David Gerrold Speaks!

[DDAY]

I was leafing through the latest issue of Star Trek Magazine this evening
and read the interview with David Gerrold.

There's a number of interesting tidbits there, although it glosses over the
squabble he had with Roddenberry. He says that ultimately the two settled
their feud, but it also said that Gerrold was a story consultant or
something like that--I thought he was a producer on TNG.

There is some discussion of his TAS scripts and also of his appearance in
the DS9 episode. He said that he appeared as an extra in part to
demonstrate that he had no ill will toward Rick Berman--his dispute was
always with Roddenberry and that was long over.

Anyway, at the end of the interview he says that he's working on two more
books in his war against the Chtorr series. On the one hand I'd like to
read more because I liked that series. On the other hand, the last book
came out something like 15 years ago. That kinda ticks me off and I think I
should not read any more books in the series on general principle...

Seriously, with such a long time between books, I think he's essentially
shot himself in the foot. He's probably lost a lot of his original
audience. Even if the books are reissued, I doubt that he'll pick up much
of his original fanbase. Rather stupid if you ask me.



D

[Jack Bohn]

Post by DDAY
Anyway, at the end of the interview he says that he's working on two more
books in his war against the Chtorr series. On the one hand I'd like to
read more because I liked that series. On the other hand, the last book
came out something like 15 years ago. That kinda ticks me off and I think I
should not read any more books in the series on general principle...
Seriously, with such a long time between books, I think he's essentially
shot himself in the foot. He's probably lost a lot of his original
audience. Even if the books are reissued, I doubt that he'll pick up much
of his original fanbase. Rather stupid if you ask me.

I checked up in my attic, I still have the original version of
the first two books. I remember reading the revised versions, so
I must have bought them, maybe in paperback... and the next two,
they might be around here somewhere... Thick books to go through
to get back up to speed, still, I remember they were a quick
read.

About the long time, remember, this is art, not sausages.
Possibly he himself wasn't ready to write these next books.
Still a sequel 15 year later can almost be treated like a sequel
from a different author; see Asimov's later Foundation novels,
and Niven's and Pournell's _The Gripping Hand_.

[DDAY]

----------

Post by Jack Bohn
they might be around here somewhere... Thick books to go through
to get back up to speed, still, I remember they were a quick
read.

They were a quick read because of his style. I remember them being real
page turners.

Post by Jack Bohn
About the long time, remember, this is art, not sausages.
Possibly he himself wasn't ready to write these next books.
Still a sequel 15 year later can almost be treated like a sequel
from a different author; see Asimov's later Foundation novels,
and Niven's and Pournell's _The Gripping Hand_.

I have to disagree (with the first part, anyway). No matter what his
reasons, waiting so long to finish a series is simply a bad move. That's
why TV shows that go away for too long lose viewers (i.e. The Sopranos).
People lose interest if it's not available, and when it comes back either
they have moved on or they have forgotten what happened before and don't
want to invest in relearning it. Nobody wants to have to reread a previous
book before reading the new one. (I think I tossed my copies a decade ago
and don't want to have to buy new ones.)

There's another factor too--I'm not sure I trust Gerrold when he says that
he's working on the next book. The reason is that I distinctly remember
that his last book in the series featured an interview with himself where he
claimed that he had already written much of the next book. So if he said
that 15 years ago, why should we believe him now?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the books and I think that I still remember
significant parts of them. But if he _does_ produce another one, I won't
automatically give it a pass, but I also won't automatically buy it either.
I was hooked before, but no longer.




D

[DDAY]

I should add a synopsis for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with
Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr books. And maybe this will help jog my
memory a bit.

The story takes place early in the 21st century--I think it's supposed to be
around 2017 or so (back in the 1980s when he was writing them, this was
thirty years in the future, now it's 10 years away and much less exotic,
huh?).

The first book starts about five years after a plague has wiped out about
95% of the world's population. The story's protagonist is (I think) a
member of the Army National Guard or the Army Reserves. Essentially he's a
private who was drafted out of college. He's in his early 20s or so.
There's tragedy in his back-story, of course. His father had taken the
entire family to a cabin as soon as the plagues broke out and he had managed
to save them. But then he made a key mistake and had allowed someone to go
back into town too soon and that person brought back the plague, killing the
rest of the family except for the protagonist.

The first book has frequent flashbacks to the hero's experience in high
school civics class which is a clear homage to Heinlein's Starship Troopers
(almost too much--it's too contrived, and I think that Gerrold wisely
abandoned this theme by the second book).

What has slowly dawned on the remainder of humanity is that the plagues were
the opening round of an alien invasion, except that it's not like any
invasion that we've speculated about before. Okay, not exactly true. It
clearly borrows from many other alien invasion stories. But Gerrold's take
on it has a really clever twist--the invasion is biological. New life forms
simply start to crop up around the world and there is no sign of how they
are getting here.

The opening of the book is great (it was excerpted in Starlog, which is how
I first got hooked on it). The protagonist is on a foot patrol in the
mountains of Colorado when they come across a cabin in the distance and see
a little girl playing outside. They also see evidence of a Chtorr--a giant
carnivorous worm that can grow to the size of a schoolbus. They are fast
and their front is all mouth. The other members of the squad decide to
slowly walk away as their sniper gets out his rifle. The hero naively
sticks around and watches in horror as the sniper then shoots the little
girl. The sergeant had determined that there was no way that they could
rescue the girl--the worms are too fast and unstoppable--and it was better
to kill her than allow her to be eaten.

The story unfolds as our hero investigates the biology of the new
infestation. There are all kinds of weird plants and animals that are
emerging out in the vast unoccupied areas. He was trained as a biologist in
college and because humanity is so decimated, his college-level education
makes him one of the "elite" scientists.

Working from memory here...

The hero (obviously I don't remember his name) encounters a shadowy govt.
organization that is collecting info on the invasion. But one of the scary
things is that he eventually learns that they know almost nothing more than
he does. In fact, he is one of the best field observers that they have.

Gerrold throws in a lot of things that he used in some of his earlier books
and which I think he probably borrowed from other writers too. For
instance, it turns out that there is a technology that allows people to
actually mentally occupy the body of another person and the hero ends up
having sex with an old (male) friend occupying the body of a female. In the
second or third book the hero actually engages in (I'm not kidding)
pedophilia. One gets the sense that Gerrold was throwing a lot of things
into the books that his editor should have made him remove. They were
distracting from the main story about the invasion.

The Chtorr are the largest land animals that humans encounter, but there are
all kinds of other plants and animals and insects. There are also marine
animals, including a giant "Enterprise whale" so named because it attacked
the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and nearly sank it. One thing that they
have in common is that they are very colorful--pinks and hot orange and
yellow and various hues of reds. No blues or greens. And so as they take
over an area, it becomes garish and totally alien.

The humans are fighting the infestation any way that they can--burning it,
using chemicals, and eventually using nukes. But it's clearly not working.
Eventually Colorado is nearly overrun and other areas of the country are
also being "Chtorraformed." (By the way, the name comes from the sound that
the worms make: "chtorr.")

By the third book it's clear that the humans are losing the war at an ever
faster rate. Nothing they do works and the hero starts to conclude that
Earth is lost and humanity's only hope is to settle on the Moon. (There is
apparently a large space station and also a lunar base, and I think there
are efforts to build space elevators.)

One big problem for the humans is that not only do they not see any signs of
how the invasion is happening, but they start to conclude that they're only
seeing the early stages of the invasion. The intelligence behind
it--assuming that there is an intelligence--has not made itself visible.
Thus, there's nobody to really fight, nobody to negotiate with, nobody to
surrender to.

Gerrold is good at introducing scenes of horror in the stories. The worms
kill horribly and they eat constantly. And there are plenty of ways to die
in the Chtorraformed areas--like suffocating on pink cotton candy spores in
the air or being torn apart by small worms. And there are some humans who
have somehow found a way to live among the worms, even tame them. For the
regular members of society, this is rather terrifying, because it may mean
that the people living with the infestation know things that they don't.

Gerrold also has lots of neat technology in the stories--technology that is
not very far removed from what we already have. And the books are a great
read--lots of excitement and tension. I found that I could not put them
down, especially near the endings. He was really good at providing a great
climax to the story.

But there are also weird divergences too, like the scene I mentioned
earlier--the hero "adopts" several children only to have to essentially
abandon them and later in the book it's like that whole sequence never even
happened. The hints at the shadowy government agency also just kind of
disappear.

My suspicion back when I was reading the books was that Gerrold did not
really know where he was going with the story. He had a truly great
premise--an alien invasion where humanity is clueless about what is
happening. But he just didn't know what the true nature of the invasion
was. So he didn't know how to get to the end point. The fact that he
stopped writing the books for well over a decade and a half implies to me
that my assumption was right.




D

[Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)]

Post by DDAY
I should add a synopsis for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with
Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr books. And maybe this will help jog my
memory a bit.

Slight nitpick... The main character actually was accepted into Special
Forces
w/o the full qualifications due to a paperwork mix-up, but they never
kicked him
out either for it, at least that's what I remembered.

A lot of humans were infected by alien "weed" and became sort of
mindless
sheep in the cities. They had to be "herded" and fed from trucks
unloading large
amounts of nutrient-loaded "dough" and controlled by "cowboys". The main
character was briefly lost in one of those herds before he finally
snapped out
of it somehow, and was also recovered by his friends as he had a tracker
on
him or something like that.

The alien stuff, probably evolved on a planet much more hostile, are far
superior
to Terran native life and thrived in Terran environments. Oceans are
clogged with
new types of seaweed and such. Land is overgrown with all sorts of weeds
and
alien equivalent of "bunnies". Some of the weeds pop powder like and can
choke
people even though masks and clog engine intakes (cotton candy? is that
the name?)
and some, as mentioned before, is actually hallucigenic to humans. There
are cults
that grew up worshipping the aliens, some of them even claims to control
the Chtorr,
the huge worms that is capable of eating people (and yes, they have eye
on eyestalks
and two double-jointed "arms" that can fold back against the body).
Some native
terran life adapted and started hunting the alien stuff for food, others
didn't survive long
and quickly went virtually extinct. Scientists are looking for weapons
in a bio-war but
the alien biology is just too different to give them any clues so far.
The only known
to work is burn to a crisp with flamethrower.

I have the full set in paperback, the Bantam editions.

There better NOT be a deu ex machina at the end... The four novels have
dug a
REALLY REALLY deep hole for the humans to get out, and unless he can
somehow
CONVINCINGLY give the humans a way out, the sequels are, well, I dunno.

Oh, did I mention all four novels are told in FIRST PERSON?

If you want to read a different perspective on alien invasion, I'd say
try Johnny Ringo's
Aldentada War quadrilogy.

[DDAY]

----------

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
Slight nitpick... The main character actually was accepted into Special
Forces
w/o the full qualifications due to a paperwork mix-up, but they never
kicked him
out either for it, at least that's what I remembered.

Nitpick away, my memory is not great on this. I cannot even remember the
hero's name.

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
A lot of humans were infected by alien "weed" and became sort of
mindless
sheep in the cities. They had to be "herded" and fed from trucks
unloading large
amounts of nutrient-loaded "dough" and controlled by "cowboys". The main
character was briefly lost in one of those herds before he finally
snapped out
of it somehow, and was also recovered by his friends as he had a tracker
on
him or something like that.

I only vaguely remember that.

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
that grew up worshipping the aliens, some of them even claims to control
the Chtorr, the huge worms that is capable of eating people (and yes, they

have eye

There is a great scene in the first book--there is an international
conference to discuss the invasion. But it is dominated by "third world"
nations that are now more powerful because the United States is weak. They
all want to fight their age old battles against colonialism and other
grievances. Some of them want to acomodate the aliens, or even speculate
that the threat is overblown.

A Chtorr is brought out to show them--and conveniently breaks out of its
cage and starts killing. But the Chtorr's favored way of killing is to eat
and it starts tearing the delegates to shreds. Our hero ends up killing the
beast, but not before it brutally slaughters numerous people. It turns out
that the whole escape was staged in order to get the delegates to recognize
the nature of the threat.

Gerrold has truly great _scenes_ in these books. The problem is that the
overall story is not as strong as the scenes.

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
There better NOT be a deu ex machina at the end... The four novels have
dug a REALLY REALLY deep hole for the humans to get out, and unless he can
somehow CONVINCINGLY give the humans a way out, the sequels are, well, I
dunno.

Yeah, that was my problem as well--I believe that by the end of the third
book the hero basically says that the Earth is lost and they needed to
figure out some other strategy, possibly leaving the planet. My suspicion
was that after Gerrold wrote (as his protagonist) "I realized that we were
going to lose..." he sat back from his typewriter and asked himself "What
the heck am I going to do now?" And that explains why he stopped writing
the series.

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
Oh, did I mention all four novels are told in FIRST PERSON?

That didn't bother me. The narrative flows fast. I recently saw a book in
the bookstore that is actually written in third person, present tense: "He
writes in his notebook, then he sits up and takes a drink." Man, that gave
me a headache after about three sentences!

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
If you want to read a different perspective on alien invasion, I'd say
try Johnny Ringo's Aldentada War quadrilogy.

Never heard of that one. What's unique about it?

As I said before (I know I'm being repetitive), I thought that Gerrold's
unique contribution was the idea of the invasion being biological, not
technological. It was virtually impossible for the humans to even
_understand_ what was happening, let alone fight it.

Other alien invasion works that I am familiar with (and I'm not familiar
with a lot, I'll admit) usually give the aliens a big technological
advantage. Their motives may not be understandable, but their methods,
although advanced, are familiar--they fly aircraft or operate tanks. So
Independence Day and The War of the Worlds are just big battles and we need
to find a way to be clever (or in the case of the former--the bugs kill the
aliens).

It has always been one of the big paradoxes of sci-fi: a truly alien
lifeform is probably too strange for us to understand, but how does one
write a story with a lifeform that cannot be understood?




D

[[e-mail]]

Post by DDAY
----------

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
Slight nitpick... The main character actually was accepted into Special
Forces
w/o the full qualifications due to a paperwork mix-up, but they never
kicked him
out either for it, at least that's what I remembered.

Nitpick away, my memory is not great on this. I cannot even remember the
hero's name.

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
A lot of humans were infected by alien "weed" and became sort of
mindless
sheep in the cities. They had to be "herded" and fed from trucks
unloading large
amounts of nutrient-loaded "dough" and controlled by "cowboys". The main
character was briefly lost in one of those herds before he finally
snapped out
of it somehow, and was also recovered by his friends as he had a tracker
on
him or something like that.

I only vaguely remember that.

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
that grew up worshipping the aliens, some of them even claims to control
the Chtorr, the huge worms that is capable of eating people (and yes, they

have eye
There is a great scene in the first book--there is an international
conference to discuss the invasion. But it is dominated by "third world"
nations that are now more powerful because the United States is weak. They
all want to fight their age old battles against colonialism and other
grievances. Some of them want to acomodate the aliens, or even speculate
that the threat is overblown.
A Chtorr is brought out to show them--and conveniently breaks out of its
cage and starts killing. But the Chtorr's favored way of killing is to eat
and it starts tearing the delegates to shreds. Our hero ends up killing the
beast, but not before it brutally slaughters numerous people. It turns out
that the whole escape was staged in order to get the delegates to recognize
the nature of the threat.
Gerrold has truly great _scenes_ in these books. The problem is that the
overall story is not as strong as the scenes.

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
There better NOT be a deu ex machina at the end... The four novels have
dug a REALLY REALLY deep hole for the humans to get out, and unless he can
somehow CONVINCINGLY give the humans a way out, the sequels are, well, I
dunno.

Yeah, that was my problem as well--I believe that by the end of the third
book the hero basically says that the Earth is lost and they needed to
figure out some other strategy, possibly leaving the planet. My suspicion
was that after Gerrold wrote (as his protagonist) "I realized that we were
going to lose..." he sat back from his typewriter and asked himself "What
the heck am I going to do now?" And that explains why he stopped writing
the series.

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
Oh, did I mention all four novels are told in FIRST PERSON?

That didn't bother me. The narrative flows fast. I recently saw a book in
the bookstore that is actually written in third person, present tense: "He
writes in his notebook, then he sits up and takes a drink." Man, that gave
me a headache after about three sentences!

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
If you want to read a different perspective on alien invasion, I'd say
try Johnny Ringo's Aldentada War quadrilogy.

Never heard of that one. What's unique about it?
As I said before (I know I'm being repetitive), I thought that Gerrold's
unique contribution was the idea of the invasion being biological, not
technological. It was virtually impossible for the humans to even
_understand_ what was happening, let alone fight it.
Other alien invasion works that I am familiar with (and I'm not familiar
with a lot, I'll admit) usually give the aliens a big technological
advantage. Their motives may not be understandable, but their methods,
although advanced, are familiar--they fly aircraft or operate tanks. So
Independence Day and The War of the Worlds are just big battles and we need
to find a way to be clever (or in the case of the former--the bugs kill the
aliens).
It has always been one of the big paradoxes of sci-fi: a truly alien
lifeform is probably too strange for us to understand, but how does one
write a story with a lifeform that cannot be understood?

That's why I decided _Colour Out Of Space_ was actually a
xenoforming tale, not a horror story.


Mark L. Fergerson

[Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)]

Post by DDAY
----------

Post by Kasey Chang (remove EATSPAM to reply)
If you want to read a different perspective on alien invasion, I'd say
try Johnny Ringo's Aldentada War quadrilogy.

Never heard of that one. What's unique about it?

Big battle scenes, without too much technology to get in the way.

As this is going offtopic, I'll give you a short summary, and you can
read the first and
second book free at baen.com, in the free library. First book is "A Hymn
Before Battle"
2nd book is "Gust Front".

Here's teaser for the first novel:

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . .
With the Earth in the path of the rapacious Posleen, the peaceful
and friendly races of the Galactic Federation offer their resources to
help the backward Terransfor a price.

Humanity now has three worlds to defend.

As Earths armies rush into battle and special operations units scout
alien worlds, the humans begin to learn a valuable lesson: You can
protect yourself from your enemies, but may the Lord save you from your
allies.

So imagine the following universe... The Posleen are like Vikings...
Individual ships, some large some small. Most Posleen are dumb, but they
can be taught to fire weapons, and can follow directions. These are
"normals". The smart leaders are known as "God Kings". They can "bond"
with a group of normals, and direct them in battle. God Kings usually
ride on a command saucer which has an excellent sensor suite that
detects incoming fire, and the God King will point, and everybody in his
group will shoot that way. Saucer itself has small plasma cannons. The
ships comes in two sizes... Lampreys, which are like sizes of
18-wheelers or larger, and C-decs, which are big as warehouses.
Supposedly the Lampreys actually FIT into the C-Dec's surfaces for
interstellar travel. Individual ships can load thousands, thus a C-dec
can load millions of Posleen. EACH of whom is armed, and they multiply
REALLY REALLY FAST. The Lampreys do fly, as do C-decs, albeit not very
well. They generally land and the horde spread out and kill everything
in sight. They don't really coordinate but some sort of a computer
system takes in their "conquests" and designates who wins what based on
each God King and his horde's contributions. The God King can trade in
part of his horde/tribe and weapons for better ones based on the battle
performance and his "reward" for the performance. The cheapest weapons
are shotguns and rifles or their alien equivalent. The GOOD weapons are
hypervelocity missiles (HVMs, essentially alien bazookas) and plasma
guns and such. However, being tribe oriented, they don't have artillery,
never needed it. They also have individual "boma blades" for close
combat. They don't understand "defense". They were able to overwhelm
everybody before. Humans mostly rely on their old tried-and-true
weapons... M-16's, Barrett 50 cal sniper rifles, and so on. Alien
improvement to computer tech allowed some autonomous defense guns
(basically imagine a robotic Ma-Deuce 50 cal. A laser scanner scans
what's in front. If anything changes that doesn't seem natural, it gets
shot at) and the most elite are the mobile infantry... almost right out
of Robert Heinlein's novel. Guy is completely encased in this suit, no
faceplate. Suit fires bullets through what's essentially a railgun that
sends the bullet so fast, they look like plasma in atmosphere. Some
suits are equipped with grenade launchers and/or multiple shotguns. And
of course, artillery, is unique to humans, as are snipers. Snipers
quickly learned to go after God Kings by shooting saucers in their
plasma storage packs. Shooting normals are useless... too many of them.
When a couple dozen C Decs landed all over Earth, most of the world
government ceased to exist, despite valiant efforts of defenders in
space and various ground defense centers. China barely lasted three
months, even after exhausting their inventory of nukes (which was much
larger than expected). After 12 months, the only cohesive government
left in the world is US of A, as the US was lucky... No Posleen landing
in the middle of the country, only on the two coasts, and they were
contained... for the most part.

--KC

[Jack Bohn]

Post by DDAY

Post by Jack Bohn
About the long time, remember, this is art, not sausages.
Possibly he himself wasn't ready to write these next books.
Still a sequel 15 year later can almost be treated like a sequel
from a different author; see Asimov's later Foundation novels,
and Niven's and Pournell's _The Gripping Hand_.

I have to disagree (with the first part, anyway). No matter what his
reasons, waiting so long to finish a series is simply a bad move.

I remember it was a long time getting the first one out the gate.
I remember one of his columns in Starlog was about how he
upgraded his personal BS filter, and looking at his book, saw how
much of it was BS, and so was able to shorten it considerably,
while improving it. Maybe he really _couldn't continue the
series without getting his brain in a new space. (One of the
things he removed was The Sayings of Solomon Short: not because
he thought they were BS, but because they weren't helping to tell
the story. That's why when they reappeared in the revised _A
Matter for Men_ question marks went up above my head.)

Post by DDAY
Nobody wants to have to reread a previous
book before reading the new one. (I think I tossed my copies a decade ago
and don't want to have to buy new ones.)

I remember I reread every volume of The Book of The New Sun when
another came out, but everyone was so excited about it back when.
Also rewatching the Lord of the Rings movies, but that was
actually watching the Extended Edition for the first time, and
only required an evening investment each rather than several for
a novel.

For the War Against the Chtorr, I think its going to depend on
whether I still have the books. I don't think I'll buy
replacements.

[Joseph Nebus]

Post by DDAY
I was leafing through the latest issue of Star Trek Magazine this evening
and read the interview with David Gerrold.

Oh, that's interesting ... I'll need to find some copy around
somewhere.

Post by DDAY
There's a number of interesting tidbits there, although it glosses over the
squabble he had with Roddenberry. He says that ultimately the two settled
their feud, but it also said that Gerrold was a story consultant or
something like that--I thought he was a producer on TNG.

I'm rather sure he was a producer too, although checking out the
Internet Movie Database finds him only listed as ``program consultant''.
This may be a case of the title obscuring the role, though, based on how
much the show reflects his writing.

Post by DDAY
There is some discussion of his TAS scripts and also of his appearance in
the DS9 episode. He said that he appeared as an extra in part to
demonstrate that he had no ill will toward Rick Berman--his dispute was
always with Roddenberry and that was long over.

That answers one little mystery, then. I thought I remembered
an essay from him in the front of the novelization to 'Trials and
Tribble-Ations'. He's also got little introductions to some of the new
short story collections.

Post by DDAY
Anyway, at the end of the interview he says that he's working on two more
books in his war against the Chtorr series. On the one hand I'd like to
read more because I liked that series. On the other hand, the last book
came out something like 15 years ago. That kinda ticks me off and I think I
should not read any more books in the series on general principle...

Yeah ... I'm looking forward to reading it while listening to
Harlan Ellison's podcast about 'Last Dangerous Visions' while riding
the Second Avenue Subway. Stephen Boyett can edit it.

Post by DDAY
Seriously, with such a long time between books, I think he's essentially
shot himself in the foot. He's probably lost a lot of his original
audience. Even if the books are reissued, I doubt that he'll pick up much
of his original fanbase. Rather stupid if you ask me.

The protracted time between books has hurt, although what I
imagine *really* has killed fans of the series has been a number of times
the next book was *readying* completion only to be indefinitely delayed,
and then a really stupid stunt somewhere around the late 90s where Gerrold
apparently offered a special deluxe edition of ``A Method For Madness'' if
and when it ever came out to those people who bought -- right now -- brand
new copies of all the previously existing books.

The other thing killing the series, of course, is that the first
one came out in 1983, that is, 24 years ago. Assuming that people from
age 15 through age 75 were buying the first book, then a third of the
original audience is *dead*, of old age. All right, there's new readers
coming in, but ... there aren't a lot of low-volume series that can last
that long and maintain reader interest.

Also, as I recall, the book starts out with an *extremely* late
1970s view of America's Dismal, Impotent Future, of a style that's now
rather comically dated [1]. (Current visions of America's Dismal, Impotent
Future work on different premises.) It's woven heavily into the setting,
I think, and that seems to complicate making a book that's true to the
start of the series without seeming obsolescent.

And that's not even regarding the major problem, that there's
just no good way out of the ecological invasion besides deus ex machina,
humans-evacuate-to-space, or the death of the human ecology. None of
these are really desireable options. (Of course, I also predicted that
the New Battlestar Galactica would be a middling flop.) Anyone who's
read one book has to come to the conclusion that's the way it's going.

[1] I've seen the interesting notion advanced that science
fiction of the 1960s and 70s spent much of its time trying to study the
conclusions of the Club of Rome report. These days we've come to notice
the Club of Rome report was wrong except in the parts where it was made
up, and science fiction is trying to process the Singularity and military
fiction.

[DDAY]

----------

Post by Joseph Nebus
I'm rather sure he was a producer too, although checking out the
Internet Movie Database finds him only listed as ``program consultant''.
This may be a case of the title obscuring the role, though, based on how
much the show reflects his writing.

That could have been part of the dispute--he wanted a bigger title (and
money) based upon his contributions and Roddenberry simply listed him as a
consultant.

It's clear from his prior writings that the very idea of the Away Team--one
of the fundamentals of the show--was his.

Post by Joseph Nebus
The protracted time between books has hurt, although what I
imagine *really* has killed fans of the series has been a number of times
the next book was *readying* completion only to be indefinitely delayed,
and then a really stupid stunt somewhere around the late 90s where Gerrold
apparently offered a special deluxe edition of ``A Method For Madness'' if
and when it ever came out to those people who bought -- right now -- brand
new copies of all the previously existing books.

I don't remember that. If true, it was pretty galling--the kind of thing
that a writer should be called on.

I do remember the interview with himself at the end of the last book. It
was rather arrogantly worded, almost as if he was responding to criticism
that he was not producing the books fast enough. The tone was along the
lines of "I've already written a lot, I know exactly where this is going, so
back off!" In retrospect, I wonder if he was self-conscious about not
having an ending to his story.

Post by Joseph Nebus
The other thing killing the series, of course, is that the first
one came out in 1983, that is, 24 years ago. Assuming that people from
age 15 through age 75 were buying the first book, then a third of the
original audience is *dead*, of old age. All right, there's new readers
coming in, but ... there aren't a lot of low-volume series that can last
that long and maintain reader interest.

The series is also not that well known. I think there are many other series
where people eagerly await a new book.

Now this all gets into the fan-artist relationship. Yeah, Gerrold doesn't
really _owe_ the fans anything. But the fans also don't owe him loyalty
either. It's a mutual relationship and if he doesn't uphold his end, then
the fans have every reason to be critical.

(I may seem like I'm overly whining about this, but I did really enjoy the
books way back when I read them, and this is one of the few cases where an
author promised something--rather bluntly--and then failed to deliver.)

My cynical view is that he has promised to finish the series before and
failed, so there is no reason to believe him when he says that he is ready
to do it now. But even if he does finish it, I'm a) not sure I'll spend
time on it, and b) have no assurance that it will be good.

Post by Joseph Nebus
Also, as I recall, the book starts out with an *extremely* late
1970s view of America's Dismal, Impotent Future, of a style that's now
rather comically dated [1]. (Current visions of America's Dismal, Impotent
Future work on different premises.) It's woven heavily into the setting,
I think, and that seems to complicate making a book that's true to the
start of the series without seeming obsolescent.

I don't really seem to remember it that way. Gerrold had some rather
conservative elements in the books--the homage to Starship Troopers and
civics class (maybe that's what you're thinking of), a dislike of the United
Nations, a pro-military viewpoint, etc.

Post by Joseph Nebus
And that's not even regarding the major problem, that there's
just no good way out of the ecological invasion besides deus ex machina,
humans-evacuate-to-space, or the death of the human ecology. None of
these are really desireable options. (Of course, I also predicted that
the New Battlestar Galactica would be a middling flop.) Anyone who's
read one book has to come to the conclusion that's the way it's going.

I too thought that BSG was impossible. My view was that the basic premise
of always running from the enemy was unappealing. I was wrong about that.

Of course, Gerrold could end his series with a defeat. It's just not that
appealing.

Post by Joseph Nebus
[1] I've seen the interesting notion advanced that science
fiction of the 1960s and 70s spent much of its time trying to study the
conclusions of the Club of Rome report. These days we've come to notice
the Club of Rome report was wrong except in the parts where it was made
up, and science fiction is trying to process the Singularity and military
fiction.

That's an interesting theory. I'm not terribly familiar with sci-fi
literature of the past three decades. I gave up reading fiction in the
1990s for various reasons--no time, too much non-fiction to read, overall
lack of interest. I liked William Gibson's early stuff a lot. But recently
I have begun writing about the link between science fiction and spaceflight.
See www.thespacereview for some recent stuff.

The influence of the Club of Rome on thinking in the pro-space movement is
something that I've wanted to explore. Gerard K. O'Neill's concepts of
space colonies was a response to that, as is The Mars Society (Robert
Zubrin's organization).

D

[Steve Hall]

Post by DDAY
----------

Post by Joseph Nebus
I'm rather sure he was a producer too, although checking out the
Internet Movie Database finds him only listed as ``program consultant''.
This may be a case of the title obscuring the role, though, based on how
much the show reflects his writing.

That could have been part of the dispute--he wanted a bigger title (and
money) based upon his contributions and Roddenberry simply listed him as a
consultant.

I seem to remember an article in one of those James Blish tell-all
Trek books that said the whole dispute between Roddenberry and Gerrold
(or at least the straw that broke the camel's back) was that Gerrold
was pushing for an AIDs-themed story with an openly gay Starfleet
character on season 1 TNG and Roddenberry was very opposed to the
idea.

[unknown]

Post by Steve Hall

Post by DDAY

Post by Joseph Nebus
I'm rather sure he was a producer too, although checking out the
Internet Movie Database finds him only listed as ``program consultant''.
This may be a case of the title obscuring the role, though, based on how
much the show reflects his writing.

That could have been part of the dispute--he wanted a bigger title (and
money) based upon his contributions and Roddenberry simply listed him as a
consultant.

I seem to remember an article in one of those James Blish tell-all
Trek books that said the whole dispute between Roddenberry and Gerrold
(or at least the straw that broke the camel's back) was that Gerrold
was pushing for an AIDs-themed story with an openly gay Starfleet
character on season 1 TNG and Roddenberry was very opposed to the
idea.

I don't blame him. Surely AIDS wouldn't be a medical issue in the 24th
century.

Beverly: "Oh, you have HIV?" [waves magic Trek-wand] "All set. Call me
when you have something serious, like a pulled muscle..."

[GeneK]

<Christopher Basken> wrote...

Post by unknown
I don't blame him. Surely AIDS wouldn't be a medical issue in the 24th
century.

No, but there have been numerous other diseases invented for
Trek over the years.

The big problem with doing an AIDS-allegory story in
TNG (at least while Roddenberry was in direct control of it)
was Roddenberry's insistence on making TNG-era humanity
even more nobly "advanced" in the 24th century than he had
made it in TOS. For 24th century Starfleet or the Federation
to have turned a blind eye to the suffering and death caused
by a contagious disease because it was confined to a group
of people who were considered outcasts by the majority of
society, or for future society to even *have* outcasts, would
have run utterly counter to Roddenberry's "positive vision of
the future." Likewise for any idea that 24th century goodguys
could abandon or destroy some of their own because they
had become trapped on some infected ship without access to
a reset button. The closest newtrek could come to it was
"Haven," and even for that they had to push the blame for
inaction off onto some other planet's authorities. Years later,
post-Roddenberry, Trek did do a story in which "our heroes"
were forced to confront morally unacceptable decisions on
the part of their superiors ("Insurrection,") and we got a
chance to see just how bad "Blood and Fire" might have
been had Gerrold been able to get it made.

GeneK

[unknown]

Post by GeneK
<Christopher Basken> wrote...

Post by unknown
I don't blame him. Surely AIDS wouldn't be a medical issue in the 24th
century.

No, but there have been numerous other diseases invented for
Trek over the years.

The key word is "invented." Trek is an allegory, or a metaphor. They
shouldn't have AIDS or HIV, but they should (and have) depict fictional
diseases that make the same kind of philosophical point.

They should have never introduced actual Native Americans as a thematic
element (in TNG, and then later as backstory for Chakotay). That was a
mistake, IMO, and something Roddenberry would no doubt have opposed, as
well. If you're going to get literal, then why bother setting it in a
fictional universe? And if you're setting it in a fictional universe,
then getting literal has an impact on willing suspension of disbelief.

[GeneK]

<Christopher Basken> wrote...

Post by unknown
The key word is "invented." Trek is an allegory, or a metaphor. They
shouldn't have AIDS or HIV, but they should (and have) depict fictional
diseases that make the same kind of philosophical point.
They should have never introduced actual Native Americans as a thematic
element (in TNG, and then later as backstory for Chakotay). That was a
mistake, IMO, and something Roddenberry would no doubt have opposed, as
well. If you're going to get literal, then why bother setting it in a
fictional universe? And if you're setting it in a fictional universe,
then getting literal has an impact on willing suspension of disbelief.

Fans often lionized Roddenberry for being able to "fool"
the network censors by slipping in relevant social comments
in TOS, but I think that once the censors' power over Trek
was diminished we saw that they had actually prodded
more creativity and subtlety out of Roddenberry and his
team. Social commentary in Trek post-TOS tended to be
as subtle and creative as being bashed over the head with
a hammer.

GeneK

[DDAY]

----------

Post by unknown

Post by GeneK
No, but there have been numerous other diseases invented for
Trek over the years.

The key word is "invented." Trek is an allegory, or a metaphor. They
shouldn't have AIDS or HIV, but they should (and have) depict fictional
diseases that make the same kind of philosophical point.

I'm not quite clear where you're coming from here. I doubt that Gerrold
wanted an episode about AIDS. What he probably wanted was an episode about
a disease that had the same social stigma as AIDS--i.e. personal behavior
led to it and led to people being ostracized from their society.

In fact, hasn't Trek already done this?

Trek _has_ done the social allegory stuff a lot. They did it quite a bit
with TOS, and I think they really tended to avoid it with TNG, DS9 and VOY.
When they did do it on those shows, it was often really hamfisted.

One of Trek's big problems for the later series was a refusal to be bold
with their stories and their characters. They did an episode where Riker
fell in love with an androgynous person, which was clearly an allegory for
being gay, but they watered it down a lot to the point where it really had
no point. And I don't think that Trek ever had a gay character did they?
Too provocative for the show about the future...

You can see the reaction to this in a lot of shows that emerged starting in
the 1990s. B5, Firefly and now BSG have all striven to be the anti-Trek in
numerous ways. Ron Moore has said that he has done a lot of things on BSG
simply because he was _not_ allowed to do them on Trek.



D

[unknown]

Post by DDAY

Post by unknown

Post by GeneK
No, but there have been numerous other diseases invented for
Trek over the years.

The key word is "invented." Trek is an allegory, or a metaphor. They
shouldn't have AIDS or HIV, but they should (and have) depict fictional
diseases that make the same kind of philosophical point.

I'm not quite clear where you're coming from here. I doubt that Gerrold
wanted an episode about AIDS. What he probably wanted was an episode about
a disease that had the same social stigma as AIDS--i.e. personal behavior
led to it and led to people being ostracized from their society.
In fact, hasn't Trek already done this?

I was just (initially) responding to Steve Hall's post about Gerrold
wanting an actual AIDS-themed episode. My feeling is that Trek works
better when it's not literal. That is, they should do (and have done)
episodes about debilitating diseases and the social attitudes toward
them. Roddenberry certainly wouldn't have nixed an allegorical AIDS
story, since a number of them appeared under his watch, but I can
understand his resistance to a literal AIDS story.

As for the openly gay Trek character... well, Reed eventually appeared,
didn't he? ;-)

Post by DDAY
Trek _has_ done the social allegory stuff a lot. They did it quite a bit
with TOS, and I think they really tended to avoid it with TNG, DS9 and VOY.
When they did do it on those shows, it was often really hamfisted.
One of Trek's big problems for the later series was a refusal to be bold
with their stories and their characters. They did an episode where Riker
fell in love with an androgynous person, which was clearly an allegory for
being gay, but they watered it down a lot to the point where it really had
no point. And I don't think that Trek ever had a gay character did they?
Too provocative for the show about the future...

Definitely too provocative for the 60s and 80s. Might have gotten away
with it in the 90s (B5 danced around it, Buffy had no backlash
problems). Reed jokes aside, they could have done it in Enterprise and
the TV audience wouldn't have blinked. But B&B were hardly bastions of
courage.

Post by DDAY
You can see the reaction to this in a lot of shows that emerged starting in
the 1990s. B5, Firefly and now BSG have all striven to be the anti-Trek in
numerous ways. Ron Moore has said that he has done a lot of things on BSG
simply because he was _not_ allowed to do them on Trek.

Despite my affection for both B5 and BSG, doing something "just
because" Trek didn't isn't necessarily a winning path...

[DDAY]

----------

Post by unknown
Despite my affection for both B5 and BSG, doing something "just
because" Trek didn't isn't necessarily a winning path...

But they also did it because it was good drama.

Has Trek ever had a character as flawed and interesting as Colonel Tigh? Or
Kara Thrace?



D

[[e-mail]]

Post by DDAY
----------

Post by unknown
Despite my affection for both B5 and BSG, doing something "just
because" Trek didn't isn't necessarily a winning path...

But they also did it because it was good drama.
Has Trek ever had a character as flawed and interesting as Colonel Tigh? Or
Kara Thrace?

Those that came at all close were portrayed as either screwups
(Kevin Riley), criminals (Harry Mudd) or insane (Garth).

TNG gives us Mr. Barclay, Vash (who tried to use Picard to steal the
Tox Uthat), and the transporter-duplicate of Riker (OK, something of a
stretch for insane).

The one thing that drove me most nuts about TNG was the overarching
requirement of "niceness". I could imagine Scotty keeping a still
somewhere aboard "for emergencies" and getting winked at for it, but
never Geordi.

Conversely Voyager tried to be _less_ nice (half the crew were
conscripted "war criminals" fer crying out loud) particularly the EMT
hologram who was a right asshole.

As for DS9, the most interesting characters were the Bad Guys!


Mark L. Fergerson