might not have been up to writing any more. If Vol XII had not been published posthumously, then Bond would have been left, still with amnesia, somewhere between Japan and Russia.

Prima facie, Vol IX, The Spy Who Loved Me, is inconsistent with the rest of the series because it shows Bond in action against SPECTRE, still led by Blofeld, at a time when, according to Vol X, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he was convinced that SPECTRE, having been destroyed, could not be revived and even that Blofeld was dead. On the one hand, the series is full of inconsistencies and I think that this one can easily be explained: Bond mistakenly came to believe that SPECTRE had not been involved in the events of Vol IX. On the other hand, there is evidence that Fleming did not regard Vol IX as really fitting with the series.

If we go with the latter idea, then the second complete sequence comprises only four novels and The Spy Who Loved Me presents an alternative history in which there could have been further encounters between Bond and SPECTRE...

Controlling Conversations

Some people control conversations so that the only agenda is theirs.

(i) I met a conspiracy theorist who engaged in monologues in which he only convinced himself. The same points were simply repeated endlessly. If the Moon Landing, to take one example, had been such an obvious fake, then it would not have fooled scientists, astronomers, investigative journalists, opponents of the US or critics of its government's policies. A conspiracy theorist can state arguments to which the uninformed cannot reply - until they google the issue. Then it emerges, to take another example, that, although the impact of an airplane on either of the Twin Towers could not have weakened its steel beams, the heat from burning fuel did.

(ii) A second way to control a conversation is to ask questions with the implication that the other party is insufficiently informed because he cannot give the answers required. I asked a master of this technique to tell me what he knew instead of asking me it and he replied that I didn't want to know.

Miscommunications

(i) A woman: I have known people who thought that, because they had a PhD, they could just walk into any job and do the job without any training or preparation.
Me (surprised but wanting to know more): Where have you met these people?
Woman: Lots of places! Lots of places!
Me: But where?
Woman: Lots of places! Lots of places!

The conversation went no further. I realised afterwards that, when I asked where she had met them, she took me to mean, "I do not believe you have met such people," and that, when she said, "Lots of places!", she meant, "Yes, I have!" But I did not realise that then and was just conscious of not having a question answered. Since then, I have come to doubt the existence of such people.

(ii) A guy I was working with: Albert wants the pick and shovel.
Me: Where are they? (meaning: where are the pick and shovel?)
Guy: They're out on the back field. (meaning: Albert and his mate are working out on the back field.)
Me (not yet realising my mistake): What? The pick and shovel have been left lying out on the back field?
Guy: Nnnooo!!! (but making no attempt to elucidate further.)
Me (realising my mistake): I asked you where the pick and shovel were.
Guy: No, you didn't! I asked you where they were!
Me: No, you didn't!

He thought that to tell me that Albert wanted the pick and shovel was the same as to ask me where the pick and shovel were. My attempt to clear up the misunderstanding just drove us further into it. The guy would have had no ability to work out what went wrong in the conversation and just thought that I was mad.

I think it is worthwhile to note the ways in which communication fails. I was able to understand after the event even though I floundered while the miscommunication was happening.

Narrative, Drama and Sequential Art

(Brief statements modeled on Indian philosophical sutras.)

Narrative was spoken, then written.
Extra speakers and actions transformed spoken narrative into drama.
One picture can tell or imply a story.
Extra pictures transformed representational into sequential art.

Narrative, drama and sequential art are three story-telling media.
Pre-printing sequential art was rare.
An epic is a long heroic narrative poem.
A saga is an Icelandic heroic prose narrative.

The Gilgamesh epic was written on clay tablets four thousand years ago.
But can be read in paperback translation.
It addresses mortality.
And contains a polytheist flood story.

The Jahwist epic presented the Davidic monarchy as fulfilling the Abrahamic tradition.
The parallel Elohist epic was less anthropomorphic. 
The Mosaic books incorporate Jahwist, Elohist, priestly and legal sources.
The priestly source was post-Exilic.

"Moses and the prophets" is the narrative of a Law and its applications.
The Gospel narratives present Christ as fulfilling the Mosaic Law.
"Homer and the poets" are an epic poet and several dramatists.
Virgil's epic, the Aeneid, presents Rome as fulfilling Homeric myth.

The Roman Empire canonised Mosaic, prophetic and Christian, not Homeric, dramatic or Virgilian, texts.
Homer became the beginning of European secular literature.
Greek dramatists and philosophers reflected on myths.
Philosophers also initiated logic and science.

In Platonic philosophy, characters dramatically address each other.
In Aristotelian philosophy, the author prosaically addresses the reader.
Homer, the Eddas, the Vedas and the Shinto Records of Ancient Matters are definitive polytheist texts.
Milton applied epic and dramatic forms to Biblical content.

The Koran reproduces Biblical stories.
The Granth is hymns by Hindus, Muslims and Sikh gurus.
A novel is a long prose fiction.
Novels are historically "new".

Mainstream novels are realistic.
Genre novels are historical, romantic, Western, detective etc.
Fantasy novels re-present myths and legends.
Science fiction (sf) novels address speculative effects of science and technology.

"Sword and Sorcery" is a self-explanatory sub-genre of fantasy.
Space opera is action-adventure fiction with science fictional settings.
Edgar Rice Burroughs set "Sword and Science" on Mars.
Poul Anderson wrote speculative fiction, space opera, Sword and Science, fantasy and historical fiction.

CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy and James Blish's After Such Knowledge Trilogy are fictitious sequels to the Bible.
However, Lewis was Anglican whereas Blish was agnostic.
Thus, God dies in Blish's Trilogy though not in Lewis'.
However, Lewis imaginatively considered the death of God in the fictitious correspondence, Letters to Malcolm.

 

The Greek dramatist Aeschlyus wrote Prometheus Bound.
The English poet Percy Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound.
The English novelist Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.
The British sf writer Brian Aldiss wrote Frankenstein Unbound.

Frankenstein is the pivotal character between Gothic Fiction and sf.
Superman is the pivotal character between sf and superheroes.
Cameras transformed stage drama into cinema.
Frankenstein, Superman and Frankenstein Unbound have been filmed, the third unsuccessfully (in my opinion).

Karel Capek's play RUR introduced the term "robot".
Isaac Asimov's "Frankenstein Complex" is fear of robotic rebellion.
Asimov's Laws of Robotics transformed Robots from Menace or Pathos into Engineering.
However, Asimov later revived, then synthesised, Menace and Pathos.

William Blake combined words with pictures.
His allegorical The Marriage of Heaven and Hell replied to Swedenborg's literalist Heaven and Hell.
CS Lewis' The Great Divorce replied to Blake and Swedenborg.
Following Plato, Dante etc, Lewis presents an imaginative visit to the hereafter.

Speech balloons and captions transformed sequential art into comic strips.
The earliest comics were comical.
However, they can mediate any content or genre.
A graphic novel is a long substantial comic strip.

Collected issues of a monthly comic book are often insubstantial.
The graphic adaptation of the novel Fahrenheit 451 is substantial but short.
The Killing Joke by Alan Moore is short but substantial.
It asks whether one bad day would drive us mad.

It also features the Batman fighting the Joker.
Consequently, the author has described it as insubstantial.
Definitive graphic novels are Watchmen by Alan Moore and The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.
Both place superheroes in realistic settings.

"Superheroes" is a composite genre originating in comic books.       
Super powers may be scientifically or supernaturally based.
Also, masked avengers and costumed adventurers need not be super powered.
Thus, the genre combines sf, fantasy and action-adventure.

It presents modern heroic mythology.
However, comics by Garth Ennis, Art Spiegelman and Bryan Talbot address war, the Holocaust and child abuse, respectively.
There are at least two composite media.
Opera = drama + music.

Comics = representational art + story-telling.
A visual-verbal medium addresses right and left brains simultaneously.
Coloring and lay out may affect readers subliminally.
For example, a regular horizontal panel grid grounds fantastic or horrific content in a televisual/cinematic context.

Like prose, comics involve reading, turning and re-reading pages at the reader's pace.
Like screen drama, they involve sequential images.
However, careful readers miss no detail in a static image.
Each panel may contain captions, speech balloons, foreground and background.

Pictures and panel texts may resonate with or contradict each other.
Captions have replaced thought balloons.
A character's thoughts are revealed as he narrates a section of the story.
Captions can be color coded and written in different scripts.

Background includes titles on book shelves and graffiti on walls.
Thus, Superman source Gladiator by Wylie appears on a shelf in Watchmen.
"Coal not Dole" from the Great British Miners' Strike appears on a wall in Moore's Swamp Thing.
Lancaster Motorway Services appears in two otherwise dissimilar comics.

Narrative details may be non-verbal.
For example, an unknown background figure follows the central character through several panels...
Reading the words and glancing at foregrounds is insufficient.
A well written comic needs to be read at least twice.

Creative comics writers re-assess cliches.
Thus, Moore's Swamp Thing is not a conventional monster but the guardian of the environment.
Moore revived Marvelman as a journalist who dreams of flying but cannot remember his magic word...
Neil Gaiman's Sandman is not a superhero but the personification of Dream.

Substantial comics refer to prose literature.
Thus, Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen depicts Verne's Nautilus fighting Wells' Martians in the Thames.
In Gaiman's Sandman, Shakespeare's company performs A Midsummer Night's Dream for Oberon's court.
Gaiman's Lucifer Morningstar quotes, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

But he comments that Milton was blind.
Milton's personified Death was monstrous because begotten by Satan on personified Sin.
Gaiman's is beautiful because she defines life.
She complains that people fear her but not Dream who claims to be more terrible.

Personified Destruction abandons his realm when Newton asks whether light and matter are inter-convertible.
Personified Despair persuades the star god Rao to destroy a planet but allow one survivor.
Delirium that was Delight claims to know things that even Destiny does not.
Despair's devious twin, Desire, plots Dream's downfall...

Lucifer retires and becomes the title character of a series by Mike Carey.
Carey's God retires to be succeeded by his granddaughter, a British schoolgirl.
Blish's Satan had become God but offered the role to Man.
Thus, modern fantasy presents worthy sequels to myths and scriptures.

Special effects and CGI facilitate screen dramatisation of myth, sf, fantasy and superheroes.
Oral story-telling; recited epics and sagas; written narratives; prose fiction.
Spoken narrative; stage drama; screen drama; special effects.
Representational art; sequential art; comic strips; graphic novels.

Comparisons

Works of fiction resemble each other either because one influenced the other or because they address common themes. In HG Wells' works: 

the Time Traveller finds Morlocks and Eloi in 802,701 AD;
Cavor and Bedford find Selenites in the Moon;
Martians invade Earth. 

Thus, time travel, travel to the Moon and alien invasion of Earth occur in separate works. 

In Edgar Rice Burroughs' (ERB's) works:

John Carter finds green and red Martians on Mars;
Carter's successors find Kalkars in the Moon;
Kalkars invade Earth.

Thus, astral travel to Mars, travel to the Moon and alien invasion of Earth occur in successive works. In fact, ERB connected all his series and incorporated time travel:

in The Eternal Savage, someone travelling to Africa to visit Tarzan accidentally travels into the far past instead;
Tarzan visits the Earth's Core;
Gridley's radio contacts the Earth's Core and Carter's Mars;
the first Venus book refers to the events of Tarzan at the Earth's Core;
the Moon Trilogy is a sequel to the Martian series;
astral travel takes a later character to an extra-solar planet.

In ERB's inhabited Solar System, human beings are found inside the Moon and on Venus, Mars, a Martian moon and Jupiter and are said to exist on Mercury. They even exist also on the extra-solar planet.

Wells started to connect his works, then abandoned the idea. Martians:

observe Earth in "The Crystal Egg";
invade Earth in The War of the Worlds;
were mentioned in an early edition of The Sleeper Wakes
which is set in the same future society as "A Dream of Armageddon" and "A Story of the Days to Come",
the latter a sequel to "A Story of the Stone Age". 

That is it for Wellsian interconnections. When the reference to Martians was removed from The Sleeper Wakes, the main link was severed. Wells had started to move towards an inhabited Solar System. There were Selenites and Martians and the latter also invaded Venus.

ERB had dinosaurs on an island called the Land that Time Forgot during a War.
DC Comics had the War that Time Forgot on Dinosaur Island. 

In the DC Multiverse, different times and places intersected during the climactic Crisis on Infinite Earths.
In Michael Moorcock's Multiverse, different times and places intersect during the periodic Conjunction of the Million Spheres.

Moorcock's Multiverse contains an ERBian pastiche which uses the idea of travel to the far past to explain how a twentieth century character can visit a humanly inhabited Mars. Thus, Moorcock creatively combines ideas that ERB had treated separately. Two other writers of Martian adventures should be mentioned: Edwin Arnold as a possible source for ERB and Otis Adelbert Kline as the imitator and competitor who obliged ERB to retaliate by starting a Venus series.

In the Dan Dare comic strip:

Dare found Treens and Therons on Venus;
Treens invaded Earth which they ruled through robots
until Cadet Spry seized the mike and, imitating the Mekon, ordered the robots to attack the Treens,
thus forcing the Treens to destroy the robots. 

In the Dr Who TV series:

the Doctor found Daleks and Thals on Skaro;
Daleks invaded Earth which they ruled through robotised men
until the Doctor's granddaughter seized the mike and, imitating a Dalek, ordered the robomen to attack the Daleks,
thus forcing the Daleks to destroy the robomen.

The Daleks-Thals and Daleks Invasion Earth stories were adapted as feature films starring Peter Cushing not as a Time Lord called the Doctor but as an English inventor called Doctor Who, thus closer to the Wellsian original. The originals of the Doctor and his assistants contending with Daleks, robomen, cybermen etc are the Time Traveller and Weena contending with Morlocks, then the Time Traveller alone contending with giant crabs and the end of life on Earth.

Daleks, like Wellsian Martians, are evolved beings inside protective machines. John Christopher acknowledged that he had unconsciously plagiarised Wells when he wrote about extra-solar invaders in tripods.

Wells, ERB, Moorcock, DC Comics, Dan Dare and Dr Who: this summarises a lifetime of appreciating imaginative fiction. In the above summaries, Earth is invaded from Mars, the Moon, Venus and two extra-solar planets. Some similarities are acknowledged influences. Others are sources of wonder.