Space Captain Smith

A novel by Toby Frost. I have just finished this – after about three months, which shows how much time I’m allocating to reading these days. It’s the mongrel offspring of space opera, Victorian adventure stories, and The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Captain Smith and his crew – a psychopathic alien headhunter and a fugitive android sex toy – are sent on a mission to pick up a hippy herbalist and return her to the Empire, during the course of which they must contend with the Ant Men of the evil Ghast Empire and their born-again religious dupes, amongst other things.

Here is a short extract, wherein Captain Smith briefs his friend Suruk on the mission:

“…We’re actually going to collect someone from a space station inhabited by pacifists.”

“Fierce warrior pacifists?”

“No.”

“Edible pacifists?”

“I would advise against it.”

“Will we then deliver this coward into the sun?”

“No.”

“Is anything good going to happen on this holiday?”

“Not by your standards, I’m afraid…”

I was gently amused throughout, and moved to outright laughter at points. This is the first in a series, and is followed by God-Emperor of Didcot and Wrath of the Lemming Men.

Stargate Universe

The whole family have been huge Stargate fans since the beginning. Sadly, the latest incarnation may break that track record.

Stargate Universe takes the tropes of Stargate and inverts them. Instead of an elite group of Earth’s finest working together to overcome obstacles in daring tales of adventure and romance, as in the earlier series, we now have a bunch of losers who are deeply suspicious of each other, struggling to survive in a gritty, downbeat milieu.

At the end of episode 5 or so, I have a distinct feeling of “OK, so much for the dark foreboding and character backgrounds. Can we have an actual story now? A bit less about Colonel Young’s imploding marriage perhaps?”

It was a bold move to take the setting in a new direction. I was intrigued by the idea of a random group of strangers cast adrift on a broken-down Ancient ship. Frankly, however, it is not working. In the same way that Doctor Who tried to generate a dark, gritty spinoff series with steamy sex scenes (Torchwood) – and managed to produce something largely uninteresting. At least to us.

It’s not the Stargate we knew, loved, and largely watched together. I hope that it will find its way back to something more like the original feel soon. Otherwise it is likely to doom the franchise in the way that Enterprise doomed the Star Trek one.

Lest Darkness Fall

You know the idea: You’re suddenly transported back in time and use your superior 21st century knowledge to bring social and/or technological advances to society.  (We will conveniently gloss over avoiding slavery or death, and learning the local languages.)

Just for fun, The Universe As website has a technology quiz to work out how much good you could do if this happened. I got 10 right, which they say makes me a “technologically useful human” who might be able to rebuild 20th century levels of technology; what about you?

Gunnerkrigg Court

I gave up webcomics again last week. Well, except for Girl Genius and Schlock Mercenary, obviously. The plan was to use the time for something more constructive, like, umm, painting toy soldiers. Or watching Primeval.

Then, by accident, I discovered Gunnerkrigg Court. I couldn’t stop reading it, at least not until I got to the latest strip. Imagine if Neil Gaiman were writing the Harry Potter stories, and you’re about there. Highly recommended.

The Traveller Trailer

When non-gamers look at the gaming table, they just see scruffy bearded types rolling dice. In our heads, it looks more like this…

One of Andrew Boulton’s Traveller mini-movies. There are more on YouTube.

Hell’s Gate

This is a novel by David Weber and Linda Evans, which I’m unsure whether to flag as SF or fantasy, despite the little rocket ship on the spine by which my local library announces its classification.

It’s a long book, and very clearly the first in a series, for which it sets up the main characters and ongoing conflicts, while hinting at other subplots yet to come (what are those whales cross about?)

We have two dimension-hopping civilisations, which use “portals” to cross from one parallel universe to another. Neither has space travel, so all universes are limited to slightly different versions of the same planet. Neither is related to contemporary Earth; I found this confusing for the first few chapters, as I had to assimilate two sets of unfamiliar names, ranks, organisations, nations, and so forth, rather than the usual one.

One of these civilisations is based on magic, and as a consequence has no mechanical technology more advanced than a crossbow; but it is able to use spells to do what we would call genetic engineering, as well as levitation, fireballs and the usual trimmings. Their use of dragons for air superiority and as airborne ferries gives them an edge in transport and reconaissance.

The other civilisation has no magic, but does have psionics, and a roughly Victorian technology. They have telepaths, artillery and lever-action rifles, which gives them an edge in communication and allows them to project power (or at least artillery shells) through a portal without sending people; this the magicians cannot do.

The novel did a good job in making me care about the main characters, and in depicting the inexorable slide to war between these two civilisations after two exploration parties bump into each other, and open fire.  I’ll keep an eye open for the second and subsequent volumes, but do not feel compelled to rush out and buy them.

Watch the Sky

I’ve been quiet for a few days, because my bride is back from Sicily! Yay!

And since then, our evenings have been spent in front of that worthy addition to our busy modern lifestyle, the Sky+ box. Even after I culled a load of stuff, and a determined assault on the remainder over the bank holiday weekend, we still have about 40 hours left to watch. So what has filled our box? I’m glad you asked.

• Chuck: A fish-out-of-water sitcom, featuring a guy who works in a discount warehouse who has bizarrely learned the bulk of the secrets held by the CIA and NSA, which they have then lost. An average guy trying to keep up with the superspies. This is territory that has been covered before in things like Jake 2.0 and (to an extent) Reaper, but it works well. Like Father Ted, in that I sit down each week thinking it will be awful, but find myself enjoying it.
• Dollhouse: Which I have enthused about before. A grown-up version of Joe 90, but none the worse for that.
• Life: Which I like for its bizarre plots and strange protagonist (a millionaire Zen Buddhist detective).
• The Mentalist: Another detective show with a strange protagonist, a fake psychic turning his powers to fight crime. Entertaining, but takes liberties with things like NLP for the sake of the plot.
• My Own Worst Enemy: An interesting premise, but it struggles to hold my interest after half a dozen episodes – it would have been better as a movie. The premise is that there is a group of secret agents who have deliberately induced split personalities; their cover is unbreakable because it is a separate personality completely, which knows nothing about the agent – except for the protagonist, who due to a technical fault switches randomly between the two. There’s only so much you can do with that.
• NCIS: One of the better detective shows. Perhaps because it is limited in scope (NCIS investigates crimes involving US Navy and Marine personnel only), it develops bizarre crimes for the team to unravel, and has a range of fully developed and unusual (not to say weird) characters. Probably the best of the bunch for us.
• True Blood: Was there for awhile, but we lost interest halfway through the pilot and erased the lot. Twilight meets Californication. Not our cup of tea.
• Ugly Betty: Which my better half watches while I’m playing with my toy soldiers, of which more anon, no doubt.

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (again)

Or, what I read on my hols, part 3…

My children bought me this as a present, and I read it over a couple of days at the seaside. It’s a fun read, although I wouldn’t class it as great literature. But what can I say about it? It’s Pride and Prejudice, with zombies and wuxia. The bit that amused me most was the mock revision notes at the back, as if it were a set book for English Literature. (“Can you imagine what this novel would be like without the zombies?”)

Earth Abides

Or, what I read on my hols, part 2…

Earth Abides is a post-apocalyptic novel written in 1949 by George R Stewart, who amongst other things seems to have invented the template for the disaster movie.

We follow the protagonist (a graduate student of geography) from his return from a field trip to discover that humanity has essentially died out, to his meetings with other survivors, to his old age some decades later.

The book has aged surprisingly well, I suppose since once civilisation collapses there is nothing obviously out of date. Althought Stewart glosses over the initial apocalypse (and the protagonist never does find out what happened in any detail, other than a mysterious disease arising and nearly erasing humans from the globe), he does focus on the Secondary Kill – people who survive the disease, but are unable to cope with the new world, and implode under the stress. We then follow the protagonist as he lives alone for a while, eventually links up with a few others, and essentially becomes a tribal elder.

The novel speaks well to what technical and social concepts can survive this, and which can’t. It also discusses what would happen to domestic and wild animals, although I’m not entirely convinced that sheep would die out. I can see romantic love being a lost luxury; in a community of say 20 people, there are not going to be many choices of a partner near the right age and the opposite gender.

It’s a book which is likely to haunt me for some time, especially the hero’s steadily declining expectations of what level of technology his tribe can actually maintain.

Overall, Earth Abides reinforces what I’ve felt for a while on this topic: Once the electricity goes out, we’re back in the Stone Age, and precious few of us know how to live there any more.

The Tekumel Novels

(Or, what I read on my hols, part 1).

Finally I got around to reading the last three of these, and since it’s so long since I read the first two, I reread those as well.

The books are all travelogue fantasies, each taking the reader through a specific area of the world of Tekumel, created by MAR Barker and the setting for the Empire of the Petal Throne RPG. The first two were published by DAW, and seem to have benefited from better editing; the last three are published by Zottola. Roleplayers interested in the EPT RPG will find some (but not all) of the milieu’s questions answered; I also noted that coins and ancient technology are much more common in the novels than in the game backgrounds. Dates in parentheses are the year the novel occurs in the setting.

1. The Man of Gold (2360?). Chiefly of interest because the hero saves the world without ever knowing it, and feels like a failure as a result, despite his material rewards. That was genuinely novel for me.

2. Flamesong (2361). The only one of the novels in which the priest Harsan does not figure as a central character; the most memorable feature for me was the unusual nature of the magic weapon.

(Here Prince Dhichune’s grab for the throne and the resulting civil war occur, offstage. There should have been a book covering this, I feel, even if neither Harsan nor Trinesh – the two principal characters – were involved.)

3. Lords of Tsamra (2363). Very interesting to me as an EPT roleplayer, not so good as a novel; a tale of mediaeval fantasy biowarfare, explaining who the real Lords of Tsamra are, and their surprising connection to the ancient subway system.

(Here the Mu’ugalavyani invasion occurs, offstage again.)

4. Prince of Skulls (2372). Dragons and demons and priests, oh my! Prince Dhichune reappears, and in a surprise plot twist he and his old foe Harsan are compelled to work together.

5. Death of Kings (2373). This reads like the first half of a much longer novel. I found the ending disappointing, in particular that all the major romances except one are broken up, for no very obvious reason; and the plot doesn’t feel resolved. One of the main characters is Captain Harchar, the character run by Dave Arneson (RIP) in Professor Barker’s own EPT campaign.

The books, especially the last three, rely heavily on deus ex machina and on critical events occurring far away, to other, more powerful characters, which shape the world dramatically but which the novel’s protagonists only find out about in passing, weeks or months later. For me, this makes them dissatisfying as novels, although the world of Tekumel and its history remain fascinating as a complete break from the usual Dark Ages mediaeval milieux.

I would, however, read another one of the series if it appeared, because I still want to know how and why Tekumel dropped out of realspace into a pocket universe. Some hints are dropped, mostly in book 5, but I’d still like the correct answer at some point; I think I know who did it now, but not why.