In my post March 18 I linked you to a graphic that presents the history of science fiction. Some of you may have noticed the prominence of the expression "Space Opera" in that graphic.
What does that mean? As you might have inferred already, the expression came about on the analogy with "soap opera," and it refers to the more melodramatic sorts of sci-fi. It also refers to the large scale on which a plot works -- a space opera might portray a war between two galaxies, or a multi-generational saga spanning millennia, or both.
The following will give you a feel. This is the opening paragraph of A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY (1999).
"The manhunt extended across more than one hundred light-years and eight centuries. It had always been a secret search, unacknowledged even among some of the participants. In the early years, it had simply been encrypted queries hidden in radio braodcasts. Decades and centuries passed. There were clues, interviews with The Man's fellow-travelers, pointers in a half-dozen contradictory directions: The Man was alone now and heading still farther away; The Man had died before the search ever began; The Man had a war fleet and was coming back upon them."
One hundred light years and eight centuries -- a mere niche in space, a flicker in time, on the scale of space operas. Further, the object of this manhunt is a single man, which tells us something about longevity in the distant future when this is set. Indeed, routinely long lives are a common feature of space operas, not necessarily for any reason more complicated than this: it allows a single protagonist to experience several long-lasting flights hither and yon.
From the above paragraph, reading between the lines just a bit, we can begin to grasp some points about the world to which we've been introduced. There was a war or revolution in the past, and "The Man" was on the losing side, which is why he went into hiding. He continues to be sufficiently dangerous that his sympathizers can with some plausibility claim he has raised a new war fleet. At any rate, the established powers -- his successors -- are looking for him.
We immediately have questions. Should our sympathies be with him or with his pursuers? Is he more like Eichmann in Argentina, or Jean Valjean, condemned over a stolen loaf of bread? Related: what do they plan to do when they find him? Assume he has no warfleet -- assume he is a man living an unremarkable life in an unremarkable place when they find him. What then? Summary execution? A trip "home" (wherever that is) for trial? Something else?
I won't spoil it. If your interest is piqued, the book is here.
That is the meaning of the term "space opera."
Showing posts with label Adolf Eichmann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adolf Eichmann. Show all posts
01 April 2011
23 January 2011
The One Before Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann is in the news again. Der Spiegel says that newly available records give a new story of his life in hiding, and tell of an Israeli effort to capture him when Israel itself was a brand spankin' new nation, in 1949.
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=203881
(My apologies -- I've had trouble getting that URL to work as a link -- just copy and paste it into your browser if you like!)
Some related surfing tells me that before the Eichmann case, Israel had only tried one WW II war criminal. That was Rezso Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew who, Israel alleged, had collaborated with Eichmann in the destruction of the Jews of that country.
According to Neal Bascomb, author of "Hunting Eichmann" (2009), Israel didn't even have a law on the subject of prosecutinbg Nazis and their collaborators until 1950, so they wouldn't have had one in place at the time of that first effort to capture Eichmann.
As to Kasztner, Bascomb writes: "The supreme court ... eventually ruled that Kasztner had saved Jewish lives rather than aided in their destruction -- but not until after he had been assassinated in March 1957."
Tough timing on that vindication, Kasztner ol' buddy.
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=203881
(My apologies -- I've had trouble getting that URL to work as a link -- just copy and paste it into your browser if you like!)
Some related surfing tells me that before the Eichmann case, Israel had only tried one WW II war criminal. That was Rezso Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew who, Israel alleged, had collaborated with Eichmann in the destruction of the Jews of that country.
According to Neal Bascomb, author of "Hunting Eichmann" (2009), Israel didn't even have a law on the subject of prosecutinbg Nazis and their collaborators until 1950, so they wouldn't have had one in place at the time of that first effort to capture Eichmann.
As to Kasztner, Bascomb writes: "The supreme court ... eventually ruled that Kasztner had saved Jewish lives rather than aided in their destruction -- but not until after he had been assassinated in March 1957."
Tough timing on that vindication, Kasztner ol' buddy.
24 May 2009
History and different chains of causation
I'd like to share with you this passage from a William James essay, "Great Men and their Environment."
James has just said that there are different cycles in nature and in the human world that operate in relative independence, even if cheek-by-jowl. It is a point that requires specific illustration. So he writes"
"The mould on the biscuit in the store-room of a man-of-war vegetates in absolute indifference to the nationality of the flag, the direction of the voyage, the weather, and the human dramas that may go on on board; and a mycologist may study it in complete abstraction from all these larger details. Only by so studying it, in fact, is there any chance of the mental concentration by which alone he may hope to learn something of its natre. On the other hand, the captain who in maneuvering his vessel through a naval fight should think it necessary to bring the mouldy biscuit into his calculations would very likely lose the battle by reason of the excessive 'thoroughness' of his mind."
I love that analogy. It helps me understand the appearance of randomness in history, and to abstract from the issue of whether there really is 'randomness' in any deep metaphysical sense. Once in awhile, after all, the mouldy biscuit does somehow intervene in the sea-fight. A gunner, having grabbed the biscuit and bitten into it without thinking, may become ill and miss a target. When this happens, it introduces a note of randomness into the action of the battle and the "human dramas" in general.
Yesterday I wrote of the Mossad operation that captured Eichmann and brought him to Israel for trial. The team was deligtyed to realize that their operation was to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the independence of Argentina, a fact that made their planning of a cover story for getting Eichmann out of the country easier.
Obviously, there is nothing indeterminate in any metaphysical sense about the calender. The 150th anniversary of an event always happens one year after the 149th anniversary. But in this case it looked like a stroke of luck, because the other elements with which these captains and gunners had been operating -- their leads on this suspicious 'Ricardo Clement,' the accumulation of evidence that he was in fact Eichmann, the tracking of his movements -- all that had taken place in absolute indifference to the issue of when Argentina won it independence from Spain.
The mouldy biscuit sometimes does affect the battle after all.
James has just said that there are different cycles in nature and in the human world that operate in relative independence, even if cheek-by-jowl. It is a point that requires specific illustration. So he writes"
"The mould on the biscuit in the store-room of a man-of-war vegetates in absolute indifference to the nationality of the flag, the direction of the voyage, the weather, and the human dramas that may go on on board; and a mycologist may study it in complete abstraction from all these larger details. Only by so studying it, in fact, is there any chance of the mental concentration by which alone he may hope to learn something of its natre. On the other hand, the captain who in maneuvering his vessel through a naval fight should think it necessary to bring the mouldy biscuit into his calculations would very likely lose the battle by reason of the excessive 'thoroughness' of his mind."
I love that analogy. It helps me understand the appearance of randomness in history, and to abstract from the issue of whether there really is 'randomness' in any deep metaphysical sense. Once in awhile, after all, the mouldy biscuit does somehow intervene in the sea-fight. A gunner, having grabbed the biscuit and bitten into it without thinking, may become ill and miss a target. When this happens, it introduces a note of randomness into the action of the battle and the "human dramas" in general.
Yesterday I wrote of the Mossad operation that captured Eichmann and brought him to Israel for trial. The team was deligtyed to realize that their operation was to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the independence of Argentina, a fact that made their planning of a cover story for getting Eichmann out of the country easier.
Obviously, there is nothing indeterminate in any metaphysical sense about the calender. The 150th anniversary of an event always happens one year after the 149th anniversary. But in this case it looked like a stroke of luck, because the other elements with which these captains and gunners had been operating -- their leads on this suspicious 'Ricardo Clement,' the accumulation of evidence that he was in fact Eichmann, the tracking of his movements -- all that had taken place in absolute indifference to the issue of when Argentina won it independence from Spain.
The mouldy biscuit sometimes does affect the battle after all.
23 May 2009
Ben-Gurion announcement
On this day, May 23, in 1960, the then prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, announced to the Knesset that Adolf Eichmann had been captured and was in Israel. Perhaps I should have waited to make this the subject of an entry one year from now -- the 50th anniversary of the event.
But I'm doing so now because I happen to be reading a newly published book on the subject, HUNTING EICHMANN, by Neal Bascomb.
One intriguing fact emphasized in this book involves the mechanics of flying Eichmann out of the country. The national airline, El Al, had no regular flights to and from Argentina at that time. (It didn't even have its own maps of South America yet.) And the Mossad could hardly grab Eichmann off the street and hustle him onto, say, some airliner belonging to a US based company. There was consideration of telling the Argentine authorities that El Al would like to make a "test run" of one of its planes into and out of Buenos Aires. But that seemed like a very thin cover for a highly secret operation.
Fortunately, the calender came to the aid of the Mossad. May 1960 was the 150th anniversary of Argentina's independence from Spain. The country had invited many other countries around the world to send official delegations to attend the festivities. It seemed unremarkable, them, that Israel asked for permission to bring its delegation into Buenos Aires on May 19th on a special El Al flight. (Eichmann had already been captured days before that plane left Israel -- he had been held in a safe house since May 11.)
Even the members of the official anniversary-celebrating delegation, officials of Israel's foreign ministry, were unaware of the fact that another purpose was to be served by that airplane. They were told, though, that El Al needed the plane back quickly to keep up its regularly scheduled flights, so they would have to fly home later in the month through other commercial airlines.
As a result, on the trip back to Israel on May 21, that plane carried only Eichmann, the operatives who had captured him, and the flight crew.
Even through meticulously planned operations, though, it is very difficult to keep a secret. The flight crew knew something was going on, and since Argentina's significance as a refuge for leaders of the 3d Reich was hardly a secret, some of them had a pretty good idea what it was. Bascomb has interviewed members of that flight crew and tells the story of that flight from the inside.
When the plane cleared Argentine airspace, there was a spontaneous outburst of delight. The leader of the Mossad operation decided that further efforts at in-cabin secrecy were pointless and gave the El Al security chief, Adi Peleg, the honor of making the announcement. "You've been accorded a great privilege," Peleg told the El Al crew, "You are taking part in an operation of supreme importance to the Jewish people. The man with us on the plane is Adolf Eichmann."
It was soon after touchdown on the morning of Sunday May 22, Israel time, that Ben Gurion learned of the success of the operation and of Eichmann's presence in the country. He asked his Mossad chief how many people knew. Isser Harel replied that already more than fifty knew. Thus, Ben-Gurion decided that an announcement was necessary -- news like this has to be framed by a head of state in a manner other than nodding "yes" when a reporter eventually hears about it and asks a question.
This is where we came in, the statement in the Knesset, May 23: "Adolf Eichmann is already under arrest in Israel and will shortly be placed on trial in Israel under the terms of the law for the trial of Nazis and their helpers."
But I'm doing so now because I happen to be reading a newly published book on the subject, HUNTING EICHMANN, by Neal Bascomb.
One intriguing fact emphasized in this book involves the mechanics of flying Eichmann out of the country. The national airline, El Al, had no regular flights to and from Argentina at that time. (It didn't even have its own maps of South America yet.) And the Mossad could hardly grab Eichmann off the street and hustle him onto, say, some airliner belonging to a US based company. There was consideration of telling the Argentine authorities that El Al would like to make a "test run" of one of its planes into and out of Buenos Aires. But that seemed like a very thin cover for a highly secret operation.
Fortunately, the calender came to the aid of the Mossad. May 1960 was the 150th anniversary of Argentina's independence from Spain. The country had invited many other countries around the world to send official delegations to attend the festivities. It seemed unremarkable, them, that Israel asked for permission to bring its delegation into Buenos Aires on May 19th on a special El Al flight. (Eichmann had already been captured days before that plane left Israel -- he had been held in a safe house since May 11.)
Even the members of the official anniversary-celebrating delegation, officials of Israel's foreign ministry, were unaware of the fact that another purpose was to be served by that airplane. They were told, though, that El Al needed the plane back quickly to keep up its regularly scheduled flights, so they would have to fly home later in the month through other commercial airlines.
As a result, on the trip back to Israel on May 21, that plane carried only Eichmann, the operatives who had captured him, and the flight crew.
Even through meticulously planned operations, though, it is very difficult to keep a secret. The flight crew knew something was going on, and since Argentina's significance as a refuge for leaders of the 3d Reich was hardly a secret, some of them had a pretty good idea what it was. Bascomb has interviewed members of that flight crew and tells the story of that flight from the inside.
When the plane cleared Argentine airspace, there was a spontaneous outburst of delight. The leader of the Mossad operation decided that further efforts at in-cabin secrecy were pointless and gave the El Al security chief, Adi Peleg, the honor of making the announcement. "You've been accorded a great privilege," Peleg told the El Al crew, "You are taking part in an operation of supreme importance to the Jewish people. The man with us on the plane is Adolf Eichmann."
It was soon after touchdown on the morning of Sunday May 22, Israel time, that Ben Gurion learned of the success of the operation and of Eichmann's presence in the country. He asked his Mossad chief how many people knew. Isser Harel replied that already more than fifty knew. Thus, Ben-Gurion decided that an announcement was necessary -- news like this has to be framed by a head of state in a manner other than nodding "yes" when a reporter eventually hears about it and asks a question.
This is where we came in, the statement in the Knesset, May 23: "Adolf Eichmann is already under arrest in Israel and will shortly be placed on trial in Israel under the terms of the law for the trial of Nazis and their helpers."
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