ohboyohboyohboy (Firefly novel)

G

Geo

Mostly Harmless
Legend
Steven Brust has written an original novel for the Firefly universe.

http://whedonesque.com/comments/8600

I'm practically at a loss for words to describe how cool this is for someone like myself who thinks both Brust and Firefly are near perfection. And Vlad (Brust's main character from his Jhereg novels) and Mal. . . well, let's just say I don't think they'd have too much trouble understanding each other.

Okay, must take my meds now, because it can't possibly be as good as I suddenly just became Pat Robertson certain it must be.

Ohboyohboyohboy.
 
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Ha-ha-ha, I never would have guessed you for a Vladd fan! Brust has always been one of my faves and for his Vladd series, although Cowboy Feng's Spacebar & Grill has got a special place in my heart too.

I still have some of the Vladd series I haven't read yet sitting on my desk, I think I'll crack a book soon. :)

Damn it, the whole of the universe is conspiring to force me to watch Firefly... :rolleyes:
 
Well, I've also read his Freedom & Necessity (with Emma Bull), which is his ode to Trotskyist Marxism, and you'd probably never guess me for that either. :LOL:

Brust is as close to Zelazny as it gets anymore. One of the reasons I love his stuff. . . I can feel RZ looking over my shoulder and chuckling as I read.

Edit: oh, btw, Steve has turned in Dzur, the next Taltos, to his publisher this summer. So hopefully by next summer. . . Supposedly it starts "about 10 minutes after the end of Issola". Yum! I just re-read Issola and loved it all over again. I remember when I finished it the first time I immediately went to my pc and wrote Steve an email, with some stolen Thin Lizzy lyrics. . ."That wild-eyed boy who'd been away. . .Vlad is back in Town. . ." Adrihlanka, that is. The reunion with Cawti ought to be interesting, and. . .err, coming to terms with the Jehreg. I caught some hints this last time that maybe Cawti might have a surprise for him that no one has mentioned to him while he was wandering in the wilderness. . .
 
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OK, I never got this Firefly obsession. I found it to be OK SciFi entertainment but nothing too special. In fact, at times, I found it hard to suspend disbelief. A space-faring society that becomes a carbon copy of 19th century low-tech USA (sans the racism) once people step out of their spaceships doesn't make any frigging sense. It made little sense that the whole universe is being colonized by a bunch of space-faring Rednecks to begin with! Sometimes the whole thing felt like two entirely different TV Shows rolled into one.

I usually don't mind crossover fiction with Western genre elements (hell, I even liked John Carpenter's Vampires - A LOT) but Firefly was overdone. The Western element could have been more subtle without the overt real-world history references and maybe they shouldn't have revisted every other Western genre stereotype.

What's left is a TV show with a comparably high production value, decent actors and some promising plot threads but that's hardly unique and not enough when the basic concept didn't really work for me. The Reaver story line was the most interesting one, the River plot... interesting but kinda "meh".

It was a good TV show and it deserved to survive more than one season but I find the almost religious reverence of Firefly by some fans just way over the top. It wasn't THAT great.

The movie (Serenity) did a decent job at tying up the most pressing loose ends but other than that it was pretty boring. It felt even more like a TV double feature than the Star Trek TNG movies.

Trying to mate Nerd culture (SciFi) with Redneck culture (Western) was a promising idea. It's the same idea that created the popular "Furry" subculture (Nerd//Anime and Redneck//Animal Fucking) on the Inet. To be honest, I would have expected it to be a huge success in the USA. Guess I was wrong.

The real tragedy here is that Firefly's failure kinda closed the door for other more exotic genre-mixes like Steampunk, Medieval SciFi or Space Fantasy.
 
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In Firefly, it wasn't rednecks everywhere. It was enligthened hi-culture (mostly Chinese) in the alliance planets.

The show takes place mostly on the independent planets, those that lost the civil war. I don't find it disbelievable that an Orwellian government that crushes opposition who wants to live free, and who holds most of the interplanetary resources would create a vast underclass of people trying to eek out a subsistence living. Remember, in Firefly, the culture is a combination of upper class English/Chinese on the inner planets, and lowclass rednecks/chinese peasants on the outer.

Perhaps you would have preferred it if when they step off the spaceship, everything's hip-hop culture and looks like 50 Cent get rich or die trying? :)

Aha! I've created a new genre. Black-Fi! Combine hip-hop with space ships. Get Ice-T, Icecube, 50 cent, et al on the cast. Genius!
 
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The whole evil government thingy came over like some sort of confederate Reconstruction era sentiment. That's not my problem though. My problem is that things get too low-tech on the independent planets. It doesn't make sense. The question remains why in the space frontier is virtually identical to the early 19th century American frontier. I see no logical reason for this whatsover. The whole notion isn't internally consistent. The Alliance planets were alright and believable.

Black-Fi, huh? Like "Gayniggers from Outer Space"?

Cyberpunk back in the 80s realistically predicted some of the technologies and social developements of the late 90s and some of the things described in that genre might yet become true in the future.

SciFi + HipHop would be kinda like the new Cyberpunk because I believe that's where the future of society is headed. It will be horrible. Imagine Cyber-Wiggers. I hate that "urban" culture so intensly that I can't even think straight. I'd rather settle with the Rednecks, kk, thank you. I'd rather fuck my sister and her dog Redneck-style than ape that BlingBling-8k$-Rims-Niggas-and-Hoes-Cap-yo-Ass shit. Grrrr.
 
L233 said:
My problem is that things get too low-tech on the independent planets. It doesn't make sense. The question remains why in the space frontier is virtually identical to the early 19th century American frontier. I see no logical reason for this whatsover. The whole notion isn't internally consistent. The Alliance planets were alright and believable.
Click to expand...

You haven't read Heinlein, have you (think Farmer in the Sky as an example, if you do know Heinlein)? Or, for that matter, think back to Tattoine in the first Star Wars movie. It is entirely believable that outer planets would in important ways be low tech, and then become more prosperous over time. The guvmint men come in and terraform the planet, then dump peasants to root hog or die.
 
Um, they have land speeders, droids, evaporators, futuristic looking laser guns, Jawa sand crawlers and stuff like that on Tattoine. In Firefly horses and horse carts are the main means of transportation on the frontier planets. Plus, the aliens and humans on Tattoine didn't dress up like cowboys and the city doesn't look like a cardboard city from some 1960s spaghetti Western.

There is no internally consistent reason for 19th century technology and culture in Firefly but yet it's everywhere. It's too low tech. I feel the Western thing would have worked better if they hadn't exaggerated it. You can have that certain Western vibe without going fully John Wayne.

I do not mind Western elements in SciFi at all, I just feel that they have been extremely poorly implemented in Firefly.
 
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The one in the movie where the chick goes all Bruce Lee? Was that one even on a frontier world? IIRC the saloons in the TV series were just as low-tech as the rest of it.
 
L233 said:
The one in the movie where the chick goes all Bruce Lee? Was that one even on a frontier world? IIRC the saloons in the TV series were just as low-tech as the rest of it.
Click to expand...

Yes, it was. And I think you'd even find that in the series, relatively.
 
L233 said:
There is no internally consistent reason for 19th century technology and culture in Firefly but yet it's everywhere. It's too low tech. I feel the Western thing would have worked better if they hadn't exaggerated it. You can have that certain Western vibe without going fully John Wayne.
Click to expand...

19th century tech is cheap to make and requires a fairly low industrial base to support. Once the population base expands enough higher tech can be first imported, then supported locally when demand becomes high enough.

Consider supporting a jeep. You need machined parts, refined petroleum of some description to fuel it and servicing on a semi-regular basis to keep it functional. If you are a freshly teraformed planet being colonised on the cheap that simply isn't going to be available. Horses make a great deal of sense in that situation.

And the series showed people would hang on to pockets of high tech where possible. Holographic pool tables and saloon windows were in a back of nowhere podunk town they dropped into. 'Heart of Gold' shows us someone with a laser weapon and a hover car, only because he is rich enough to import the parts needed to keep them both going.
 
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