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EMERALD_LAND

                                             October 17, 2008


In E.E. Smith's "The Skylark of Space",
our heroes end up on the planet Osnome,         SKYLARK
under the green light of it's many suns,
in the warm, mild climate the natives
all go nearly naked, save for little           Those outfits are presumably 
strappy outfits decorated with jewels.         a reference to Edgar Rice 
                                               Burrough's "A Princess of Mars":
 The author is a little coy about this:        they were imported from the red
 The remark "the strangers wore no             land to the green.
 clothing" comes as an afterthought --              
 as though that wouldn't be one of the              RULE_OF_REVERSALS
 first things that would be noticed by     
 the American viewpoint characters.       
                                          
       "They were a superbly molded race, the men fully
       as large as Seaton and DuQuesne; the women, while
       smaller than the men, were noticeably taller than
       the two women in the car. The men wore broad
       collars of metal, numerous metallic ornaments, and
       heavily-jeweled leather belts and shoulder-straps
       which were hung with weapons of peculiar
       patterns. The women carried no weapons, but were
       even more highly decorated than were the men--each
       slender, perfectly-formed body scintillated with
       the brilliance of hundreds of strange gems,
       flashing points of fire. Jeweled bands of metal
       and leather restrained their carefully-groomed
       hair; jeweled collars encircled their throats;
       jeweled belts, jeweled bracelets, jeweled anklets,
       each added its quota of brilliance to the
       glittering whole. The strangers wore no clothing,        But wasn't he
       and their smooth skins shone a dark, livid,              just describing
       utterly indescribable color in the peculiar,             their clothes?
       unearthly, yellowish-bluish-green glare of the
       light. Green their skins undoubtedly were, but not       It doesn't
       any shade of green visible in the Earthly                count if it
       spectrum. The 'whites' of their eyes were a light        doesn't cover
       yellowish-green. The heavy hair of the women and         the naughty
       the close-cropped locks of the men were green as         bits.
       well--a green so dark as to be almost black, as
       were also their eyes."

                        Chapter XIII,  "Nalboon of Mardonale",
                        E.E. Smith's "The Skylark of Space"


This planet is called "Osnome": The
joke is that this is a reference to           The outfits described owe more
the Oz stories about the Emerald City.        to Edgar Rice Burroughs John
                                              Carter stories.  "A Princess
                       And Dick Seaton's      of Mars" was out in book form
This version of Oz     fiance is named        in 1917, from a serial in 1912.
seems less utopian     "Dorothy".
than (I expect) the
Baum version was.

There's some mildly disturbing
stuff about the virtues of
social darwinism...  I suppose
it could be that this *is* an
ideal land in Smith's mind, in
some respects.

      Seaton speaking about the beliefs of Osnome:

      "Well, as nearly as I can explain it, it's a
      funny kind of a mixture--partly theology, partly
      Darwinism, or at least, making a fetish of
      evolution, and partly pure economic
      determinism. They believe in a Supreme Being,
      whom they call the First Cause--that is the
      nearest English equivalent--and they recognize
      the existence of an immortal and unknowable
      life-principle, or soul. They believe that the
      First Cause has decreed the survival of the
      fittest as the fundamental law, which belief
      accounts for their perfect physiques...."

                      Chapter XVI, "An Osnomian Marriage"
                      E.E. Smith's "The Skylark of Space",







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