When I was told that I needed to list media comparisons for my work, my initial response was “ah, easy, done!” and then I read that it is not good form to reference movies. Which is why you are reading this long list of blog posts recapping my desperate search for alternatives.
But I can talk about it here! So this is where I can recap the real inspirations for what I wrote (other than Gideon the Ninth).
Okay first off we need to establish that I have adored science fiction my entire life, and I cannot chicken-egg this to tell you if it was the dad bringing home Star Wars Original Trilogy on VHS which sparked the love, or me loving space that encouraged the dad to keep watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with me. Look, I picked my primary career field (the rockets) at age 9. That’s nearly three decades of dedication to space travel, and I’m not in my 40s yet. There wasn’t a lot of solid kids sci-fi at that young age (yes I have read everything associated with a Wrinkle In Time, there’s like six books). So, yes movies and TV were a big part of it all.
Let’s run a recap of the major contributors to this genre love I have. Star Wars, is a massive part of it. My dad would rent one each of the original trilogy every night we were staying at my grandmothers each summer until he finally bought a VHS Box Set. Star Trek TNG was airing on TV at the time, my dad would watch it and I would join him. I had nightmares about some Voyager episodes and let’s not even discuss “Deep Space Nine” here, I think the connection is obvious. But those are practically the baseline for everyone. What else? VHS editions of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Earth Vs Flying Saucers”, “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “War of the Worlds”, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Forbidden Planet”… the original Godzilla movies… Its not that I wasn’t watching The Lion King with everyone else, but I was also obsessed with Jurassic Park, and Twister, and, the mere idea of Space Camp. What’s missing here is the predictable pattern that events would occur in. Dad would come home from his work in ceramics and three-dimensional design (where he sculpted things that give most people nightmares and instead kept me company in my bedroom), bearing some staples from Shoprite, to include whatever B-grade movie he would have found in the measly rental section of the supermarket. My sibling and I would get super excited for a “new movie” only to be told that it was not for kids. We would go to bed, Dad would pop the movie in, and then he himself would promptly pass out on the couch we have owned for over forty years. Pitter patter down the stairs and now I’m watching John Carpenter’s The Thing. Look, dad had to pay for this pattern with the creativity of my own resultant insomnia and nightmares, but it was an established pattern. Especially since he usually was watching it the next morning starting over at the spot where he fell asleep.
Okay so now that we have established the origin of my young innocence being sullied by an endless stream of science fiction movies, lets look at the three I keep bringing up: Alien, Sphere, and Event Horizon. Thus far all my book reviews have focused on, well, what I assume is pretty critical to book writing, which is pacing, characterization, basic construction of a story, etc. Then there’s been my study of other queer and lesbian relationships in these written works. But these movies are what set my tone, and major plot ideas.
I’ll start with the clearest connection I can draw, which is Sphere. And, yes, Sphere is based on a book by Michael Chrichton. And yes, I read it (okay most of it), but in reality I had already seen and been addicted to the movie for decades before I tried reading it after I wrote Space Station X. Look, a small group of people trapped at the bottom of the ocean with a massive alien space ship and then they start seeing things based on their own internalized nightmares? Yeah I was straight up marching in line with that. Then, of course, in both the book and the movie, these people (three of them, instead of two), are just entirely dysfunctional. They banter, they interrupt each other, they step on each other, its not at all an honorable melding of the minds. Its three reclusive, kinda-shitty geniuses, grappling with their internal demons as well as the horrifying unknown they are also being confronted with. This isn’t a unique storyline either (but no I haven’t researched who did it first, maybe it was Le Guin, she did everything first, right? Ansible?), it’s seen several other times, in a lot of other media that I just can’t count anymore. But the only other one that really stuck with me was going to be Event Horizon. Because the horror in Sphere wasn’t enough for me.
Okay I love science fiction, but I haven’t actually talked about my relationship with horror. I hated it. It was the birth of my awful nightmares. And it was equal parts a feature of my dad’s late night video sessions. And of course, the two genres are so easily intertwined. But it wasn’t really a hatred. It was a morbid fascination. If I went to B. Dalton to stare at the offerings of every Frank Frazetta-drawn cover featuring bare-chested, skimpy-clothed heroes posing in front of the rings of Saturn, I was also in the kid’s section reading the synopsis of every Goosebumps book I could find… and giving myself nightmares from that alone. I didn’t even need to read them, just the covers were enough. I hated monster movies, and I still hate gratuitous gore or slasher flicks, but the freaky primal nature of something that nags at your base instincts of what defies your understanding of reality still snags my attention. Event Horizon is pretty gruesome. It is clearly more horror than science fiction at this point. But hot damn did I like it. A lot. So, yes, a devoted spacecraft engineer committed to his creation that has gone past simply being a vessel, while all those on board dissolve into the chaos and horror of nightmares from somewhere else in an infinite universe, before being dragged through a black hole into literal Hell. Check.
But this intersection of horror and science fiction isn’t new either. And again, it probably goes back even further than I can even know, but there’s a clear third contributor here. She is a singularly capable space denizen, in her flight suit, kicking ass so far from the rest of humanity that she has to wait a lifetime to finally return. Look, its going to be an entirely different blog post to talk about the pattern of queer-coded women in science fiction, and I’m probably the last person qualified to talk about it. But, at a minimum, I think it’s because going into space requires some initial rejection of demure femininity, and eschews some level of self-reliance. And if the movie is being honest and not caking them in a ton of makeup, then you tend to wind up with some kinda gruff, pretty independent, fully capable female characters in fetching flightsuits. It’s not every female sci-fi character, it’s not all encompassing, but it’s hard to avoid. And as far as I can tell, none of them have just been allowed to be gay. Just… its right there, it’s okay, you don’t need some burly spacemarine dude to round this girl out, just let them go the full distance.
Alien freaked me out as a kid. The movie, not the creature. I didn’t have barbies, my toys of choice were Stretch Armstrong, a cadre of Beanie Babies erecting their own form of government, and a glow-in-the-dark Predator action figure that rode around on the dog-alien from Alien 3 like a horse. So, the characters from the franchise clearly weren’t the problem. And as I got older, I just needed to get comfortable with the fact that I liked being freaked out by Alien. And more to the core, I was probably in love with Ripley. The Xenomorph/Ripely couples costume is probably my favorite early relationship milestone between me and the wife. Guess which character I was…
Okay so I guess it’s not that big of a deal to tell agents your work is comparable to movies or comics. Almost all movies are made from books or comics these days anyway. I may have wound up referencing Ripley, Starbuck and Kira Nerys in my queries. Maybe I was trying to buy into some more elitist idea that I was now being literary by avoiding outright mentioning my real comps. It wasn’t necessary in the long run. I told my publisher the honest truth, and he got it in an instant. So, for all the queries I sent that weren’t 100% honest: This book will appeal to queer fans of Sphere, Event Horizon, and Alien, and I am unashamed.
AZ ROZKILLIS 