June 18, 2006
Alan's First Eucatastrophe
So, last week, we were reading one of the "Akiko" comic book collections.
If you have kids under ten or so, give Akiko a look. Akiko is a fourth grade girl (though she gets to fifth, then sixth grade in the course of the series) who is whisked off to another galaxy, where she has adventures with a collection of odd characters. There's Mr. Beeba, a timid academic; Spuckler Boach, a Han Solo-like space cowboy; Gax, Spuckler's dilapidated robot; and Poog, a mysterious floating purple blob thing. The whole thing has been compared to "The Wizard of Oz meets Star Wars', and that's probably fair. There are books as well as comics.
Anyway. We'd reached the point in Volume Three where the evil Loza Throck has captured Akiko and her companions and thrown them into... The Hole.
This was a mildly scary sequence. Maybe more than mildly. Goes like this:
-- Villain puts Akiko and her friends in a cage on a chain. The cage descends into... The Hole.
-- Some discussion. It's dark in The Hole, but Spuckler pulls a torch out of Gax the robot. (Spuckler is always pulling things out of Gax; sometimes they work, sometimes not.)
-- Vents in the side of The Hole open. Out pours... red hot lava!
-- Spuckler manages to cut some of the bars of the cage. Akiko climbs out onto the top of the cage, so she can climb the chain.
-- The villain releases the chain. Bastard!
-- We see Akiko flinching backwards as the chain falls onto the top of the cage. The others climb up... but there's no escape now. They're trapped! The red hot lava is rising, and in moments it will come over the top of the cage and engulf them. Close-up of Akiko's frightened face...
[pause]
"Okay, should we stop now?"
"Daddy, turn the page."
"You sure?"
"Daddy, turn the page."
Next page... the cage suddenly tilts... and lifts! It's rising out of the lava! But how?
Spuckler Boach hangs upside down over the edge of the cage and looks inside. There, pressed against the roof of the cage, is Poog. The floating purple blob alien has never been seen to float anything but himself. But now... though we can see that the strain on him is terrific...
"It's Poog! It's Poog, goldurn it!" yells Boach. "He's liftin' us outta here!"
Alan turned to me, beaming, smiling. Then he just laughed. Pointed at the page and laughed for joy.
And that's all.
Posted by douglas at June 18, 2006 09:32 PMWell hurrah! Sounds like some delightful father-son bonding going on over there.
Becky will be eight later this month. This has been the year of silent reading alone, although reading with parents is still fun. I'm scouring the libraries for Horrible Histories for her as well as Emily Rhodda fantasy novels, or 'chapter books' as we call them.
A large number of Becky's invisible friends come from games of Wizardry VIII and recently, Civilization IV that we've been playing together. But that is a story for another day.
Posted by: Syd Webb at June 19, 2006 08:32 AMNot to sound plain stupid, but what does Eucatastrophe mean?
I can't find it in my dictionary.
Posted by: Luke at June 21, 2006 08:31 PMFrom the Greek "eu", good or superior, and "catastrophe", meaning pretty much what it says. Eucatastrophe everything is going wrong, but then unexpectedly things work out right. Like a deus ex machina, but without the deus.
In theology, it's sometimes used to refer to the Incarnation or the Resurrection of Christ. In literature, it's an unexpected good turn for the protagonist.
I've seen it credited to J.R.R. Tolkein, and it does sound like the sort of thing he'd come up with.
Doug M.
As promised, I thought I'd pop in to say 1) Hi! and 2) Blog more! :-D
OK, so I've hit a rough patch myself, but all the more motivation for both of us to write more. I was also enjoying a Fistful of Euros, but I can't easily tell which Doug M you are of the two there, so here's where I get to scratch initials on what I hope is the correct cave wall. ;-) Also, I was hoping to exchange a mutual blogroll, if you're up for it?
Hope you and your family are enjoying Armenia's dryness. ;-) I was (not) enjoying Virginia's drought-ness until the rains finally showed up in force this weekend...
-F.
Posted by: Frank at June 25, 2006 05:25 PM