SciFi Month 2016: Babylon 5 Quotes Season #5

Science Fiction on the small screen offers a wide variety of interesting shows, but still it seems to lack the depth and complexity we can find in books – and it stands to reason, since the TV format must adhere to rules that don’t apply to the written word. Yet there is a show that transcends these rules because it was conceived as a five-part novel in the mind of its creator, and like a novel it doesn’t only deliver action and adventure, but also great characterization with visible growth, and a gripping narrative arc.

The show I’m talking about is Babylon 5: despite its “age” (it ran from 1994 to 1998) it still feels fresh and actual because it’s not about impressive CGI or technological marvels, but it deals instead with people, with their reactions to extraordinary circumstances, with the choices that those circumstances force on them and the consequences of their actions.  I’ve often thought that it could work just as well as a theatrical production, because its strength is in the story, the thought-provoking issues it deals with and the intense dialogues spoken by the characters.

Here are some of my favorite quotes – divided by season: I hope that they will rekindle fond memories in those who watched and loved this show, and inspire the curiosity of those who have missed this complex, thoughtful and very passionate story until now.

The universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice. The language is not Narn or Human or Centauri or Gaim or Minbari. It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust. It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul. But always it is the same voice. It is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us and the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born. The small, still voice that says: ‘We are one. No matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star. We are one. No matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear. We are one.’ Here, gathered together in common cause, we begin to realize this singular truth and this singular rule that we must be kind to one another. Because each voice enriches us and ennobles us and each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light our way to a better future. We are one.

(G’Kar / Declaration of Principles – The Paragon of Animals)

I spent my years in one shelter after another. But sooner or later, I was able to leave the shelter and walk out into the daylight. You do not have that luxury. You carry your shelter with you, every day. You didn’t grow up. You grew old.

(G’Kar – A View from the Gallery)

In the past we had little to do with other races. Evolution teaches us that we must fight that which is different in order secure land, food, and mates for ourselves, but we must reach a point when the nobility of intellect asserts itself and says: No. We need not be afraid of those who are different, we can embrace that difference and learn from it.

(G’Kar – The Ragged Edge)

We are all the sum of our tears. Too little and the ground is not fertile, and nothing can grow there. Too much, the best of us is washed away.

(G’Kar – Objects in Motion)

I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station, when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we’ve exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying.

(G’Kar – Objects in Motion)

Review: GREATMASK, by Ashley Capes (The Bone Mask Trilogy #3)

I received the e-ARC of this book from the author, in exchange for an honest review.

This epic fantasy trilogy reached its conclusion with the final book, one that nonetheless leaves the door open for a possible sequel: should that not be the author’s intent, the sense of “unfinished business” from the last chapter still is a welcome change from a more conventional ending, one where all the narrative threads are nicely tied up.

At the end of book 2, the main characters were all scattered to the four winds, contact between them lost and each one forced to deal with their problems, some of which were of a quite deadly nature: Notch and Sofia managed to escape from the Sap Born, but were separated in the forest, he fighting for his and Nia’s life and she running away with her father and the Sap Born’s freed prisoners. Ain was traveling back to his people, together with his companion and King Oseto’s peace envoy, only to meet with a deadly, formless foe. And King Oseto himself faced the threat of a Renovar invasion, only to discover that a new, unknown force was at his doorstep: the Ecsoli, the ancient people from whom the Anaskari originated, arriving from the sea to conquer the city, and steal its precious bones.

Now, as the third book starts, we follow  each individual group as they struggle to overcome the mounting difficulties: at the beginning this fracturing of narrative threads makes for an apparently disjointed storytelling, but little by little the pieces start to come together to build the main tapestry, non unlike smaller streams that flow into a wider river, and we understand that each single incident is part of an overall – and ominous – picture.    And once our “heroes” manage to regroup, the story takes on speed, driving toward a breathless fight for survival.

What becomes clear is that ancient bones are indeed the key to this world’s magic, and that there is an untapped well of power in them: this must be the main reason the Ecsoli are collecting them with a ruthlessness that seems born of desperation – or great need. One of the most gripping parts of the story comes indeed from the description of occupied Anaskar, of the profoundly changed life in the beleaguered city, where people are trying to survive in the streets filled by the rubble from the attack, or patrolled by the Ecsoli who seem quite keen in enjoying bloody sport.

More intriguingly, the bone masks themselves transition from mere tools to characters, showing what kind of unimaginable powers can be drawn from them – and what kind of price they exact from their wearers: I was fascinated by the hints of personality that were shown this way, and by the almost neutral nature (for want of a better word) they display, neither good nor bad, but still frightening in its uniqueness.

We learn more from the characters as well, a few hints from their past and – more important – the changes wrought by the dire situation on their personalities: King Oseto, and the shocking bargain he seals with the ancient mask Chelona is the most relevant example of this, as is Sofia’s continuing journey toward maturity and the ability to make harder and harder decisions, showing a strength of spirit that had only been hinted at up to this point.

There is a huge change in tone toward the end and the final showdown: the author’s usual discursive style transforms here into pure narration, describing the story’s climatic events in a breath-taking scene that would make wonderful cinematic material, and whose conclusion was surprising for the bold – if sad – choice he made there.  I must admit I was taken unaware by the turn of events, but once the consternation wore off I understood that this bittersweet conclusion was much more satisfying than a more conventional one where everyone marched to the proverbial happy end.

Not all questions are answered at the end of Greatmask, and that’s the main reason that made me mention “unfinished business”, but I like to have some unsolved mysteries, to know that not everything has been explained: making one’s own assumptions is part of the fun after all…

All in all, a very satisfying conclusion to an intriguing story.

My Rating:

 

I would like to take a little time here to talk about the cover: what I used at the top of the review is going to be the one for the published book, but as I was waiting for the “go ahead” from the author for the posting of my review, I was made aware of some problems with the cover itself, that might not have been ready for the publication date.  Mr. Capes kindly sent me the alternate cover, that I’m sharing here just as a matter of curiosity and because I loved the colors and the sense of impending doom that comes from it.  What do you think? Which one is your favorite?

SciFi Month 2016 – Short Stories: THE LADY ASTRONAUT OF MARS, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Short stories are a difficult matter to handle: on one side, they might not give the same satisfactory “density” of a book, on the other they afford you a glimpse into a world, a setting you know you would enjoy – but end all too soon.

Every time I read about some fellow blogger reluctance about reading short stories, I understand, but at the same time I see these smaller offerings as a way to sample authors I have not read yet, without committing to a full book.

For this mont of November dedicated to science fiction, I’ve decided to look up some of the short stories offered online by many sites, and see what I could find.  It was a somewhat difficult search, because not all stories were to my taste, but what I found made it all quite worthwhile: my heartfelt thanks to all those online magazines that allowed me to sample such an incredible variety of stories.

The Lady Astronaut of Mars, by M.R.Kowal – from Tor.com

In this particular case, I was already familiar with Ms. Kowal’s writing, having read and greatly enjoyed her fantasy series the Glamourists Histories, but this was unknown territory for me: a short story and a science-fiction themed one.  I must say beforehand that it was the very best short story I read for my Sci-Fi Month posts, and the one that touched me more deeply, showcasing Ms. Kowal’s deep sensibility and skill as a writer.

Elma used to be an astronaut, the first and more famous woman astronaut: she now lives on Mars, as mankind has found the way to colonize other planets of the Solar System. She pines for the days when she could travel in space, but she’s now sixty-three, well past the age when an astronaut can be sent on missions, and moreover she cares for her husband, suffering from a degenerative illness that will soon take his life.

When she is offered one last mission, one that will imply a one-way journey to establish a sort of beachhead on a newly-discovered Earthlike planet, she is torn between the desire to touch the stars once more and her duty and deep love toward her husband Nathaniel.  The way in which she expresses her quandary comes across as more effective because of the starkness of the words, not in spite of it:

I wanted to get off the planet and back into space and not have to watch him die. Not have to watch him lose control of his body piece by piece. (…)  And I wanted to stay here and be with him and steal every moment left that he had breath in his body.

Another fascinating side of the story comes from the subtle statements about the role of a woman in what is traditionally considered a man’s job: there are a few remarks about the way Elma’s work was presented, with a slant on appearance and glitz rather than skills and competence.

I was there to show all the lady housewives that they could go to space too. Posing in my flight suit, with my lips painted red, I had smiled at more cameras than my colleagues.

To call this story ‘poignant’ would be a huge understatement: what makes it so much more touching is that M.R. Kowal never resorts to easy drama or saccharine-laden sentiments, but rather shows Elma’s quandary in simple strokes, and yet manages to present the situation in all its difficult sides, ending with a moving, emotion-laden sentence that I’m not ashamed to admit moved me to tears. And that does not happen often…

Follow the link and read this beautiful story, you really owe it to yourselves.

My Rating:

SciFi Month 2016 Review: HOUSE OF SUNS, by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds is easily one of those authors I tend to read sight unseen, because he’s always able to sweep me into these complex, galaxy-spanning stories that never fail to appeal to my sense of wonder. House of Suns is indeed one such story, and without doubt it’s the best one I’ve read until now, both for narrative scope and for sheer entertainment value.

Shatterlings are post-human individuals, clones of their progenitors who created hundreds of copies of themselves with the purpose of traveling far and wide across the galaxy, gathering information that is shared among members of a given Line at meetings that take place at appointed times.  Shatterlings are very long-lived and able to increase that augmented life-span to millions of years, through techniques of suspended animation and cryo-freezing that help them overcome the tedium of long treks through interstellar space.

Purslane and Campion are two such shatterlings from Gentian Line, the House of Flowers, who have entered into a forbidden association: flaunting the Lines’ rules they travel together and have become lovers, and at the beginning of the story they are also late for Gentian Line’s meeting, which will certainly result in censure from their peers.  This circumstance, however, proves quite fortunate for them because on approaching the system where the meeting is being held, they discover there’s been a massive attack on Gentians and that only a handful of shatterlings survived the massacre, some of which the two lovers are able to rescue, heading toward a safe place where the survivors will regroup.

If the story takes a little while to gather speed, once this event is brought to the table the pace increases exponentially from the investigation of the reasons for the attack to the brutal interrogation of some captured enemy agents; from the crushing loss of a murdered Gentian shatterling to a breathless interstellar chase that will turn out to be a journey of discovery, both of unsuspected information and of very unpalatable truths.  The events are narrated from three points of view, those of Purslane and Campion in the present and that of Abigail Gentian, the founder of the House of Flowers, from the past, this one in a series of flashbacks that give the backstory of the Lines in bits and pieces.  Other interesting players are represented by a few of the Gentian survivors the two meet on Neume, the planet where the refugees have fled to, and the Machine People: sentient artificial beings like Hesperus – who has been held in stasis for thousand of years on a planet visited by Campion and Purslane – and Cadence and Cascade, two mysterious synthetics who have befriended the Gentian refugees.

Abigail Gentian is a fascinating creature: artificially stalled in childhood for over 30 years, she describes her life in a huge, planet-spanning and constantly changing house where she lives alone but for her tutor, the household robots and her mother, with whom she infrequently interacts through video communications, when the woman is able to overcome the mind-breaking paranoia she fell victim to. Abigail’s only companionship comes from the visits of a boy from another influential family: the two share a strange love/hate bond that finds its more intricate expression while playing with Palatial, an interactive game giving the two of them roles in a medieval-like adventure that can become far too immersive, to the point of losing one’s identity and memories.    Despite these fascinating details, Abigail’s character remains elusive throughout the novel, as do those of Campion, Purslane and other Gentian shatterlings, a fact that robbed some of the enjoyment from the experience.

Granted, the shatterlings are Abigail’s clones, imbued with her memories, so it would stand to reason that there would be a sort of uniformity in the core of their personalities, but it would also stand to reason that each one’s accumulated experiences would add different layers to an individual’s psychological makeup, making every offspring different from his/her progenitor. Even their “voices” fail to carry any substantial differentiation: it took me a while to focus on the fact that Campion is male and Purslane female, since their alternating chapters “sounded” the same, at least in the beginning, when some reference to the other allowed me to understand who was speaking.  This lack of definition became worse when other Gentian survivors were introduced: other than their names, and a few individual leanings – like Betony’s desire to take over as lead, or Mezereon’s cruelty in interrogating the prisoners – there was no firm sense of differentiation between them.

Purslane and Campion’s relationship suffers from the same brand of indetermination: we are told they form a couple, that they are forced to edit their memories of the liaison before any Line meeting, to avoid being reprimanded for disobeying the rules, but we never perceive them as a couple until events separate them and Campion launches in a desperate chase to reach Purslane’s ship and rejoin his lover.  That’s the point where we are finally able to see the feelings they share for each other, how deeply they are rooted and what each of them is ready to sacrifice to insure each other’s survival.

Ironically enough, I thought that the more human, approachable character was Hesperus, one of the Machine People: the long imprisonment from which the two Gentians free him – or maybe some event prior to his incarceration – have robbed him of most of his memory, and there’s a gentle, almost child-like quality to his wistfulness about the loss, and the need to recover it, together with the purpose of his mission.  This gentleness, and his selfless attitude in helping out the shatterlings in several occasions, quickly made him my favorite character and the one I found more relatable than the flesh and blood ones.

Despite these issues, I greatly enjoyed the book because the questions examined throughout the story appear much more important than the characters moving through it. More than the inexorable rise and fall of civilizations, more than the political and economical maneuvering of the great Lines, more than the observation of societies born out of human colonization, some of which have even transcended human form, what really held my attention was the focus on knowledge and memory.  Knowledge seems to have become the galactic currency: no coin or precious metal hold the same worth as information, and the contents of individual “troves”, the stores where such information is collected, seem to have taken the place of bank accounts. And in the search of knowledge shatterlings can even take great risks, like Campion does, for example, when visiting the Vigilance, a sort of archive of enormous proportions, run by a forbidding, mysterious intelligence.

Memory, on the other hand, takes center stage during the whole course of the novel. The shatterlings store, edit and share the memories they have accumulated in their long lives, and are able to manipulate them – either to delete risky details (as Purslane and Campion do to hide their relationship from Gentian Line) or even to erase damning evidence, as the story reveals when survivors pursue the reasons for the attack on their Line.  Hesperus lost every memory of his past, of his mission, of the reasons for his presence in that portion of space, and lack of that knowledge renders him incomplete – and at times even makes him appear suspicious.

Memory is identity, and here it also becomes the defining quality of one’s personality: Gentian Line strictly enforces the erasure of a particular memory, that of a heinous crime perpetrated without intention, yes, but still will tragic repercussions, and that choice is seen as the erasure of guilt, of the consequences of that long-ago choice.  Does forgetfulness also imply forgiveness? This is the lynchpin on which the end revelation turns, and the partial answer that is given does not even start, unsurprisingly, to explore the issue.

Complex and fascinating, thought-provoking and engaging, House of Suns is the kind of novel that leaves me thinking about it even after I’ve reached the last page, and even though it ends in a quite abrupt manner, after slowing down the forward momentum reached until that point with some heavy exposition, it remains a very satisfying read. The kind of story that could no doubt gain from a re-read, and a highly recommended one.

 

My Rating:

 

SciFi Month 2016: Babylon 5 Quotes Season #4

Science Fiction on the small screen offers a wide variety of interesting shows, but still it seems to lack the depth and complexity we can find in books – and it stands to reason, since the TV format must adhere to rules that don’t apply to the written word. Yet there is a show that transcends these rules because it was conceived as a five-part novel in the mind of its creator, and like a novel it doesn’t only deliver action and adventure, but also great characterization with visible growth, and a gripping narrative arc.

The show I’m talking about is Babylon 5: despite its “age” (it ran from 1994 to 1998) it still feels fresh and actual because it’s not about impressive CGI or technological marvels, but it deals instead with people, with their reactions to extraordinary circumstances, with the choices that those circumstances force on them and the consequences of their actions.  I’ve often thought that it could work just as well as a theatrical production, because its strength is in the story, the thought-provoking issues it deals with and the intense dialogues spoken by the characters.

Here are some of my favorite quotes – divided by season: I hope that they will rekindle fond memories in those who watched and loved this show, and inspire the curiosity of those who have missed this complex, thoughtful and very passionate story until now.

Have you ever heard of the hour of the wolf? My father told me about it. It’s the time between three and four in the morning. You can’t sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should’ve gone but didn’t. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart.  […]  In times like this, my father used to take one large glass of vodka before bed. To keep the wolf away, he said. And then he would take three very small drinks of vodka, just in case she had cubs while she was waiting outside.

(Ivanova – The Hour of the Wolf)

Fighting a war is easy. Destroying is easy. Building a new world out of what’s left of the old, that is what’s hard.

(Delenn – Lines of Communication)

The truth is fluid. The truth is subjective. Out there it doesn’t matter what time it is. In here it is lunch time, if you and I decide that it is. The truth is sometimes what you believe it to be, and other times what you decide it to be.

(The Interrogator – Intersections in Real Time)

Who am I? I’m Susan Ivanova, Commander, daughter of Andrei and Sofie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is gonna kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I’m death incarnate and the last living thing that you’re ever going to see. God sent me.

(Ivanova – Between the Darkness and the Light)

SciFi Month 2016 – Short Stories: SPIDER THE ARTIST, by Nnedi Okorafor

Short stories are a difficult matter to handle: on one side, they might not give the same satisfactory “density” of a book, on the other they afford you a glimpse into a world, a setting you know you would enjoy – but end all too soon.

Every time I read about some fellow blogger reluctance about reading short stories, I understand, but at the same time I see these smaller offerings as a way to sample authors I have not read yet, without committing to a full book.

For this mont of November dedicated to science fiction, I’ve decided to look up some of the short stories offered online by many sites, and see what I could find.  It was a somewhat difficult search, because not all stories were to my taste, but what I found made it all quite worthwhile: my heartfelt thanks to all those online magazines that allowed me to sample such an incredible variety of stories.

Spider the Artist, by Nnedi Okorafor – from Lightspeed Magazine

In a not-so-distant future, the Niger Delta is exploited for its oil, pollution running rampant through crops, waters and people. In one of the many villages lining the pipeline lives Eme, whose only means of escaping the rigors of such a life is playing her father’s guitar.  The pipeline is protected against sabotage or simple theft of oil by mechanical, spider-shaped guardians, that people have started calling “zombies”: when a Zombie finds someone tampering with the pipeline, it kills in a brutal and gruesome way.  One night, as Eme is playing her guitar outside her home, one of the Zombies approaches her and listens to her music: it’s the beginning of a very strange, silent friendship that will have unexpected consequences.

The true horror of this story does not come so much from the terrible living conditions of the villagers, or the reports of mindless killings operated by the Zombies, that more often than not are unable to distinguish between thieves and saboteurs and mere children playing near the pipeline: these events, as terrible as they are, pale against the depiction of Eme’s everyday life, and the shock is not engendered by what she relates but rather by her quiet acceptance, the resignation that’s plain in her words and attitude.

As Eme reports in the very first sentence of the story, her husband beats her, taking all his despair and frustration on her, and all she can do – besides passively accepting it all – is bear it day after day, almost not realizing that every desire for a better life is slowly dying.

No matter my education, as soon as I got married and brought to this damn place I became like every other woman here, a simple village woman living in the delta region where Zombies kill anyone who touches the pipelines and whose husband knocks her around every so often.

There is a form of quiet desperation (to quote from a Pink Floyd song) in Eme that reaches out from the pages and grabs at your soul with incredible strength. So it’s almost not surprising that she might find a kindred soul in a mechanical construct that seems to care about the beauty of music much more than the flesh-and-blood people around her do.

It’s a peculiar story, but a fascinating one, and I will need to explore this author further in the near future

My Rating:

SciFi Month 2016 Review: EXCESSION, by Iain M. Banks (Culture #5)

This Culture novel was the most difficult and most puzzling in my experience with Iain Banks’ writing, so far, and still I am not sure about my feelings, if I truly liked it or not.  The novel was enjoyable, of course, and it also was a quick read, its momentum provided by the rapidly advancing plot, but still it seemed as if something was missing: certainly I did not feel as invested in the characters as I was with previous books, and this might be the reason for my faint dissatisfaction, considering that characterization was the strongest point of the novels I read before this one.

An Excession – or out-of-context problem – is an event without precedent and without predictable outcome: in this case it’s a mysterious black body suddenly appearing in space near the star Esperi, doing nothing, but still representing a menace, if nothing else because of its inscrutability.  The study of the Excession is carried out mostly by the Culture’s Minds – the vastly evolved artificial intelligences residing on huge ships, or in the orbitals: they appear here as the true movers and shakers of the galaxy, even more than humans who seem far less preoccupied with the strange phenomenon than their cybernetic counterparts.

In a way, this novel is about the Minds more than it is about the mysterious object at the center of the story: I already encountered some Minds in my previous “travels” in Banks’ Culture, but they never took center stage as they do here, and this gave me a new perspective on the Culture itself.  As a society that can offer its citizens everything they want, with easy and ready access to any kind of physical resource and where the word “impossible” seems to have no place anymore, the Culture might look like the perfect Utopia. The Minds have evolved to the point where they can build each other in a sort of mechanized parthenogenesis, and they are the true managers of society, while humans can freely pursue their diverse goals.

Minds are not coldly perfect, though: some of the human traits they acquired along the way surface through the messages they exchange with each other (one of the most enjoyable parts of the story), and these exchanges are both amusing and illuminating, showing how the degree of evolution the Minds reached has endowed them with the equivalent of a soul, besides their distinctive personalities.   The other side of this coin is that the Minds can also fall prey to human flaws, and errors: as the story develops we understand there is a conspiracy, brewed by a group of Minds, to start a war between the Culture and an alien civilization, so that the Culture might finally impose some more enlightened rules on the wayward Affront (I’ll come back to them in a moment…).

Here resides one of the reasons for my puzzlement with this novel, if not the main one: confusion. The huge number of Mind-ships’ names, most of them quite bizarre (like Not Invented Here, Shoot Them Later, Anticipation for a New Lover’s Arrival, just to name a few) made it difficult for me to keep track of who was who and what faction they belonged to. Much as I enjoyed their witty exchanges, after a while I gave up trying to keep them straight, and let myself go with the flow, in all probability missing some important clues. I thought more than once that maybe the author had given in to his own desire to showcase these amazing intelligences, and in so doing made life difficult for his readers…

Another point of contention with this story comes from the human characters: while I understand that the Minds needed to take the center stage here, I can’t accept that the flesh-and-blood people called into play are never developed as much as they were in the other books, and at times they look more like props than anything else. For example, Byr Genar-Hofoen, Culture envoy with the Affront, is recalled from his post and tasked to reach the ship Sleeper Service to retrieve the conscience of a person who was Stored there: along the way we are given Genar-Hofoen’s back story, and many details about his past liaison with Dajeil Gelian, who is the Sleeper Service’s only passenger and has been keeping her pregnancy in stasis for forty years. As the past they share is slowly revealed, it becomes clear that the Sleeper Service is doing all it can to help them reconcile their differences, and to overcome the tragic circumstances that brought on their separation. And yet, when the moment comes, it also seems to pass in a manner that’s way too subdued in respect of the huge anticipation that was built until then.

In the same manner, I’m still wondering what was the purpose of the young spoiled brat Ulver Seich, who is enrolled by Special Circumstances (the Culture’s equivalent of a secret service) to expedite Genar-Hofoen mission: much space is given to the girl’s self-centered character, and her dismay at the physical changes she undergoes to resemble Dajeil Gelian and therefore to better ensnare Genar-Hofoen. And again, it all boils down to practically nothing…  There is something I’m missing, I’m certain of it, but for the life of me, I’m unable to see what it is.

On the other hand, the depiction of the Affront, a neighboring civilization that is totally alien both in appearance and in outlook, and that looks like the Culture’s polar opposite, is one of Excession’s best features: imagine a race of floating octopuses, gifted (so to speak…) with congenital bad manners and the boisterousness of unruly students on spring break. And still that would be too weak a description: the Affront are by turns amusing and outrageous, the details we learn about their culture made me hate them, while their unabashed enjoyment of life made me smile with the tolerance reserved for rambunctious kids. I can see, with hindsight, how some of the Culture’s Minds saw such a danger in the Affront and its cruel values, so that they decided to start a war (something the Culture avoids studiously, preferring a more subtle integration) rather than risk a long-term contamination of its status quo.

Still, it’s not enough: I was fascinated by Player of Games; soul-wrenched by Use of Weapons; and poignantly affected by Look to Windward, but I could not summon any strong emotion with Excession, and it left me with a pervasive sensation of incompleteness, which feels very strange for a book by Iain Banks.

 

My Rating:

 

SciFi Month 2016: Babylon 5 Quotes Season #3

Science Fiction on the small screen offers a wide variety of interesting shows, but still it seems to lack the depth and complexity we can find in books – and it stands to reason, since the TV format must adhere to rules that don’t apply to the written word. Yet there is a show that transcends these rules because it was conceived as a five-part novel in the mind of its creator, and like a novel it doesn’t only deliver action and adventure, but also great characterization with visible growth, and a gripping narrative arc.

The show I’m talking about is Babylon 5: despite its “age” (it ran from 1994 to 1998) it still feels fresh and actual because it’s not about impressive CGI or technological marvels, but it deals instead with people, with their reactions to extraordinary circumstances, with the choices that those circumstances force on them and the consequences of their actions.  I’ve often thought that it could work just as well as a theatrical production, because its strength is in the story, the thought-provoking issues it deals with and the intense dialogues spoken by the characters.

Here are some of my favorite quotes – divided by season: I hope that they will rekindle fond memories in those who watched and loved this show, and inspire the curiosity of those who have missed this complex, thoughtful and very passionate story until now.

I’ve taken the opportunity provided by my incarceration to meditate, to think. […] In here, Mr Garibaldi, you can not hide from yourself. Everything out there has only one purpose, to distract us from ourselves, from what is truly important. There are no distractions in here. We can learn much from silence.

(G’Kar – Messages from Earth)

“I believe that I have been touched. That I am meant for something greater. A greater darkness or a greater good, I can no longer say. All I have ever wanted is to serve our people. I need to see what is before me. If I should escape it, or embrace it. If there is any longer a choice.”

“There is always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with the decision we have already made. If you understand that, there’s hope. If not ..”

(Londo and Lady Morella – Point of No Return)

Three years. For three years I warned you this day was coming. But you would not listen. Pride, you said, presumption. And now the Shadows are on the move. The Centauri and the younger worlds are at war, the Narns have fallen. Even the Humans are fighting one another. The pride was yours, the presumption was yours. For a thousand years we have been awaiting for fulfillment of prophecy, and when it finally happens, you scorn it, you reject it. Because you no longer believe it yourselves. ‘We stand between the candle and the star, between the darkness and the light.‘ You say the words, but your hearts are empty, your ears closed to the truth. You stand for nothing but your own petty interests. ‘The problems of others are not our concern.‘ I do not blame you for standing silent in your shame. You, who knew what was coming, but refused to take up the burden of this war. If the warrior caste will not fight, then the rest of us will.

(Delenn – Severed Dreams)

Every day, here and at home, we are warned about the enemy. But who is the enemy? Is it the alien? Well, we are all alien to one another. Is it the one who believes differently than we do? No, not at all, my friends. The enemy is fear. The enemy is ignorance. The enemy is the one who tells you that you must hate that which is different. Because, in the end, that hate will turn on you. And that same hate will destroy you.

(Reverend Dexter – And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place)

All around us, it was as if the universe were holding its breath, waiting. All of life can be broken down into moments of transition or moments… of revelation. This had the feeling of both. G’Quan wrote: ‘There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain’.

(G’Kar – Z’ha’dum)

SciFi Month 2016 – Short Stories: THE EMPEROR OF MARS, by Allen Steele

Short stories are a difficult matter to handle: on one side, they might not give the same satisfactory “density” of a book, on the other they afford you a glimpse into a world, a setting you know you would enjoy – but end all too soon.

Every time I read about some fellow blogger reluctance about reading short stories, I understand, but at the same time I see these smaller offerings as a way to sample authors I have not read yet, without committing to a full book.

For this mont of November dedicated to science fiction, I’ve decided to look up some of the short stories offered online by many sites, and see what I could find.  It was a somewhat difficult search, because not all stories were to my taste, but what I found made it all quite worthwhile: my heartfelt thanks to all those online magazines that allowed me to sample such an incredible variety of stories.

The Emperor of Mars, by Allen Steele – from Clarkesworld Magazine

This story deals with madness, and the physical and psychological displacement suffered by space-faring humanity: the premise sees the early colonization of Mars, where the first human settlements are being built by enterprising adventurers.  As with modern oil-rig workers, those who accept a two-year stint on Mars – not counting the travel time, that’s limited to the periods when the planet is closest to Earth – do so knowing that their sacrifice will earn them a sizable amount of money with which to start a new life.

But outer space is an unforgiving environment, and the strangeness, the alien-ness of it all, can play tricks on the human mind: as the narrator says, there are many kinds of madness that can infect the unwary human – but the tale he relates is one in which madness is a saving grace.

Jeff Halbert is one of those hopefuls: young and driven by the will to gain enough for himself and his fiancée and their future together, he becomes quickly known for his good-humored dedication and appreciated by co-workers and supervisors – until tragedy strikes.  On Earth, his parents and fiancée – and the unborn child she carries – are killed in a car accident: when the news reaches Jeff, he’s only seven months into his 3-year stint and he understandably falls into zombie-like depression, until he’s assigned to an exploratory mission that also retrieves the old Phoenix probe.  Inside the probe, he finds an old DVD where the scientist of the Phoenix project uploaded a number of books and stories concerning Mars: losing himself in these old stories, many of which depict a planet that’s quite different from the one where Jeff lives and works, he builds a wall around himself and his pain, forgetting his day-to-day harsh reality thanks to a fictional dream-world.

To say I loved this story would be a huge understatement: what looks like a sad tale about loss and displacement transforms into something a reader of speculative fiction can relate to – the need to lose oneself, now and then, in a place other than the one we live in. And in the end, The Emperor of Mars becomes an uplifting story that shows how we can build something good, and lasting, from a painful beginning.

Quite recommended.

My Rating:

SciFi Month 2016 Review: ADMIRAL, by Sean Danker (Evagardian #1)

When I read the first reviews for this book I was quite intrigued: the trope about people waking up in a damaged ship and not knowing what happened is one I’ve always found fascinating.  As I started reading Admiral, though, I had a few misgivings: the tone felt somewhat off, the exchanges between the characters a little stilted, the overall impression that of uncertainty – and not related to the situation at hand.

Yet something kept me reading on, the few disturbances I perceived not being enough to make me close the book: now I’m happy to have persevered  because once the story finds its footing it becomes a compelling read, and a quite satisfactory one.

Four people wake up from stasis on what looks like an abandoned freighter: three of them are freshly graduated trainees from the Evagardian Imperial academy, the fourth is the unnamed narrator himself, whose stasis pod bears the markings of an admiral and should put him automatically in charge. I said should, because the three young officers react with varying degrees of puzzlement and suspicion to the man’s lack of uniform, un-military bearing and off-hand manners – not to mention the fact that the Admiral himself appears quite surprised of his promotion…

Lieutenant Deilani is the more vocal and mistrustful of the three: the Evagardian Empire just signed a truce with the Ganraen, with whom they have been at war, and finding herself in a re-conditioned Ganraen ship, with a man who doesn’t fit the image of an Evalgardian ranking officer, Deilani thinks immediately they are dealing with a spy, and proceeds to say so in no uncertain terms.  The fact that all the Admiral does is deflect her accusations while offering no real answers only manages to enhance her  doubts.

Private Salmagard, on the other hand, acts in a more detached manner – there are shades of Vulcan aplomb in her attitude – and seems more inclined to concentrate on the group’s more immediate problems, leaving the identity and fate of their senior officer to a more propitious moment.

And finally, Ensign Nils is the more accepting of the three: it becomes quite clear from the beginning that he’s a natural-born follower and responds well to authority – or what he perceives as such – preferring to deal with the many mechanical issues plaguing the group, and applying his remarkable engineering skills to their survival.

The ship the four find themselves in is deserted, the power is off and there are all the indications of massive system failure: the discovery of the bodies of the two-men crew, later on, only adds to the huge pile of unanswered questions they have to face before they can start working on a rescue plan.   Here is where my initial reservations made themselves felt: first, the exchanges between the four people did not sound… natural (for want of a better word), the disparity between the almost-flippant tone of the Admiral and the trainees’ doubts – especially Deilani’s accusations – felt forced, not at all in sync with the situation at hand.  Moreover, there were a couple of instances where I actually stopped and stared in bafflement at the page I was reading: for example, at some point the four discover that the ship suffered a hull breach, and the Admiral’s line reads: “I swore, amazed. We hadn’t even suspected a breach.”
Seriously?  They did crash-land on a planet, and the very first thought should have been about hull integrity!   Or again, take this little snippet:

“This is some kind of combat damage.”
I sighed. Couldn’t these three take a hint and just stop noticing things? (…) How could I convince them that they were happier just getting on with their lives?

Am I wrong in thinking that noticing things would be the first step toward ensuring their survival? As I said, these details took me out of the narrative flow and made me doubt the soundness of the story, or of the characters.  But once I was past these initial… “hiccups”, I was completely captivated by the story and these four people’s plight, one that swiftly turns from a mystery-solving situation to a battle for survival. From that point on, I was one hundred percent onboard – and very happy to have soldiered on.

To define the planet where the ship crashed ‘hostile’ would be a massive understatement, and as the story progresses the dangers the four survivors face become increasingly deadly: unbreathable atmosphere, eerie green-tinted mist, weird rock formations and a very unstable ground are just the tip of the iceberg, because the Admiral and his trainees soon realize they might not be alone in there…  More than once my mind flashed to the more harrowing scenes in the Alien narrative arc, and each chapter brought on a new, nasty hurdle to be overcome, either through Nils’  powers of improvisation or the others’ need to survive at any cost while they wait for rescue.

All through this I developed a certain fondness for the Admiral: from the very start he appears like the proverbial unreliable narrator – he makes no mystery about this point – and it’s also very clear that he is hiding something, but at the same time he comes across as a very resourceful person, and what’s more important he cares about his young charges, constantly urging them not to give up, even when the situation becomes most dire.  No matter who he is, he acts like the ranking officer he appears to be, and his heart is indeed in the right place:

No I wasn’t a real admiral, but that didn’t make it okay for people to die on my watch.

At this point, his real identity becomes a moot point, and the almost-revelation that occurs toward the end of the novel is far less important than the road the foursome traveled to get there: the partial answers the readers glean from that part of the story might or might not be the truth (I keep thinking that the Admiral might still be dissembling, since it’s clear this is second nature to him), but at this point it hardly matters.

What does is the sheer fun of the adventure we enjoy getting there: there are times when this is all we want from a book, and on this score Admiral delivers in a very enjoyable manner.  I will be waiting for the second book in this series with great expectations.

 

My Rating: