Tag: Odd John

4,887 words

Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Director: Stanley Kubrick; written by Peter George, Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern
Columbia Pictures (1964)  (more…)

4,320 words

Part 3 of 3

While smiling a lot, the colonists in Odd John don’t talk much at all, which just adds to their creepiness.

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William S. Burroughs with the hint of a smile

5,047 words

Part 2 of 3 (part 1 here)

Alan Watts’ notion of “fascinating ugliness” leads us to another important theme is the disquieting or even repulsive “beauty” of John and his kind. Here is Jacqueline:

But though passably ‘human,’ according to the standards of Homo sapiens, she was strange. Were I an imaginative writer, and not merely a journalist, I might be able to suggest symbolically something of the almost “creepy” effect she had on me, something of its remote and sleepy power. (more…)

4,763 words

Part 1 of 3

Olaf Stapledon
Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest
London: Methuen, 1935 (Etext)

“Well,” said John, “I’m thought queer because I have more brains than most children.”

After making my way through The Flames, and having read Last and First Men already, I decided to press ahead in my Kindle anthology by tackling Odd John, (more…)