Starcraft: Speed of Darkness | a Review
originally published on 31/07/2023;
Hello everyone, I am the star-stricken star-farer, G.E.M.Simov, a being of pure intrigue, here to share with you the wonders of Tracy Hickman’s book “Starcraft: Speed of Darkness”.
Simple review details - I rank books on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Content
This is a book about Starcraft. As a book about Starcraft, this book is unfortunately going to focus, almost exclusively, and by design, on war. However, this book does something that Starcraft does not really suggest. It gets down on the ground, gets its hands dirty, and showcases the micro of war, rather than focusing on the macro.
That is really good in regards to telling stories about human beings. About humanity itself, as a concept and a species. The stories do, however, end up focusing on one of the most pointless, mindless and ruthlessly stupid things one can imagine - war.
So “Speed of Darkness” focuses on that. How people deal with war, how people are manipulated into thinking war is good, how war becomes a goal, rather than a means, and how the means of war become more important than the goals of the war.
The book does this very eloquently, juggling the ideas while also exasperating the issue in the common sci-fi fashion, which is a very good thing. After all, science fiction is most pleasant whenever it takes a concept and expands it, not just spatially, but also in every conceivable way. It improves on the thing in question, conceptually, and presents an extreme, be it as a cautionary tale or as a means of inciting thoughtful consideration of that thing.
So, when I found out that a Starcraft book was doing its best to do that - to examine concepts that I would describe as incredibly anti-war, in a franchise that is built upon war and almost glorifies it, I was a little surprised. Pleasantly surprised, of course.
Thus, let me go on about these concepts. The first thing that really shows up and is presented to the reader is the idea of brainwashing. Naturally, that is nothing new - especially in relation to the military, as “Fullmetal Jacket” or “Jarhead” will show you, or a countless number of books will tell you.
Still, the fact that there is brainwashing at play evades many people, because that is part of the entire scheme. The military industrial complex of any country, but mostly the USA, is doing everything in its power to convince the citizens of the USA that it is necessary and that it is good. Not only that, but it isn’t just the military that’s doing this - it’s the government as a whole.
They (the ones devising means of recruiting people into the military) have incredible options at their disposal. They provide student grants in exchange for service, they blow up the patriotic angle out of proportion, they prey upon lonely people with the promise of community… The army wants to grow, for through its growth it becomes stronger, and an army needs to be as strong as possible so that it may deal with its enemies.
As that is well known, what comes next? Following recruitment, be it as a result of one’s penury or another exploitable social weakness, one must be made into a soldier, and one must be conditioned to be a soldier. After all, an army is composed of different types of personnel, but the main meat of it are soldiers. Those who fight, those who kill, those who die. You can’t field an army with just military engineers or communications experts, unfortunately.
So how does the USA’s military manage to get these recruits to go from a nuanced human being who has an understanding of life’s value and considers murder to be wrong - especially, supposedly, if that recruit is a Christian individual - into a mindless drone that follows orders and kills people without a second thought?
Brainwashing, which is achieved through conditioning and other, less savory things. The value of the recruit is constantly undermined and lessened, until the person is willing to do anything the sergeant orders. The will of the individual is crushed, be it through the social aspect - by their fellow recruits and soldiers - or by the vicious punishments that are forced upon them for showing any wilfulness.
That, then, gets combined with the total isolation of that individual from other people - the only type of person a soon-to-be soldier can be around is another soldier, for if the recruit goes back home after a day of training and pulls away from the ‘lifestyle’ of a soldier, that person will remain a proper person, not the drone desired by the military.
Only letters or sporadic phone-calls to and from family, and those are prone to getting withheld for any reason imaginable. When one goes to become a soldier, one must understand that they are going there to part with their humanity.
However, that is how it is in modernity. It is an imperfect process, because it takes a lot of time. It also requires lots of manpower and lots of money. Those are things the military would much rather not deal with - as no one wants to do things that require lots of money, time and energy - but if those things happened quickly, required far less energy and far less money to be accomplished… Then the situation is different.
The Starcraft book franchise is no stranger to dealing with that aspect of war. The brainwashed soldiers, the horrible conditions they’re forced to exist under - all the jazz. The first book in the franchise, “Liberty’s Crusade”, featured neural re-socialization, which was described as being a special type of lobotomy.
This installment features neural re-socialization, too. In fact, neural re-socialization is that elevation of the process a recruit goes through to become a good soldier - an obedient, bereft of conscience drone that does not think for itself and believes that orders are absolute and nothing stands above them, and nothing justifies the decision to not commit to the fulfillment of an order.
Funnily enough, the book also features a lot of Religion. It seems as though the main driving force behind the main character is Religion, and it is depicted as something wonderfully pure and wholly good, something the practitioners of which get punished for practicing.
That leaves me very free of things to say on the topic, especially the topic of Religion. It is not truly mentioned why it is that the practitioners of Religion are banished or persecuted for being religious, all the plentiful nuances of Religion are also not mentioned, and what is presented is, essentially, and idealized vision of the concept. Religious people are peaceful and enlightened, wise beyond their years and filled with goodness.
It is through the utilization of religious virtue that people ever do good things, it is through Religion that people even start considering doing selfless things. Prior to a consideration of oneself, prior to considering things and contemplating them, the main character is prone to act in a selfish manner. However, he only stops himself from doing so when he thinks, and when his thoughts are affected by Religion, by his religious beliefs.
So this book, whilst being a condemnation of war, as well as the means utilized by the militaries of the world, is also a measured, but biased hail of Religion - or so it seems. Of course, the Religion in question is Christianity, and, of course, what is used as a persuasive mechanism - in the case of the main character's own persuasion of the self - is the threat of eternal damnation, of Hell.
I don't really like the fact that it is presented as a thing that's so good. It is well known, and perfectly evident to me, that Religion has the potential to be good, but it is neither wholly good, not is it more good than bad. That is bothersome to a degree I can't really ignore.
And yet it was well placed. The influence of Religion manifests via memories, via statements made by other characters in the main character's past - a past which the main character considers to have been as good as it could be, a past considered to be perfect, almost. It seems reasonable to me that anything associated with the past would be considered good, and valuable, especially when the present is easily describable as Hell.
It makes sense that any memories the main character has of the past are all bound to goodness, that all the memories are positive. Perhaps he has donned a pair of rose tinted glasses and is seeing this through the prism of overwhelming nostalgia… Or, rather, unbearable hiraeth.
That aspect of it - having a home to which one can not return to, having this past that was and is no more - that makes me willing to show mercy, if we could call it so. I do not mind the fact that the book features Religion as something unapologetically good, for it does so in a manner that works.
This book… It just works. Maybe it's not a 'just' work, but it does function almost perfectly, it does what it has set out to do and does it admirably. For that, I can't not acknowledge this achievement. 3/3
Richness of Expression
In this regard, this is a decently satisfactory book. I don’t think I can call it incredible, for it did not really wow me with the richness of the writer’s lexicon, or with the way they strung sentences together. It was purely prose, of a decent quality.
Now, it is very well known to yours truly that a book’s richness of expression is somewhat like Sound Effects in any visual medium - if they are done well, they are not really noticed. In the case of books, it is very similar, though there is the occasional glimmer of excellence that really sticks out.
Does “Speed of Darkness” have that fluorescence? Well, that’s the difficult part to gauge. There is a single thing that was done in this book that really left me impressed, a ‘move’, if one can so call it, that slapped itself in my brain and forever remained therein. I’ll probably talk about it more in detail in the Legendary Point section, but I must tell you that I read this book, once, more than ten years ago.
To this day, even before re-reading it for the purpose of this review, I remember in pristine detail the maneuver. The book starts with the description of a golden thing, a golden day. Then, the book ends with the assessment that a certain thing is golden, that the day, itself, is golden.
Considering the story, that’s a very, very important thing that gets done, and it’s incredibly impactful. Nothing else in the book gets close to that - in fact, everything else about the book is neither memorable nor heavy enough to slap the reader in any meaningful capacity.
With that said, though, the book reads incredibly smoothly. If it were a boat sailing down a stream, that stream would’ve been composed of butter and honey… Err… Yes, that’s the thing. This book was tasty, I suppose. I read all the Starcraft books before going to sleep, and this one I consumed for 3 days whilst avoiding to read for more than an hour at a time. Sure, it is the shortest out of the trio, but by only 15 pages.
It was incredibly captivating… Unbelievably fascinating, actually.
Even so, I don’t think it was undoubtedly perfect. It had its moments, but it didn’t really wow me as I expect to be if I were to award the big points. 2/3
Story
Ardo Melnikov is a marine for the Confederacy of Man. He is sent to Mar Sara to do a job - it doesn’t matter what job it is, for he cares only for the fighting. He has demons plaguing his mind - memories of his homeworld Bountiful, where his love was taken by the Zerg.
For those of you, ladies, gentlemen and N-bees, who know about Starcraft, you’ll find this quite interesting. How come he’s going to Mar Sara - which is the first place where the civilians, and the world at large, has come into contact with the Zerg - but he knows about the Zerg… And, in fact, the Zerg have destroyed his home planet in an event that took place years ago. Unfortunately, Ardo Melnikov does not know Starcraft lore, and thus that’s totally reasonable for him.
So Ardo arrives in a drop-ship with a large number of other marines. He takes note of two fellows - a massive, excited and quite bloodthirsty islander and a lady lieutenant. He also takes note of the fact that everyone is, seemingly, trying to flee the planet - in the case of the civvies (civilians) - or just evacuating - in the case of the military.
He gets himself neurally re-socialized - along with every other marine - which is a process he is shown as hating, but after the process is done, he is shown loving it. The same applies for the barracks in which the process takes place - he hates them prior to being neurally re-socialized, and loves them afterwards.
I must admit that I started off quite strongly, completely ignoring the fact that telling you a synopsis of the story would spoil it, and in the case of this book, spoiling the story is a great disservice to it. As a result of that, I’ll slow down.
The book features a number of characters, all of whom are considered, by yours truly, to be brainwashed servants of the Confederacy. Those of them who are not brainwashed have either totally accepted, and benefited greatly, from the Confederacy’s approach to things, or have not had the opportunity to recognize the wrongness in the Confederacy’s approach to things, due to the fact that everything is mired in great amounts of propaganda.
However, it also features those same characters showcasing incredible amounts of humanity, even if their humanity is almost destroyed by the brainwashing. Then there are other characters who do not appear to be brainwashed by the Confederacy, however they barely get to have a showcase that extends beyond - those are brothers and they are human beings acting like human beings would in high-stress situations without any training.
Then there’s another very special character who is also very brainwashed… But not by the Confederacy. That character exhibits the exact same mindset that is being riled against in the story, the mindset that is willing to conclude a human life is equal in value to something, even if that is not the case.
The fact that this story features the Confederacy of Man which treats humans as expendable resources, which is a cause for great conflict among the characters, and then the Confederacy’s opposition also exhibits those same quirks, is quite cool. However, it is also quite disappointing. It seems to mirror the two-party system in the USA and the message I get is that one needs to navigate and pick the lesser of two evils, even if there’s no real improvement to be discovered.
That’s more related to the Content of the book, but it’s part of the story. This is part of the reasoning behind the actions of many of the characters.
One other thing I’d like to mention is that time-wise, this story is incredibly short. It takes place over 2 days, at most, and it could actually be less than 24 hours in reality. Even so, there’s such a density of events, and these events are incredibly plausible and believable, as well as perfectly coherent in regards to the story, that it’s impressive just how much stuff happens, when a lot of this would’ve probably been skipped over in most books.
In any case, every named character in this book is important. There is no excess of character. Everything in this book, everything that gets mentioned or shown, winds up being used in some way. Chekhov’s Gun was blasting, if you catch my drift, and that’s really good. There was no thread left unaddressed, and on top of that, all of them seamlessly wound into a magnificent… Sweater?
With that said, let’s spoil the rest of the story:
Ardo and company set off for their destination on the “drop-ship” ‘Valkyrie Vixen’, alongside the brother of the pilot. They get dropped off at base Scenic, get settled over the course of ten minutes, and then set off for the nearby town.
In the town, they find Creep (Zerg thing), whilst they’re looking for a box. Ardo falls down a well covered by the Creep and winds up killing a Zergling, which really shakes him. Meanwhile, the rest of the team finds the box (and a civilian) but the Zerg start attacking.
Things get very spicy and Ardo, still terrified, chooses to flee a position he is defending with a firebat, which compromises the firebat and leaves him in the throes of the Zerg, so Ardo shoots the canisters on his back, blowing him up.
That is noticed by two other characters - one of whom does not like it, while the other deems it a reasonable decision. Fortunately for Ardo, he and most of the properly presented characters manage to survive, though the ‘Valkyrie Vixen’ does not come to pick them up. In fact, they get a nuke dropped on them, but due to the quick thinking of the lieutenant - Breanne - they wind up out of the danger-zone and survive.
Scenic, however, is totally abandoned, safe for the pilot’s brother, Marcus. Marcus, being a technician, was dealing with an SCV when the evacuation took place and he was abandoned along with the base and Ardo’s team.
Things are getting skunky, but there’s still time. Ardo is left with the surviving colonist - the civvie - who wakes up and her sheer appearance prompts the young man to wind up in a manic episode. His demons have caught up to him, considering the fact he has taken 1 human life and at least 1 Zerg life.
He was, prior to joining the military, a very religious fellow. So much so that he was studying in a seminary. Either way, he spooks the colonist, who manages to get him to recognize that she’s not his beloved from his home planet.
Before things get more interesting, she tells him that he’s living a lie. Called to the command floor of the command center, Ardo takes the colonist - Merdith - there. Breanne and company are not very happy about the state of things, Merdith has a little chat with Breanne - one that insinuates that she’s very suspicious (perhaps a terrorist or a spy), then the civvie is sent to grab a bite (alongside Ardo).
Turns out she's a telepath that managed to evade recruitment into the Ghost program, and she asks Ardo the right questions… Which leads into him undoing his neural re-socialization, though he can't truly believe that it is so. It was the Confederacy's barbaric recruitment methods that took him away from his home planet, not the Zerg. In fact, his family and beloved Melanie might still be alive.
He manages to recover from this relatively quickly, and afterwards he takes Merdith back to Breanne. Another conversation between them is had, while the situation pertaining evac gets worse whilst also getting better at the same time. Transporta are visibly flying off in the distance, but Marcus' brother - the pilot of 'Valkyrie Vixen', Tegis, is trying to find the technician.
Unfortunately, a large amount of Zerg passes by the base, headed towards the big city… And eight Mutalisks take an interest in the command center.
The marines try to lay low, but Marcus, hearing his brother on comms, loses his composure and gets in contact. Ardo tries to stop him, knocking him out, but it is too late. The Mutalisks attack, and the fight is dreadful.Three Mutalisks down, there’s a moment of quiet… Then the other Mutalisks attack. One character dies, giving his life to rescue Merdith. The Mutalisks appear to have been dealt with and Tegis arrives with his ‘Valkyrie Vixen’, but there were more Mutalisks sighted than there were Mutalisks killed, and the ship gets destroyed.
Using the chaos, Merdith tries to commandeer a vehicle to escape with the box, as a means of using it as a bargaining chip in exchange for safe passage aboard the ships of the Sons of Korhal, who’re about to try to pull off a politically motivated rescue operation. Ardo stops her, has a chat with her about surviving and the price of a person’s life, as well as the value of their soul.
He then proposes a plan of action to those who are left alive - use the box, which contains a device used to bring the Zerg to a place from thousands of miles away, to draw the Zerg away from the big city so that the drop-ships can safely get the citizens and evacuate them.
The reasoning of the characters is very sound in this scene, and any unreasonable elements of it are also reasonable in the context of the story - after all, most of those characters are not mentally sound.
The group is not very certain, with the one remaining firebat (Cutter),who witnessed Ardo’s deed in relation to that other firebat, trying to kill private Melnikov, but he winds up stopped by lieutenant Breanne. They wind up agreeing to do this, and do it.
Then they hold out heroically… Until they all die.
The ending is incredibly sweet, though there is also a great tinge of bitterness. Unfortunately, however, it seemed as though it was somewhat unavoidable. Ardo was damaged irreversibly by the revelations he came to with Merdith's help. Not only that, but he is bound by circumstances to depend heavily on the other members of the team.
Those other people are prone to executing fools for desertion. They're prone to being unfathomably Machiavellian in their approach, and they do things by the book. Seeing as the book was written by 25th century Machiavelli, it's evident that to them there's almost no means of seeing people as people and treating them as such.
Thus, an escape is not really plausible. Especially when one considers the fact that Ardo's consciousness has wound up flying towards conscientiousness. His conscience seems as though it will not allow him to do what he wants to do, and his conscience is formed by his religious upbringing…
Then there are some weird things. Seeing as the events are taking place on Mar Sara, where James "Jim" Raynor lives and where his exploits occurred, it is very odd that a telepath on Mar Sara - Merdith - managed to juke Confederate ghost program recruitment. How come she managed it, and she's so capable so as to be able to read people's thoughts so well that she can go deep enough to find out if someone's memories are fake, but she was not recruited, but James Raynor's child - his daughter - was?
That's very funky. Sure, it could be that Jimmy's daughter is made up for "Liberty's Crusade", but there is mention of a family life in "Wings of Liberty" (StarCraft II).
In addition to that, the colossal amount of uncertainty that permeates the book, in relation to who brought the Zerg to Mar Sara, is impressive. It was assumed the Confederacy did. Then, it was assumed the Sons of Korhal did. Only by reading the manual for "StarCraft I" does anyone find out it was actually a 'natural' occurrence - the Zerg themselves brought themselves to Mar Sara.
The way this uncertainty gets used by the characters, as they justify their deeds and pipe blame on others through the Zerg's presence, is really cool. Very human.
That's all I've got to say about the story. It's super quick, super funky, and incredibly human. I love it. 3/3
Legendary Point
Does this book get the Legendary Point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Does it? Why, of course it does, and the YES is resounding. This could have been a complete garbage fire, but as long as it had followed the plot points and had started with the qualification of the day as golden, and had ended with the qualification of the day, and more specifically of the trails of the drop-ships, as golden, it would've gotten the Legendary Point. 1/1
Conclusion
9/10. An astoundingly good read. I might still be high off of reading it, but that should speak volumes to how good and worthwhile it is. Well, maybe it isn't that worthwhile, but I'd definitely recommend it to folks who like "StarCraft", "Warhammer: 40,000", media related to war and even science fiction. I'm not too certain I'd recommend it to just anyone, but folks who are open to reading novels written around games are welcome to have a go at it.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display. It's almost too wondrous for my eyes, it's almost too vibrant for me. It is a strange simplicity that it has, an unusual ordinariness, or perhaps a groundedness… But it is one that makes it exceptional in the nigh-blinded eyes of yours truly.