They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Cary Caffrey, who is the author of The Girls from Alcyone series!
What does Cary love when he’s not toiling away on his latest book? Spoiler alert: diverse and hopeful futures, a love-letter to ’80s nostalgia, an immersive online adventure, and something you should absolutely listen to in the dark, even if you don’t want to be scared. Curious? Read on for more!
Passions? Obsessions? All-consuming, life-sucking activities? Yes, these are a few of my favorite things.
Star Trek Discovery: What can I say about Star Trek, a show that’s basically come to define my entire existence? Gene Roddenberry’s hopeful and diverse vision of the future helped shape my past and my present in a profound way. And not just because it was cool sci-fi, with aliens and phasers and green animal-women and lizard-men. Not just because it featured stories by some of the best, most ground-breaking science-fiction writers of all time — although, that is a seriously huge part of it.
I grew up in a very diverse area of Montreal. Different colors, different accents — different languages. So when I saw Star Trek — seeing women and men working side by side, people who looked different from one another, or came from different backgrounds or even different planets — this was a vision that hit home. Hard. Star Trek reflected my world. Or at least, what I thought of it.
And for a kid growing up in the age of the Apollo moon missions this was doubly-true. Space, diversity, these concepts weren’t fantasy for me. This was normal. So, yes, Star Trek — from TNG to Voyager — has always been a huge part of my life, and it always will be.
Still, I was never fan of ST: Enterprise (please don’t hate me!), and, while I seriously applaud J.J. Abrams for trying to give Star Trek a much needed update, his altered timeline-verse just never clicked for me either. Maybe because in my heart of hearts I know Spock digs Christine!
But J.J. was right about one thing. Star Trek needed a refresh.
Queue Discovery.
So, how do I feel about Discovery? I. Love. it. Seriously. And it’s easy to see why. The makers of Discovery wisely chose to forego the standard alien-of-the-week experience in favor of a complex, character-centric narrative focused on Michael Burnham, a human woman raised by Sarek (Spock’s father) himself. This isn’t your parents’ team-building, good-of-the-many Star Treks of generations past. In Discovery, heads will butt, personalities will clash, and morals and personal convictions will be severely tested.
Oh, and don’t get too attached to interesting characters either. Like Game of Thrones, some characters won’t last the episode whether they’re wearing red shirts or Discovery-blue. But this only makes Discovery a more intense, white-knuckle ride.
I’m deeply in love with all the characters and the wonderful actors who portray them. Tilly, Dr. Paul, Ash Tyler — Saru! What an ensemble. This is a great show, dripping with mystery, suspense, danger and love.
And, speaking of suspense, love and awesome characters…
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: I can’t think of one book I’ve enjoyed more in the past twenty years than Ready Player One. I’ve read it four times now, sometimes just to experience it again, other times to try and figure out why it is I love it so much.
It’s not too difficult to understand my affection for this book. Ready Player One is a story about an orphaned kid, Wade Watts, who finds escape from a brutal, dystopian Earth in the ‘80s-inspired virtual world of OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation). Say that five times!
More than escape, Wade is looking for a way out. Living with his junky-Aunt in a literal pile of trailers and recreation vehicles, Wade spends his days online in the OASIS hunting for the fabled easter egg, a virtual prize left behind by James Halliday, the OASIS’s dead creator — and one of Wade’s personal heroes. Finding the egg isn’t a game. Whoever finds the egg wins control of the OASIS, with all the riches and power that go along with it.
It’s easy to blow a book like this off as a simple adventure, a race to find the virtual “holy grail.” But I know it’s more than that. A lot more. This book is written with so much affection and love, love for the characters and the virtual world they inhabit, love for the fans who loved those movies and games, it’s hard not to fall in love with it.
Wade’s journey isn’t just about finding the “egg.” It’s about finding a way out of his hopeless existence. It’s about finding love. It’s about finding himself. And if it just so happens to do this while wrapping itself in a cloak of references to old ‘80s text-adventure games like Zork, or Monty Python or wonderfully-cheesy eighties science-fiction movies, then all the better!
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited: And speaking of virtual worlds…
I actually only just started playing The Elder Scrolls Online. But (especially!) after seeing the movie Ready Player One and reading the book — again, I knew I had to include this amazing online adventure in my list.
So, what is The Elder Scrolls Online? Simply put, it’s a life-sucking, fantasy-themed, continent-sprawling virtual world populated by elves, orcs, dragons and monsters. Oh, and dungeons. There are lots and lots of dungeons.
If you’ve never played a massively-multiplayer online game, the experience is a bit hard to describe. Just calling it a “game” is a bit misleading. You don’t really play Elder Scrolls Online, you live it. You pick a role — thief, fighter, healer, mage — and you become that character letting your actions determine the course of your own narrative. Oh, and you’re not alone in this world either. There are people here. Millions of them. People who just happen to look like orcs and elves and such. And just like the living world, some of these people will work with you, others against you.
From the craggy peaks of Craglorn to the damp jungles of Greenshade, Tamriel (the world of Elder Scrolls Online) is dynamic and ever-changing. The grass is full and lush, brooks babble, and the wooded areas hum with insect life. You can easily lose yourself for days (months? years?) simply fishing, picking flowers or decorating your home, be it a humble cabin or a sprawling, mountaintop fortress of solitude. You can share an ale with fellow adventures in the local inn, or delve deep into the darkest dungeon in search of treasure and renown.
Perhaps even more impressive than the game’s sheer size and scope — and the real reason I’ve included it in my list — is the incredible quality of the writing and storytelling. Whenever I stop my adventuring long enough to chat with the people of Tamriel I find myself caught up in their stories; stories of love and loss, stories of despair and hope — hope for a hero. A hero who just might happen to be you!
Alien & The Audio Dramas by Tim Lebbon and Christopher Golden: I really don’t like to be scared. I don’t! (Please don’t scare me. Please don’t scare me). So what is it with my obsession with all things Alien?
Obviously, this all started with the original movie back in 1979 — a movie that still stands out as cinematic perfection, just as terrifying and gripping today as it was 40 years ago. My obsession only deepened with Aliens and Prometheus. And then I found Alien: Isolation. Wow. This was the story of Amanda Ripley (Ellen Ripley’s daughter) and her search for her mother — a search that takes her back to LV 426 fifteen years after the events of the original (why! why do they keep going back!?!). Amanda’s story made me realize this franchise had a lot more to offer than just two terrifying hours in a movie theatre.
So. I went hunting for more. More terror. More Aliens.
That’s when I found Tim Lebbon’s Alien: Out of the Shadows and Christopher Golden’s Alien: River of Pain, both books, but also amazing audio dramas on audible.com.
If you’ve never experienced an audio drama — we used to call them radio plays back in the day, back when there was still such a thing as radio — I highly recommend it. The experience is very different from audiobooks. It’s a full production, with music, a full cast of actors, and sound FX that go right down to the hiss of dripping acid, the tearing of flesh and splintering of fractured bones. Yay!
Did I mention the cast? Laurel Lefkow’s performance as Ripley is uncanny. I swear I had to keep checking IMDB because I was dead-sure that it was Sigourney Weaver reprising her role.
Curiously, Alien: Out of The Shadows, a story very much about Ellen Ripley, takes place after the events of Alien and before Aliens. Wait? What? How’s that possible? I was incredibly skeptical about this. I mean, we know Ripley was lost after Alien, right? She was left to drift alone in deep space, slumbering peacefully in suspended animation until she was awoken fifty years later.
Or…was she?
My advice: Definitely. Listen. With headphones.
Alone.
In the dark.
Honorable Mentions:
The Mass Effect series, anything written by Harry Harrison, and…Star Wars. Because all stories are Star Wars.
Cary Caffrey is obsessed with all things science-fiction. Books, movies, games and comics. Anything.
Cary is a full-time writer, part-time teacher, and author of the best-selling science-fiction series The Girls from Alcyone. He studied at Concordia University and the University of British Columbia, earning a BA and MFA in creative writing, as well as the Jacob Zilber award for screenwriting.
Cary is currently working on two novels: Embers of Alcyone (The Girls from Alcyone IV), as well as a brand new, still secret, science-fiction/horror/romance/historical-fiction crossover project called W.A.S.P. And, yes, it’s about the Women Air Force Service Pilots of World War II. And possibly a werewolf.
Publications:
- The Girls from Alcyone, 2011
- The Machines of Bellatrix (The Girls from Alcyone II), 2013
- “Merchantman” (A short story), 2013
- Codename: Night Witch (The Girls from Alcyone III), 2015
I’ve never been one for audiobooks but the whole Aliens audiodrama thing….now that sounds like something I could get into…