Undercurrents (Blake's 7 zine)
| Zine | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Undercurrents |
| Publisher: | New Moon Press |
| Editor: | |
| Author(s): | James Ide |
| Cover Artist(s): | Carole Swoboda |
| Illustrator(s): | Carole Swoboda |
| Date(s): | 1991 |
| Series?: | yes |
| Medium: | |
| Size: | |
| Genre: | het |
| Fandom: | Blake’s 7 |
| Language: | English |
| External Links: | [1] |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Undercurrents is a het Blake's 7 189-page novel by James Ide. It is the first in a series and has the subtitle: "Another Aspect of Blake's 7."
This story is a romance between Avon and Cally.
The Series
- Undercurrents
- Journey
- Quest
- Going Home, "Avon's Quest," a play in five acts
Inside Gallery
Reactions and Reviews
If James Ide is really male, then I'm very surprised, because this novel is in fact a genre romance. The only real action is the series of misunderstandings between the lovers, Avon and Cally. Oddly enough, this is ostensibly set in the universe of "Avon: Terrible Aspect", but the tone is very different. During Series 3, Avon and Cally are stranded for some time on a planet. When another man courts Cally, Avon begins to realize his own feelings for her. Back on the ship, they begin an affair. What happens on Terminal is rather different from what Avon lets the others believe and sets up the possibility of a sequel.
According to my information, the projected third volume, Quest, was eventually rewritten as a play and published in that form, though I've never seen it; but I don't think that part 2, Journey, was ever published at all. I could be wrong, of course. Remember, I didn't think that Desperado had ever made it to print, but now I have my very own copy.
It has a very smooth, readable style; but since I'm not very fond of romances in general (unless they also include hot sex or adventure or best of all both), I confess that I was a little bored by this one. Recommended if you like romances, but not otherwise. The illustrations, full-page portraits of the third-season crew, are very nice.[1]
This 188-page novel zine by James Ide is a mix of the good and the mediocre, with frequent dips into the ridiculous.
On the plus side, it is technically quite good. The print is dear and dark, the packaging well-presented. The copy editing itself is first-rate. We spotted only one typo, indicating Ide took a great deal of care with the manuscript, and there were no glaring errors of punctuation or grammar.
The book is divided into several sections with title clues to tip the reader off on where in the series any given section takes place, the first beginning a little while after Children of Auron. This serves well as orientation and saved this reviewer much aggravation.
Before plunging into the plot, we must haul ourselves up short and set out our own criteria for evaluating a zinc Q: Could this have been an episode for the series? A: Decidedly not. Ide covers himself on this rather important point by stating in the subtitle that his book is "Another Aspect of Blake's 7." In that, he is entirely correct.
Undercurrents is primarily a relationship story built around Avon and Cally. Tarrant, Dayna, Vila, and eventually, Soolin are relegated to the background and occasionally provide comedy relief. There are a host of guest characters, so many that we were hard-pressed to keep all their names straight. References were made to the situations Paul Darrow set down in Avon: A Terrible Aspect, but reading that volume is not a prerequisite to understanding this one.
The story first centers on Cally's growing isolation from the others in the wake of the plague on Auron. She is feeling lonely, hopeless and quite depressed, weary of the constant bickering on the flight deck. The Liberator puts in to the neutral planet of Barram for repairs. The Feds aren't supposed to harass them, but do anyway, placing a homing beacon among the new supplies going aboard. The beacon seems to be giving Cally some telepathic problems, and she becomes 'hysterical." Our dictionary defines hysteria as "a nervous fit characterized by alternate paroxysms of crying and laughter." She is more comatose than anything else. When Avon leaves her to find Vila, a doctor comes up, instantly diagnoses the very quiescent Cally as hysterical, and promptly gives her a shot to quiet her down. This would be sinister if the doctor were a Fed, but she turns out to be one of the good guys. Notwithstanding, we severely question her medical qualifications in the light of this precipitant, malpractice-suit-courting behavior.
Avon sends Vila back to the Liberator, with instructions to Tarrant to get away and return when things are safer (oh, sure), then goes looking for Cally. Both are taken in by the doctor's family and invited to stay until Cally recovers. The third person narrative divides itself with many cuts to the Fed officers, the Liberator, Avon, Cally and the family. Eventually, the Liberator crew finds the homing beacon and returns for their missing members.
First and foremost this is not space opera. It is most definitely soap, the biographical information in the back of the book lists [the author] as an actor; this must be where he gets his skill at presenting dialogue. There are endless pages of it, though, much of it repetitious and unnecessary. Relationships are the focus here and without any action and adventure to relieve it, the final effect was very dull indeed. There were some glaring anachronisms in the dialogue, i.e. 20th century American idiom was very present throughout. Also, there was mention of two Feds sitting down to a game of cribbage. While card games have existed for many centuries, we do not think it would be all that difficult for the writer to invent something more up to date for the Blake's 7 universe. We have the sneaking suspicion that these unnecessary characters and page-filling situations were for the sole purpose of including the writer's friends as "guest stars" in the story.
Now we come to characterization. Again, much thought and care was put into this. However, the people dealt with bore little resemblance to their TV originals. Avon is frequently referred to as being a bastard, but in this he's mostly guilty of simple rudeness and nothing more earth-shattering. Cally is a supreme disappointment. Even taking into account that she's having emotional problems, she comes off as being a terrible wimp. Throughout the book she bursts into tears with alarming frequency. Good grief, indeed. We got tired of that device very fast.
The last part of the book has Avon and Cally sharing a physical relationship and coming up with a ridiculous "front" to put on before the others in order to preserve Avon's precious privacy. Cally will dog around and pretend to be "used" by Avon, but in reality and safely behind dosed doors, she knows she is really and truly loved by him. It's their own little secret giggle-giggle. While this device has its place, that place may only be found in the worst pulp romances, not aboard the Liberator. While the planetside scenes were merely dull, we found this tidbit to be downright offensive; sexist and utterly unbelievable. What annoyed us the most was the fact that Ide is really not a bad writer. He knows how to get a point across, build dialogue, and has a rudimentary grasp of suspense. His weak points are characterization, a lack of action in his plotline (which was flat, with no highs or lows and no discernible dramatic climax), and being guilty of what we call emotional distance. This book is primarily about feelings, yet we felt nothing. Cally's weeping and whining served only to irritate, not gain sympathy. We were looking at a "picture" of an emotion, but not feeling it ourselves. What was lacking is that ability to suck the reader right into the character's skin so that we can feel what they feel, fight their fights, and cheer their victories.
Undercurrents is not a typical fan product — we have read worse — but it has little to recommend itself. On a scale of 1 to 5, we give it a 1.[2]
At the risk of being too subtle in my opinion of this work, I can't believe I read the whole thing. Okay, okay, it wasn't a complete waste of time. Nothing's perfect. It just disturbed me that some Brazilian tree died for this.
What did I like? Like isn't really an apt description. Accepted, perhaps. I accepted the fact that author James Ide was, at least nominally, in the Blake's 7 ballpark. He had the names right. He had his chronology down. (This is starting to sound like those manuscript critiques in which the best thing you can say is, "wonderful typing. Really wonderful")
Well, that was short. Now for the postmortem: I got violently tired of Cally weeping, crying, sniffling, bursting into tears, leaking, dripping, whatever. And she cried constantly. I haven't got the patience to count up the times she cried, but I suspect we were well into double digits, not to mention several boxes of high-tech tissue I got even more violently tired of Avon acting like a particularly surly and stupid Harlequin hero (actually, I think I'm insulting Harlequin), throwing temper tantrums, and generally being about as emotionally in control as a three-year-old when he should definitely have been worried about staying alive.
We had the obligatory love-in-front-of-the-fireplace scene, in which Cally and a particularly insipid character named Wes gazed soulfully into each other's eyes and said brainless things like "A penny for your thoughts" and "Not now, not yet" Naturally, the latter was Cally's line, either before or after bursting into tears for the forty-seventh time (approximately). We had the obligatory Avon-waitng-up-for-Cally-to-get-home scene, in which he says stupid things and actually has no idea why he's saying them. We have the semi-obligatory love-hurts scenes, including Cally giving Avon a black eye and Avon apparently giving Cally several different bruises during the second half of the book. I found that particularly disquieting.
Okay, okay, plot. Was there one? I got confused, particularly since Ide can't seem to follow a scene through to the end before he jumps to another location and another set of characters. Some of his scenes are less than two sentences long, which is distracting and thoroughly unnecessary. I didn't find the Liberator scenes at all convincing, and the Federation "strategy" really pretty much escaped me. The plot was definitely overshadowed by the juvenile antics of Cally and Avon, who displayed the emotional development of two not-too-bright adolescents. Four stars. Rox sez check it out — or is that chuck it out? [3]
References
- ^ review by Sarah Thompson at Judith Proctor's Blake's 7 site
- ^ from Tarriel Cell v.4 n.2
- ^ from Tarriel Cell v.4 n.2