Rifleman, Riddle Me This: What's The One Thing They'll Remember About Us?

Back to a familiar theme of mine. (If you just want to buy the Rifleman book, or learn more about it, scroll down.)

Here is the theme, which I think about all the time:

What's the ONE THING people will remember about the 20th century?

You might say there won't be one thing, that there will be lots o'things remembered, but you would be wrong, depending on how long we as a species survive, of course. If the midterm elections go the way they should there is a chance, slim but still nonzero, that we will survive the year as a country and as a species. VOTE DEMOCRAT. They're only slightly less evil than Republicans, but that slim margin is what makes all the difference between "a horrible life" such as we're having now, and "a life that can be tolerated if you really try."

Anyway, the World Of Tomorrow (TM) will remember one thing, if that, from the 20th century. ONE THING TOPS.  Think back on history yourself. How much do you remember from the 20th century yourself? Maybe 20 things, without really trying hard?

What about the 19th century? Here's my list: The civil war. Reconstruction. Railroads. John Quincy Adams. Tyler & Tippecanoe. The War of 1812. Napoleon? I am not sure of that last one.

The 18th century? Even worse.

Eventually, we boil popular, general knowledge down to one thing. Shakespeare lived from 1564-1616 (I had to look it up). Here are some things that happened in the 1500s:

Michelangelo did David, and the Sistine Chapel by 1512. Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. Nostradamus was born and Lutheranism began. Copernicus declared the sun to be the center of the universe. Cortes took over Mexico. Henry VIII started the Anglican church so he could get divorced and beheaded Anne Boleyn. Mongols invaded China. Spain and Portugal became one country. Roanoke was colonized. England beat the Spanish Armada. The British East India Company was chartered.

That's the highlights I recognized, from a massive list of things found on Wikipedia. I had heard of all those things, although I didn't know they took place in the 1500s.

But go back 400 more years and check on the 1100s: here's what I've got: Leif Eriksson landed some Vikings in North America; Catholicism split into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox.

That's it. There's lots of other stuff that reportedly happened, but I had never heard of any of it.

We don't teach people all the stuff; we can't. So each generation we winnow and sift down through what we know about everything, and decide what to teach and remember and keep alive as a general thing that people know, and as time goes on the past becomes less and less important. Someday, all the stuff you could list about what you know happened in the 20th century will be boiled down to 10 things. Then 5 things.  And eventually, one thing.

My guess has always been that the one thing we'll remember is Star Wars.  It's got some staying power, having come back around for a second run and never having left, plus it's controversial at times what with the racists and fanboys being all butthurt about there being women and minorities (and woman minorities!) in that galaxy far far away.

People will think maybe World War II, which is my second guess, but wars have a way of fading, even world wars, even ones as bad as World War II was. Pop culture, especially lowbrow pop culture, has staying power.  Just ask Shakespeare.



Rifleman book: Very good condition but for a handwritten inscription from the former owner. The inscreiption says "I read this book twice," and is initialed and dated. The date is 2/17/13, so someone in the last five years read this book twice before it ended up at a shop and I bought it because there's this shop in Waukesha, called the "Pathfinding Bookstore" where if you buy two hardcovers the third is free, so if you're going to get one you might as well get two so you get a third one free, and this one was my third one that day.

Asking $20. It's a 1959 first edition. You'll love it. Comment if you're interested in purchasing.

Ray Milland Did Not Write This Book About The End Of The World, It's Just Bad Design (Or Good Design, Depending)

"Dean Owen" is a pseudonym for Dudley Dean McGaughy, a prolific writer of mostly crime fiction and westerns but who branched into 'sleazy' novels in the 1960s and movie novelizations such as this one, a novelization of the movie "Panic In Year Zero!"

The book is about a family of four that goes on a camping trip only to come back after an atom bomb has destroyed Los Angeles; they go live in a cave for the better part of the next year until order is restored.

"Ray Milland," the name chosen for highlighting here, was an actor and director, a former member of the British Cavalry who at one point was Parmount's highest-paid actor, was obviously more famous than Dean Owen at the time (and now) so splashing his name on the cover was probably great marketing, at least until the 21st century when nobody would really know who either of these guys were. (The novelization of Star Wars, written by Alan Dean Foster, was credited to George Lucas, whose name appears above the title, even though Lucas wasn't the household name then that he would become after the movie.)

Movie novelizations go as far back at least as movies; one of the earliest novelizations was "Les Vampires," a movie serial about a journalist investigating a group of murderers; the movie was 7 hours over 10 episodes; the novelization was four paperback-sized books and 3 magazine-sized ones.

Most scholars (?) think that the novelization peak was in the 1970s, blaming videotapes and the internet for the decline of popularity of this art form; the typical essay on the subject will claim that prior to VCRs fans had no real way to re-live a movie beyond the novelization (at least until it came on television) but that would have been true of every era of movies prior to the invention of VCRs, so why was the 1970s the peak, if it was? (I say if because there are never statistics in the sort of pseudothinkpieces that pass for 'journalism' in this area.)  I wasn't able to find any list of sales of movie novelizations to say what the best-selling ones ever were.

In 2014, the "junior novelization" of Frozen was the 75th best selling book that year. According to Yahoo!, three novelizations of superhero movies (The Man Of Steel, The Dark Knight Rises, and 2002's Spider-Man) made the best seller lists in the year of their release.

In that sense, novelizations, like every other area of consumer culture, seem to be responding to the fragmentation and isolation of the modern entertainment era -- when there is no monolithic structure for entertainment.  Back in the 1970s and even 1980s, there were essentially only movie theaters and the big three networks, with everything else being a subculture. Shopping was done in person, rather than online, so stores were a monoculture, too, especially suburban shopping malls. You could put a novel into a chain bookstore and hope to grab not only those people who had seen the movie, but those who had heard of it and were curious or booklovers who just wanted to read something rather than go to the theater.

Now, though, bookstores are few and far between and, as that Yahoo! article notes, shopping is a "destination" thing: you go online or to a store looking for a specific thing. Fewer people are wandering around a store waiting to see what grabs their attention. So if you don't know something exists, odds are you won't find it, which means you won't see movie novelizations for movies you didn't know existed or weren't all that interested in at first.

That type of culture means that 'tentpoles' are more important than ever. That's why every new soda is a Mountain Dew branded variation, why so many shows are being remade, why movies all are spinning around the Avengers or Justice League or Star Wars maypoles: why try to create a new market when you can tap into an existing one, especially one fed by nostalgia, where parents will inculcate their kids into the mythos for you?

That's not necessarily new; this article from 1981 makes somewhat the same argument. But the article notes that in 1979 or 1980 80% of all movies released had a novelization of the movie released. 80%!! That dropped to 50% by 1981, and the price paid to buy the movie rights dropped down to $25,000. (That's $69,000 in 2018 dollars) and began focusing on blockbusters.

That same article also says the novelization of Raiders of the Lost Ark sold 900,000 copies. The novelization of E.T. (one of my favorite books ever) was the New York Times' best seller for 1982, and 1983 was topped by Return of the Jedi's novelization.  Business learning, as always, the wrong lesson from the bottom line, obviously decided that only blockbuster movies would lead to good sales of novelizations. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. I've read novelizations of movies I've never seen (Dragonslayer, for one, and Krull, for another), but that's just me.

It might be that novelizations would be a boost to the bottom line of a movie -- especially because studios could have an in-house writer novelize a movie and release it electronically at first, without hardly any hard costs of shipping or publishing or production. Why some studio hasn't hit on that is beyond me, given that most major films exist simply to generate merchandise sales. You'd think someone would have novelized The Avengers by now -- a move that would probably generate sales to pre-existing fans of the comic -- and set up a bunch of spun-off solo novels a la "Han Solo At Star's End" and the like.  But what do I know? I'm just a guy who likes reading.

About the book: Pretty decent condition, no flaws internally, paperback, list price is $9. Comment if you want to purchase.

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan: A Nearly-Complete Set of the 1960s Paperbacks

Ten things you didn't know about "Tarzan":



1. The CHARACTER of Tarzan is in the public domain in the US, but the name "Tarzan" itself is still protected as a trademark of Burroughs' estate, so you can write Tarzan stories but can't use his name.



2. Tarzan in the books is a year younger than Jane.



3. Tarzan's name means "White Skin" in the ape language. 




4. The first (human) language Tarzan learned to speak was French.






5. After Tarzan saves Jane in the books [SPOILER ALERT!] she leaves and Tarzan has to track her down IN WISCONSIN. That's right. TARZAN visited WISCONSIN. How have I lived in Wisconsin for 49 years and never known that? That should BE ON OUR LICENSE PLATES.

6. Among the things Tarzan stumbles across in Africa are: A lost valley where dinosaurs live, "ant people" who are 1/4 the size of Tarzan, and various hidden colonies of European knights and Roman society.



7. After Burroughs died, Tarzan books authored by a "Barton Werper" were released; the Burroughs' estate sued and the books were taken off the market. "Werper" was a pseudonym for two authors, Peter Scott and Peg O'Neill Scott.






8. The books have affected the Hebrew language: the Hebrew word "tarzan" meant a dandy or a fop; after Tarzan of the Apes became popular Hebrew speakers eventually dropped the use of their own word.


9. Edgar Rice Burroughs was actually a corporation: he formed a corporation to publish his books for tax and control purposes. 

10. Burroughs was at one point so poor and unsuccessful that he sought work in the Chinese army. His application for a commission was rejected. That led to a job trying to find sales agents for lead pencil sharpeners; during the slow times at that job he wrote his first story.

About the books: Nearly complete set of #Burroughs Tarzan Ballantine books.

Most 2nd printing 1963 but 2 first print 1963 and some 1st print 64 or 65. Good condition. Missing 8, 16, and 20 out of 1 thru 24.

 One cover has slight white tear. Otherwise good condition mostly shelf wear. $5 per book or whole set for $100.