Over on Jenny Rohn’s deservedly and egregiously popular blog the discussion has ranged with eye-watering eclecticism from the capacity of people to remember true accounts of stories, to the problems of documenting the lives of the famous (as opposed to the infamous not-quite-so famous), to the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges, and the startling revelation that Scott Kier is, in fact, a chicken.
During the course of this discussion Jenny opined that it isn’t just the lives of scientists that produce stories, it is the machinery they work with, what she called ‘unsung apparati’. I begged to differ, to which Ms Rohn responded with characteristic asperity
“As anyone who reads my blog knows, machinery can take on a life of its own, so I reject the idea that a machine (or technique for that matter) can’t play a central role in a story of science.”
Thinking about this over the past day or so, I realize that not only is she right, but that I have also made the same point in another context.
Proximately, the relationship between people and their machinery is an abiding theme in LabLit and I should like to take as an example one of Jenny’s own novels. I am privileged to have read not just one, but, yes, two such novels. The first, Experimental Heart, is a tale of mystery, suspense, romance and the release of calcium from intracellular stores relationship between academic and industrial research.
The second is about a young girl who comes to a laboratory in the Netherlands to attend a huge and very specialized machine which only shRaison D’Êtree seems to know how to work. I found this much more involving than Experimental Heart because the characters were more rounded, but for the life of me (and without spending a lot of time digging into files) I just can’t remember what it was called (sorry, Jenny) so for the purposes of this blog I shall call it The Machine That Goes ‘Ping’. [It’s called Raison D’Être – Ed.]
And that’s just the point.
The machine that brings the heroine into her new environment is every bit as cantankerous and wayward as a real person, and does its share of driving the action along. The machine, like its young attendant, is a character, and the two have a meaningful relationship on which turns the entire plot.
Broadening the scope from LabLit, science fiction has its fair share of machines that are characters. By this, I don’t mean robots and computers that simulate the characteristics of humans, but machines of sufficient vastness that their very presence dictates the actions of the (more talkative if physically much smaller) human characters. Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama is the canonical example – Rama is a gigantic, uninhabited alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System on a hyperbolic trajectory. The tale is about a human expedition that intercepts the spaceship, explores it, and leaves, before the spaceship shoots off into the darkness of space. My favorite Clarke story, though, is The Fountains of Paradise in which the main character is a space elevator.
And it’s not just SF, either, which brings me to the context in which I first discussed the phenomenon of inanimate objects playing character roles in stories. The context is (as you’ll no doubt have guessed) Tolkien, whose fiction often uses personifications of various aspects of landscape as characters. To take just one example of many, the Fellowship in The Fellowship Of The Ring is prevented from crossing a high pass of the mountain Caradhras by the malice of the mountain itself (the film version has the wizard Saruman fulfilling this role, as malevolent mountains are rather hard to do, visually). One could argue that Middle-earth itself is as much a character in the story as Frodo and Aragorn.
To personify inanimate objects in this way may seem strange, but was entirely characteristic of Tolkien, who drew on ancient modes of storytelling in which inanimate objects are poetically described as if they had lives of their own (Beowulf, for example, is full of descriptions of this sort).
But is it so strange? From more recent literature, my friend the palaeontologist Kevin Padian- who is also a Thomas Hardy scholar – argues that the topography of Wessex in Tess of the D’Urbevilles influences the actions of the characters to such an extent that it can almost be considered a character. And if Jenny’s contention has merit – which it has – the personification of objects continues in stories right up to the present day.
Now then, admit it, which of you has never cosseted, pleaded with, wheedled favors from or even assaulted the tools of one’s trade, just as if they were people?
Most of my interactions with equipment in the lab were similar to the incident of the tin of pineapple in Three Men in a Boat.
I was thinking of the episode of Fawlty Towers in which John Cleese gives his unreliable car a jolly good birching…. but I couldn’t find a video clip on the web.
In the original episodes of Star Trek, the Enterprise is as much a character as any of the crew. His love for his ship saved Kirk in that episode where the magic pinko/hippie spores protected the colonists from deadly Berthold rays.
The ship-as-character feeling carried over into the second and third movie. I admit I very nearly cried when Jim and Bones stood on Planet Genesis and watched her burn up in the atmosphere.
This aspect has been missing from all subsequent efforts. I even seem to remember at the end of that movie in which they ripped off Sauron’s name and then flew the Enterprise saucer section into the ground, they said something to the effect of, oh well, we can always build another ship.
My daughter has just read a quartet of books called Mortal Engines (et seq) by Philip Reeve, featuring cities that move around, engulf each other, etc—does that count?
@Maxine – hard to say without reading them. Reminds me of the Cities in Flight quartet by James Blish. The cities themselves have little character because the human characters are so dominant.
Tut tut Henry.
…in which John Cleese gives his unreliable car a jolly good birching….
Stick this on your Barbie.
Thanks, Graham. :)
For those not interested in musical instruments look away now.
Yoko 1 – Expelled 0
Phew, with dat out the way, I offer this week’s musical esplanade.
Seven Buttons On A Nehru Jacket (w/ Mcboy) by Tobin Mueller
Muchos Apparati here, especially flute, electric guitar and awesome Hammond Organ.
There are plenty of movies and stories in which cars, say – have personalities (from Herbie to Christine), but I can’t think of a single example in which a musical instrument becomes a character. The accordion in Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx isn’t so much a character as a relay baton, and that’s all I can think of. I had begun to toy with the idea of a haunted Hammond organ…
Tubby the Tuba ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Violin
Ooh I might have to look for that film this weekend. Thanks for the link Jon!
On the film front,
We bring you the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” in it’s entirety on the web.
Deep down. Deep deep down (shallow really) A Scary Monster lurks here. 1950’s Classic c/o Universal Pics via Bora Zivkovic.
ENJOY
BANG
This assassination brought to you by the Committee for Apostrophe Defence.
Punctuation Terrorism. Whats’ the world coming to?
Ah, I see. It’s “it’s” when Graham means “its”, isn’t it?
Damn. Out of ammo.
“Egregiously”?
In the archaic sense, according to my dictionary, obviously.
Jenny, now you’re here, please please tell me the name of your very fine novel I’ve named (pro tem The Machine That Goes Ping. I’ve tried and tried but I cannot bring it to mind, and it’s driving me crazy. An effect of being 46 is that I can’t remember the names of things that are otherwise familiar. For example, I know everything there is to know about Richard, but I’m convinced his name is Daphne. Or is that Bob?
Raison D’Être.
Love,
Jenny.
I’ve only just realized that every word of that title is in a foreign language. I think The Machine That Goes Ping is a better title.
Apologies.
The Machine That Goes ‘Ping’
Blimey. All that over an ’.
I apologise humbly, profusely and lots of other words ending in ly. Personally, I blame the Stella Artois.
I don’t know what’s worse – abusing apostrophes or admitting to drinking Stella.
Ah, Richard, so the ’publish’ed on your own esteemed blog represents the correct use of punctuation, does it? I was confused, because as far as I am aware, ’publish’ed translates as -fifteen hundredweight of stale batter pudding_, in Klingon.
Bella, Bella, wh’ere’s my Stella
C’ue dirty knife sketch
-
Now, is it just me and ma bucket O’ stale batter, but when corresponding with folks using ‘UK English’ and say, ‘American English’, myself and my
foolfoolproof Microsoft Dictionary gets consistentlyClive’dRogered?Have you read WATERLAND by Graham Swift, Henry – the flat landscape of East Anglia haunts just as much as any machine I’ve come across in an SF novel.
No, Clare, but I should, and thanks for mentioning it. We recently took our house-guest Bora Zivkovic to Holkham Beach, an expanse of beach, sea and sky that’s almost terrifyingly empty and dwarfs everything in it. And I’m sure you’re familiar with M. R. James’ ghost stories, in which he uses the bleak openness of East Anglia to chilling effect. I wrote a novel set in North Norfolk (where I live) in which I tried to link the landscape and especially the weather to events within the novel (Jenny Rohn kindly serialized it on Lablit and you can read it here ).
Grant, you are such a grass.
You want me to rename my novel, Henry? Mind you, I’ve only just realized that it actually contains a line about the machine ‘pinging in panic’. (Life imitating art or vice versa?)
But it also does a lot of gurgling. Not quite as poetic.
Sorry Jenny. You were MIA (Missing in Acton).
Graham. Do not start me on ‘American’ English and Microsoft. Really. You do not want to go there.
Welcome back, Jenny! Not sure about the title. Titles are really difficult things. For example, I like By The Sea for the recent effort with which you are familiar, but my agent hates it.
I like Raison. Not least for all the puns currantly going around.
The machine certainly takes a lot of
currentcurrant.