Space and Time Issue 121 (13 page)

“He reminds me of my son,” Dana said. She reached out for the child. “May I hold him?”

* * *

J. A. Bradley is an author of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, but his geekery knows no bounds. He lives in Central New Jersey with his wife and family, and too many computers. He won the annual Garden State Speculative Writers (GSSW) short story contest with
What Adam Said.
Find him online at jabradley.com.

STIRLING SILLIPHANT AND ’60s SF

by Daniel M. Kimmel

We’ve heard it many times: the director, actor or writer who claims their latest project isn’t “really” science fiction, it’s “about people.” Legendary screenwriter Stirling Silliphant was no different, yet along with working on the landmark television series “Route 66” and winning an Oscar for “In the Heat of the Night” he did three science fiction movies. One of them was the cheesy “The Swarm,” which was part of the cycle of ’70s disaster movies he helped create with “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno.” Two others bookend the 1960s and are worthy of reconsideration.

In the interests of full disclosure I should note that my friend and colleague Nat Segaloff has recently written
Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God
(Bear Manor Media), which is a fascinating look at one of the most successful screenwriters of the era. In an industry where the writer is often overlooked in our worship of stars and directors, it’s an important contribution to Hollywood history. For our purposes, though, it’s an excuse to revisit “Village of the Damned” (1960) and “Charly” (1968).

Silliphant adapted “Village” from John Wyndham’s 1957 novel
The Midwich Cuckoos
. The film is a taut 77 minute thriller in which one day everyone in an English village collapses unconscious. (We later find out this scene was replicated in several places around the world.) It is an eerie sequence in which we see not only cars and buses crashed to a halt, but postmen lying in the road, a telephone operator slumped at her switchboard, and similar shots of people fallen wherever they were. It’s similar to something Robert Wise would do a decade later in his film of “The Andromeda Strain.”

After several hours the people awaken as if nothing happened, yet two months later it’s clear something
did
happen: every fertile woman in the village is now pregnant. There is little thought given to how this was accomplished or how or why some alien force might do this. Instead we see tearful virgins insisting they can’t possibly be pregnant, and smoldering men who know they can’t possibly be the fathers. When the children are born they not only mature rapidly, but they look weirdly alike, all blonde and with unusual eyes that glow when they are upset. We discover the children can not only read minds—each other’s as well as the adults around them—but use mind control to cause those who cross them to suffer or die.

It’s a horrific “what if” situation and Silliphant, lacking any science fiction background, hewed closely to the mood and themes of Wyndham’s novel with the exception of moving the action to America. The film had been intended to be shot by MGM in California but, according to Silliphant, that was until the head of MGM, Robert H. O’Brien, read the script. O’Brien, a Catholic, was apparently deeply offended by the suggestion of alien virgin births, and the project was cancelled. It resurfaced as an MGM production in England where director Wolf Rilla and writer George Barclay attached their names to the script for doing little more than transposing the story back to England. Silliphant told Segaloff that if the Writer’s Guild—which arbitrates screen credits—had been stronger in those days with regard to overseas productions, he would have been given sole credit.

As it was, one of the most memorable elements of the film, besides the creepy kids, was how Professor Zellaby (George Sanders) finally defeats them. He meets with the children with a time bomb in his briefcase, but in order to prevent them learning of it he thinks of a brick wall. That image of the wall starts to crumble but lasts long enough for his scheme to reach its climactic conclusion. Silliphant said that device was all his own.

Viewed today, the film holds up amazingly well. In spite of being in black and white and with nearly all the violence taking place off-camera, it makes us wonder and be frightened by the notion of impregnation from the stars. By keeping the action strictly on Earth it raises all sorts of issues, from parents viewing their children as aliens to how different cultures react to this surreptitious invasion. The Russians, for example, use a nuclear device on the entire village that was infected, killing everyone, not just the children.

“Charly,” based on the short story and novel
Flowers for Algernon
by Daniel Keyes, is another matter. The book has been adapted numerous times for film and television as well as in different languages, but the 1968 movie which earned its star Cliff Robertson his Oscar is probably the best known. Robertson had appeared in a 1961 television adaptation and in order to ensure he would be in the movie version, acquired the movie rights himself.

The story is about Charlie, a genial man who is mentally impaired and ekes out a living as a janitor. He takes adult education classes in an attempt to become smarter and his teacher Alice (Claire Bloom) gets him considered for an experimental procedure that will boost his intelligence. As with the aliens in “Village,” the precise nature of the procedure is left vague and obscure, but it has worked on a lab mouse named Algernon and they are ready to try it on a human subject. “Charly,” like its source story, is a tragedy about a man who is given what he most wants only to lose it all. It is even more poignant because before the effects fade he has become a genius, and thus has full knowledge of what he is losing and where he is heading.

Silliphant, though, now had his Oscar and Oscar-winning writers were supposed to do serious things. He told Segaloff, “I didn’t want to write a science fiction piece.” He explains that meant not explaining the procedure, which misses the point. The science fiction element is the impact that the procedure has on Charlie and those around him, and here the film fumbles as much as it scores.

The early scenes with Robertson showing the mentally stunted Charley have an awkwardness to them. It’s all too obvious that this is a Hollywood star strenuously trying to make a mentally retarded character sympathetic. It doesn’t help that veteran TV director Ralph Nelson has overlit all the scenes to the point that one thinks Charlie has a permanent set of klieg lights following him, heightening the artificiality of the film. While Charlie’s growing intelligence is sensitively portrayed—he has been competing against Algernon trying to solve a maze and has previously been losing—the third act of the story is just a mess.

The point is made that in spite of his intelligence Charlie is still a child in many ways, and when he finally acts out on his growing feelings towards his teacher she lashes out at him and asks why he thought she would ever take a “moron” like him seriously. The situation is realistic, making Charlie akin to Frankenstein’s monster in lacking the maturity and acculturation to act properly, but her response is shocking, not in defending herself but in suggesting that her sympathy for him all along was just a ruse and that she always thought of him as nothing but a “moron.”

The film then presents an embarrassing sequence in which Charlie goes off to experience various “lifestyles” presented in a series of choppy and overlapping images that critics at the time said seemed to have been influenced by films made for exhibits at Montreal’s Expo ’67. The sequence concludes with Charlie and Alice entering into a serious relationship without any indication that either one has dealt with the incident that drove them apart. Charlie’s diminishing intelligence is likewise handled badly, with a sequence where he seems to be running away from his earlier self. More effective is a scene in a bar where a mentally impaired busboy drops a tray of glassware. As everyone in the bar laughs, Charlie goes over and helps him pick up the pieces.

“Charly” might survive its dated visuals if Silliphant (and Robertson and Nelson) hadn’t seemed to have missed the point of the novel. It had its impact from getting the reader to see the world through Charlie’s eyes. At the book’s end Charlie writes to his teacher and asks her to put flowers on Algernon’s grave, a touching moment because Charlie has followed the mouse’s arc and whether he will die soon or not, it is an implied request that he be remembered for what he once was. The movie ends after Charlie refuses Alice’s offer of marriage and sends her away, and then cuts to her some time later watching Charlie childishly grinning on a seesaw. It ends the movie on a note of what
she
has lost, which seems a mistake.

Stirling Silliphant was one of the great Hollywood screenwriters, but the lesson here might be that if you’re going to write a science fiction movie, you need to be willing tackle your material
as
science fiction, not pretend it’s really about something else.

* * *

Daniel M. Kimmel is past president of the Boston society of Film Critics and founding co-chair of the Boston Online Film Critics Association. His reviews appear in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, and can now be found at NorthShoreMovies.net. He is the author of
The Fourth Network
,
The Dream Team—The Rise and Fall of DreamWorks: Lessons from the New Hollywood
, and
I’ll Have What She’s Having—Behind the Scenes of the Great Romantic Comedies
. His book
Jar Jar Binks Must Die
was a finalist for the Hugo Award for best related work. His latest work is a fiction novel,
Shh! It’s a Secret: a novel about Aliens, Hollywood, and the Bartender’s Guide
.

WORD NINJA

by Linda D. Addison

Out of The Black Forest
by F. J. Bergmann (Centennial Press, 2012) This collection has breath-taking paintings by Kelli Hoppmann for each written piece, turning this book into a work of art. Bergmann tales are mesmerizingly familiar and new at the same time. The titles are one word: Teeth, Hair, Hide, etc. “Teeth” is a twist on ‘Little Red Riding Hood’; the title takes on more than one meaning. “Sting” gave me chills in the best way: “On the day the lost prince enters,/.../She sleeps on,/ beneath a buzzing blanket of bees. Highly recommended.

The Monstrance
by Bryan D. Dietrich (Needfire Poetry, 2012) In Dietrich’s fantastic visions we find monsters dreaming for the soft touch of life and makers holding tight to their creations. From “On My Library”: I, too, grow faint in the absence and rise / .../ I descend / again and fill the hollow I have / left with the question each figure makes. Are we not all shackled to society’s image, and struggle to unchain and find acceptance? Dietrich uncovers the possibility with his hauntingly beautiful verse.

Mourning Jewelry
by Stephanie M. Wytovich (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2014). In the author’s own words “...everyone mourns, but not everyone cries.” Like a house of mirrors, Wytovich’s latest book shows how loss and broken dreams feed each other. In reflection, shadowed vengeance and hidden needs gracefully dance and twirl in her finely balanced poetry. Loved every poem especially “Untitled”: Existence is / mute--/ A fleeting second / awakened / by a hiccup / in sleep. n

* * *

Linda D. Addison, four time HWA Bram Stoker winner, has been the poetry editor with
Space & Time
magazine since 1999. Her poetry and stories has been listed on the Honorable Mention list for the annual Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Year’s Best Science-Fiction. She is a member of CITH, SFWA, HWA and SFPA. Her site: www.lindaaddisonpoet.com

DRAGON TO CENTAURI

by Beth Cato

building a dragon

involves more than sinew or scales

it begins with the heart

cold fusion, pumping ventricles

a skeleton of gray steel

coiling corridors of the veins

a skin cool and smooth

eyes that stare into oblivion

across this blackened vacuum

and fire from its lips, always fire

a quiet and soundless flame

to immolate foes and keep safe

the charges nestled within its belly

when ready to take wing

this dragon will roar

as its wings scrape the stars

SPACE AND TIME  

Issue # 121

Summer 2014 

Editor-in-Chief
  - Hildy Silverman  

Editor Emeritus - Gordon Linzner  

Fiction Editor - Gerard Houarner  

Art Editor - Diane Weinstein  

Poetry Editor - Linda D. Addison  

Contributing Editors 

Daniel Kimmel

Stephen Euin Cobb

Sam Tomaino

Associate Editors  

Kathleen David, Susan Hanniford Crowley, Gary Frank, Jennifer M. Persson, Edward Greaves, Alan Kistler, Lee Weinstein  

Webmaster - Randy Heller  

Artwork  

Martin Hanford, Thomas Nackid, Alan Beck, Alfred Klosterman, Brad W. Foster, Mark Levine

Cover - Brad W. Foster

Cover & Interior Design - Kate Freeman  

SPACE AND TIME #121, Summer 2014 [ISSN 0271-2512]. Published quarterly by Space and Time, 458 Elizabeth Avenue, #5348, Somerset, NJ 08873. Single issue $5.00 + $1.50 shipping. Subscriptions 4/$20 (outside U.S. 4/$22; please use U.S. postal money order or check payable against any U.S. bank. For online and mobile versions of Space and Time, please visit Weightless Books (www.weightlessbooks.com). Visit http://www.spaceandtimemagazine.com. All rights to material herein revert to creator(s) on publication. 

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