Sunday, June 19, 2011

Asimov covered moviemaking errors in novelization of "Fantastic Voyage"

Since I briefly mentioned the possible remake of "Fantastic Voyage", I have to mention that I also read the novelization by Isaac Asimov. Ike had hit his stride by that time, and it was probably wittier and more interesting than the movie -- and the description of what the Proteonauts were seeing was probably biochemically and physiologically accurate ca. 1967. And Ike, who had a legit Ph.D. in biochemistry, covered some of the oversights in the movie. One of them was when the Proteus had to refill their air tanks by borrowing some air from the lung of the person (Benes) they were inside of. As Ike noted in the novel's dialogue, trying to do this with a miniaturized submarine and unminiaturized air wouldn't have worked; it would have been like sucking raisins through a straw. So Ike said that the Proteus had a miniaturizer on board (to collect deep-sea samples originally) and the genius who built and was piloting the Proteus rigged it to collect miniaturized air for the miniaturized air tanks of the Proteus. Very clever, Dr. Asimov.

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