Cataloging Raygun Fantasy - An Initial Foray

In the last post, I discussed my basic thoughts on what constitutes "raygun fantasy", and how that subgenre of retro SF differs from "scientifiction". It's also different than other retro SF genres such as steampunk or dieselpunk, but those others aren't really relevant to the current discussion. For now, I'll limit myself to the continuum between scientifiction and raygun fantasy. I did note elsewhere that one could call the blending of the two poles "sword & blaster". There is one other subgenre that is relevant, though, which is the "planetary romance". Most raygun fantasy falls within the bounds of planetary romance, which is a subgenre concerned with adventure across the varying environments of an alien world. Planetary romance dates back to the earliest era of SF, being the category one could place such works as A Princess of Mars by Burroughs and its sequels, or even the Flash Gordon newspaper strips that I consider definitive to raygun fantasy.

What I'd like to do in this post is begin cataloging the works that constitute raygun fantasy to some extent or another. It can't be complete, and I would certainly appreciate suggestions from my readers to help expand the list. I'm specifically going to avoid mentioning roleplaying games, as I intend to examine those individually in future posts. All of that said, here we go:

The stories about Northwest Smith by C.L. Moore - These were the stories that gave me the realization that there was a subgenre to identify in the first place. The repeated theme of powerful, incorporeal aliens which were interacted with in manners that resembled magic or religion are definitive to raygun fantasy. Moore's first story about Smith was "Shambleau", and she went on to write a total of twelve stories plus a short vignette, all collected in Northwest of Earth.

The Flash Gordon newspaper strips and movie serials - Especially the Sunday strips written by the creator of the character, Alex Raymond. Flash's trips to Mongo were clearly inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs's tales of John Carter, and include the requisite swordfights and inhabitants of Mongo who are differentiated by their skin color (though that latter distinction lessens and eventually vanishes from the strip by the end of Raymond's run). In one sequence, Flash fights against the "Witch-Queen", whose arcane - and unique - technology gives her powers that resemble magic. The inventions of Dr. Zarkov occasionally resemble magic, as well, such as one sequence in which the doctor invents a booth that can make a man invisible for a few hours. The 1980 film version draws on ideas from the SF New Wave that were current at the time, such as chemical enhancements, and added an element of deliberate camp.

Star Wars and sequels (and prequels, etc.) - Originally, George Lucas wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, but couldn't get the rights. This resulted, happily, in the excellent idea of making his own sci-fi pseudo-serial. The story of Star Wars centers on the action of the Force, a mystical, all-encompassing energy field which directs the fates of the central characters to varying degrees. I don't think I even need to discuss this one further, as probably everyone reading this is intimately familiar with the details of Lucas's stories.



After those three, which I consider to be the central, defining works of raygun fantasy, there are many others.

The Lensmen series of stories by E.E. "Doc" Smith - While Smith tried to make plausible explanations for the devices of his Galactic Patrol, the telepathic powers of the Lensmen themselves, as well as the instrumentality of the Lens and the "Ascended Masters" manifest in the Arisians (who are fighting the demonic Eddorians that are breaking into our reality from another), force the series deeper into human, spiritual concerns. Some of the fans of the series only consider the four books Galactic Patrol, Grey Lensman, Second-Stage Lensmen, and Children of the Lens to be truly canonical, and to be best read in that order.

Eric John Stark and other stories by Leigh Brackett - I haven't actually read the Skaith books that change the setting from the planets of the Solar System (mainly Mars, Venus, and Mercury) to a broad range of stellar systems, but I hear that they are basically the same in tone as the original three novellas. Brackett gives a noir edge to retro SF, and Stark runs into mystical forces masquerading as technology, from the soul-transfer crown of "The Secret of Sinharat" (a revised and expanded version of "Queen of the Martian Catacombs") to the mystical, titular talisman of "People of the Talisman" (a revision and expansion of "Black Amazon of Mars"), not to mention the very title of "Enchantress of Venus". Many of her other stories are set in the same background as the Stark ones, and so are well worth reading (see, for instance, the collection The Best of Leigh Brackett, edited by her husband, Edmond Hamilton).

Speaking of Hamilton, The Star Kings and other stories of his fit well into the realm of raygun fantasy. The Star Kings, in fact, are the subject of the only official collaboration between Hamilton and his wife, "Stark and the Star Kings", connecting Eric John Stark to that series.

Buck Rogers is certainly influential on raygun fantasy, but it is itself pretty solidly scientifiction as I've defined it, being more concerned with developing the implications of the gadgetry than exploring the mental and spiritual natures of the characters. The late-'70s television series included more raygun fantasy elements than the original newspaper strips or the novella Armageddon 2419 AD.

John Carter - Edgar Rice Burroughs nearly singlehandedly invented the planetary romance when he wrote "Under the Moons of Mars", serialized in The All-Story starting in February 1912. When the serial was finished, it was collected as the novel, A Princess of Mars. Deeply influenced by Theosophy, Burroughs's adventure tale went on to influence sci-fi deeply, and may be the original source of the frequent mysticism infusing raygun fantasy.

Barbarella - Starting out as a comic book of "erotic SF" in 1964 in France (though you can almost find more racy material on television for children these days), written by Jean-Claude Forest, Barbarella took the images and tropes of sci-fi and married them to European concerns about humanity, sexuality, and liberation. Famously made into a movie starring Jane Fonda in 1968 (though it didn't really succeed until its re-release in 1977 as Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy, with the nudity toned down - not that there was much to begin with!), this is one of the places where the SF New Wave joined closely to retro SF and explored raygun fantasy.

Battlestar Galactica - Not so much the "reimagined" series of the early 2000s, which developed its own (related) concerns, but the original television series touched frequently on spiritual and religious issues, leaving it pretty firmly in the area of raygun fantasy. The reimagined series is pretty well in raygun fantasy territory, but seems to have dropped a lot of the fun in favor of existential dread, which I think disqualifies it to some extent, in the sense that such existential concerns are nearly the opposite of the spiritual ones of raygun fantasy. As a case study in what it is about Modernism and Postmodernism that opposes Romanticism and Enlightenment concerns, the reimagined series is probably an excellent example - but that isn't really my concern here. There is little to recommend the "sequel" series, Galactica 1980, excepting only the final episode of that mercifully short-run series, which dealt with the fate of Starbuck.

Guardians of the Galaxy - I have not, unfortunately, read the comic on which it is based, but the 2014 film includes the mystical pseudo-technology characteristic of raygun fantasy and updates it for modern audiences, as well as the physical and personal fighting to be found in it. I'm particularly happy, from a gaming perspective, to see the theme of treasure hunting included.

Tara, Marauder of the Spacelanes - Available in a collection from Nuelow Games (though missing the first, origin, story which was apparently presented in Wonder Comics #15; the collection features a prose short story intended as an origin which does not draw on the original). Originally a fairly obscure and short series found in Wonder Comics in the late 1940s, mostly known now because it passed into the Public Domain. That said, it is a lovely, quirky example of raygun fantasy, though it tends toward the more pure adventure elements than the spiritual and psychological concerns of most raygun fantasy. In that way, it resembles Flash Gordon to some extent, though the art and writing are not nearly as good. Tara's Atom Sword is obviously one of the precursors of the lightsabers of Star Wars.

Edited 12/30/2016: I have since learned a great deal more about this story. There were seven comic and four or five two-page prose stories about Tara published. All six of the issues from 15-20 of Wonder Comics had comic stories, and issues 16, 17, 18, 20, and maybe 19 (I haven't seen a copy of that issue yet) had two-page prose stories. In addition, a final episode, "Satellite of the Moon Spiders", was published in Thrilling Comic #71. I am trying to find the story or stories from Wonder Comics #19 (I have been able to find all of the rest, but not that issue so far; as it seems that only 26 copies are known to still exist, that's perhaps not surprising), at which time I hope to publish an edition of the complete Tara stories with some editorial commentary since they are all out of copyright at this time.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe - Starting as a line of plastic toys and the show-length advertisements for them masquerading as entertainment, these quickly developed into some serious stories. While perhaps not the best, they were nonetheless very well-received. The live-action movie, while not a classic, isn't terrible. Again, I doubt that I really need to go into detail about this.

Thundarr the Barbarian - Probably the last Saturday-morning cartoon that wasn't either slapstick or a toy advertisement, Thundarr is more post-apocalyptic, but deserves mention as sharing many of the concepts of raygun fantasy, such as swordplay, magical technologies, and even straightforward magic.

Star Trek - While it has a reputation as being relatively "hard" SF, the original series and its animated followup actually follow raygun fantasy ideas much more often than the technogadgetry that typified the later Generation or even Enterprise. Starting in the two pilot episodes, "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the series immediately laid out a concern about the spiritual elements of being human as being pre-eminent over the validity of the science. This was quickly reinforced by episodes such as "Charlie X", which re-wrote* Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land as a tragedy of adolescence (a necessary change due to the show's basic conceit, which could not support the messianic message inherent in Heinlein's story). The exploration of raygun fantasy themes would last all the way to the last episode of the original series, "Turnabout Intruder", which presented a machine that transferred the "essence" of two people between each other, just as the Crowns of the Ramas in Leigh Brackett's "The Secret of Sinharat". The animated series continued to explore those themes, as well, to varying success. While The Next Generation did occasionally (especially early on) touch on such matters, mostly they were dealt with dismissively or ham-fistedly. Compare Q to Squire Trelane for example. Despite being similar enough that the former's first appearance in "Encounter at Farpoint" seems at times almost to be a direct remake of "The Squire of Gothos", the latter is pretty well handled while the former quickly becomes tiresome. Perhaps this due to his frequent employment in the series, or to the fact that Trelane is presented as a child while Q is merely an annoying and frequent interloper.

I'll stop there for now. What are some more that you think would fit the idea?


* This is purely my own theory. I do not know for certain if Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana were directly influenced by Heinlein's novel.

Gameable Fiction

I've been spending most of my reading time these days with George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series. I was introduced to the setting through the excellent HBO adaptation, but quickly decided to read the books as I was sure that there was deeper content, and more of it. I was not disappointed.

Of course, we all know that the series has been adapted as a roleplaying game (though to be sure, I don't know very much about the game and how well it adapts the material; it seems to me that HârnMaster would go a long way toward developing the feel of the setting, with some work adapting the terrible and exotic magics of Martin's fantasy). There are a few other literary settings that have been adapted by specific roleplaying games: Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Vance's Dying Earth, Moorcock's Melnibone and some other Eternal Champion material, Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories, Niven's Known Space, Fleming's James Bond (though perhaps that was more an adaptation of the movies), Constantine's Wraeththu, Herbert's Dune (twice, though only once officially), Butcher's Dresden Files, Zelazny's Amber, along with a very few others. This doesn't include those settings that were mere supplements for other games, such as Thieves' World, Wild Cards, or Adams's Horseclans. There are even a few, such as Howard's Conan, that have been adapted more than once. In addition to those, there are some movie and television settings that have seen adaptations, like Star Wars (three times so far!), Star Trek (more than three times, depending on how you count it!), Firefly, Babylon 5, and so on.

However, there are some settings of fiction that have not been adapted to roleplaying games, and I am not sure why that is. Eddings's Belgariad, Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, Butcher's Codex Alera, Burroughs's Barsoom (well, it sort of has, but not really), Lee's Flat Earth or Birthgrave, Donaldson's Thomas Covenant, Brooks's Shannara, and so on. Some of them, I can understand if the rights have issues or are otherwise difficult to secure, but the popularity of such as Malazan or Shannara would seem to have caused someone to go through the effort.

What settings do you most want to see turned into freestanding roleplaying games? Which would be better off as a supplement for an existing game like D&D/Pathfinder, GURPS, BRP, or whatever?

The Reward

The Reward from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

This is a really good animated epic fantasy. It includes everything you need: epic visuals, character arcs, conflict, fantastic situations, and all of it in nine minutes.

However, the thing about it that I like most is that it exemplifies why the D&D formulation of "zero to hero" is awesome. Starting characters who already have power and authority are not nearly as interesting as ones that have developed those in play.

Also, there are just a couple more days in the poll about the next Obscure Games review. Vote!

Swords & Sorcery

I've been looking at the upcoming setting product Tales From the Fallen Empire, which looks really interesting to me. I love that it takes inspiration from the fantasy films of Roger Corman, such as The Warrior and the Sorceress and Deathstalker, as well as the more traditional sword & sorcery fiction of Leiber and Howard. The only thing I'm not so intrigued by is that it is going to be for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Now, I've not got much against that game, but it's just not likely to be one that I am going to pick up. I've already got a couple of class/level games that treat sword & sorcery topics well enough (I'm talking about D&D and S&W, as well as The Arcanum), and I haven't seen anything that really compels me about DCC.

Anyway, I discovered this setting when I was googling around for information about The Warrior and the Sorceress, and found a thread on one of the RPG boards about it where it was mentioned that one of the classes in the setting (the "Wanderer") was inspired by the Order of the Homerac from that film, or specifically by David Carradine's character in it. It got me thinking, though, about what specific movies and fiction I'd want to use as inspiration for a swords & sorcery setting, staying away from the obvious ones like Conan the Barbarian and the works of people like Howard or Leiber.

The Warrior and the Sorceress is a no-brainer. There's a lot of implied setting there that can serve as inspiration. Similarly, Deathstalker is pretty neat. There are some interesting ideas in Fire and Ice, which is pretty much what happens when you take Frazetta's art and make it into a setting and story. The "Taarna" sequence from Heavy Metal has a lot of inspirational imagery and concepts, and the "Den of Earth" sequence has a few ideas as well.

Speaking of Taarna, there's the story sequence of Arzach and Legends of Arzach by Moebius and Lofficier.

An unusual source which might be interesting is the boardgame Dark Emperor from Avalon Hill. The idea of an immortal necromancer coming back from the land of the dead with the Lord of Vampires and the Goddess of Fear to conquer a decaying empire is an interesting one. The unusual geography (it is based on a landscape of meteor strikes and the resulting round seas instead of plate tectonics) is neat, too.

Tanith Lee's Tales From the Flat Earth books are amazing. Vaguely Arabesque fantasy with a darkly modern perspective, like fairy tales told by a madwoman. She's also writing a couple of new ones, so soon there will be seven volumes or more, with the upcoming two to be published in 2014 and 2015.

Richard Tierney's Simon of Gitta stories are a wonderful mix of sword & sandal, sword & sorcery, and Lovecraftian themes, rationalizing the heretic Derleth's ideas with those of Lovecraft through the interpretation of Gnostic theology, but a lot more entertaining than that sounds. Most of the stories are collected in the Chaosium collection Scroll of Thoth, and the others are found in the novel The Drums of Chaos, one story in the Chaosium collection The Azathoth Cycle, and one story (originally published in the magazine Crypt of Cthulhu) online here. There's also a novel titled The Gardens of Lucullus, which is part of the cycle, but very hard to find at the moment. Loosely connected, the movie The Silver Chalice was an inspiration on this series of stories, as Tierney has said that Jack Palance's portrayal of Simon the Magician is how he envisions the main character.

What odd sources would you use for a sword & sorcery setting?

Wednesday Morning Randomness

1) I've been re-reading MegaTraveller. I'm surprised at how very simple the rules are, except for the vehicle design sequences. Most of the first two books are taken up with either those design sequences, the world generation sequences, or the character generation tables. Only a very small amount is taken up with resolution systems.

2) Work proceeds on the Top Secret clone. I'm keeping things pretty close to the basic book, but there are bits from the Top Secret Companion that I feel like I really want to include. I'm also making sure that some of the material from Dragon magazine would be usable by including the extra stats from, for instance, the space program articles and the wilderness survival article. I'll probably include highly simplified ways of using those.

3) Almost no one seems to be voting on the poll to the right. Please vote.

4) One of my projects for this year is to finish all of the Burroughs Barsoom books. I'm on the eighth, Swords of Mars, now.

5) I'm really looking forward to Prometheus. I may go see it in the theater, something I only rarely do - most recently, I've gone to see John Carter and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I can't even remember what movie I went out to previous to that (the first Iron Man, maybe?). Yeah, I don't go to the theater much.

Science Fiction Film Space Travel

Note: For the purposes of this post, I am using "Science Fiction" to refer to reasonably plausible scenarios. This includes what is sometimes called "Hard Science Fiction", but is not limited to that, as some minor bending of the rules of reality is acceptable in the interests of the story. Hopefully, what exactly I mean will be made apparent by some of my examples below.

I love Science Fiction movies. I also love Science Fantasy movies, but here I'll just talk about the former. First, my nominations for best Science Fiction movies of several decades:

1950-1959: (tie) Forbidden Planet and The Day The Earth Stood Still
1960-1969: 2001: A Space Odyssey
1970-1979: Alien
1980-1989: Blade Runner
1990-1999: Gattaca
2000-2009: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Of those, I'd say that the 1960s-1980s were the best time for Science Fiction film, and would count those three as far and away the best three of all time (in which specific order? That would vary depending on my mood, I think. Right now, Blade Runner is pretty much leading the pack).

Did you notice something about those? After the 1970s, spaceships are passé. Gattaca has a trip on one as the ultimate goal, Blade Runner mentions them almost offhandedly as something that other people go on, but they're pretty much removed from the table otherwise. Before then, anyone can go into space (with one exception). There's a stereotyped cook in the 1950s who makes bootleg liquor. In the 1960s, there are low-level receptionists on the space stations. In the 1970s, we're back to an updated version of the 1950s-era lowlife spacemen. After that, it's only the élite who travel beyond the bounds of gravity, if anyone does at all.

I've been kinda obsessing on this topic for the last few weeks, in the wake of the effective end of the USA's space program (yeah, yeah, they're working on another one - wake me when it flies, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it won't happen in the next decade or more; don't even get me started on the private space companies). Before we went, space was full of possibilities. Anything could happen, and we imagined so much.

Then we actually got there.

I will never denigrate the achievements of the Apollo program. Landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth was, frankly, an absolutely incredible success. As I've learned more about rocketry and space travel in the real world, it has become more and more apparent to me just how amazing it was.

But, that success is leavened by the lack of anything of real interest to humans on the Moon. Sure, there's a wealth of scientific information that we should be glad we have, and there are potentially valuable resources if we can just work the bugs out of the devices that will hopefully use them. But there's not much that we can use now. We can't plant crops, because the Lunar soil lacks many of the necessary nutrients available in an organic biosphere, so we'd pretty much have to bring those with us. There aren't many useful metals that we don't already have in abundance on Earth. There are no organics, such as petrochemicals, at all. It's an expensive trip with little material return.

When we found that out, it seems, there was a drop in interest in space travel. Some visionaries tried to leverage concepts that would make space productive, but those haven't gotten very far. There are a few industrial processes that might be improved by microgravity, but that hasn't been proven yet. Microgravity might make a useful retirement community for the wealthy (who might desire the reduced strain on aging organs), but that isn't exactly "productive".

Basically, we've learned that space is mostly good for communications and observation satellites (possibly weaponized ones, as well, but those are currently agreed to be banned), which don't really need people. It isn't all that long until they plan to de-orbit the International Space Station, and that would pretty much be the end of space for humans. Sure, we might build another one, but we couldn't even build a new highway system at this point. We can barely maintain the one we already have. I think that we're done in space, and Science Fiction movies have been reflecting that, for the most part. There are occasional examples otherwise: Avatar, for instance, but those border on the realm of Science Fantasy (as, really, does Forbidden Planet. I make no claims to a foolish consistency, and one could dismiss this argument on that basis if one were so inclined. Keep in mind that the idea is that of "plausibility", which varies depending on the state of knowledge). Moon is the big exception, but it is an exception.

So, some other Science Fiction films I really like:

Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)
Solyaris (aka Solaris, also remade as Solaris) (1972)
Outland (1981)
Escape From New York (1981)
War Games (1983)
Aliens (1986)
Hardware (1990)
Until The End Of The World (1991)
Strange Days (1995)
Hackers (1995)
Koukaku Kidoutai (aka Ghost In The Shell) (1995)
Abre Los Ojos (aka Open Your Eyes, remade as Vanilla Sky) (1997)
Banlieue 13 (aka District B13) (2004)
Children Of Men (2006)
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
District 9 (2009)
Inception (2010)
Limitless (2011)

This is not, of course, a complete list, just what I can think of offhand. Also, I left out some after considering them (such as WALL-E and Paprika), as they went too far into the realm of Science Fantasy for what I am trying to discuss here.

What you see in all of those is that space travel is definitely something that becomes more uncommon with time, and more relegated to élites when it is present. Even Moon fits into this latter category by limiting its spacemen to one individual at a time, not having entire colonies with janitors, receptionists, store clerks, and so on.

For our games, this might mean that it is worthwhile to consider Science Fiction settings that don't include space travel. Even (perhaps especially) cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and realistic transhumanist settings might start to consider that we might not be getting off of this planet in any significant way.

Some time, I'll discuss the whole Peak Oil/Limits of Growth thing and how that affects this possibility.

Apocalypse Now Redux

I love this movie, both versions (though I'll be talking about Redux specifically here). It's an amazing artifact, created almost by accident. It also looks like the sort of thing that results from a proper sandbox. There are location-based encounters (the French villa for roleplaying, the ambush for combat), random encounters ("Never get out of the boat!", inspecting the sampan), and even dungeon-style location-based adventures (Kurtz, of course, at the end of the river). It also includes short story arcs (the USO show at the supply depot and later at the MASH, for instance) created by moving NPCs from one location to another. Some scenes are mythic in scope (the Do Long bridge, the end of the river), while others are more prosaic in tone (the USO show, again, and the supply depot in general).

We can find inspiration for our games in many places, sometimes not even the ones that we think of as directly applicable.