[Perry] Lessons Learned From Flinx and Pip Part 1

So recently, I got a hold of an old science fiction series written by Alan Dean Foster that I read bits and pieces of when I was much younger.

When I first ran into the characters of Flinx and Pip, I was…not quite as sophisticated and mature a reader as I am now. I loved these characters and the world unabashedly.

But the libraries around me only had the books in scattered bits and bobs, I’d only managed read a book here, a book there. Still, what I’d read, I’d really enjoyed and I thought that one day, it would be nice if I could go through it all, in order, from start to finish, just to really know what the overarching story was about.

Well, I had that opportunity just a little while ago, and suffice to say, it’s an experience I should have left in my past.

Still, there were valuable lessons learned on what NOT to do when writing. Lessons that I will share with you now so that you don’t have to go through my pain.

There’s a lot to cover, hence, the multi part blog post.

It’ll be meandering. It may not make much sense at times. There will probably be a lot of question marks and ranting.

We will be tackling these problems in order of less severe to most severe, for a sense of natural progression.

…Let’s get started!

Basic Premise

The series is a science fiction tale spanning fourteen books. The main character, Flinx, starts the series as a young orphan who gets adopted by a cantankerous old woman in a market planet called Drallar.

Flinx adopts a pet, Pip, a mini-drag from Alaspin (think flying snake) who can shoot caustic venom and also is an empath (it senses emotions). Which is convenient because Flinx is also an empath. He’s the product of an illegal genetics experiment and he’s one of the very few products still alive in the groups efforts to ‘improve’ humanity.

Join Flinx on his adventures gallivanting around the planet, then the galaxy, discovering that there’s a looming, immensely huge, galaxy devouring threat heading their way, and he’s the only one who can stop it!

The Problem of Writing vs Publication 

This is actually only an issue with one book in the long series, but it comes at a rather pivotal point in the story and feels all the more egregious because of it.

So book three of the series, Bloodhype, is actually set as book ELEVEN or so in the story.

The reason for this mixup (from what I’ve gathered), is that after the success of the first two books of the Flinx and Pip adventures, Foster had already written another book.

This other book was set in the same universe, but didn’t feature the title characters of the series, Flinx and his pet Pip.

He was told to FIT Flinx and Pip in there, somehow, and market it as a Flinx and Pip book.

So you have this book, ostensibly, book 3 in the series, where Flinx isn’t the main character. Where he’s only sort of in there very briefly to the sides before fucking off to…you know, stop the galaxy devouring threat.

Here’s the problem.

It’s one of plot consistency.

See, minor changes to the plot? Not that big a deal, to be honest. I mean yeah, there will be some things that don’t match up, given how late in the Flinx timeline this book was ACTUALLY supposed to happen when it appeared? It makes sense that not everything is going to line up.

My issue with it?

Flinx fucks some random woman.

I use this instance of profanity in a very deliberate manner.

The woman he bones is the co-main character of the novel, a female church spy named Kitten Kai-Sung (yes, it’s terrible. Absolutely terrible and stereotypical that there would be a female sex kitten type femme fatale character ACTUALLY NAMED Kitten, but it was published back in the ’70’s so maybe we can cut him some slack).

Flinx and Kitten end up fucking.

Again, very deliberate word usage.

Near the middle/end of the book, the main characters ask Flinx if there’s anything they can do to reward him for his unexpected help. He nods to her and says that he wants her.

Literally. That’s what he says.

Then they go off-screen to fuck, and Kitten comes back out, complaining of aches in various places ahem, and Flinx takes a nap.

You know, barring how…phenomenally, BLATANTLY out of place, random and inappropriate that was? Here’s my issue with it.

As the series progresses (so books 4-10), Flinx is portrayed as a generally soft-spoken, rather sensitive young man who’s terrible with women. He helps people that need help…just because. He advocates helping other species that can’t help themselves, and puts himself at great risk to do it, over and over again.

Then you have to try and reconcile that man with the man he was in book 3 (book 11 in the story), where he randomly appears at the right place and time to save the day and basically demands sex from a woman he’d just met as payment.

But that? That isn’t even the worst part.

Oh yeah, it gets worse.

See, Flinx is in love. In book nine, he reunites with the lovely Clarity Held. A beautiful, scientist woman he’d met a long time ago. Over the course of the book, they reaffirm their deepening connection to one another and she resolves to go with him on his journey to stop the galaxy devouring evil, to the ends of the universe if she has to…

…Except she gets injured in a terrorist explosion right at the end of the book and Flinx leaves her behind with his friends, telling them to guard over her recovery as he starts the search alone to take the heat off her.

Book ten, he has a brief solo adventure on a planet, worrying about Clarity the whole time, wondering if she’s recovering well. Wondering if she still wants to be with him.

…Then book eleven where he bones Kitten.

Then book twelve, thirteen, and fourteen where he beats himself up over why he would have sex with some random woman when he’s so in love with Clarity.

…Really? I’m not even kidding, that shit HAPPENED.

Potential solutions to this problem

Anything. Almost literally, anything would have been better.

You could pretend that book never happened? Put a foreword or an afterword in a book and explain that that book isn’t canon, continue on.

Book 3 (11 in the timeline), doesn’t contribute much, if anything, to the big bad problem Flinx is dealing with in the latter half of the series. It wouldn’t effect much to simply excise it.

Or? Alternatively? You can write him into a situation where that’s something he would do at the time and recover him after.

There’s really no excuse. He had seven books worth of time to figure out a way to make that situation plausible.

It would have been easy to slowly spiral him down into despair after Clarity is injured, put him in a life-threatening situation and make it like…depressed, I’m going to die anyway sort of situation.

He could have kept Flinx and Clarity from deciding to be together till AFTER that point (easily done as the subsequent books had a decent amount of fluffy, filler type material).

He could have done many things.

Instead?

Random sex and we, the reader, get to deal with the main character suddenly going completely inconsistent in the Nth hour of the overall story and trying to come to grips with why he would do such a thing.

Great fun.

Stay tuned next week where we talk about inconsistent pacing and how you too can avoid stalling out your narratives by having your main characters get stranded alone in a hostile environment, book after book!