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Plot Summary
The crew
of Pegasus finds a shortcut that could bring them to Earth
centuries ahead of schedule; a StarLock, an ancient Commonwealth device
capable of transporting ships thousands of light years in the blink of an
eye.
Unfortunately,
shortcuts will sometimes take you through some very bad neighborhoods.
Phil Redfire and Eliza Change use the StarLock to investigate a nearby
planet, and are trapped when their Aves crashes into its icy surface.
Meanwhile, Matthew Driver and Trajan Lear take an Aves to another
StarLock, and return with bizarre, dream-like, half-remembered tales of
peril and weirdness that will haunt the rest of their days.
Pegasus proceeds to the colony of Aurora, which somehow escaped
devastation when the Tarmigans rampaged through the sector. Of all the
worlds they have encountered, Aurora is by far the most decadent, a world
where industrial combines sell sex and violence. Aurora’s role during the
Tarmigan Assault is a deadly secret buried in its history. Also, Goneril
Lear tries to strike an alliance with a dangerous and manipulative woman
called "Auntie Maim," a miscalculation that nearly leads to Global
Thermonuclear War.
The World
Aurora is the eighth planet in a trinary system of
three stars, eighteen planets, and two asteroid belts. The intense stellar
activity coupled with its powerful magnetosphere creates auroras that fill
the planet’s entire atmosphere. The planet has two moons. The planet also
exhibits bi-axial rotation, rotating on both a north-south and an
east-west axis. The planet has one large and two smaller continental
landmasses and two large oceans. The planet required extensive
terra-forming to make it suitable for human inhabitation.
Trivia
The Basic plot for Aurora was inspired by one of Jack Handey's
"Deep Thoughts"
The StarLock idea is similar to the SuperGate in Stargate
SG-1, but I Book 5 was written two years before the appearance of
the Supergate, and the concept has a long pedigree in science
fiction
Specialist Brainiacsdaughter’s name is a reference to
the song “Brainiac’s Daughter” by the Dukes of
Stratosphear.
Book 5 refers to a giant spaceship made
of ice called the Habakkuk, Project
Habakkuk was the
codename for a World War II project to build aircraft carriers out of
icebergs.
Book 5 contains a line “MARRS Needs
Women,” echoing the classic B-Movie, Mars Needs Women.
In Book 5, the planet
Aurora
is dominated by giant corporations who
feed the public a steady stream of sex and violence, similar to the
American Flagg, comic book series. The character of Queequeg is
similar, in the sense of being a talking cat, to the character of Raul
from American Flagg.
Book 5 also contains multiple references to the
Book of Acts in the New Testament of the Bible,
including the Aeropagus (Areopagus) hotel, the town of
Fair Havens, and the Unknown Pleasures channel (a reference to the
Temple of
Unknown
Gods).
Book 5 also riffs on elements from James Bond movies, including the supervillain who
wants to take over the world (Auntie Maim), with a secret underground
lair, and the use of colorfully named female characters: Lovejoy and
Killjoy, the Calendar Girls.
Auntie Maim herself bears a passing resemblance to
Martha Stewart.
The MegaWeapon in book 5 is a reference
to the MegaWeapon in the MST3K movie,
Warrior of the Lost
World.
In Book 5, five teenage members of the
crew, accompanied by an animal, explore an abandoned spaceyard and are
chased by a glowing ghost, similar to every plot from
Scooby-Doo,
Where Are You
?
Supah al-Fareek is a play on the Rick James song
“
Super
Freak
.”
Dead Keeler mentions a colony where
“the women had a weird fetish about taking a crap on your chest…,” a
reference to
Not Another
Teen Movie .
In Book 5, we are introduced to the Men
from MARRS and the Women from VENIS, a reference to the book,
Men are from
MARS, Women are from VENUS
.
Short Version
Full-Length
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(If downloading is a problem you can email a request
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