Firefly/Futurama

Don’t knock Blues Clues.

Even if the alliance held a monopoly on information updates, the Reavers are either out of the loop or cunningly found a way around that, and always find where they are going. However they are under continuous attrition, and even on the series they’ve had one way trips. Undoubtedly plenty of Reaver scrap laying about.

And Firefly doesn’t take place in the expanse of a universe but a solar system. A very unrealistic one. Hence my note of Battlestar Galactica’s 12 Colonies- and that takes from the Mormon Kalob, which took from Swedenborg. It is a couple hundred years of bad astronomical data used as the backdrop for storytelling.

firefly.fandom.com/wiki/The_Verse

They tried to fix it by saying it is a massive star with four stars orbiting it, and each star has planets and asteroid belts. And given the importance of faster than light communications, gravity wells, and historical memory, people should of remembered Miranda or question why Reavers always came statistically from one location more than others, why radio transmissions happen out there. It was also in the Goldie Locks Zone of this star system- and nobody notices. Solar system is creeping with malcontents, rebel gear just laying around, crashed ships from the war with computers by default all over, and plenty of relatives of people who settled in Miranda left behind- and everyone forgot and doesn’t notice- in a era of very common space travel?

Malcolm should of been out running weapons left from brown coat caches, harvesting asteroids, growing food in glass pressurized habitats in space (they obviously found a way to counter solar radiation for ships with big windows, so can do it for powerless floating green houses left in warm orbits (1 AU) from the star. A broken ship can provide that and scrub the atmosphere for plants. If vegetables are that expensive floating greenhouses sound mighty more profitable than anything they did. More wrecks salvaged equals more parts for floating farms meaning more food or profits.

I take the opposite perspective, example: I know that the movie Inception was inspired by Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, it is a work from the Renaissance and set the rules for modern books on how to print images with text. Carl Jung used the images as a example of his archetypal theory- but that work is also based off Empedocles concept of Love and Strife (the book’s title means Love and Strife in a Dream”. It was the hardest book to read till a few years ago when someone finally managed to translate all of it into English, and the images are often sold separately in another volumn, but most people when they see the images they feel eerily familiar. I’ve also had a discussion with a Indian I know about the interrelation of Empedocles to the Ajivikas.

But knowing Jung (a psychologist) was the most plausible link that caused the writers of Inception to look into the Hypnerotomachia also leads to another interesting connection with Jung and Sci-Fi on a tangent, how Frank Herbert’s Dune Novels are supposed to end. Jung’s final released book, “The Red Book” had a image in it:

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stottilien.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/systema-mundi-totius.jpg


A lot of the main characters in the Dune Novel stretched over several thousands of years appear on that mandala- and I’ve seen a copy in San Francisco that predates the release of the Red Book. You can see the mouse/Paul, Leto the Sand worm at the bottom with plant life, Duncan Idaho is the extreme top as a ghola (that’s a long explanation but if you know anything about Orphic Cosmoc Egg or Vedic Cosmic Egg concepts isn’t hard to grasp what Duncan represents beyond Leto II) but is also associated with the Menorah- these play off one another as continuous opposing opposites. Leto the Sandworm ushed in his contradictions- a lush Arrakis (he was deathly allergic to water being a desert creature) but the individual he had to create beyond himself and his understanding was Duncan. 

When Frank died the final novel was unfinished and many think he wasn’t supposed to have Jews in it, and I point out this mandala saying infact yes, he was intending to put them in, just the interrelations of Duncan to the Jews wasn’t sufficiently grasped by the writers who didn’t grasp Duncan had a interrelation to them as dependent and contradictory as Leto to a lush Arrakis. 

The four elements (spacing guild and Bene Jesuit) are also listed but don’t want to stay up all night talking about it. 

Basically when you can dive in real deep into a book you can appreciate the philosophical depth more that the writer was taking from and use that to look at other great writers. I must say though…. Firefly isn’t exactly on the level of Inception or Dune in terms of quality of depth or resources it drew upon. I’ve never stayed up pondering the nature of life and the universe after watching anything Joss Whedon put out. 

Like- I know Blade Runner 2049 is a repackaging of Rain Man- but I still like the scenes, acting moments and especially the sound track. It is more a discussion on the nature of cinematic storytelling- can stories cross genres and would most people be able to tell? Can the morale of the story survive? Does it mutate? Does it somehow still resonate? When I watch Firefly I’m mostly just watching Summer Glau. She is worth it, but the depth of insight one can get from say Asimov, it ain’t in Whedon. Good sci-fi goes out of the way to anchor itself to deep perennial questions and myths. 

Oh, that Jungian mandala depicts a Axis Mundi- the galaxy in Kin Dza Dza! is likewise depicted as such- dead universe used up by materialists on one side, good wholesome Soviet Earth that is proletariat and respectful of natural resources (not in real life- Soviets destroyed the Aral Sea and broke a nuclear power plant) on the other. The movie likes to quote Nietzsche. Clear that Nietzsche and Jung, and of course Marx was a inspiration for that story of Soviet Marxists exploring alien Capitalist societies far, far away. 

Imagine if you will, a place where canceled shows are reborn.  Reborn, but not as they were, but as they might have been.  Maybe a parallel universe, where ...