Richard Feynman and the Nazis

[arbre_rieur]

Here are four pages from issue 2 of Jonathan Hickman's THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS...

Comments

[killerkaleidoscope]

I realize this is a pretty short clip, but I don't particularly care for this characterization of Feynman. I have a book of his letters I'd recommend as a good read for anyone interested in the guy. Feynman was never all this dry. He was very cheerfully up-front about everything in a way that read like arrogance, but I'm pretty sure it was only a lack of false modesty--he knew exactly what he was like and capable of, which was an awful lot. There is a decent chance he would have told General Robo-Arm to stuff it because he had faith in proper scientists being able to discover it on their own.

Obviously this would have made for a very short story. But it would have been fun to see the real Feynman in action.

(Also: "We are the same, you and I?" Please.

[joysweeper]

Yeah, seriously. I feel like his name and a couple details just got grubbed up and plugged in. "Real personality? Pfffft. All we need is a stock Narcissist to play the part of Scientist Sans Ethics!" I read Feynman's book involving anecdotes from working on the Manhattan Project, too - I think it was "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - and it was a lot more compelling.

By the way, Feynman's last letter to Arlene.

[goattoucher]

This. I don't know why the chose to use Feynman, a man with a well known public persona, instead of just introducing a new character. He is clearly there to serve more as a vehicle for exposition than as a character.

[halloweenjack]

This, too. It's one thing to give ancient scientists whatever types of personalities the writer wants to project on them, as Hickman did in SHIELD, but another entirely to do this sort of thing for people like Feynman and von Braun who lived within living memory of most of us (well, maybe just me and a few others in von Braun's case, at least as far as s_d is concerned) when he could have easily have just made two new characters. But that's less of a hook, I guess.

[mrosa]

And why should it be different for ancient scientists? Some have left personal accounts, and there are always biographies. Perhaps it's harder to get their personalities right, but research is part of writing. Research is something I don't see in this book at all.

From Hell this is not.

[icon_uk]

Complete agreement

[killerkaleidoscope]

Exactly! I mean, my book is called "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track", which, IIRC, is a phrase he used in defense of someone who'd asked what some would call a stupid question.

My favorite letters of his are the ones he sent in reply to random joes who wrote him with a question about science or a theory to expound. No matter how basic the query or how crackpot they sound, his answers were always perfectly polite and clear. Very patient fellow, very loving, and a lot of fun--one of the few American historical personages I would genuinely have given anything to meet.

The writer's defense is, inevitably, going to be 'well this makes for a better stooooory...' which is a damned lie. The true Feynman was exactly the kind of guy who could be belligerantly nice while also being a ferociously clever genius. It would have been like tossing the best traits of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark in a blender and throwing the resultant superbeing at the Nazis.

[joysweeper]

Even in accounts in his own books, where you know he's going to make himself look good because we are all on our own sides first, he could be smarmy and annoying. He was kind of a womanizer about a decade after Arlene died, too. But geez, it was a totally different kind of annoying, amicable and grinningly self-deprecating, not... this.

I'd have liked to see that, too.

[glprime]

Motto, motto. and yet more motto.

[mrosa]

Awful, clichéd writing. "Winners write history" is one of those stock phrases I could live the rest of my life without listening or reading again.