Tabletop Roleplaying Review: Diaspora

    In spite of being into the hobby of Tabletop RPGs since I was a lad back in the 80s, and in spite of being a science fiction nerd, I have never played the grand old game of “Traveller,” not only one of the first commercially available rpgs, but THE Science Fiction game. It’s squarely set in the Asimov/Heinlein/Clarke/Niven side of things (less woo, more tech). I always meant to get around to trying it, but never did. Then a few years ago, I saw a review of “Diaspora” from VSCA Publishing. It grew out of a group’s enjoyment of Traveller, but hunger for a different style of play. They’ve used the Fate system, which I’ve heard a lot about, but haven’t used at all. Generally, it looked like a very group storytelling focused, harder Science Fiction game than is typical; and that made me curious.

    I’ve skimmed it a few times, reading a couple chapters several times over the years since I bought it. But this time around, I decided to get serious and really read it thoroughly. And that became a strange trip. Early on, reading about system creation and character creation, I kept thinking; “stop everything! I want to grab some friends and start playing this game right now.” But then, as I got into the ‘mini-game’ sections about melee, space, and social combat...my excitement kinda died, and reading the final section of the book was almost an afterthought.

    The system and character creation segments are great, and I very much want to use them in a game at some point. What makes it different from many games I’ve seen is that it’s such a group effort. The group, including the referee/game master/what have you, all take part in the creation of the setting you’re going to play in (a small collection of linked star systems called a ‘Cluster’).  Each person takes some ownership over a system, and as a table, you all make choices and forge the relationships between those star systems.  This is where tech levels and resources are figured out.  A player roles for certain numbers, but then interprets those numbers in whatever way makes sense.  There is a great little example, where they present a set of rolled statistics for a system, then show multiple variations on what that might mean.  You could easily have two players roll exactly the same numbers, but come up with completely different systems when they interpret what those numbers mean.  I like that a lot.

Then, with those systems as a background, you all create your characters. And part of character creation involves linking yours to another, so that while not every character has a direct connection to every other character, the group as a whole is linked in some way (like a chain).  I also really like that the characters don’t start out as low level schlubs who have to crawl and beg and fight to be able to gain enough power to do anything of note.  You’re playing characters that are important people, interesting people, shapers, doers, legend makers.  If you take the a skill at what they call ‘apex’ level (and you will take one at that), you’re not just good at something, you’re legendary.  You’re the neurosurgeon who was brought in when the president had a brain tumor.  You’re the actor who keeps winning the top award for performance in the 3D Vids.  You’re the barroom brawler who rose to be Zero-G boxing champion of the Antares system.  You’re the soft-spoken politician who swept the planet in a grassroots campaign of reform.  Essentially, you’re playing important people.  Not necessarily famous, but important to how the future of the cluster is shaped.

Then the game lost me.  Once it got past the creation of the setting and the characters, it gets into plug-in mini-games for determining various types of conflict.  I didn’t care for any of them, particularly, and I don’t care for the extremely ‘plugged-in’ feeling of them.  It’s almost like in a lot of older computer rpgs, where your party icon might be wandering around a large map, then you come across a monster and it zooms in to a little tactical map and do a totally different kind of game.  I didn’t like it in computer games.  I really don’t like it in a tabletop game.  Combat tends to be one of my least favorite parts of a game, because in a lot of systems it stalls the story.  These plug-in games seem to do that on another level.

So I did what I find myself doing so often. I mentally edited things.  I started looking at it like a salad bar; take what I like and leave the rest.  There’s so much good stuff about ‘the table’ having control.  A lot of stuff encouraging group connection and determination.  The way system and character creation is done, you might not even have a game master when you sit down to the table.  And I could see the game master job changing hands multiple times during a campaign.  That’s kind of exciting.  I like when players and their characters are drivers of the story and plot.  But I don’t see myself running or getting together a group for Diaspora as it is.  I think it will be like some other games with interesting mechanics I’ve read.  It will inform how I run a different game.  It does make me interested in other Fate games, as the mechanics for that seem very easy and intuitive.  I’ve heard very good things about “Mindjammers,” and could see using some of the better elements of “Diaspora” with that or a game like it.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: Railhead

My recent re-engagement with the works of Andre Norton, and something of a re-awakening of an only slightly dormant infatuation with Golden Age Science Fiction couldn’t have come at a better time. My brain was in just the right condition to receive Railhead, the new novel by Philip Reeve. Longtime readers of the blog will know that Reeve is one of my favorite contemporary writers. I first discovered him through his juvenile Jules Verne style romp Larklight, but really came to be a fan with his book Mortal Engines and its follow-ups. With those books, he delved into a lot of the ‘big idea’ Science Fiction spirit I love so much. And he has returned to that with Railhead, a very big idea, Golden Age soaked adventure yarn. A galactic railroad network, threading through stargates, taking humanity from world to world; all under the watchful eyes of ancient AI. Excellent.

What Reeve does that was less common during the era of Asimov, Norton, Heinlein, and others, is populate his wild settings with interesting, nuanced, challenging characters. In Railhead, Zen doesn’t always make great choices. He doesn’t always do the right thing. He’s not a perfect young man. And he’s not alone. Are the villains really villains? Are the heroes heroes? Or are they just people trying to do the best they can with the things they’ve got? Whatever the case, I really like reading about Zen. I love Flex, Gentlemen Take Polaroids, and Nova. I was curious to find out where the Threnody Noon story would go. And the Guardians? The Hive Monks? I want more.

This is the beginning of a longer story; that much is kinda obvious. There are a lot of things introduced, and not all of them are explored to satisfactory degrees. But there is a satisfying story arc to the book. While leaving things in place for events to continue, I like that there is some closure, some resolution. And I’m certainly looking forward to finding out what happens next.

Also, and you’ll know this if you’ve read his other Young Adult novels, Reeve is one of those authors who seems to delight in abusing his characters, and yes, killing them off...especially if they’re one of the ones you really love. This is something that I find thrilling. Knowing that any character, at any time, could get snuffed out makes the reading more intense. And it challenges me, in my own writing, to be more daring; to remember that in life and so in stories, stuff happens. People get hurt, they die, they come into sudden fame or glory or infamy, they fall in love with the wrong person, that make the wrong choice, they find unexpected beauty.

Like Heinlein’s “juvenile” books, and a lot of others from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Railhead features some young protagonists and there’s no explicit sex. Otherwise, it’s written as though for adults, without condescension or the accepted lowering of writing standards frequently found in young adult fiction. This is a good book. And it happens to be appropriate for teenagers. Sci-fi readers of all ages should check this out. And of course, go back and read Mortal Engines and the other books about the Predator Cities. Great stuff. Hester Shaw, man. One of the great characters.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: Star Hunter

    Fans of science fiction simply must read Andre Norton (Alice Mary Norton). She was one of the architects of the genre, writing a daunting number of books that stand alone Asimov, Herbert, and the rest. She creates visions of believable futures, peopled with multi-faceted characters. And she does it in just a hundred or two pages.

    In Star Hunter, we’re introduced to Ras Hume, a safari guide and big game hunter who takes wealthy folk to specially selected game worlds. But he’s also running a con, getting the mob and a desperate orphan wrapped up with him. And when they stumble upon something unexpected, all kinds of trouble drops on their head.

    When I’m reading Norton’s work from the 50s and 60s, I can’t help but think she was crafting a larger universe without every getting too strict about it. I often get the feeling that if you flew far enough in one direction or another, you’d find the characters from one of her other novels going through their particular set of struggles. If I were a better man, I’d assemble some kind of guide to her worlds; try to figure out which stories belong together.

Star Hunter
Author: Andre Norton
Publisher: Bean
ISBN: (book two in the collection Secret of the Stars) 978-1-4767-3674-7

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: Secret of the Lost Race

    Andre Norton (aka Alice Mary Norton) is among the great Golden Age Science Fiction writers (I consider the 50s as part of the Golden Age, though some say it ended in the late 40s).  Though her later career moved into a sort of Cat Fancy/Fantasy thread, her early work was core, essential stuff.  This tale is of a young seeming man with a shrouded past, working in a gambling hall.  When things go wrong, he ends up shanghaied and forced into labor on an ice planet.  From there, conflict, adventure, political intrigue, and galactic revelations.

    Going back and reading books from this era (used to be my bread and butter, but I don’t read nearly as much anymore), I’m always a bit taken aback by how modern they feel.  In large part, I think this is because movies, which I watch more frequently, are always so far behind books.  Settings and styles of books written in the 40s and 50s would not see depiction in film until the 80s, or even 2010s.

    I enjoyed the heck out of the book, but it feels like part of a larger whole.  Often, while reading books of this time, the worlds feel so fleshed out that when the book is done, I wish to read more stories.  Yet, most of the time there are no more.  It’s a testament to the skills of the writers, but it’s frustrating, none the less.   For fans of science fiction, Andre Norton is a must and this would be a good introduction.

Secret of the Lost Race
Author: Andre Norton
Publisher: Bean
ISBN: (I read this as part of a double volume called Secret of the Stars) 978-1-4767-3674-7

-Matthew J. Constantine

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

Movie Review: Forbidden Planet

    It doesn’t get much better than Forbidden Planet.  Taking inspiration from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, it pushed special effects technology to whole new levels, and set the stage for science fiction to come, especially and particularly Star Trek.  This wasn’t, as so many other 50s movies, about a rocket ship to the Moon, or even a first voyage to Mars.  This was set in a future where those things had already long been accomplished.  This was the sort of future history Asimov and Heinlein were writing about, where Humanity was living among the stars, finding all sorts of marvelous things.

    Our crew of 50s military types, led by a slightly stuffy Leslie Neilsen, take their flying saucer past the speed of light, out into the universe.  There they are tasked with finding the fate of a long lost space ship, Belerephon.  The only survivors are a scientist and his daughter, who are less than welcoming.  The mystery of the Belerephon’s crew and their fate, as well as the secret of Dr. Morbius and his daughter’s success, and their robot servant Robby, make up a large part of the film.  That, and the nature of a strange killer that hunts Neilsen’s crew upon arrival.  Technologies that seem far in advance of what Morbius should have is a hint that something deeper going on.

    The make-up of the crew, the general look, and the future setting where some faceless organization sends ships out on missions of discovery would all serve as inspiration a decade later for Star Trek.  There’s even a bit of the triumvirate, the Executive Officer, the Doctor, and the Captain, going off to explore while the rest of the crew stays behind.  Walter Pidgeon is hostile, yet charming as the good doctor.  He’s perfectly civilized, if unhappy for visitors.   Anne Francis is cute as heck as his young daughter, Altaira, who is desperately hungry for experience with new people.  It’s still the 50s, so there’s obligatory drunk humor involving the ship’s cook, and awkward, somewhat rapy romantic fumbling on the part of the crew when they meet Altaira.  Lieutenant Farman out skeeves the worst Kirk pawings by a mile.

    Once the first death happens, things get rolling pretty fast.  Ancient civilizations, strange monsters, budding romance, and some cool super-tech.  And that’s where the special effects really shine.  Deep under the surface of the planet are vast complexes brought to life in an excellent mix of model work, animation, and live action.  Few science fiction pictures before this grasped at anything like the scope.  Things to Come, maybe.  But not much else.  I can only imagine what it must have been like seeing it in the theater on its first run.

    The production design is amazing, with cool sets, beautiful backdrops and mat paintings, and good costume work.  No surprise Robby became an iconic movie robot.  He’s quite striking.  And the weird electronic music gives the movie an otherworldly flair.  This is one of the big ones.  You have Metropolis, Things to Come, and Forbidden Planet.  There were other science fiction films, like Woman in the Moon, The Time Machine, etc.  But when it comes to tectonic shifts, I think it falls on the former.  Until everything changed with 2001, they were the top of the line.  I love that it creates a universe with a history, without ever explaining most of it.  Who were the Krell?  While the question is central to the film, it is never really revealed, only implied.  Part of me thinks they were amorphous, the Lovecraftian in me hopes they were cephalopodish.  But who can say?

-Matt

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