Dickens and the aliens · 12:57am May 20th
Patchwork Poltergeist posted a fragment of what I hope is a story about Cozy Glow and how she got that way. It involves Flim and Flam and the way Patchwork writes them reminded me of something but I couldn't put my finger on it until now.
It's the Cheerybles from Nicholas Nickleby.
Why? Well, I was reading along in this okay-ish early Dickens novel and suddenly here were these characters that made me think "Oh, these are the aliens!"
Because that's exactly what the Brothers Cheeryble act like: benevolent aliens, or maybe cyborgs from the future, come to this place and time to study the natives and help them out as much possible (since these guys are from a superior civilization and all). You can tell because although their human disguises are very good, they can't quite conceal their native telepathy. Plus their human-suits are identical, probably because budget constraints didn't allow for two different ones. And they unravel so many tangles in the plot, which is exactly what "gods in a machine" (as good a definition of aliens as any) are supposed to do.
The thing that really gives them away, however, is their behavior: it's just a bit too odd to be human, and by "odd" I mean "good:"
"Where is Tim Linkinwater?" said brother Ned.
"Stop, stop, stop!" said brother Charles, taking the other aside. "I've a plan, my dear brother, I've a plan. Tim is getting old, and Tim has been a faithful servant, brother Ned, and I don't think pensioning Tim's mother and sister, and buying a little tomb for the family when his poor brother died, was a sufficient recompense for his faithful services." [chapter 37]
Of course Dickens wasn't really writing them as aliens, right?
Well...
There's one little thing Dickens puts in there that didn't register with me at first: a sign on the door of their business saying they are "German-Merchants." I just assumed that meant they dealt in German goods, or that their business was incorporated as some type of legal entity then known by that name (Like "LLC"). But no: it meant the Cheerybles were immigrants, or first-generation children of immigrants, who I suppose felt obliged to warn prospective customers that they "weren't really English."
So they were aliens after all.
I guess the Cheerybles seem so much like space-aliens to an SF reader like me because in SF, the alien from another planet is often a metaphor for the alien from another nation. Plus I'm sure lots of SF writers have read Dickens, discovered the Cheerybles, and copied them off for their own use. It's standard practice, after all (I'd love to go into depth about about how Kimball Kinneson's three alien comrades in the Lensman series are just Mowgli's three teachers from The Jungle Book, but we haven't got time for that now).
And looking at it that way, I suppose you could say there's an alien in every one of Dickens' stories. For Dickens captures the England of his day, especially London, so sharply and vividly that you feel you walk its streets among its natives, invisible to their sight and immune to the myriad toxins and diseases of the time. And so you are free to marvel at their weird technology and outré dress and baffling mores. Most especially, you can be safely horrified by their cruelty, callousness and barbarity, for you know you can return to your own world with a flip of the wrist.
The alien, you see, is you.
Of course the difference between the Cheerybles and Flim/Flam is that Flim/Flam aren't benevolent. Or are they? Are they perhaps playing a long game to teach the ponies about the dangers of hucksterism, so that Equestria will be prepared to meet the more powerful civilizations of other universes who yeah yeah come in peace but not necessarily in benevolence?
Does The Dink have imaginary playmates named Boff and Googy?...
Are Flim and Flam preparing Equestria for the approaching Ferengi fleet?
Boff and Googy has the flavor of a pair of delightful comic relief ghosts hanging around The Dink's basement. That or a pair of pet tarantulas.
I never read Nicholas Nickleby I'll freely admit, but I love this description of things.
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Have you read Theodore Sturgeon's "The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff?" Great stuff, and a masterclass in jumping between points-of-view so as to hide something in plain sight.
Are you sure that's not Dikkens, the well-known Dutch author?
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"I'm all set to go quantity surveying!"
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