Done well, alternate history is some of the most thought-provoking, argument-inducing fiction around. It also often inspires those who read it to go find out what really happened, which isn’t a bad thing, either. Done not so well, it reminds people how painfully true Sturgeon’s Law is. And I expect we’ll all go on arguing about what is good and what’s not so good and why or why not for a long, long time to come.
FILM AND TELEVISION
Michael Cassutt
Michael Cassutt successfully writes both SF and television scripts.
In my increasingly distant youth, a science fiction or fantasy film was a rarity, either a low-budget wonder that happened to sneak out of Hollywood early one morning or, like 2001, a major studio event that got made only because a powerful director wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Now, a year into Kubrick and Clarke’s millennium, five or six of the ten top-grossing motion pictures of all time are science fiction or fantasy, depending on what megablockbuster has opened lately. SF and fantasy are part of the motion picture landscape—a lucrative part.
Television is also our playground, if you believe a recent USA Today poll, in which baby boomers named The Twilight Zone and Star Trek as two of their top three favorite series of all time. More recently, several generations of Star Trek sequels have had long, loving runs—Next Generation, Deep Space Nine,Voyager, and now Enterprise. Intriguing series such as Babylon 5 and Max Headroom have come and gone. The X-Files lasted for nine seasons. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is still kicking satanic butt. Farscape sails on through its peculiar universe, low-rated but critically approved.
What is there to complain about? Well, for one thing, most SF or fantasy films and television are still written and produced by mainstream talents, not by SF writers who have published in the magazines or written novels. (Babylon 5’s J. Michael Straczynski is the notable exception.)
Which means that the cutting-edge concepts on display in Asimov’s, Analog, or Interzone don’t make it to the screen. Well, make that rarely: there was this movie called The Matrix . . .
It may be that cutting-edge SF is, by its nature, limited to a more elite (which is to say, smaller) audience.
Look at the finalists for the Nebula script category, as selected by the membership of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America: X-Men (based on the famed Marvel comic book), the wonderful Chinese fantasy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Are Thou? and (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Joss Whedon’s television script “The Body.”
Four fantasies. If you wanted to be tough about it, you could say three fantasies: O Brother is a musical comedy that continues the Coen Brothers’ exploration of the American yokel.
The Spielberg–posthumous Kubrick collaboration, A.I., based on material by Brian Aldiss and Ian Watson, and emerging from the core of traditional science fiction, didn’t make the cut. Nor was it particularly successful, certainly not by Spielbergian standards. It’s not hard to see why: the treatment of the subject matter was slow and obvious. Worse, Kubrick’s cold, unflinching, and unforgiving view of human nature fits with Spielberg’s warmth and sentimentality like a shot of gin with a slice of tiramisu. Yuck.
Perhaps the most rigorously traditional and successful SF film or television production of 2001 was Sci Fi Channel’s miniseries Dune, adapted and directed by John Harrison from the classic Frank Herbert novel. It was not as artistic as David Lynch’s critically battered (yet, by some, secretly appreciated) 1984 feature film, but it made more sense, helped, no doubt, by a six-hour running time.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the only prime-time drama series to approach the very mainstream West Wing in having a clear writer’s voice, suffered somehow in moving from the WB to UPN for fall 2001. It would require more moral character than I possess to give WB network execs credit for Buffy’s success; perhaps Whedon and his talented staff are tired or, with the spin-off Angel series, stretched too thin.
Enterprise, which is simultaneously a follow-on to Voyager and a prequel to the original series, premiered strongly in fall 2001, though it has yet to become “appointment” television. Well, Next Generation and Deep Space Nine took two seasons to find themselves. Enterprise has the outlandish luxury of a five-year, 120- episode commitment.
Syndicated science fiction continued to fill Saturday afternoons, with varying degrees of success. Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda prospered in its second season; Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, ran out of gas in its fifth. The superhero series Mutant X arrived, aimed squarely at the audience that enjoyed the X-Men movie but was impatient for the sequel.
Not all the SF on television held its own as well as these series. The X-Files tottered into the television equivalent of old age. Roswell squandered a terrific concept (alienated teenaged aliens here on Earth). The Sci Fi Channel and UPN had notable failures, best left undescribed.
The failures and even the successful series suffer from a conceptual sameness: they all deal with heroic starship captains, alien hunters, or superheroes. Where are the stories set on our world in a future we might see? Where are adaptations of SF?
I think they’re on the way. The explosive growth in computer-generated special effects has made it possible to create almost any sort of world on the screen, even on a series television budget and schedule.
Certainly, feature films show astonishing promise. In the fall of 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The Fellowship of the Ring opened to huge box office success. Harry Potter, based on the megaselling novel by J. K. Rowling, was perhaps as good a movie as one could expect, but The Fellowship of the Ring was successful in almost every way. Simply committing to the three movies—at a cost of more than half a billion dollars—was an act of astonishing courage by New Line. For an effects-laden fantasy film with no big stars? And a relatively unknown director (Peter Jackson)?
Yet it all worked. Even the pickiest Tolkien fans seemed pleased with Fellowship. This picky viewer certainly was.
If anything can be made, in film or television, how long can it be before we see real science fiction?
CATHERINE ASARO
Catherine Asaro—quantum physicist, mother, and former ballet dancer—zips around Maryland from NASA to ballet classes at practically light speed. Born in California, she received her Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard. She has done research at, among other places, the University of Toronto and the Max Planck Institut fur Astrophysik in Germany. She was a physics professor until 1990, when she established her own consulting company, Molecudyne Research.
Catherine’s novels combine hard science, space adventure, and romance. She makes her ideas do double duty; some of the science in her popular SF series made a more sober appearance in her 1996 paper for The American Journal of Physics, “Complex Speeds and Special Relativity.”
First serialized in Analog in 1999, The Quantum Rose is part of Catherine’s well-received Skolian Empire series. This excerpt is the novel’s exciting opening.
THE QUANTUM ROSE
Catherine Asaro
1
IRONBRIDGE
First Scattering Channel
Kamoj Quanta Argali, the governor of Argali Province, shot through the water and broke the surface of the river. Basking in the day’s beauty, she tilted her face up to the violet sky. The tiny disk of Jul, the sun, was so bright she didn’t dare look near it. Curtains of green and gold light shimmered across the heavens in an aurora visible even in the afternoon.
Her bodyguard Lyode stood on the bank, surveying the area. Lyode’s true name was a jumble of words from the ancient language Iotaca, which scholars pronounced as light emitting diode. No one knew what it meant, though, so they all called her Lyode.
Unease prickled Kamoj. She treaded water, her hair swirling around her body, wrapping her slender waist and then letting go. Her reflection showed a young woman with black curls framing a heart-shaped face. She had dark eyes, as did most people in the province of Argali, though hers
were larger than usual, with long lashes that right now sparkled with droplets of water.
Nothing seemed wrong. Reeds as red as pod-plums nodded on the bank, and six-legged lizards scuttled through them, glinting blue and green among the stalks. A few paces behind Lyode, the prismatic forest began. Up the river, in the distant north, the peaks of the Rosequartz Mountains floated like clouds in the haze. She drifted around to the other bank, but saw nothing amiss there either. Tubemoss covered the hills in a turquoise carpet broken by stone outcroppings that gnarled up like the knuckles of a buried giant.
What bothered her wasn’t unease exactly, more a troubled anticipation. She supposed she should feel guilty about swimming here, but it was hard to summon that response on such a lovely day. The afternoon hummed with life, golden and cool.
Kamoj sighed. As much as she enjoyed her swim, invigorated by the chill water and air, she did have her position as governor to consider. Swimming naked, even in this secluded area, hardly qualified as dignified. She glided to the bank and clambered out, reeds slapping against her body.
Her bodyguard continued to scan the area. Lyode suddenly stiffened, staring across the water. She reached over her shoulder for the ballbow strapped to her back.
Puzzled, Kamoj glanced back. A cluster of greenglass stags had appeared from behind a hill on the other side of the river, each animal with a rider astride its long back. Sun rays splintered against the green scales that covered the stags. Each stood firm on its six legs, neither stamping nor pawing the air. With their iridescent antlers spread to either side of their heads, they shimmered in the blue-tinged sunshine.
Their riders were all watching her.
Sweet Airys, Kamoj thought, mortified. She ran up the slope to where she had left her clothes in a pile behind Lyode. Her bodyguard was taking a palm-sized marble ball out of a bag on her belt. She slapped it into the targeting tube of her crossbow, which slid inside an accordion cylinder. Drawing back the bow, Lyode sighted on the watchers across the river.
Of course, here in the Argali, Lyode’s presence was more an indication of Kamoj’s rank than an expectation of danger. Indeed, none of the watchers drew his bow. They looked more intrigued than anything else. One of the younger fellows grinned at Kamoj, his teeth flashing white in the streaming sunshine.
“I can’t believe this,” Kamoj muttered. She stopped behind Lyode and scooped up her clothes. Drawing her tunic over her head, she added, “Thashaverlyster.”
“What?” Lyode said.
Kamoj jerked down the tunic, covering herself with soft gray cloth as fast as possible. Lyode stayed in front of her, keeping her bow poised to shoot. Kamoj counted five riders across the river, all in copper breeches and blue shirts, with belts edged by feathers from the blue-tailed quetzal.
One man sat a head taller than the rest. Broad-shouldered and long-legged, he wore a midnight-blue cloak with a hood that hid his face. His stag lifted its front two legs and pawed the air, its bi-hooves glinting like glass, though they were a hardier material, hornlike and durable. The man ignored its restless motions, keeping his cowled head turned toward Kamoj.
“That’s Havyrl Lionstar,” Kamoj repeated as she pulled on her gray leggings. “The tall man on the big greenglass.”
“How do you know?” Lyode asked. “His face is covered.”
“Who else is that big? Besides, those riders are wearing Lionstar colors.” Kamoj watched the group set off, cantering into the blue-green hills. “Hah! You scared them away.”
“With five against one? I doubt it.” Lyode gave her a dry look. “More likely they left because the show is over.”
Kamoj winced. She hoped her uncle didn’t hear of this. As the only incorporated man in Argali, Maxard Argali had governed the province for Kamoj in her youth. In the years since she had become an adult, Kamoj had shouldered the responsibility of leading her people and province. But Maxard, her only living kin, remained a valued advisor.
Lionstar’s people were the only ones who might reveal her indiscretion, though, and they rarely came to the village. Lionstar had “rented” the Quartz Palace in the mountains for more than a hundred days now, and in that time no one she knew had seen his face. Why he wanted a ruined palace she had no idea, given that he refused all visitors. When his emissaries had inquired about it, she and Maxard had been dismayed by the suggestion that they let a stranger take residence in the honored, albeit disintegrating, home of their ancestors. Kamoj still remembered how her face had heated as she listened to the outlanders explain their leige’s “request.”
However, no escape had existed from the “rent” Lionstar’s people put forth. The law was clear: she and Maxard had to best his challenge or bow to his authority. Impoverished Argali could never match such an offer: shovels and awls forged from fine metals, stacks of firewood, golden bridle bells, dewhoney and molasses, dried rose-leeks, cobber-wheat, tri-grains, and reedflour that poured through your fingers like powdered rubies.
So they yielded—and an incensed Maxard had demanded that Lionstar pay a rent of that same worth every fifty days. It was a lien so outrageous, all Argali had feared Lionstar would send his soldiers to “renegotiate.”
Instead, the cowled stranger had paid.
With Lyode at her side, Kamoj entered the forest. Walking among the trees, with tubemoss under her bare feet, made her even more aware of her precarious position. Why had he come riding here? Did he also have an interest in her lands? She had invested his rent in machinery and tools for farms in Argali. As much as she disliked depending on a stranger, it was better than seeing her people starve. But she couldn’t bear to lose more to him, especially not this forest she loved.
So. She would have to inquire into his activities and see what she could discover.
The beauty of the forest helped soothe her concern. Drapes of moss hung on the trees, and shadow-ferns nodded around their trunks. Argali vines hung everywhere, heavy with the blush-pink roses that gave her home its name. Argali. It meant “vine rose” in Iotaca.
At least, most scholars translated it as rose. One fellow insisted it meant resonance. He also claimed they misspelled Kamoj’s middle name, Quanta, an Iotaca word with no known translation. The name Kamoj came from the Iotaca word for bound, so if this odd scholar was correct, her name meant Bound Quantum Resonance. She smiled at the absurdity. Rose made more sense, of course.
The vibrant life in the autumnal woods cheered Kamoj. Camouflaged among the roses, puff lizards swelled out their red sacs. A ruffling breeze parted the foliage to let a sunbeam slant through the forest, making the scale-bark on the trees sparkle. Then the ray vanished and the forest returned to its dusky violet shadows. A thornbat whizzed by, wings beating furiously. It homed in on a lizard and stabbed its needled beak into the red sac. As the puff deflated with a whoosh of air, the lizard scrambled away, leaving the disgruntled thornbat to dart on without its prey.
Powdered scales drifted across Kamoj’s arm. She wondered why people had no scales. The inconsistency had always puzzled her, since her early childhood. Most everything else on Balumil, the world, had them. Scaled tree roots swollen with moisture churned the soil. The trees grew slowly, converting water into stored energy to use during the long summer droughts and endless winter snows. Unlike people, who fought to survive throughout the grueling year, seasonal plants grew only in the gentler spring and autumn. Their big, hard-scaled seeds lay dormant until the climate was to their liking.
Sorrow brushed Kamoj’s thoughts. If only people were as well adapted to survive. Each Long Year they struggled to replenish their population after the endless winter decimated their numbers. Last winter they had lost even more than usual to the blizzards and brutal ices.
Including her parents.
Even after so long, that loss haunted her. She had been a small child when she and Maxard, her mother’s brother, became sole heirs to the impoverished remains of a province that had once been proud.
Will Lionstar take what little we have left? Sh
e glanced at Lyode, wondering if her bodyguard shared her concerns. A tall woman with lean muscles, Lyode had the dark eyes and hair common in Argali. Here in the shadows, the vertical slits of her pupils widened until they almost filled her irises. She carried Kamoj’s boots dangling from her belt. She and Kamoj had been walking together in comfortable silence.
“Do you know the maize-girls who do chores in the kitchen?” Kamoj asked.
Lyode turned from her scan of the forest and smiled at Kamoj. “You mean the three children? Tall as your elbow?”
“That’s right.” Kamoj chuckled, thinking of the girls’ bright energy and fantastic stories. “They told me, in solemn voices, that Havyrl Lionstar came here in a cursed ship that the wind chased across the sky, and that he can never go home because he’s so loathsome the elements refuse to let him sail again.” Her smile faded. “Where do these stories come from? Apparently most of Argali believes it. They say he’s centuries old, with a metal face so hideous it will give you nightmares.”
The older woman spoke quietly. “Legends often have seeds in truth. Not that he’s supernatural, but that his behavior makes people fear him.”
Kamoj had heard too many tales of Lionstar’s erratic behavior to dismiss them. Since he had come to Argali, she had several times seen his wild rides herself, from a distance. He tore across the land like a madman.
Watching her closely, Lyode lightened her voice. “Well, you know, with the maize-girls, who can say? They tried to convince me that Argali is haunted. They think that’s why all the light panels have gone dark.”
Kamoj gave a soft laugh, relieved to change the subject. “They told me that too. They weren’t too specific on who was haunting what, though.” Legend claimed the Current had once lit all the houses here in the Northern Lands. But that had been centuries past, even longer in the North Sky Islands, where the Current had died thousands of years ago. The only reason one light panel worked in Argali House, Kamoj’s home, was because her parents had found a few intact fiber-optic threads in the ruins of the Quartz Palace.