by CD Moulton
had to be some mechanism that would keep them apart – such as continents too far apart to be accessible before the races had evolved into a more industrial/technological stage.
So! Next was a book about three different evolutions on one planet and the conflicts contact could cause. The Kappins are introduced. Z is disguised as a Kappin and finds he greatly enjoys having fur and he overcomes some of his inhibitions there. It was established long ago that Maita could use the medical machines to grow extra muscles, fur, scales, an extra arm or leg, etc The memory crystals could give the altered being full knowledge and use of such things..
This left me wondering how Terrans would react to alien forms coming here. Would there be the proverbial snowflake's chance we could get along with anyone else, considering we can't get along with each other?
In Return to Earth it becomes a satire and comedy piece. I tried to be honest about what the human race is and see how Maita and Thing, among others, might actually react to us. It gives me the answer to those who ask, "If we have been visited by intelligent aliens, why haven't they contacted us?"
My answer is, "Because they are intelligent."
Be realistic. If you have the technology to cross the vastnesses to come to good old important Earth are you going to rape some woman in an Iowa cornfield, mutilate cows and try to form a hybrid race with us or are you going to see the kinds of things that are on the front page of the newspapers every day and say, "No way, Jose!"?
That brought up the difference in the way different beings would think among the crew, so a book, Now You Tell Me!, from Thing's point of view was written. One story in that one has gotten some very high praise – from a critic who did NOT like the first part of the book. It was also about a “first contact” problem when that contact was prevented by seemingly insurmountable natural barriers.
One of the running jokes in the series is about the way Maita designed Tab with "normal" sexual responses and Thing, who has four sexes, can't understand the sex drive in mammals and reptilians. The Mactowans in this story are extremely sexual beings and Tab raised his response (part of being a robot is the ability to adjust such things) to fit into the society. Thing found itself involved in some totally unexpected ways and in situations it couldn't hope to understand.
Trying to discover how an alien being might think has to be based on the intelligence level of the being, the cultural mores, the kind of life and even the evolution of that being. Thing's great love for Maita, Z and the crew makes it want to be able to understand them and it does, intellectually, but does NOT actually in many cases. It responds to what it would be expected to do.
In this book it is in a situation where it can do more than anyone else to help and does. It has an empathic ability to influence mood and focus at the right time.
I thought a lot about the changes we all go through as we age and wondered how a magician in a society with demons and psy powers would change so wrote a revisit to Tlorg and the son of Net (Changes – See where I got the name?), a character from the first book, who had decided to become a magician. This one also went a bit into fantasy (explained as a psy power), but was a character study. The Plutons are studied a bit and I decided one was going to become a member of the crew a bit later because they are psychologically what the crew was originally and could be a fun addition. The crew had aged and changed as a unit and I wanted to display the contrast.
Keen of Teeme is followed from his youth through becoming the Wizard of the Realm, then on into old age. He is an inherently good person who has to face reality in a sometimes brutally cruel society. He befriends Wruk, the Pluton, as well as various other otherplanal beings and shows how those beings aren't necessarily evil demons, they are simply people trapped in an impossible situation through no fault of their own.
I like this book. It is a personal favorite.
I had worked out handling contacts of physically and psychologically different beings to as many as four, but what would happen if there were DOZENS of different cultures who didn't even suspect the existence of any of the others who must meet suddenly?
Anomaly was an experimental piece that worked quite well. It concerned an experiment using a number of races by a mutant race who were sinking rapidly into severe decadence. Maita and crew had to find the world that built the place, return races to their original worlds and put an end to that kind of travesty. The culture and technology of the builders was advanced and the crew were in very real and deadly danger there. The place was built on one of those psychological points because the builders' race had lost its societal dynamic and had conducted an experiment that could possibly have succeeded, but only if they had NOT compartmentalized the world. The builders' present society was based on a kind of racial guilt transferred to the individual and was dangerous and sick as it fell more into decadence and regression.
That seemed like enough psychology for awhile. We needed some straight adventure/action so the berserker from Zulians and Robots was back. This was Star Wars with a twist and with a cunning, clever and extremely dangerous adversary. This one is straight BEM hack, but fun at the same time. I felt I could write a "special effects" piece that actually had a plot and a storyline. I think I pulled it off.
The newspapers here were running stories about the Giambi mess in New York and the Russian Mafia at the time so I wondered how Maita would handle a galactic crime syndicate. It wouldn't really be possible in an entity like the Maitan Empire – but it MIGHT be possible on the vacation worlds where there was already gambling!
So! Next was Z trying to resolve a crime syndicate problem on the vacation worlds. He gets to be a Kappin through the use of the medical machines aboard Maita. He particularly enjoys being those furry beings. An interplay develops between Z and T6 that is funny and serious at the same time. They have always been close friends, but a much closer bond is formed. Kit (the next robot detective) is introduced.
There were reports in the papers about AIDS and its spread and I began to wonder what would happen if such a plague that was capable of decimating an entire world were to occur in the Maitan Empire – and Maita had no way of knowing anything about it because the world where it started was restricted from contact.
The book doesn't really belong in the series, yet in a way it does. It is a story about a plague that could destroy a world and how the people there coped with it. It is a far more serious work than most of my crap: Book twenty one – After the Old Gods.
Kroon was introduced in book two. A plague that is always fatal and that the carrier spreads for some time before he knows he has it can actually wipe out the race. It comes at the worst possible time, the society being in turmoil because the crew had been there and had shown the religions that had kept the people under a type of violent slavery for generations were a fraud (Which is where I got the title).
Time for some lighter stories that don't require a lot of research and study. I needed something where I could use the things already known and there WAS a new member of the crew and he WAS supposed to be a detective!
Book twenty two is a bunch of shorts where Kit and Tab do the detective bit and get to know each other. Kit is paired with the accidentally intelligent ship, T6, from SSFSS (Describe Intelligent).
I wanted another one that didn't take a lot of research and that would resolve some of the older puzzles in the series. On the Dome is a collection of shorts and a novella. The Krofpth are found. They are being enslaved by a mis-programmed machine/dictator. This is a three-way psychological study of machines with poor or defective programming, TAR-1, the berserker and the machine in Tristar.
I had to surmise that machines, even totally logical ones, even the intelligent ones, were as bound by their programming as we are by ours. If there was a wrong idea or program there the being, machine or organic, may not be able to recognize it and would act according to the programming.
Now I was thinking about plagues and psychological points and about what enormous effects a small thing can have over a period o
f time. How Odd! is a story about the severe damage outside interference can have on a race. I got into psychological reasons for things more and more and discovered that a seemingly very small thing might possibly do massive damage to a race. The idea was to present that without harping on the psychology part. Sort of show by example.
Here was an exploration of how outside appearances can be very different from what is real. A gleaming marble city that looks good from a short distance is very different when one is on the street with the litter and garbage. It wasn't a part of these people to be that way and they had devices no civilization at that stage could have.
The psychology of a younger empire race who had not yet exorcized the normal greeds is ultimately behind it and the crew have to go to several other worlds to trace down the ones behind it, then have to decide if one world should be cleansed of the interference while another is allowed to continue with it.
Book twenty five introduced the Pluton, Kurk, who will figure in the rest of the series. Kurk is an other-planal being who is terrifying and funny at the same time. He is very basic and his laugh can be used as a weapon, as Kene discovered in book 17. Z overcomes his natural fear of such a being and they become the closest
