Hot off the Thrawn Trilogy and still thirsting for more Star Wars I picked up some copies of Michael P. Kube-McDowells’ Black Fleet Crisis. Why the Black Fleet Crisis? Because it looked like the next chunk of significant Extended Universe continuity after the Thrawn Trilogy from an author that didn’t actively turn me off. (By which I mean Kevin Anderson.)

VOLUME 1: BEFORE THE STORM

Unfortunately, despite doing my best to avoid the dregs of Star Wars licensing, I found the first volume of this trilogy to be very disappointing.

Why? Well, for starters, Princess Leia doing her best impression of Neville Chamberlain is a bizarre choice, and it quickly goes from simply not ringing true to being painfully stupid. (“Hitler is such a nice guy, it’s just that his hands are tied by his government.” “Hitler might be hiding a massive military force? I can’t believe it, so it must not be true.” “Hitler has derailed the negotiations, slandered my name, and blamed me for the deaths of a dozen people he killed? Then I must be doing something wrong!” “Hitler has killed 300,000 people in a genocidal purge? Cover it up. It’ll make me look bad if it comes out.”) Then she goes home to sulk for awhile before accusing the people around her of being sexist because they’ve been questioning her erratic and moronic behavior.

Kube-McDowell also seems to have some difficulty in keeping his eye on the ball. This entire volume, for example, actually consists of three entirely separate plot lines which essentially never interact with each other. Each plot is characterized by short little spurts of action interrupted frequently by expository lumps, many of which have only a tangential relationship to the action. Individual scenes will often start just AFTER a major event, the details of which will be backfilled a couple of paragraphs later through exposition.

The result is a completely dysfunctional pacing. So when you’re trying not to hurl the book across the room in response to Leia’s latest stupidity, you’re being jerked willy-nilly around the galaxy.

But, in some ways, this disjointed and schizophrenic structure may have been the trilogy’s salvation for me. If the only thing the first volume had offered me was Leia the Incompetent, I doubt I would have continued reading. But the other two plots, one involving Luke’s quest to find himself and the other involving Lando’s exploration of an alien ghost ship, both had enough interesting elements in them to keep me from completely disengaging from the novel.

(Even given that, though, if Leia hadn’t taken her brain off the shelf and put it back in her head where it belongs during the last twenty pages or so of the book, I probably would have given up on the trilogy.)

A few other thoughts here:

Unlike Zahn, Michael Kube-McDowell can’t quite capture the voices of the characters. The characters are true to form, but the words don’t quite sound right in their mouths; the rhythm of the dialogue doesn’t quite flow right. (There are two exceptions to this: Leia, who, as noted, isn’t true to form in the slightest. But also Luke, in quite the opposite direction: Kube-McDowell’s realizing of a Luke fifteen years older and possessed of a profound insight into the wisdom of the Force is simply captivating. It’s not the Luke of the movies, but it’s still Luke — and that’s a very impressive accomplishment.)

In reading this back-to-back with the Thrawn Trilogy, some of the most interesting details are those which conflict with one another: Zahn, for example, postulates that Yoda hung out in the swamp on Dagobah because of the proximity of the cave drenched in the energies of the dark side — a negative charge damping out his positive charge and allowing him to stay hidden from the Emperor and Vader. But Kube-McDowell chooses to focus, instead, on the common element between Yoda and Obi-Wan: Their hermitage. And he reads a great depth of meaning into that hermitage, and draws from it a philosophical revelation of what it means to be a powerful user of the Force.

And watching Luke struggle with the realization that he’s truly outstripped the teachings of his Masters and must now chart his own course is probably the strongest thing about this first volume, and the thing most responsible for getting me to crack the cover on volume two.

VOLUME 2: SHIELD OF LIES

And I’m really glad I did crack the cover on volume two, because Shield of Lies is a massive improvement over the first volume.

The structural problems of the first novel disappear as Kube-McDowell implements the simple expedient of splitting each of this three plots (Leia, Luke, and Lando) into separate parts and presenting them one at a time. The result looks more like a collection of three novellas than a novel, but if it makes for good reading, I’m not going to complain.

Most importantly, Leia’s veil of stupidity is lifted. And with Leia firing on full-thrusters, the political thriller at the heart of the Black Fleet Crisis goes from unrealized potential to page-turning intensity.

If this trilogy were published today, we’d be hearing endless gripes from people complaining that Kube-McDowell has tainted the Star Wars universe with an injection of modern politics. The Black Fleet Crisis, particularly in this second volume, looks an awful lot like the current war in Iraq . And after a quick glance at the copyright date dispels any suspicion of the novel’s possible influences, you can only sit back and appreciate the versimilitude and depth of Kube-McDowell’s narrative.

Where I struggled through the first volume in this trilogy, the second volume gave me a couple of sleep-deprived nights of “just one more chapter” reading. And when I finished the last page, I was immediatley compelled to snatch up the third volume and continue reading.

VOLUME 3: TYRANT’S TEST

Nor was I disappointed. The third volume delivers on much the same level as the second.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the trilogy’s third volume, however, is the revelation that one of the three plot threads in the trilogy does not, in fact, have any connection to the Black Fleet Crisis in any way, shape, or form. It could be completely excised from the trilogy and published as it’s own novella without any negative effect upon either itself or the rest of the trilogy. This is, needless to say, pretty bizarre.

Not that I’m complaining about the content of this particular sub-plot. It’s a solid piece of storytelling, and it manages to tell an honest-to-god science fiction story, albeit with Star Wars style.

It’s just odd that this novella, while it may be interspersed throughout the trilogy, doesn’t truly seem to belong to the trilogy.

This third volume also delivers a resounding and action-packed finale. Unfortunately, I can’t quite claim that it was an entirely satisfying finale, in large part due to the fact that — like Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy — this conclusion seems to have large elements of deus ex machina and liberal coincidence strewn around.

But, in the final analysis, I’m really glad that I persevered through the tribulations of the first volume here, because the second and third volumes provide some great entertainment.

GRADES:

BEFORE THE STORM: C
SHIELD OF LIES: B
TYRANT’S TEST: B-

Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Published: 1996
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Cover Price: $6.99
ISBNs: 0-55-357273-3 / 0-55-357277-6 / 0-55-357275-X
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Perhaps against all common sense, I’m actually excited by the imminent release of Revenge of the Sith. Actually, “ecstatic” would be the better word (although that doesn’t help my case for sanity.)

Sure, the last two films have shown what happens when you take someone who hasn’t written a script in 15 years and hasn’t directed a movie in 22 years and give them a $200 million budget without any editorial oversight: You get a flabby film from someone showing a lot of creative rust. But, hey, if you work off some of that flab, sand away that rust, and imagine a fresh paint job in a couple of places, you can turn these mediocre movies into some great movies.

But, more importantly, Attack of the Clones was a much better film than The Phantom Menace out of the starting gate. Lucas is working off that flab and he’s getting those rust spots cleaned up. If Revenge of the Sith shows as much improvement over Attack of the Clones as Attack of the Clones showed over The Phantom Menace — and if Lucas can keep his recent penchant for inappopriate humor in check (and the promised darker tone of the movie may indicate that as a serious possibility) — then Revenge of the Sith will be an absolutely fantastic movie. (The tragedy is that, with Revenge of the Sith completed, Lucas will probably retire back to his producer’s chair. Spielberg has spent the last twenty years constantly practicing his craft and improving his talent; if only the same could be said of Lucas.)

And I’m fully aware of the fact that I may be eating these words and washing them down with the bitter draft of disappointment come this time next month. But, right now, I’m pumped up. And I’m looking for things to slake my Star Wars thirst.

Getting widescreen copies of the original versions of the original movies on LD was what started the anticipation. The Clone Wars animated series is almost certainly what got me jumping up and down. Which left me to turn my attention to the Extended Universe.

Back in ’92, when Bantam first got the tie-in license for Star Wars novels and Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire was released with all the attendant fanfare, I religiously ordered each and every volume from Westfield Comics as they came out. I enjoyed them a lot, and unlike my massive collection of Star Trek tie-in novels (which are now buried in a box in my storeroom somewhere), these have almost always managed to find a place on my shelves. As result, as the hunger for Star Wars began to consume me, my eye conveniently fell upon the Thrawn Trilogy.

(Tangentially, Bantam would probably have benefitted more from my pubescent period of completist collectorism if the Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy had not been followed by the relatively atrocious Truce at Bakura and The Courtship of Princess Leia. And, if I recall correctly, these were followed by Kevin Anderon’s Jedi Search. At the time, I didn’t know who Kevin Anderson was, but I never forgot him. I didn’t pick up a Star Wars novel for more than a decade after that triumvirate of crap.)

What made these novels work for me? Well…

Zahn never violates my sense of what the Star Wars universe should be. This is a problem that a lot of tie-in novels have: For example, I recently glanced at a Star Wars comic which featured Yoda flying around on the Millennium Falcon with Luke, Han, and Chewie. That was just so wrong, on so many levels, that I immediately put the comic back down.

More importantly, Zahn gives us stories which feel like Star Wars stories. To some extent, he does it by stocking his story with familiar phrases (“I have a bad feeling about this”), locations (cantinas, asteroid fields), and dramatic tropes. But when it comes to Star Wars, that’s a legitimate dramatic technique. Lucas talks about writing the Star Wars movies as if they were true space operas, with certain themes being played again and again in variation. Some would simply scoff at this as being creatively lazy, but I find that Lucas is absolutely right: Exercised with the proper restraint, the technique adds a thematic depth and resonance. Zahn, perhaps, pushes a little too hard at times, but he succeeds at extending the thematic beats of the original movies into his sequels.

With the exception of Threepio, Zahn really manages to capture the unique voice of each character. (And I don’t know what it is about Threepio: I have yet to find a tie-in product that actually manages to capture Threepio’s unique voice. Even Lucas seems to struggle in finding it in Attack of the Clones.) Getting character voices fundamentally right is something a lot of tie-in authors struggle with — and some of them get it so wrong that, whatever other strengths their work may have, I find it impossible to enjoy their story. But when you can succeed at it like Zahn does, it goes a long ways towards legitimizing your story and immersing the reader back into the familiar environs of the original source material.

Zahn also does a great job of balancing familiar friends with brand new faces. Luke, Han, Leia, and all the other mainstays of the original trilogy get plenty of screen time — but Zahn also introduces a cast of new characters and fits them seamlessly into the Star Wars saga. Grand Admiral Thrawn may not be a Darth Vader (who is?), but he’s a great arch-villain nonetheless. Among the others, Mara Jade and Talon Karrde manage to do more than just hold their own as major members of the cast, while characters like Fey’lya, Winter, and Ferrier take up supporting roles alongside familiar faces like Admiral Ackbar, Wedge Antilles, and Mon Mothma.

When I first read these books, I took them up to my mother and I said: “You have to read these. You could literally film these tomorrow and they’d be perfect sequels.”

Looking at them again from a slightly older and wiser point of view, I can’t quite agree with my earlier sentiment. Not only because the prequels have caused these novels to slip out of synch with the canon (Zahn gets the Clone Wars completely inverted, for example), but also due to a certain lack of vigor: There is nothing I would point to here as a debilitating flaw, but there’s also nothing that I would call an outstanding success (with the possible exception of the character of Mara Jade). And, even more importantly, the essentially mythological flavor of the Star Wars movies is lacking here. This is a fun little adventure romp with some great military set-pieces and several moments of intriguing character drama. But that’s all it is.

Of course, that’s hardly a condemnation. The Thrawn Trilogy is a great little piece of space opera, and it’s absolutely perfect if you’re looking for nothing more than some rock solid entertainment.

TRILOGY GRADE: B

HEIR TO THE EMPIRE: B+
DARK FORCE RISING: B
THE LAST COMMAND: B-

Timothy Zahn
Published: 1992-1993
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Cover Price: $6.99
ISBNs: 0-55-329612-4 / 0-55-356071-9 / 0-55-356492-7
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The reaction to the Lensmen novels of E.E. “Doc” Smith I mentioned yesterday is taking longer to finish than I’d hoped. Instead, let me share some thoughts on the grading scale I use for the What I’m Reading reviews:

A – Excellent

B – Good

C – Average/Mediocre

D – Poor

F – Worthless

Or, to be a little more descriptive:

A – This book is a classic. You should definitely give it a try ASAP, and it’s probably worth reading multiple times.

B – This book is very enjoyable. I recommend it, and it might be worth a reread.

C – This book was okay. If it’s in a genre you particularly like, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here — but there are a lot of things that will distract and detract from your reading experience. Definitely not worth a reread.

D – This book was seriously flawed. It wasn’t a complete waste of time, but there’s not enough here for me to recommend it on any level. Approach with extreme caution.

F – Complete and utter waste of time. Unless someone is paying you to read this book, don’t bother.

Pluses and minuses generally modify or color these grades. An A- is an excellent book with a few flaws. A B+ is a good book with some memorable moments of genius peeking through.

Most of the grades you’ll see from me will probably be in the A or B range. The reason for this is simple: I’m generally pretty good at picking what books I want to read. Since I’m not reading a lot of crap, I’m not in a position to review it.

An A+, it should be noted, is reserved for a book which immediately finds its way onto my personal Top 50. That isn’t an exact science, since I don’t actually keep a precise Top 50 list, but if I’m giving a book an A+ its because I think it compares favorably with Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, Kuttner’s Fury, Cherryh’s Cyteen, Howard’s Hour of the Dragon, Banks’ Use of Weapons, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Bujold’s Memory, or Bester’s The Stars My Destination. Take that as you will.

The basic theory of this grading system is Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap. I figure that if something falls into that 90% range, then it’s not worth wasting the time to determine exactly how crappy it is — so all of that material is simply graded F. The other grades deal entirely with that 10% of the pile which is worth our time to consider.

Any type of rational analysis of these novels would be forced to conclude that they just don’t work, plain and simple. Smith’s setting is improbable, his plot is riddled with clichés, and his characters are laughably drawn in the extreme. When you learn for example that Richard Seaton is the best physicist of his generation… and the best magician… and the best gunman… Your willing suspension of disbelief threatens to cry out and drop dead on the spot. These people aren’t human!

Ah! There we go.

These characters aren’t human: They’re demigods strutting across the cosmos. And you can either choose to rebel at the sheer improbability of it all, or you can accept Seaton for what he is and thrill at what he can accomplish.

Whether by chance or by design, Smith embraces a mythic tone and tells an epic legend of the spaceways. And, on that level, these are fun little books even by the standards of today.

But they become particularly impressive if you can cast your mind back to the time when they were written and imagine reading them in the pulps of the 1920s. If you can do that, then you get to watch as E.E. “Doc” Smith almost single-handedly creates science fiction as we know it today. It is not an exaggeration in the least for me to say that I cannot recall the last science fiction novel I read which was not, in some way, influenced by the ideas and concepts which Smith introduces in the original Skylark novels. (At the very least you have to give Smith justice and remember that he didn’t write clichés; he created ideas of such enduring power that they became clichés.)

Let’s talk a little about the individual volumes:

Skylark of Space is almost certainly the least satisfying entry in the series. It’s a first novel, and it shows a lot of the inconsistency which is typical for a first novel. Perhaps the biggest problem, however, is that it seems to take Smith a while to settle down into the mythic pace that makes the series work. It’s one thing for Seaton the Demi-God to accomplish three impossible things before breakfast; it’s quite another for Seaton the Merely Human to do so.

What Skylark of Space does have going for it, however, is that it’s the first. Not just the first Skylark novel, but the first space opera; and the first interstellar voyage; and the first… Well, you get the idea. So the degree to which you enjoy this novel will depend a lot on how much of a thrill you can get out of reading a literary revolution.

In any case, it’s with the second volume – Skylark Three – that this series really hits its stride: The mythic quality of the series has found consistency; Smith’s epic vision of intergalactic space opera has been fully realized; and the plot is firing on full jets now. So even if you try Skylark of Space and find nothing more than a clunky  and out-dated piece of cliché, I’d still recommend giving Skylark Three a chance to change your mind.

Once Smith has found his rhythm in Skylark Three, he brings it to a brilliant crescendo in Skylark of Valeron.

One of the great things about this series is that Smith is never satisfied resting upon his laurels. With every passing chapter he’s raising the stakes, throwing out new ideas, and broadening his scope. The result is a rollercoaster ride which stretches the imagination and leaves you breathlessly turning the pages with anticipation.

Skylark DuQuesne, written about three decades after the blinding flash and deafening report of Skylark of Valeron, is a disappointment, however. The plot never quite gels and the action is frequently kept on track only by “virtue” of the author hooking it up to a locomotive and informing the reader that, in point of fact, the whole discordant mess will all tie together in the end. (Which it does… sort of. Although only by virtue of a magical deus ex machina. And I mean that literally.)

Skylark DuQuesne’s sole saving grace is that, once more, Smith conjures forth images of epic grandeur and startling creativity at a breath-taking pace. But, unfortunately, the foundation is lacking, and the result seems hollow.

I think it also needs to be said that Skylark DuQuesne brought into sharp and painful relief a problem that had been tickling at the back of my brain throughout the entire Skylark series: Viewed from any impartial angle, the heroes are genocidal fascists with a disquieting belief in the Cult of the Youthful Genius as the Natural Rulers of Civilization. The villains they oppose are distinguished only by being even MORE genocidal and fascist in their ideology.

In bizarre contrast to this, the novels also feature an equality of gender and skin color almost modern in its sensibility and profoundly progressive for the 1920s and ‘30s. (The only thing which dates the treatment is that Smith, quite rightly in my opinion, wasn’t willing to pretend that such equality was a fact of life in 1920’s America.)

Fortunately, the fast-paced action of the novels generally tends to minimize the genocidal and fascistic tendencies of the main characters. And a charitable interpretation would be that, in the situations they find themselves in, the characters simply have no choice: Their only salvation lies in decisions of an absolute and irrevocable kind. But every so often I would find myself thinking about the implications of what I was reading, and then I would be left with the disquieting sensation that I was reading a novel about brave Nazi super-scientists thwarting the tyrannies of Stalinist Russia by blasting the entire Asian continent off the face of the planet.

But I digress.

This was the first time I’ve read the Skylark novels. It won’t be the last. When E.E. “Doc” Smith is firing on all jets, reading his novels is just plain fun. And with Skylark Three and Skylark of Valeron, those jets are on full-blast. In fact, I had such a blast reading these novels that I’m going to pick up Smith’s Lensmen series next for a quick re-read.

GRADES:

SKYLARK: C+
SKYLARK THREE: A-
SKYLARK OF VALERON: A-
SKYLARK DUQUESNE: C

Lord of Light is a story of myth and science and man, all wrapped and twisted about each other into an ineffable whole.

This would be an impressive novel if Zelazny had simply managed to craft a narrative of such epic scope which managed to be a grand vision of science fiction world-building; a potent myth tapping into fundamental truths; and a heart-touching character drama – each in turns. But what makes Lord of Light one of the greatest novels ever written is that it routinely succeeds at being all of these things at once.

One person will read a passage and be captivated by the depth of Zelazny’s future history.

Another, reading the exact same passage, will be awed by Zelazny’s uncanny ability to capture moments of mythic perfection upon the page.

And yet another, while reading the same passage as the other two, will be moved to tears or laughter or joy by the sheer, human passion of Zelazny’s characters.

And what’s truly special are those moments where your mind rises to Zelazny’s challenge and expands to encompass all three perspectives at the same time – rendering a passage resonant with myth and marvel and man.

On top of that, Lord of Light is ultimately a narrative of canny subtlety. To even the most casual reader, Zelazny will deliver a rip-roaring tale of unforgettable quality: Men walk as gods; titanic duels and mighty wars are fought with the unimaginable fires of science; and the fate of mankind balances somewhere inbetween. But the more attention you give it, the more rewarding it becomes – revealing layers and hidden depths and wheels within wheels.

Lord of Light appears at #4 on my list of all-time favorite science fiction novels. And it’s a place well-deserved.

GRADE: A+
Roger Zelazny
Published: 1967
Publisher: Eos
Cover Price: $12.95
ISBN: 0-06-056723-6
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