EERIE SF/PARANORMAL/STEAMPUNK: 1899

A ship steams toward destiny in Netflix's 1899.

Just before we are swamped by television’s annual flood of holiday movies and specials, you might want to take a few nights to binge something completely different. Fans of steampunk and classic mad-scientist SF, in particular, will be fascinated by 1899, an eerie psychological paranormal thriller on Netflix from the German creators of Dark.

  I’ll admit I’m only about halfway through this limited series starring an ensemble of international actors (the dialogue is delivered in German, Polish, Cantonese, Spanish, Danish, French and I’m sure I missed a few languages) led by British actor Emily Beecham, but I’m definitely hooked. It’s a bit of a slow build, I don’t mind waiting for a show to reveal itself, as long as the characters are interesting (which they are in this case—everyone seems to have a secret and/or a painful past).

The basic premise is that a shipful of European immigrants—some richer on the upper decks, some poorer in steerage—are making the trip across the Atlantic on the symbolically named Kerberos (yes, the three-headed dog that guards Hades). The captain of the mostly German crew (played by Andreas Pietschmann) and his officers remark that, 1) they are grateful they weren’t laid off when the company was bought out by a British cruise line and, 2) they are cruising at only about half capacity in passengers and with no cargo.

Aboard the ship are a mix of odd characters, including a female doctor (Beecham) who specializes in the brain and has studied medicine, but not practiced (which was common at the time for women); two gay men posing as brothers, one of them a fake priest; a madam posing as an imperious society matron; a Chinese mother and her daughter, who is destined to join the madam’s brothel as a “geisha;” a devout Danish family in steerage, the oldest brother of whom is a target for one of the rich gay men and the oldest sister of whom is pregnant; and so on.

About a third of the way into the trip, the ship receives a repeating telegraph of coordinates from a ship of the same line (the Prometheus) that has been lost for four months. There are no other details. The captain determines they must change course to check it out. (I was suddenly reminded of STAR TREK, forced to investigate a mysterious emergency distress signal in the black of space.)

Now, what we have come to understand is that both the captain and the doctor have received black-edged letters from the same anonymous source urging them to investigate the cruise line (owned by the doctor’s father) and the disappearance of the (again symbolically named) Prometheus. On the back of the envelopes was this message: What was lost will be found again. And it’s useful to know that a black-edged envelope in Victorian times meant an announcement of death.

So, despite much grumbling from passengers and crew, the Kerberos is diverted to find the Prometheus. When they get there, they discover the abandoned ship, looking very decrepit (like it’s been abandoned much longer than four months), but no bodies and no evidence of what might have happened. They discover only one survivor—a boy of about eight, locked in a cabinet (from the outside). He doesn’t speak, but hands over to the doctor a pyramid-shaped black object with markings on it. No one has a clue what it is, but immediately all the compasses on the Kerberos go haywire. If it were me, I’d toss the thing overboard, but no one ever does, do they?

Also, while the Captain and his crew (and the doctor) are searching the Prometheus, a young man (Daniel Solace, played by Aneurin Bernard) swims aboard the Kerberos from the abandoned ship, fully clothed, boots and all, and finds an empty room to hide out in. He starts releasing scarabs (another symbol of death) in the ship, why we don’t know. But, pretty soon, people start dying; the captain and the doctor start having visions; and things start going south. (The scarabs, by the way, also unlock doors and portals to other worlds.)

When contacted for orders, the cruise line insists they sink the Prometheus, which is strange enough, but the Captain refuses and makes the decision to tow it back to their port of origin. Passengers and crew are all unhappy—several of the passengers have big reasons for not going back—and the crew fear their captain has lost his mind. But the Captain just knows something is wrong about that ghost ship, and he’s determined to find out what. But a mob blames the boy for the spate of deaths on the ship, chaos leads to mutiny, and Daniel Solace turns out to hold the key to some fearsome new tech on the Kerberos.

But that’s not the end to the wild and inexplicable events on the ship. Manipulation of the new tech places the Kerberos elsewhere, miles from where it had been, back on course for America and separated from the ill-fated Prometheus. Another push of a button starts up the ticking of a spectral clock which sends most of the passengers into a zombie-like state and over the side into the ocean. It’s only much later that we discover the cause of all this may be a mad scientist behind what is a massive mind experiment.

The show has a few faults, the biggest being that Beecham’s character, Maura Franklin (the doctor), is what we in the science fiction world call a Mary Sue. She should be just another passenger—well, with a few connections to the plot, certainly—but for some reason she manages to insert herself in all the action. That would never happen onboard a real ship. Still the show is worth a watch for fans of the paranormal, of steampunk (the Victorian setting, the gears and odd tech—Solace even wears a long coat and boots), and of classic mad scientist SF. They, like me, will want to tune in to find out what happens next in this twisty tale.

Cheers, Donna

Hunting the Corrigan's Blood - a space opera thriller

After I finished reading Holly Lisle's Tales from the Longview series, I bought her two Cadence Drake novels which take place before the Longview books and set the scene for that series. I wanted to know more about the people the author calls 'Legends'.

The first book, Hunting the Corrigan's Blood, introduces Cadence (Cady) Drake and her partner, Badger. If you're looking for diversity, these two have it in spades. Badger is an albino and Cady is a genetically-engineered hodge-podge, designed by her mother using DNA from three different 'fathers'.  To say Cady doesn't get on with her mother is an understatement – and she doesn't have a father, both factors which have influenced her development as an individual.  There's no way this book is a romance – but there is a love interest which plays an important role in the development of Cady's character.

We meet Cady in rather dramatic circumstances, shackled to a corpse and stuffed into a locker on a space station. It's a graphic scene, very well written but within the context of the rest of the story I wasn't convinced as to why the villains would do that. But I was certainly interested enough to keep reading.

This book is a thriller/detective story with steadily escalating stakes, twists, and turns. It's crammed with believable tech. I especially liked the Medix, a box which can fix all ailments and rejuvenate the human body. An hour in one of these can substitute for a good night's sleep and a few days will repair broken bones and missing limbs. And change your appearance if you want – bigger boobs, less backside – that sort of thing.

In true space opera fashion Cady and Badger move from planet to planet to space station in search of the stolen space ship Corrigan's Blood and find themselves mixed up in something increasingly sinister.  The world-building is excellent, with believable high-tech space stations contrasting with settlements on planets intent on going back to non-tech roots, a little like the Amish in Pennsylvania. One planet is called 'Up Yours'. So very Australian :)

I've said many times that I don't read horror. I've never watched any of the Alien franchise despite the sexy space ships and I don't watch series like The Walking Dead. There are elements in this book which come close to horror. The villains are spectacular. Although I often cringed I couldn't look away as the odds against Cady and Badger rose.

You probably realise I loved it.

Here's the blurb:

DESCRIPTION: Cadence Drake takes on a job finding a missing space yacht--a job that turns into a deadly nightmare. This is the first novel in the Cadence Drake series of linked stand-alones.

--------Cadence Drake is a finder of lost things. Badger Bede is a technical wizard adept at creating programs that make Cady's life easier. Both are handy with a stunner.

All their talents are put to the test as they search for the Corrigan's Blood, a new kind of TFN-drive spaceship with some very special abilities. At first it looks like their dream job -- the job that will allow them to pay off their own ship, the Hope's Reward, and to be more picky about the clients and work they accept -- but they quickly learn that every dream has a price.

Because behind the stolen ship lies the mystery of the people who stole it, people who appear to be using this insanely expensive vessel and others like it to smuggle inexpensive medicine to people who don't need it.

And behind that mystery is another...

Why are all these people linked to Cady's past and the one person who made it impossible for her to ever go home again?

And why does everyone in the universe want Cady dead? 

You'll find the book at Amazon. Or visit Holly's website.