It's been a really slow couple of weeks for me. I came down with my 5th cold of the year (yay...) and lost my voice, so have spent much of last week resting, planning the (now hopeful) trip to Rangitoto, watching a lot of sci-fi, and not doing much else. Over the past two months especially, in thinking about the connections between Rangitoto's geography and Mars' own volcanic landscape, I keep coming back to some of my favourite science fiction films and shows. I tend to put them on in the background when focusing on other things, which has been nice as a way to keep the genre in mind without delving into them too much or diving down a rabbit hole.
The X-Files, "Firewalker"
This, along with Maurice Gee's Under the Mountain, was one of the first fictional texts that came to mind when visiting Rangitoto (probably due to some pretty strong childhood nostalgia). This episode was inspired by NASA's Dante robot and the real but eventually abandoned plan to send the remotely piloted craft into Antarctica's active Mt Erebus volcano for research and exploration purposes. It was hoped that doing so would pave the way for future exploration of volcanic structures on Mars and the moon:
"When we go to the Moon and Mars, we will send out robots to explore sites for habitation, research and mining before humans get there... The Erebus project lets us test a rover in the most Mars-like place on Earth while giving us the immediate payoff of using it to obtain unique scientific information."
The episode revolves around Scully and Mulder investigating the disappearance of a scientist during a research expedition in which a team of seismologists were exploring an active volcano using the lunar rover-like robot, Firewalker. In the process, a silicone-based lifeform (an ophiocordyceps-like fungus) is discovered and disturbed in the volcano's lava tunnels, rocks and caverns, which eventually infects and kills many of the research team. The fungi in question grew in the environment of the human body once inhaled before bursting out in the form of a spore-producing structure, hence the grisly image above!
It's hard not to wonder what exists in the earth's ecologies and structures beyond human perception or reach. In walking through Rangitoto's caves, with the knowledge of the island's ecology and surrounded by a relatively untouched natural landscape, I found myself wondering what other possibilities exist both on the island and further afield. It's not the best story but the themes of science, ecology, exploration and unknown geographies in "Firewalker" made it feel relevant.
The X-Files, "Field Trip"
Another bio-centric episode, "Field Trip" features Mulder and Scully investigating the disappearance of several hikers and the discovery of oddly placed human remains in a national park. Spoilers: it turns out to have been caused by a vast network of underground fungi that has been producing spores with hallucinogenic effects and that is capable of digesting creatures (including humans) once they wander into its subterranean tunnels. The two detectives succumb to its effects, only realising in the nick of time that they are being digested alive by the fungi. It's one of my favourite stand-alone "monster" episodes as I love the blending of science fiction with the real-world properties of mycelium networks (some in North America for example stretch over multiple states in networks of soil systems).
In some ways, the plant-like creature in "Field Trip" may be the most powerful "monster of the week" X-Files heroes Mulder and Scully ever encountered. As seen by its multiple attempts to keep Mulder and Scully under its spell, the creature is highly intelligent, capable of designing and redesigning its hallucinations specifically to fit what it thinks will fool them into a docile state. While it's never clear exactly how much time Mulder and Scully believe to have passed for them inside one of these hallucinations, it seems to at least be multiple days, if not weeks. Thus, the creature can make its prey perceive the passage of a much longer period than has actually occurred. Beyond just the time manipulation aspect, there are some decidedly sinister hints that the ending of "Field Trip" in which Mulder and Scully successfully escape isn't real...
In terms of ecological thinking, I think part of what makes the episode effective isn't just the body-horror element, but the implication that there are organisms and forces beyond ourselves and our comprehension that are capable of feeding on and manipulating human beings. For all our logic and rationality, think it taps into anxieties around our place in ecology, our abilities in self-preservation, nonhuman agency and intelligence, and our understanding (or lack thereof) of nonhuman systems. The prospect of wandering into a natural area and becoming vulnerable to the entities within it, or becoming disoriented to the point of losing direction/sense of self is a very real possibility.
Prometheus
The movie is primarily about the origin of life. Several important questions are raised in the process: Where did humanity come from? Why are we here? Where do we go when we die? What is the relationship between science and faith? What does it mean to be a “creator”? All of these questions are significant.
Aside from being a big Alien fan and enjoying this film for its place in the bigger Alien universe, I enjoy the conceptualisation of landscapes in this film. There's a nod back to Giger in the design work and some nice references to other sci-fi media (The X-Files, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact, Star Trek, Frankenstein aka The Modern Prometheus, etc.)...
A reminder to myself - Percival Lowell's "Spokes of Venus"
This isn't a science fiction tale, but a real-life happening that was perhaps caused by one man's unknown belief in what turned out to be one.
If there was ever an example of remembering not to miss the forest for the trees, it's the story of Percival Lowell. In the late 19th century, Lowell, an American businessman, astronomer, author and mathematician, became convinced that there were mysterious patterns on the surface of Venus which may have been caused by an extraterrestrial civilisation.
In 1896, soon after Lowell had acquired a new 24-inch refracting telescope and installed it at his Flagstaff observatory, the controversial astronomer began studying Venus. Lowell noticed that when he stopped down the aperture of the telescope, a mysterious dark spot materialized on the planet’s surface with spoke-like structures emanating from it. Lowell knew that Venus had a thick atmosphere that’s impossible to penetrate optically, yet he saw these markings that could only have been on the surface. Stranger still, these features always seem to face the earth, which meant that Venus must be in synchronous rotation with the Sun—an inference which didn’t tally with other observations. The most puzzling was the fact that no one else, other than Lowell, could see these markings. The scientific society derided Lowell’s findings but they couldn’t help but wonder exactly what Lowell had seen, and why only he could see it. The matter was left unsettled for more than a century until a couple of amateur astronomers proposed a theory: Lowell was gazing into his own eye!
Lowell often observed the planet high in the daytime sky with the telescope's lens stopped down to under 3 inches in diameter to reduce the effect of the turbulent daytime atmosphere. With that setup, Lowell shrank the telescope's exit pupil in front of his eye to a pinhole of diameter less than 0.5 millimeter, effectively turning the telescope into a giant opthalmoscope that optometrists use to examine eyes of patients. To state it plainly: what Lowell saw as spokes were actually shadows of the blood vessels and other structures in his own retina. So instead of mapping the surface of Venus, Lowell had been mapping the structures in his own eye. While this may sound all very strange, this phenomenon is a well-known annoyance among astronomers observing planets at very high magnification. When the late Carl Sagan spoke at the University of Glasgow in 1985 during Gifford Lectures, he used Lowell’s example of an over-productive mind as a cautionary tale about the power of belief and yearning to trump science and reason.
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