Straczynski Unplugged (short story Collection)

Published by ibooks,inc (Synthetic Worlds) 2004.

J Michael Straczynski is best known for creating and writing the Babylon 5 series and related TV movies – to my mind, one of the greatest TV shows ever. He also created and wrote the post-apocalyptic Jeremiah, and the Netflix favourite Sense8. Flexible and talented enough to have fingers in all media pies, he has written the script/screenplays for the movies Thor (2011), Underworld: Awakening (2012), Changeling (2008), World War Z (2013), Ninja Assassin (2009); TV scripts for the New Twilight Zone (1980s), Murder She Wrote, Crusade, The Real Ghostbusters, Captain Power, He-Man, She-Ra, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. He has written some of the biggest selling comic book superhero stories, relaunching flagging heroes such as Superman, Wonder Woman, Thor, The Silver Surfer, The Fantastic Four and others to huge success. He was given the writing reins for the prestigious Marvel flagship The Amazing Spider-Man, also to huge acclaim (I have several of these graphic novels). In recent years he has turned his hand to writing fiction and non-fiction (details at the end of this review). He is a winner of the Hugo and Bradbury awards.

Straczynski Unplugged: The Fantasies of J Michael Straczynski, is a collection of eleven short stories written between 1989 and 2003. Some of these are tales of the New Twilight Zone. There is an amusing but poignant Introduction wherein JMS describes some of his problems with himself and other people.
 

Say Hello Mr Quigley:

When her parents die, Liz returns to the childhood home she fled from aged fifteen. Deep-rooted, terrifying memories are brought to the present when she discovers Mr Quigley, a three-foot stuffed toy jester. It was given to her to act as protection but did nothing but stare blankly as she suffered abuse. By association, it was evil; it had let her down. When she finds warnings chalked on the walls and hears the jester’s bells at night, liz thinks she is going mad. But what if it is Mr Quigley? And if so, why does it want her out of the house?
After a slow start, Straczynski’s vivid imagination soon slaps you around the face. Everything is so clear and visual in your head. This is an emotional journey for Liz, but the real star here is the stuffed jester, which is both creepy and threatening. Although there is only the barest description of Mister Quigley, you somehow know exactly what it looks like. There is a nice revelatory twist too.
 

Dream Me a Life:

Roger is a resident in an old people’s home. Ever since his wife died, he is short tempered. Nobody has any time for him except Frank, who ignores his temper and treats him like a good friend. Roger is plagued by nightmares in which an elderly woman begs, terrified, for his help in keeping something unknown from breaking through a door. The door splinters and shakes in the frame. The nightmares continue relentlessly until Roger is afraid to sleep. Then a new resident arrives. It is the woman from his dreams, but she is in a wheelchair and stares sightlessly into space. They say she hasn’t spoken a word since her husband died ten years before. Roger realises that to discover the truth and help his own outlook on life he will need to confront the force at the door.

The characters are strong, as they always are in a JMS tale. However, the tone is similar to ‘Kick the Can’ from The Twilight Zone, or the Cocoon movies. This story exists only for the outcome which, again, is to let the past go and live for today.
 

Rendezvous in a Dark Place:

Barbara LeMay has an unhealthy preoccupation with death. She always dresses in black, keeps her curtains pulled against the light, and visits the funerals of people she doesn’t – or didn’t – know. When a fatally wounded gunman enters her house one night, she comforts him and awaits the arrival of Death. When he comes for the gunman, Barbara tries to get him to take her instead. Everyone she has ever loved has gone and, rather than raging at Death, she thanks him for putting them at peace. She realises she loves Death and wants to go with him, but it’s not her time. Can Death find a way?

This is a very engaging tale, with Death never more than a shadow (there’s that word again which JMS fans will recognise). There’s the potential for the story to progress so much further, but it’s always a good ploy to leave them wanting more. This is another ‘people’ story, with the emphasis on empathy.

The Call:

After misdialling a number, Norman Blair strikes up a comfortable conversation with a woman called Mary Ann. Every night they talk for hours, but she doesn’t want to meet up. Norman traces the telephone number to a modern art museum where he finds a bronze statue, a self-portrait by Mary Ann Lindeby, who had tragically committed suicide. Norman thinks he is going mad but talks to her again on the phone that night. He realises he has fallen in love. Both parties are lonely, but Mary Ann finds a way for them to be together.
What an incredibly emotive story. JMS is extremely adept at handling characters. Both of these are brought to life to the extent that you feel the sadness from each of them separately, rather than from the point of view of only one person. Loneliness takes centre stage here. Almost everybody’s been lonely at some stage in their life (it’s even possible to be lonely in a crowd). So, from the start, without knowing a great deal about them, you want them to be together.
 

The Salvation of Lyman Terrell:
The titular character is a high-flying but honest criminal lawyer with the job of getting an innocent man off a murder charge. While the jury is out, Terrell gets the devastating news that he has an inoperable and therefore terminal cancer. He seeks second opinions from all the experts and is finally contacted by a surgeon who says he can help with a revolutionary genetic treatment, which effectively changes the cancer to a virus. But after the treatment he is told he has to pass on the cancer within 24 hours or it will return. Can he morally give the disease to someone else?
This is one of those situations when you think What would I do in similar circumstances? The instinct for self-preservation is strong in all humans, and many people would be more than tempted to relieve a loved one from pain and death by arranging to put a complete stranger in contact with them. A strong tale that leaves you thinking.

Acts of Terror:

Louise Simonton is a victim of domestic violence and abuse at the hands of her husband Jack. When Louise receives an ornament containing a miniature Doberman dog, a real dog materialises to confront or attack Jack whenever he threatens Louise. The dog is the focus of her inner rage, and even when the ornament is smashed, the dog finds a home within Louise.
This is an uncomfortable story to read, and that is testament to JMS’s ability with vivid imagery involving believable characters.
 

Special Service:
John Selig breaks a mirror in his bathroom, only to find a television camera behind it. He soon discovers secreted camera all over the house, but while he himself is shocked and outraged, everyone he comes into contact with urges him not to spoil the ratings of what turns out to be a popular reality show.
This reminded me of the film Being John Malkovitch. The idea of someone finding out that their life is not their own (in this case, job and wife too) is essentially a good one. It worked well in The Matrix, and also John Carpenter’s They Live.

Cold Type:
A travelling preacher stays overnight in a backwater little town, where he meets a disabled man with an extraordinary ability. Any book he burns in a fire ceases to have existed at all. The copies vanish and suddenly nobody has heard of it.
This is a great twist. A gift is entrusted to another person and misused. The new user is stopped in a unique but conducive manner before he can do too much damage.
 

The Wall:

Major McKay is brought in when a gateway to an unknown location appears during an explosion in an underground military research centre. Several objects and people have been sent through and none have returned. What he finds is a simple utopian society with no conflict or weapons. He also finds his predecessors who tell him there is no way back through the gate from this side. However, the gateway is only visible at night, and McKay as the good soldier has to return and make his report. But has he made the right decision?
They say that no idea is completely original. The Wall contains several resonances of past influences, most notably Stargate and, more precisely, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, wherein one expedition to the Red Planet is subdued by making the travellers see their hometowns and the people they love. Another ‘What would you do?’ situation.
 

The Mind of Simon Foster:
Simon Foster is poor, out of work and behind with the rent. Upon visiting a pawn shop with his last few items of personal possessions, the shopkeeper offers to buy selected memories from him, using an illicit machine. Feeling he has no other choice, Foster agrees. But his lost memories cause him to fail to secure a new job and, when he is asked for the memories of his first love, he begins to have second thoughts.
It is said, with wise conviction, that we are the sum of our memories. They make us the person we are. As we get older, we are increasing more able to relay events from our past than we are recent situations. They form the structure of our lives. JMS intelligently exploits this scenario by offering the suggestion that possessions mean nothing when compared with the very structure of our individual and progressive human construction.
 

We Killed Them in the Ratings:

Carl Sarotkin is the producer of a reality TV show which takes hidden cameras out onto the streets. When he is contacted by a notorious serial killer and informed where his next murder will take place, Carl makes certain the cameras are there. The ratings skyrocket, but now he is forced to stick with this immoral arrangement or risk losing his show.
Again, JMS presents an important moral dilemma. Popularity and money, or honesty and doing the right thing. To think that somebody would even consider risking a potential victim’s life in exchange for fame and fortune is anathema to anyone with moral fibre. But the sad thing is there are people out there who would make this choice without a moment’s hesitation. It’s the ultimate act of selfishness with all the connotations with come with it. This has been explored in films such as Scream, wherein the TV journalist will go to any lengths to get something controversial on camera. These characters are normally shown the error of their ways. Those who persist will inevitably fall. Often in these fictional scenarios the protagonist doesn’t even realise that the public would become suspicious that cameras are always located at the scene of a killing.
 

This is a very enjoyable collection of tales – some more far-fetched than others – but all tight in plotting, situation and (most importantly) characterisation. The people suffering through these troubles are very real and rounded. You sense who they are as human beings within a very few wisely chosen words, and this is testament to the inherent skills JMS has in his arsenal. You can’t have a person act out of character – unless a highly traumatic situation changes him or her – and then they stay changed. Many writers will simply press the reset button, returning that person to normal. Not JMS. He knows better.
 

Anybody looking to read more fiction from J Michael Straczynski should seek out Othersyde, Demon Night, Tribulations, Together We Will Go, and The Glass Box. For non-fiction you can’t go wrong with The Complete Book of Scriptwriting, and his phenomenal autobiography, Becoming Superman.

9

(Original Review by Ty Power 2024)