The visions of humanity's future
Richard seemed hurt at my reaction to his statement. Science would never know it all. Aristotle suspected it, even the Mayans living in the dense jungles in the Yucatan peninsula. I feared that there won't be many titles in Young-adult literature if a time machine was invented a long time ago. And then it dawned on me that it would better not to know it all. I would be one of the millions who could imagine the possibilities. I wasn't thinking of a dystopian setting, while the young survivors must deal with pimples and puppy love. Both were petty issues compared to the apocalyptic future.
I wasn't being pessimistic about it, as my coursemate read a feature on the London Literature Festival. It happened that the theme was discussed early this year. (The theme was "Living in future times".) It was the first week of October, and it reminded me of something else. Halloween. Richard and I studied Gothic literature last year, and we were overwhelmed at the module. We knew a great deal of titles under this category, even saw scary films. It turned out that there was more to it, but we rather have fun about the subject.
Richard enjoyed "The Howling", where Joe Dante made cheeky references to werewolf films of yesteryear. I was thinking of the same thing with "An American Werewolf in London", where the moor didn't serve as a platform for torn feelings and failed relationships. The conversation drifted to unnatural creatures, a favorite topic of H. P. Lovecraft. I was thinking of the call of Cthulhu until I recalled my housemates. (They wanted a visit to the coastline during the weekend.) These creatures seemed cuddly in Harry Potter's world. And then I recalled Lara. A huge fan of Hogwarts, she could help J. K. Rowling in thinking of a sequel to "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". We would joke about the Sorting Hat. (She didn't fancy the Slytherin house.) And then Richard asked me about the collection of short stories on unnatural creatures. Ollie lent me his paperback copy, but I haven't read it all.
The best place in the world might be London
Neil Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Edgar Allan Poe, all of whom influenced his writings. He compiled a list of shorts, where the description of unnatural creatures would range from surreal to horrible.
Gahan Wilson's short didn't have a title, as he opted a long blot of ink. Reginald Archer, a clean freak, was annoyed at the first sight of it. He became intrigued when that blot of black ink disappeared and appeared in different places of his house. And it would get bigger. Wilson was a cartoonist, and I would suspect that he had a twisted mind. Who would think that this blot of ink was a carnivorous creature? Faulks, his butler, was too late to find out. And Reginald Archer had no idea who was hiding in his attic. A blob perhaps.
Maria Dahvana Headley's "Movable Beast" began as a flirtation between Billy Beacham, a beast collector, and Angela, an ill-mannered ice cream vendor. The story took place in Bastardville, which was once an untamed terrain. It was believed that a beast was living within the woods. A ship took him from Scotland to New England, but it could be a remote Scottish isle. And Bastardville might be another English metropolis. It turned out that Angela was a beast charmer, even a conspirator. Maria Dahvana Headley wasn't expressing her views on the sexes, but it could allude to the role of women in fairy tales. Most of them would end up as memorable villains. And the beast could be a metaphor that would suggest about primeval times. It would be sketchy, if not a fantastic voyage into the dark past. I couldn't make out of the figures, though.
"The Flight of the Horse" was a silly tale on time traveling. Barry Niven thought of medieval Britain when the air was fresh and the horse wasn't an extinct species. An agitated Svetz, who was tasked to bring a stallion back to the future, find a unicorn instead. Richard chuckled after reading it, and we were both thinking of the same thing. Niven wasn't making a case about the existence of unicorns. It was rather a rediscovery of mythology, which was long forgotten in the distant future. Then again, the existence could shake up Svetz's utopian surrounding. A little uncertainty, even chaos, would define human civilization.
I was curious about "The Manticore, the Mermaid, and Me". I'll read it later.
