Why Attend Science Fiction Conventions?

In the three years since we have become active in the science fiction community, we have come to discover the many advantages of science fiction conventions, known among the crowd simply as cons. We have attended several in the immediate area of our home in Virginia, and there are at least two more in this state alone that we look forward to visiting. Within driving range in North Carolina, Maryland, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, there are several more, and Jim will be present out of state for the first time later this year at the Creatures, Crime, and Creativity meeting in Columbia, Maryland. This does not even begin to mention some of the even larger cons, such as San Diego's famous Comicon or the many overseas cons that have proliferated over the years. Participating in any con involves some time and expense, which often runs to three days and several hundred dollars unless the venue is within commuting distance. However, we have found that the experience is invaluable in a variety of ways and no aspiring author or fan should miss the opportunity. Here are a few of the specific reasons to attend a con.

First of all is education in the sci fi profession, particularly for indie authors like ourselves, who do not have large publishing houses to coordinate the plethora of activities involved in bringing out a book. While there are resources, in print and otherwise, that offer guidance not only in writing a text, but in the subsequent stages of editing, formatting, publishing, marketing, and publicizing, there is no substitute for plunging yourself into an environment where hundreds of authors and fans are brimming with first-hand information that is more up-to-date than almost anything in print. Furthermore, at con panels, one can ask questions and get an immediate and frank response, along with personal reactions to all sorts of situations that can bewilder any neophyte. We gathered precious tips on how to negotiate the myriad complexities of self-publishing, after having spent a couple of years delving into the maze of agents and large or small publishers with only modest results. The publishing industry is in such a state of flux that timely information is absolutely necessary in order to avoid missteps. Once one can follow trails laid out by more experienced hands, the self-publishing road is not at all as difficult as it may seem at first glance. From working with Kindle Direct and CreateSpace, to finding a good cover artist and copyrighting, cons can provide links to virtually any question one may run into.

In addition, cons give very palpable examples in marketing and publicity. At most cons, there are authors who are engaged in readings or signings – these are perfect examples to follow in the distribution of one's own books. You can develop strategies that will work for getting your own books to the public. In fact, there are so many different types of examples, that you can pick strategies that seem appropriate for the particular type of book that interests you. You can compare, mix and match dozens of approaches to find one that best suits your own goals and capabilities as a writer. We have always been amazed at the openness and generosity of accomplished sci fi authors who are willing to welcome new voices into the fold and to share their pitfalls and triumphs with newcomers. This is priceless for us, because like most authors, our first love is writing itself, and the skills and methods involved in sharing a book with the public demand a completely new orientation that can be daunting to the normally introspective bookworm. Just grasping the fact that presenting anything from a stand-alone novel to a whole sci fi series requires a long-term investment of thinking and effort, rather than an overnight business success, is a crucial step in reaping the rewards of interaction at a con.

At a convention, a writer soon realizes the wide scope of the sci fi community, since the span of

subgenres, as well as associated genres like urban fantasy, steampunk, comic horror, etc., is present everywhere. Ideas abound in often overwhelming profusion. One soon sees that the novel aspects that originally seemed so isolated and incomparable are part of a universe of speculation reaching out in every direction through time and space. Needless to say, you walk away from a con with a million new notions about character, plot, timing, dialogue, research, and every other facet of the construction of a story. One the one hand, it's humbling to take into account how much everyone else is already doing or has done, but on the other, the perspectives for new creation open up so much new territory that you are dying to get back and start putting new things on the page. Space is mighty big, but there you are in the middle of it, zooming along with the other pilots. You perceive just how good writing can be and you yearn to make yours better and better. This educational process is probably just as important for other types of fiction, from romance to detective, yet it's all the more vital in sci fi, where the liberation of the imagination is sine qua non. Finally the time comes when you step from the status of privileged spectator and learner to that of panel participant, for there is always a passing of the baton and one needs to be ready when the time comes to assume a role of peer among peers.

Of course, cons also offer pure pleasure. Though we are not adept at the complex art of cosplaying, we have come to appreciate and enjoy the elaborate masquerades and costume contests that are part of just about every con. To see the rooms and halls filled with elves, gremlins, aliens, heroes, robots, and monsters is every bit as exciting as carnival. It creates a visual medium where the concrete normality of banal life can be turned upside-down, privileging the new and unexpected. There are also frequently screenings of experimental films, show-casings of cutting-edge music and dance, and exhibitions of art closely related to sci fi and fantasy. Each con has, as a natural economic feature, vendors of every imaginable type of object, clothing, book or cd, jewelry, or geegaw. Other cons will have booths to attract people to their upcoming events in own locations, often with their own particular topic or featured star. Finally, there is the gaming. Whether it be board games, arcades, RPGs, or any other ludic form, it is bound to be available in some form at a con. Where else can you gather at the drop of a hat a half-dozen friends fascinated with the same game experience and willing to pass several hours in delightful concentration as they work out the mysteries of an old favorite or a new game that has not even been released yet to the general public?

As you can understand, cons offer a total experience. For those of us who have grown tired of waiting in lines for the standard kinds of programmed amusements or bored with poring over the details of a publishing plan, the con provides a breath of fresh air and a tonic to restore our creative juices, free of the pre-packaged brands that litter our daily lives. Try it, join in, become part of the celebration, lift yourself in spirit and skill. Come to the con.

Alternate Evolutions

     A planet where the dominant life form is very large telepathic insects?  That is Domremy. One of the key elements of our novel, Life Sentence, is the idea that there is no single evolutionary thread for the development of life in the universe.  Considering that Earth's evolution has depended on several catastrophic cosmic collisions, as well as perhaps geological shifts in the Earth itself, it is reasonable to speculate that, absent those extinction events, or possibly in cases of even more such disasters, life on other planets might evolve in quite different ways.  After all, humans have been around for only a tiny fraction of our world's history.  What if the Permian, Cretaceous, or other extinctions had never happened and earlier life forms had been allowed to continue to adapt?  There is nothing per se that would prevent reptiles, amphibians, other mammals, or even insects from developing intelligence and other characteristics that would allow them to develop an advanced culture or technology.  

     In the planets of Life Sentence, there are several different scenarios of evolution.  The Locals (as humans call them) of Domremy have managed to develop a sophisticated culture without material technology.  Communicating through touch telepathy, they are able to share vast amounts of common memory and species lore.  Since humans have no such capacities themselves, they are unaware of the Locals' gifts until Willie Klein and the Religious Dissenters unravel the mystery of the original inhabitants of their corporate-run colony.  Once they realize the terrible consequences of Hyperion Corp's semi-terraforming of Domremy, Willie, Peebo, Dr. Patak and others vow to try to restore as much as possible of the precolonial ecology.

     The Locals shared their environment with mammalian and quasi-mammalian creatures that had evolved alongside them, as well as smaller life forms.  Since many of these had been wiped out by the terraforming (as indeed the Locals themselves almost were), it is necessary for the Dissenters to use genetic engineering to restore missing species.  One of these is the "pippo," so dubbed by Willie because they look like a cross between a pig and a hippo.  He learned about their existence on the Locals' savannas through a telepathic session, but was astounded that Dr. Patak, who had perfected regeneration of mammoths and other extinct Earth beasts, had already been able to produce fertile clones from hides, bones, and other archaeological material uncovered on Domremy.  This gives the Dissenters, more interested in venerating life than exploiting it in the manner of the corporations, the rare chance to make amends for some of mankind's earlier crimes.  

     Domremy is just one of the worlds of Life Sentence, and in a later post we will examine the very different conditions that led to divergent types of life on Song Pa and Forlan, where particular conditions produced dominant species of cephalopod (octopus-like) and marsupial natures.  These topics are especially pertinent as NASA prepares to land on some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which seem more and more likely to harbor some form of life. NASA has already indicated it plans to observe nothing like Star Trek's prime directive, preventing the interference with existing life forms.  Remember that Mars itself may still display some type of life that is so far undetected, since we are looking for something fairly close to ourselves or familiar contemporary Earth creatures.  It is looking increasingly the First Contact may not be just a one-way experience, but rather a give and take that may be either positive or negative.  Reason to consider the possibilities of what might be out there and how we should approach it.

    If these questions fascinate you, go to : https://www.amazon.com/Life-Sentence-Forlani-Saga-Book-ebook/dp/B01MCUIHXY and order your print or digital copy of Life Sentence.  We would love to hear your reactions.

An Epic of Speculation: Creating a Plausible Dinosauroid

               Attempting to write about nonhuman species brings with it many challenges, among them the difficulty of trying to represent nonhuman species accurately, and to what extent a human writer can actually do so.  For much of the twentieth century dinosaurs functioned as a sort of “throwaway monster” in the public conscience, something that would show up, randomly attack jungle explorers or historically inaccurate cavemen, and then get killed. Tyrannosaurus often had a penguin-like waddle, when he wasn’t unfortunate enough to be played by an iguana with a fin glued on his back. Sauropods and stegosaurs would randomly eat meat, dinosaurs from distant time periods would encounter each other, non-dinosaurs such as Dimetrodon would explicitly be called “dinosaurs”, and nobody cared as long as Doug McClure would show up and save the day in the end.  During the 1970s, the “Dinosaur Renaissance” took place in paleontology, and new discoveries were made about dinosaur behavior and biology that contradicted earlier stereotypes. Only once Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park was published in 1990 would these discoveries influence the broader public perception of dinosaurs.

               And yet, in creating the Garanians, a “dinosauroid” race for Spy Station, our second Forlani Saga novel, I found that many of the “Dinosaur Renaissance” era assumptions had themselves become dated.  Dale A. Russel’s original Troodon-derived dinosauroid concept did not have any feathers; since 1982, multiple fossils of Coelurosaurian dinosaurs have been found with fossilized feathers, therefore I decided to give the Garanians a vestigial neck crest of feathers that would stand erect when they were agitated.  I was also fascinated with trying to research dinosaur intelligence and brain size.  The pre-Dino Renaissance belief that dinosaurs were all dimwitted clods was clearly wrong, but beyond a very generalized “birdlike dinosaurs were probably the most intelligent” consensus, I had trouble finding a set of theories that were broadly agreed upon.  This was made even more difficult by the lack of research into the brains of still living archosaurs; there are far fewer studies of avians and crocodiles than there are of mammals.  With newer studies indicating surprising signs of intelligence in crocodiles, could there be potential aspects of dinosaur behavior that our current level of scientific understanding doesn’t understand yet?

               Even the basic dinosauroid body plan is now considered contentious in some circles.  Some researchers believe that a dinosauroid of sapient intelligence would have to use its head and feet to manipulate objects, as the forelimbs become less used in existent ground-dwelling birds and dinosaur groups such as the abelisaurs and tyrannosaurs.  I decided on a body plan resembling Russel’s original dinosauroid more than these; not only did numerous coelurosaur groups such as the “raptor” dromaeosaurs and therozinosaurs retain their large forelimbs, but I aesthetically thought that having Tashto operate a gun with his feet would have made him more of a warrior parrot than a warrior dinosaur.  Of course, this could be my own bias in simply wanting something that resembled my own pre-2010s notion of what a dinosaur could be.

               Part of the nature of speculative fiction is that it is as much bound by what an author enjoys as it is about scientific reality.  As a writer, I tried to bridge the notion of the popular Jurassic Park “raptor”, my own personal favorite depiction of a dinosaur, with the newer insights into how dinosaurs would have looked.  This was perhaps slightly easier with a “raptor” since this type of dinosaur was newer in the popular imagination, and therefore more malleable, than creatures like Tyrannosaurus.  Ultimately, we only know a tiny fraction of knowledge about most given dinosaur species, and much of our expectations about their behavior lies rooted in imagination, conjecture and (sometimes erroneous) tradition.  Regardless of whatever is discovered about dromeosaurids in the time after Spy Station is published, I can at least take pleasure in the fact that, unlike Jurassic World, I bothered to put feathers on my “raptors”.

1947 and the Cosmic Quarantine

The year that the term “flying saucer” was invented (perhaps due to a journalist's mistake) may not actually mark a First Contact situation for humans and aliens. The USA tends to use that as a benchmark for strictly americacentric reasons, since the UFO sightings in Washington state and New Mexico generated wide media attention here. It also coincides neatly with the development of the Nuclear Age, since the heat and radiation intensity of the atom bomb explosions two years earlier would plausibly have created unique features that may have drawn the attention of alien observers. From a worldwide point of view, UFO observations had been going on more or less regularly for some time in various parts of the Earth, all the way back to ancient Egypt. Nevertheless, 1947 does merit a place in history as the birthpoint of ufology and the beginning of a period of intense UFO reports that stretched into the 1960's. The tailing off of this phenomenon also coincides well with the dawn of the Space Age, as from the Sputnik launch onwards, humans became greatly enabled in their observations of our own upper atmosphere and the space immediately near it. One might surmise that, if anything, this heightened ability would have led exponentially to more UFO reports, but that does not seem to have been the case.

With this in view, I would like to examine the speculative question of whether our planet may currently be subject to a cosmic quarantine that has resulted in a decrease of “flying saucer” type reports. This is a difficult area for many reasons. First of all, a great deal of information has been hushed up by military and intelligence sources. This is particularly true of World War II era incidents, when the development of secret weapons made this sort of obfuscation a matter of daily fact. The Cape Girardeau case and the various “foo fighter” claims during the war fall into this category, as does – after the fact – the Roswell incident which was tardily varnished with a story of high altitude observation balloons that was close enough to reality to fall into the parameters of deniability. As regards the stories of alien landings on the planet, especially two incidents in Sweden and Brazil, there are also serious scientific impediments to accepting them at face value. For alien creatures to willingly expose themselves to the Earth's atmosphere and the soup of potentially harmful organisms and substances contained therein would seem to be a contradiction to common sense, even if an alien civilization had done a fairly thorough biological scan of our planet. After all, new species are still being discovered in parts of the Earth and new microbes are evolving rapidly right now. The Earth is literally bursting with life, so that any survey would become obsolete in a short time. Thus, even within the bounds of speculation, it is most reasonable to assume that alien observation would most likely take the form of robotic devices rather than appearances in the flesh.

One possible exception to this caveat about physical encounters is the famous Hill Incident in New Hampshire, in which the aliens are reported to have established a type of telepathic communication and perhaps control over the human subjects and are not described as exiting from their vessel. There are too few descriptions to hypothesize about whether humans might have been able to be examined in sterile conditions by alien visitors, yet the details of the Hills' experiences do not preclude such a scenario. The vast mass of alien abduction stories that have proliferated since the Hill Incident tend to swamp the original case in a mass of essentially unrelated material. Examined on its own rights as a single chain of described evens, though, the Hills' encounter will probably continue to stand as a keystone reference for speculative thought until further information is available. I would propose that one regard it as a climax event, rather than a springboard, for speculative ufology.

Supposing that if there is any truth value at all to UFO reports from 1947 on, and that it may indeed have been nuclear fission that attracted observation of Earth from outside near space, there are several possible explanations for why conditions of observation may have changed since the early 60's, leading to the existence of a cosmic quarantine on the planet, and perhaps much of the solar system. The primary one has to do with what in the StarTrek lore is referred to as the Prime Directive. What Roddenberry's Star Fleet imputes to moral imperatives could even more convincingly be associated with sheer scientific procedure. As our own species delves deeper and deeper into the study of animal behavior, we find it more and more necessary to establish some separation from the species we are observing. Thanks to remote devices that do not attract the attention or fear of study subjects, we can peer into the nests of tree ducks, the burrows of meerkats, or the habits of deep-sea fish without causing that behavior to be altered or to disappear because of our immediate physical presence. Assuming humans are a species that requires observation – admittedly something we ourselves have been too reluctant to accept, it logically follows that separation is a highly desirable protocol of understanding.

Of course, a behavioral Heisenberg principle also applies. Given our natural curiosity as an organism, if we were to detect the presence of another intelligence, we would very likely change our actions so much that it would destroy the reliability of previous data. In other words, now that we are able to observe not only near space with far greater accuracy, but even deep space through orbiting telescopes, we become increasingly likely to discover something that would profoundly alter the very notion of ourselves, so that we might not only change our value as subjects for observation, but even dangerously affect our ability to go on surviving. And there may not be a benevolent group of aliens willing and able, as in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, to coddle us and usher us into a new cosmic age. So without an immediate need to exploit Earth or humans for some reason, an external intelligence might well want to limit intrusion into what is going on inside our atmospheric blanket right now. Added to the inducements for distance is the possibility that we might be more unique than we give ourselves credit for. An intelligence capable of traveling in interplanetary space would – it seems more and more likely, as we discover a plethora of exoplanets – presumably discover many inhabited worlds, but others may not offer the richness of species diversification or the isolation of this little rock. Our “primitiveness” related to a space-faring intelligence may actually bode us well.

A few final speculations as to how a cosmic quarantine may work. First of all there would have to be some kind of a space-based “Do Not Feed the Bears” sign. This could easily be achieved by a couple of stable units, probably placed at a good distance and perpendicular to the ecliptic of the solar system and protected from our view by stealth technologies, that would detect approaching craft and warn them off. The same units could contain sensors to observe Earth, as well as remote drones that could operate in closer proximity to the subjects. They might also be able to shield Earth from interstellar communication by generating an interference field that would cover the band of whatever it is an interstellar intelligence would use to communicate with. We already do this with our own military aircraft to jam certain bands used to target missiles, for instance. This is a sensitive area, since our technology is rapidly developing and we become more susceptible to “tripping over” a communications form currently unknown or undetectable to us. Of course, provided we don't destroy ourselves in the near future, we are likely to become too smart eventually for any quarantine to work. How an alien intelligence might deal with that puzzler extends beyond the scope of this essay. More speculation will be needed.

Meerkats: A Forlani Model

     In developing the Forlani, we wanted to portray a species with a strongly matriarchal structure and borrowed many traits from the lovable meerkat.  These African creatures are highly social and have strong altruistic instincts that allow them to make great sacrifices of individual interests in favor of the group.  They are led by a strong mother figure, who is normally the only female in the group that mates and produces children.   This was important to us because we wanted to have a society that was female-dominated numerically as well as in terms of power.  As you've seen if you've read Life Sentence, Forlani females outnumber males by factors as high as 100 to 1 in some cases.  In such a society, widespread female mating would rapidly produce a population explosion that would lead to extinction.  So, as in meerkats, the Forlani practice highly selective mating and reproduction.  In meerkats, this selection happens through a more or less instinctive process and is enforced by the dominant mother, but among the Forlani, it is decided by the deliberations of the matrilines, the female clans that have a more or less representative structure and use powerful ethical notions of logic and propriety, rather than outright force, to maintain the selective process. (However, we'll give you a tiny spoiler and say that this will come under strain in Book Four: Rage on Forlan, but that's all for now!)  

     So with Forlani able to produce multiple offspring at birth -- up to six, but in Entara's case, usually more like three -- families can be quite large, as in meerkat colonies.  This creates the need for communal childcare, which among meerkats includes male members of the group assuming various child-rearing functions.  The Forlani are similar in most aspects, with the institution of the mahame, or matrilineal headquarters, acting as a formal organization that provides educational, medical, and everyday support for female offspring beyond the immediate parental sphere.  Note, we say female, because Forlani males have an entirely separate structure that we will explain further in another post.  Suffice it to say that female Forlani identify strongly with the mahame and its values, just as meerkats do with their colony group.  

     There are, of course, some differences between meerkats and Forlani females.  Meerkats are full-fledged mammals, but Forlani are proto-marsupials, and there are thus considerable differences in physiology, such as the Forlani's elongate brain and double heart system.  Unlike meerkats, who mainly eat arthropods, Forlani are primarily fruit-eaters, although they also enjoy certain kinds of grilled insects.  Entara herself is a bit of an exception, since her time with Klein allowed her to develop some exotic tastes, such as a yen for crunchy toast.  Forlani, like meerkats, have tails, but they are longer and almost completely prehensile, which harks back to the species' semi-arboreal origins in the primeval forests that covered Forlan before the Times of Trouble.  The earthling Klein never realizes this until Entara takes him for a romp in the orchards on her home world and starts leaping into trees.  This origin gives Forlani some distinctive customs that vary with those that a burrowing race like the meerkats would naturally develop.  Finally, of course, the Forlani are highly adapted to tool manipulation and the development of technology, which meerkats have so far not been evolutionarily selected to exhibit.  The Forlani abilities for technology were so great that at an earlier point in their history they developed an industrial civilization that nearly destroyed the planet, until a profound reorganization set up the matriline system and restrained tech development so that they never ventured into space.   This only changed because of external forces, such as the Zetans and humans who wanted to exploit their world.  To resist, the Forlani readily accepted an alliance with the warlike and spacefaring Song Pai, who favored the Forlani because of their strong veneration for the sacredness of procreation.

     So there you have a thumbnail sketch of the similarities and differences between Forlani and meerkats, at least as far as the females are concerned.  Since the Forlani are quite sexually dimorphic, the males are another story, and we will take that up at length and talk about the Brotherhood at a future time.  For now, happy reading! 

     

The Wonderful Xindi: Aliens Overdone or Underdone?

    In the third year of its run Enterprise proposed one of the most fantastic and intriguing ideas of the StarTrek universe or any other -- the Xindi.  Here was an alien civilization composed of not just one species (Klingons, Andorians, etc.) or two (Romulans and Remans) but no fewer than six!  Each was based on a group of creatures more or less familiar to Earthlings, for there were primates, sloth-like arborials, lizardy reptilians, insectoids, and aquatics that seemed to be a cross between fishes and amphibians, plus an avian species that had already become extinct and was represented only by a skull (actually a giraffe's).  Neither the animatronic insects nor the swimming aquatics were on screen very often.  In fact, none of the xindi are really revealed until well into the season, as the Enterprise crew searches for the perpetrators of a surprise terror attack on Florida.  For technical and budget reasons, the pentad is mostly represented by the more humanoid components, the primates, arborials, and reptilians.  Still, even with three out of the original six types of creatures in the lens, there was plenty of room for Enterprise to leave a dominant legacy in the realm of sci fi exobiology. 

     Yet, the xindi story arc of season three did not elicit a rousing critical reception or a badly needed turnaround in shrinking audience share.  The reasons for this disappointment provide many interesting insights into the problems of representing aliens both in visual media and in writing.  This is especially true in that the species are underwritten as well as overwritten.  The visual concentration 

on the three creatures most similar to humans certainly tilted the showing field from the very beginning, though some effort was made to compensate for this by giving the aquatics some very cool space vehicles that are featured towards the end of the season.  The fact that the insectoids play second banana to the more aggressive reptilians and the aquatics have a somewhat similar role in regard to the primates and arborials gives a pretext for their underwriting.  So does the detail that these two minor races are not to express themselves in anything like normal words, whereas the others can be scripted with a little help from accents and dialogue coaches.  Nevertheless, the audience has a natural curiosity about these exotic beings that is never truly satisfied.  Surprisingly, the ponderous back story necessary to support the verisimilitude of the xindi is not very well elaborated or regularly sustained, with information confined mainly to two episodes and little morsels of revelation distributed unevenly, and with no obvious strategic plan, throughout the remainder of the season.

     There is another, even more glaring reason for the underwriting of the xindi, namely that they are not (as they are set up to be through at least five episodes) the principal villains responsible for the devastation of Earth.  It turns out that they are merely the dupes of another even less clearly described race, the Sphere Beings. Thus the motivation for the xindi, except perhaps for the reptilians, is eventually reduced to a mistake.  Indeed, the primates, arborials and aquatics eventually join the humans in trying to thwart the villains' plot for a second and more deadly attack on Earth.  Even the insectoids assume a more or less neutral stance towards the end.  The big mystery becomes not what makes the xindi tick, but why the Sphere Beings are behind the mischief.  By this time in the arc, most of the audience had begun to lose interest in this gratuitous bifurcation.  The error is emphasized by the diversion away from the xindi's own back story involving a civil war between the six races and the annihilation of their home planet.  It is aggravated by a huge continuity problem concerning the xindi council chamber.  This set is explained as a former stronghold of the avians before their extinction.  Yet, if the extinction occurred at the time of the home world destruction, which the un-spaceworthy avians could not escape, how could they have constructed a complex on another planet?  
     The burgeoning problem of continuity errors and ambiguity leads to late-season script details that try to resolve the incongruities.  Thus, the xindi wind up being overwritten (badly) as well as initially underwritten.  The original lack of concord among the xindi species, presented as a fait accompli when their delayed development belatedly takes place on camera, could have been a singular opportunity to deepen the treatment of all six life forms.  And that was clearly called for, since the simultaneous evolution of six different and to some degree rival types of advanced organisms on one planet challenges scientific common sense.  What a complex social situation, fraught with emotions that could captivate the spectator! Instead, the complex production and writing staff simply introduced the pretext of a civil war that posed more questions than it provided answers.  We are asked to simply accept the premise that "there were these six different guys and naturally they didn't get along."  This sort of "Chinese box" approach to composition is a poor one, since it progressively deflects and diminishes the attention of the audience.

     As the StarTrek universe expanded, one phenomenon that unfortunately manifested itself was that costumes and makeup, superb as they were, sometimes tended to push more important issues to the back burners.  I am reminded of the experienced actor who had been hired to be a Klingon in an STNG episode, only to be unceremoniously dumped because his huge frame could not fit into the snug outfit Christopher Lloyd had worn in StarTrek III.  It was he who had to remind the management that in the grown-up world directors and producers have to make the crucial decisions, not the Costume Department.  (To their credit, the poobahs realized their error and reinstated him).  In the case of the xindi, the admittedly breath-taking achievement of filming the plethora of alien beings was vitiated by the failure to develop them -- individually or collectively -- as characters.  Ultimately, any sci fi extraterrestrial, from the mute xenomorph in Alien to the linguistically talented Drak in Enemy Mine, must succeed as a fully acceptable character with a coherent system of motivation, rather than as a disembodied image, no matter how stunning.

Rogue One: Not Your Average Space Opera

     In the various Facebook groups devoted to Space Opera that I belong to, there have been many remarks of late about Rogue One that tend toward the negative.  It is currently fashionable to "call out" any members one disagrees with, but this usually degenerates into the kind of monosyllabic flame war that i detest.  So I choose to examine the question in the form of a little essay that will begin by giving some credit to my potential adversaries: their reaction is not completely unexpected or unnatural.  In fact, they are right in perceiving that Rogue One is not a conventional space opera.  For me, it is instead a combination of medieval Christian epic and heroic tragedy, two historically established genres the American public is almost completely unaware of.

     First, let's examine some of the main expectations of space opera.  There are adventure, one-against-the-universe boldness, reliance on technical mastery or super powers, and of course a successful outcome.  Add to this the tendency to project a hideous evil that is the embodiment of a psychologically concealed nemesis.  Think Spaceman Spiff turning his untouchable teachers into monsters he can disintegrate.  Space opera privileges a high degree of vicarious stimulation and enjoyment.  The reader/viewer expects to confront and overcome the projected monster, gaining a sense of fulfillment, just as in mysteries, he or she accompanies the detective with the virtual certainty of unmasking the criminal and unraveling his plans.  Nothing wrong with what Ronald Reagan, a reader of limited abilities, used to call a "ripping good story."

     The Star Wars universe, though, has never completely subscribed to this formula.  Keep in mind that George Lucas began with a very dystopian future in THX 1138.  A New Hope was a space opera grafted onto a Bildungsroman that featured Luke Skywalker in a scenario that resembled Joseph Campbell's idea of the mythic quest, a type of space-based Perceval more than a Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon.  It adopted just enough of the Hollywood ritual of obstacles and plot points to fit on the big screen, but its parameters were much wider, leading into the stark dilemma of The Empire Strikes Back, which ends with Luke's ritual mutilation.  

     Rogue One begins in a very un-space-opera fashion, with Jyn being rather unwillingly recruited by Cassian into a mission to recover her father, who has already betrayed the Empire and is in turn the object of a secret assassination plot by the Rebels that Jyn is completely ignorant of.  We are much closer to John Le Carre than Flash Gordon.  As they assemble their unlikely team of paladins (a reverse of the sidekicks in The Song of Roland, complete with a Jedi equivalent of Bishop Turpin), Jyn and Cassian begin to meld together while at the same time delving into their covert selves.  For it is only by coming to grips not only with their past, but also with their individual potential that the couple can assume the sacrificial importance that was the center of seventeenth-century heroic tragedy.  Like The Cid and Chimene, Horatius and Sabine, the reluctant lovers have to realize a blood sacrifice even as they come together.  It is this generic rooting that gives the film the psychological profundity that most viewers have praised.  More than the fact that everyone sympathetic dies, it is the manner and context in which they die that really matters.  Even had Darth Vader been able to seize that memory device at the last moment, dooming the Rebellion, Jyn and Cassian make the rebellion, previously a well-intentioned but morally tainted enterprise, worthy to succeed.  

     As for the reactions of the negative audience, I will note one repeated reaction, "I was not impressed."  This seemingly inarticulate and personal response is actually quite revealing.  Emphasis on impressed.  The space opera viewer typically seeks an impression, an essentially passive response associated with the vicarious thrill of participating with the "hero."  This has always been a feature of Hollywood products and has dictated the almost universal presence of the Hollywood ending.  To have the vicar (in the original sense of the word) die would break the contact with the impression.  In the rare cases of endings where vicars died, there was generally a passing of the vicarious association: McMurphy to Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Spartacus to Varinia and Antoninus, Big X to Cooler King in The Great Escape. Instead of impression, Rogue One requires a process of transformation that shifts the emphasis from the putative heroic fact to the interior heroic assumption of worthiness, as in Pierre Corneille's heroic tragedies or, to come closer to our Anglo-Saxon tradition, in the fifth act of Hamlet ("If it be not now, yet it will be").

    I hope I have shown that, however justified by habit some space opera fans may be in remaining unimpressed by Rogue One, the majority of its worldwide admirers are even more justified by growth in allowing it to transform them.