{"id":1470,"date":"2019-10-09T22:37:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T03:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2019-10-09T22:37:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T03:37:01","slug":"saying-farewell-to-the-master","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/saying-farewell-to-the-master\/","title":{"rendered":"Saying “Farewell to the Master”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“Farewell to the Master”
\nHarry Bates
\nThe Day the Earth Stood Still<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Harry Bates was the first editor of Astounding Stories of Super-Science<\/em>, known as Analog<\/em> today.\u00a0 He was born on this date, October 9, in 1900.<\/p>\n

Astounding Stories of Super-Science<\/em> was the second science fiction pulp, intended as a competitor of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories<\/em>.\u00a0 Bates is credited with infusing a sense of action and adventure into the field, in contrast to the stuffy, intellectual type of story favored by Gernsback.\u00a0 I’m going to have to read some of those stories and report back.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Today I want to look at the reason Bates is remembered today.\u00a0 That’s his story “Farewell to the Master”, which became the basis of the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/em>.\u00a0 Spoiler: the movie is very different from the story.<\/p>\n

A quick summary (with no more spoilers):\u00a0 a craft appears on the lawn of the Smithsonian.\u00a0\u00a0 It doesn’t descend.\u00a0 It just appears out of nowhere.\u00a0 A few days pass, and crowds gather.\u00a0 Then a man steps out of the craft accompanied by a large green robot. He says his name is Klaatu and the robot is Gnut.\u00a0 Before he can say anything else, he is shot dead by a person in the crowd.<\/p>\n

Klaatu is buried in the Tidal Basin.\u00a0 Gnut doesn’t move or say anything.\u00a0 An entire wing of the Smithsonian is built around the robot and the ship.\u00a0 In three months.\u00a0 This part I didn’t buy.\u00a0 Humanity being the type they are, they do everything to make sure the robot is rendered inoperable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The reporter named Sutherland (who broke the story because he was the only reporter nearby the day the ship appeared) is covering the opening of the wing when he notices something.\u00a0 The robot’s foot is in a slightly different spot than it was the day before.\u00a0 He decides to sneak into the museum that night to see what happens.<\/p>\n

You’ll have to read the story yourself to fins that out.<\/p>\n

I read this story back in [REDACTED]<\/strong> when I was in high school.\u00a0 Tonight was the first time I’ve read it since.\u00a0 There’s a danger in rereading the stories that you enjoyed in your youth.\u00a0 I was pleased to find out “Farewell to the Master” has held up well.\u00a0 The writing is a bit rough in a couple of spots, but overall the story\u00a0 is well-told.\u00a0 Other than building an entire wing of a museum in less than three months, the only thing I had difficulty buying into was the totally lax security at the museum.\u00a0 The technology was primitive by today’s standards, but that I can deal with.<\/p>\n

“Farewell to the Master” is ultimately a sad story.\u00a0 It was more moving than I remembered.\u00a0 The twist in the final line shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone who has a lot of fiction, but it’s still effective.\u00a0 This one is worth reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Farewell to the Master” Harry Bates The Day the Earth Stood Still Harry Bates was the first editor of Astounding Stories of Super-Science, known as Analog today.\u00a0 He was born on this date, October 9, in 1900. Astounding Stories of Super-Science was the second science fiction pulp, intended as a competitor of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[296],"tags":[775,865],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthday","tag-birthday","tag-harry-bates"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-nI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}