As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read yesterday Isaac Asimov‘s story ‘Flies.’ It was first published in the June 1953 issue of Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Casey, Winthrop and Polen are three friends meeting for a college reunion after twenty years of going their ways. Polen is a cybernetics expert, Winthrop a highly respected Reverend and Casey is a leading chemist. In their college sophomore year Casey discovers he has a peculiar charm which makes him a magnet for flies and wherever he goes a couple of flies follow him to his annoyance. The college reunion is no exception for Casey. Winthrop – coming from religious thinking – believes Casey is carrying the curse of Beelzebub, Casey -a disbeliever in superstitions – rubbishes it but only Polen as a cybernetics expert knows the truth and the truth is that Casey himself is Beelzebub – the lord of the flies.
I chose this story to read to our group for the complexity of the plot and how Asimov manages to complete this brilliant, at places funny and suspenseful story in five short pages. There are some very enteratining insights into cybernetics and philosophical musings on role of emotions, evil and religion in the story which are a joy to read.
Members of our group recognized that it is a good story but expressed an opinion that they were bored in a few places as the narrative moves from present to past to present quite fast. It is my aim to leave an impression with children that SF&F is a very fascinating and important genre and even there some of the writers like Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Heinlein should be must encounters in their reading life.
Many good writers and movie directors have drawn inspiration from the works of Shakespeare for various things:
The title of William Faulkner‘s famous novel ‘The Sound and the Fury‘ comes from Macbeth’s famous soliloquy. Ray Brabdury‘s delectable novel ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes‘ is a phrase taken directly from the song of the second witch in Act 4, Scene 1:
Second Witch: “By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, Whoever knocks.”
Jane Smiley‘s Pulitzer Prize winning novel ‘A Thousand Acres‘ is based on King Lear.
Near home, 3 movies of Vishal Bharadwaj have direct connection to Shakespeare’s plays: Haidar is based on Hamlet ( including the skull scene) Omkara is based on Othello (Saif was brilliant as Langda Tyagi) Maqbool is based on Macbeth (all with matching first letters….)
I am sure there is much more….
June 28, 2023….. Here is something I found from one of my previous posts. This time it is great Russian writers borrowing from Shakespeare:
The Hamlet of Shchigri District – Ivan Turgenev
The Lady Macbeth of Mzinsk District – Nikolay Leskov
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read today Ernest Hemingway‘s ‘The Killers’ – a story from his collection ‘Men without Women.’
Two hired killers walk into Henry’s Lunch room and are waiting for their target – Ole Andreson – to walk-in to kill him. What happens during the waiting period and after that is all that this story deals with.
I chose this short story primarily to introduce a new style of writing which are very conversation intensive and through those conversations the plot/incident emerges. Hemingway was a master craftsmen of that style.
Barring a couple of children, rest said they did not like the approach to the story and the style in which it was written – and that was something I expected. Hemingway evokes extreme reactions.
(As far as I am concerned, it is one of my all time favourite stories)….
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read today Philip K. Dick‘s ‘The Little Movement.’ It was first published in 1952 in ‘The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction’
The story has an interesting plot in which a group of toys plan to take over the world and do everything in their power to charm children to execute their plan but unknown to them another group of toys friendly to children frustrate their plans.
The charm of the story lies in the gradual build up of the plot and counterplots and we as readers realise the dynamics of the proceedings only in the last few lines.
Children had a good time listening to the story and received it well. I am happy, I am able to introduce a writer of PKD’s caliber at a young age to this group of children and that they are able to appreciate the inherent goodness in his writing. This is the sixth story of PKD that we have read till date.
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
Many know these famous lines. What intrigued me was the phrase ‘Great nature’s second course’ and I dug a bit to find that in a typial meal of 3 courses or 5 courses… the second one is the most heavy of all courses and also the most substantive nourisher. According to the bard, Nature serves various courses to support life of which food is the first and sleep is the second but the second is more important than the first in sustaining life.
Not sure if the doctor’s have a different opinion…..
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read today, Arthur C. Clarke’s classic ‘Travel by Wire !‘ This story was written and published in 1937 in the magazine Amateur Science Stories. It is now part of the popular ‘The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke.’
It is a tale told in first person by a scientist in UK who creates and perfects a radio transmitter apparatus which transports things, freight and people across vast distances in a jiffy. However, once in a while things do not go as planned and strange and funny things keep happening during transmission. Surprisingly and to the utter consternation of the readers, the scientist himself prefers good old airplanes and rockets planes to his created mode of transmission.
There is a nice touch of humour to the story and members of our group had a good laugh through the story. A well attended and well received session.
The idea to memorize some of the famous lines of Shakespeare was triggered by an interview of Prof. Harold Bloom on Charlie Rose show. Prof. Bloom was talking about owning poems and learning to be alone with them. It was an interesting lecture and I felt I could borrow some of the ideas from the interview to own bits and pieces of Shakespeare for good and recall them as I pleased at will.
Tried my hand with parts of ‘Julius Caesar,’ ‘Macbeth,’ ‘Hamlet’ and it revealed a few things to me: Firstly, it is a bit of hard work but with benefits: the most important being that you become the permanent owner of parts of some great creations in literature which represent a kind of apotheosis of human creativity. They may have come from the pen of the bard, but once memorized, you become now an equal owner and that great content is at your beck and call.
Secondly, Shakespeare is not just a great playwright but a great philosopher too. His ruminations and thoughts on various critical aspects of human condition expressed through his characters have a power to transport you into a state of mind which is full of happiness & realization with glimpses of knowledge, wisdom and reconciliation. For example, when Brutus says:
“Fates, we will know your pleasures, That we shall die we know, ’tis but the time, and drawing days out, that men stand upon..“
he briefly but brilliantly is clarifying the relationship between humans and death. And as far as I am concerned this is as pious and sacred an insight as what one supposedly gets to see in great religious texts. Read Shakespeare deeply and you may not need religion and religion based philosophies to understand various aspects of ourselves.
Thirdly, a unique thing I found in Shakespeare (from the few plays I read carefully) is that he does not appear to be a great believer in the idea of God and Religion and on the contrary appears to place great faith in human agency despite his unusually deep understanding of all its known limitations. When Cassius say to Brutus:
“…. Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…… “
Shakespeare is placing humans at the center of everything. I have come across this same thought in the other plays of his and to me this is enormously comforting.
Fourthly, the bard is profound with his ruminations and surmises on what defines humans and the impossible situation we are in. For example, when Macbeth upon hearing that the queen is dead says:
“…….. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”
… or when Hamlet is wondering loudly:
“……. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so………”there is a touch of profundity in the words he employs to describing the human condition and by memorizing those words, one owns and internalizes that profundity. And in presence of anything profound, we are forced to be humble and be filled with humility. Humbleness and humility, I believe, are the first steps to polishing the rough edges of one’s character.
Fifthly, Shakespeare was not limited to philosophizing only on things profound. He was also worldly-wise observing and commenting on things common and mundane so nicely that the words he used elevated his ideas out of ordinary to realms beyond. For example when Fool tells King Lear:
“Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne’er turns the key to th’ poor.”
or When Rosencratz in Hamlet says:
“……. that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose quills” …. he is referring to the ways of the world and how things work.
I am may not be overstating, if I were to say that Shakespeare has probably touched on every aspect of our existence which matters to us deeply and in doing so has made those aspects universal, profound and transcendental. And in memorizing snippets of Shakespeare, one internalizes this universality, profundity and transcendentalism.
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read the following 2 stories today:
1. Roog – Philip K. Dick (PKD): This is one of the early stories of PKD, was written and published in November 1951 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
2. Let’s Play Poison – Ray Bradbury: Originally published in the November 1946 issue of “Weird Tales.”
Today is a special day as this group has crossed the milestone of 250th story. It tooks 2 Years, 6 Months and 4 Days of sustained labour of love to reach this milestone. And we are still halfway only. My aim for this group is to do 500 stories without compromising on any of the fun, unstructured learning and awareness that comes along with these story sessions.
Coming back to the story summaries: PKD’s Roog is a story full of ambiguity. It is told through the eyes of Boris – a huge dog and its interaction with roogs who could be aliens dressed as garbage collectors or real garbage collectors who do not like dogs barking at them and disturbing them in their work. PKD sustains the ambiguity and never reveals to the readers what roogs actually are. Written in simple, free flowing prose, PKD builds ambiguity quite nicely.
Let’s Play Poison by Ray Bradbury starts as a simple tale of a teacher – student animosity and quickly descends into horror where the students bring a fatal end to their teacher for his harsh behaviour with them. It is a typical Ray story and some children guessed the end quite early on.
Between the ‘Roog’ and ‘Let’s Play Poison’ – children overwhelmingly voted for PKD’s Roog despite their familiarity and great fondness for the stories by Ray Bradbury.
Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable and memorable session.
This is what I want to communicate to parents in our reading groups….. Sometimes the indifference I see is disheartening but the kids and their enthusiasm keeps me going…..
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read today ‘The Gun‘ by Philip K. Dick. It was first published in 1952 in the September issue of ‘The Planet Stories.’
A spacecraft manned by a well knit crew approaches an unknown planet and realize that its surface is devastated by an atomic war. However, to their surprise their ship is damagingly shot and grounded by a massive gun that is still miraculously operational among the ruins of the planet. The exploring crew reach the gun and realize that it was set up to protect the great civilizational artifacts of the race that has gone extinct. The crew find the artifacts extremely interesting and impressive and decide to come back with a larger and well equipped mission to ship back the entire treasure of artifacts to earth. As part of the preparation to go back to earth and safeguard all future landings, the crew destroys the gun which has capability to shoot anything that takes off from the planet, repair their damaged spacecraft and take off for earth with the conviction that they are safe for all future returns. The moment the space craft takes off for earth, various undestroyed elements of the gun relay signals to draw forth all the necessary material from the hidden recesses of the planet to repair itself, get ready and wait for for the humans to return.
It is one of the early stories of PKD written in a way that is not only filled with suspense but also engaging. What makes the story interesting is that PKD draws heavily on the mythical metaphor/theme of “buried treasure and the dragon/serpent guarding it” common across all human races. This theme is well articulated by one of the members of the crew when he says: “Do you remember the legend that all races have, the myth of the buried treasure, and the dragon, the serpent that watches it, guards it, keeping everyone away?” and when one of the crew members comes up with the idea of destroying the gun with crow bars and other crude tools extends the theme to its fullest by saying “.…… the soft underbelly of the dragon. In the legend, the dragon’s armor doesn’t cover its stomach.“
It was a mixed reaction from the children despite the majority leaning towards liking it – they felt the parts of the story were boring.
This is our 249th story and 4th from Philip K. Dick’s oeuvre.
Excursions Of A Bibliophile 