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| Jim Burns |
Star Frontiers has a list of "Reading for Fun and Ideas" but (and I'm not the first to point this out) it's really just a grab-bag of good and/or classic science fiction. The relationship between the list and SF's explicit and implied setting and the sort of elements that would show up in a game are elusive. It isn't anything like a "how-to" manual.
So I thought it was worth coming up with a list of inspirational media that is more to the point. This will be my perspective; I make no claims about what works the original authors made in mind. I will, though, at least for the works I dub "core," try to stick to works that could have been inspirations back in 1982.
The Core
General features: A lack of focus on cybernetics, dystopia, interaction with inscrutable aliens, common psi, or space empires. They tend to have generally a more upbeat (at least not brooding or dour) tone and a focus on adventure rather than tech.
CJ Cherryh - The Pride of Chanur. Interesting but accessible aliens. space trading.
Alan Dean Foster - Humanx Commonwealth series, particularly the subseries of the Adventures of Flinx and Pip. Strong human-alien cooperation (and with insectoid aliens), conflict with another alien species, unusual planets for adventure.
Andre Norton - Solar Queen series. Corporate-centered space travel and free-trading. Mysteries of previous civilizations on isolated worlds.
Jack Vance - The Demon Princes series. Travel between core worlds and a frontier region, Space criminals and cops. Strange societies.
Planet of Adventure series. Stranded on an alien planet after a crash with a lot of weird stuff going on.
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| Ralph McQuarrie |
The Frontier
These works are either post-1982, have fewer elements of homology to the Star Frontiers setting, or both.
Brian Daley - Han Solo Adventures series. fast-paced adventure, human-nonhuman cooperation.
Edmond Hamilton and others - Captain Future series. space criminals and mad scientists. A smaller number of worlds.
Film/TV:
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. More action pulp than serious sci-fi. Costume design aesthetic of roughly the same era as the game.
Firefly. Smaller setting. ragtag crew like a PC party.
Comic Books/Strips:
Atari Force vol. 2. '80s science fiction aesthetics, friendly humanoid aliens.
Star Hawks. Space law enforcement.
Star Wars. The post-Empire Strikes Back era of the comic has aesthetics not unlike the game, and the comic and comic strip at times have more general Space Opera plots.
The Star Hawks newspaper strip (with Gil Kane on art for most of it) is a good rec, but I'd add basically all seventeen of Ron Goulart's "Barnum System" books to the list. Same general setting and tone, and plots that could easily be Star Frontiers adventures if you swap out the odd psionic character and swap mutants for aliens. Some of his short stories are good inspiration as well, although they can be hard to track down outside of pdfs of the magazines they first appeared in.
ReplyDeleteMost of Mike Resnick's scifi work also has a strong "star frontier, slowly being encroached on by a core civilization" vibe, coupled with a lot of "folktale hero" type characters - sort of an American frontier in Space thing going on overall. I cribbed a few of his plots and characters for Star Frontiers back in the day. His work can be rather melancholy at times, although I suppose that's true of Goulart too.
Nice to see Daley's Terran Inheritance books mentioned. Underappreciated gems IMO.
A side note - are the Humanx Commonwealth stories the only major example of friendly, comprehensible "Bug" aliens in literary scifi? Bugs are frequently baddies and occasionally simply inhuman (often "hive-minded") to the point where they're nigh-impossible to communicate with, but I'm having a hard time thinking of "good guy" Bugs outside of the thranx and Star Frontier's vrusk. There's a fair few species in the Sector General books from White that have insectoid or arthropod features, but they don't really stand out as "Bugs" to me when you consider the whole gamut of alien species in that setting.
ReplyDeleteThere are doubtless some individual characters I've missed or forgotten, but do "nice Bugs" appear anywhere else as a major part of the setting?
Edmond Hamilton's Imterstellar Patrol series has some friendly aliens, as does Lensmen, but "bugs" not really.
ReplyDeleteOh, and yeah, those Daley books are underappreciated.
ReplyDeleteHa! I'd completely forgot I wrote that post until I followed your link. What a blast from the past.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a pretty good list. I think the "fun" SciFi adventure serial (a la the early 80s Buck Rogers show) is an especially under-utilized source of inspiration for something like SF. Other than the ship-to-ship combat aspects of the series, there is a LOT of Buck in Star Frontiers...and vice versa.
[BTW, I, too, enjoyed those Han Solo books]
Star Frontiers is a game that's dying for a system overhaul. But its setting and base assumptions/themes have some serious potential.
I agree on both counts.
ReplyDeleteY'know, thinking about it I don't think I've ever read a Brian Daley book I didn't enjoy. Not a whole lot of authors I can say that about, and they're mostly much more widely-known names like Jack Vance or Rex Stout. A consistently entertaining writer is a rare gem indeed.
ReplyDeleteWould Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars books qualify for your list? It has been decades since I read them, but they feature cat-aliens (the Kzinti) and some of the stories involve human-nonhuman cooperation.
ReplyDeleteBabylon 5 and Farscape aren't exactly Star Frontiers, but have lots of human-nonhuman cooperation and drama and attempts to make the aliens, well, alien.
I considered B5 and Farscape (bpth of which I really like), but in the end left them off. B5 is a space opera epic in a unSF sort of way. Also, the relations between the species are a bit more realpolitik. Farscape has almost too many alien species and has the oppressive Peacekeepers as an element.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there's plenty of inspiration to be had from them beyond that, but that was my thinking.