Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright Read Free Book Online

substitute into my face, in order to smother the broken, wretched burbling—
shoot him … with … an elf arrow.
    Of course, the wife was shouting SHOOT HIM at the screen during this event, so the point of her behavior was not clear. Maybe she remembered that I invited her to this turkey, and we paid for many children and my mother-in-law.
    I was semi-conscious for a long and dreary and utterly pointless scene where the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was looking for the one last remaining black harpoon thing was the only McGuffin that could kill the dragon, and then only when fired from a standing catapult that looked like it had been designed by the Professor on Gilligan’s Island. Why there were not a hundred of these, and scores of giant harpoon shooters, I do not know. But I am glad that Ishmael and Queequeg will appear in the sequel.
    As it turns out, it did not matter that I, or for that matter the script writer, were only semi-conscious because, as with everything else in this movie, nothing comes from the scene and nothing led up to it.
    Please, let no purists tell me that Bard and his Black Arrow were indeed in the book. You are mistaken. You are confusing them with Kirk Douglas’s character Ned Land in Disney’s
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
. He is the one who harpoons the evil dragon with his dragon harpoon. In Tolkien, Bard the Archer shoots an arrow. Got it? Arrow. Pointy thing. Flies. Like what the superelves use.
    The next time I regained consciousness, it was in time to view one of my most favorite scenes not merely from Tolkien’s
The Hobbit
, but indeed from all literature whatsoever. You know what scene I mean!
    Bilbo, donning his ring of invisibility, is pressured by the justifiably frightened dwarves to sneak into the lair of the loathsome wereworm, Smaug the Great, who is found asleep on the heaps of hoarded gold.
    Bilbo steals a single cup, the smallest trifle, and this wakes the dragon to wrath, who emerges from the mountain on wings of flame, and finds and destroys the dwarvish camp, and eats their ponies. The dwarves flee into a secret door, hiding in an upper corridor, unwilling to go down and see what Smaug is about when he returns, shivering with rage, to his unclean burrow.
    Those of you who are keen on literary references will see the parallel. In
Beowulf
we recall the nameless escaped slave, who, happening upon the grave of dead kings, enters it seeking shelter, and instead finds the wereworm aslumber on the heaped hoard.
    He steals a cup to bribe his lord to receive him again and forgive his escape attempt. But the sequel is horrific:
     
    When the dragon awoke, new woe was kindled.
    …. The guardian waited
    ill-enduring till evening came;
    boiling with wrath was the barrow’s keeper,
    and fain with flame the foe to pay
    for the dear cup’s loss.—Now day was fled
    as the worm had wished. By its wall no more
    was it glad to bide, but burning flew
    folded in flame….
     
    The whole point of the scene is the difference between a good and kindly lord, one who open-handedly rewards his brave earls for their faithful service in battle, and the insane greed of the dragon, who cannot bear to part even with the smallest trifle, and who knows every article and implement and coin to the smallest detail.
    As in
Beowulf
, so here. This second time Bilbo enters the stifling lair, the canny dragon wakes, and sweeps the dark around with his hypnotic, penetrating eyes, but Bilbo is invisible. Bilbo is clever enough to amuse the dragon with flattery and riddles, putting the noisome monster off his guard.
    I am pleased to say that my favorite line—or at least part of it—appeared in the midst of this mockery and wreckage of one of my favorite books.
     
    “The King under the Mountain is dead and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are his sons’ sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and