The Synopsis Treasury
Page 13
Walden promises the skeptical Frinn all the help possible in stemming the spread of the virus, but it might be too late. Starships have already lifted for the Frinn’s homeworld, taking along many of the infected crew—but not in isolation. The Frinn have a moderately well developed medical science but have not encountered engineered plague. The idea of developing such a weapon of war seems inconceivable to them. In this, Walden can share their bemusement.
15 The Frinn Walden has captured reluctantly reveals his name: Uvallae. He wants to believe Walden’s theory about what happened, but events show a different motivation for the humans. Zacharias has cut through the center of the station, laying waste to everything as he goes. Sorbatchin has taken a patrol on a seek-and-destroy mission killing hundreds of Frinn.
16 Walden tries to convince Uvallae this is a horrible mistake and that a bigger threat has been created. The Frinn might wipe out their homeworld by trying to tend those who fell ill on Swann.
The first thing Walden must do is call off Zacharias’s attack. To do this he reunites with the soldier’s armored force. Uvallae comes along, more a prisoner than an ally. He is still leery of Walden’s motives, even though Egad has tried to convince the Frinn of the humans’ true intentions.
17 Zacharias had begun a hunt for Walden, needing the scientist’s expertise. Sorbatchin has located a laboratory and the soldier is afraid the Sov-Lat might learn something that can be turned against the NAA. Walden marvels at how long-term animosity can continue, even in the midst of a battle with aliens. And it is all misguided.
18 Before they can reach Sorbatchin, the Frinn automated fighters attack in strength. Zacharias is killed, along with most of the human soldiers. Walden, Uvallae, Egad and a handful of others escape. They blunder through the station, finding only damage and dead bodies, both Frinn and human. They find a tight knot of Frinn in what Walden believes to be Starlight’s control center. The humans extensively use computer-controlled equipment. The Frinn have gone even farther in their automation. As a result, it is difficult for them to reprogram the station to respond quickly to the unexpected human invasion.
19 Walden tries to convince the Frinn that a truce is in everyone’s benefit and that it has all been a ghastly mistake. Uvallae proves the deciding factor. He argues the human’s case. Walden is unsure how the Frinn arrive at the decision to stop fighting, but they do. He contacts Miko Nakamura and tells her what has happened. She stops the wild pillaging that Sorbatchin is engaged in.
20 The Frinn feel that they have surrendered and are prisoners. Walden insists that they are not. The research team from the Hippocrates enters the station and begins trying to save as many of the wounded as possible. That the human scientists work as diligently on the aliens as on their own sways opinion among the Frinn.
However, when Walden suggests that the Hippocrates continue to the Frinn homeworld and aid in stopping the infinity plague, he encounters more than a little resistance. It takes considerable work to win over the Frinn into a hesitant acceptance that the plague might kill their entire race and that only the humans can stop it. Even in their rank, the infinity plague is working. Walden and Anita Tarelton work to find a cure—or even a way of slowing the effects of the plague.
21 Their research is strained by their personal feelings. Anita feels that Walden maneuvered Zacharias into a position where he would be killed. Not even Egad can convince her that Walden acted to save Zacharias rather than kill him. She aligns herself more closely with Sorbatchin, who plays on this to keep his human enemies divided.
They manage to come up with a stopgap measure that will halt the unravelling of the alien DNA and innoculate all those aboard Starlight. For many aliens it is too late; they die. But the survivors are protected for the time, if not entirely safe. Walden must delve into the function of the extra alien chromosomes to get an idea about how the infinity plague works.
To Uvallae and the surviving Frinn, Walden has proven himself. However, it is apparent that Colonel Sorbatchin—and Miko—are not friendly toward the Frinn. They view the aliens as enemies and the plague as a chance to reap huge gains.
Jerome Walden will continue working to find a cure for the plague. Uvallae reluctantly agrees to give Captain Telford the coordinates of the Frinn homeworld. The alien realizes that his race’s only hope for survival lies with Walden.
But the soldiers.…
***
Orson Scott Card
(Photo by Terry Manier)
Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools. His most recent series, the young adult Pathfinder series (Pathfinder, Ruins, Visitors) and the fantasy Mithermages series (Lost Gate, Gate Thief) are taking readers in new directions.
Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts, including his “freshened” Shakespeare scripts for Romeo & Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice.
Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.
Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card, where his primary activities are writing a review column for the local Rhinoceros Times and feeding birds, squirrels, chipmunks, possums, and raccoons on the patio.
I first came up with the Columbus project when I read a fascinating biography of Columbus, and then several other books that attacked Columbus as some kind of devil because he was not sufficiently “modern” and “enlightened” in his attitude toward the natives of the lands he discovered.
What astonished me was the naked hypocrisy of Columbus’s critics. Columbus was vilified for not being understanding of cultures and languages different from his own; yet his critics seemed oblivious to the fact that in so judging him, they, too, were being just as contemptuous of cultures and languages different from their own—namely, Columbus’s.
I wanted to write a novel that would view Columbus from his own perspective, but I realized that would not be sufficient. What I needed to do was write a novel that would take into account all the anti-European viewpoints that absolutely condemn the European conquest of the Americas, and find, not the opposite view, but a middle ground that would recognize how culture clashes can be destructive but, with wise management and reasonable doses of good will, the destruction can be averted or ameliorated.
Thus I hit upon the idea of having time travelers, who were intending to intervene to stop Columbus’s discovery of America, realize that Columbus’s discovery was actually prompted by previous time travelers who wanted him to discover America when he did in order to avert the worst event in THEIR history: the Aztec (or post-Aztec) discovery of Europe.
Since this project required a mechanism for time travel, I fitted it in with a story that I was already working on about Noah’s flood. I wrote a version of that story called “Atlantis,” using Kemal as a character who discovers the true location of Noah’s flood. So I worked him into the story as one of the time travelers.
Originally, though, I still intended the bulk of the novel to be about Columbus’s fascinating life. Instead, the story of the time travelers became my focus, mostly because in the story I was telling, Columbus was relatively passive, reacting to what others told him, while the time travelers were the ones making the hard choices and the deep sacrifices. They were therefore the more interesting characters (that is, if I succeeded in writing them well enough).
So between the outline and the execution, Columbus was reduced to se
veral key vignettes from his life, a few of his preexisting relationships; Columbus became, in Alfred Hitchcock’s words, the “maguffin” in the time travelers’ story.
The plan had been to publish this novel in 1991, so the paperback would come out in 1992, in time for the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of America.
But no publisher is so good they can publish a novel that doesn’t yet exist, and since I didn’t finish writing the book until too late for that publishing schedule, when I finally did finish it, it sat with my publisher for more than two years.
Not that the book went unread during that time. I had uploaded the entire manuscript to the area I maintained with AOL in those pre-Internet days, and about five hundred people downloaded it and read it in manuscript (free of charge). I only took it down from the site when the hardcover was finally published.
The reason the publisher waited so long was a good one: All the hooplah and anti-Columbus rhetoric of the quincentennial had made it highly unlikely that any book about Columbus, whether pro- or anti-, would do anything other than disappear. By waiting, and by having Columbus mentioned only in the subtitle, the publisher was able to give the book a chance to find its own legs in a quieter marketplace.
I still think the resulting novel is the best science fiction I’ve written to date. Even if it doesn’t follow the original outline all that closely.
—Orson Scott Card
The Redemption of Columbus
A novel by Orson Scott Card
It’s 1492, and Christopher Columbus discovers America right on schedule—but waiting for him on the shores of Cuba are three Chinese. They come, not from the Middle Kingdom of 1492, but rather from the far future; and they keep interfering with Columbus’s search for greatness. For one thing, all three of Columbus’s ships blow up in the water, so he can’t get back to Spain. And then there’s the way that the Caribees keep stealing Spanish muskets and gunpowder even as the “savage” women and children converse with the priests in halting Latin.
After sometimes dire, sometimes comic conflict with the Caribees, the Arawaks, his own crew, the priests, and the meddling Chinese, Columbus manages to forge them all into a workable community. They are a mixed lot, a people of tenuous compromises, speaking a mixture of three languages, worshiping jealous gods, combining native agriculture and European technology.
But together they are able to build and navigate a powerful Caribbean fleet, and over the course of years they unite the islands and finally face the monstrous Aztec Empire. It is Columbus, not Cortez, who ends the human sacrifices of the Aztecs—but when he’s through, he forges a new, cooperative federation of tribes and sets out to build the two fleets that will sail to Europe and China to announce the existence of the New World.
The three Chinese did not live to see even the conquest of Mexico. But they did leave a message, encoded in a way that is not grasped until an Aztec scientist deciphers it for Columbus near the end of his life. They came from the far future, and they had used time travel to undo the single most devastating event of human history: the European conquest of America. In doing so they uncreated their own time; but they believed that Columbus himself was such a man that, if he were placed in the right circumstances, he would be able to bridge the gap between the two worlds. Columbus dies knowing that they were right, and appalled at what he might have caused, had they not come to him.*
* Published as Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus in 1996. —CSH
***
David Brin
David Brin’s popular science fiction novels have been translated into more than twenty languages, including New York Times best-sellers that won Hugo, Nebula and other awards. His 1989 ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare, the World Wide Web and Gulf Coast flooding. A 1998 movie, starring Kevin Costner, was loosely adapted from his Campbell Award winner—The Postman. DC/Wildstorm also released a groundbreaking hardcover graphic novel The Life Eaters. Kiln People portrays a coming era when a simple advance in technology allows anyone to achieve the ancient dream of being in two places at once. Foundation’s Triumph brought a grand finale to Isaac Asimov’s famed Foundation Universe.
David Brin is also a noted scientist and speaker/consultant who also appears frequently on television, discussing trends in the near future. He serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as astronomy and space exploration, SETI, nanotechnology and national defense. His non-fiction book—The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy?—deals with issues of openness, security and liberty in the new wired-age. It won the 2000 Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association and a prize from the McGannon Foundation for public service in communications.
The Out of Time series emerged from a discussion among authors and editors concerning an apparently difficult tradeoff between what young readers find easy to read, what they want deep-down, and what they might need.
We all agreed that the surge in consumption of Tolkien-imitating magical fantasies offered, best, candy-like adventures about characters whose life experience would never overlap with the reader’s. Unless the reader lived in a fairy castle and could hurl fireballs at red-eyed villains with a word.
Oh, sure, wish-fulfillment escape is fun. But might escape also be combined with characters who go to school in today’s world, face real problems … and then solve major crises using the REAL magic? The kind we can aspire to actually use, someday? Courage, brains, teamwork and skill?
I pondered that challenge and came up with a scenario where each episode would start with one or more anxious young protagonists in this, very gritty and real decade … hurl those characters into amazing sci fi circumstances where their best inner strengths have a chance to come forth … and then put them back home again, stronger and more confident with the experience.
During the adventure, I wanted to emphasize things like cooperation among people of many cultures, agility and learning, plus a touch of discipline and hard work … all wrapped in a belief that plucky perseverance can eventually save the day.
Achieving this combination took a little plot-magic. Plus a maguffin that would ONLY let teenagers solve special problems in a future world, where adults find themselves stopped short.
Avon books loved the concept and bought three novels by nebula award-winning authors, Nancy Kress, Sheila Finch and Roger Allen. We seemed to be on our way …
… Only then an in-house shakeup replaced the editorial staff. New people wanted a complete changeover. Our books were given the cheapest, most wretched-looking covers imaginable and shipped in dribbles to just a few stores, without a trace of marketing. Ah well.
I still get ecstatic fan letters over this series, from the few kids who got their hands on copies.
—David Brin
June 19, 1996
Proposal for a Science Fictional Universe
With an Optimistic Premise
Targeted at Young Adult or Pre-YA readers.
Dear Lou and Ralph,
Thanks for thinking of me, to conceptualize a potential YA-oriented series aimed at presenting images of an optimistic tomorrow. These are my preliminary thoughts about such a universe—code named Yanks.
(Does it stand for Young Adults Need Kind Speculations? Bear with me!)
• Optimism is difficult to convey in fiction. Because of the need to keep your heroes in jeopardy for X00 pages, or 90 minutes of film, most authors and directors prefer to start with the assumption that civilization is stupid, its citizens are sheep and its institutional leaders corrupt. For all its flaws, Star Trek managed to avoid this trap, because the externalities (aliens and opposing star empires) are so vast the Federation can be competent yet still get in enough troubles for the individual transcendence of heroes to matter. Yanks ought to achieve the same effect, without mimicry.
• This difficulty is especially hard if our intent is to have an ongoing series in which children and teens e
nter jeopardy in book after book. A decent civilization would try not to allow such an eventuality unless forced to by dire need.
• A futuristic setting may be stimulating, but the ideal would be to have kids of our present time involved, so that marvels can be juxtaposed against the problems the reader feels from everyday life. This, I believe, is one of the attractions of Goosebumps. Young readers think—“That might be me.”
• Ideally, our kid protagonists will fight for something worthy and greater than themselves. They will see their own problems diminished in comparison. They will gain a little confidence to tackle their home situations. Above all, they’ll acquire a tad more faith in their own future and their civilization.
All these desiderata point to a possible scenario. A future semi-utopia, finding itself in ongoing peril must snatch kids from the late 20th century to help solve their problems. This need is dire and cannot be satisfied any other way. The kids are called “yanks” because they are yanked out of their home timeline and asked to join a team that will help save the day.
Why are kids from “the past” needed? Because in a utopia few people suffer extreme danger. There will be risky sports and adventurers, but civilization has eliminated most of the truly horrible catastrophes that test humans to the utter limit. Yet, there is a certain quality that some people have. A quality that enables them to face soul-searing crises. To endure, prevail, and emerge whole and wise. People of the year 2565 have a name for this trait, taken from an old film.