Chalker

I think that it is super funny that for someone who is essentially a science fiction writer, Jack L. Chalker doesn’t seem to really think much of advanced science or technology. He sort of hints at this inescapable fact in the preface to Wonderland Gambit 1: The Cybernetic Walrus.

the simple life is the thing for me: a red-picket fence and blue skies

I’ve come across discussions on such diverse platforms as conventions, fanzines, and the Internet where people argue whether I write fantasy novels or science-fiction novels. Most people think I write predominantly fantasy, and in this they are wrong. What I do not write are engineering stories—hey, gang, let’s build a space station! Hey, let’s terraform Mars! Those are all well and good, and some folks do them well, but they are very much in the tradition of Astounding in the Campbell era, a magazine I am not going to ever denigrate but which, I think, told as many variations of engineering stories as I ever want to read…

…Me, I look in different places. I look in books and articles on the “new physics,” in arcane studies in biology, chemistry, and other subjects, and I keep bumping up against visions of the future that are often not terribly nice but hard to ignore.

Well, I believe him. Do you? But he’s not actually saying that he doesn’t like science and engineering here, is he? Let’s look at some of the evidence, shall we?

Most of the series deal with advanced forms of science and technology in one way or another. We’ve all seen the marvelous Well of Souls Computer create and destroy the entire Universe one too many times to think that, a., Chalker is primarily a fantasy writer, and b., that he thinks that advanced technology equates with individual or societal advancement. Let’s face it, the Markovians failed as a species. And these guys were the best and the brightest of the engineering set.

In the Soul Rider series, World is colonized by Earth humans possessing a vastly advanced kind of science and computer know-how, yet fairly soon after mankind arrives, the culture degenerates into a primitive medievalism. Of course, you’ll object, the great computers had a hand in the whole mess. Granted. Though doesn’t that simply illustrate my initial point? In a Chalkerian universe, technology is more of a curse than a benefit.

In other series, advanced computers malfunction horribly, which sets the stage for the drama. Look at Wonderland Gambit where fifty-two people are trapped living endless lives in one insane world after the next, all in computer simulations with no apparent way to stop playing the game. That idea depressed me so that I finally, viscerally got it about Buddhism as a response to Hinduism.

Even more strange is Master System in the Rings of the Master series. The super computer brutally murders its own creators, returns humanity to primitive (i.e. pre-technological) ways of living on Earth and forcibly alters our physical shapes and hurls us out into the Galaxy to “protect” us. We’re led to believe somehow that Master System itself develops a kind of split personality, which eventually allows Hawks, China Nightingale and company to capture the elusive five rings and regain control of the schizophrenic machine. The stand-alone novel, The Messiah Choice, is similar in that it, too, is about a very powerful computer that goes completely nuts. Neither of these are hopeful visions of a bright future.

What do we see in the Four Lords of the Diamond series? There, we’re initially led to believe that the Warden Diamond System is some kind of super prison camp for horrible criminals of the advanced and egalitarian Confederacy. By the end, it turns out that the Confederacy itself is more of a stagnant and corrupt mess than most of the citizens and institutions of the Warden worlds. Interestingly, the technology on the Diamond is behind the rest of humanity elsewhere. What a surprise.

The Quintara Marathon has to be one of the most technologically advanced and most depressing of Chalker’s series. Set in the far distant future, humanity has been absorbed into three competing interstellar empires where our lot is at the bottom. Turns out that we’re playthings for everyone: the Quintara, the Exchange, the Mychol and the Mizlaplan. Technology is so advanced that nobody even understands it any longer. Three of the four competing super-races have to put aside their differences to combine their vast resources of knowledge to defeat the fourth, and even then it’s a touchy situation. It makes me wonder if nobody’ed ever learned all that stuff if things wouldn’t, in fact, be better. I think that’s exactly what Chalker tries to demonstrate in all these stories.

So often, it’s at those temporary yet timeless periods when Chalkerian heroes and heroines get stranded on deserted tropical islands that everything seems right with the world. Nathan Brazil recalls such a stay on the Well World as one of the best times of his millennia-long life. We see it in the Changewind series when Charlie gets stuck with Dorion on another fabulous desert isle littered with huge gemstones. Right now I’m reading G.O.D. Inc. and it’s there too. Sam and Brandy Horowitz get re-routed through the Labyrinth to a paradisiacal vision of tropical Oregon. Oregon isn’t an island in this alternate Earth. However, the invisible barrier around the area in which they find themselves more-or-less makes it seem like one. I’m sure that I’m forgetting other examples.

I don’t have the sense that Chalker really believes in these Edenic paradises as permanent homes for anyone. They’re more “vacation destinations,” if you will. I think that, like the duplicitous Jamie in The Labyrinth of Dreams, Chalker longs for an earlier age of technology, perhaps analogous to Europe at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. You know, a “quieter” time where life went a bit slower, people were polite and religion wasn’t just about shopping and power, but you could still have your morning coffee, ride a locomotive occasionally, and even enjoy a good cigar from time to time. We all know that there are endless problems with this idyllic fantasy. Even Jamie got that. That kind of lifestyle wouldn’t suit me one bit (how could I do my blogging?) But I keep coming back to Dillia, the semi-tech centaur hex on the Well World, when I survey Jack Chalker’s oeuvre. It wasn’t perfect, that’s true, but it really did seem like a rather nice place, indeed.

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isn't a simple haircut a way we voluntarily transform ourselves without even thinking about it?

In all this type of story the living interest lies in their non-fantastic elements and not in the invention itself. They are appeals for human sympathy quite as much as any `sympathetic’ novel, and the fantastic element, the strange property or the strange world, is used only to throw up and intensify our natural reactions of wonder, fear or perplexity. The invention is nothing in itself …

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) in a preface to a collection, 1933

I found this while randomly trolling the Internet for critical stories about Jack Chalker’s writing. Aside from my own humble commentary, there doesn’t seem to be a lot out there beyond stock comments about the writer’s life, lists of his books, and vague statements about Midnight at the Well of Souls. People are sure missing out.

This H.G. Wells quote spoke to my own obsession with Chalker. The “fantastic” might be a hook to get you interested but there’s definitely something there beyond the mere theatrics. I’m still annoyed with that other web site that trashes Chalker’s tendency to use certain plot devices, for example shapeshifting, by calling it “author appeal.” It’s so dismissive! I wonder if those bozos have even read any of his stuff?

It’s true that I really can’t think of a Chalker novel where changing shape and/or gender don’t feature in the plot somehow. From the very first, clumsy novel, A Jungle of Stars; to all of the Well World novels; the Soul Rider series; Four Lords of the Diamond; the stand alone novels, And the Devil Will Drag You Under and Downtiming the Nightside; the Dancing God series; and the one I just breathlessly finished, the Rings of the Master all use this device in one way or another. I haven’t read everything that he’s published yet, but this is about half of them. It must be a pattern, right?

I admit that all of this switching around does appeal to me, and it truly is one of the reasons that I enjoy Chalker. But is changing shape the only reason that he wrote these books? Isn’t there more to the novels? I think so. Wouldn’t the guy have been bored silly writing so many novels that were meaningless beyond altering the characters’ appearances? Maybe he’d have been better off working as a plastic surgeon or in digital photography if that had been the real reason?

If one actually paid attention to the ouvre, one might be able to make more out of it. I’d classify the shape and gender changing as follows:

1. Voluntary versus involuntary
2. Temporary versus permanent
3. Partial versus complete transformation
4. And a variation of number 2, a single episode of change versus many possible

Looking at the most famous series, the Well World, with this list in mind, we see that most folks who enter the Well undergo an involuntary, permanent, complete transformation, with a few exceptions. On the Well World, magical and scientific means can be employed to temporarily or permanently change individuals after they pass through the Well. That’s how Nathan Brazil becomes a great stag and Marvra Chang a kind of pig at various points in the series. But it’s true that for most people arriving on the planet, there’s only the one major change and they sink into obscurity to live out their lives.

That’s very different in the Soul Rider series where unless you’re magically endowed, partial and complete changes can be imposed on you in Flux by others and your own subconscious. These transformations are permanent so long as you’re in Anchor and in a few cases with certain self-imposed “spells” even in Flux. Otherwise change is the rule over time.

In Four Lords, the Federation Agent’s four “copies” change bodies once at the start of each novel. And in all of them except for “Lilith” they keep on changing. Initially the change was voluntary and seemed permanent. You learn though that there are more options for most of them.

In my new favorite Chalker series, Rings of the Master, except for Vulture, for the most part people can be transmuted once into something else. If they try again, then it seems that they lose significant IQ to the point that they become dysfunctional. So it’s a source of real pain when crew members of the intergalactic spaceship, Thunder, must choose to be transformed into “colonial humans” to infiltrate various worlds and capture the golden rings needed to unlock Master System and free humankind from the tyranny of the machine.

I wouldn’t want to have to volunteer to become a Janipurian cow-like human or a Chanchukian sea otter type, would you? Even worse would be some bizarre water breathing sea monster like “human” from Alititia. Wow! You’d really have to believe in what you were doing! And that’s exactly what happens. Even more stressful, it turns out for some, is changing sex in the process of becoming some other kind of creature. And that’s nothing compared to China Nightingale’s forced transmutation into a blind, hormone-crazed sex machine while not pregnant; blind, “normal” person while with child. That seems like the most grotesque of them all, though she still looks like an “Earth human.”

After a while, the endless transformations seem, well, normal and sort of an expected part of life in a Chalker universe. It’s the emotional impact of the changes that becomes so intriguing and compelling here. I can completely suspend belief and accept that one might become a tiny blue satyr like being or a gigantic moth with a grinning death’s head for a face. I’ve no problem imagining someone changed into a part-machine, part-organic, goddess figure with an idealized woman’s form. I’m fascinated by the super hung, super good-looking male servants that pop up here and there in the company of the most decadent characters. Why not?

It makes me think about my own body and those of others around me. We have this illusion that our bodies are permanently set the way they are right now, when in fact they’re changing every minute. Do you ever get a haircut or shave? I do. If you’re an adult, then you were once a baby and then a child. Your body changed dramatically to get you where you are today. Do you exercise or lift weights? Do you over eat and put on the pounds? If so, than probably you’ve been slowly, perhaps even involuntarily and unconsciously, changing your body. I’ve a friend from college who has recently come out as the other gender. Another friend just had a tummy tuck. So they’re both in the process of consciously, voluntarily transforming themselves. Folks who get injured or women who have borne children undergo more bodily transformations. That person in the wheelchair with the missing legs might have acquired that change somewhere along their lives, after all. How is any of this different from the things on the list above?

I’m middle aged now and even when it’s not always visible, I can feel that my body is different from when I was in my twenties. I’m no longer quite as flexible and energetic (and horny) as before. My body aches more now and for longer periods. My mother says that it only increases with advancing age. I believe it.

Chalker’s characters undergo these ultra rapid physical changes, but I think that it just heightens the reader’s sensitivity to phenomena happening around us and to us constantly, but often more gradually. Isn’t that what H.G. Wells is talking about? This is way more than “author appeal.”

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Of the four novels in The Four Lords of the Diamond series, I think that Charon: a Dragon at the Gate, simply falls on its face. I thought the same when I was sixteen reading the series for the first time. The first book, Lilith: A Snake in the Grass is cool because it sets up the whole thing and I was totally turned on by the idea of the place. On the planet, Lilith, unless you have some rare mental power, everything manmade or dead (for example, clothes and cut flowers) gets broken down to nothing within a matter of minutes to hours. Wow! So everybody goes around stark naked and are essentially enslaved to those few people who can prevent this ultra-rapid deterioration, just so they can eat and therefore live. Clothing takes on a whole new meaning as a status symbol on Lilith. If you’re dressed, then you’re powerful. It’s a good thing that the climate is warm or else folks would really suffer! It’s a messed up place, but pretty kinky.

I hit a wall with Charon but I still think that Ckalker is the bomb

Cerberus: A Wolf in Fold is the second volume. It’s the one that I remember best from my youth in the Eighties. This is a “high tech” world where everyone lives on enormous trees that sprout up from the world-wide ocean. No land here, you better like boating. There the little sub-microbes infect you in such a way that you can switch bodies with whomever you’re sleeping next to at the time. That’s wild! Do you think that folks kidnap each other, strap themselves and their intended victims in chains held together by combination locks and then sleep nearby in order to steal an appealing body? Chalker never mentions it but perhaps he wasn’t completely familiar with the Cerberan black market. It’s still my favorite of the series.

I remember that my excitement about the Four Lords of the Diamond began to flag with book three, Charon: A Dragon at the Gate. This is a tropical world that you Well World fans would call “semi-tech.” Due to some peculiar, poorly explained natural phenomenon, severe electrical storms get attracted to any forms of power more sophisticated than the steam engine. Perhaps as compensation, some folks, at least, have the power to create illusions that seem real and eventually become so with the passage of time. It’s a great idea used to incredible advantage in the Soul Rider series. Yet I feel on Charon, it doesn’t quite live up to its potential. Sure there’s some initial creating-furniture-and-food-out-of-thin-air hocus pocus and of course there’s a lot of shape shifting going on. But that’s really it.

I was reading just today a sort of whiny site criticizing Chalker’s use of shape and gender changing, referring to it as “Author Appeal,” a dismissive term taken to mean “a kind of fan service where the presence of a particular gimmick or kink is so widespread and prominent that it is interpreted as the specific reason the creator actually produced the work.” I simply cannot agree. Jack L Chalker is the bomb! It’s the same as complaining that Jane Austin’s novels deal excessively with young, inexperienced women seeking romance and a secure income. Absurd! There’s a lot more to the novels than a shape changing kink-fest.

That said, “Charon” is a bit of a snooze compared to the others. Perhaps I struggle with the romantic relationship between the Federation Agent on Charon and Darva? It just doesn’t ring true for me. The plot’s especially forced in this one, too. But my main issue is that compared to the Soul Rider series, these Charonese are so uncreative about their control of the wa, that microbial force that lets people directly manipulate matter with their minds. Alright, there’s a fair amount of shape shifting and some cool “magical” battles. But where are the Fluxlands and the masses of the powerless relentlessly controlled by the wizard classes for their sick amusement? What about the governmental chaos that you might expect with such out-of-control power? It’s simply not there. I wonder if the possibility of these as a consequence of wa control occurred to Chalker after “Charon” had already hit the presses? I’m glad he figured it out in time for the next series.

I’ll spare the brief on Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail. It’s sort of different from the first three and ties everything together in unexpected ways. “Four Lords of the Diamond” is a real adventure story and can be easily enjoyed merely on that level. I have to think that there’s a bit more to it though. Throughout you are witness to horrible atrocities of being against being with the most base of desires and motivations: greed, power hunger, sexual depravity, you name it. Yet somehow there’s this real sense that even though these will always, and sometimes must, exist, that at times life is wonderful, mysterious and beyond anything that we can dream of or imagine. That’s why I really like Chalker. As wild as the stories get; as strange as the bodily and mental transformations; as brutal and harsh the treatment, he never hides it, he never despairs and he never gives up on us.

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