Read Stranger Than We Can Imagine Online
Authors: John Higgs
The quote from the Marquis de Sade is taken from Elaine Sciolino’s 22 January 2013
New York Times
article, ‘It’s a Sadistic Story, and France Wants It’ (p. C1). Details of Dalí’s sexuality can be found in Clifford Thurlow’s
Sex, Surrealism, Dalí and Me
. His quote about impotence is found in Ian Gibson’s
The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí
. The praise from Freud appears in the foreword of Dalí’s own autobiography,
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí
. Henry Miller’s description of Dalí is from an autograph which can be seen at
http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/dali-is-the-biggest-prick-of-the-20th-century.html
.
The number given for Jews killed in the Second World War is from Lucy
Dawidowicz’s
The War against the Jews
. The detail about Hitler’s portrait of Henry Ford is from p. 296 of Antony Beevor’s
The Second World War
.
Bertrand Russell’s letter to his friend Helen Thomas is quoted on p. 179 of William R. Everdell’s book
The First Moderns
. Einstein’s quote about the ground being pulled out from underneath is found in Paul Arthur Schilpp’s
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Volume II
. The quote from Richard Feynman is from
The Character of Physical Law
, a Cornell University lecture he gave in 1964, and the Douglas Adams reference is from
Mostly Harmless
. Einstein’s quote that ‘God doesn’t play dice’ can be found in many sources, for example p. 58 of William Hermanns’s
Einstein and the Poet
. Stephen Hawking’s essay
Does God Play Dice?
can be found on his website at
http://www.hawking.org.uk/does-god-play-dice.html
.
The quote ‘a shlosh or two of sherry’ is from Peter Byrne’s December 2007
Scientific American
article, ‘The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett’. The quote from Léon Rosenfeld comes from a 2008 paper
The Origins of the Everettian Heresy
, by Stefano Osnaghi, Fabio Freitas and Freire Olival Jr, which is online at
http://stefano.osnaghi.free.fr/Everett.pdf
. The quote from David Deutsch is from his book
The Fabric of Reality
. The analogy about the size of atoms is from Marcus Chown’s
Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You
.
The quotes from Alejandro Jodorowsky are from the 2013 documentary
Jodorowsky’s Dune
, by Frank Pavich. The quote from Ken Campbell is as recounted to the author by Campbell’s daughter Daisy Eris Campbell. The words of J.G. Ballard are taken from Alan Moore’s essay ‘Frankenstein’s Cadillac’, Dodgem Logic #4 June/July 2010, as are Moore’s comments about Tom Swift. The quote from Carl Jung about UFOs is from his 1959 book
Flying Saucers
.
Gene Roddenberry’s words are from
The Birth of a Timeless Legacy
, on the
Star Trek
Series One DVD (CBS DVD PHE 1021). The quote from Eric Hobsbawm is from p. 288 of
Fractured Times
. The account of the origins of cinema is based on Mark Cousins’s
The Story of Film. The
Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight
was directed by Enoch Rector in 1897. The quote from Joseph Campbell is taken from the Introduction to
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
. Philip Sandifer’s analysis of The Hero’s Journey is on his website, at
http://www.philipsandifer.com/2011/12/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for.html
.
The quote from screenwriter Æneas MacKenzie comes from the commentary by historian Rudy Behlmer on the Blu-ray release of
Casablanca
(BDY79791). The three quoted lines from Alexander Trocchi’s
Cain’s Book
are from p. 47, p. 56 and pp. 29–30 respectively.
Waiting for Godot
was voted the most significant English-language play by a British National Theatre poll of 800 playwrights in 1999. Beckett originally wrote the play in French, but was eligible in this poll because he did the English-language translation himself. Vivian Mercier’s review of that play was in the
Irish Times
on 18 February 1956.
The quote from Albert Camus is from his 1952 essay
Return to Tipasa
. Colin Wilson’s criticism of
Endgame
is taken from his 2009 book
Super Consciousness
. The quote from William Blake comes from
The Mental Traveller
, circa 1803. The origins of the term ‘Beat Generation’ are detailed in
Brewer’s Famous Quotations
by Nigel Rees. Gregory Corso’s remarks are from the 1986 film
What Happened to Kerouac?
by directors Richard Lerner and Lewis MacAdams.
William Bainbridge’s comment is found in George Pendle’s
Strange Angel
(p. 15), and p. 14 of that book is the source for the quote from a 1931 textbook,
Astronomy
by Forest Ray Moulton (p. 296). John Carter’s description of Jack Parsons’s impact on the field of solid-fuel rocketry comes from p. 195 of his book
Sex and Rockets
. That book is also the source for the quote from Dr John Stewart (p. 47), the rumour about the sex tape with his mother’s dog (p. 183), the descriptions of his advert for prospective tenants (p. 103) and his occult ceremonies (p. 84).
The detail about Nazi rocket scientists reaching a height of sixty miles comes from Deborah Cadbury’s
Space Race
(p. 11). Parsons’s poem ‘Oriflamme’ is quoted on p. 218 of George Pendle’s
Strange Angel
. The quote from Crowley about Parsons and Hubbard comes from John Carter’s
Sex
and Rockets
(p. 150), and Hubbard’s warning is from p. 177 of the same book.
Hitler’s reaction to the A-4 rocket is described in Deborah Cadbury’s
Space Race
(p. 5). Bob Holman describes his childhood memories of a V-2 bomb in his 8 September 2014 article in the
Guardian
, ‘I saw the devastation of war 70 years ago. It was not glorious.’ Von Braun’s involvement in acquiring slave labour from Buchenwald is detailed in Deborah Cadbury’s
Space Race
(p. 343). Estimates for the number of casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are taken from the Yale Law School Avalon Project,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/mp10.asp
. The quote from Eisenhower comes from his autobiography
The White House Years
(pp. 312–3). Von Neumann’s use of game theory to argue for an unprovoked nuclear strike on Russia is discussed in chapter twelve of Paul Strathern’s
Dr Strangelove’s Game
.
Sergei Korolev’s story is told in Deborah Cadbury’s
Space Race
, including the account of his witnessing a butterfly (p. 87), and the same book recounts NASA’s reaction to news of Yuri Gagarin’s successful flight (p. 246). Von Braun presented three episodes of the TV series
Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Colour: Man in Space
(1955),
Man and the Moon
(1955) and
Mars and Beyond
(1957). A complete transcription of President Kennedy’s speech to Congress can be found at
http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/jfk/publicpapers/1961/jfk205_61.html
.
Details of the life of Marie Stopes are from Ruth Hall’s biography,
Marie Stopes
, with her mother’s argument in favour of direct action taken from p. 54 and her father’s letter quoted on p. 21. Stopes claimed to be ignorant of homosexuality and masturbation until the age of twenty-nine on p. 41 of her book
Sex and the Young
.
The source for the average size of families in 1911 and 2011 is the Office for National Statistics. The quote from the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops is from the 1920
Lambeth Conference Report
, Resolution 70. The words of Archbishop Hayes appeared in the 18 December 1921 issue of the
New York Times
, and were quoted on p. 162 of Ruth Hall’s
Marie Stopes
. The letter from an unnamed railway worker is quoted on p. 257 of Hall’s book.
Senator Smoot’s words are from ‘National Affairs: Decency Squabble’ in the 31 March 1930 issue of
Time
magazine. The quote from Marie Stopes’s trial is from p. 216 of Ruth Hall’s biography. The Doctor Who story mentioned was
Doctor Who: The Romans
, broadcast on BBC1 in January 1965. The song ‘Rape’ appears on Peter Wyngarde’s self-titled album, released by RCA Victor in 1970. Betty Friedan’s quote regarding sexual liberation being a misnomer is from her September 1992 interview with
Playboy
magazine.
‘Tutti Frutti’ was named number one in the
Top 100 Records That Changed the World
chart in the August 2007 edition of
MOJO
magazine. The quote from the 1956
Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook
is taken from Ken Goffman and Dan Joy’s
Counterculture through the Ages
(p. 225). Details of the FBI’s investigation into ‘Louie Louie’, including the quote from LeRoy New, come from Alexis Petridis’s article in the 23 January 2014 issue of the
Guardian
, ‘ “Louie Louie”: The Ultimate Rock Rebel Anthem’. Details of the original lyrics of ‘Tutti Frutti’ come from Charles White’s
The Life and Times of Little Richard
. ‘The Wagon’ was a 1990 single by Dinosaur Jr, and opens their album
Green Mind
.
The account of Keith Richards’s legal difficulties in Arkansas comes from his autobiography
Life
, as does his quote about The Beatles aiming ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ at his band (p. 158) and his statement that ‘We needed to do what we wanted to do’ (p. 123). The William Rees-Mogg editorial appeared in the 1 July 1967 issue of
The Times
. Paul McCartney sang about the love you take and the love you make in ‘The End’, from the
Abbey Road
album. The speeches from Margaret Thatcher are archived at
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689
.
Remarks about a neurological difference between pre-pubescent and adolescent brains are based on Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Suparna Choudhury’s ‘Development of the Adolescent Brain: Implications for Executive Function and Social Cognition’,
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
47:3/4 (2006), pp. 296–312. The argument that the counterculture fed the consumer culture it railed against is made by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in
The Rebel Sell: How the Counterculture Became Consumer Culture
. Kurt Cobain sang about how teenage angst had paid off well in ‘Serve The Servants’, the opening track on Nirvana’s 1993 album
In Utero
. Ken Goffman’s quote comes from
Counterculture through the Ages
(p. xvi)
Von Neumann’s plans to control the weather are discussed in Paul Strathern’s
Dr Strangelove’s Game
(p. 303). Owen Paterson’s worrying understanding of climate change was widely reported, for example in Rajeev Syal’s 30 September 2013 article in the
Guardian
, ‘Global warming can have a positive side, says Owen Paterson’.
Accounts of the work of Lorenz and Mandelbrot are based on James Gleick’s
Chaos
. Lorenz’s seminal paper ‘Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow’ was published in the
Journal of Atmospheric Sciences
(1963). The quote from Mother Teresa is taken from chapter one of James Lovelock’s book
The Revenge of Gaia
. Carl Sagan’s quote is from his book
Pale Blue Dot
(pp. xv–xvi). The quote from Alan Bean comes from the official website for his artwork (
http://www.astronautcentral.com/BEAN/LTD/WayWayUp.html
). The observation that the position of the astronaut on the journey home correlates to how spiritually affected they were was made by Andrew Smith in his book
Moon Dust: In Search of the Men who Fell to Earth
.
For an overview of the change in extinction levels in the twentieth century, including the estimate that puts them at between 100 and 1,000 times the background rate, see Howard Falcon-Lang’s 11 May 2011 BBC article, ‘Anthropocene: Have humans created a new geological age?’ at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13335683
. The figure for the Gross World Product is based on the value of the US dollar in 1990, and is from J. Bradford DeLong’s 1998 study
Estimating World GDP 1 Million BC – Present
. Figures for global energy consumption are taken from the 16 February 2012 article ‘World Energy Consumption – Beyond 500 Exajoules’, which is online at
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8936
.
The statistics about the number of corporations using the Fourteenth Amendment are taken from the 2003 documentary
The Corporation
, directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. For a comparison of the economic size of nations compared to corporations, see the 4 December
2000 paper by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies, ‘Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power.’ The US Justice Department’s inability to prosecute HSBC was widely reported, see for example Matt Taibbi’s article ‘Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail,’
Rolling Stone
, 14 February 2013. For a short overview of the Bhopal disaster, see Tony Law’s 3 December 2008 article for
Wired
, ‘Bhopal, “Worst Industrial Accident in History” ’. For an account of the legal action by Nestlé against War On Want, see ‘The Formula Flap,’
TIME
magazine, 12 July 1976.
Life expectancy figures are from Kevin G. Kinsella’s ‘Changes in Life Expectancy 1900–1990,’ for the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
(1992). For an account of the prospects of the millennial generation, see Elliot Blair Smith’s 21 December 2012 Bloomberg report, ‘American Dream Fades for Generation Y Professionals’. For an account of falls in life expectancy, see Sabrina Tavernise, ‘Life Spans Shrink for Least-Educated Whites in the U.S.’,
New York Times
, 20 September 2012.