Watchman Book Spoiler in this thread

[Eric P]

just came across this in Kim Newman's Apocalypse movies:

Even more far-fetched are those cabals of scientists and planners who decide the only way to forestall a world destroying event is to manufacture a paper dragon threat from alien invaders - a possibility that Ronald Reagan once mused about in public - that frightens the superpowers nto pointing all their weapons out into space rather than each other.  The concept seems to originate with Theodore Sturgeons' short story "unite and conquer" (1948) but novels on the theme include William C Anderson's Pandemonium on the Potomac and Martin Caidin's The Mendelov Conspiracy.

http://books.google.com/books?id=NX4THQAACAAJ&dq=apocalypse+movies+kim+newman&client=firefox-a

The book then goes on to reference this episode of the Outer Limits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Architects_of_Fear

[Eel O'Brian]

i've always had this nagging problem with the watchmen

spoiler (click to show/hide)

manhattan should have killed adrian, too

[close]

[GilloD]

just came across this in Kim Newman's Apocalypse movies:

Even more far-fetched are those cabals of scientists and planners who decide the only way to forestall a world destroying event is to manufacture a paper dragon threat from alien invaders - a possibility that Ronald Reagan once mused about in public - that frightens the superpowers nto pointing all their weapons out into space rather than each other.  The concept seems to originate with Theodore Sturgeons' short story "unite and conquer" (1948) but novels on the theme include William C Anderson's Pandemonium on the Potomac and Martin Caidin's The Mendelov Conspiracy.

http://books.google.com/books?id=NX4THQAACAAJ&dq=apocalypse+movies+kim+newman&client=firefox-a

The book then goes on to reference this episode of the Outer Limits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Architects_of_Fear

Moore includes a shout-out to this episode in the last like... 5 pages of Watchmen. The TV at old Silk Spectre's house is tuned to the Twilight Zone.

[Eric P]

*cough*

outer limits

[chronovore]

Spoilers for Watchmen book? Other important aged spoilers: Darth is whiny boy's dad, and Rosebud is the dying guy's tobaggan.

[Cormacaroni]

well, it could spoil the MOVIE for some folks who haven't experienced it in either format yet.

There's nothing remotely new about the concept of uniting against a fictional threat; look at the foreign policy of any extremist government. The Jews weren't a threat to Hitler's Germany, yet he managed to unite the nation against them. The Watchmen plot just paints this in bolder colors.

[Eric P]

space jews

someone call hollywood

i smell a hit

[recursivelyenumerable]

I'd heard about the Outer Limits episode from reading "Cult TV", which was apparently where Moore saw it.

[Cormacaroni]

space jews

someone call hollywood

i smell a hit

Orson Scott Card/BSG are mining similar territory for sure.

[Eric P]

those are space mormons!