Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Is Captain Kirk the great- (+ 80 greats) grandfather of Riddley Walker?

I've been blogging so long, I've forgotten or almost forgotten some of my past posts, buried in the mountain of posts.
Like this macro-narrative below.
It popped up on my stats this morning, so I went back and looked at it for the first time in a long while--which almost felt like the first time ever.

"This is terrific," I thought.
The made-up language works, and it's such a good match with the Star Trek images, I'm reposting it today.

ORIGINAL POST

I just read the novel Riddley Walker (1980), by Russell Hoban--a post-apocalyptic tale told by the boy Riddley in a future-language, of which Hoban says:

"Early on the language began to slide towards Riddleyspeak; I had a lot of fun letting words wear themselves down into new words and new meanings. ... One thing led to another, and the vernacular I ended up with seems entirely plausible to me; language doesn't stand still, and words often carry long-forgotten meanings. Riddleyspeak is only a breaking down and twisting of standard English, so the reader who sounds out the words and uses a little imagination ought to be able to understand it."
––From the author's notes, here, where you can actually read the entire novel online.

The people around Riddley want to discover the power of the previous society, which blew itself up in nuclear war two thousand+ years ago, and eventually they discover the secret of making gunpowder: 

sulfur, coal, and saltpeter.

Hey! I thought, reading it, that's what Captain Kirk puts together in the 1967 Star Trek episode "Arena"!

This called for the making of a macro.

All screencaps are from "Arena," thanks to
Trek Core.com, and all text is from Riddley Walker (mostly from chapters 16 and 17).


[I originally made this on June 24, 2013]

5 comments:

bink said...

Wow! I just started reading RW, and you have nailed the language and the feel of it in this macro! Fun! Good job!

gloria said...

I read RW time back way back when it first was published. And many times since. This is a really cool thing you've done here pairing it up with Star Trek. Nicely done.

Fresca said...

Glad you like it, bink & gloria!
It was a lot of fun to put together.

ArtSparker said...

Lil shining man in first panel.

Frex said...

SPARKER: Great catch!!!
--Fresca