ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon wrote a strange and exciting short story which director Jerry London turned into a pretty good TV movie with the help of Sturgeon himself and screenwriter Ed MacKillop.

The story is set on an uninhabited Pacific island where a construction crew unearths a meteorite which houses an invisible alien comprised of pure energy. Unbeknownst to the humans, the alien transfers itself from the meteorite to a huge bulldozer which collides with it. The alien uses the machine as its physical body, murdering the humans one by one while they desperately try to stop the near-indestructible mechanism.

The film version lacks much of the original story's spooky and poetic examination of the alien's nature. Sturgeon is a masterful writer when it comes to describing the intangible and extra-normal, but the venerable Tube just isn't the medium for this kind of thing.

Even though this TV movie tries to make it clear that the life force which motivates the bulldozer is an alien, the film looks too much like a ghost story about a "possessed" bulldozer. However, it does include a good action scene in which hero Clint Walker uses a steam shovel to battle the alien/machine.

Also starring Carl Betz, Neville Brand, and James Wainwright. Directed by Jerry London.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I remember enjoying seeing this one when it first aired.

Neville Brand remains one of my most favorite actors.
He could do it all, drama, comedy, sensitive, you name it.
Mostly he was typecast in villain roles, but his range was incredible.

Laredo remains one of my top TV westerns. Great cast & Neville was one of the leads. He was also a highly decorated soldier from his service in WW II.

[Bud Brewster]

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Youtube has a beautiful copy of this movie, and I've downloaded it to watch in the near future. I suggest you folks do the same.

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________________ Killdozer (1974) - trailer


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

It took a while for the tale to make it to the screen - here's the cover of the November 1944 issue of Astounding...

[Bud Brewster]

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I didn't have to restore this one because Wikipedia's article about the short story has a nice jpeg of the magazine.

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The TV movie dumbs down the story, making the threat simply a non-corporeal entity inhabiting a meteorite, which possesses the bulldozer when the blade strikes it. The entity then sets out to kill all the men, because (as everyone knows) non-corporeal entities which inhabit meteorites just can't stand sweaty construction workers.

You know, the old HardHatfield vs McCoys feud, on a cosmic scale.

Theodore Sturgeon was definitely a cut above most authors, and he had a lot more fun with the concept he used for the story. I read it several decades ago, but I don't remember the details. Wikipedia has a plot summary, but it's badly written, so I fixed it.
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An eight-man construction crew is building an airstrip on a small pacific island during World War II. They uncover and break open an ancient stone temple, releasing an being composed of pure energy.

The being is from an lost civilization who waged war with sentient machines, and it's purpose was to take over the enemy's machines and attack them.

When released from the temple, the being takes over the bulldozer and begins killing the men, obviously assuming they are the enemy.

Ultimately, two of the workers survive, although one goes insane, but they manage to destroy the creature.
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My goodness, that certainly gives us a lot more to chew on than just a haunted meteorite with a hatred for hardhats, eh?

To me, Theodore Sturgeon has all the poetic flare that Ray Bradbury is famous for, but Sturgeon blends it much better with the hard science he includes in his stories. And I'm a "hard sci-fi" kind of guy.

I think I'll organize an expedition into my storage closet and hunt down some of my paperbacks with short stories. Then I can become a science fiction reader again and start posting things in the literary sections of both All Sci-Fi and the Science Fiction Message Board!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

There are programs that promise to restore old photographs etc, boosting their colours, removing creases etc, which seem a bit expensive - I wonder if that was used there? While it's good to see art "as new," I do quite like the gritty reality of a scan I've done myself.

There are plenty of Theodore Sturgeon collections around - on my shelves I see I've got A Way Home, Sturgeon Is Alive and Well, Sturgeon In Orbit, Caviar (naturally), Not Without Sorcery, Starshine, The Joyous Invasions, Beyond, and E Pluribus Unicorn. Some duplication of stories may occur, I suspect...

[Bud Brewster]

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Nope, not an easy-peezy program that does all the work for me. I spend hours with Microft Office Picture Manager and Paint.net. I boost the color and contrast with Microft Office Picture Manager, and then I use Paint.net to painstakingly "paint over" the folds, scratches, and faded-out areas.

It's just that old devil artist in me. I've restored and enhanced my own artwork extensively that way.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Concerning the concept of an "energy being" (a non-corporeal life form) using a machine as it's "body", it occurred to me that if the life form was capable of moving objects around, why would it need the machine?

But then I realized that if the life form could only use magnetism to move iron-bearing metals like steel, it could manipulate the handles and pedals on the bulldozer to use the machine as its "body".

The alien in the story starts out inhabiting a stony-iron meteorite, but this didn't give it the ability to manipulate its environment!

And if the maximum force the alien was able to apply with it's magnetic abilities was just enough to pull and push the bulldozer's controls, the alien could use the machine for exactly the same purpose as humans do — to employ mechanical advantage as a mean to amplify what we can do on our own!

Very clever of Theodore Sturgeon! He obviously thought of all this when he wrote the book.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

A couple more images, with first an ad from when the made-for-tv movie premiered:



And the Marvel Comics adaptation:



Both retrieved from this page.

postimage.cc

[Bud Brewster]

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Thinking Outside the "Plot"!
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I reread my post above about how a non-corporeal alien was able to use magnetism to move metal objects — even though it's ability was limited to the force it takes to pull handles and push pedals on machines like a bulldozer.

That means the alien was clever when it possessed the bulldozer and used it as its "body", thus allowing it to make use of the machine's mechanical advantage to do what it wanted.

~ A Question for the Members: If a large invasion force of these aliens came to Earth and possessed thousands of our machines — like tanks, aircraft, and Navel vessels — how could we combat them when they would be able to take over our own large military weapons and use them against us?

~ My Theory: First of all, if the alien invasion force was not sufficiently large to possess ALL our large military machines, they wouldn't be able to take over our complete arsenal of mechanized weapons. Therefore, some of our military machinery would still be under our control.

However, even if they WERE extremely large, the other armies around the world would be able to fight them!

Add to this the idea that our military would be able to hastily replace key components of our mechanized weapons (tanks, aircraft, etc) with parts made of non-metallic materials such as plastics and ceramics.

This would prevent the aliens from controlling these machines, so that some of our tanks, aircraft, etc could still be used to combat the alien-controlled versions of our own machines.
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Hot damn, I love coming up with stuff like this! I know I'm not the only All Sci-Fi member who enjoys thinking of cool sci-fi ideas!

With that in mind . . . it's your turn, guys!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

Bud, it sounds like you are talking about the Stephen King directed movie, "Maximum Overdrive" (1986).

David.

[Bud Brewster]

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

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Ah shucks . . . twart nuthin'.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ The maximum forward speed of the Caterpiller D9 is 7.3 mph. The average adult male can jog at 8.3 mph.

Note from me: First thought: How long can the average human run flat out? On the other hand, a bulldozer never gets tired. (It just runs out of gas. Eventually.)

~ Our remaining heroes eventually vanquish the monster by electrocuting it when it ventures onto an electrified grid. This is the same strategy used to stop the creature in the original 1951 version of "The Thing (from another world)".

Note from me: This makes viewers wonder how the electricity defeated the non-corporeal alien. Did it somehow kill the alien, or did it just short out the bulldozers electrical system and prevent the alien from driving it.

I wonder if author Theodor Sturgeon dealt that question in his novella. The Wikipedia synopsis doesn't address that subject, but it does describe the non-corporeal being this way.
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The Earth was once populated by a great empire that was at war with an alien race of pure energy. The enemy attacked with weapons that took over metal machinery and turned it against its builders.

[A WWII construction crew on a Pacific Island] breaks open an ancient shelter, releasing [a lone surviving] enemy weapon which possesses the bulldozer..
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That's a helluva backstory for a novella.

And it's interesting that the non-corporeal aliens use non-corporeal weapons. It's both imaginative and confusing.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)