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.