Manhattan Projects 1-7

Manhattan Projects:

Scientific Myths

Secrets for building an atom bomb in your basement, won’t be found in this comic book, nor will schematics for inter-dimensional gateways, rocket propulsion, nor do reliable biographies of scientists turn up in these pages of Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra’s tales. Keep grinding through mathematics and physics textbooks if you desire such information (but read Manhattan Projects when taking a break from your studies).

Yet, a mythos of early 20^th century science ferments and is cultured in these Manhattan Projects.

Οὐκ οἶδ᾽ ὄττι θέω,

δύο μοι τὰ νοήματα.

I do not know what I think

The minds are two for me

(Sappho, my translation)

Sappho’s words isolate an element Hickman and Pitarra infused within the first seven issues of the Manhattan Projects. Dual simultaneous existence pads through this comic like Schrödinger’s live/dead kitten…a similar mental dance implicit within the above words of Sappho.

While an entertaining comic book and a great story (of which many reviewers already attest to here, here, and here amongst other places), these seven issues scratch at something beyond mere escapism and mundane entertainment. MP both inspires a study of science and horrifies the study of science; two contradictory simultaneously existing states.

Horrification first.

Destruction radiates within the panels of MP. In the first issue, the death of an Oppenheimer along with a high body count of soldiers and Japanese robots could overflow small cemeteries. The death scale increases with the construction and dropping of the atomic bomb (without the consent of the USA president in this version of the tale); an act of destruction wrought by scientists[1]. Hickman expands thanatotic fabrications to include the genocide of an alien race. The unabashed attitude with which General Leslie Groves regards this pogrom comes through a quip used to persuade the Russian scientists to join q scientific alliance, “We killed an entire race of aliens on a Wednesday…who’s going to call our bluff?”

The scientists themselves (in the story, not in “real life,”) get transformed into depraved and monstrous doppelgängers of their actual counterparts. An “evil” Oppenheimer slays his “good” brother and exponentially manifests new personalities while gaining knowledge by devouring (literally) the minds of others. Harry Daghlian metamorphoses into a fleshless radiation monster (the instrument of genocide that razed the alien race with radiation). Einstein (an evil twin from another dimension of our Einstein) devotedly imbibes alcohol with nefarious connotations, while Wernher Von Braun, (in addition to the Nazism) encamps few qualms of sacrificing others for the advancement of science[2], plus he sports a creepy robotic arm. Enrico Fermi embodies an inhuman form (with green skin, sharp teeth, and an aptitude for violence). If monsters “represent fears held by society, fears associated with danger perceived in the surrounding world[3],” then the social apprehension towards scientists and their creations and use of these creations seems difficult to miss.  If such acts and characters don’t horrify and solicit pause for contemplation about the effect of uninhibited scientific research utterly controlled[4] by uninhibited genius madmen, then the back cover of the collection conveys this message with less subtlety than Von Braun threatening to slap an atomic bomb into a Russian research laboratory through an inter-dimensional gate:

And yet, even with such horror, there is the other mind…the box where the kitten still purrs and licks its paws and disregards the flask of poison. This book rouses inspiration and awe for science and scientists.

Ok, sure, readers won’t learn sound scientific principles, or accurate biographies of their favorite scientists, but conveying factual historically documented information is not the strength of fiction, of stories, of myth (whose Ancient Greek cognate μuθοσ can simply mean "story"), but myths, stories, fictions do inspire and shape the events and characters that will become history.

Issue four opens with a quote from Albert Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” These stories serve as crucibles for the imagination, the imagination that, “embraces the entire world” and stimulates progress, and gives birth to evolution.”

These stories rouse the curiosity and prompt one to go beyond what rests on the page. Was Von Braun really that callous, did Einstein have a drinking problem, could Oppenheimer possess multiple personalities, was Truman a Mason?

Such questions nag readers and fictional works replete with twisted facts have fired creativity in scientists and others alike. Issue three contains the quote (attributed to Feynman by the fictional Clavis Aurea) “What am I guilty of? An intimate familiarity with the necessity of fiction. Truth is my wife, but lies are my mistress.” Such “lies,” in the guise of fiction, contain truths that influence how people live their lives and the futures they pursue. The MP, in showing the raw power and potential, and sexier possibilities of science and engineering holds such possibility. According to interviews, it wasn’t amiss at the real Los Alamos to find copies of Astounding Science Fiction amidst those working on slicing atoms and assembling rockets, stories that kept minds and dreams in the stars and hands and eyes on calculations and bolts…another dual state of the mind.

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[1] Ftting enough, this mood may be captured by the words of the real Oppenheimer upon seeing the explosion of the first atomic bomb…the words he uttered before much more eloquent ones from the Bhagavad Gita, words from the engineer who spent years constructing a project…”It worked.” Then the more poetic, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer, too, it seems possessed two minds and can relate to the sentiments of Sappho.

[2] The first issue contains the quote from (the fictional) Clavis Aurea’s The Recorded Fenyman

  “I was surrounded by those willing to sacrifice all of mankind if doing so achieved their goals. Evil deeds by evil men that only I could prevent. Mourn then the passing of the world. For when the time came, I could find no good in myself, only mischief.”

[3] As  Matt Kaplan writes on page 4 of his book Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite: The Science of Monsters

[4] Von Braun in issue seven works at creating an agency of scientists free from all government control.
Gratitude equivalent to the half-life of Harry Daghlian goes forth to my rocket-scientist cousin for loaning me his collection of MP to read during break. May you always remain beyond the clutches of Von Braun's robotic arm.