The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear
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| Author | Walter Moers |
|---|---|
| Original title | Die 13½ Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär |
| Translator | John Brownjohn |
| Illustrator | Walter Moers |
| Cover artist | Walter Moers |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Eichborn Verlag |
| Released | 1999 |
| Released in English | 2005 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| ISBN | ISBN 3-8218-2969-9 (first hardcover edition) |
The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear is a 1999 fantasy novel by Walter Moers. It details the numerous lives of a human-sized bear with blue fur.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear' describes the first half of Bluebear's set of 27 lives. The story progresses from Bluebear's first memories of life, floating in a nutshell near the giant Malmstrom, to his career as a professional liar called a Congladiator, to his time spent on the SS Moloch, the world's largest ship, and everywhere in between. The novel intersperses Bluebear's narrative with excerpts from The Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs by Professor Abdullah Nightingale, a teacher Bluebear encounters in his sixth life.
The plot is set in the fictional continent of "Zamonia" before the "great descent" in which Zamonia and many other continents sink beneath the waves.
[edit] Plot summary
Bluebear's first life begins with the young seabear floating in a nutshell in the north Zamonian sea, alongside a loud roaring noise which is belatedly identified as the Malmstrom, a giant whirlpool which all the world's sailors take care to avoid. Luckily, Bluebear is saved by a diminutive crew of Minipirates, who adopt the bear as their good-luck charm. Aboard their tiny craft he learns much of sailing and knot-tying, but before long he has grown too large and the Minipirates must set him ashore. Bluebear's first life ends with him standing on a deserted shore watching the Minipirates sail off.
Bluebear's next life picks up right where the last one left off, a pattern continued throughout the novel. Upon exploring his new island home further, Bluebear discovers a group of Hobgoblins, who raise Bluebear to celebrity status due to his fantastic displays of crying. Eventually repulsed by this, Bluebear builds a raft and sets off on his own.
The bear's third life finds Bluebear at sea aboard his self-made raft, where he meets a pair of "Babbling Billows". These talking waves take a liking to the seabear, giving him a name and teaching him the art of speech. This life also marks Bluebear's first encounter with the SS Moloch, the world's largest ship. Although it passes by without stopping, he feels a powerful urge to climb aboard. Finally, Bluebear helps ease a giant whale's pain by pulling harpoons out of its back, and the grateful whale deposits him within swimming distance of another island.
Bluebear's fourth life, by far the shortest chapter in the book, sees our hero on Gourmet Island, a fantastic isle wherein every lifeform is both edible and wholely delicious. Before long, Bluebear has grown obese from constant eating, and his latest meal is interrupted by the discovery that the island is in fact a giant carnivorous plant that lures unwary travellers in with its scrumptious offerings, fattens them up, and proceeds to eats them. Luckily, Bluebear receives salvation in the form of Deus X. Machina, a Reptilian Rescuer who happens to be passing by. The fourth life draws to a close as Bluebear flies off on Mac's back.
Life 5 details Bluebear's experience acting as a navigator for the near-sighted Mac, assisting the Reptilian Rescuer in his daring saves. (Many of the Zamonians saved in this chapter by Mac and Bluebear turn up later on in future lives.) The life ends with Mac entering retirement, depositing Bluebear at the entrance to the Nocturnal Academy, the headmaster of which owes Mac a favor.
In his sixth life, Bluebear is taught all the knowledge in the world with the aid of the seven-brained Nocturnomath Professor Abdullah Nightingale, and his intelligent bacteria. In his schooldays the seabear also meets several figures who will become significant later on in his lives- both his best friend Qwerty Uiop (a gelatin prince from the 2364th Dimension) and Fredda the Alpine Imp (a hairty creature with a crush on Bluebear), as well as crude Knio the Barbaric Hog and annoying Weeny the Gnomelet. Upon leaving the Academy, Bluebear is led astray in a series of caverns by a tricky creature known as a Troglotroll, whom Professor Nightingale had expressly told Bluebear not to trust. Luckily, Bluebear is able to call upon his newly begotten knowledge to make his way out of the caves and into the neighboring Great Forest.
Life 7 finds Bluebear wondering why exactly such a nice place as the Great Forest would be deserted. In fact, therein he meets the love of his life, a blue she-bear with amazing cooking abilities and a similar taste in literature. Unfortunately, he discovers to his dismay that the other bear is only an illusion of the Spiderwitch, in whose web Bluebear is now caught fast. Despite the refusal of the reappearing Troglotroll to help him, the bear finally manages to free himself from the web and sets off on a marathon run through the forest away from the giant spider. Just as his strength gives out, our hero stumbles upon a fortuitous Dimensional Hiatus, the same sort of genff-smelling portal through which Qwerty entered our universe. Only seconds away from being spider food, Bluebear jumps into the portal.
Bluebear's life in the Dimensional Hiatus brings him face-to-face with elements of both past and future lives, and eventually deposits him into the past in the 2364th Dimension, where he accidentally sets off a chain of events which lead to Qwerty falling into a Dimensional Hiatus and into our world in the first place. Faced with a group of angry 2364ers, Bluebear jumps into the portal after his friend and comes back out in our world, with the Spiderwitch nowhere to be seen. He then sets out across the Demarara Deset.
Life 9 details Bluebear's treks across the desert in the company of nomadic Mugg people searching for the legendary mirage city Anagrom Ataf. Bluebear helps the Muggs trap and inhabit the city, but upon finding it already populated with the ghost-like Fatoms, he sets the Muggs roaming again, this time in search of a city called Esidarap S'loof ("Fool's Paradise" backwards). Leaving their company, Bluebear spies a Tornado Stop and decides to wait there to catch a ride to Atlantis, on the other side of the desert. Sure enough, a tornado soon comes along, but Bluebear is sucked into its center to discover he has aged nearly eighty years in the process.
Thus, in his tenth life, Bluebear and the other elderly denizens of Tornado City search desperately for a way to escape the center of the whirlwind. In the process, Bluebear is reunited with a man he and Mac once saved, and discovers a madman in the tornado is responsible for the strange practices of the Muggs. Eventually, the bear realizes that the tornado stops its spin for one minute once every year, so he and the other old men count backwards for a whole year in anticipation of the next stop. When it happens, they dig through the tornado wall, aging in reverse as they make their escape. As the men go their separate ways, one tells Bluebear of a strange path to Atlantis, which he will attempt to follow in his next life.
Life 11, then, is the story of how Bluebear travels through the unrequired and thus discarded head of a Megabollogg on his way to Atlantis- "in one ear and out the other," as the bear is told. While inside, he meets a number of bad ideas, including the deranged thought known as Madness. Barely escaping a dip in the brain's Sea of Oblivion, Bluebear takes up a profession as a dream composer, hoping to earn enough to pay for a map out of the head. He manages to escape the head just in time, right before the roaming giant returns to put his head back on his shoulders. Bidding goodbye to his newfound friend Bad Idea 1600H, Bluebear advances towards the gates of Atlantis.
In Life 12, Bluebear slowly works his way up the Atlantisian professions tree, from a spitting tavern sweeper to a pizza topper and finally to the highly coveted position of King of Lies in the Congladiator tournaments. In this last career, Bluebear becomes employed as a professional lier, a job he decided to try upon seeing the Troglotroll become the reigning King of Lies. Bluebear defends his throne for over a year, ultimately against his Congladiating idol himself in an epic 99-round Duel of Lies. Unfortunately, Bluebear's boss had asked him to throw this last fight, and when the bear refuses, his boss attempts to sell him into slavery on the SS Moloch. Luckily, the minion he sends to escort Bluebear is actually one of the Wolperting Whelps that was saved by Bluebear and Mac. He instead takes the bear below the ground of Atlantis, where Bluebear is reunited with Fredda. Along the way, the Troglotroll risks his own life to save Bluebear from a Sewer Dragon, explaining that you can never trust a Troglotroll to do the wrong thing, either. Bluebear elects to remain behind with the Troglotroll while Fredda and her Invisible friends pilot the city of Atlantis into outer space, as he learns to his dismay that the seas on the Invisibles' planet are made of electricity. Unfortunately, as soon as they leave the Troglotroll deposits Bluebear right into the hands of the SS Moloch's crew.
Bluebear's thirteenth life is in many ways a culmination of all his previous lives. On the SS Moloch, he discovers its captain is in fact the renegade element Zamonium, which he had learned about in his school days. Professor Nightingale makes a reappearance, and battles with the Zamonium in a war of thoughts while Bluebear sneaks up on the element to throw it into the Professor's domesticated darkness. Upon thus freeing the crew, Bluebear discovers that many of them are actually Chromobears, of the same species as he. Unfortunately, the Moloch becomes trapped by the Malmstrom, and the crew is only saved in time by the fortuitous arrival of an army of Reptilian Rescuers. Mac is the last to leave, but right before Bluebear climbs aboard his back, the Troglotroll leaps out of the shadows and takes his place, mimicing the bear's voice. Bluebear is seemingly destined to be sucked down into the Malmstrom, but at the last minute he realizes it is actually a Dimensional Hiatus, and he is saved by the arrival of his old friend Qwerty Uiop on a flying carpet. Together, they sail off to rejoin the rest of the crew on the shores of the lake where Atlantis used to be.
[edit] Ending
Bluebear's sprawling yarn draws to a close in his final 'half-life', wherein he meets a real-life she-bear similar in every way to the one he only imagined in Life 7. He begins a new life with her, but hints that further adventures await them both in the future. These words echo the novel's opening lines quite nicely:
"A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen-and-a-half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest. A bear must have his secrets, after all; they make him seem attractive and mysterious."
[edit] Film, TV and theatrical adaptations
Moers' Captain Bluebear character originally appeared in short segments of the "Sendung mit der Maus" ("Program with the Mouse"), a half-hour German children's television show. During these sequences, a puppet Bluebear would spin ridiculous pirate yarns, all of which he claimed were true. Käpt'n Blaubär – Der Film (Captain Bluebear – The Movie), a traditionally animated movie based on the TV show, was released in German theaters in 1999, coinciding with the novel's original release.
A musical version of the novel premiered in October, 2006 in Köln, adapted by Heiko Wohlgemuth and music composed by Martin Lingnau. [1]
[edit] Release details
- Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär, Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 1999. ISBN 3-8218-2969-9 (Hardcover)
- Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär (Numerierte Luxusausgabe), Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 1999. ISBN 3-8218-5117-1 (Hardcover)
- Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär, Goldmann Verlag, München 2001. ISBN 3-442-41656-6 (Paperback)
- Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär, Goldmann Verlag, München 2002. ISBN 3-442-45381-X (Paperback)
- Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär, Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 2002. ISBN 3-8218-5159-7 (Audiobook)
- Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär, Goldmann Verlag, München 2005. ISBN 3-442-46127-8 (Paperback)
- Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär, Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 2006. ISBN 3-8218-5423-5 (Audiobook, read by Dirk Bach)
- The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, Overlook Hardcover, USA, 20 October 2005. ISBN 1-58567-724-8. Hardcover.
- The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, Overlook Trade paperback, USA, 29 August 2006. ISBN 1-58567-844-9 Trade paperback.
[edit] Sources, references, external links, quotations
- Walter Moers
- Jack Bartlett Walters
- A review of the work
- http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/features/bluebear/main.htm
