Mad Science and Martian Maidens:
The Science Fiction Adventures of Aleksey Tolstoy
Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy was Russia’s less internationally known Tolstoy. While the one was writing thousand-page tomes about sad people losing things (pretty sure that’s the plot of most Leo Tolstoy books) that would be forced upon generation after generation, the other Tolstoy was writing slick science fiction adventures like Aelita (1923, adapted into a movie a year later), Engineer Garin (1924), and Count Cagliostro, which American high school students did not get to read, since there was no time left after plodding through Anna Karenina — in which absolutely no one travels to Mars, builds a death ray, or practices alchemy. Both Aelita and Engineer Garin were adapted into films, the first during the silent era, and the second during the heyday of the swingin’ sixties.
Keith Allison is the chief Bacchanologist at Teleport City.
#1 by lyzard on October 3, 2014 - 6:07 pm
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It’s nothing to brag about – or is it?? – but misleading advertising art may have started with Aelita. It’s certainly not the film you’re led to expect. I can handle the beets, but Los as anything resembling “the hero” is too much to ask of any audience.
I’m surprised that the Russian Cinema Council hasn’t done the right thing by way of Engineer Garin.
Not so much the death ray, but the “ray that can bring down a plane” is unnervingly pervasive in the serials and B-movies of the 30s. I suspect, though, that it was as much to do with the cost-effectiveness of the premise (odd-looking box + exploding model plane = cheap reusable footage) as anything that was actually going on amongst the loony science fringe.
#2 by RogerBW on October 3, 2014 - 6:23 pm
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Nikola Tesla was among those who claimed to have invented an anti-aircraft ray (the “teleforce” projector), and perhaps he was taken more seriously than others. (If you look at his papers, it’s basically a particle accelerator firing ionised mercury; he dealt with the problems of atmospheric collision, and aiming, basically by ignoring them.)
#3 by lyzard on October 3, 2014 - 7:14 pm
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Well, yes—whatever his accomplishments, we’re not suggesting that Tesla was sane, are we?? 😀
#4 by supersonic man on October 5, 2014 - 2:11 am
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Tesla was very frequently long on promises and short on results. I’m not sure of the details but I think it mainly had to do with trying to get some decent financial backing so he wouldn’t always be scraping for money.