The Temple of Set II
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self-contained orbital space colonies. 120 The following year O’Neill’s book The High Frontier became a best-seller,
and Professor Leary happily transferred his “drop out” prescription to “drop up” instead.
Perhaps the first artistic expression of this new space-escapism occurred in 1970, when the Jefferson Airplane’s
Paul Kantner released his “Jefferson Starship” album Blows Against the Empire, singing the story of the hijacking
of the United States’ first starship by 7,000 New Age “gypsies” and their subsequent galavant around the cosmos a la
peace, partying, and pot. “No pigs,” avowed Captain XM-1, “are going to make it to the cities of the universe.” 121
All of which is to say that when a San Anselmo protégé of Francis Ford Coppola named George Lucas created a
fantasy movie about an alienated youth grappling with an oppressive government in outer space, a worldwide
audience was primed for exactly that. Star Wars was more than a successful movie; it immediately became a social
phenomenon. Long after the original 1970s’ space-escapism had dissipated - the Space Shuttle became militarized
and the L5 Society faded into a mere NASA fan club - Star Wars would remain a cult attraction as enduring as
James Bond or Star Trek.
1977’s Star Wars, in addition to being a nonstop barrage of classic adventure cliff-hangers, was energized by
wondrous special-effects and a Wagnerian soundtrack by John Williams. So mesmerizing was Williams’ score that it
would itself generate scores of reperformances nd interpretations by everything from full orchestras to jazz bands,
MOOGs, disco, and cathedral pipe organs.
As with Walt Disney and Davy Crockett, Star Wars’ megasuccess caught its creator by surprise. While the
movie and Lucas’ accompanying novelization gave every indication of being a stand-alone story, this was soon
119 This curious name refers to the 5th Lagrangian Point along the Moon’s orbit. A space colony positioned there would remain
permanently gravitationally balanced between the Earth and the Moon.
120 I was, of course, a founding member of L5.
121 Blows Against the Empire quickly attained Gold Record status, and was the first rock album to be nominated for science-
fiction’s prestigious Hugo Award.
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revised into a prequel/sequel series and aggressively publicized as such. The original movie was retitled “Episode
IV: A New Hope” of an intended 12-part sequence.
Two sequels followed: #V: The Empire Strikes Back and #VI: Return of the Jedi. Next to come were three
prequels, after which Lucasfilm was acquired by the Walt Disney Company and a fourth sequel, #VII: The Force
Awakens, was produced. Clearly the Star Wars culture has settled in to stay.
As much as I admired the 1977 movie, I was unhappily unenthused by its two sequels:
The Empire Strikes Back degraded the three principal characters - Luke, Han, and Leia - into a tawdry soap-
opera love triangle, turned Darth Vader into a mindless slave, contradicted Star Wars concerning Luke’s parentage,
awkwardly added the required racial minority presence conspicuously absent from the first movie [unless you count
Darth Vader’s voice], and served up a preposterous “Jedi initiation” for Luke presided over by a green gnome better
suited to Sesame Street.
The Freudian omelet of TESB gave way to comic-book slapstick in Return of the Jedi, wherein the last
remaining vestiges of the original Star Wars atmosphere were submerged beneath a motley parade of absurd aliens
and panda-bear Ewoks, and dealt a terminal blow by the grotesque “Darth Vader Born-Again” finale.
As for the second series of Lucasfilms - Episodes I/II/III - for me they departed so far from the original first
movie that I have no interest in them whatever.
Here I hasten to caveat that I seem quite alone in my disillusionment: All of the official pre/sequels have been
spectacular box-office successes. My mistake, I suspect, was in reading a depth into that first movie which it was
never intended to incorporate. For this I can only apologize to George Lucas for my petulance.
Which brings me to the outré history of FireForce.
Back in 1977 I found myself somewhat dissatisfied with the way in which Star Wars had developed the
character of Darth Vader and the notion of the Force.
Darth Vader clearly made the story. As a magician with a purpose entirely beyond mere power-politics, he gave
the conflict a transcendental importance. It was not a war between a social establishment and a guerrilla movement;
it was a contest between the Forms of what humans vaguely sense as “good” and “evil”.
The “good” side (Leia and the Rebels) ostensibly represented egalitarian principles of government, symbiosis
with the natural environment of the universe, and tolerance for individual personality quirks as long as the
collective security of the Rebel band was not jeopardized.
The “bad” side (Darth Vader and the Empire) represented authoritarian government, the manipulation of the
natural environment, division of beings into masterminds and workers, and intolerance of non-conformity.
And the moral of Star Wars was that the “good” side should and would triumph over the “bad” - and that its
ideology gave it the absolute right to do so, above and beyond purely political considerations. 122
Why was Darth Vader so fascinating? [Why are all of history’s and fiction’s Darth Vaders so fascinating?]
The answer is that he represents the Principle (or Platonic Form) of intellectual separateness from
the inertia of the universe.
While the Rebels in the film seemed to be fighting for the cause of individuality, in fact they were doing so in an
emotional, reactive sense - as an animal might struggle to escape from a trap. The real individualist was Darth
Vader, who determined to bend the Force to his purposes rather than to dis-integrate his will and surrender it to the
inertia of the Force [as Kenobi advised Luke to do].
Conscious distinction from the natural order is a frightening notion to humans; hence they define it as “evil”
and conjure up Satans to personify it in mythology. But, because their minds contain elements of independence
whether they like it or not, they find “evil” alluring. And so Darth Vader became an anti-hero.
Darth Vaders can be destroyed only by greater Darth Vaders, or by accident. This was illustrated in
Lord of the Rings, wherein a direct challenge to Sauron by Gandalf or Galadriel would have resulted merely in his/
her replacing him. The Saruman sub-plot explored this hypothesis. It was necessary for Sauron to be destroyed “by
accident”.
But then Middle-earth became more primitive and less magical, because a high level of intellectual separateness
from nature had given way to a lower one. Who cares what happened in Middle-earth after Sauron? No one; we
know it was bound to be dull.
Star Wars dutifully echoed LOTR here. Responsibility for the overthrow of the Dark Lord was taken by the
Force; Luke simply surrendered to it at the opportune moment. His celebration in the following awards ceremony
was “safe” because, like Frodo, he was a Common Man who had been brave and lucky. He would have been
unacceptable to audiences had he demanded Darth Vader’s prerogatives for himself.
In September 1977 I decided to explore these ideas by trying my hand at an amateur sequel - Secret of Sith
(chapters “Mission to the Senate” through “The Secret of Seth”). I wr
ote it over a weekend and surprised Lilith by
writing her into it as well - in the character of Krel Atlan. I sent photocopies to a few friends and put it out of my
mind - until mid-1978, when Forrest J Ackerman asked me if he could include it in a special Darth Vader issue of
Famous Monsters of Filmland:
122 As Peter Cowie relates in The Apocalypse Now Book, Francis Coppola originally entrusted George Lucas with making his anti-
Vietnam War movie while Coppola was busy with his Godfather series. Lucas agreed, but Coppola took it back when Lucas was
delayed by American Graffiti. So Lucas relocated revolutionary Vietnam vs. America to outer space for his Rebels-vs.-Empire
theme.
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The Ackermonster’s introduction took it from there:
Long, long ago ...
In a galaxy far, far away ...
In an alternate universe similar to but not identical to our own ...
There lived a talented filmonster fan named Michael A. Aquino.
And it came to pass that, for Lilith, the Lady of his Life, he told a tale to entertain her, giving no thought
to a wider audience except that, since his story was an homage to Another George Lucas in that parallel
world, he felt that the Great George also should have a copy.
“Well, I have a few sci-fi friends too who might be interested,” he reasoned, so altogether he ran off 30
copies. Fortunately for the Editor of Famous Monsters (in that Other World) this Aquino, Historian of
Events Imaginational, regarded EEEE (4E) as a friend and sent him a copy, saying “I recognize that I am
not a professional writer - you should look upon this as no more nor less than fan fiction of the type that
frequently appears in the Star Trek, Perry Rhodan & Dark Shadows fanzines - but nevertheless I thought
you might derive some fleeting entertainment from my little offering.”
The Other Forry Ackerman (Forrest C. Ackerman was his full name rather than Forrest J) did enjoy the
pseudo-history, so much so that he dispatched his copy via time-warp space-o-gram to our present day solar
system, Planet 3, Hollyweird, Karloffornia, and I read it with great interest and said to myself, “Why, this is
much too unusual an item to simply let languish in limbo like Stuart J. Byrne’s Tarzan on Mars,” so I am
presenting it here as a curiosity from which I believe you will derive an exciting reading experience.
Bearing in mind that these events do not follow the path of George Lucas’ history nor the late Leigh
Brackett’s nor any other authorized historians of Star Wars but are, as he puts it, “a personal fantasy” of
Michael Aquino’s, read on!
Letters began to arrive from people all over the world telling me how they had enjoyed the story. So I followed
up S.O.S. with Pantechnikon (Chapters “Crossroads” through “End of the Rebellion”), dedicated to Forry Ackerman
and presented to him on New Year’s Day 1979.
Scheduled to follow Pantechnikon in 1980 was Xronos, a titanic “ultimate conflict” set in not one but two
galaxies.
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The mathematics, research and writing filled bank after bank of my hardworking PolyMorphic 8813 computer,
Glinda, and Xronos became such a horrendous mass of data that meeting the anticipated date was impossible. [You
try working with two galaxies sometime!]
Four initial chapters from Xronos appeared in the 1981 compilation, then withdrawn in 1988 for further
revision. In 2002 I updated and re-included them and added an epilogical synopsis to them.
Also added was an appendix concerning music - which, because of the obsolescence of some of the original
recorded media, may be more frustrating than helpful to the reader. Still I thought it might be of some lingering
“archæological” interest.
As I became more and more deeply enmired in Xronos, I found that knowledge of Andromeda’s more ancient
history was necessary; hence Glinda and I assembled the chronology preceding the events of Star Wars, gradually
expanding to to semi-text as it approaches the story proper.
Eventually and inevitably this left me with the “missing link” of the Star Wars movie events themselves. My
“explorations” were now so complex that without this lynchpin they would be unintelligible; yet they had changed
the scenario so markedly that assuming a reader’s familiarity with the movie was no longer adequate.
So it was necessary to retell the events of Star Wars, but incorporating the many changes and nuances which
FireForce necessitated. The result (chapters “The Rebellion Revealed” and “The Battle of Garvin-5”) is superficially
similar to the original movie, but actually departs from it in almost every detail. Mindful of both the responsibilities
and limitations of parody, I attempted to pay tribute to the plot of the original film while recontextualizing its
details. The result is “the same but different”.
In the tradition of the original Star Wars film, FireForce is not really a novel, but rather a “movie set to prose”.
The reader is intended to experience it, not just read it - as I experienced it when recording it. For I did not
“author” it; rather I “observed the events taking place and then recorded what I saw”.
Similarly I did not “create” the characters. As each of them entered into the story, I merely watched what he or
she did in various situations and then recorded those actions. As I spent more and more time with the characters, I
grew to know them very well, and today count several of them as close acquaintances. [Perhaps you will too.]
As FireForce is a “movie in text”, I “cast” it with professional actors and actresses as well. It is an advantage of
magic that one can not only take one’s pick of casting, but can move various personages backward or forward in
time/age to the precise appearance, age, and manner desired. Thus the dramatis personæ for FireForce:
I have retained five of the original actors of their age and appearance in the original Star Wars film: Mark
Hamill as Lark Windancer, Harrison Ford as Jon Valo, Sir Alec Guinness as Kenbi Odwan, Carrie Fisher as Lora
Ozana, and Peter Cushing as Doff Zarkin.
In FireForce the role of Princess Lora is played by Carrie Fisher specifically in the graceful, regal style she
adopted for the third Lucas film movie Return of the Jedi - absent the abrasive mannerisms she employed in Star
Wars or The Empire Strikes Back.
How does a young woman behave under the responsibilities of sovereign royalty? Here I took for my model a
fairy Princess whom I met in my own childhood: Ozma of Oz:
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[Methinks I saw more than a hint of her in the way that the Star Wars Leia was dressed and coiffed.] Like Lora,
Ozma regularly confronted weird and fantastic perils, aided by creatures who were at least as bizarre as some of
those appearing in this history. Despite such trying circumstances she was always able to maintain her poise and
dignity. And if Lora occasionally behaves a bit more like Dorothy Gale than Ozma, let us recall that Dorothy often
jumped in to solve problems which at least temporarily would have dismayed her fairy friend.
A second “study” for Lora was Queen Elizabeth I of England, who was similarly catapulted into the turmoil of
sovereignty at a young age and forced to use her wits not just to become a capable ruler but also to survive the
intrigues swirling around her.
Deth Razor is portrayed by James Mason of the age, appearance, and manner he presented as Captain Nemo in
Walt Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea:
This is all the more important because during much of FireForce he appears free of his protective armor. [And if
you think you detect the ghost of the Nautilus in the Seth Starship, well … you’re right!]
In George Lucas’ original Star Wars novel, the galactic emperor was a senator of the “old republic” by the name
of Palpatine who had seized power by means of a coup. In the second and third Lucas films, however, the emperor
was turned into an ugly, malevolent sorcerer.
Not so in FireForce. My Palatine is portrayed by Sir Laurence Olivier of the age, appearance, and patrician
demeanor he presented as Crassus in the film Spartacus - an analogy all the more appropriate because of Crassus’
military venture against Spartacus’ revolt at a time when the Roman Republic was transitioning into the Empire:
Imperial General Tharrud Terclis is modeled on [and his name is an anagram of] Colonel Richard L. Sutter, one
of the U.S. Army’s foremost authorities on Special Operations - and a longtime personal friend. Similarly Terclis’
MindWar Center echoes the Army’s Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Sutter kindly contributed
Terclis’ speech to the graduating cadets of the MindWar Academy.
In our FireForce film, Terclis is played by Yul Brynner of the age, appearance, and impossibly exquisite
arrogance he presented as Pharaoh Rameses II in The Ten Commandments:
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Lorin Xanpol preincarnates Paul Lorin Kantner, creator of extraordinarily beautiful hymns to space and
magic. 123. Since he has taken me on so many journeys to the stars since 1966, and since he forecast the magical
vortex of 1975 so crucial to the Æon of Set, it seems only fitting that I should recall his distant past in Andromeda:
The Pantechnikon cyborg may be seen on the jacket and sleeve of the Jefferson Starship’s Dragonfly album:
... and many of his characteristics may be studied in David Rorvik’s As Man Becomes Machine: The Next Step in
Evolution and Pamela Corduk’s Machines Who Think.
Avatars occupy a strange and mysterious role in ancient legend, and in FireForce we meet one of the actual