Static Dynamics

Get moving get moving get it moving get yo' aaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

It is that moment in the movie when it all falls apart for the first time and you see a hidden presence dismember the elite team of marines, commandoes or whatever you think is more elite than that. The video and audio feeds are suddenly cut, and everything is overwhelmed by a hiss of static. The true story of the hidden world is here, buried in the informational distress.

In 1952, Raymond F Jones wrote a seminal SF short story, Noise Level. In that story, a group of world-class scientists are shown a grainy video of a man levitating with no visible means of support or propulsion except a small backpack. The pack explodes and pieces of the pilot are strewn all over the place just as the video feed is cut. The authorities tell them that they must not reveal what they have seen, and that the remains of the pilot and the equipment have all been disposed of because they were completely destroyed.

The scientists are then set this problem: recreate the antigravity machine from scratch, given access only to the dead man's lab. It is a classic in vacuo problem-solving situation. Fortunately, they are world-class scientists.

They visit the lab, only to find a well-equipped building with no notes, papers, drafts or any other evidence. They are told, "Don't speculate on classified material. Just see what is there and come to your own conclusions." The library contains every book there is on a wide range of fields, including the occult, which makes some of the scientists rebel at what they say is a joke. This is close to the truth, as the video was a complete fake, and the scientists figure that out eventually.

But in the end, they invent an antigravity machine. It is huge, half the size of a building, but it works. The moral of the story is that if you think it can be built, you will build it. But there is another moral: the faceless authorities can fool you into doing work of an amazing kind which you will not be credited for and which even they did not know could be done. It is all a matter of using the static dynamic to create a pattern of noise from which any information can be created.

There is a cure to this kind of reckless experimentation and manipulation though. It can be found in one of Frank Herbert's lesser-known creations, the Bureau of Sabotage. Essentially, somebody must throw a wrench into the juggernaut's inner workings. This gives everyone time to figure out what ought to be done. The enforced and temporary stasis gives dynamism to a chaotic state.

The Greater Trumps: (26) The Sun

It is an open land, and ever a beautiful one. Nothing hides here; the roads are free and children play without fear - on horseback or afoot. It is always high summer here. And above all things glows the warm and welcoming Sun, triumphant.

Where the Moon is the subversive and deceptive side of creativity, the Sun is creativity brought into the open and made concrete. It is the presiding eminence that watches over a heady blend of fire, wine and song - the fruits of alchemy that come from substance, flux, and mind. Perhaps the only negative side to this image is the fact that it is always the same - it holds no surprises, and therein may lie the seeds of Stasis, rather than Triumph.

In some of the older images, there are other stories - of the Sun burning up the Earth in its enthusiasm, of Phaethon's chariot burning the lands of Africa, of Icarus and his melting wings - which serve as warnings to those who would worship the Sun alone. Perhaps, it is best to let the Sun be, to welcome it in all its guises and not attempt to be its master or come too close to it.

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Probably many of us who grew up in those messy decades of the 1960s and 1970s will remember where these two verses come from:

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right

While, as always, my favourite poet of the Welsh Renaissance had his own cautionary note, embedded in that famed villanelle:

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The Sun, source as it is of all that keeps our world running, beacon as it is of the days and seasons, should not be worshipped. But it is always obvious why men might worship him - for the Sun is a power which simply cannot be ignored.