Clean, interesting, vivid

Inside the amazing world of Astounding Stories

Seriously bad science continued

This crucial guiding principle of pulp fiction is illustrated perfectly in the description of Mercury given in the story about the interplanetary policeman [The Earthman's Burden by R F Starzl from Astounding Stories June 1931].

Okay, so admittedly astronomers back in 1930 didn’t know half as much about the  conditions prevailing on the other planets of the solar system as they do these days.  However this ignorance obviously didn't matter a jot to the writers, as it simply provided much more room to manoeuvre for seriously bad science.

So, what's life like on Mercury, according to R F Starzl?

Despite the Arctic blizzards screaming at one extreme of the planet and the howling desert wastes at the other, the equatorial band is surprisingly habitable.  This relatively temperate zone is filled with dense tropical rainforests – a bit like Venus, allegedly (or the Amazon on earth, if you want to be totally boring and pedantic about it, a la David Gerrold).

On Mercury, rivers begin in the far north and run right down to the far south.  They start off freezing cold, then gradually warm up, so that by the time they reach the desert region, they have become boiling hot.  This doesn’t happen on any of the continents on this planet, you note, despite the considerable range of temperatures prevailing here.  So why should it be any different on Mercury?

'Cos it's exotical, that's why.  We're on a totally different planet now, so to make sure that basic fact is fully established in the reader's tiny mind, the place has to look pretty weird compared to our home ground.

And when we say 'weird', we certainly mean 'weird'.  David Attenborough would have a field day chronicling the wildlife round these parts.

Take the Mercurian louse.  According to Starzl's story, Mercurian lice live up trees, rather than under stones in your back garden.  A tree louse basically looks like a 'big disc' with legs round the edge (in other words, a lot like a crab).  Is it called a ‘louse’ because it looks like the earth creature – or is it actually related to it in some way?  If the latter, then that’s extremely interesting … 

The bacteria are so big that they can be seen with the naked eye.  When you manage to pull one off you, it leaves small red marks that can fester a bit if you don’t treat them pretty smartish.  Why have these buggers managed to grow so big on such a small planet?  Surely they can manage to sneak up on us better when we can’t see them - like the ones on earth.  Perhaps it is the increased level of solar radiation caused by the planet being closer to the sun than Earth that does it.

Whatever the reason, we are not told - probably for the self-same reasons detailed in the next section.

Your most interesting questions not answered

Many of the stories published in Astounding Stories beg a never-ending string of breathless queries.

Sometimes the author does make some sort of attempt to address the issues raised by these.  Quite often they don't.  Starzl's story is absolutely typical of the latter type. 

According to his narrative, it takes his interplanetary policeman hero no less than two weeks to travel to Mercury from Earth.  He makes his way to the first planet of the solar system in a small ovoid craft that is started with an activation key (similar to the ignition key of a car, I suppose) and fitted with oxygen tanks and viewing periscope.  Otherwise, we don’t learn anything more about this nifty little vehicle.

Amongst the numerous vitally important questions that sprang to my personal mind whilst reading were:

How is this craft fuelled?

What happens if he runs out of fuel on the way?

What does he eat while he is travelling?

Does he have an autopilot that flies the craft while he gets some much-needed kip?

How and where does he go to the toilet en route?

I suppose Starzl might well argue that as his protagonist is a policeman, he would not be expected to know all that much about the science and technology behind his craft.  Well, yes, I'll accept that as an excuse - but surely a copper must still have some idea of how he goes to the bog during the journey?  

Clichesville Arizona ahoy!

Much of the academic and critical study of the early Astounding Stories that I have been able to track down so far centres round the undeniable fact that many of the tales included in each issue are based fairly and squarely on creaky old popular fiction tropes.

Once again, this particular story provides a splendid example of this tendency.

The native people of Mercury may look like a cross between human beings and frogs – but they speak just like all those preternaturally wise Native Americans from the creakiest cowboy fiction on the range [Earthlings = ‘Lords of the Green Star’, for a start.  Plutonians = ‘Lords of the Dark Star’, which inevitably makes you start thinking of Star Wars … ].

Even though their apparently worthless plants produce what is to Earth people an extremely valuable cure for cancer, it never occurs to them to start charging the Earthlings serious money for it.  Nor do these fine beings bother to ask us to try respecting their environment a bit more, instead of so steadfastly exploiting it.

People from Pluto, on the other hand, look just like the devil – only they are as black as hell, rather than red as sin.  Like the devil, they are the incarnation of evil – and incredibly manipulative into the bargain.

Why it is acceptable for Earthlings to screw the hell out of Mercury while a single Plutonian interloper is harshly and summarily dealt with remains yet another one of those pressing questions that somehow never get answered in the narrative.  If you ask me to hazard a guess, however, my money would be placed firmly on the fact that our hero the policeman is an upstanding specimen of Thirties WASP American manhood - so of COURSE he's got the undisputed right to support and condone others of his kind in their unrelenting attempts to get rich (not).

One rule for the States, another for the rest of the world

And here's the answer to the above dilemma.

Following this unspoken real-life assumption from the time, we can extend the basic principle to cover the rest of the solar system.  Therefore, it is fine for the Earthlings to exploit the people and environment of Mercury – but not at all acceptable for the interloper from Pluto to start muscling in [the mere title of The Earthman's Burden alone makes this attitude quite explicit].

As you already know, Bob

As mentioned previously in Ben Aaronovitch's Temporarily Significant entry on Primeval, this seems to be another extremely common trope in pulp fiction.

In the four part novel The Exile Of Time by Ray Cummings, there is supposedly a robot uprising against the human race taking place in the ancient cellars of New York in the year 2930.  Surely you think the reader would like nothing better than to be in the very thick of such gripping and fantastic action.  They would love to be right there with the central characters as the narrative surges on around and about them.

But do we get to see any of these thrills and spills for ourselves?  Do we buggery!

Instead, many of the events are narrated by one character to another, instead of being recounted directly by an omniscient narrator.

Now sometimes this technique does work very well.  Indeed, one of the best sections of the entire series occurs when the present-day protagonist describes the way in which the skyline of New York constantly changes during the journey through time that he makes with the princess from the future.  As they travel, she explains the historical context of all these changes to him. 

This makes perfect sense in narrative terms.

However, instead of actually seeing the robots from the future when they come crashing into the New York of the American Revolution during the eighteenth century, we only hear about it through the account that the girl from those times gives to our twentieth century hero.  Why?  Surely it would make far more of a dramatic impact if we were there with her and her contemporaries when it happened, sharing their horror and bewilderment as the strange invaders march on remorselessly?

So what the hell was the point of using a first person narrator if they cannot actually be present at many of the most exciting and vital scenes in the story the author is telling?  Is it because the reader’s need to identify with the narrator is assumed to rank above all else – including narrative tension? 

Part of me wonders whether American magazines back in the Thirties were already publishing guidance notes for prospective contributors.  If so, what did those for Astounding Stories say?  Would it be something along the lines of "No matter how strange your tale and how weird the word you set it in, above all else, our readers must identify with your protagonist or narrator.  This therefore means that they need to be a nice, sensible, all-American just like you and me."?

Dictator of the month

Hardly surprisingly for a publication produced during the Thirties, there is a complete obsession with raving megalomaniac dictators.

Over a period of 1 year [? Confirm this], they published no less than [?] stories on this theme alone.

Some of these dictators are fascists, while others are Communist.  For example, Paul Stravoinski in Holocaust is Communist, and Moyen in Monsters Of Moyen is Fascist.  Because this was a mainstream American magazine, the authors of these stories are usually quite upfront about displaying their intense fear of the Red Menace [see Holocaust by Charles Willard Diffin from June 1931 issue, and Werewolves of War by D W Hall in Astounding Stories February 1931 issue].

Equally sadly, racism doesn't take long to rear its ugly head either.  Hence the nasty undertone of the Yellow Peril displayed in Monsters Of Moyen by Arthur J Burks from Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 (and also the Buck Rogers classic novel The Air Lords Of Han by Philip Francis Nowlan).

Presumably the rampant racism would go some way towards explaining the fact that, even though Mussolini was already ruling Italy by 1930, there is no mention of any of these fictional dictators starting out their rule in a Western European country.  This also tends to suggest that both authors and magazine editorial staff assumed that Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa are all considered slightly savage, backward countries by all ‘right-thinking’ English speaking people of the era in which these stories were written.

No matter where they might individually come from, every single last one of these dictators quickly manages to set up an incredibly efficient war machine.  In these stories, wave upon wave of planes, tanks, ships or submarines swarms over the horizon to deal death and destruction to the American people.

If this is true, then there must be endless factories in these dictatorships churning out nothing but armaments and military equipment.  And naturally this begs more of the classic awkward questions on the intelligent reader's part:

Where do these factories get all the raw materials to produce this stuff?

How do these regimes manage to train all their soldiers, sailors and airmen so efficiently and rapidly?

Why don’t the raw materials ever run out?

Or the factory workers go on strike?

Once again, we never hear the answers.  All we are told is that the invasions are eventually repulsed - not by Bolshevik workers downing tools and establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat over in the snowy wastes of another continent, but by a lone Yankee warrior of some sort, proving that the American way of life is so ineffably superior to anything else that it can turn any old Joe Schmo off the street into Horatio on the bridge.

Mind you, it's impossible to come away from these stories without the distinct impression that secretly the authors and their all-American characters sometimes seem to quite envy the dictatorships for solving all the terrible economic and social problems faced by capitalist economies during the Twenties and Thirties ...

Looney geniuses running amok

This is another one of the ropey old workhorses of narrative device that never fail to get a good airing in Astounding Stories.

The standard way of making a genius into not just an overt threat but the covert epitome of coolness is to portray him (9 times out of 10 it is a 'him') as a stark staring nutter

Hence we have our old favourite Fraser the mad scientist in The Floating Island Of Madness, Into Space by Sterner St Paul in Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930, The Beetle Horde by Victor Rousseau in the same issue (trillions of famished beetles led by a madman sweep down over the entire human race - great stuff!); Mad Music by Anthony Pelcher in the same issue (a barmy violinist employs his instrument to knock down a 60 storey skyscraper.  Why?  Because he's stark staring teapot); Old Crompton's Secret by Harl Vincent in the same issue again (an eccentric rich youth becomes a recluse and invents a machine that restores lost youth to the old - but neglects to turn it into a serum to sell on the cosmetics counter at Maceys); Ivan Saranoff in The Port Of Missing Planes by Captain S P Meek in Astounding Stories August 1931 and When Caverns Yawned in the May 1931 issue.

There are so many mad scientists on the loose in these stories that you do have to wonder if the authors were promised an extra percentage on top of the standard fee if they remembered to include at least one in each story.    

Never trust an extraterrestrial

Of course, this goes without saying - but that doesn't stop all of these boffins and their mates from falling into the trap every single sodding time.

In Monsters Of Mars by Edmond Hamilton in Astounding Stories April 1931 , the head scientist and his colleagues are amazed and delighted when they manage to establish contact with beings from Mars.  As a result of their curiosity, they spend several months engaged in an indepth exchange of ideas with the extraterrestrials.

They really believe that they are working to further the noble causes of human knowledge and co-operation and harmony between the different species of the solar system.  So when the Martians send them across plans for a teleportation unit and ask them to come over for a quick visit, they're ready to jump at the chance.

Oooooo dearrrrrrrrrr.

BIG mistake!

Not only do the Martians look just like crocodiles walking about on two legs - they also want to invade the Earth.

As you do.

Mind you, seeing as their planet is slowly dying from global environmental failure, you can't exactly blame them for feeling a tad desperate, even though their method of dealing with the problem isn't exactly to be recommended.  And their leader may have three giant heads sitting on top of one enormous body - but they do drive the most marvellous vehicles shaped like robot centipedes.

Did the astronomers in The Doom From Planet 4 by Jack Williamson in Astounding Stories July 1931 pay any attention to the lesson learned so painfully by the characters in Monsters Of Mars?

No way, Jose.

This mob decided to go and observe a rare eclipse from an isolated island in the middle of the ocean.  When the extraterrestrials contacted them there, they found it every bit as profound and cool an experience as the scientists in the previous story.

So when they were sent over some blueprints and asked to build the devices depicted, they were only too happy to comply as well.

In this second story, Mars has been taken over by the sentient robots created by the original inhabitants.  The droids lost no time in marmolising their former masters - and their next stop is Earth.

To keep curious Earthlings away from their secret base on our planet, they persuaded the astronomers to construct a giant laser cannon just like something straight out of a James Bond film, which they use to zap the buggery out of anyone who threatens them.

The only way to combat the menace in both tales is to destroy the nasty alien technology that has brought the threat to the Earth.  Whether it is the teleport device in the first story or the laser cannon in the second, sorry mate, it's got to go.  Not just the machine itself, but all the plans and blueprints as well.

After that the interstellar communication devices must be smashed as well, so that we can never talk to those sneaky conniving extra-terrestrials ever again.

And while we're still on the subject, don't trust the wildlife or the vegetation on another world either.  Yes, the David Attenboroughs and Bellamies amongst us would adore the opportunity to investigate all that fabulous exobiology.  But the characters in The World Behind The Moon by Paul Ernst in Astounding Stories April 1931 faced constant and overwhelming threats on all sides from the very moment their hydro-powered atomic craft touched down on the surface of Zeud [another highlight of seriously bad science, incidentally - a planet that hides behind the dark side of the moon, which is why it wasn't discovered until the Thirties.].

When should TV programmes stop flogging a dead horse?

While we wait for me and my great big brain to finish sorting out Clean, vivid and interesting and Elvis Alive, I thought we could keep ourselves usefully ticking over with a quick look at the points I am planning to make at the other panel session I have now been roped into joining at the Redemption 2011 convention in Coventry.

All produced in the space of half an hour, with the aid of my trusty black biro and a mug of coffee:

      

1.)  One title – Last Of The Summer Wine

2.)  When the entire original cast of canon characters has been completely replaced with clones twice over (see the above for further details)

3.)  When it is broadcast more than twice a week (soaps!  The news is more random.  Plus the cast and location keep changing.)

4.)  When it keeps playing ‘me too!’ with its rivals and competitors (hence if one soap shoves the matriarch in prison on trumped up charges, all the rest do the same about one week later)

5.)  When it starts spending a lot of time spoofing other programmes/films/musicals etc (The Simpsons)

6.)  When it starts repeating basic plot tropes over and over again (Commander Travis using women to lure Roj Blake into a trap in B7 …  Tough!)

7.)  When the main reason for tuning in is to see who the guest of the week will turn out to be

8.)  When the viewer’s first response is: “Bloody hell – is it STILL going?”

9.)  When TV executive gibbons love it so much that they keep commissioning further series (Midsommer Murders – warning: do NOT become a cornerstone of the viewing schedules)

10.)                 When the raison d’etre of the entire series becomes worn out and preposterous through too much exposure (the murder rate in Midsommer Murders would provoke questions in Parliament)

11.)                 When shocking incidents lose all their dramatic impact through over-use (Servalan keeping murdering people who got in her way in B7.  Tough knackers 2)

12.)                 When TV executive gibbons think an expensive overhaul of the set and costumes will detract attention from the acting/script/direction

13.)                 When the TV executive gibbons are convinced that the best way to revamp a show and pull in more viewers is to make it just like a soap, even though it belongs to a totally different genre (The Bill)

14.)                 When incidents that are totally ridiculous within the world of the series not only occur, but are treated in a dramatically unconvincing manner (Sun Hill police station getting blown up in The Bill and it not being a national headline news story)

15.)                 When there are no new challenges left to stretch and tax the actors/writers/directors/crew (Most Haunted)

Yes, I'm definitely still here!

Just in case the two blokes, a dog and a packet of crisps that constitute my entire (presumed) online audience have been wondering where the expected update/eccentric diversion into an obscure byway of popular culture has got to - fear not!

I know that all four of you are expecting yet another one of my classics (NOT going to put that word in inverted commas, though that would be strictly accurate in technical terms, my reason being that it would make me look like a rank amateur.  One thing I am most emphatically NOT is a tinkering Sunday jobber who just farts about and refuses to take writing seriously enough in order to try and learn how to do it properly.).

Well, I have certainly got something interesting in preparation, namely an article on Astounding Stories magazine from the Thirties.  Provisionally titled 'Clean, interesting and vivid', like my previous pieces on the Blake's Seven fan, slash and genfic, it looks at a number of stories and attempts to identify a number of general guiding principles that apply to most, if not all, of the stories in question. 

True, all these principles have already been identified and discussed at much greater length (if not tedium) by professional academics who specialise in literature with a sci fi or fantasy bent, but this is my personal take, so do look forward to more of my uniquely wry insights and witty asides once I've finally managed to finish writing the bugger.  

The main reason I have fallen slightly behind with the blog schedule is I'm still sodding wrestling with the treatment and step outline for my Final Project on the MA in Television and Radio Scriptwriting.  Without wishing to sound unprofessional about it, it has been proving bloody difficult.

Yes, that means it will probably end up proving a great learning opportunity.

But first I have got to get to grips with the thing and sort it out once and for all.

It’s slash time! Further thoughts on slash fiction

Dedicated fan(s?) of this wondrous blog of mine may have been wondering how I’ve been getting on with my researches into the topic of fan fiction.

After all, there’s a hell of a lot of it about – and it’s a while ago since I last reported back.

Fear not, slash freaks of the world!

Yes, there is plenty more B7 fiction out there.  Yes, I have continued to download and read it as best I can.

And now I have bravely hacked my way back through all the dense undergrowth of the B7 fanfic world to bring you my second exclusive (in the sense that it is written by me, rather than anyone else) report.

Here for your attention are some of my latest thoughts and conclusions.  Please be aware that they are purely my personal opinions, so do feel free to differ whenever you like.

Because the characters have already been introduced to the public arena and displayed there for the enjoyment of the audience, they are considered by the fans to have become an integral part of popular culture.  This means that they are assumed by many to be public property rather than private.

Like famous characters from myth, legend and folklore, they now exist independent of their original creators.  They belong to the fans, not the television company, the people, not the masters.    

Indeed, it is clear that many fans from many different fandoms specifically employ fan-fic as a way of removing the characters right out of the control of the production company.  As amateur writers, they are not subject to market pressures.  Therefore, they can permit themselves much more freedom and flexibility in creative and artistic terms than the canon writers.

However, certain themes, concerns and dilemmas turn up time and time again in fan and slashfic.  This would tend to suggest very strongly that these more artistically independent literary genres have now developed a complete set of conventions and tropes all of their own.

Judging by the sheer number and huge variety of B7 fanfic stories out there on the Internet and elsewhere starring Kerr Avon, the charismatic computer fraudster's huge host of adoring female fans want to BE him every bit as much as they want to have sex with him or experience what it might be like to have him fall in love with them. 

By using him as their protagonist, they get the chance to see, hear, smell, taste and feel life from Avon's unique viewpoint.  And it certainly seems to prove a heady experience.   

As a man, society positively encourages you to be clever, sarcastic, greedy, selfish, an individualist, lecherous, disagreeable, anti-social, unhelpful and the complete antithesis of a team player or a follower.  Once under Avon's skin, you will now be congratulated and admired for all these defects of character, rather than rejected and condemned, as women so often still are when they display the self-same characteristics as he does.

It turns out that Vila Restal also has his coterie of women admirers.  This is much smaller than Avon's, but every bit as enthusiastic and dedicated.

Just as with Avon, it seems that there is much to recommend life from the male point of view, rather than the female.  If you are lazy, cowardly and dishonest, but also friendly, intelligent, quirky and amusing, you might like to try on Vila's personality for size some time (see Vila Restal's E-Mails for a particularly good set of stories in this respect).  Once again, you will probably find that society at least excuses these deficiencies in you, when it doesn't go all out to admire and celebrate them.

Fancy being a tall, strutting nasty bastard with a moody temperament and severe attitude problem but great line in savage wit?  (Bad-ass eye patch, sexy tight black leather uniform and seriously cool shit-kicker boots come included, plus fully charged laseron ring to zap the buggery out of anyone who's had the temerity to piss you off in any way at all.)  Then Commander Travis is the man for you.  In his guise, you get to be as rude, aggressive, hateful, unfriendly, determined, obsessive, unhinged and unkind as you could possibly want.  Yet again, these are not qualities that our present society likes to acknowledge in the female of the species, let alone condone in any way.

Now, as a woman, I understand perfectly that even today, many members of my gender still envy the greater freedoms and possibilities open to men in our society.  I can certainly identify and sympathise with the female actors from the original version of B7 when they complained that many of the scripts were sexist, leading the women characters to often lose out in dramatic terms compared to the men.  Nor am I exempt from secretly wondering what being a man is actually like.  So I can definitely appreciate just why so many of these fanfic writers are so keen to investigate a mode of life so radically different to their everyday reality.

What does continue to puzzle me is the comparative lack of interest in exploring the female point of view.  Okay, the nascent genre of femfiction offers a very promising corrective to this tendency, but it still has quite some way to go before it manages to catch up with the massive great splurge of male-centric fan and slash fic already out there.

Admittedly there is a hell of a lot of B7 fanfic out there that I haven't managed to read yet - and more is being produced and published in many different formats all the time.  I can only offer my personal opinion based on what I have had the opportunity to examine so far. 

Bearing this continuing sexist disparity in mind, you might think that the predominantly female writers of fan, slash and gen fic might make slightly better use of their artistic freedom and independence to start redressing the balance a bit more.  Whatever your personal sexual and emotional orientation might be, Servalan is still a very strong, attractive, charismatic woman with a lifestyle to envy.  So why not try enjoying her immense power and influence for yourself?  If you agree that Jenna and Cally, Soolin and Dayna never got the chance to shine properly, why don't you provide them with the ideal opportunity to do so?

True, there are some attempts at this already out there - but still not nearly enough.

No doubt many of the deficiencies of fan and slash fiction can be blamed on the fact that 90% of its products are, to put it bluntly, not very good (just like practically every other area of human endeavour you care to name, really).  Perhaps it is slightly unfair to start pointing the finger at writers who are often inexperienced, untrained and lacking in the basic talent to ever be able to produce an artistically successful level of fiction.  With time and practice, some fan fiction writers eventually learn how to create very good stories.  A few of them then go on to work as professional writers and even end up penning completely original series and characters of their own.  However, most won't.

Those who are lacking in experience or ability, as well as those who prefer to write slash, gen or fan fic for personal reasons as opposed to purely artistic ones, may find it quicker, easier and more reassuring to cling to the safety rafts offered by the tried and tested tropes.  Not only do they offer much needed support for their literary techniques, but they also ensure that the writers keep providing the fanbase with more of what it already knows and loves.

Let's face it, Avon is the most popular choice for a protagonist purely and simply because he is by far the best-loved and admired canon character in all of Blake's Seven.  If you stick with him and make him sympathetic to the readers in some way, then you are guaranteed a large audience for your story.  And the chances are good that many of them will be inclined to like it - or at least more prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt.

At the time the original series was broadcast, Servalan was both greatly loved and celebrated by many viewers and critics for being a trailblazing superbitch.  Quite why so much of this appeal has since evaporated remains unclear.  Perhaps it is because the stiletto-heeled, red-lipsticked, immensely shoulder-padded Eighties dominatrix is so completely out of keeping with our current zeitgeist.  Can you imagine the Supreme Commander judging contestants on The X Factor?  Or owning a pink mobile phone encrusted with Swarovski crystals?  Or keeping a chihuahua in her handbag?  Or doing a Britney Spears and shaving her head in public when the stress all gets too much?

Even so, you might still think that Servalan would have a lot to offer a female writer pissed off at the way that modern society treats women.  Surely there is plenty of scope there for vicarious revenge and satisfaction, not to mention savage satire.  In the realm of gen fiction, she could have an absolute field day dominating the men.  Travis would seem the most obvious choice for her sub here, but I'm sure Blake, Tarrant and Vila might all also enjoy being bossed about a bit on the quiet.  If you want to be really naughty and subversive, even Avon himself could do with putting on the frilly pink pinny and polishing her floor some time.

Judging by the way some heterosexual male fans drool as soon as Servalan's name is even mentioned, there definitely does seem to be a market out there in fandom for this sort of thing.  There must also be heterosexual female fans who swoon at the very thought of being cruelly dominated by one or other of the male characters.  So where are the stories for them all?

Possibly Avon's overwhelming popularity with the fans might be inhibiting some writers from coming up with stories that could be interpreted as portraying him in any sort of a negative light.  Though judging by all the many wild and wonderful antics he already gets up to in slash and gen, I'm sure he wouldn't hesitate to try out and enjoy both domination and submission if he got the chance.

            

When it comes to dominating women, Travis would be a complete natural.  You might even argue that this would be the logical dark and disturbing flipside to some of the episodes from the canon series itself (most notably Seek-Locate-Destroy and Hostage). 

So why don't we get to see any of this? Perhaps it is because sexual enjoyment tends to be seen as a sure sign of a character's capitulation in both slash and gen fiction.  If you can make a character experience an orgasm, then you have won a victory over them.  If a so-called 'evil' character like Servalan or Travis manages to do this, it would turn the moral basis of the entire series upside down.

[At this juncture, I do have to admit to having discovered a few stories that attempt to address some of the above issues.  There was one very amusing one from a fanzine collection [A Short Tribute To Mr Hill - from Ultra 1] in which Avon teleported into Servalan's bathroom when she was still in the tub one morning, tied her up, injected her with memory erasing serum and had his evil way with her.  After he had vanished back to the Liberator again, she screamed at Travis to come and rescue her. Travis however was so fed up with Servalan bossing him about and humiliating him in front of the other officers that he simply undid his trousers and also proceeded to have his evil way with her.  Then he just left her lying there stark titty naked in the rapidly cooling bathwater. 

[For her part, Servalan didn't seem to mind either of these gruelling experiences too much.  But just in case she did, the memory erasing serum would blot them both out forever.  This seems a shame, as I'm sure both men would be more than keen to have her remember every detail for as long as possible, whatever their respective motives may have been.

[Following a bit of a bender at the pub over the road from the Adelphi campus after a hard evening's work on the MA course, I (with the aid of my trusty mobile phone) stumbled across another tale in which Cally was gay by inclination, but was having sex with Commander Travis because he was basically raping her.  He was quite determined that she should experience an orgasm - so of course she was fighting with all her might to make sure it didn't happen.  If she was gay and he was a rapist, you might conclude that it wasn't at all likely.  But this is gen fiction, so it doesn't follow the rules of standard narratives (let alone real life).

[This was an absolute shocker of a story for so many reasons - which is why I was snorting at it in sheer horror and disbelief not only on the bus, but also in Abduls while I was waiting for my post-prandial kebab.  I'm sorry if I upset anybody as a result.  It was truly disturbing to me as a woman to read such awful stuff, so I sincerely hope that Travis hasn't got up to any more of this sort of thing anywhere else (or any of the other male characters, come to that).]       

Some critics of slash fiction believe that another of its key functions is to provide its writers with the ideal forum to engage in a bit of underhand gender bending.  Presumably, this means that when Blake and Travis end up as the submissive partners in gay sex in these B7 stories, this might be a codified way of identifying them as women rather than men [Re-Education?]. 

Now, it seems there could be two potential ways of looking at this standard literary trope in slash fiction. 

Perhaps some women writers employ it as a slightly sneaky method of examining aspects of male characters and the relationships between them that weren't really addressed in very much detail by the scriptwriters of the canon series (who, you will remember, both were - and still are, even today - almost exclusively male).  Now fair enough, I wouldn't by any means be the first B7 fan to agree that the series could have well done with just a touch more tenderness every so often, and a few less shootings and explosions. 

But it's still slightly depressing that so many of these writers seem to feel that the only way the male characters can express and explore the gentler sides of their personalities is through sex.  If this is, in any sense, an accurate depiction of real men in our contemporary society, then my sisters, there is plenty of work still to be done.

Bashing Avon over the head with a massive great brick to render him (usually) temporarily helpless, so forced to accept the tender ministrations of Blake, Tarrant or Vila, strikes me as a bit drastic, to say the least.  I am still surprised that he hasn't ended up with permanent brain damage as a result of all this hurt/comfort genre induced violence.          

In nine cases out of ten, it is this fully functioning version of Avon that forces Blake, Travis, Tarrant (or sometimes poor Vila, of all people) to accept and embrace their 'femininity'. 

Now, what I want to know is - who the hell has decided that Kerr Avon is the so-called 'right-thinking' B7 fan's accepted paradigm of an alpha male?  Why does he so often seem to have the right to decide what 'masculinity' is and isn't in the B7 universe?  Who says in these type of stories that Blake, Travis, Tarrant or Vila aren't real men in any sense?  Why can't a 'true man' be idealistic?  Or a pompous berk?  Or paranoid?  Or nasty? Or cowardly?  Or pretentious?  Or gay?  (etc etc amen … )

Why does a man have to metaphorically conquer another person, win a victory over them, in order to encourage them to come to terms with their more vulnerable side?  Because the central theme of Blake's Seven is the refusal of the individual to buckle down and accept the tyranny of the system, many fans would argue that it is particularly right and fitting that this conflict should be expressed in artistic terms through vicious struggles for dominance between the different characters.

Whatever your opinion of Avon's various partners in slash sex/relationships, his frequent insistence on forcing his own conception of masculinity upon these individuals sometimes comes across as positively fascist.   

Many fanfic, gen and slash writers reveal themselves to be confirmed 'relationshippers'.  For them, it is essential that they use their artistic freedom from the constraints of the original canon scripts to ensure that characters who remained firmly apart on screen finally get it together on the Internet or in a paper fanzine.

If the scriptwriters refused to play ball with all those lovely hot cases of steaming sexual and emotional tension, then the fans lose no time in making up the deficiencies for themselves in one way or another.

Hence in B7 fiction, Avon and Cally are often paired for love, Avon and Soolin for sex, Avon and Jenna because they are both bored and frustrated and want to piss off Blake in some respect, Jenna and Travis because it forms a bittersweet secret between two tough cookies who have both suffered a lot behind the scenes and need something to cheer them both up a bit [Death Of A Friend], Blake and Avon for sex/love/who the hell knows what else on one or both sides (delete according to personal taste and need), Servalan and Avon because she is secretly hankering to be conquered by a REAL man, Avon and Vila because it seems so bloody obvious to those who want to combine it with the taste for classic slash.

Even though Carnell is meant to probably be bisexual in the famous episode Weapon (bit of a Freudian slip for a title considered in the current context, but can't be helped!), I agree you certainly wouldn’t have got away with two of the main characters being gay or bisexual and engaging in a gay relationship with each other at the time the series was originally transmitted by the Beeb.  So the slasher and fem-shippers in particular make the very most of the opportunity that fanfiction offers them to explore types of sexual and romantic relationships that couldn't really be treated by the original series.

As the Mary Sue/Marty Stu approach is so strongly discouraged by so much of fandom, fans who want to get it on with their favourite character but either can’t or don’t want to invent an original partner to help them do it, are probably best off assuming the mantel of another canon character as a sort of avatar.

Therefore, if you are a heterosexual female fan of Avon who wants to enjoy a heterosexual relationship with him, for however long, then you need to find a female character who didn’t get it on with him in the original programme – but you think there was still something of a definite attraction or interest going on between him and her.  Your precise choice of avatar depends on what type of fantasy relationship you want with him, how long you want it for – and the sort of canon female character you either identify with or would like to emulate.

So if you fancy yourself as tough but dreamy and sensitive, you love Avon and want to capture his heart, you would probably go for Cally [as in The Secret Miracle from Ultra 1].  If you reckon yourself tough and glamorous, but pragmatic and independent-minded, you’re bored, frustrated, feel subtly rejected by Blake, consider him a pompous dickhead and need to have your brains screwed out before you explode, you would choose Jenna [as in Unholy Alliance from Ultra 1].  If you are impossibly tough, outrageously glamorous, totally selfish and eat other men for breakfast, but secretly long to be conquered and turned into a REAL woman who finally knows what true love is, then you must be Servalan [as in If You Would Have Power from Horizon 15]but how many of us are lucky enough to have a personality or real life anything like hers, let’s be honest?).

Tales from typographical oceans

So, SO glad that I just missed being a teenager during the Seventies.

All right, I DID have to contend with reaching maturity just as Mrs Thatcher and her various minions starting consolidating their hold on the country.  Possessing a mind totally unsuited to the traditional Ferenghi way of thinking proved a serious disadvantage during the era when profit was king, as did my hippy-dippy tendency hair during the concurrent reign of new wave.

But at least I didn't have to listen to prog rock.

Could hardly avoid it yesterday evening, though.

Flatmate was listening to the Stuart Maconie show on Radio 6 - which featured the alleged Yes 'classic' Tales From Topographical Oceans as the album of the week.

Even the so-called 'highlights' that Stuart had selected for public consumption proved beyond all reasonable doubt to the listeners out there just why punk had to happen.

Every single sodding tune seemed to meander up and down and round and round and back again, chewing the end of its own bloody tale like the ouroubouros snake of ancient symbolism for hours and hours on end, yet never really getting anywhere.

No wonder people had to be off their heads on drugs, drink or both to enjoy this sort of music.

Flatmate commented that one track sounded just like the 'introduction' to something.

"What?" I replied.  "A hobbit opera?"

Then we both fell about laughing.

But it's true.

If hobbits write and perform operas, then that's just what I would imagine them to sound like - Mozart crossed with Steely Dan.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear a real tale from a topographical ocean, here's one:

Is nothing left?  Have all things passed thee by?
The stars are not thy stars.  The aged hills
Are changed and bowed beneath the ills
Of ice and rain, of river and of sky;
The sea that riseth now in agony
Is not thy sea.  The stormy voice that fills
This gloom with man's remotest sorrow shrills
The mem'ry of thy lost futurity.

This extract from a sonnet to the trace fossil of Oldhamia was penned by John Joly, former Professor of Geology at Trinity College, Dublin.

Now, he may have liked wearing a radioactive hat in order to test the effect of the gamma rays on his memory, but he displays a much subtler understanding of the immensities of geological time than the assorted members of Yes.

Plus he gets to the point a damn sight quicker.

What a load of old teapot! Inside The Floating Island Of Madness again

Can now report back that I have now finally finished reading The Floating Island Of Madness - somewhat earlier than expected, mainly because the bloody thing is only 24 pages long.

Yes, that's right - 24 pages.

Now, many great works of past and present are on the shorter side, it's true.  But usually something of this length would be described as a 'short story', rather than a 'book'.  A book needs to have enough heft to it to prop up a wonky dining room table in an emergency.  24 pages of pulp fiction is simply not enough to do it.

According to a quick Google search I've just done, The Floating Island Of Madness was originally published as a short story in one of these Astounding Fiction type magazines.  So why wasn't it then included in some 'best of ... ' collection of their short stories and novellas?  That would have made a lot more sense than reprinting it as a standalone.

But then, what do I know?  I'm not what Ben Aaronovitch would no doubt refer to as one of the gibbons of the publishing trade.

To compound the offence, they then had the cheek to describe it on Amazon as a 'classic'.

It isn't!

It's pants!

Well, I did warn you that if it continued to keep up the good work, then I would probably let you know all about it.  If we swap the word 'good' for the word 'bad', then I can in all conscience keep my original promise to you.

You'll no doubt recall that author Jason Kirby prefers not to bother himself with those extraneous little fripperies of the story-telling trade such as character and motivation.  He is also enough of a radical to dispense entirely with narrative tension and an action-packed ending as well.

Returning to the story at the point where we left off last time, after the three captive secret agents had injected themselves with harmless vials of water in order to pretend to be mad, they were summoned before mad Algy Fraser (makes him sound like he's Franky's brother or cousin, doesn't it?  Have visions of him parading down the East End in the Sixties, dressed up to the nines in the sharpest cut and narrowest lapelled of Italian-tailored mod suits, and drinking at the bar of the Blind Beggar, arm wrapped firmly round Barbara Windsor's waist.  But anyway!).

Fraser naturally wants to make sure that the official insanity juice is taking its due effect.

Luckily Foulet the French agent has already studied abnormal psychopathology in some depth, being a pretentious Gallic intellectual by trade, and so the other two decide to copy him in both gesture and word, just to be on the safe side.

Fraser appears to be reasonably satisfied with progress so far, but informs the three that Brice the Brit has to undergo a second dose of loopy latte at the hands of Doctor Semple because his brain is much tougher than those of the other two (yes, you heard it here second).

Meanwhile, Fraser will put Ainslee the Yank and Foulet 'under the nourishment ray'.

This involves installing them in a tiny room kitted out with a device similar to a sunray lamp that bathes them in a deep orange light which feeds, waters and relaxes you all at the same time.  Quite why Fraser couldn't have flooded the market with these marvellous contraptions, even back in the Thirties, and made an absolute mint we don't know.  But then, he is supposed to be stark, utter, raving bonkers, so perhaps a bit of simple market research and business forecasting might be slightly beyond his mental capabilities at the moment.

Once they have topped up their stomachs and their tans sufficiently, Fraser starts interrogating them.  He insists they tell him what their respective countries have found out about him and his evil plans for total world domination.  Naturally he’s extremely proud of his nefarious plots, so he doesn't exactly neglect the full and detailed explanations of them that we have all come to expect from the malevolent mad genius of popular imagination.

Of course they realise that being ‘mad’, they are now supposed to have forgotten everything about their previous lives. So they look really vacant and don't reply.

Then Fraser demands to know whether the nations are afraid of him.  Do they realise that it is he who brought about the Wall Street crash?  (This is seriously no joke - he most definitely claims that he and his agents were the ones responsible, rather than the world's bankers and politicians, or the global economy buffeted by the vicissitudes of recent history.)

The men answer in dull monotones.

But does the world KNOW that Fraser is its master?

"Master," drones Foulet, just to drive the point home.

Abruptly, Fraser announces he has now changed his mind, and takes them outside again.

There he releases a secret catch.

A trapdoor swings open in the bottom of the island.

They peer through it at the desert plain two thousand feet below.  Surely mad Algy is not going to pitch them straight through the opening to their certain death?

Er, no.

Even Algy Fraser is a bit too subtle for that.

Instead, he points to a small metal ladder running down from the trapdoor to who knows where.

He forces them to climb down this into a small chamber that hangs off the underside of the island just like a gondola off the bottom of an airship.

Then he locks them in there for the next three days.

Because they suspect that Fraser may have also invented his own version of CCTV and even now be monitoring them round the clock, they still have to pretend to be mad.  This involves looking dense as pigshit whilst moving and speaking as little as possible.  Again, Ainslee follows Foulet's expert lead.

Due to the need for caution, conversation is necessarily somewhat limited.

On the third day, Fraser returns.

Addressing them as sane men this time, he demands to know how they are now feeling.  Apparently, the first dose of the madness serum only last three days.  However, successive doses will prove cumulative in their effects.  As he has so abundantly proved already with all the prisoners he took earlier.  So - are they finally ready to talk?

At this point, the modern reader may be heartened by such splendid evidence of devious mind-screws and good old-fashioned emotional manipulation.  Perhaps Algy will match Hannibal Lecter and co yet!

Ainslee and Foulet both vow never to give in to the demands of the 'cruel, power-loving, scientific machine', even if they have to die in order to save their respective countries from the depredations of his vile plots. 

Coming as it does after a soothing session in the tanning salon and three whole days vegging out in the Thirties version of an isolation tank, you would hope (indeed, you would probably be praying by this juncture) that this difference of opinion might do something to rachet up the emotional tension level a bit.

Basically, their dilemma boils down to this.

Fraser will only let them out if they talk.  If they don’t, then he will use his handy mad genius Swiss pocket knife to cut through the four cables that attach the isolation pod to the underside of the island.

No prizes for guessing that Fraser rejects Foulet’s attempts to reason with him, fearing a trick.  The men both refuse pointblank to talk – and so he starts cutting the cables, one by one.

Just as he has almost finished severing the third cable, rescue arrives!

Yes, it’s Brice the Brit.

Clamping a handy pair of steel cables to the roof of the pod, he opens the roof hatch and proffers them a ladder.  While Algy is distracted with his efforts to cut through the final cable, they climb out back onto the island.

He launches forthwith into his lengthy explanation of events.  (Lengthy explanations of events seem to be a favourite narrative device in pulp sci-fi from the Thirties, judging by the various short story collections I’ve downloaded from the Manybooks site so far.  More on this topic at a future date, maybe.)

While they were locked away in the isolation chamber, Brice did receive a second injection of the madness medicine – but this didn’t bother him because he’d spotted a phial of the antidote just casually lying on barmy Dr Semple’s desk.  Why Fraser isn’t concerned about the possible security ramifications of such terrible carelessness isn’t explained, though I suppose if you happen to be a mad genius, locking dangerous medications away safely when not in use probably isn’t high on your agenda of things to do to achieve total world domination.

When the doctor was distracted, Brice simply injected himself with this to reverse the effects.  Wonder how he knew for sure that this was the antidote?  Was the bottle clearly labeled ‘ANTIDOTE TO MADNESS SERUM – DO NOT EXCEED STATED DOSE’?

Next he spent the next three days doing his best impression of Foulet’s Method acting style ersatz insane slave.  This seems to have gone down pretty well with the captive audience, as he was given liberty to go wherever he liked around the island.

He discovered that in fact the weight of all the people and machinery is not sufficient to keep the island from flying all the way up into space.  Four giant lamps situated at each corner of the desert beam up more of the mysterious rays discovered by Fraser.  The rays meet just underneath the island and combine their forces to anchor it down into a stationary floating position (technical explanation courtesy of Jason Kirby and his personal interpretation of Seriously Bad Science).

Yes, there is an off switch.  Yes, Brice discovered where it was.  And yes, he’s just managed to turn it off.   

Without losing any time, he urges them to climb into the plane they originally came in.

As the island and its inhabitants soar off to their certain deaths in space, the agents calmly fly off into the sunset.  Brice jumps off the edge – but he’s okay because he’s managed to find a parachute and attach it to his back without anyone noticing.  The other two simply land on the desert floor and pick him up when he touches down.

And, that’s it, folks.

So, let’s take a moment to quickly summarise what we’ve just learnt:

1.)  If you are a genius, no one else understands what the hell you are on about – including the author.  Therefore, you tend to talk in what sci fi great Larry S. Niven refers to as ‘bolonium’ (aka industrial strength professional jargon bollockese).

2.)  When you are mad, you tend to do things just for the sheer hell of it.  Your normal powers of logic have been suspended for the duration.  Therefore, you build a floating island and live and work on it purely because it seems incredibly cool, not for any scientific or strategic benefits that this might bring you.

3.)  Mad people deserve no understanding or sympathy.  Even though most of the nutters living on the island were brought there against their will and have been driven insane thanks to regular doses of the medically unlikely serum, none of the three agents makes any attempt to help or save them.  This is despite the fact that Brice has discovered the antidote.  Instead, they must all fly off to their death along with Fraser and the island.

4.)  Either the local tribespeople living in the desert underneath the floating island haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary (very unlikely indeed, when you consider the fact that Fraser has installed four enormous arc lights in each corner of their domain) – or nobody in the English-speaking world of the Thirties considers their opinions to be worth listening to.

5.)  Many readers during the Thirties must have thought that pulp fiction counted for nothing as an art form.  Hence the endless proliferation of tired tropes, such as mad scientists, and constant lapses in narrative logic, like the business with the  insanity serum antidote.