Starship Summer

STARSHIP SUMMER

by

Eric Brown

INTRODUCTION

So we’re now well into the “new millennium,” that evocative date beyond which used to be purely the realm of science fiction. So when our clocks finally flipped over that fateful Y2K point, did all us SF authors suddenly become “contemporary” authors? Not according to the marketing strategists and helpful genre-labelled shelves in bookshops—normally at the back of bookshops away from daylight and public sight. Nope; we’re still apparently churning out stories about spaceships, robots, and ray guns (well, I am, anyway). That distinctive summary of all things SF. Take a bow, marketing department and the popular press.

Actually, on one level, I have to admit, it’s a fair cop. Us SF authors write the literature of ideas, pushed forward by advancing technology whose chrome-plated gadgets gleam brightly and enticingly in the strange light of alien suns. Who can resist all that shiny new gadgetry? The way it affects our lives, the options it provides, all those myriad neat possibilities for a twist in the tale as you reverse the polarity, decouple the tachyon spin, and escape with a mighty bound. It’s useful stuff. Back in the alleged golden age of SF, which I think is the late forties/early fifties depending on who you ask, engineering and science were the defining parameters for SF: that’s what it was all about. People in these stories were mere tour guides to steer you through the possibilities of new worlds full of wonderful ideas. They didn’t count, they weren’t characters with feelings or personalities.

I’m generalizing monstrously of course. Some tech-driven stories did have great characters, and not every story was about technology. I’ll just mention
A Canticle for Leibowitz
and
Way Station
as my prime examples of non-techie novels from this era, and leave you to nominate your own favourites—it’s a fun game.

However, the point of all this is that the SF genre from the forties onward was largely perceived as cowboys in space, adventure for teenagers; then, as we moved into the computer age: for geeks. A perception reinforced by most SF films and TV series.

It was certainly what I tended to read in my teens.

Then I tried to write the stuff—that was in the mid-eighties. There were a lot of us starting out back then. And yes, we wrote a lot of hard SF as it’s called now, but there was a big shift in focus. The stories were about societies and the effects of technology on individuals. Almost a shift back, if you like, to the ideas-based narratives of Wells and Verne but with a modern edge. That’s when I started buying Interzone, and when, of course, I discovered Eric Brown.

Eric was then and remains to this day a thoroughly modern writer. The issues and concepts he deals in are those of today. In that respect he is a contemporary writer. It’s the settings which are SF, but he’s successfully thrown off the convention of science permeating every page. Yes, there are spaceships, and sometimes robots, and even aliens, but they are not the central pillar of the story. Especially not in the case of
Starship Summer
. Eric’s skill lies in the way in which he deals with futuristic technology, incorporating it into the narrative in the same easy way as we treat our own technology today; it’s an interesting peripheral and nothing more. It helps us do certain things, it hinders us in others, and it throws up interesting possibilities. No matter its form, Eric puts his characters firmly centre stage, and that sets him well above the horrific pigeonholing which SF is still forced to endure.

I read Eric’s stories because I want to find out what happens to the people involved. He’s good at crafting them, and he’s very good in creating their predicaments, almost all of which are self-inflicted, the outcome of human nature in all its stubbornness and sorrow. With
Starship Summer
we’re introduced to Conway, our narrator, a man with a tragic past seeking the escape of solitude on a distant, apparently insignificant planet. Hawksworth, a man with an equally veiled past. Old spaceships with an unknown pedigree. An artist past his prime. Mysterious lady with an even more mysterious ailment. Alien religion—that isn’t quite. All fascinating stuff. But Eric’s artistry is the way in which he combines these traits in an intricate dance of emotion and feeling. There are the Big Events of SF going on there, but only in the background, secondary to the people we quickly grow to care about. To say anything more about them would be a plot-spoiler, and I’m not doing that. All I knew when I picked up the manuscript was that I’d be drawn into the story and enjoy the outcome, and that’s what I can reassure you that you’ve got with this book in your hands.

As always, Eric has blended the very best facets of futuristic fiction, giving us an elaborate, gentle vision of a desirable future populated by characters that inspire both sympathy and poignancy.

Eric’s output, certainly when it comes to novels, isn’t as frequent or as sizable as I for one would like to see; which makes novellas like this all the more important to those of us who wait impatiently for what he releases. Once again I enjoyed what he produced, and once again I’m left waiting anxiously for the next one.

Peter F. Hamilton

Rutland, February 2007

Dedicated to the Memory of Michael G. Coney

ONE

Last year I left Earth and Telemassed twenty light years through space to the colony world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis IV. I was looking for peace, for a retreat from the nightmares that plagued me. I was looking for contentment after a period of pain. I should have known, of course, that you cannot outrun your nightmares: they are with you until you find the strength to look deep within yourself and banish them with courage.

I took the Telemass relay via the four stations between Earth and Chalcedony and arrived feeling as if I’d died four times and been brought back to life—which, in effect, is exactly what had happened. Dazed, nauseous, I booked into an expensive hotel overlooking the ocean and slept for twenty-four hours. The following day I enquired at a couple of real estate agents. I was looking for a quiet, out of the way place, far from the tourists and the religious pilgrims who flocked to the planet in their droves.

That afternoon I hired a ground-effect vehicle and drove a hundred kilometres up the coast to the small beachside settlement of Magenta Bay. There, an overweight local in his sixties, all tan and smile, showed me around a few A-frames and then, sensing they were not what I was looking for, suggested I might like to view a plot of land with the idea of having my own place built.

I liked the area. Magenta Bay consisted of a dozen beachfront dwellings—A-frames and villas—and a few stores set back from the water. The sand was as fine and red as Hungarian paprika, and the rainforest that backed the settlement a startling, alien green. The purple mountains of the interior were sufficiently different to remind you that you were no longer on Earth.

I selected a plot on the northern headland of the bay, close enough to the centre of town to provide a short walk for the necessities, but far enough away from the nearest villa so as not be bothered by inquisitive neighbours.

I signed the paperwork, paid a deposit, then began the long drive back to MacIntyre to look for a dwelling that might suit the land I had bought.

In the event I didn’t get that far.

I was three kilometres out of Magenta when I saw the scrapyard. My first impression was that this was an incongruous, not to say ugly, business to set up in paradise. My second impression, when I made out the nature of the scrap, was tinged with a romanticism that recalled my youth and my fascination with the exploration of space, and I knew I had to stop and take a look around.

I drove under a rickety metal-worked archway bearing the legend: HAWKSWORTH & CO., constructed from old stanchion rods and microwave antennae. From one paradise I passed into another.

I braked and climbed out and stared about me in wonder. I was ten again, a kid awed at the sublime majesty and latent power of the craft arrayed around me. The sight was not without the kick of poignancy, however—and not just the poignancy of lost youth, but the sadness that these magnificent vessels should end up here, some whole, but most nobbled and spavined, stripped and stacked and sorted into utilitarian piles: here a rickety mound of radiation baffles, there a ziggurat of nose cones, and over there a pile of tail-fins layered like pancakes.

Not all the craft had been cannibalised and sectioned, however;there were a dozen vessels intact, looking much as they had thirty years ago, poised on the aprons of starports across the Expansion,ready to bravely explore the infinite.

I wandered around a ten-man exploration vessel squatting on its ramrod haunches, a bulging bullfrog of a thing with swelling engine nacelles and a prognathous nose-cone. I slapped its flank, old paint flaking beneath my palm. The silver and lightning blue livery of the Canterbury Line was still visible in places, excoriated by the void.

The next ship in line took my breath away, for I had possessed a model of this very starship in my early teens. It was a Jansen Mk III deep space exploration probe, still proudly bearing the blue and yellow carapace of the Stockholm Line. I walked its long, streamlined length, trying to imagine the sights it had witnessed, the events of history in which it had played a part—the exploration of planets across the Expansion now settled by colonists ignorant of the deeds and daring of the crews of vessels such as this.

I turned, taking in the entirety of the yard, my eye catching a kaleidoscopic display of familiar sigils and decals.

“Can I help you?”

The question, in the warm afternoon air, startled me.

The owner of the voice was just as remarkable as the vessels which surrounded us.

He was garbed in a grease-stained black onepiece and walked with a lurching limp, his right shoulder ducking with every step. His hair was long, black, and the skin of his face tanned by the fierce heat of Delta Pavonis to the shade of an overdone beefsteak.

The material of his onepiece bulged here and there—along the length of his arms and across his chest—but this I noticed only later.

He advanced, left hand outstretched. “Hawksworth. I run the place.” His right arm hung useless at his side.

“Conway,” I replied. “I’ll shortly be moving to Magenta.” I looked around at the towering examples of a long-gone era. “Some museum you have here.”

He looked at me, assessing my age. “Brings back memories?”

I smiled. “Just a few. It’s as if…as if my past has been pulled out of my head, made metal and lined up for my inspection.”

Hawksworth laughed. “Care for a drink?”

I was surprised by his hospitality, then realised that he probably didn’t get much passing trade this far north.

He led the way across the yard towards a small scoutship which, I realised with amusement, he had turned into an office. We climbed a spiral staircase welded to the hull of the ship and stepped onto an observation platform. Acceleration couches, in lieu of chairs, dotted the deck. He gestured for me to sit down and ducked into the bridge of the craft, a dark hole filled with glowing com-screens.

He emerged a few seconds later with two ice-cold cans of local beer.

He leaned against the rail, surveying his domain, and he reminded me, in that piratical pose, of a superannuated buccaneer scanning the salvage of a long and eventful life.

Only then did I notice the ridge of bolt-like protuberances that lined his arms, his chest and spine.

Before I could think of a way of framing a question, Hawksworth said, looking at me, “I don’t have you down as a pilgrim.”

I smiled. “Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment. No, I’ve come to Chalcedony to retire. The quiet life…” I finished lamely.

I took a long swallow of beer. It was good, with taste and bite. I could see myself enjoying the occasional drink on the veranda of my villa, overlooking the bay.