Parsons in Popular Culture
Before his death, Jack Parsons appeared in science fiction writer Anthony Boucher's murder mystery Rocket to the Morgue (1942) under the guise of Hugo Chantrelle. In the same book, a fictional version of L. Ron Hubbard appears as a character named D. Vance Wimpole.
Parsons' relationship with Hubbard also appears in Feral House's Apocalypse Culture, Paradox's Big Book of Conspiracies, Alan Moore's Cobweb story in Top Shelf Asks the Big Questions, and in the Jon Atack nonfiction book A Piece of Blue Sky. He was one of the characters in Craig Baldwin's collage film Mock Up on Mu. A character named Zachary Carsons, based on Parsons, appears in the 2001 film The Profit. Parsons also was the main villain of the Atomic Robo short story "Rocket Science is a Two-Edged Sword," wherein Robo prevents Parsons from attaining godhood through a system of magick infused with science.
He is referenced in Philip K. Dick's novel Dr. Futurity, in which the protagonist is named Jim Parsons. He briefly appears in a 2002 issue of Alan Moore's comic book series Promethea entitled "The Wine Of Her Fornications" where he is one of the adepts in the "city of pyramids" in Moore's version of the Binah sphere of the Tree of Life and is watched over by John Dee. A play about Parsons, Babalon, by Paul Green, was performed in London in December 2005 by Travesty Theatre. There is an entry dedicated to Parsons in The QI Book of the Dead by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson. A stage play about Parsons by George Morgan, Pasadena Babalon, premiered at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in 2010. It was directed by film and TV actor Brian Brophy. Adam Howden portrays him on a 2012 episode of the Science Channel series, Dark Matters: Twisted But True.
Read more about this topic: John Whiteside Parsons
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, parsons, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I will have no Parsons around me but such as drink deep, ride to Hounds and caress the Wives and Daughters of their Parishioners. A Virtuous Parson does nothing to test or exercise the Faith of his Flock.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock and roll or Christianity.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)