Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 34

Foundation takes “The Leap” and ends its first season

Welcome to my review of the final episode of Foundation, which is a day late, because I had tech issues as explained here. Reviews of previous episodes of Foundation as well as two actual Foundation stories may be found here.

For more Foundation discussion, check out the Star’s End and Seldon Crisis podcasts. And if you want even more Foundation discussion, this Tuesday, Joel McKinnon of Seldon Crisis and Paul Levinson of Light On Light Through will discuss season 1 of Foundation.

But now, let’s take a look at the season 1 finale of Foundation.

Warning! Spoilers beneath the cut!

The previous episode of Foundation finally ended with the moment we’ve all been waiting for, namely Hari Seldon’s hologram strutting out of the Time Vault, an insufferably smug grin on his face, to confront the assembled Foudationers, Anacreons and Thespins, who are literally at each other’s throats. As everybody who’s read the books knows, Hari is about to tell everybody what just happened and that he foretold everything. And this exactly what happens.

First of all, Hari tells the Anacreons and Thespins that the cause of their centuries long feud – the murder of an Anacreon grand huntress on her wedding night, supposedly committed by her husband, the Thespin crown prince (the writers can’t even come up with an original scenario for a centuries long feud, but have to crib one from Game of Thrones) – was really a plot initiated by Cleon II to keep the two rim worlds from getting too powerful through their alliance. Of course, we believe him because he’s Hari Seldon and Hari Seldon is always right, except when he’s not (but that’s still centuries in the future). However, the Anacreons and Thespins have no real reason to believe “a ghost” as one of them puts it.

Hari then explains that he predicted the periodic reappearances of the Invictus (of course he did) and that he knew it would show up near Terminus. Then, finally, he pulls out the rug from under the Foundationers, when he tells Salvor’s Mom Mari – after warmly greeting her – that the whole Encyclopedia Galactica project was just a ruse to get a lot of smart and dedicated people to Terminus, where they can begin to build what will become the nucleus of the second Galactic Empire. So now they have three planets – Terminus, Anacreon and Thespis – full of hardened survivors, the collective brains of the Foundation and the Invictus and can start building.

“But what about the Empire?” Salvor, whom Hari obviously does not recognise since she wasn’t even born yet, when he died, asks. Hari or rather his hologram is feeling generous today and so he explains that if the Empire believes everybody on Terminus – including Lord Dorwin and his crew – is dead, they won’t bother to investigate, since they’re already stretched to the limits. He even gives the Foundation a hint how to achieve that, by piloting the Invictus onto the far side of Terminus’ sun and simulating a nova. This is quite unusual, because normally Hari’s hologram just gives cryptic hints. In the first Foundation story, Hari’s hologram just points out that the solution is obvious before flickering off and Salvor Hardin is the one who actually figures what that obvious solution is. That solution, by the way, is scientism, the fake religion that the Foundation uses the control the four kingdoms. The show has completel jettisoned that aspect of the original stories, which is what most annoys me about it, because I always loved the idea of science as a fake religion. There is a possibility we will still get to see it – more on that later – but I’m not hopeful.

Hari is truly feeling generous today, for he also answers the questions of the cute kids we’ve seen on Terminus throughout the show about what it’s like to be dead. He explains that the Time Vault is really Hari’s casket which used nanotech (contained in the capsule we see Hari swallowing in episode 2) to cannibalise Hari’s body as well as any passing meteorites and cosmic dust to install itself on Terminus. We even get an impressive visualisation of this instead of the usual opening credits. So Hari is not a ghost, but a hologram powered by a sophisticated AI which wakes up in times of crisis.

Hari also asks one of the cute kids his name and the kid replies, “Poly Verisov”. Now this is a name that readers of the books should recognise, because in “Bridle and Saddle” a.k.a. “The Mayors”, the second original Foundation story (and third story in the book), an adult Poly Verisov is the Foundation ambassador to Anacreon and also high priest of scientism, the Foundation’s fake religion.  So does this mean that we will get to see scientism after all or will Poly Verisov be as changed as many other characters whose names the series borrowed from the books?

Finally, Salvor asks Hari why he has been sending her visions, since she has been seeing his “ghost” since early childhood. Hari gives Salvor a strange look and then says that whoever sent Salvor the visions, it wasn’t him. Then he struts back into his Vault to sleep for another few decades. When Poly Verisov asks if they’ll see him again, Hari replies that yes, they will. And since Foundation has been renewed for a second season – something that Hari surely predicted – he is right.

Now the first Seldon crisis is over, all that’s left to do on Terminus is mop up the pieces. The Anacreons and Thespins have been convinced that Hari Seldon, the ghost of a man they never met, is right and they all join together, letting bygones by bygones. Phara’s surviving goon lays her body to rest on Terminus and plants a tree next to hit, so Phara can have a bit of Anacreon near her. He also informs Salvor that Phara respected her (though she had one hell of a way of expressing that) and that he was fed up with nutty Phara and her suicide missions anyway, because he has a kid on Anacreon he’s like to see grow up. Finally, he gives Salvor Phara’s bow, which makes her grand huntress, I guess. Meanwhile, Salvor is also about to be elected mayor of Terminus, taking over from her father.

We see the tree grow in a timelapse video, which supposedly covers a few months, but should cover several years, unless trees from Anacreon grow really fast even in alien soil. The Foundationers, Anacreons and Thespins repair the Invictus and plan to build more ships like her, now they have a blueprint. Where do they get the material? Shh, don’t ask complicated questions. The new captain of the Invictus is none other than Hugo, the Thespin trader, who also acquires a surname, Crast, in this episode. Now there is a character named Lumin Crast in the first Foundation story, but he is a member of the Encyclopedia board and a Foundationer, not a trader from the Four Kingdoms. This is another example of the show borrowing the names of minor characters and sticking them on people who have very little to do with the original characters.

However, Hugo still finds the opportunity to visit Salvor on Terminus, while the repairs of the Invictus are ongoing, and they have another round of sex. In the middle of the night, Salvor wakes up with strange dreams again. She heads out to the Time Vault, which is now a floating black thing again, and sees a vision of a black girl running away and finally apparently jumping into water, where there is none.

Since Salvor now knows from the mouth of the man (or rather his hologram) himself that Hari Seldon is not responsible for the visions that have plagued her since childhood, she decides to ask her mother about them. Salvor’s mother, who is after all a leading member of the encyclopedia board, probably the leader now that Lewis Pirenne is dead, is understandably angry that the encyclopedia was just a ruse and that Hari Seldon lied to everybody. Salvor points out that it really doesn’t matter why the Foundation was established and that actual life on Terminus won’t be all that different. Never mind that at least in the books, the Enyclopedia Galactica is published after all and that excerpts thereof serve as an epigraph for every chapter.

Meanwhile, Salvor is still depressed that the visions she’s had since childhood are not from Hari Seldon and that she’s not special. Hear me yelling, “You’re not supposed to be special. You’re supposed to be just a smart person in the right place at the right time” at the screen. Mari assures Salvor that of course she is special. So Salvor decides to ask her mother about the girl from the water planet she sees in her visions on occasion and Mari tells her that’s Gaal Dornick.

However, Mari has more to tell Salvor. Because it turns out that Salvor is not the biological kid of Mari and her late husband. Instead, she comes from the egg and embryo bank aboard the Foundation’s generation ship that we saw back in episode 2.  It is not clear whether Mari and her husband had problems conceiving and therefore opted for a donor pregnancy or whether this is standard procedure among the Foundation, a reproductive key party as AV-Club reviewer Nick Wanserski calls it. Mari may have carried the embryo to term, but Salvor’s biological parents are Gaal Dornick and Raych, which makes her Hari Seldon’s granddaughter. Salvor inherited her psychic abilities from Gaal and possibly Raych, who has latent psychic abilities in the books.

Now Hari Seldon actually does have a psychic granddaughter via Raych in Forward the Foundation. Her name is Wanda Seldon and she is instrumental in establishing what will become the Second Foundation. And while it’s certainly possible that Salvor Hardin in the books is a descendant of Gaal Dornick, we never learn about it, because Salvor’s parentage doesn’t matter to the story at all and Gaal never reappears after the first story anyway, because the character just isn’t that important. In the books, Gaal is pretty much an exposition delivering vehicle, a walking and talking infodump.

So while the decision to make Salvor Gaal’s biological daughter does not contradict the books, simply because the books never mention either character’s family relationships, it’s nonetheless the sort of soap opera plot twist that patently designed to lure in the sort of viewer who only watched Game of Thrones for the soap opera elements. But while soap opera elements absolutely have a place in Game of Thrones, they don’t fit into Foundation at all, because it just isn’t that sort of story. And so the whole thing just feels shoehorned in, even if it is foreshadowed by the embryo extraction scene in episode 2.

After learning about her biological parentage, Salvor makes the leap that the fact that she has been having visions of Gaal means that Gaal must be still out there somewhere. She quizzes Mari regarding where and when exactly Gaal vanished in the escape pod and then decides that she must now find Gaal.

Now I know that many adopted children are eager to find their biological parents, but abruptly deciding in the middle of the night to travel halfway across the galaxy to locate her biological mother who has been missing for more than thirty years makes no real sense. What about the newly widowed Mari? What about Terminus, the planet Salvor was so eager to protect for ten episodes now? What about the Invictus and Hugo? Why throw all that away to search for a woman she’s never met, a woman who may be a murderer as far as Salvor knows?

Still, Salvor is determined and so she sneaks off aboard Hugo’s ship. Hugo intercepts her, they hug and kiss, then Salvor takes off. Of course, Salvor has never been in space except for the brief trip to the Invictus. How does she even know how to pilot a spaceship, let alone navigate or use a jump drive? Who cares, Salvor is special.

Meanwhile, Gaal’s escape pod has finally reached her homeworld of Synnax 138 years after she left behind The Raven and Hari Seldon’s insufferably smug hologram. As anybody except Gaal might have expected, this trip was not a good idea, because the town where Gaal once lived is submerged and all of Synnax appears to be devoid of human life. Maybe the Empire finally did get around the evacuating the people of Synnax. Or maybe they all drowned. Not that it really matters to Gaal, since everybody she knows would be long dead anyway.

But then, Gaal spots a glowing light under the surface of the world ocean which is still remarkably shallow. She dives down, finds a very familiar looking crashed spaceship and finally a suspended animation pod, the source of the mysterious glow. Gaal opens the pod and rescues the occupant who turns out to be Salvor. “I think you’re my Mom”, Salvor informs Gaal.

I understand that they probably did this in order to keep Gaal and Salvor around a little longer, but it’s still a stupid plot development that makes little sense. It also thoroughly upsets “Bridle and Saddle”, should they decide to adapt that next (unless they jump straight to “The Big and the Little”), because in “Bridle and Saddle”, set thirty years after the events of “Foundation/The Encyclopedists), Salvor Hardin is still mayor of Terminus – having won election after election – and faces challenges from a new movement called the Actionist Party as well as a newly emboldened Anacreon. But now Salvor has jumped straight ahead to the era of “The Wedge/The Traders”, where he/she is supposed to be a legendary figure from the past and not an active participant.

Besides, Salvor certainly would have deserved to enjoy her victory and live happily ever after with Hugo and becoming a benevolent semi-dictator. As for Gaal, I wouldn’t have minded if we had never seen Gaal again after the first two episodes, because Gaal simply isn’t very interesting. The script does its best to turn Gaal into more than the walking and talking infodump the character is in the books and there’s nothing wrong with Lou Llobell’s performance, but I still don’t care about Gaal and what happens to her. Having her head off to establish the Second Foundation would have been a good resolution for the character, but otherwise I don’t know why she’s still in the story.

Meanwhile in the Empire, the clone family drama of the Cleons is coming to its inevitable conclusion.  Brother Day, newly returned from his gruelling adventures on the moon of the generic triple goddess religion, first deals with Azura, the sole surviving member of the conspiracy to replace Brother Dawn with a rogue Cleon clone that was uncovered last week. He takes Azura from the cell where she is tied to a chair and then takes a walk with her in the palace gardens.

Day is utterly furious at Azura, not only because she attempted to undermine the genetic dynasty, but also because she hurt Dawn. For Brother Day feels very protective of Dawn, whom he views as his son. After all, he already rocked Dawn as a baby. We actually do see this, when this version of Dawn is decanted and Day tenderly rocks him, while the former Brother Dusk, now Brother Darkness, is disintegrated back in episode 3. At the time, I assumed that this unusual display of tenderness in a galactic tyrant was simply due to Lee Pace just liking babies and reacting to the live baby put in his arms for this scene. Of course, Lee Pace probably really does like babies, but there was a purpose to this scene as well, since it shows that this version of Day, at any rate, has tender feelings for his younger self.

But even if he likes babies or at least Brother Dawn, Brother Day is still a galactic tyrant and he can be a real bastard. We saw a glimpse of that side when he ordered Demerzel to murder Zephyr Halima at a point when the woman had ceased to be a threat. Azura, meanwhile, gets the full brunt of Brother Day being a bastard. And so he tells her that his people have tracked down anybody who ever passed through Azura’s life, close and distant family members, friends, co-workers, lovers (Azura is bisexual, we learn), 1551 people altogether. Any one of those 1551 people might remember Azura and wonder what happened to her or might even know that the current Brother Dawn is an imperfect clone, so Day has them all eliminated with the snap of a finger. It’s not the deadliest finger snap in filmic history – Thanos has him beat there – but it’s still an impressively awful thing to do. Though it would have been even more impressive, if we had actually seen e.g. a random citizen or maybe one of Azura’s fellow gardeners just drop dead on the spot. As for Azura herself, she won’t be executed. Instead, she’ll be hooded, hooked up to a feeding tube and chained up in a dungeon and then Day will throw away the key.

Day’s punishment of Azura echoes Dusk’s (back when he was still Day) punishment of the Anacreons and Thespins after the attack on the Sky Bridge back in episode 2. Because just like his hated predecessor, this Day kills a shitload of innocent people but leaves the one person who’s actually guilty (though we still don’t know, if the Anacreons and Thespins are really responsible for the attack on the Sky Bridge) alive to contemplate their guilt. This shows that no matter how much they try to distinguish themselves from the clones, the Cleons are still the same person and it’s not a very nice person. Of all the emperors they could have cloned, they picked probably the most awful one.

After dealing with Azura, Day goes to see Dawn who’s being held under guard and in handcuffs in his quarters. Day sends the guards out and releases the handcuffs and proceeds to yell at poor Dawn, who may not be the sharpest Cleon in the drawer, but who’s still a victim in all this. Dawn confesses that he always suspected he was different and that he used to watch footage of Day in order to copy him better. Dawn also tells Day that he so much wishes Day were his father (that’s two Cleons then), but also that their lives – cooped up in the palace, no family except their clone siblings and no intimacy except with harem girls who will have their memories erased afterwards – are pretty shitty. “Did you never want to get out of the palace?” Dawn yells at Day. Of course, Day did want to get out, that’s why he travelled to the Maiden, after all. Dawn also cries that “We’re not even real people”, which strikes a sore spot in Day, who still wonders whether Zephyr Halima was right after all and the Cleons don’t have a soul.

Now I actually like the Cleon clone plot and their dysfunctional family a lot, even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the books, and it is often more compelling than the actual Terminus plot, as Paul Levinson points out in his review. However, the constant harping on whether the Cleons are or are not human annoys me. Maybe I’ve read too much Lois McMaster Bujold, but to me there is no question that clones are human. Of course, they’re human – how they were created and conceived doesn’t matter. As for whether clones have a soul, I don’t believe that there is such a thing as a soul that exists separately from the body and the brain, therefore every conscious and intelligent being has a soul, including the Cleons, Demerzel and even Hari’s hologram.

However, the debate whether the Cleons are human is not just a philosophical debate I find irrelevant (of course, they are human, which doesn’t mean they’re good people), but one I find hugely problematic and actively harmful.  Because there are people out there like the German writer Sibylle Lewitscharoff who genuinely believe that people conceived via artificial insemination or surrogate pregnancies are not really human either (which would make e.g. Salvor not human, if applied to Foundation). And whenever group is considered “not really human” by a sufficient number of people, bad things happen as history has amply told us. Thankfully, Sibylle Lewitscharoff got pushback for her idiotic remarks, but she’s not the only one who believes that sort of thing. I remember watching a dytopian SF film on German TV sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s – i.e. around the time that I first read the Foundation books – where a teenaged boy finds that he doesn’t have emotions and later learns that he was conceived by artificial insemination and that he therefore isn’t a real human being, whereupon he kills himself. I no longer remember the title of that movie and Google is no help either. But my reaction to that movie was very much my reaction to the “Are the Cleons human?” debate in Foundation, namely “Of course, they’re human, so why are we even having this debate?” There are hundred thousands of people out there who were conceived by artificial insemination and/or via sperm or egg donation and/or born via surrogate pregnancies. We can argue whether these practices are moral or right (and personally, I think surrogate pregnancies are a horrible abuse of women’s bodies and should be banned, though I have no issue with artificial insemination or sperm and egg donations), but the people who result from these practices are no less human and do not deserve to have their humanity called into question. Just stop with this crap.

When we next see Brother Dawn,  Demerzel picks him up and leads him through the corridor with faces of all the past Cleons turning to look at you to face his judgment and likely execution at the hand of his brothers. Dusk, who’s always been a bastard, just wants the embarassment that is Dawn gone and incinerated. Day, however, wants to keep Dawn, even if he’s imperfect. And because “I love this kid and I don’t give a fuck if he’s lefthanded and has red/green blindness” isn’t really an argument that will convince Dusk of all people (since Dusk loves no one), Day invokes Hari Seldon and that Seldon said that the genetic dynasty has become stale and will hasten the fall of the Empire, unless they change. And here is change, delivered right onto their doorstep right in the form of Dawn. This is not the first time Day has invoked Seldon and it makes sense for him to do so, because Day was there as a little kid when Hari Seldon made his pronouncements and literally minutes afterwards the Sky Bridge collapsed. To Day, Hari Seldon is a powerful and dangerous magician.

Dusk, however, won’t have any of this. He and Day come to blows, having a fist fight in the throne room (which must be like punching yourself in the face). Dawn is scared and begins to cry – he’s still very much a kid after all – and hugs Demerzel. And Demerzel strokes and soothes him and tells him everything will be all right – before breaking his neck. “I serve the genetic dynasty above all”, she informs the horrified Day and Dusk.

Yes, Daneel/Demerzel has flat out ignored the First Law of Robotics and committed a murder for the second time in three episodes. And while the murder of Zephyr Halima might just be explained away via the Zeroth Law, since Zephyr Halima was destabilising the Empire, hastening the fall and also a representative of a harmful religion that kills some fifty percent of its followers via terrible pilgrimages (something the show never ever questions) and the galaxy is probably better off without her, Brother Dawn was a harmless kid who never hurt anybody.  True, Demerzel is very upset by what she’s done, so upset that she retreats to her private quarters and rips off her face to reveal a Terminator-like metal skull underneath. Nonetheless, robots who repeatedly ignore the Three Laws of Robotics in what is supposed to be an Asimov adaptation annoy me more than any other departure from the books.  Because the Three Laws of Robotics are so very central to Asimov’s work, as central as or even more so than psychohistory. And though Hari explains psychohistory correctly in the first episode, the show chooses to ignore that and instead focusses on super-special chosen ones like Salvor or Gaal.

Day is utterly devastated as he carries Dawn into the incineration chamber. Dusk seems to be his usual bastard self – “I want a new one decanted and up to speed by morning”, he order – but even he is not unaffected and smashes his palette into the mural he’s been working on.

Worse, the murder of Dawn was utterly unnecessary, because Dawn isn’t the only imperfect Cleon clones. For Shadowmaster Obreht informs Day that the conspirators didn’t just mess with Dawn’s DNA, they corrupted the source, i.e. the body of Cleon I itself. Nor was Dawn the only Cleon affected. Day’s DNA is altered as well and most likely’s Dusk’s too.

This is a devastating blow to the genetic dynasty, though I still have to wonder why they don’t have multiple copies of something as important as the original Cleon DNA they use to clone the Emperors. And if all else fails, there’s still the rebels’ Cleon clone whose body should have the correct DNA. Finally, if the nanites in the Emperors’ bloodstream can alter their DNA, shoulodn’t they also be able to fix it? After all, we’re much closer to having gene therapy and gene editing (we already have it to a certain degree) than to having cloning.

And that’s it for season 1 of Foundation. The show wasn’t the complete disaster I feared it would be and it actually was pretty good as a generic space opera show. However, it also wasn’t the Foundation I wanted to see, the Foundation I’ve wanted to see for more than thirty years now. I don’t care of Salvor Hardin changes race and sex (and the books neve specify Salvor’s race anyway), but it would be nice if they were still at least vaguely the same person. Just as it would be nice to get some more of what makes Foundation Foundation, namely the Foundation winning not by violence and having bigger guns than the other guys, but by outsmarting their opponents time and again. Cause that aspect is almost entirely absent in the series, replaced by explosion, chases and soap opera antics.

Finally, I want to point you to this article by Zachary D. Carter in The Atlantic. I initially scoffed about the headline – “Foundation has an Imperialism problem” – because duh, of course it does, which anybody whose actually read the books should know. However, the actual article is much better than the headline suggests, because Zachary D. Carter has not only read the books – a few years after I read them – he’s also a fan and has been greatly influenced by them and even studied economics because of Foundation. I always find this interesting, since Hari Seldon is never called an economist in the books nor a mathematician, he’s referred to as a social scientist or sociologist. So while Zachary D. Carter and Paul Krugman were inspired to study economics by Foundation, I was inspired to study sociology as a secondary subject. I’ve never regretted that either, even if I now know that psychohistory is nonsense, sorry.

In short, Zachary D. Carter is one of the people the show was made for and his criticisms mirror mine in many ways, namely that the show has lost too much of what made Foundation Foundation. Carter explicitly criticises that the show turned Salvor Hardin, who was a shrewd and pacifist manipulator in the books, into an action hero. He also takes issue with the fact that Gaal’s planet of the Luddites seems to be populated exclusively by people of colour, which is flat out offensive, even though it wasn’t intended that way.

Carter also explains how much Foundation is rooted in the WWII and immediate postwar era when the stories were written and how they reflect the US’ rise to superpower and how the US used strategic alliances, trade and yes, religion, to bring other countries into their sphere of influence. This is something that I never noticed when I originally read those stories in the late 1980s/early 1990s – probably because at the time history literally stopped in 1945 and nothing that came after was ever covered in history lessons. However, the parallels to the US’ rise to superpower became only all too clear to me when I reread the stories for the Retro Hugos.

For me – and I think for Zachary Carter – the core of Foundation is the triumph of brains over brawn and how the Foundation usually wins without firing a single shot. Plus, the Foundation stands for progress and technology and for wanting to make the world and the universe a better place. We can argue about their methods and whether they achieve that, but their goals are laudable. Foundation is what taught me how economic boycots work, whereas the teacher who attempted to explain to us why eating grapes from South Africa was suddenly a very bad thing in the 1980s, whereas no one had given a damn about the fact that aprtheid era South Africa was racist as fuck only a few years before, failed (and I’m pretty sure those unseasonal grapes weren’t even from South Africa, but from Chile or somewhere else).

There is a reason the Foundation books are so beloved and have inspired countless people, some of whom went on to do important things. Because the overall story – though it lacks a lot of elements that stories traditionally need such as action or characters that are more than cardboard – is incredibly compelling. And it still could be as compelling today as it was in the late 1980s, when I first read the books, or in the 1940s, when they were written. I have no issues with updating the story for a modern audience, with adding more women and people of colour (though I don’t recall being at all bothered by the nigh complete lack of women in the first book), with adding in action scenes and space battles and sex scenes, as long as the core story – brain wins over brawn and doesn’t even need to fire a shot, there are no chosen ones and Hari Seldon is always right, except when he isn’t – remains intact. And yes, it should be possible to tell that story and still appeal to the folks who watched Game of Thrones for the sex scenes and soap opera aspects.

And while the first season did manage to pull itself together at the end, I’m not sure if the core story still is intact. First seasons are often rough – think Star Trek Discovery – but the whole “super-special chosen one” stuff just doesn’t fit Foundation nor does the very earnest view of religion rather than the extremely cynical view of the original stories (which I loved, just having had multiple run-ins with religious hypocrites which eventually caused me to leave the Lutheran church behind). And don’t even get me started on Daneel/Demerzel flat out ignoring the Three Laws.

So in short, season 1 of Foundation was not bad at all and extremely pretty to look at, though for me it didn’t quite capture the spirit of the books. Will I be watching season 2? Probably, though I suspect we’ll have to wait a while for it to come out.

Star Trek Discovery Takes the “Kobayashi Maru” Test

Star Trek Discovery is back for its fourth season, though I’m not sure that I’ll be doing episode by episode reviews again, because Paramount has pulled a true dick move and pulled Star Trek Discovery from Netflix internationally, leaving viewers outside North America with no legal means of watching the show. And yes, we all know that there are ways around this, but if Paramount doesn’t want me watching their show, then I’m not sure that I want to spend the time required to write these reviews and I’m not the only one.

However, I was having technical difficulties and couldn’t watch the Foundation season finale, so I watched the season 4 opener of Discovery instead. And yes, it’s ironic that I had an easier time watching the show I theoretically shouldn’t be able to watch than the one I can legally watch.

For my takes on the first three seasons of Star Trek Discovery, go here.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut!

When we last saw the good ship Discovery and her valiant crew, they had just saved the entire Federation by solving the mystery of the so-called “Burn”. Habitual troublemaker Michael Burnham has been promoted to captain and the whole crew got new uniforms (likely because they make hiding pregnancies easier), since Saru wanted to spend time on his homeworld Kaminar with Su’kal, the troubled Kelpien they met back in season 3.

Season 4 now opens with Michael and her boyfriend Book on a diplomatic mission to the planet of the butterfly people (their species probably has a name, but Book calls them “butterfly people” and the name is appropriate) that goes comically wrong. Now that the Federation has dilithium again, they want to rebuild and repair connections with worlds that they lost contact with. One of these worlds is the planet of the butterfly people.

Unfortunately, the butterfly people have zero interest in reconnecting with the Federation and are sceptical of a no strings attached gift of free dilithium as well. They are even more sceptical, when they detect another lifeform aboard Book’s ship. Of course, that lifeform is only Book’s cat Grudge, but unfortunately the butterfly people don’t understand the concept of a pet and misunderstand Book’s remark that Grudge is a queen as Michael and book holding a literal monarch prisoner aboard Book’s ship. So the butterfly people decide to free the queen of the cats and chase Michael and Book through the forest (this is one of the thirty percents of planets in the universe that look just like British Columbia, with some extra CGI cliffs).

Michael and Book realise that the butterfly people are having problems navigating and a quick call to Stamets and Adira (who has been promoted to series regular, complete with her name in the title credits) reveals that the poles of the butterfly planet are shifting, which affects the butterfly people’s natural navigation abilities. And the satellite network that was supposed to compensate for this has failed due to a lack of dilithium. So Michael orders the Discovery’s cutesy repair bots to supply the satellites with dilithium so the butterfly people can navigate again, before she and Book get the hell out of there. The butterfly people are grateful, but still won’t quite believe that the Discovery repaired their satellites with no strings attached. Michael assures them that it’s true, because they’re the Federation and helping people is what they do.

Honestly, Michael Burnham should never ever be sent on any diplomatic mission, because she’s just flat out terrible at it. Which is interesting, since Michael’s adoptive father Sarek was one of the Federation’s top diplomats and her adoptive brother Spock would eventually follow in his footsteps. Michael, on the other hand, is way too blunt to make a good diplomat. Send Saru or Tilly or indeed anybody except Michael.

After narrowly averting a diplomatic crisis with the butterfly people, the Discovery has to head back to Starfleet headquarters, now no longer cloaked, for the grand reopening of Starfleet Academy. Michael is supposed to give a speech and introduce the new president of the Federation, something she’s not all that happy with, because Michael doesn’t like politicians.  Meanwhile, Book heads back to his homeworld Kwejian to meet his adoptive brother Kyheem and nephew Leto at an initiation ceremony for empaths.

At the grand reopening of Starfleet Academy, Michael proves that she has the one quality that any Starfleet captain worth their salt must have, namely the ability to hold inspirational speeches.

All the familiar faces are there, including the whole Discovery bridge crew, who not only continue to be given more lines and characterisation, but also got a new member, one Lieutentant Christopher. Admiral Vance is back as well and now reunited with his family. Whereas Raumpatrouille Orion, which debuted in September 1966 only ten days after the original Star Trek, always featured the same higher ranking military officials, Star Trek usually featured random forgettable admirals of the week. I like the fact that Discovery and Picard are both more consistent with regard to admirals. Finally, we also meet President Lara Rillak, who according to Tor.com reviewer Keith R.A. DeCandido is part Cardassian, part Bajoran and part human and also the first female Federation president we’ve ever seen.

Notable by his absence is Saru, whom we briefly see on a much changed Kaminar. Kelpians and their erstwhile predator species are living in harmony now, even if the predators still look like evil Lovecraftian critters. Saru is well respected on Kaminar and argues for rejoining the Federation. However, he also misses Discovery. Su’Kal tells Saru that he will be fine and has found friends and that Saru can go back, if he wants to, as long as he visits on occasion.

The joyful event is interrupted, when Starfleet headquarters receives a distress call from Deep Space Repair Station Beta 6, which just suffered a catastrophic failure of unknown origin. No other Starfleet ship is close enough to help and the nearest Federation planet, which just happened to be Book’s homeworld Kwejian, is also too far away. So it’s up to the Discovery and her magic mushroom drive to save the day. However, the Discovery also has a passenger, President Lara Rillick, who tags along for the mission because she wants to see the crew in action.

Michael is less than happy about this. She doesn’t like politicians and believes that the President is just coming along to tick a box. However, Lara Rillick is also the president and Michael can’t just leave her behind. Furthermore, President Rillick also turns out to be more knowledgable about space travel than Michael originally assumed, since she used to be a cargo ship pilot. Finally, Lara Rillick also knows what the Kobayashi Maru test is. My initial thought was, “Wait a minute, they’re still doing that stupid test seven hundred years in the future.”  AV-Club reviewer Zack Handlen seems to have the same impression.

From this point on, “Kobayashi Maru” turns into a straight up rescue mission episode. Not only is the Beta 6 station completely out of control, barely any of their systems are functioning. The Discovery manages to stabilise the station and hail the stationmaster who reports that most of his systems have failed and he has no idea why, but an engineer and some programmable matter should help. So Michael orders Adira, who is now an Ensign and has more experience with programmable matter than anyone on board, and Tilly, who’s now a Lieutenant and has plenty of away mission experience, to beam over to Beta 6.

Star Trek Discovery consistently looks good – the best looking of all Star Trek shows – and the Beta 6 scenes are no exception. Because the artificial gravity on the station had failed, Tilly, Adira and the station crew are walking on the ceilings.

Tilly and Adira are on their way to repairing everything – in spite of a hovering and overprotective stationmaster – when more trouble strikes. For no sooner has the Discovery figured out just what happened to Beta 6 – they were struck by a gravitational anomaly – that both the Discovery and the station are pelted by a swarm of meteorites caused by the gravitional distortion. The Discovery extends her shields around the station, but the required energy output is too great and they can’t keep it up very long, even with Stamets working his tech magic. So Michael orders everybody on Beta 6 evacuated, which frankly is what they should have done in the first place.

However, the transporter inconveniently malfunctions, as it tends to do in these situations, which leaves Adira, Tilly and the Beta 6 crew with a dilemma.  They can’t get to the rescue shuttle, because the rest of the station has lost life support and they have no spacesuits in the command center. And while the command center has a small escape pod, it can only fly one way and is not big enough to fit the entire crew plus Tilly. and Adira.

Adira thinks that they can reprogram the escape pod to return to the station, but more trouble occurs, for debris has jammed the escape pods ejection system and there’s nothing anybody can do from the inside. And Discovery‘s repair robots cannot navigate in the meteorite storm. Someone has to go out in a one-person vehicle and remove the debris. Michael immediately volunteers, but President Rillak points out – quite correctly – that the captain’s place is on the bridge and not on a dangerous away mission. Of course, this is Star Trek, so the captain and first officer will always beam down together into dangerous situation and only survive due to the sacrifice of a random redshirt. Michael, meanwhile, points out that she is the person on board with the most extravehicular experience, so she’s going. Rillak isn’t happy with this, but throwing the captain in the brig during a crisis is never a good idea, so she lets Michael go.

Things go wrong once again, when Michael’s vehicle is hit and she is reduced to removing debris in just a spacesuit. The stationmaster takes just this moment to have a freak-out and wants to head to the shuttle bay through the part of the station that has no life support. When Tilly and Adira try to stop him, he pulls a gun on them. Now President Rillak does something useful. She talks to the stationmaster and uses her knowledge about his home planet to calm him down and him to lower the gun. Of course, Rillak was lying and never visited the stationmaster’s planet at all; she just read his file. Michael is not happy about Rillak lying, but then Rillak’s lies got the stationmaster to lower the gun, which is a win in my book.

Once Michael has cleared away the debris, the escape pod can finally depart, but there is yet more trouble ahead, because the escape pod needs to make two trips to rescue everybody. Meanwhile, the shields are failing. Rillak wants the Discovery to get the hell out of there, but Michael isn’t willing to leave Tilly, Adira and the stationmaster behind to die. Rillak points out that staying means that everybody aboard the Discovery might die and then gives Michael a variation of the “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” line. Part of me hoped that Michael would reply with, “Yes, I know. My brother always said that.” But she doesn’t.

The escape pod makes it to the Discovery‘s shuttle bay just as the shields fail. The Discovery jumps, but the shuttle bay takes a hit. Tilly and Adira survive with little more than bruises, but stationmaster (who may never have worn a red shirt, but was a classic redshirt nonetheless) is killed. Poor fellow was doomed the moment he started talking about his homeplanet.

Michael, being Michael, is sad that she couldn’t save everybody, but President Rillak points out that they saved more lives than they lost. She also starts talking about the Kobayashi Maru test and reveals that she’s not just aboard the Discovery to “tick a box”, as Michael put it. No, Starfleet is looking for a captain for their latest experimental ship, ironically named Voyager (watch it suffer mishaps and be flung hell knows where on its maiden voyage). Michael was on the longlist, but she did not make the shortlist, because she’s unwilling to make “hard choices(TM)” and too much of a maverick, something that will surprise absolutely no one who has watched the past three seasons of Star Trek Discovery.

Personally, I’m with Michael here and agree that she shouldn’t have abandoned Tilly, Adira and the doomed stationmaster, while there was still a chance to save them. Also, as I’ve pointed out several times (most recently here) my yardstick for evaluating spaceship captains has always been “What would Commander McLane from Raumpatrouille Orion do?” And while Michael may have failed the President Rillak test, she just passed the “What would Commander McLane do?” test with flying colours. And indeed, of all the Star Trek captains, Michael probably is the one who is most like McLane with regard to mentality, because she’s also a maverick who will never abandon anybody, if there’s a chance to save them. And I for one can’t argue with that.  McLane would also have found a way to cheat the Kobayashi Maru test BTW.

In his review at io9, James Whitbrook rightly points out that Michael and the Discovery crew have plot armour, which allows them to pull off the most impossible missions and snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat every single time. Yes, the plot is rigged in favour of Michael.

However, what James Whitbrook fails to point out (though the episode itself does) is that Kobayashi Maru type no-win scenarios are just as rigged. Because in order for a Kobayashi Maru scenario to work the way it should (There’s no way out. Everybody will die every single time), the author has to eliminate all sorts of ways to save the day without death and bloodshed.  And readers/viewers are normally very good at finding ways to rescue everybody. That’s why people (including yours truly) have been picking apart and rewriting Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” for almost seventy years, because “The Cold Equations” features a badly rigged (at the insistence of John W. Campbell) no win scenario.

This episode of Discovery is actually a good example for a rigged no win scenario. The most logical course of action would have been to evacuate the station crew at once rather than to try to repair the station. When the repair attempts fail, the writers take the transporter, which could have saved everybody, out of the game (there’s a reason transporters malfunction on Star Trek all the time). Then the rescue shuttle is on the wrong deck and the escape pod too small for everybody, even though it makes no sense that a civilisation as advanced as the Federation would not have an escape pod big enough for everybody with some redundancies in case they need to pick up an extra Adira and Tilly. In short, the whole situation is rigged, which is okay, because that is what writers do. And it actually holds up and doesn’t have too many logical issues, which is more than you can say for many of these stories.

That said, I do like President Rillak, even if the episodes sets her up as an opponent to Michael. She reminds me of characters like General Lydia Van Dyke, General Wamsler and Colonel Villa in Raumpatrouille Orion, who forever try to reign in the maverick McLane. Of course, I have Orion on my mind currently, because I’m in the middle of reviewing the whole series for Galactic Journey, but there really are a lot of similarities between Discovery and Orion. Star Trek and Orion are transatlantic siblings anyway, two shows born in the same cultural moment (debuting ten days apart), drawing on the same sources and tackling similar themes. Which would make Discovery the great-niece of Orion, I guess. And I’m pretty sure Michael and McLane would get along swimmingly.

While Michael is retaking the Kobayashi Maru test, Book enjoys a peaceful moment with his adoptive brother Kyheem and nephew Leto on Kwejian (which looks like British Columbia on a rare sunny day). Leto is an empath just like his Dad and uncle and so Book and Kyheem take him to the world root, a large tree root that is sacred to his people. They take some sap from the root and put it in a glass capsule together with a drop of blood. Empaths like Kyheem and Leto always wear this capsule around their neck, though Book seems to have mislaid his.

The peace and quiet is interrupted by a huge flock of birds flying up into the sky. Something is wrong, so Book returns to his ship to figure out what. The ship is suddenly hit by the same gravitational distortion which took out Beta 6 and pelted by debris. Book barely has time to get off a warning, before the damage knocks him out.

The ship returns to the Discovery on autopilot with Book unsconscious. Once he recovers and reports what happened, the Discovery heads to Kwejian, but the planet is a burning cinder in space, completely destroyed. Book’s family and everybody else he knew is most likely dead.

After some rough early seasons (and season 1 is very rough indeed), Star Trek Discovery seems to have found its feet in the 30th century. We get a mix of Star Trek doing what it does best – saving lives against impossible odds, while delivering inspirational speeches and moral dilemmas – with a more modern style of storytelling, more action and season arcs. The gravitational distortion and whatever or whoever causes it seems to be the main arc for this season. It doesn’t look very impressive – Zack Handlen calls it a “scary black cloud” – but it certainly is powerful and nasty.

A promising start to season 4. A pity that thanks to Paramount’s dick move, viewers outside the US and Canada won’t be able to watch it legally.

A Trio of Public Service Announcements regarding the Hugos and Other Stuff

As the title says, this post is a trio of brief public service announcements.

For starters, voting for the 2021 Hugo Awards closes today. So if you’re a member of DisCon III and haven’t voted yet, you still have a few hours, so go here and vote.

As you probably know, I’m a Hugo finalist for Best Fan Writer this year and of course, I’d be honoured if you were to vote for me. But if you’d rather vote for one of my most excellent fellow finalists, that’s okay as well, because they all do great work.

While we’re on the subject of the Hugos, issue 59 of the Hugo-nominated and Hugo-winning fanzine Journey Planet is available and the theme is – yes – the Hugos.

I have an article in this issue and talk about one of my favourite Hugo winning stories of all time, “Ill Met in Lankhmar” by Fritz Leiber, winner of the 1971 Hugo Award (and Nebula Award) for Best Novella.

You can download the issue here.

Finally, I’m also over at Galactic Journey again, where I discuss episode 5, “The Battle for the Sun” of the West German science fiction show Raumpatrouille Orion a.k.a. Space Patrol Orion.

It’s been a while since I last watched Orion all the way through, but while I of course remembered that this is the episode featuring Margot Trooger as the ruler of the planet of the women, I had completely forgotten that “Battle for the Sun” also has a global warming plot – in 1966. Plus, Tamara Jagellovsk comments on Commander Cliff Alister McLane’s kissing abilities.

Fancast Spotlight: The Book Wormhole

Today, I have another Fancast Spotlight for you. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

And so I’m pleased to feature the delightfully named YouTube channel The Book Wormhole.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome Robin Rose Graves of The Book Wormhole to my blog today:

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

The Book Wormhole is a monthly updating BookTube channel where I provide spoiler free reviews and discussions of the books I read. Science Fiction makes up the majority of what I cover on the channel, and while I lean more towards female, POC and/or LGBT authors, I read both classics as well as contemporary releases. I balance popular books with indie and underrated titles. I promise there will be at least one book you’ve never heard of before on my channel.

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

Currently it is a one man production. I do everything from selecting books, reading them, scripting, filming, editing videos and graphic design. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though. This project is my baby. I love doing collabs, but ultimately when it comes to anything regarding quality control, I like being responsible to ensure everything I post is something I am proud to share.

Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?

After college, my motivation to read plummeted and even when I did pick up a book, I was never connecting with anything I read. This project began once I broke the cycle and started finding books I liked and got me excited about reading again. I initially started the channel as both an outlet for me to talk about what I was reading, but also with the hopes that it would help connect others with books they are really going to like. It’s only happened a few times so far that someone has told me they read a book I talked about on my channel, but it’s still very rewarding each time.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

The predecessor to the Book Wormhole was a blog. Admittedly, I don’t care too much for blogging, and nor did I think it would be the right way to find the audience I was looking for. I was looking for people who wanted to read but didn’t know what, and I honestly don’t think too many of those people frequent blogs.

But I also wanted it to have a verbal component. I wanted to physically talk about the books that excited me so. Matched with my humble past experience with video editing, and it became obvious what medium this needed to be in. I was going to film video reviews on YouTube!

Funny enough, I didn’t know BookTube was a thing when I first had the thought to convert my reviews to film. I mean, I knew I couldn’t have been the first person to think of it, but I didn’t realize until I started just how big of a community BookTube is. It’s reassuring to see so many people are still passionate about reading.

The fan categories at the Hugos were there at the very beginning, but they are also the categories which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

There’s nothing more genuine than a fan. Oftentimes, it is work done without financial compensation and therefore nothing about it is motivated by money or what is going to sell. It’s purely driven by passion alone. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being spammed with commercials constantly, so finally seeing something genuine and made for the love of it is such a nice remedy.

As a reader, I find nearly all my books based on recommendation. I trust them more than a synopsis or a sponsored post who’s trying to make a sale. (Several times I’ve been misguided by an advertisement only to have been entirely let down by the book). I find BookTube reviews to be more honest. Sometimes delighting in tearing apart everything that didn’t work about a book. But also, oftentimes including minor details I want to know ahead of time that a synopsis isn’t going to offer. What beloved tropes and themes will the book contain? What sort of representation? The things I REALLY want to know about a book ahead of time.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts have sprung up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

I think fan media is going to continue to evolve along with upcoming new formats. With YouTube came BookTube. With Instagram came Bookstagram. And now, with the rise of TikTok, naturally there is BookTok. So long as there is a space for fans to exist in, they’ll be there making fan content.

On the plus side, accessibility will continue to improve. On the negative, I’ve noticed an increase in censorship as more young children enter what used to be almost adult-exclusive spaces. It’ll be interesting to see what fan media looks like even one year from now, judging by how quick the internet has been evolving lately.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

Yes if you’re not familiar with the fancast Space Cowboy Books Presents – Reading and Interviews series, I highly recommend checking it out! Those events got me through the pandemic and I still enjoy them now. As for fanzines, Galactic Journey. I’ve been religiously following their coverage of Star Trek, starting with the first episode that premiered at Tricon in 1966. Also Simultaneous Times Newsletter. As for fan artists, I’m amazed by Lorelei Esther’s work!

Where can people find you?

Watch and Subscribe to The Book Wormhole on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFuAf6QaaLdJzXvZbNltDRw

And/or Follow me on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/spicymisorobin

Thank you, Robin, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out The Book Wormhole, cause it’s a great BookTube channel.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast or a semiprozine and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

The Tale of Declan, Disruptor of Doors

The Tale of Declan, Disruptor of DoorsA Sword and Sorcery Parodyby Cora Buhlert

In an age undreamt of, after the Supreme Lord of Darkness descended from his mountain to lead the Hounds of Sadness in their assault against the sinful cities on the coast, but before the scarlet plague swept the land, there lived in a barbaric country a young bard named Declan.

Declan was a rising star among the bards of his land. His name was spoken with admiration in the taverns and around the camp fires. Last year, he had even been runner-up in the bardic contest of the Great Dragon Atalanta, losing only to Bryan, the Grand Hunter of Witches. Declan was still sore about that.

Even though Declan resided in Nu-Yore, the most sinful of the sinful cities on the coast, he was a pious man who had seen the light of the One True God and followed the One True Faith. And so Declan decided to make a pilgrimage across the great sea to visit the great temple of the high priest of the One True God.

It was at this time that the ships anchoring in the harbour of Nu-Yore brought troubling news. For an unknown plague was sweeping through the lands across the great sea, felling the beggars in the streets and the lords and ladies in their palaces. Dark clouds were gathering and bodies, their skin turned a bright scarlet, were lying unclaimed and unburied in the streets of the cities across the sea.

The plague had also come to the land of Ital across the sea. It descended from the snow-capped mountains in the North to the fertile plains of Ital, where it struck old and young, rich and poor, sinner and saint alike.

In the heart of Ital, there lay the city of Va-Tica, home of the great temple of the One True God. And this was where Declan was headed on his pilgrimage. Like everybody in Nu-Yore, Declan had heard the news about the scarlet plague sweeping the lands across the sea. But he was undeterred. After all, his was a holy pilgrimage. And besides, he was a pious man and humble servant of the One True God. So surely, he would be spared from the scarlet plague.

“Art thou sure, son?” asked the captain of the galleon upon which Declan had booked passage to Va-Tica, “Hast thou not heard of the scarlet plague that devastates the land of Ital?”

“I am sure, good captain,” replied Declan, “After all, I am a man of faith and the One True God shall protect me.”

Days and weeks passed, as the galleon made its way across the great ocean that divides the world. It was an uneventful voyage. The waves were calm and the galleon passed few other ships. Even the pirates that plagued the seas had retreated to their fortified islands.

“Art thou truly sure that thou wantest to disembark, son?” asked the captain, when the galleon moored in the harbour of Va-Tica, “For the scarlet plague has reached Va-Tica and the sacred virgins are dropping dead in the streets of the temple district. It is not too late, son. I can take thee back to Nu-Yore free of charge.”

But Declan’s faith in the One True God was strong. “No, good captain, I am sure. All I want is to pray at the great temple of the One True God and ask his favour for my bardic ventures. And surely He Who Rules All Creation will hold His hand over His humble servant.”

The captain just sighed. “Thy word in thine God’s ear.” Then he ordered the mooring lines cut and the anchors lifted, for no captain worth his salt wanted to stay in a plague-ridden port longer than absolutely necessary.

***

Declan, meanwhile, wandered through the streets of Va-Tica, marvelling at the marble palaces, grand statues and obelisks that reached for the heavens, and blissfully ignored the bodies that lay rotting in the gutters, their faces and hands turned a bright scarlet.

“Surely…” thought Declan, “…they were sinners who would not worship the One True God.”

Onwards he wandered, through deserted streets and past shuttered houses with the sign of the plague painted on the doors in bright scarlet. As he reached the temple district, he spotted the body of a sacred virgin lying in the gutter, her soft skin stark scarlet underneath her gossamer veils.

“Another sinner, to be sure,” thought Declan, “Most likely, she wasn’t even a real virgin. And everybody knows that the One True God smites sinners with extreme prejudice.”

And then he quickly turned away, for even in her scarlet state, the fallen virgin was still most comely, her curves sound and soft and enticing.

“Temptation…” thought Declan, “…lurks everywhere.”

For many years, Declan had saved his coins for this journey, the journey of a lifetime. But the pilgrimage turned out to be most disappointing. For in the temple district of Va-Tica, all the shrines and seminaries, the sacred library and even the great temple itself were shuttered. The sacred virgins hid their faces behind their gossamer veils, hoping to the spared the breath of the scarlet death that stalked the streets, And the high priest himself had fled to his estate in the country and barricaded himself among orange groves and apple orchards.

It was the pilgrimage of a lifetime, but there was nowhere to pray, nowhere to worship, no sacred blessings to receive. There were only deserted streets and dead bodies, their skin grotesquely scarlet.

Not even the taverns and inns and the street market stalls were open and Declan could get nothing to eat nor drink. So in desperation, he visited the envoy of his homeland, standing outside the shuttered villa and banging onto the gate, until he was granted entry.

“What art thou even doing here, boy?” thundered the envoy, “Hast though not heard of the scarlet plague that sweeps the land?”

“I… I am on a sacred pilgrimage to see the great temple of the One True God,” stammered Declan, for the envoy was a very imposing man.

“Screw thine pilgrimage!” thundered the envoy, “The great temple is shuttered, has been shuttered for weeks. Half the priests and sacred virgins are dead, the other half has fled. Go home, boy!”

“B…but…”

“Get thy arse home!” thundered the envoy, “The harbour of Va-Tica is closed, but the port of Flo-Rina, a town to the North, is still open. Get thyself to Flo-Rina in three days and take passage home or thou wilt be trapped here, with the dying and the dead!”

***

So Declan took a horse and headed for Flo-Rina, riding day and night, stopping only to water and feed the horse. He rode past barricaded towns guarded by soldiers in tarnished armour and past deserted country villas, every single person therein dead. The mills lay idle, the grapes rotted in the vineyards and scarlet corpses and bleached bones littered the roadside. At last, Declan reached the town of Flo-Rina.

In the days before the plague, Flo-Rina had been famed far and wide for its wealth and the beauty of its palaces, villas and temples. But as in Va-Tica, the temples, palaces and villas of Flo-Rina were shuttered. The scarlet plague mark burned on many doors and the pyres of the dead burned day and night.

Declan had not slept in three days and neither had his horse. Somehow, he made it to the harbour and there, moored at the dock, lay the last galleon bound for Nu-Yore, that most sinful of cities that was Declan’s home and that he missed more than anything in the world now.

But the harbour was barricaded. Stockades blocked off the docks, manned by soldiers with pikes and halberds.

“Halt!” cried a soldier, “State thy business, traveller!”

“I am but a humbled pilgrim…” said Declan, “…come to return home to Nu-Yore on yonder galleon. Please, good sir, let me pass!”

“Thou canst not pass,” said soldier, “Though must quarantine for forty days in the barracks yonder, lest thou carry the scarlet plague to Nu-Yore.”

“But I am a man of faith, a servant of the One True God,” cried Declan, “He holds His hand over me. Thou must let me pass.”

“I do not care what god thou worships,” replied the soldier, “Thou canst not pass. And now begone!”

Declan was a pious man, not given to swearing and profanity. But even the most pious man can be tested to his limit and Declan’s patience had just exceeded that limit.

“Thou son of a mongrel dog and a disease ridden whore,” yelled Declan, “Is it my fault that thy shithole of a country cannot manage even a simple plague? And now let me pass and let me go home to Nu-Yore, where our overlord Donald the Great Orange protects us from plagues and imbeciles.”

“Insults won’t get thee past this barricade,” said the soldier and poked Declan with his pike.

Declan was furious. This imbecilic son of a mongrel dog and a disease ridden whore would not let him pass, would not let him board the galleon and return to Nu-Yore, the city where everything was sane and normal and where there was no plague and no dead people lying in gutters, at least not plague dead.

He peered above the stockade and saw that the galleon, his last, best and only chance of getting home, was cutting the mooring lines. If it sailed, he would be stuck here in this benighted land forever.

Beside the large gate guarded by the soldiers, there was a small door in the stockade. A door that led to salvation.

Beyond the stockade, the galleon was lifting the anchor and setting the sails. It was now or never.

The soldiers were busy examining the papers of a merchant and paid no attention to Declan. So he took a step towards the door and then another. He gave the door an experimental push and as if by the will of the One True God, it opened.

So Declan dashed through the door and onto the dock, dashed towards the departing galleon, crying, “Wait! Wait for me!”

He was still screaming when the soldiers wrestled him to the ground.

***

“Foreign imbecile,” muttered the judge under his breath, as Declan, who had now acquired the moniker “Disruptor of Doors”, was brought before him. And then he slammed his gavel down and sentenced Declan to pay a fine of one thousand gold doubloons for disturbing the peace and disrupting doors.

But Declan had no one thousand gold doubloons. He did not even have two copper pennies. And since an appeal to the great temple of the One True God to aid a true believer in his hour of dire need was ignored, he was thrown into the deepest, dampest dungeon in Flo-Rina.

There he languished in chains and fervently prayed for deliverance, when one day a fellow prisoner, a giant with steel-blue eyes and a shaggy mane of midnight black hair approached him.

“Art thou the one they call Declan, Disruptor of Doors?” asked the giant.

Declan nodded. “They call me that,” he said warily, for he had received more than one beating while in gaol.

“And is it true that thou broke through the barricade by the harbour, even though thou hast the statue of a skinny rabbit?” probed the giant.

“That what I’m in here for,” replied Declan.

“Excellent,” exclaimed the giant and slapped Declan on the shoulder, so hard that Declan went to his knees.

“They call me Conkull the Skullsplitter,” said the giant, “Declan, Disruptor of Doors, thou and I shall be partners. Thou shalt use thy door-disrupting magic on the doors of this dungeon and then on the doors of the villas and palaces of the rich. Together, thou and I shall tread the jewelled thrones of the world under our sandalled feet. So what sayest thou?”

Declan swallowed hard and uttered a quick prayer to the One True God who he feared had deserted him. Then he looked down at his bare feet, for he wasn’t even wearing sandals.

“I guess I have no other choice.”

The End

***

Inspired by this event and this comment thread at Camestros Felapton’s blog.

Foundation finally experiences “The First Crisis”

And here we thought that we have been in the middle of the first Seldon crisis since episode 3.

Anyway, welcome to my review of the penultimate episode of Foundation. Reviews of previous episodes of Foundation as well as two actual Foundation stories may be found here.

For more Foundation discussion, check out the Star’s End and Seldon Crisis podcasts.

But before we get to Foundation, I also want to point you to my latest Raumpatrouille Orion (Space Patrol Orion) review over at Galactic Journey. Unlike Foundation, Space Patrol Orion never pretended to be an Asimov adaptation, even though Asimov’s works clearly were one of several influences on the series. And indeed, Orion feels more like an Asimov story at times than Foundation.

But let’s take a look at the latest episode to see how it compares to the books and if the story is back on track by now.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut for both the TV series and the book!

The answer is that at least by the end of the episode, the story is sort of back on track, though the way to get there has nothing whatsoever to do with the books.

Like previous episodes, “The First Crisis” divides its time between two different storylines, namely the adventures of Salvor Hardin and the saga of Brother Dawn, the imperfect clone. Gaal Dornick is absent, except to provide voice-over narration about how history is written by the victors, though Hari Seldon’s hologram puts in a most welcome appearance.

As before, Brother Dawn’s story is the most interesting part of the episode, even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the books and instead borrows elements from a lot of more recent space operas. The influence of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series is very obvious – and can we maybe adapt that, please? There are also similarities to Sean Danker’s Admiral series and Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, which beat Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity in the race for the 1956 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Brother Dawn, the defective clone, was clearly terrified of being found out and killed by his “brothers” and so he is plotting his escape with the aid of the lovely palace gardener Azura. However, before Dawn and Azura can put their plan into action, Brother Dawn is summoned by Brother Dusk, who has now taken over the neverending task of painting mural depicting the glories of the Cleons. Brother Dusk wants to show Dawn something, namely a pictorial representation of their hunting expedition back in episode 6. Considering that the mural normally depicts great victories, this is an unusual choice. Nonetheless, Brother Dawn pretends to be honoured and remarks how well the mural captures the three pterodactyl-like things he killed. Brother Dusk gives Dawn a very sinister smile and then leaves him to contemplate the mural on his own. Curious, Dawn dons the colour correction lenses Azura got for him and notes to his shock that Brother Dusk painted six rather than three pterodactyl creatures, i.e. the number of creatures that Dawn really killed. However, he painted the three missing creatures in a way that someone with red-green blindness cannot see them.

Dawn now knows that Dusk is on to him and heads for his chamber to make his escape now. However, before he can, Dusk’s right-hand man Obreht comes to fetch him, most likely to escort him to his execution. And Dawn’s protestations that he’s the Empire, too, and that Obreht is supposed to obey him don’t help either. Dawn finally uses his personal forcefield and projects it outward to knock out Obreht and runs away, while the palace guards go after him. He can’t get past the scanner at the palace gates, so he escapes via the ruins of the old palace (Why are those ruins even still there, since they must be hundreds, if not thousands of years old?) into the sewer system, almost drowns and then wanders around among the homeless of Trantor, clad only in his pyjamas. For of course, there have to be homeless people living in the sewers of Trantor, so Dawn can get a glimpse of the real world (TM).

Dawn trades his forcefield bracelet (yeah, smart, trading in the one weapon and protection he has) for the smelly coat of a homeless man to disguise himself. Unfortunately, he fails to put the hood up to hide his very recognisable face, but the people using Trantor’s public transport pretend not to notice. And so Dawn makes it to the Scar, i.e. the area that was wrecked by the falling space elevator and never fully repaired, where Azura has an apartment.

The scar looks like (and probably is portrayed by) a 1970s Brutalist outdoor shopping mall, jazzed up with glowing domes, trippy light projections and low-rent punks straight out of the 1980s cyberpunk novel. As AV-Club reviewer Nick Wanserski points out, it’s probably the cleanest slum with the best-fed population you’ve ever seen, but somehow it works, if only because Brutalism was the look of science fiction, especially of the dystopian kind, for decades.

Somehow, Dawn manages to find Azura’s apartment. Azura doesn’t look too happy to see him, though she does let him in. As before, Azura must live in the cleanest and most spacious slum apartment ever. The place looks like a mid-range hotel suite. Azura sends Dawn to take a shower, because he reeks. When Dawn emerges from the shower, Azura pulls a gun on him. “What’s that for?”, Dawn – not being the sharpest Cleon in the drawer – asks. Azura fires and Dawn realises that she has betrayed him. He tries to run away, but the picturesque punks have him quickly surrounded and knock him out. Just before Dawn passes out, he finds himself looking up into his own face.

At this point, I assumed that Azura was working for Brother Dusk and had been instructed to spy on Dawn and find out his secret and that the fellow with Dawn’s face was the replacement clone we saw two episodes ago. However, the truth is a lot weirder than that.

For when Dawn comes to again, he finds himself strapped to a chair in Azura’s apartment, a needle in his arm, as his nanites are removed from his blood and fed into that of Dawn’s doppelganger. We now learn that the whole thing is a plot by the (never before mentioned) Trantor underground decades in the making. Somehow, the Trantor underground managed to get their hands on enough genetic material to clone their own Cleon. They also managed to reprogram to nanites in Dawn’s bloodstream to alter his genes and cause the mutations that plague Dawn. This was supposed to induce Dawn to flee the palace, so the underground could grab him and replace him with their own Cleon. Azura was in one the whole plot – and Paul Levinson points out in his review that in Forward the Foundation, a (male) gardener assassinates the non-cloned Emperor Cleon.

Now I have to admit that this was one development I absolutely did not see coming. As plans go, the Trantor underground’s plan is overcomplicated and also hinges on way too many coincidences, such as Azura being in the right place to witness Dawn’s thwarted suicide attempt and getting him to trust her. Unless half the staff at the palace are members of the Trantor underground, which would certainly be interesting. Also, if you’re going to introduce an underground movement, it would be helpful to at least drop a few hints that such a movement exists, i.e. have the Cleons and Demerzel hunt unsuccessfully for the Trantor underground. However, we get no hints of that sort beyond a vague mention of unrest on Trantor.

The Trantor underground is just about to kill the surplus Dawn, when he spots the dragonfly drone he had given Azura. Soon thereafter, Imperial troops led by Brother Dusk storm the apartment, kill the rebels including the fake Dawn and arrest Azura, using those weird prison hoods again.

Brother Dawn is shocked that Dusk knew what was up all along and used him to root out the rebels, though he’s also happy to be rescued. Brother Dusk, however, is still furious at Dawn, for being stupid and gullible, though those sins are forgiveable. The fact that Dawn is defective, though through no fault of his own, however, is not. “Your face is a permanent reminder of our failure”, Dusk says to Dawn, whereupon Dawn points out that it’s his face as well. Dawn also points out that Dusk can’t decide his fate on his own, he has to consult with Day. And this version of Day is somewhat nicer than his predecessor, whereas Dusk has always been a murderous bastard. However, Dusk points out, Day is probably not going to be kindly inclined towards Dawn after his ordeal on the moon of the Luminists. And he did order the murder of Zephyr Halima, after she’d ceased to be a threat. On the other hand, Day’s half-naked pilgrimage also gave him a crash course in empathy, as Camestros Felapton points out in his review, so maybe everything will go all right for Brother Dawn. Especially since I have the feeling that Brother Dawn will make a pretty good Emperor, if he survives.

It needs no saying that none of this happens in the books, beyond the assassination of Emperor Cleon by a (male) palace gardener in Forward the Foundation.  Instead, the whole clone doppelganger plot is borrowed from other science fiction novels, most notably Lois McMaster Bujold’s 1989 Vorkosigan novel Brothers in Arms, where Komarran insurgents plan to replace Miles Vorkosigan with a clone in a plot to assassinate Aral Vorkosigan. Needless to say that this does not go the way anybody expected.

Sean Danker’s Admiral trilogy also has a junior member of a royal family replaced by a lookalike, who then proceeds to sabotage the royals and their planet. However, this is all backstory – the actual trilogy starts with what happens to the royal lookalike after he has fulfilled his mission and has become a liability to his own people. The trilogy is well worth reading, though fairly obscure, so the similarities might just be a coincidence.

Finally, in Robert A. Heinlein’s 1956 science fiction novel Double Star, which beat Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity in the Hugo race for Best Novel, a down and out actor is hired to replace, first temporarily and then permanently, a prominent politician. Hijinks ensue. Heinlein admitted that Double Star was inspired by the granddaddy of all “important person is replaced by a nigh identical doppelganger” stories, namely The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope.

But even though neither the clone doppelganger plot nor the whole genetic dynasty are to be found in the books, this storyline is actually entertaining and a lot of fun to watch.

Which brings me to the other plot strand, namely the adventures of Salvor Hardin. The Salvor plot starts with a flashback to little Salvor and her Dad watching the stars. Salvor’s Dad tells her that all humans, whether Foundationers, Anacreons, Thespins or Trantorians, all come from the same planet, though they don’t know where that planet is. There are several theories, including one that the origin of humanity is a planet called Earth, though no one knows where that planet might be. I was pleasantly surprised at this scene, because the location of Earth is also a mystery in the books. I guess the showrunners were trying to set up Foundation and Earth, the final (not very good) book in the series. At the pace they’re going, they’ll get there in eight or nine seasons.

Little Salvor is stunned. So everybody comes from just one planet? Then why do people hate each other? This prompts Salvor’s Dad to give her a lecture about how violence and hate beget even more violence and hate. Hereby, Salvor’s Dad also says the following, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” This is an actual quote from the books – and one of the most famous ones, at that – though in the books Salvor Hardin is the one who says it. Of course, Salvor may well have gotten the saying from his/her Dad.

But while book Salvor acts according to his own aphorism and beats the Anacreons without a single shot fired – twice – the TV series has turned Salvor into an action girl character who usually tries to solve problems by hitting or shooting at them. Still, even a little bit of Asimov is welcome in a show that offered so very little of that.

Flash forward to the present: When we last saw Salvor, she was on the bridge of the Invictus with Lewis Pirenne, Phara and the last remaining one of Phara’s goons, when the Invictus suddenly jumped to parts unknown, pulling several Thespin ships along with it.

Now Foundation has made a point of making it clear that unaugmented humans cannot tolerate hyperspace jumps while awake, which is why they are sedated before the jump. However, since the Invictus jumped in the middle of a fight, no one had the time to get sedated. And so Salvor is awake during the jump and not negatively affected beyond distorted vision, because Salvor is super-special, just in case you hadn’t noticed it yet.

When Salvor scrambles to her feet again, she realises that the Invictus is orbiting Terminus, which is exactly where Salvor wanted to take her. She finds that Lewis Pirenne has plugged himself into the navigation console and sent the ship to Terminus, which cost him his life. Rest in Peace, Lewis Pirenne, a character who was so much better here than in the books, while also staying true to his book self.

The jump also knocked Phara and her goon out. Salvor ties them up and then tries to hail Terminus or indeed anybody on the coms of the Invictus, but gets no response. Plus, unless Salvor can figure out how to disable the jump drive, the Invictus will jump again to heaven knows where.

On the scanners, Salvor spots Hugo’s ship, which apparently was dragged into the jump as well. So she gets into a spacesuit to return to the ship she at least has some hope of controlling. Of course, she still can’t hail Terminus, but at least a piece of cosmic debris on a collision course with the ship turns out to be Hugo in his spacesuit, who somehow had also hitched a ride with the Invictus. So Hugo and Salvor are reunited. They make a very cute couple and Hugo is one addition the series makes that I genuinely like. Though they quickly start arguing, because Hugo just wants to take his ship and Salvor and fly away, whereas Salvor doesn’t want to abandon Terminus or the Invictus. She also explains that she believes that the reason she can’t hail anybody on Terminus is that the null field around the Time Vault has expanded to swallow Terminus City.

So Hugo returns to the Thespins to help them disable the Invictus‘ jump drive, before she can jump again, while Salvor heads for Terminus. Now we also finally see some Thespins not named Hugo. They are all white, vaguely Eastern European and tend to go for totalitarian chic. Indeed, they could easily be Imperial officers in Star Wars. The Thespins arrest Phara’s lone remaining goon, but Phara herself has escaped and promptly hijacks a Thespin ship.

Meanwhile, back on Terminus, everybody has passed out from the expanding null field. Only Salvor, who’s immune to its effects (cause she’s super-special), can still walk around. Unfortunately, she neglects to disarm and tie up the Anacreons, but instead checks the vital signs of people she knows like those two cute kids and her Mom, whom she finds unconscious fairly close to the Time Vault. In her hand, Salvor’s Mom holds Hari Seldon’s magic dodecahedron.

Salvor now has another psychic flashback and sees Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick with the dodecahedron. More importantly, she also sees how to activate the dodecahedron, so she does just that.

I’ve seen the theory bandied about that Salvor is the biological kid of Gaal and probably Raych (who was implied to be psychic in the books), which is why she seems to be psychic as well. There is certainly some merit to this theory, especially since we got that lengthy sequence about Irish Foundationer Shivaun extracting eggs and embryos from women aboard the Foundation’s generation ship, including Gaal, back in episode 2. That said, I have no idea why Salvor’s parents would decide to carry the biological child of Gaal and Raych to term, unless there was a mix-up at the fertility clinic. Also, in the books, Salvor Hardin is smart and resourceful and in the right place at the right time. However, he/she is not in any way special.

Salvor’s activation of the dodecahedron has the desired effect. There are some glowy special effects, the Time Vault turns to a glowing crystal, burries itself into the ground of a hilltop and splits in half, revealing a glowing doorway. Meanwhile, the null field is deactivated and everybody wakes up again.

Salvor and her Mom are arguing about whether to do through the glowy doorway, when the Anacreons show up, brandishing guns. Foundationers and Anacreons are at each other’s throats, when the Thespins show up with two neat ships, which look like streamlined TIE-fighters and can be remote-controlled by the Thespin commander to fire at the Anacreons, unless they stand down.

The stand-off escalates, when Phara shows up with her stolen Thespin spaceship and blasts the other two Thespin ships to bits. Then she lands and also pulls the remote control stunt on the Anacreons and the Foudationers. Meanwhile, Salvor – who has taken her father’s words to heart after all – yells at everybody to calm down and listen to her. After all, the Invictus is the most powerful weapon in the universe and much too useful to waste on Phara’s crazed revenge scheme. Keeping her and using her to keep the Empire and any other expansionist neighbours at bay would be a much better purpose, so why don’t Anacreons, Thespins and Foudationers just band together and sing Kumbaya use the Invictus to tell the Empire where they can stuff it.

It’s a good proposal and the Foundationers, the Thespins and most of the Anacreons are actually considering it. However, Phara won’t have any of that, so her own goon pulls a gun on her, cause he’s had enough of Phara and her crazed revenge quest. This leads to another stand-off between Phara and her goon, while Salvor grabs Phara’s bow and shoots her, instant archery skills apparently being another of her super-special abilities.

Seriously, fun as the whole Invictus and Terminus sequences were, the fact that everybody just instantly has all the skills they need is seriously eye-roll worthy. After all, Salvor has never been to space before and yet she can instantly fly a spaceship, put on a spacesuit and navigate in it and use the com system on a seven-hundred-year-old spaceship. Lewis Pirenne has some space knowledge, but can use the navigation console of a seven-hundred-year-old spaceship without any issues, even if it kills him in the end. Phara can control a type of spaceship that’s completely unknown to her. And Salvor can hit someone with an arrow on the first try. I’m as sick as anybody of calling every remotely competent character a Mary Sue, but the instant skills many of the Foundation characters display are just ridiculous. Salvor knowing how to fly a spaceship with zero training is like me flying a plane and not crashing with zero training. And that arrow would have been far more likely to hit a random bystander than Phara, if Salvor had managed to fire at all.

While everybody is still at each other’s throats, the glow of the Time Vault intensifies and out strolls none other than Hari Seldon or rather his hologram, a smug grin on his face. “Well, well, Termini, Anacreons and Thespins all in one place”, the hologram says, “If that isn’t a good sign that we will survive this crisis.”

“Foundation” may be by far the most famous story to appear in the May 1942 issue of Astounding, but the cover actually illustrates the lesser known “Asylum” by A.E. Van Vogt.

This is basically how the first every Foundation story published, entitled simply “Foundation” upon first publication in the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and “The Encyclopedists” for the book version, ends, with Hari Seldon’s hologram showing up and explaining that everything is happening just as he foresaw it and that the solution to their dilemma is obvious – though readers would have to wait until the June 1942 issue of Astounding to hear just what that obvious solution was.

The sequel “Bridle and Saddle” actually did get the cover of the June 1942 issue of Astounding, though it’s a rather underwhelming one.

I have to admit that I punched the air when Hari Seldon’s hologram showed up with that smug grin on his face, because this right there was what I’ve been waiting to see for thirty years. Here finally was the Foundation I read and enjoyed all those years ago. Of course, it still took the show seven episodes to tell a story that is under 10000 words long (the first episode was an adaptation of “The Psychohistorians”, the first story in the book version, and the second episode was filler/bridging material). And even though the outcome is the same – the Foundation will join up with (and very likely control) its aggressive neighbours – the way the show took to get there was long, meandering and a massive detour from the books. The endless chase, capture, escape sequences on Terminus and the equally endless exploration of the Invictus could have easily been condensed to two or three episodes, which would have given the show the room to adapt “Bridle and Saddle” a.k.a. “The Mayors” in the first season as well. Since both stories are two halves of a whole and both feature Salvor Hardin, this would have actually made sense, before jumping ahead in time and giving us Limmar Ponyets and Hober Mallow.

So in short, Foundation is back on track after endlessly meandering detours. Though I hope that the TV show will also adopt Salvor’s obvious solution – share our tech with our neighbours, but pretend it’s magic and only special priests can controll it – because the fake religion of Scientism was always one of my favourite bits from the first Foundation book.

Foundation fails to find “The Missing Piece”, but at least gives us a lot of nearly naked Lee Pace

Since we only have two episodes to go, I’m doing episode by episode reviews of Foundation, so here is my take on episode 8. It’s a little late, because I had technical issues and had to wait until I was actually able to watch the show. Reviews of previous episodes of Foundation as well as two actual Foundation stories may be found here.

For more Foundation discussion, check out the Star’s End and Seldon Crisis podcasts.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut for both the TV series and the book!

There are only two episodes to go in season 1 of Foundation and I’m still not sure what this show is trying to do, since adapting Foundation clearly isn’t it. Nor do I know who this show is supposed to be for? Cause those people who actually wanted to see Foundation will come away disappointed even with all the goodwill in the world. And the people who vehemently hate the idea of adapting any SFF by dead white authors of the golden and silver age in general and Foundation in particular won’t be watchng anyway. So who is the intended audience? Viewers who just want a generic flashy space opera? But in that case, there are plenty of books which better fit the bill. Or just make up your own story, especially since that’s what the showrunners are doing anyway. Or are they aiming at that mythical mainstream audience who only watched Game of Thrones for the sex scenes? But if that’s your target audience, Foundation is about the worst book you could to adapt.

Like the previous episode, “The Missing Piece” divides its runtime between three separate storylines, namely Brother Day versus the generic Triple Goddess religion, Salvor Hardin’s adventures aboard the Invictus and Gaal Dornick and Hari Seldon’s hologram aboard the Raven.

This time around, Brother Day’s storyline is not the worst of the lot, if only because nothing that features Lee Pace wearing nothing but a loincloth can be all bad. However, it still has fuck all to do with the books nor does it have anything to go for it except nearly naked Lee Pace. Unfortunately, he’s also badly sunburned and covered in sand for much of the time, which rather spoils the effect. According to this interview in the AV-Club, Lee Pace read the books long before he was cast for the show and was of course keen to appear in Foundation. Though I wish that Lee Pace and Jared Harris, both of whom are great in their respective roles, as well as the rest of the cast would have gotten a more accurate adaptation.

When we last met our intrepid Cleon clone, he had just announced that he would embark on the gruelling pilgrimage known as “walking the Spiral” as a ploy against Zephyr Halima, frontrunner in the race to determined the next high priestess of the influential cult of Luminism, who also happens to think that clones, including the Emperors Three, are an abomition against her faith cause they do not have souls. Now Brother Day knows all this is nonsense (though I’m not sure the show does), but unfortunately Zephyr Halima happens to be a talented speaker with a gift of moving the masses. So he decides to beat her at her own game and use her religious beliefs against her.

In my last review, I wrote that I expected Brother Day to cheat, and he does – sort of. However, Brother Day actually subjects himself to the gruelling pilgrimage, which kills more than half of those who attempt it, and even takes off his personal forceshield and has the nanobots filtered out of his blood, which is frankly idiotic, because he could easily have gotten killed.

Now let’s talk about the whole lethal pilgrimage for a moment. Because frankly, it makes zero sense for a religion to have a ritual, which kills more than half of its followers. Even if you have trillions of followers, systematically killing the faithful is never a good idea, if you want your religion to thrive and survive. Okay, there was Jonestown, but the so-called People’s Temple were a small cult under the control of a deeply disturbed man. And while crucification reenactments and flagellants are/were a thing, they were never more than a fringe phenomenon and the Catholic church actually persecuted flagellant cults in the 14th century. Walking the spiral recalls the spiritual exercise of walking a labyrinth, but again that’s supposed to be a spiritual and meditative exercise, not a gruelling death march. And while pilgrimages are a common feature of many religions, they are not supposed to kill worshippers and indeed there usually is an infrastructure in place to support pilgrims. I suspect one inspiration for the deadly spiral pilgrimage may have been the various deadly crushes and stampedes that occurred in Mecca during the Hajj during the 1990s and 2000s and cost hundreds, sometimes thousands of lives. However, these crushes and stampedes were tragic accidents, pilgrims risking death was never the point and indeed the Saudi Arabian government has done a lot to manage the crowds better and make the Hajj safer.

Meanwhile, the Luminists care very little about the health and safety of their worshippers. And so we see Brother Day walking along the spiralling path and gradually loosing his clothes (yeah), while the sun burns his skin raw. In his review at The AV-Club, Nick Wanserki calls those scenes “a mostly naked Lee Pace walking around in a Robert Smithson installation” and that’s exactly what it is. He also manages to look positively Christ-like, when he walks about with an injured body clad only in a loincloth. And yes, I’m sure that’s deliberate. I suspect that masculine trinity of Day, Dusk and Dawn is supposed to evoke the Holy Trinity of Christianity, while the Triple Goddess is supposed to evoke the mother, maiden, crone triad found in many pre- and non-christian religions.

At one point, Day finds a companion, an elderly man who lives on a terribly polluted planet where all the stuff that’s too poisonous to manufacture on Trantor is made – clearly a reference to the outsourcing particularly of dangerous industrial production to poorer countries. The elderly man helps Day up, when he stumbles and Day tries to return the favour, when the elderly man falls, but the man refuses to go on. The mother aspect of the triple goddess is calling to him. Day genuinely seems to be bothered by the elderly man’s death, which must be a first for him, and lays him to rest by the side of the path. He’s not the first or the only one to die there, indeed, the path and even the cave at the end are littered with skulls, making the whole thing look more like the set of an Indiana Jones movie than anything found in Foundation. Coincidentally, the whole thing also makes me wonder why we are supposed to care about a religion that so casually kills its followers and then lets their corpses rot.

Day makes it to the cave at the end of the spiral, where he casts off his remaining loin cloth and takes a bath in a pool. Allegedly, the salt crystals in the cave and the water in the pool (and near lethal heat exhaustion and dehydration) are supposed to bestow a sacred vision upon the faithful. And indeed, Day tells a panel of priestesses about the vision he had, a vision of the salt crystals forming a three-petaled flower. This flower only grew on the Luminists’ moon, but is extinct now and of course, sacred to their religion. The three petals symbolise the three aspects of the goddess and also the three Emperors (because apparently no one noticed that neat little parallel until now), so the priestesses are satisfied that Day had a sacred vision and that he has a soul and is a real human. Zephyr Halima is out and her rival is named high priestess.

So far, so good. Except that Day didn’t have any sort of vision at all, but just made one up, based upon stories what other pilgrims saw and a sample of the extinct flower he’d seen on Demerzel’s dressing table. Nor is Day satisfied with having Zephyr Halima, he wants the bloody woman gone for good and so he sends Demerzel to poison her.

Demerzel is not happy with this at all – and not just, because she’s about to violate the First Law of Robotics in a huge way. No, Demerzel apparently genuinely believes in Luminism. And so she visits Zephyr Halima in her quarters to tell her that she thinks she would have made a great high priestess. She also tells Zephyr Halima that no, she did not coach Day in what to say and admits that she did walk the spiral eleven thousand years ago.

Given that Zephyr Halima is a fanatic, I would have expected her to make her religion’s equivalent of the sign of the cross and scream, “Burn the witch! Stake the vampire! Kill the demon!” But instead, Zephyr Halima is fascinated by Demerzel and all the things she must have seen in her long life. She also tells Demerzel that she is convinced Demerzel has a soul and that she need not obey the commands of the Emperors Three. Demerzel, on the other hand, is in tears and insists that she must obey.

This whole scene is well acted by Laura Birn and T’Nia Miller and I actually got some lesbian vibes from both of them, which would have made the murder by touch much more interesting. However, it makes no sense and doesn’t match how the characters have been portrayed before.

Because the Zephyr Halima we’ve seen so far was a strident fanatic who didn’t just challenge the Emperors Three for the sake of power, but because she genuinely believed every single word she said about how they were a soulless abomination. But in her scene with Demerzel, she’s suddenly the kindly and understanding priestess. Not to mention that there is no way that a religious fanatic who hates clones for not having souls wouldn’t hate robots, too.

Meanwhile, Demerzel insists that she is programmed to follow the Emperors Three’s commands even against her will. However, Demerzel/Daneel is subject to the Three Laws of Robotics and “Thou must obey the Emperor” is not one of the Three Laws. Instead, the Second Law of Robotics states: “A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings [any human beings, not just Emperors] except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” And the First Law of course states: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” So Brother Day ordering Demerzel to kill Halima is a clear case of the Second Law conflicting with the First, whereby the First Law automatically has preference.

Of course, there’s also the Zeroth Law: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm”, which only two robots ever explicitly formulated and followed, namely R. Daneel Olivaw and his pal R. Giskard Reventlov, whose decision to let Earth become an irradiated wasteland, so humanity would be forced to colonise space destroyed his positronic brain. So the only robot left following the Zeroth Law is Daneel a.k.a. Demerzel.

So far, I have interpreted Demerzel following the orders of the Emperors Three, including awful orders – after all, we see her overseeing tortures and a mass execution in episode 2 – as adhering to the Zeroth Law, because at this point in time, keeping the Empire in functional is best for humanity. And of course, in the Foundation prequels, Daneel/Demerzel manipulates Hari Seldon towards setting up the Foundation specifically to protect humanity.

But while Zephyr Halima clearly was a problematic and deeply unlikeable character, she wasn’t a threat at this point anymore and there was no reason to murder her. If there was a right moment to kill Zephyr Halima, it would have been before Brother Day went on that pilgrimage. Of course, getting rid of or at least reforming Luminism, so it stops trying to kill more than half of its worshippers with deadly pilgrimages, would be very good for humanity as a whole, but that’s not achieved by getting rid of one fanatical priestess.

As for Demerzel genuinely believing in Luminism rather than finding it an interesting moral problem, which is how Daneel treats the Bible discussions he has with Elijah in The Caves of Steel, sorry, but that doesn’t fit the character Asimov created at all. But then, Demerzel in the TV series appears to be a robot to whom the Three Laws don’t apply, which is worse betrayal of the spirit of Asimov’s work than any other nonsense the series has served up so far, because the Three Laws and Daneel are so very central to Asimov’s work.

Demerzel also reveals that she had a vision when she walked the spiral, which not only made me wonder, “And how does that work exactly, since she’s a robot and whatever causes those visions clearly only works on humans?”, but elicits much the same reaction from Brother Day. This is also the moment where it is revealed that Brother Day did not have a vision, just a nice soak in the salt pool. Of course, there is no real reason Brother Day would have a vision – unless there is a chemical component such as a hallucinogenic substance in the water that causes the visions – because Brother Day does not believe in Luminism. Just as I likely would not feel any effects from drinking or bathing in the water from the spring of Lourdes, because I’m not Catholic and don’t believe that there’s anything special about that water.

However, Foundation the TV series takes religion seriously in a way that the books never did and so Brother Day is not only troubled by the fact that he did not have a vision, but this is also apparently proof that he doesn’t have a soul. Now I don’t know which religion, if any, Brother Day subscribes to, but unless it’s a religion which has the concept of a soul as something separate from the body, I don’t know why he would be bothered by this.

While Brother Day is searching for his soul, Salvor Hardin, Phara and a dwindling number of shanghaied Foundationers and Anacreon goons are still exploring the stranded Invictus. It’s a very big ship, you know.

We are treated to a flashback to Phara as a litle girl playing in the forest with her brother, when Anacreon is bombed and her brother is killed. The casting doesn’t match, since kid Phara has green eyes, while adult Phara’s good eye is brown, and I’m not sure what the point of the flashback is at all. Do Americans need periodic reminders that indiscriminately bombing other countries/planets also kills and maims children? Because the rest of the world already knows that. And no, kids who survived bombings do not all grow up to become violent fanatics like Phara. In fact, the Thesbians, who suffered just as much as the Anacreons, seem to be much saner.

Otherwise, the Invictus plot is a standard “Let’s explore the creepy ghost ship” storyline that we’ve seen a hundred times before. The other nameless hijacked Foundationer is killed by an automatic gun set up to protect the bridge from mutineers. In a scene more appropriate to The Mandalorian, Salvor draws the fire of the gun, while Phara disables it with an arrow – yes, really.

Luckily, Salvor can grab hold of the gun of one of the dead mutineers and even more luckily, the gun still fires after 700 years. So Salvor shoots a hole into the hull, which sucks out the guts of one of Phara’s remaining goons in a gruesome scene. Then, Salvor uses the confusion to open the bridge, haul Lewis Pirenne, who’s the sole other surviving Foundationer, inside and close the door again, momentarily locking out Phara and her sole remaining goon.

Inside the bridge, Salvor and Lewis find – big surprise – more dead crewmembers, including the Captain who killed themselves and wrote “Exo” on a random bridge console in their own blood. Salvor and Lewis are not sure what this is supposed to mean aside from “outside”, but outside of what? Outside the universe? Or an outside threat? Please, not aliens. Because the Foundation universe does not have aliens, blast it.

However, since Phara and her goon are trying to break through the door from outside and the jump countdown is still running, Salvor and Lewis have more immediate problems. They locate the navigation console and receive an unpleasant surprise. Because it turns out that navigators used to be hardwired into the ship and that navigation basically involved making a wish where to go. Yes, my eyes rolled so hard they almost fell out of my sockets.

Salvor, i.e. the one with zero space travel experience at all, who hasn’t even been in space before this little excursion, insists that Lewis, who actually has a bit of space travel experience, plug her into the navigation console, even though Salvor doesn’t have the required implants and the process will likely kill her, if it works at all. However, since Salvor is super-special, she is confident she can take the Invictus to Terminus, before she dies. And yes, that’s actually in the dialogue.

However, before Lewis can cut into Salvor’s brainstem to plug her into the navigation console, Phara and her goon break through the door. Lewis is wounded and Salvor’s gun jams at the wrong moment, so Salvor and Phara have yet another physical fight.

Meanwhile, the Thesbians show up to demand that the Anacreons hand over the Invictus. Because Hugo was not killed after all, when he drifted off into space, but managed to make it to one of the abandoned Thesbian mining stations and called in the Thesbian fleet. And since the Thesbians still can’t stand the Anacreons – well, who can? – they were only too happy to help.

Unfortunately, that pesky countdown is still running and so the Invictus jumps, taking Salvor, Phara, Lewis, Phara’s goon and the Thesbian fleet to hell knows where.

Meanwhile, back on Terminus, Salvor’s Mom informs the Anacreon commander that they have problem, cause the repellant field around the Time Vault is expanding and will soon swallow up Terminus City, knocking out Anacreons and Foundationers alike. I suspect this means that Hari Seldon’s hologram will finally put in an appearance where he is supposed to be.

But for the time being, Hari Seldon’s hologram is still aboard the Raven with a very pissed off Gaal Dornick, who has just admitted that she has precognitive abilities. Hari questions her about that and Gaal admits that she gets feelings and hunches and prophetic dreams. One of those dreams showed her little community sinking beneath the waves of the world ocean of Synnax (after all, we haven’t had a climate change analogy in a few episodes), so Gaal taught herself highly advanced math to see whether her dream was correct and if there was anything to be done.

Hari takes Gaal’s precognition in stride and decides that this means that she’s even more of a math genius than he thought. However, for now they really need to get to Helicon, because the entire Seldon plan hinges on Hari’s hologram making it to Helicon. For you see, Hari Seldon or rather his hologram desperately needs to get to Helicon to establish the Second Foundation or the plan will be at risk.

And this right there is the only thing in this episode apart from a few names that’s actually in the books. Because Hari Seldon does indeed establish the Second Foundation as a behind the scenes safeguard for the First sometime after his followers get exiled to Terminus, even though – as Camestros Felapton points out in his review – we do not learn about the existence of the Second Foundation until “The Mule” halfway through the second book Foundation and Empire, though there is a brief mention of Hari leaving some of his followers behind in “The Psychohistorians”, the very first story in the first book, which was only written as an introduction for the publication of the fix-up in 1951.

So in a 56 minute episode, there’s one thing, which actually happens in the books, albeit offscreen, and that is Hari Seldon establishing the Second Foundation. And the writers get even that wrong, because Hari intends to establish the Second Foundation on the wrong planet, namely on Helicon, which he dubs Star’s End. Of course, that it’s at Star End is all anybody knows of the Second Foundation’s location in the original trilogy, though there are different theories where or what Star’s End is. The answer lies in an old proverb: “All roads lead to Trantor and that’s where all stars end.”

So in short, the Second Foundation is on Trantor and always was on Trantor, hanging out in the remnants of the Imperial University. Indeed, the Trantor reveal is so well done that I can still remember where and when I read it – on a bench in the yard of my high school, interrupted by annoying classmate Andreas W. at the crucial moment – more than thirty years later. And the show manages to ruin even that, though it’s possible that the Second Foundation will still end up on Trantor, as Paul Levinson, who’s no more happy with the change to Helicon than me, points out in his review.

Gaal, meanwhile, reacts just as the First Foundation always react to learning of the existence of the Second, with a mix of anger and betrayal. Also, she wants nothing to do with the Second Foundation, thank you very much. So she insists that Hari let her go back into the suspended animation pod that brought her on board in the first place. And when Hari’s hologram does not comply, Gaal smashes the temperature controls of the Raven, so it will overheat while passing through the asteroid field on the way to Helicon. Because Gaal would rather be boiled alive than go to Helicon. If you think that Gaal is pretty nuts at this point, you’re not alone.

Hari’s hologram eventually lets Gaal go and opens the door to the miraculously perfectly cooled escape pod bay, where Gaal gets into the pod, ejects right into the asteroid field and sets the course home for Synnax. It will take her more than a hundred years to get there, if the asteroid field doesn’t smash her to bits first. I suspect that this is the last we will see of Gaal this season, though she will probably pop up again, when the showrunners think the viewers need a familiar face to handle the time jumps.

I’ve tried to give Foundation and its many deviations the benefit of the doubt, especially since so far there was always still enough left of the books to make me hope that maybe, the showrunners know where they’re going. However, my goodwill is just about exhausted, because this show is just an unholy mess, a Frankenstein’s monster of different storylines stitched together with a little bit from the books. Space Patrol Orion, the other show of which I’m currently doing episode by episode reviews over at Galactic Journey, feels more Asimovian than Foundation, even though Orion is not an official Asimov adaptation, but was just inspired by his stories as well as many other golden and silver age science fiction stories.

The individual storylines aren’t even all that bad. Viewed on their own, the saga of the Emperors Three as well as the story of the ghost ship Invictus are compelling. However, I signed up to watch Foundation and so far, the show is not giving me nearly enough of the story I actually wanted to see. And considering that we have only two episodes to go, I don’t see how they will ever get there.

Fancast Spotlight: Seldon Crisis

The Fancast Spotlights are coming thick and fast these day, cause here is the next entry in the Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

Today, I’m pleased to feature Seldon Crisis, a podcast devoted to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and the current TV adaptation.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome Joel McKinnon of Seldon Crisis to my blog today:

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

Seldon Crisis –the podcast, is a loving tribute to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, in which I bring to life each chapter in audio form through summary, excerpted dialog, and analysis. Official story episodes come out every few weeks with intermediate updates appearing occasionally where I am still experimenting with the format. So far I’ve included essays, personal notes, and a primer on Foundation for Newbies targeted to watchers of the new series from Apple TV+.

I also have a YouTube channel with a video introducing the podcast, promo shorts featuring the custom intros for each episode, and video versions of each episode. My son, Jeremy MacKinnon creates the videos and does sound design on the official story episodes starting with The General, Part I in Season 2.

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

I’ve mentioned my most significant collaborator in Jeremy, who also acts as a sounding board and quality control for all episodes. The theme music was orchestrated by my old friend and bandmate Tom Barnes from a simple melody I provided. The logo art comes from a UK artist named Mike Topping who also created a whole series of classic cover art for Foundation and the Robots series. My most recent collaborator is Amanda Kreitler who saves me from having to voice female characters. She also performs on the RPG podcasts Severed Fate and  Dimension Door.

Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?

I read the full Foundation series for the first time last summer during lockdown. I had read the trilogy in my youth but had forgotten most of it and it was pure joy to re-read it. I had that common feeling after reading a great work of literature of wanting to share it with others, and decided the easiest way to share it with the world was in podcast form. I had no knowledge of the AppleTV series until after I’d written the first several scripts.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

It’s kind of a unique hybrid of multiple formats. I usually start out with setting some context in the larger story and often include cultural context in which Asimov wrote it. Then I get into the story itself and try to make it stand on its own. I do a fair amount of summary, but the heart of it is the dialog, which I voice as I interpret the personalities of the characters. As you know, Asimov didn’t do a lot of physical description of his characters or the scenes they inhabit, so I just go by the content and try to imagine the real person who would say these lines. Often I don’t know what they’ll sound like until I voice them. Among my favorites – besides the big ones Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, and Hober Mallow, are lesser known characters like Limmar Ponyets from the Traders and Commdor Asper from The Merchant Princes. Right now I’m having the time of my life doing Magnifico in The Mule.

When I wrap up the story part I include more analysis including how I think the themes and ideas are relevant to our current societal context. A good example is the comparison of Seldon’s predictions of coming catastrophe for the Empire with our current predictions of climate catastrophe and suggest that it might be a good idea to come up with a coherent plan to tackle it.

The fan categories at the Hugos were there at the very beginning, but they are also the categories which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

Fan art of all kinds is a wonderful source of new creativity building on the stories that often leave a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions. Asimov provided lots of grist for this by the nature of his creative process. He claimed to never use an outline, but to have a clear idea of the eventual resolution. What happened along the way was totally by the seat of his pants. A great example is the Siwenna revolt that is mentioned as background in The Merchant Princes and again in The General. Among the unanswered questions is what happened to Onum Barr’s daughter who he thought might have survived the Empire’s bombardment that killed all but one of his six sons. In The General we are told she committed suicide, but nothing about the surrounding circumstances. There are enough fragments of this tale to create a whole novel. It’s really temping to take a crack at it some day.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts have sprung up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

I haven’t thought a lot about this to be honest, but I can imagine new platforms appearing to organize fan content. VR should be a great format for immersive experiences of stories that have been told but not particularly well described – as with Asimov’s settings – along with entirely newly created worlds. I can imagine people populating these virtual environments and reliving old stories and encountering new worlds as actual participants. Imagine being completely immersed in a realistic experience of taking a space elevator trip down into Trantor as Gaal Dornick does in the first episode of the TV show. Hardier fans might want to be on it when it is is destroyed and ride one of the flaming carriages down to oblivion. Another cool thing might be to choose your own plot developments from within the story, possibly with the help of AI algorithms facilitating creation of random scenarios.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

I’m mostly aware of the podcasting space right now, and since starting my own it’s been all about Foundation. One of my favorites is one we both did a guest appearance on, Stars End Podcast (https://starsendpodcast.wordpress.com/). The three hosts are very knowledgeable about the source material and open to new expressions of it like the TV show and I really enjoy their discussions. Another of their recent guests, named Morgan, writes some pretty decent fan fiction herself, along with some awesome memes, and spends a lot of time on the Galactic Empire Discord server as Dors Venabili. I’ve encouraged her to start her own podcast and hope she does.

I’ve encountered some amazing indy sci-fi writers in the last few years, and I’ll call out Tobias Cabral for his sensational novel New Eyes set on Mars a century or so from now and Erasmo Acosta for his extremely ambitious K3+ about the future of humanity set just a billion or so years in the future. An entirely different and probably more realistic vision of a galaxy filled to the brim with humanity – should we succeed in getting through our great filters and launch a diaspora to the stars.

Where can people find you?

Seldon Crisis is at seldoncrisis.transistor.fm and on all of the major podcasting platforms and at the official YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCSnydc0fSf0zQJ91IxoVmQ). I engage on twitter @joegmckinnon and as Max Wyvern on Discord at Galactic Empire (https://discord.gg/S3FtSXJC). I also have an earlier podcast called Planet and Sky which is an original science fiction story combined with a creation myth. It’s based on a rock opera I wrote and both the album and podcast details can be found at PlanetAndSky.com. My old band JupiterSheep – where I got the name Max Wyvern – has a website at jupitersheep.com. Email me at joel@seldoncrisis.net.

Thank you, Joel, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Seldon Crisis, cause it’s a great podcast.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast or a semiprozine and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

 

Fancast Spotlight: Worldbuilding for Masochists

Even though I recently announced the new Semiprozine Spotlight series, I’m still featuring fanzines and fancasts, too.

And therefore, here is the next entry in the Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

Today, I’m pleased to feature Worldbuilding for Masochists, a 2021 Hugo finalist for Best Fancast.

Therefore I’m happy to welcome Marshall Ryan Maresca, Cass Morris and Rowenna Miller of Worldbuilding for Masochists to my blog today:

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

Tide charts — a stack of books on constellation mythology — an elaborately sketched map — a bulletin board covered in illustrations of obsolete technology — research on textiles, naming conventions, architecture and a dozen ways to cook lentils — what could it all mean? 

It means worldbuilding. Big worldbuilding. Elaborate worldbuilding. Obsessive worldbuilding. Dare we say… masochistic worldbuilding?

Play along with three fantasy authors as they delve into the intricacies of building a fantasy world from the ground up. We build a new fantasy world together, we explore history, culture, science, and more as we learn new and exciting ways to choose the shape of our invented worlds, rather than merely repeating the presumptions of common tropes.

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

MRM: I’m Marshall Ryan Maresca, and I’m a fantasy writer mostly known for the Maradaine Saga, which is four interconnected series set in the same city that braid together over time, starting with The Thorn of Dentonhill, A Murder of Mages, Holver Alley Crew and The Way of the Shield, and the latest book in that setting is An Unintended Voyage.  I also have a standalone dieselpunk fantasy, The Velocity of Revolution, about an undercover officer infiltrating a rebel cycle gang in an occupied, colonized nation. And I’m an obsessive worldbuilder.

CRM: I’m Cass Morris, writing historical fantasy. My debut series, the Aven Cycle (From Unseen Fire and Give Way to Night) takes place in an alternate version of ancient Rome, where magic has shaped society as much as law, politics, and war. In my other life, I’m an educator currently teaching composition at a community college, but most of my experience is in Shakespeare studies.

RM: I’m Rowenna Miller, a fantasy writer, history nerd, sometimes-seamstress, part-time English professor, and novice goatherd. My trilogy, The Unraveled Kingdom, follows a dressmaker through a revolution in a world inspired by 18th century France and England; my next book, The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill, is a historical fantasy set in the waning years of the Gilded Age. 

Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?

 So, the origin of the podcast, like so many things these days, came from Twitter. At the time– April or May 2019– Rowenna & Marshall and Alexandra Rowland were having several extended conversations about getting very detailed into worldbuilding– the effects of multiple moons on culture, how different fabrics choices can cascade into other elements, the sort of “if you decided to do A, how does that affect B, C, D” and so on.  And one of us commented, “So convention really should put us on a worldbuilding panel.”  And then someone commented to us, “You all should just start a podcast.”  And we went, “Should we?  Why not?”  

So we did!  And one of our first guests was Cass Morris, who was amazing. So when Alex decided they needed to step away, Cass was the obvious choice to join in on the fun.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

I think we chose a podcast specifically so we could actually talk to each other and geek out about worldbuilding together, while not having to necessarily be good on camera.  I know for me, audio is a very forgiving format, especially in the ability to edit it.

The fan categories at the Hugos were there at the very beginning, but they are also the categories which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

CRM: Fandom is what drives so much of speculative fiction. I have no idea what my life would look like without the fandoms I’ve been involved in since childhood. Fan projects are a way of making full cultural conversations out of original stories, encouraging contextualization and re-examination of favorite works, drawing attention to marginalized creators, and making a place for every reader, viewer, and listener to become part of the narrative.

RM: I’m sure this is true of other genres and mediums, but most SFF writers–we were fans first and we’re still fans. Doing this podcast is the ultimate nerd fantasy–we get to talk to these people we are in awe of and geek out together. I think that fan projects foster that exchange–that the audience is not passive, the audience are creators. I always say that reading is a creative process, but fan work makes it even more active and vibrant.

MRM: Fandom is where we all start, one way or another.  Even if we don’t necessarily find our communities, we all get into SFF by loving some work so much we need to 

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts have sprung up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

CRM: Personally, I’m looking forward to holodeck fan media.

RM: I’m all for anything that continues to make fan creation more accessible and more equitable. I want everyone to be able to play! As Cass said, it’s in fandom that some of the most important conversations happen–digging deeper into the biases and structures in works we love, and can center marginalized voices when, well, traditional avenues don’t always do a great job.

MRM: I think a lot about how much the capability of fanmade work has jumped to the next level.  You have, for example, fanfilms made in someone’s garage that look just like the original Star Trek.  So I’m excited about what sort of things fans will just be able to do with the tools at their disposal.  But also holodecks.  Holodecks would be cool. 

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

MRM: I’ve been paying more attention to BookTubers, and I’m glad that they’re getting attention in this category.  I’m a big fan of SFF180, though that’s in no small part because Thomas is an old friend.  

CRM: I have to shout-out CerebroCast, with the confession that it’s my agent’s podcast. But it’s seriously amazing — every week, he’s doing a deep dive into one character from the X-Men with a guest who loves that character, with particular attention to the perspectives of marginalized fans. There’s also been a lot of discussion of the sociopolitical implications of the current storylines, where the mutants are establishing their own homeland on the island of Krakoa. The podcast is smart, funny, equal parts heartfelt and snarky.

Where can people find you?

Podcast: https://worldbuildingformasochists.podbean.com/
Twitter

MRM: http://mrmaresca.com/, @marshallmaresca on Twitter, @mrmaresca on Instagram

CRM: cassmorriswrites.com; @cassrmorris on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok; patreon.com/cassrmorris 

RM: rowennamiller.com, @rowennam on Twitter, @rowenna.past.perfect on Instagram

Thank you, Marshall, Cass and Rowenna, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Worldbuilding for Masochists, cause it’s a great podcast.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast or a semiprozine and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Two Podcast Appearances about Old and New SFF

In addition to the Fancast Spotlights, I also have two podcast appearances of my own to announce.

First of all, I was a guest on the Hugos There podcast, where I discussed the 2021 Hugo finalists for Best Novelette with Sarah Elkins, Olav Rokne of the Hugo Book Club Blog, Juan Sanmiguel, Ivor Watkins and host Seth Heasley.

You can listen here or watch the video on YouTube.

Moreover, I’m the special guest for episode 106 of the Appendix N Book Club podcast, where I discuss the Jirel of Joiry stories by C.L. Moore with hosts Jeff Goad and Ngo Vinh-Hoi.

C.L. Moore is not listed in the original Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Handbook, but we rectify that inexplicable oversight.

You can listen here.