Ancestors

Written by Matt McIrvin on 2024-12-07 at 23:41

So the actual reason I was poking around stuff I wrote 21 years ago was that I was thinking about L. Frank Baum's Oz books, and one of the things I did around 2003 was read through them.

"Tik-Tok of Oz" (1914) has the following passage:

"...believing that Ozma was now taking an interest in the party he [the Wizard] drew from his pocket a tiny instrument which he placed against his ear.

Ozma, observing this action in her Magic Picture, at once caught up a similar instrument from a table beside her and held it to her own ear. The two instruments recorded the same delicate vibrations of sound and formed a wireless telephone, an invention of the Wizard. Those separated by any distance were thus enabled to converse together with perfect ease and without any wire connection."

(The Magic Picture is a kind of omni-surveillance video screen. But it's visual only, no sound.)

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Written by llewelly on 2024-12-08 at 11:33

@mattmcirvin

I remember this scene. I don't recall much else from Tik-Tok of Oz, since it was one of the few Baum books I didn't re-read obsessively during childhood, and unlike you, I don't think I've re-read any of them since adulthood. (I did try, a few times, and lost interest rather quickly.)

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Toot

Written by Matt McIrvin on 2024-12-08 at 17:29

@llewelly I read the Oz books only in adulthood, initially out of pure curiosity because they're so weird, and then to my kid when I had one.

They vary greatly in quality, even the original ones by Baum. His style was evolving rapidly over the first few books and the continuity is wildly inconsistent from volume to volume. Eventually he gets this big fandom and kids start sending him letters complaining about the inconsistencies so he has to write more to patch them up.

And then he got sick of Oz and tried to kill the series with the sixth one, only to realize that the Oz books sold and nobody was buying his other ones. Similar to Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, I suppose.

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Descendants