Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 14!

 It's Tuesday and I haven't done anything this week, so here's another installment of the Space Guys, specifically a chapter I revised more than anything else, which is the "spicy" chapter. As usual, a table of contents is at the end.

Within 12 hours of the ceremony, preparations were begun for the most complex operation of the voyage, refueling. The ship pulled into orbit over Ganymede, the largest planet’s largest moon, where almost 300 people lived in the sprawling settlement of Minerva City. A flotilla of ships gathered, always flaming desperately to match the speed the Janus held by momentum, while the great ship released its own little fleet of 3 medium shuttlecraft and 6 utility pods. Jason and Alek were chosen to pick up a load of volatile hydrogen tanks. It was Harrison who discretely told them, “Some of the crew were concerned you might be having trouble. The captain has offered to reassign you, or take you off duty.”

“No,” Alek said, as if genuinely puzzled. “We are fine.”

They passed Anastasia and Donald. The former was bolting the latter into a barrel-like hard suit that the engineers had repurposed as radiation gear. As she calibrated a mechanical accordion arm, her husband tried to pinch her. She screeched and gave the headpiece a sharp rap with her tool. Alek smiled; Jason shook his head and kept walking. He paused as they passed Moxon, leaning against a bulkhead with one leg propped against the wall. His lips were moving; Jason realized that he was humming the Major Maxon theme. He almost called out to the officer. Then he took a closer look. Only then did he realize that Moxon was asleep. He backed away before hurrying to catch up with Alek.

The shuttlecraft was really quite large in comparison to anything but the Pegasus and the Janus itself, 8.4 meters long and able to carry either 8 passengers or a metric ton of cargo. It launched from a double docking port on either side of the Mission Fuselage, an arrangement that allowed loading and unloading at the same time. Because of the airlock configuration, there was usually one moored on the left facing backwards or turned sideways as theirs was. They entered through the belly airlock and climbed into the cockpit. Harrison joined them at a communication console at the rear. The cockpit was a panoramic half-ovoid that seemed to suspend the pilots in space. What they could mostly see was the Janus, an impressive sight on its own. As they unmoored, Alek took Jason’s hand. They drifted to the side for a few moments before the thrusters kicked in. The craft wheeled about and headed for the moon.

Through the return trip, they remained in surprisingly comfortable silence. As they approached the dock, Jason turned to Alek. “We should talk to someone,” he said.

“Who?” Alek said.

They started with Anastasia. She went with them to Dr. Cahill. They had barely begun to talk before she sighed and said, “Talk to Tanya.”

They found the officer in the communications cabin with Smith, the American. The Union officer amicably left to make room as they entered, with Anastasia tagging along. Tanya swiveled to look over Alek and then Jason. “You may not have noticed,” she said, “but you two are getting more talk than any other couple on the ship.  So, what brings you here?”

“Well, ah, they told us you used to help people with, um, this sort of thing,” Jason said. “Ah, what is it you do?”

Tanya smiled. “I gave my husband five children, to start with,” she said. “That scandalizes the enlightened people more than you three ever have. A while later, I was made the head of the Federation’s health and education program, along with another woman, Abakumov. It was really to increase birth rates. We had slogans, `shells for the Motherland’, ‘the pleasure of duty’. We were the laughingstock of the Federation and the Union. We let them laugh, they knew we were getting results.”

“All right, that makes sense,” Jason said. “Wait… You said there was another. Was that Sasha Abakumov?”

“That’s right, if she didn’t finally drop her married name,” Tanya said. “She took a ticket to Mars when she fell out with the Party. Did you know her?”

Alek smiled at that. “You could say that,” she said. “He’s told me about her.”

That made Anastasia gape. “Why in the heavens would you tell an Earthwoman about- Damn. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“It is funny story, really,” Alek said, grinning. “I tell him at beginning, there are things you do for me, things I do for you, and things I do for myself. But he tells me, there is a crazy Federation woman on Mars who shows men how to take care of a woman. Finally, I tell him, you can try. I will tell you when you fail. Should have let him do it much sooner. After, I tell him, you have very enlightened women.”

“It was my parents’ idea, actually,” he said. “They paid for, well, private sessions. Jax’s folks chipped in, too.”

“Well, that’s different,” Tanya said. “How did you get from there to here?”

“So, I wanted to do my part,” Alek said. "Maybe give him a few ideas. I got a special record to show Jason…”

“I hate to say it, but I heard,” Ana said.

“So did I,” Tanya said with a curl of her lip. “About the record, anyway. So how badly did that go?”

“He watch for maybe 5 minutes,” Alek said, holding Jason’s arm. “It started with a woman walking. She passes a man, he tries to talk to her, she tells him to get lost, he follows her. Then he asks her to come to his apartment, she says yes. So he tells her to take her clothes off, she says no… then Jason walks out. I find him when he walk all the way back. I try to make him tell me what didn’t no work…”

Jason nearly walked out then and there. “I did tell you,” he said. “He hit her. That’s never okay. Good boys don’t hit girls…” He trailed off with a blush. He calculated leaving the cabin. The first thing that stopped him was that Anastasia was in the way. The second was Tanya’s genuinely kind gaze.

 “She could have told you, it wouldn’t work,” she said with a cool glance at Anastasia. “Not on a man who had been to Sasha. Things like that are made for men by other men, which really means men who know what they want. A man with nothing but that will have more to unlearn than learn. On Mars, things are different. Why is looking for a needle in a stack of needles. We investigated, when the Federation was still enforcing morality rules. Things like that had always come in with the offworld spacers. It wasn’t catching on with the Martians, and it was virtually non-existent with the ones who were born on-planet. The people who wrote up the report decided that the conditions had removed the demand: Good education, close-knit families, and older, progressive women raising children. They gave all the credit to the Party’s progressive policies, of course. It was as good an explanation as any, really.”

Anastasia snorted. “There’s progressive women here and there, mostly on the Union side,” she said. “In the Federation sectors we still have old women who say, a man is good enough if he only hits you with an open hand and only when he is drunk.”

“It’s not that complicated,” Jason said. “The whole time I watched that film, I just kept thinking it wasn’t real. I’ve talked to Martians who saw things like it, and they all said the same thing. Really, I almost got space-sick watching it. I couldn’t even tell if the girl looked that good. They just kept doing closeups of things, like nobody ever walked in on his sister before…”

“It’s the camerawork,” Ana affirmed. “I looked at a few myself. Most of them are made with cheap equipment by people who barely know how to use it. If they do know what they’re doing, they still shoot what the men on Gaia care about. And of course, with our enhancements, any movie is at three-quarter speed and 5 to 10 times magnification....”

Tanya nodded. “We never even thought about that,” she said. “Figures.” She looked intently at Alek. “So, why did you really show him that?”

Alek crossed her arms in a pout. “I want him to act like a man’s man,” she said. “When we are making love, he is always talking, talking, talking. I keep telling him, why don’t you just grab me and violate me?” She glanced at Anastasia. “Like you and Donald.”

“All right, I don’t want to be here,” Anastasia said.

“Then go,” Tanya said in bemusement. Again, she looked intently at Alek. “What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t understand what it means,” Jason snapped. Inside, he was fighting an urge to recoil. “We’ve talked about this. Making love isn’t about what we do, it’s about doing what we both want. I keep telling you, anything you ask for, it isn’t- that!”

“Then why don’t you listen to what I say?” Alek fumed. “Why won’t you listen when I am not talking? Be boss to me! Stop asking me what I want to do when what I want is for you to be quiet!”

“Hold on,” Tanya said. “He doesn’t understand. Neither do you. There are men who hurt women, really hurt them. He’s not like that, neither is Donald. You don’t know what a bad man is like until you meet one. Honestly, I’ve never met another woman your age who hasn’t.”

“You’ve definitely got the wrong idea about Donald,” Anastasia said. “I let him be a wolf when we are out in the open. I like it, I love him for it. But when we are alone, he is a lapdog. I teach him his tricks, and reward him when he performs. Sit, beg, roll over. If he ever bit the hand that feeds him, he would be wishing he was fixed.”

 “Let me tell you what a man’s man is like,” Tanya said. “When he was young, my man was handsome as a movie star. He never raised a hand. He hardly raised his voice. But he would whisper to me what he wanted. He could give me a look, and I would know. He would carry me to bed with the children watching. And he never did a thing to me that I didn’t enjoy as much as he did.”

Alek’s lips curled into a wicked smile. “So what do the farmboys go for?”

Tanya grinned back. “Oh, we looked into that,” she said. “We found out about boys and men trading for things we would never have thought to restrict. Most of it was pretty obvious. You know, animal films cut down to just the parts about mating behavior. The thing that was catching on was animation. We looked at stuff the farmboys made themselves that was really impressive, I mean technically. God, there must have been a hundred with Sparky the Squirrel alone; we barely stopped a Party minister from accusing the studio of being involved. Then there was the stuff that was just weird…”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Anastasia chimed in. “They’ll watch anything with animals. There’s plenty of ways to leverage that. Another thing you’ll see just from that, they are good with body language, if you can get them to look at you.”

Alek looked at Jason thoughtfully. “Yes,” she said. “When you put it that way, I can see that.”

As the women turned toward him, Jason broke his silence. “Okay, there was one thing,” he said. “It was one of the educational films, like Tanya was talking about. So, it was about whales…”

They all continued to talk, and laugh, until Anastasia blushed as she giggled. Finally, Alek said, “There is something I still do not understand. I talk to old woman in my hometown. She said to me, when you are grown, you may meet man who will say he will hurt you if he cannot have you. She said, do not fear that man, because he will not really hurt you, at least not so bad he cannot have you, or have you again. But there is another kind of man who would rather hurt you than have you. Run from a man like that if you meet him, because that man is mad. I did not understand, I still do not understand. Is that what this is about? What a man like on the disc is like?”

“No,” Anastasia said. “Not really. But I can understand.”

“Look at it this way,” Tanya said. “Think about Moxon.”

Alek’s frown became a scowl. Jason saw Anastasia visibly stiffen. “What about Moxon?” Alek said. “He would no never do that. He would not care about that. Any woman can see that.”

“Yes,” Tanya said. “Now just think, what might a man like him do instead?”

Alek considered, and paled. Anastasia did the same without delay. “Moj boze,” she said. She took Jason’s hand. “You are a good boy, my farmboy. I’m done trying to change you.”

They finally left the cabin when Tanya’s shift ended. Alek offered Jason her hand. He waved for her to go ahead. She did so without hesitation, still talking and laughing with Tanya. Jason remained seated, gazing at Anastasia. “I need to know,” he said. “What really happened?” Anastasia only shook her head. “Moxon said something, didn’t he?”

“He came to me, right after I talked with the captain,” she said. She gazed past him at the banded orb of Jupiter. “It’s still not like you think. He said I was going to marry Donald. I knew that, so did he. That wasn’t the point. What he told me was that I’m going to be a faithful wife. He told me I wasn’t going to spend time with Jackie or any other man again, even if Donald told me I could. He said if it came to that, I was to make sure he didn’t get into any trouble either.”

“Did he threaten you?” Jason pressed. “Did he say he would do something to you?”

“No,” she said. Suddenly, she threw her arms around Jason’s neck. Only then did she whisper: “He said he could make Jackie do it.”

Table of contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!

Part 8: The launch!

Part 9: The girl talk!

Part 10: The domestic disturbance!!!

Part 11: The Space Nazis!!!

Part 12: The inevitable geography lesson!

Part 13: The wedding!!!

Mid-Sized Marx: Evil Space Guys Unbagging!

 

As I write this, it's a brand new year, and I haven't made my first post. As it happens, I had content ready for a Mystery Monday post except, of course, it's Tuesday Wednesday. For catch-up, I'm making this a Mid-Sized Marx post, on something I already have a video up for. Here is my brand new (to me) bag of 4-inch Space Guys, now stars of their own meandering adventure, delivered straight from Mexico. To kick things off, here's a couple pics of the bag.

For the backstory, I found this listed for sale online, bag and all, from a seller south of the border. For all my usual disdain for packaging, I was very interested to find a set in the bag. I was all the more intrigued to see the same name and card art as the item that started all this, the day-glo Captain and Knife Guy (aka Jason... wow, I did not plan that). The name is Juguetes Dinamicos, a company listed as active, apparently specializing in Marx reissues. The artwork looks about right for the 1980s or early 1990s. The condition of the bag looks like something the original patchisaurs came in, except that you can actually see through the plastic. As can be seen, the condition was poor enough for arms and legs to stick right through (a fact already evident in the online listing). The upside is that this let me remove a couple without technically opening the bag. Here's a pic with the most famous of the lot, the Onion-Head Alien!

As evidenced by the fact that it has a name among collectors more than 60 years after the fact (more on that momentarily), this is a very popular figure. When I followed up the original pair with a set, this was conspicuously absent. At the time, I did not miss it. Like most of the Marx aliens/ robots (see the 35mm alien, very suspiciously resembling the improvised suit of Robot Monster), I did not find it a match for the style or quality of the vividly detailed human figures. Neither did it fit the grim visions that came to mind when I first considered a storyline for them. On first-hand examination, I was happy to admit that this was better than I had judged it to be. It's weird and psychedelic, like most Marx creatures, yet there a touches that now look more realistic and forward-thinking than the designers are remotely likely to have intended. I especially like the eyes, which look like they could be night vision goggles, set in a possibly mouthless face. I still don't get the webbed, scaly feet, which were clearly easily damaged (more on that in the video). All in all, this guy is definitely getting at least a small part in the adventure ahead (once I get through the impenetrable exposition). Here's pics of him in full glory, times two!

The most interesting prospect was getting more specimens of the figure that became Moxon, complete with the scar. I assumed that something so hideous (yet extremely difficult to photograph) had to be a one-time manufacturing defect. I expected to find the same underlying mold lines, not as pronounced. But nope, they all looked exactly the same, despite being molded in a clearly different color. Here they all are, as if one wasn't disturbing enough.

"Do you feel lucky? Too bad, this thing is solar-powered."

And here he is with the alien...

"You realize, for all you know, you're pointing that at my hat."

Now for the history. When I first wrote about these guys, I quite casually suggested that these figures were originally produced in the 1960s, perhaps as late as the middle of the decade. I have long since concluded that this is far, far too late. (The 1962 Moonship/ shuttle thingy was a pretty good tip-off how far Marx had progressed.) Per actual research at Marx Wild West, the Marx space guys were introduced from 1952-1954, starting with licensed Tom Corbett playsets. I am now completely satisfied that the 4-inch and 70mm Space Guys were introduced sometime in that time frame. There is also consensus that they were part of the Rex Mars line, usually considered the "generic" successor to the Corbett sets, which ended with the loss of the license in 1953. (The show itself continued until 1955.) The manner in which they were distributed remains a big null-gray Wall Of Nothing, with hard data limited to a near-hearsay report that the 4-inch guys were sold with "satellite" disc launchers. The plausible harmonized timeline is that these were indeed a late entry to a probably declining line, which is believed to have ended around 1957, or by more pessimistic accounts as early as 1955.

But because I must have revenge on those who completely rightly correct me, I have found two plot holes in this scenario. First, the proper authorities have long reported that certain Rex Mars sets were made in 1953 or as early as 1952, which means that it was never just a substitute for the Tom Corbett name. Second, there is the incredibly gigantic supply cabinet, previously featured in the accessories post linked to above, which was completely out of scale except with the 4-inch figures. This isn't conclusive, but it does strongly suggest that Marx was at least considering large-scale figures from the beginning. Here's a reused photo to show the astonishing bigness. Yes, this is almost as big as the Robby the Robot large-scale figure (aka Chopper).

Now, here's more pics. Here's the one I was looking forward to getting extras of, the one I think of as the Rifle Guy, which of course turned out to be one of the ones that the bag held only one of. I find the pose generic enough to turn into a troop build figure. He's also one of two (the other being the crouching guy, who didn't get his own pic this time) that I consider possibly Asian, or at any rate racially ambiguous. (If this discussion seems uncomfortable, I can always roll out the Japanese soldiers...)  Here is my pair, along with their 70 mm counterparts.

And here's the Captains! By the way, it turns out he's got his own "scar", which greatly varies in visibility.

And here's Jason!

Now, here's one more thing I've had a little fun with. I've tried matching up the 4-inch figures with 70 mm ones (see my round 2 post) that might represent the same characters. The best match turned out to be for my favorite, the Space Guy Who Doesn't Care, aka Harrison.

Another pretty good fit was for Jackson Lightower, aka Jax. Not getting respect is pretty much his personality.

"I still think this is a thermometer..."

And we're back to Jason. He's the tallest guy in the 4-inch set, which was enough to offer a decent match. I considered the TV Aerial Guy (I know, it's "supposed" to be an air hose) as an alternate match, but it's not quite there.

And that's enough for now. I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do with these. I'm glad to have gotten these, and as usual, I have no regrets about opening the bag. If it comes to that, I would recommend getting these if you can. That's all for now, more to come!

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Generic giant Oviraptor and friends!

 

As I write this, it's the last day of the year, and I've gone a whole week without a post. I knew if there was one thing I had to get done, it was a dino blog. Fortunately, over the last shopping days before Christmas, I made it to a little store that is my favorite place for things paleo related, the way The Falling is my favorite Alien knockoff. It's a concentration of incredibly weird and wonky dinos that has already been the source of the ankylosaur dino bot, the generic dino bag, and a plurality of my "in the wild" pics (surprisingly not so much round 2). I was counting on finding something worthy of this feature. I knew I had it when I saw this guy.

This is, as anyone who found their way here undoubtedly knows, an Oviraptor, very possibly the weirdest dinosaur ever discovered. The thing about that title that the non-paleo public doesn't get is that very, very few dinosaurs are really that strange as dinosaurs, particularly among the therepods. The medium-sized herbivores could be pretty weird, the most unique being none other than the beloved stegosaurs. By comparison, the big, famous carnosaurs are mostly bigger or smaller versions of the same body plan, with only Dilophosaurus, Carnotaurus (see the mystery box post) and to a lesser extent Ceratosaurus going far from form. We now know the spinosaurs got weird enough to be their own thing, but they were ultimately nothing more or less than a reversion back to the Triassic crocomorphs (absolutely the most scientificest term ever) that the dinosaurs descended from in the first place. 

But the oviraptors have a skull structure so unique that we still have no idea how they actually fed. In fact, as nobody but me has ever commented, the one thing it does resemble is a flamingo, the filter-feeding bird, which I semi-seriously considered as a solution to their diet before we found one that weighed two tons. From what we knew then and now, the diet really couldn't have been that strange, as lizards and/ or small dino remains have been found as stomach contents and other closely associated remains. As you all undoubtedly know, the name was based on the fact that the very first specimen was found on top of a nest of eggs that it was assumed to be feeding on, until we figured out 70 years later that those were its own eggs. This specimen is a pretty good representation of how we thought they looked by the mid-1980s, before revisionists started drawing them with feathers. Here's some more pics of the glorious datedness. And yes, I could not get a single one of this thing standing up on its own.

"You'd protect your eggs too if you had to squeeze this one out..."

The thing that really seals the deal is that egg. If this was anywhere near normal size for an oviraptorosaur, this would be the size of a football, which would be about as big as actual titanosaur eggs. It is hollow, squeezable and cast in two pieces, which seemed to indicate it would be more or less removable. I initially wondered if it would have a baby dino inside. I figured from inspection in the package that it would be held on with tape or a bit of super glue at most. Naturally, handling quickly established that this thing is going nowhere without cutting something off. The lingering mystery is, what the hell is that tube thing???

As it happens, this gigantic dino still came in a bagged set with a couple more dinos, an out-of-scale stego and a brachiosaur that is probably even more disproportioned but still huge. As usual, the brachiosaur has no semblance of the soft tissue we know it had. It's still a decent old-school dino. The stego is very good, and might have been better with painted eyes, if, of course, they had been painted with competence not in evidence. Here's more pics of the pair.

And here's a couple with a 70mm Space Guy for scale...

If the gun is as effective as usual, we can assume it's a .410 loaded with rock salt.

Naturally, the set also came with some vegetation for scenery. This time around, it's quite decent. Here's a diorama shot with the space marine analogs.

And that's enough for another day and another year. I'm still thinking over what I want to do with this blog, but one thing you can count on is that the Legion will press on. That's all for now, more to come!

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 13!

 It's overtime on the holiday weekend, again. Once again, all I have to show for it is another Space Guys installment that's more worldbuilding, only this time, it's not even that long. By the way, I already know exactly what really happened to the communities discussed here; don't look it up if you don't want to be depressed. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

As the Janus approached Jupiter, Alek and Jason finally married. To Jason’s surprise, Alek insisted on a religious service. Old Yuri offered to perform an Orthodox service, revealing that he was a deacon of the Church, but a hasty consultation confirmed that his authority stopped short of performing a marriage. While the pair were debating what to do, the captain summoned them. They came, to find Moxon waiting. Raeder said matter-of-factly, “Commander Moxon has offered to perform the ceremony. I have confirmed, he has the authority.”

Jason looked uncertainly at Moxon. “So you’re really a priest?” he said, not quite incredulous.

“I said I was a Brahmin,” the officer answered with evident modesty. “I studied at the Temple of Karachi for 6 years, all told, when I wasn’t on duty. At the end of it, the Brahmins voted to recognize me as one of their own. It’s a title of respect more than anything else. It wouldn’t mean any more than Yuri’s title. Still, we can perform marriage rites, and outsiders never argue. All you need me for is to witness your vows. Yuri can still handle the rest.”

Jason looked at Alek. She smiled. “Of course, it will be fine,” she said. “I am an enlightened woman.”

The ceremony ended up being performed mostly by Yuri. The reporter Lin recorded their vows. Anastasia was in view as a bridesmaid, and Harrison and Jax stood with Jason. Moxon opened with a speech on the principle of ahimsa and the value of all life, and closed by affirming the marriage as valid. It was excuse enough for as wild a revel as could be had in the confines of the life support ring. As the celebration commenced, the Americans Yates and Smith sang the Major Maxon theme song, a clear plagiarization of the Marine Corps hymn, drawing an evidently sincere smile from Moxon. In the midst of it, Jason found the officer talking with Donald and Jax.

“I thought Jainism was pacifist,” the engineer said, almost argumentatively.

The officer smiled at that. “People who’ve heard of Jains usually think that, if they never met one,” he said. “The holy texts teach peace, when possible. But we also teach freedom of conscience. Nobody is told what they can or can’t do, only what the principles are. The Brahmin I learned from used to say, non-violence is ideal. Non-interference is practical. It mostly comes down to, don’t start anything, and you won’t have to finish it.”

Jax spoke up. “So how do you decide when to get involved?”

Moxon looked at him thoughtfully. Jason could tell that it unsettled Jax. “It’s up to everyone to decide,” the officer said. “But there is a saying: If life is taken for naught; if the good are persecuted for their goodness; if evil is done for evil’s sake; then the righteous man may join the fight.” In his peripheral vision, Jason saw Alek frown.

Donald  persisted on another track. “So what god do you pray to?” he said. “Or do you have a bunch of them like the Hindis and the islanders?”

“We don’t need one,” Moxon said, still smiling. “Now, that’s not like it sounds. The holy texts teach that the universe is forever. No Creator, no beginning and no end, leastways none that people will ever see. There’s just us, the world and Karma. You could say that’s our idea of God. It’s not like a judge punishing sinners, more like the laws of physics. Everything is interconnected. Nobody can just stand by and watch. If you do harm to another being, what you do or don’t do affects the whole world. Then, sooner or later, the world will affect you back. So what we mostly teach is non-interference.”

Jax patiently cut in again. “Then how does non-intervention work?” he said. “If you stand by and do nothing while people are hurt, how are you any better than the people doing it?”

“That’s where things get complicated,” Moxon said. “Here’s how the Brahmin explained it to me. Suppose you’re in the woods with a gun, when you see a tiger chasing a deer. If you shoot the tiger, you save the deer. But you are responsible for everything that happens after. If it’s a tigress with cubs, her cubs will starve, and you will be to blame. If the deer is old or weak, it may starve too, or be eaten by another tiger, unless you are there to protect it every night. Then if you keep killing every tiger, all the deer will all starve when there are too many of them for the forest to feed. If you don’t involve yourself, then it is between the tiger and the deer. Maybe the tiger will feed, maybe the deer will save itself.”

“Then how does that fit with what the Strato Corps does?” Jax said. “How is leaping into other people’s wars anything but interference?”

 “Our tactics are carefully developed on the principles of ahimsa,” he said. “We enter at the invitation of the lawful, local authorities. We secure an area with minimum loss of life. Then we hold until proper civil and diplomatic channels can be restored. The invitation is the important part. If there weren’t authorities, there wouldn’t be anything left to protect, would there?”

By then, Anastasia was at Donald’s side, trying to lead him away. He continued with what had clearly been on his mind all along. “So, where did that scar come from?”

Moxon turned his head, smiling. A bright blue-white light overhead showed his face in sharp detail. For the first time, Jason saw the full extent of the scar. He had thought it was on his cheek, perhaps extending to his eyebrow. In fact, the ragged trail started well above his hair line and went down to his jaw, even his throat. For a moment, he tried to reconstruct what blade and what trajectory could have made the wound without simply cleaving his skull. He only shook his head.

“Here’s the thing,” Moxon said. “Lots of people ask about that scar. I assume you mean the big one. Too bad; I have others that are a lot more interesting.” He casually removed a glove from his right hand. Underneath were matching scars like stigmata on his palm and the back of his hand. He wiggled his fingers. Only then was it evident that his ring finger was a prosthesis. “Usually, they ask in private. In fact, you’re the first person to ask me with a real crowd around. Some of them have asked me themselves. Obviously, they haven’t talked, leastways to you. So, are you sure you really want to hear it?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Anastasia said. She drew an arm possessively and perhaps protectively around Donald’s waist. His eyes widened as she whispered in his ear in Russian. Jason picked up the gist, which was what she would drag him out by if he did not come with her. The engineer happily followed her out.

“I am ready to go, too,” Alek said. She took Jason’s arm. “Please.” Jason ignored the chorus of cheers as they left.

Alek led him through a less frequented cross passage as they made their way back to her lab, lined with plants, fish tanks, caged rodents and other creatures used to study microgravity. “I know what really happened,” she said. “It is in the file I got from the Corps. I demanded it as a condition of coming. I already knew of three people who insisted they had heard the story from him. I found four more on the ship. Every last one was completely different; all total kaka.”

“I wondered about it,” Jason said. “There’s something else. Yuri showed me a pilot of the Major Maxon show. It had an extra introduction before the theme song. The whole bit about protecting good from evil was straight from it.

“I know; I’m pretty sure Donald did to,” Alek said. “Tell me, did you ever ask?”

“No,” Jason said. “I never cared.”

“That is why you are a good man,” his bride said. “Now come with me.”

 

When they arrived at her quarters, a light dinner was waiting, evidently prepared by her robots. Scarecrow and the Patchwork Girl served them, while Nick Chopper and Tik Tok prepared a freeze-dried desert. When they had finished, Alek dismissed the robots. After months of sharing her bed, Jason still felt excitement and an undercurrent of tension as she closed the partitions.

“Now that we are married, I have something for you,” she said. She held up a vinyl video disc. “I get it to, how to say, spice things up. You know, give some new ideas. I had to ask around a little. They wouldn’t have let it in the data banks. But it wasn’t no hard to get, when I ask the right people.” She was still smiling as she put the disc in the player on top of her computer terminal.

Within bare minutes, Jason walked right out of the nacelle.

Alek was waiting for him when he inevitably circled back around. “Too much?” she said. He returned her smile, and they embraced.

Table of contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!

Part 8: The launch!

Part 9: The girl talk!

Part 10: The domestic disturbance!!!

Part 11: The Space Nazis!!!

Part 12: The inevitable geography lesson!

The Kong File 3: The one with robot Kong

 

 

Title: King Kong Escapes

What Year?: 1967

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Improbable Experiment

Rating: Ow, My Brain!!! (Unrated/ NR)

 

With this review, I’m up to the third in this lineup, which would usually be the last. As I already alluded, this is the one that was going to be here all along. In a franchise approaching its 90^th anniversary, there have been all kinds of detours and dead ends, and one is the strangest and wonkiest of them all, not just in concept and execution but in the backstory of its creation. And, even more amazingly, it’s not the one that had Kong literally brought back as a zombie. Without further delay, I present King Kong Escapes, the one where King Kong does indeed escape.

Our story begins with a sub travelling under water, accompanied by a moody yet groovy score. It turns out that the crew is on an expedition to Mondo Island, to investigate legends of a giant creature called Kong. For some reason, this Japanese crew has exactly one female crew member who happens to be blonde, because apparently the template has overcome ethnicity. They discover this movie’s incarnation of Kong, who can politely be described as sleepy-looking even in battle with Mesozoic creatures. Naturally, he takes a fancy to the blonde, leading him on one hand to save her from the monsters but on the other trying to disable the sub when they try to leave. Meanwhile, a mad-ish scientist named Dr. Hu has built a giant robot ape based on Kong, as a means to mine the mysterious element X. When the machine fails, the doctor and a lady spy set out to get the real Kong. It’s  zany villainy on a collision course with good, and there’s no way this doesn’t end with Kong fighting his own double on top of a building!

King Kong Escapes was a 1967 science fantasy/ kaiju film from Toho and Rankin Bass, directed by Ishiro Honda. The film is regarded as both a sequel to the 1962 Toho film King Kong Vs. Godzilla and a film adaptation of the Rankin Bass cartoon King Kong aired from 1966-1969. While the characters Dr. Hu and Mechani-Kong were previously featured on the show, the film did not feature or directly reference characters or events from the earlier Toho film or any other entry in the franchise. The film starred veterans Akira Takarada as Hiro and Hideo Amamoto as Hu, with Linda Jo Miller as Susan and the original Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima as Kong. The film was released in the US by Universal in 1968 with a G rating, for a North American box office reported as $1 million. Toho continued development of films featuring Kong, but was unable to proceed after a deal with the US rights holders expired. The film is not available for digital purchase or rental in the US.

For my experiences, this is an egregious example of a film that has been a third-hand memory for most of my life. I first became aware of it from a single illustration of the robotic Kong, which I am sure I long thought of as Mecha-Kong. A little later, I saw King Kong Vs. Godzilla on TV, which in hindsight was a major reason I did not warm up to actual kaiju movies as a kid. By early adulthood, I had figured out that the references I remembered were to this film. It was still a few years before I watched it. It immediately stood out as a strange chimera. It’s as if someone set out to make a film based on all the stereotypes and assumptions people, especially in the Western sphere, hold about kaiju movies: Low production values, wonky effects, marginal acting, preposterous plots and an anticlimactic resolution. Fortunately, it also demonstrates why even a “bad” example of the genre can still be a lot of fun.

Moving forward, what’s really noteworthy here is that this a fairly rare case of a vintage kaiju movie that is definitely trying to be funny. It is counterintuitively difficult to pinpoint the difference. All the elements here could be and were played “straight”, yet the presentation transforms them. Whether it’s the psychedelic costumes, vehicles and sets, the weird suit monsters and permanently spaced-out Kong, or the hammy acting, everything here is just a little “more” than usual, at least before the 1970s camp cycle (see Godzilla Vs. Hedorah), and that makes a big difference. It shows the most in the dynamic between Kong and the blonde, which is in many ways the most interesting and sophisticated variation on the formula. Out of the long trail of quasi-romantic figures, Susan is the first to succeed in telling the big guy what to do. She accomplishes this feat mostly by talking to Kong as if he was the petulant toddler he really acts like, with no regard for the very real possibility that he might simply squash her if sufficiently annoyed. The results are truly comical, with a disturbing edge that was there all along. It’s just as well that it ends with the pair parting in peace, implying that the ape has actually learned some kind of lesson.

On the other side of the equation are the villains and Mechani-Kong. The striking thing about the mad doctor and his fair-weather lady friend is that they are the one element played more or less straight. Despite their campy appearances (and Paul Frees swinging for the fences as Hu’s redubbed voice), these are competent and cold-blooded professionals who are absolutely willing and able to kill to get what they want. This is driven home with uncharacteristically brutal human-on-human violence that would be shocking in a G-rated movie if you haven’t seen the likes of The Green Slime and The Andromeda Strain. The robot ape comes across as nothing less than the sum of their malign personalities. We never get a full sense of its capabilities, yet it is a grim and formidable presence in its quite limited screen time. The bot’s greatest advantage is its hypnotic ray, which requires human intervention to neutralize. In true one-on-one combat with Kong, it proves itself quite capable without being completely overwhelming. It’s the environment of the tower that makes the fight memorable, as both combatants maneuver in search of an advantage. One more thing I have to say is that the bot’s early failure from radiation is a quite believable weakness for an AI (though there aren’t many things that wouldn’t be equally bad for the organic Kong). If there’s anything I might suggest changing, it would be to make this a factor in the finale.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s random even for this movie. Soon after the landing on the island, the blonde is menaced by a wonky dino admitted to the Toho stable as Gorosaurus. Its overall look is actually unusually realistic for a vintage kaiju, even if that’s not saying much. The only thing really “off” with mid-20^th century paleontology as a frame of reference is that the head, neck and forelimbs seem bunched up, a compromise presumably dictated by the mechanics of the suit. The lady has the presence of mind to scream and run away, cueing the now-infamous cut to Kong’s eyes opening as he wakens from either a long nap or a stoned stupor. (Okay, his eyes aren’t blood-shot, so we should lay off the drug jokes… nah.) It takes bare moments for him to arrive. That’s when we get possibly the most surreal moment of the movie as the gorosaur launches what proves to be its main attack, a sort of tail-bounce that allows it to hit Kong with both feet simultaneously. It’s every bit as absurd as it sounds, except, this kangaroo-like form of locomotion was considered very seriously in the Victorian era and portrayed in paleo art through the 1930s at least. It’s just an early highlight of a weird sequence that is definitely going for slapstick, and as with many things, it works.

In closing, I will freely admit the bottom line: By any technical standard, this is the worst Kong movie that can still be counted as within the franchise, a fact I certainly took into account in nominating King Kong Lives for that very title. It’s obviously not as polished or professional as De Laurentiis’ offering; for that matter, there were still undoubtedly entries far worse than either among the wave of knockoffs and parodies that the 1976 remake spawned (see Mighty Peking Man). Per my standard refrain, it all comes down to context and means. The real “problem” with King Kong Lives was that those involved could do far better. By comparison, this is a movie that delivers exactly what you would expect from those involved, inasmuch as one could have expectations of a studio that went on to make House. The crowning achievement and irony is that, even considered as a parody of what Toho had done before, it still comes out as well above average. In that respect, it can take its place with the likes of Galaxy Quest and Twitch of the Death Nerve. It’s weird, it’s silly, it’s dated, and for the right taste and mood, it’s just fine. Hail to the King!

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 12!

 It's time for the nominal start of the week, so of course I have another Space Guys installment that's pretty much all gratuitous world-building. By the way, these are all real place names. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

The voyage went on as Jupiter grew larger in the porthole. Jason struggled less with his own engagement than with the sudden marriage of Anastasia and Donald. Within a week, they could be seen openly displaying their affection in the recreation area around the captain’s cabin. Much of that admittedly consisted of Anastasia talking while he pawed at her. Alek made a point of teasing him. “See, he is a man’s man,” she said. “He grabs and takes. Why do you no do that to me? Am I not no good enough woman for you?”

Jason ignored her and joined the group. They passed a computer game console, consisting of a circular flat panel screen the size and configuration of a game table with two sets of controls on opposite sides. Currently, Jax and Yukio, the Edonian engineer, were using it to play Go. Surprisingly, Jax was in the process of winning. By Anastasia was playing one of the electromechanical games, a rudimentary simulator where the player controlled a descending model lander. When Donald sidled up behind her, she finally swore and hissed at him.

Jason chose an electromechanical target game, based on King Kong. Through a vision block, he could see a miniature ape atop a stylized spire, holding a wildly out-of-scale woman. The spire and the figures rotated as the crosshairs moved back and forth, in a fair simulation of a circling aircraft. Alex leaned in to look. The window was wide enough for one or two onlookers to see what was happening, but little of what illusion there was carried over when viewed from the side. He waited for the mechanical ape to set down the woman, then fired. He got the required number of hits on the second try, then allowed Alek to look as the flailing ape dropped out of sight. He then allowed her to take his free turn. Within bare moments, there was a crude but effective wail as she fired early, causing the ape to drop the woman and end the game. He suppressed a flinch when he found Moxon leaning against the next cabinet. “Say,” he said, “can I try?”

They took turns through three rounds each. He outscored Moxon twice. The officer took it in evident good humor. By then, Alek had started into boasting about their partnership. “I am an enlightened man, and you know, he is a very enlightened man,” she said. “That is why we are waiting to get married. He takes care of me, I take care of him, we don’t need to rush.”

That got a scowl from Anastasia. “Oh, please,” she said. “You two are so traditional the Motherworld press think you are already married.”

Jason managed to cut in. “Well, we’ve both been wanting to ask,” he said. “You getting married was, well, fast. I’ve known you a long time, I never thought you were the marrying kind. There’s definitely no way you would do it just to stay out of trouble.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Anastasia said. “We were seeing each other. We just weren’t exclusive. There wasn’t anyone else I was going long-term for.”

Don put an arm around her. “Hey, it’s not like I’m the compromise candidate,” he said. “I’m smart, I’m cool, I’m fun. I can make her laugh. I can make her do more than laugh.” He reached down to her waist. She firmly moved his hand back to her shoulder.

By then, Jax had won his game. As he shook hands with the Edonian, Moxon sidled in. “I can play the next game,” he said.

“Nah,” Jax said. “I want to try the geography game again.” He punched a control, and a map of Gaia appeared. Moxon leaned over with interest.

“I can tell you about geography,” he said. Nobody opposed him as he took the Edonian’s seat, though there were glances of concern when he raised his trench knife.

The game consisted of prompts to select a country. Jax moved the crosshairs around the map with a pair of knobs. Moxon simply jabbed the screen with the still-sheathed knife. “Here’s where you farmboys are from,” he said, tapping the middle of the North American continent. “Good old US of A. Now part of the  Pan-Atlantic Union, of course. The closest thing there is to a capitol is down here; Mexico City. Chances are your parents left through the Merida spaceport here.” He tapped the Yucatan Peninsula to the east.

Jax moved the crosshairs to the islands of England across the Atlantic. “Aren’t they in the Union?” Jason said.

“Actually, no,” Moxon said. Jax nodded. “You could say they’re a member in all but name, but officially, they’re a neutral state. They backed out because of Ireland, among other things.” He tapped the island to the west. “They did join the Union, free and clear, but the damage was done.”

They went through France and more Union countries on the continent, then the central states of Deutschland. Moxon nodded toward the captain. “Deutschland tried to get it all in the Last War,” he said. “You know how that turned out. After the Great Peace, all the armies that fought against them withdrew on the condition that they would remain neutral in a war between the other powers. Now, it’s a matter of pride that they don’t have an army. Of course, if they ever need one, there will already be another Great War going.”

He traced the vast territory of the Federation, stretching from Slovakia to Upper Korea, plus satellites as far-flung as Cuba and Lower East Indochina. “The Federation was the Soviet Union, of course,” he said. “After the Reforms, they became the Trans-Eurasian Federation of Socialist Republics. Their Republics got a choice between staying with equal representation in the Party or becoming satellite states, and the satellites were allowed to stay or agree to neutrality. Most of them stayed.”

He jabbed at New Edo and Shen and the allied lands of Lower Korea and Upper East Indochina. “Then, of course, there’s the Alliance of Heaven, really, that’s their name,” he said. “Right before the end of the War, the Emperor of Old Tokyo made a peace treaty with the Leader of the Ruling Party of Shenzhou. Only back then, the Party wasn’t ruling anything, except the lands on the border with Russka. The Emperor said it was atonement for the wrongs of the war. It was really just lighting a fire in the attic while they ran out the back door. The damnedest thing was, they followed through with it.”

They came back to Dalmatia, which drew a chuckle from Moxon. “Dalmatia exists because the Hrvatskis took the wrong side in the Last War,” he said. “When the Jugoslav Union reformed, the southern part was carved out as a new Republic.” He traced an erratic line across the peninsula. “The Adriatic Federation bit was aspirational. They hoped they could get Greece, even Italy. All they got was Albania and Romania. The rest mostly went to the Alignment.” He outlined a swath of territory that went from Greece through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, plus the outliers of Siam and Israel.

The officer waved vaguely at the converging island chains of Indo-Malaya. “The Indo-Malay Federation was another start-up that didn’t get anywhere, though they at least got a lot of nothing to show for it. It’s a whole bunch of little islands full of people who speak almost the same language, pray to practically the same gods and all hate each other. No offense.” He looked in the direction of Aisi. “They finally got to act important when somebody convinced them to stick their noses in West Indochina.” He jabbed at a comma-like swath on the inner edge of the eastern peninsula.

He pointed to the swath between Iran and Siam that was Greater Hindustan, and the belt of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa across the oceans to the south. “This is the Indo-Oceanian Federation,” he said. “It’s the other reason England didn’t get into the Union. There was a deal to let the colonies in the Subcontinent go their own way, and straight to Hell for all anyone cared. But England convinced the non-Hindu provinces to accept peacekeepers from the other colonies, which was how the Federation started. I spent a lot of time there. In the Second Intervention, I saved a temple of the Jains in Karachi. The priests made me a Brahmin.”

Jax spoke up. “Wait a minute,” he said, “I know that one. It was 27 years ago. How the Hell old are you?”

Moxon turned his head and smiled. “How old do I look?” Jax said no more.

Moxon leaned back. “So that’s good old Gaia,” he said. “It’s a nice enough place, really. We have world peace, peace enough anyway. That beats the alternative. Just in case, we have the UN and the Strato-Corps. You could say we’re the world’s fire department, putting out little fires before they get big. You know, there was a time I did that, too.” As he spoke, he drove the blade through a partition.

As the game wound down, Donald happily took over the console. He started a game called Interceptor that was clearly intended to simulate a missile exchange. Each incoming projectile was represented by a curving line that could be blocked with another. The trick was that  there was a lag between the lines on the screen and the input from the controls that grew as the game went on. Alek joined in, laughing as she stopped one attack after another and drove her own offensive home. In the midst of it, Jason and Anastasia exchanged glances. They both made their way to the rear, where the ludicrous prefabricated bathroom filled the rear escape pod. She stretched out in the tub. He sat on top of the lowered lid of the toilet.  She said without turning, “It was your fault, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Jason said. There was already a note of wounded innocence in his voice.

“I had to marry Don,” Anastasia said. “After what happened with Vasily and Jackie, I got called in to see the captain. He laid out everything. Sure, it was for what I did, and maybe I deserved it. But it was still because of you and the little supergenius!”

“I don’t understand,” Jason said, quite honestly. “We didn’t do anything wrong, at least by what goes back home. Even what you did wouldn’t be a big deal. What does Command on Gaia care?”

Anastasia started to snarl, but moderated into a sigh. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “Remember those silly old shows that always had a man and woman in separate beds even if they were supposed to be married? The Federation State networks still won’t show a man and woman in one bed unless it’s designated for `health and education’. Or did you notice all the times they talk about how the Union outgrew segregation? There are Union stations that wouldn’t air interviews with Jill Lightower without hiding that she’s a morena. Now just try to imagine what it’s like dealing with sponsors in Outer Hindustan and the Arab League. So can you guess the one thing that’s got everyone up in arms? That Shen reporter filmed you and Alek in bed with her top off, while your partition was wide open!”

“What?” Jason said. “We always… wait… oh. Jax must have forgotten about it. Well, what are they going to do about it? The ship has sailed, literally.”

“They can send us home,” Anastasia said. “All of us. That’s why we aren’t going full speed. Of course, the official explanation is that it lets a rescue ship meet up with us if we had an accident or a medical emergency. But as far as Gaia Command is concerned, we aren’t just an unproven experiment, we’re a liability. When they see us living life our own way, they don’t want to see people who don’t know what the rules are supposed to be. They see superhumans who think we’re too good for their morality. If we won’t follow their rules, who’s to say we won’t stop following their orders? They wouldn’t send back the actual supergenius, oh no, they need her. They might let you stay if it kept her happy. But the rest of us… totally replaceable.”

She sighed for real. “The captain told me, it is essential to the program that the public sees a Martian in a stable domestic relationship,” she said. “He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to.”

Jason shook his head. “No way,” he said. “That’s not you. They might as well tell a full-blooded wolf to sit, roll over and fetch.”

Anastasia sighed again. This time, she smiled. “I had thought about it, really,” she said. “Even a woman like me thinks about settling down sooner or later. I was never getting there with Jackie. I should have cut Vasily off already. But Donald… I suppose he could have gotten here on his own eventually. Probably would have. He’s that kind of person.”

“Does he know?” Jason asked pointedly.

“Of course,” Ana said. “Well, he knows enough. He still thinks that makes him Number One, at everything. That’s why he treats me the way he does. It’s fine, really. Trying to change him wouldn’t be any better than trying to change me. If anybody could dig deep enough to do it, I wouldn’t want what would be left.”

She turned her head to meet Jason’s steady gaze. “Damn,” he said. “You’re in love, aren’t you?”

“Well, you’re an idiot,” she said, without hiding a blush. They were still sitting in silence when there came a banging at the door.

“Jason!” Alek said. “I know you’re in there! Ana, I know you’re in there too! Are you cheating with my fiancée?”

Jason and Anastasia looked at each other. “No,” Ana said with a lilting accent.

There was a moment of silence. “Well, why not?” Jason got up to leave.

Table of contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!

Part 8: The launch!

Part 9: The girl talk!

Part 10: The domestic disturbance!!!

Part 11: The Space Nazis!!!