Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)
Q: You mentioned in a recent Tinder Box column that you’d sold your novel about astral projection. So does astral projection really exist? Or — and I guess this is a second question — was it you who sold that novel? I’m unclear whether “The Oracle” is different from “Brent Hartinger, Editor”! — Mark, Pullman, WA
A: Second question first!
No, The All-Knowing Fantasy-Question-Answering Oracle is not Brent Hartinger, the founder and editor of this site and the author of that astral projection novel. We are completely different entities — although The Oracle can see how it would be confusing, as every week my omnipotence is channeled by Brent. (Once or twice, he channeled my words incorrectly — which are, of course, the few times he’s had to acknowledge errors!)
Regarding Brent’s forthcoming novel Shadowwalkers and the subject of astral projection, there is no doubt that the phenomenon of out-of-body travel exists — in that people subjectively experience something where it seems as if the body and spirit are separate. There are thousands of personal testimonials of such occurrences, from cultures all over the world — and many of them do share common elements such as seeing a “silver cord” which connects the spirit with the body.
But does the experience “really” happen? In other words, did those people’s spirits actually leave their bodies — or were people merely experiencing something that’s entirely in their minds?
Alas, it’s almost certainly the latter. Scientists are now able to provoke the subjective “out-of-body” experience by stimulating certain parts of the brain. Further, no study or researcher has been able to confirm that actual mind-body separation has occurred — by, for example, having an astral traveler read or identify something with which he is unfamiliar, in a completely different room.
(It’s true that some out-of-body subjects correctly report having “seen” events in rooms or places where they were unconscious, but most mainstream researchers currently argue that, even while unconscious, the brain is able to make sense of the events around them and present an experience where it “seems” as if the person is actually watching them. This frequently happens in dreams.)
But the Oracle has it on good authority that Brent’s novel takes a slightly different perspective!
Q: Will Lucy Lawless ever dye her hair back to Xena black? - Lindsey, LA
A: Since Fatal Attraction, have you ever seen Glenn Close in those trademark corkscrew curls? And guess what? You never will! (Not unless she’s doing some kind of parody.)
When actors become so associated with a certain role that it threatens to typecast them, they are understandably motivated to do whatever they can to disassociate themselves from that role. For actresses, that means changing their hair style and/or color. And sure enough, Lucy Lawless has gone from Xena black to many shades of blond to red and now to brown.
But my Lucy Lawless expert, Mary over at LucyLawless.info, has read every interview Lucy has ever given, so I was curious to ask her if Lucy had ever talked about this. Mary told me that Lucy has been asked about her new hair colors many, many times, but Mary could recall only one interview where she was specifically asked about the color black: Lucy said it was simply too hard on her hair.
When my channeler, Brent, interviewed Lucy in July, he tells me her hair was a very fetching brown – her natural color.
(Her red hair in the new series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand, coming in January, is a wig.)
Q: This is sci-fi, not fantasy, but ... Fantastic Voyage is such a great idea for a movie, but the original, while fun, is so dated. Why haven’t they re-made it? And 1987’s Inner Space doesn’t count! — Magpie, Toronto, Canada
A: You’re not the only one who thinks the movie about miniaturized scientists exploring a human body would make a terrific remake. In fact, such a movie has been in the works at least since 1984. Indeed, in the 1980s, the producers even approached Isaac Asimov to write the treatment for a sequel.
(Contrary to popular belief, the 1966 movie is not based on Asimov’s original idea; he did write the novel, but it’s a movie novelization based on a screenplay, although he changed many elements.)
Asimov’s treatment never became a movie, although he later published it as another novel, Fantastic Voyage II.
More recently, James Cameron (who’s producing) has worked on the idea, even writing a script, but 2012 director Roland Emmerich, who was slated to direct, reportedly “hated it,” in part because it was set in the future.
“I said, let this happen now,” Emmerich said. “It’s so much more cool and fun when we can say to a normal person from now, ‘Well we’re going to make you microscopic and put you in some submarine which we will shrink down and you have to do this stuff inside a body.”
The project is still in limbo, although screenplays continue to be written, and The Oracle is reasonably confident that the movie will eventually get made. The idea is too cool not to do it — and the existing movie has plenty of geek-nostalgia appeal for aging, but powerful directors.
P.S. Sci-fi questions are occasionally okay … providing they interest The Oracle!
Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)
A: The Oracle could not agree with you more! If there’s one thing that turns the Oracle into a Christmas Scrooge faster than anything, it’s, well, yet another production of this sweet, but wildly-over-told tale.
A: A fallen angel who is, more or less, the literal embodiment of evil? No. The ancient Hebrews, from whom the idea of Satan originated, possessed great wisdom, and their religious stories contain impressive metaphorical truths, but their literal understanding of the world was flat-out wrong in almost every respect: the world is not flat, the sun does not revolve around the Earth, a flood never covered the planet, you couldn’t live inside a whale for three days, and on and on and on.
That said, many religions and cultures do contain the concept of some sort of physical embodiment of evil. But the Oracle would argue that this is merely a way for humans to make sense of the concept of evil, and to instruct others on the nature of evil — not evidence that such a being really exists. After all, all these “beings” are so different from each other as to be absolutely irreconcilable.
Q: You said in another question that you can order the season 1 DVD of Merlin on Amazon UK. If, hypothetically, other DVDs from Britain have played on our DVD player, and if, hypothetically, I have a cousin studying abroad in England right now, would it be a good idea to have her smuggle Merlin into the US for me? — Wynne