Mad Max Tension on a Planet Far, Far Away

The first time I saw the second Mad Max movie, Road Warrior, I was blown away at how the author showed no mercy for the protagonist. It was such a contrast to other action films, where the hero lives a charmed life with one breezy escape from danger after another. Not so with Max: he is put through the ringer with disaster after disaster, until he is a broken, limping figure with one good eye. "You should look at yourself, Max," the leader of the good guys tells him. "You're a mess." Max survives all his troubles through sheer determination, with no assistance from the hero fairy.

I had the same experience while reading M. Shayne Bell's Nicoji.

The two main characters, narrator Jake and his colleague Sam, escape the supercapitalistic feudalism of Earth by getting jobs with the off-world company American Nicoji. They are shipped to a recently colonized planet where an amphibian species called nicoji dwells in the millions. They are small, crustacean-like creatures that are harvested, and whose meat is an expensive delicacy throughout the inhabited planets. The employees of American Nicoji are assisted by semi-sentient natives to the planet who are merely called "the help," and remind one of intelligent chimpanzees in their appearance and behavior.

Jake and Sam find out that the de facto slavery of the blue collar class on Earth is nothing compared to the conditions working for American Nicoji. The migrant workers in Grapes of Wrath have it good in comparison. The company holds out the dream of working one's contract off and leaving the planet a free agent, but assures that no one ever succeeds in this goal with its oppressive policies of low wages, ubiquitous fees, and confiscatory prices on goods.

One day Jake and Sam learn through the grapevine about a second company which has established a base on the planet, and which will buy up contracts of experienced nicoji harvesters, providing them with the good life since there is now competition for workers. Jake and Sam realize that American Nicoji will never let such a thing happen. If they expect to work for this other company, they will have to break their contract and flee.

The bulk of the novel is the account of their journey to the mesa where the other company's base is located. They must travel through uncharted, unknown wilderness on a planet which has barely been explored at all. Little of its ecology and life forms is known.

Bell evokes a fascinating world of conflicting ecologies locked in a constant battle for ascendancy, on a planet with a huge satellite that causes enormous tides. Jake and Sam are confronted with an unrelenting series of deadly challenges at every turn of the river they float down in Huckleberry Finn fashion. The challenges Bell throws at them are chilling and imaginative:

     The others crowded around him and helped him onto the raft. But instead of chittering and touching his wet fur, they put the nicoji under their feet and looked past me. I turned around. A white froth drifted on the water ahead of us, nothing more.
     "Stop raft," one help whispered . . .
     The help -- all twelve -- clamped their hands over their mouths and looked at me. The froth was closer, bobbing gently on the surface. I stood quietly with the help and watched the froth and said nothing.
     . . . it came straight for us. One help touched my leg and pointed behind me. Patches of white were floating all around us on the water.
     "Sam," the help whispered, pointing up. "Tree."
     . . . the froth had surrounded us. I grabbed my pole, stuck it in the froth, and dragged a gob of it to the raft . . . The froth started to flow up the pole toward my hands. I swished the pole through the water, but the froth clung to the pole. I couldn't dislodge it. I tried to scrape it off against the side of the raft, and the help chittered at that. "Jake," Help-with-the-hurt-hand said. "Stop, Jake!" The froth flowed across the log into one patch of white and started for my feet . . .
     The water, as far as I could see, was now covered with white froth. We couldn't get through it. I stepped onto the log where the froth had been, and my foot started stinging. I rubbed it, and my hand felt prickly and odd.
     "What is this?" I asked.

Neither Jake nor Sam are anyone special. Just regular guys who pursue a dream and literally struggle for survival against dreadful odds with nothing but their average intelligence and abilities. Along the way they discover more and more amazing secrets about the planet as Sam fights death from the poisonous attack of a deadly water creature and Jake slowly becomes a mess, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Mad Max had nothing on them.

LDS author Bell leaves his novel clean of any LDS references, so that any general audience can enjoy it. But a hint of his American heritage comes through as he describes the process by which Earth becomes an oppressed society in terms that should be familiar to LDS people:

     The book said we were no better off than feudal serfs who gradually, and probably without realizing it at first, if ever, gave up their freedoms in return for physical protection. Relatively recently, our ancestors had once again given up the freedom to control their lives -- had let corporations in effect buy them -- this time in return for economic well-being. Corporations now had the land and the wealth and hence the power, and most men and women had become merely productive or unproductive units tallied in offices continents away. We were serfs, again, serving a corporate aristocracy. The first serfs cast off their chains after a thousand years of wearing them. When would we find the courage and vision to cast off ours, the book asked.

Bell imagines a loss of freedom through corporate tyranny. A similar scenario could be imagined for governmental tyranny. In either case the issue is giving up freedom for security, something Benjamin Franklin, and now M. Shayne Bell, warns us about.

But don't expect a preachy social sermon. You just read about all the politics that exists in Nicoji. The rest of the book treats you to the story of two decent men, no different than you or I, on a quest for a life where they can live as free human beings with dignity. The outcome is both tragic and hopeful, melancholy and uplifting. All of it is told in an understated style that lets the power of the story itself impact you. Nicoji takes place on a world far, far away, but its tale is one that strikes home right here on planet Earth.

-- 
D. Michael Martindale
dmichael@wwno.com
Worlds Without Number
http://www.wwno.com