This is Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte's 1928 painting, "Hunters at the Edge of Night" (Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit):
I have always been fascinated by obscure and strange visual images. As a child I used to hunt through our set of grocery store encyclopedias looking for interesting illustrations to pour over. Among the early eye-catchers that later became deeper interests of mine were Ancient Egypt, alchemy, and surrealist art. Over time I've thought a lot about what attracted me to such esoteric images, and I believe it is the appearance of strangeness in the midst of what seems normal.
From the Papyrus of Ani, better known as
The Book of the Dead. Ani is the normal
looking guy at the far left, holding
hands with Anubis.
From the alchemical art book "Splendor Solis" (1535)
This depicts the Hermaphrodite holding an egg, which
is supposed to represent the union of opposites
and the new substances thus made.
I later discovered the works of the Surrealists painters (Miro, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Tanguy, et. al.)
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects, and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself. Its aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality" (Andre Breton) [from Wikipedia]
It's not my intention to delve into the philosophy of surrealist art here. Suffice it to say as a Rationalist, I found selective irrationalism a interesting and challenging departure. In writing fiction, surrealism has for me acted like a key, unlocking certain ideas and plots, and providing direction and development in existing stories. Science fiction and fantasy in particular have an affinity with surrealism, as the abnormal or super-normal events of genre fiction need a context in which to be understood.
Someone once declared there were only two plot mechanisms in all of fiction:
Someone once declared there were only two plot mechanisms in all of fiction:
1. An ordinary person is confronted with extraordinary events;
2. An extraordinary person is confronted with ordinary events.
There is a third possibility, extraordinary person/extraordinary events, which is the form most superhero tales take. Mythology and religion routinely use the third option. An unwanted (by me) fourth option, ordinary person/ordinary events is the basis of much so-called mainstream fiction, which is as boring as it sounds.
Around 1991 or so, while I was deeply immersed in producing and publishing FORBIDDEN LINES, I decided to develop a novel idea I'd been toying with. It centered on a new form of human invisibility. The concept of invisibility is very old. The ancient Greeks told of a cap or helmet owned by Hades that made its wearer unseen. Perseus was loaned the cap and used it when he killed the Gorgon Medusa. Norse, Welsh, and medieval legends all contain tales of invisibility, usually conferred by an enchanted ring, hat, or cloak. Sauron's ring, fiction's most self-aware piece of jewelry, also makes its wearer invisible.
Invisibility:
How Perseus got ahead
H. G. Wells' 1897 novel, The Invisible Man, set the pattern for science fiction invisibility for a century. Wells' mad scientist, Griffin, injects himself with chemicals that ostensibly change the refractive index of his body to that of air.
There are some problems with this concept. In order to be invisible, Griffin has to be naked. In many climates (especially England) this imposes a handicap. Wells uses this problem as part of the plot, but worse is the fact that a truly, optically invisible person would be totally blind. Without normal retinas, light would not be caught on the back of the eye--no vision. It's been a long time since I read The Invisible Man, but I don't recall if Wells tries to get around the blindness issue by having Griffin's pallid retinas floating around . . . talk about a surreal image.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Claude Rains
Later technological notions of invisibility like light bending or optical camouflage face the same problem. If you bend light around your Invisible Person (IP), how are they supposed to see?
I wanted a way around all this for my invisibility story. Optical methods I rejected as trite or physically improbable. Technical methods don't seem to answer the blindness problem. How else to make an IP?
There are actually invisible people all around us. We don't see them because we don't want to see them. Some of them are the homeless, the panhandlers, the deformed, the morbidly obese. In their case, their appearance makes the viewer so uncomfortable they check out, trying not to see anything so unpleasant. What if this reaction could be induced artificially? Suppose there was a way to transmit 'don't look at me!' signals to anyone within a significant radius?
Psychological invisibility.
This was the basis of my next novel, titled after Magritte's painting, HUNTERS AT THE EDGE OF NIGHT. It deals with an artist (living in Chapel Hill, N.C.) who is a Photorealist. He tries to paint images as exact and as real as a high resolution photograph. Keith (the artist) believes in object permanence and defines reality as what can be sensed. While out and about one November day, he spots an extraordinary looking young woman. Wanting to paint her portrait, he follows her, intending to introduce himself and asking her to pose. Strangely, her presence does not register with anyone else. She walks into a bank on Franklin Street (the main drag in Chapel Hill) walks behind the tellers' counter, helping herself to wads of cash. When Keith protests, the theft is noticed and Keith is blamed. The woman appears and urges him to flee before they're arrested. Confused, and more than a little fascinated, he goes with the woman, who calls herself 'Monica Griffin.'
Griffin, of course, is the name of Wells' invisible man. Monica is obviously an old film buff, as she later uses the pseudonym 'Illona Massey,' the name of the actress who appeared in the 1942 film, The Invisible Agent.
My use of the name Monica is more esoteric. I will explain the significance behind the name here to demonstrate the adage that anything a writer experiences is grist for his artistic mill.
Back in 1981 I was in graduate school, working on a Master of Arts Teaching degree in history. As a grad student, I was entitled to a carrel in the main library. I could check out books relevant to my studies and store them in the carrel for much longer than the standard checkout period. In fact, the books I stored there reflected my private interests rather than any scholarly need. A casual perusal of my carrel titles in those days would find books like Vampires of the Slavs, Japanese warplanes, or Oscar Parkes magnificent opus, British Battleships. In short, Carrel 1098 was a nerd's book cache.
Sometime in the spring of '81 (don't recall the exact date), I found a handwritten note stuck to the shelf of my carrel. It purported to be from two undergrad girls, Ashley and Monica, who were curious to meet me and get to know me intimately, etc., etc. (And you thought this kind of stuff originated in spam email). There was a phone number I was supposed to call.
Now I was lonely and horny, but I wasn't stupid. This was somebody's idea of a joke, but I decided to find out who owned the phone number. At that time, the dorm rooms at UNC Chapel Hill each had a landline phone installed. With so many rooms to service, the phone company actually allotted phone numbers in consecutive number blocks. To find the location the phone number, I had to ID the dorm and floor using that block of numbers. A few minutes' study of the campus phone book (remember those?) pinpointed it in Avery Dorm, not far from where I lived. By counting rooms and numbers I soon identified the exact room where that phone number was located.
I know, too much trouble, but it wasn't hard to track the culprits down. Nothing spoils a prank like a counter-prank. I called the number. A girl answered. I asked for Ashley or Monica.
No one here by that name, I was told. She hung up. Not five minutes later I got a call from one of my 'admirers' in a poor impression of a sultry voice.
Hi, I said. How are things in Avery Dorm, room XXXX? Loud gasps, and the phone was slammed down. I laughed until my sides ached. Needless to say, I never heard from Ashley or Monica again.
Ten years later, Monica became my Invisible Woman. In my novel HUNTERS Monica does the classic mad scientist thing and experiments on herself. She works in a research center, developing a device to help blind people see electronically. She discovers the software they're working on can work backward--in addition to telling the wearer what they can see, it can also tell them what they cannot see. The signal blots out entire objects. Monica sees an opportunity and inverts the seeing device into an 'invisifyer' and has it implanted in her body by a talented but unscrupulous surgeon. Problem: the device needs large amounts of energy to operate, and after surgery Monica finds she can't turn it off. It drains her of energy--body fat--and she has to eat enormous quantities of high calorie food to stay alive and keep the invisifyer working. She could go back under the knife and have it removed, but she gets off on the power and freedom invisibility confers. Monica builds two screening devices, small, coin-size transmitters that block the "I am invisible" signal and allow her to be seen. Unknown to Keith, she slips one in his pocket when he first sees her. She keeps the other to allow herself to be seen when she wants to be seen.
Fleeing the FBI and many local cops, Monica and Keith travel west on I-40. Monica has a mysterious errand in California, and she basically kidnaps Keith for company. She also has this meta-idea of having her portrait painted by a leading photorealist (Keith) while she is invisible . . . it gets pretty surreal by that point.
HUNTERS AT THE EDGE OF NIGHT was also deeply informed by the works of Rene Magritte. Each chapter title was also the title of a Magritte painting. Though I did not find a publisher for the entire novel, I adapted one chapter as a short story which was published in the tenth issue of FORBIDDEN LINES as "Pink Bells, Tattered Skies."
Psychological invisibility.
This was the basis of my next novel, titled after Magritte's painting, HUNTERS AT THE EDGE OF NIGHT. It deals with an artist (living in Chapel Hill, N.C.) who is a Photorealist. He tries to paint images as exact and as real as a high resolution photograph. Keith (the artist) believes in object permanence and defines reality as what can be sensed. While out and about one November day, he spots an extraordinary looking young woman. Wanting to paint her portrait, he follows her, intending to introduce himself and asking her to pose. Strangely, her presence does not register with anyone else. She walks into a bank on Franklin Street (the main drag in Chapel Hill) walks behind the tellers' counter, helping herself to wads of cash. When Keith protests, the theft is noticed and Keith is blamed. The woman appears and urges him to flee before they're arrested. Confused, and more than a little fascinated, he goes with the woman, who calls herself 'Monica Griffin.'
Griffin, of course, is the name of Wells' invisible man. Monica is obviously an old film buff, as she later uses the pseudonym 'Illona Massey,' the name of the actress who appeared in the 1942 film, The Invisible Agent.
Illona Massey (1910-1974)
Definitely worth seeing.
My use of the name Monica is more esoteric. I will explain the significance behind the name here to demonstrate the adage that anything a writer experiences is grist for his artistic mill.
Back in 1981 I was in graduate school, working on a Master of Arts Teaching degree in history. As a grad student, I was entitled to a carrel in the main library. I could check out books relevant to my studies and store them in the carrel for much longer than the standard checkout period. In fact, the books I stored there reflected my private interests rather than any scholarly need. A casual perusal of my carrel titles in those days would find books like Vampires of the Slavs, Japanese warplanes, or Oscar Parkes magnificent opus, British Battleships. In short, Carrel 1098 was a nerd's book cache.
Sometime in the spring of '81 (don't recall the exact date), I found a handwritten note stuck to the shelf of my carrel. It purported to be from two undergrad girls, Ashley and Monica, who were curious to meet me and get to know me intimately, etc., etc. (And you thought this kind of stuff originated in spam email). There was a phone number I was supposed to call.
Now I was lonely and horny, but I wasn't stupid. This was somebody's idea of a joke, but I decided to find out who owned the phone number. At that time, the dorm rooms at UNC Chapel Hill each had a landline phone installed. With so many rooms to service, the phone company actually allotted phone numbers in consecutive number blocks. To find the location the phone number, I had to ID the dorm and floor using that block of numbers. A few minutes' study of the campus phone book (remember those?) pinpointed it in Avery Dorm, not far from where I lived. By counting rooms and numbers I soon identified the exact room where that phone number was located.
I know, too much trouble, but it wasn't hard to track the culprits down. Nothing spoils a prank like a counter-prank. I called the number. A girl answered. I asked for Ashley or Monica.
How are things in Avery Dorm?
No one here by that name, I was told. She hung up. Not five minutes later I got a call from one of my 'admirers' in a poor impression of a sultry voice.
Hi, I said. How are things in Avery Dorm, room XXXX? Loud gasps, and the phone was slammed down. I laughed until my sides ached. Needless to say, I never heard from Ashley or Monica again.
Ten years later, Monica became my Invisible Woman. In my novel HUNTERS Monica does the classic mad scientist thing and experiments on herself. She works in a research center, developing a device to help blind people see electronically. She discovers the software they're working on can work backward--in addition to telling the wearer what they can see, it can also tell them what they cannot see. The signal blots out entire objects. Monica sees an opportunity and inverts the seeing device into an 'invisifyer' and has it implanted in her body by a talented but unscrupulous surgeon. Problem: the device needs large amounts of energy to operate, and after surgery Monica finds she can't turn it off. It drains her of energy--body fat--and she has to eat enormous quantities of high calorie food to stay alive and keep the invisifyer working. She could go back under the knife and have it removed, but she gets off on the power and freedom invisibility confers. Monica builds two screening devices, small, coin-size transmitters that block the "I am invisible" signal and allow her to be seen. Unknown to Keith, she slips one in his pocket when he first sees her. She keeps the other to allow herself to be seen when she wants to be seen.
Monica's device made her clothes invisible too.
Sorry, Hollywood.
HUNTERS AT THE EDGE OF NIGHT was also deeply informed by the works of Rene Magritte. Each chapter title was also the title of a Magritte painting. Though I did not find a publisher for the entire novel, I adapted one chapter as a short story which was published in the tenth issue of FORBIDDEN LINES as "Pink Bells, Tattered Skies."
"Pink Bells, Tattered Skies,"
by Rene Magritte
One of these days I'll rewrite and update HUNTERS and try it out again. It's a good concept, and with some work I can bring it up to standard.
Next: "Pink Bells, Tattered Skies"
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