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3rd
July 03 |
 There
are rules to writing fiction that apply to all genres, and chief among
these is the Suspension of Disbelief rule. If you're not familiar with the term,
it goes something like this: the writer should do his or her best to avoid reminding
the readers that they're reading. In other words, you don't put in stuff that
makes the reader go "Huh?" or "You wot?"
For example, you
don't use long words like sesquipedalian, because many readers won't know what
it means, so it acts kind of like a literal speedbump. You also don't include
too many Amazing Coincidences (like the way Luke Skywalker's uncle just happens
to be the man who buys the robots from the Jawas, thus giving Luke a reason to
go off looking for R2D2 where he coincidentally meets Obi Wan who used to be his
father's best friend and who also used to own the robots and who happens to keep
Luke away from home long enough for the stormtroopers to kill his aunt and uncle,
etc.)
Likewise, you don't
put stuff into your fiction that's so staggeringly stupid that the reader thinks
"Oh, gimme a break!"
 That
said, in science fiction and related genres you're often allowed to get away with
stuff that's impossible or impractical, because the readers are conditioned to
expect it. Take the concept of teleportation, specifically as seen in Star
Trek: this thingy breaks down your body into its component molecules, transmits
it across vast distances and somehow reassembles it in working order. We all know
it's nonsense, but we accept it within the confines of the story.
But when a story
goes too far and introduces pointless technology just for the sake of it, or just
because it seems like a cool idea at the time, then the writer is walking on eggshells.
In spiked boots. On thin ice. With an anvil on his head (and so on).
Right about now,
the intelligent and attractive 2000 AD Review reader is probably thinking, "What
the hell is Sprout on about now? He's really gone off the deep end this time.
Wearing concrete boots. With an anvil on his head (etc.)" But fear not, for in
the next paragraph Sprout magnificently manages to bludgeon the topic in the direction
of 2000 AD...
 I've
never really taken to Rogue Trooper. The idea just never grabbed me: too
many Amazing Coincidences, and one great skipload of Pointless Technology.
Let's start with
the Genetic Infants - I mean, Infantrymen... They're all clones, right? And they
all have, for some reason, nicknames. That's okay, I can accept that, and nobody
has to die over it. Our hero is Rogue, and he has three buddies, whose names are
Helm, Gunnar and Bagman. Unusual names, sure, but again that's something I can
live with. These clones all have their personalities encoded on little computer
chips, okay? And if a clone is killed these chips can be placed in various pieces
of another clone's equipment. Carefully sidling around the Big Question, we arrive
at the Amazing Coincidences...
- Amazing Coincidence
#1: Just
by sheer chance, Rogue's three buddies get killed. Three dead buddies, three available
bio-chip slots in Rogue's equipment. Oooh! That was lucky, wasn't it?
- Amazing Coincidence
#2: The bio-chip of the clone whose name is Helm gets put into Rogue's helmet,
Gunnar goes into his gun, and Bagman goes into his backpack (sadly, there were
no available slots for Rogue's little-mentioned fourth buddy, Toilutseet). Note:
the characters have those nicknames before they get killed, so it's not
like they chose them afterwards to suit the equipment.
- Amazing Coincidence
#3: After the massacre that killed his buddies, the clone whose nickname just
happens to be Rogue decides to abandon the chain of command and turn rogue.
I can just about
accept the first and third Amazing Coincidences, but the second? Come on, guys!
That's just silly! Even when I was reading this as a kid, I was going, "Oh yeah,
sure!" For that reason, I've never been able to take Rogue Trooper
seriously.
On top of that,
there were some pretty dumb stories, such as the one with the trucks that follow
microchips embedded in the road: Rogue uses his buddies' bio-chips to lead the
trucks over the edge of a cliff or something. What does that tell us? The trucks
are clever enough to detect road-embedded microchips, but they aren't clever enough
to actually read the chips to see if they're the right kind?
 Okay,
so there have been some great stories in there too, and some truly fantastic artwork
(so far I'm really enjoying the current tale, "Ghouls"), but I've never got past
the silliness of Amazing Coincidence #2. Nor have I ever managed to get past the
Big Question, as aforementioned... The Big Question concerns the inclusion of
technology just because it seems cool: That is, the recording of a G.I.'s memory
and personality on a bio-chip... WHY? Why would they do that?
According to the
first episode, Milli-Com engineered the bio-chips because it made sense: it was
easier to grow a new clone body and put the dead trooper's brain patterns into
it than to train a clone from scratch. For this reason, a trooper should retrieve
the bio-chips of all his fallen comrades. But wouldn't it make a hell of a lot
more sense for Milli-Com to train one G.I., then take a copy of his brain patterns
and use that copy in each new clone?
And it doesn't
help that Rogue's history is all muddled and confusing as hell. The initial "hunt
for the traitor general" came to an moderately satisfactory ending when Rogue
actually found him, but then there was all that stuff with Fr1day (and his good
pals Yes2rday, Wedn3sday and Aweekfrom2morrow) and Tor Cyan. It got so hard to
figure out who was Rogue and who wasn't that the most recent stories are set back
in the past, when it was just One Man and his Talking Hat.
Apparently, Rogue
Trooper was commissioned because the readers wanted more future war stories.
As Culture Club once helpfully informed us, war is stupid. But that doesn't mean
that war stories also have to be stupid.
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