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  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6601",
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 6601,
    "subject": "Short Story 83: The Last Thrilling Wonder Story",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2014-08-06T18:27:49+00:00",
    "last": "2014-08-06T18:27:49+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<CAF1072y2wHQpx2WQZpdbbxn-DbL2nx1KR2SgRD4qffAUNw6ECA@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2014-08-06T18:27:49+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Short Story 83: The Last Thrilling Wonder Story",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
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          "text": "\"The Last Thrilling Wonder Story? was published in *Isaac Asimov’s Science\nFiction Magazine* in 1982 and is republished in *Endangered Species*.\n\nSUMMARY: The author Gene Wolfe tells his character a plot breakdown of what\nwill happen, first shaping and describing him, but Brick Bronson, the hero\nof the story, takes umbrage at a few of the descriptions such as calling\nhis hands hams instead of “pavement breakers”,and he even insists on going\nto pray before the action begins. According to the author, he must save Dr.\nCrane, whose beautiful daughter Brick loves, though he has never met her,\nand protect Dr. Crane from a pharmaceutical company's hit man who would\nprevent him from releasing his life saving serum. Aliens from Rigel will,\naccording to the author, eventually abduct them, and the problems on Rigel\nand on Earth are ultimately resolved in an apocalyptic battle.\n\nThe action begins, and on his way to St. Michael's Church Brick is stopped\nby an earthquake and the church flattened. Someone claims no one was\ninjured because “Father always locks up after the last morning mass” -\nhere, meant to be an authorial interference and realistically erroneous. He\npulls a damaged statue of the Virgin Mary and her child from the wreckage.\n\nWhen he arrives at Dr. Crane's, “Lucifer Satanus” greets him with “a stink\nlike an open sewer — the reek of the corpses in a certain field of upland\nrice” (culled from Brick's military service). When Brick tries to shake his\nhand, Lucifer says “That will not break my pavements — despite so many wild\nrumors, they are not laid of good intentions — which are, in my experience,\nquite easily broken.” Wolfe has unleashed Satan on Brick because he\nappealed to a higher power than the author, transforming it into a\nreligious story, and now he is there in place of the aliens from Rigel.\n\nSatan disappears and he meets Dr. Crane, who is being blackmailed and\nthreatened by someone but merely admits he feels watched. Crane reveals\nthat in a few months he will release his serum for free, and Brick offers\nto protect him. Carol Crane enters, and the scene shifts, at which point\nBrick speaks with his author again, saying that the others can't hear him\nbecause they are on a different part of the page. He asks about his rights\nand claims he will turn into nothing but a puppet and caricature facing the\ndevil.\n\nCarol enters and tells Brick her father is scared and in danger. She\nadmits, ?Brick I want him to die. But -? when they are interrupted by a\nshot. Below, Crane has injured the hitman, John Slade. Brick identifies the\nweapon and projectiles involved and displays some expertise in delineating\ntheir traits, and they call for an ambulance. Here there is a conversation\non how he arrived without being heard, which we can only attribute to\nsloppy authorial construction — Slade got there because the author needed\nhim there. Crane says that the threatening letters he has received are from\na very familiar person. Brick notes his daughter's tempered animosity\ntowards her father and asks her about it, but she says it isn't the time or\nthe place. Brick replies, “It may be the only time and place we'll ever\nhave — the story may be over soon.” He tells her the story of mating birds\nhe witnessed on a Pacific Island, trapped into the same mating ritual no\nmatter what they desired — their instincts would not let them mate without\nthe ritual, but he asserts that they are different and can do what they\nplease.\n\nWhen Crane returns he is “high” on some drug. When asked about what he\nuses, Crane says, “I won't say — and you can't force me to. At this very\nmoment there is a curtain — a wonderful curtain, invisible, beautiful, the\nstrongest and most beautiful invisible object ever seen — between myself\nand yourself. Between myself and the world.” The sound of ambulance is\nheard, and when Crane still won't reveal the name on the letters he has\nreceived, Brick strikes him. The letters are from himself, Dr. Crane. Crane\ndenies they are forgeries, saying, “Not forged — He — Xerox ...” and then\nBrick speculates, “Lucifer Satanus, Prince of Sin, you did all this to us.\nDope. Attempted murder. Lies. But if you're real, He has to be real too.”\nThe author intervenes and almost says that he is the only God for Brick,\nbut stops just short.\n\nAs Brick is trying to get Slade to drink water, Slade slips the gun from\nhis belt and shoots Dr. Crane, claiming it was because Crane would have\nkilled the world. Slade also says, “Dr. Crane told me — Burn lab. The\nparamedics arrive, a bit drunk from the stress of dealing with all the\nearthquake victims from earlier. The paramedics are sure the gunshot\nvictims are DOA, but Brick tries to convince them they need plasma. Carol\nreveals her father ?did it to [her] — when [she] was a little girl. About\nonce a week for a year. — I've never been able to forgive him for that.”\n\nThen she reveals her dreams: “Brick, we'll be rich. — People will pay\nanything for it. Think of all the rich old men.” Brick says Dr. Crane was\ngoing to give it away, but she believes it was only for prestige and\nrecognition. Realizing the ambulance drivers are too drunk, he knocks out\none and gets Carol to drive while he goes to make the lab appear to be on\nfire so that he can get the main villain to appear.\n\nUnfortunately, the bad guy surprises him by showing up right away, and it\nis Dr. Crane. Brick positions them in line with his truck, which the evil\nDr. Crane drove directly over the gas canister to eventually produce a\nlarge explosion. Dr. Crane reveals he is a copy, probably created by the\nRigelians, and that the original had about an hour of his memory erased,\nthe hour in which he solved the last problem of his serum. This Dr. Crane\nplans to kill him and take his place when the original Dr. Crane returns\nfrom the hospital.\n\nAlas, a shot hits Dr. Crane, from Brick's rifle on his burning truck.\nKnowing the effects of heat on the bullet, Brick positioned the evil doctor\nso that eventually he would be in line with the increasingly hot rifle\nmounted on his truck. Brick says, “You don't believe that crap you fed\nSlade, do you” We'll be saving the best people — engineers, physicists,\ncraftsmen. If somebody'd found that serum in time, we'd still have\nEinstein, and by now we'd be selling fried chicken on Mars.\n\nDr. Crane drops, and Brick frees himself to enter the burning lab and seek\nthe serum notebook, where he drops to the floor, and he has one last\nconversation with his author, who asks him, “Where is the God you prayed to\nnow?” Brick asserts that he is everywhere, and that the author will be\nseeing him soon. Brick stops answering his author, and Wolfe begins to show\nfear. “On TV tonight they showed a man who got pulled out of a fire in\nCalifornia. But his name was Rick, Rick Benson. — That wasn't you, was it,\nBrick” — Answer me! Brick ???\n\n\n COMMENTARY: Wolfe’s most overt metafiction, “The Last Thrilling Wonder\nStory” starts with an introduction that sets up the dialog between Wolfe\nand his protagonist, Brick Bronson. Even in this opening scene, the\ncharacter does not quite behave exactly as Wolfe desires. He resents the\ndescription of his hands as “hams” and questions the logic of falling in\nlove with a woman he never met. His religious sentiment, contrary to\nWolfe’s desires to get the plot moving in true pulp fashion, “changes” the\nstory to one in which the demonic has sway, making it look much more like a\nmorality play.\n\nThe story, for all its asinine trappings and the ridiculous plot set out by\nWolfe in the first section, explores free will. Even with an earthquake and\ndisasters, our extra-textual Gene Wolfe shows that the fictional Wolfe can\ncontrol what happens in the story, but not how his character truly\nresponds, as Brick assumes something of a life of his own. The idea that\nfiction mirrors life is inverted a bit for science fiction — sometimes\nspeculative fiction shows what may become true in life, and the title of\nthe story is based off of *The Thrilling Wonder Stories* begun by Hugo\nGernsback. This magazine would occasionally show the negative side of\nscience and inventions, and here we have the ultimate biological invention:\na cure for pretty much any degenerative disease, but one which must be\nadministered immediately after it is produced. “Good” Crane wants to give\nit away, but his “evil” copy strives to work against him by sending an\naltruistic but na ve hitman, feeding him stories of overpopulation and the\nlong ranging consequences of the invention.\n\nOddly, Dr. Crane is both humanitarian and perverse villain, serving the\nrole of both hero and heavy after his ridiculous copying at the hands of\naliens, despite the fact that both versions of himself have, according to\nhis daughter, committed an atrocity, and one of the most vilified in modern\nsociety. I believe that this doubling is a literary re-enactment of free\nwill. The same man can make a choice, even after he has acted as a villain.\nWhile his daughter has ascribed his character’s willingness to make his\ntreatment free to humanity to greed for recognition, she wants to make\nmoney off of it, and the copy of her father can chose to steal, discredit,\nor destroy his work. It is interesting that there seems to be a third,\nnever seen copy of Dr. Crane, which the aliens have taken away. Perhaps he\nrepresents in some ways the unseen immortal soul — how is he affected by\nthe decisions of his epigones?\n\nThere is some confusion as to whether the daughter is sincere in her\naccusations of being molested by her father, for she does have one very\npowerful motivation: she wants to sell her father’s formula and enlist the\naid of a man who is clearly more powerful than him in the form of Brick.\nHowever, there does not seem to be enough evidence one way or the other to\ndisbelieve her, as I think the theme plays out more perfectly if indeed Dr.\nCrane is guilty of a past sin, one thought to be by society almost\nunforgivable — he can still choose to give his work away and help humanity.\nOr he can choose to try to seek profit — the same man with the same\nbackground can react differently.\n\nThis is slightly undercut by the copies claims that he must be an imperfect\ncopy, but I do think that it still shows free will in action, something\nthat is of ultimate importance to the Catholic dualist Wolfe. Often villain\nand hero are but a single choice away from switching roles.\n\nBrick’s discourse on the mating birds he saw during his flight overseas\nwith the military is also of ultimate thematic importance:\n\nThere were a lot of birds on that island, and it was the mating season. —\nThey would pair off and kind of bob up and down at each other, and keep it\nup for hours. Sometimes one would go get an oyster shell and lay it at the\nother’s feet. I guess the one that carried the shell was the male, or maybe\nthey both did it. Anyway, there was an ornithologist — a bird scientist —\nwho’d come to study them. — I asked why they did it, why they bobbed up and\ndown like that. And he told me they had to. It didn’t matter how much they\nwanted to get together. To mate. If they didn’t bob up and down like that,\nthey couldn’t do it.\n\n“That’s sad, isn’t it” Sad, and a little funny. But I don’t understand why\nyou’re telling me about it now.\n\n“I just meant that we’re people, not birds. If I could bring you candy and\nflowers and take you someplace to dance — or for a walk in the desert in\nthe moonlight that would be nice. But we don’t have to do it.”\n\nThe animals must serve their instincts no matter what — they are born\nknowing all that they need to survive, but even in Wolfe’s fictional world,\nthe characters show free will. Circumstances may conspire to force them,\nbut, at least in this story, the idea that they have a choice is always\nthere, even if it means they might die. The birds serve as a symbol of the\ncreatures bereft of free will — Brick wants to assert his choice in the\nfiction no matter how determined his surroundings seem, and his plea to\nWolfe to avoid becoming a predictable puppet is serious:\n\n“Sir, I’ll die.”\n\n“I won’t let you.”\n\n“Not that way, sir. I’ll die inside. I’ll turn into a store window dummy\nand a tape recorder. Pull the string and I say my lines, push me over and\nI’ll never get up.”\n\nWithout real character and choice, Brick sees himself as dead.\n\nLITERARY ALLUSIONS:\n\nIn addition to the meditation on free will and the problem of evil in the\nworld, the text definitely references the pulp science fiction of the early\npart of the 20th century, especially the magazines run by Hugo Gernsback\nsuch as *Amazing Stories*, then *Wonder Stories*, which became *Thrilling\nWonder Stories* when it was purchased by Thrilling Publications in 1936.\nFor a time, Wonder *Stories* competed with Campbell’s *Astounding Science\nFiction*, but dissolved by the 1950s. Of special note is that some of the\npulp stories were liberated from constraints by the end of the magazine’s\nrun, such that controversial stories involving interspecies sex and even\none with incest between a father and daughter, Springer’s “No Land of Nod”,\nwere being published in the magazine, which might resonate with the incest\nimplied by Crane’s daughter.\n\nRELIGIOUS ALLUSIONS:\n\nSome of the discussion between Wolfe and Brick involves the reforms to the\nCatholic Church under John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. Of course,\nthe cornerstone to the orthodox solution to the problem of evil (how could\nan all good God sit powerless and let evil work in the world?) is free will\n— if evil can be possible, it will of necessity occur, but man cannot judge\nwhat works will result in good, and which in evil, only try to choose the\ngood in accordance with what he understands and love God and his neighbor.\nThis is distinct from predestination and some other Protestant ideology\n(though of course, there are many different Protestant positions). Brick is\nparticularly Catholic in his love of ritual, and seems to resent variation:\n\nHe was not a regular churchgoer — the ritual of the mass soothed him, but\nthe improvements and variations irritated and distracted him, and since\nthere were now more improvements and variations than ritual, he had\nscarcely attended since his discharge. Yet he had never truly doubted the\nexistence and the goodness of God; and as he drove he imagined himself on\nhis knees before the Holy Virgin while the bright flame of a newly lit\ncandle proclaimed his devotion, the purity of his intentions toward Carol\nCrane.\n\nThere is the wonderful moment of hubris in this story where the character\nGene Wolfe declares, “There is no God for you, Brick, and your Devil wasn’t\ncast out by anybody. He was cast by me, and cast into your life by me. If\nyou’ve a God at all — never mind.” About to proclaim himself as God, Wolfe\nstops short. (Of course, there is still the rather humorous statement by\nBrick that the serum would be used to save the best people first — and the\nfirst type he lists are engineers).\n\nBrick's moment of realization that there is more to the world than the plot\nand the pages he is trapped inside involves a recognition of evil: if the\nvile forces of darkness are real, then the divine must be real as well.\nThis resembles a few of the observations Ivan Karamazov makes in\nDostoevsky's *Brothers Karamazov* (though the film version with Yul Brynner\nand Shatner emphasizes this point far more emphatically than the book.)\n\nThe final dialog shows the inversion of the power dynamic between author\nand character — at first, Wolfe said he would not let Brick die, and at the\nend this discussion ensues:\n\n“You see what it got you, Brick. You might have been rich and famous,\nmarried to a lovely woman. Where is the God you prayed to now?”\n\n?Everywhere sire. Nowhere. I still haven't seen him.\n\n“You never will.”\n\n“But you'll see me.”\n\n“What are you talking about” You're burning to death right now, dying of\nsmoke inhalation.\n\n“But He made me real. ...”\n\n“Brick, you can never be real, Not real the way I am. When this is over,\nyou'll be left behind on the page. ...”\n\nAnd then Brick enters our author's reality, showing that he is not the\nhighest authority, and that his own reality is subject to the power of\nsomething even higher. Wolfe's attempt at playing God fail, and his\ncreations are often dependent upon the reality around him.\n\nGUNS: Not since “The Largest Luger” have we seen this obsession with the\nworkings of guns, and just as in that story, the physical properties of\nweapons serve to allow Brick to defeat Dr. Crane. Knowing something of the\nphysics of his rifle and the effects of a hot fire on it, he defeats a man\nclearly imbued with a greater intellectual ability because he has\nsituational and practical knowledge of scientific and physical properties.\n\nNAMES:\n\nThe name of Charles implies “free man, strong” - which resonates with our\nidea that free will is possible — one an be a villain or a hero based on a\nsingle choice or perspective. Crane is a nickname for a tall thin man\nresembling the bird. Carol also means “free, strong”. No coincidence.\n\nJohn implies the grace of God, Slade small valley\n\nBrick means “quick moving, alert”. Bronson means “son of the dark man”. It\nis Anglo-Saxon in origin. When Brick insists he is Irish, Wolfe instead\nsays it is merely a pulp name, not an Irish one. (Implying that a careful\nauthor would know that the name would indicate origin and possibly\ntraditions rather than simply a meaningless cipher of “cool” sound). His\nreal name, Roscoe, implies “from the deer forest”.\n\nRick implies “hard ruler” and Benson, which could man “son of the right\nhand” or “son of the mountain peak”, though the right hand one makes a\nbetter contrast to his fictional name, “son of the dark man”, showing\nBrick's liberation from a gnostic and fallen reality, that of Wolfe, into a\nhigher one.\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nDid Crane really molest Carol? I think that the best reading implies that\nhe did.\n\nWhat is Crane using to create a screen that separates him from the world\nand others? Probably this is simply one of the ways that the devil can act\nin the world, like the alcohol that helps the ambulance drivers cope with\nthe devastation of the earthquake, and the details are unimportant.\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nFor all the egregious action and the appearance of Satan, there is still\nthe sense that there is an absurd tone to the story, no doubt mocking the\npulp based plot, but undercutting it with serious themes — does life\nimitate art, or is the opposite true? Are creations free and alive separate\nfrom their creator? The influence of Borges on Wolfe's metafictional\naccounts are clear, and “Creation”, “Parkroads: A Review”, and “Bibliomen”\nall play with the artificiality of the fictional reality. Borges would also\ninfluence the large Sun series, but by and large “reality” is more solid in\nthose books. The relationship between myths, reality, and the pages of a\nbook are also explored in the “Thag” series. The thematic implication of\n“The Last Thrilling Wonder Story” and Wolfe's Catholic belief in free will\nconstitute part of my problem with Wright's book length study of New\nSun ? *Attending\nDaedalus*. Even though I am greatly oversimplifying, Wright asserts that\nwhen we approach the final level of meaning in New Sun, Severian's\nsituation is subject to extreme external manipulation — and while this is\ntrue, from Wolfe's basic ideology, this should not invalidate the decisions\nSeverian makes, for good or evil."
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