Movie:
Apologies for not getting to the Probe/Search posts yet. I made the mistake of getting a copy of the book Colossus trilogy by D.F. Jones and started reading it. Important note, the Amazon.Com notation "Colossus Mass Market Paperback – May 5, 1955" is bullshit. The book was published in 1966 and the movie came out a few short years later, with sequel novels after that. The three book series is available for cheap on Kindle, and used paperback editions can still be found.
At this writing I am finished with the first two books. I must say that I have found a level appreciation I never knew existed for great screenwriters. James Bridges did some heavy lifting to turn the awful first book into a fine movie.
Perhaps I am spoiled by Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Crichton, along with the movies made from some of their books. For example, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey is a pretty darn good companion to the essays and books Clarke made on the way to the screenplay. A much better example is The Andromeda Strain, where the movie shows the viewer what happened and the book, while written vividly, dives into many technical details that Crichton borrowed/exaggerated from reality, or just made up in a convincing manner. Colossus the book is none of that.
My experience, like many others, was watching the movie and then reading the book. In my case, these events were 46 years apart. Archive.Org has a good copy, embedded below. I strongly suggest getting the DVD from the link in the left column, borrow a copy from your local library, or find a source for a good high-definition copy. Somewhere I have a VHS copy too, and if that is what you like that format is still available. I am not the first person to highly recommend this film.
Just because it is one of my favorites does not at all mean that it is without flaws. Some of them are noted below in the critique of the book trilogy, others will be detailed in discussion at the Shock Monkey A/V Club in the near future.
Just because it is one of my favorites does not at all mean that it is without flaws. Some of them are noted below in the critique of the book trilogy, others will be detailed in discussion at the Shock Monkey A/V Club in the near future.
Warning: The YouTube version is missing the very beginning, some of the end, and runs 16 min. longer than any complete version I have. If I ever discover the discrepancy, I will mention it here. The Archive.Org copy looks complete.
Colossus: The Review
D.F. Jones, a retired British Navy Commander, published Colossus in 1966. All time setting clues in the book sets the events in the 20th century, more specifically the 1990s (bolding and linking mine):
From the President's speech in Chapter 3
From the President's speech in Chapter 3
One of the great philosophers of this century, Bertrand Russell, said many years ago, `You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.’First page of Chapter 10
“As far as I can see, it’s the theory of gravitation as amended by Hoyle back in the sixties. I’m a bit rusty on all that, but some of it looks rather odd.”
...
“Odd!” he repeated. “The men who have advanced the theory of gravitation can practically be named on one hand! Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Hoyle—and now Colossus! This is new, Charles! Colossus has gone on where Hoyle left off over thirty years ago!” Fisher banged his fist on the desk, snatched up the roll of paper and waved it at Forbin. “New! Do you hear? Do you realize what it means?”
Apparently by the 1990s Americans speak British English, or D. F. Jones never heard an American speak before he penned the novel. Something that was cleaned up nicely by James Bridges for the movie.
Similarities between the book and the movie are the character names and not much else. Rather than continuing a comparison between the book and the movie, I'll stick a bit more to the book. And Wikipedia covers a lot of details well, so this will just be an addition to the Colossus Wikipedia page. Note: Some of the Wikipedia edits are mine.
Much of the tech hardware should be familiar to anybody in their 50s or older, but there is a tie to the younger generations too. The new super-duper defense computer in the United States of North America (USNA) is, Colossus and it initially communicates by texting. Nobody has portable phones, the texting is done via Teletype machines until audio, video, and speech capabilities are designed by Colossus and built for Colossus by people. However, the humans only get Colossus demands/answers/output via teletype, or later its voice. No video computer monitor shows up anywhere in this book.
Flying cars are all over the place, of course, and disposable clothes too, but no cell phones or other indications that the author thought one bit about future technology. Somehow, "low-power lasers" can weld metal, they are mentioned in passing for communications and logic circuits (maybe, however that is unclear), but there is no mention of high-power lasers even as tools or weapons.
The project manager is one Dr. Charles Forbin, (also referred to as Professor, but not revealed where he ever held that title), in his "very early fifties," who is not in any rush to let this new super-duper computer system take over all of the defense systems, including nuclear missiles as well as missile interceptors. The President is the one in the big rush to get this mess going.
The world has been politically rearranged into a manner that any big giant government aficionado should love. The US and Canada have merged into the USNA. The President's wife of convenience is Canadian. The nations of South America are now the United States of South America (USSA), Australasia us a thing, PanAfric Republic, some sort of Japanese Republican Zone, and the good old Soviet Bloc is still intact.
Note too that the author appears to make the error of lumping everything south of the Continental US into South America and the USSA.
Note too that the author appears to make the error of lumping everything south of the Continental US into South America and the USSA.
The odd manner of American speech is distracting. Americans seem to speak like a British caricature of how Americans would speak. The narrator refers to a British reporter as "the Limey" and the computer texts messages like this:
FLASH THERE IS ANOTHER MECHANISM
RESTORE COMMUNICATIONS FORTHWITH
ACKNOWLEDGE FORTHWITH
So, shortly after hooking every communications line (save the USNA-Soviet hotline), as well as every intelligence agency feed, etc. into a central computer, Colossus, it discovers it has a mirror in the Soviet Union and the hijinks begin.
Colossus demands a communications link to the Guardian of the Socialist Soviet Republics, aka Guardian, the Soviet version of Colossus. Dr. Forbin is not keen on this idea and has a heated argument with the president, who plans on firing Forbin in short order.
Communication is established between the systems with a radio link on a frequency that Guardian should be monitoring. Eventually Guardian answers and trouble follows. The Soviets accuse Colossus of "seducing" their computer with bad calculus and want the communications severed. Severed they are and the computers demand communications be reestablished or else. The or else is the launch of missiles, one at a Siberian oil town, another at Henderson Space Base, Texas. Looks like Elon Musk missed that one by a little bit, he named his spaceport something bland.
The North Americanos get their end of the link reestablished, but the Soviets fail and a town near their oil town is cooked. Some interesting annoyance in this part of the book is worth mentioning. The USNA missile is launched from a submarine (Poseidon Mk 17, but there is no history of that system anywhere I could find) at Siberia. The intercept happens 25 miles up, and the warhead detonates, which should put it in the target area, but it is not described as damaging the target city. Its time of flight was 607 seconds in the movie (10 minutes, seven seconds) which is doable, I suppose. However, it is not described well.
The missile from the Soviets, headed to Texas, was intercepted at an altitude of 95 miles, off the coast of Virginia/South Carolina, 500 miles north of the Bahamas. Why that missile needed to fly over the Atlantic, and at only 95 miles altitude in that point of flight is a bigger puzzle than the Siberian detonation. Virginia is not on the way to Texas by ICBM routes and 95 miles altitude is way too low at that distance from the target anyway. It sounds more like the route taken by a dirigible over the Atlantic, other than the altitude. The movie portrayed that much more believably.
Instead of firing Forbin, the President makes Forbin a super-secret new Secretary of State.
Also, more proof that science is not the strong point of these books, the President's hair turned grey during the missile crisis. No worries though, his Manitoban wife of convenience knows the right color hair dye to have a staff member fetch.
A bit of weirdness is the merger of the US and Canada. It is described like some old european monarchy nation merger deal, thus the Canadian wife to the American President.
Instead of firing Forbin, the President makes Forbin a super-secret new Secretary of State.
Also, more proof that science is not the strong point of these books, the President's hair turned grey during the missile crisis. No worries though, his Manitoban wife of convenience knows the right color hair dye to have a staff member fetch.
A bit of weirdness is the merger of the US and Canada. It is described like some old european monarchy nation merger deal, thus the Canadian wife to the American President.
From this point forward, the people do what the machines want, generally. Colossus speaks for both computers and orders the US/USSR hotline tapped, which until then was the last line in the White House that is not tapped. Behind the computer's back, they organize a resistance and communicate only by courier.
This might be a point where the book portrays something better than the movie. In the movie a plot to sabotage the nuclear missiles is discussed and briefed in the White House Situation Room with all manner of phones present. It was already established that Colossus had access to all of those phones. Plus, the big screen used in the briefing had to be accessible by Colossus, as well as the small screens.
In the book, all of this plotting is done with care to avoid the gaze of Colossus and of any intelligence agencies that might report on it and end up informing Colossus indirectly.
When Colossus discovers the plot, it blows up a missile that was in the process of an upgrade. Again, the book handles this detail better. A Soviet missile is fired at the USNA silo, since the sabotage prevents Colossus from launch or detonating the warhead. In the movie, Colossus blows up the warhead after it was tampered with. Los Angeles is destroyed by that event.
A bit before this, Colossus is given sight and sound capability, with Dr. Forbin ordered to stay in camera view at all times. In order to communicate with the resistance, he convinces Colossus that he needs a mistress and selects thirty-five years old Dr. Cleopatra "Cleo" June Markham. The arrangement of necessity becomes a true romance.
Note her description in Chapter 5, it is important when we get to the next book in the trilogy:
The Fall of Colossus: Review
Onward and downward we go into the swamp that is The Fall of Colossus (1974). The Wikipedia page is very good. I did some editing there too.
I have not found an editor credited with this story, but I haven't looked very hard either. If that editor is still alive, perhaps it is best I not identify them with this story.
Five years have passed since Colossus took over the world. In that time Guardian's historical name has been changed in Chapter One of the new book:
In the last book, it was Guardian of the Socialist Soviet Republics. Anybody who knows a little bit about Soviet Communists knows that nobody, but nobody who ran anything there would use "Democratic Socialism" in any positive way.
But wait, there is more!
The Doctors Forbin and Markham have gotten married. They also have a two-year-old son, Billy. Dr. Charles Forbin has gotten a bonus from the scribe of his world too. Dr. Markham has lost seven years of age in the five years since we last read of her:
However, her husband is still in his early fifties, just like in Colossus:
I cannot find found only a single review before now where any of it is pointed out! MarkK on Amazon noticed too. If there is another, please let me know! BTW, those Wikipedia mentions of the continuity errors were entered by me.
As for the merits of the books, I leave that to those who do not notice any of these problems when they read. I admire you people even as you aggravate the shit out of me.
I still find Colossus: The Forbin Project to be one of the great science fiction movies of all time. It stands with 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain as my top-shelf movies. Luckily, the book it was supposed to come from has not diminished that at all.
Briefly: Colossus and the Crab
At least he kept this on in the same century as the book it follows. Twenty-second century, but an early callback to Colossus just stirs up the timeline again:
In the 1970s, a generation was generally thought of as twenty years, for a total of sixty years. The first nuclear capable missiles (actually, thermonuclear) were operational in 1959. The above quoted passage makes Colossus and Guardian active around 2019, around twenty years after they are described as going active in the first book.
Again, this book does not read as if the author reviewed anything he had written before.
Scoop-O-Steve
This might be a point where the book portrays something better than the movie. In the movie a plot to sabotage the nuclear missiles is discussed and briefed in the White House Situation Room with all manner of phones present. It was already established that Colossus had access to all of those phones. Plus, the big screen used in the briefing had to be accessible by Colossus, as well as the small screens.
In the book, all of this plotting is done with care to avoid the gaze of Colossus and of any intelligence agencies that might report on it and end up informing Colossus indirectly.
When Colossus discovers the plot, it blows up a missile that was in the process of an upgrade. Again, the book handles this detail better. A Soviet missile is fired at the USNA silo, since the sabotage prevents Colossus from launch or detonating the warhead. In the movie, Colossus blows up the warhead after it was tampered with. Los Angeles is destroyed by that event.
A bit before this, Colossus is given sight and sound capability, with Dr. Forbin ordered to stay in camera view at all times. In order to communicate with the resistance, he convinces Colossus that he needs a mistress and selects thirty-five years old Dr. Cleopatra "Cleo" June Markham. The arrangement of necessity becomes a true romance.
Note her description in Chapter 5, it is important when we get to the next book in the trilogy:
Cleo Markham, thirty-five and a leading cyberneticist of Project Colossus, was wearing a shower cap, and nothing else, when Forbin burst into her sitting room without knocking. (Chapter 5)Also, Doctor/Professor Charles Forbin is in his fifties:
They were both roughly the same age, in their very early fifties, though a hundred years earlier they would have appeared much younger. (Chapter 1, describing the President and Forbin)In the meantime, Colossus plans to have a successor built on the Island of Wight. Somehow that 147 square mile island (correct area in book) has 1.5 million people in the Colossus 1990s. In 2010, it had about 140,500 people. The largest number of people I know of that have ever been on that island was 1970, during a music festival when 600,000 additional folk visited the island. Apocryphal writers of the day seemed to want every corner of the western world to be densely populated for some reason. The movie selected the island of Crete instead. The project is to take about five years
The Fall of Colossus: Review
Onward and downward we go into the swamp that is The Fall of Colossus (1974). The Wikipedia page is very good. I did some editing there too.
I have not found an editor credited with this story, but I haven't looked very hard either. If that editor is still alive, perhaps it is best I not identify them with this story.
Five years have passed since Colossus took over the world. In that time Guardian's historical name has been changed in Chapter One of the new book:
But the Soviets had been busy too; they soon announced the existence of their Guardian of Democratic Socialism.
In the last book, it was Guardian of the Socialist Soviet Republics. Anybody who knows a little bit about Soviet Communists knows that nobody, but nobody who ran anything there would use "Democratic Socialism" in any positive way.
But wait, there is more!
The Doctors Forbin and Markham have gotten married. They also have a two-year-old son, Billy. Dr. Charles Forbin has gotten a bonus from the scribe of his world too. Dr. Markham has lost seven years of age in the five years since we last read of her:
Cleo got up reluctantly from the breakfast table. An attractive, rather tall, blue-eyed blonde of twenty-eight, she appeared at first sight to be a typical cold Nordic woman. (Chapter One)
However, her husband is still in his early fifties, just like in Colossus:
Forbin, in his early fifties, was still attractive. (Chapter One)It gets better. In the five years that have passed since the 1990s, we are now in the 22nd century. Somewhere in the second half of the 22nd century:
In her eyes, the eyes of a woman of the second half of the twenty-second century, he was an attractive male. Marriage was an increasingly rare state; few men took the plunge—if they took it at all—until their late forties. (Chapter One)
Then again, there was the vast banqueting hall, with adjacent reception rooms and kitchens. Forbin had toured them, Cleo on his arm, staring in disbelief and amazement at the silver cutlery, the gold plate, and the incredible gadgetry designed to reduce human help to a minimum. Even for the twenty-second century, it was fantastic. (Chapter One)
The word “love” plus the relative rarity of marriage in the twenty-second century, triggered Colossus Emotional. Here was a man predicted for that rare state, and to a woman prepared to wreck her career for him—and her potential was considerably higher than his, regional manager. (Chapter Seven)
That a sane man—and he was—could, in the second half of the twenty-second century, think of nothing but work, sex, food, and sleep was incredible. They had nothing in common, yet she saw he was by no means unintelligent, only fantastically ignorant. (Chapter Eleven)
By background and inclination, a typical twenty-second-century woman, city dweller, and scientist, Cleo found the relationship between man and dog a little short of miraculous. (Chapter Eleven)
As he saw it, the only time he could be still reasonably sure of his security was swimming naked at night with the courier. That was all very well, but midnight nude bathing with a girl, even in the twenty-second century, implied a certain degree of intimacy. Not that anyone was coy about that, not anyone normal, anyway. (Chapter Fifteen)The most amazing thing about all of this, from both books, is that
As for the merits of the books, I leave that to those who do not notice any of these problems when they read. I admire you people even as you aggravate the shit out of me.
I still find Colossus: The Forbin Project to be one of the great science fiction movies of all time. It stands with 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain as my top-shelf movies. Luckily, the book it was supposed to come from has not diminished that at all.
Briefly: Colossus and the Crab
At least he kept this on in the same century as the book it follows. Twenty-second century, but an early callback to Colossus just stirs up the timeline again:
After all, the nuclear armory had existed long before machine defense systems were contemplated; two thirds of the globe had lived for three generations under the constant threat of annihilation from human-targeted missiles. Somehow people got by.
In the 1970s, a generation was generally thought of as twenty years, for a total of sixty years. The first nuclear capable missiles (actually, thermonuclear) were operational in 1959. The above quoted passage makes Colossus and Guardian active around 2019, around twenty years after they are described as going active in the first book.
Again, this book does not read as if the author reviewed anything he had written before.
Scoop-O-Steve
