Joe Johnson Writer

Tag: science-fiction

  • Han Solo’s Revenge

    Han Solo’s Revenge

    The intergalactic smuggler with a heart of gold returns in the 1979 novel, “Han Solo’s Revenge.” Which of course begs the question, “What is he so mad about?”

    Well, after his latest get-rich-quick scheme sparks a minor uprising, Han and Chewie strike out for the Corporate Sector. It’s a few years before “A New Hope” and the pair need a quick score to keep the creditors at bay. Against his better judgement, Han signs on to haul some cargo without knowing what he’s transporting.

    It turns out to be slaves.

    Unwilling to traffic in sentient freight, Han turns on his employers and sets out to make them pay. Specifically, the ten thousand credits he was promised for the job.

    Um, Mr. Solo? I think you have to complete the job to be owed payment. But never mind.

    Instead, he begins working his way up the criminal hierarchy, demanding his money like a Star Wars riff on Richard Stark’s The Hunter. The story rips along as Han follows the trail to low level thugs, corpo goon squads, space pirates, squabbling clan leaders, shadowy poisoners, and the secret beating heart of the conspiracy.

    Along the way he picks up a couple fun partners, including a mismatched pair of droids, a skip tracer determined to repo the Millenium Falcon, and a spunky junior executive who wants to expose the conspiracy to get a boost up the corporate ladder.

    Author Brian Daley may not get the acclaim of Timothy Zahn, but his Han Solo novels are consistently fun and entertaining romps. He imbues his characters with enough wit and compassion to bring them alive on the page in a way you rarely see in commercial tie-in fiction. It’s a shame we only got three of these novels from Daley. In a better world, we’d have dozens.

    Oh well. Han Solo’s Revenge is great action adventure in the wider world of Star Wars. I loved this book. It’s good, pulpy fun.

  • Han Solo at Stars’ End

    Han Solo at Stars’ End

    It’s hard to think back to a time when Star Wars was just a single movie. Maybe because I hadn’t been born yet.

    Before the Disney streaming shows, the sequel trilogy, the prequel trilogy, Clone Wars crap, the roleplaying games, the video games, the board games, the Disney rides, and a metric mountain-load of toys, there was just one film; A simple story about a farm boy with a laser sword who blows up a space station with his friends.

    Then, in 1979, that world expanded. We got our first look at what would become the Star Wars Extended Universe before The Empire Strikes back hit theaters. It was in a little book called Han Solo at Star’s End.

    Han, years before he meets up with Luke and Obi-Wan, is cooling his heels in the Corporate Sector. Think of it like the Empire, but with more red tape and business suits. He runs afoul of the law for not having his car, I mean starship, registration renewed and books it to one of his underworld contacts. She agrees to give him new fake credentials in exchange for pulling a dangerous job: Breaking some folks out of their work contract on a corpo-controlled agriworld. Without any other options, Han takes the job, and adventure ensues.

    Unlike a lot of Star Wars material, Star’s End captures the pulp serial action-adventure vibe that runs through the original film. There’s no bold, operatic battle between good and evil here. Just a fun adventure that sees Han and Chewie shooting it out with company goons, dealing with traitors in their midst, and leading an escape from an impregnable space prison.

    My favorite stuff in Star Wars has always been the little hints about the criminal underworld hiding in the corners of the frame, so this was catnip for me. I had a great time reading this. Author Brian Daley captures Han Solo’s voice so effortlessly that you can just hear Harrison Ford speaking the lines in your head.

    When I reviewed the Han Solo books by A. C. Crispin, one of my biggest complaints was that the stories failed to offer any insights into how he became the character we know. Chips on the table: This book fails to hit that mark, too. But the story was so vibrantly told with breathless excitement and energy that I didn’t have time to stop and care. Han Solo at Star’s End is a solid, entertaining slice of sci-fi adventure that makes me wish that Daley had written dozens of these books instead of just three.

    Sometimes, you just want to read about a guy with a laser gun committing crimes with his shaggy dog friend.

  • Star Wars: Rebel Dawn

    Star Wars: Rebel Dawn

    Who would have thought the best book in the Han Solo trilogy would also have the least amount of Han Solo in it?

    I’m getting ahead of myself. “Rebel Dawn” opens with Han down to his last credits after losing his ship, the Bria, in the battle of Nar Shaddaa. Never one for subtlety, Han decides to wager it all and enters a Sabacc gambling tournament.

    Elsewhere, Bria Tharen — the namesake of Han’s lost ship — is now a commander in the Rebel Alliance. She wants to attack Ylesia, the slave colony Han rescued her from two books ago. Taking over the illegal spice mining operation would give the Alliance money and troops to use in their fight against the Empire.

    Opposing her is Teroenza, the fake priest who runs Ylesia. He’s still annoyed that Han and Bria escaped all those years ago and stole treasures from his prized collection. He’s hired Boba Fett to capture them. Also, as a side hustle, he’s plotting against Durga the Hutt, who bankrolls the drug operation, because who doesn’t want to be their own boss?

    But wait, there’s more. Durga is obsessed with finding out who poisoned his father. Readers of the last book will know it was Jabba the Hutt and his uncle, Jiliac, who were plotting with Teroenza to overthrow the rival Hutt clan. Durga’s fixation draws the attention of Black Sun, a rival criminal syndicate which would love to get a foothold in Hutt space. Jabba, meanwhile, is bristling under his uncle’s stewardship, and seeks a way to become the new head of his clan.

    Whew! As you can see, there’s a lot going on in this book. Where the last two novels kept the stakes low and the focus limited, “Rebel Dawn” is epic in scale, shifting between a variety of vivid characters as the story barrels toward “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” As the capper to a trilogy, it’s a doozy.

    What amazed me was how neatly the story beats all clicked into place. A. C. Crispin ends the book about one minute before Han meets Luke and Obi-Wan in the Mos Eisley Cantina. It never feels rushed or forced, but a natural progression of the story that just happens to end right before the movies begin. It’s deftly done and a credit to the author’s ability (for the opposite effect, just watch “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which is about as subtle as a rocket propelled grenade).

    Best of all, we see the events that harden Han’s heart and turn him into the “mercenary” of the films. As George Carlin famously said, “Inside every cynic is a disappointed idealist.” Seeing how this plays out adds a great layer to an already great character. Even though we spend less time with him, we learn more, and that makes for a better read.

    Speaking of spending little time with someone: One final note. Han and Chewie visit Kashyyyk, where the Wookiee gets married, leaves, comes back, discovers he has a son, then leaves again. So, I guess Chewbacca is a deadbeat dad? Or his wife is just one understanding lady. “But,” I imagine him growling, “I owe the guy a life debt.”

    Yeah, nice try. That excuse never worked for me, either.

  • Star Wars: The Hutt Gambit

    Star Wars: The Hutt Gambit

    For my first Star Wars extended universe book in 25 years, I thought it would be fun to explore the origins of Han Solo. Disney dropped the ball when they made “Solo,” so I was eager to see what someone else would do with the material.

    The story opens with Han drinking alone in a bar, drowning his sorrows. His dreams are crushed. He’s lamenting a decision that would have made for a much better novel: While serving in the Imperial Navy, Han defied orders and saved the life of a Wookiee slave. His actions saw him stripped of rank and blacklisted from ever working as a commercial pilot.

    A character sacrificing their hopes and dreams to confront a grave injustice would be rich soil for a story to explore, but never mind. Han flies to Nar Shaddaa, the “Smuggler’s Moon,” to find work. He’s joined by the slave he rescued, a Wookiee named Chewbacca who claims to owe him a life-debt. Having seen the movies, we know he means it.

    Han reconnects with an old buddy from the academy and begins his career as a smuggler. This is a lot less exciting than it sounds. We mostly bum around with Han and Chewie as they haul cargo from one place to the next. Later, Han petitions Jabba the Hutt for work, and becomes his chauffer. Then he saves the gangster’s life during a pirate attack, which isn’t very exciting, but it goes on for a while.

    If you squint, you can see the shape of a story here. Han is rebuilding himself after a fall from grace. We witness his rise through the criminal underworld. But it feels like we are reading our way through a sequence that would be a two-minute montage in a feature film. Han meets Lando and teaches him how to fly. Han gets abducted by Boba Fett, then immediately rescued. Han dates a magician, then gets dumped. Han sees the Millenium Falcon for the first time and instantly falls in love with it, because the author has seen the movies.

    There is never an obstacle or setback that isn’t resolved three pages later.

    I complained that the first novel, “The Paradise Snare,” skipped the moments that would have really explored Han’s character. “The Hutt Gambit” has the same problem. It’s very much “tell, don’t show” kind of writing. But “Paradise Snare” at least maintained interest by pivoting in interesting directions—who would have guessed Han spent some formative years running drugs for a religious cult? “The Hutt Gambit” doesn’t have anywhere meaningful to go.

    It culminates in an epic space battle where Han rallies an army of smugglers against the Imperial Navy. It’s meant to be a showstopper. But A. C. Crispin has a hard time conveying the logistics. First, she spends an obscene amount of time with characters announcing their plans to an audience (and the readers). Then the battle itself becomes a slurry of throwaway characters and relentless pew-pew without any real stakes because we know who survives and the rest are thinly-sketched plot contrivances.

    There’s some truly terrible writing in here. Sample dialog: “Mako here. You ready?” “We’re ready!” “Go for it!” Or how about: “We’re being drawn by the moon’s gravity! In about a minute, we’re going to hit Nar Shaddaa’s energy shield! And what an explosion that would be!” Oof.

    It’s a testament to the author’s ability that the book ends up being tolerable. She captures the feeling of Han, Chewie, and Lando well enough to elevate this above bad fan fiction. But only just.

    You can tell this is intended as the middle chapter of a trilogy. We get several asides with other characters that have no relevance on the story we are reading. They are just setting the table for a payoff in the third book.

    I’m hoping that one will be better. “The Hutt Gambit” isn’t bad. But just days after finishing, I had to look up a synopsis online to even remember what happened. That’s probably not what the author intended.

  • Mickey 17

    Mickey 17

    Robert Pattinson, a.k.a. Mickey 17, lies at the bottom of an ice crevice. Blood pools beneath him. He cannot move. A shout echoes from above. A person waves. It’s Steven Yeun. He repels down. “Oh, thank goodness,” he says. “Your flamethrower wasn’t damaged. These are expensive, you know.” He fastens it to his back and prepares to climb back up. Then he hesitates and kneels down next to our hero.

    “Hey Mickey,” he says, his grin widening, “what is it like to die?”

    It is sometime in the future. Mankind has perfected the science of cloning. Humans who die can be brought back to life with their prior memories intact. The practice is outlawed on Earth. The creator of this technology used it create multiple versions of himself as an alibi to cover up his crimes as a serial killer. That seems like a lot of effort to get away with murder, but never mind. Why the rest of humanity would forgo any the chance at immortality is never adequately explained.

    The hero, Mickey, is played by Pattison as a mumbling halfwit. He signs up to join a corporate-run expedition to colonize another planet. He doesn’t dream of being a pioneer. He’s just looking to escape his debt to a loan shark. There are thousands of other applicants. To stand out, Mickey signs on to be an “expendable.”

    The recruiting agent stares at him. “Did you read all the fine print?” Mickey blinks half-glazed eyes. “…uhm. Yeah?”

    See, duplicating people is illegal on Earth, but acceptable once you get to international waters—err, I mean, outer space. The only restriction is that if you discover multiples of the same person, they must be destroyed on sight and the memory data purged.

    As the only expendable on the crew, Mickey is assigned all the worst jobs. He dies a lot. I think it is meant to be funny, but there’s no comic timing or payoff. A swinging antenna lops off one of his arms. “Oh man, did you see that?” a voice on the radio howls. A crew member notices Mickey still breathing inside his body bag. “He’s still alive!” Another man shrugs. “Not for long.” He tosses him into the incinerator. Sometimes, the science team forgets to pay attention while Mickey’s new body slides out of the printer. In one scene, he just plops out headfirst on the floor while people go about their business. Whoops. Ho ho ho.

    I imagine this is supposed to endear us to Mickey and his plight. It’s a shame, then, that he’s insufferable. Pattison plays him as pathetic sad sack who narrates the proceedings in a nasally whine. There’s never any attempt to give him a drive or a goal. He exists to suffer abuse at the hands of the supporting cast. A young security officer falls in love with him, presumably because he looks like Robert Pattinson.

    Every other character is an aggressively unpleasant caricature. There is nothing funny about them, because we do not believe them as characters. There is no kernel of truth or understanding or relatability to make the humor ring with truth. Instead, they wobble about, shouting and gesticulating in a constant stream of idiocy that is intended to be a satire, but of what, I couldn’t say.

    Mickey is eventually left for dead on this new planet but is saved by the enormous potato bugs that inhabit it. When he returns to the ship, he discovers they have already printed another Mickey. Number 18 is smarter and more aggressive for reasons that are never explained. At first, they fight, then they conspire to stay alive.

    The villains are Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and Ylfa (Toni Collette). Marshall is a former politician and secretly has some sort of vague eugenics scheme for the new world. His wife, Ylfa, is obsessed with sauce. They don’t so much chew the scenery as they devour entire sets. Ruffalo seems to be channeling some sort of Donald Trump character, but it’s hard to fathom what director Boon Jung Ho is trying to say.

    I guess this is all supposed to be a scathing indictment of late-stage capitalism and the plight of the working class. Mickey is the earnest employee who gets chewed up by an uncaring system. If that’s the metaphor, it’s muddled by the 47 other ideas the director crams in and seemingly forgets about, often within the same scene. The film exists in such a heightened state of reality that you might only be able to approach it if you are high to begin with.

    It’s fueled by the delusion that it has something to say, but what, and to who, I know not.

    Was there anything I liked in this movie? I think the creature effects were nice. The “Creepers” manage to be disgusting and cute in equal measure. That’s an accomplishment. Well done, CGI department.

    Everything else, I hated. After enduring two hours and 17 minutes of this farce, I, too, wanted to know what it would be like to die. And the quickest way to bring it about.

  • Star Wars: The Paradise Snare

    Star Wars: The Paradise Snare

    Long before he gut-shot Greedo in a dimly lit bar and tossed a few credits to the owner to apologize for the mess, Han Solo was a young thief on the streets of Corellia. “The Paradise Snare” is his origin story — or, at least, it was. Then Disney acquired Star Wars and tossed everything from the Extended Universe into the Sarlacc pit. But never mind.

    We open with Han planning his escape from Garris Shrike, a Fagin-like crime lord who presses young orphans into service as grifters and pickpockets. Han has been scamming Corellian noblemen under Shrike’s orders for years. But he aspires to a life where he isn’t forced to commit crimes to make a living. He dreams of joining the Imperial Academy to become a real pilot. Yet he’s already an accomplished racer on his home world, and he masters any spacecraft he’s given with a deft hand. What’s left for him to learn? Is he looking to pad his resume?

    To pay his tuition, he needs to earn some money that doesn’t end up in Shrike’s pocket. So he stows away aboard a shuttle and travels to the planet Ylesia, run by a secretive religious sect in desperate need of pilots. The sect fills their coffers by selling black market spice and conscripting their pilgrims to mine it. While touring the facility, Han meets and falls for a beautiful young pilgrim. We imagine this will end poorly, since the girl is not mentioned in the movies. But how will it happen and how will this mold him into the character we know? The mystery holds our interest, but it’s not hard to guess.

    Meanwhile, the priests saddle Han with a bodyguard. It becomes apparent that he is really just there to keep an eye on Solo. Han knows he can earn the money he needs honestly (or as honestly as one can while smuggling drugs), but he could speed up the process by slipping his hand into the till. It raises the question: Does he really want to go straight? Old habits die hard. Eventually, Han discovers that the religious colony is a front for the Hutts, and he comes up with a plan to rob them and escape with the girl.

    Prequels are a hard thing to get right. The audience already knows where the story ends up, so it is up to the author to make the journey worth the trip. When done right, a prequel can cast the original stories in a new light, providing nuance and context to reshape the scenes we already know. “The Paradise Snare” fails at this. Han Solo arrives at the story fully-formed as the character we know—just younger and a bit naive. He hasn’t been struck by life’s great disappointments yet. There are no missing puzzle pieces that unlock a greater understanding of his character.

    Instead, we get a few glimmers into the events that harden Solo’s heart. There’s the death of Dewlanna, a kindly Wookiee and cook to Shrike’s crew who takes Solo under her wing. There’s no indication that she cares about the other children. But, again, never mind. We also get a brief flashback to the time Han ran away to find out what happened to his parents. The episode plays out far differently than we might expect.

    We only get a few brief asides about Solo’s childhood. I was left wondering if we’d be better served going deeper into the past. Dewlanna’s death and Solo’s hatred of Shrike are good ideas that end up carrying little weight because the characters are introduced and disappear in the first chapter. Seeing him develop from a poor street kid into a charming swindler and how his relationship develops with two vastly different parental figures would’ve made this story far more emotionally resonant.

    Instead, “The Paradise Snare” suffers from the same problem that plagues all tie-in fiction: Nothing of great importance can happen, so the story feels like glorified fan-fic. I enjoyed the novel, but it isn’t essential. There’s little here that couldn’t be inferred from reading between the lines in the original films.

    That said, the author tells a decent story that avoids all the rebel vs. empire, light vs. dark side tropes that mire the rest of the series. It feels like a small miracle that no one shows up to wave a lightsaber around. It also manages to fill in the blanks without being trite and asking questions nobody cares about, like “Solo: A Star Wars Story” did (Why is he called Solo? Because he tells an Imperial officer he is alone).

    The book also sticks the landing with a wonderful ending. For Han, it’s a personal triumph. But knowing, as we do, what Han’s future holds, it’s a poignant and bittersweet note.

  • Wool

    Wool

    An unspecified event hundreds of years ago forced humanity underground. To go out on the surface now is a death sentence, reserved only for those who commit the most terrible of crimes: Asking to leave.

    This is called being “sent out to clean.” The individual is dressed in a protective suit and given a wool cloth. They are asked to wipe off the sensors that give the Silo’s inhabitants a view of the desolate outside world. It’s a mystery why every cleaner follows through with this before they succumb and die.

    Juliette is a mechanic in the bowels of the Silo. She is too busy keeping the power on to worry about the outside world. Then, one day, the mayor of the silo descends all 144 floors of the grand staircase to make Juliette an offer: Replace the last Sheriff who went out to clean.

    As a girl from the down-deeps, Juliette has no idea about the politics at play in the floors above. No sooner does she pin on her star then she finds herself embroiled in a high-profile murder case, targeted by department heads who want her gone, and unraveling the mystery of what happened to her predecessor.

    This is a fantastic setup for a mystery story that the author, Hugh Howey, clearly has no interest in. Everything is either spelled out right away or is so heavily signposted that you can’t help but immediately connect the dots before the characters do. Then the author dumps all this and takes the story in a totally different direction.

    After doing a little digging, I discovered that Wool originally began life as a short story. The author then kept expanding it, first into a series of novellas and then finally into a novel. This makes a lot of sense and explains some of the lumpy story structure.

    More problematic are the characters, who all feel paper thin when they aren’t acting like weepy, melodramatic teenagers. There’s never any subtlety. The players pound their chests and wail and moan, their inner dialogue a seething turmoil of pithy emotions.

    I think if you took a shot of alcohol every time one of the characters starts crying, you’d be dead or comatose before the final chapter. It’s almost funny, later in the book, when they introduce a new character who is described as a stunted child in a man’s body. He acts just like everyone else.

    It doesn’t feel like anyone grows or changes. Most of the players exist simply as a plot function. You know everything about each character in just a few lines because there is nothing else to discover. The villain is so laughably obvious that he might as well appear twirling his moustache and cackling.

    This will sound like blasphemy to some, but I actually prefer what the TV adaptation is doing at this point. I feel like the writers there took these bare character sketches and breathed life into them, expanding the plot and embelishing the worldbuilding that mostly sits in the margins here.

    As something that inspired some great television, I have to give this book some grudging respect. I wouldn’t say I regret reading it. I didn’t hate it. But Wool reads like a rough draft that the show’s creators wisely edited into a great story. As such, I think I’ll stick with the show for now and give the two follow-up novels a pass.