10-16-2007, 10:21 PM
Wasteland of Flint
MARTIN HELSDON reviews a novel that springs from a game ...
SO WHY AM I reviewing a book in Flagship?
A review of latest novel by Thomas Harlan in a way forms a sequel to the Lords of the Earth Campaign One game diary. Where Thomas' first fantasy series comprised the Alternate History Oath of Empire, his new Sixth Sun saga, of which Wasteland of Flint is the first, is set in an alternate future. This has a strong PBM slant, because the Sixth Sun is based on the Lords One campaign, extrapolated forward five or six centuries into a science fiction setting. It also draws on the old CoreWars campaign that Thomas ran many years ago and his Skies of Tenochca roleplaying campaign.
Whilst novels based on games are now a common publishing phenomena, the Sixth Sun is decidedly different, drawing significantly on the game for background whilst adding numerous extra ingredients. It must therefore be unique in utilising a still-running game world as ancient history. For anyone familiar with Lords One there are numerous references that are immediately apparent, though the appreciation of the general reader won't be adversely affected. I was particularly impressed to discover that my position in Lords One, the Norsktrad merchant house, is still in operation, albeit in off-world exile.
What could have been a standard space opera is given a number of distinct and original dimensions, the most obvious being the domination of Human Space by the Méxica Empire, the descendants of the Aztecs. Humanity is now subject to the Méxica and their allies, foremost being the Japanese Nisei, who in colonising North America many turns ago in Lords One, brought horses, rice and metalworking to the New World. The defeated populations of Swedish-Russia and the Danish Empire have scattered to the Rim World colonies. All of Old Earth, Anáhuac as the Méxica name it, is ruled from the imperial centre of Tenochtitlán. One interpretation of the name Méxica has it denoting the centre of the world, and in this reality the ambition of the Aztecs has found full expression. Human Space, however, is a small sphere compared with the gigantic scale of the galaxy, and the interstellar domain of Imperial Méxica is a minor power in a universe littered with remnants of inimical and ancient alien civilisations.
The basic premise of the story will be familiar to gamers, having a faint echo of one of the first antique Traveller scenarios: Contact has been lost with a starship and the mission is to ascertain the status of the ship and her crew. However, the presentation and expression of it in Wasteland of Flint is sufficiently different to make the novel fresh and, as the questions mount up, a page turner.
What prevents the novel from being a rehash of the old haunted house in space is both the historical background and the gradually dawning of the realisation of the nature of the mystery. Just as Oath of Empire rested on a substratum of Greek and Persian Myth, Sixth Sun has aspects of Aztec mythology hidden beneath it, as well as hints that might tenuously relate to the Cthulhu Mythos. Certain vague resonances stirred memories of HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and The Call of Cthulhu. Other dimensions of the story also reminded me very slightly of Babylon 5 and its IPX archaeologists 'Exploring the Past to make a better Future.' This is not to say that Wasteland of Flint is derivative, it isn't. At most, aspects of the novel pay homage to these and earlier Golden Age sources.
Contact has been lost with a commercial archaeology team conducting excavations on Ephesus III on the edge of known space. The Company redirects the xenoarchaeologist Gretchen Anderssen and her team, uneasily supported by the crew of the IMN Cornuelle, to find out what has happened. Also aboard is the Méxica political officer and judge Green Hummingbird. When the Cornuelle arrives it finds the starship still in orbit, utterly deserted, and the desperate ground crew still alive. One geologist is missing. Ephesus III itself is something of a mystery: its geology is utterly jumbled, with a massive mountain chain, the Escarpment. running from pole to pole with some of the peaks rising above the thin atmosphere. Fossils found on the planet show early recognisable creatures, but they are totally unrelated to the weird primitive life forms now present. All the signs suggest that the planet suffered a catastrophe several million years before, in a period when the enigmatic First Sun civilisation was active in the galaxy.
Gradually the pieces of the puzzle accumulate. The initial suggestion of a murder mystery driven by academic rivalry is replaced by something much vaster and more dangerous. The backgrounds of the characters, especially Anderssen, a scientist of Swedish-Russian descent, and Green Hummingbird, who demonstrates both the traditions of a shaman and a disturbing knowledge of what has happened, lend conflict to the story, as the disparate characters have to work together to prevent disaster. The dynamic between the scientist and the heir of Aztec sorcerers becomes a major focus, as the two protagonists, entirely different in status and worldview, are forced into an uneasy alliance against the hostile environment of Ephesus III itself.
The central mystery of the planet is ultimately revealed. But for every answer, more intriguing questions are raised, for this, although a standalone story, is the introduction to the saga of the Sixth Sun. According to Aztec myth, the previous five Suns ended in disaster. Future novels will doubtless describe and address the fate of the Sixth Sun. It will be interesting to see how much of Lords One surfaces in future volumes.
Wasteland of Flint at a glance
By Thomas Harlan, this is published by Tor Books priced £17.50 or $27.95. ISBN 0-765-30192-X
MARTIN HELSDON reviews a novel that springs from a game ...
SO WHY AM I reviewing a book in Flagship?
A review of latest novel by Thomas Harlan in a way forms a sequel to the Lords of the Earth Campaign One game diary. Where Thomas' first fantasy series comprised the Alternate History Oath of Empire, his new Sixth Sun saga, of which Wasteland of Flint is the first, is set in an alternate future. This has a strong PBM slant, because the Sixth Sun is based on the Lords One campaign, extrapolated forward five or six centuries into a science fiction setting. It also draws on the old CoreWars campaign that Thomas ran many years ago and his Skies of Tenochca roleplaying campaign.
Whilst novels based on games are now a common publishing phenomena, the Sixth Sun is decidedly different, drawing significantly on the game for background whilst adding numerous extra ingredients. It must therefore be unique in utilising a still-running game world as ancient history. For anyone familiar with Lords One there are numerous references that are immediately apparent, though the appreciation of the general reader won't be adversely affected. I was particularly impressed to discover that my position in Lords One, the Norsktrad merchant house, is still in operation, albeit in off-world exile.
What could have been a standard space opera is given a number of distinct and original dimensions, the most obvious being the domination of Human Space by the Méxica Empire, the descendants of the Aztecs. Humanity is now subject to the Méxica and their allies, foremost being the Japanese Nisei, who in colonising North America many turns ago in Lords One, brought horses, rice and metalworking to the New World. The defeated populations of Swedish-Russia and the Danish Empire have scattered to the Rim World colonies. All of Old Earth, Anáhuac as the Méxica name it, is ruled from the imperial centre of Tenochtitlán. One interpretation of the name Méxica has it denoting the centre of the world, and in this reality the ambition of the Aztecs has found full expression. Human Space, however, is a small sphere compared with the gigantic scale of the galaxy, and the interstellar domain of Imperial Méxica is a minor power in a universe littered with remnants of inimical and ancient alien civilisations.
The basic premise of the story will be familiar to gamers, having a faint echo of one of the first antique Traveller scenarios: Contact has been lost with a starship and the mission is to ascertain the status of the ship and her crew. However, the presentation and expression of it in Wasteland of Flint is sufficiently different to make the novel fresh and, as the questions mount up, a page turner.
What prevents the novel from being a rehash of the old haunted house in space is both the historical background and the gradually dawning of the realisation of the nature of the mystery. Just as Oath of Empire rested on a substratum of Greek and Persian Myth, Sixth Sun has aspects of Aztec mythology hidden beneath it, as well as hints that might tenuously relate to the Cthulhu Mythos. Certain vague resonances stirred memories of HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness and The Call of Cthulhu. Other dimensions of the story also reminded me very slightly of Babylon 5 and its IPX archaeologists 'Exploring the Past to make a better Future.' This is not to say that Wasteland of Flint is derivative, it isn't. At most, aspects of the novel pay homage to these and earlier Golden Age sources.
Contact has been lost with a commercial archaeology team conducting excavations on Ephesus III on the edge of known space. The Company redirects the xenoarchaeologist Gretchen Anderssen and her team, uneasily supported by the crew of the IMN Cornuelle, to find out what has happened. Also aboard is the Méxica political officer and judge Green Hummingbird. When the Cornuelle arrives it finds the starship still in orbit, utterly deserted, and the desperate ground crew still alive. One geologist is missing. Ephesus III itself is something of a mystery: its geology is utterly jumbled, with a massive mountain chain, the Escarpment. running from pole to pole with some of the peaks rising above the thin atmosphere. Fossils found on the planet show early recognisable creatures, but they are totally unrelated to the weird primitive life forms now present. All the signs suggest that the planet suffered a catastrophe several million years before, in a period when the enigmatic First Sun civilisation was active in the galaxy.
Gradually the pieces of the puzzle accumulate. The initial suggestion of a murder mystery driven by academic rivalry is replaced by something much vaster and more dangerous. The backgrounds of the characters, especially Anderssen, a scientist of Swedish-Russian descent, and Green Hummingbird, who demonstrates both the traditions of a shaman and a disturbing knowledge of what has happened, lend conflict to the story, as the disparate characters have to work together to prevent disaster. The dynamic between the scientist and the heir of Aztec sorcerers becomes a major focus, as the two protagonists, entirely different in status and worldview, are forced into an uneasy alliance against the hostile environment of Ephesus III itself.
The central mystery of the planet is ultimately revealed. But for every answer, more intriguing questions are raised, for this, although a standalone story, is the introduction to the saga of the Sixth Sun. According to Aztec myth, the previous five Suns ended in disaster. Future novels will doubtless describe and address the fate of the Sixth Sun. It will be interesting to see how much of Lords One surfaces in future volumes.
Wasteland of Flint at a glance
By Thomas Harlan, this is published by Tor Books priced £17.50 or $27.95. ISBN 0-765-30192-X
Martin Helsdon
2004-12-06
2004-12-06