Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth Read Online Free PDF Page A

to depart from the path. Leaving the path is bad.
    In the book, as in any number of old myths, fairy tales or medieval legends, they are indeed lured off the path due to weakness of character. In the book, the dwarves see what seems to be the campfires of a gay company dancing and feasting with music and rich ale and savory meats, and when they blunder off the path toward the vision, it turns out not to be men but rather forest elves, who vanish in a twinkling, as by magic, and the dwarves are left dazed and asleep amid the mossy forest roots.
    In the movie, they try not to leave the path, but then they get stoned at Woodstock, because maybe they dropped some bad acid, man. The vibes turn bad, man, it’s a bad trip! And Bilbo turns and sees himself. WHOA, this is so heavy, dude!
    Okay. Does anyone who has ever told a story to a child actually need lessons in how it is done? The rule is very simple. Adults will allow you to cheat the story. Children won’t. If the story says that only Love’s First Kiss will wake the sleeping princess, an adult might allow you to pull an ironic trick such as having the prince be the villain and the sister’s love save the princess. But no kid will allow it. It is cheating. There is an unspoken contract, as binding as any enforced by an unsmiling and clear-eyed king who rules with a rod of iron, between the teller of the tale and those who enter the tale. The rule in children's stories is that you don’t say things you don’t mean.
    Gandalf tells them not to leave the path. He does not mean it. If he meant it, the dwarves would be tempted to leave the path due to a weakness of character, or fear, or hunger, and the hobbit would remind them to stay on the straight and narrow. Get it? It is the first rule of storytelling. Maybe it is the only rule. Storytelling is serious and telling a children’s story is even more serious, because children are more severe critics than adults, and their sense of justice is more finely honed.
    Other complaints? I have a Cotillion, which is a number larger than Vermilion.
    There was not enough Mirkwood in the film. It was supposed to be murky, and seem endless, and gloomy and forbidding, and you were supposed to feel lost. Instead the dwarves zipped through the endless miles of gloom in, what, like an afternoon? Did they even camp overnight?
    Time for another vacation from Stupidityland. There was something that was not in the book but that was so damned cool that it almost makes up for the disappointment of Beorn.
    When Bilbo puts on the ring which he got from Gollum, he can hear the spiders talking and understand their evil speech, for he is partway into the shadow realm.
    Ah, I loved that idea.
    Then there was a fight scene where the filmmaker threw gallons of glop in 3D toward my eyes. Vacation over.
    In the book, Bilbo lures the spiders away from their prey, the helpless dwarves, by calling them names, such as Lazy Lob, Crazy Cob, and Old Tomnoddy and, of course, Attercop. It is a classic Jack-taunting-the-Giant fairy tale gimmick, as fresh and ancient as Eastertide, where the little guy lures the big guy with eight legs, clustered eyes, and a pincer mouth away from the prisoners.
    Vocabulary trivia time!
Attercop
–n. 1. a spider. 2. an ill-natured person. [Old English attorcoppa, from ātor poison and cop head]
    In the movie, no such luck. No such attercop. Instead we get a
World of Warcraft
-style CGI fight with giant spiders. Now with extra glop.
    This film was like being hit in the head over and over with a hammer, and with each blow, the IQ of the audience dropped another few digits. At this point a particularly fierce blow of the Stupidity Hammer struck home. Yes, fans, it was time for Legolas to come onstage!
    I do not know if you have ever played
Dungeons & Dragons
or any of the various role-playing games that occupied my youth, but if you had, you would be familiar with the phenomenon called ‘the moderator’s pet NPC.’ This is when a