Category Archives: SF

Chosen One Stories

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I have never been overly fond of ‘chosen one’ narratives. There is something in the core concept that some people are just ‘special’ and deserving of praise and riches because fate or the gods or something has selected them above all others that just rubs my skin wrong.

There is a vague memory lurking in my brain of some production of a Camelot myth that struck at just the right time to inspire a foundation element of my ethos and personality. Arthur proclaiming that Laws must bind high and low alike or they are not laws at all. To me this extends to narratives.

The chosen one myth is at its heart, to me, a perpetuation of the lie of nobility. That person is better than you by virtue of birth. You own that person you loyalty for no other reason that chance has deemed it so. Granted, in stories the heroes nearly always are virtuous and good people. Luke refuses to turn to the dark side even though it will cost him his life. Aragorn is a kind, just, and benevolent king. Harry Potter despite a childhood of horrid abuse is compassionate and only interested in what is right, immune to the seduction of sudden riches, fame, or sports induced glory. These characters are ‘good’ because the author has made them so, not for any other reason.

While I have never been a dedicated fan of the Dune novels, I deeply appreciate that in that series not only is the ‘chosen one’ the source of billions upon billions of deaths and the imposition of a tyrannical galactic theocratic dictatorship but that from the start the ‘chosen one’ myth is a lie fabricated to manipulate populations for the goals of an uncaring elite.

One reason I adore The Last Jedi is that the chosen one is flawed and scared and subject to human frailty, but most all because it ends with a nameless slave wielding the power that had been reserved to the ‘noble.’

I doubt I would ever write a ‘chosen one’ story but if I did you can be assured that it would be to subvert it.

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Time and Familiarity Distorts Art

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By chance I am reexperiencing a couple of television series. To follow along with the podcast The Detective and The Log Lady my sweetie-wife and I are rewatching the surrealist mystery horror series Twin Peaks with an episode each Sunday evening. On YouTube I am enjoying watching millennial reactors experience the original series of Star Trek for the very first time.

Season one of Twin Peaks speeds along much faster than my faulty memory recalled. I had forgotten that the entire first series, as the Brit would say, totaled just 8 episodes. Not even half of a tradition American television season. My emotional memory of a slow, languid story that unfolded at a leisurely pace is entirely a construction that the mood of the series and the decay determine by the decades since its debut.

Star Trek has had a different course in my recent re-exposure to the program. I grew up watching reruns of the series in the 70s. (With very hazy memories as a child of the original broadcast.) I have seen every episode countless time, own the program on Blu-ray dice and have player the Roulette Episode game with myself where dice determine which story to watch.

This saturation of the series, with a judgment set by decades of rewatching that fixes the good and bad episodes into their hierarchy is quite shaken when a new viewer comes along.

Let That be Your Last Battlefield has long been on my list of some of Trek’s worst episodes. Aliens with superpowers that exist solely to put the plot of a deterministic course and a ‘message’ presented with all the subtly of a frying pan to the face made this episode painful to watch.

And yet people new to the series, without their opinions set my decades of judgment, can find the story engaging and relevant. My familiarity with the episode exaggerated it faults until I could no longer see its charms.

Oh, it remains a poor episode and the faults I have mentioned are glaring with my experience as a writer, but the bod doesn’t always overpower the good. It is important to try and keep that fresh new viewer experience alive.

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Where the Alien Franchise Went Astray

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As I write this people across the internets are celebrating the 45th anniversary of the release of Alien, a science-fiction horror film that spawned sequel after sequel and nearly countless knockoffs and imitations.

20th century films

In my appraisal there are only two Alien films of quality, Alien and Aliens. James Cameron wisely decided when he wrote and directed the sequel to the original film that his was not to be horror but action/adventure with only tone of horror. With the conclusion of Aliens Ripley’s story came to an organic and satisfying end. Healed from her traumatic encounter with the Zeta Reticulian parasite and with a new composite family there should have been no more to tell for this woman.

Naturally the studios screwed that up and insulted the audience along the way.

With the next film, Alien3, a production that had a hard release date before it has even a story treatment much less a script, after abandoning such vaunted SF concepts such as wooden space stations crew by technophobic monks, the producers opened the story by killing Ripley’s new family.

The producers considered the audience suckers for investing any emotional energy or commitment to these characters. The lesson is quite clear. Nothing you care about matters. No victory is lasting, all happiness is fleeting, we bring you only despair. Is it really surprising that this production is the one that introduced sexual assault to the franchise?

The proper course after Aliens would have been to craft new stories about new characters. The bold and correct choice would have been to even abandon the parasite as the central threat. Horror repeated becomes adventure and further repeated become dull. This is of course not what the studio did, instead, reviving poor Ripley from her demise and adding scores of parasites in a futile attempt to create a sense of danger and dread where only lame action now existed.

Two ‘prequel’ movies have been produced, a pair of Alien vs Predator movies have squeezed a little more cash from the concept and this year, yet another movie will be released but everything after Aliens has been crap.

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Consider the Transporter in Star Trek

CBS Home Video

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Developed as a means of sidestepping the impossible production challenge of landing a ship every time the characters went ashore in Star Trek the transporter is a marvel of impossible science and utterly fantastic energies.

The show’s lore the transport converts the target’s, usually a person, matter into energy, beams it to a distant location, then reconverts that energy back into matter precisely recreating the person at the new location.

Let’s sidestep the ‘Ship of Theseus’ question if the reconstituted person is actually the same person or not for another essay and focus on the physics of this process.

Einstein revolutionized the world with his understanding that energy and matter were equivalents as set forth in the world’s most famous equation E=MC^2. The energy value of a mass is equal to that mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.

Let’s put a 50-kilogram (110 lbs.) person on the transporter and set them down.

50 kg converted entirely to energy becomes 4,500,000,000,000 megajoules. Such a number is simply beyond human comprehension. It is the equivalent 71 thousand Hiroshima bombs delivered instantaneously as a beam to a distant location. If the transporter chief held a grudge against the person on the planet that had sold him a crummy watch, he could deliver 71 thousand Hiroshimas.

There is a reason why in my Space Opera role playing games when I have introduced a transporter like device it has never ever been of the variety that directly converted matter to energy and back again. Star Trek would have been far better served if someone had decided early on that the transport simply created a gate between places and saved us from both bad technobabble solutions to problems (we’ll just put the doctor in and reconstitute her from an early pattern) and not introduce a weapon of such scale and destruction.

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Re-Reading Dune Messiah

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More than 30 years ago I read Dune Messiah, the first sequel to Frank Herbert’s novel Dune.The continuing storyline did not quite capture my attention and I did not proceed down the course of the following novels. Now with the release of Dune part 2 completing Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the novel and its box office and critical success I decided to re-read Dune Messiah and see if I had a different reaction to it this time around.

The first thing I noticed was that in the passing decades I had forgotten nearly everything about the sequel novel. Vague aspects of the story’s final ending floated in my memory but of the actual plot and events, nothing.

Dune Messiah picks up a dozen or so years after the ending of Dune. Paul Atreides’ Jihad has swept the galaxy and the fanatical legions of Fremen have slaughter billions and destroyed hundreds of worlds for their Messiah. The vast powerful forces of the galaxy spanning human imperium, economic, political, and religious have crafted a plot to eliminate Paul and reclaim control of the empire. Paul, plagued by prescience, knows some aspects of the plotters plans but also sees that any misstep and error will lead to even more slaughtering and death than he has already unleashed on the galaxy.

With even more mind-bending concepts, Face-Dancers, people with such utter control over their muscles that they can assume the appearance of any person, and people reanimated after death and imposed with brain washing conditioning, Herbert’s sequel is challenging to read and even more challenging to adapt to a visual medium that the first novel in this classic series. The book makes more explicit Herbert’s premise that charismatic leaders are a danger to everyone, their enemies and their followers. While the reader may sympathize with Paul who never intended to do evil it remains clear that evil is the product of his actions no matter his intent.

With the most recent adaptation fresh in my mind, it was easy to ‘hear’ the voices of the actors playing in my head as I read the book and adding a few new member’s to the cast. I expect that should Villeneuve adapt this to the screen that Peter Dinklage will once again become part of a fan favorite franchise.

I can say that this time around I enjoyed the novel more than I had in the late 80’s when I first read it. Partly because of Villeneuve’s adaptation and partly because I have become more aware of the social and cultural antecedents that Herbert drew upon for his inspiration. I do not feel that this go around I wasted my time.

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The Doomsday Machine is not Dead

CBS Home Video

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Season two episode six of Star Trek (The Original Series) gave us The Doomsday Machine, where Kirk and company battle a automated weapon that destroys planets. Hampered by a traumatized Starfleet Commodore they eventually deactivate the mechanism leaving floating derelict in space.

With a hull of neutronium the machine had been impervious to the Enterprise’s weaponry the victory had hardly been assured.

You might be forgiven if you assumed neutronium was a fantastical substance invented by delirious writers much like ‘Vibranium’ or ‘Adamantium’, but you would wrong.  Neutronium is matter that has been so compressed by immense gravitational forces that the protons and electrons have merged with the neutron at the nucleus of the atom forming pure nuclear material with nearly unimaginable densities, Neutron stars have nearly enough mass to become Black Holes, but not quite.

It is unlikely that the ‘Doomsday Machine’, even though it was ‘miles long with a maw that could swallow a dozen starships’ possessed stellar masses of neutronium. (That would make for an interesting battle, fighting a machine with the gravitational effects of a star.) To maintain its shape and function the mechanism would need to counter the immense gravitational forces generated by the neutronium hull.

When the Enterprise departed the battle volume the machine still retained it shape. If it was truly and utterly dead, it should have collapsed into a sphere, but it did not. Something inside the doomsday machine still functioned, fighting the terrible crushing force of gravity.

It was not dead. Now, there’s a space for some fan-fiction or a tie-in novel.

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Vernor Vinge, Rest In Peace

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I do not often post about the passing in notable people here. While there are artists of all arts that I enjoy, admire, and are fans of, I rarely feel any great emotional tug when they pass. Losing a parent at a young age can impress upon you with great force the truth that everyone dies.

I do want to make a note of the passing this week of SF author Vernor Vinge. He was a celebrated author, often credited with popularizing the concept of the technological singularity, the point where advancements in technology change humanity so completely that what exists on the other side is incomprehensible to those before the event. The reason I am making this post is not because of his talented writing, his impact on the field, or even his influence on the wider culture but because I had the good fortune to have met him on a few occasions.

I cannot say I knew him. Sharing a few panels at local SF conventions is not enough to truly know a person, but I was acquainted with Vernor.\

He was a kind man, a local celebrity who did not throw that weight around at conventions. Even away from the dim spotlight of small local conventions he remained a friendly and approachable person. Our paths crossed at San Diego’s airport once as he was flying out to an eclipse and my sweetie-wife and were departing for a convention. The time we shared before boarding our flights was pleasant and affable.

It is strange, perhaps, that such a kind and seeming decent man created one of the most chilling and evil cultures in literature. The Emergence from A Deepness in the Sky and their viral form of slavery frightened me in a manner rarely found from pages of text. The book and those villains were so compelling that I was unable to resist reading it on the bus home from work, despite the intense motion sickness reading on a moving vehicle provoked.

Vernor was talented, kind, and he will be missed.

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Fragile Masculinity or Simply Incurious

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About 30 years ago I shared a 2-bedroom apartment with a fellow geek, gamer, and friend. I can’t recall what prompted this particular discussion that day but somehow we got close to the worn trope of body-swapping. You know, Freaky Friday, from the original Star Trek series Turnabout Intruder.

I asked my roommate if for a day it was possible to live life as a woman, in a woman’s body, would he do that. With the clear stipulation that there would be no need to engage in any sort of sexualized activity but be in that body for 24 hours.

His answer was not only ‘no’ but a very fast and very emphatic NO.

This has always puzzled me. My answer is the opposite. I would jump at the chance to see, to feel life from a perspective I can never truly experience and perhaps can only barely imagine.

Biology is not destiny, but it has a huge impact on our perceptions and on our concept of selves. We are not minds that exist separately from our physical forms but consciousnesses that arise from those physical forms. Our natures start at the biochemical level and build from there. Of course, a wholly different brain with its unique connections can never host an alien mind. That’s what makes body swapping the realm of fantasy and not science-fiction, but I have a hard time understanding not being so curious as to want to know what it is like, really like, for another.

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A Weekend of Classic Genre Cinema

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This weekend, while still losing the damned cough that start almost two months ago, was one for enjoying some classic, that is old, genre cinema.

Columbia Pictures

Saturday Night my sweetie-wife and I streamed The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973.) After coming into possession of a fragment of a legendary table Sinbad, (John Phillip Law) is thrust into a race for power and riches against an evil wizard (Tom Baker) while saving a bewitching slave girl Margiana (Caroline Munro.)

With stop-motion effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is a prime example of pre-Star Wars genre cinema. Simple, direct, and doing the best that they cane with limited budgets and resources. Still, it is fun little film not meant to tax the old grey matter.

Sunday was this months Film Geeks San Diego screening of another Showa era film of the Godzilla franchise, Mothra vs Godzilla as part of their year celebration of the big lizard’s 70th anniversary.

Toho Studios

After a monstrous egg washes up following a typhon and quickly grabbed by greedy capitalists twin tiny ‘fairies’ arrive pleading for the egg’s return. They are rebuffed despite the efforts of a noble reporter, scientist, and photographer. Awaked from his slumber in the sand by the typhon, Godzilla, in his final Showa era turn as a villainous monster, rampages through the area and the ‘fairies’ convince Mothra to come and battle the radioactive beast.

Despite a decidedly clear turn towards children’s entertainment Mothra vs Godzilla still retains enough ‘serious’ matter to have value for adults watching as well as the kiddies in the audience. It’s message of mutual respect and the abhorrence of Pacific island nuclear testing grounds the film in the period of its production without actually dealing with the tense geo-political realities of the mid 1960’s. Watching this for the first time on a big screen, even if the theaters is a micro one seating only about 50 people, was a joy for nostalgia.

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Ellison’s Cynicism & The City On The Edge of Forever

Paramount Studios/CBS Home Video

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The City on the Edge of Forever the 28th episode of season one from Star Trek (The Original Series) is a celebrated and award-winning episode of classic television collecting both the Hugo for short form Dramatic Presentation and the Writers Guild Of American award for Best Episodic Drama on Television.

After suffering a mishap while the Enterprise investigates disturbances in time from a long dead world, Doctor McCoy to hurled into the past where his presence changes history erasing the United Federation of Planets’ existence, forcing Kirk and Spock to follow McCoy to set right the course of the universe.

The original script was penned by famed and mercurial author Harlan Ellison but for production the screenplay had been rewritten, by uncredited story editor D.C. Fontana, at the producers request. The rewrite dissatisfied Ellison producing a rift between him and the producers that lasted decades. Ellison eventually would publish his own account of the production in book form that included his original script.

I have watched the original episodes many many times since the 1970s and I have read Ellison’s original script. Both are wonderfully written but Fontana’s is decidedly more in the tone of Star Trek.

Spoilers follow.

The crucial element of history that McCoy upset is saving the life of a pacifist, Edith Keeler, which delayed America’s entry into the Second World War allowing Germany to emerge victorious. Kirk, having fallen in love with Edith, is torn between his duty to preserve history and prevent a NAZI future and his emotional need to save the woman he has come to love.

In Ellison’s version, Spock, the inhuman, coldly logical alien holds both men. Kirk and McCoy, back, preventing them from saving her and reestablishing the proper shape of time.

In Fontana’s script Kirk seizes McCoy, stopping him from saving Edith, but is emotionally devastated by his course of action.

Dramatically speaking I have held and continue to hold that Fontana’s ending is simply better. It costs Spock nothing to do the right thing. Alien and detached from the pull of emotion, Spock’s action has no more dramatic weight that a piece of automated machinery performing a programmed function. Kirk, forced at great emotional pain and trauma, stopping McCoy is the sort of event that forever changes a character and change lives at the heart of drama.

None of this is new thinking on my part. It’s been my conclusion for nearly 30 years since I read the original script. That said thinking further upon the story and Ellison’s ending I do think that there is another aspect to this that is fascinating.

What is the thematic core of Ellison’s ending? Why was he drawn to that particular resolution?

It is possible that the answer is that Ellison held a very dark and cynical view of humanity.

While I have not read all of Ellison’s work, I have read a number of his well-crafted short stories and dark is common element. Rarely if ever did Ellison descend in joy over terror and crushing failure.

It’s possible, either by authorial intent or predilection, that Ellison’s ending reflects a deep sense that humanity, that people, are incapable of overcoming their selfish needs and desires for a greater good. That flawed and weak humanity will always fail to destroy the One Ring and choose themselves over others.

If that’s the reason Ellison went with his ending it makes even more clear that deep and unbridgeable divide between himself and Roddenberry. Roddenberry believed in humanity’s perfectibility. That a future without the irrational failings of racism and selfness was possible and Ellison’s ending reject all of that. It is an ending that asserts people will choose their own happiness even at the cost of uncounted millions.

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