15. The Star Web by George Zebrowski

I’m not crazy, right? You guys see it too?

This has been driving me crazy for weeks now. I dodge enough bullets for a living; I don’t need sic semper tyrannis over here adding on his two cents o’ lead.

Anyway, you guys check out this review while I check out my hat for holes.

Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Award nominee George Zebrowski brings us a story in the purest tradition of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. I say that without the least bit of prejudice because, at their best, Golden Age stories depicted battles of wits between humanity and the cosmos.

Reading up on Zebrowski, I’m unsurprised to find out that, like many of our authors thus far, he wrote tie-in novels for Star Trek, focusing on The Next Generation era. Most of those works were co-authored with writer Pamela Sargent.

Going boldly where many have gone before, Zebrowski’s Star Web articulates a classic question popularized by Arthur C. Clarke, and perfected by Andy Weir:

Are these people smart enough to survive?

Would You Like to Know More?

If you spot a copy of this book in the wild, most likely at a used bookstore, buy it. It is some of the best value-for-money you can get in a book. Not only does it contain Clarke’s body of short fiction (which by itself is marvelous), it also holds one or two novel-length works which usually are published under the SF Masterworks label.

Clarke’s importance to science fiction isn’t that he was a great storyteller (he was), or that he predicted many technologies before they were invented (he did), but that he made his readers feel that the story of the universe, of our solar system, of Earth, was their story–that no matter the colour of your skin, your sex, or your personal beliefs, you have a magnificent heritage written in the stars themselves, and no one can deny you that heritage.

There are few tropes from the 1930s that have aged well, but this is one of them, and was used to greatest effect in books like The Martian and Project Hail Mary.

But how well does Zebrowski employ it? Does The Star Web stand tall or fall flat? And just who is that John Wilkes Booth-lookin’ doofus, anyhow?

We’ll find out after paying our dues to Kelly Freas.

Cover

Ahhh… you know that crisp, refreshing sound you get when you crack open a cold one with the lads? For some reason, that’s exactly what I hear when I look at this cover.

Maybe it’s the cool cerulean of the aurora, or the sharp lines of the bright star in the sky. Maybe it’s the texture of the sky itself or the ice as the spaceship breaks through. Maybe it’s the gentle curves and shadows of the thready title at the top. Maybe it’s Juan Obrion’s wavy hair. Maybe it’s Maybelline.

Whatever it is, there’s something just so soothing about this cover.

I’ve been staring at it for so long trying to decide whether it’s one of Freas’s better covers, or more workmanlike ones. Having read the book, I can tell you that there are very few story elements present. In fact, Freas has chosen to depict a single scene from the book: the rising of the alien ship in the third or fourth chapter.

But it kind of works. He really evokes a sense of “jumping-off” combined with a feeling of wonder. There could be anything hiding behind those curtains of light, and we’re gonna peer behind them and find out.

Blurb

A UN research team has been sent to the Antarctic to investigate strangely patterned radio signals. Expecting a buried transmitter, the team is awestruck by what they discover hidden beneath the polar ice. But it doesn’t remain hidden for long! The team is soon hurtling through space on an adventure that is as incredible as it is frightening. George Zebrowski, author of The Star Web, is a Nebula Award Finalist. His first novel, Omega Point, published in 1972, has already been translated into six languages.

You pitch me a spaceship buried under Antarctica, and I’ll buy a ticket on that hotrod today.

In the review of Birthright, we talked about tropes that always hook readers, right? “Literally-Anything-Buried-in-Antarctica” is one of them.

I think the reason this never fails has to do with the nature of Antarctica: it’s the only continent on our planet that was never colonized by humans. There’ve been proposals and attempts, both aborted and ongoing, but the reality is there’s very little economic or political incentive to setting up shop.

Would You Like to Know More?

I spent three years writing for the Hearts of Iron IV submod Operation Deep Freeze. Set in the alternate history universe of The New Order: Last Days of Europe, our story depicted a fictionalized Scramble for Antarctica in which three superpowers vie for control of the “Exile Continent”.

The events my brother and I wrote for that mod are some of my best work. We drafted hundreds of thousands of words over the course of COVID and created countless storylines and plot threads. Our research into Antarctica revealed the most astonishing things about the continent that laypeople simply don’t know.

COVID was a shit time for humanity, but I’ll always have fond memories of my brother and I quietly going insane together as we crafted the most outlandish scenes this side of a Terry Gilliam fever dream.

The landmass is covered in glaciers, and is routinely scraped by katabatic winds exhaled from the mountains of the interior. Assuming you can even reach the Antarctic littoral (you have to cross the Roaring Forties, which are some of the most vicious latitudes on the planet), depending on where you make landfall, you might be met with sheer walls of ice that are too high and too unstable to be scaled from sea level. And even if you make it into the continent proper, you will find cold desert stretching for thousands of kilometres–desert in which the mean annual temperature is -40 degrees Celsius.

There is nothing there to eat except scarce pockets of wildlife. Nothing grows. Half the year is spent in perpetual daylight, and the other half in persistent darkness. It is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to survive there without great financial and technological investments.

Antarctica is not for us.

But it wasn’t always so inhospitable. We know from paleontological evidence that in the deep past, it was a tropical paradise, a veritable Garden of Eden. Dinosaurs prowled jungles denser than the Amazon. Flora proliferated and learned to survive seasonal frosts without dying. All of that is still there, buried and fossilized under hundreds of metres of ice.

It’s no secret why stories of horror have been set there: the essence of cosmic horror is that human existence on planet Earth is bracketed by beings far older and more powerful than we are, that we are comparative newcomers to a vast and ancient stage.

This is entirely true from a paleontologist’s point of view.

While there is definitely some fear in Zebrowski’s novel, it is not the chief emotion which The Star Web elicits.

That would be wonder.

Story

So how the hell did Zebrowski get away with subtracting 13 pages from this novel?

I wonder if any of the other Laser Books have the same problem. Which ones are they?

What are their destinies?

All joking aside, my experience of this book was much like my experience of reading Bob Heinlein‘s Methuselah’s Children: thoroughly enjoyed the first half, but found the second to be underwhelming.

Would You Like to Know More?

Funny story about Methuselah’s Children. The copy I had was a paperback older than the Antarctic dinosaurs and the binding was crumbling. The pages of this little book were literally falling out as I turned them. So when I read the book, I placed a wastepaper basket next to my bed and let each page fall in as I finished reading it.

If you can cast your minds back to the very first Laser Book review, for Thomas F. Monteleone‘s Seeds of Change, you’ll recall that I wrote that that book felt like two stories Frankensteined together: one was Logan’s Run, and the other was a gripping tale of scientists figuring out the workings of an alien spacecraft. I also suggested that, to salvage that tale, you’d simply have to peel the disparate stories apart and let them grow into their own books.

Zebrowski clearly had the same idea, because he took the spaceship plotline of Seeds and did exactly that.

The story follows four UN scientists, led by our protagonist, Juan Obrion (the John Wilkes Booth-lookin’s doofus), who try to unravel the mysteries of a structure found beneath the Antarctic ice. The structure is in fact an ancient alien spacecraft, buried under the ice for untold millennia, and before you can say “Geronimo!” the scientists find themselves trapped in the spacecraft as it hurtles away from Earth at relativistic velocity.

Suddenly, unraveling the vessel’s mysteries is no longer an academic exercise, but a matter of life and death.

This is where the story is at its strongest. Are these people capable of thinking like beings which are far more intelligent than humans? Can these supposedly educated people use rationality and logic to puzzle out the workings of this ship while simultaneously batting aside their preconceptions and biases?

These kinds of stories are a dime a dozen from the Golden Age, but seldom do GA authors demonstrate the deftness and detail that Zebrowski demonstrates–which makes it all the more frustrating when he falls victim to cliche.

The Journey of the Spacecraft

Look, if you’ve read these two books, you can probably guess where Star Web is heading.

The vessel taps into an interstellar network of tunnels–the titular Star Web–and navigates to its native port: a berth hidden inside a blue giant star. Obrion and co. learn that the builders of this spacecraft eventually eschewed space travel altogether in favour of stargates.

Would You Like to Know More?

It never ceases to amaze me how often this trope is used in sci-fi to denote an advanced civilization: thousands of doorways scattered across space, connecting thousands of different planets in a sort of galactic metro system. We’ve even seen it used in this very series with Gates of the Universe.

The Expanse, Star Trek, Contact, and 2001: A Space Odyssey all had some version of stargates, but in my opinion, no story did it better than the TV series named for the device.

If you’ve not seen this show, I heartily recommend it. It’s a classic of science fiction, and one of the rare examples when a spinoff of a feature film (Roland Emmerich‘s Stargate) turned out smarter, funnier, and more exciting than the original. With ten seasons and two films, and featuring a friggin’ army of Canada’s finest screen talent, you are guaranteed two hundred hours of wonder, laughter, chills, and thrills.

The spacecraft, like the Monolith in 2001, like the wormhole in Contact, takes the scientists on a tour of its builders’ history, from their humble beginnings to their tragic downfall. The spacecraft itself is a character–it has goals, opinions, beliefs–and is an intriguing part of the story, but ultimately, Zebrowski doesn’t do anything really novel with the concepts he explores.

Conclusions and Recommendations

I will never say no to Antarctica, spaceships, aliens, or combinations thereof.

Some of my favourite tales in this genre involve scientists puzzling out the workings of extraterrestrial technology.

My favourite video game–perhaps my favourite piece of media period–Outer Wilds is about the unraveling of a millennia old mystery.

My Goodreads Review

All the things I love in a sci-fi tale are present in the Star Web, and there is much to recommend in this novel, but unfortunately, the tropes which Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan plumbed to such a great depth in their magnum opuses are recycled too easily in this novel. I would like to give The Star Web a solid 3.5 out of 5, but since that’s not possible with Goodreads rating system, a 3 shall have to suffice.

Kathleen Sky‘s Birthright was so effective because she took tried and tested tropes and put her own unique spin on them. George Zebrowski never quite gets there with The Star Web. The novel would work a lot better if it were longer, and put more obstacles in the path of our characters: more puzzles to unravel, more secrets to uncover, more machines to figure out.

I could recommend it, but then again, why not just read 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Contact, or watch Stargate SG-1? All those pieces of media have the same essential premise: pitting human intellect against ancient alien machines and seeing who comes out on top. This trope has been done perfectly before, and Zebrowski, strong writer though he is, is simply treading a well-beaten path.

Who’s Next?

Rufus Kane is a born rebel. Forced to flee from the tightly controlled life of an isolated commune, he finds safety in a large city. But his dream of freedom to live is soon shattered. He is betrayed by a friend and his incredible trial reveals a society gone mad. Law and order are absolute, human rights have surrendered to fear. Hope has vanished fromt he world. In this exciting tale, Jeff Clinton is at his storytelling best. Rufus becomes a rebel with a cause: the creation of a world fit for men!

Ehh… I’m not gonna get my hopes up.

Ancillary Matters

Those who’ve read my 8000-word retrospective on the Riddick franchise know what a huge fan I am of screenwriter/director David Twohy. Recently I discovered his website where he posts every screenplay he’s ever written, either on-spec or shooting, including an unused Alien³ screenplay.

This lattermost script in particular will be of great interest to cinephiles because many of the elements he introduced in it (sci-fi prison, different versions of xenomorph, killer hounds) would later be re-used in the Alien franchise and his own films like Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick.

His scripts have renewed my appreciation for the importance of solid scripts, and how films transform and evolve in the course of shooting and editing.

I even dropped him a line via email and he was kind enough to reply, mentioning his acquaintance with Harlan Ellison. Still super jealous you got to meet him, David!