he Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines a condition known as Asperger's Syndrome, which afflicts many of the world's most gifted people. A mild form of autism, it's a neurological disorder that strikes in childhood, lasts a lifetime, and seems to occur more often among the children of bright parents, although it can be found in all levels of society. People afflicted with it—mostly male—are notable for their Revenge of the Nerds social skills, and also for the tremendous patience and focus they can bring to bear on problems that interest them. Like autistics, Aspergians tend to be obsessive in their hobbies. For trainspotters this means notebooks full of train car serial numbers, while for scientists and mathematicians it often means either Earth-shaking discoveries or else years of patient data taking to support the discoveries of someone else. (In physics this is sometimes known as "stamp collecting.")
Sadly, though, while people afflicted with Asperger's have a normal human desire to be liked, they have a blunted sense of empathy, i.e., a poor ability to guess what other people are thinking or feeling. Most of us have a built-in feel for other people's nuanced moods; we constantly read faces, body language, slight changes in tone and volume, and adjust our own behavior accordingly. Ideally, these responses are unconscious, and so automatic we aren't aware of them at all, but Asperger's victims—sometimes referred to as "mind blind"—have to learn and practice their social skills consciously, and lose them completely in moments of inattention. As a result, Aspergians are easily taken advantage of, have a hard time making friends and are especially awkward among strangers.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Willy Wonka—the brainchild of 20th-century British author Roald Dahl—is a textbook case. Secluded in his giant factory, he's undeniably a success and a genius, but also a born victim, easily swindled by his former employees and even, one imagines, by the mischievous Oompa Loompas who replaced them. When he invites people over to visit, Willy can't simply judge their character at a glance the way the rest of us do. Instead, he sets up elaborate traps to identify, scientifically, who can and can't be trusted. A runaway from a troubled family, he also shows definite signs of repression, denial, disconnection, arrested development and sadism. He may be kind at heart, but he also enjoys inflicting a good scare, and doesn't seem to mind very much if people are hurt—even comically disfigured—in the process. Beneath his playful exterior he's amoral and creepy.
Which is funny, because in a moment of rehearsed candor Willy notes that chocolate—rich in theobromine, caffeine and cannabinoids—gives people the same sort of rush they get from falling in love. This is perfectly true, but it's sad to imagine Herr Wonka as a love-starved lad, clinging to chocolate as his only pleasure. Is that as close to love as he's ever come? In fact, many Asperger's sufferers are celibate by choice, and many more are, through no fault of their own, unable to locate a willing partner. Hence, Willy's need to adopt an heir rather than siring one directly.
Candy isn't dandy
What Wonka didn't point out, though I will, is that chocolate is actually toxic to most mammals and birds, though surprisingly nutritious for humans in its raw form. Like chili peppers (whose caustic juices are repellent to nearly every creature on Earth), the cacao bean almost seems to have been created as a uniquely human pleasure. And mixing the chocolate by waterfall is a nice touch—this really would aerate the mix, making it lighter, fluffier and generally more delightful.
Regarding the Oompa Loompas, there are certainly primitive tribes still living in the jungles of South America (where chocolate originates), and many of them are known only by rumor, since they avoid contact with modern people. For Willy Wonka to stumble onto one of these groups in his travels is not impossible by any means. The shortest tribe of people in the world, though, are the forest-dwelling Mbutsi people of Zaire in central Africa, with an average height of 4'4" (137 cm) for the men and 4'1" (124 cm) for the women. A little taller than Wonka's friends, yes? History's shortest medically examined person, though, was just over 22 inches tall, and the shortest adult of basically "normal" proportion was a 24" (61 cm) woman. So while the Oompas seem a bit extreme, they're just barely within the range of plausible human development.
I'm similarly optimistic about the ordeal of young Augustus Gloop, who gets stuck in a bit of plumbing and then sucked free. He is not pushed but pulled up the tube, which looks to be about half a meter, or 1.5 feet, in diameter. Now, the maximum possible force you could achieve that way is equal to the area of the tube times the pressure of the atmosphere behind it—around 3,700 pounds—but that would require a total vacuum in the upper part of the pipe. You'd have to cut that suction in half if you wanted to keep poor Augustus from suffocating or developing a body-wide hickey. Even allowing for the kid's weight—I'm guessing around 200 lbs—this still means a net force of as much as 1,600 lbs. That'll overcome a lot of friction, especially with liquid chocolate as a lubricant, although it will also generate heat. To some extent the chocolate may also act as a coolant, but I wouldn't be surprised if the sides of the pipe burned Augustus' skin as he whizzed through.
As for the everlasting gobstopper, hey, no problem. All you need are insoluble flavor molecules embedded in a polymer. Putting an entire meal in a stick of gum is a bit more of a stretch. It shouldn't be difficult to embed chemical flavors in time-release capsules, so the flavor of the gum would change over time. With high enough technology you could even use some sort of nerve stimulation to fake the textures and other sensations of eating. You could also pack in a small amount of carbohydrate or a smaller amount of protein, vitamins and minerals, to make the gum more nutritious. Unfortunately, a stick of gum simply can't pack in the mass or nutritional value of a four-course dinner. That's a problem not even genius can solve.
Similarly, I'm sure it's possible to reorganize a person's body into a blue sphere. It's possible to reshape a caterpillar into a butterfly, right? But when Violet Beauregard turns into a blueberry, she gets a lot bigger. Since she doesn't deform under her own weight the way a water balloon would, and because a few Oompa Loompas are able to roll her around without difficulty, it's pretty clear that she hasn't gained any mass. She's less dense in her blueberry form—probably about like foam rubber. I can buy this transformation if Wonka's technology is that advanced, but I can't buy "squeezing the juice out of her" as a way to restore her normal size. Like any foam, she must be mostly empty space.
Trained squirrels? Sure, why not. Squirrels have been trained to waterski, open cans and to act in movies, and in fact, much of the footage in the nut-sorting scene may be genuine. According to unverified rumor, Tim Burton, the film's director, insisted on the trouble and expense of actually training the squirrels to crack nuts and place them on a conveyor belt, using computer graphics only for the more complex bits of acting. If true, it's an inspiring achievement, and should make us all proud to be alive.
Inside the idiot box
One item I feel compelled to mention here, even though it didn't occur in the book or in last month's movie remake, is "Fizzy lifting drink." Even if you could somehow dissolve helium or hydrogen gas into sugar water, creating a sweet, bubbly drink, the total lift available from an inflated human stomach would be about one ounce or 28 grams—definitely not enough to lift a person. Tim Burton did well to leave this out of his version of the movie. Besides, who needs to float around when you've got a Great Glass Elevator that can fly you anywhere? The thing doesn't carry much propellant, but from the books we know it's capable of reaching orbit. A thruster based on nuclear fission is a very remote possibility, but since technology doesn't seem to be much of a barrier, it's more likely a nuclear fusion rocket. Wonka doesn't seem to worry about radiation, so the fuel is probably a clean-burning mix of deuterium and helium-3. At around $166,000 per gallon, this stuff is 60,000 times the price of gasoline, but for Wonka—one of the wealthiest men in the world—it's clearly affordable.
For me, the movie's most troubling moment involves the shrinking of Mike TV in what can only be described as a transporter accident. Using a combination of deductive reasoning and huge intuitive leaps—both important parts of the scientific method!—this kid successfully predicted the location of a Golden Ticket, and then went out and got it. He also immediately understood the principles behind Wonka's teleporter (citing the correct quantum-mechanical buzzwords), grasped their revolutionary potential and upbraided Wonka for limiting his invention to the trivial application of shipping chocolate samples. And like many scientists he wasn't afraid to experiment on himself—a foolish act, but certainly a brave one. Kids are more impulsive than adults, and often hurt themselves doing stupid things they're pretty sure will work. It's hard to fault Mike TV for something as ordinary as that. All right, he may not have the playfulness or whimsy of a Candy Man, but with the strength of his convictions and a tremendous intellect to back it up, Mike TV will one day make a formidable adult—the sort Starfleet would be happy to have for a chief engineer, or (dare I say it?) Science Fiction Weekly for a "Lab Notes" columnist. Ironically, he seems to have a bit of Asperger's Syndrome himself, so it's all the more ironic that Wonka doesn't like him. But I do.
Anyway, overall I have to give the movie surprisingly high marks for scientific credibility. The technology is improbably advanced for our 21st-century world (even more improbably for the mid-20th-century world of the original book), but almost none of it is actually impossible. Which is more than we can say for most movies, or indeed, for most science fiction. Up and out, indeed.
Sources:
The Guinness Book of World Records, 2005 edition
Judy Jones and William Wilson, An Incomplete Education, Ballantine Books, 1987
"Tim Burton Trains Squirrels To Crack Nuts," http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/entertainment/39732004.htm
Wikipedia: ("Asperger's Syndrome," "Roald Dahl"): http://en.wikipedia.org
The Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference DVD, 2004 Edition ("chocolate")
Wil McCarthy is a rocket guidance engineer, robot designer, nanotechnologist, science-fiction author and occasional aquanaut. He has contributed to three interplanetary spacecraft, five communication and weather satellites, a line of landmine-clearing robots and some other "really cool stuff" he can't tell us about. His short writings have graced the pages of Analog, Asimov's, Wired, Nature and other major publications, and his book-length works include the New York Times notable Bloom, Amazon "Best of Y2K" The Collapsium and, debuting this month, To Crush the Moon. His acclaimed nonfiction book, Hacking Matter, is now available in paperback.
