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Thursday, April 10, 2008

Where's My Jetpack? - 2007

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This is a passage from the book Where's My Jetpack? by Daniel Wilson, all about the wondrous toys we were supposed to have by now, if you believed 50s and 60s sci-fi.

So when discussing artificial gills, Wilson says "The time has come to don a bright orange spandex suit and join Aquaman for a lifetime of underwater adventure!"

It's passages like that that help reinforce my belief about how much Aquaman is part of the culture. There's no explanation as to who Aquaman is, what he looks like or what his powers are, that knowledge is all assumed. (Though I guess the argument could be made that the author figured his audience was a little more on the Nerd Side of Life and would therefore be more familiar with comic book references).

This was caught by F.O.A.M.er
Siskoid, and alerted me to it (who, btw, just finished an Aquaman-themed week over at his blog). Thanks Siskoid!

3 comments:

Siskoid said...

No problem Rob. I'm as likely to jump out of my seat when I read an Aquaman reference as, well, any many. I'm not made of stone!

The oceans cover the majority of our world and yet, very few iconic characters live there. So when you think underwater, it's automatically Aquaman. He beats out... who? Namor? (9 out of 10 regular folks recognize him as Mr. Spock.) Patrick Duffie? No, there is only one.

Doug Slack said...

Rob, have you ever seen Mermaid man from Spongebob Squarepants? Voiced by Ernest Borginine no less-
http://spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/Mermaid_Man

rob! said...

i have! that's a funny character. sometime i should try and talk to the SBSP writers (once they come down from their high, presumably) about how that all came about.