The Books of Babel

I recently finished reading The Books of Babel tetralogy by Josiah Bancroft. The series was so engaging I plowed through them all, only taking a brief intermission between books two and three to read Watts' Blindsight. The Books of Babel are Steampunkish fantasy, set in the titular Tower, which is something of Big Dumb Object in science fiction parlance.

The series starts with Senlin Ascends where the schoolmaster of a small seaside town and his new bride get separated on a visit to the Tower. I hesitate to say too much regarding the arc of the series for fear of spoiling it, but suffice to say there are multiple ringdoms of almost Vancian cultural eccentricity, Steampunk technology including "cyberware" supplied by a mystery inventor high up in the Tower, air ship pirates, and secrets to uncover aplenty, including the mystery of what the Brick Layer, the head of the Tower's construction, actually intended as its function.

The series has a fair amount bit of humor and the chapter epigraphs from in-world works are often wry, but the Tower is also a rather cruel and violent place at times. Bancroft's narrative doesn't flinch from this or keep the events at an ironic distance. Besides Tom Senlin, the headmaster, there are a number of other viewpoints characters, most of whom are capable women--though there's also a fastidious stag whose brain has been transplanted to a robotic body. But I said I didn't want to give too much away, didn't I? 

Anyway, the series is well-worth checking out, and I think would give a lot of inspiration for rpgs in addition to being a fine read.

Wednesday Comics: DC, May 1981 (wk 2 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around February 19, 1981. 

Legion of Super-Heroes #275: Conway is joined by Jane this issue so the art is a little better. The amnesiac Ultra Boy is becoming disenchanted with the cutthroat and cruel nature of the pirate crew and his new lover, Captain Frake, but an assault on the pirate base by the Legion brings the conflict to a head sooner than it might have. Ultra Boy begins helping the Legion, but when he takes a blast from the pirates' cannon, the device explodes and Ultra Boy disappears, leading Saturn Girl to conclude he now really is dead, so she doesn't tell the other Legionnaires that she ever suspected he was still alive. Not a terrible story, but it seems kind of pointless if it ends with the Legion in the same place they began.

Detective Comics #502: Conway does better here, accompanied by Newton/Adkins. Julia believes Alfred killed her mother, Mademoiselle Marie, famed resistance fighter. Her proof is that her mother kept repeating his name before she died. Alfred isn't helping his case by refusing to say anything and looking guilty. The group is going to execute him if Batman doesn't do something. Batman escapes to track down the real killer. He again visits Dupre, the French policeman that helped him before. He points Batman to the last person to speak with Marie alive. The old woman is in the hospital, but she gives Batman a bullet supposedly from the gun that killed Marie and tells him their was a traitor in Marie's resistance cell. Dupre surprises Batman, revealing that he was that traitor, but Batman is playing possum and captures him. He turns over Dupre and the bullet to Julia and the others, and Alfred is freed. In the end, the reader learners what Batman has already figured out: Julia is Alfred's daughter with Marie, and he has been supporting her, but doesn't want her to know the truth.

Burkett and Delbo continue the adventures of Batgirl in the backup. She overcomes her fears and defeats Dr. Voodoo in a buy-the-numbers yarn.

New Adventures of Superboy #17: Clark's classmate Moosie gives a speech in class arguing they shouldn't be so impressed with Superboy since he's never been tested against a truly super-powered opponent. Clark takes this to heart and designs a super-villain from one of his robots to beat him up all over town.  Then this Kator winds up taking his role a little too seriously. Bates though this story was worthy of a two-parter. The backup is a mildly humorous Krypto tale by Rozakis and Calnan where the dog of steel must go to the vet for shots, but manages to avoid that and catch some criminals looking to dope a race horse. 

Sgt. Rock #352: Kanigher and Redondo are back with one of their heavily-hammered theme stories. Rock and Easy keep running into other units asking the combat happy joes to "buy them more time" as they've been bloodied by German aircraft and need time to regroup before the ground assault. Rock and his crew take a forward position in a bombed out town, but after an assault by scouting party of Germans, Rock sends wounded Easy back to be treated while he holds the line, solo! When it looks out he's done for, Easy comes riding to the rescue, then all the units they had helped.

The Men of Easy feature by Kanigher and Mandrake "Winter Soldier" (heh) focuses on the Ice Cream Soldier. He likes ice cream so much he'll eat snow. That's about it. Then there's a story by Mandrake which is really more a Weird War Tale: A Roman soldier on the Antonine Wall. Oppressing the Picts, he stumbles into a fairy ring and gets transported to present day. The final story is a completely forgettable Civil War tale with art by Duursema.

Super Friends #44: Bridwell and Tanghal have the Justice League all forgetting their super-identities. The Wonder Twins are captured by the alien responsible, but manage to wake the Super Friends up by activating their JLA signal devices. The heroes battle the alien's troops who have transformed into alien monster bodies with the heads of JLA members.  The backup is a Bridwell and Tanghal story of Jack O'Lantern. He catches a hit man who's happened to choose to disguise himself as the hero's uncle.

Unexpected #210: The cover story by Kashdan and Jodloman is the sort of ridiculous high concept I can appreciate. A town sees a vampire ape (!) attacking a guy, and tracks it to its lair and stake it, only to be informed by its scientist-creator that the vampire ape fed only on vampire. It was the only thing protecting the town from the depredations of the local Count and his brood. Kashdan follows that up with an EC-esque Timewarp yarn with art by Vicatan. In a totalitarian future society, a dissident chooses mysterious exile over execution. Her lover pines for her so, he commits a crime to take the same exile. He arrives on an alien world transformed to a sexless, grinch-looking wretch. He's been changed for the conditions of the world--and so has all the other exiles including his formerly lovely girlfriend.

Laurie Sutton and Brozowski/Mitchell deliver a slight tale about a mummy possibly moving around a museum at night and spooking the security guard. Finally, there's the latest installment of the Johnny Peril serial, now with Trevor von Eeden art. I'll just hit the highlights here: There's a "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" riff with creatures sent by the baddie to tear up the plane Johnny and friends are in. Then, a psychic is possessed by the enemy, but Johnny talks her down. In the cliffhanger he flies off solo and the plane crashes.

Warlord #45:  Read more about it here. The OMAC backup by Mishkin/Cohn and LaRocque/Colletta  is a story that could come from a script by Starlin. It even has an extradimensional sequence in a deadly funhouse that it's easy to see in the style of Starlin doing a Ditko homage, but the art is rough to the point of appearing amateurish.

Weird Revisited: The Wild Wood

This post first appeared in March of 2011. This material didn't make it into Weird Adventures...

 

One tragic loss of the Great War was the area of Grand Lludd known as Wild Wood. Covering a hundred acres of farm and woodland, it was the home of various species of anthropomorphic animals. Now much of the land has been despoiled, and most of its inhabitants have been killed or displaced.

These creatures were the product of biothaumaturgy and the eccentric genius of one man, Gaspard Mauro. Mauro gained the support of the crown in his endeavors by promising applications of his techniques in creating servitors to free mankind from hazardous labors.

His work never amounted to more than a curiosity.  Still, the Queen herself was quite fond of them, and on the occasion of her eighty-ninth birthday had a group of the animal-folk perform for her. There is one wax-cylinder recording said to exist of their cheerful, high-pitched singing.

Most of the animal-folk appear to have died in bombing during the war. There is evidence that some burrowing species may have survived, and there are worrisome reports that rats, taken to Communalitarianism, may have absconded with some of Mauro's notes, and are now undertaking a program of evolution and revolution among the rodent underclass of several cities.

Blake's 7

 

Something we read online last week prompted a brief discussion on Discord regarding the British science fiction series Blake's 7 (1978-1981). The show involves a political dissident (the titular Blake) leading a small group of escaped prisoners turned rebels (the titular 7) against the forces of the totalitarian Terran Federation. I don't know anything much more about the setting or how the plot plays out than that, having only seen the first episode years ago on PBS, but I think the concept has plenty of rpg potential.

There's nothing wrong with the set-up as is with the serial numbers filed off. The comic book series Six From Sirius would be another potential inspiration for this sort of thing--both in plot elements and characters and in 80s sci-fi trappings. I can think of a couple of ways the idea might be tweaked, though.

The first (possibly predictably, since I've done this before) is strip away some of the space opera conventions and have it confined to the solar system with more realistic tech. This becomes a little bit more cyberpunk, I think. It would be darkly dystopian, certainly, but serious or satirical would be possible.

My other though is to retain the galactic scale, but not have the setting be so humanocentric. Borrowing a bit from Farscape, the escaped prisoners might be a motley, mostly alien crew.

Weird Revisited: Rogue Elephant

To adventurers in the City, the question, “have you see the elephant?” has a different meaning than elsewhere. Some have encountered an infamous, wandering hotel in the shape of an elephant, now the residence of a dangerous (and possibly insane) sorcerer.

The Mastodon Colossus, or Hotel Elephantine, was built as a tourist attraction on Lapin Isle in the City’s barony of Rook End. The (admittedly eccentric) architect Jamis Maguffin constructed it through consultation of certain codices of the Ancients--and some magical materials probably dating to Meropis dredged from the City’s harbor. The elephant was twelve stories tall and had stout legs 60 feet in diameter. It had 31 guest rooms, a gallery, tobacconist's shop, and an observation deck shaped like a gigantic howdah.

Most spectacularly, the whole thing was planned to move. Maguffin promised that when all of the thaumaturgic glyphs and enhancements were complete, the elephant would be able to ambulate without any seeming change to the rooms on its interior. These enhancements, unfortunately, would take some time.

Eleven years later, when the thaumaturgical working was (supposedly) nearly complete, the elephant walked away one night with a compliment of guests. Most have turned up dead in various locales all over the world and beyond in the four decades since.

The theft and the murders were laid at the feet of Hieronymus Gaunt, lich and (self-styled) wicked sorcerer. He and a band of miscreants entered the elephant and completed the rituals to give in motion. Since that time they've travelled the world in decadent style, taking their seemingly unending orgy of dark thaumaturgy, baroque perversity, and deadly amusements where they may. Sometimes, when it amuses Gaunt, they take others aboard and survivors have reported stores of plunder, both mundane and magical.

This post first appeared in February of 2011. I did a post on the real elephant-shaped buildings of our world after it. You can also read more about them at your local library. Or, you know, the internet.

Wednesday Comics: DC, May 1981 (wk 2 pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around February 19, 1981.

Action Comics #519: A deep sea listening station in the desert is the site of a conflict between an alien hunter and a monster that destroyed his world. Again Conway provides story free of an real sense of peril and whose action seems staid under Swan's pencils.

The Aquaman backup by DeMatteis/Heck continues. Here we get the strange history of Aquaman's mother, which I suspect was ignored after this story, from the Poseidon android who has a replica of the mind of Aquaman's father. Atlanna was one of the original survivors of Atlantis. She became immortal thanks to a serum of her creation. After her supposed death following Aquaman's birth, she apparently went crazy. She hates the Atlantis that exiled her, and now wants to kill her own son who is prophesized to be it's savior.

Adventure Comics #481: More stories of heroes (and villains) submitted by the readers. This issue has a series of stories connected by the escalating machinations of an aquatic alien species looking to conquer Earth. A flood hits the city, but Goldman, Goldgirl and Alchemiss are there to help. Chris' father, a cop, begins to become suspicious of the new heroes. Then, Chris and Vicki have a near-romantic moment interrupted by an attack by the Destructress, a delusional young woman turned into a super-villain by the aquatic aliens. They become Sixth Sensor and Dimension Girl to stop her. Finally, the aliens send Largo the Conqueror. Volcano and Stellar defeat him and send the aliens packing. I'm not usually a fan of Infantino's art in this era, but his rendering of Largo is good.

Brave & the Bold #174: Batman, Green Lantern, and the Guardian arrive on Maltus, the ancient home of the Guardian's ancestors. There, GL is reunited with Appa Ali Apsa (though he isn't named this issue) who was made mortal by the Guardians as punishment. They bring the "Old Timer" back with them to Oa to help them discover which of the Guardians is Sinestro in disguise. Ultimately, Sinestro's temper unmasks him. While Batman and Old Timer avoid him, Green Lantern marshals the Corps to defeat the renegade and the Guardians he's using as a battery. Conway is pretty good at these team-ups, and Aparo's art is an added bonus.

In the Nemesis backup by Burkett and Spiegle, Nemesis escapes from the police officer trying to take him in and continues to try to foil Chesterton's plot. He figures out the kidnappings are chess themed, but things are complicated by Valerie getting into trouble. 

Green Lantern #140: Wolfman, Staton and Mitchell finish up their storyline regarding the kidnapping of the Ferrises. Either it's a trait of Wolfman's or a trait of how comics were written in this era, but the "arc" doesn't have any particularly big payoff. The kidnapper who's trying to ruin the Ferris family is Bloch, an old business partner who believes Ferris stole the business from him. Later, he was horribly burned in an attempt to sabotage a Ferris experimental jet. Aiding him are his sons, one of whom is a sleazy Congressman. None of these folks are particularly significant or compelling adversaries for Green Lantern as yet. Bloch dies for his efforts, but his son in Congress vows vengeance. 

The Adam Strange backup is passable planetary romance. Strange succeeds in helping the mer-person queen stop the automated battleship that was menacing her people. It turns out the robot they met last issue was a little boy wearing power armor. I kind of like that Sutton doesn't explain who the boy is or how he got there, though does have Strange pose those questions in the story.

House of Mystery #292: I..Vampire is nowhere to be seen this issue, but we get better than average anthology tales. The first story by Cavalieri with art by Mark Silvestri (his first for DC or anybody) and Tony DeZuniga is probably the weakest, but only due to unexploited potential. A general plans to use an orphaned child with the ability to manipulate reality a weapon against the U.S.'s enemies, but when the child seems poised to smash a globe in a temper tantrum, it could mean the end of the world instead. There's the gesture at a subplot here involving a doctor taking care of the boy having lost her son in Vietnam, but it goes nowhere.

"The Wendigo" by Kelly and Estrada has some interesting art, particularly in the creature design. A young boy living in a rural area befriends a Wendigo and uses it to get rid of people who've angered him. After depopulating the nearby town, he sends it to the big city following a skeptical reporter. "Hair Apparent" by Conway and Spiegle has the scion of the Briarly family breaking with family tradition and marrying someone besides a cousin. When the familial lycanthropy curse hits, his new wife uses a spell to turn herself into a werewolf rather than live without her husband.

Unknown Soldier #251: Haney and Ayers take us first to the snowy Pyrenees with the Unknown Soldier caught between Spanish fascists and Nazis Then he has to fight a bear. He's there to bring back a German Abbot form a remote monastery whose brother is a resistance fighter the Allies wish to get out of Germany. They need the Abbot to help them get to the brother, who otherwise might think it was a trap. Sneaking back into Germany proves difficult, and the Abbot and the Soldier are separated for a while, but reunite in time to meet the brother in a bombed out German city. It turns out the Soldier is actually there to kill him as the Allies believe he has already turned traitor--but it turns out the Abbot was replaced while they were separated by an SS officer! Then the real Abbot shows up and has to decide whether to side with family or ending the Nazi tyranny. In the end, he breaks his nonviolent code and shoots his brother to save the Soldier. In return, the Soldier later retrieves the statue of Mary the Nazis had plundered from the monastery.

We get the first installment of a Enemy Ace backup by Kanigher and John Severin. I like Enemy Ace, but this issue the story is mostly introducing the character and his rigid honor as a Knight of the Air. He takes on the request of a dying enemy to get a bracelet to his twin sister. Unfortunately, the pilot died before he could even say her name. The final story is a short where downed enemy pilots in the Pacific don't fall to each other but to the "eternal sentinel"--a shark.

How Do You Like Your Sci-Fi?

I posed this question this question as the title of a blogpost the irst time on February 15, 2013. It's a topic that TV Tropes--unsurprisingly--has some thoughts on. This scale is a bit granular and more detailed (and perhaps a bit more judgey). Here's my sort of summary of the basics of both of these:

Hard: So, on one end we've got fairly plausible stuff that mostly extrapolates on current technology. This includes stuff like William Gibson's Sprawl series and the novels of Greg Egan (from the near future mystery Quarantine to the far future Diaspora). A game example is this category would be somethig like GURPS Transhuman Space.

Medium: Getting a little more fantastic, we arrive in the real of a lot of TV shows and computer games. One end of this pretty much only needs you to believe in FTL and artificial gravity but is otherwise pretty hard. The fewer impossible things you're asked to believe (and the better rationalized the ones you are asked to believe in are), the harder it is. Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean Le Flambeur trilogy falls here, on the harder end. The middle of this group adds in something like psionics (Traveller gets in here, and a lot of science fiction novels, like Dune and Hyperion). The softer end throws in a lot of too-human aliens and "pure energy" beings (Babylon 5, most Star Trek).

Soft: Here lies fantasy but with a science fiction veneer and context. Some Star Trek (the animated series, particularly) comes in here, and Farscape. This is also the domain of Star Wars. Simon R. Green's Deathstalker cycle turns up here, too.

Ultra-Soft: Some Star Wars tie-ins in other media come in here, as do things that include magic (or similar fantastic elements} mixed in with an otherwise soft sci-fi universe: This would include superhero sci-fi properties (the Legion of Super-Heroes and Guardians of the Galaxy) and comic book epic sci-fi (what might also be thought of as Heavy Metal sci-fi) like Dreadstar, The Incal, and The Metabarons. It's possible it stops beings science fiction on the mushiest end of this catgory and just becomes "fantasy."

So what consistency of sci-fi is your favorite--particularly in regard to rpgs?