![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
House of Cards
Did you know there were Farscape novels? I didn't.
Let me just say now that I don't comprehend the mentality of a writer who says, "Oh, I love this show. I know, I'll write a novel about it, get it published, and make money off it." It's just so far outside the way I think that I can't get a handle on it. And it's apparently what Keith R. A. DeCandido, author of Farscape novel House of Cards, does on a regular basis. I can't tell from his bio in the back that he's ever even published any original fiction, but he has published Buffy, Doctor Who, Marvel Comics, Xena, Herc, and a drenload of Trek--but I probably could have guessed he was a trekkie from the novel itself; on page 190 there's a reference to a spare parts dealer finally unloading a crate of stembolts. Deep Space Nine, "Progress," anyone?
Jesus. Can I be this guy when I grow up? Seriously. Publishing a load of fanfic and... yeah. Just, yeah.
DeCandido notes that his novel is intended to occur between the season two episodes "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "The Locket," but outside of a few references to Scorpy's interest in Crichton (DeCandido has Crichton say on page 198 that Scorpy is "warm for my form"--yay for the evil naughty slash!) the novel read very first season to me. This was mostly in Crichton's characterization--he seemed too upbeat to be post-torture Crichton; everyone else kept belittling his Earthisms in a way that had kind of faded by that point in season two, I think; most importantly, Harvey put in no appearances whatsoever. You'd think if DeCandido went out of his way to mention that this was right after "Won't Get Fooled Again," in which Harvey came out to Crichton and fully admitted his presence and purpose in Crichton's head, that Harvey might at least rate a mention.
But then, this wasn't really a Crichton story, even though he came through with the solution to planetary ecological problems. It was an ensemble story, with probably the most emphasis on Aeryn and Rygel.
Rygel bids Moya in a card game, loses her, and then, while everyone else is working off his debt, politicks around with various ruling members of the Vegas planet. Okay, so it's not a lot of development and personal growth, but he does have a fairly big role, especially in his own eyes.
Aeryn runs into an exiled PK tech whose dishonorable discharge she was responsible for, and also must impersonate a PK lieutenant, and therefore gets all regretful and self-hating and really, really drunk, which doesn't actually strike me as terribly in character. Getting drunk off her ass seems more a, I don't know, Chiana thing to do, or maybe a John thing (after all, he did keep sniffing that forget-me drug Noranti gave him).
Chiana, D'Argo, and Zhaan remain cut off from everyone else through most of the story. Zhaan catalogues some flora and pretty easily escapes yet another plant collector. D'Argo has to bodyguard this guy named Licit, who's not important to the story at all, and D'Argo drops out of the novel about halfway through. Chiana goes out drinking with the character whose sole purpose was to get them to the Vegas planet, then vanish. At least Chiana gets another short scene towards the end of the novel--Pilot and Moya ask her to give a eulogy to a dead biotech ship, victim of ecological disaster overhanging all the exchanges in the novel.
Considering the importance of this ecological problem, the solution--and Crichton, who solves it--get short shrift. In order to cut out the technobabble you know DeCandido's trekkie side wrote up in an early draft, but knew wouldn't fit into the Farscapeverse, Crichton's solution gets about three lines, two of which are Rygel's, while bargaining with a Casino owner for payment of the debt and their freedom, and one of which is interrupted by Aeryn's impatience with anything scientific, and hey, another season one thing, 'cause wasn't Aeryn's bias there supposed to have lessened sometime around "Thank God It's Friday Again"?
Okay, maybe I'm just a Crichton whore, pissed he's not getting his due.
But I do think Crichton's reasons for wanting to put the solution to good use rather than keep the Vegas planet cut off from the Peacekeepers are surprisingly shallow--he tells Aeryn he won't destroy an idea that only he, a Terran, could have come up with. Again, it feels first season--maybe around "Jeremiah Crichton" when he just feels like he can't fit in. I kept waiting for him to say, "And it's not fair to this planet to make them continue to suffer from this ecological disaster when I can fix it" but he never did. And I think even first season Crichton would have said that.
On the whole, I think I've found a lot of better "amateur" fanfic.
Let me just say now that I don't comprehend the mentality of a writer who says, "Oh, I love this show. I know, I'll write a novel about it, get it published, and make money off it." It's just so far outside the way I think that I can't get a handle on it. And it's apparently what Keith R. A. DeCandido, author of Farscape novel House of Cards, does on a regular basis. I can't tell from his bio in the back that he's ever even published any original fiction, but he has published Buffy, Doctor Who, Marvel Comics, Xena, Herc, and a drenload of Trek--but I probably could have guessed he was a trekkie from the novel itself; on page 190 there's a reference to a spare parts dealer finally unloading a crate of stembolts. Deep Space Nine, "Progress," anyone?
Jesus. Can I be this guy when I grow up? Seriously. Publishing a load of fanfic and... yeah. Just, yeah.
DeCandido notes that his novel is intended to occur between the season two episodes "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "The Locket," but outside of a few references to Scorpy's interest in Crichton (DeCandido has Crichton say on page 198 that Scorpy is "warm for my form"--yay for the evil naughty slash!) the novel read very first season to me. This was mostly in Crichton's characterization--he seemed too upbeat to be post-torture Crichton; everyone else kept belittling his Earthisms in a way that had kind of faded by that point in season two, I think; most importantly, Harvey put in no appearances whatsoever. You'd think if DeCandido went out of his way to mention that this was right after "Won't Get Fooled Again," in which Harvey came out to Crichton and fully admitted his presence and purpose in Crichton's head, that Harvey might at least rate a mention.
But then, this wasn't really a Crichton story, even though he came through with the solution to planetary ecological problems. It was an ensemble story, with probably the most emphasis on Aeryn and Rygel.
Rygel bids Moya in a card game, loses her, and then, while everyone else is working off his debt, politicks around with various ruling members of the Vegas planet. Okay, so it's not a lot of development and personal growth, but he does have a fairly big role, especially in his own eyes.
Aeryn runs into an exiled PK tech whose dishonorable discharge she was responsible for, and also must impersonate a PK lieutenant, and therefore gets all regretful and self-hating and really, really drunk, which doesn't actually strike me as terribly in character. Getting drunk off her ass seems more a, I don't know, Chiana thing to do, or maybe a John thing (after all, he did keep sniffing that forget-me drug Noranti gave him).
Chiana, D'Argo, and Zhaan remain cut off from everyone else through most of the story. Zhaan catalogues some flora and pretty easily escapes yet another plant collector. D'Argo has to bodyguard this guy named Licit, who's not important to the story at all, and D'Argo drops out of the novel about halfway through. Chiana goes out drinking with the character whose sole purpose was to get them to the Vegas planet, then vanish. At least Chiana gets another short scene towards the end of the novel--Pilot and Moya ask her to give a eulogy to a dead biotech ship, victim of ecological disaster overhanging all the exchanges in the novel.
Considering the importance of this ecological problem, the solution--and Crichton, who solves it--get short shrift. In order to cut out the technobabble you know DeCandido's trekkie side wrote up in an early draft, but knew wouldn't fit into the Farscapeverse, Crichton's solution gets about three lines, two of which are Rygel's, while bargaining with a Casino owner for payment of the debt and their freedom, and one of which is interrupted by Aeryn's impatience with anything scientific, and hey, another season one thing, 'cause wasn't Aeryn's bias there supposed to have lessened sometime around "Thank God It's Friday Again"?
Okay, maybe I'm just a Crichton whore, pissed he's not getting his due.
But I do think Crichton's reasons for wanting to put the solution to good use rather than keep the Vegas planet cut off from the Peacekeepers are surprisingly shallow--he tells Aeryn he won't destroy an idea that only he, a Terran, could have come up with. Again, it feels first season--maybe around "Jeremiah Crichton" when he just feels like he can't fit in. I kept waiting for him to say, "And it's not fair to this planet to make them continue to suffer from this ecological disaster when I can fix it" but he never did. And I think even first season Crichton would have said that.
On the whole, I think I've found a lot of better "amateur" fanfic.