Bizarroworld

So you think what we’re doing makes sense?

Image credit: DC Comics

During my childhood in the late 1960s my family lived in South Africa for a couple of years. Among many other experiences, this was when I first encountered US pop culture. A local convenience store sold a few out-of-date comic books featuring then-current superheroes, the most notable of which were Superman and Batman.

I remember being puzzled by their fondness for baroque and rather impractical costumes. Why was their underwear on the outside of their pants? For what purpose did they adorn themselves in capes? And why was every problem solved by means of punching other people? For the most part the story-lines seemed tediously repetitive and boring.

The one story that did interest me, however, introduced a parallel Earth: Bizarroworld.

Defying basic physics, this quasi-Earth was a cube rather than an oblate sphere, and its inhabitants were likewise defective copies of the original. There were many incongruities: Why was only quasi-Earth a cube while the rest of the nearby universe conformed to normal surface tension dynamics? How could such stupid inhabitants have developed parallel technologies and social structures?

Yet the thing that struck me most was the fact that the parodic world was in fact a far better description of our actual world than the cartoon Earth on which…