"Major Matt Mason: Mattel's Man in Space!"

Carter: "You don't have to worry, Major. I played with dolls when I was a kid."
Kawalsky: "G.I. Joe?"
Carter: "No, Major Matt Mason."
Kawalsky: "Oh. Who?"
Ferretti: "Major Matt Mason. Astronaut doll. Did you have that cool little backpack that made him fly?"

- Children of the Gods, Stargate SG-1

Q: What was your favorite toy as a kid?
A: Major Matt Mason. He was a great astronaut: a full-on, lifelike astronaut, made with rubber and wire, kind of like Gumby. He was bendable and poseable, and I went through a few of them because after a while the wires get all twisted.

- Tom Hanks, Disney Adventures magazine interview

Christmas Day, once again. The lessons of charity and goodwill that are associated with Christmas can very often be lost in a flurry of merchandising and money, but even so it's difficult to be too judgemental about the simple pleasures of children and toys. It's a magical time of year for kids, and as such this posting is dedicated to Christmas Past and wonderful gifts.

As I've mentioned in my introduction to the site, I've been a fan of science fiction and fantasy since before I can remember. I was an advanced reader, and as such started reading selections out of my mother's library of fantasy and SF before I'd gotten to double digits in age. However, man does not live by bread alone, and I had all the usual childhood interests in toys, with an understandable influence from my reading choices.

However, keep in mind that I was born in 1961, and when I turned ten in 1971, there was nothing like the selection of science fiction toys that there is on the market today. We were well before the late 70's science fiction marketing boom from Star Wars*, and even then, the marketplace was quite different. Now there's an "action figure" for everything - if you think I'm kidding, go into a specialty comics shop and look around - but in the early 70's, it was either TV merchandising or GI Joe dolls, and sadly, TV had very little to offer the young science fiction afficionado at that point in time.

Ah, but there were certain unexpected advantages to growing up without much money in a rural environment. There was a store called Economy Fair in the nearest town, which, as its name suggested, dealt in lower-end merchandise. In retrospect, I suspect that a lot of their stock probably came from remainders and liquidations, and as such their toy section was a bit out of date and somewhat idiosyncratic, but certainly more affordable than ordering from the Eatons catalogue** would have been.

Regardless, it was out of this uncertain and weedy garden that my mother plucked the rose of my childhood Christmas gifts: Major Matt Mason, "Mattel's Man in Space".

As Tom Hanks says, these were great astronauts. Originally introduced in 1966, they were about six inches tall, and molded out of rubber over a wire and plastic armature, with accordion joints at knees, hips, shoulders and elbows which worked well with the spacesuit look of the figures. The wire frame combined with the accordion joints made the figures very flexible and posable, although over time the wires inside the rubber eventually broke, as might be expected of any piece of wire that a child bends several thousand times.

The basic figures came with a removable spacesuit helmet with a movable yellow visor, but as with any toy like this, there was a whole catalogue of separate accessories, vehicles and buildings available. I had some of them - there was a sort of yellow exo-skeletal power suit, with extendable arms and legs, and I seem to recall some kind of exploration outfit that had tools that you could operate with a combination of tubes and a little plastic bellows system. I also had a space glider, which was a thin plastic shell with a molded pocket at the front for the pilot. I think the only reason I had that particular toy was because the transparent cockpit cover was missing, and it had been marked down as a result, but an elastic band would hold the astronaut in just fine and the damn thing was a pretty good glider if memory serves.

I loved those things, they were the perfect toy as far as I was concerned. I remember that I owned the Major himself, and his alien companion Callisto from Jupiter. I may have had one other figure, maybe Sergeant Storm or possibly another Major, but the accordion joint for his right arm had given up the struggle and torn through, and my childhood imagination couldn't come to terms with a one-armed astronaut. (Although I did recycle one of his feet for Callisto, in spite of the fact that they didn't match at all.)

I made my own accessories, guns and swords (the Major Matt Mason line was surprisingly free of that sort of militaristic baggage) and even produced my own alien race, using tennis balls as bodies and salvaged lengths of wire for arms and legs, with two-prong plugs from dead appliances as heads. Frankly, mine lasted a hell of a lot longer than the Mattel toys, I was certainly using a better grade of wire.

Of course, as children do, I moved on. Eventually the figures fell apart completely, or were consigned to a box somewhere, and I abandoned that part of my childhood. I was saddened to discover that a figure in good shape from the Major Matt Mason line costs hundreds of dollars now, as you might expect from a collectable 40-year old line of science fiction toys. How unfortunate - it's too much money to spend on something like that, even if it would be great to have the Major up on the shelf over my computer, beside my Starcraft Terran Marine, my Japanese VOTOMS battle armour, and the Dalek toy that my friend Alan gave me...okay, maybe I haven't moved on all that far.

- Sid

* Although, coincidentally this is the year that George Lucas' THX 1138 was released.

** The Eatons catalogue was an enormous source of angst in my childhood, the equivalent of supplying someone on a bread and water diet with well-illustrated menus from four star restaurants. The Winter edition with the Christmas offerings used to arrive in September, a few weeks before my birthday, and I would slowly go through the toy section and covet the unattainable therein.

"Barren, silent, godless."

On the far side of the river valley the road passed through a stark black burn. Charred and limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side. Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from the blackened lightpoles whining thinly in the wind.

- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

I've just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and I was startled and impressed. So much post-apocalyptic fiction either feels a need for a ray of hope, or fails to believably address the realities of the end of our civilization: McCarthy's grim, ashen future does neither. It is a dark and plausible window into what life might be like in a worst-case scenario.

Science fiction has an almost complete claim on end-of-the-world stories. Fantasy will sometimes address the topic - those of you who haven't read the Narnia books are in for a bit of a shock when they adapt the final volume for the movie screen - but for the most part apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic tales are the province of SF.

But what do we mean by the end of the world? Very few such stories deal with the destruction of the planet itself. In our near-infinite hubris, what is generally considered to be the end of the world is really just the end of humanity, which is not the same thing by a long pitch. (Mary Shelley of Frankenstein fame breaks the ice for this sub-genre of science fiction in 1826, with her novel The Last Man, wherein a plague devastates humanity.)

The first post-apocalyptic novel that I can remember reading is Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank, which I purchased through the Scholastic Books catalogue when I was about ten or eleven. (I still own that somewhat battered text, although I see that I've had to tape the spine a couple of times.) Originally published in 1959, it's a fairly conventional tale of nuclear war and its aftermath, a popular topic for that period.

I recall enjoying it when I first received it, but in retrospect I'm amused by the almost positive picture that it paints of the aftermath of a thermonuclear exchange. Much of the United States is destroyed, yet the protagonists, located in Florida, don't suffer from fallout, nuclear winter, starvation, or any sort of degradation. A few cardboard characters die tragically, but for the most part the novel portrays the lives of the survivors as a quiet but optimistic struggle, complete with fresh-squeezed orange juice.

In sharp opposition is Nevil Shute's On the Beach, written in 1957. Shute's novel takes place in Australia, the last part of the planet uncontaminated by fallout after a massive nuclear exchange. But this is only a temporary respite: the invisible cloud of airborne death is gradually making its way south, and slow, lingering death is inevitable. However, a thoughtful government has come up with a solution: mass-produced suicide tablets.

The novel portrays a response to inescapable doom that seems depressingly accurate. Characters become alcoholics, take refuge in complete denial, or indulge in high-risk distractions such as suicidally dangerous car racing. In the end, the fallout cloud arrives, radiation poisoning begins to have its way, and everyone takes their pills and dies. The novel ends with an orphaned American submarine making its way into the open sea so that the captain can scuttle his vessel - and kill the crew - in quixotic obedience to military regulations.

The Road takes a different approach. It tells the story of a father and son wandering through the ashen remnants of the world. The nature of the catastrophe is never specifically articulated, there is little backstory, and the father and son are left nameless. All of the detail is reserved for their struggle through the wasted landscape, and how that brutal struggle has molded and in some ways crippled their relationship.

This sparse, masterful narrative, written in McCarthy's signature punctuation-free style, pulled me in completely. I can imagine that this might not be the case for everyone, depending on your background: for me, the evocation of memory, of walking through barren, leafless trees in rain and snow, of monochrome landscapes and no sounds but those of the weather, was complete.

This is in no way a cautionary tale - the anonymous nature of the catastrophe leaves no room for sermons or cries of "Alas!". The equally anonymous nature of the characters allows anyone who reads the novel to slip into their worn shoes and stinking clothing, to see themselves as starving pilgrims without a destination. In spite of that Everyman structure, I'm uncertain about recommending this book to everyone. It's one of those books that is more easily described as impressive or admirable than enjoyable, and that may not be the sort of thing that people are looking for as we enter the holiday season. However, for anyone who does embark on The Road, I can guarantee a unique literary experience.

- Sid

But if you really feel that you have to, I'll be polite about it.

I realize that the holiday season is upon us, and that clothing can be a popular fallback as a gift choice, but I'll be honest, no one needs to knit me a Star Wars sweater.

- Sid