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A Real Live Paleontologist Discusses the Biomechanics of Godzilla
Mark Witton is mostly known (to me) from his research into pterosaurs. In this blog post, he has some appreciative things to say about the new Godzilla movie:
For 2014, Godzilla is a fully digital and, as we all know, relatively faithful to the original designs. It has, however, been altered in ways which would be difficult to execute if we were still watching a man in a suit. A lot of these changes, as well as the design of Godzilla’s adversaries, were pretty neat because they tie into what we know about animal biology, scaling and functionality, and I get the impression that the guys behind this latest Godzilla – Legendary Pictures – put a lot of effort into making half-sensible creatures which biologists, biomechanicists and functional anatomists can be relatively happy with. And yes, yes yes: there’s a buttload of stuff which is clearly nonsense: there’s no way these animals could be the size they are, or firing beams of nuclear fire from their throats and so forth. But that’s just par for the course for a Godzilla movie, and I’m not going to jump on boring old bandwagon of highlighting how impossible the whole lot is. What’s far more interesting, and what I want to focus on here, is how Legendary built their animals around standard movie monster tenets to produce creatures which are not only intriguing and cool-looking, but also chime with real animal biology and functionality.
My favorite line:
If we’re willing to stretch belief a bit (I assume we are, what with a fictitious 100 m tall reptile being the subject of discussion here)…
Witton discusses the new Godzilla’s foot structure, gills (!), and proportionally smaller head and finds that each makes a certain amount of sense within the context of the movie. Then he really shines as he looks at the aerodynamics of the flying beasties Godzilla battles. It’s all quite fascinating if you enjoy a little bit of science with your enormous lizard beasts.
Sunday Inspiration: Humility
Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand.
—William Penn (1644-1718)
Tolkien: The Meaning of LOTR
A long-lost audio recording of a speech Prof. Tolkien delivered at a social gathering in Rotterdam is soon to be released to the world. According to Noble Smith at HuffPo:
The recording took place on March 28th, 1958 in Rotterdam at a “Hobbit Dinner” put on by Tolkien’s Dutch publisher and a bookseller. Tolkien’s own publisher, Allen and Unwin, paid for his trip to the Netherlands to attend this special party. According to his letters the author was chuffed to find that Rotterdam was filled with people “intoxicated with hobbits.” Tolkien showed up at a packed hall where 200 hobbit fanatics had come to hear him and other scholars talk about Middle-earth.
And there was much rejoicing.
The Science of Game of Thrones
I always enjoy it when fantasy makes at least some kind of scientific sense.
The video mentions fire-breathing dragons. A while back I found this explanation, apparently written by someone with a background in organic chemistry, of how dragon fire might work. If I ever had a cause to include dragons in a story, this is probably how they would breathe fire.
What Causes Fairy Circles?
In Namibia, at the boundaries between grassland and desert, a strange phenomenon has puzzled people for centuries. Mysterious circles of barren land form in the middle of rich, thick grasses. Dubbed “fairy circles,” their formation has been attributed to everything from termites to poison gas. Now, a group of scientists has a new theory.
Sunday Inspiration: Faith
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
—Rabindranath Tagore
On the Trail of the Hercynian Unicorn
According to Julius Caesar, in the Hercynian Forest on the far side of the Rhine River,
There is an ox [or “quadruped”] of the shape of a stag, between whose ears a horn rises from the middle of the forehead, higher and straighter than those horns which are known to us. From the top of this, branches, like palms, stretch out a considerable distance. The shape of the female and of the male is the, same; the appearance and the size of the horns is the same.
Karl Shuker wonders if the creature described is a mutant deer. Beachcombing suggests it may have been a reindeer, perhaps either in profile or after one of its horns had fallen off. (They do that, you know.) Either way, the Hercynian unicorn is an intriguing ancient cryptid.
Sunday Inspiration: Impossible
It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.
—Robert H. Schuller
Building Your World through Multiple Texts
Lisa Walker England has put her finger on something that I have been groping toward for a couple of years now. There are just too many details of a well fleshed-out world to ever fit comfortably in any number of novels. In her recent post at Mythic Scribes, Lisa challenges us to think in terms of other sorts of texts that might be useful in conveying that information. Namely, she suggests
- Bestiary
- Fable Collection
- Comic Book
- Letters
- Fight or Magic Manual
I’ve worked out some of the basics of a bestiary for my Into the Wonder series as well as a fairly extensive essay on magic. Those who’ve read Children of Pride know that I’ve also written a handful of indigenous fables. (The idea of the kinds of stories faeries might tell their young children captured my attention at some point in the writing process.)
I was surprised History wasn’t one of Lisa’s suggestions, but perhaps that is such a common companion piece that it didn’t really bear mentioning. She also mentioned in passing the idea of a Law Code. In fact, the laws of the fae are an important plot point in my work-in-progress sequel, The Devil’s Due.
Good stuff all around. It’s a blog post well worth reading!
Darrell J. Pursiful 