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Sunday, May 10, 2009
Bleg: Solar Sign Presented as a Wonder
I’m in the process of re-reading Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885). I’ve just read the passage where Allan Quartermaine & Co. get out of a tight spot by blotting out the sun for an hour or so. Of course they did no such thing. Rather, one of their company, a former naval officer, just happened to have an almanack with him and, upon consulting it, found out that they were about to have a total eclipse of the sun that would be visible from Africa. So, they were able to make this promise (to one group) or threat (to another) with some confidence. Mark Twain used the same device in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889, which the Wikipedia entry has noted).
Do you know of any other uses of this device, or a similar one?
Comments
Right here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_the_Sun
Bob beat me to it. That was my fourth favourite Tintin, that one, when I was a lad.
Wikipedia also has this list of fictional stories in which solar eclipses feature as an important plot element. (’Mere passing mentions are not listed’ it says, slightly haughtily). Doesn’t have Hergé, though.
(My mistake: scroll down and Hergé’s there).
Thanks, Bob and Adam. I wonder how many of these are independent uses and how many can be traced back to Haggard, Twain, or, apparently, Columbus.
Some cases probably aren’t relevant. There is a solar eclipse in Fantasia, which is in the Wiki list, but it’s not used in the way Haggard, Twain, and Hergé use it.
I instantly thought of Tintin too. But Tenskawatawa, brother of Tecumseh, aka the Shawnee Prophet is said to have done this in real life in 1806, after being challenged by William Henry Harrison to carry out some miracle. I wonder if this is a more immediate inspiration for Haggard and Twain than Columbus, or if this is just an old standard.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=312
It’s a cool example, since it reverses the pattern in most of these where a white man awes the primitives with the trick.
Herge discovered later that the Inca had sophisticated calendars and astronomy, and would certainly have known that the eclipse was due.
Bill,
I believe it is a lunar eclipse—rather than a solar eclipse—in King Solomon’s Mines.
It happened mid-day, so it had to be a solar eclipse.
SPOILER
Chris Priest’s “The Prestige” uses exactly the opposite device, in that a magician’s trick which everyone supposes to be a masterpiece of stage conjuring turns out, in fact, to be (pretty well) real magic.
I think AR should also reveal what his top three were, if “Prisoners of the Sun” was number 4. I’m guessing “Land of Black Gold”, “The Red Sea Sharks” and “The Secret of the Unicorn/Red Rackham’s Treasure”.
I’m shocked, ajay, that you think Red Sea Sharks—that deeply racist graphic novel—would be in my top ten. Shocked, I say!
The top three (it seems so obvious to me) are: Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon, as the most science fictional; plus also for the ‘acting the goat???’ routine of Professor Calculus in the former, at which I laughed so heartily as a youth that my testicles practically descended: and in the Number One slot, The Castafiore Emerald: the most perfect of all Tintin stories.
There was a thread on the VICTORIA listserv about this a few years back.
In J.G. Ballard’s short story ‘A Question of Re-Entry’, a montebank gains power over a tribe of Amazonian Indians using the transits of a satellite. Or vice bersa, this being Ballard.
I see everyone has come up with the Tintin. What I suspect is that it must also be an older trope than Twain, but that’s a much harder project. Part of the question is: when did Westerners get a common-sense, widely-distributed knowledge of eclipses?
Well, Tim, Columbus is said to have used the gambit in the West Indies on his 4th voyage. For real.
& Rider Haggard did beat Twain by 4 years, but that’s minor.
I’ve read about people doing it for real in early or mid-Antiquity, or authors from Antiquity claiming so. Can’t
"the ‘acting the goat???’ routine of Professor Calculus in the former”
Ahhh, of course. A wonderful rant, finishing off with the Professor dragging the Captain into the VAB, where the rocket is being finished off - an immense (full page?) illustration with chaps in boiler suits and obscure machinery everywhere - “There! Look what the goat created.” The motto of put-upon engineers everywhere.
“when did Westerners get a common-sense, widely-distributed knowledge of eclipses? “
Depends on the Westerner. The ancient Greeks knew what caused them, but that didn’t stop mediaeval Europeans believing all sorts of rubbish about them…
The Professor’s angers are always a treat. My favorite is in the Flight 714 : he goes from simple uncomprehension to incoherent rage in 2 seconds, and yet his reaction remains oddly understandable.