12/27/22
Newsletter #201
The Crack of Dawn
One of my best friends as a kid was named Jim, who was both the smartest and the richest kid in the neighborhood. Jim once offhandedly remarked, “I’m the richest kid in school, and I still don’t have any friends.” As young teenagers we were both voracious readers of science fiction, and we both loved Isaac Asimov. Asimov put out a collection of his favorite sci-fi stories from when he was a kid, 1930-1938, called, Before the Golden Age. One of the oldest and best stories was from 1932, called Tumithak of the Corridors by Charles Tanner. Jim and I both thought it would make a great movie, and discussed it a number of times over the years.
Briefly, way in the future humanity goes to war with aliens. We’re pretty evenly matched, but over the course of a hundred years the aliens are winning, bit by bit. Humans begin digging tunnels in which to hide. By the time the aliens take over the surface of the Earth, all humans live in a vast underground web of corridors that go deeper and deeper. When our story begins it’s a thousand years later and humans have begun to die off in the deepest corridors. The humans in the deepest corridors are barbarians. A young, Conan-like warrior, Tumithak, decides to journey up to the surface and confront these aliens. The whole story is Tumithak making his way upward from one level of corridors to another, each containing a different level of civilization.
Twenty years later I was sitting in my bungalow in Hollywood with my buddy Rob, the producer. Rob proclaimed, “Every good book has been made into a movie.” I was aghast and said, “Only someone who doesn’t read could say that.” Rob said, “OK, name one book?” I reached to a bookshelf right above Rob’s head, took down Asimov’s book, handed it to Rob and said, “Read Tumithak of the Corridors. It’s so old it’s probably in the public domain.” Rob read it, called me and said, “Hey, that was a good story.”
A couple of years later Rob called and asked, “Whatever happened to Thumbelina of the Hallways?” I said, “It’s still collecting dust.” Rob asked me to make a copy and send it over. I did, and Rob said, “Hey, that’s a good story.” A year later this actually happened again for the third time.
A couple of years later, Rob called and said, “I’m actually going to make TV show out of Tumithak. What do you want?” I said, “I didn’t write it. I don’t want anything, just don’t fuck it up.” There was an unnaturally long pause, until I finally said, “It’s too late, right? You already fucked it up?” He had. Tumithak, the 17-year-old Conan, had become three busty girls who had gone into the hospital for breast enlargement surgery, then woke up in a future where humans were fighting evil robots. It was called Cleopatra 2525 and it was on in 2000-2001. It makes My Mother the Car look like Shakespeare. It’s so completely different that Tumithak of the Corridors could still be made and nobody would ever suspect that they had anything to do with one another.
But I still think about that story occasionally because I it relates to the present day. Tumithak fights his way up twenty levels of corridors, each one in a different state of collapse. As he nears the surface the civilizations stop fighting each other and become more artistic and philosophical, and fat. On the uppermost level humans are all fat, and recite poetry, and sing songs all day, hoping to win a contest where they are given the chance to go to the surface and perform for the aliens. Tumithak sneaks along.
When the fats humans arrive on the surface, singing their songs and reciting their poetry, they are descended upon by aliens, that are eight-legged spiders with one big eye and fangs. The aliens promptly devour the humans.
The present context is: everybody can’t be an artist. If everybody is an artist, then you just become food.
Think about that, won’t you. Please.