Siege of Earth by John Faucette

"Remember this, Yellin: the race of man is vicious, revengeful, self-righteous and sadistic.  It will stop at nothing for vengeance.  We did not start this war--but that will not matter to future Terrans who shall seek only vengeance.  They shall see only defeat, not the reason for the war that brought defeat."

Warning: There is nothing about
brains or the mystical significance
of the number 10 in this novel

As I noted in my blog post about its predecessor, Warriors of Terra, I purchased the 1973(?) paperback edition of John Faucette's 1971 novel Siege of Earth because of the terrific cover art by...who is it by? There is a signature, but I can't really decipher it...Alway?  Chang?  Clancy?  Curse my bad eyes!

Bad eyes or good, I adore the cover painting--the colors, the robot/lander/eye thing, the brains, the planet which is glowing or exploding or something, the number "10," the whole package.  And don't ask me why the background figures cast a shadow and the foreground figure does not!  True love embraces such idiosyncrasies!

I pointed out a lot of flaws in Warriors of Terra, but I was still interested enough in Faucette's story and themes to read this sequel.  In particular, I hoped to find out what happened with Battle of Ran Hudson's career as ruler of the Commonwealth of Peaceful Species.  Ran, after escaping slavery among the Morg (the main plot thread of Warriors of Terra), had worked his way up to the top position in the galaxy, but during his tenure the Commonwealth was faced with dangerous enemies both foreign and domestic.  Could Terra survive?  (The text of Warriors of Terra strongly implied it might not!)

Ran's military and political career took place after the Terra-Sparta War; in fact, Ran was a child during that war, sold into Morg slavery by Spartans.  I was a little surprised, then, to find that Siege of Earth begins during the Terra-Sparta War, with the Earth surrounded by Spartan fleets, ten years before the main plot of Warriors of Terra has even begun.  Ran is not even mentioned in Siege of Earth!  Maybe Ran's tale was to be continued in an unpublished third volume of the Peacemakers series. Wikipedia, an article at blackpast.org, and Faucette's obituary at sfsite.com indicate Faucette had written several novels which he was unable to sell to publishers, including one called Earth Will Be Avenged--maybe Earth Will Be Avenged is the third Peacemakers book?

Signature of mystery

Anyway, this novel confines itself to the siege mentioned in the title.  I described Warriors of Terra as a space opera; I think Siege of Earth is perhaps better described as "military SF."  All the characters serve in the Terran or Spartan militaries, and the book reads like a military history.  At the start we get info on how many ships and personnel each side has, and little biographies of the commanders of the various units--this reminded me of the second book of The Iliad, when Homer describes each of the leaders of the many Greek contingents.

In fact, Siege of Earth follows a structure much like The Iliad.  Again and again the Spartans attack Earth, and again and again the Terrans emerge from their subterranean bases to repel them.  Faucette describes all the different weapons and vehicles, all the tactics and strategies they employ, in some detail.  After much devastation and many deaths on both sides, the short novel ends with a conference between the leader of the Spartan force and the ruler of Earth--the Iliad of course ends with the peaceful meeting of King Priam of Troy and Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Greeks and killer of Priam's son.  

In The Iliad we had the moving relationships between selfish jerk Achilles and his fellow Greeks, and between tragic Hector and his family, and the evolution of Achilles as a person.  Siege of Earth lacks such effective use of characters, though Faucette takes a few stabs in those directions.  There are scenes in which the leader of Earth, pacifist turned genius strategist and tactician Dane Barclay, visits his daughter on her deathbed, and then his wife on her deathbed.  We also have a brief scene with an Earth politician who regrets starting the Terra-Sparta War, and the suicide of the leader of the Spartan fleet, whose failure to defeat the Terrans in quick order has put his home world in jeopardy.

We know from Warriors of Terra that Barclay unites the Terran and Spartan empires into one peace-loving empire which launches a crusade against slavery and hereditary rule, but that isn't mentioned in this book.  The final chapter has Barclay lamenting that war is "Man's inevitable destiny," and asking "Must there always be war?"

Siege of Earth is an indictment of humanity's bloody propensity for war making.  The Spartans are determined to destroy the human race because it was Terrans who started the Terra-Sparta War and the Spartans have studied Earth history and know how violent we are!  One of Faucette's main themes in the Peacemakers series is the immorality and destructiveness of revenge, and in this book the leader of the Spartan attack force explains to his subordinate, a dude called "Yellin," that if the human race is merely defeated and not exterminated that the Earth will rise again and exact a terrible vengeance!  "...there was no other race quite like Man.  Never had a race been so dreaded."

Faucette filled Warriors of Terra with quotes from intellectuals like Erasmus, Seneca and Samuel Johnson about the folly of war and the desirability of peace; he fills Siege of Earth with references to military history and the history of atrocity: Rome's destruction of Carthage, the American firebombing of Dresden and atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Rommel, Napoleon, Hannibal, the Holocaust of the Nazis and the arena of Rome.    

Another clue to what view of humanity Faucette is trying to transmit to us is the names of Terran space ships.  Dane Barclay's flagship is "ITSN starship Ravisher, one of the Rapist class battle wagons...."  In a later scene the Terrans refurbish a hospital ship called Patcher, tossing out all the medical equipment, installing missile launchers in their place and rechristening her Molester.  

I gave Warriors of Terra a thumbs down, and Siege of Earth is no masterpiece.  The style is not very good, with lots of questionable metaphors.  It is hard not to laugh when a Spartan squadron, hit by a laser barrage, is described as resembling "odd-shaped pieces of what Terrans called Swiss cheese."  Here's a description of Terran strato-fighters: "their engines red with the fury of their thrust...like angry bees they buzzed about Yellin's ships, their laser bullets like driven snow in the gloom."  Then there's the bombardment which destroys every city on Terra: "Mushrooms sprouted on the Earth as if the planet were one huge mushroom farm."  Faucette isn't content to employ a tired metaphor merely once; the reader's eyes are offended by the sight of craft like "angry bees," things "lighting up like a Christmas tree," and explosions compared to fireworks multiple times.

On the other hand, I think Siege of Earth is more successful than Warriors of Terra, and am willing to give it a marginal positive review.  It is relatively short and to the point--like an undergraduate's research paper for a class outside his major, the book uses a large typeface and roomy margins.  The passionate, melodramatic, somewhat naive style comes off as more charming than annoying.  And Siege of Earth has a unity of purpose Warriors of Terra lacked.  The anti-war theme is not diluted with exploitative erotic elements or muddled by a contradictory advocacy of an imperialism that stamps out "class societies" among aliens, like it was in the earlier volume.  And all the military stuff, the many different types of weapons, defenses, and combat, are all interesting and well thought out; Faucette achieves a sort of balance between denouncing war and recognizing how and why so many people find warfare fascinating and admire the bravery of fighting men and the skill of great military leaders.  I enjoyed the scenes of apocalyptic futuristic warfare in Neil R. Jones' "Into the Hydrosphere" and Edmond Hamilton's Outside the Universe, and Faucette's massed fleets and devastating missile and laser barrages, and the ground fighting involving infantry and armor, are also pretty cool.

It is unfortunate I won't have a chance to read a third Peacekeepers volume, but I will buy Faucette's other SF novels, Age of Ruin and Crown of Infinity, if I encounter them. I think SF readers interested in space war, in passionately anti-war SF, and in work by black writers, might find Siege of Earth a worthwhile read.  

Warriors of Terra by John Faucette

"If we are to bring peace to the universe, we must break these blood chains of revenge....  We are breaking them now.  We are turning the other cheek.  We are going to show the Universe that pardon is better than revenge, and that eventually neither will be needed." 

Behold the one and only edition of this novel

I spent the week of Thanksgiving at my mother-in-law's house, which lies in the middle of a vast agricultural zone, over 20 miles from the nearest grocery store.  I found I had developed an allergy to her cat, and on Thanksgiving Day slipped on ice and hurt my knee.  While recuperating from all these afflictions and misfortunes I read John Faucette's Warriors of Terra, a 1970 paperback from our friends at Belmont.  To be honest, my main reason for buying B75-2002 was that I liked the cover of its sequel, Siege of Earth, which I encountered on the same expedition to Boone, Iowa. Even though the cover art on Warriors of Terra is weak, and the advertising text on the back seems to have been written by an incompetent, I figured I may as well get both.

Warriors of Terra, the first volume in the two-volume Peacemakers series, is a poorly written space opera with a message.  Primarily, the message is opposition of war, but there are subordinate supporting anti-slavery and anti-racism themes.  Despite the anti-war message, the book does seem to endorse hegemonic powers using their superiority to "persuade" weaker societies to behave (making them abolish slavery and hereditary rule, for example.)  We've seen this kind of author-approved imperialism inflicted on Earth by aliens in SF like the famous film The Day the Earth Stood Still and Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, but in Warriors of Terra the shoe is on the other foot, with Earthlings using their space fleet to make aliens change their ways.  

The plot of Warriors of Terra is fine, but the novel lacks the spirit of adventure or the kinds of striking images and crazy SF ideas that make better space operas (like Edmond Hamilton's Outside the Universe and "Doc" Smith's Spacehounds of IPC) engaging.  The anti-war theme and all the scenes of people crying means the fight scenes and chase scenes are not exhilarating, but a slog.  An example of the lack of creativity and "world-building" can be seen in Warriors of Terra's aliens, who are just like human beings (they can and do have sex with Earth people), differing only in skin color-- Faucette doesn't give them interesting biologies or memorable societies.  And while Faucette tries to do more than present an adventurous entertainment, writing with a message in mind and portraying characters who change over time, he does so in a clumsy way, apparently having bit off more than he can chew.  Characters are flat and dimly realized, and spout some pretty corny dialogue:

"You're free to go now, Overlord. Though if I had my way, you'd regret being alive."

"I'm gonna get you Terrans, and when I do...."  His tone left nothing to the crew's imagination.

To ram home his theme, and perhaps in hopes of elevating his material, Faucette includes as epigraphs to many of his chapters quotes about peace from various luminaries, including Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole, St. Augustine, John Ruskin, and Shakespeare.  Unfortunately the novel is dragged down by an abundance of typographical errors, with quotation marks particularly vulnerable to misuse, and some odd spellings ("Field Marshall" for Field Marshal, for example, while Shakespeare's play Cymbeline is cited as "Cymberline.")  The staff at Belmont likely deserve more blame for this kind of thing than Faucette himself.   

When we first meet our hero, Battle of Ran Hudson, (generally just called "Ran") he is an old man, ruler of the Earth and the Commonwealth of Peaceful Species.  His title is "Peacemaker."  Ran has his hands full because the Commonwealth is about to collapse into civil war at the same time extragalactic aliens are attacking.  The book soon switches from this drama to its main plot thread, a flashback to Ran's youth and a narrative of how Ran evolved from an angry violent young man into a lover of peace, and began his rise to power. 

(People in this book have distracting names; besides Ran's own name there is a human called "William Blake," and another named "Bull Dog Daggon"--an homage to both Sapper and H. P. Lovecraft?  The most prominent non-Terran in the book is named "Overlord Train.")

Young Ran was a slave on planet Morgia, home of the sadistic green-skinned, bug-eyed Morg.  Hundreds of Terrans are there as slaves, having been sold to the Morg by their captors, the Spartans, over a decade ago.  This was during a war between the bellicose Terran Empire and the Spartan Empire.  The Terran slaves on Morgia don't know how the war turned out, if the Terran Empire even continues to exist.

There are several brief flashbacks to this war between the Terran and Spartan Empires; these vignettes constitute the book's third plot thread and star Dane Marcellus Barclay, pacifist turned fighting man.  Dane works his way up the ranks to become ruler of Earth and is the first to bear the title of Peacemaker, his career in some ways paralleling that of Ran.

Somewhat improbably, Ran and some fellow slaves escape, are captured alive, and escape again in the first 60 pages of the book.  To make Ran's transition to peace lover more dramatic, young Ran is extremely bloodthirsty and says things like "Anyone who doesn't like the way I do things can leave.  There's going to be a lot of dead Morgs before I'm finished.  I'm going to enjoy killing every single one of 'em."  True to his word, Ran kills a multitude of Morgs in a dizzying variety of ways: shooting (of course), strangling, stabbing with a knife, chopping with a cleaver looted from a Morg kitchen. 

In his efforts to make the reader see the folly of war, Faucette includes plenty of gore--skulls cracking open like eggs, people holding their own intestines in their hands after suffering a belly wound, that kind of thing.  Accompanying all the violence, which cynics might suspect is exploitative rather than a component of the book's anti-war message, Warriors of Terra has some sex--for example, the Morgs take Terran women as concubines, and there is a scene in which one of Ran's fellow fugitives tries to rape another of their number.  This tepid erotic content is harder to justify than the pervasive bloodshed; it really feels like it is just there to titillate. 

Ran and friends steal a spaceship and flee to Novad, an independent planet on the edge of Morg space.  The yellow-skinned and scantily-clad (hubba hubba) Novadians protect our heroes from their Morg pursuers, so Overlord Train, the Morg who is in charge of the pursuit, hires the second finest swordsman on Novad to challenge Ran to a duel in the arena!   (As you know, people in SF stories are always getting tossed into the arena!)  Luckily, Ran has made friends with the Number One swordsman on Norvad and gets the pointers he needs to survive the duel.  (Following Faucette's anti-war theme, Ran wins the duel by allowing himself to be impaled, thus trapping his foe's blade and leaving him defenseless so Ran can stab him through the eye.)

In the final 60 or so pages of the 175-page novel Ran and friends leave Novad, are pursued by Train's ships, and then saved by ships of the Commonwealth of Peaceful Species.  The escaped slaves, and we readers, learn that the Terra-Sparta War ended with a treaty that joined the Terran and Spartan Empires into one polity under Barclay. Barclay and the Commonwealth have sworn off vengeance, and only use their space navy to "wage war to end war" and "persuade other species to join" the Commonwealth:  

"The Commonwealth does not accept surrenders.  In the first place, it doesn't defeat anyone.  It only makes them see the light and join the Commonwealth.... The Commonwealth doesn't allow slavery or class societies or hereditary rulers.  Fix these things and you have nothing to worry about."

Ran is distressed to find that Barclay is not interested in supporting Ran's campaign of vengeance on the Morgs, so he and his friends get their hands on a space ship and attack planet Morgia all by themselves.  After all of his friends have been killed Ran realizes the folly of war and the futility of vengeance and forgives Overlord Train. Then Dane Barclay's peacekeeping fleet arrives, and Train agrees to change Morg society to meet Terran demands, bringing Morgia peacefully into the Commonwealth.

The plot thread about elderly Ran, Peacemaker trying to keep the Commonwealth together, must be resolved in Siege of Earth, because it is not wrapped up here.

Warriors of Terra is ambitious, but poorly executed.  It is lacking in fun and excitement, and I didn't care who lived or died and which warriors became pacifists or vice versa.  Its ideology (war is wrong but it is OK to use force to make aliens change their cultures to meet my culture's standards) is kind of sketchy.  So I am going to have to give Warriors of Terra a thumbs down.  I'm still going to read the sequel, Siege of Earth, though, to see what Faucette does with these themes a second time around, and suggest that students of space opera and those interested in SF by African-American authors or explicitly anti-war SF may find Warriors of Terra a curiosity worthy of investigation.