The Lion

        There is an old BBC version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe that was so boring that it almost turned me away from Narnia for the longest of times known: forever. Good thing for me Disney thought an adaptation from the book by CS Lewis would be profitable.

        In the symbolic portion of this part, the king of Narnia, Aslan, is perfect for the ADD that I am going to talk about. At one point the cat didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. Sheesh, pay a little attention. Maybe perfect is too strong a word because other than that I really can’t back-up what I said up there.

        What I wanted to do was try and segue way to the next two parts where I will talk about a book and the first installment in The Chronicles of Narnia. The book is one I read in 2005 by Paul McAuley called The Secret of Life. Both authors, their books published fifty-one years apart, create realistic worlds within different realms created by that space of years where the world has caused change in the writing in and of it.

        I mean I guess, I never read the one by CS Lewis. I just saw the movie.

        Aslan was voiced by Liam Neeson and for some reason he has the perfect voice of reason. He gave the animated king of Narnia a validity by never breaking his tone or cadence throughout.

        How could a majestic leader, whose very breath birthed Narnia, not have a little touch of the ADD? All of that stuff on his mind, the prophecy, the Witch making a hundred years of winter with no Christmas and her mesmerizing of Edmund. Aslan played mediator when Edmund met again with his siblings: Peter, Susan and Lucy.

        He said the past is something that must sometimes be left behind or something like that, I wasn’t really paying attention.

The Witch

        I am a science fiction fan. It caters to my taste for extrapolation. What if this happens and what if that happens? Paul McAuley has extrapolated a world in 2026 that has had the Internet for so long that it is an international community from China all the way to the United States.

        So when an oil slick appears in the Pacific Ocean it is very difficult to keep it under wraps by the governments, one responsible and one being pro-active, separately trying to do just that. The social elite have piercing in their eye-brows, noses and wherever else they like. Everyone has a slate which is a laptop, cell phone and Internet connection all in one small package. Scientists who work on the elements that will cure diseases caused over the years such as the First Born Crisis where male embryos were aborting at two months all over the world. The vaccine to that pandemic led to a paradox the author eloquently spoke of where injecting a virus into people was the lone cure to the much greater disease.

        In effect, health in 2026 needed disease to be achieved.

        The heroine of the tale is a scientist who lives in a trailer in the Arizona desert.

        “Mariella pulls on her sheepskin-lined denim jacket, saddles her bay mare, Twink, and rides at a trot along the dry riverbed.”

        This is how Paul McAuley introduces Dr. Mariella Anders. He creates a strong and sympathetic portrait of a rebellious woman who knows how to conform. A woman with deep scars that has fallen in love with her work and her love for that is not even as strong as she would like it to be.

        She knows how to work it in the political realm in the ultra high-tech world and is granted admission onto an elite squad that will travel to Mars. It seems that the Chinese have found something on the red planet and it is the reason for the substance growing in the Pacific Ocean. Shipping lines have caused the spread of the original slick into the rest of the water around the world.

        She is going up with two others to find out what is under the polar ice cap on Mars. She takes the orders of NASA for as long as she can until she sneaks off for a night on the town just in case. Nothing was going to happen of course when she went to Mars, but just in case…

        That night cost her leverage in a struggle with one of her crewmembers. The one representing the company funding the trip from the Earth past the Moon and onto Mars. He kept her on the mission against the orders of those above him so she would create a majority when they were alone on the Martian surface.

        After a nightmarish journey through space and even more imagery of chaos on the surface of Mars, Mariella returns to Earth with precious cargo and a price on her head by both public and private interests.

        The Secret of Life is an ambitious novel that spoke to me on many levels of a quasi-world that is eerily conceivable. Like George Orwell with 1984, Paul McAuley sees a world where big brother uses the advancements to come to further control those that they rule. It is the sheer number of those that are to be controlled, something maybe Orwell never conceived from his vantage point before the sexual revolution of the 60's that has grown more perverse with each passing decade, that allows the social mores to become liberal to the point where business suits and nose rings look common together.

        It is a page turner that takes you on a journey through the birth of a planet from cosmic dust to Central American labs where the structure of Martian life was dissected. It is also full of insight to the effects of micro-gravity, DNA and RNA structure and the history of their research. There are communities that live only off of the land that have to deal with the destruction of that land by big corporations. The slicks in the ocean are effecting marine life which will eventually spill onto land.

        Maybe the secret of life is that everything effects everything else.

The Wardrobe

        Not since the first Lord of the Rings has an epic fantasy been so thoroughly enjoyable. It starts with the brutality of battle and a young boy unable to look away until told to. He is part of a family torn apart by the war as his father is away at war. Only a picture of him remains.

        The children were sent away to all points not under air attacks. Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy got to their professors in the country. He has an enormous house and one room has only a wardrobe in it. With belief there is a whole world, from the lamp post on is Narnia, behind the fur coats in the wardrobe. Without belief there is only the back of the wardrobe.

        With belief children can become great warriors and leaders and lions are truly kings. Without belief a witch can freeze a waterfall and a child can become lost on his way. Narnia was suffering but there was a prophecy that things would get better. The witch made Narnia suffer and wanted to stop the prophecy. Edmund’s belief allowed him to follow his little sister through the back of the wardrobe. In trying to find her, he met the witch. He knew she was bad but still tried to help her. He was afraid of her. Edmund was always afraid and that made him very angry.

        The movie was so good that it didn’t even need the preview friendly battle at the end but it didn’t hurt either. The kids brought springtime back to Narnia and after a hundred years of winter it was sorely needed.

        They grew up in Narnia and one day while riding majestic stallions they saw an old street lamp overcome by vines and barely lit. They walked back to find an old wardrobe and returned to their youths back in England.

        With belief a child can grow into an adult twice and it will always be springtime in Narnia.

        It will be a noble undertaking to translate The Chronicles of Narnia from book to film. I am also a big fan of the book to film adaptation. That was how I have read such great books as Big Trouble by Dave Barry, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by the late Douglas Adams, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King, The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (who was in a literary circle with CS Lewis and it seems there two great series have some similarities they could have possibly discussed) and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton among so many others.