Hûw Steer's Blog, page 29

Short Story: Grey

It rained a lot last week. I had a bit of writer’s block, so instead of floundering with the novel I wrote about it instead.

If you want to read it, you can do so here. Enjoy.

Rejections; Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Keep Writing

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in possession of many stories is going to get rejected approximately 1000 times before anything they’ve worked on sees the public light of day.

I’ve been writing seriously for quite a long time now, and I’ve got the word-count to prove it – if you add up all the short stories and books and other random stuff I’ve done since I started writing every day then it cracks a million words pretty easily. It’s a lot. And though most of it desperately needs editing before I dare show it to anyone remotely professional, I think a lot of my stories are pretty good. And when I write something I think is good, I want to see if anyone else thinks so – so off it goes into the aether, there to be judged by the unknowable eldritch creatures that are editors.

And 99% of the time, or thereabouts, it gets rejected. And that is fine.

I’ve thrown a lot of short stories out at the world, and I’ve had a go with a couple of books too. I’ve submitted work to dozens of magazines and anthologies and competitions, and I do mean multiple dozens. It’s all been good writing, at least in my opinion and those of my poor proofreaders. But I get rejected. A lot. I’ve been published a few times, yes, but for every success I have so many failures. If you click that link and go to my short stories page, scroll to the bottom. All of those ‘Unpublished’ stories have been round the houses, been submitted to every magazine and anthology I could think of. They’ve all failed. They were (hopefully) decent writing, but they didn’t go anywhere.

I’ve failed more times than I can count. Literally. I can fit my short story successes on one hand, but my rejections barely fit on my collection of severed ones outnumber them completely.

[image error]This is a few years of submissions on Submittable alone – not including three or four times as many that have gone through Moksha or directly to magazines.

But I keep going. I keep writing new stories, and I keep submitting the old ones (probably for far longer than is strictly wise). Because if one story isn’t right for a publisher, maybe the next one will be – and the first one might be right for someone else.

I was lucky enough to have that proven recently, when a story I’d almost given up on unexpectedly found a home with a publisher I’d been rejected from half a dozen times already. It was a pleasant surprise, not just because it proved that what I thought was good writing actually might be, but also because it proved that perseverance works.

Don’t give up. Sometimes it takes time to find the right place for your work. If you stop trying, you’ll never know for sure.

Upstarts and Rogues

We all love a loveable rogue. The clue is kind of in the name. Fantasy probably has the highest ratio of thieves, vagabonds and generally roguish men and women to normal folk of all, and there are plenty of excellent books featuring such stalwart scoundrels.

But where can you go to find such treacherous tomes? If only there was an upcoming promotion that gathered 24 of the finest indie fantasy books, bringing a whole bevy of bastards together in common cause – and bringing all their prices down to just a handful of coins?

Surprise! There is! Upstarts and Rogues is that very promotion: 24 books, all featuring, well, upstarts and rogues of all stripes (including several past SPFBO alumni), and all reduced to the bargain price of just £0.99.

[image error]Artwork by Rebecca Gallant.

Among those books is The Blackbird and the Ghost. Tal Wenlock might not like to call himself a thief, but archaeologists don’t tend to carry lockpicks, and though he’s loveable he’s definitely a bit of a rogue.

(Ok so it’s technically always £0.99, not just during this sale, but still. Books.)

If you’re after a fresh fix of banditry, conmanship or dodgy derring-do, then this is just what you need. Visit the Upstarts and Rogues website to see the full range of rogues you can get to know!

The sale runs for a week, starting on Tuesday the 29th, so dig out your wallets – but keep a tight hold on them, or you might find you’re a bit more out of pocket than you expected…

Missives from Isolation #16 – Hidden Gems (in videogames again)

In order to take a brief break from replaying my beloved Ratchet and Clank 3 (because I’m already halfway through the New Game + playthrough…), I went back and replayed the campaign of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. On the one hand, the story was significantly more jingoistic and… well, American than I remembered it,* which was a little depressing. But on the other hand, the overall feel is cyberpunk as hell in places, the crazy future weapons are great fun and the acting is overall pretty good.

And on the other other hand, the branching storyline was just as cool as it ever was.

Call of Duty games aren’t exactly famous for their storylines. The campaigns are usually good fun to play, but nothing to shout about. The first Black Ops had some good moments and clever twists – but Black Ops 2‘s story was on another level, because for the first time in a CoD game the story didn’t always play out the same way. That’s right: it’s branching storyline time.

Now you’d expect most of the ‘choices’ in a CoD game’s storyline to be linear ‘X or Y’ button-presses – and yes, there are a couple of moments where it’s ‘Press X to shoot man #1’ and ‘Press Square to shoot man #2’. But there are other, more subtle choices. There’s a whole series of missions where you try to stop China taking over the world that are completely optional to play and that you can lose. If you win them all, you get some significant help later in the game – but if you lose, or you just don’t bother to play them, then the endgame outlook is much less rosy.

There are other things too. There’s a mission (probably my favourite in the game), where you infiltrate a floating island resort city to rescue a computer hacker from terrorists. After piloting a robot spider called Ziggy through some vents, some light VR-hacking and some asides on corporate advertising,** and a dubstep shootout in a future-nightclub, you have to chase the terrorists and catch them before they escape with the kidnapped hacker. And again, you can fail to rescue her. If you fail, you do get a chance in a side-mission to rescue her again, but if you fail again then she’s dead for good.

[image error]To reiterate, hacking your way through a future resort-city with a robot spider is awesome.

There are several other characters who can end up dying from seemingly innocuous decisions throughout the game – including some who you might not even realise you can save at all – and every one impacts how the rest of the game plays out. Want to save your wisecracking sidekick from execution? Go for it. But when doing so means sacrificing another member of your team who you might need later, you may want to think twice about how badly you need sassy dialogue for the rest of the game.

I’m not pretending that Black Ops 2 is a masterwork of choice-driven storytelling. It’s still a Call of Duty game. But all these little ways you can affect the game, from changing endings to just cosmetic changes and particularly the option to fail at objectives, really make it stand out as something special, at least in terms of the campaign. When you go in expecting a totally linear experience, the option to do things differently is pleasant to have – and when you reach those pivotal moments where all your choices suddenly come back to haunt you, and you realise that you really should have done things differently, it’s just brilliant.

* Oh for the days of the original Modern Warfare, where you played as the SAS and just got things done…

* Again surprising in a game series which can often be summarised as ‘woo capitalism go USA’ – Black Ops 2 inserts a little ambiguity in unexpected places.

Review: I, Exile

“If one’s wisdom is measured by the length of time captives must wait for an audience, then this woman was the wisest of them all.”

Damn, but David Samuels can turn a good phrase.

I, Exile is a very good book. That’s the short summary of this review. It’s not perfect (what book is?) but it’s a very good read, fast-paced and full of excellent worldbuilding and witty dialogue. That’s the slightly longer summary of this review. The purpose of these summaries is to hammer home the point that if you like fantasy, you should read this book.

[image error]And I must say I do like that cover art a lot.

My first visit to Samuels’ world of Euvael was a window on a rich and fascinating world, of towering cities and strange magics and intrigues galore. When I picked up I, Exile I was expecting a return to Faral-Khazal, a story where Emelith the Finder would dive into the underworld hinted at in Samuels’ previous stories. When I started reading, and realised that the story would in fact take Emelith into a blasted desert wasteland, I was, for a moment, a little disappointed. But then I actually read on, and found that Samuels had somehow managed to make a barren desert even more interesting a setting than his marvellous city. If there’s one thing I’ll praise in I, Exile above all else it’s the worldbuilding. The decaying grandeur of ruined cities, the societies of desert tribesmen, the overshadowing menace of ancient necromancers – it’s all beautifully written and realised.

The plot is pretty good too. Emelith’s quest across the wastes to save her possessed friend has some great emotional highs and lows, and the supporting cast of characters has some real gems, particularly the cantankerous witch/priestess Madelaine. There are plenty of people for Emelith to evaluate with her characteristic wit and sarcasm – and Samuels is, as I mentioned above, a dab hand at witty banter and put-downs. The story moves fast, keeping characters and readers alike on their toes as Emelith and co. confront obstacle after obstacle on their quest to save their friends and the world.

The opening heist sequence honestly made me a bit jealous. Until I read the start of I, Exile I was fairly proud of The Blackbird and the Ghost and my portrayal of a witty rogue out to steal/find a priceless magical manuscript. Why’d you have to just do it objectively better, David? Tell me your secrets!

It’s too fast in places, though, and this is where the book does falter a little. So quickly are we launched into the wastes that there’s barely any time to get to know the main characters. I knew Emelith already from her story in Three Nights, but no sooner is Niellan introduced than he’s gone, fled across the desert. Emelith tells us how much she’s hurt by his betrayal – but it doesn’t really have an impact when we’ve seen so little of their relationship. There was a great opportunity for Emelith to sit and reflect on things for a bit (in jail) after the excellent opening sequence – but Samuels skips the imprisonment almost entirely. The relationship between Emelith and the absent Niellan is the pivot around which the story revolves, but it’s not that well established. Letting the story catch its breath at the beginning, slowing down to explain things and laying proper foundations, would have greatly improved things.

Similarly, the end feels a little rushed – which is a real shame, because the climactic battle is superbly written. But after that, I wanted time to let Emelith and the other characters pick up the pieces of their various relationships, to pause and reflect on what had just happened. Again, though, there’s scarcely time for a few apologies before the story’s over. The book’s relatively short: there was certainly room to slow things down and let all the aspects of the story have room to grow and be fully realised.

I, Exile is sometimes too fast-paced for its own good. Sometimes there’s a bit too much telling and not enough showing, and there are bits of the world I’d love to see expanded, and characters who deserved a more well-rounded ending.

But that doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s a brilliant story. Samuels’ descriptions are beautiful, his characters, Emelith in particular, infectiously fun to travel with and listen to. The world of Euvael is vast and wonderful, and I really, really want to learn more about it. I said as much after reading Three Nights, and I’ll say it again: I can’t wait to read more tales from Euvael.

Missives From Isolation #15: Across the Wall

I just spent a few days in Edinburgh for a little holiday. It’s far from my first visit – 3 Fringe shows and two Fringe visits are firmly etched in my memory.

But this is the first time I’ve seen Edinburgh as… just Edinburgh. The Fringe is a wonderful thing, but it’s like a city of its own. The streets are heaving, every building is festooned with banners and posters, and you can’t move for hopeful/jaded/exhausted actors handing out flyers.

Edinburgh in Fringe time is a riot. Edinburgh on its own is lovely.

[image error]I’m not sure I’d ever seen the actual floor of the Royal Mile before this photo.

There were still plenty of people, but compared to the Fringe it was nice and quiet – not the eerie silence you get when all the shows close down at the end of August, but a pleasant, peaceful quiet.

We spent three days walking around happily, bouncing from tea-shop to bookshop to nerdy cocktail bar – and it was just lovely. We didn’t get accosted by actors (and nor did we have to flyer ourselves, which is always welcome). We just got to relax.

[image error]Armchair Books off Grassmarket. Go there. Literally heaven.

Edinburgh is great. I love the Fringe, and I look forward to its return. But I feel like the city honestly needed the break from its annual month of madness. And that’s just fine.

[image error]

Missives From Isolation #14 – I Just Wanna Play Video Games

Last weekend I finally gave up my internal argument, and bought the Ratchet and Clank trilogy on PS3.

To clarify, that’s the original 3 games, and the reason I was having an internal argument is that I already have all of them on my venerable old PS2. But my PS2 is at my parent’s house, and I was feeling nostalgic and somehow had money in the bank. So I went for it. And I’ve now spent the last week playing my favourite game of all time: Ratchet and Clank 3.

[image error]Or Up Your Arsenal for any US readers.

This was the first R&C game I played, and it’s always held the crown as my favourite. The writing is great, the voice acting is class, and Dr Nefarious is the series’ only recurring villain for a very good reason. And even though it’s from 2004 it still looks pretty damn good.

[image error]Metropolis also has some of the best music in the game.

And it’s just fun.

Platforming, shooting, leaping around like a madman trying to turn enemies into ducks – every R&C game is just a blast to play, and 3, in my opinion, is the one that got that balance right (at least of the PS2 games).

I’ve also probably played the game through about 20 times. Maybe more. At least 5 of those to 100% completion. Including all the Skill Points (internal achievements before they were cool). And I’m about to do it again. I love this game.

[image error]

But the thing is, the PS3 port… isn’t great. It’s full of bugs – nothing that actually affects gameplay (so far…) but tons of little visual and audio glitches, like Ratchet’s helmet being too big in cutscenes, or sounds being out of sync or the wrong pitch. For someone who’s sunk so many hours into the PS2 version, it’s really annoying.

And I’m really happy about that.

Because it means that even though I now have them on a newer console, even though I can play them whenever I want, those old PS2 discs sitting in my bedroom at my parents’ place are still the best versions of those games that exist.

And I’ll always, always have a reason to dust off the old workhorse and play them again.

Missives from Isolation #13: Holy Crap How Is It August Already

Pretty much the title. Time really has lost all meaning – I appear to have spent the peak of the summer sitting at my desk with a fan two inches from my face to survive. Much the same as the way I’ve spent most of this isolation period. Just hotter. Still working from home, still not going out much (because many Londoners are idiots who refuse to wear masks on the Tube, etc.), and waiting for the inevitable second lockdown to begin. I’ve been back up at the Toy Project, though, which is great, though we can’t yet start LEGO workshops. Hopefully soon.

In writing terms, Boiling Seas 2: Eventually I’ll Think Of A Title is coming along steadily. I’ve spent far too long and far too many words writing this airship sequence, though – like two or three times as many as I originally intended. As in I could finish the book here, if I wanted, with our protagonists only just arriving at the place where I wanted the book to finish. There may need to be some editing. I’m going to finish this bit and then take a break for a while, clear my head and then come back with a better plan. I really need a plan for this series as a whole.

I also came second in the UCL Publishers’ Prize the other month, which was a very welcome surprise!

A couple of short story opportunities have presented themselves to keep me ticking over in the interim. Grimdark Magazine is opening submissions for a competition in a week or so – I’ll be throwing something hopefully hat-shaped into the ring. The Black Library is also opening submissions (in October) for a bit of Warhammer/40k horror – if I can keep myself in the right frame of mind from my Grimdark entry then I should be able to put something together too. Maybe something with too many limbs. Got a week off coming up, which should give me time to get things flowing nicely.

That’s about it. If you want to read Ad Luna, it’s still very much available so do take a look. If you want to read an essay about it, you can do that too – but the book is probably better. I hope the book is better…

Ad Luna #9: The Essay, Part 7 – Conclusion

So this is the original end of the dissertation – there were plenty of other things I wanted to write about, but I just couldn’t fit them in! I did actually write one of those chapters out in the first draft, so I may post that as some bonus content (never before seen by examiners!). But for now, I’ll just sum the whole thing up.

7 – Conclusion

“It’s been a long road, / Getting from there to here…”

On the surface, Star Trek’s vision of the future is so far removed from Lucian’s cosmic voyage that it seems impossible to find any similarity between the two texts. Yet similarities there are, in the ways in which both the True History and Trek present social themes to their audiences through cognitive estrangement. There are many similarities in what both Roman and modern audiences experienced, feared, and expected of the strange new worlds that their SF presents. The fear of losing one’s individuality, of unstoppable, destructive change, is embodied in Trek by the Borg, and in Lucian by the Vine-Women. In Trek the fear is ideological, of the insidiousness of Communism; in Lucian the fear is physical, historical, the fear of the devastation of plague. Similar, too, are Roman and modern approaches to gender and their objectification of women. The TH illustrates Rome’s male-dominated society, presenting women as objects of desire at best and insidious seductresses at worst, and Trek, despite its professed progressiveness, did the same in various episodes, showing not how far humanity has come but also how far it still has to go.

Many social issues in Rome, as depicted in the TH, are still faced by us today – but on some of those issues it seems the Romans may in fact have been more progressive than we are. Trek’s track record on homosexuality has been poor, reflecting the conservative values of the 20th century in unfortunate clarity. By contrast, Lucian’s presentation of the entirely homosexual Selenite society mirrors a remarkably tolerant Roman society by modern standards. SF shows not only our leaps forward, but our steps backwards. The most striking difference between Lucian and Trek’s reflections of their respective worlds, however, is the difference between attitudes to the ‘other’. In Lucian’s world there were two tiers to all culture; the civilised – the Greek and Roman – and the barbarian. The Romans and the Selenites are on one level, united by language and culture – but the animalistic Aquatics and Bullheads, less socially advanced, are to be civilised by their Roman betters. The TH echoes the real imperial expansion ongoing through Lucian’s lifetime and the history of Rome; the aggressive uplifting of the world, by Rome, to its own cultural standards. Trek showcases a future where humanity has moved beyond such behaviour, promoting the anti-imperialist philosophy of the Prime Directive, preventing any interference regardless of intent – despite the imperialist abuses being committed by the society of its audience as it aired and to this day. The values of Lucian’s Rome and Trek’s 20th-century West were at once very different and strikingly similar.

ST holds up a mirror to a society very different to Lucian’s Rome – but both Trek and the TH mirror their societies in the same way. Effective SF “relates symbolically back to key concerns of the society and culture out of which it was produced”; this is as true of Lucian as it is of Trek. Through his encounters with the alien, his exploration of strange new worlds and societies, Lucian presents real issues to his audience through the distorting lens of science-fiction; attitudes to the other, to sexuality, to the fear of contagion and much more besides. This is precisely what Trek has done for Western society since the 1960s, reflecting on wars hot and Cold, on sexuality, slavery, racism and identity. The TH, in my view, does just the same. Was this Lucian’s intention? Can we be sure that he meant for his audience to consider the issues of their own society through his parodic reflections and cognitive estrangement in the TH, just as Trek does for modern society? I believe he may well have done, and hope that I have gone some way to proving that possibility in this dissertation. Whatever his own opinions might have been on Roman society, Lucian, in the TH, presents that society to his audience and uses cognitive estrangement to help them imagine other societies, other worlds; perhaps better ones, perhaps worse; perhaps with the intention of changing their views – or perhaps not. That, in my view, is the essence of good science-fiction, and it is an essence shared by Trek. Even when one boldly goes where no-one has gone before, even the strangest of new worlds is ultimately a reflection of our own.

“We are all explorers, driven to know what’s over the horizon, what’s beyond our own shores. And yet the more I’ve experienced, the more I’ve learned that no matter how far we travel, or how fast we get there, the most profound discoveries are not necessarily beyond that next star. They’re within us, woven into the threads that bind us, all of us, to each other.”

Captain Jonathan Archer, 2155

Every Star Trek captain is just such an explorer. Their adventures let us, the audience, explore our own societies, our own prejudices, our own selves. Jean-Lucian, in the True History, was driven by the same urge, and his adventures provided his audience with the same opportunities for explorations of their own. They still do. The Final Frontier began in the Second Sophistic, and Lucian was the first to visit it.

 

Diane Warren, Where My Heart Will Take Me (Decca, 2001) – the theme music of Enterprise.

Roberts, New Critical Idiom, p.48-9

ENT 4.21, Terra Prime, dir. Marvin V. Rush (13/5/2005), 0:37:00 – 0:38:33

Ad Luna #8: The Essay, Part 6 – Assimilation

So Ad Luna has had its first review in, from The Wood Between the Worlds – and it’s 5 stars, which is rather nice! Check it out here.

Back to business; namely the penultimate bit of this essay you’ve all been suffering through for over a month. This chapter deals with the ever-popular concept of assimilation; of contagion, infection. Think zombie viruses, that sort of thing. Or the Borg. This chapter was basically just an excuse for me to write about the Borg. The Borg are cool.

Anyway, enjoy.

6 – Assimilation and Contagion

The fear of losing one’s individual identity is one played on often in science-fiction. Zombie viruses, alien hive-minds, Doctor Who’s Cybermen and The Expanse’s protomolecule: all evoke the terror of losing what makes us human – our thoughts, our feelings, our agency, and ultimately our very humanity, transforming into an utterly alien and utterly terrifying ‘other’. One of SF’s archetypal assimilators are Star Trek’s Borg, whose civilizational goal is described succinctly in First Contact:

“We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

There is no room in the Borg Collective for individuality, for the “integrity of the autonomous individual”. The Borg are a truly terrifying prospect; a legion of identical, expressionless drones, all bent on converting our protagonists into something just like them, no longer human – no longer anything but Borg. The Borg feature heavily in Voyager, but in this chapter I intend to focus on TNG’s original Borg episodes, particularly The Best of Both Worlds, I, Borg and the movie First Contact; episodes focusing heavily on the loss of individual identity and its associated fears. Where, then, do we come across such fears in Lucian’s True History? At the very beginning of the book: with the Vine-Women. Like the Borg the Vine-Women are assimilating creatures, seducing and then absorbing Jean-Lucian’s crew, transforming them into beings no longer human. Lucian evokes similar fears to those presented in Trek – but what were the roots of those fears? What inspired the Borg, and what inspired the Vine-Women – and how might those different inspirations reflect differently on our modern and Lucian’s Roman societies?

The Vine-Women are the very first aliens encountered by Jean-Lucian’s crew. They are intelligent – able to speak three languages, at least collectively, and they communicate effectively with the crew. Unlike the Borg, the Vine-Women have some degree of individuality – but they do have a common and destructive goal. Upon kissing them, the crew become drunk; on prolonged contact, “the men are assimilated and lose their human individuality.” Transformed from human into hybrid, the crew are unable to escape, doomed to stay rooted forever:

“Already branches had grown from their fingers, tendrils entwined them, and they were on the point of bearing fruit… any minute.”

Whether or not the victims are transformed from male to female is not stated (only implied by the ‘bearing fruit’), but if they are then this only compounds the horror of assimilation – both humanity and gender have been stripped away by the transformation. Having watched their comrades being stripped of their humanity; a fate “worse than dying”; in the manner of Sir Robin, Jean-Lucian’s crew bravely run away – a far more sensible response than is generally pursued in SF like Trek. Their fear is compounded by the Vine-Women’s connection to wine; the “civilised drink”, mark of a cultured society; a connection implying that the Vine-Women are likewise civilised, lulling Jean-Lucian’s crew into a false sense of security before their true nature is revealed.

The same fear of loss of identity is the focus of The Best of Both Worlds, whose first episode culminates in the forced transformation of Captain Picard into Locutus of Borg. If even the strong and stoic Picard – the show’s protagonist – can be assimilated, then anyone can, compounding the audience’s sense of danger. Enterprise’s Regeneration enhances audience fear in the same way, through the Borg’s infection of Doctor Phlox – the only person able to treat assimilation. Lucian misses a trick by not naming any of his fellow sailors to provide a more striking emotional punch. Like the Borg, the Vine-Women transform their victims into near-simulacra of themselves; the only difference is aesthetic, with roots and leaves taking the place of mechanical implants. The principal difference is that that Vine-Women do not seem to be intentionally hostile towards the crew – or at least their motivations are unclear, for Jean-Lucian does not remain long enough to ask. The crew of the Enterprise, by contrast, fight to free Picard until they have no choice but to destroy the Borg Cube. There is a point at which saving one’s infected friends becomes impossible, and both the Enterprise’s and Jean-Lucian’s crews are aware of it – Jean-Lucian the character is simply more overwhelmed by such an encounter than the experienced Enterprise crew, and Lucian the author has more exciting places to visit.

The Vine-Women are, of course, explicitly inspired by the myth of Daphne, transformed into a tree to escape the amorous Apollo (though inverted, with the eternally virgin Daphne parodied by the inherently sexual Vine-Women). The Borg were inspired by the ever-expanding field of cybernetics; “augmented humanity” exaggerated and made monstrous. Both the TH and Trek took something familiar from their respective societies’ cultural consciousness and exaggerated it – but this was far from the only inspiration for the Borg, and, I believe, the Vine-Women. The Borg, introduced as replacements for the “waste of time” that were the hyper-capitalist Ferengi, appear to have been heavily inspired by American fears of Communism and the USSR. The Borg were originally to be an insectoid species (before budget constraints forced a redesign into humanoid cyborgs); unified in purpose and identical in appearance. All Borg drones labour for the good of the collective, and all are expendable. In Q Who? (their first appearance) the Borg do not react to the deaths of several drones aboard the Enterprise – why bother? All Borg are, essentially, one, united in motivation in a twisted imagining of the ultimate goal of a Communist society. Later Borg episodes allude to the Soviet Union in particular – I, Borg, aired in 1992, showed a Borg drone freed from the collective hive-mind and praised for his newfound individuality, in a plot echoing the recent dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the newfound freedom of former Soviet-dominated nations. The Borg evoke a cultural fear of ideological infection by Communism present throughout Trek. Both the Klingons and Romulans represented different aspects of the Red Menace in TOS; a fear that had spread through the USA since the Second World War, felt particularly harshly in the film industry thanks to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)’s blacklists in the 1950s. Even years after the end of the Cold War, TNG’s Borg demonstrate that such fears were still present in the American, and perhaps wider Western, cultural subconscious.

The Borg play, therefore, on an ideological fear – but what of the Vine-Women? There were no Communists in the Second Sophistic, and the Vine-Women lack the hive-mind characteristics that fuel that fear of the Borg. The fear of the Vine-Women’s unstoppable infection of Jean-Lucian’s crew is a physical one – and based, I believe, on a real infection. In 165 AD, when Lucian was just forty, the Antonine Plague swept across the Empire, killing five million people including Marcus Aurelius’ co-emperor Lucius. Deaths continued until 180, and up to two thousand people died in Rome every day at the plague’s peak. Whether the TH was written during the plague’s outbreak or afterwards, the memory of such a devastating, unstoppable disease, not discriminating against any class or social group, remained strong in the Roman imagination for many years; Marcus Aurelius wrote of it at length in his Meditations and even mentioned it in his dying words. Lucian himself had a personal connection to the horror of the plague; he had met Emperor Lucius, the disease’s most famous victim, in 163. The Vine-Women, like the plague, impart an unstoppable infection; incurable, untreatable. Their infection does not kill – it is worse, leaving its victims as living, breathing reminders of what robbed them of everything that made them human. The Vine-Women seem to represent and exaggerate all the horrors of the Antonine Plague.

Just as the Borg might represent America’s worst fears of Communism, the Vine-Women could plausibly embody Rome’s fears and sorrows after – or during – the Antonine Plague.  Through cognitive estrangement, two similar villains mirror two similar fears. Communism and plague may seem as different as can be, but in the minds of Trek’s and Lucian’s audiences they were both insidious, unstoppable menaces, undermining the foundations of society itself.

 

Borg Drone, Star Trek: First Contact, dir. Jonathan Frakes (Paramount, 1996), 0:10:30 – 0:10:40

Rose, Margaret, ‘Cyborg Selves in Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: The Next Generation’, p.1204

Partly because they make for good comparison, but mostly because I have yet to watch Voyager!

Georgiadou, Aristoula, ‘Lucian’s Vine-Women and Dio’s Libyan Women: Variations on a Theme’, in Mnemosyne, vol.50 (1997), p.207

Lucian, 1.8

TNG 5.23: I, Borg, dir. Robert Lederman (10/5/1992), 0:27:53 – 0:27:59

If, however, the Enterprise always left strange situations well alone, we would barely have any Trek to watch.

Hartog, p.166

TNG: The Best of Both Worlds 1, 0:43:44 – 0:44:16

ENT 2.23: Regeneration, dir. David Livingston (5/2/2003), 0:18:07 – 0:20:00

He fails to do so throughout the TH, naming no original crew members.

TNG: The Best of Both Worlds 1, 0:42:38 – 0:43:28

Lucian, 1.8

Melinda Snodgrass, 50-Year V2, p.160

Maurice Hurley, 50-Year V2, p.160

Maurice Hurley, 50-Year V2, p.161

TNG 2.16: Q Who?, dir. Rob Bowman (8/5/1998), 0:21:15 – 0:24:00

TNG: I, Borg, 0:36:35 – 0:37:00

“…the Klingons were a parallel for the Communist bloc…”: Leonard Nimoy, 50-Year V1, p.529; “the Romulans represented the 1960’s Chinese Communists”: John Logan, ‘Introduction’ in Dillard, J.M, Star Trek: Nemesis novelisation (Pocket Books, 2002), p.xx

Tuszynski, Susan, ‘A Cold War Cautionary Tale: Heterosexuality and Ideology in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur’ in Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol.34 (2006),  p.118

Birley, Anthony, Marcus Aurelius: A Biography (Routledge, 2016), p.149

Viglas, p.159