The unusual suspects

Ah, yes – and now, by popular demand . . .

I’ve been asked to make a list of sci-fi novels that aren’t on the usual lists. You know the usual lists – the 20 best sci-fi novels of all time, etc., etc. Usually headed by Dune or the Foundation series.

(I have nothing against either of those books, by the way. Dune is great, and the Foundation series – although it reads a little dated, to me – is obviously one of the classics.)

But we need another list, a list of the less obvious suspects. I was originally challenged to come up with twenty. Twenty turns out to be beyond me, a least for the moment. Let’s start with five:

The Last Planet, by Andre Norton. This was originally titled Star Rangers. It was one of the very first sci-fi novels that I read, and I can still feel the sense of wonder. It’s oriented towards younger readers, I suppose. I don’t care. Ideas/themes: telepathy and mental powers, aliens, post-technological civilizations, return to a lost Earth.

This isn’t the novel that started me on sci-fi, but it’s probably the novel that got me permanently hooked.

The Uplift War, by David Brin. OK, this one is better known, and more recent, and might even have ended up on a list or two. The best, most complex, most entertaining talking-animals story ever. Ideas/themes: Evolution of species to sentience, aliens, star wars, information technology.

Brin has a knack – and as a writer, let me tell you, it’s a definite talent – for names. Fiben. The Gubru. And my favorite: Uthacalthing.

Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany. This is another older book (first published in 1963), and introduced me – as a very young reader – to sci-fi novels as prose. Strange, beautiful, and a little sad. Themes – OK, this one I’m going to have to re-read first. But I do remember one thing; a corrupt government starts a war against something they don’t understand, and when there is really no need for a fight.

The Female Man, by Joanna Russ. Full-on, in your face, sci-fi meets 70s feminism. Need I say more? Over the top but highly entertaining. Yes, it’s dated, but who cares?

Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle. I have a distinct memory of reading this book. I am something like 12 years old. It is the middle of the night and I cannot stop reading until I’ve finished it. At the end, astonished, I burst into tears.

And no, the final scene – in the book – has nothing to do with the Statue of Liberty.

I’ll keep thinking about this, and add to my list. I’m already thinking of two that I missed – Timescape, by Gregory Benford; and Stargate, by Stephen Robinett. Stay tuned!

Tripoint

I've always been a fan of 'hard' science fiction; this means different things, I suppose, to different people. To me it means an emphasis not necessarily on a currently realistic scenario--because let's face it, we aren't getting those Star Trek transporters any time soon--but on the set-up and development of a story in a society with an advanced technology.

And once you've set up the rules, you have to follow them. Gregory Benford's Ocean of Night series comes to mind, here. And not in a good way. His set-up in the first books of the series is fabulous, but by the end (Sailing Bright Eternity) Benford and his characters have wandered off into the 'esty' (S-T, the space-time continuum) where, as far as I could tell, anything can happen.

And when anything can happen, nothing is all that interesting.

But back to Cherryh-- One of her many strengths is that she sets up the rules of a society and its technology and then sticks to them. Her hard science novels--I'm thinking of Cyteen and Regenesis of course; also Downbelow Station, Tripoint, Merchanter's Luck, Rimrunners, Finity's End and the Pride of Chanur series--have a common underpinning of faster-than-light space travel. Faster-than-light involves 'jumps' (Cherryh's version of making time through hyperspace). Jumps aren't fun for humans, who need to be tranked down for the experience.

A new human culture has evolved--or the old culture has split into three: we have planet-dwelling humans, station-dwelling humans, and ship-dwelling humans. They don't necessarily think the same way or have the same goals.

And my favorite bit--ship dwelling humans can't imagine wanting to live on--of all things--a planet. Where there's . . . . dirt. Eeeuuww.

Now add strong characterizations--definitely another Cherryh strength--and you have a recipe for a good sci-fi novel. In Tripoint--my favorite, along with Rimrunner--we have an in-depth exploration of life aboard an FTL ship. I love the combinations here. Not only astronavigation--but also details of making sandwiches in a ship's galley. Not only Planck's equation--but the wonder of a ship-bound human seeing a real tree in a station greenhouse.

"If a leaf's fallen," the guide told them, "you can keep it."

The details are all there, and all true, along with the difficulties of a hot-headed young man--kidnapped!-- starting life over with his father and half-brother. Neither of whom he trusts worth a damn. It's a fantastic read. It ought to have been a blockbuster of a best-seller.

Regenesis

I would say that Regenesis is not so much a sequel to Cyteen as a continuation. Maybe that's splitting hairs. But it takes up within about a month of when Cyteen leaves off, which engenders a slightly odd feeling in its readers, many of whom have been waiting two decades to read the thing. We're twenty years older, but Ari Emory is still eighteen.

What Cherryh seems to be most interested in is relationships. She has developed a fully-realized society - Cyteen, with born-humans and azi - and she takes a detailed look at the lives of a large handful of its inhabitants.

Ari's relationship with Florian and Catlin. Ari with Jordan. Ari with Yanni.

Justin with Grant. Justin with Ari--who admits, in a nice bit of low-key dialogue, that's she's been in love with him, like, forever.

Ari and Justin and Yanni with Giraud and Denys Nye, both now deceased.

Finally-- Justin with Jordan, who are more or less son and father; the evolution of this relationship constitutes a major thrust of the book. Cherryh has written before about a father and son--in Tripoint; and about a mother and a son--both in Tripoint and Finity's End. The author's family relationships are always fraught, and occasionally you want to take one of these characters and whap him upside the head, but it's grown-up stuff and all part of the fun.

I did miss--unavoidably--one of the charms of the first book, which was the description of Florian and Catlin growing up. And in fact, if I was to bemoan anything about the sequel, it's that--although Catlin is always around in the background--we hear very little specifically about her.

On the other hand, the character of Jordan Warrick--newly back from Planys; brilliant, drunk, and fighting mad--provides several great scenes, and a fair amount of humor.

The genius of Regenesis--as with the original novel--is that Cyteen is a real place. That's no small accomplishment. I don't remember any other future society that established itself so firmly in the imagination. Cyteen exists--now let's go see what's happening down in Reseune and Novgorod.

And let's hope that Cherryh has at least one more visit to the planet left in her.

The new CJ Cherryh has arrived

Regenesis - the sequel to Cyteen - is here after only a twenty-year wait or so. I've just started it - stay tuned!

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Preliminary comment #1: I don't know what the title means. The action doesn't take place in one day, or at least that wasn't my impression. And the earth doesn't stand still. Maybe someone can enlighten me on this point.

Preliminary comment #2: I haven't seen the original. People always seem to think the originals are better, and yet I've seen 1950s-era movies, and they're terrible. Not just the special effects, either; the acting is terrible. Maybe this one was an exception.

Preliminary comment #3: I like Keanu Reeves.

So, are we all set? Good. The movie was . . . OK.

Keanu Reeves was great. He makes a wonderful alien, as other reviewers have noted, and the moment when we first see him in a suit was a nice visual joke. (Hello-o-o, Mr. Anderson . . .)

The child (Jaden Smith) was cute, and a decent actor. Jennifer Connelly was very thin. That's all I could think about, looking at her. Wow, you're like a toothpick.

I remember Connelly from The Rocketeer--a movie which I loved, by the way--and in that one she was the perfect, bright-eyed 1940s girl to go with Billy Campbell's gorgeous, bright-eyed 1940s boy.

Here she looks worried alot - and thin.

The special effects were good, but these days that almost goes without saying. I particularly liked the plague of tiny mechanical locusts (you'll remember the disintegrating 18-wheeler from the movie trailer--that's their handiwork). And the scene where we are introduced to their extremely fast method of reproduction was nice and creepy.

Now, I'm a special-effects afficionado, as I think I've said before - but I'm going to reverse myself here, and claim that in this case the story would have benefited from a simpler telling. More time to get to know our alien and our heroine. Even a little banter, maybe. The one scene where the movie really came alive for me was a quiet piece of dialogue between Reeves and John Cleese, playing a Nobel-winning scientist. They both sounded thoughtful, intelligent; two real individuals, discussing something important.

Because the message is an important one, and the movie approaches it in an interesting way. We know (or at least some of us do) that human beings--by their bad habits, their over-consumption, and their sheer numbers--are causing environmental damage to the Earth.

The movie asks: Do we have the right to destroy a planet? And what will it take for us to change? The situation (Al Gore absolutely hit it right on the head) is inconvenient. It is inconvenient to think we might not be able to continue as we wish. It is inconvenient to think that we can't have whatever we want to have.

It is just damned inconvenient that life can't be all Christmas morning, with shiny packages (big screen TVs! $1.50 gasoline!) spilling endlessly from under the tree.

The Day the Earth Stood Still wants us to consider whether we can change our behavior to save our lives. And I can only say that - IMHO - this question is probably worth a little more dialogue.

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.