Spoilers TP: The Struggle Within (ebook) review thread

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by Thrawn, Oct 4, 2011.

  1. elaithin

    elaithin Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I rather enjoyed it - and despite comments to the contrary, I think the short form suited this particular story well. It was very nice to see how the Typhon Pact is changing it's own members, and the character progression for Jasminder and T'Ryssa both was excellently done.

    Back to the length - this story felt more like a single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation than anything I've read in a long time. And that's not a minus.
     
  2. OverlordSpock

    OverlordSpock Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I agree that this story had a lot of potential, but the short-form let it down. I greatly enjoyed the Kinshya story, at least as much of it as we got, but it could almost have been a novel on its own. The Talarian story was okay, but again rushed.

    This story felt more rushed to me. Jas and Chen show up in their disguises and within a few paragraphs, Chen falls hopelessly in love with a Romulan she's never met before. There's a peaceful protest that goes horribly wrong. We spend a few paragraphs talking about what went wrong and then we have another protest that starts the beginning of the end for the Kinshya regime. Honestly, I kinda felt like everything happened in the span of a few days, but find out later that it was over four weeks. This story was way too rushed.

    When Crusher gets kidnapped, Picard goes into an internal struggle about his obvious need to rescue here vs. political reality and there's a brief conversations with Worf about it, but then the Crusher storyline is resolved before it actually really becomes an issue for Picard and he has to make a decision. Again, something that could have been explored more in a longer form.

    Don't get me wrong. I LIKED what I read. But I wanted more—a lot more. While that's obviously a sign of a good story, this should have been a full novel. Christopher's skills at world-building and plot development were wasted here. If he had more length of story to play with, I think this would have been something I LOVED.
     
  3. ToddCam

    ToddCam Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I don't think Trys was in love with him. She just liked him. And she's quick to jump in the sack. Personally, I think she worked best with Konya, who is a personal favorite of mine.

    Add me to the list of people who wished it were longer. It was really good, but so short. Crammed.
     
  4. Keptin J D Reed

    Keptin J D Reed Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    It seems a tad strange that I can preorder Brave the Storm which is a full novel for £3.99, exactly the same price as the short novella The Struggle Within. Having said that, £3.99 is a bloody good price for Brave the Storm. Oh well, I'll still be buying both :)
     
  5. timothy

    timothy Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    picked up you're book today on my nook can't wait to read.
     
  6. Kertrats47

    Kertrats47 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Just wrote my review (link in the sig). For the most part, loved it, as I usually do things written by Christopher. However, I have to agree with many that it was just too darn short! (Hardly a bad criticism, I think!)
     
  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Thanks for the review! I'm glad people are responding well to this, because I was afraid it didn't work at all.

    A couple of points, though. One, it's "Choudhury," not "Cloudhury." Two, you said:

    While Choudhury and Chen are away from the ship for about 17 days, most of that is travel time. The events on Janalwa itself span only 5 days, with only 2 days between the two rallies.
     
  8. Kertrats47

    Kertrats47 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yikes! Well, son of a gun, is my face red!

    Fair enough, I should have said Choudhury and Chen's story took a couple of weeks, rather than saying their time in Kinshaya territory. :)
     
  9. timothy

    timothy Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    just finished it christopher fantastic book and series. all caught on tng now.can't wait for next year for new books and tng hd blu ray.
     
  10. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Finished The Struggle Within. An enjoyable book, though I think it's a bit rushed.

    One quibble: The Talarian situation is just a bandaid in the long run. There can't possibly be such unanimity of opinion amongst Talarian females that formal politics is irrelevant and not what they want to participate in that there wouldn't be a lot of Talarian women wishing to break into the patriarchy's power structure. And the very fact that so many Talarian women felt so oppressed by the government's recent policies means, at the end of the day, that they can't just trust the government not to infringe upon their rights and desires without eventually seeking a voice.

    But, as Picard would likely say, that's ultimately an internal Talarian problem and not something the Federation should be getting involved in.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Well, there's a lot of historical and sociological precedent for the kind of gender division I was portraying here. If you look at some of the horticultural societies of the Amazon, for instance, the women generally are the ones who do most of the important stuff in society and all the men's rhetoric and posturing about being in power has little real impact. We think of politics as the way to get things done because we've been conditioned for many generations to assume that the traditionally male, public sphere is the only legitimate one and to devalue the parallel social roles that women played, roles that often gave them a great deal of real power that the male establishment simply chose not to acknowledge as power. Such as control of marital choice (which could have a major political impact, since so much could ride on marriage alliances between powerful families), control of finances within the family, control of what their children got taught or trained to do, etc. A lot of women in history have wielded great "informal" power, changing the course of mighty empires by choosing which son to groom as a ruler or which marital alliances to make.

    So calling it "formal politics" is itself a male-centric definition, unquestioningly accepting the assumption that the male sphere is the only one that exists or matters. Our society has moved toward equality by extending that traditionally male sphere to include women as well, but there are other ways of structuring a society, as history shows. Women have often had a lot of real power through social institutions that existed in parallel with so-called "formal" government and politics. It's just generally been ignored or downplayed because men wrote the history books and imposed their biases. But what if a society openly recognized both those parallel spheres as equally "formal" in their own way? Sort of a separation-of-powers thing like having different branches of government. That's the kind of alien society I wanted to explore.

    The whole point I was going for here was that the women do have a voice, and always have; the problem was simply that Ronzel's government, and the male culture he belonged to, had fallen into the same kind of self-aggrandizing assumptions that human men historically have, falsely perceiving their own role in society as being more important or powerful than the females' parallel role, and thus creating an imbalance. I wanted it to initially look like a battle of the sexes in human terms in order to disguise the real situation, and then reveal how things were different because this was an alien culture. Not so different from how many historical human cultures have done things, but certainly different from modern Western assumptions and expectations.
     
  12. Deranged Nasat

    Deranged Nasat Vice Admiral Admiral

    ^
    My views on this are rather controversial, so I apologise in advance.

    Please forgive me if I seem a little rude here. The big problem I have with this, Christopher, is that from my point of view (and I'm sorry to make assumptions) you seem to be trapped in the exact ideological pattern you're supposedly challenging. It looks to me like you see the supposed and accepted "truth" that humans are male-dominated and that "men have the voice and the power" and then you say "ah, but women always had a voice, had power too". I would say that's an exercise in constructing a false history and then deconstructing it again. In other words, a variant on that same biased history (and its assumptions about what is important and where real power lies) that you're challenging. If I may be so bold, look at it from my point of view, as someone who never accepted an ideological worldview that conformed to any standard, either from modern feminist-saturated culture or the traditional culture it was supposedly critiquing.

    I never bought into the idea that men were prominent and “important” and women weren't - I didn't see the lie as you seem to see it (and as the mainstream ideology runs), in terms of men being self-centred or imposing, but rather as a means of denying men and boys the opportunity to truly challenge how society would use them. Labour, cannon fodder, even leadership and direction - it is all to serve, and by constructing an account of the supremacy of this service, it prevents anyone truly having opportunity to question things. The self-aggrandizing of patriarchy is a self-deception that, in my mind, perpetuates exploitation of male humans. So much so that men would toil down mines to support families or march into battle in their millions and suffer appallingly, or die, just because "that's what we do".

    It's the old feminist lie of "his story". In school, we had the standard line about focus on women authors and women's voices to supposedly redress an imbalance. The argument is the common one that human males controlled the discourse, and thus history was the voicing of the male promoted at the expense of the female. Ignoring for a moment the obvious truth that even if that was the case only a minority of men would have their voice represented (because while women may wield power collectively men have to compete personally and individually for it, be it in politics, sexuality, etc), the fact is that - as you yourself note - much of it is just aggrandizing and denying the genuine power and influence of women. It's a lie. How is that then a true male voice? They’re just parroting deceptions. The point I would make is that men denied womens' power not out of a desire to dominate but out of a combination of how they're raised (and who's doing the raising, I wonder, as you yourself note?) and an inability to face the truth that they were the weaker party, because human society insists it MUST be otherwise, truth be damned. Humans are ideologues, they relate to their world based on what reinforces or supports their assumptions. I’d propose that because our civilization has always depended on the idea that males are responsible, resourceful, strong, it cannot acknowledge or face up to the idea that men are anything other than responsible, in control, powerful. To think otherwise is terrifying for a human, yes? We just have to look at the situation today, where many men are completely disillusioned with the demands society places on them, to see that human society has become so dependent on men being "responsible" and "strong" that it starts to break down if that isn't reinforced.

    Then there's simple pride - men didn't want to acknowledge that women had more power than they did. How can we be surprised, when wielding power gains a man worth, most especially in the eyes of the females who, as nature dictates, select which males are worthy mates and which are not?

    Again, I would say that the historical "male voice" is not the voice of truth but of deception. Personally, I was desperate throughout my youth for anything in literature, etc, that would lift the obvious veil and actually speak to me, a boy, as truth. But I was fed lies and indoctrination at every step. Patriarchs or feminists - what's the difference from where I'm standing? Liars all. The traditional "canonical" texts and the feminist-influenced challengers were, to me, simply allies in denying me my voice, my true heritage. Working together to prop up a falsehood.

    If I may make another point: calling formal politics as our cultures understand it a "male-centric" concept implies (please forgive once more my assumptions here) that men are disposed to work in that manner or that this is their natural way of doing things. But that's only because men have been excluded from the other aspects of our civilization (women want it so, most of the time, and men well know it), just as women have been excluded from the male sphere. And the idea that the men are responsible for all this, that they made the choice and imposed it, simply buys into another lie of our civilization - the idea that the male is responsible while the female is irresponsible. But as with sexual selection - where despite the male being supposed to make the first move he's actually responding to signals from the female - men are giving women what they believe or suppose women want. Doesn't mean they're always right, mind you.

    I might go as far to say that among humans men think they lead when they don’t and women think they follow when they actually lead.

    You seem (here I go again), to frame part of your conclusions in terms of learning to acknowledge the equal importance of the designated feminine sphere to the masculine. I would argue that the real way forward is to deny the idea that those aspects of society are feminine, because that makes women hostile to any attempt by males to enter it. And a house divided against itself cannot stand. Again, look at it from my point of view. The things I instinctively value - community, family, continuity - are designated women’s concern by our cultures (hells, even intellect and academia, once considered masculine by default, are increasingly perceived as feminine). It was made quite clear to me throughout my youth that I was to be excluded and marginalized from the community, the family, because it wasn't my place. These things are communicated quite effectively, I assure you.

    I've always been a very strong critic of traditional patriarchal societies, largely because in my mind they are propped up by self-deception and exploitation on a grand scale. But I don't see such societies as having an imbalance in favour of males but as constructing a facade to disguise the actual imbalance against them. (And, ironically, perhaps the lie becomes so powerful it starts, in some places, to truly resemble the truth). In my mind, to ensure a balance between the sexes requires dismantling the same assumptions you're acknowledging as prevalent, but also the idea that those same assumptions are the product of male responsibility and control.

    I would say our modern society is the first to ever truly challenge gender roles - not because it's challenging male power (which is a construct reinforced by our feminist society just so it can go on bashing at it) but because it's challenging female power and waking up to the fact that, yes, male-oriented history is a biased lie. One that we’re finally starting to shake ourselves free of. But we have to be truly free of it, because it’s already reeling us back in due to the feminist assertion that this biased history is a bastion of true male power and control.

    I guess what I'm saying overall is that your take on this general issue seems to ignore whole swaths of the debate. But, again, please forgive if I have been rude.
     
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2011
  13. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    What?? No, I'm not saying it's a truth that humans are male-dominated. Not even close. First off, I'm not talking about "humans" as a monolithic mass, because I've studied enough history and sociology to know what a ridiculous notion that is -- human cultures have a lot more diversity in their treatment of gender roles than we tend to assume. There have been cultures that were egalitarian, ones that were matriarchal, ones that were patriarchal, and everything in between. What I'm saying is that, because the histories we Westerners are taught in school reflect the biases of the nominally "male-dominated" societies that our particular culture is descended from (by which I mean societies where the definitions of terms and the writing of history were largely male responsibilities), that gives us the false impression that women have generally been powerless in most civilizations.

    Also, I'm not talking about ideology here. I'm not advocating something as the "right" way to be. I'm a science fiction writer looking for interesting alternative cultures to explore. The only value judgment I'm making here is whether a particular cultural pattern is interesting to write about and think about. What I learned in my history studies about the traditionally-unacknowledged influence that women had in a lot of past societies intrigued me, and I wanted to construct an alien culture that was inspired by that. There's no ideological judgment intended, because it's not meant to be an exact parallel to those historical societies, and because the whole point is to explore alternative social structures as an exercise in world-building. I don't just write about alien cultures I agree with. I write about ones I find interestingly different from my own, and that means I often disagree with a lot about them. I wouldn't necessarily want to live in them, but they're still interesting to develop and contemplate.



    I have no disagreement with any of that. My whole point is that male dominance is what is taught to be the fact of history, not what was actually so.



    That's actually a pretty good description of what I had in mind for the Talarian system. The females don't want the males butting into their areas of responsibility any more than vice-versa. Indeed, that's the whole reason they were revolting against Ronzel's government -- because he was imposing on their areas of responsibility, usurping for Talarian males many of the decisions that were supposed to be the purview of females.


    That's not what I meant to say at all. Of course I'm simplifying a lot because this is just a BBS discussion, not a formal dissertation.




    I never said it's what I personally believe. I said it's what many human cultures in the past have been conditioned to believe. I'm describing the worldview of others, not endorsing it. This is what I learned to do for four years as a history student -- to study and discuss cultures objectively and keep personal biases and assumptions out of it as much as I could. It's also, as I said above, what I've trained to do as a science fiction writer and worldbuilder -- to explore a variety of cultures and worldviews with curiosity and an open mind rather than confining myself to what I personally agree with.
     
  14. Deranged Nasat

    Deranged Nasat Vice Admiral Admiral

    I'm extremely sorry if I caused offense through any misrepresentations (actual or potentially implicit). I appear to have clumsily trampled around on your contributions here and it looks like it came across as unfairly aggressive, and even dismissive of the professional and personal qualities you cultivate as a writer. I hope you'll accept that this was not intended, and that I have great respect for you. Callimas at Bahar! :(
     
  15. JB2005

    JB2005 Commodore Commodore

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    Well this was the first e-book i've ever bought and I wasn't disappointed!

    I wonder Christopher, what it was like writing about these events in the fictional setting while they were happening in the Middle East? To me it seemed to harken back to Classic Trek, by raising an issue that is happening around us and putting a "human" face on it (it made me consider just how bloody terrifying it must have been for all those who took part in the uprisings, both in the Arab Spring and historically)

    I personally don't feel it was that rushed, though I can understand why the comment is made...to me it felt more like one of the (better) stand alone episodes of TNG - a set up, a diverging A and B plot and a wrap up at the end...The plot didn't dawdle, it moved from one thought to another without delay, and it was efficient, it didn't meander, the story evolved logically allowing character growth without impeding the narrative. Since Christopher's novels tend to be more cerebral (that is to say they spend more time questioning the why and explaining their points clearly) this was a certainly a change of pace!

    I think if this had been a full novel then it would have been easily the best of the Typhon Pact series (hell, even as an E-Book I still lean in that direction) since giving it a score out of ten would be meaningless, I will simply say that it is Most Highly Recommended!
     
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Mainly I was worried about whether the situation in Egypt or thereabouts would change in a way that would render my story dated or obsolete. It's risky to try to do an allegory for a current, ongoing situation. And I do find it sad that too many of the revolts in the Mideast lately have sunk to violence. The way Qaddafi met his end was particularly disturbing. How can they expect to replace him with anything better if they sink to the same kind of brutality?


    Wow, that's very flattering.
     
  17. Thrawn

    Thrawn Rear Admiral Premium Member

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    ^ I may not have said so in as many words, but I agree; full-length, this would have wiped the floor with the other four.
     
  18. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I downloaded my copy last night. (The Struggle Within is my first E-book, you may be interested to know.)

    I liked. It was nice to see something of Talarian civilization; the exploration of the Kinshaya, though, was much more interesting. The Talarans have a gender-segregated society, that's fine. The Kinshaya, though, are authentically alien, and interestingly so.
     
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    TrekMovie.com’s reviewer Robert Lyons has posted a review of The Struggle Within, and he has some very nice things to say. My favorite bits:

    Very flattering.
     
  20. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Very cool. I still haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, but once I get caught up on the Trek Lit books I already own, it'll be one of my first purchases.