Re: Red World of Polaris
Posted by:
Scott Connors (IP Logged)
Date: 23 February, 2006 12:00PM
Ludde Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Quote: "Stark Trek and CAS? Is this comparison for
> real?"
>
> Raven10, I don't see any similarities between CAS
> and Star Trek. The only connection here is a thing
> of rhetoric association in one single sentence. In
> one of the stories CAS wrote something like "to go
> boldly where no man has gone before", and it is
> suggested by some readers that the makers of Star
> Trek picked up this line and then used it in the
> TV-series.
I suggested the parallel in the introduction, "The Magellan of the Constellations," that Ron and I wrote for RED WORLD OF POLARIS:
"Of Volmar himself, we are told "there was a spirit of mad adventure, a desire to tread where no man had been before [. . .]" (PAGE) (emphasis added).
"It is precisely instances like this that makes us realize just how much influence Clark Ashton Smith had on modern science fiction, since here we have an uncanny echo of the basic concept for one of the most phenomenal and lucrative series in television and motion picture history. We are of course referring to the Star Trek phenomon; one can easily imagine Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise having just such an adventure as Captain Volmar and the crew of the ether-ship Alcyone in "The Red World of Polaris." Yet we cannot seriously suggest that producer Gene Roddenbury stole the idea for the show he pitched to television executives as "Wagon Train in space" from Smith. After all, space opera had been invented by another Smith, E. E. Smith, Ph.D., two years previously in Amazing Stories, and in his austere monomania Volmar owes more to the traditional conception of the "mad scientist" of the pulps or movies than he does to Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. And yet, when one watches such classic Trek episodes as "The Way to Eden,"where an apparent paradise is revealed to be totally--and actively-- incompatible with human life, or "Operation: Annihilate!," (so suggestive of "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis"), or the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Far Point," one realizes that the cold, non-anthropocentric universe described by Smith still resonates in the imaginations of a select few."
Of course, despite these similarities, CAS differs from Roddenbury in his rejection of the myth of the Space Age that WONDER STORIES editor David Lasser first promulgated. This is basically an extension of the idea of Manifest Destiny to the stars: "Space, the Final Frontier." It is clear from CAS's stories that he believed that man would find outer space and other worlds totally alien and unsuitable for human life, and had little faith in our ability to adapt to the new condiitons.
For more of CAS's sf, check out the collection STAR CHANGES from Darkside Press, which has an introduction wherein I discuss in greater detail CAS's position in science fiction.
Best,
Scott