Something Better Than Man: The Strange Humanism of Planet of the Apes

Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

These words are from the sacred scrolls of the apes, the intelligent and civilized simians who rule the earth in the distant future prophesied by the 1968 film Planet of the Apes. The passage is striking as a stern condemnation of humanity and its perpetually evil ways. In unmistakably religious tones, it paints "the beast Man" as irredeemably wicked and perverse; the only way to deal with him is, in essence, to avoid him at all costs. 


Of course, in reality, these words were penned by human beings, who are their own harshest critics, and there is no way we can avoid ourselves. As Kant said, "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." This is a sobering perspective that would ultimately give the lie to all dreams of human progress, for we can never escape what we are, and what we are includes all of the darkness within. According to the tragic vision of human nature that has traditionally dominated Western thought, that darkness can never be eradicated by social or political action nor by the application of science and technology (at least not without, as has often been argued, taking away something fundamental from our very humanity, such as free will). 

When I was a boy, Planet of the Apes was one of my favorite movies. Back then, of course, I had little to no understanding of the film's themes; I just enjoyed it, as I did many another science fiction movie, as a spectacle of strangeness and wonder (which it very much is). I read the novel it was based on (by the French author Pierre Boulle) just once, when I was in about the second grade, but I still remember it vividly. The book differs from the movie in several significant ways, and, although it is probably, as might be expected, a more sophisticated work than the movie, I believe that the film approaches the theme of the worth of humanity in its own distinctive way, and, at least by Hollywood standards, with a fair degree of subtlety and poignance.

One of the sections of Boulle's book that has especially haunted me is an extended scene involving ape scientists who are performing psychological experiments on the bestial humans of their planet. The apes have figured out how, by way of hypnotic regression, to get the erstwhile dumb, brute human beings to speak—not in their own voices, however, but in the voices of their long-dead forebears—and thereby to elicit a series of narratives, culled from the depths of the humans' unconscious ancestral memory, about the gradual eclipsing of the former human civilization by the apes. This scene is not only wondrously eerie, because of the mechanism of having people who are long dead speak through their living, not to mention mute and unintelligent, descendants (a feat of channeling that is accomplished by scientific means!); it is also haunting because of the stories that are told, and the lost history that is revealed, by the voices of the ancient humans.

Unlike the movie series, which portrayed the apes' conquest and the humans' downfall as happening rather suddenly and dramatically, the parallel process in the novel is revealed to have been much more gradual and mysterious. For whatever reason, the humans are undergoing a process of devolution while the apes are rapidly evolving their capabilities of thought and language. Eventually the apes begin to display increasingly defiant and ominous behavior toward their human masters, who are simultaneously less and less able to function to their full human capacities. Eventually, the apes are the masters, the humans their servants. When shown in this way (a manner which is, to be sure, better suited to a novel than a Hollywood movie), the ascent of the apes and corresponding descent of humanity become much more chilling and somehow more believable. 

Boulle's novel has been described as a sort of space age variation of Gulliver's Travels, and, like Swift's classic novel, uses its fantastical setting and situation to satirize the human race. It can justly be said that, in some sense at least, both novels are misanthropic. The main point of each is not to provide mere escapist fantasy adventure, but to hold the human race up to ridicule and mockery, to deflate our pretensions and vain hopes, to condemn our flaws and failings, and to keep us humble. The movie does not eschew satire, but it often expresses it much more broadly, one might even say in a dumbed down way: for instance, when the three apes visually enact the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" motif; the "human see, human do" joke; etc. Of course, so much is to be expected in a major Hollywood motion picture. However, the movie does something else with Boulle's premise, something that might at first glance appear to be a mere concession to popular taste and sentiment, but which is actually quite nuanced, moving, and profound. The film almost seems to reverse the polarity of Boulle's novel and thereby turn Planet of the Apes from a misanthropic satire into a tragic and ultimately deeply humanistic morality play. 

*** 

Colonel George Taylor (Charlton Heston) is the protagonist in this drama, the U.S. astronaut who finds himself on a planet where intelligent apes rule and humans are mere beasts. Taylor is himself a misanthrope, but the bizarre situation in which he finds himself ends up turning him into an unlikely defender and advocate of the human race. It is this complex and ambiguous attitude toward humanity (particularly as exemplified by Taylor) that gives the film its distinctive philosophical cast and a large part of its dramatic power. 

At the beginning of the picture, we see Taylor aboard his spaceship, recording his final thoughts before entering hibernation on the far voyage across interstellar space. He says: 

This much is probably true - the men who sent us on this journey are long since dead and gone. You who are reading me now are a different breed - I hope a better one. I leave the 20th century with no regrets. ... Tell me, though. Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbor's children starving?

Later, after the astronauts have arrived on the titular planet (but before they have discovered the nature of its civilization), Taylor says to one of his more idealistic companions: "I'm a seeker too. But my dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man. Has to be." 

This sardonic statement concisely expresses Taylor's misanthropy, a rebuttal to the humanistic notion that man is the pinnacle of creation. It recalls Nietzsche's statement in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, with regard to his concept of the Übermensch (Overman or Superman), that "Man is something to be surpassed." However, as with Nietzsche, Taylor's apparent antihumanism is conjoined with a strange sort of idealism—the longing for a being that is better than man, that succeeds where humanity fails. While Nietzsche saw this being, the Overman, realized in the future history of human evolution, Taylor seems to believe that such a superior being must already exist somewhere in the universe. His statement implies a belief that the universe would be mysteriously incomplete, not to mention disappointingly lacking, if in fact humanity proved to be the highest and most advanced creature it had produced, considering all that humanity leaves to be desired. 

Shortly after their arrival in this strange new world, the astronauts stumble upon the seemingly Edenic existence of the primitive humans who dwell in the planet's forests. They are unimpressed by their uncivilized human counterparts. Taylor quips, "If this is the best they've got around here, in six months we'll be running this planet." 

Of course, Taylor goes on to discover a civilization on the new planet—one that is certainly different from man, but not necessarily better. To his shock, this civilization consists of apes. Boulle's device of casting apes as intelligent and humans as beasts is in itself a bitterly antihumanist conceit, upending as it does the entire notion that humanity is inherently superior to other animals. In the context of humanity's age-old pride of place in the cosmos, this inversion feels to us both humiliating and perverse. To think! That the "monkeys" would be our masters! That we would be their pets, their zoo animals, and their unwilling scientific research subjects! 

And yet, this outrage to human pride is, incomprehensibly, the actual state of affairs on the planet of the apes. Almost immediately on the heels of this bewildering and disturbing discovery, Taylor is wounded by gunshot and captured by the apes, then brought into captivity. To make matters even worse, due to his injury he cannot speak and therefore cannot prove to his ape captors that he is in fact an intelligent and articulate being. He must endure being treated in the inhumane and undignified way in which we ourselves often treat animals, and is unable even to protest. 

Eventually Taylor recovers his voice (in one of the film's most memorable moments: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"), and comes to be regarded as a freak of nature by the apes. Ironically, his cause is not helped by the fact that the apes, as exemplified by the learned orangutan Dr. Zaius, seem to share Taylor's own misanthropy: "You are right, I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself." 

What did Taylor expect? That the apes would regard humankind much more favorably than he himself does? It is when he faces antihumanist attitudes from intelligent nonhumans that Taylor's heart begins, almost of necessity, to change. In this "upside down" world, he finds himself the lone voice capable of defending what our humanists once called the Dignity of Man against the withering contempt of the apes who believe themselves infinitely superior to us. The fact that the apes regard humankind as essentially worthless causes Taylor to appreciate and to defend what worth we may possess in spite of it all. 

He accomplishes this, at times, by less than noble means. After making a journey to the wasteland known as the Forbidden Zone, Taylor ties up Dr. Zaius in order to facilitate his own escape. The ape most sympathetic to Taylor, the female chimpanzee Dr. Zira, cries out, "Taylor! Don't treat him that way!" 

Taylor: Why not?

 Zira: It's humiliating!

 Taylor: The way you humiliated me? All of you? You led me around on a leash!

 Cornelius: That was different. We thought you were inferior.

 Taylor: Now you know better.

But the film is far from being a simplistic cheerleader for humanity. Its pessimistic vision does not champion the liberal Enlightenment faith in human progress—a faith which has been seen by some historians as being based to a large degree on assumptions inherited from Christianity. Instead, Planet of the Apes echoes another, much less sanguine heritage of the West's Christian tradition: the concepts of original sin and the Fall of Man. At one point Zaius remarks: "The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago." 

There is no need here to describe the film's ending, one of the most iconic scenes in movie history, and I would not spoil it for those who have not seen it. Because of its familiarity, it is difficult for most of us to register the full shock of it, but the final visual revelation, its unforgettable image of ultimate ruin and loss, remains powerful and chilling. It is commonplace to make fun of the dramatic final lines shouted by a distraught Charlton Heston, but in the context of the picture, seeing not Heston but a broken Col. Taylor, this utterance is nothing less than deeply tragic. They are words of heartrending despair, spoken by a shattered, uncomprehending, and, in the moment, barely articulate human being: 

You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell! 

The film's tragedy lies in the fact that the human race, by its actions, has justified the apes'—and Taylor's—misanthropy. They have betrayed Taylor's would-be defense of humanity and proven themselves worthy of the apes' condemnation and derision. And yet, as with all true tragedy, humankind is shown to be noble even in its weakness and its downfall—even in its moral failings. It is tragic precisely because something very great has been lost; it grieves us to know that we failed so completely, so terribly, because we know we could have done better. In our tragic fall, we see not only our failure but our nobility and our promise. 

*** 

When I watched Planet of the Apes as a child, as I said, I simply enjoyed the imaginative wonder of it. Even after many repeat viewings, it remains just as strange a film to me today. It is strange, however, not only in the same fantastical ways I appreciated as a boy, but also now in new ways that are related to its theme. From my distant but still remarkably clear memory of the novel, I would say that the book seems to leave us simply with the bleakly pessimistic impression that the human race is not all that important in the grand scheme of things—that we may (and ultimately will) be easily and carelessly superseded by other species. It is a message befitting the book's bitterly satiric misanthropy. 

In the film, however, I sense a more complex, more tantalizing vision. Taylor may be a misanthrope, but he is, in his own words, a seeker. He seeks something better than man. He hardly finds it on the planet of the apes, for the apes' society exhibits many of the same follies and foibles as our own—it is, in fact, a mirror of our own. The shifting, silently mesmerizing cosmic lights seen at the beginning of the picture and the sleekly futuristic spaceship in which the astronauts traverse the stars suggest the wonder and mystery of the cosmos and the hopefulness and courage of human exploration, expectations which are profoundly disappointed by the desolate and forbidding landscape of the world upon which the astronauts arrive and by Taylor's harrowing and dehumanizing escapades among the hostile ape society. This is a bold exploratory reach for the stars that proves entirely futile and demoralizing. It is an expedition of adventurous discovery that ends in total waste and utter defeat. Zaius's response to Taylor's desire to venture further into the Forbidden Zone may very well apply to the astronauts' original mission to explore the unknown universe: 

Taylor: There's got to be an answer.

 Zaius: Don't look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find. 

It is a statement that seems to underscore the inherent risk involved in any type of exploration or discovery, any quest for knowledge. If we seek truth, we just may find it—whether we like it or not. We may discover that the world is not as welcoming to us as we had thought, that the universe is indifferent to our highest human aspirations and ideals. We may discover deeply unhappy truths about ourselves. 

At the end, Taylor's quest—his search for "something better than man"—remains unfulfilled. Stranded on the planet of the apes, he has no hope of ever finding what he seeks, his mission a dismal failure, leaving him alone in the universe, in possession only of the most bleak and bitter of truths. Perhaps he has found wisdom. But at such cost. 

And yet, I remain haunted by Taylor's words, by his almost spiritual quest (indeed, as he has no evidence of any such superior creature existing in the universe, it can only be a matter of faith that such a being might in fact exist; and it may also be considered spiritual in the sense that it is an aspiration or desire of his soul). He may not have found the object of his vision, but we are left with the tantalizing possibility raised by the vision itself—what if, somewhere out there, there really is something better than us? What if the universe really has produced a creature more noble and pure—everything that we aspire to be, but never seem able to become? To me, there is a profound sense of longing and emptiness at the heart of the picture. The desolation of the landscape stands as symbol of that unfulfilled cosmic yearning, while the shimmering silence of the stars beckons mysteriously toward the unknown object of that longing. 

*** 

It is interesting that Planet of the Apes was released the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey. The latter picture, of course, through its music, makes overt reference to Nietzsche's Overman myth as told by the prophet Zarathustra, and it, too, is a film that expresses sublime cosmic yearnings. 2001 is a more optimistic film than Planet of the Apes, but both films are informed by the idea that "man is something to be surpassed". This is, at first glance, a seemingly antihuman sentiment that nevertheless often finds expression in a desire for transcendence and transfiguration. It is not so much the notion that humanity is worthless as it is the idea that we were meant to be, or at least are capable of becoming, something more—something better than man. Ultimately, then, it is perhaps closer to being a profoundly humanistic conviction, a faith in what the philosophers have called our last end—our final potential and possibility, the true fulfillment of our being that we have not actually witnessed in empirical reality. Humanity has always felt this longing, as seen throughout the vast history of its religions, and it is a desire that has not vanished in our modern secular age. All dreams of progress are based upon it. 

For the time being, though, we are left with ourselves as we are. Both religious and secular faith in the perfection of humanity must wait for the future to see their fulfillment. Until that day comes, if it may and however it may, we must continue to live with our crooked timber, and we must never give up the ongoing, inevitably imperfect attempt to treat each other with—as we so poignantly call it—humanity. 

Yes, Col. Taylor. I'm afraid this is the best we've got. 

Incredible! Unbelievable! Told The Untamed Way!: Re-Calculating "Robot Monster" as 20th Century Art

I grew up watching a local Tampa Saturday afternoon TV show called Creature Feature that played "horrible old movies" hosted by a friendly and jovial (if rather spooky) old gentleman named "Dr. Paul Bearer". Science fiction, primarily from the 1950s and 1960s, much of it of questionable artistic quality and cultural value, formed a major component of my intellectual and aesthetic diet as a young boy.

My love for these ancient and often technically terrible science fiction and horror epics has not only survived but continued to thrive in my adult life. I have watched so many of the genre films of this time period that I feel like a veritable expert on the subject. To many people, this may seem at best an innocent waste of time, or perhaps a guilty pleasure.

I myself long considered it such, not being able fully to justify to my adult self, with my interest in and attraction to the high culture of poetry, classical music, and art history, why these trashy pictures retained such a strong hold on my heart and mind. I would sometimes half-jokingly explain to friends that sometimes I needed to rest my brain.

Robot Monster is widely considered one of the worst films ever created by human beings since the art of the cinema began. You may have never heard of it, but among film buffs, and especially fans of sci-fi, it has the dubious distinction of vying with Ed Wood's anti-masterpiece Plan 9 from Outer Space for the title of "The Worst Film of All Time". According to legend (which is probably just that), director Phil Tucker attempted suicide after the negative reaction to the picture upon its release in the summer of 1953.

The judgment is understandable. To the uninitiated (and even to most "fans" who enjoy the movie more as a spectacular failure to laugh at, MST3K-style, than as something to be sincerely appreciated and enjoyed), the movie is a total mess, an evidently zero-budget effort with equally nonexistent production values, laughable special effects, props, sets, and costumes (including the infamous alien costume consisting of a diving helmet and a gorilla suit), terrible acting and dialogue, and a completely nonsensical narrative.

My aim here is not to overlook or deny any of Robot Monster's abysmal technical and artistic qualities. These are part of its charm, indeed the whole of whatever charm it might possess for most people who devote 66 minutes of their life that they can never get back to witnessing this belief-challenging spectacle.

But I do believe, with Robot Monster as with many other of the much-maligned "B" movies that were churned out by Hollywood in the mid-20th century, that there is more going on here than simply a pathetic exercise in incredibly inept and trashy moviemaking—entertaining (or not) as that trash might be.

*    *    *

What began to change my perspective on Robot Monster (and, by extension, B-movies in general) was the review of the movie by Bruce Eder at the website AllMovie. Startlingly to my mind, Eder saw the movie as something other than an unmitigated cinematic disaster, and helped me to begin to appreciate and understand aspects of the film that give it value beyond serving as a cautionary tale about how not to make a motion picture.

The crux of Eder's analysis is this: "Essential in appreciating what director/producer Phil Tucker was trying to do with Robot Monster—and trying to do with a total budget of $16,000 and four days of shooting time—is to keep in mind that the main body of the movie consists of an eight-year-old boy's nightmare." With that in mind, the utter bizarreness of the film, the absurd, illogical features of the narrative, and even the cheapness of the production all come to be seen in a different light:

The way that the action unfolds, suddenly and with huge leaps in logic and thought, are seen the way a child sees the world. The threadbare sets, which are missing what we know to be vital pieces, also resemble the settings of dreams. [...] The whole notion of a brave young boy facing down a space invader hangs together beautifully once one accepts the setting as a dream (or nightmare).

According to Eder, Robot Monster re-creates the nature of children's dreams and nightmares more accurately than do many other fantasy films that address the subject, and thereby can actually be seen as, in its own strange way, an accomplished work of art, especially considering the production's severe limitations of money and time.

*    *    *

This is not to argue that Phil Tucker was an artistic genius, or that Robot Monster is a cinematic masterpiece. It is only to say that, if one views the film with the proper perspective (and is generously willing to forgive its abundant technical flaws), it is more than just trash. Understanding Robot Monster as the nightmare of an imaginative young boy who is obsessed with science fiction and space aliens, it becomes, in fact, a respectable if highly imperfect work of art, and even, as Eder describes it, "a somewhat enchanting film". That may not sound like much, but it is a far cry from "the worst film of all time".

One of the most giggle-inducing features of Robot Monster is the dialogue. The screenplay was written by Wyott Ordung, another 1950s B-movie practitioner. Many of the lines are rightfully regarded as just plain ridiculous, but there is a fine line between the ridiculous and the sublime. The absurd can even be philosophical, as in the absurdist comedy of, for instance, Monty Python's Flying Circus or Seinfeld.

In the case of both Tucker and Ordung, who, judging by their entire career output, seem to be middling talents at best in the field of motion pictures, one is cautious to ascribe too much artistic or creative genius to their work in Robot Monster. But, as poet Kenneth Rexroth explains in his excellent article on Literature for Encyclopaedia Britannica, "The nature of artistic merit is less easy to define than to recognize. The writer need not even pursue it to attain it." Rexroth repeatedly alludes to the fact that artistic quality in a work, though usually intentional on the part of the artist, may sometimes be produced by "accident"—that is to say, without the artist's intention.

So, even if Wyott Ordung did not mean to produce ingenious absurdist dialogue for Robot Monster, he marvelously succeeded. Though it also contains many lines that are simply bad, Ordung's script is a treasure house of strikingly surreal utterances that read like some kind of brilliantly bizarre Dadaist play:

I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot!

I will re-calculate. Your deaths will be indescribable.

Earth Ro-Man, you violate the laws of plans. To think for yourself is to be like the hu-man.

Hu-mans, listen to me. Due to an error in calculation, there are still a few of you left.

Johnny: I think you are just a big bully, picking on those smaller than you are! 

Ro-Man: Now I will kill you.

*    *    *

These lines also point to one of the major themes of Robot Monster (yes, the movie has themes): the survival of humanity, not just of physical humanity against (atomic) destruction, but of spiritual humanity against the dehumanizing effects of hyper-rationalization.

The premise of the film (i.e., of Johnny's nightmare vision) is that a race of super-advanced space aliens has conquered the earth, wiping out almost all of its inhabitants except for one family, which it somehow missed. These aliens, the "Ro-Mans" (as in Robot Man), are entirely guided by cold, calculating mathematical, logical, and scientific reasoning, with no room for human emotions and desires such as love and compassion.

The majority of the film's running time details the beleaguered family's attempts to survive in their new post-apocalyptic world and to escape, hide from, and negotiate with the Ro-Man who has come to earth as a sort of advance scout for his mechanistic and merciless race. In so doing, they run up against conflicts between physical survival and maintaining their human dignity, and the subject of love is cast into stark relief—not only by the budding romance and marriage (an expression of stubborn hope in the midst of such devastation) of the boy's older sister and a young male scientist who has survived with them, but also, and perhaps even more poignantly, by the Ro-Man's attraction to the young woman and his confused awakening to emotions of love and desire.

The Ro-Man's feelings and the desires they awaken in him bring him into conflict with his leader, the Great Guidance (who is similar in appearance and who communicates with his Earth-based underling via one of the ubiquitous viewscreens that populate 1950s sci-fi films). After the "Great One" has told Ro-Man that "to think for yourself is to be like the hu-man", Ro-Man replies: "Yes! To be like the hu-man! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?"

The Great One answers, "You are an extension of the Ro-Man, and a Ro-Man you will remain." Ro-Man, rather than conquering the inferior "hu-mans", wants to become one of them. He wants to become a free individual, not "an extension of the Ro-Man". In this we can also see a theme common to 50s sci-fi horror films, though only subtly brought out in this one: the fear of assimilation by Soviet-style collectivism.

Most of the picture, however, seems not so concerned with communist paranoia as with the perennial anxiety (expressed in art at least since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein) of the loss of humanity to "science"—in this case, to the dehumanizing effects of technological and rational control that would attempt to subjugate and colonize all areas of human life and experience. The same concerns may have been more eloquently and powerfully expressed elsewhere, but Robot Monster can be seen as a strangely touching and colorfully imagined statement of not only the precious worth but also the spirited resistance and ultimate survival of the human against the inhumane.

*    *    *

I would not recommend that everyone should watch Robot Monster, and would certainly not make the claim that it is one of the most important works of art of the 20^th century. But I will assert that this much-ridiculed picture is far more worthwhile, and far more accomplished, than its reputation would suggest.

In using the frame of a child's dream fantasy to conjure an image of a lone family struggling to survive in a devastated world—and not only to survive, but to defend humanity, i.e., that which makes us human, against obliteration by the forces of a cold, calculating logic that is devoid of unscientific but eminently human qualities such as empathy and love—Robot Monster proves itself to be not entirely deserving of the descriptor "trash".

In fact, I would argue that, in its own ridiculous, childlike way, Robot Monster is a masterful expression of flawed, imperfect humanity in defiance of rigid and oppressive rationalism and control. Its very form—both the setting of the narrative within a highly imaginative child's dream and the many technical shortcomings of the film's production—is actually, whether intentional or not, a perfect medium for the movie's message. What better way, after all, to defy the juggernaut of a humanity-denying perfectionism than with one of the most amazingly imperfect works of art ever made by man? What better way to counter the steamroller of uncaring, merciless "calculation" than by way of a child's deliriously irrational and freely imaginative dream—a dream that is nevertheless illuminated and made sensible by love and hope?

It is true that Phil Tucker most likely did not set out to create an important work of art when he made Robot Monster. Like most science fiction movies of the era, Robot Monster was no doubt intended as entertainment, especially for the kids who attended Saturday matinees. It is certain that many of the children who sat in the theater and viewed this picture were indeed delighted and thrilled by it. My 3-year-old daughter enjoys watching it now. But, regardless of the intent, and despite its miserable reputation, the film does rise above the level of "mere" kiddie entertainment and, I think, is worthy of serious enjoyment (as well as of the more giggly kind).


Whatever greatness Robot Monster possesses may have been an accident. But what a wonderful accident it was. Despite the technical disasters; despite the artistic failures; despite a poverty of resources and time—in fact, partly because of these things—Robot Monster stands as a small, strange triumph of humanity, of its daring imagination and undaunted spirit, of its deeply flawed but noble stuff, against those forces that would seek to repress and to eliminate human imperfections. A Ro-Man, equipped with expansive budget and technical wizardry, and guided by the inexorable logic of "calculation", never could have made this movie. Robot Monster is, and always will remain, a testament to the gloriously, imperfectly human.

Remembering Ray

Ray Bradbury, long known as "the world's greatest living science fiction writer", has left this world at the age of 91. The news of his passing bears a particular poignance for me, as his tremendous literary talents had exerted an incalculable influence on my imagination starting at the age of 7, and ever since he has maintained a consistent place among my favorite and most esteemed authors.

I was first introduced to Ray Bradbury in the fall of 1978, when my father showed me the Heritage Book Club edition of The Martian Chronicles. The magical illustrations by Joseph Mugnaini certainly helped to stoke my fascination, but above all it was Bradbury's words and stories and the strange, wondrous worlds they conjured up that captured my young mind, and that played a large part in inspiring me to become a writer.

Throughout my adolescence and adult life I read many more stories by Bradbury, in addition to revisiting The Martian Chronicles. I came to feel that the well-intended epithet "world's greatest living science fiction writer" did not in fact do him the greatest service. Even though Mr. Bradbury was perhaps more responsible than anyone else both for popularizing science fiction (pushing it beyond the domain of a few SF nerds) and also for making it respectable to devotees of "serious" literary fiction--both feats due to his deeply humane and poetic style that dealt with real human issues and feelings rather than technical details--he was not exclusively, nor even primarily, a science fiction writer. He preferred to think of himself as a fantasist, but in reality his work spans a wide range of genres and subject matters.

In addition to stories about the exploration and colonization of Mars, depicting crassly materialistic Earth people's encounters with a dying race of noble Martians, and other outer space and futuristic tales, Bradbury also wrote a large number of gothic tales (e.g., the stories collected in Dark Carnival and The October Country, as well as the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes), nostalgic and wondrous stories inspired by his childhood in 1920s Illinois (especially Dandelion Wine), stories set in Mexico, and a number of other stories that can only be described as realistic fiction, about ordinary people in the real world. His stories are often punctuated by bitterly ironic humor but also by bittersweet longing, and always by a marvelous sense of wonder at the endlessly amazing, mysterious, and miraculous universe in which we find ourselves.

Most readers agree that Bradbury's greatest and most significant work is his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, named for the temperature at which book paper burns. Although it is widely known as a dystopian work decrying the evils of censorship, I realized upon reading it for the first time that it is more about a society which has become shallow, a world in which the masses lead superficial lives distracted by electronic entertainments and hectic lifestyles. Book burning is almost an afterthought, since very few people in this society bother to read anymore anyway. Nevertheless, the main character, Montag, whose job as a "fireman" is to go around destroying the remaining illegal stashes of books, discovers the existence of an underground subculture made up of people who not only read books, but also take the time to have real, meaningful conversations and to enjoy the simple beauties of the natural world. The ending of Francois Truffaut's 1966 film version makes the ending of Bradbury's novel especially moving when it shows a succession of book lovers, hiding away in the woods, reciting great works of literature that they have committed to memory, in an inspiring and magnificent effort to preserve these cultural treasures for future generations. In the process, each one takes on the identity of the book he/she has memorized... "I am Moby Dick", "I am Great Expectations", etc. It is enough to make any bibliophile choke up.

Many film and television adaptations have been produced of Bradbury's works, but it has become almost a truism to say that it is impossible to capture the full magic of his writing on screen. You have to read his books to really get it. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, paid Bradbury a high compliment by calling him "a poet". Although Bradbury has written actual verse poems, Huxley no doubt meant this to refer to Bradbury's writing as a whole, which of course has been dominated by fiction. Many others have noted and appreciated the poetic style of Bradbury's writing--some dismissing his style as overly florid, while his unnumbered fans admire the evocative beauty and richness and lyricism of his distinctive language. In the larger sense of the term, Bradbury was indeed a poet, a writer of immense imagination and vision, who easily and naturally perceived the magic and wonder of the world we live in and who was blessed with an incredible talent for communicating that vision to the rest of us. So, while it is no insult to call him a science fiction writer (a genre that he, after all, helped to make respectable), it is important to note that he is far more than that.

Or perhaps, since one adjective in the epithet cited at the top of this post no longer applies, perhaps we can now just call him "the world's greatest science fiction writer".

*    *    *    *

So long, Ray, and thank you for sharing with us your wonderful talent and imagination, in themselves miracles as amazing as anything you told us about in your marvelous tales. To paraphrase a line from the Chronicles: "Your bibliography is beautifully complete."

Raymond Douglas Bradbury

American author

1920 - 2012

Ode to the B-Movie: or, Why Ed Wood is a better director than James Cameron

Science fiction films, and particularly those in the low-budget subgenre known as B-movies, have a hard time finding respect. At least since Star Wars (1977), science fiction movies have in some sense become "cool", like the scrawny, awkward nerd who transformed into a handsome, musclebound star athlete (who still wears glasses when he is not on the field). But the old sci-fi B-movies of the 50's and 60's still garner "bomb" ratings from all self-respecting film critics and serve as little more than fodder for mockery and laughter for most viewers.

But is all this derision really fair? After all, when Leonard Maltin gives Citizen Kane a (quite justly deserved) 4-star rating and Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s anti-masterpiece Plan 9 from Outer Space a "bomb" (0 stars), one must ask if it even makes sense to judge these two pictures by the same set of cinematic or artistic standards. Was Ed Wood even attempting to create the same type of work as Orson Welles? Actually, if one goes by Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood, it would seem that the answer is perhaps yes, that Wood might just have been deluded enough to believe that he was creating high art in the fashion of his hero. Or perhaps he was self-aware enough to realize that he and Mr. Welles were operating not so much in different leagues as in different spheres of film art.

The primary reason, it seems to me, that B-movies get the short shrift they do is their poor technique. It's true that great art usually requires great technical skill to pull off successfully and effectively, but technical skill alone is not sufficient. In fact, enormous budgets and the most sophisticated special effects can often produce rubbish that some film buffs may find far less worthwhile and interesting than many of the cheaply and quickly made B-movies tossed out by the likes of Wood, Roger Corman, and many others whose names are less known.

Witness James Cameron, the director of such blockbusters as Titanic and Avatar, two of the most expensive and most commercially successful movies of all time. Such bloated, grandiose, and self-important pictures, like many others that are churned out by the modern Hollywood machine, seem to be attempting to reach not only for box office success but also some level of artistic seriousness which they sorely lack. Long on special effects and spectacle, short on imagination and vision, today's big budget spectacles are the true bombs. James Cameron perhaps likes to think of himself as a serious film director, but he is actually a glorified purveyor of kitsch.

What many critics and viewers do not seem to understand about B-movies is that they cannot be judged by the same standards--at least not the same technical standards--as big-budget pictures. Many of their technical flaws are the result of low, in many cases practically nonexistent, budgets. And there is no wrong in giggling when, for instance, you can see the strings holding up the spaceship. But the technical flaws alone do not necessarily make these films any less effective in accomplishing what they set out to accomplish. B-movies vary widely in terms of their worth and interest, but what makes them successful are the same non-technical qualities that make any film successful: a good story, entertainment value, and above all, especially in the genre of science fiction: imagination and wonder.

I have watched countless science fiction movies from the 50's and 60's in my day, ranging from venerable classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, and 2001: A Space Odyssey to bottom-of-the-barrel fare like Robot Monster, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and of course Plan 9 from Outer Space. What I can say about the sci-fi films of this era is that their value as art and as entertainment--and not merely of the unintended comedy variety--has no direct correlation to their budgets. There is, however, a very close correlation to their writers', producers', and directors' imaginative visions, even if they were prevented by a lack of finances and/or a lack of technical competence from realizing these visions quite as smoothly or convincingly as a lot of bigger-budget pictures.

What is required above all in enjoying all that a good B-movie has to offer is a childlike sense of imagination, the type of pretend that allows the make-believe to be real despite the boring and irrelevant protestations of the rational and empirical mind, and an equally childlike sense of wonder, that ability to marvel at the world and its infinite possibilities, its strangeness and delight. The virtue of many a low-budget science fiction film is in that tingling sense of wonder or horror (often both simultaneously), and in that thrilling imaginative vision of the universe, that it is eminently capable of communicating to the child in all of us.