Pointy ears and androids

I enjoyed The Next Generation series as much as the first Star Trek, although I never quite warmed up to Jean Luc Picard. Nice accent, though.

What is it with British accents, by the way? If we Americans like the bloody things so much, why didn’t we keep them?

But I digress. Patrick Stewart got top billing for TNG, as William Shatner did for the original Star Trek. In both cases, however, another cast member—Leonard Nimoy as Spock, and Brent Spiner as Data—got at least as much attention from fans.

Why those two? Data was Spock, I suspect; i.e., a character intended to fill Spock’s role in the crew dynamic, an android in place of the half-Vulcan. Both of them were logical, ultra-intelligent—and very strong. Physically strong. Apparently we don’t want our smart guys to be whimps.

Spiner has said that some of his fan mail was romantic in nature—and that it was primarily addressed not to him, but to Data. Data was, in fact, more accessible than Spock, more vulnerable. He seemed younger than Spock, and his relationship with Picard very different from that of Spock to Kirk.

Data also has one of the best lines in a Star Trek movie (Insurrection), when he states that in the case of a water landing he was designed “to serve as an emergency flotation device.”

But in the end, the fun is over and our strong, smart guys have to die: Spock sacrifices himself for the Enterprise crew in the second movie (Wrath of Khan), Data in the ninth (Nemesis). I’m sure somebody, somewhere, has written a thesis about this. I’ll restrain myself, mostly, but it sure does seem like what we really want, down deep, is somebody else--Vulcan, android, whatever--to step in and save our sorry, collective, human butts.

Space . . . the final frontier

I'm old enough to have seen the first Star Trek when it originally aired. As an avid science fiction fan to begin with, a TV show set in space was a small, mid-1960s miracle. Books were fine, but -- look at the cool phaser! -- Mr. Spock has pointy ears! And Scotty, Scotty, please transport me the hell off this planet.

A lot of the early episodes seem corny now, but there must have been something to these characters, because Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy - and the rest -- went on forever. We watched them--and the following five TV series, and the following ten movies-- forever. They became part of our lives. As I write this, there is another Star Trek movie in the works, due to come out in 2009.

Is it entertainment we're after? Let me suggest otherwise. I believe that the ground state of the Star Trek phenomenon, and the obsessive-fanboy phenomenon, and all the recent interest in high-profile, spectacular special effects, cartoon-based movies is this: we want it to be true.

The actors understand this. Years ago, Leonard Nimoy wrote a book titled I am not Spock and, although I never read it, his thesis seems clear enough. But we need him to be Spock, because we want Spock to exist.

We want it to be true. So special effects--so easy to dismiss--are important, not as eye candy, but because they add to real.

One of the most charming moments in the movie Galaxy Quest - which is a good natured send-up of Star Trek - is at the end, when the young fanboy Brandon discovers that the spaceship 'Protector' (i.e., the Enterprise) is real.

"I knew it!" he says.

So these are the lives of science fiction fans. We are waiting for our "I knew it!" moment. We are waiting for it all to be true.

More CJ Cherryh: Cyteen

Downbelow Station, for all its strengths, is not my favorite CJ Cherryh. For that we must go to Rimrunners (centered around another strong heroine, Bet Yeager) or Tripoint (hard sci-fi combined with commentary on, of all things, a son's relationship with his mother; also a very freaky-cool spaceship navigator named Capella) or -- Cyteen.

Here's one of the interesting things about Cherryh as a writer: we have seen the universe through the eyes of the characters in Downbelow Station, we have seen them fighting against an enemy called 'Union' - and Unioners are the bad guys, for sure - and then we have Cyteen, an entire novel seen through Union eyes. And it turns out they are people as well, and not so bad after all.

At least not all of them.

Cyteen (the title of the book is the name of the central planet of Union) is confusing in places, another Cherryh trademark. A major character is murdered early on - we think. We don't know who did it in the beginning - and at the end of the book we're still not sure. I re-read the passages dealing with the incident several times, thinking that I must be the only reader who couldn't figure this out. But then I discovered (on amazon again!) that others have wondered as well.

(A sequel to Cyteen will be published early next year: Regenesis. It's already pre-ordered and in my shopping cart. Supposedly all will be revealed at that point, at least re the death of Ariane Emory.)

Another trademark of Cherryh: sex. You betcha. I'm not talking about explicit sex. Sometimes you need to read between the lines, in fact, to decide whether two characters are sleeping together or not. But sexual relationships are definitely part of the story in Cyteen.

The apparent murderee, Ariane Emory - a powerful older woman, confident, a genius - has had sex with a young man (with an element of duress attached).

Said young man - Justin, who is certainly one of Cyteen's heroes - is (probably) having a sexual relationship with another young man, an azi (azi are manufactured people - that's the best short description I can manage). This homosexual relationship with the azi, Grant, seems to be a source of emotional conflict for Justin. Although we're not quite clear on that.

The cloned and re-born (post-murdered) Ariane Emory, whose birth and development into a young woman make up the majority of the story, has a crush on Justin, and at one point half-heartedly tries to blackmail him into sleeping with her.

And Grant, the azi, offers to sleep with the young Ariane - just to get her off Justin's case:

"I'll do whatever you want, young sera. Any time you want. I
have no objection. Here, if you want. Or at your apartment.
All you have to do is ask me."

Although there are many other strands in the story (politics, teenagers, power, friends and enemies, trust), the many and varied sexual relationships have an ultimately subversive effect: these people are different. This society is different.

Welcome to Cyteen.

Downbelow Station

As a child I was tremendously fond of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a TV series that ran for several seasons in the 1960s. Those were Ye Olde Days of course, well before VCRs (let alone TiVo) and as the decades passed by I just figured I'd never see Admiral Nelson or Captain Lee Crane again.

Then came the internet. One of the unsuspected joys of google and wikipedia has been looking up all those old TV shows, the ones you would never admit you liked to all your educated, sophisticated friends, and discovering there are legions of fellow David Hedison fans still out there. The Seaview! Chief Sharkey! The Flying Sub!

I got to thinking how good it feels to google something - a favorite movie, a TV show, a book - and discover that plenty of other people like it, too. A sort of personal validation via the internet, a corroboration of your taste and of the things that have been meaningful to you throughout your life.

We need a term for this.

But I'm really supposed to be talking about Downbelow Station, a science fiction novel by author CJ Cherryh. Downbelow Station is one of her best-known works, a Hugo award winner in 1982, and the novel that got me started on all her other stuff. I would describe it as a great read.

And there are--inevitably--a few people on amazon who don't like it.

Here we have the opposite phenomenon to validation-by-google: you look up your absolute favorite book, the one you finished at four in the morning with tears in your eyes, the one you can still quote pieces of dialogue from - and although most reviewers like it there is always somebody, somewhere, who couldn't get past page three.

It's annoying.

Downbelow Station is written in classic multi-character style; we follow many individuals for short bits at a time, coming back to each one as the story progresses. One reviewer claimed that none of these characters is particularly memorable, and here I must strongly disagree. Captain Signe Mallory of the starship Norway is one of the strongest sci-fi heroines ever, and Cherryh describes her cleanly, unflinchingly, and indelibly.

Because although Mallory is a heroine, she is not a 'nice' person. When we meet Norway's captain, she's keeping a prisoner in her cabin and sleeping with him; she drinks, she gets drunk, and toward the end of the book - in a powerful scene, part of the climax to the story - she rips her ship loose from the space station, killing any number of people in the process.

And yet she has integrity, she is loyal to her crew and adored by them, she goes out of her way to save one innocent man - and one who is not quite so innocent. She is, in short, a person and not a character.

Downbelow Station has a complicated plot; it is a book to read when you have time. For those who want to be immersed in another (future) time and another place, I highly recommend it.

A note about A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly is available on amazon.com. However, as best I could tell, you can either purchase an older, used hardback copy (one offered at $608.00?!) or as part of a recently published collection (Philip K. Dick: Five novels of the 1960s and 1970s) .

The movie and the graphic novel are also available.

A Scanner Darkly: Paranoia and Hope

I've been thinking about all the Philip Dick novels I've read, trying to put together the words to explain the 'feel' that he creates in each one of them. There is a sense --most clearly spelled out in Valis --that something has gone wrong with the world. Something is off: but his characters are not sure what.

Dick has heroes, in a way; but these are not strong heroes (Superman), or all-knowing heroes (Spock), or even well-armed heroes (Batman? Dirty Harry?). A Dickian hero is a man (or, in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, a woman) who has made mistakes, who is basically decent, who has flashes of self-knowledge. This individual pursues the path he believes he should take, and in the end, makes some kind of difference.

A Scanner Darkly (first published in 1977) is, perhaps, bleaker than some of Dick's other novels, but even as his main character--Bob Arctor--becomes terribly damaged from the drugs he's taken, the author never quite gives up on him, or on his world.

What has gone wrong in Arctor's world? Who is the enemy? In A Scanner Darkly, the enemy is eventually spelled out clearly: it is a real group of people, with a real agenda. But it is not the drug users themselves (Dick writes about them with empathy and humor), nor the police, whom the author treats kindly as well. It is another group, unexpected, that preys on the weak and the damaged.

When I finished reading ASD for the first time I felt that it was a profoundly anti-drug statement, but an anti-drug statement of an odd kind. As Dick noted himself, in the afterword:

"There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say that they [the drug users] were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were."

I've often felt that Americans make everything - every story, every movie, every issue, every election - into a morality play. Maybe that's what I've been searching for, the unique 'feel' of Dick's work: whatever his books are, they are not morality plays.

Androids, Blade Runner, Philip Dick

Philip Dick is, of course, the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the book on which the movie Blade Runner is based.

I imagine there has been a fair amount written comparing the two. Blade Runner received - as I recall - middling or even poor reviews when it first came out in 1982, but its reputation has grown considerably since. Philip Dick (who died not long before the movie came out) has achieved cult-hero and eccentric sci-fi author status as well.

(Re the movie: some people seemed to particularly hate the voice-overs by Harrison Ford. I can't say I minded them.)

Blade Runner had fabulous special effects (for 1982), and a uniquely evocative 'feel' - the future as an endless grey, urban drizzle. It also has one of my all-time favorite, breath-catching movie moments: Rutger Hauer, as Roy Batty, letting Harrison Ford go - and then opening his hands, releasing a pigeon.

I don't complain that it isn't the book. You can't film an entire book (OK, except for Peter Jackson). But there are elements in Sheep - missing from the movie - that give it a unique feel as well, and are worth comment.

One example is the Penfield Mood Organ (dial up a mood at will).

"My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression," Iran said.

"Dial 888," Rick said as the set warmed. "The desire to watch TV no matter what's on it."


Another example: Wilber Mercer and the empathy box, and the associated belief system of Mercerism.


But the most unique aspect of the novel is Dick's description of his created future's attitude towards animals. As most of them are rare or extinct, the result of the devastating 'Word War Terminus', even the smallest animal - even a spider - is cherished. Instead of mega-inch wide-screen TVs as a status symbol, or granite kitchen countertops, real status is achieved when a family owns an animal:

"Graveson has that chicken over there . . . . I think Ed Smith has a cat down in his apt; at least he says so . . . "

At the end of the book Deckard has 'retired' Rachel (an android) and returned home with - against all odds - a toad. His wife shows him what he did not notice: the toad is artifical. Then, she finally convinces him to rest . . .

"Will you go to bed now? If I set the mood organ to a 670 setting?"
"What does that bring about?" he asked.
"Long deserved peace," Iran said.

. . . and as he sleeps, Iran searches the yellow pages for a business that sells animal accessories. And buys a pound of artificial flies.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I was a voracious reader as a child. In the beginning I read everything, but when I was given a science fiction novel as a Christmas gift (Catseye by Andre Norton, circa 1960) I devoured it and never looked back.

Early on, I had very little thought for the authors of the books I was reading, nor for the literary value - if any - of their works. I read what I liked, and with science fiction I liked it all.

Still, some were favorites, which brings us to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. It is a Hugo Award winner, and one of the great works of moon sci-fi.

The book presents a lunar society in which the adaptation to a unique local environment (proximity to hard vacuum, a perennial shortage of women) is worked out in logical, and highly entertaining, detail. It is also an adventure story involving intrigue, revolution, and dropping large rocks down a big fat gravity well.

Mike - the computer who wakes up - is a major player in the plot, and I still love Heinlein's cut-to-the-chase discussion of the nature of self-awareness:

"Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don't know about you, tovarishch, but I am."

Such was my literary naivete as a child that it was years later before I realized that the odd way the book reads is due to the total lack of the definite article (the word 'the') in Heinlein's first person narrative by our hero, Mannie; Heinlein's version of a lunar dialect.

It was also many years before I learned about Heinlein's political leanings and his rather - umm - unusual take on family relationships. At the time I didn't need more that a good story, and as that, the book works.