where is Glinda?

[sergebroom]

I was paged last night to take care of a computer problem just as I was trying to go to sleep. The situation was resolved quickly, but, after I went back to bed, I found myself thinking of various SF-related things, and of my first worldcon, the one in Boston in 1980, where GoH Damon Knight talked about his youth and his disappointement that The Wizard of Oz had turned out to be a dream, and how the adults had asked him what else it could have been.

I tried to sleep while wondering if Oz could really have been an alternate reality caused by some quantum phenomenon. As I thought about how the main characters of Oz had a counterpart in our world, something occurred to me.

Where is Glinda's counterpart?

And is there something in Dorothy's genetic material that explains why she has no equivalent in Oz? A genetic quirk might explain why her aunt and uncle also don't exist in Oz.

But what of the Wizard? He tells Dorothy that he isn't from Oz, but he can't be from here because he has a counterpart here. Could he be from yet another reality?

I blame Michael Burstein's story collection, I Remember the Future, especially the tales of a parallel universe that can be reached thru the Superconducting SuperCollider in Waxahachie, Texas, for my cogitations's taking me into such territory.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I always thought Oz was a real place when I was a child. I thought the deadly desert was the Sahara, or perhaps somewhere in Nevada, though the issue of the nations surrounding Oz caused me to spend long hours puzzling over maps and distances. The counterpart thing was/is a nonissue: remember that the movie altered the story. In the original book it wasn't a dream and the people were not all cognates of the Kansas crowd. The movie is fun, but it's not the real L. Frank Baum Oz. It's noncanonical, sort of like fanfic on a large budget. Clearly the filmmakers thought the general public couldn't handle the reality of Oz!

Susan
http://www.rixosous.com

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

In the original book it wasn't a dream

So I've heard. As is the case with most people, my knowledge of Oz comes from the movie. As for making it all to be a dream, one wonders why they felt it necessary to do that. I mean, people went in expecting a fantasy story so you'd expect that they'd cope with its turning out to be real.

About the real Baum... Back in 1984, I had gone to some panel where Gary Kurtz was, to promote Return to Oz. (Goodness, that turned out to be a depressing movie.) The neat thing is that Kurtz showed some silent films that Baum himself had made, and the characters looked close to what the Judy Garland movie wound up doing. Presumably, Baum didn't make his films turn out to be a dream.

In case you're interetsed... There's a comic-book miniseries out that adapts the original novel all over again. It's written by someone who's writing new Oz novels. I like the art quite a bit, especially Toto:

http://www.marvel.com/catalog/?id=10446

[readinggeek451]

Return to Oz may have been depressing, but it was otherwise much closer to the books. I read and re-read--adored--all the books as a kid. The ending of Wizard the Oz the movie made me so angry when I finally saw it (in college) that it retrospectively ruined all the earlier bits that I had enjoyed up until then. It's NOT A DREAM, dammit!!

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I know that Return tried to reproduce the look of the characters in the original illustrations. What of the tone of the stories? Which of the movies was closer to it?

[readinggeek451]

Return matched the storyline of (one of) the books pretty closely. It's been a long time since I watched it (when it was new in the theaters), but I remember it as being much more satisfying to my and my friends' Oz-loving hearts. You call it depressing, which I'm not going to argue with (see: "long time since I watched it") although that's not the way I remember it. The books are fairly light, for the most part.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Like you said, it has been a long time. Heck, a quarter of a century. I might like it better now.

[pedanther]

Yes, I like that artwork too.

"Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze)" is another one for the they don't really think when they write those parentheticals, do they? file, though. I understand why they mention that he's famous for 'Age of Bronze' - I honestly can't think of anything else he's as famous for that they could have mentioned instead - but is "The Wizard of Oz, as told by a guy most famous for a very adult retelling of the Trojan War" really the message they want to send?

(I should add that 'Age of Bronze' is adult in the good sense, not the sadly common debased sense, and that Shanower is a very good writer and I don't personally doubt that he's capable of writing capable family-friendly Oz stories. But, still.)

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking that I know of some famous writers whose work was anything but YA, and yet they did write stories aimed at children. It's on the tip of my tongue. Drat. I can't remember who I might be thinking of.

Anyway, Marvel released a free promo issue, which is how I found out about it. Shanower, with whom I wasn't familiar, writes that he's been a fan since he was 6 years old, and even published some Oz graphic novels in the 1980s. That issue contains sketches (I love seeing sketches) of various versions of the characters. Interestingly, one early rendition of the Tin Man makes him look like the Iron Giant.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I always thought Oz was a real place when I was a child.

When I was a child, I thought that Superman was real. Still, it never occurred to me that, if I jumped off a roof, I'd be able to fly. Heck, I may had quite a fantasy-rich life, but I knew I wasn't Superman. Besides, I had tripped over thigns enough to know that flight wasn't among my skills and capabilities.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

You need to see the SciFi miniseries Tin Man. Plays on the original book very nicely.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I remember that. My favorite parts were those involving the Scarecrow, played by Allan Cumming, and the Cowardly Lion, who unfortunately was underused.