The Future of the Past

Angus McKie

Back when I talked about the Strange Stars "Appendix N," I mentioned how I saw the stylings of this particular future as harkening back to previous decades. I imagine spaceships like in seventies films, seventies and eighties book covers and comics books, and particularly the Terran Trade Authority books.

Terran Trade Authority

Also, the groovy fashions of late sixties and seventies book cover art, the euro-sensibilities of Heavy Metal, and disco-era comic book sci-fi in the U.S. inform how I view the fashion and material culture. Sure they're silly in a lot of ways, but often so are clothes from real historical eras to modern sensibilities.

Chaykin's Monark Starstalker

Mike Grell's Charma

Now as anyone who's been reading the posts knows, I'm not doing retro-sci-fi, overall. It's just that it seems like the there is a narrow range of how the future is viewed in any given era. Science fiction done today tends to look the same: a lot of darkness, sleek suits, and electric blue holograms, etc. I'm certainly not immune to recent influences, but I feel like those things get too familiar. The future needs to seem exotic and going back to the past is a way to restore some of that exoticism. At least it reminds me (and maybe other around my age) of a time where the future looked different, and we were young enough to be encountering these images and the ideas behind them for the first time.

Stymphalides

No. Enc.:  2d4 (4d6)
Movement:  90' (30')
         —Fly:  120' (40')
Armor Class:  3
Hit Dice:  1
Attacks:  2 (1 talons, 1 beak); or 1 feather volley
Damage:  1d4 / 1d4; 1d8
Save:  L2
Morale:  12

Stymphalides are sometimes called Stymphalian birds or birds of Ares, but they aren't actually birds at all. They're self-replicating robots, resembling something like a cross between a heron and a mosquito, made of bronze knives. The blades that form their wings aren't merely decorative: They're able to launch them at opponents. The Stymphalides got their name from the flock encountered by Herakles at Lake Stymphalis in Arkadia, but the Argonauts also fought a group tasked with guarding the Amazonian shrine to Ares in the Black Sea.

Ares (or one of his servitors) designed the Stymphalides as weapons of terror. They consume human flesh (indeed any animal flesh), filtering essential metals and nutrients from it. They excrete a waste product toxic to animals and crops (Poison Class 1 in Mutant Future terms).

Warlord Wednesday: Ballad: Kilt Him A B'ar

Here's another installment of my examination of  the adventures DC Comics' Travis Morgan--The Warlord.  The earlier installments can be found here...

"Ballad Part 1: Kilt Him a B'ar"

Warlord (vol. 2) #1 (January 1992)

Written by Mike Grell; Art by Dameon Willich and Rick Hoberg

Synopsis: A lone minstrel makes his way on horseback across the dangerous wilderness of Skartaris to the Terminator and the dangerous “civilization” of an outpost named Hazrak. He takes a gig in a tavern, but finds it ill-suited to songs of love. Finally, he hits on the ballad of the Warlord and that gets the room to pay attention.

After the performance, he’s approached by a grizzled veteran who tells him he’s a fool for believing that heroic nonsense—just like the man he’s singing about. The minstrel chides the old man for defaming a hero.

The man agrees the Warlord is a legend, and that he could have been a hero.

The Warlord had been a great warrior, and inspired men on the battlefield. He also inspired with his words:

But in the end:

The veteran recounts the Warlord’s origin: how he came from another world, one the heart of a warrior queen, rose from slavery in the gladiatorial arena to lead a revolution across Skartaris. That was when the veteran (who had been a scholar-slave for a Theran noble) came to meet him. The Warlord told the scholar a little about his home world, but also revealed what he knew of Skartaris’s Atlantean past.

The minstrel is skeptical about all of this. The old scholar turned veteran issues a challenge:

Things to Notice:

• Grell provides the cover.
• None of the Warlord regular cast appear in this issue except in flashback.

Where It Comes From:
From the outset, it's clear that Grell is looking to chart a different course in this limited series than the writers that followed him on the original title. He returns to the theme of the flaws--the fundamental tragedy--of Travis Morgan's character and amplifies it.

This series serves to balance the view Morgan's perspective on his life as somewhat illustrated in the appearance in Green Arrow. There he's Peter Pan. Here we see the how the adult world reacts to him.

In presenting Skartaris to us, Grell shows a unicorn being eaten by a carnosaur. Like I mentioned way back in my commentary to volume 1 issue #12, the unicorn again seems to represent the beauty and fantastic nature of Skartaris.

Centaurs

The Kentauroi tribes are one of several cross species hybrid creatures including satyrs, sileni, and the bull-horned centaurs of Cyprus. The centaurs (and possibly all the hybrids) were the creation of two unusual gods. Nephele was an intelligence distributed through a cloud of nanites that (perhaps as a joke on the part of Zeus) typically coalesced into a semblance of Hera. Nephele's co-researcher and transport was an intelligent saucercraft called Ixion. Nephele provided gentle persuasion, while Ixion's weapons provded force when necessary.

The centaurs were loosely based on the design of Chiron, a forgotten creation of Kronos, and an immortal in his own right. Nephele and Ixion's design for a hominid-equine cross didn't have Chiron's intelligence or immortality. An initial breeding population was released in the area of Mount Pelion. Once this group became established, some were relocated to the western Peloponesse.

The centaur tribes are considered savages by the Greeks. They have not mastered metallurgy or agriculture. They trade with more advanced cultures for metal weapons and alcohol--if anyone is foolish or greedy enough to give it to them.

Mutant Future Centaurs would be the same as their Labyrinth Lord counterparts, except of course they have the mutation aberrant form. Cyprian Centaurs with horns are able to substitute their one weapon attack or their two hooves for a head butt doing 1d6 damage.

Jewel in the Skull

Anybody who has been reading my blog for a while, knows I like to do posts where I do a setting riff off an image. This actually harkens back to one of my first world-building attempts, when I was only a player thinking about dungeonmastering where I tried to make a coherent setting out of what the painting and sketches in Frank Frazetta, Book Two. I decided to start a tumblr blog to indulge that a little more, at least in the area of Sword & Sorcery-esque fantasy. In addition to the setting snippets, it will also be a repository of random fantasy art I come across. Check it out here. It will also be added down in the "Blogs of Interest" section of the sidebar.

In case anyone wonders, I am by no means abandoning this blog and plan to keep up my same posting schedule.

Communication Breakdown

With human-descended cultures and associated xenosopohonts spread out over 3000 cubic parsecs, hundreds of thousands of forms of communication are in use. While regional trade languages exist, the problem is mostly side stepped by the use of translation software. Upon arriving in a new place and connecting to its metascape, any necessary translation software integrates itself seamlessly with a visitor's netlink. Only the most backward or isolationist habitats deny complete translation, and even most of those find it expedient to allow limited translation of signage, official communications, and the like.

The visitor will hear speakers in their native tongue (though their netlinks will note the actual languages used), unless they utilize more primitive visual-only links, in which case the translation will appear as "subtitles."   For those with a need to blend in, direct neurologic download of language software is employed. This was once more widespread, but it's susceptibility to hacking proved its undoing.

The most notorious of these attacks was caused by the "23 Enigma" virus in the time of the Radiant Polity. It is believed to have been perpetrated by a hacker collective called the Nova Mob, though there was never any official statement of responsibility. The virus was named for a quirk (or perhaps a signature) in its code that left its victims unable to speak the words "twenty-three." Instead, they would replace it with a close approximate ("twenty" or "twenty-five," perhaps). The virus was a bit of nanomachinery, phage-delivered into the microbial vector employed to carry the translator code to the brain of biologics. The changes caused a global aphasia and lowered stress tolerance, leading to explosive reactions when communication with anyone was (predictably) ineffective. This reaction was particularly pronounced against moravecs and infosophonts, likely by design.

The malware vector was aerosolized, so it spread quickly throughout habitats. Quarantines were put in place, but these were often policed by bots, which only intensified the anger of the populace. It was weeks before the virus was contained in the most places and civil order restored.

For years afterward, it was a frequent conspiracy theory in the noosphere that hacks of Enigma 23 existed that were more subtle, that shadowy forces were using it to surreptitiously shape the language (and therefore the thought process) of the populace.

Warlord Wednesday: Green Arrow

Here's another installment of my examination of  the adventures DC Comics' Travis Morgan--The Warlord.  The earlier installments can be found here...

"Enter..." / "Seige"

Green Arrow (vol. 2) #27-28 (Dec 1989-Jan 1990)

Written by Mike Grell; Pencils by Dan Jurgens, Inks by Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin

Synopsis: A stranger keeps getting hassled on the streets of Seattle by thugs and criminals who mistake him for the new “Robin Hood” vigilante. Some of them begin to suspect he’s a different guy, as he deals with his opponents in a more ruthless way than the vigilante in green has previously.

The stranger (Morgan) is getting irritated at all this attention and tracks down the guy responsible: Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow. Morgan tells Queen that he's pissed a lot of people off and offers some advice:

After getting knocked down by Dinah Lance (the Black Canary) for suggesting she should “stay in the kitchen.” Morgan makes his apologies and explains who he is—leaving out any specific mention of Skartaris. As he talks over the way the world has changed with Ollie and Dinah, the crime boss whose car he shot earlier gathers a squad of goons to assault Dinah’s home and take out both his adversaries.

They cut the power before beginning the raid, but Morgan’s keen hearing still gives our heroes a bit of warning. Oliver arms himself with his bow, Morgan with his pistol, and Dinah with an uzi she takes off one of the assailants, and they defend the house against the siege.

There are just too many, though. Dinah and Ollie run out of ammunition and Morgan disappeared after an explosion. They believe him to be dead. Suddenly, he appears, clothes tattered but sword in hand, and lays into the rest of the mobsters. The boss tries to make a break for it, but:

By the time the police arrive, Morgan is gone. All Ollie and Dinah can do is tell them what happen. They do reveal that Morgan gave an address of a sort:

Things to Notice:

• Morgan apparently tried to get Veteran's benefits during this visit to the Earth.
• The story seems to imply Morgan hasn't been to the surface world in some time, but that really isn't true given the post-Grell Warlord. His last visit would have been in roughly 1986 (depicted in Annual #5).

Where it Comes From: 
The similarity in appearance of Olliver Queen and Travis Morgan plays an important part in this story and may even have been the inspiration for the crossover. Queen's Van Dyke was courtesy of Neal Adams and debuted in Brave and the Bold #85 (1969). Morgan was drawn with the facial hair Grell had at the time.

This is the second time Grell has used the Disney movie Peter Pan quote "second star to the right, straight on till morning" (the word "star" is omitted in Barrie's original) to loosely refer to Skartaris. The first time was in Warlord #6 (1977), which described the first time Morgan revisited the Earth.