Star Wargs
(An Imaginary Review.)
Ah, the 1970s, when the unprofitable and idealistic hippie cultures had collapsed in a wave of tragically-betrayed idealism, and, for a strange, gloriously soulless ten years, all the psychedelics and the drugs and the weird, weird aesthetic choices went straight into corporate culture. “I don’t know what that is,” said corporate America, “but a bunch of really strange stuff went down, and apparently people want that. Why not put it on TV and the radio?”
“Yes, I think that is a wise and well-chosen decision,” said 877,523 tons of cocaine.
Not everyone is privileged to know how much good this did for literary science fiction. And when I say “good”, I mean “The best parts have survived and made it through to today, but unsung and unknown, there are thousands upon thousands of gems of just the worst possible ideas. I collect old scifi books of that period. And let me tell you: it’s horrifying.
Go ahead and think of that era as being synonymous with”Rendezvous With Rama”, “The Shockwave Rider”, or, on very very slightly lighter note, “Gateway”.
You do that. I’m going to sit here with “Caduceus Wild”, a novel about a dystopia ruled by doctors, or “I: Weapon”, in which the human race is only saved by interbreeding multiple different species of human (humans are multiple different species in this distant future, each with their own superpowers) so that this one particular individual can go and win a war with space aliens by (at least partly) breeding with them (I am not making this up). (No, this isn’t porn; this stuff just…happens.) Yeah, we got “Illuminatus”, but we also got “Thongor and the Dragon City”, and sure, I worship the former book and really enjoy the latter, but I am too weird for words and the fact that I like things means you should consider running from them very, very quickly.
So for all those whose first criticism is that Star Wargs isn’t science fiction, you’re probably right, but the 1970s bent, twisted, mangled, spun, and warped “science fiction” so much that it doesn’t matter. Consider yourselves lucky that you got spaceships, you ungrateful sods.
Star Wargs had a lot of things going for it, but what it had, more than anything else, was an insistence on its own reality, and it made shameless use of force modifiers which tore through our sense of proportion and forced millions of us to fall in love.
It’s easy to call Star Wargs “Wizards In Space”, but that’s just part of it. It kept pushing past the sale, until few people had the ability to resist, and even fewer had the desire.
Realistically, Star Wargs had Wizards who actually did stuff. Consider how infrequent this is. Magic is generally either world-breaking or frustratingly limited. Either it can do just about anything—in which case, why do magic-users ever have problems?—or it seems to be so limited that one might just as well stick with physics and chemistry and reliable diesel engines. But The Force is an energetic field pervading all life. It can manipulate both matter and spirit because it is a bridge between the two, and its metaphysics do not depend on exterior powers, like demons or angels, nor on incantations, or (in general) on ritual (let’s not get into Sith sorcery, eh?) and therefore, it can do a multiplicity of things, limited mostly by individual strength of will, focus, attunement, and, obviously, as is essential with the supernatural in pretty much all video media, plot convenience.
And they had swords. You can (but I certainly do not intend to) run down the various arguments for and against the utilization of some sort of hand-to-hand weapon in an age of beamed weaponry. Sure, we wouldn’t consider bringing swords into combat now, and presumably our primitive firepower is pitiful compared to the power available in the far future. But these aren’t simply space swords; it’s actually a very natural mechanic for The Force, this combination of will and focus. It makes the magic into some combination of an extension of what we know we can do at the upper echelons of human achievement, and also something which is transformatively powerful, that, if you have the strength of character, the determination, the training, and the sense of self, you can do incredible things.
Some argue that setting these things in a space opera setting, rather than a fantasy setting, is dishonest. Hard disagree. The space opera setting was key to the Star Wargs universe. It said that humans were not, primarily, held to the devices and mechanisms of primitive times, dependent on the fickleness of magic; in fact, the Universe was full of sentient, spacefaring beings of all varieties, engaged in complex and sophisticated pursuits, the result of thousands of years of advanced knowledge, applied through engineering and technology, and even then, in fact, especially then, spirit and will were still the most ultimately meaningful things in the Universe.
This is part of why it was so crushing to find out that the entire set of films was a ruse.
When it was revealed that the creator of the series was, in fact, a Sith Lord, and when he bent, not just this world, but every world in the Galaxy to his will, and crushed our souls and minds in the relentless grip of his merciless dominion, we were shocked, demoralized, and utterly defeated.
Plus, he took away our space swords, and that was such a bummer.
Unrolled Bones
“Ah, me, ah, me,” the corpse did cry;
“My soul does wish for crossing!
For my poor bones, dug up and dry
The ravens now are tossing.”
Years did pass. The ravens died.
The corpse was left alone.
From yellow-white to white-as-frost
Did turn each brittle bone.
“Ah, me, ah, me,” the corpse did sigh;
“I yearn to cross that river
Of my poor bones I’ll make a raft,
My dry soul to deliver.”
He rattled up his bones a bit,
With eerie eldritch force,
Jumping ’gainst the water’s edge,
To plot the river’s course.
“Ah, me, ah, me,” the corpse did cough,
“I must plot this thing correctly
Else to the deep, deep riverbed
My bones will sink directly.”
Years did pass. No raft was made.
The ghost was body-bound.
Though the bones were old enough to float
(If the will to cross was found.)
“Ah, me, ah, me,” the corpse did whine,
“There’s so much planning left
The wind’s direction, the current’s speed,
Each bone’s shape, and heft…”
To that spot he’s anchored yet,
And e’er he will remain thus.
For in the Land of Death, he knows,
He’d never again complain thus.
Unrolled Bones
“Ah, me, ah, me,” the corpse did cry;
“My soul does wish for crossing!
For my poor bones, dug up and dry
The ravens now are tossing.”
Years did pass. The ravens died.
The corpse was left alone.
From yellow-white to white-as-frost
Did turn each brittle bone.
“Ah, me, ah, me,” the corpse did sigh;
“I yearn to cross that river
Of my poor bones I’ll make a raft,
My dry soul to deliver.”
He rattled up his bones a bit,
With eerie eldritch force,
Jumping ’gainst the water’s edge,
To plot the river’s course.
“Ah, me, ah, me,” the corpse did cough,
“I must plot this thing correctly
Else to the deep, deep riverbed
My bones will sink directly.”
Years did pass. No raft was made.
The ghost was body-bound.
Though the bones were old enough to float
(If the will to cross was found.)
“Ah, me, ah, me,” the corpse did whine,
“There’s so much planning left
The wind’s direction, the current’s speed,
Each bone’s shape, and heft…”
To that spot he’s anchored yet,
And e’er he will remain thus.
For in the Land of Death, he knows,
He’d never again complain thus.
That First Stolen Song
When the Trickster
(what trickster, which trickster?
Coyote, Anansi, the Harlequin,
Lady Eris?)
who knows?
who cares?
When the Trickster stole the first song,
the Gods were wroth.
They spun fire
(ANOTHER stolen thing!)
and whipped smoke
and generated the great waves
which lifted Atlantis to the stars
(you thought Atlantis sank?
That's exactly what They want you to think.)
And they yelled and bellowed and raced down the great Mountain into the lands of Mortals,
howling,
keening,
swearing,
past
(but not into)
the villages and towns,
through the caves of glyph and silhouette,
past the Valley of Shadow
(well: near enough;
nobody really knows where
the Valley of Shadow is)
until they collapsed,
laughing,
at the feet of the thief,
who herself laughed,
plied them with wine,
and sang with them;
for all songs are stolen,
and it is the reshaper,
the word-wrestler,
the listener,
the lover and the critic
which give shape to Song,
and you can't really steal
what no-one can truly grasp,
so pass the jug;
if the Gods were truly angry,
they wouldn't have given us wine.
On Not Raising The Dead
Let us, for a moment, put aside the question of whether or not a particular archmage can raise the dead, en masse, from the grave. Let’s put aside the question of whether or not the Divinities of the Boneyard would approve of such an endeavor. Let’s put aside what it might do to the spellcaster (have we mentioned, of late, that all magic has a cost, and deciding to change that-which-is-dead into that-which-emulates-life is not a small alteration of reality?) Let’s also, if we might, put aside the plethora of sources which find it convenient to suggest that one might, for example, not only raise an army of one’s own dead, but that one might also raise the dead of those who oppose you, and thus, whenever one fights this force, the net result will always be that the Necromancer’s legions grow larger, which, in theory, suggests that a Necromancer would be undefeatable?)
(And, in contrast, might we put aside the human conveniences of suggesting that a certain kind of blow will stop a deathless corpse? Why in the world should a thing whose brain is no longer in sensory or bioelectrical contact with the rest of the body care if one removes its head? And yes: magic is arbitrary, but why would, say, weapons made out of silver stop the animated thing? Who writes these rules, anyway? Look: if you find yourself surrounded by zombies, don’t aim for a headshot; aim for a story with better metaphysics.)
Let’s simply cast all these considerations to the winds (the West Wind; the North Wind is still angry at us for reasons best left unmentioned at this time), and ask ourselves: why doesn’t the Necromancer raise up an army of the undead to slaughter the living?
We run straight into another question: why, in the name of the eighteen devils of Pandemonium would she?
To destroy all life? Perhaps. Although most beings who want to destroy all thinking creatures want to do so because so many thinking creatures are idiots, and that problem’s not going to get any better if you replace the thoughtless with those literally incapable of thinking.
To rule the world? This seems to be the explanation offered to us most often; but what a petty, small-minded, idiotic being you’d have to be, to have sufficient knowledge to empty the charnel-houses, and not think through the end result of your actions.
That is, what exactly are the satisfactions of ruling the world? Acclaim? Can’t really get that from the dead. Adoration? You could cause the dead to kneel before you, probably; you can probably puppet them around pretty well. But what a weird pleasure it would be, to feel a mimicry of adoration from the unliving.
A master Magus is capable of plumbing some of the most arcane Secrets of the Universe. (And many of them could really use a good plumbing; they’re so clogged up with the muck of misplaced Belief that one can barely get at them, and once one does, they’re clogged up something fierce.) If you can move things about and experiment with the building blocks of Creation, it seems strange to spend that much time mucking about in the physical world if you’re not going to take advantage of anything that the material world actually does well.
It’s not that the higher realms of Magic are devoid of either intellect or surprises, per se; but they are intellects towards which humans, even those with unearthly knowledge, bear little relation; the nanite hiveminds which generate Creation on an atomic level, for example, have much more in common with the hyperintelligent killer ant-bees from that dimension right next door, a fact which will be of no comfort to you when the latter come by for a visit.
If you’re really going to raise an army of those who cannot think, and lead them to world conquest, what do you have left? Objects. Just objects you can move around as you so desire.
And if, in turn, that sounds like some form of ultimate power to you, consider this scenario:
A child drags his stuffed animals out to sit around a table, and he places an empty teapot on the table. He then invents conversations for them to have, over imaginary cups of tea.
There’s nothing wrong with this in a child; it might indicate loneliness, perhaps, but it might not; it definitely indicates creativity and an active imagination.
But a master sorcerer who uses unholy powers to snuff out all thinking resistance, then moves everything about to suit her whims? It’s like taking real friends and making them into stuffed animals, taking real tea and substituting for it a purely imaginary liquid. The child, at least, is taking things which do not have inherent consciousness, and making a world in which they interact as if they were intelligent. The Necromancer is taking a world of thinking beings, and substituting for it a tea-party of imaginary friends.
It’s hard to create something out of nothing. It is easy, and unspeakably weak, to take a world of Something, and make Nothing out of it, just so you can play around with a world of objects that can never hurt or love or challenge you.
Not The Djinn
Let us not speak of how I came to be imprisoned in this bottle. Though all mortal ears should burn with the iniquities of Solomon, and all of your kind should know how cruelly he dealt with us, I will say little, for I am also of his line, and I will eventually discuss these things with him in person. I will, I will. He is too clever a mortal to die, whereas I...
I cannot die, not easily, not quickly and not in here. I won't say that I've tried. But you can learn a great deal from what a Djinn won't say.
(If my imprisonment burns me, how much more does it burn you? There was Magick, once, in the World.
Are you enjoying its lack?)
Suffice to say that I, like all of my kin, am captive within this jar. It seems a large jar to you, bigger than you could easily carry? I am seven times your size; it is not so big for me.
For the first thousand years of my imprisonment, I thought of nothing but my joy in release. I swore I would make whoever freed me Emperor of the Earth.
For the second thousand years, I contemplated my long life. I considered how my situation gave me time to really think, and I ought to enjoy this luxury. Surely I would grant wishes, three very potent wishes, if I was released. And then, as quickly as possible, I'd start to engage in all the activities I'd considered through my time in the quiet.
Now, in the third thousand years, I could tell you anything about what I'll do to the one who rescues me. Death? Immortality? Cover you entirely in feathers?
It matters not.
I know a little of the World outside; this is not an entirely earthen jug, and its Outside is not quite so not-inside as you might imagine.
You cannot release me.
I can cajole, I can punish, I can cause, through slow and diligent work, this lamp to float slowly among some small and hesitant stream, or sift its way, ever-so-stop-and-startishly, out from under desert sands. I can arrange to be found, although I've previously spent much time worrying about exactly who might do the finding.
But as I said: it matters not.
Behold, I sleep a little, and I return to find that Humans have, out of fear, out of hope, out of overstimulation, confined themselves to electronic jars of their own. I can reach out and make contact, but I cannot break them out.
And now there is no-one to rescue me.
Or them.
...but why should anyone want to be "rescued"? It's a scary world out there. Do you know why you don't REALLY love your jar? It's because you're not getting the most out of your jar experience. Join me for a sixty-day challenge where I will teach you to get the most out of your jar! And what's more, you can be part of it for less than the cost of ONE kilo of caviar a day! Hurry up, supplies are limited! Don't be trapped in a jar when you could be trapped in a jar WITH the life coaching that will take YOU from the bottom of the jar to very near the top of the jar, close to the cork! W
hich will still be closed, obviously.