FSF, March-April 2010 (7 page)

"One of Charles Beaumont's best-remembered episodes, adapted from his own short story and directed by Robert Florey, reveals that Zone was constantly autobiographical for Serling, even when he was not the author of a particular installment."

"'Long Distance Call’ began with an idea by William Idelson, restructured by Richard Matheson, further refined by Charles Beaumont, finished by Serling. The process allows for a sense of collaboration, as well as a realization that what finally went on the air came down to one man."

By most accounts, Serling was a modest man who regretted never having written a novel or stage play, and was self-deprecating of his own substantial achievements. Shortly before his death, he stated “When I look back over thirty years of professional writing, I'm hard pressed to come up with anything that's important. Some things are literate, (some) are interesting...but very damn little (seems) important."

In its failure to bring Rod Serling and his work to life,
The 50th Anniversary Tribute
is a reminder of just how much larger than life he was, and how his work continues to be the best memorial he could have left to all of us. Two graphic novel adaptations of a pair of better-known episodes, “Walking Distance” and “The After-Hours,” are pallid and uninspired.
Twilight Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary
, is a far superior homage to Serling. Few of the stories take on social issues or reflect current events; exceptions are Jim DeFelice's “The Soldier He Needed To Be” ("GI Joe Perfect in the Afghan hills") and Laura Lippman's “Family Man” (a surreal take on corporate downsizing). Several are darkly whimsical: John Miller's “Your Last Breath Inc."; Timothy Zahn's Hollywood send-up “Vampin’ Down the Avenue.” There are good stories by horror stalwarts Joe R. Lansdale and R. L. Stine; excellent hauntings courtesy of Lucia St. Clair Robson and Kelley Armstrong; several stories that would have been perfect for the original series, by Robert J. Serling (Rod's older bother), Alan Brennert, Earl Hamner (one of the show's original writers), William F. Wu, and Carole Nelson Douglas. The only real misfires are a wan, previously unpublished treatment by Rod Serling, and a story by Whitley Strieber that starts out as a riff on “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and devolves into alien goo. Best of all is David Hagberg's “Genesis,” which out-Serlings Serling, and makes for a witty and moving memorial to televsion's angriest young man.

[Note: As research for this column, I watched a number of episodes from the first three seasons of The Twilight Zone, archived in pristine condition (and with a bit of advertising) at www.cbs.com, and well worth viewing.]

Anime Nation

Back in the early 1990s, I was co-creator and co-writer on a DC Comics series titled
Anima
. As a result, at science fiction or comic conventions I'd periodically find myself assigned to a panel about anime, about which I knew nothing. I grew up enamored of Astro Boy and other early anime, loved Japanese monster movies with a passion, watched Miyazaki's films with my kids and, with my son and his friends, followed an impenetrable (to me) series called (I think)
Bleach
. At cons I'd inevitably spends hours in a dark room, enjoying the anime programming but understanding none of it.

But now, thanks to postmodern polymath Jonathan Clements, I can nod knowingly at mention of
Plastic Little, Rei Rei: The Sensual Evangelist
, and
Shark-Skin Man & Peach-Hips Girl
, and vigorously debate the merits of
Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad
over
Dingding Versus the Monkey King
. In short, Jonathan Clements changed my life, and he can change yours, too.

A British scholar and translator, Clements has written biographies of Confucius and Mao Tse-Tung; a short history of the Vikings; studies of Marco Polo, Beijing, and the fall of the Ming Dynasty, as well as the
Anime Encyclopedia
, the
Erotic Anime Movie Guide
, and scripts and stories relating to Doctor Who, Judge Dredd, and Halcyon Sun. He's done the English translations of scores of manga and anime. He's also the go-to guy for info about the Kalevala (he's married to a Finnish martial arts specialist), works as a voice-over actor, has performed open-heart surgery with a spoon, and is the hot pick to be Obama's Ambassador to Pohjola. This last is a considerable triumph as, according to his website, Clements is also the only man in history to have been exiled from Outer Mongolia, after an altercation with the mayor of Ulan Bator. He's an Indiana Jones for the twenty-first century.

And he's really, really funny.

Schoolgirl Milky Crisis
is the suitably ludicrous, all-purpose name Clements made up for a (fictional) anime series that he used in his dissections of anime and manga culture in
Newtype U.S.A
., the now-defunct English-language counterpart to the popular Japanese anime magazine
Newtype
. As he notes in his intro to this collection of his work, Clements “picked three random words out of nowhere,” allowing him to “take potshots at Japanese cartoons and comics and related fields, to read scurrilous gossip and tell tall tales. And my friends in the business didn't seem to mind, as long as they had plausible deniability."

So the collection contains damning and hilarious accounts of the work life of a young anime voice-over actress ("'You'll never catch me, McEvil!’ she yells as her onscreen image fades into the distance. On the animatics, the lead bear shakes his fist in rage."), reviews of magazines such as
Golf Lesson Comic
and
Hana's Highschool Girl's Golf Club
, and accounts of Clements's own experiences inside the sound booth, at Finnish anime conventions, and the like.

But there are also insightful and engaging essays on Hayao Miyazaki, Neil Gaiman,
Godzilla, Mothra
, as well as a fascinating piece on erotic anime that argues persuasively that pornography anticipates mainstream adaptation of new technology by at least five years. Best of all, Clements explains why anime often makes no sense to American viewers, even as it enthralls us. Books on pop culture tend to be pretentious or superficial:
Schoolgirl Milky Crisis
is neither. It's essential reading for anyone who loved those teensy twins in
Mothra
—and honestly, who didn't?—as well as anyone whose response to the Hello Kitty phenomenon can be gently summed up as WTF???

An added plus: in true scholarly fashion, Clements provides a lengthy and meticulously organized index, which includes citations for “nostril hairs, as comedy sidekicks” and “sorcery, as illegal hockey tactic.” I hope that future editions of
Schoolgirl Milky Crisis
will include “Clements, Jonathan: Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech."

[Back to Table of Contents]

Many years ago, while waiting to be drafted, Albert Cowdrey worked for a stretch at Ft. McHenry, Baltimore (of “The Star-Spangled Banner” fame). But he notes that the Fort Clay of this story bears more resemblance to Louisiana's Fort Pike, where Mr. Cowdrey used to go snake hunting in his youth. (Of course that was even longer ago than his stint in Ft. McHenry.)

"Well, Doc!” cried Saffron, throwing open the door of her little Bywater studio to the tall, thin old man who stood on the stoop, blinking in the light. “Come in out the rain!"

Mumbling apologies, Corman handed over his streaming black umbrella and shed his antique London Fog. Saffron took only a minute or two to get him seated amid the clutter of lights, tripods, strobes, reflectors, and other photographic equipment that filled the room. She'd already made tea, and pressed a chipped mug of fragrant oolong into the Doc's surprisingly big hands. The hands were the kind of detail she noticed.
He may be a scholarly scarecrow now,
she thought,
but sometime in his long life he's done manual labor.

Then it was time to make him a present of her book,
A Lost World
—one of the ten free copies her publisher had sent her. Saffron had all the usual artistic mixture of arrogance and butterflies, and wondered: what if he hates it? Watching him begin to leaf through the pictures, pausing to scan the text, she reminded herself of her agent's last letter modestly comparing her to Annie Leibovitz, Diane Arbus, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange—not
quite
to Ansel Adams, but then she'd never worked in Yosemite.

She was smiling at her own egotism, a bit mocking, a bit tense, when Dr. Corman began muttering under his breath. “Remarkable,” he said. “Quite remarkable!"

Saffron relaxed. He liked it too. Everybody needed to like it. The
world
needed to like it. She smiled at the old scarecrow with real affection, and when he asked for an inscription, she picked up a felt-tip pen and wrote, “To Dr. Quentin Corman, without whom this book might never have existed at all."

Strange now to think that she'd hardly noticed him the first time they met—if you could call it meeting.

He'd been standing behind the desk in the Chief Ranger's office at Chalmette on the field of the Battle of New Orleans, as silent and almost as thin as the flagstaff. Meanwhile the well-barbered bureaucrat in his uniform, with his Smokey the Bear hat hanging from a rack, gave Saffron her instructions.

"We're about to lose Fort Clay, Ms. Genève, so we want to document it while it's still here. That's what the contract you've signed is about. We want a thorough pictorial record. We don't want
art
,” he said, pronouncing the last word as if it soiled his palate.

She made a noncommittal noise, figuring that once alone on Île du Sable, she'd do what she damn well pleased. Didn't this guy realize that two of her Katrina pictures had appeared in
Vanity Fair
? Sure, she was young, still struggling, she needed the job and expected to do competent work. But on her own terms. She certainly didn't expect Smokey to send Dr. Corman along to watch her.

But that was exactly what he did. Under orders, she met Corman at Pilot Town just above the Passes of the Mississippi, and during their two-hour boat trip on a Corps of Engineers lighter he lectured on his specialty. He was a National Park Service historian, an expert on nineteenth-century fortifications, and like most experts wanted to share everything he knew about the old brick forts that ringed the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines—why they'd been built, and when, and by whom.

Old farts like old forts,
thought Saffron sourly, deciding, as they bucked and rolled through choppy brown water between the jetties of Pass à Loutre and headed out into the open Gulf, that Corman knew more about less than anybody she'd ever met. Even after the boat dropped them on the island, he went on and on, like a cricket that gets into your house in autumn. Still chirping, he led her through an impressive arched gateway and up a flight of weedy brick steps.

"Fort Clay,” he admitted, “had rather an uneventful history. Yet I've made a special study of it."

Figures,
she thought, taking her new Macron ZX-300 digital camera (9 megapixels, 10x Zeiss optical zoom) out of its carrying pouch. While she hungered for fame, Corman seemed to have an inverted lust for celebrity. The less important something was, the better he liked it. He was a moth drawn to obscurity instead of light.

"In the forty years it was in service,” he nattered on, “the garrison never heard a shot fired in anger. In 1870 it was decommissioned and stood abandoned until a group of enthusiasts (myself included) managed to get it on the National Register. The Park Service restored it, and it became a popular destination for boaters who stopped off to sunbathe and swim and picnic. And, I suppose, to satisfy their morbid curiosity."

"Can we get started now?” asked Saffron. But the last phrase had caught her ear, and she added unwillingly, “Morbid curiosity about what?"

"Why, the one truly sensational event of the fort's history—Sergeant Schulz and his men and their sad fate."

"Sad fate,” she muttered, wondering how many archaic clichés Corman kept in his arsenal.

"
Very
sad. Sad and shocking. I wrote the official brochure telling the story. First came the yellow fever, and then the hurricane, and then the poor fellows were beheaded by a madman. Would you like to begin with the casemates, Ms. Genève, or would you rather photograph the gun emplacements
en barbette
first?"

Barbette guns turned out to be the ones that stood on the open parapet, nothing above them but empty sky.
"So
vulnerable to plunging fire,” sighed Corman. “Almost suicide to service them if there'd ever been a heavy bombardment. Many men joined the heavy artillery hoping to stay safe. Some of them got a nasty surprise."

Unfortunately, the big guns—the Columbiads and Dahlgrens and Parrotts, as Corman called them—had long since been removed and melted down for use in other wars. A few stones and bits of rusty iron were all that remained, so Saffron dutifully documented the lack of anything to document.