Table of contents for Winter 2017 in Smith Journal

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it,” he wrote. “If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.” This has been going through my head a lot since researching one of the stories in this volume of Smith Journal. In the mid-20th century, apparently, scientists on both sides of the Cold War thought it was a good idea to look into something called “atomic demolition” – using small nuclear munitions to blow up buildings. They had everything sorted on paper and even built the bombs. But no one ever pushed the big red button. That fact didn’t end up making it into…

SCOUR ANY COLLECTION OF LONG-DISCARDED PAPERBACKS – IN A SECOND-HAND STORE, SAY, OR A MARKET – AND CHANCES ARE YOU’LL COME ACROSS A FILM NOVELISATION. It’ll most likely be from a film made in the ’70s, ’80s or possibly ’90s, which would lead most sensible people to believe that these movie books are a thing of the past. Because how, decades after the introduction of home video and in a time when streaming services are superseding DVDs, could there possibly be a demand for film novelisations? “I keep getting asked that question, and I have yet to come up with a good answer,” says Greg Cox, the author responsible for prose adaptations of the films Man of Steel, The Dark Knight Rises, the upcoming War for the Planet of the…

THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE WHEN YOU ENTER THE OLD HOLDEN FACTORY IN MELBOURNE’S SOUTH IS THE QUIET. THE HUGE COMPLEX IS ALMOST EERILY DESERTED; LONG CORRIDORS ARE LITTERED WITH SHUTTERED-UP WORKROOMS AND WALLED-OFF REMINDERS OF A DORMANT LOCAL INDUSTRY GOING TERMINAL. BUT THERE IS ONE STRETCH THAT STILL HUMS WITH LIFE. Up on the second floor, in a sequence of brightly lit studios, one of the automobile industry’s longest-running and least known traditions is in full flight as a squad of artisan clay-workers creates painstakingly detailed, full-size, inside-and-out models of the next generation of cars. “Clay is the lifeblood of car design,” explains Paul Larkin, who has been making models at Holden for more than three decades. “If you’ve got a good clay model, you’re set.” The history of…

AS AMANDA PETRUSICH ZIPPED UP HER WETSUIT AND APPROACHED THE BANKS OF THE MILWAUKEE RIVER, SHE WAS HIT WITH A RUSH OF NERVOUSNESS. The sound of flowing water coursed through her ears. A large scuba tank weighed heavy on her back. Nearly everyone Petrusich had contacted in the lead-up to this moment had tried to talk her out of it. People just didn’t dive in the river, they said. Strong currents, low visibility and swimming snakes made it a risky undertaking. Still, Petrusich persisted, gripped by an idea she just couldn’t shake. She wanted to scour the stirring brown water for hidden treasure. “It was crazy from the start,” she remembers. “But I didn’t care.” The section of river Petrusich planned to explore snaked past the crumbling foundations of a…

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF COMMUNISM HAS LONG SINCE BEEN ABSORBED BY THE CAPITALIST WORLD WHICH DEFEATED IT, THE TROPES OF ITS ZEALOUS YET EERILY NAIVE PROPAGANDA REPURPOSED AS ORNAMENTAL KITSCH, IRONIC DECORATION, EVEN ADVERTISING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It can be easy to forget that these portraits of ruddy-cheeked peasants beaming at a new lathe, or steel-jawed soldiers solemnly regarding the red sun dawning in the middle distance, were originally conceived – well within living memory – as advertisements for an ideology which destroyed millions of lives. Unless, of course, you painted some…

AT 16 STOREYS HIGH, THE INGALLS BUILDING WAS ONCE THE TALLEST REINFORCED CONCRETE STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD. Built in downtown Cincinnati in 1903, it was part engineering marvel and part symbol of things to come: a vertical world of skyscraping concrete and steel, urbanism that went up rather than out. Yet some critics of the tower couldn’t believe it would stand. Once construction was finished, one enterprising local reporter even stayed up all night to be first on the scene when the building collapsed. But the Ingalls Building is still there. The nameless newsman (presumably) isn’t. Conclusion? Toppling a tall building is a lot harder than you think. Since then, far more skyscrapers have gone up than have come down again. The tallest tower to be peacefully demolished was the…

THE EARTHQUAKE BEGINS THE MOMENT HIS FEET TOUCH THE CARPET. THE TREMORS PUSH VICTOR SMETACEK FROM THE EDGE OF THE HOTEL BED ONTO HIS KNEES. REDUCED TO A FRIGHTENED ANIMAL, HE CRAWLS TO THE WINDOW, FLINGS THE CURTAINS BACK AND GAPES SEVEN STOREYS DOWN AT THE STREETS OF CAPE TOWN. Rather than pandemonium, he sees a man pull a plastic bag out of his pocket, fluff it in the air and pick up after his dog. Waiting at the crossing in the early morning light, a pedestrian yawns and checks her watch. It’s not that they don’t feel the earthquake; it’s that there isn’t one. Smetacek’s balance returns with a jolt as he recalls the RV Polarstern docking in the South African city late the night before. For the past…

CHRISTOPHE COX HAS TOLD THIS STORY MANY TIMES BEFORE. BACK IN THE 1990s, ONE BELGIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENT – A CLASSMATE OF COX’S CALLED BART WEETJENS – THOUGHT UP A RADICAL NEW WAY TO DETECT LAND MINES. IT INVOLVED RATS. When he told his scientific colleagues, Weetjens was laughed out of the room. Truth be told, it can still be a battle convincing people the concept is not a joke. But decades later that lone student has had his hunch proved right. Rats can be tiny lifesaving heroes – when it comes to sniffing out land mines and detecting diseases, at least. It’s the kind of work normally reserved for sniffer dogs: lovable mutts that hold a long history of being man’s best friend. So getting people to place their faith…

IF YOU REMEMBER ANYTHING ABOUT JAMES CAMERON’S 2009 FILM AVATAR, IT’S PROBABLY THE GIANT SMURF-LIKE ALIENS, THE JUNGLE-STREWN WORLD OF PANDORA, OR THE RESIDUAL HEADACHE THAT ACCOMPANIED WATCHING YOUR FIRST FULL-LENGTH 3D FILM. Less memorable, perhaps, is the plot device that set the story in motion: an elusive substance known as “unobtanium”. Critics mocked Cameron for the name, a portmanteau they regarded as lazy and overly literal. Ironically, it was the one thing the film actually borrowed from real life. It’s unclear who coined the term, but people in white lab coats have been referring to “unobtainium”* as a way of talking about hypothetical elements and compounds since at least the ’50s. The first documented use of the word appeared in 1956, in a column in the Marshall, Michigan Evening…

“Fantômas.” “What did you say?” “I said: Fantômas.” “And what does that mean?” “Nothing… Everything!” “But what is it?” “Nobody… And yet, yes, it is somebody!” “And what does the somebody do?” “Spreads terror!” – Opening chapter of Fantômas, by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain Suppose that while playing one of those ice-breaking, fight-starting parlour games where you have to sketch a visual representation of a phrase on a card, so that your partner can guess what it is, you plucked the word “villain” from the bucket. As the sands trickle through the egg-timer, you will probably draw a figure distinguished by the following characteristics: male, dressed in black formal attire including a top hat, almost certainly set off with a waxed moustache suitable for twirling in dastardly fashion, and…

How did you first hear of the ruesee? I was researching black magic, but that kind of stuff is really well hidden and secretive. So I kind of gave up on that, but I came across this blog post a bit later. It was super-brief, it was called ‘Thailand’s Wizards’, and it had a one-line description of the ruesee, and a couple of crappy old phone pictures. I showed a couple of my Thai friends, and they were surprised to see contemporary ruesee. They’re mostly known from fairytales, or portrayed in period dramas, where they have kind of a dark connotation: these scary wizards who live in the forest. How do you go about getting in touch with them? I asked loads of Thai friends to help me, and they…

DAVE CHAPPELLE I was lucky enough to open for Dave Chappelle when he was touring Australia. He’s at a genius level of storytelling – I’ve seen him go off the top of his head for over an hour, just riffing in a small room without anything prepared. I love the way he is able to craft stories and deliver punchlines, and also say something more than just his jokes. Offstage he is a very profound guy; he’s not so much a jester as a rock-star philosopher. He’s a really cool guy, and that’s the way he projects his comedy. I think he is one of the few cases where he genuinely is that cool guy. And that’s important. I mean, you can’t fake the funk. Sometimes we don’t think stand-up…

SIA IS THE LEAST GUILTY OF THE GUILTIEST PLEASURES, BECAUSE THERE’S SO MUCH MORE DINNER TO HER THAN DESSERT. I’m a late bloomer to her music. I should have paid attention to my wife praising her – I only noticed her when we were performing at a Polish festival and a band called Crystal Castles was playing next to us. Their singer was warming up to Sia’s ‘Elastic Heart’ and I was forced to listen to it. And I thought, “Oh my God, this woman can sing.” I’ve always been jealous of the female range, but when I heard Sia I just thought, “I could never fucking sing that.” It’s insane. It blew me away, so I started listening to her stuff and watching her videos. And then I realised…

PROFESSOR SHARI FORBES KNOWS WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED. AND WHERE THEY’RE PLACED ABOVE GROUND, TOO. As a forensic chemist and director of the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER) – a scientific set-up colloquially known as a body farm – she is responsible for 48 hectares of bushland in the lower Blue Mountains where researchers place recently deceased human remains. The dead decay and yield information to the scientists, most of whom work closely with law enforcement on criminal investigations. Forbes became interested in forensics during the final year of her science degree, researching a specific area of a cemetery where bodies refused to decompose. “Like most things in forensic research, one thing leads to another,” she says. Those things included a PhD in decomposition chemistry, a six-year…

TIGER MOTH BERTHOLDIA TRIGONA Most of the moths we clap eyes on are a lacklustre lot, gnawing away at jumpers or wreaking havoc on a packet of spaghetti. Then there’s the tiger moth – an insect so formidable it had a Royal Air Force plane named after it. Ironically, aviation pioneer Geoffrey de Havilland came up with the name for his famous aircraft well before the moth’s dogfighting abilities were fully known. In 2009, a graduate student in North Carolina discovered that a certain species of tiger moth called Bertholdia trigona was able to throw bats off their trail using the insect equivalent of sonar jamming. As the predator bat swoops in for dinner, organs on the side of the moth’s body start clicking at about 4500 times…

You certainly can’t argue with the pedigree of the class of ’22: Einstein receives a Nobel Prize for physics; Louis Armstrong catches a train from New Orleans to Chicago; in Luxor, Howard Carter enters the tomb of Tutankhamen; mass media is born with the launch of the BBC and the transmission of the first picture by facsimile. In Madrid, Salvador Dalí takes his seat at the Residencia de Estudiantes; Hitchcock directs his first flick; FW Murnau’s Nosferatu premieres in Berlin and the year in literature is framed by the publication of two modernist classics: James Joyce’s Ulysses and TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. It was also the year that Walt Disney produced his first animated short film, Little Red Riding Hood, which for inexplicable reasons opens with a cat shooting…

BORN: October 2, 1914, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. DIED: June 17, 1952, Pasadena, California, U.S.A. WHEN MARVEL “JACK” PARSONS BEGAN LAUNCHING HOMEMADE ROCKETS FROM HIS BACKYARD AS A CHILD, PEOPLE REGARDED HIM WITH SUSPICION. Not simply because the sight of a teenager firing explosives into the air (and occasionally his neighbours’ yards) tends to raise eyebrows, but because during the 1920s the very idea of rocket science was regarded as a crackpot fantasy. In the first half of the 20th century, engineers interested in flight were encouraged to experiment with planes and airships. According to the conventional wisdom of the time, a rocket was no more capable of travelling through space than it was through time. As a popular textbook on astronomy put it, “only those who are unfamiliar with…