Rock and roll fantasy (9/9/02)
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The Mole People. [Virgil W. Vogel, 1956; written by László Görög.]
Fire Maidens of Inner Space: on a remote dig in Central Asia, dashing young archaeologist John Agar pulls a mysterious Sumerian tablet out of a heap of ruins and is just translating the curse of Ishtar it contains for the benefit of his colleagues when — an earthquake strikes! — Coincidence? or the wrath of the goddess? — Undaunted, the adventurous antiquarians drop everything when a native lad points toward an imposing sacred mountain [the very epicenter of the recent upheaval] as the source of another intriguing artifact; after negotiating some interpolated mountaineering footage, the party finds itself on a plateau near the summit where a timely avalanche uncovers a commemorative temple erected shortly after the Biblical deluge, apparently the work of some business rival of Noah [Atrahasis, actually, though I don’t recall whether they get the name right.] They admire this for fifteen or twenty seconds before a yawning void opens beneath the feet of one of their number and he disappears down a shaft of indeterminate depth; descending with the aid of their climbing gear to attempt a rescue, they’re cut off by [you guessed it] yet another landslide and find themselves wandering through caverns measureless to man down finally to a sunless sea in the bowels of the Earth lit by an inexplicable phosphorescence which casts an eerie light upon a lost city inhabited by descendents of the Sumerians — completely fitted out with: a witless nobility that falls for their improvised story about being messengers from the gods; an evil priesthood that does not; a boatload of dancing girls in Grecian robes [close enough to Sumerian, what the hell] to provide [somewhat ultravioletly-challenged] human sacrifices to the sun god [absence makes the hierophantic heart grow fonder]; and a slave race of subhuman laborers [the eponymous Mole Dudes] who can undoubtedly be counted on to revolt when the moment is ripe. “In archaeology all things are possible,” says Agar. I guess so.
Absurd but for some reason entertaining; how many silly Fifties scifi movies claimed to take the epic of Gilgamesh as their point of departure, after all? — Reassuring technical note: the inhabitants of the city did not, for once, learn English from our radio broadcasts; rather, Agar and his colleagues are supposed to have acquired a speaking knowledge of Sumerian from studying ancient codices.
____________The Extreme Student of Prague (8/9/02)
