Category: SFRA

Message List Emails

There’s a frequent poster to the SFRA email list that I’ll call “Nutjob.” He usually sends emails that are off topic in the same way that talking about moose bites are off topic at astrophysics conferences. He also sends out emails that don’t make a lot of sense in that he isn’t really asking a question, and one point doesn’t necessarily link to the next in a coherent manner. For example, he recently sent this to the list:

——————–
“Live long and prosper.”

– Mr Spock (c. 1965)?

No!!! That particular quote is actually from a line
in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” play from 1595.

The astronomers also say that, at one time, there
was a planet closer to the Sun than Mercury, but it
got destroyed in a solar flare up or whatever. And
they term it “Vulcan” (after the ancient Roman god
of fire).

I realize that this can never make up for the removal
of Pluto as a planet, but perhaps all of the oncoming
Global Warming will. It’s ALWAYS a mystery!

Thanks,

[Nutjob]
——————–

Unlike some other folks on the list, I chose not to respond to his email, because I don’t want to encourage his asinine emails. However, I was curious about the origins of the Vulcan Salute and the planet Vulcan, so I did a little research and typed up this email to Nutjob that was never sent.

——————–

Hi Nutjob,

It would be interesting to find out the history and origin of one of American SF’s most easily recognizable phrases. However, I don’t believe that Shakespeare is the definitive source for the quote.

First, Leonard Nimoy improvised the Vulcan Salute and the farewell, “Live long and prosper” during the filming of “Amok Time” (the second season opener, air date: 15 September 1967). Several sources online, drawing from Nimoy’s autobiographies, indicate that he drew his inspiration for the salute and farewell from Jewish ceremonies he had seen as a child. Additionally, the origin of the salute and saying go back millennia. More on this here:

http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html

Second, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet contains a variation of the saying in Act V, Scene 3 when Romeo takes his leave of his servant Balthasar:

So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that.
Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow.

However, I believe that this might have antecedents in other literature or in oral culture. The reason for this is that the phrase, “live long and prosper” is commonly used in prayer and toasts in many varied sources from the nineteenth and early twentieth century as evidenced by an advanced search on gutenberg.org. Many of these are unattributed or given to anonymous authors. This implies a history of the phrase passed through word of mouth, which may originate with Shakespeare as introducing the phrase into English, but it may also have arrived from a source predating Shakespeare. Some of the sources that include the phrase that are online and in the public domain include:

Various
Burnand, Francis, 1836-1917 [Editor]
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892
English

Cody, William Frederick, 1846-1917
The Life of Hon. William F. Cody
Known as Buffalo Bill the Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide
English

Dell, Floyd, 1887-1969
King Arthur’s Socks and Other Village Plays
Contents:
Human nature — The chaste adventures of Joseph — The angel intrudes — Legend — Sweet-and-twenty — A long time ago — Enigma — Ibsen revisited — King Arthur’s socks — The rim of the world — Poor Harold.
English

Dixon, Thomas, 1864-1946
The Foolish Virgin
English

Edmund, Peggy [Compiler]
Williams, Harold W. [Compiler]
Toaster’s Handbook
Jokes, Stories, and Quotations
English

Lee, Jennette Barbour Perry, 1860-1951
Mr. Achilles
English
Context

McCabe, James Dabney, 1842-1883
Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
English
Context

Pierce, Ray Vaughn, 1840-1914
The People’s Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English
or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred
and Fifty Thousand
English
Context

Plaatje, Sol (Solomon Tshekisho), 1876-1932
Native Life in South Africa
English
Context

Ray, Anna Chapin, 1865-1945
Phebe, Her Profession
A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book
English
Context
79

Various
Fulton, Robert I. [Editor]
Trueblood, Edwin P. [Editor]
Trueblood, Thomas C. [Editor]
Standard Selections
A Collection and Adaptation of Superior Productions From
Best Authors For Use in Class Room and on the Platform
English

Interestingly, one online source pointed to Rip Van Winkle as the source for “live long and prosper,” but this isn’t so. For one, that wasn’t Nimoy’s inspiration, and also, “live long and prosper” is in the play adaptation of Washinton Irving’s Rip Van Winkle by A.P. Burbank.

I’m confident that further work on this bit of SF trivia would turn up further points upon which a vector for the phrase’s trajectory in to the modern vernacular could be established. However, I don’t see the connection between this phrase, the hypothesized planet Vulcan and its relationship with the then unexplained orbit of Mercury (that was later explained by the theory of general relativity), and global warming. In all honesty, this and many of your other emails to the SFRA list are a mystery best left unexplored (except perhaps by a psychoanalyst).

-Jason
——————–

Besides email writing, I’ve emersed myself in reading anything related to steampunk. I finished The Difference Engine the other day, and I completed Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights tonight. Next up: Christopher Priest’s The Space Machine, Jeter’s Morlock Night, and Paul Di Filippo’s The Steampunk Triology.

Tomorrow is Christian’s 24th birthday, so Jean, Ardy, and I are going to cook cupcakes and dinner on Sunday evening. I’ll prepare steak stir fry for us using my Mom’s recipe. Hopefully I won’t screw it up!
Photo above: Construction work next to the Metropolitan Cathedral on Brownlow Hill.

Expectational Headaches

Yesterday was a full day. It began with our meeting Andy at 11:00am for our Le Guin Special Authors class. We continued our discussion on Le Guin’s Earthsea sequence. Next week, we’ll meet with David Seed for our Le Guin class and we’ll be discussing The Dispossessed and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Also during class, Andy handed back our final Genre Definitions papers. I received a 72 on mine, which is a distinction score, but it wasn’t as high as I had hoped. I put a lot of time and effort into that paper, because it will be the one that I’m delivering here at the Faculty/Postgraduate Lecture Series and the SF and the Canon Conference at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. I’ve looked over the notes, and I’m going to work on it some before the first presentation on 14 February.

After class, Jean and I walked over to the jobs listings board at the Career Centre. From there, I went to a presentation on AHRC funding, but I later found out that I’m ineligible for that award.

These things put me into a right foul mood and I still had one more appointment for the day. Sunshine and I walked over to Andy Sawyer’s lecture on “Ursula Le Guin and the Pastoral Mode.” It was an interesting paper, particularly since I don’t know much about the pastoral beyond what I’ve learned from Leo Marx and Sharona Ben-Tov.

When I got back to my place from the lecture, I saw that I had an email from the English Graduate Admissions Secretary at the University of Kansas. She informed me that they had not yet received my transcript from Liverpool or my recommendation letter from Professor Knoespel. I called Professor Knoespel and left a message with Mrs. Jackson to have him fax a copy of the letter to KU. Then, I tried to access my transcript online, but SPIDER was broken. More to come below…

After all of that, I finished reading my current book review assignment, John Scalzi’s The Android’s Dream. It’s an enjoyable read, but it’s far from serious. Also, I hate the cover for the book and the title. First, the cover: it features a blue sky with two dimensional sheep with a droid that looks a lot like a Battle Droid from Star Wars lying down with a thought bubble erupting from his cranium towards the foremost sheep. Considering the subject, it would have been far more appropriate to use a photograph or painting based on Tori Amos’ cover for her “In the Springtime of His Voodoo” single, which shows her chest up wearing a sheep costume. The title: yes, it’s cute that he’s tipping his hat to Philip K. Dick, but there aren’t any androids in the story and the sheep aren’t electric.

Today, I’ve been nursing a headache all day long. It seems to have subsided since I ate supper, but there’s still a bit of a dull pain. This wasn’t helped by further problems with KU.

After getting up, I was able to bring up my transcript on SPIDER and print it out. Then, I asked Mrs. Rees in the English Department office to fax it for me, which she did (they are so awesome over there). At that point, I thought I was done.

Unfortunately, I received another email from KU saying that they needed my grades and an description of the program. I emailed Andy, and he said that he would take care of it. He emailed them, but after the secretary spoke with the graduate director, they required an official document with my grades thus far. This could be a problem, because Liverpool doesn’t report grades right away for MA students. Andy had already left for the day before we were cc’ed on the last email from KU. Hopefully we can get this resolved tomorrow.

Tonight, I’ve been working on my book review of Scalzi’s book.

Tomorrow, I might go to Sefton Park for a walk with Jean and Sunshine.

Some good news: I got a better URL for my flickr photostream.