The Detrimental Robots are coming for you

In 1943, a very strange document landed on the desk of one Ray Palmer. As the editor of sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories, Palmer was used to receiving all kinds of submissions. But this document - ominously titled "A Warning To Future Man" - was something entirely separate from the pulp mainstay.

The author, Richard Shaver, had a hell of a story to tell. He revealed - as an item of fact - that a highly-advanced species had once ruled the earth, up until a nasty burst of solar radiation some ten millenia ago drove them away. Some of these beings had apparently remained hidden in their sophisticated cavern-cities far below the surface. A few, called "Teros", were human-like and noble-natured. But the majority had devolved into sadistic, perverted dwarfs called "Deros". Shaver said "Dero" stood for 'detrimental robot' - in this sense, robot meaning emotionless and cruel.

These horrid Deros were, according to Shaver, well at work terrorising us surface-dwellers. Using the arcane technology of the ancient race - which seems to have involved all sorts of "ray" machines - they were responsible for everything from flu outbreaks to massive earthquakes. A recurrent theme, one Shaver was most obsessed with, involved the Deros abducting women for all sorts of unpleasant reasons. He described numerous such scenes with considerable relish.

The Deros also found time to zip out in spaceships, to further their nefarious goals. At this stage Ufology was not yet popular; Shaver's use of them would become significant later.

Palmer realised he was really onto something, and edited Shaver's piece for the magazine. Shaver had actually claimed this was all genuine, and that he had in fact spent eight years as a prisoner of the Deros. Palmer had to revise and re-write portions of the story to sell it as a work of science fiction - adding a plot, and removing the more graphic rape and torture scenes.



First published in AS in March, 1945, the Shaver stories saw the magazine's circulation soar. The story itself rapidly grew into a national, and international, phenomenon. Palmer would later state that AS normally got "50 to 60" letters a month; with the publication of the Shaver stories that number jumped to an incredible 50,000. Almost all of those letters were from people who claimed these stories were true - that they had experienced contact with the Deros. It grew to a point where a 1951 issue of Life magazine examined it, and the idea briefly entered into the popular consciousness.



Then came the backlash. Fans of 'hard' sci-fi were not impressed at what they called the "Shaver hoax", and ridiculed it as a publicity stunt. Astute observers noted that Shaver's claims bore all the hallmarks of paranoid schizophrenia, particularly with the elaborate, self-involved fantasy world and emphasis on an "influencing machine".



In 1948, AS stopped running Shaver's stories. Palmer would later claim some sinister coercion forced him to stop; cynics suggest declining sales and the increasing mockery of the stories were the cause. Palmer was also disillusioned when he discovered that Shaver had indeed spent eight years as a prisoner - not of the Deros, but rather as a catatonic in a psychiatric hospital.

Funnily enough, this was right around the time the UFO craze really took off. As Palmer notes in the interview below, Shaver was somewhat ahead of the curve with regard to flying saucers.



Viewed from our distant remove, it's pretty easy to be scornful of all this. Shaver was undoubtedly a disturbed guy, at time when schizophrenia was very poorly understood. The parameters of the fantasy were familiar to thousands around the world, in varying states of schizophrenic distress. It wove in a number of things - the hollow earth legend, fears of miscegenation, paranoid delusion - to create, paradoxically, a story that is utterly plausible to some.

I like to think of the Shaver stories as a great example of "found documents". This is, in essence, a work of fiction passed off as fact. They are usually first-person, and provide supporting data - maps, documents, and so on. In a sense they are something like "reality fiction" - if that makes any sense. An interesting example of the type would be Dracula. This is an epistolary novel - a bundle of documentation relating to the "Dracula case", as it were. The reader engages with Dracula more as a case study than a novel.

The genre is a particular staple in horror films - for example Cannibal Holocaust, The Blair Witch Project, and Cloverfield. The proliferation of amateur cameras and the viral power of the Internet have made this even more popular today. Back in 1997, I remember watching with bemusement a little piece called Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. Pre-empting the Blair Witch by a year, it was supposedly one family's amcam account of their alien abduction. The fact it ran a cast list at the end, had a wad of disclaimers, and was based on an previously revealed hoax, wasn't enough to stop many people claiming the "footage" was legit. Such is the awesome power of the media.



With regard to the Blair Witch, the producers of that little classic made a "documentary" about the case which, I thought, was even creepier than the film itself. It illustrated why I personally enjoy the "found documents" device - especially when it is well handled. A good, deep mythology is crucial to any horror story - the audience has to believe.

Another creepy trope of fiction that I fancy is the motif of harmful sensation, sometimes called the brown note. Briefly, this is like the Evil Eye, or Medusa's gaze - you look upon something and die, or at least are profoundly affected. Recently, the Ringu cycle of movies made this trope very well-known; the plot hinged on a cursed video, the viewing of which doomed the viewer.



I particularly like it when the idea of the "found document" is incorporated into this motif. Not surprisingly, this combination pops up a lot in the mind-blasting horrors of Lovecraft. Only in his warped realm could one find an opera which destroys existence about halfway into the third act.

The work in question is the hideously mistitled Massa di Requiem per Shuggay. Originally appearing in one of Ramsey Campbell's brilliant Cthulhu works, the opera is passed off as a genuine document from 1769 - however it is incomplete. A grim tale is told of how the Church ordered all copies to be burnt, along with their heretical author. The score - apparently considered "unplayable" by any sane musician - isn't really the problem; it's the libretto, which is actually a veiled summoning ritual. A successful performance ends with Azathoth showing up, and he's not there to throw flowers on the stage. Here's the entry for the Massa, from the latest edition of the Call of Cthulhu RPG:



Talk about bringing down the house - there's no showstopper quite like the Daemon Sultan. It's one piece the Concert Programme won't be featuring in their Sunday Opera special, I'd wager.

There is no fear in this dojo

I feel one has truly matured as a blogger when one has been burned - or at least singed - in virtual effigy. Having sampled such Dantean vengeance this morning, your faithful blogger feels he has achieved that dubious honour.

Some folks over at the Outrageous Fortune forums found my piece about the weird trolls who sometimes lurk about over there. Here. They took umbrage at what was immediately perceived as an attack on themselves. Jumping on my (indiscreet, I admit) link to teh Myspace, my profile picture was put up for a good tomato-throwing. So I had to wade in and explain myself more clearly, and point out that this sort of thing was just what I had been talking about. The picture-grabber was kind enough to take it down and apologise, and I think everyone's feathers were returned to an unruffled state.

I did let myself down in the original piece by suggesting there was a conflict of interest involving the forum and the show's publicity department, without means of fair reply. That is poor journalism, no matter how light-hearted I may have intended it, and it has been removed accordingly. I'd just say it was a bad reaction to seeing a reviewer, who dared to suggest an alternate opinion, have their email address offered up for harassment.

Needless to say, it sent my visitor count through the roof. Come for the insults, stay for the comics trivia!

Anyway, this is indeed a comics blog, so let's take a look at one of the coolest, funniest, and possibly most offensive superheroines Marvel has ever come up with - Big Bertha.



Bertha - real name Ashley Crawford - is a parody character. But like so many of her ilk, she has a greater depth and poignancy than many 'serious' characters. She is a member of the Great Lakes Avengers, Milwaukee's only greatest superheroes, and the biggest joke in the MU. They're a bunch of heroes with not-quite-useless powers who are generally ridiculed by everyone else. They also serve as a platform for some excellent superhero satire. Bertha is an excellent example of this; she initially only existed to mock the popular conceptions of women in comics, as she explains to her teammate Squirrel Girl:



What I - and many fanboys - love about the GLA is that they're plain, honest characters genuinely trying their best, as ineffective as it may be. Along the way they raise some very pointed issues about the politics of the superhero comic. It helps that their best writer, Dan Slott, is a master at this sort of thing.

In her civilian guise, Bertha is Ashley Crawford, "Wisconsin's Top Supermodel!". It seems she could be as big as her MU colleagues Millie or Patsy, but her loyalty to the GLA keeps her in the back country. Her (mutant) power is a kind of ability to "Hulk out" - when she becomes Big Bertha, she adds 300 pounds of muscle, and turns into an incredibly powerful behemoth.





Oh yes, the questions about body image are being hammered home here. And how do you think she reverts back to Ashley?







The GLA kind of humour is definitely something you either love or hate. I suppose a regular, nerdish familiarity with the tropes makes the irony sharper. But what makes a character like Bertha so damn cool, is the skill and affection with which she's written. She knows she's a joke, and that's the joke, and we laugh with her at the insanity of the whole concept.





Beyond being her beautiful parodic self, Bertha had a truly hilarious story of her own a few years back. The notorious Deadpool, king of Marvel's losers, decided to move in with the GLA as he related to their "lovable underdog" status. However the Merc with a Mouth turns out (surprise!) to make a nasty couch fungus, rapidly becoming very obnoxious to his new roomies.

The GLA boys decide to manipulate the one weakness they know Deadpool has. After his true love, Bea Arthur, Deadpool has a major crush on Big Bertha. They ask Bertha to take him out on a date, and use her feminine wiles to persuade him to leave.



Wade's downcast because he's hot for Bertha, not Ashley. But making the best of it, the romantic pair travel to a seedy joint where the in-jokes come fast. The Simpsons and The Sopranos collide violently and our couple's date is interrupted. ("Yeah, so I like Journey, what about it?")





Afterward, Bertha and Deadpool have a little heart-to-heart:



Awww, poor Deadpool. I feel his pain.

Now for something completely different to finish. The ending of this year has seen a proliferation of best-of lists, as everybody tries to wrap up the decade (with technically a year still to go) and their favourite parts of it. I used to be a bit leery of lists - they seemed a bit lazy; but once I got over myself, I learned to understand them. Also, none other than Umberto Eco - certainly NOT a lazy writer - has praised the virtue of the list as a ward against death. How can one argue with that?

So a time has come for the listing of things. It's prompted me to scour the Interwebs, remembering the past ten years, and thinking 'bout a few things. Some calls seem easy to make : I'd put Alias as comic of the decade, for example. But how about music videos? I've been trying to think all of the goodies from the past ten years, and it has led to some interesting finds on Youtube.



I am not positing No More Kings' "Sweep the Leg" as video of the decade, but I would include it in any list. The whole piece - song and video - is a detailed tribute to that 80's classic "The Karate Kid" - and reunites all of the original cast, with the notable exceptions of Elizabeth Shue, and of course the late Pat Morita. But in this vivid fantasy, the hero of the piece is Johnny Lawrence, the 'bad guy' and loser in the original film. The real kicker? The video was written and directed by Johnny himself, William Zabka. Zabka also plays himself in the lead role - rollerblading down the street, fantasizing about a comeback/rematch that re-writes the end of the original film. It's a great little piece of 80's nostalgia, with in-jokes aplenty.