FORGOTTEN BOOK: FASTER THAN LIGHT

Faster Than Light:  The Story of The Sci-Fi Channel's FTL NEWSFEED, two volumes, by Matt Costello & F. Paul Wilson  (2021)

"For the first four years of The Sci-Fi Channel's Existence [now just 'Syfy'], the only original pro-gramming was a daily one-minute newsblurb from 150 years in the future called FTL NEWSFEED."

The featurette, which appeared daily -- Monday through Friday -- from September 24, 1992 to December 20, 1996, totaled 1,106 episodes.  The program was created by Matt Costello and F. Paul Wilson, two highly regarded scioence fiction and fantasy writers.  For the first two years, the daily epusodes were written by Russ Firestone. adapting each episode directly from then show's detailed "Bible" that Costello and Wilson had prepared.  At the time, The Sci-Fi Channel was owned by USA Network, whose honchos were not very well clued in on what science fiction was.  As a result FTL NEWSFEED enjoyed a lot of creative leeway.  In 1994, USA Network was sold to Viacom, Russ Firestone was let go, and Costello and Wilson were asked to write the episodes.  Those episodes -- from September 26, 1994 to December 20, 1996 -- are reprinted in this compendium, along with the show's original Bible, and running commentary (including planned story arcs) from the authors.  The result?  A heck of a lot of fun!

This was an amazing playground for two very creative writers.  They imagined a realistic, plausable future society that was at times "hokey, silly, funny, touching, mysterious, compelling, suspenseful."  To prove the old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same, echoes from those 30-year-old scripts still ring pretty true today -- which is admittedly scary.

Among the main themes carried throughout the series:

• Earth is now divided by several political combines -- with North America, Europe, Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, Islamic Nations, Israel, and the Far East all vying for power and influence; other areas of the world take a back seat.  Politics is as dirty as ever.
• Humanity  has reached outer space -- sort of.  There are exclusive floating cities for the very weaslthy, settlements on the moon, space stations, and colonists on Mars trying to eke out an existence as they attempt to terraform the planet.  Humanity has also changed and has adapted biologically to live in some of those locations:  some have become semi-amphibians and have settled cities under the oceans.  In addition, there are robots, clones, clones created for specific purposes, biological adaptives, and so on.  Clones, of course, have no rights and are considered property.
• Virtual Reality has taken over much of the population, who have escaped into the VR Net where they can create their own dreams and reality.
• Finance is controlled by a worldwide banking system, the Cenbank. which, it turns out, is controlled by an autonomous AI.  The AI is self-aware and very protective of its power.  It (she?) eventually adopts a human body for a biological persona, Ayeye.
• An asteroid is heading toward Earth on a collision course.  No one knows where it came from.  Attempts to stop it have failed, and it appears to have a defensive, impenetrable shield.  Earth is doomed.  Just hours before the collision, the asteroid comes to a screeching halt (here, I kind of picture the spaceship from the film Dark Star coming to a full stop), and orbits the Earth as a second moon.  By golly, the new moon is hollow.  And by double golly, there are some life forms inside:  small, unintelligent, dying critters...how could they have piloted the asteroid?
• Another relative newcomer to the solar system turns out to be the second moon of Mars, where a mysterious plant originates.  The plant, known as dandefox (from its unique coloring) is poisonous to humans and animals, but is oh so pretty.  And it reproduces rapidly...and it gobbles oxygen.  Soon the plant threatens to choke the Earth, as it evidently did to Mars, eliminating that planet's civilization and leaving nothing behind.  So Earth doesn't get smashed by an asteroid, it gets vegetated to death instead?
• The dying aliens from the hollow asteroid do just that,,,die.  All except for one.  This one happens to eat a dandefox and becomes healthy.  On a diet of dandefox, he gets bigger, healthier, and gains great intelligence, while retaining a childlike innocence.  He is still an alien, though, although he eventually married a showgirl named Bimbetta.  It is this alien, named M'ki, who provides the way for the plague of dandefox to be eliminated, although it also eliminates his only source of food and dooms him.  M'ki dies a tragic death, but Bimbetta (we soon learn) is pregnant.
• Indications now reveal that the alien asteroid may have come from Europa, an ice-bound moon of Jupiter.  A heroic space flight is sent there to try to get somr answers.  They drill beneath miles of ice to an ocean underneath.  There is something, large, dark and mysterious at the bottom of the ocean, something that seems to be folded among itself like a moebius strip gone terribly wrong.  One astronaut approaches and communication is suddenly lost.  She reppears on the underwater vessel, strangely changed.  Her companion on the vessel has been murdered horribly and she is covered with blood, with no memory of what has happened.  On the walls of the vessel is a strange symnbol and the the words "TAU PLAMT" written in blood.  Because of these events, the expedition is recalled to Earth.  The woman begins preaching the vague philosophy of TAU, in which all will be wonderful.  The message of TAU -- whatever it is -- is picked up on Earth, and millions of people on Earth are become followers of TAU. 
• In the meantime, a middle-aged woman begins appearing on the VR Net without any logivcal means of appearing there.  She is preaching another message, one of imminent danger.  Her following also grows large, and appears opposed to TAU.
• TAU opposes any attempt to go beyond Earth, a message echoed by the Realist Party, which opposes the VR Net, while promoting rights for clones.  Followers of TAu and the Realists engage in blooody warfare and sabotage.  Many people who  have logged on to the VR Net have had their physical bodies murdered, yet their avatars are still alive and functioning on the Net, including the daughter of a leader of the Realist party.
• Israel has been secretly working on a faster-than-light drive.  Their reserched has led them to discover a number of new dimensions and possible intelligences.  People working on the project are going mad and committing mass murder.
• One very popular toy is the "L'il Geneticist" kit, which has youngsters creating all sorts of biological havok.

And that's the tip of the iceberg.  Keep in mind that each episode runs for under a minute -- the program's introduction takes up about twenty seconds of that time.  And each news feed needs some sort of hook and a cliffhanger, and you begin to grasp the complexity of the program.  Costello and Wilson also managed to wrangle some pretty intriguing guests for the show, including Gilbert Gottfried,Timothy Leary, Peter Straub, Jeffrey Lyons, and Kweskin.  Rhonda Shear (from MTV's Up All night) played Bimbetta, the bride of M'ki.  Writer Tom Monteoleone played a future mafia capo, Armando Corleone.  Kay Koplovitz, the head of USA Network, was corraled to play Madeline Clark, the president of the North American Economic Community and head of the Unified Party.

One fun thing about the program was the amount of Easter Eggs and silliness the scripters managed to include.  Yes, there is a Space Station Costello and an important character named Dr. F. Pauilson, but there is also Philip jose, a farmer, and Dr. Rod Hamm, the Chief of staff at the Kevokian Medical Center. The character Karen Gengerbu is a nod to Ace Books editor Ginger Buchanan. Benjamin Driopd is the head of FLAKE (Fans of Lovecraft, Asimov, King and Exraterrestials), and uses old "flatscreen" movies to enhance his paranoia about current events.  Bennie Leinstein is a noted musical conductor.  The winner for Best Hologram Game is The 97th Guest (Matt Costello was the creator of the early best-selling video game The 7th Guest).  And so on, and so on...

I had never seen FTL NEWSFEED when it was one the air (frankly, the early offerings of The Sfi-Fi Channel were way too juvenile for me), but now I wish I had.  The program was wildly imaginative while staying withing the realm of the best science fiction.  It had the sweep of a best-selling historical novel, done Campbell-Soup-condensed, it you follow  my meanig.  The more than 500 episodes repirinted in these two volumes keept me turning the pages, and I was sorry to see it end.

And a very happy Halloween to you!