Abelard Snazz
Encyclopedia
Abelard Snazz was "The Man With The Multi-Storey Mind," a super intelligent 2000A.D.
character created by Alan Moore
, and first illustrated by artist Steve Dillon
.
, but no specific link was implied. Snazz was Alan Moore's first recurring character for 2000A.D.
, and appeared in eight progs between 1980 and 1983. Snazz first appeared in Moore's third Ro-Jaws
' Robo Tales strip for 2000A.D. (and third work overall for that publication), in the two-part story "The Final Solution", in Progs #189-190. Moving briefly into the Tharg's Future Shocks
for his second storyline (third appearance) in Prog #209, Snazz then gained his own short-lived strip in Prog #237. 'The Man with the Double-Decker Brain' is a mutant with two brains and two sets of eyes (occasionally adorned by two sets of glasses). Convinced - with some accuracy - of his own genius, he acted as a consultant inventor, "offering to handle complex problems with even more complicated solutions," and shared many character traits that Moore would return to with the America's Best Comics character Jack B. Quick
in his Tomorrow Stories
anthology comic, two decades later.
Typically his innovative solutions build upon one another to great comic effect as his initial errors are compounded in ever-more bizarre ways. Joe "Jog" McCulloch describes the logical progression of two of the strips in the following way:
Snazz is regularly accompanied by his robot sidekick Edwin, whose dialogue tends to revolve around variations on the phrase "You're a genius, Master!", serving to stroke the ego of Snazz spurring him to ever more unlikely feats of "intelligence", while also underscoring the humour for the reader. Eventually, Snazz himself is frustrated by Edwin's cloying, servile flattery. Five of the six Abelard Snazz stories end with characters turning against Snazz and leaving him in a cliffhanger
-style predicament.
The Abelard Snazz saga pales in significance when compared to Moore's better-known 2000A.D. work - Skizz
, D.R. & Quinch, and The Ballad of Halo Jones
- but, despite its relative lack of exposure (and page count), it formed a cohesive whole, with "a fairly tight continuity, with earlier adventures referenced later on, and even an ending of sorts."
ous strip, which ran for a further five Progs (four complete storylines). All six stories were written by Alan Moore
:
Moore's short Future Shocks stories were collected in the late 1980s and reprinted in two volumes by Titan Books
as Shocking Futures (1986) and Twisted Times (1987). All (bar one) of the Abelard Snazz strips feature in the second of the two volumes, but "The Return of the Two-Storey Brain" did not because, as Moore says in the introduction of "unintentional plagiarism" on his part from a story by R. A. Lafferty
.
This story was nonetheless restored when Rebellion published all six Abelard Snazz stories, alongside Moore's other "Future Shocks" in the 2006 trade paperback:
Probability Scrambler.” Edwin was unavailable to assist Snazz as he was busy getting drunk with some robot dancers. An enraged Hoolio refuses to let Snazz use the Time Box to win back their money, and instead uses it to send Snazz and Edwin back in time to when they were trapped in space. This time, when Hoolio’s cruiser passes them, it doesn’t stop to pick them up.
-like beings, the Farbians, rescue Snazz and bring him and the corroded remains of Edwin aboard their ship. After Snazz is defrosted and gets his bearings, he gleefully disposes of Edwin’s remains via the ship’s garbage disposal chute. The Farbians take Snazz back to their home planet, Farbus. The Farbians believe that Snazz is a god-like being, the “Toglub of the Two-Fold Gaze,” and worship him accordingly. They also inform Snazz that he is the fulfillment of a prophecy – that the Toglub has been sent to deliver Farbus from three major calamities: their economic crisis, caused by the “Farbian Crottle” weed killing all their vegetation; their energy crisis, caused by a lack of fuel; and the crisis of a black hole
’s imminent approach to the planet. Snazz is duly informed that, should the Toglub fail to solve these three problems in a single stroke, he will be thrown to the Piranha-Dogs. After much thought, Snazz discovers that the Farbian Crottle is overrun and fed on by the intelligent “Farbian Crottle-Worms” – “the most saintly and good-natured beings in known space.” Snazz creates a “virtue converter” to transform the worms’ good thoughts into an unlimited supply of energy – thus solving the energy crisis. Snazz theorises that other races will want to harness this source of energy, and the Farbians can sell abundant supplies of Farbian Crottle to them – thus solving the economic crisis. As for the black hole, Snazz comes up with the idea of stitching up the hole with a thread-like stream of “cohesive neutrinos” from a faster-than-light spaceship, piloted by himself and powered by Farbian Crottle-Worms. This plan initially works, until the Farbians praise the worms. An enraged Snazz declares that all the thanks should go to him, and that the worms are merely a bunch of “do-gooder maggots” and “mindless invertebrates.” The worms are so insulted that they lose their good thoughts, and thus the ship loses power – and is sucked into the black hole.
-authority queue where people who have fallen into black holes are processed. When Snazz informs the official that his previous occupation was being employed by the people of Farbus as the “Great God Toglub,” he is dispatched to the “Bide-a-Wee-Twilight Dimension for Disinherited Deities.” There, Snazz encounters a collection of ancient gods (mostly from Greek mythology
) who have lost their power because no one believes in them anymore. Snazz appoints himself the gods’ new manager, and begins a massive promotional campaign to rebrand the gods and bring them up to date, making himself rich in the process. Snazz brings the “Gods Revival’” to Ursa Minor
, where he introduces to the inhabitants the gods’ new roles, including Ares
as the God of Space Invaders
Machines, Demeter
as the Goddess of Health Food Stores
, Apollo
as the Disco
God, and Eros
as the God of Popular Romantic Fiction. Unfortunately, the people worship the gods so much that they revert to human sacrifice
to placate them. An appalled Snazz tries to convince the gods to put an end to it, but they inform him that creating barbarism “is what being a god is all about!” Snazz refuses to allow this, so the gods decide to banish him: Snazz is left stranded in “a realm of bleak isolation” from which he can only escape if he solves a puzzle left by Zeus
- a gigantic Rubik's Cube
.
. Snazz is rescued just before he can use a giant crane to make the final turn to solve the giant Rubik’s Cube – it took Snazz twelve thousand years to mine enough metal to build the crane, and another thirty thousand years to actually build it. The hippies take Snazz back to Earth, which has enjoyed a utopia
n existence ever since California
won World War 26. Snazz is dismayed that Earth has become such a “technological paradise” that there is nothing left for him to invent. However, he soon hits upon the idea of creating robot tennis
players to replace human players. The hippies of City Hall agree that making tennis purely a spectator sport would make the game more “mellow” and more of a “communal sharing experience.” Snazz duly creates robot tennis players, gigantic enough to be seen by huge crowds. Snazz explains that the robots are highly-skilled at tennis because they have been programmed with the personalities of great 20th century tennis players. Unfortunately, one of the robots has the personality of John McEnroe
, and after arguing with the tennis umpire during a match, the robot loses its temper and begins to destroy the stadium. The humans run for their lives, and punish Snazz by attempting to drown him in the city’s giant Jacuzzi
.
” to Snazz. The Manager explains to Snazz that any citizen who passes “the six million mark” is honored with a celebration and “the one gift” that would make him “happier than anything in the world.” Snazz unwraps his “perfect gift,” but rather than empiric power or riches, Snazz is dismayed to discover that his gift is his old robot servant Edwin, who has been recovered from deep space and rebuilt. Overjoyed to see his old master, Edwin is as cloying as ever, and Snazz breaks down in tears of anguish, misinterpreted by those in the room as tears of gratitude. Snazz is left to reacquaint himself with Edwin, and elects to pummel the robot repeatedly instead. Between each knock, Edwin still proclaims Snazz to be “a genius!”
2000 AD (comic)
2000 AD is a weekly British science fiction-oriented comic. As a comics anthology it serialises a number of separate stories each issue and was first published by IPC Magazines in 1977, the first issue dated 26 February. IPC then shifted the title to its Fleetway comics subsidiary which was sold...
character created by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
, and first illustrated by artist Steve Dillon
Steve Dillon
Steve Dillon is a British comic book artist, from Luton, Bedfordshire, best known for his work with writer Garth Ennis on Hellblazer, Preacher and The Punisher.-Biography:...
.
Character history
Abelard Snazz, a.k.a. "the man with the two/multi-story brain", is a genius whose plans nevertheless do not work quite as intended. His first name was likely inspired by Moore's half-memory of having read about the philosopher Peter AbelardPeter Abelard
Peter Abelard was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. The story of his affair with and love for Héloïse has become legendary...
, but no specific link was implied. Snazz was Alan Moore's first recurring character for 2000A.D.
2000 AD (comic)
2000 AD is a weekly British science fiction-oriented comic. As a comics anthology it serialises a number of separate stories each issue and was first published by IPC Magazines in 1977, the first issue dated 26 February. IPC then shifted the title to its Fleetway comics subsidiary which was sold...
, and appeared in eight progs between 1980 and 1983. Snazz first appeared in Moore's third Ro-Jaws
ABC Warriors
ABC Warriors is a long-running 2000 AD comic strip written by Pat Mills, which first appeared in prog 119 in 1979 and continues to run today. Art for the opening episodes was by Kevin O'Neill, Mike McMahon, Brett Ewins, and Brendan McCarthy - who between them designed the original seven members of...
' Robo Tales strip for 2000A.D. (and third work overall for that publication), in the two-part story "The Final Solution", in Progs #189-190. Moving briefly into the Tharg's Future Shocks
Future Shocks
Future Shocks is the name given to a long running series of short strips in the weekly comic 2000 AD in 1977. The name originates in a book titled Future Shock, written by Alvin Toffler, published in 1970.-Publishing history:...
for his second storyline (third appearance) in Prog #209, Snazz then gained his own short-lived strip in Prog #237. 'The Man with the Double-Decker Brain' is a mutant with two brains and two sets of eyes (occasionally adorned by two sets of glasses). Convinced - with some accuracy - of his own genius, he acted as a consultant inventor, "offering to handle complex problems with even more complicated solutions," and shared many character traits that Moore would return to with the America's Best Comics character Jack B. Quick
Jack B. Quick
Jack B. Quick is a fictional character, a superhero from Alan Moore's America's Best Comics imprint. He appeared primarily in humorous stories in the anthology series Tomorrow Stories.-Character history:...
in his Tomorrow Stories
Tomorrow Stories
Tomorrow Stories was an American comic book series created by Alan Moore for his America's Best Comics line, published by Wildstorm .-Overview:...
anthology comic, two decades later.
Typically his innovative solutions build upon one another to great comic effect as his initial errors are compounded in ever-more bizarre ways. Joe "Jog" McCulloch describes the logical progression of two of the strips in the following way:
- "Upon inventing ultra-sophisticated police robots to rid crime, Snazz winds up reducing a planet to a police state, so he invents complementary robot criminals, but then innocent citizens are getting caught in the crossfire, so he invents robot civilians to be harmlessly wasted, and eventually the robots crowd the humans off the planet. In another scenario, he creates a Virtue-Converter to transmute the unlimited selflessness of the beatific Farbian Crottle-Worms into a lucrative source of energy, at least until his callous attitude toward his beaming work-force engenders Pride within them, counteracting their virtue and spoiling the plan."
Snazz is regularly accompanied by his robot sidekick Edwin, whose dialogue tends to revolve around variations on the phrase "You're a genius, Master!", serving to stroke the ego of Snazz spurring him to ever more unlikely feats of "intelligence", while also underscoring the humour for the reader. Eventually, Snazz himself is frustrated by Edwin's cloying, servile flattery. Five of the six Abelard Snazz stories end with characters turning against Snazz and leaving him in a cliffhanger
Cliffhanger
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction...
-style predicament.
The Abelard Snazz saga pales in significance when compared to Moore's better-known 2000A.D. work - Skizz
Skizz
Skizz was a comic book strip in 2000 AD which appeared in three installments across more than a decade. It was written by Alan Moore and drawn by Jim Baikie...
, D.R. & Quinch, and The Ballad of Halo Jones
The Ballad of Halo Jones
The Ballad of Halo Jones is a science fiction comic strip written by Alan Moore and drawn by Ian Gibson, with lettering by Steve Potter and Richard Starkings ....
- but, despite its relative lack of exposure (and page count), it formed a cohesive whole, with "a fairly tight continuity, with earlier adventures referenced later on, and even an ending of sorts."
Original run
The character of Abelard Snazz appeared in three Progs (two short strips) before getting his own eponymEponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous strip, which ran for a further five Progs (four complete storylines). All six stories were written by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
:
- Ro-JawsABC WarriorsABC Warriors is a long-running 2000 AD comic strip written by Pat Mills, which first appeared in prog 119 in 1979 and continues to run today. Art for the opening episodes was by Kevin O'Neill, Mike McMahon, Brett Ewins, and Brendan McCarthy - who between them designed the original seven members of...
' Robo Tales: "Final Solution", art by Steve DillonSteve DillonSteve Dillon is a British comic book artist, from Luton, Bedfordshire, best known for his work with writer Garth Ennis on Hellblazer, Preacher and The Punisher.-Biography:...
, in 2000A.D. Progs #189-190 (1980) - Tharg's Future ShocksFuture ShocksFuture Shocks is the name given to a long running series of short strips in the weekly comic 2000 AD in 1977. The name originates in a book titled Future Shock, written by Alvin Toffler, published in 1970.-Publishing history:...
: "The Return of the Two-Storey Brain!", art by Mike White, in 2000A.D. Prog #209 (1981) - Abelard Snazz:
- "The Double-Decker Dome Strikes Back", art by Mike White, in 2000A.D. Progs #237-238 (1981)
- "Halfway to Paradise", art by John Cooper, in 2000A.D. Prog #245 (1982)
- "The Multi-Storey Mind Mellows Out!", art by Paul NearyPaul NearyPaul Neary is a British comic book artist, writer and editor.His first work was for Warren Publishing in the 1970s before working with Dez Skinn at Marvel UK as well as work for 2000 AD...
, in 2000A.D. Prog #254 (1982) - "Genius is Pain", art by Mike White, in 2000A.D. Prog #299 (1983)
Reprints
The first two Abelard Snazz stories were reprinted in Eagle/Quality's 1986 2000 A.D.(2nd Series) reprint comics. "Final Solution" featured in issue 4, and issue 5 reprinted "The Return of the Two-Storey Brain".- 2000 A.D.(2nd Series) #4 (Eagle, Jul 1986)
- 2000 A.D.(2nd Series) #5 (Quality, Aug 1986)
Moore's short Future Shocks stories were collected in the late 1980s and reprinted in two volumes by Titan Books
Titan Books
Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...
as Shocking Futures (1986) and Twisted Times (1987). All (bar one) of the Abelard Snazz strips feature in the second of the two volumes, but "The Return of the Two-Storey Brain" did not because, as Moore says in the introduction of "unintentional plagiarism" on his part from a story by R. A. Lafferty
R. A. Lafferty
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty was an American science fiction and fantasy writer known for his original use of language, metaphor, and narrative structure, as well as for his etymological wit...
.
- Twisted Times (TitanTitan BooksTitan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...
, 1987) (ISBN 0-907610-72-2)
This story was nonetheless restored when Rebellion published all six Abelard Snazz stories, alongside Moore's other "Future Shocks" in the 2006 trade paperback:
- The Complete Future Shocks (Rebellion, 2006) (ISBN 1-904265-88-X)
"Final Solution"
On the planet Twopp, crime is so rampant that even the Prime Minister, Chancellor, and Commissioner are robbed down to their underwear on their way to visit double-brained, four-eyed “Mutant Supermind” Abelard Snazz, President of Think, Inc. The officials of Twopp ask Snazz for a solution to the planet’s crime problem. Snazz's answer is to create a race of giant police robots, heavily-armed and programmed to make unlimited arrests. Snazz is hailed as a genius by his sycophantic robot assistant, Edwin. Unfortunately, the police robots are so efficient that they arrest all of the criminals on the planet, and continue to fill out their arrest quotient by arresting citizens for minor offences, such as breaking the laws of etiquette, good taste, and grammar. With everybody getting arrested, the officials return to Snazz for help. Snazz creates a race of giant criminal robots to keep the robot police busy, thus saving innocent people from being arrested. However, the perfectly-matched conflict between the robot police and robot criminals creates an all-out war which kills scores of innocent bystanders. After another visit from the officials, Snazz’s latest solution is to create a race of little robot innocent bystanders to suffer in the humans’ stead. This saves the people from harm, but it also leaves the planet Twopp overcrowded with robots. The humans abandon the planet, and when Snazz announces his idea of building a giant robot planet for them, the enraged officials have had enough and eject Snazz and Edwin into outer space."The Return of the Two-Storey Brain!"
Abelard Snazz and Edwin are rescued from deep space by a passing cruiser piloted by Hoolio Moolabar, who is despondent because he has lost his life savings on the casino world of Beteldryve. Snazz believes his genius can help Mollabar recoup his losses, and hits upon the idea of creating a time machine to make Hoolio and himself rich. After returning to Beteldryve, Snazz uses his "Time Box" to repeatedly place bets on games he already knows the outcome of. Snazz and Hoolio soon become the richest people in the galaxy, but Snazz subsequently loses all of their money by losing two-hundred coin-tosses against a doorman who, unbeknownst to Snazz, has been using an “AcmeAcme Corporation
The Acme Corporation is a fictional corporation that features prominently in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons as a running gag featuring outlandish products that fail catastrophically at the worst possible times...
Probability Scrambler.” Edwin was unavailable to assist Snazz as he was busy getting drunk with some robot dancers. An enraged Hoolio refuses to let Snazz use the Time Box to win back their money, and instead uses it to send Snazz and Edwin back in time to when they were trapped in space. This time, when Hoolio’s cruiser passes them, it doesn’t stop to pick them up.
"The Double-Decker Dome Strikes Back"
Adrift in deep space with a rapidly-diminishing oxygen supply, Abelard Snazz is cryogenically preserved after a passing meteor ruptures his space suit’s thermostat and freezes his body. Two thousand years later, a passing race of morose, VikingViking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
-like beings, the Farbians, rescue Snazz and bring him and the corroded remains of Edwin aboard their ship. After Snazz is defrosted and gets his bearings, he gleefully disposes of Edwin’s remains via the ship’s garbage disposal chute. The Farbians take Snazz back to their home planet, Farbus. The Farbians believe that Snazz is a god-like being, the “Toglub of the Two-Fold Gaze,” and worship him accordingly. They also inform Snazz that he is the fulfillment of a prophecy – that the Toglub has been sent to deliver Farbus from three major calamities: their economic crisis, caused by the “Farbian Crottle” weed killing all their vegetation; their energy crisis, caused by a lack of fuel; and the crisis of a black hole
Black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
’s imminent approach to the planet. Snazz is duly informed that, should the Toglub fail to solve these three problems in a single stroke, he will be thrown to the Piranha-Dogs. After much thought, Snazz discovers that the Farbian Crottle is overrun and fed on by the intelligent “Farbian Crottle-Worms” – “the most saintly and good-natured beings in known space.” Snazz creates a “virtue converter” to transform the worms’ good thoughts into an unlimited supply of energy – thus solving the energy crisis. Snazz theorises that other races will want to harness this source of energy, and the Farbians can sell abundant supplies of Farbian Crottle to them – thus solving the economic crisis. As for the black hole, Snazz comes up with the idea of stitching up the hole with a thread-like stream of “cohesive neutrinos” from a faster-than-light spaceship, piloted by himself and powered by Farbian Crottle-Worms. This plan initially works, until the Farbians praise the worms. An enraged Snazz declares that all the thanks should go to him, and that the worms are merely a bunch of “do-gooder maggots” and “mindless invertebrates.” The worms are so insulted that they lose their good thoughts, and thus the ship loses power – and is sucked into the black hole.
"Halfway to Paradise"
Abelard Snazz ends up in an immigrationImmigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
-authority queue where people who have fallen into black holes are processed. When Snazz informs the official that his previous occupation was being employed by the people of Farbus as the “Great God Toglub,” he is dispatched to the “Bide-a-Wee-Twilight Dimension for Disinherited Deities.” There, Snazz encounters a collection of ancient gods (mostly from Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
) who have lost their power because no one believes in them anymore. Snazz appoints himself the gods’ new manager, and begins a massive promotional campaign to rebrand the gods and bring them up to date, making himself rich in the process. Snazz brings the “Gods Revival’” to Ursa Minor
Ursa Minor
Ursa Minor , also known as the Little Bear, is a constellation in the northern sky. Like the Great Bear, the tail of the Little Bear may also be seen as the handle of a ladle, whence the name Little Dipper...
, where he introduces to the inhabitants the gods’ new roles, including Ares
Ares
Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent aspect of war, in contrast to the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and...
as the God of Space Invaders
Space Invaders
is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to...
Machines, Demeter
Demeter
In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...
as the Goddess of Health Food Stores
Health food store
A health food store is a type of grocery store that primarily sells health food, organic foods, local produce, and often nutritional supplements...
, Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
as the Disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
God, and Eros
Eros
Eros , in Greek mythology, was the Greek god of love. His Roman counterpart was Cupid . Some myths make him a primordial god, while in other myths, he is the son of Aphrodite....
as the God of Popular Romantic Fiction. Unfortunately, the people worship the gods so much that they revert to human sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
to placate them. An appalled Snazz tries to convince the gods to put an end to it, but they inform him that creating barbarism “is what being a god is all about!” Snazz refuses to allow this, so the gods decide to banish him: Snazz is left stranded in “a realm of bleak isolation” from which he can only escape if he solves a puzzle left by Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
- a gigantic Rubik's Cube
Rubik's Cube
Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik.Originally called the "Magic Cube", the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that...
.
"The Multi-Storey Mind Mellows Out!"
Six million years later, Abelard Snazz is rescued from the Dimension of Bleak Desolation by a pair of hippies working for Amnesty IntergalacticAmnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
. Snazz is rescued just before he can use a giant crane to make the final turn to solve the giant Rubik’s Cube – it took Snazz twelve thousand years to mine enough metal to build the crane, and another thirty thousand years to actually build it. The hippies take Snazz back to Earth, which has enjoyed a utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n existence ever since California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
won World War 26. Snazz is dismayed that Earth has become such a “technological paradise” that there is nothing left for him to invent. However, he soon hits upon the idea of creating robot tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
players to replace human players. The hippies of City Hall agree that making tennis purely a spectator sport would make the game more “mellow” and more of a “communal sharing experience.” Snazz duly creates robot tennis players, gigantic enough to be seen by huge crowds. Snazz explains that the robots are highly-skilled at tennis because they have been programmed with the personalities of great 20th century tennis players. Unfortunately, one of the robots has the personality of John McEnroe
John McEnroe
John Patrick McEnroe, Jr. is a former world no. 1 professional tennis player from the United States. During his career, he won seven Grand Slam singles titles , nine Grand Slam men's doubles titles, and one Grand Slam mixed doubles title...
, and after arguing with the tennis umpire during a match, the robot loses its temper and begins to destroy the stadium. The humans run for their lives, and punish Snazz by attempting to drown him in the city’s giant Jacuzzi
Jacuzzi
Jacuzzi is a company that produces whirlpool bathtubs and spas. Its first product was a bath with massaging jets. The term "jacuzzi" is now often used generically to refer to any bathtub with massaging jets.-History:...
.
"Genius is Pain"
Before he falls into the giant whirlpool bath, Abelard Snazz is teleported to the other side of the universe to face trial before the Manager of the Universe. The Manager recounts all of Snazz’s misadventures up to this point, and Snazz’s attempt to escape by threatening him with a “Neuron-Whisk” fails. At the moment of pronouncing judgment, everyone begins singing “Happy Birthday to YouHappy Birthday to You
"Happy Birthday to You", also known more simply as "Happy Birthday", is a song that is traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person's birth...
” to Snazz. The Manager explains to Snazz that any citizen who passes “the six million mark” is honored with a celebration and “the one gift” that would make him “happier than anything in the world.” Snazz unwraps his “perfect gift,” but rather than empiric power or riches, Snazz is dismayed to discover that his gift is his old robot servant Edwin, who has been recovered from deep space and rebuilt. Overjoyed to see his old master, Edwin is as cloying as ever, and Snazz breaks down in tears of anguish, misinterpreted by those in the room as tears of gratitude. Snazz is left to reacquaint himself with Edwin, and elects to pummel the robot repeatedly instead. Between each knock, Edwin still proclaims Snazz to be “a genius!”