1955-08-13 — Page 5

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We remember Cyrano de Bergerac, who died 300 years oga, as soldier, lover and buffoon. We forgot the arm- choir scientist who Wor 200 years ahead of his nearest rival with his ima gined trips into outer space.

FATHER OF SPACE FICTION

By

R. A. PIDDINGTON

YYRANO

C

DE BER- GERAC, with his toucan nose, his un- answerable sword und his rumbustious deeds, is u familiar name to admirers of Rostand's scintillating drama, to film-goers, and to smatterers of literary allusions.

But Cyrano hus a further claim on our admiraiton. Anticipating Jules Verne by two centuries, he wrote the first plausibly scientific romances of travel into outer space.

Connoisseurs of Mach 6 and all the other jargon of jet propulsion may smile at the word "scientlile." Let them not underrate Cyrano's gentus. He reasored about gravitational force before Newton left school, suggested aeronautical balloons before Montgolfier was born, and correctly explained the phases of Venus of time when astronomers were sthl debating whether the planets shone with their own light,

Cyrano, in fael, was เก earnest student of philosophy and physics, on which he wrote a treatise of more than amateur competence.

ROCKET TAKE-OFF

ITE was

HE

any

the first to imagine form of power-driven contraption by which Inter planetary travel might be achieved. and though his apperatus for trip to the

moon is about as vaguely

described as 11. G. Wells's time machine, he did make use of rocket-assisted take-off for his second (and successful) attempt in fiction to land on the earth's Bufellite.

ave

Cyrano was an extraordinary mixture of buffpon, prophet, Utopian and realist. As the owner, in Paris, of "an excellent felcscope," he must known that the chances of life on the moon were fantastically but fantasy was his morse rnd he

rode it

bare-back when experience could not call him to account. Th result reads like a tale of Erewhon by Louis de Rouge- mont,

On Cyrano's second voyage, this time to the sun, an entirely

by

'different machine, driven on a kind of jet impulsion derived from solar energy, carries him the necessary 90m miles "pas Venus and Mercury in about four months-on inspired guess at the time needed, seeing that a speed of at least seven miles per second is now. calculated to be requisite for getting clear of Earth's gravitational pull.

the sun

Ils apparently naive belief that "dark purts of

habitable

by

than

were

nd venced ostronomer

110

whs

less

later

an

Sir Willam Herschel. And our own century not altogether discarded the idea of a tip-and-run solar expedition.

has

SUNSPOT LANDING

*Fres

مین

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1955.

"Woll, well-if it isn't our CO. and the Major who had us on the gat about our civvy dress.”

London Express Service

DID IT HAPPEN?

"E

the

NJOY your heritage!"

article said, "You live in the most picturesque land in the world. There is more down- right beauty in an acre of English sod Or than in all the perfumes of Arabia," words to that effect. I began to get interested. After all, what knows he, of England who only Clapham knows?

I had rattled round Britain from Em- pire to Hippodrome, but what did I understand about life outside the big build-up? Practically nothing. So when the writer began to fill in the corners with phrases like "the chiaroscuro of a Devon sky", it wasn't just because I didn't know what "chiaroscuro" meant that I was im- pressed.

It seems that while my back was turned tranquillity had upped stakes and gone to live In the country. What was worse, those broker's men, Hustle and Bustle, were at that moment moving out my peace of mind. If I wanted to keep my nerve-endings in working trim, I had to quit the city for a while, and make for the trees.

I wasn't myself

"Benny Hill," I said, "what are you doing riding a milk-bar stool?" I didn't answer the question ad- dressed to me, 1. wasn't myself that day. And I knew

Д

*

At last he spoke it wasn't a very good line, but be had given it lack Benny living.

*

to BENNY HILL?

CALL ME NATURE BOY

what was missing. Rest. Peace. The open air. A. near-by gate, bolted, pad- doom. I began to make a big So I dismounted, put the locked and laced with barbed thing of waking up yawning

bed in wize beckoned invitingly I eye-rolling and face-screwing. magazine to

fought my pocket, and went in search stumbled carefully along an over got wind of the fact that I was way over it and But Robert Newton might have of some conveyance. Fifteen dressed hedgerow. A great green minutes, two misdirections cloud of a wood loomed up using his stuff, so I gave that and an argument later I was ahead. I approached it quietly, up.

and coughed tactfully, an ancient

tum inside. It was very nice in there. bril that bore on its faded flanks the legend: "Atlantis Bus Company." Impostor! That

abourd

Was no .bud. . I'll swear it ran on castors! It grunted, shook and skittered

Peace at last

"Lovely day," I said with went brittle jocularity on the dublous

Benny, HIII-

-author of today's story, is 30. Having already found a gift-edged Treme în TV seta and proscenium orches up and down the country, the face of Benny Hill is about to be seen la cinemas.

The Southampton-bom come- dian started off. of 16 as o property boy in a forgotten TEVING

He now has a flat in Maida Vale and is currently fascinating bis free from Wast End stage.

middle. Now I was on the run, the denizens at the. forest turned against mo. Trees I'd never even seen before put out already

Branches roots to trip me up..

had no quarrel. that the with whom I beginning to suspect proper place for greenery was in took to belabouring

was a proposal I had pleasure in seconding Wasn't

mo about

"yards.

i saled? Furthermore I was in the bead, and every tow no condition to welcome rough some justice, from some feudal baron, Policy was to take a turn with Holmese as far as the forest's edge. Then a quick bow, and off. No encores,

We struck camp immediately "and made off towards the wood's perimeter. We were an +1}... I resembled a assorted couple. floor-walker in a junk-shop, and my zomble friend looked like a stand-in for Dracula. After my prolonged slesia. I was learning to toddle all ever again. As for the tragedian in the two-way hat, he appeared to be walking backwards.

Tricky

would

bramble jealous make a grab at my birdseye. I struggled on. I was scratched, slapped poked, and pushed over twice. Horseplay was beginning to grow tiresome when a second thunderous broadside was lot loose in my general direction

Faster than sound

This encouraged me to further efforts, such as bering my teeth, clawing the air, and throwing my trunk forward so impetuously that the rest of me felt obliged to follow immediately.

A trail of fine spray hanging in the air marked my passage through the batonished wood: I was by this time stepping out in

At

Not my day

any

My thoughts were interrupted so animated a fashion that the like a milkshake passing trous looked like a picket Lonce. Only the weight of my Like being in Brighton Aquarium premise that the weather is by a sound

cool and green and fragrant. always good for a laugh. Not a under construction. The mols small change provented me trozi

Alckert

was jolly, musical and wet. But becoming airborne. it wasn't a milkshake. It was moment I expected to catch up

stream as wide as the High with the Old Mortality just stood there

sound of

my own Street and twice as busy. We and watched the will to win

progress. squinted down a ennyon at it. drain out of me. At last he "I got to git down. there," THE story of what follows round the streets, looking

spoke. It wasn't a very good line, mumbled my shaggy escort. He Cyrano's landing on a sunspot for a way out of town. Deep Into the greenery I wan- but he'd given it Jack Benny wanted to inspect some hole for beats anything that Othello Finally it breached a hole in dered, through sylvan fastnesses timing Dawn you gnaw you're wild-life. Apparently; it was the only cache in the bank he'd ever the defences, and

and verdant whatsnames until scam-

tresparstin'?" He showed a had, "Tricity business," I con- I was entirely surrounded by pered through into

the vegetable mattor.

Here, in a mouthful of winides. "Gnaw-tributed helpfully. and

I said beginning welcoming glade that had come put in er-No,"

rash of sunlight, I sat down, unfold my legs. Peace at last. I lay back.

Yes, this was certainly It, Deep call- ing to Deep, Communing with Nature, and all that sort of guff. I yawned. You, Deep calling to

Bun

ever related ut antres vast and deserts le, and men whose hends do grow beneath. their shoulders, On the He met with talking trees, litigious birds, Protean men and symboliced rivers, ☛

All this ia mingled with philosophical discourse that is a kind of remnant sale of the multifarious ideas that Cyrano had found no means of market ing in his literary He. Had he lived in an age of Sunday news- papors, what a name he might have made as a columnist

warm

countryside.

A lot of country

I let the seat massage my Nature, and Nature calling to kidneys for a while, until Gut. Then Gut appeared and He was the Sandman, » except my legs got jealous. Then that he wasn't throwing and. I fell off the bus at the next He was throwing rocker, and one breakdown, and left it to hit me and I wont spark out. choke

Seconded

to

Top,"

usually

olds

the

Suddenly the trees made way for me, the lights went up and I rocketed out of the wood, úp a "Dobbsle

he grumbled. So, to make I'm flying" Someone had pulled sharp bank and "Doh, look, MD, a long story Interminable,

the world away from under me. offered to not as anchor man I dropped out of the sky for a while Sporting Life let himself

perfoot three-point landing on down on the end of a piece of string. My exercise proved to be one, car and two ices, Every thing spun like a roulette-wheel, 80 invigorating that when I waited for it to settle. Finally Holmeslo finally amaged and

Number

Black came released the rope, I executed up. Not my lucky day, Bo I stood

Thiricon, few tricky steps of "Black Ng up, checked to see that no vital and went down for a count of organs were missing, and Limped away. As I-turned to shake a

"Avenue scen they notice boards all round the wood?"

As a matter of fact, I haven't acen a single board about any whore. Not one. Anywhere, five.

*

to death. The For I don't know how long, Actually." I stood up and made I was just crawling back out at at the wood, I noticed ther

magazine lying below the busts.

I didn't go backs: for 14. of WORLD COPYNIĠET RESERVED)

Truc, even allowing for the untimeliness of Iris death at 30, countryside looked wonder- Down in the forest something futile efforts to punish my birds of the brush when the discreet his-output of manuscripts was meagre.

But he began his ful. There was a lot of it and stirred. It was me or should eye for collecting small articles, buzz of woodland canvarration

of forest bric-a-braz,

was rudely interrupted by the it was very green. All the that be.It was 17 Anyway,

sudden carcer, not as an author, but as a

cough shattering flowers were wearing their it was one of us. I opened a goldler.

**The squire center bido tres- some rustle field-pixo, The Was he the rake-holly swash-party dressca, Birds that tentativa eye. Than two eyes. A. paratin,”- grunted the unhappy atmosphene, became. charyart buckling bravo that legend has should have known better character in a corroded deas. wanderer, accusingly...

with buckshot almost imme-

Holmes lately,

Was Boven portrayed? We cannot be sure.

were darting Hither and yon, stalker was gazing down at me The inswor to that was paces past me before he graind: But we do know that he stand Drunken boon were stage with an expression akin to dis obviously an expression of ouf- of a has made

D'Artagnan than Rostand

gering from blossom to taste, believe. 督

He looked like a dis- caged platy. I tried it on for size. He may well have spent a blossom, mumbling to them best. Sherlock Holmw, and his: It didn't it mo. So I let my face riotous youth, for oven his

shape, friend Lobret says that Bergerac Belves. The sun was face was so long it realmed rop back to its usual melon

generally and to run down his facist, I tried regretted in later life the time assisting

He had wasted in folly. But making a big production of to muster a smile, but it didn't,

Boing severely wounded at The whole world was come to muais Juste, convul the relief of Monzon, and again tryin to persuade me that elve twliching

after

at the alege of Arras, Cyrano

returned to his birthplace, Paris,

where he apparently, studied philosophy,

sweetness and

Iowaanib arguing. - I

“You better come met commended Holines

offered, eviden

mimiäilled

haring that

Run for it!!

Jeopart

thought,

DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?

Baris "NO":

Pud your, tibk In the space above 'and "Koep" this ' panel, multi- Monday,

Run for lu" when, the inrwer, whit de ggirupa

I started

Pago.

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