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Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for March 2018

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some February books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, small town mysteries, paranormal mysteries, historical mysteries, WWII mysteries, British mysteries, humorous mysteries, crime thrillers, psychological thrillers, domestic thrillers, romantic suspense, sea adventures, spy fiction, hot FBI agents, reformed thieves, stalkers, serial killers, superheroes, spies, doofus detectives, intrepid reporters, crime-busting librarians, innocents accused and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Darke Accused by Parker Avrile:

An FBI agent goes undercover to catch a thief who turns out to be too hot to handle.

Darke Davis destroyed evidence to give his partner-in-crime time to flee with thirty-nine million dollars— and Special Agent Flare Greene is determined to get that money back. Hooking up with Darke at a popular gay roadhouse seems like a brilliant way to insinuate his way into Darke’s life.

Flare didn’t plan on the two of them stumbling over a body and finding themselves on the run from charges of first-degree murder. It’s the perfect opportunity to bond with Darke, but if they can’t work together to solve these crimes, they may find themselves locked up together for longer than just one night.

No cliffhangers, and you may expect the killer to find justice. However, because Darke and Flare are at the beginning of their journey together, they reach a happy for now ending with relationship challenges remaining ahead of them.

Dead On The Docks by David Banner:

Brandon Waters was never expecting everything to go as planned, but he never imagined it would go this far off the rails…

After receiving a phone call from a new client he finds himself in St. Augustine, Florida ready to go to work. But right from the start, this is no ordinary case and it isn’t long until he finds himself caught up in the underground world of organized fight clubs and twisted millionaires.

With an seemingly innocent woman’s freedom on the line and a rogue FBI agent at his side he must try to find the truth in the lies and help uncover what really happened to his former best friend’s father. Were the police right, was the woman in jail really guilty of the crime or was there more to the case?

Dead on The Docks is the highly anticipated third installment of the hugely popular Dangerous Waters series.

Her Sister’s Secrets by V.J. Chambers:

An anonymous letter summons Emilia Farrow to Siesta Key. An oceanfront house has been rented there for her, its closet stocked with designer clothes in her size. The mysterious correspondent promises that if she comes, she will find out what really happened to her sister Violet.

Her death wasn’t an accident.

Immersing herself in a world of wealth and privilege, Emilia has nightmares about the Wainwright mansion next door. Her mother used to work there years ago. Recently, her sister also worked for the Wainwrights. Just looking at the house makes Emilia feel as if she can’t breathe. Her strongest memory of the place is her mother packing up her and her sister and fleeing in the hours before dawn.

What happened all those years ago? Was Violet murdered? Who killed her? And who rented this house for Emilia?

Found Drowned by B.K. Duncan:

Smuggling. Prostitution. Murder.

London. 1920 and coroner’s officer May Keaps is tasked with solving the mystery that surrounds the death of a young boy, found drowned in The Thames.

But was it murder or an accident?

May knows that when children go missing, the reason is often linked to money but she is in danger of underestimating the corrupting influence of power . . .

On streets where poverty and exploitation walk hand-in-hand everyone has a price. And some are more valuable dead than alive. But who is pulling the strings?

May must journey into the dark underbelly of London to find the answers.

The Zero Commandment by Lawrence J. Epstein:

It is 1941. The country is on the edge of war. In New York, three men are murdered. The detective Charlie Singer is drawn into the case after rescuing a young woman being attacked in Central Park. With Katie Walker, his partner, Charlie deals with a famous gossip columnist, an organization devoted to fighting Hitler, and a violent group of haters. As Charlie uncovers the lies and secrets, he discovers a blossoming relationship with Katie who is undergoing a major life change.

 

Games of Bones by Geraldine Evans:

Sergeant Llewellyn’s remark that, perhaps, ‘Someone ELSE had made them a gift of Professor Anthony Babbington’ as the murderer, was just sour grapes, in Detective Joe Rafferty’s opinion.

But Llewellyn could plant a doubt where none had existed before. And Rafferty, sure in his own mind that they had the culprit, disregarded Llewellyn, who was known to greatly admire Babbington. They had so much proof it was embarrassing: Babbington’s fingerprints on the murder weapon; the victim’s blood on his shirt; and his DNA on the dead man.

Rafferty couldn’t believe it when his ‘sure thing’ began to slowly unravel. He refused to admit his growing doubts about Babbington’s guilt to Llewellyn, who championed the professor, and was as convinced of Babbington’s innocence as Rafferty was of his culpability.

But gradually, all Rafferty’s certainty vanished into dust, and he was left to prepare himself to face the music when Superintendent Bradley came back from his expensive holiday, to find that the ‘sure thing’ he had left with Rafferty, had inexplicably become anything but.

Unless Joe Rafferty could find some way to turn defeat into triumph…

[image error] Vic Boyo, Doofus Detective in Double Murders are Twice as Bad by Milo James Fowler:

Two murders. One detective. Half a brain.

1931, New York City: Detective Vic Boyo may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but that doesn’t stop him from solving cases as only he can. With a little luck and a whole lot of gumption, Boyo sets out to find the murderer of a local cop. Problem is, Boyo’s more interested in a gorgeous femme fatale accused of killing her husband. She’s destined for the electric chair, but Boyo’s got a hunch she might be innocent. And nobody gets in the way of Boyo’s hunches, not even Vic Boyo himself.

The Corrector by Ethan Jones:

When covert operations go wrong, the CIS sends in . . . The Corrector.

After a botched retrieval operation, Javin Pierce is sent in to complete the mission where others failed. But, before even getting started, Javin and his less-than-trusted partner, Claudia, must deal with a devious terrorist plot. Their search leads them to a flash drive containing scandals that could topple world governments and plunge Europe into absolute chaos if they do not retrieve it in time.

How will The Corrector fix this disastrous mission? Uncertain if they can even trust each other and unprepared for the shocking truth that could cost their lives, Javin and Claudia must stop the treasonous plot, retrieve the elusive drive, and save themselves and the entire European continent, all without leaving a trace . . .

Not a Mermaid by Madeline Kirby:

It’s July in Houston, and when heat waves and storm warnings finally give way to flooding rains, Jake Hillebrand’s strange dreams take a sinister turn. When the flood waters recede, the body of a young woman is found on the banks of Buffalo Bayou – a young woman whose life overlaps with that of Detective Victoria Perez.

With Perez on the sidelines, maybe she and Jake can finally come to an understanding. Or not.

Petreski’s working with a new partner, Jake’s declared a major, Jennifer Katz is moving on with her life, and Don has no idea that the new cat hanging around his apartment is not what she appears.

Contains even more carbs than “Not a Werewolf”, plus all you can eat shrimp!

[image error] Extra! Extra! Dead All About It by Amanda M. Lee:

The primary election is almost here and Avery Shaw is in her glory. Her boss has unleashed her on the leading candidates – including two of whom she downright loathes – and Macomb County’s leading reporter (and pot-stirrer extraordinaire) is about to turn the election on its ear.

She just needs to find a story first.

When her nemesis Tad Lancaster loses a volunteer, Avery sniffs out a bigger story … or at least she thinks she does. She has a pile of documents, too many insidious ideas to wrangle, and a long-suffering boyfriend who can do nothing but shake his head.

Avery is determined to find out the truth, even if it doesn’t lead to Lancaster’s downfall. She only has a limited time to do it, too, and the clock is ticking down to election day.

In short order, Avery has to uncover a pile of financial corruption, irritate her co-workers to the point where they don’t want to steal her story, hook her ex-boyfriend up with a new girlfriend, survive family dinner, convince her boyfriend she’s not chasing ghosts but rather something that’s really there, and save Macomb County’s election process for the people.

Oh, she also needs to figure out a way to avoid a baby shower, too.

It’s all in a day’s work for one hard-working and fast-talking reporter. She just needs to survive the final showdown to prove to everyone exactly how superior she really is.

In Silence Sealed by J.R. Lindermuth:

Lydia, daughter of Swatara Creek Police Chief Aaron Brubaker, is accused of murdering her boyfriend, Jason Russell, handsome but feckless stepson of Clay Stoneroad, a famous writer who recently moved to a farm outside town.

Daniel ‘Sticks’ Hetrick, now a county detective, is determined to prove Lydia’s innocence. His job is made more difficult when the weapon her father insisted she carry is found missing.

Mysteries surround the Stoneroad family. Vickie Walker, a strange young woman—also recently arrived in town—insists Nan Calder, the writer’s secretary, is her sister, a claim Calder denies. Then Diana Wozniak, reporter for a sleazy tabloid, is the victim of a hit-and-run accident, and police learn she attempted to blackmail the writer.

The sudden disappearance of Lydia and Vickie puts Hetrick and his friends in a desperate race against time to find them, unravel secrets, and apprehend the real killer.

Oblivion by David Neth

Ethan still doesn’t know what happened to his missing brother four months ago. No idea where he went, who took him, or where to find the answers. But then he discovers Fizz, a mutant whose acid spit can melt off a man’s face, and he has a new lead.

Meanwhile, Carlo Martelli is in a rage. His cousin’s murder can only be a threat to his rule in the local mafia. The immediate suspect is the traitorous Michael Bello who ratted him out to the police. As the mob war erupts, Fuse finds himself in the cross-hairs, which may have been a trap for him all along.

Murder is in Fashion by Danielle Ocean:

When Lindsey visits the site of the Fasha magazine photo shoot with her friend Jenna they expect to be dazzled by the spectacular clothes of the new edgy designer. What they don’t expect is to try to solve a murder. But then the stunning model, Dawn, is found murdered. The police decide to cancel the fashion show that was planned for that night at the same place for security reasons, unless the murderer is found. Lindsey decides to help out and try to find the killer before the show gets canceled.

This is the first novella in the Lindsey Brown mystery series.

Final Chapter by Pam Stucky:

For Megan Montaigne, library director, living in the top floor of the mansion-turned-library is a dream come true. At least it was, before the murders started.

Megan Montaigne has always secretly wanted to be a forensics investigator. The small-town library director has just begun rebuilding her life after tragedy tore it apart less than a year ago, and is happily settling into her new apartment on the top floor of the library by the river. But when a local celebrity turns up dead, the time has come to put her sleuthing fantasies into action. Has she unwittingly invited the murderer into her own home? And will she be able to prove her innocence before she becomes a victim herself?

Serial Stalker by A. Woodley:

By murder number five, Lennie is becoming more and more aware that these killings could have something to do with her.

The man she keeps seeing in inconspicuous places, doing natural-looking, everyday things appears to be anything but innocent to her as time goes on, but is she being silly and paranoid? Or is he really out to get her?

Lennie is forced to make changes to her life in order to keep her contacts safe but while the body count rises around her, a pattern seems to be emerging and Lennie is sure it must be only a matter of time before he kills again.

Tracking the stalker, when the police come up empty, brings its own consequences and it begins to look as though he’ll never be caught.

Will Lennie ever be free of him?

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New Two-Fisted Todd Adventure Available: Flesh Trade

Remember that I promised you that there would be more Two-Fisted Todd Adventures coming soon? Well, the next Two-Fisted Todd Adventure is finally here, albeit with some delay, because one of the vendors had problems getting new books up. Not to mention that I caught a nasty cold, which significantly impacted my writing, editing and blogging time.

Though Flesh Trade is the second Two-Fisted Todd Adventure published, it is actually the first one written. Because, as described in this post, approximately twelve years ago, I found some success selling short stories to a magazine that billed itself as a successor to the men’s adventure magazines of the 1960s.

Since I had hit upon a market that gave me steady sales, I also endeavoured to find out more about the actual men’s adventure magazines of the 1960s (about which I knew little aside from some lurid covers I found on the Internet). And so I also came across this art book which collects hundreds of covers of vintage men’s adventure magazines and also offers an overview about the genre, it’s development, prominent themes and subjects and what sort of content might be found inside those lurid covers. So I promptly bought the book.

The book also included interviews with artists, models and writers who had worked on these magazines. And one of the writers said that quite often, the covers were painted before there even a single story had been written. And afterwards, a writer would be commissioned to write a story to match the cover. And considering some of the really lurid illustrations on those covers – rugged men being attacked by all sorts of likely and unlikely wildlife, while buxom maidens were being tortured and menaced by evil Nazis, evil Communists, evil biker gangs and evil beatniks (the last one doesn’t quite fit) – coming up with a story to match must have been quite a challenge.

Now I have never been able to resist a writing challenge, so I decided to set myself the same challenge as those men’s adventure magazine writers of old, namely to write a story to match the cover of one of those magazines. So I opened the art book at random, picked one of the covers shown and decided to write a story based on it. The cover I picked was this one from the July 1960 issue of Man’s Life, by the way.

So I came up with a suitably rugged hero, freelance troubleshooter Todd Donovan a.k.a. Two-Fisted Todd, who is hired to find a bunch of American college students who have gone missing in the Caribbean, and sent him careening all over the island of San Ezequiel, punching suspects and taking names, all the while headed towards the scene depicted on the cover image I’d picked. The story eventually stalled out two thirds of the way through, so I set it aside. Then life got in the way and the magazine in question changed direction and became a sexy horror mag, depriving Two-Fisted Todd of his intended market (try as I might, I could not fit a sexy vampire into the story). Eventually, self-publishing became a thing, making previously unviable stories suddenly viable again. And through it all, Todd was biding his time in some tropical paradise, a cool drink in his hand, waiting for another job.

Todd’s moment finally came, when I dusted off the character for the 2017 July short story challenge and wrote what would eventually become The Crawling Death.

In the wake of editing and publishing The Crawling Death, I also took another look at the Two-Fisted Todd story I had abandoned years earlier. The story clearly needed some work, but I still liked it. And so I continued writing where I had originally left off and completed the story in a couple of days.

So here it finally is, more than ten years late: The very first Two-Fisted Todd story, which is now the second Two-Fisted Todd Adventure:

Flesh Trade

[image error]1966: Freelance troubleshooter Todd Donovan is hired to locate four American college students who have gone missing while doing humanitarian work on the Caribbean island of San Ezequiel.

While punching suspects and taking names, Todd learns that the college students as well as a young nun were kidnapped by a local crime boss named Cabeza.

So now Todd is engaged in a desperate race against time to rescue the kidnapped women before they can be sold to the highest bidder.

This is an adventure novelette of approx. 9800 words or 35 pages in the style of the men’s adventure pulps of the 1960s.

More information.

Length: 9800 words

List price: 2.99 USD, EUR or GBP

Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Inktera, Playster, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, e-Sentral, 24symbols and XinXii.

Will there eventually be more Two-Fisted Todd Adventures? I certainly wouldn’t rule it out, since they are fun to write. Plus, I have a whole book full of inspiration for more strange and deadly situations into which I can thrust poor Todd and watch him fight his way out.

But first, there are more In Love and War adventures coming, since I am currently about to finish the final proofread on the latest In Love and War story. After that, look forward to a new Hallowind Cove story, After the End 2 – More Stories of Life After the Apocalypse as well as Murder in the Family 2.

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Some Thoughts on the 2018 Oscars and their appreciation for SFF films

Yesterday was a day of decisions. Germany finally has a new (old) government after SPD members finally approved the coalition contract approximately half a year after the elections, the Swiss voted for keeping their TV license fee and Italy sadly voted for several equally horrible far right extremist parties. Oh yes, and the 2018 Oscars were also awarded last night. You can find a full list of the winners here, while Mike Glyer lists the winners of genre interest. And there were many this year, even though the Oscars are traditionally hostile to SFF films.

I probably wouldn’t have watched this year, because the TV in my office and the TV card in my laptop both ceased to work, after German antenna TV switched over to an entirely unnecessary HDTV format, which older TV’s and decoders can’t handle (plus, they charge you extra for the private channels in addition to the regular license fee). The livestream of German broadcaster ProSieben tends to crash my computer, which means that if I wanted to watch the Oscars, I would have to do so on the big satellite TV in the living room and couldn’t work on my PC on the side during the many, many ad breaks (though I worked on the proofread for the next In Love and War adventure). Considering the Oscars are almost four hours long, that’s a big time investment. It’s not an investment I would have made, if not for the fact that I actually cared about several of the nominated films this year, unlike many previous years, where the nominees were a lot of movies I hadn’t seen and usually didn’t care about.

But the Oscars have been slowly changing in recent years. Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes were pointed, but not under the belt like Seth MacFarlane’s infamous turn as Oscar host in 2013. Grisly Oscar baits such as propaganda-laden war movies, biographies of great men and the very occasional great woman, musicals that remind us why the musical is a largely dead genre and serious movies that contemplate the American navel are still nominated, but there are different nominees as well, the sort of nominees you wouldn’t have seen five, let alone ten years ago. And while American navels are still contemplated with alarming frequency, the navels at least aren’t always white, straight and middle class anymore. And occasionally, a genre film that’s not a musical or western also gets a look in. Two years ago, we had Mad Max: Fury Road takes home six Academy Awards in various technical categories and getting nominated for best picture as well (though it lost out to the forgettable Spotlight – so forgettable that two years later, I don’t even remember what it was about), last year the African American drama Moonlight beat the very white musical La La Land and this year, we had two SFF films – The Shape of Water and Get Out – nominated for best picture, best director, best screenplay as well as several acting awards. And unlike Mad Max: Fury Road in 2016, they actually got to take home Oscars in more than just the technical categories. This alone is reason to cheer.

The Shape of Water won a deserved four Oscars, including best picture, best director for Guillermo del Toro, best original score and best production design. Get Out and its director/writer Jordan Peele did not win best picture and best director and sadly, star Daniel Kaluuya lost out to Gary Oldman in a fat suit in the best actor category. However, Jordan Peele got to take home an Oscar for the best original screenplay, the first black person ever to win in that category. Blade Runner 2049 took home two Oscars for best cinematography (for Roger Deakins who won on his fourteenth nomination) and best special effects. Coincidentally, the special effects category is also the only category with a German winner, Gerd Nefzer (the other two German Oscar hopes, Hans Zimmer for music and Katja Benrath and Tobias Rosen in live action short film lost out, while Fatih Akin wasn’t even nominated for In the Fade). Nefzer is the second German to win an Oscar in the special effects category following Volker Engel from Bremerhaven, who won for Independence day in 1997. So much for “We can’t make science fiction and fantasy films and TV shows in Germany, cause we don’t have the technology”. Cause it turns out we do have the technical expertise – we’re just leaving it to Hollywood to actually do something with it.

Rounding out the Oscar winners of genre interest is the animated Disney/Pixar film Coco, which won in the best animated feature film and best original song category. Now I have to admit that I was rooting for other nominees in both categories. Loving Vincent was visually and technically a lot more interesting than the latest Disney/Pixar effort. And while the song from Coco wasn’t bad and the live performance with dancers dressed as Frida Kahlo was stunning, I still found it the least interesting of the nominated songs. I guess my favourite was Mary J. Blige’s song from Mudbound, though I also found the song from The Greatest Showman surprisingly good, given how bad the critical reception of that movie was.

Though the 2018 Oscars started out frustrating, when technical category after technical category went to Dunkirk or The Darkest Hour a.k.a. the two WWII pictures designed to make Brits and Americans feel good about themselves (at least they didn’t nominate the other two Churchill/Dunkirk films made in 2017 as well, thank heaven for small mercies). What was worse, that there were more interesting movies nominated and not nominated in both categories. I don’t even like Baby Driver, but you can’t say that its editing, sound editing and sound mixing aren’t a lot more interesting and novel than Dunkirk‘s. As for the best make-up category, the nominees this year were a movie about a disfigured child, at least as far as I could tell (I’ve never heard of the film, let alone seen it), and two historical films, where make-up basically meant making actors look like historical figures. And while making Gary Oldman look like Winston Churchill is at least something of a challenge, turning Judy Dench into Queen Victoria isn’t much of a stretch. Why no nominations for The Last Jedi, Guardians of the Galaxy (Groot and Rocket may be CGI, but Gamora, Drax, Yondu, Nebula, Mantis, Thanos and plenty of other characters are actors in make up), let alone The Shape of Water? Doug Jones does not really look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, you know?

The Oscars in the acting categories predictably went to the sort of Oscar bait films that tend to win these awards. Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell both got to take home Oscars in the best supporting actor and best actress in a leading role category respectively for Three Billboards Outside Whatever the Name of the Bloody Town Is (not the actual title, but I can never remember the name of the town and usually default to Dogshit, Nebraska). No idea why Sam Rockwell won – I expected either Richard Jenkins or Christopher Plummer to take it. As for Frances McDormand, I think she is a wonderful actress and I loved her acceptance speech, in which she asked all other female nominees in all categories to stand up and implored the powers that are in Hollywood to give all these women funding for their project. Nonetheless, I would have preferred both Sally Hawkins for The Shape of Water and Margot Robie for I, Tonya (zero interest in the film or the case, but even I can tell that her performance was exceptional) to Frances McDormand, because Three Billboards Outside Wherever is exactly the sort of contemplation of the American navel, even if contemplated by a British director, that I’m sick of. What is more, the American navels being contemplated are white, rural and presumably Trump voting navels that I really don’t care about.

Allison Janey won the Oscar for the best supporting actress for her role as Tonya Harding’s mother in I, Tonya. Her performance has been widely praised, so this is not exactly a surprise. Also not surprising is the best actor award for Gary Oldman for playing Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour, since he was considered the frontrunner in this category, though my personal favourite was Daniel Kaluuya for Get Out. Not to mention that in spite of all the public proclamations of how Hollywood will and must change in the wake of #MeToo, Time’s Up and #OscarsSoWhite, awarding an Oscar to Gary Oldman (against whom there are allegations of domestic abuse) for his role in an old-fashioned bio-pic cum propaganda laden war movie sends a very different message. And for that matter, if Gary Oldman puts on a rubber suit and plays Winston Churchill, he promptly wins an Oscar. If Doug Jones puts on a rubber suit, in which he can’t even poop, to play an aquatic creature, he doesn’t even get a nomination, the only one of the major cast members of The Shape of Water who didn’t.

As might be expected, when a genre film wins Oscars in major categories such as best picture and best director, there is backlash, some of it from expected corners and some of it from unexpected corners. The expected backlash comes from established culture reporting and could be seen in cultural and news programs here in Germany calling this year’s Oscars “safe and unpolitical”, which makes we wonder if they’ve even watched the show, and dismissing The Shape of Water as a romantic fairytale, which makes me wonder if they’ve even watched the movie. Meanwhile, those same culture programs were falling all over each other to extoll the virtues of blatant Oscar bait like The Post (which didn’t win anything), The Darkest Hour (two wins) or The Phantom Thread (one well deserved win for best costume design) or European film darling The Square for best foreign language film (lost about to the highly deserving winner Un Mujer Fantastica, a Chilean film about a transwoman, whose star also got to present an Oscar). Interestingly, those programs did not extoll the virtues of Three Billboards Outside Wherever or Lady Bird, let alone Get Out. Well, at least no one has lamented that The Shape of Water winning best picture means the end of critical and serious cinema yet like they did after the best picture wins for The Silence of the Lambs, Return of the King or Chicago respectively. Okay, Chicago was something of a dud choice, but it was up against weak competition and there have been worse movies to win best picture.

The unexpected backlash against The Shape of Water comes from genre fans and critics, whom you’d think would be happy to see an SFF film take best picture. However, plenty of people are disappointed that the wrong genre film won best picture, because they were rooting for Get Out. Here is a polite version of this from Charles Pulliam-Moore at io9, who does like The Shape of Water, but would have vastly preferred Get Out and feels that The Shape of Water was the safe choice. I’ve seen uglier versions of this online, where people call The Shape of Water “that fish sex film” and declare that it won’t be remembered in ten years time, while Get Out will be considered a timeless classic. Personally, I suspect that both of them will still be well remembered in ten years time and that neither of them will turn out to be another Spotlight, forgotten after only two years.

Now I was very happy when Jordan Peele won in the best original screenplay category, was hoping Daniel Kaluuya would beat Gary Oldman in a fat suit to the best actor Oscar and would have been very happy for Get Out to win in the best director and best picture categories, too. I also suspect that Get Out got a lot of additional sympathy after it was reported that some older Academy members were flat out refusing to watch the film and dismissing it unseen, because they felt it was not Oscar worthy, since it was a horror film, B-movie like (uhm, what do they think inspired The Shape of Water?), released at the wrong time of the year and yes, had a black star in a non-approved “This is a very serious movie about racism and/or slavery” role. There were also the horribly racist comments by this anonymous Oscar voter about how Get Out “played the race card”, how she disliked Daniel Kaluuya, because he dared say something about racism in the US, while British, and how Octavia Spencer plays the same roles over and over again (well, I’m sure Octavia Spencer would love to play the Queen, Maggie Thatcher or the publisher of the Washington Post, too, but unfortunately black women still overwhelmingly get cast in stereotypical roles such as cleaners and maids). The racism on display here is horrible, if not entirely surprising. The Academy after all keeps giving Oscars to Clint Eastwood long after his heyday, nominated Sylvester Stallone but not Michael B. Jordan for Creed, snubbed Fatih Akin’s In the Fade, because white racist terrorists murdering muslims and a blonde white woman avenging the murder of her Kurdish husband and son are apparently too far-fetched for them (never mind that In the Fade is based on a real case, though without the vengeance angle), really loves WWII movies like Dunkirk or The Darkest Hour and felt that a fawning propaganda pic like American Sniper was Oscar worthy as late as 2015. Even if the make-up of the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences is slowly changing and becoming more diverse, there are still a whole lot of old, overwhelmingly white and male lifetime members whose tastes are stuck sometimes in the 1950s. However, these people are not as strong as they used to be, otherwise we would have seen more wins for the likes of The Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, The Post or The Phantom Thread than we did. Even Three Billboards Outside Wherever is not the usual choice for those voters, since it has a British director, rural working class characters and a decidedly unladylike leading lady. The fact that Get Out and The Shape of Water or Moonlight last year or Mad Max: Fury Road two years ago even got as many nominations as they did, let alone that they won in several categories and not just the technical ones either is evidence of change.

Get Out and The Shape of Water are both very good films and I would have been happy to see either of them win, though I prefer the latter and was also very happy to see Guillermo del Toro’s work recognised, especially after Pan’s Labyrinth lost the best foreign language Oscar in 2007 to the horribly stereotyped Stasi drama The Lives of Others in one of the great mistaken decisions in Oscar history. And can’t we just be happy that there were two excellent genre films nominated for several Oscars this year and even won some of them (not to mention the nominations and wins for Blade Runner 2049 and Coco), without playing one against the other? Both Get Out and The Shape of Water would have been deserving winners. And let’s face it, even without the blatant racism of certain Academy members, Get Out winning best picture or best director was always a long shot. After all, it was Jordan Peele’s debut and debut films rarely win. Besides, even the nomination, let alone his win in the best screenplay category will open many doors for Jordan Peele. Not to mention that Jordan Peele and Get Out won the Independent Spirit Award in the best picture and best director category only a few days before. We will see more movies by Jordan Peele and we may see him win a best director Oscar in a couple of years. And while SFF films generally don’t have good chances of winning best picture in general, The Shape of Water with its retro setting, musical sequences and focus on the magic of cinema has more of a chance to appeal to more conservative Academy members than Get Out. Finally, I suspect that The Shape of Water also appealed more to non-American Academy members than Get Out, because in spite of its British star, Get Out is a very American film with a very American setting (suburbs are nowhere quite as stiffling and conformist and ready-made horror settings as in the US), playing on very American anxieties. The Shape of Water does have a very American setting as well and also plays into all sorts of men in black stereotypes, but I still feel that it’s appeal is more international.

As for people who claim that The Shape of Water was a safe and predictable choice, as this Guardian article says, The Shape of Water is anything but safe. It’s a movie by a Mexican director in which a group of marginalized people – a mute woman (sadly not played by a mute actress), a black woman and a gay man – go up against the military industrial complex to save a sentient non-human being from torture and vivisection. Like many of Guillermo del Toro’s films, The Shape of Water questions toxic masculinity, as this Twitter thread points out (highlights below – click through to read the whole thing):

but I believe there are two aspects to del Toro that lead to those charges: there is a shift in the way he tells some of his stories where he centers feelings, emotions and certain attitudes that are associated with femininity and they don't necessarily follow comic book arcs

— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 5, 2018

most of the men in power in del Toro's films (and I'd make an exception for Stacker Pentecost who's not really "in power" but leading which is a very different thing) are very toxic, harmful men. Metaphors of what toxic masculinity does to everyone who deviates from its rigidity

— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 5, 2018

and I do wonder if part of the hatred his films elicit is not based on that portrayal of toxic masculinity. A lot of white men who are into genre think of themselves as the outcast, not the toxic man in power

— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 5, 2018

The Shape of Water also feature female masturbation and – what apparently put off some people – a sex scene between Eliza and the acquatic creature. Honestly, the objection to the sex scene in The Shape of Water is the most baffling thing to me, but then certain people were also put off by the gay sex between a 17-year-old and a 25-year-old in Call Me By Your Name, even though the film is set in Italy, where the age of consent is 14 and 17-year-olds having consensual sex with 25-year-olds is completely unobjectional. As for The Shape of Water, first of all sex between a human woman and a sentient aquatic creature is no more bestiality than sex with werewolves, vampires, aliens, etc… And besides, critics have been remarking on the erotic undertones in the original Creature from the Black Lagoon since the movie came out in 1954. Hey, I wrote a short story in which a young woman has sex with the Creature from the Black Lagoon (with consequences) two and a half years ago (collected in Bug-Eyed Monsters and the Women Who Love Them), long before The Shape of Water came out. And I’m pretty sure that Guillermo del Toro and I are not the only people who’ve watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon and wondered, “What if the Creature did more than just watch her swim and carry her off? And what if it were consensual?”

So no, The Shape of Water was not the safe and predictable choice no more than Get Out or even Lady Bird (I have zero interest in a mother-daughter drama about Catholic schoolgirls, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have been a deserving winner) would have been. Dunkirk or The Darkest Hour would have been safe choices (because apparently, umpteen WWII pictures, including four about the same aspect of it in the same year weren’t enough). The Post would have been a safe choice (stars Oscar darlings Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks and has something to say about censorship and freedom of the press, while being safely removed in time from what is happening now). The Phantom Thread would have been a safe choice (stars Oscar darling Daniel Day Lewis and has some very pretty dresses). The Shape of Water is not a safe choice and a very good film besides. So why can’t we celebrate both The Shape of Water and Get Out as two very good genre films with something to say who both got Oscar nods last night, even if the winner wasn’t ultimately the one we’d prefer?

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The Other Star Trek Show: Some Thoughts on The Orville

It seems to be one of those moments of cosmic serendipity, when two or more works with eerily similar concepts come out independently of each other at around the same time. Pop culture is full of such moments, such as when both the original Star Trek and Germany’s Raumpatrouille Orion premiered within two weeks of each other, albeit on different continents, in September 1966. Or 1991, the year of the two Robin Hood films (and the better one of the two is the one no one talks about anymore), 1997, the year of the two equally forgettable volcano films, or 1998, the year of the two “asteroid threatens Earth” films. 2017/2018 also had such a moment of cosmic serendipity, because it was not only the year that four different movies about Churchill and Dunkirk (why, dear gods, why?) and two different takes on the John Paul Getty III kidnapping (why? Who still cares about that?) came out, but also three very different takes on Star Trek, one official and two inofficial ones with the serial numbers filed off, after twelve years of no Star Trek on the small screen at all.

I have already exhaustively talked about Star Trek Discovery and also discussed Black Mirror‘s take on Star Trek, “USS Callister”. So that leaves the third version of Star Trek, Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville, which is the only of the three current variations on Star Trek that I haven’t yet seen. However, yesterday I rectified this and watched the first two episodes of The Orville.

Now the initial reception of The Orville was mixed, to say the least. Official TV critics were generally baffled, because they went in expecting a Star Trek parody with MacFarlane’s trademark crude humor and got something quite different. Meanwhile, reactions from SFF fans and reviewers ranged from “This feels like fanfiction and watching someone’s private Star Trek fantasy” via “This is kind of old-fashioned, like The Next Generation used to be twenty-five years ago and those who like the show are old-fashioned” and “Who cares if it’s official or not, at least it feels like Star Trek, unlike some other show you could name” to “Star Trek with the serial number filed off or not, this actually is a pretty good show.”

None of these reactions are wrong and all contain at least a kernel of truth. For starters, The Orville is not a Star Trek parody in the vein of Bully Herbig’s Traumschiff Surprise skits, Pigs in Space or even Galaxy Quest. And The Orville is indeed very different from Seth MacFarlane’s comedy work (which is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned, considering how dreadful my previous experience with Seth MacFarlane and his work was), though it does resort to typical US sitcom humor on occasion. Now some of the jokes – mostly those arising out of science fiction and Star Trek clichés, e.g. the jokes about the “anti-banana ray”, drinks on the bridge and cannabis from the replicator, Ed accidentally walking through the Blob like crewmember, the tentacled underwater creature which turns out to be a botanist or the bit with the Krill commander standing off center on the viewscreen (come on, it is weird that people always stand exactly in the middle of the viewscreen in SF films and TV shows, to the point that I even included a “Sorry, could you please adjust your screen” line in Graveyard Shift) – work. They work precisely because these jokes arise naturally out of the science fiction setting.

On the other hand, the typical US sitcom humor, particularly the bickering between Ed and his ex-wife Kelly or the brief scene with Ed and his very embarrassing parents, who insist on discussing their and Ed’s health issues, doesn’t work nearly as well, simply because it doesn’t really fit into the science fiction setting. Particularly in Star Trek like settings, audiences are used to the characters behaving with at least a modicum of professionality. I can’t imagine any Star Trek captain, not even Lorca, nor any captain in Star Wars, Babylon 5 or any other SF universe for that matter, yelling at their ex-partner in the ready room within earshot of the bridge crew or discussing colon cancer screenings via the bridge viewscreen. And while couples may quarrel and bicker, they usually quarrel because one of them is a surgically altered Klingon spy and not because they don’t like the way the other eats their morning cereal. Science fiction fans tend to like competentence porn and characters who know what they’re doing. US style sitcoms, on the other hand, derive their humor largely out of the fact that their characters, at least the male ones, are completely and utterly incompetent. And interestingly, The Orville sticks with the US sitcom trope of competent women paired with not very competent and occasionally childish men. Because aboard the Orville, the women (Kelly, Doctor Claire, Alara) and male aliens (Bortus, Isaac) are all pretty competent, while the human men (Ed, the helmsman and the navigator, whose names I have forgotten) are portrayed as the typical bumbling sitcom dudes, though the helmsman is also an ace pilot. What is more, Ed and Kelly are very much the typical US sitcom couple. She is highly competent and attractive, whereas he is very average and bumbling. And like so often with sitcom couples, you wonder just why a woman like Kelly would put up with a guy like Ed in the first place. And Kelly clearly does care about Ed, as the final moments of the first episode show, we just don’t know why. Maybe, The Orville will eventually answer that question, but for now it’s a mystery. Though several reviews I’ve seen have said that the arguments between Kelly and Ed settle down after a few episodes, which is a good thing. Indeed, my Mom said, “Oh please! We all know that they’ll eventually get back together, so can they just stop the bickering and get on with it.”

Now the pilot episode makes it pretty clear that the Orville and her crew are very average. The admiral played by Victor Garber even says as much to Ed. The Orville is not the flagship of the fleet like the Enterprise (either of them) or a cutting edge secret weapon like the Discovery, it’s just a midlevel ship crewed by the sort of people who would never make the cut to serve aboard the Enterprise and wouldn’t survive five minutes aboard the Discovery. Victor Garber’s character (maybe I should just call him Admiral Exposition) pretty much tells Ed that he’s nobody’s first choice to command this or any other ship – they simply have more ships than captains (I wonder why. High death rate, some kind of war we’re not told about, recruiting problems?). Isaac and Alara are explicitly introduced as affirmative action picks (I wonder how well that bit went down in the US), the helmsman is a screw-up who’s only hired because he’s a friend of Ed’s, Kelly is only there initially, because no other first officer is available, and Doctor Claire is there because she is needed. In regular Star Trek, you only see a ship like the Orville, when it runs into trouble and the Enterprise or the Discovery have to swoop in to save it or mop up the remains after the cosmic phenomenon of the week killed everybody on board. But not every ship can be the Enterprise, the Voyager or the Discovery and it’s a pleasant change to focus on a more average ship with a crew that’s not quite as hypercompetent, but still do their best. I just wish that they wouldn’t have stuck quite so much with US sitcom tropes and clichés.

Now let’s move on to the next complaint, namely that The Orville feels like fanfiction. This is absolutely correct, because The Orville indeed feels like fanfiction. In spite of some token effort to file off the serial numbers, it’s very clear that The Orville is basically a Star Trek show set in the Star Trek universe. Okay, so their Federation is called Union, their Klingons are called Krills (who even look a lot like the nu-Klingons from Discovery), but they have warp drives, holodecks and replicators. About the only Star Trek tech The Orville doesn’t have are transporters (and Ed and Kelly are kidnapped via a transporter in episode 2, it’s just not human tech). So yes, The Orville is a big budget Star Trek fan film. But that doesn’t make it bad.

In her post about The Orville, Star Trek Discovery and other new US TV shows, Abigail Nussbaum says that The Orville made her feel a bit embarrassed at watching someone else acting out what is clearly a private fantasy. I sympathise with this, because I’ve had the same feeling on occasion. The most blatant example was while watching a special episode of the German comedy program Neo Magazin Royale, which was billed as the revival of the popular German game show Wetten Dass?. Now Wetten Dass? is certainly ripe for parody, though I did find the choice to parody the show when it had been off the air for three years a bit odd. However, when I watched the special Wetten Dass? edition of Neo Magazin Royale, I quickly realised that this was not a parody at all, but an earnest attempt to revive the former ratings juggernaut and also Jan Böhmermann applying for the job of Wetten Dass? host. The episode culminated in Böhmermann, who’d lost a bet, coming on stage dressed up in a costume from the musical Cats, singing the song “Starlight Express” from the eponymous musical, while sitting in a bathtub full of mustard. The whole thing was just as weird and disturbing as it sounds (and available on YouTube here). And while I was sitting there openmouthed, staring at the TV, I suddenly realised that I was watching someone else acting out their private fantasy. Böhmermann clearly was a huge Wetten Dass? fan and always dreamed of hosting the show, he clearly loved musicals, particularly the big 1980s musicals Cats and Starlight Express, and obviously wanted to perform in one of them. And as for the tub full of mustard, I honestly don’t want to know.

Watching Jan Böhmermann singing “Starlight Express” in a tub full of mustard, while hosting Wetten Dass? made me feel deeply uncomfortable, because I felt as if I had intruded on someone else’s fantasy. Abigail Nussbaum apparently had a similar reaction to The Orville. But while it was obvious at some points that Seth MacFarlane was clearly having the time of his life (watch how he fires his phaser – he’s dreamed of this moment for years), I never felt the same discomfort as I felt at watching Jan Böhmermann singing “Starlight Express”. It’s probably because while I understand why someone would dream of commanding a Starfleet ship (is there anybody who has never dreamed of that?), I haven’t watched Wetten Dass? in years, don’t like Starlight Express and find Cats overrated and certainly have never dreamed of bathing in mustard. So Böhmermann acting out his private fantasies felt alien to me in a way that MacFarlane acting out his doesn’t.

So let’s move on to the next point, namely that The Orville is old-fashioned and feels like 1990s TV, which is usually paired with the observation that Star Trek Discovery is a lot more like modern prestige TV in style, tone and look. Again, this criticism is absolutely correct, because The Orville looks and feels very much like a 1990s Star Trek show. The ship is clean and brightly lit, a stark contrast to the overly dim lighting that afflicts pretty much every other space-based SF show out there (and coincidentally, my Mom very much appreciated the fact that The Orville is well lit, since she hates the dim lighting that is currently so en vogue). Planets look like office parks, university campuses and shopping malls. Uniforms are colour coded and actually include colours other than black, blue or grey. Episodes are self-contained and wrap up their plot in 45 minutes. And while the visual effects look better than 1990s Star Trek, they are also ropier than what you see in Star Trek Discovery or The Expanse. Compared to the latter two, The Orville indeed looks rather old-fashioned. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Now I have been pretty critical of this so-called “golden age of television” or “peak TV” and especially of its excesses before. Not every male character in a TV show has to be a complex anti-hero (which all too often translates into horrible person) like the protagonists of the various “quality TV” shows. Of course, Ed Mercer is something of an anti-hero, but he’s an anti-hero the way Homer Simpson is an anti-hero. He’s not a murderous psychopath like Walter White or Gabriel Lorca. However, SF TV has room for both Ed Mercer and Gabriel Lorca. And while serialised shows can be great, when well done, not every show has to be serialised. And indeed, I often prefer standalone episodic shows to serialised shows, because if you watch too many serialised shows at the same time, it’s easy to forget what happened, even with recaps at the beginning. And don’t even get me started on shows that are clearly created solely for binge watchers who will burn through an entire season in a single weekend. I’m not a binge watcher, I neither have the time nor the inclination, and most working adults I know are not binge watchers either. Viewers like me exist and we are many. Because even in this era of “peak TV”, there is room for shows which are a bit like TV shows were back in the 1980s and 1990s. Genres like crime dramas and medical dramas still have these “old-fashioned” shows. There is very little talk about them, but plenty of people watch them, myself included. SFF, however, has been dominated by heavily serialised and dimly lit “peak TV” era shows for years now. There is certainly room for something that looks and feels more like science fiction shows used to be before the so-called “golden age of television” came along and usurped everything else.

So let’s address the inevitable comparisons between The Orville and Star Trek Discovery (leaving aside “USS Callister” for the moment, which is its own beast and uses Star Trek-like visuals to make a point about toxic masculinity). And the comparisons really are inevitable, because on the one hand we have a show that is very much 1990s Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off, while on the other hand, we have a show that carries the official Star Trek label and is full of references to previous iterations of Star Trek and yet manages to neither look nor feel like Star Trek much of the time. Indeed, if you look at Star Trek Discovery and The Orville side by side, they couldn’t be more different. One is light (in every way up to the sets) and somewhat fluffy, the other is grimdark (also up to the sets). And yet, there are some surprising parallels between both shows that go beyond the fact that both share a common ancestor, the original Star Trek of the 1960s.

For starters, both shows feature a protagonist who is something of a screw-up given their last chance to redeem themselves. Of course, Ed Mercer is merely a man having a rough time after a difficult break-up who occasionally shows up drunk for duty, while Michael Burnham is literally the most hated person in Starfleet, even though she didn’t do most of the things she’s accused of. What is more, both Ed and Michael were once highly promising officers who screwed up due to unexpectedly losing someone important to them, Kelly and Philippa Geogiou respectively. And both characters find themselves face to face with the person they lost, though Ed only gets a repentant Kelly, while Michael gets an evil and genocidal Mirror Georgiou. Still, considering that Star Trek traditionally features hypercompetent characters, the fact that both current reiterations focus on screw-ups is notable. Though I’d argue that Michael actually is highly competent with occasional lapses in judgement, while Ed does not strike me as very competent even at the best of times.

There are other parallels as well between Star Trek Discovery and The Orville as well. Both shows include a gay couple in the main cast, which wouldn’t be remarkable in 2018, if not for the fact that Star Trek traditionally has a crappy track record on LGBT representation. The Nu-Klingons of Discovery and the Krills of The Orville look eerily similar to the point that I said, “Oh, shut up, Voq, or whatever your name is” when the Krill commander issued his demands. Both shows also give us alien nudity and bodyparts we did not particularly need to see in L’Rell breasts and Bortus’ butt. Both shows have extras without any lines in highly elaborate make-up standing or walking around in the background. The pilot episode of Star Trek Discovery and the second episode of The Orville both have a female officer in over her head ignoring direct orders and committing mutiny in order to save their captain, only that Alara gets a medal and Michael gets a life sentence. Okay, so Alara succeeds, while Michael doesn’t, but the discrepancy is still striking. Both shows have a cafeteria scene, where no one wants to sit with the ostracised outcast, in the early episodes, another thing which isn’t a classic Star Trek trope, though it is a very American trope, as I explain here. Captain Lorca has a Tribble on his desk, while Captain Mercer has a plush Kermit the Frog. Though I liked the bit that Ed introduced Kermit to Bortus as “a great leader I admire” (if Ed sees himself as Kermit, does that make Kelly Miss Piggy? Though Piggy always was a cracking good officer in Pigs in Space) and that Ed’s Kermit had a role to play in the plot, whereas Lorca’s Tribble never did anything, not even detect Klingon spies in disguise, which is something Tribbles are traditionally good at. Hell, both shows mention a tardigrade, an otherwise obscure micro-animal whose DNA eventually plays an important role in the plot. And when the elderly scientist dude mentioned tardigrade DNA in the pilot episode of The Orville, I pretty much jumped from my chair, very much to my Mom’s surprise. And in fact, the tardigrade reference is the strangest parallel between both shows, especially since you hardly ever heard about tardigrades until last fall. Was there by chance an article about tardigrades in a science journal recently that might have inspired their unusual popularity in contemporary Star Trek inspired SF? Or maybe it’s just one of those moments of cosmic serendipity striking again.

So let’s take a look at the plots. The big difference is of course that Star Trek Discovery is heavily serialised, as is currently en vogue, whereas The Orville is episodic. Star Trek Discovery is also addicted to surprise revelations and shocking twists (TM), many of which are not nearly as shocking and surprising as the writers seem to think. What is more, not all of Discovery‘s shocking twists are earned or even fit very well into the ongoing plot. Indeed, Discovery has fallen prey to a problem that afflicts many serialised shows. The constant need for shocking twists (TM) and revelations means that the overall plot ceases to make sense after a while. This is what happened to Lost, Prison Break, Heroes and many other serialised shows which started off strong and then went completely off the rails. However, beneath all the shocking twists (TM), a lot of Discovery‘s actual plots are old SF standbys, frequently borrowed from previous versions of Star Trek. Though to be fair, Star Trek has gone through most viable SF idea and many non-viable ones (“Spock’s Brain”, anybody?) in fifty-one years, so there is a high probability that any given plot of a given SF story, particularly one set in space, will bear similarities to a Star Trek episode.

In its first two episodes, The Orville also dishes up some very old SF tropes, namely rapid aging and the alien zoo where humans are treated as exhibits. Star Trek has done both before as early as the original series, which tackled rapid aging in “The Deadly Years” and humans as zoo exhibits in its original pilot “The Cage”, later revisited in “The Menagerie”. And Star Trek sure as hell didn’t invent those tropes either, in fact they probably go back to the golden age, if not further. But even if a trope is old, the true skill lies in the execution. And in both episodes, the solution to the problem posed by the plot, destruction of enemy spaceship via rapid aged redwood tree in “Old Wounds” and handing over a huge video library of reality TV episodes to the alien zookeepers in “Command Performance”, was genuinely clever and unexpected.

However, I don’t watch TV for the plots anyway, since I can usually predict how an episode will go, which drives my Mom crazy. No, what keeps me coming back week after week, episode after episode, are the characters. And characterisation is one aspect where Star Trek Discovery has a huge advantage, because – as I pointed out in my season one postmortem – the characters and their relationships were one of the few things that I really liked about Star Trek Discovery. Though Star Trek Discovery discarded too many of its characters and two of the best romantic relationships in all of Star Trek for the sake of cheap twists and emotional drama. It also had the problem that the bridge crew, though seen in almost every episode, were cool looking cyphers with barely any lines and zero personality.

Compared to Star Trek Discovery‘s complex and interesting characters, The Orville‘s characters come across as a lot flatter and one-dimensional. But then, I’ve only seen two episodes of The Orville so far and by the second episode of Star Trek Discovery, we hadn’t even met most of the main cast yet. What is more, even if the characters of The Orville are largely a collection of clichés and stereotypes – the well-meaning bumbler, the repentant ex-wife, the class clown, the inexperienced officer, the logical android, the stoic alien, the hypercompetent doctor – I nonetheless quickly got a handle on who these people are. In fact, I can remember the names of most of the characters except for the helmsman and the navigator after only two episodes, whereas I was still referring to Discovery characters as jerky scientist dude, cute doctor or rubberhead several episodes in. This isn’t limited to Discovery either – I couldn’t remember the names of most of the characters of Enterprise after three seasons. In fact, I only know for certain that the captain’s dog was called Porthos and would have to look up the names of the others. So for me to remember the names of most of The Orville‘s characters after only two episodes is quite remarkable. The Orville‘s characters might not be deep and complex – and in fact I cannot imagine The Orville even trying to tackle subjects like PTSD and sexual violence against men like Discovery did with the characters of Ash Tyler (okay, they blew it in the end, but at least they tried) – but they’re certainly distinctive.

What sets Discovery apart from all other Star Trek shows is its tight focus on a single character, namely Michael Burnham. We mainly see the other characters through Michael’s eyes. And in fact, some of the inconstant characterisation in Discovery – Stamets pretty much has a complete personality transplant and Saru becomes much more likable in the second half of the season – might be due to Michael’s view of these people changing.

The Orville, on the other hand, seems to be more of an ensemble show like Star Trek traditionally was, with different episodes focussing on different characters. The first episode introduced the cast, while the second focussed mainly on security officer Alara (whom I’d love to introduce to Discovery‘s Tilly, since I’m sure they’d get along just wonderfully). It’s time honoured approach and one that works, because it gives us the chance to get to know everybody and also gives every character a chance to shine. Besides, Discovery‘s tight focus on a single character really wouldn’t have worked with The Orville, because the focus would most likely have been on Ed. Considering Ed is played by creator, writer and showrunnr Seth MacFarlane, a too tight focus on his character would easily turn him into a Mary Sue. And though The Orville does feel a bit like fanfiction, Ed Mercer is not a Mary Sue.

One of the main problems with season one of Star Trek Discovery was its sheer inconsistency. Over the course of its short first season, Discovery seemed to be awkwardly patched together from about five very different shows, only some of which bore any resemblance to what we’ve come to expect of Star Trek. This lack of consistency contributed to the whiplash effect of Star Trek Discovery and was also mirrored by a lack of consistency behind the scenes, since Star Trek Discovery had about four dozen different producers, only some of which had any previous experience with Star Trek at all, and seemed to switch showrunners every other week or so. The result is an unholy mess.

Now it’s difficult to judge The Orville‘s consistency on the basis of only two episodes. Even Star Trek Discovery managed to be consistent for two episodes in a row, depending on which two you picked. However, according to the reviews I’ve seen, the overall tone of The Orville remains constant over the course of the first season. That’s also largely because The Orville is the vision of one person, Seth MacFarlane. You may not like MacFarlane’s idea of what Star Trek should be like, but at least The Orville is consistent and won’t give you whiplash like Discovery. What is more, MacFarlane has staffed his team with a lot of Star Trek veterans behind the camera (and in the case of Penny Johnson-Jerald in front of the camera as well), whereas at least half the people working on Discovery never worked on any Star Trek show and some of them never even seem to have seen a single episode of Star Trek.

Coicidentally my Mom, who watched both the original series and the various 1990s Star Trek series (she even watched Deep Space Nine all the way through, while I bailed, though she bailed on Enterprise halfway through season 3), enjoyed The Orville a lot more than I thought she would, especially since she dislikes sitcoms and any sort of comedy programs. And though she didn’t much care for some of the overly sitcom-like bits, she enjoyed the show overall, because The Orville feels like Star Trek used to be and my Mom likes Star Trek. She also appreciated the fact that episodes are self-contained and that the sets are well lit and that during space battles, it’s easy to see who’s shooting at whom. In fact, she liked The Orville a lot better than The Expanse, which we’re also watching at the moment (she hasn’t seen Discovery yet).

It seems to me as if Seth MacFarlane set out to make a 1990s Star Trek show with more jokes and that’s exactly what The Orville is. It looks and feels like a lost Trek show from the 1990s and that’s probably why I found it so enjoyable. Because to me Star Trek, particularly the various 1990s Star Trek shows, are very much comfort viewing. Back in the 1990s, a German TV station broadcast Star Trek – starting with Next Generation, then Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise and then looping back to the beginning again – every weekday afternoon after Baywatch. I was in university at the time and watched whenever I could. And if I couldn’t watch, I taped it. So I’ve seen pretty much every episode of Next Generation and Voyager (skipped the latter seasons of Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, because I didn’t much care for them), several more than once. Coincidentally, I’ve also seen a surprising amount of Baywatch, because it was on directly before Star Trek (and trust me, Baywatch was really, really bad). At the time, I said, “Other people watch daily soap operas. Star Trek is my soap opera, only that my soap has spaceships and aliens.”

The Orville gives me the same comforting feeling that watching Star Trek used to give me twenty years ago. I can’t really see it every reaching the heights that Next Generation and even Deep Space Nine and Voyager reached on occasion, but then no one could have predicted how good the show would eventually become during The Next Generation‘s first season either. But from what I’ve seen so far, The Orville very much feels like a midlevel episode of Next Generation or Voyager. And that’s perfectly okay. Sometimes, comfort food is what you want.

Star Trek Discovery, on the other hand, is a lot more ambitious. It wants to have a serialised arc, more action than we usually see in Star Trek (and better choreographed, too), more complex characters and a deeper focus on them, more interpersonal conflict. Discovery wants to make a point about morality in wartime (not exactly new, but Americans seem to need regular reassurance that they can engage in wars and still remain true to their ideals, historical evidence to the contrary), it wants to present the Klingon point of view and the mirror universe point of view, it wants to make a point about PTSD and sexual violence and male vulnerability, it wants to colour in the margins of the orginal series, it wants to show how the Federation got from the quasi-dystopia of Discovery to the quasi-utopia of the original series in only ten years and it wants to give its protagonist a redemption arc, too. However, in the process, Discovery bit off much more than it could chew. Most of the many things Discovery wants to do just plain don’t work, though you can occasionally see glimpses of the much better show that Discovery could be, which makes it so very frustrating to watch. Meanwhile, The Orville has much lower ambitions, but largely succeeds in what it’s trying to do.

So which is better, Star Trek Discovery or The Orville? It’s difficult to say, because both shows are so very different in tone and style and scope, even if they are both derived from the same root. And honestly, why can’t we have both? The Orville makes for enjoyable comfort viewing, but probably won’t ever be groundbreaking. Meanwhile, Star Trek Discovery has the potential to be a very good show, once it gets its shit together. Besides, we finally have a several space opera shows on the small screen again (Discovery, The Orville, The Expanse, Dark Matter) after many years of no TV space opera at all and that alone is plenty of reason to celebrate.

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for February 2018

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some January books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have epic fantasy, urban fantasy, YA fantasy, paranormal mystery, paranormal romance, space opera, military science fiction, science fantasy, Cyberpunk, dystopian fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, post-apocalyptic romance, horror, weird fiction, slipstream, vampires, werewolves, dragons, magic schools, dream mages, spellships, time travel, cyborgs, alien attacks, missing scientists, mythic carnivals and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Scarab: Falling Through Time by Helen Allan:

Ancient Mystery – Timeless Love

An Eternity as an immortal in slavery was not what she had in mind!

Desperate and alone, sixteen-year-old Megan uses a powerful and ancient talisman to escape modern-day life and make a new start in ancient Egypt. But powerful enemies lie in wait, seeking her destruction and the magical scarab necklace she wields.

Will an alliance with another immortal, the handsome and secretive Franklin, help keep her from harm long enough to learn the secrets of the scarab? – Or will he cause her to lose everything – including her heart.

This, the first in the Scarab trilogy, will hook you in and leave you gasping – a time-travel romance with mystery, adventure, murder and love.

Mind Raider by S.M. Blooding and P.K. Tyler:

Keva Duste is an engineered human on a mission: find the weapon the corporate elite has amassed and secure it.

Humanity has conquered the black, but not their own inherent greed. The four systems surrounding Kalamatra Station provide members of the Elite class with everything they could want: mined minerals, abundant food, and an entire system to call their own, a place of paradise and riches. But for some, that isn’t enough.

Terrans and common spacers suffer under untenable work conditions and crumbling, radioactive stations while the Elite thrive. Now the commoners are threatening to revolt.

With the four systems on the verge of civil war, the Codex Syndicate’s covert intelligence network learns of an Elite weapon designed to alter the common people to their genetic core. The Elite have planned to test deployment on the mutinous Red Sky colony and force their compliance.

Codex Syndicate agent Keva Duste is an ex-military, engineered human with a score to settle. Together with a renegade space captain, an Elite refugee, and two sentient AIs, she must race to locate the weapon and stop the genocide of the human race before it can begin. Can Keva save Red Sky from destruction before the Elite turn this weapon on the rest of the settlements? And if she does, will she ignite a revolution?

Unraveled by Lindsay Buroker:

A mission to a foreign land has left Captain Trip Yert with a responsibility he never anticipated: watching over two dozen magical stasis chambers containing half-dragon young, including eight that are half-human. As bewildering as he finds it, all of them are related to him.

He’s vowed to ensure they make it safely back to his homeland where the sorceress Sardelle can, he hopes, advise him on how to care for them. But while he, Rysha, and Major Kaika are investigating a friend’s death and trying to arrange passage home, someone steals one of the baby girls.

If Trip can’t deal with hostile mages, corrupt business moguls, and the surprising secrets of his mother’s past, he may lose the little sister he never had a chance to know.

The Sight Witch by E.M. Cooper:

Marnie Speck has completed her first year at the Fanglewick School of Magic, but is waiting for the arrival of her witchy powers. When they fail to show, she is left wondering about the actual date of her birth and her true identity. After a tumultuous return to the Old World, Marnie and her best friend, Seb are welcomed to Mangleworm Avenue by Professor Lexi Spindlewood. Soon they discover life on Thundery Way, in the heart of Wandermere, is fraught with elfin and dragon dangers. Retreating to Fanglewick, they realise it too is under attack and unsafe.

Mage Mystilic ventures to Wandermere and leads Marnie and Seb on a wild dragon ride across a fantastic landscape to Morgansol in an attempt to trace Marnie’s parents’ final journey. To complicate life in the Old World, a new boy, the last apprentice at Blends and Fizzles, the potions and alchemy emporium, shows an unhealthy curiosity about Marnie and her newfound divination skills.

Lock & Key by Clara Coulson:

In a world forever changed by The Unveiling, where so-called “supernaturals” revealed their existence to humanity…

Katherine “Kat” King is on the run.

Two years ago, she woke up in a cell, held captive by a mysterious organization known as Advent 9. Subjected to harsh experiments involving magic, mayhem, and genetic engineering, Kat struggled to hold on to her sanity.

But now, she’s escaped Advent 9’s grasp—and she intends to keep it that way. Using the only three things that Advent 9 couldn’t take from her: an alias, amnesia, and an attitude that could make a grown man cry.

___

Liam Crown had it all once up a time.

A washed-up star detective with a penchant for “magic tricks,” Liam’s life fell to pieces when an accident cost him his family—and his sobriety. Now he scrapes by with a PI license and his late father’s used bookshop and spends most of his free time with a bottle in his hand.

But when a chance encounter with a strange woman makes him the target of a violent underground organization, Liam finds himself being dragged out of his stagnant life and back into the danger zone he thought he’d left forever.

And as the stakes begin to mount, Liam realizes that his old self is slowly coming back to life in the face of battle.

Now all he has to do is survive the war.

Vampire’s Curse by Lysa Daley:

Lacey thought she’d escaped her dark magical past. She was wrong.

Lacey McCray has a secret. She isn’t just a grad student living in Los Angeles. She’s also a Class 2 Animagus or a witch who can shift into any animal she pleases. When her grad school scholarship mysteriously gets canceled, she receives a strange offer to work for a firm that specializes in collecting missing supernatural treasures. Desperate to make enough money to pay her tuition, Lacey agrees to give it a try.

After breaking into a troll’s lair to retrieve an enchanted necklace, Lacey starts to think that she’s a natural. And the money’s not half bad either

It doesn’t take long before she’s ruffled the feathers of one of the firm’s top agents named Stryker Smith. Oh, and then there’s the young human cop who keeps turning up wherever Lacey happens to be.

Just when Lacey thinks she’s made enough money to pay her rent and go back to being a full-time grad student, a rogue vampire threatens the life of someone she loves. Lacey McCray will find out just how good she actually is at this new supernatural job.

[image error] Spellship by Chris Fox:

The Last Dragonflight Holds the Key to Survival

Voria, Aran, and Nara survived their trip into the Umbral Depths. They retrieved the Talon, and are now searching for the First Spellship, the key to victory in their war against the Krox. Their search leads them to Virkonna, the home of the Last Dragonflight, a world where Dragons still rule. The world where Aran was born.

Aran’s past finally catches up with him, and he is forced to answer for killing Khalahk. The Wyrms demand he undergo a March of Honor, a brutal death march that few survive. Nara must not only accept Aran’s fate, but use it as a distraction to locate the First Spellship. Voria must forge an alliance with the ancient and very arrogant Wyrms of the Last Dragonflight, before the Krox do it first.

If even one of them fail, Krox will rise and the sector is doomed. Even success will carry a heavy price…

[image error] Night of Flames by J.J. Green:

A new world colony…

A moonless night…

An alien attack…

Ever wondered what it would be like to live on a starship? It was the only life Ethan knew.

When the colony starship Nova Fortuna reaches the end of its 184-year journey, most of its passengers have grown up aboard ship. They have no idea what it’s like to feel the wind on their faces or get wet in the rain.

On the first night of the new colony, Ethan is one of the lucky few who are sleeping planetside. Most of the others are Gens like Ethan, born and bred on the starship. A few are Woken, who were revived from cryonic suspension two years prior to Arrival.

The colonists settle down to sleep, but Ethan is restless. A strange noise disturbs him, and so begins the fight for his life, the lives of the settlers, and the colony itself.

Night of Flames is the prequel to the space colonization epic, Space Colony One.

Broken Shells by Michael Patrick Hicks:

Antoine DeWitt is a man down on his luck. Broke and recently fired, he knows the winning Money Carlo ticket that has landed in his mailbox from a car dealership is nothing more than a scam. The promise of five thousand dollars, though, is too tantalizing to ignore.

Jon Dangle is a keeper of secrets, many of which are buried deep beneath his dealership. He works hard to keep them hidden, but occasionally sacrifices are required, sacrifices who are penniless, desperate, and who will not be missed. Sacrifices exactly like DeWitt.

When Antoine steps foot on Dangle’s car lot, it is with the hope of easy money. Instead, he finds himself trapped in a deep, dark hole, buried alive. If he is going to survive the nightmare ahead of him, if he has any chance of seeing his wife and child again, Antoine will have to do more than merely hope. He will have to fight his way back to the surface, and pray that Jon Dangle’s secrets do not kill him first.

Blank Tapes, Volume 1: Weird and Dangerous Tales, edited by Paul Huxley:

Blank tapes brings you nine stories from the fringes of reality. Challenging, thought provoking and just plain absurd, these stories are not your regular feel-good tales. It’s their job to worm their way into your thoughts and never leave. Bold new voices bring you disturbing insights from the further reaches of the possible. Just because you’re from around here doesn’t mean that you’re not alien.

Red Arrows by Anna Cotton: When Raymond goes for a haircut he isn’t the only one who’s going to come out with a new look.

Shark Girls by Dermot Jelfs: Thoughts on the true nature of dolphins and other concerns.

Down in the Dirt by L. Tucker: Meet Colin, your kid’s new best friend.

BLOCK parts 1-3 by Paul Huxley: The boy, the businessman, the doctor and the mother. Four lives irrevocably changed by the impossible.

I Don’t Believe in Ghosts by Damn Sung: There’s something strange in this house, but who are you going to call?

Filiarch by Gareth Pale: She always tips well, but this is the last time this pizza-boy is making the delivery.

Binky by Paul Huxley: He’s such a sweet little thing, unless his master is threatened.

The Alabaster Army by Patty Jansen:

Deadly creatures, hostile climate, and that is just the scenery.

For many years, mysterious things have happened on the ice world of Tamer, but when a scientist goes missing from Barresh thought to be on Tamer, Cory is forced to take the issue by the horns.

Problem is, he is dealing with unexpected side effects of his fertility treatment, and, like his Coldi companions, he’s lost much of his night vision, and has trouble tolerating low temperatures.

Trouble is, a recent addition to his team has sent shockwaves through his group of loyal companions and things are still sorting themselves out.

Not his healthy self, under-resourced, frozen and half-blind, that’s not the best preparation to visit a world where humans are not at the top of the food chain, let alone dealing with enemies who will go to any lengths to hide their activities.

Evil Waking by Michael La Ronn:

My last adventure made me famous. Now the fame might kill me.

Overnight, I became the city’s premier dream mage when I saved it from an evil demon.

My dream reading business has been booming ever since, but other dream mages in the city aren’t too happy about my sudden stardom.

Now I’m a target.

I’ve got to watch my back. And take it from me—the last person you want pissed at you is a dream mage.

Evil Waking is the gripping Book 3 in bestselling author Michael La Ronn’s Magic Trackers series.

[image error] Freaky Places by Amanda M. Lee:

Mystic Caravan Circus is heading to the West Coast, and while everyone is happy for the change of scenery there’s a pall settling over the group.

Poet and Kade are in a good place and planning for a change, but it’s something Poet can’t focus on because she feels as if someone is watching … and whoever it is has evil in his or her heart.

The festival location is different, and instead of space, the circus denizens have festival workers and artisans on every side. They’re open and exposed, and hiding their secret has never been more important.

When one of their own goes missing, Poet is determined to figure out exactly what’s going on. The answers won’t be easy, though, and there are all different types of evil.

A fight is coming, and the enemy is different from anything they’ve ever faced. They’re outnumbered and might find themselves outmaneuvered.

Who will survive? More importantly, who will be lost to something even worse than death? Sometimes death really is better.

Peter Brown Called: Tales of SciFi and Music by Paul Levinson:

Writing science fiction and songs have been two of my lifelong passions. This anthology combines them, with a selection of my science fiction and fantasy stories that has music as a theme, and my lyrics that deal with far-off suns, robots, and time travel.

 

 

 

[image error] The Poison People by Alex Makepeace:

Are you one of them?

With a childhood full of secrets, Matt only wants to blend in. But when his university friends fall prey to a terrifying illness, he begins to realise how truly different, and dangerous, he really is. The disease spreads across the country and society disintegrates into fear and violence. The authorities are talking about terrorism, but Matt knows the truth, and it’s much, much worse. He goes on the run, joining others like him in their struggle to survive. But will it be at humanity’s expense?

With mind-bending scenes of transformation and a story charged with moral ambiguity, The Poison People is a Jekyll and Hyde for our times.

Something Chosen by Alex Owens:

Death isn’t always the end… sometimes it’s only the beginning.

Claire’s trapped in a dead-end marriage, strapped for cash and getting desperate. Her chance at freedom comes in the form of a music con in Florida. Her mission? Win over a few big clients and collect a fat bonus check. It should have been easy, but Claire didn’t count on a bewitched violin, its sultry Italian owner, Bette, or her dark and dangerous companions.

Unfortunately, life isn’t all song lyrics and seduction. Tied to darkness by blood and power, Claire must harness her abilities if she has any hope of surviving this business trip from hell.

Someone Else’s Wolf by Hollis Shiloh:

Shane is a burned-out cop trying to mind his own business. Peter’s the new wolf at the precinct. Nerdy, awkward, and oddly attractive — and he seems strangely drawn to Shane.

Peter already has a partner on the job, the jealous and protective Sue. So, what’s the deal? Maybe he wants something else from Shane. Maybe his interest is purely personal…and not in the least professional. Shane’s starting to feel pretty unprofessional himself.

But having feelings for Peter is riskier than Shane could ever have guessed.

Varying Distances by Darren Speegle:

In his latest short story collection of dark, unsettling tales, Darren Speegle takes us on a journey through the textured layers of time and space. From Flower Age Ibiza, Spain to present-day war-torn Iraq, from the mysteries of America’s Deep South to those of a haunting future landscape where humans and machines are virtually indistinguishable, these stories explore what it is to be us among the varying distances.

An infamous German writer searches for the meaning of consciousness.

A future artist is forced by a cult leader to try to capture his soul in a portrait.

An American contractor working a camp gate in Iraq is confronted by incoming vehicles the likes of which he has never seen before.

A godlike being welcomes in Halloween with a special device.

A hitman tries to determine which woman among a party of three is the android, his target.

This surreal collection includes:

Introduction by Jeffrey Thomas

In the Distance, a Familiar Sound

The Flesh Winks While the Ghost Weeps

The Staging Yard

For Love of War

Balearic Moon

A Carousel of Faces

Death Paper Burn

Twinkle, Twinkle, Amsterdam

That’s the Game

Song in a Sundress

A Puddle in the Wilderness

Nowhere

Compound 26 by Krista Street:

A deadly virus. A brilliant, young researcher. And an infected survivor who threatens to steal her heart.

In a society ruled by sanctions and curfews, Dr. Meghan Forester emerges as the youngest and most promising scientist to join the fight against Makanza – the deadly virus that’s ravaged the world.

Inside Compound 26, a giant government-controlled research facility, Meghan’s new job involves studying the Kazzies, the rare survivors who carry the virus and now exhibit supernatural powers. But as her work enfolds, Meghan’s horrified at the brutal and unethical practices the Kazzies are subjected to. And most surprisingly, she falls in love with one.

Faced with growing conflict over helping the Kazzies versus following the Compound’s strict policies, Meghan must choose: obey the government’s unethical practices or risk everything to save the only man she’s ever loved.

Mind Games by Jeff Tanyard:

Sergeant Jerry Harper recently caused an interstellar incident. As a result, tensions are high, and the Reliants of the Mentarchy have offered to host a conference to settle the matter peacefully. Jerry is ordered by his government to attend the talks and testify. He travels with the rest of the Agrarian diplomatic delegation to the planet Cortex, home of the Mentarch.

Cortex is supposed to be neutral ground, but that changes when an assassin targets the Agrarians. Jerry chases the shooter, but the pursuer quickly becomes the pursued, and he’s forced to go on the run. While Jerry’s wandering in the wilderness, the Mentarch activates its anti-gravity jammer, blockading space travel. The Agrarian delegates are now stuck on the planet, and Jerry is the only one in a position to do anything about it. He’s tasked with disabling the jammer.

Jerry has no idea how he’s going to do it, but he sets out anyway. Along the way, he starts to get a strange feeling about Cortex, some weird interaction between the planet and his psychic gift. He’s not sure what’s going on, but he suspects the Mentarch is up to something. Jerry must find a way to disable the jammer while also dealing with the Mentarch’s mind games. And if he wants to get his people off Cortex alive, he must do it before the place turns into a war zone.

Wetworld by John Triptych:

New Bali is a swamp world located 20 light-years from Earth. Colonized by humans almost two hundred years before, the planet is also home to an intelligent, methane-breathing race of amphibians. The natives have a unique culture that precludes war and vengeance, but recent events have begun to unravel a once fragile peace.

Sophie Singh, heir to a vast conglomerate, must decide whether to retain her family’s control of Wetworld while Brother Moises Borbon, a conflicted Jesuit researcher, races against time to unlock the true meaning behind an alien art form that might be the key to truly understanding the natives.

These and many more unforgettable characters will experience critical choices ahead in the first part of this science fiction saga on colonialism, war, and sociopolitical upheaval.

Aphrodite’s Tears by Andrew Vaillencourt

Roland Tankowicz hates Venus.

The last time he went there, he died. So, no one could really blame him if he never went back.

Nevertheless, when a squad of Venusian assassins ruins date night, everybody’s least-favorite Army-surplus cyborg decides to take a trip to Earth’s sister planet and have a sit-down with an infamous group of terrorists.

Perhaps it’s because he really likes date night. Maybe he just wants to keep the promise he once made to a troubled young man. It is even conceivable that he might still have a heap of unresolved issues with the separatists who blew his body apart years ago. For whatever reason, the big man and his motley crew of misfits strap on their guns and hurl themselves into the murky world of interplanetary terrorism.

To his dismay, Roland discovers that Venus has changed since his last visit. The black-and-white politics of the fanatics and governments he remembers have now merged into complicated shades of gray. Cyborg killers walk the halls without fear, and the soldiers stationed there seem no better than the thugs they fight. The sweltering underworld of Venus holds terrors and trials that will test the old soldier in ways he is not prepared for, while a crafty assassin stalks them all from shadows both real and imagined.

The team must to walk a narrow path between terrorists, soldiers, and their own dark pasts if they expect to get out of this one alive. Is The Fixer strong enough to pull an entire population from the ashes of civil war?

If he isn’t, they may all drown in a flood of:

APHRODITE’S TEARS.

[image error] Rune Legacy by Sandell Wall:

The emperor is dead, and the White City of Amalt has fallen. Those who defy Savaroth’s tyranny are enslaved, thrown into chains and forced to carry out his sinister designs. As Savaroth’s corruption claims the Alkomian empire, an ancient and terrible evil rises from the bowels of the earth. Rumors of a creeping, entangling horror sweep through the war-torn countryside. No soul is safe as man, woman, and child cower in the ruins of the once mighty empire.

From deep within a living forest, Aventine leads a fragile rebellion against Savaroth’s forces. Yet even as they seek to strike out against the tyrant, they are hunted by an eldritch monster that hounds their every step.

On the coast of the empire, Remus haunts the skies, harrying Savaroth’s forces with the might of the Black Citadel. Time is running out, and he must find a way to fight back or flee Alkomia forever.

Remus and Aventine are mankind’s last hope for survival. Together they will fall, or rise up and overcome the greatest threat the empire has ever known.

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Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for February 2018

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some January books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, small town mysteries, paranormal mysteries, historical mysteries, police procedurals, legal thrillers, crime thrillers, psychological thrillers, domestic thrillers, men’s adventure, missing girls, stolen women, lost memories, serial killers, vigilantes, lawyers, innocents on death row and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Treachery on Tap by Constance Barker:

Ghost Hunters on the Loose

The Grumpy Chicken Pub is infiltrated by a famous Ghost Hunting television show and our ghost chicken is not amused. When one of the ghost hunting crew ends up on the opposite side of the living, Ginger and her ragtag of misfits leap into action. Will the Grumpy Chicken ghost help solve the crime like before, or are there more ghosts to contend with?

Find out in this next installment of The Grumpy Chicken Irish Pub Series.

An Occupied Grave by A.G. Barnett:

A village of secrets finds its past lies waiting…

When mourners gather in the village of Lower Gladdock, the grave is found to be already occupied. The victim is soon linked to a tragedy that tore the village apart five years ago and is handed over to the Bexford police to solve.

Detective-sergeant Guy Poole is hoping to put his traumatic past behind him and settle into his new station at Bexford. Now history is threatening to raise its head again, and he has a murder case to contend with.

Detective Inspector Sam Brock has a new recruit to take under his wing, and he’s determined this one isn’t going to die. As if that wasn’t enough of a headache, his wife is coming home and may be on the verge of discovering the lie he’s been telling her.

Newly paired duo Brock & Poole must track down the killer before more lives are lost.

The Starlet and the Dead Duke by Bianca Blythe:

Murder. Manor homes. Malfunctioning chandeliers.

Hollywood starlets are supposed to be happily on set in sunny California, and not trapped in drafty manor houses during ferocious snowstorms.

But after Cora Clarke’s best friend and fellow actress elopes with an English earl, Cora visits England to help her friend brave the aristocratic disapproval of her new husband’s family.

Unfortunately the holiday turns nightmarish when a chandelier crashes down and kills somebody. When suspicion falls on her friend, Cora vows to figure out the identity of the murderer. After all, blizzards have a habit of preventing the police from arriving, and body counts have a dreadful habit of growing.

Flesh Trade by Cora Buhlert:

1966: Freelance troubleshooter Todd Donovan is hired to locate four American college students who have gone missing while doing humanitarian work on the Caribbean island of San Ezequiel.

While punching suspects and taking names, Todd learns that the college students as well as a young nun were kidnapped by a local crime boss named Cabeza.

So now Todd is engaged in a desperate race against time to rescue the kidnapped women before they can be sold to the highest bidder.

This is an adventure novelette of approx. 9800 words or 35 pages in the style of the men’s adventure pulps of the 1960s.

[image error] Tell Me I’m Wrong by Adam Croft:

What if you discovered your husband was a serial killer?

Megan Miller is an ordinary woman with a young family — until a shocking discovery shatters her perfect world.

When two young boys are brutally murdered in their tight-knit village community, Megan slowly begins to realise the signs all point to the lovable local primary school teacher — her husband.

But when she begins to delve deeper into her husband’s secret life, she makes discoveries that will make her question everything she knows — and make her fear for her young daughter’s life.

Facing an impossible decision, she is desperate to uncover the truth. But once you know something, it can’t be unknown. And the more she learns, the more she wishes she never knew anything at all…

Change of Fortune by Jana DeLeon:

Sinful, Louisiana, is always a hotbed of activity, and despite the steamy heat, August is no exception. Godzilla is terrorizing the town, looking for a home-cooked meal, and Gertie is worried someone will take the gator out before she can get him under control. Francine has a situation of her own at the café, where food is missing from inventory. And Celia is always up to no good.

But summer is almost over, which could mean huge changes for Fortune Redding. Her undercover time in Sinful has always been limited to three months, and that time is almost up. With Ahmad still on the loose, Fortune is forced to remain in hiding, but soon she’ll have to move to another town and start all over with a new identity. And that’s the last thing she wants to do. Determined to get her life back, Fortune decides to draw Ahmad out and end this once and for all.

Can Fortune take down one of the most dangerous men in the world? And if she can, does she have a future in Sinful?

30 Days of Justis by John Ellsworth

She’s a daughter he didn’t know he had. Until she calls him…from death row.

From USA Today bestselling author John Ellsworth comes another book so thrilling the pages all but turn themselves. Written as a standalone novel.

Michael Gresham meets his lost daughter, Cache, in her prison cell. She is scheduled for execution in 30 days. Her other lawyers have given up; there is nothing left to do. On a hunch, Michael reviews ancient records. He is astonished at what he finds. He goes before the appeals court. The lawyers at the other table hammer him; the judges pursue him. He leaves with a heavy heart. With gathering speed, the days tick past.

30 Days of Justis is the story of a frantic father who happens to be a lawyer–but is he lawyer enough to save his child? Will there be a last minute call? Or is he in Cache’s life only as the last face she sees before it goes dark? A psychological thriller? Yes, definitely. A legal thriller? Yes, definitely. And so much more.

Murder at Macbeth by Susan Harper:

There’s nothing more relaxing than a day at the theater…until Macbeth is actually murdered

Kendell, a fiery flight attendant, and Pauline, a globe-trotting retiree, get stuck in London. Determined to make the best of their layover, they decide to take in a play at the Globe Theater. When the lead actor is murdered on stage, the new friends are thrust into a murder investigation. Can the new friends work together to clear their names and catch the real killer of Macbeth?

Murder at Macbeth is part of the Flight Risk Cozy Mystery series. If you like fast paced mysteries with interesting characters and unexpected twists, you’re going to love the Flight Risk Cozy Mystery series.

[image error] A Stolen Woman by Catherine Lea:

“Find Me!”

Those are the words on the note crumpled in Laney Donohue’s disabled sister’s hand. All Laney knows is that the young nurse aid who wrote them was taken by a man, and no one stopped him. Laney owes this young woman. She cared for Laney’s sister when Laney couldn’t. Now she’s disappeared without trace. Laney intends to find out why.

Meanwhile, it’s Elizabeth McClaine’s birthday. Or it would be if her PA had gotten the date right. So what better time to leave her unwanted party than when the call comes telling her a client of her charitable foundation has been found beaten and left cowering in a closet, her nurse aid missing.

But from the moment Elizabeth asks the first question, it’s obvious someone out there is hell-bent on stopping her. And when the trail left by Laney Donohue leads to the brothels and casinos of an organized crime syndicate two states away, Elizabeth must pit her wits against the brilliant and ruthless crime boss to save her. The problem is…

…he already knows she’s coming.

[image error] Freaky Places by Amanda M. Lee:

Mystic Caravan Circus is heading to the West Coast, and while everyone is happy for the change of scenery there’s a pall settling over the group.

Poet and Kade are in a good place and planning for a change, but it’s something Poet can’t focus on because she feels as if someone is watching … and whoever it is has evil in his or her heart.

The festival location is different, and instead of space, the circus denizens have festival workers and artisans on every side. They’re open and exposed, and hiding their secret has never been more important.

When one of their own goes missing, Poet is determined to figure out exactly what’s going on. The answers won’t be easy, though, and there are all different types of evil.

A fight is coming, and the enemy is different from anything they’ve ever faced. They’re outnumbered and might find themselves outmaneuvered.

Who will survive? More importantly, who will be lost to something even worse than death? Sometimes death really is better.

Take Five by Vishal Reddy:

Every death starts with a life…

The first 48 hours of a murder investigation are critical… but what about the last 48 hours of the victim’s life?

TAKE FIVE (Book 2 in the Equinox Mystery Series) turns the classic police procedural on its head by alternating between the first 48 hours of the murder investigation and the last 48 hours of the murder victim’s life, told from her point of view.

THE VICTIM

In Sunnyvale, California, — the heart of Silicon Valley – Daisy Hale is a 24-year-old coder for MagnaSwift, one of the tech industry’s fastest-growing companies. Despite experiencing tragedy as a child and homelessness as a young adult, Daisy has overcome numerous obstacles to create a life of her own.

But MagnaSwift is a misogynistic hotbed of mistreatment and harassment, and Daisy’s furious that her impressive skills aren’t helping her advance within the company. So she comes up with a plan that will not only destroy MagnaSwift… but will also make her $10 million richer.

But Daisy’s fate is sealed, because she’s also dealing with a toxic boyfriend, a violent loan shark, a creepy stalker, and others who would rather kill her than see her succeed in life.

THE DETECTIVE

Meanwhile, Detective Stellan Coleman of the Sunnyvale Homicide Department needs to find out who murdered Daisy, the brilliant young woman cut down in the prime of her life. And like Daisy, Stellan has dealt with his share of tragedy too. Recently widowed and taking care of his young and tech-obsessed daughter, Stellan — together with his volatile partner, Detective Enrique Montoya — will stop at nothing to find justice for Daisy.

As Daisy and Stellan’s timelines alternate back and forth, the line between lies and the truth becomes blurred beyond recognition. Because in this fast-paced mystery full of heart-stopping twists, everybody’s a suspect… and nobody’s confessing.

Vanishing Girls by Lisa Regan:

When Isabelle Coleman, a blonde, beautiful young girl goes missing, everyone from the small town of Denton joins the search. They can find no trace of the town’s darling, but Detective Josie Quinn finds another girl they didn’t even know was missing.

Mute and unresponsive, it’s clear this mysterious girl has been damaged beyond repair. All Josie can get from her is the name of a third girl and a flash of a neon tongue piercing that matches Isabelle’s.

The race is on to find Isabelle alive, and Josie fears there may be other girls in terrible danger. When the trail leads her to a cold case labelled a hoax by authorities, Josie begins to wonder is there anyone left she can trust?

Someone in this close-knit town is committing unspeakable crimes. Can Josie catch the killer before another victim loses their life?

13th Avenue by Thomas Shark

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO SAVE YOUR OWN SKIN?

Detective Nicholas Graves never wanted to be a murderer, but during one long Sunday afternoon on 13th Avenue, he became exactly that. With his secret safe and buried for three whole years, it comes as a shock when he receives an anonymous email, threatening to expose his secret.

Over the next 12 hours, Detective Graves finds himself in a game with a killer who is smarter, more cunning and deranged than he could ever be. His only hope is his rookie partner, Detective Stasia Rhine, who becomes the final wall between Graves and his demise.

There’s only one problem.

The killer has a game for Stasia too…

The Hate Crime by Rachel Sinclair:

Heather’s back!

Heather Morrison is back in Damien’s office, but this time, she’s not just there to work. Her boyfriend, Beck Harrison, is accused of killing a transgendered friend of Heather’s. The prosecutors are charging the murder as a hate crime. Beck insists that he’s innocent. After investigating Beck’s background, Damien’s not so sure. Beck has a dark past of involvement with the Aryan Brotherhood. But Damien soon finds out that this case is nothing like it seems. The victim’s past soon becomes the target of the investigation, as Damien finds the one key that will break this case wide open.

Did Damien solve the crime or was there somebody else that he never even thought of who might have been the culprit? A surprise witness at the 11th hour provides the clue.

Meanwhile, Connor has his own case for Damien. He’s been working with underprivileged youth, trying to steer them straight and not walk the same path that he has. He presses Damien to represent Tina, who is charged with drug distribution. Damien sees many parallels between Tina’s life and his own, and he can’t help wanting to save her.

But can he?

Imperfect Memories by Jody Wenner:

After losing her husband and daughter in an all-too-common act of senseless terror, Nina Rogers thinks she might also be losing her mind. Is she slipping because of the tragedy, or is her memory actually failing her? Is she experiencing the same thing her mother did, or is this something different? It might be easy to figure out in a normal person, but Nina is anything but normal. She has hyperthymesia: the ability to recall every minute of every day of her life.

As the days go on, she sinks even deeper into madness and knows that she needs to find some answers to what is happening to her before it’s too late. Tragically, the one person who may be able to help is also the man who killed her family.

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Some Thoughts on the 2017 Nebula Award Nominees

The nominees for the 2017 Nebula Awards have been announced today. At Barnes & Noble, Joel Cunningham offers an overview of the nominees and shares his thoughts on the nominated novels and at File 770, JJ shares some links to those of the Nebula nominated novels and stories that are available for free online. Meanwhile, as is sort of traditional by now, here are my thoughts and reactions to the nominated works.

As in previous years, the 2017 Nebula shortlist is an overall good and diverse shortlist, featuring plenty of women, writers of colour, LGBT writers, etc… There also are a couple of headscratchers and works I’ve never heard of among the nominees, but then again this is something that I find on almost every Nebula shortlist, far more so than on the Hugo shortlists, puppy nominees which usually aren’t that well known among wider fandom excepted.

Let’s start with the nominees in the best novel category, where we have a mix of obvious choices and “Huh?” moments. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin as the conclusion of a critically acclaimed and highly popular trilogy, clearly falls in the first category as do Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty, Jade City by Fonda Lee and Autonomous by Annalee Newitz, all of which got a lot of buzz. But while the reviews I saw for Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly and The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss were generally positive, the reaction to both books was a lot more lowkey. Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory, finally, complete passed under my radar. It’s notable that four of the seven nominees (Amberlough, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Spoonbenders, Jade City) in this category feature historical/quasi-historical settings. Two nominees (Six Wakes and Autonomous) are unambiguously science fiction, while The Stone Sky sits on the borderline between fantasy and science fiction.

Diversity count: Six women, one man, two writers of colour. Three of the nominees are published by Orbit (plus one more is published by Orbit in the UK), two by Tor, one by Saga Press and one by Knopf. So the Tor dominance that certain elements in fandom are always complaining about is actually more of an Orbit dominance, at least in the novel category.

However, the Tor dominance actually does apply to the best novella category, which – as in previous years – is absolutely dominated by Tor.com’s novella line. Four of six nominees are Tor.com novellas, one was published in Uncanny and another by a small press/writers and artists collective called Noble Fusion Press. But then, Tor has revitalized the novella and its novella line is generally of very high quality. As for the nominees, River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey, All Systems Red by Martha Wells, The Black Tides of Heaven by J.Y. Yang and “And Then There Were (N-One)” by Sarah Pinsker all got a lot of positive buzz. Passing Strange by Ellen Klages seems to have generated somewhat less buzz, though I like the novella very much. I have to admit that I have never heard of Barry’s Deal by Lawrence M. Schoen, though I have enjoyed other works by the author. Again, it is notable that we have two nominees (Passing Strange and River of Teeth), which are set in the past. Coincidentally, this is also the category where there is the highest degree of overlap with my personal Hugo shortlist. Three of the Nebula nominees in this category are also on my personal Hugo shortlist, another is a definite possibility.

Diversity count: Four women, one man, one non-binary, one writer of colour, one international writer.

The novelette category is the one which contains the highest number of headscratchers. Vina Jie-Min Prasad is shaping up to be one of the breakout SFF writers of 2017, since I have seen a lot of positive buzz for her stories. She also has another story nominated in the best short story category. Kelly Robson is a writer whose stories I enjoy quite a bit, though I preferred her 2017 novelette “We Who Live In the Heart” to “The Human Stain”, for which she was nominated. Sarah Pinsker’s name frequently shows up on awards shortlists in recent years and indeed she also has another story nominated in the best novella category. I also generally enjoy her fiction, though I haven’t read this particular story. Meanwhile, Richard Bowes, Jonathan P. Brazee and K.M. Szapara are completely unknown to me. A quick Google reveals that Richard Bowes is a World fantasy Award winner and that Jonathan P. Brazee seems to write mainly military science fiction, which is not normally a subgenre that is well represented on awards shortlists. It’s notable that the best novelette nominees are drawn from a wide variety of sources and first appeared in F&SF, Asimov’s, Tor.com, Uncanny, Clarkesworld and an anthology. I don’t read F&SF or Asimov’s, since they very hard to come by where I live and I haven’t read the anthology in question either, which is probably why so many of the nominees in this category are unknown to me. Interestingly, one of the stories, “Weaponized Math” by Jonathan P. Brazee, was published in the self-published anthology The Expanding Universe, Vol. 3, which makes it the only self-published work among the nominees.

Diversity count: Three women, three men, one writer of colour, one international writer.

The nominees in the short story category are a mix between stories that got a lot of buzz and more obscure choices. “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience TM” by Rebecca Roanhorse got a lot of positive attention and a very good story it is, too. “Carnival Nine” by Caroline M. Yoachim is another story that got a lot of attention this year and the woldbuilding is great, though the story itself didn’t work for me. “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” by Fran Wilde is another story that got quite a bit of positive attention, as is “Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad. I usually read Tor.com’s short fiction offerings, but I must have missed “The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard in the Yard)” by Matthew Kressel. I haven’t read “Utopia, LOL?” by Jamie Wahls.

Diversity count: Four women, two men, two writers of colour, one international writer.

Publisher count: Two Uncanny stories as well as one each from Tor.com, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Strange Horizons.

The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult SF or Fantasy only has four nominees this year, namely Exo by Fonda Lee, Weave a Circle Round by Kari Maaren, The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller and Want by Cindy Pon. Unlike some previous years, this year’s Andre Norton Award nominees largely seem to be the sort of book that actual teenagers read rather than the YA excursions by established adult SFF writers. Sam J. Miller is the only author who is better known for his adult SFF and a lot of the stories I have read by him feature teen characters, so he seems like a natural fit for YA. It will be interesting to compare this shortlist to the new YA Not-a-Hugo which is awarded for the first time this year.

Diversity count: Three women, one man, two writers of colour.

Publisher count: Scholastic, Tor, HarperTeen and Simon Pulse are represented with one nominee each.

In general, what’s notable about the adult fiction categories is that Uncanny dominates the short fiction categories, followed by Tor.com and Clarkesworld. Tor.com absolutely dominates the novella category, while Orbit dominates best novel. The decline of the big three print magazines continues. F&SF and Asimov’s managed to garner one nomination each, while Analog didn’t get any at all. Only a single nominee in the fiction categories is self-published. Thematically, I don’t see a clear trend beyond a preferences for works with historical settings.

So let’s take a look at the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: The Last Jedi, Wonder Woman, The Shape of Water and Logan are all obvious nominees and fine movies in their very different ways. Coincidentally, we have two more films with historical settings here, Wonder Woman and The Shape of Water. I’m a bit surprised that there is no love for any of the Marvel movies this year, especially since Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming and particularly Thor: Ragnarok are among the better Marvel movies of recent years. I have to admit that the nomination for Get Out was something of a surprise for me, since it’s a horror movie and those don’t normally do well at the Hugos and Nebulas. However, Get Out is also a multiple Oscar nominee this year (and how cool is it that we have two SFF films competing in the major Oscar categories this year?) and generally very well received, though it seems to have passed under the radar here in Germany, probably because of cultural differences.

But for me, the really big headscratcher in this category is the nomination for “Michael’s Gambit”, an episode of the TV series The Good Place, because this show wasn’t really on my radar at all. Now I am aware that The Good Place has received some very positive reception after a somewhat lowkey start and that it apparently ends with a massive twist, but this is a show I have zero interest in, even though I like Ted Danson. For starters, it’s a sitcom and I don’t like US-style sitcoms. It’s also set in the afterlife and I don’t like stories set in the afterlife. And the one trailer I saw, mainly because I linked it at the Speculative Fiction Showcase, did absolutely nothing for me. I’m also surprised that of all the high quality SFF offerings on TV – The Handmaid’s Tale, Westworld, Game of Thrones, American Gods, Outlander, The Expanse, Preacher, The Defenders, Black Mirror, Stranger Things, not to mention highly debated shows like Star Trek Discovery and The Orville, interesting lowkey series like Killjoys and Dark Matter or even the various DC superhero shows – the lone TV episode to make the Nebula shortlist is an episode of a sitcom set in the afterlife. The Good Place may be a fine show, but better than The Handmaid’s Tale? Honestly?

So those are my initial thoughts and reactions on the 2017 Nebula nominees. I will probably make a follow-up post in the next few days with links to reactions from around the web, once they come in.

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The Star Trek Discovery Season Finale or “Hey, we finally remembered we’re making Star Trek and not Game of Thrones in Space.”

Star Trek Discovery has finally reached the end of its highly uneven first season (for my episode by episode musing, go here). The season finale was not as bad as I feared – no one died, for starters, which is a good thing – but it still offered a wildly uneven conclusion to a messy and uneven season.

Warning! Spoilers underneath the cut!

When we last left the Discovery crew, they found themselves under the command of yet another genocidal tyrant and mirror universe imposter, namely Empress Philippa the Merciless posing as Captain Georgiou miraculously returned from the dead. Because the Discovery writers have never met a plot twist they didn’t like so much they weren’t willing to use it twice.

Unlike Lorca, Mirror Georgiou doesn’t even try to fit in. Instead, all her worst qualities are on full display. She mistreats non-human crewmembers and taunts Saru both about his ever-present anxiety and about the fact that his people are considered a tasty snack in her universe. Saru dryly tells Mirror Georgiou that he has become so tough that many find him unpalatable, which is a great comeback. Saru has truly improved a lot as a character, considering I didn’t like him at all to mid point of the season.

Mirror Georgiou also proceeds to beat the shit out of L’Rell, who is still imprisoned in the Discovery‘s brig in order to get L’Rell to divulge the location and layout of some caves on the Klingon homeworld Qo’noS (or “the enemy planet”, as Mirror Georgiou calls it). I suspect I should be more upset by Georgiou engaging in Starfleet sanctioned prisoner torture, but then we already know that this version of Starfleet and the Federation consist of horrible people and besides, L’Rell is so unlikable that I don’t particularly care what happens to her. Though L’Rell not only refuses to talk, she also can’t resist informing Mirror Georgiou that she and her fellow Klingons ate the body of the regular universe Philippa Georgiou, just in case viewers had forgotten that disgusting detail. If there was an award for the Star Trek show most obsessed with cannibalism, Star Trek Discovery would win it by a mile. In fact, I can’t recall any mention of cannibalism ever in any Star Trek show. And indeed no TV show with the possible exception of Hannibal (another Bryan Fuller show – I am beginning to sense a pattern here) has ever been so obsessed with cannibalism.

Michael eventually suggests to Mirror Georgiou that maybe she should talk to Ash Tyler, since he has access to Voq’s memories and his knowledge of the geography of Qo’noS and unlike L’Rell is actually willing to help. At least, Michael thinks that Ash would be willing to help. She has no way to know for sure, since she abandoned him last episode to suffer on his own and achieve redemption. And yes, I still can’t get over how shittily Michael treated the only person aboard the Discovery who only ever treated her well. Meanwhile, Ash is making sailor’s knots to remind himself of his human identity (he did mention that he liked to go sailing and trout fishing a couple of episodes ago), when Michael and Mirror Georgiou walk in on him. Mirror Georgiou immediately treats Ash horribly and refer to him as “it”, but Ash nonetheless tells them that the caves they want to access are part of a Klingon shrine located underneath land the Klingons have granted to the Orions. The Orions, so long term Star Trek fans will remember, are the green-skinned aliens who run a crime syndicate and who mainly appear in the form of scantily clad slave girls and dancers. Now I would have no problem believing that there would be a district/quarter populated mainly by Orions and other non-Klingons and given over to gambling, drugs and prostitution on the version of Qo’noS populated by the Klingons as portrayed in Next Generation and beyond. But considering how xenophobic and isolationist the Klingons have been portrayed in Star Trek Discovery so far, it makes no sense that they would tolerate any non-Klingons on their homeworld, let alone give them land on which they can pursue their less than savoury business. Whatever happened to “Klingons must remain pure” and “Make the Klingon Empire great again”?

The answer is that the Discovery writers decided that they wanted to send some of their characters on an undercover mission to Qo’noS. And so they came up with the idea of having a whole neighbourhood on Qo’noS where non-Klingons and even humans are able to walk around unmolested. Who cares that none of this fits with the way the Klingons have been portrayed in this series so far? Besides, the Orion neighbourhood on Qo’noS is an excuse to feature some scantily clad green-skinned women (and – pleasantly – a few men). And we all know that sex sells TV subscriptions in the US.

Mirror Georgiou immediately decides to lead an undercover mission to the Orion neighbourhood on Qo’noS in order to deploy a “drone” to map the caves or some such thing. The away team consists of – no, not a bunch of expendable redshirts (and indeed, away teams in Discovery no longer seem to include redshirts in general, killing off a noxious trope like so many poor redshirts in Star Trek history), but of Mirror Georgiou, Michael, Ash Tyler and Tilly. Ash Tyler at least has an in-story reason for being there, since he is the one who knows where the caves are and how to access them. Michael is merely there for maximum emotional drama, though you could also make a case for the fact that Georgiou wants her around because of the connection they shared in both universes. As for Tilly, I guess the writers simply thought it would be fun to plunge her into a sleazy alien gambling den and brothel. Coincidentally, it takes Tilly all of two minutes to figure out that the Georgiou currently serving as captain of the Discovery is the mirror universe version.

Together, Mirror Georgiou, Michael, Ash and Tilly make an even more awkward undercover team than Michael, Ash and Lorca did a couple of episodes ago. Nonetheless, off they go to pose as human arms dealers, dressed in some really cool leather outfits. And indeed, the costumes are one aspect of Star Trek Discovery that has been consistently great. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw has an insightful interview with costume designer Gersha Phillips here.

I’ve seem some complaints that the sleazy Orion neighbourhood is a science fiction cliché and that the green-skinned Orions are a problematic Orientalist stereotype (because it’s not as if Star Trek, particularly the original series, hasn’t been full of all sorts of problematic stereotypes and the Orions have never been the worst of the bunch), while others are offended by the fact that the world’s oldest profession will still be a thing in the far future. Now I agree that sleazy neighbourhoods are a science fiction cliché, though one that does not stem from Star Trek, but can instead be traced back to the cantina scene of Star Wars and beyond into written science fiction.

However, like many clichés the sleazy science fiction neighbourhood contains more than a kernel of truth. Because every decent-sized city will have a redlight district full of strip clubs, sleazy bars, more or less visible prostitution and clubs where drugs are as easily available as sugar water masquerading as champagne. Mostly, this redlight district will be near a major transport hub, either the central train station or the harbour, if there is one. It doesn’t even need to be a big city – the small village where I grew up had two brothels with a third halfway between our and the neighbouring village. And everybody knew where they were. Just as I bet you know where the redlight district in your city is. And you probably know the names of at least a few of the establishments. You may know the name of the coolest club or the dodgiest dive bar and maybe you can even name drop a strip joint or a brothel. So the reason we have so many redlight districts in science fiction is because we have so many of them in real life – near every harbour or train station, in every city and every town. And whatever your personal stand on sex work, it will always be with us in some form. But why do we take such delight in describing these places in our fiction (and not just science fiction either – crime fiction and thrillers quite often takes us to the sleazy underbelly of society as well)? Because it offers us a safe way to take a peek inside those places, to venture where we would or could never go in real life (women are still banned from the prostitution streets that exist in many German cities). There is a reason why Hamburg’s famous red light district in St. Pauli has been the setting of so many German novels and movies (and some foreign ones, too, e.g. one of the Jack Reacher novels is set there), which usually make it look so much more interesting than the underwhelming reality. At any rate, I love writing scenes set in dodgy spaceport bars (I just wrote one based on what is supposedly the second-roughest bar in all of Hamburg St. Pauli), sleazy gambling dens and the like. I always have, all the way back to early stories written as a teen which will never see the light of day. For me, these scenes were a way of putting into fiction what I saw in the real world (my Dad works in the shipping industry, so I have seen a lot of harbour cities and they all have redlight districts, including open ones like in Amsterdam or Antwerp), taking a peek behind the walls that hide Herbertstraße and Helenenstraße from public view without gawking at the very real women who work there and sending my characters where I cannot go myself. And coincidentally, I’d love to see an SF take on Große Freiheit Nr. 7 or Polizeirevier Davidswache which move the setting from St. Pauli into outer space. Though I guess I’ll have to write that one myself.

And so I did enjoy the detour Star Trek Discovery took into the Klingon answer to Hamburg St. Pauli. Nonetheless, I feel that a side trip like this would be far more suitable to a mid season episode rather than the season finale. In fact, it is as if the Canto Bight sequences in The Last Jedi had been the climax of the film rather than something that happened in the middle. Fun sequence, but the pacing is off. Just as the stakes – will a bomb destroy all of Qu’noS and wipe out the Klingons? – never felt as dramatic as they should have and not just because we know that Qo’noS and the Klingons will survive. Indeed, given how awfully the Klingons were portrayed in Discovery, I found it hard to care about them in general. Except for L’Rell and Voq, I can’t even remember their names. And I only remember Voq’s name, because he’s the one who becae Ash Tyler.

Though at least the characters enjoyed themselves – more or less. Mirror Georgiou drags everybody to a brothel, where she has a threesome with a young green-skinned man and woman, implying that at least the mirror universe version of Philippa Georgiou is bisexual. Coincidentally, Tilly initially assumes that the female prostitute Georgiou orders is intended for her and politely tries to decline. So does this mean that Tilly is lesbian or bi?

While Mirror Georgiou has fun (and interrogates her sex partners at gun point afterwards), Michael and Ash get to spend some awkward moments together. Ash sits down to gamble with some Klingons to get some information out of them and actually seems to enjoy himself for once. When Michael wonders why the Klingons, who are supposed to hate humans after all, accept him so easily, Ash tells her that to the Klingons, a human speaking Klingon is a curiosity, like a waterskiing dog. I guess I know a lot of waterskiing dogs then. Though there are quite a few humans running around the Orion redlight district and none of the Klingons bat an eyelash, which doesn’t fit at all with their supposes insistence on racial purity and their rampant xenophobia. Okay, so maybe L’Rell, Voq and the rest of the gang were extremists (which would also explain why they were so unlike any Klingons we have ever seen) and the rest of the Klingons don’t particularly mind humans or indeed any non-Klingons at all. But none of this is actually explained, the plot simply dumps our heroes into a neighbourhood on a supposedly hyper-xenophobic planet where they can walk around unmolested in the middle of a war.

While Ash actually seems to be loosening up a little, Michael experiences a PTSD flashback triggered by sound of Klingons laughing, which reminds her of the night her parents were murdered. This moment was a good reminder that Michael is a very damaged young woman and was so long before we met her and that she has a legitimate reason to dislike Klingons. I kind of hoped that Michael’s PTSD episode would be a precursor to her and Ash getting back together – after all, Ash is just as damaged as Michael is and both Ash and Michael could use some help and support in overcoming their respective traumata. Besides, I loved the supportive relationship they had before the stupid Voq reveal – and indeed, Ash is still incredibly supportive once Michael tells him about the death of her parents, even though Michael dumped him last episode when he needed help and support. Nonetheless, I hoped that they’d get back together, but no such luck, because the writers believe that trauma is best overcome by suffering in solitude. And of course, they also believe that romantic relationships that work have no place in Star Trek Discovery, since they managed to destroy the two good romantic relationships in their show, and indeed two of the best in all of Star Trek, since believable romantic relationships were never one of Star Trek‘s strengths.

While Mirror Georgiou and Ash are enjoying themselves and Michael has a PTSD episode, Tilly is stuck guarding the “drone”. She also manages to eat some endangered space whale meat and accidentally gets high by wandering into the Klingon equivalent of an opium den. But of course, the “drone” is not a drone at all, but a bomb, as pretty much everybody realised already. Tilly eventually catches on and immediately informs Michael. But when they return to defuse the bomb drone, Georgiou has already taken it to plant it in the caves, the location of which the team was trying to discover. At this point, Michael finally realises that Mirror Georgiou isn’t acting on her own, but with the tacit approval of Starfleet. She confronts Admiral Cornwell about this and tells her that she will not have any part in a plan that involves genocide, because even in desperate times, Starfleet still has ideals that should not be abandoned. Finally, Michael also threatens to stage another mutiny – because that worked so well the first time. And this time, Saru and the rest of the bridge crew even support Michael.

It is clear that the entire arc of this season has been pushed towards this moment. The series started off with Michael committing mutiny for the wrong reasons because she disagreed with the real Georgiou’s insistence on keeping true to Starfleet’s ideals even when faced with a clearly dangerous opponent and now it ends with Michael threatening to commit mutiny again for the right reasons, because Starfleet is about to betray its own ideals in dealing with a dangerous opponent. It’s pretty much a textbook redemption arc, but it still doesn’t work. For starters, because I still don’t believe that Michael needs any redeeming. Okay, so she probably shouldn’t have been let anywhere near a starship bridge with her massive untreated PTSD, but beyond nerve-pinching her captain (something Spock did several times in the original series and the movies without repercussions), she actually never did anything. Michael’s mutiny failed before it had barely started and she never got the chance to fire at the Klingon vessel. And Michael’s completely disproportionate punishment for her “crime” as well as Starfleet using her as a scapegoat for its own incompetence already demonstrated that Starfleet and the Federation abandoned their supposed ideals a long time ago. Of course, it was nice to see Saru and the bridge crew remembering what Starfleet is supposed to stand for, but we already saw that two weeks ago. And besides, the second mutiny just sort of fizzles out. Michael never gets to nerve-pinch Admiral Cornwell nor is the Admiral arrested and thrown into the brig. No, Michael holds her little inspirational speech and the Admiral agrees to give up her plan just like that. As conclusions go, that’s rather anti-climactic.

But of course, Mirror Georgiou still has the bomb drone. Michael eventually tracks her down and informs her that Admiral Cornwell called the mission off. Mirror Georgiou, however, isn’t willing to just abandon the mission so easily. Instead, she plans to use the bomb as leverage over the Klingons to gain personal power. And she asks Michael to join her. Michael, of course, refuses and tells Georgiou that she will have to kill Michael, if she wants to escape with the bomb trigger. However, killing Michael will bring down the might of all of Starfleet onto Mirror Georgiou’s head. Personally, I doubt that Starfleet command gives a fuck about what happens to Michael – if anything they’ll probably be happy to be rid of an embarrassment. However, Mirror Georgiou believes her and hands over the bomb trigger to live and fight another day. Coincidentally, I like the fact that unlike Lorca, Mirror Georgiou isn’t just evil for the sake of being evil, but that she’s mainly a power-hungry opportunist. And so she gets to walk away and will probably have taken over the entire Orion crime syndicate within a matter of months.

However, there is still a bomb to dispose of and a war to end and only a few minutes of the episode left. And so Michael does both in one sweep. She frees L’Rell from the Discovery‘s brig, beams her onto a Klingon vessel and hands her the bomb trigger. Because if you have just retrieved the trigger for a planet destroying bomb from one genocidal maniac, it of course makes sense to give it to another genocidal maniac. But then, this is standard for the level of plotting in this show, considering that Cornwell and Sarek retrieved the Discovery from one murderous mirror universe impersonator, only to promptly hand it over to another (and once more, Discovery repeats its own plot points and twists). L’Rell takes the bomb detonator and uses it as a threat to unite the Klingon houses under her leadership or else… Of course, the Klingon Empire is now under the control of a political and religious extremist, but hey, at least she’s stopping the war with the Federation, so all is well, at least until next season.

That still leaves Ash Tyler as a loose end to be tied off. And so Ash inexplicably announces that he wants to stay on Qo’noS with L’Rell, because his unique status as a human/Klingon hybrid allows him to promote understanding and peace between humans and Klingons (yeah, we know how well that will go). Of course, only a few episodes ago Ash was so traumatised by the mere sight of L’Rell that he became catatonic. And even if the rape and sexual abuse he remembers were actually consensual sex between Voq and L’Rell (which is a real slap in the face of rape survivors everywhere), Ash still basically goes off to follow the person he believes raped him (and we still don’t know if L’Rell didn’t force herself on him, while Ash’s personality was dominant) to live on a planet full of purity-obsessed Klingons who hate people who look like Ash and will hate him even more for having once been one of them. It’s a truly shitty ending for a character who was one of my favourites in this show.

There is an emotional good-bye and one more kiss between Ash and Michael, but I still don’t buy why these two can’t be together, especially since they clearly care about each other and were good for each other. Even if Starfleet is not willing to take back Ash – and remember that they were willing to take back Picard, after he was Locutus and wiped out half of Starfleet, and Scotty, after he killed a couple of women, while possessed by a malevolent entity in “Wolf in the Fold” – he and Michael could still have a future together. But I suspect the production team wanted to get rid of the Ash Tyler character, because he would always serve as a reminder of the stupid Klingon war storyline and the even stupider Voq subplot that I suspect everybody would rather forget. Not to mention that having a Klingon, albeit a human looking one, serving aboard a Starfleet ship ten years before the original series would contradict the claim that Worf was the first. But then, Star Trek Discovery never cared about canon before, so why here? Or maybe Shazad Latif wanted to leave, especially since he has indicated in interviews that he wasn’t happy with the way his character was written. Of course, there is always the possibility that Ash will be back next season, which would be great, though I for one wouldn’t bet on it. In short, the Star Trek Discovery ruined two of their most likeable characters (let’s not forget poor Dr. Culber who met his demise at the hands of Ash while Voq) and destroyed two of best romantic relationships in all of Star Trek for the sake of a cheap twist, which had zero impact on the overall plot at the end.

The episode ends with the Discovery crew back on Earth. Michael is finally pardoned, gets her rank back and is also reunited with her foster parents, Sarek and Amanda, who tell her how proud they are of her. Nice of them to remember, considering that neither Sarek nor Amanda nor Spock were anywhere in sight, when Michael was sentenced to life in prison. Michael and the whole Discovery crew also get commendations and Michael gets to hold a speech about the values of Starfleet. It should be an elating moment, much like the medal ceremony at the end of Star Wars: A New Hope, and indeed quite a few people reported that they got misty-eyed at the final speech. And if I hadn’t actually watched what came before, I might well have reacted similarly. However, while Michael gives her “Starfleet and its values” speech, I can’t help but notice that Admiral Cornwell and Sarek, both of whom were fully willing to commit genocide, are standing right there and that neither of them has experienced any repercussions, though Sarek is at least very sorry for what he was willing to do. Nor can I forget that the very Starfleet whose values Michael extolls totally and utterly screwed her over. And indeed part of me hoped that Michael would end her speech with, “Screw you all, I quit” and go off with Ash or maybe even that Michael, Saru and the entire Discovery crew would go rogue and decide to fight the good fight independently of Starfleet, as Katharine Trendacosta suggests here. It would have been a bold move, allowing the show to move forward into new territory without tying itself too much to (or interfering too closely with) established Star Trek canon. And indeed, I just read the third novel in a science fiction series (not naming the title here because of spoilers), which not only did the “dark Starfleet” thing much better then Discovery, but also came to that very conclusion and had the main not-Starfleet vessel go independent at the end.

However, the producers of Star Trek Discovery apparently finally remembered that the show they are making is called Star Trek and not Game of Thrones in space and so they decided that they want to make proper Star Trek from now on. Indeed, two of the many producers promise as much in this interview and say that in season 2, they will do more of the things that Star Trek does well. This is a reason to be cautiously optimistic, but nonetheless it’s telling that two of the producers basically admit that while Discovery was many things in its short first season (grimdark new Battlestar Galactica wannabe, Game of Thrones in space, Flash Gordon-esque high octane space opera), it only very rarely was Star Trek. The season finale did feel more like Star Trek than much of what has gone before and the overly neat ending gives them a chance for a clean start next season. Even the magic mushroom drive has been shelved, as Stamets declares in one of the very few lines he gets in this episode that it is too dangerous to use. So Star Trek Discovery brought its overly messy first season to as clean an ending as possible. Though I still want Dr. Culber and Ash Tyler back. With Ash, we at least have the chance to see him again. As for Dr. Culber, the actor and the producers still insist that we haven’t seen the last of the character, but then the production team has said a lot this season, much of which did not turn out to be true.

And just in order to remind us that yes, Discovery is a lot more committed to being Star Trek from now on, they drop a massive reference to the original series in its final few minutes. For after the commendation ceremony on Earth, the Discovery with Sarek on board (Amanda apparently decided to go shopping or something) is en route to Vulcan to pick up the ship’s new captain. And talking of which, why can’t Saru stay captain, since he did a surprisingly good job these past few episodes, with Michael as his first officer or vice versa? But maybe Starfleet has discovered another mirror universe refugee and wants to promote them to captain of the Discovery, because that worked so well the last two times. But whoever is going to be captain of the Discovery from now on, we and the crew have to wait to find out, because en route to Vulcan, the Discovery receives a distress signal from another Starfleet ship. Surprise, it’s the USS Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike.

Okay, so I have to admit that I felt a little shiver down my spine at seeing the Enterprise at the end. And yes, it doesn’t look like the Enterprise we remember, but then special effects have improved a whole lot since 1966. Nonetheless, having the Enterprise itself show up not quite into Discovery‘s second season smells of desperation. For while all Star Trek shows had callbacks (or call-forwards, in the case of Enterprise) to the original series, few of them deployed so many of them in a single season, let alone their first. This season alone, we’ve had Sarek and Amanda, Harry Mudd and an extended sidetrip into the mirror universe, not to mention easter eggs like Lorca’s tribble or the Gorn skeleton in his weapons room. And now, at the end of its first season, Discovery goes for nuclear and gives us the Enterprise itself. It’s telling that the least Star Trek like of all Star Trek shows is also the one with the most references to the original. Almost as if they’re desperately trying to convince themselves and us that Discovery really is Star Trek.

This doesn’t mean that an encounter with the Enterprise under the command of Captain Pike couldn’t be interesting (and indeed, one of the Discovery tie-in novels apparently featured such as meeting). For unlike Kirk’s crew, we don’t know a whole lot about Captain Pike and his crew. Apart from Spock, the most recognisable member of Pike’s crew is his first officer, Number One (does the character even have a name?). And she is recognisable mainly because she was played by Majel Barrett and not for anything the character ever did. So Pike’s crew doesn’t carry all the ballast that Kirk’s does with one exception. Because there is still the Vulcan science officer Mr. Spock, who also happens to be Sarek’s son and Michael’s adoptive brother. Now Spock has always been one of my favourite Star Trek characters. Nonetheless, I don’t particularly want to see him in Discovery (and indeed, I would have preferred if Michael had been the adoptive daughter of some other Vulcan rather than Sarek). First of all, I’m not a fan of recasting iconic characters who don’t have a history of recasting such as the Doctor or James Bond. To me, Spock is Leonard Nimoy and not Zachary Quinto. Kirk is William Shatner and not Chris Pine and indeed, I don’t consider the J.J. Abrams movies proper Star Trek at all. And coincidentally, Harrison Ford is Han Solo, not Alden Ehrenreich or whatever the actor is called.

Besides, if Michael were to encounter Spock on the Enterprise, that would beget the question why the hell Spock never came to her aid, while she was put on trial and given a life sentence? Because I don’t believe for a second that the Spock whose adventures we have followed for 51 years now would let his sister languish in prison. Cause the Spock we know is the sort of person who risks everything for the people he cares about. Spock is the sort of person who hijacked the Enterprise and risked execution to help Christopher Pike in “The Cage” and who actually did die (though he got better) to save the Enterprise crew in The Wrath of Khan. So if his sister had ended up in prison and unfairly at that, Spock would hijack the Enterprise to break her out and afterwards he would explain why it was the perfectly logical thing to do. Because this is the kind of person that Spock is. So unless he spent the past year in a coma or so, any explanation why he did not rush to Michael’s aid will inevitably make the character come across like an arsehole and Spock is no arsehole. And considering that Discovery has already managed to damage the character of Sarek – for while Sarek was never a good father, he clearly did care about his children and he also was a committed Federation diplomat who would never have consented to go along with genocide – I’d prefer if they didn’t damage the character of Spock, too.

So can Star Trek Discovery become a good Star Trek show after all? It’s certainly possible and the production team have done their best to tie up the messy first season to give themselves as clean a start as possible. And Star Trek is rather infamous for weak first seasons. However, this is one area where Discovery‘s serialised structure really harms the show. For while it is perfectly possible to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and skip over dreadful early episodes like “Justice” and pretend they never happened, it’s not nearly so easy to ignore the bad episodes of Discovery‘s first season and watch only the handful of good ones, because the serialised structure means that the episodes don’t stand alone well. Of course, it might be possible to just skip the entire first season altogether, especially if none of the crap that happened this season is ever mentioned again.

But nonetheless, looking at Star Trek Discovery‘s first season, I can’t help but see a huge waste of potential. For even though I have been pretty harsh on Discovery, there were things the show did well. They had a great cast, interesting characters and two of the best romantic relationships in all of Star Trek. And they threw much of that away for the sake of shocking twists (TM) and cheap emotional drama. Discarding the characters of Ash Tyler and Dr. Culber for the sake of a stupid twist is the most grating example (though at least Ash could still be back), but the unceremonious deaths of the real Philippa Georgiou and Gabriel Lorca seem like a massive waste of two fine actors and intriguing characters as well. Particularly, Lorca’s end was a let-down after all that build-up and they could have done so much more with his character rather than turn him into a one-note villain and kill him off. Not to mention that it would have been interesting to meet the real Gabriel Lorca, no matter how briefly. And while Mirror Georgiou is still vamping it up somewhere out there, I still wish we would have seen more of the real Captain Georgiou. Hell, we’ve had more episodes of evil Mirror Georgiou than of the good Philippa Georgiou, caring mentor and highly decorated Starfleet captain.

So in short, Star Trek Discovery is not entirely irredeemable, but it will need one heck of a redemption arc (but hey, the show seems to love them) to become the fine show it could have been.

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In Defence of Wallpaper Science Fiction

A few days ago, Paul Weimer pointed me on Twitter to this post by Charles Stross in which Stross laments the current state of the science fiction genre, because a lot of SF writers these days focus more on plot, action, characters and their relationships than on worldbuilding, particularly on economics, which is the aspect of worldbuilding that is closest to Stross’ heart. It’s clearly an issues that he feels strongly about, since Charles Stross writes variations of this post nearly every year, such as this three part rumination on space opera and its clichés from 2016 or this post on why he prefers urban fantasy to science fiction from 2014.

Here is a quote from the most recent post:

Unfortunately, we get this regurgitated in one goddamned space opera after another: spectacle in place of insight, decolorized and pixellated by authors who haven’t bothered to re-think their assumptions and instead simply cut and paste Lucas’s cinematic vision. Let me say it here: when you fuck with the underlying consistency of your universe, you are cheating your readers. You may think that this isn’t actually central to your work: you’re trying to tell a story about human relationships, why get worked up about the average spacing of asteroids when the real purpose of the asteroid belt is to give your protagonists a tense situation to survive and a shared experience to bond over? But the effects of internal inconsistency are insidious. If you play fast and loose with distance and time scale factors, then you undermine travel times. If your travel times are rubberized, you implicitly kneecapped the economics of trade in your futurescape. Which in turn affects your protagonist’s lifestyle, caste, trade, job, and social context. And, thereby, their human, emotional relationships.

Whenever Stross posts a variation of this “other people are doing science fiction wrong” rant, it inevitably gets my hackles up and also reminds me why I have bounced hard off every Charles Stross novel I tried to read. By now I have accepted that Charles Stross and his work simply are not for me, to the point that I only check out new work by him, when it finds its way to the Hugo shortlist and I am eligible to vote. Where I inevitably bounce off his work yet again. Because the things he values in science fiction are very different from the things I value.

For starters, an overexplanation of any aspect of worldbuilding at all will quickly land you in Alfred and Bertha territory and that way lies madness. After all, there is a reason why the Alfred and Bertha stories are parodies of a certain kind of overly infodumpy hard science fiction (though military SF can be just as infodumpy – it merely infodumps in other areas). And indeed, in The Three Quarters Eaten Dessert, I spent a full paragraph explaining the concept of VAT/sales tax and another explaining the concept of paper money in response to one of Stross’ rants that science fiction writers care too little about economics and never talk about VAT/sales tax.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a kernel of truth in Stross’ post. Because all too often, things show up in science fiction, just because “that’s the way things are”, whether in genre or life, regardless if this makes sense in this particular setting. The prevalence of Galactic Empires vaguely modeled on the Roman or British Empire in science fiction is a result of tropes being imported from other genre works unexamined, as is the fact that every future military ever is either modelled on the US Marine Corps of the 20th/21st centuries or the British Royal Navy of the 18th and 19th centuries and that every starship is modelled on a modern aircraft carrier. Not that there cannot be very good narrative reasons for choosing these particular models over any others that are available, but all too often the answer to the question “Why is there a Galactic Empire rather than any other form of government?” or “Why is the future military modelled after the US Marine Corps or the British Royal Navy?” or “Why does this future starship function like a 20th century aircraft carrier?” is, “Because that’s the way things are done in this genre and besides, franchise X does it that way.” Hell, I’ve even seen writing advice explicitly stating, “Pick an existing SF franchise and use that as a baseline for how things work in your universe.”

But unexamined assumptions also creep into SF worldbuilding in other ways. For example, Star Trek Discovery (and Voyager, for that matter) assume that of course prisoners will be used for forced labour, because that’s the way things are and have been since the late 19th century at least in the US, whence the writers hail. Never mind that using prisoners for forced labour makes no sense in a post-scarcity quasi-utopian system like the Federation, where replicators are common and manufacturing is largely automatised. But prisoners have to do slave labour, because that is just the way things are. Just as prisoners wear overalls in garish colours, a convention that shows up a lot in filmic science fiction (also see the bright yellow prison uniforms in Guardians of the Galaxy), even though garishly coloured prison uniforms are a purely US thing and something that came in only in the last twenty to thirty years. Before that, prisoners wore denim shirts and pants or the traditional striped prisoner garb or the broad arrow on British prison uniforms or the plain white sarees (for women) or pants and shirt combinations (for men) worn by prisoners in India. And indeed, many countries have abolished distinctive prisoner uniforms altogether. But while many readers, viewers and writers would roll their eyes at prisoners dressed in outfits bearing the broad arrow in the far future, the garish yellow prisoner uniforms in Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Trek Discovery pass unremarked, because that is just the way things are and will always be. Just as it is totally normal that there will be such a thing as prisons and prisoners at all, that there is such a thing as a life sentence (common in the US and UK, but abolished or about to be abolished in many European countries) and that life sentences are handed out for crimes such as mutiny (which is of course a very serious crime – another unexamined assumption) rather than that they are reserved for serial killers and rapists, i.e. people who pose a huge danger for society. But while I and other continental European viewers point out that Michael Burnham’s fate in Star Trek Discovery is excessive and grossly unfair, most American viewers just accept it with a shrug. Because that is just the way how things are and always will be.

Coincidentally, Star Trek used to be much better at imagining the future of crime and punishment. The brainwashing shown in the original series episode “Dagger in the Mind” may seem incredibly creepy these days, but it was actually forward thinking at the time and indeed goes back all the way to Doc Savage and his crime college, if not further. Not to mention that the focus of the prison colony in “Dagger of the Mind” is on reform and not punishment or exploitation. But the writers of Star Trek Discovery simply cannot imagine a world where prisoners are not exploited as cheap labour. Just as the writers of the original Star Trek couldn’t imagine a future, even a highly utopian one, without the death penalty, as “The Menagerie” shows, though at the time the series was made in the real world most western countries already had or were in the process of abolishing the death penalty and both executions and support for the death penalty had dropped to an all-time low in the US.

And for that matter, why are Federation citizens so keen to join Starfleet anyway, when the death rate is extremely high and there is no financial incentive to join up, since the Federation’s post-scarcity future has abolished money? And why is Starfleet organised along military lines with a military rank structure and hierarchy, when their main mission is exploration? Why do Starfleet ships have huge crews with hundreds of people, when modern research vessels, the closest real world equivalents to either the Enterprise or the Discovery or the Voyager, have much smaller crews? The answer is probably because the original Star Trek writers and the writers of the works they borrowed from were far more familiar with Navy vessels (there have always a lot of military veterans among SF writers) than commercial or research vessels. And after a while, it simply became the way things have always been done in the genre.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t have aircraft carriers in space (for example, it made sense for either version of the Battlestar Galactica to be based on an aircraft carrier, because the Galactica was an explicitly military vessel in a way the Enterprise wasn’t) or forced prison labour or even chain gangs in space, if you want to. You absolutely can and indeed, an upcoming In Love and War story will be set in a hellish prison camp where the prisoners are basically worked to death. However, if you want to have such a setting, you have to first answer the question “Why is this system in place and why does it make sense?” My answer was that the world in question has a lot of natural resources and exports agricultural products as well as minerals and resources. However, they have little to no manufacturing, so the machinery and software required for automation have to be purchased for foreign currency and the exchange rate is shit, making this extremely expensive. Human labour, however, is cheap and if you can get away with not even paying the humans for their labour, since they are convicts, you can cheaply harvest/extract natural resources and agricultural products and export them for valuable foreign currency. And since violent criminals are not all that good at following orders and complying, you will want mostly non-violent prisoners and you’ll need a way to keep them in line, too. Hence, even small infractions (in one case a parking meter violation, which is borrowed from Cool Hand Luke, the movie where the punishment for demolishing parking meters is death) are turned into crimes that result in lengthy prison sentences. And whole families are locked up, so prisoners can be kept in line via threats to their loved ones. Of course, once I had come up with a reason why there was something very much like a late 19th/early 20th century American chain gang on a planet in the far future, it completely derailed what was supposed to be a simple prison break story, because the system I had come up with was so evil that merely escaping wouldn’t do. The system had to be dismantled as whole. And indeed, Anjali and Mikhail insisted that “we have to stop this, because it is evil.” Which posed all sorts of new storytelling challenges.

So if all that Stross’ post did was implore science fiction writers to interrogate their worldbuilding choices and ask themselves “Why did I choose this?” and “Does this even make sense for the world that I built and if not, how can I make it fit?”, I would probably have heartily applauded. However, that’s not all he does. Because Stross does not just ask science fiction writers to make sure their worldbuilding is makes sense and is internally consistent. No, he also insists that all science fiction, at least the science fiction he is willing to consume, adhere to his personal worldbuilding standards and preferences and dismisses works that fail to match his particular standards. And this is problematic.

For starters, different writers focus on different aspects of worldbuilding. Charles Stross seems to focus on economics. J.R.R. Tolkien focussed on language and linguistics. Hard SF writers like Greg Egan or Stephen Baxter focus on physics. Ada Palmer focusses on philosophy. Brandon Sanderson focusses on magic systems. Military SF writers focus on military equipment and tactics. As for myself, I am interested in food and fashion and culture and architecture and will of course focus more on those aspects than e.g. on economics or physics, both of which I don’t particularly care about. This doesn’t mean that a writer shouldn’t at least have a vague working knowledge of other aspects (or be able to research whatever they need to know to tell the story they want to tell), just that writers will focus more on areas and aspects that interest them than on those that don’t. And if Charles Stross dismisses Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota quartet in the comments to the post with “It didn’t work for me, because the flying cars were not plausible”, he misunderstands the series, because the flying cars in Terra Ignota are just a tool and plot convenience to quickly move characters from one place to another. Flying cars not what those books are about and in fact, you could replace them with a Star Trek transporter, mini-wormholes or even magic pixie dust and still have the same story.

If a work focusses too much on an aspect of worldbuilding (or indeed any aspect) that you don’t care about, it’s perfectly normal to bounce off the work in question. I tend to have this reactions to certain types of military SF and also some thrillers, which make me think, “Enough with the weapons porn. Could we maybe get back to the plot?” Meanwhile, the steamier sorts of science fiction romance or paranormal romance occasionally make me go, “Okay, I get that the sex is great. But could we maybe get back to winning the galactic civil war now? And while we’re at it, could you explain this cool worldbuilding aspect a bit more?” Finally, I once said about Tom Clancy, “I will only read submarine tech specs, when I’m paid to translate them. I certainly don’t want this stuff in my leisure time reading.” Not that it isn’t possible to enjoy a work, even if it focusses a lot on aspects of worldbuilding you normally don’t particularly care for. For example, I’m not overly interested in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, but I nonetheless enjoyed the Terra Ignota books a whole lot, even though the characters spend a lot of time talking about philosophy. Finally, even if I don’t particularly care about a book and find the endless discussion of some worldbuilding aspect I’m not interested in duller than watching paint dry, that still doesn’t make it a bad book or mean that nobody else will like it. It merely means that this book is not for me. And that’s okay, because not every book has to be for me.

But Stross doesn’t merely complain that people are writing books he doesn’t care for, he also pulls out science fiction’s biggest cudgel, namely “This is not scientifically accurate.” And it is a big cudgel, so big that fear of getting hit with it stopped me from writing SF for years (which, to be fair, has nothing to do with Mr. Stross, but was my own reaction to years and decades of similar articles and essays). For as a young person who loved science fiction and desperately wanted to write it and who was scientifically literate enough to realise that movies like The Black Hole or Armageddon were complete and utter bunk and that nuclear reactors don’t require slaves to shovel radium into the atomic furnace (looking at you, Flash Gordon), I was utterly paralysed by the fear of getting the science wrong. Never mind that the sort of SF universe I wanted to create – a big universe with lots of inhabitable planets, alien races and regular FTL travel between them – was scientifically impossible.

It didn’t help either that I read about other science fiction writers who would calculate and plot out the orbits of their fictional planets or who regularly mined science magazines for story ideas. Still, this was the way “real SF writers” did things, so I forced myself to read science articles that often bored me to death, hoping for a nugget of SF inspiration to fall out. And when no nuggets of inspiration appeared, I sadly concluded that I was simply not meant to be an SF writer and focussed on other genres.

Meanwhile, the truth is that I’m simply not that sort of writer. My stories usually start with a character, a situation or a scene, not with a big idea, scientific or otherwise. Nor do I create the story to fit the science, but I research the science to fit the story. It’s a different approach to writing SF (or any other genre), but it’s just as valid as calculating and plotting orbits and drawing GA-plans of spaceships before even writing a single word.

To be fair to Stephen Baxter, he gets this. Take this quote from the article I linked to above about his collaboration with Terry Pratchett on the Long Earth series:

“It was a great idea but Terry’s strength did not lie in landscapes and things,” Baxter says. “He’d get a story by having a basic idea, get two people in a room talking and see where it went from there.”

This is not how Baxter works. His fiction, whether about the colonising mission sent to a planet orbiting a nearby red dwarf star, in Proxima, or the exploration of different evolutions of humanity in the Destiny’s Children series, is meticulously planned and pinned down, rooted in the scientific background from which he comes.

My own way of writing is a lot closer to Pratchett’s than to Baxter’s. I start with characters, too, and not with the science and the worldbuilding. Nonetheless, I found myself paralysed and unable to write in the genre I loved most for years, simply because I was a character-driven and not a big idea writer.

Meanwhile, I was well aware that a lot of the SF I read (or watched) and enjoyed was far from scientifically accurate. A lot of the time I made excuses along the lines of “It’s an old book/movie. They just didn’t know any better back then”, though even I knew that the radium shovelling slaves in Flash Gordon (around the 6 minute mark) made no more sense back in 1936 than when I first saw the serial in 1989. And there was absolutely no excuse for The Black Hole, since everybody should have known about vacuum and decompression by 1979. As for Armageddon, I simply decided to view it as a comedy set in space, much to the consternation of the other cinemagoers, who seemed to take it seriously and were mightily irritated by me laughing out loud during various tense moments.

Even so-called hard science fiction contains mistakes all the time. Here, James Nicoll finds scientific, anthropological and other flaws aplenty in two recent hard SF darlings: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson and Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. And don’t even get me started on novels which get all the science right or at least not glaringly wrong, but still manage to be set in utterly implausible futures entirely populated by straight white American men who never ever seem to eat, fall in love, have sex or indeed experience any human emotions at all.

But even though I saw plenty of other SF works get away scientifically impossible nonsense and had absolutely no problem with lightsabres, aliens crossbreeding with humans, Star Trek transporters and other tech I knew could not exist, I still would not give myself permission do the same and just write the SF I wanted to write. Because I never wanted to be the person who committed the idiocy of the radium shovelling slaves of Flash Gordon or The Black Hole or Armageddon.

Nor am I the only SF writer who ever felt paralysed by the fear of writing something that contradicts currently accepted scientific fact and getting laughed out of the room. In fact, this creative paralysis seems to be quite a common phenomenon, particularly among women and writers of colour who already have a harder time gaining a foothold in the genre and who are more frequently given the message that people like them just don’t get science and so of course cannot write SF. Nor does it help when works by women and writers of colour are disproportionately accused of being “not real science fiction”, when there is a great hue and cry from certain quarters that science fiction is dominated by English majors and MFAs now rather than by the scientists and engineers who used to write it and that those nasty English majors and MFAs are too stupid to understand either science nor what proper science fiction is and want to ruin the genre because they suffer from literary status envy and that any awards won by women, writers of colour and LGBT writers are due to affirmative action rather than merit. In an atmosphere like this, it’s no wonder that budding writers, particularly women and minority writers, are terrified of writing something labeled “not proper science fiction”.

Take for example this post by Catherynne M. Valente, in which she discusses the intense pressure on science fiction writers to keep their work realistic and scientifically accurate and how it paralysed her, wondering whether she was allowed to write something set in a universe that we know does not exist that way. Never mind that anybody who reads as much as the blurb of Radiance, the novel in question, should be able to tell that Radiance is not set in the solar system as it is, but in an alternate solar system as early 20th century pulp science fiction imagined it to be. And you know what? That’s perfectly okay.

Now don’t get me wrong. If you write something billed as hard science fiction, you’d better get the science right. If you write something that is set in our solar system in the fairly near future, then the solar system should look and behave as it does in reality. But hard SF is not the only mode of science fiction out there. And if you want to have steampowered spacecraft, vampires and werewolves in outer space, swordfights on the decks of spaceships, thrilling chases through the asteroid belt, a Mars, Venus or whole solar system straight out of early 20th century pulp science fiction, a planet full of homicidal toys (looking at you, Simon R. Green) or even slaves shovelling radium into atomic furnaces, then yes, you can do that, too. You’ll just have to have find a way to explain it and make it internally consistent with the world you’ve built.

There is also another cudgel hidden in that post, namely the “This story isn’t science fiction, it’s just an adventure story/romance/western/mystery set in space/in the future”. This accusation has always baffled me, because how on Earth is a love story or a murder mystery set in the future or in outer space not science fiction? Sure, if you took away the science fiction trappings, you’d still have a murder mystery or a romance, but it wouldn’t be the same story and this goes even for something like the near future Eve Dallas mysteries by J.D. Robb a.k.a. Nora Roberts.

Nonetheless, the accusation that a given story isn’t science fiction enough, because it uses the SF elements as furniture, is surprisingly common and resilient, from Bat Durston, whose adventures would never see print in Galaxy via Ian Sales’ Ruritanian science fiction to accusations that latter day Cyberpunk tales such as Sam J. Miller’s (lovely) novelette “We Are the Cloud” or the recent streaming video series Altered Carbon, based on Richard Morgan’s eponymous novel, are just a gay love story (“We Are The Cloud”) or a standard noir detective story (Altered Carbon) set in a shopworn and exhausted Cyberpunk future that is in itself a nostalgic retro setting.

My reactions to such criticisms is always “So what?” There is no reason that every work of science fiction always has to focus on new ideas and new technologies and a new, never before seen vision of the future. Sometimes, it is perfectly okay to use science fiction elements merely as furniture or wallpaper to tell a story that focusses on some other aspect of the human experience. Not to mention that saying that “We Are the Cloud” isn’t doing anything new with the genre is wrong (I haven’t seen Altered Carbon and barely remember the novel, so I can’t comment), because what “We Are the Cloud” or other SF stories by Sam J. Miller such as “Things with Beards” do is inject LGBT characters into stories that normally had no space for such characters. And that definitely brings something new to the shopworn urban dystopias of Cyberpunk or the claustrophobic SF horror of Who Goes There?/The Thing. It might not be a new aspect that the critics of these stories care about or even recognise, but it definitely does something new with old tropes.

And indeed, whenever I hear a “my science fiction is purer than thine” critic ask why an author didn’t just write a contemporary or historical novel, if all they do with the science fiction elements is use them as furniture, I always think, “But it’s not possible to move that story to a different time period and/or setting and still tell the same story.” Because if you move a work of wallpaper science fiction (an analogue to wallpaper historical romance) to a different time period, the social and political conditions of that period may well render that story impossible to tell or at least irrevocably alter it. A gay romance between two fighter pilots cannot simply be moved to a WWII setting, because the vicious homophobia of the time would make the story impossible. A tale about a pirate captain who happens to be a lesbian of colour wouldn’t be entirely impossible during the age of sail (there were pirates of colour as well as female and LGBT pirates), but it would still be a very different story and its protagonist would face very different challenges. Or maybe, you simply want to set your story in a world with indoor plumbing, in a world where travelling long distances without grinding the plot to a halt for days, weeks or months is possible (see Ada Palmer and the flying cars of Terra Ignota), where your protagonists don’t have to worry about dying of infectious diseases or other treatable conditions or – if they have wombs and ovaries – dying in childbirth. There are all very good sorts of reasons to set a story in a science fiction world, even if the story itself is a romance or murder mystery or adventure story and the SF elements are merely furniture and background details. Though you should still take some time to consider if you are using these particular SF elements, because your story requires them or just because that’s the way things are done in this genre and whether the elements in question even make sense in the world that you built.

More than other genres, science fiction is always concerned with defining itself and also with policing its borders. Quite often, this involves embracing and absorbing works that use science fiction elements, whether they want to be embraced or not. This is why Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Road, Never Let Me Go, The Plot Against America, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, The Underground Railroad or The Power all came to be considered science fiction, even if their authors occasionally had other ideas. However, this boundary policing is also directed at excluding works for not being science fictional or innovative enough. Even though quite often, the ones attempting to eject a work from the genre cannot even see what is innovative about it (same old cyberpunk, only that the protagonist is gay; same old space opera, except that everybody uses female pronouns, etc…). And you’ll find these boundary policing attempts both on the right (I don’t have to link to that Nutty Nuggets post again, do I?) and the left (many of the links in this post). But whatever direction it comes from, it’s problematic.

If the author considers their work science fiction and if it includes elements generally considered science fictional, then it is science fiction. It may not be the sort of science fiction you like, but that doesn’t make it any less science fiction.

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Star Trek Discovery and the American Cult of Guilt and Redemption

Yes, there apparently was a new episode of Star Trek Discovery last Sunday, though it was easy to forget with the Superbowl and the most important thing about it, the ads and trailers. For previous posts on Star Trek Discovery, see here, by the way.

Though frankly, this episode of Star Trek Discovery also was rather forgettable. It didn’t even have shocking twists (TM), no matter how non-sensical, to keep us on the edges of our seats. Instead, all this episode of Star Trek Discovery dished up was unlikeable people (and aliens) being unlikeable and treating each other like shit. It did feel a bit more like Star Trek – moral dilemmas and people talking a lot – but unfortunately it only seemed to take all the bad aspects of Star Trek – the heavy-handed moralizing of episodes like “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” and the fact that occasionally the solution to the moral dilemma du jour was “Be an arsehole, as long as you don’t violate the prime directive or maybe even if you do” – with none of the good. Camestros Felapton says in his review that it felt a little like an episode of Deep Space Nine, which may be why I didn’t like it, since I never cared for Deep Space Nine at all. Except for Tilly, pretty much everybody behaved like an arsehole in this episode and this includes Michael Burnham.

Yes, this is the episode that made me openly dislike Michael. Though I have to admit I didn’t like her all that much, since Michael was much too passive about accepting what happened to her. I merely sided with Michael almost reflexively, because she had been wronged and treated abominably and I tend to side with characters put in such a situation, even if they are not particularly likeable otherwise. But now it turns out that everybody in this version of Starfleet is an arsehole, including their scapegoat for everything bad that ever happened.

Warning! Spoilers beneath the cut!

So the Discovery made it back into the regular universe, only that the regular Star Trek universe (if that’s what it is, cause I’m still not convinced) is in dire trouble, since the Klingons have all but won the war, though they’re still squabbling among themselves, and the Federation has been driven to the brink of extinction, since the twenty-four different Klingon houses are all trying to one up each other by killing as many Federation citizens as possible. Meanwhile, the Federation is still too bloody incompetent to take advantage of the fact that their enemy is divided among themselves and allow themselves to be slaughtered. Coincidentally, there is also no way that such a massive war with millions of Federation citizens dead happened only ten years before the original series and yet Starfleet and the Federation seem to have completely recovered after having been brought to the brink of extinction and are already back to exploring the unknown and going where no man has gone before. What is more, no one ever mentions this devastating war beyond a vague “The Klingons killed many of our people” comment Kirk makes in “Errand of Mercy”. Looking at real world parallels, rebuilding after WWII happened relatively quickly, but in 1955 you would still have seen some wartime ruins in most German cities (a few of those ruins remained well into the 1980s and 1990s, though usually hidden behind billboards). Not to mention that rearmament as well as the return of the last German POWs only happened in 1955, ten years after the end of WWII. So there is no realistic way for the Federation to suffer a devastating nigh-defeat and extinction and be back to business as usual only ten years later. Which suggests that there is either a big red reset button at the end of the season or that Discovery is not set in the regular universe after all.

The Discovery crew and by extension we, the audience, learn everything that happened in the meantime from Admiral Cornwell (who somehow managed to survive both evil mirror Lorca and the Klingons, more the pity) and Sarek, who beam onto the Discovery bridge with the Admiral’s retinue and point guns at everybody. Turns out that the mirror Discovery under the command of Captain Killy was destroyed by the Klingons (kind of a pity, since I would have liked to see Mirror Tilly wrecking havoc) and now the Admiral and Sarek are understandably confused about the Discovery popping up again. And so, in order to assure themselves that the Discovery and her crew are not imposters (though considering that Admiral Cornwell and Sarek don’t know about either Lorca or Tyler, one wonders how they come to that conclusion), Sarek forcibly mind-melds with Saru. Never mind that we’ve been told by 50+ years of Star Trek that Vulcan mind-melds are an extremely intimate experience, almost like sex, and that a non-consensual mind-meld is like rape, Sarek – who has been established as a crappy father, but generally good man and fine diplomat – basically mind-rapes Saru on Admiral Cornwell’s say-so. He never asks for permission and he never considers mind-melding with Michael, who is standing right there on the bridge and has experienced a mind-meld with Sarek before. Though this is not even the worst or most out of character thing Sarek will do this episode.

Mind-melding with (or mind-raping) Saru quicky brings Sarek and via him Admiral Cornwell up to speed with regard to what happened in the past few episodes. Cornwell is understandably furious that she was taken in (and slept with) an imposter Lorca from a parallel universe (and she vents her fury by blasting the bowl of fortune cookies in Lorca’s office with her phaser in a moment that’s genuinely funny), though she also mourns her Lorca whom she presumes is dead (though that has never been confirmed). We’d like to mourn with her, except that the show never gave us a chance to get to know the real Gabriel Lorca. Personally, I’d like to think that he was like Jackson Brodie from Case Histories (also played by Jason Isaacs in one of his few sympathetic parts), only in space.

After kicking poor Saru out of the captain’s chair and assuming command of the Discovery herself, Cornwell, together with Sarek, also immediately decides to declare the existence of the mirror universe classified (which explains why the Enterprise crew had never heard of the mirror universe when they encountered it approx. ten years later – though Spock may have known via Sarek or Michael, explaining how he was able to catch on so quickly). The reason that Cornwell gives is that with so many Federation citizens dead at the hands of the Klingons, the temptation to go to the mirror universe and grab a replacement would be too great. No word on how the average Federation citizen is supposed to cross over into the mirror universe (since I suspect most Federation citizens don’t have a magic mushroom drive or a malfunctioning transporter at hand) or how they will even locate the counterpart of a dead loved one, once there. Instead, it seems as if Cornwell just drowned her sorrows about losing Lorca by binge-watching Fringe and came up with this explanation. Though coincidentally, couldn’t the Discovery have grabbed Mirror Culber and brought him back, provided he wasn’t evil?

But even though the average Federation citizen has no more chance of crossing over into the mirror universe than the average 21st century citizen has of building a nuclear bomb, the writers still inserted that explanation both to preserve canon with regards to “Mirror, Mirror” and to pile yet more grief and guilt upon Mikhail, who momentarily seems to have forgotten, in spite of plenty evidence to the contrary, that mirror universe people are not their counterparts, even if they look like them, and so grabbed the Empress Philippa the Merciless, as she was beamed from the exploding flagship. And now the Discovery is stuck with an evil Empress from an alternate universe who just happens to look exactly like a highly decorated dead Starfleet captain.

Empress Philippa isn’t the most pleasant guest either. Instead, she presents her haughtiest self and promptly points a gun at Saru – who is, for the moment, acting captain of the Discovery – and tries to order him around. When that doesn’t fly, she informs Saru that his sort are merely a slave species anyway and that they also taste really delicious, as Michael can confirm. Whereupon Saru promptly turns on Michael to accuse her of lying to him, when he asked whether she’d encountered other members of his species, and also to berate her for being so blinded by her emotions to bring Empress Philippa aboard. Looks like Saru still can’t resist having a go at Michael, even if he has otherwise become a much more likeable character. And yes, Michael lied to him, but what should she have told him? “Yes, I’ve met your mirror counterpart, he’s my slave and washes my back. And by the way, why did you never tell me that your threat ganglia are so tasty?”

Talking of Saru’s threat ganglia, it’s interesting that they react to Michael, who is not a threat, but don’t react to Lorca, Ash Tyler, Empress Philippa or Harry Mudd, all of whom are actually dangerous. Nor do they react to the magic mushroom drive, Lorca’s collection of murder weapons or the tardigrade, all of which are still more dangerous than Michael. Indeed, when I discussed this episode with a friend, we both looked at each other and said, “Saru is totally lying about what those things actually are, cause the truth would be much too embarrassing.” Cause the reason he reacts to Michael sure as hell isn’t cause she’s dangerous. In fact, I suspect poor Saru has an unrequited crush on Michael and expresses it by being rude to her. Hell, it makes as much sense as any other theory.

Instead of throwing Empress Philippa in the brig, perhaps into the same cell as L’Rell, she is instead given a guest cabin. Admiral Cornwell and Sarek even pay her a visit to pick her mind on how to defeat the Klingons, since Philippa the Merciless has defeated them in her own universe. What is more, Empress Philippa has also actually been to the Klingon homeworld Qo’noS, where no regular universe human has been since Captain Archer of the first Enterprise. And isn’t it fascinating how Discovery has absolutely no problem with playing fast and loose with established Trek canon, but for some reason slavishly adheres to Enterprise of all things? Of course, taking tactical advice from a monstrous tyrant is a really great strategy. And the Empress isn’t even the most qualified person onboard regarding the Klingon homeworld, since there are two actual Klingons aboard the Discovery, though one of them no longer looks like a Klingon. And L’Rell is at least on talking terms with Admiral Cornwell, since they bonded over their shared escape from the Ship of the Dead, though not exactly helpful. As for Ash/Voq, no one even bothers to ask him. But hey, let’s listen to the genocidal tyrant who’d like to have Saru for dinner.

Empress Philippa happens to know that Qo’noS is riddled with caves, which are conveniently accessible via the Discovery‘s magic mushroom drive. Of course, last episode we learned that the Discovery can no longer use its magic mushroom drive, because all the spores died and besides, using the magic mushroom drive could destroy the multiverse. This week, however, this little obstacle is forgotten, when Stamets reveals that he still has an uninfected sample of the spores left and that he also has a convenient method of growing a whole lot more by terraforming an uninhabited moon via a sort of mini Genesis device. This is a typical example of the level of plotting on this show. “Hey, we seem to have written ourselves into a corner here.” – “No problem, we’ll just pull some never before mentioned ability or device out of our hats, that is vaguely based on something mentioned somewhere in the Star Trek franchise before.” Though Stamets terraforming the moon does make for a cool special effect.

The Federation at least only wants to destroy all military installations on Qo’noS (which considering how militaristic Klingons are, probably only leaves them with a few opera houses). Empress Philippa, however, has another proposition for Sarek, namely wipe out the Klingons forever. Sarek is willing to go along with it – which goes contrary to every other portrayal of the character we’ve seen, cause while Sarek may be a crappy father, he’s not a genocidal maniac. Michael, on whom Empress Philippa had tried her “Hey, let’s commit genocide” line before, is sceptical and tries to talk some sense to Sarek before he returns to Vulcan to work out details of the plan. Sarek deflects the question by pointing out that Michael isn’t exactly objective, since she happened to fall in love with a Klingon, though she had no way of knowing that, when she fell for Ash Tyler. Sarek also babbles something about how loving your enemy is a sign of grace and also potential source for peace and that Michael should never regret loving someone.

This is probably a clumsy attempt by Sarek to offer some emotional support to Michael, though it nonetheless doesn’t fit with how the character has been portrayed everywhere else. After all, Sarek is the guy who said, when asked why he married Amanda, that marrying her seemed like the logical thing to do. From that Sarek, I would have expected something more along the lines of “Well, since you were emotional enough to fall in love with this Klingon, it would be only logical to use this unfortunate lapse in logic to broker a peace between our races.” Okay, so maybe Amanda did coach Sarek on how to talk to Michael about emotional issues. At any rate, on the list of “things Sarek does in this episode that violate everything we know about Vulcans in general and this character in particular”, talking about love still ranks far below mind-raping Saru and suddenly thinking that genocide is a swell idea.

Coicidentally, I suspect that the whole “Hey, let’s commit genocide – after all, none of our other tactics have worked” plan is supposed to offer up yet another patented Star Trek moral dilemma, namely “Is it okay to abandon your core values and resort to horrible acts in desperate times of war?” This isn’t exactly a new moral dilemma, since every Star Trek series ever grappled with a version of this at some point (any parallels to the real world behaviour of the US military in times of war, whether WWII, Vietnam or Afghanistan and Iraq are total coincidence of course), but it can still be compelling. Hell, maybe “How can we remain true to our ideals in times of crisis and war?” is Star Trek‘s core dilemma, which is why the franchise keeps returning to this question again and again. There is just one problem here. The Federation as depicted in Star Trek Discovery is no longer the benign quasi-utopia presented in previous Star Trek shows (and yes, there is a case to be made that it never was that utopia in the first place). This version of the Federation has already given up most of its values, since it condones prisoner abuse, exploits slave labour and hands down ridiculously harsh sentences for fairly minor crimes. So the realisation that this Federation is willing to commit genocide to win a war isn’t nearly as shocking as it should be. And indeed a large part of the reason why the war between the Federation and the Klingons is so dull, in spite of ever increasing stakes and millions of dead, is that neither the Federation nor the Klingons bear any resemblance to way they have been portrayed in the past and that both are pretty horrible, so that I don’t really care what happens to them.

After biding Sarek good-bye, Michael says to Tilly that this time their good-bye felt different, more final somehow. This is probably supposed to be ominous foreshadowing, but for what exactly? After all, we know that Sarek won’t die and will still be around in Picard’s time decades later. Just as we know that the Empress Philippa’s Klingon genocide plan won’t work out, because the Klingon Empire will continue to be a frequent thorn in the side and occasional ally to the Federation for decades to come. So the ominous foreshadowing can only mean two things: a) Michael dies, which is something I wouldn’t put beyond the Discovery writers (plus, a lot of people seem to hate Michael, which I’m sure has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she is played by an actress of colour), even though they’re rapidly running out of castmembers at this point, or b) it is revealed that Discovery is not set in the regular Star Trek universe after all, but in yet another parallel universe, which means they can do whatever they want, including killing off Sarek and the entire Klingon race. Coincidentally, this would also take care of the many canon and continuity issues that have piled up. Of course, there’s also option c) namely that the ominous foreshadowing means nothing and is just as forgotten as the Tribble on Lorca’s desk, which totally fails to detect Ash/Voq.

Once Sarek leaves, he contacts Admiral Cornwell and tells her to proceed with the plan, as discussed. Whereupon Admiral Cornwell shows up with Empress Philippa in tow, now dressed in a Starfleet uniform, to present her to the Discovery crew as the long lost Captain Georgiou back from the dead. And, so Cornwell announces, Georgiou will now assume command of the Discovery and lead the attack on Qo’noS. So after accidentally handing over their flagship and super-secret weapon to a megalomaniac imposter from the mirror universe, Starfleet command now knowingly hands over the same ship to another megalomaniac imposter from the mirror universe. Because that makes complete sense… NOT.

All right, so this version of Starfleet is desperate, not to mention completely incompetent. And yes, Starfleet admirals have frequently been portrayed as dodgy, powerhungry or outright evil in Star Trek, but Cornwell is not just shady, but also completely incompetent. Of course, she may well be completely out of her depth here. After all, she’s a psychologist, so Admiral Cornwell commanding Starfleet is like Deanna Troi commanding Starfleet. Nonetheless, I’m pretty sure that Deanna Troi would not have handed over control of the Discovery to Empress Philippa the Merciless, because this is a horrible idea. Nor would Deanna Troi have agreed to commit genocide for that matter. Even if Cornwell and Sarek want to implement Empress Philippa’s genocide plan, why put her in command of the Discovery rather than letting Cornwell lead the mission herself? What is more, Admiral Cornwell also seems to think the Discovery crew is either stupid or has been asleep these past three episodes, if she expects them to buy that the Philippa Georgiou presented to them is the real one back from the dead. After all, the Discovery bridge crew was right there during the attack on the Charon. They know that the Mirror Empress is Georgiou and that Michael brought her back.

Coincidentally, putting evil mirror Georgiou in command of the Discovery is also a horrible thing to do to poor Saru, who against all odds is proving himself to be a pretty good captain. At any rate, the mood among the crew and the general atmosphere on board have improved significantly, since Saru took over, until the Discovery almost seems like a normal Starfleet vessel. Coincidentally, this also shows that the Discovery crew wasn’t actually made up of jerks, but that Lorca poisoned the atmosphere. But though Saru is doing a good job as captain, he gets kicked out of the captain’s chair first by Cornwell (who also orders Sarek to forcibly mind-meld with him) and now finds himself replaced with Empress Philippa, a woman he knows wants to eat him. This is just cruel. And though he was something of a jerk in the early episodes, Saru has done nothing to deserve this. But of course, Saru wouldn’t go along with genocide, so Starfleet puts someone in the captain’s chair who will. As for why not Cornwell herself, I suspect it’s a lame attempt at plausible deniability. “Oh, the heroic captain returned from the dead turned out to be a genocidal megalomaniac from a parallel universe – twice. Well, it’s clearly not my fault, how was I supposed to know that?”

However, the late Captain Lorca and Empress turned Captain Georgiou are not the only imposters aboard the Discovery. There’s also Ash Tyler a.k.a. Voq, the Klingon. Who, when last seen two episodes ago, was screaming out his lungs in a prison cell, until L’Rell put her hands onto his head and somehow managed to shut him up, apparently by exorcising one of the two warring personalities within him. But which personality remains, Voq or Tyler?

We had to wait for two episodes to find out that the answer is Ash Tyler. Who apparently was a real person whose personality and memories were grafted onto the surgically altered body of Voq. Why didn’t the Klingons just graft Voq’s personality and memories onto the real Tyler, which would have lowered the risk of detection and also would have kept the real Voq around to aid the war effort? Who knows? However, the Klingons are apparently just as incompetent as the Federation, since they thoroughly botched the procedure and ended up with a screaming half-Klingon/half-human personality. And L’Rell just as thoroughly botched the procedure to exorcise one of the two personalities and managed to kill off the personality of her ex-lover Voq for good. So now what’s left is Ash Tyler stuck in a surgically altered Klingon body with access to Voq’s memories, including those of him doing horrible things such as killing Dr. Culber and attacking Michael. But even though, Ash now has Voq’s memories, no one even considers picking his brain regarding the Klingon homeworld, Klingon military strategies, location of outposts and installations, weaknesses, etc… Instead, everybody is far more interested in listening to a genocidal maniac who isn’t even from the same universe and whose intelligence on the Klingon homeworld may just as well be wrong.

Coincidentally, at least one reviewer, the otherwise sensible Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, questioned the morality of saving the grafted on personality of Ash Tyler rather than the personality of Voq, the original owner of the body they both share. I find this utterly baffling, because Ash Tyler, wherever his personality came from (the way I understood it, from an actual Starfleet POW) was a likeable and reasonably well developed character. Whereas Voq was a bland non-character, as instantly forgettable as the rest of the interchangable Klingon leaders. L’Rell is the only Klingon with an actual personality. What is more, like the rest of these Klingons, Voq is a horrible person and ruthless killer. Does anyone honestly wants him back over Ash? And by the way, I’m going to treat Ash Tyler like a real character in the following, even if he is a stolen or constructed personality stuck in a body that isn’t his. Because this is not about Voq, the one note Klingon villain, but Ash Tyler, who until five episodes ago, was one of the most likable characters in Star Trek Discovery.

So the whole stupid “Ash is Voq” subplot is dealt with in five episodes (and Ash/Voq didn’t even appear in one of them, so it was really four episodes) only to end up in almost the same place where they were before the big reveal, namely with a nice young man named Ash Tyler who has suffered some horrible experiences at the hand of the Klingons. Which begets the question, why have this stupid subplot at all, if it doesn’t change anything, beyond unnecessarily killing off poor Dr. Culber? And Culber only died for pure shock value, because the death of an anonymous redshirt wouldn’t have had the same impact. Okay, maybe Voq could have killed a semi-anonymous character like one of the bridge crew people who are recognizable, but about whom no one gives a shit, because they have no personality beyond looking cool. Finally, the “Ash is Voq” twist is also way too similar to the “Lorca is really from the mirror universe” twist that the show decided to dish out only two episodes after the “Ash is Voq” reveal.

The only reason for the pointless “Ash is Voq” subplot is to pile on yet more of the angst and emotional drama this show is addicted to. Though considering that – unlike Michael, who didn’t actually do anything beyond a nerve-pinch and a failed mutiny – Ash actually was a Klingon spy, albeit unknowingly, and actually did horrible things such as killing Dr. Culber and trying to kill Michael, he gets off lightly. Saru immediately agrees that Ash was not responsible for the things that he did, while Voq was in control, and therefore cannot be punished. Nor does he lock up Ash, though he does relieve him of his post as security chief and fits him with some kind of bracelet, which indicates where Ash is at all times, just in case he suffers another outbreak of Voqness. Considering how badly Michael was treated by everybody, including Saru, for much lesser sins, what happens to Ash is extremely lenient. Coincidentally, it’s also much more in line with what Starfleet and the Federation should be like. And indeed, there are plenty of precedents going all the way back to the original series of Starfleet personnel committing more or less horrible acts, while under the influence of some malign entity, without being punished for it. Picard’s turn as Locutus is probably the most high profile example.

Shortly after being released, Ash finds himself all alone in the cafeteria in a situation that mirrors Michael’s in the episode where she first came aboard the Discovery. Coincidentally, I wonder if the writers are aware how American these cafeteria scenes really are, because status inferred via who sits with whom in the school cafeteria is a very American thing. Cause elsewhere, even in countries that have school cafeterias (and in Germany they didn’t come in until long after I left school), the seating in the cafeteria isn’t necessarily a status indicator. For example, in all the schools where I worked, the cafeterias simply didn’t have enough tables so that outsiders would have to sit on their own. The worst case scenario would be having to sit with the teachers.

But while Michael is promptly assaulted in the cafeteria, Ash once again fares much better. Not only does no one try to kill him – no, Tilly even comes over to sit with him. And once Tilly sits down with Ash, the outcast, the scarred red-headed woman from the bridge crew (I think the character’s name is Dettmer) comes over to sit with him as well. It’s a nice moment and probably supposed to show how much the atmosphere aboard the Discovery has changed for the better, now that Lorca is gone. However, there is also something grating about it, simply because the scene mirrors the scene with Michael in the cafeteria so closely and we can’t help but notice how much worse Michael was treated, even though what Ash has done as Voq was much worse than anything Michael ever did. Worse, during the first cafeteria scene Dettmer, the scarred redhead from the bridge, was one of the people who blew off Michael and who hasn’t as much as talked to her ever since (though to be fair, Dettmer doesn’t talk to anybody, since she barely gets any lines). And while Tilly is generally the most likeable character aboard the Discovery and often the lone ray of sunshine in this show, she nonetheless also pulled a “You can’t sit here” routine on Michael in the lab during an early episode. To be fair, Tilly knows Ash and didn’t know Michael at that point and they quickly became good friends afterwards, but that “You can’t sit here” moment still happened. So while it’s nice to see that the Discovery crew is treating Ash pretty well, given what he did while under the control of Voq, the double standard regarding how Michael and Ash were treated in a similar situation is nonetheless infuriating. And yes, I know that the intention is probably to show how much the crew has bonded and how much better the atmosphere aboard the Discovery has become, since Lorca is gone, it still doesn’t quite work, if only because Lorca, though a horrible person, actually treated Michael better than the rest of the Discovery crew at the beginning, if only because she was the mirror image of his dead lover.

But not everybody forgives Ash quite so easily. Paul Stamets is understandably still furious – after all, Ash killed his life partner Dr. Culber in an outbreak of Voqness. And Stamets lets Ash know exactly how he feels, when Ash tries to apologise to him for what he did as Voq. And in fact, the loss of Dr. Culber and with him, the only happy established couple we’ve seen in Star Trek Discovery (and the first gay couple in Star Trek ever) is the most infuriating consequence of that stupid “Ash is Voq” subplot, which went exactly nowhere and had no real bearing on the overall plot arc. So why again was this stupid plot twist even necessary?

And then there is Michael, who’d just begun to fall in love with Ash, when he was revealed as Voq and assaulted and tried to kill her. Whereupon Michael tried to kill him and actually beamed him out into the vaccuum of space, before Saru beamed him aboard the Discovery. Now that Ash is himself again, albeit with a few bad memories more than before, Michael, who has never been good with emotions, flat out refuses to see him. Tilly, once more playing matchmaker, tries to convince Michael to talk to Ash, because Ash could really use a friend right now.

Now remember that Ash was the only person aboard the Discovery who was nice to Michael from day one on. Everybody else, Saru, Stamets, even Tilly, treated Michael like crap initially, while Lorca just tried to manipulate her. Ash, however, always treated her with kindness. Yes, he clearly was interested in Michael, but unlike Lorca he wasn’t sleazy about it. What is more, Ash was always supportive, even when it became clear that Ash was every bit as broken as Michael. In fact, this was what I liked about the Ash/Michael pairing (beyond the fact that the actors have a lot of chemistry), that these were two deeply traumatised people who could find support and strength in each other.

So what does Star Trek Discovery do, when it unexpectedly finds itself with a romantic relationship that works? Well, just as with Stamets and Culber, they break it up, of course. Because now that the shoe is on the other foot and Ash Tyler is the despised outcast (though not quite as despised as Michael was) in need of a supportive friend, Michael rejects him. Even though both Tilly and Sarek try to persuade Michael to give Ash and their relationship a chance (okay, so Sarek probably has an ulterior motive a la “Make love, not genocide”, but Tilly doesn’t), Michael still rejects him. First by refusing to see him and later, when she cannot avoid him any longer, she basically throws him out, because she can’t trust him any longer, since he didn’t confide in her, when he started noticing that something was wrong. Okay, so Ash should have confided in Michael, when the first symptoms of Voqness started appearing. But remember that Ash also pretended that he was totally fine after several months of Klingon captivity with constant torture, abuse and rape, until he wound up nigh catatonic when coming face to face with his rapist and abuser L’Rell aboard the Klingon flagship. So Ash is no more someone who likes to talk about his painful experiences than Michael is. And coincidentally, Ash did open up to Michael about his rape and abuse at the hands of L’Rell. And knowing how often male rape is ignored or minimised, talking about what happened to him with his girlfriend was a big step. By the way, I presume that the torture and the rape really did happen, whether to the real Ash Tyler or to Ash’s personality stuck in Voq’s surgically altered body. And talking of which, since Ash now has Voq’s memories, he probably has some additional memories of Voq having (consensual) sex with L’Rell, whom Ash still views as his rapist. Not to mention memories of killing Dr. Culber and trying to kill Michael and whatever other horrible things Voq did. So Ash is understandably a mess. And unlike Voq, who volunteered for the procedure that turned him into Ash, Ash Tyler did not ask for any of this.

So how does Michael react, when Ash finally gets her to even talk to him? She rejects him, brutally. Ash asks if it’s because he’s a Klingon, albeit altered to look human, and accuses Michael of dumping him, now things are complicated (which is exactly what she is doing). To which Michael replies that Ash needs to suffer to redeem himself, just like she did after her oh so horrible crimes. What she exactly says, is this:

“I had to work through it. I had to crawl my way back. I’m still not there, but I’m trying. That kind of work, reclaiming life, it’s punishing. And it’s relentless. And it’s solitary.”

That’s a truly horrible thing to say to someone in that situation. And indeed, this was the first time where I truly disliked Michael. I understand that she’s damaged and that she has a martyrdom complex. And in fact, the one thing about Michael that always grated on me was her passivity in the face of what happened to her. Michael was treated horribly, by Starfleet and the Federation, by her friends and comrades, even by her own family (since Sarek, Spock or Amanda were nowhere in sight, when Michael was given an undeserved life sentence – and coincidentally, not trying to save Michael is totally out of character for the Spock we’ve known for 51 years). She should be fucking angry, but instead she just passively accepts all the things that are done to her, because she apparently believes that she needs to be punished, though I’m still not sure for what, since Michael neither started the war – the Klingons did – nor got Philippa Georgiou killed – Georgiou got herself killed – nor got 8000 members of Starfleet or however many there were killed – they died because of their own incompetence. And then after all the abuse heaped upon Michael from every corner, she rejects the only person who did not treat her like crap by telling him that since she suffered alone for her crimes, he has to suffer, too.

The scene between Michael and Ash is well acted, but otherwise a stellar example of the Discovery writers creating emotional drama for its own sake and coincidentally also making their protagonist really unlikable. Which is why I was stunned to see that most of the reviewers still covering Star Trek Discovery were pleased with Michael’s rejection of Ash Tyler, including those who usually hate the show. I’ve seen reviews comparing Ash to a domestic abuser who’s really sorry after hitting his partner (domestic abusers don’t – as a rule – share their body with an evil Klingon), reviews calling Ash emotionally manipulative (methinks you have him confused with Lorca), reviews insisting that Michael was right to reject Ash because she needs to deal with her own trauma first (Michael has been traumatised since she was a little kid and she actually got better, since she was with Ash) and reviews insisting that Michael is totally right, because grief and trauma “work” (Oh, how I hate dealing with trauma or grief “work”. Worst sort of psycho-speak ever) must always be done alone without any help. The only reviewers who did not fully agree with Michael rejecting Ash are Gavia Baker-Whitelaw and Zack Handlen. And this is where I realised that the whole Michael and Ash plot arc examplifies a stew of highly toxic and very American attitudes.

First, there is this whole “tough love” approach of interventions and rejecting those who need help and support. I’ve always viewed “tough love” as nothing more than emotional abuse and the first time I saw an intervention, in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the first one I ever watched, too, which negatively coloured my view of the show ever after) I was utterly horrified. Hell, American based treatment programs like Alcoholics Anonymous even advice people to reject family and loved ones in need of help, so they hit rock-bottom. And afterwards, the person on the receiving end of this “tough love” approach most also apologise to those who have rejected them. It’s a horrible ideology. Oh, and by the way, it’s been proven that Alcoholics Anonymous and similar programs have an extremely low success rate (I personally know someone who has been failed by them), which is why I’m always furious whenever I see another book or movie or TV show extolling the virtues of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs.

Several reviewers also called Ash Tyler whiny, emo or a self-pitying mess, which goes neatly hand in hand with the fact that any character who is even remotely introspective or emotional or reacts to trauma and pain with anything other than stoic self-discipline is inevitably called whiny by American reviewers. Coincidentally, this goes doubly if the character in question is male. Hell, I’ve seen plenty of writing advice that particularly male characters should not talk about their feelings or even think about them or indeed talk very much at all, because otherwise they would be considered whiny. Because men aren’t allowed to be vulnerable or show emotions. It’s toxic masculinity writ large.

Finally, there is this whole redemption arc bullshit. Now I’m on record that I hate most redemption arcs, because they inevitably involve shovelling pain and humiliation on some poor character deemed in need of redemption and I hate seeing people humiliated. On a related note, I also hate the so-called “grovel” in many older romance novels, where the hero must apologise to the heroine for treating her like crap. My reaction to these grovels is either cringing at the humiliation involved or – in case of rapist heroes and the like – the fervent wish that the heroine will send the hero packing, no matter how much he grovels. Besides, most of the characters subjected to redemption arcs haven’t actually done anything to deserve the pain and humiliation heaped upon them. Michael and Ash certainly don’t. And those who truly have done horrible things are usually such awful people that I don’t care what happens to them (many grovellers, particularly in older romance novels, fall into this category). There are redemption arcs that work – the Marvel movies have several good redemption arcs and the new Hawaii Five-O of all things also has a couple that work – but they are rare. Because crafting a redemption arc that works means walking a tightrope. And if Discovery really wanted to do a redemption arc, why not try to redeem Lorca? Cause that would actually have been a worthwhile challenge and a far better use for his character than turning him into a ranting one-note villain before killing him off.

Much of the time, redemption arcs and grovelling scenes are actively painful for me to watch or read. They’re also incredibly common, particularly in US media (as I said before, both “redemption” and “grovel” are words that don’t even have an exact German translation), because plenty of people seem to enjoy them, as this post on redemption arcs and this two part post on romance grovels shows. And indeed, one reviewer who has since stopped reviewing Star Trek Discovery, was practically slavering at the prospect of seeing Michael humiliated and abused. So apparently, there are people for whom this whole redemption shit, which so infuriates me, is total catnip. But why are redemption arcs and grovels so popular, particularly among Americans (since you don’t see a lot of this stuff in German works and most German readers and viewers hate this stuff)? Given the focus on guilt and shame and having to atone for ones sins, real or imagined, and having to earn redemption – all of which are very religious concepts – I would suspect that the answer lies with some American variation of Christianity. And it has to be an American variation, because Lutheran Protestantism, the strain of Christianity most prominent where I come from, does not have this focus on suffering and redemption. Hell, we don’t even have a word for redemption and the closest translation is the word for forgiveness. Nor does a focus on guilt and redemption show up in the German version of Catholicism, though in the US Catholicism is apparently associated with guilt, which always baffled me, because that’s not an association I would make at all. But whichever American strain of Christianity this creepy focus on guilt and shame comes from, it has infected even such explicitly non-religious works as Star Trek, where Jason Isaacs had to reshoot a scene for adlibbing “For God’s sake”.

I actually do have a redemption arc of sorts in the In Love and War series. Because when they first meet – in a story I still haven’t been able to finish, because it’s so fucking painful and emotionally exhausting to write – Mikhail explicitly lies to Anjali and poses as someone he’s not in order to capture her for his commanders. And though Mikhail is uncomfortable with his mission, he still goes along with it and even agrees to hand Anjali over to his superiors, knowing that she will be abused and killed. He grapples with this for a long time – they both find themselves isolated, so Mikhail can’t hand her over right away – until something happens that shows him once and for all that what his superiors are doing is wrong and he decides to let Anjali go, regardless of what this will mean for him. And yes, there is some grovelling involved, because Mikhail actually has done things that he needs to apologise for. But once he has apologised, Anjali forgives him pretty quickly and they start working together, even though it still takes her some time to admit that she loves him. Because I’d rather see characters working together as partners and supporting each other through their various traumas (and both Mikhail and Anjali are traumatised people) than suffering alone, just because someone’s idea of redemption requires it. And in fact, a lot of what I write is a direct reaction to tropes that I hate, countering bad narratives by writing better stories. And the In Love and War series in particular is a reaction to a lot of problematic and downright toxic tropes.

Michael’s horrible comment to Ash pretty much encapsulates why I hate redemption arcs. The insistence that one has to hit rock bottom and claw one’s way back, that one has to suffer and be punished and do it alone, all this is a perfect description of why redemption arcs are awful. And besides, Discovery‘s own plot arc, what there was of it, refutes this whole insistence on solitary suffering. Because the atmosphere aboard the Discovery became better, comradery and morale improved, after Lorca and his fear-based style of command were gone. And the Discovery crew were always at their best, when they all worked together, even during Lorca’s time. And Michael seemed happier and more like herself and actually started smiling on occasion, once she started to bond with the crew in general and Ash in particularly. This is another reason why I hate that Michael dumped Ash, because they were good for each other. Even Sarek, who’s not exactly an expert in matters of the heart, says so. So while Michael insists that solitary suffering and punishment are necessary for redemption, the narrative itself actually says something completely different, namely that everything is better with a little help from your friends and loved ones (which is coincidentally the one message that every Star Trek series since the very first one has had in common).

I suspect that Michael and Ash will eventually get back together, once Ash has suffered in solitude enough, provided both characters survive the season finale, which is by no means certain. And in fact, I fear that one or both of them will die, probably in the process of pressing the big red reset button that will restore the Star Trek universe back to the state it should be in at this point in time. Because it’s pretty obvious that the reset button must be pushed, if they want to salvage this utter mess of a show. Though when they push the reset button, I hope that they save all the characters still alive and hopefully bring back Culber, too. Maybe they’ll even manage to bring back the real Philippa Georgiou or the real Gabriel Lorca, whom we’ve never even met.

So can Star Trek Discovery still redeem itself? I’d say it can, though it will probably involve jettisoning this entire mess of a season.

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