1,000,000

This morning, shortly after sunup, I had the one-millionth visit to my blog. I suspect that a lot of those have been Russian hackers, Ukrainian spammers, and Chinese robots, but even so, that's a lot of visits. I would like to say thank you to all of my readers. I still have a series to finish for you. I hope you'll come back for it and all of the things that come after it.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Animals in the Uncanny Valley

At the end of these hot and humid days, I watch movies in the dark. The night after watching Mad Max: Fury Road, I saw Jurassic World (2015) on DVD. The movie opens with a scene showing a CGI bird of an unidentifiable species. (I think it's supposed to be a jay.) Here's something I have come to understand about moviemakers: they think we're stupid. They don't realize that moviegoers might know something about birds, or paleontology, or human behavior, or any other subject, and that we might notice when they--the moviemakers--come up with some kind of BS. Anyway, the bird is fake, made by CGI, and does not look or act like a real bird. I have also seen CGI wolves and horses. I'm sure there have been other fake animals in movies.

A few months ago, I wrote about the uncanny valley, that place where human beings recoil from something that looks human but is obviously not human. An animated Shrek is okay because he doesn't and isn't supposed to look human. An animated Peter Cushing is creepy and repulsive, however. Animals are not human, but we have affinity with animals. We know they're alive. We recognize in them some of the same experiences, sensations, and feelings we have in ourselves. We know that they suffer and feel pain, that they wish to live and thrive and enjoy life and the company of their own species. (I will never forget the sight of a group of barn swallows playing a game with a floating feather as they circled a pond on an Indiana farm.) No, they are not human, but we know them and recognize them. We also recognize things that are not animals but that are supposed to look like animals. Toy animals are okay. Animals made by conventional animation are okay. But CGI animals are not okay. They inhabit the uncanny valley, and they are wrong and creepy and disturbing. Dinosaurs and imaginary animals are different because we don't have any experience with them, but CGI animals are creepy and should not be in movies. I would ask moviemakers instead: why don't you just get the real thing?

I have other complaints about Jurassic World. I'll start with the deficient and inaccurate science in the movie. I have already talked about the bird species that doesn't exist. But what about the dinosaur that breaks out of its eggs using a talon rather than an egg tooth? Or the map showing how dinosaurs migrated or expanded their ranges, yet the map is of the modern world? I'm sure there are other problems with the science in the movie, but they're not as obvious as the problems with technology. For example, if the dinosaur handlers can implant a tracking device in each dinosaur, why can't they just insert a small, remotely controlled explosive device or at least a tranquilizer capsule for use in case of disaster? And what about the cellphone system on the island? Why doesn't everybody who works there know everything instantly by automatic message? Why do they have to call each other? Why isn't there complete, foolproof cellphone coverage across the entire island? And why does one of the characters use a cellphone that looks like it came out the 1990s? Is that some kind of radio or walkie-talkie? Why? And why do they go after the dinosaurs on foot? Haven't they ever heard of a tank or an armored vehicle?

But the worst part of the movie--the surest sign that the moviemakers think we're stupid--is the disregard shown by the screenwriters for their characters. As an example, Chris Pratt's character is smart and able. I was never even mildly convinced that he would be attracted to the stupid, shallow, annoying character played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Worse yet--really the worst part of the whole movie for me--is the use of an idiot plot device whereby Chris Pratt's character very conspicuously disarms himself not once but twice before the top dinosaur appears. His weapon has a shoulder strap. He can free his hands while still carrying it. Yet he sets it on the ground. This is an insult to the character and to us. It's a sign not only of the screenwriters' contempt for us but also of their intervening in their story by forcing their characters to do things that are out of character simply for the sake of the plot. And not only for the sake of the plot but for the sake of their not having to work harder to figure out how to make their plot work better. This happens way too often in movies and it has to stop. Maybe moviemakers should have small, remotely controlled explosive devices implanted in them for when they misbehave.

Finally, Jurassic World reminds me of Aliens. Once again, a large corporation and/or the military is the villain. That didn't bother me very much, but I'll note that Vincent D'Onofrio gets it like Paul Reiser got it in Aliens. Do moviemakers, who work for large corporations, have any sense that when they kill off corporate functionaries in their movies, they may actually be killing off representations of themselves?

In November 1930, Weird Tales published "A Million Years After" by Katherine Metcalf Roof, a story in which two burglars steal and accidentally hatch a brontosaurus egg. The great dinosaur goes on a rampage, of course, before meeting the fate of all rampaging dinosaurs. No, there is nothing new under the sun. Cover art by C.C. Senf.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Giants on the Cover of Weird Tales

This is a loose collection of two giant robots, a dinosaur, a rogue elephant, a green-skinned demon, and a colossus with stars in his eyes. They don't have a lot in common, but the people (and demons) on these five covers do: they're all frightened, wide-eyed, and hurrying to get out of the picture as fast as they can go.

Weird Tales, December 1926. Cover story: "The Metal Giants" by Edmond Hamilton. Cover art by Joseph Doolin.

Frightened people in the foreground running from something terrible in the background is a pretty common image in popular culture. Here's an example from comic books, drawn by Basil Wolverton.

Here's another example from Weird Tales of the Future #6, from March-April 1953. The artist was Tony Mortellaro.

Weird Tales, November 1930. Cover story: "A Million Years After" by Katherine Metcalf Roof. Cover art by C.C. Senf. 

Weird Tales, February 1939. Cover story: "Death Is an Elephant" by Nathan Hindin (Robert Bloch). Cover art by Virgil Finlay.

Weird Tales, July 1941. Cover story: "The Robot God" by Ray Cummings. Cover art by Hannes Bok. (The man in the picture is almost certainly a self-portrait.)

Weird Tales, September 1941. Cover story: "Beyond the Threshold" by August Derleth. Cover art by Margaret Brundage. The stereotype of Margaret Brundage's work is that she drew little feminine confections in the most delicate of pastels. Here's a cover from 1941 showing her to have been a more versatile artist.

Weird Tales, November 1947. Cover story: "The Cheaters" by Robert Bloch. Cover art by Matt Fox.

Text copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Johanson and the Monster

The old saying is that life imitates art. In 1926, H.P. Lovecraft composed "The Call of Cthulhu," a story that would become a classic of twentieth century horror and fantasy. Published in Weird Tales in February 1928, "The Call of Cthulhu" is a kind of mystery in which a scientific investigator attempts to reconstruct the events of a time only recently past. The key piece of evidence in his reconstruction is the diary of a Norwegian sailor, Gustaf Johansen, who was there when Cthulhu awoke from his slumbers on the island city of R'lyeh. Johansen was the lone survivor of that encounter, but even he has succumbed to the influence of Cthulhu before the story ends.

The fainting narrator is a cliché in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Alternatively, the narrator is driven insane by his experience, sometimes temporarily, often permanently. Even if his insanity is only temporary, the narrator must lie abed before recovering himself. Gustaf Johansen is not the narrator of "The Call of Cthulhu," but of all the characters in the story, he comes in closest contact with its horrors. Made of sturdier stuff than the typical Lovecraftian narrator, Johansen nonetheless falls into a state of depression or despair after encountering Cthulhu. In the end, he dies mysteriously, almost certainly at the hands of cultists.

Four years after the publication of "The Call of Cthulhu," the Swedish overseer of a rubber plantation in the Belgian Congo reported an experience like that of Gustaf Johansen, though admittedly not by degree. His name was J.C. Johanson, and on a hunting trip in the Kasai Valley, he and his bearer encountered a monster out of the past. Described as a lizard sixteen yards long, the creature was devouring a rhinoceros when the two men came upon it. Johanson is supposed to have taken pictures of the creature. The two images circulating on the Internet have been shown to be fakes. In any event, Johanson's reaction is familiar to anyone who has read a story by H.P. Lovecraft:

The experience was too much for my nervous system. Completely exhausted, I sank down behind the bush that had given me shelter. Blackness reigned before my eyes. . . . I must have looked like one demented when at last I regained camp. . . . For eight days I lay in a fever, unconscious nearly all the time. (1)

Even Johanson's expressions--"Blackness reigned before my eyes"--echo writing from the pulps.

I have never seen a Tyrannosaurus rex eating a rhinoceros or for that matter a ham sandwich. I can't say what my reaction would be to such a thing. But pulp writers and moviemakers don't seem to have a lot of faith in the psychological strength and stability of their fellow human beings. If Johanson was laid low by the sighting of a dinosaur in the African jungle, I don't think he should have been in Africa in the first place, so far as it is from a fainting couch. In other words, Johanson's story sounds like a story. I wonder if the man himself ever existed. And if it was just a story, I wonder if the person who thought it up had read "The Call of Cthulhu" not long before.

Note

(1) Quoted in Monsters and Mythic Beasts by Angus Hall (1975), p. 87.

Copyright 2014, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Joel Martin Nichols, Jr. (1895-1991)

Author, Adman

Born December 18, 1895, Manchester, Connecticut

Died December 13, 1991, Camp Verde, Arizona

Joel Martin Nichols, Jr., was born on December 18, 1895, in Manchester, Connecticut. His father before him served in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. Joel, Jr., also served, also in the Army, during World War I. He graduated from the Brown University School of Journalism in 1921 and went to work as a reporter for the Hartford Courant. In 1923, he moved to the New York Herald and began writing pulp fiction stories for Action Stories, Triple-X Magazine, Illustrated Novelets, All-Adventure Action Novels, and of course Weird Tales. He wrote five stories for "The Unique Magazine" beginning with "The Lure of Atlantis" (Apr. 1925) and ending with a three-part serial, "The Isle of Lost Souls" (Dec. 1928-Feb. 1929). Nichols' story "The City of Glass" (Mar. 1927) was voted most popular by readers for that issue and was tied for fourteenth most popular (with "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P. Lovecraft no less) among all stories published between November 1924 and January 1940.

Nichols also traveled to Europe in the 1920s and had the good fortune to run into the American painter Ruth Graves (1884-1964). Locked out of her Latin Quarter studio one morning, Ruth was in the process of giving a boost to a janitor, through the window, when Nichols happened on the scene. He opened the door for the young artist and agreed to sit for a portrait in exchange for "a cup of real American coffee." Ruth Graves' portrait of Joel Martin Nichols, Jr., was one of three paintings by her that were hung in the 1926 exhibition at the Societé Nationale des Beaux-Arts, otherwise known as the Salon or Salon de Paris. (That was the same exhibition in which the fictional fantastic painter Ardois-Bonnot had hung his "blasphemous Dream Landscape" the previous year, an event mentioned in H.P. Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu.")

In 1931, Nichols joined the Federal Advertising Agency, eventually becoming vice-president and director. According to the Brown Alumni Monthly (Feb. 1935), the iconic Sinclair dinosaur was Nichols' idea. (That may be the only source of that claim.) In later years, Nichols was employed by Hixson-O'Donnell Advertising, Inc., Maxon, Inc., and Arthur Kudner, Inc. Hixson-O'Donnell handled accounts for radio, including the radio show "Calling All Cars." In 1947, Nichols moved to Tucson, Arizona, because of his wife's ill health. He continued to write short stories while living in Arizona and was even working on a novel in the years prior to his death. Joel Martin Nichols, Jr., died in Camp Verde, Arizona, on December 13, 1991, at age ninety-six.

Joel Martin Nichols, Jr.'s Stories in Weird Tales

"The Lure of Atlantis" (Apr. 1925)

"The Hooded Death" (Apr. 1926)

"The Devil Ray" (serial, May-July, 1926)

"The City of Glass" (Mar. 1927)

"The Isle of Lost Souls" (serial, Dec. 1928-Feb. 1929)

Further Reading

You can find Joel Martin Nichols, Jr.'s obituary online at the website of the Arizona Obituary Directory, here.

The American artist Ruth Graves (1884-1964), who lived in Paris for many years and painted a portrait of Joel Martin Nichols, Jr., during one of his trips there in the 1920s.

The Sinclair dinosaur dates from the early 1930s, about the time Nichols went to work for the Federal Advertising Company. Was he responsible, at least in part, for that iconic image? His college's alumni magazine seemed to think so.

More Not at Night, a British anthology edited by Christine Campbell Thompson (1926), included Nichols' story from Weird Tales, "The Hooded Death."

Joel Martin Nichols (1895-1991), an undated photograph from the collection of Randal A. Everts.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Katherine Metcalf Roof (1871-?)

Author, Poet, Playwright, Biographer

Born March 31, 1871, Clifton Springs, New York

Died ?

Pulp magazines rose and many older and more respectable titles fell in the years following World War I. The Great Depression was partly to blame. Paper shortages during World War II finished off many of the titles that had survived the 1930s. Writers who once saw their work printed in fine magazines such as Scribner's, The Century, and The Smart Set had to be satisfied in later years with writing for the pulps. Katherine Metcalf Roof was one of them. She was born on March 31, 1871, in Clifton Springs, New York, and began writing for magazines as early as 1902. Ainslee's, The Century, The Craftsman, Harper's, Metropolitan, The Smart Set, Woman's Home Companion, and Women's Stories were among the magazines that published her work. In December 1907, she had a ghost story, "The Edge of a Dream," in The Smart Set. Her books included The Stranger at the Hearth (novel, 1916); The Life and Art of William Merritt Chase (non-fiction, 1917), a biography of her friend, the renowned painter and teacher from Indiana, William Merritt Chase (1849-1916); Colonel William Smith and Lady (non-fiction, 1929); and Murder on the Salem Road (novel, 1931). She also wrote plays, including Three Dear Friends. Pulp magazines that printed Katherine's work included Ghost Stories, Romance, Snappy Stories, Street and Smith's Detective Story Magazine, and of course Weird Tales. Katherine's lone story for "The Unique Magazine" was "A Million Years After," which made the cover of the November 1930 issue. (That was the same year coincidentally in which The Century and The Smart Set gave up the ghost.) She ended the decade with a letter to Strange Stories in December 1939. 

Dinosaurs were in the air when "A Million Years After" appeared. Brought to the silver screen in the 1910s by moviemaker Willis O'Brien (through stop-motion photography) and cartoonist Winsor McCay (through hand-drawn animation), dinosaurs had been in the public eye for some time when the silent film The Lost World was released in 1925. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle's book, the film featured advancements in Willis' techniques and proved a smash hit. Soon dinosaurs appeared on the covers of popular magazines, including Amazing Stories in June 1926 and February 1929. Weird Tales got in on the act with Katherine Metcalf Roof's story, illustrated by Curtis C. Senf on the cover and in the interior. Robert Weinberg considered it a mediocre tale, while Donald F. Glut was kinder, describing it as a "whimsical story" involving the theft and inadvertent incubation of a brontosaurus egg by two burglars. After going on a rampage, the poor dinosaur meets the same fate as rampaging dinosaurs everywhere. Incidentally, less than three years after "A Million Years After" was published, the moviegoing public flocked to the nation's theaters to see a film that was then and is still a sensation--King Kong.

Katherine Metcalf Roof lost both of her parents, Dr. Francis Harvey Roof and Mary Metcalf (Stocking) Roof, within three months of each other in 1916-1917. The date and place of her own death are unknown, even after these many years. She was a traveler, though, and made several trips to Europe in the 1920s and '30s. Her last known published story was in 1943 (she had two poems published later), and I suspect that the elusive Katherine Metcalf Roof died sometime in the 1940s.

Katherine Metcalf Roof's Story in Weird Tales

"A Million Years After" (Nov. 1930)

Further Reading

Some of Katherine Metcalf Roof's early work has been digitized and is available on the Internet. I don't know of any reprints of her pulp fiction.

Katherine Metcalf Roof's "Million Years After" landed her a spot on the cover of Weird Tales in November 1930. The art was by C.C. Senf.

Note: Although Katherine Metcalf Roof listed her birth year as 1881 in an application for a passport, Randal A. Everts has found her in the 1880 census, aged nine. I have changed the birth year I had previously shown in this posting. Her date and place of death are still unknown. Thanks to Mr. Everts.
Updated March 31, 2019, the 148th anniversary of her birth.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley