Читать книгу CVC Veri A Guide to the Epic of the Martian Empire - Lee CDN Streiff - Страница 7

Perhaps the best place to begin, in fact, is with the Cosmology of the Empire.

Taking his cue from earthly cosmological legends, James visualized how the universe would have been expressed in mythic terms by the early Martians. A drawing of this visualization is shown below.

Figure 1.2: Cosmological myth of the early Martians

In it a map of the known world in ancient Martian times is shown held up by columns which rest on a platform carried on the back of a dragon. In the heavens above the map are two fabulous creatures, [the creature on the upper right is the demon VERI] and below them is an inscription in the old Martian writing system. No where in the writings is there a reference to this drawing or the myth it shows, but it is clear that it is intended to be ancient in character in its conception.

The dragon was not a mythical beast to the Martians, however; nor was it an extinct creature. The dragons, Erf and Merf, of whom more will be said later, were active participants in the adventures of the present and Klono, a dragon, was the god of Justice and Planets (see figure 1.7). On the other hand, it is not clear just when the Martians first encountered dragons, and how that contact happened to take place. The Martians did not develop space travel until AL 1,000,000,000 — when they settled the Earth’s moon and the moons of Jupiter— and, naturally, interstellar travel did not come until later (see Timeline in Chapter 2).

Figure 1.3 Dragons and Middle Martians ideograms associated with them.

Once the Martians went into interstellar space, their view of the Universe changed dramatically, of course, and there were many intergalactic maps in the materials that plot journeys from one place to another (see figure 1.4).

But, all of these locations in space had their origins in a set of locations on earth as well. One very interesting map (see figure 1.5) shows that many of the places that figure in the Epic have their counterparts in the four square block area around our house in Wichita Kansas, at 548 N. Dellrose, bounded by Central Ave., Crestway, 9^th Street, and Oliver. In particular, the location of our house on this map is in the area set aside for Andromeda (M31), and it is in that galaxy that much of the action of the Epic takes place.

By structuring the Universe in a physical space in this four block square area, the real life doings of James, Bob Parks, and their friends could be embodied in historical events in the Epic and daring deeds could be acted out in distant space. A walk from our house to Parks’ house — only a couple of blocks away — would involve, thus, a journey through space, during which our heroes might encounter all sorts of fearful hazards.

[In the following picture of the Star Map (or the alternate Universe) you can see Streiff’s Tavern which belonged to our Dad, our home, Bob Parks house, John Roth’s house and Shultz’s the little open-aired residential Grocery store in our neighborhood that would transform into “Shultz’s Beer Parlor when the boys entered into the 81^st dimension.]

*Star map by Lee Streiff

Figure 1.4: Intergalactic map showing the directions to the Virgo Cluster, M 31(the galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda), M 33(a galaxy in Triangulum), and other places from, apparently, the Milky Way, in the center.

Figure 1.5: Transcription of the four square block area map. (North is at the Right)

In addition, by standing in our backyard (as the night sky was much more visible then in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s), one could almost feel the affinity with and closeness to the celestial sphere and the streaming cloud of the misty Milky way. I remember many cold winter nights when James would take me out into the backyard and point out the various stars, constellations and planets. His own understanding of Astronomy — which in retrospect it must be remembered was limited to the knowledge of that time — was considerable, even if his spelling was eccentric.

[Note: And, Pluto was not even discovered yet as a planet. Now of course there are questions about that.]

It might be noted that the Zodiacal constellations are grouped in the center of this map, and that suggests that the Milky Way was at the intersection of Pershing and Murdock’s store of streets, and that by looking out from there on the plane of the Ecliptic, one would see these constellations from Earth, or — slightly differently — from Mars. There was a small open air neighborhood grocery store of the kind familiar in the 1930’s nestled between some houses on Murdock, close to Pershing where we kids would frequently make stops for pop, Ice-cream and candy. I suspect this might have been the location of Shultz’s Beer Parlor in the outer-space Epic.

In any case, the intergalactic map in figure 1.4 was only one such, among many in the files depicting episodes in the Epic. And many of the adventures were battles between the Martian Exiles and their various enemies. Most of these exploits are covered in James’ essays in the series Studies in Martian History and in articles in the Martian News Letter, and they will be discussed in Chapter 3.