Book Review: Icerigger

    When I was a lad, my father pointed me in the direction of some Alan Dean Foster novels.  I think he told me specifically about the Flinx and Pip books, which oddly I wouldn’t go on to read for two decades or more.  But none the less, I was fascinated by Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth, and I picked up a handful of books and read them over the years.  Among the first I bought were the Icerigger trilogy…which I again, didn’t read.  Until now.  I found the trilogy as ebooks on the cheap, and figured now was a good time.

    Icerigger introduces us to Ethan Fortune, a merchant looking to make a name for himself and get a cushy job back in the core worlds, caught up in a kidnapping attempt that quickly goes from botched to totally screwed.  Soon, he finds himself one of the survivors of a crash, marooned on a hostile ice world, with no expectation of rescue.  Here we meet, among others, the mad Viking of a man, Skua September.  In Edgar Rice Burroughs fashion, Fortune and September embark on a journey of discovery and adventure, involving inhuman natives, swashbuckling, politics, and romance.

    Foster’s Humanx novels are direct descendants of classic space opera, mixing the pulpy fun of Burroughs’s Mars books and C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith stories, with the huge scale universe building of Asimov’s Foundation and E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen.  Similar to Larry Niven, A. Bertram Chandler, and others, he crafted a wide, wild universe to play in, creating galaxy spanning civilizations and local potentates.  Though the action of Icerigger is limited to one world (and briefly, it’s orbital space), you are constantly aware that events take place within a larger setting.  Fortune and September are certainly fun characters to follow.  Fortune is a relatable guy.  Smart, competent, and driven, he’s able to roll with a lot of punches, but still reacts in a way the reader can understand.  September is a wild beast of a man; a hard partier, lover, and fighter.  If I have a complaint about this novel, and I don't know that I do, it's that the story reaches a natural climax and conclusion, only to keep going.  It feels like the book is over, but there's a sort of novella tacked on to the end.  Odd, but not necessarily bad.

    Fans of space opera must check out Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx books.  If you’re only familiar with him from his incalculable number of movie novelizations, forget that and read some of his original work.  His universe is more consistent, and more consistently good than the Star Wars or Star Trek universes, while filling a similar niche.

Icerigger
Author: Alan Dean Foster
Publisher: Open Road Publishing
ISBN: (ebook) 9781453274088

-Matthew J. Constantine

An Open Letter to the makers of the New Star Wars Films

To the Powers That Be at Disney,

    No, no, no.  Relax.  This is not another snotty, Comic Book Guy post, complaining that C3P0 is going to want to be a real boy, or that Buzz Lightyear will be the main character of the next movie, or that Leia is not a Disney Princess.  Unlike many people on the internet, I do know that a studio famous for certain things is capable of doing other things.  Plus, the Star Wars films were danged kids’ movies (or family-friendly, anyway) in the first place.  So, what’s the problem really, super-fans?  This letter consists of a few suggestions from one lone voice of nerdiness, one Dork who has spent a lifetime with the universe of Star Wars as part of his mythological pantheon.  I’m not one of those guys who tries to live by the Force.  I don’t have a Slave Leia poster on my wall.  And while I don’t care for the Prequel Trilogy or the CG manipulated versions of the original films, I did actually like a lot about The Phantom Menace (It’s a gorgeous movie, people.  Look at it!).  I’ve never subscribed to the idea that one must like either Star Wars or Star Trek.  I like ’em both, and Babylon 5, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly to boot.  I have plenty of space in my nerd heart for all (I even like Middle Earth, even though I’m not much for wizards and dragons).  But I feel I need to stand up on my tiny little soapbox have my say.

    In my previous letter to the creative team behind the rumored Star Trek TV series, I suggested that step one in the process should always be to look at the property and assess what it is really about.  What is that thing that makes it stand out, that gives it its essential identity.  With Star Trek, I contend that it is hope for the future of humanity (and life in general), wonder at the vastness and cosmic beauty of space, and a cautious optimism about technology and science, and that all this ‘let’s make it darker, let’s show lots of war, etc.’ stuff is muddying the waters and diluting the essential nature of Trek.  But what is Star Wars?  Is it about Jedi Knights battling to restore balance to the universe?  Is it about fathers and sons, family destinies, etc.?  Is it about people living on the fringes, fighting against insurmountable odds?  I’ll tell you what it meant to me.  It was a glimpse into realms of the imagination.  I was transported to exotic locations, saw strange creatures and stranger people.  Interesting characters like wise Old Ben, sleazy Han Solo, smooth Lando, driven Leia became role models of a kind.  Leia was one (thankfully, of many) female characters in movies of my youth that defied gender roles and showed that a woman didn’t have to be constantly rescued by a man, but could do plenty on her own.  Han showed me that one might have a rough exterior, so long as one remained true to one’s self and did the right thing when the chips were down.  And even though I don’t like a lot about Return of the Jedi, or for that matter, the whole story of Darth Vader being Luke’s father (I much prefer him just being a villain with no ties to the protagonist beyond opposing ideologies), I do love the redemptive arc; the idea that as bad as he was and as awful as the things he did were, a man could find some little slice of redemption.  But what it all came down to was stickin’ it to the Man.  No, my ship’s hallways aren’t gonna be clean.  No, my hero isn’t going to get the girl.  Yeah, Han shot that dude.  In cold blood.  ‘Cause it was the right thing to do in that circumstance.  And yeah, he is a little too short to be a Storm Trooper.  Take that, suits.  Star Wars don’t take no guff.

    Star Wars had its roots firmly planted in the storytelling of a different time.  It harkened back to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of  Mars and its sequels, to Buster Crabbe’s Flash Gordon serials, and to the pulp science fiction of C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith stories and the like, and the Golden Age science fiction of Asimov’s Foundation books.  These were books marked by bold visions, wild and untamed imagination, grand imagery, and daring adventure.  Rogues and visionaries, self-made heroes.  Sweeping stories, packed with action and melodramatic relationships.  Swashbuckling and ray-guns.  Rocket ships and robots.  Strange vistas and exotic women.  And obviously, when you look at the Empire (not to mention a lot of the technology), a level of World War II seeped into much of the series, with its crushing jackboots, resistance fighters, and average people caught up in the waves of history.  It helped to break the image of the science fiction as being soulless, pristine hallways, and Spartan, monochromatic rooms.  It visualized what had been in the literature for a long time, that when humans go into space, they will bring all their habits with them, not always sweeping the floor, cleaning off the table, repainting that part of the wall by the door, leaving the dirty laundry laying around, etc.  It’s a world that looks like it’s being lived in, not one long day at the office.

    So, what do I want to see in new Star Wars films?  Well, I don’t really need to see Luke, Leia, Vader, or any of them again.  Their story is done.  It’s over.  We’ve seen  it.  It’s been told.  I’m not saying ignore them; clearly they should have had a profound effect on the galaxy.  But just as I wouldn’t want every movie about the 60s to be about Bob Dylan, and I wouldn’t want every movie about cops to be about Eliot Ness, and I wouldn’t want every movie set in the Star Trek universe to be about Worf, I don’t want or need every Star Wars film to be about the Skywalker clan.  It’s a big universe, filled with infinite potential.  New characters and new locations, and new stories, that’s what I want.  And don’t ever, ever, ever go back to Tatooine.  It was supposed to be the back-end of nowhere, a place so outside of the flow of the galaxy that a powerful Force adept could hide out without worry, the son of a Republic hero could live a quiet life, and there was little to no chance of ever being stumbled across.  Yet, five out of the six films visit that backwater nowhere (is it simply coincidence that the film generally considered to be the best in the series is the one movie that doesn’t take time out to visit Tatooine?).  And everything that has ever happened in the history of the galaxy seems to have involved that one desert world at least once.  What gives?  And avoid the traps of Avatar and Episodes II and III.  Don’t spend tons of money, time, and effort on recreating environments you could just fly to.  A desert?  A jungle?  We have those here on Earth.  Let’s see things we don’t have.  Not even saying don’t go to jungles or deserts, but make them exotic, make them unique.  Change the color of the sky, the ground, the plants.  Give them distinct features we won’t recognize as North Africa, Australia, or Brazil.  Avatar cost what, 300 million?  600 million?  An episode of the last season of Farscape cost what turned out to be a prohibitively expensive 1 million, and in an hour of that show I felt like I had visited an alien world with strange creatures and people I’d never experienced, not taken a trip to Costa Rica or Brazil with the cast of Terminator 2.  Imagination is the key, and maybe that really does require younger voices, younger directors and script-writers.  Often, older filmmakers play it too safe, rely too much on experience.  And if there is ever need of an illustration of necessity being the mother of invention, look at hard at Avatar, a movie where money was not an issue, where the best and brightest had everything they could ever want to put together a movie, and what did we get?  A long, un-engaging retelling of Fern Gully with environments, people, creatures, and technology we’d all seen before in other films, video games, etc.  Not an inventive or surprising element in the whole danged thing.  A lower budget isn’t a bad thing.  It forces creativity and invention.  Not only that, but when the financial stakes are lower, the freedom to take chances is higher.  And taking chances is how classics are made.  It’s how Star Wars was made.

    Let’s see a return to the action packed, visually striking, idea packed fun of Star Wars (before it was A New Hope) and the serious, high-stakes storytelling of The Empire Strikes Back.  Interesting characters with surprising motivations.  Strange worlds and unique locations.  Creative and alien peoples.  Look to the Clone Wars animated series, which has more interesting ideas packed into an average episode than the entirety of Episodes II or III.  Look to other science fiction shows, like Farscape, which managed to capture that magic of the first Star Wars film week after week for four seasons.  Or the operatic storytelling of Babylon 5, which could rise above primitive CGI and wildly uneven acting to be one of the best emotion packed science fiction epics out there.  Star Trek and Star Wars helped to reshape science fiction.  And after the success of Star Wars, countless films hit theaters, shows hit the small screen, and books hit the shelves.  Some of them took inspiration from Star Wars and went further, became more, became something better.  Don’t be afraid to look to these sources, look at what they did, and try to raise the bar again.  And hey, while I’m talking about things I want to see, let me just throw out a few things I really, really don’t want to see.  I don’t want to see vaguely racist stereotype aliens, like those pseudo-Asian Trade Federation guys (I kept expecting one to say ‘Me so solly’), or the Manton Moorland style antics of Jar-Jar Binks (I know he’s a popular target of ridicule, but there’s a reason for that, he seems like he stepped right out of a 1930s comedy where people might show up in blackface), and maybe a new trilogy shouldn’t feature only one prominent role for a black man…who is also pretty much the only non-Caucasian person (Lando in the originals, Windu in the prequels) with any significant screen time.  And lastly, stay away from kid characters.  Unless there’s a very good reason.  Nobody likes kid characters.  Nobody has ever liked kid characters.  The kid is the least popular and most reviled character in pretty much every science fiction series out there that features one.  Kids don’t like ‘em (Who was my favorite character in the original Star Wars movies?  Han Solo.  Who was my favorite character on Next Gen?  Worf or maybe Picard.  Who was my favorite character in the prequel trilogy?  Obi-Wan.  Who were my least favorites?  Respectively Luke, Wesley, and Anakin.).  Adults hate ‘em.  They’re almost never written well (“Are you an angel?”).  They’re usually the center of the most insufferable moments.  So don’t do it.  Just scrap that part of the story.  Everyone will be happier.

    So far, I think the most interesting time created for the Star Wars universe is still that of Imperial rule.  What the Dark Horse comics term as The Rise of the Empire and the Rebellion Era.  But that doesn’t mean filmmakers should stick with that.  Maybe there will be other, more interesting times.  Maybe a really good story set in the Nights of the Old Republic would work.  Or, and I doubt this, something set in the so called New Republic time.  Who can say.  But if the movies are used to explore the time of the Rebellion in greater depth and scope, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

    So what is Star Wars?  Like so many works of art, it varies from viewer to viewer.  But I think it’s about fun, wild, exuberant action, exciting and exotic locations, and relatable but not necessarily nice characters.  It’s about standing up for what’s right against the weight of a galaxy spanning evil.  It’s about the power of the little guy to fight the system.  It’s about all the shades of grey that exist between good and evil.  Please, do what J.J. Abrams did for Star Trek.  Make it fun to be a fan of Star Wars again.  Make me look forward to the next film with unabashed anticipation, not wary trepidation (actually, that’s how I’m looking forward to the new Trek film, so maybe don’t follow Abrams’ example).  Look back to what made Star Wars a cultural phenomena.  It wasn’t little kids, hammy acting (well, there was plenty of hammy acting), or CGI.  It was fun and new and grand and exciting.  And it was full of hinted at ideas and larger things beyond what the camera showed.  It captured and inspired the imagination.  Let’s see some of that again, OK?  I know you can do it, Disney.  You have Pixar, which has created some of the best family-friendly movies of the last two decades.  You have done what nobody believed possible and made a series of comic book movies that feel like the comic books they’re based on.  You’ve got money, power, and talented people.  And now you’ve got one of the most coveted, beloved franchises of all time.  But like Star Trek before it, the fans have been put through the ringer and they’re kind of hurt and sad.  Help us out, and don’t screw this up.

Thank you for your time.
-Matthew J. Constantine, Star Wars fan since the late 70s.

Prodigal Son: Reading Science Fiction

Part Eighteen

    I’ve been eating up science fiction since I was a wee lad.  Give me laser blasters, space ships, giant alien lizards, and hot ladies (yes, the green ones too) in jumpsuits and I’m there.  Serious stuff, silly stuff, heroic stuff, and sleazy stuff.  I love it.  Not to say I’ll read anything.  Considering I’ve read several Star Trek novels, enjoyed the heck out of the Aliens/Predator books, and love Warhammer 40,000 stuff far more than it deserves (and much more than I enjoy the game), I’m actually quite picky when it comes to reading novels.  Like art or pornography, I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.

    After several years with very little fiction outside graphic novels getting jammed in my brain, I recently went on a classic science fiction kick.  I read books by Andre Norton I’ve been meaning to check out since I was a kid.  I read the first in a long series of John Grimes novels by A. Bertram Chandler.  I even picked up a Halo novel set in that video game universe’s distant past (not gonna lie, I absolutely love the universe that game is sit in; the game is a ton of fun, too).  And then, this week, for some reason I don’t fully understand, I was prompted to order and pick up all (well, two aren’t out yet) of Poul Anderson’s ‘Technic Civilization’ books, which have recently been collected in a series of omnibuses (omnibi?) from publisher Bean.  I’d tried a Flandry novel many years ago, at my father’s suggestion, but for whatever reason, couldn’t get into it at the time.  Perhaps, the time is now…ish.  Flandry doesn’t show up until something like the fourth omnibus. 

    Going back to reading Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth books and Larry Niven’s Known Space stories in high school, not to mention Heinlein’s Future History, Frank Herbert’s Dune books, and Asimov’s Foundation a bit later, I’ve loved expansive, well thought out science fiction settings and the cool characters that frequently inhabit them.  I find myself trying hard to imitate the grandiose, sometimes bloated histories and mythologies of these settings in my own work, for what it’s worth, and to varying degrees of success.

    The kind of science fiction I’ve got in mind goes way back.  At least as far back as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars (about to have a film version released as it turns 100 years old), and taken  up several notches by the likes of C.L. Moore with her Northwest Smith stories (as I’ve called them before, The Adventures of Han Solo as written by H.P. Lovecraft…with sex).  It’s the kind of star-hopping, rocket fueled adventure brought to the funny pages in Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.  (Burroughs’ John Carter and the Flash Gordon serials were probably the two biggest inspirations for Star Wars all those decades later).  But it probably had its time in the sun during the late 40s, the 50s, and early 60s, as the postwar era of hope and prosperity, along with the space race and fear of world ending atomic war, drove writers to envision star system and galaxy spanning civilizations, peopled with all sorts of cultures, creatures, beings, and ideas. 

    Each generation of writers built on, and/or reacted to the previous, creating waves of style and concept as technology changed, our culture changed, and our perception of ourselves and our future evolved.  At some point, the reaction against the boundless imagination and hope of earlier generations became the stronger element in science fiction, and the naysayers and neo-Luddites took control of the genre, preaching the evils of progress, the essential darkness and hopelessness of the human condition, and lots of other depressing, self-hating, anti-human nonsense the likes of which has rarely been achieved outside of French film or the Bible.  Not all of this post-Twilight Zone, post-hippie, irony besotted literature was (or is) bad.  And heck, I like a bleak dystopia as much as the next guy, and I’ll always have a place in my heart for cyberpunk.   But a lot of the wonder and thrill went out of the more popular science fiction.  I suppose it migrated over to the Tolkien disciples writing fantasy, but I couldn’t stick with that for long.  Too much ‘chosen one’ and stark ‘good VS evil’ dichotomy for my taste.  Not to mention that spells and demons were never as cool as blasters and aliens, even if their archetypal place within the story was essentially the same. 

    I don’t know if that logically brings me to my next point or not, but, onward I go.  One of the types of gaming I’m most interested in, but have had precious little experience of, is that Golden Age science fiction style adventure.  I’ve played a bit of Star Wars, run some Star Trek, Fading Suns, and Blue Planet.  But, I never played Traveller, which is solidly within the subgenre I’m grasping at.  I suppose there’s almost a spectrum, with Star Wars (and Fading Suns) on one end, and Blue Planet on the other.  Star Trek seems kind of off to one side, toward the Blue Planet end.  And Traveller would be the very center.  Kind of generic, yet balanced in a way that makes it special.  My recent discovery and purchase of Diaspora, which I’m sure was part of what got me back on this kick, seems tailored to my interests and gaming aspirations.  With a setting at just about the right balance that Traveller has, and a system more in tune with my low-maintenance, low-math, simple, quick and easy kind of gaming style, it may be just what I need and just what I want to play (hopefully soon).  

    So, putting together a good reading list for the sort of science fiction I am specifically enamored of at this moment, I’ve come up with a few selections.  They vary quite a bit, ranging across the above indicated spectrum, from the near fantasy of Dune (the RPG Fading Suns is on this end) to the semi-realistic techno-thriller of a Michael Crichton novel or Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (the RPG Blue Planet is somewhere in this area).  They appear on this list in no particular order. 


C.L. Moore- Northwest of Earth: A dashing rogue travels among the worlds of the Solar system, making a quick buck and battling nameless and ancient things that lurk in the shadows of dead and near-dead civilizations.  Moore’s stories manage to capture a lot of the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, but with a subtle humor and an undercurrent of disquieting sexuality that wasn’t all together common in her peers (though few were more asexual than Lovecraft). 

Larry Niven- The Known Space books, especially Ringworld, Protector, and The Integral Trees:  A super-science heavy, deep history featuring setting with lots of interesting characters and cultures.  This is some real Big Idea stuff.  Sometimes reading it, I get that very small feeling I get when looking at the night’s sky.  Don’t take that wrong.  I feel small.  I feel awed.  But I feel more alive than at any other time.  The universe is there.

Mike Resnick- His Far Future books, especially Santiago and The Return of Santiago:  Capturing some of the essential American Frontier vibe of classic Westerns, Resnick weaves myth with science fiction and creates magic.  Santiago was one of the most satisfying novels I’ve ever read.  It felt like I’d just sat across the fire from a master storyteller.  I imagine hearing Homer relate The Odyssey live would have felt something like it.  Also, if you enjoy Firefly’s special blend of science fiction and western, this should have plenty for you to love. 

Isaac Asimov- Foundation:  The Foundation trilogy is definitive Golden Age science fiction, with world-cities, sprawling civilizations, amazing technologies, and epoch spanning plots.  Like an archeologist finding the origins of our modern world in the remnants of ancient ruins, I found myself constantly picking up bits and ideas that would shape everything written after. 

E.C. Tubb- The Dumarest novels:  Though frustratingly difficult to get hold of right now, I’ve read a few of these, and the universe they create is interesting and exciting.  Dumarest is a wandering orphan of sorts, lost out there somewhere, just trying to find his way back home.  His home happens to be the mythological Terra, the supposed birthplace of humanity.  And some very bad people want to find it before he does.

Frank Herbert- His Dune novels:  Well deserving of its place as a classic of science fiction, I would argue that Dune is in fact simply a classic of literature in general, and should be much more widely read.  I even got a friend who HATES science fiction to read it, and he loved it.  It transcends genre like few others.  Juggling complex issues of science, religion, politics, and all the many things that we humans get up to when nobody’s watching, it features world building on a scale at least as big as Tolkien, but with masterful plotting and writing, too accompany.  And you know what?  I like all five of Frank Herbert’s sequel novels, too.  Yes, even God Emperor of Dune, a book where almost nothing happens for more than 400 pages, and I couldn’t get enough.  Herbert’s universe is grand, complex, heart stopping, sad, wondrous, and terrible.  And yet, as crazy as the specifics often become, at its heart, it always feels true enough to the world we live in. 

Andre Norton- Her Forerunner series:  What starts out as a fun but kind of forgettable Cold War era time travel story takes a turn for the crazy near the end, but doesn’t take it very far in The Time Traders.  However, not far into the second book, Galactic Derelict, things go bugnuts and this series demands to be put alongside Asimov as essential Golden Age reading.  Her career spanned a long time, and much of the latter two thirds doesn’t interest me one bit, but Andre Norton’s early work is top notch. 

Alan Dean Foster- The Humanx Commonwealth stories:  Foster has got to be one of the most prolific authors in the field, and sadly, that means he’s written a LOT of garbage.  However, most of the Humanx novels I have read (there are so many) have been good, and a few of them very good.  His particular setting feels very much in keeping with the above mentioned roleplaying game, Traveller.  And his books and stories span a lot of time.  I believe the most popular books from this setting are the Flinx and Pip adventures.  But my personal favorite is probably Nor Crystal Tears, a very cool first contact story told from the perspective of a Thranx, insect-like aliens who eventually become humanity’s greatest ally, but not without some serious problems.
 

    I still have to read more of Poul Anderson’s Technic Civilization, Jack McDevitt’s Hutch books, A. Bertram Chandler’s John Grimes series, and I have yet to even open Charles Ingrid’s The Sand Wars books.  And even from the above list, there are plenty of works I have yet to read, especially Niven and Foster.  And I left off a lot of stuff like the Halo and Warhammer 40,000 books, though some may very well be a part of what I’m talking about.  I’m also leaving off a lot of individual novels, like Richard Paul Russo’s Ship of Fools, because while quite good examples, frequently with lots of implied universe and history creation, they don’t do quite the same job of weaving worlds. 

    After quite a while of reading mostly non-fiction, it’s been nice to get back into reading novels and reminding myself of the wonder of classic science fiction.  It’s so rarely tapped in film, where I’ve always felt it could be stunningly realized if the effort were put forth.  Alas, for now, it’ll have to live in print and maybe, just maybe, in future sessions of a roleplaying game featuring yours truly. 

-Matt