Lateral Thinking

                    By James G. Johnston

Oxford Dictionary

Lateral Thinking - A way of solving problems by employing
unorthodox and apparently illogical means.

Adventurer or (fem) Adventuress - A person who seeks adventure.
esp.  one who seeks success or money through daring exploits.

I have been using this phrase for years, wrongly it seems. I have
always presumed that 'lateral thinking' was 'logical thinking' -
that is, if I find a spade in a location and I dig there (or in
some other location) I will uncover an object which will assist
towards the final solution.  What prompted me to look up the exact
meaning of the phrase was to try and resolve, in my own mind, some
of the illogical actions found in certain of our adventures.

I don't mean the "gully bull" type of description as in St.
Brides' "Very Big Cave Adventure".  This type of humour is
pleasant on the first occasion but soon bores the adventurer.

I won't even object to the lavatorial joke type adventures or the
lewd ones as they normally carry a health warning on the package.
This permits you to play or not as you wish.

What I am referring to, is the way that this lateral thinking is
used, by the writer, to make the player dream up and carry out
various actions that he would normally never consider doing in
real life, due to their un-natural or repugnant nature (I am
excluding fantasy acts of flying etc.).

For example, in Quest for the Golden Eggcup, inputting a 'swear
word' is dealt with by the following message :-

'Suddenly a resonant voice booms down your ear, "Swear Not, In My
Realm!".  Then two large guards of hell capture you and throw you
into a dungeon'.  Swear in the dungeon and you will get the
following message :- 'A key rattles in the lock, the door opens
and a huge hairy arm reaches into the cell and clouts you'.
(There was even one adventure I played which reset on such input
and you had to wait another 20 mins. until the tape reloaded.

Now I chose to enter the swear word, the writer chose to put in
these replies to cater for my bent mind. But here is the twist,
you have to enter the dungeon to collect a key which is necessary
to complete the adventure and there is no way to get into the
dungeon other than by swearing. No Choice - No Swear - No Key - No
Completed Adventure ...... That's Lateral Thinking?

By the way, don't swear again after getting the key and leaving
the dungeon.  This time when you are returned to the dungeon there
is no way out and a restart is the only option.  ...... More
Lateral Thinking?

In one adventure I played you were faced with a guard and a fierce
doberman dog stopping your escape to the Swiss Mountains. No
problem ...  SHOOT GUARD (done), The dog is now whimpering (with
fear?) and you can now move onwards.  "And what is wrong with
that?", you say, "it's only role playing and you don't really kill
him!". ........ In three moves I was frozen to death in 'a
freezing pass' in the Swiss mountains ......  I was completely
stuck.  On asking for help, I was informed that I should SHOOT DOG
- SKIN THE DOG then WEAR SKIN.

Now I have a very healthy imagination and I have also prepared
poultry and rabbit for the table but lateral thinking could never
make me visualise some pretty lady adventuress calmly slitting
this dog up, skinning it and then picking up the bloody gungy skin
and draping it over herself. To me that is not lateral thinking -
more the product of a disturbed mind.

The way through the mountains is now available and you are told as
you move from location to location "How lucky you are wearing a
warm dog skin" or how "If you were not wearing the dog skin you
would probably frozen to death".


Rubbish!!!  Next time there is a heavy frost along with a good
wind, get yourself rigged out with nice wet blanket and go for a
walk. If you don't freeze to death, you will certainly die of
pneumonia. In order to try to dry, the blanket will use your body
heat to try to raise its temperature. The chill factor of the
wind will absorb this heat before the blanket can use it and will
reduce the blanket temperature further.  This process will rapidly
produce a state in which you will have lost all your body heat and
the blanket will be frozen to your body, helping to maintain your
now dead body at wind chill factor level (which can be very low
indeed). Well, best not to try it after all!!

Just think about coming out of the water when swimming on a lovely
warm summer day. The first thing you notice is that you feel
chilled.  No, the temperature hasn't dropped, the water on your
body and your swim suit is stealing your body heat to dry itself(
(with less drastic results than those above).  As an example of
Lateral Thinking it is distasteful, does not comply with the
natural laws of physics and could have been completed simply by
having the guard wearing a alpine fur coat.  If the doberman had
to be killed then he could be made to stop you taking the coat
from the dead guard. Logical to me but maybe not lateral enough
for some!

Another theme was introduced in an adventure where you were met,
on a lonely road, by four youths who inform you that they are the
guardians of the road and in order to pass you must fight their
leader in unarmed combat and beat him. You agree so the leader
drops his weapons and you start to fight. I punched, kicked and
chopped and always found myself being killed by their leader after
two or three moves. I put the adventure away for a while till I
could get help. The solution to my problem was to mirror his
actions, punch where he punched, kick where he kicked but - (now
here is a nice bit of lateral thinking!!!!!) - when he chops at
your neck you CHOP NECK WITH SWORD (which you just happened to be
still carrying during an UNARMED COMBAT) and cause his death,
('Premeditated Murder' I think they call it!).

Now having watched you kill their leader, the other three youths
melt away and let you get on with your adventure. A simple FIGHT
LEADER - You engage the leader in a fist fight and win. The gang
carry their leader away (thus leaving the way ahead clear) - was
obviously never considered.  You must hack an unarmed fellow human
to death in order to satisfy the author's lateral thinking.

I can accept most of the fantasy worlds that adventure writers
develop but there must be a level below which it is wrong to
travel.  Again I am not referring to condition changes brought on
by time and events. I am referring to an adventure writer who sits
and plans that he will force you carry out actions in his 'game'
that you would find unethical, un-natural or repulsive.

Recently, my grandson was playing a 'golden oldie' (Atlas
Assignment).  At the start of the adventure he picked up a bottle
of sodium pentathol and later found a syringe in a dustbin. He
wasn't too keen to pick up the syringe but did when I pointed out
that he would need it if he wanted to use the sodium pentathol.
Sure enough 'a bound man' was found who, when injected with sodium
pentathol, gave the address of 'Atlas' (the character you were
seeking). As he moved to the next location, my grandson (age 14)
remarked "I would have told you where Atlas was before you got
near me with a used syringe that you had picked up out of a
dustbin!".

The adventure had been written at a time when used syringes were
not potentially lethal in themselves. I would not have thought
much about it but it was obvious that, even at his young age, he
had a reluctance to handle and use a used syringe, even in an
imaginary situation and was certainly fully aware of the dangers
of its indiscriminate use.  This I would regard as as a condition
that has changed by time and events and as such is acceptable.
After all, as an R.A.F. medic in the 50s it was standard
practice, for me, to re-sterilise all syringes and needles for
re-use. Some of the needles became so blunt that they bounced off
the skin.

The great writers of the macabre knew how to tell their tales
without the need to stoop to crude actions and descriptions to
shock their readers.  In The Pit and The Pendulum - the guillotine
does not keep lowering until the damsel in distress is cut in half
with her blood splattered all over the place!  Just when it
started to cut through her clothing (and the rope holding her),
the mechanism jammed and she broke free (Hooray!!). The villain
ran to see what had jammed the blade and just as he reached it the
blade swung towards him. Did it slice him in half with blood all
over the place? .... Nooooo! He clasped and clung to the shaft of
the guillotine as it swung over the pit, then lost his grip and
fell with a terrible scream into the dark pit.  And was impaled on
a dozen sharp stakes, with blood everywhere?  .... Nooooo! We
leave him falling to his death and return to the young lover who
takes his obvious anxiety out on an innocent door, forces it open
and clasps the swooning maiden in his arms.

He swears his true love forever and promises that these awful
things will never happen to her again.  Thus completely reassured
of her future, the story ends as they leave the dark foreboding
house and walk hand in hand, down the path just as the sun breaks
through the clouds.  The golden rays paint the scene with
beautiful fresh colours and the birds and bees go about doing what
birds and bees do. No dead bodies!!  ...... No buckets of blood!!

I am willing to accept that this type of horror (using the tension
to build up the atmosphere but concentrating on the rescue to
bring you gently back to 'normality' might not suit you and you
might prefer to RAPE ANDROID in Planet of Death (Artic 1982) to be
given the reply "She moans with pleasure and blows a fuse". I,
however, reserve the right to question the author's and your state
of mind since your lateral thinking leads you to contemplate, with
some obvious pleasure, the sexual assault of an electro-mechanical
machine.

Boy, have you got problems !!!!!!!!

You will notice that all along I have made my case against 'us
males'.  This is because the female mind does not suffer from
these defects.  If you do not believe me then read the gripping
horror story written by Mary Shelly (when just 18 years old) -
Frankenstein. The story revolves not around 'A Monster' but round
a poor creature who could not understand what had happened to him
or what was going on. He knew he wanted love, beauty and
friendship but was shunned and misunderstood, when not being
attacked for being 'different'. I found my sympathies were always
on the side of the 'nameless' monster and against Frankenstein
whose endeavours had resulted in the creation of the monster. A
monster without name, memory, language or training whom he
immediately abandons because he finds the monster's appearance
revolting.  The story reaches its climax with Frankenstein dead
on board Captain Walton's ship, stuck somewhere in the Artic
icefields.  The monster somehow gets on board and visits his dead
creator. I had a lump in my throat when he tried to explain his
feelings to Captain Walton.

Mary Shelly, within the beliefs and customs of her time, tells a
story of such stark horror - Man blaspheming against The Creator
by attempting to create (or recreate) life - and yet gives us the
pathos of the terrible loneliness, fear and confusion in this poor
creature's mind and of it's creators own revulsion and horror of
the being he had created.  This showed to me that, just like all
her gender, she understood the 'mind' of her creation and had no
need to resort to the crude or degrading to titillate her readers.

Footnote.

Frankenstein was not the creature's name. He is given no name at
any time in the story other than 'monster'. Victor Frankenstein
was the person who created him.  Mary wrote the story of the
Frankenstein's activities under his name and also refers to him,
in the title, as 'A Modern Prometheus' (he created life using fire
from the heavens (lightning)) - both in the Greek sense as 'the
bringer of fire' and in the Roman myth of Prometheus who animates
a figure of clay.

22nd Jan 1994.






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