NEW Book Report, TOS-AU (Ancient Destroyer alt-history), PG13, 1/1
Gojirob
Author : ‘Goji’ Rob Morris
Series : The TOS-based AU, The Ancient Destroyer Cycle
Type : Alt-history perspective
Part : 1/1
Characters : Four Starfleet cadets of different eras
Rating : PG13
Summary : A pivotal author of two very different young adult novel
series in the post-WW3 period is discussed and reviewed in very
different ways.
Book Report
By Rob Morris
The Late 21st and early 22nd Century Career of Fantasy Writer Roman
Harwin in a series of retrospectives.
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2130
Roman Harwin was one of a triumvirate of people who, in 2063, gave the
world back its hope after what was very nearly the end. He was the
finance wizard, Lillian Alfred the mechanic, and Zephram Cochrane the
designer/dreamer. He went on to become the greatest writer of his era,
with not one but two series called the Harry Potter, Star Wars, and
Lord Of The Rings of our time. For once, it was said, popular
culture’s drive forward wouldn’t stop when the second millennium did.
Roman Harwin (born Raymond Harlan, name changed the day the bombs
fell) was a hanger-on to one of history’s great romances, the dreaded
third wheel on the bicycle of love. He was a scam artist whose chief
use to Cochrane was his ability to keep creditors and thieves not of
his caliber at bay. He wrote one series that would have proven as
plagiaristic in court, had any descendants of the stolen work’s
original author survived the great conflict. The other merely lifted
whole cloth from the eschatological legend of the Ancient Destroyer Of
Worlds. He grew disgusted by his own works, and in the end had control
over neither.
Most history books tell us the former version. The latter one came
from Harwin himself. I was privileged to meet him at Uncle Zef’s
funeral, somber though it was. I actually asked him if his two great
characters, Mary Sue Johnson and Ebeniel, would ever meet in one of
his future works. I cannot forget what he said.
*Kid, don’t you think Ebeniel has suffered enough?*
To my mind, he had put together something so awesome, and in fact had
done it twice. No young adult goes through those tween/early teen
years without having some powerful memories of Miss Johnson saving the
day, or crying just a little when his future love Cruxadia at last
frees Ebeniel from Dukes’ Keep, held there by The Children Of The Old
Dragon for a long hard decade.
He played a part in our species’ re-launch from the ashes, and
authored two series that will not ever be forgotten. But in his own
mind, Roman Harwin was still that same desperate man whose efforts to
skip his debts were aided by a near-miss with Judgment Day. Our
Academy is filled to the brim with people who never stopped reading
his works, who strive and explore because of what he gave us. We could
never hope to be the with-it wizard Mary Sue was, or the eternally
resilient, optimistic and seeming immortal Ebeniel was. But thanks to
Harwin, we could dream.
SENIOR CADET JONATHAN HENRY ARCHER
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2230
Needless to say, Harwin’s works have touched a great many. I fear that
I never saw it. Perhaps it was my unsentimental upbringing, or perhaps
it was a wave of deconstructionism that took apart the classical
literary world after the Klingon conflict. People who had seen modern
war in space no longer wanted to see it gloried, and Mary Sue Johnson
seemed to personify bloodless victories won all through smarts and
tech.
Since the creation and existence of The Hidden Prince was the author’s
own pot-shot at Mary Sue Johnson, I choose to place it outside the
focus of this report. While disturbing in great part and unabashedly
part and parcel of the periodic end-of–days nonsense, Ebeniel’s tale
is never presented as anything but a broad fantasy. Not so for Mary
Sue Johnson.
After Lillian Alfred rejected Harwin in favor of their partner,
Cochrane, he was said to have become further depressed by reading a
surviving science fiction story called ‘The Cold Equations’. Angered
at the heroine’s brutal but necessary fate, it is said that he sat
down for a month and churned out an alternate version wherein her tech
savvy nature enabled her to make the ship she stowed away on more
efficient, and the wary crew became her optimistic boosters as she saw
her distant brother and then became, as the title suggested, ‘First
Teenager In Space’.
When the Cochranes, visiting their friend, were said to have loved it,
it was submitted to a publishing house that was one of the first to
rebuild by recycling the gigatons of reclaimable paper for use until
technology could be restored to most areas.
It sold so many copies, the Vulcan Ambassador gave in and provided
Terrans with the ability to restore E-Reader networks. The story of
his price for doing so being a signed copy is likely apocryphal. But
not only were E-Readers brought back, so was the old rule that a
successful piece of mass entertainment must have a sequel. He later
swore on everything he held dear that, had he known, he would never
have done it.
The girl who had desperately reasoned out a way to save her own hide
in Book One became the expert at alien contact in Book Two. In Book
Three, she became an accidental battle-master. In Book Four, a curer
of plagues. And so on. By the time of the fourteenth and final book,
she helped the fractious planets join together to form a more perfect
union. Harwin’s restrictive contract at an end, he bolted to the
second publishing house to open in the post-war period, and there
began his tales of Ebeniel, who failed majorly at least once per
volume. After that first-attempt ‘new series’ of Mary Sue Johnson
novels fell flat before the second volume could even be considered,
Harwin released his so-called ‘real’ ending.
Mary Sue Johnson walked out of an airlock to save resources for the
first baby born aboard her ship. The crew that had so loved her
(disturbingly for her age, in some cases, this was literal) lost all
direction and purpose, and returned to being a simple freighter.
I can’t blame the first publisher. Their aim was to sell books. The
sad part is, they might have had something, had they made Johnson a
real teenager. As it stands, her name is now synonymous with obnoxious
know-it-all outsiders who will somehow make right what experienced
professionals never could. It is a sad legacy, whether as a would-be
Federation founder or a fragile pretty thing that shattered when the
air ran out of the absurd idea of a child doing what a grown person
has failed at.
Nowadays, even children the same age as she was in those stories
deride the figure’s inability to keep it real. I believe that says it
all.
FIFTH-YEAR CADET CHRISTOPHER PIKE
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2251
I will be the first to admit I never understood the hatred for Mary
Sue Johnson, expressed to this day in so many endless chat-pods, some
named for just this purpose. She was doing what every kid dreams of,
and carrying the youthful enthusiasm that everyone wishes they could
keep.
I won’t cast aspersions or paint with broad strokes, but I have to
believe at least some of those who cast and paint on her are prime
examples of what my grandmother called sour grapes.
If I have venom for Roman Harwin, it is reserved for the excesses of
his second, far more widely and openly praised series, The Hidden
Prince. Taking place in a pseudo-Arthurian world that is equal parts
Tolkien, Stephen King, Rowling and Peter Beagle, whose ghost I hope
haunted the writer for this derivative work, it has ambition it
frankly never meets. I personally am glad Starfleet cut the academic
term from seven to four years. Otherwise, I might have time to re-read
this series, of a world where the villains are child-rapists, and the
heroes are dithering idiots, blind or both.
This is a world where two children are forced to rescue victims who
has already long since drowned, said victims being creation and
civilization. The messianic analogies, while frequent, are also never
followed through on. It often comes across as though the author is
still punishing Miss Johnson by way of the way the heroes, Ebeniel and
Cruxadia, are treated.
First of all, Ebeniel is lied to in nearly every way there was, so
often, I think that Luke Skywalker would concede that mantle to him
gladly. Lied to about his prowess and strength by the parents that
raised him. Lied to about who his real father was. Never told about
the Prophecy Of God’s Stone (which, perhaps, he should have figured
out from his name). The list goes on ad nauseum, ad infinitum, and it
grows rapidly with each volume. Ebeniel is supposed to be a hero, the
ultimate hero, and yet he leaves a trail of blood and bodies behind
him, and we are supposed to assume that every last enemy he and
Cruxadia take out is wholly corrupt and all kinds of irredeemable.
Cruxadia is no better off. Her grandfather, the Lord High Peacemaker,
constantly betrays the values he is supposed to live by with his
sending the children to do battle against The Children Of The Old
Dragon. Worse still, he fails to tell Cruxadia that it was his own son
who fathered her under humiliating circumstances. A silent shame makes
this princess think she is a barely-tolerated guest in her own
ancestral house.
After a dismal past, Humans are still overcoming the self-esteem
problems a young woman can have, based on culture and mores. Cruxadia
takes this back eight hundred or more years. She spends endless hours
trying to get her unknown amnesiac father to notice her.
While characters in-story and some readers fretted when she began a
relationship with the rescued Ebeniel, his was the first positive,
unfiltered attention she ever received on a consistent basis. Even
their sweet relationship, though, is pock-marked with a sub-text the
author apparently refused to think through the ramifications of.
The text hems and haws on the subject, but it becomes clear, and
Harwin had the decency to confirm, that the ‘great and grim
brutalization’ suffered by the heroes as young children was rape.
Possibly gang rape. The author then runs with this awful theme by
having the Dukes in the Children Of The Old Dragon develop a chicken-
hawk mentality, at one point seemingly having all the Knights-In-
Waiting (thankfully egalitarian in its gender membership) as their
playthings. Yet this is the generation that must be prepared to fight
the Old Dragon when he truly comes.
Why most of these, and especially Ebeniel and Cruxadia, are not
ravening psychopaths by the time of the apocalypse is beyond
comprehension. They suffer neglect benign and malign, massive abuse,
and the eternal self-interest trumping all as regards the adults
around them. That they keep their faith and love is not heartening, it
is a writer’s weak-kneed contrivance.
Lowest of all is their supposed inspiration and adoptive (secretly
blood in Ebeniel’s case) adoptive father, Canaan, The Sailor King,
renowned explorer and great hero. We are supposed to think him the
greatest of all heroes, yet he fails his children in an epic way.
How can he be called a leader, when he fails to see that Bene’, his
regent and first mate, is Cruxadia’s own father, and that more, hidden
memories of past shame are enervating this man, his good right hand?
How can he be called a great lover when patient Freida is left to wait
for decades while serving as a surrogate mother for the two children?
How can he be called a hero when he fails to see the treachery of
those who dwell in Dukes’ Keep?
What is he to these children, these kids who have to do the heavy
lifting of stopping the great dragon? He is—largely absent. That is
not a good father. It’s not even an uncle.
In this reader’s opinion, give me Mary Sue’s honestly obnoxious offers
of unwanted help over ‘glorious’ tales of children on the verge of
cracking and the adults who can’t be bothered to save or even help
them.
SECOND-YEAR CADET JAMES T. KIRK, SUBMITTED, CLASS OF
PROFESSOR JOHN GILL
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2181
There is no conflict between Roman Harwin’s two series of novels, save
in the minds of those who need there to be such.
Who is Mary Sue Johnson, but the epitome of our desire as children to
live out the dream that starts with ‘if only they’d let me’ and ends
with ‘then I’d show them’?
Who are Ebeniel and Cruxadia, but the reality that bumps up against
that old dream, magnified into nightmare by our seemingly dashed hopes
and our seemingly realized worst fears?
Critics always forget that Mary Sue, for all her pushiness and manic
energy, is the one who had the strength to leave the nest early. She
is fearless, and offers her opinion even when it seems certain she is
to be tossed in manacles for doing so. She boldly goes forward. People
seem to resent her for being able to do the things that the mere
thought of paralyzes them.
Likewise, whereas we know that expecting Ebeniel (named for a
fictional archangel, The Rock Of God) and Cruxadia (named by Bene’ for
the cross his captors broke him on when he was forced to sire the
girl) to walk through the blood and fire while keeping pure and sane
is absurd, it is an absurdity we want. Who wouldn’t like to know that,
when facing grim fate or a sadistic tormentor, it is in fact you who
is taking their measure?
In the end, Mary Sue either brings order to lawless space once and
for all, or dies saving a new life, depending on which interpretation
you follow. In the end, Eben and Cru beat the Old Dragon and undo all
his satanic works. What does it tell a young adult in these series’
targeted audience demographic? That you can pull it out. Having it
good doesn’t mean you’ll be soft, and having it bad doesn’t mean
you’ll become a monster.
If the first series is too bloodless and dry, and the second too
bloodied and wet (some scenes between Eben and Cru push the boundaries
of the age group’s limits for content) then let them each be read only
by those who enjoy them. I enjoy them both, and for good measure, I
enjoy the later, post-Harwin series, Infinity, which has the three
heroes meet at last across a dimensional barrier.
In it, Johnson wonders if she could live as hard a life as they have,
while Ebeniel and Cruxadia wonder if they could live in such a
peaceful place as hers without wrecking with their violent ways. Their
crowning moment, groaned at by some, is when they prevent the act of
nuclear terrorism that wiped Oklahoma City off the map in April of
1995. Most forget that they chose between this and saving the doomed
passengers in the Presidential motorcade in the Dallas of 1963. The
needs of the many, outweighing the needs of the few. Isn’t that
supposed to be heroism, the stuff of tough choices?
For those critics of either or both, there are enough in-jokes that
incorporate those criticisms to satisfy the crustiest curmudgeon.
RICHARD GRAYSON, FIRST-YEAR CADET
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Hitting the send button, the young man who was publicly known as the
distant cousin of Lady Amanda Grayson of Vulcan saw Saavik Brianna
Kirk return from her nightly patrols of the activities of the vile
‘Cadet-Masters’ appointed by Admiralty Hall. She asked a question.
“You finished your book series’ analysis?”
Peter Kirk relaxed around the only person on campus who knew him
outside of the false identity constructed for him by the efforts of
Captain Kirk, Commander Uhura and Ambassador Sarek. ‘Richard Grayson’
was apparently also an ‘in-joke’ of some kind, but Peter had not yet
bothered to research it.
“The instructor wanted it shortened. She said too many cadets try and
make these things into political or philosophical dissertations. She
said flatly that Uncle Jim had been one of the worst in that regard.
But that was said with a smile, so I didn’t challenge it.”
“Peter—will you write mine?”
He sighed, and agreed to aid the one he loved best of all—but not
before picking her brain on her desired subject, the works of Stephen
King, from Carrie to The Dark Tower, tragically unfinished due to a
fatal accident in 1999.
Through the long night, two of the first young people ever to ride in
a starship talked of adventures they would never have, of love and
hate-groups like the Order Of The Ancient Destroyer, and of how to
fulfill their strange destinies as the Rock Of Prophecy, meant to slay
the beast, King Ghidorah.
Their lives, apart and together had been and would be both insanely
horrific and full of moments of unparalleled heroism. Through it all,
no one would ever call them perfect, but yet they were the ones for
the job, and their primary inspiration would be seven heroes aboard a
starship called Enterprise, whose distance diminished them not at all.