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Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 2/25/00 -- Vol. 18, No. 35
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The Denver Area Science Fiction
Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
===================================================================
1. Nigel Kneale got it wrong. It was not five million years ago,
it was only two million years ago. And it may not have been done
by aliens, it may have been natural forces. But maybe not. Who
knows? Anyway it did happen somehow to the human race. And we are
all different because of it. Nigel Kneales's great leap forward,
and Arthur C. Clarke's great leap forward, may have actually
happened.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Okay, let's talk about it. 1968
was an interesting year for science fiction films. Two different
films came out on the same theme. One was 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
and the other was QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. The former film is many
people's favorite science fiction movie and the latter is my
favorite science fiction movie. Each film was built around the
idea that in our distant past the ancestor of humans was guided to
intelligence by alien species. Each said that if you looked at the
record there suddenly was an astounding jump forward in evolution
that could only have come about by tampering by aliens. In 2001: A
SPACE ODYSSEY the unknown aliens use a sort of slab. When our ape
ancestors came in contact with the slab, their intelligence was
suddenly increased.
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT came out the same year with the same idea.
Five million years ago aliens modified apes genetically to become
more intelligent. They were to become the kings of the world
because of physical and mental modifications. (In the United
States, incidentally, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT was renamed FIVE
MILLION YEARS TO EARTH. If you want to see it, they seem to run it
once a month on the American Movie Classics cable channel. It is
well worth seeing.) Nigel Kneale is the author of QUATERMASS AND
THE PIT. Did he borrow his ideas from Clarke? Actually, it was
more likely that it was the other way around. 2001 was an
expansion of Clarke's story "The Sentinel." That story did not
have the uplift idea in it. QUATERMASS AND THE PIT was based on a
1950s TV serial "Quatermass and the Pit," which did have the uplift
idea. So if anything Clarke borrowed from Kneale. And Kneale
tells the better story. What Clarke does with the idea is say that
we were uplifted once, it will happen again. Kneale's approach was
actually more intelligent. He looks at how are humans noticeably
different than they would be if the uplift had been natural. But
talking up how good QUATERMASS AND THE PIT/FIVE MILLION YEARS TO
EARTH is is an old theme with me. I have been a vociferous fan of
the film for years.
One problem with the film, of course, has always been that there
was no point in pre-human history when in a very short time there
was a big jump to human. Now there is. You can go to the
University of Michigan site at
http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/Releases/2000/Jan00/r011000b.html
and read the article for yourself. It begins: "Ann Arbor--Two
million years ago somewhere in Africa, a small group of individuals
became separated from other australopithecines. This population
bottleneck led to a series of sudden, interrelated changes--in body
size, brain size, skeletal proportions, and behavior--that jump-
started the evolution of our species." Next to it was a picture so
extreme that Kneale would not have used it for fear of being
accused of extreme exaggeration. It stands side-by-side a before
and after australopithecine. The before stands up about to the
after's pelvis and has a brain pan maybe five times as big. That
such changes could happen so suddenly is certainly surprising and
Nigel Kneale's explanation that the difference was caused by alien
intervention is only slightly less believable. The article covers a
study in the January 2000 issue of "Molecular Biology and
Evolution." The study brings together genetic, fossil, and
archeological evidence. As for this change, University of Michigan
anthropologist Milford Wolpoff says, "Insofar as we can tell, these
changes were sudden and not gradual."
It is difficult to look at this article and not realize how close
Nigel Kneale got it, even if he placed it back five million years
and it was only two million. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619