Phoenix Without Ashes Read online

  TO THE STARS—TO DIE!

  Harlan Ellison created a bold concept for a television series. Winner of more sf awards than any living author, Ellison soon realized his “enclosed universe” concept was being ripped-off by inept TV producers.

  But his original teleplay for the series won a Writers Guild award as the Most Outstanding Teleplay of the year. Now Harlan Ellison and Edward Bryant (Nebula award winning author) have joined forces to bring The Starlost to reality as it was intended.

  In Phoenix Without Ashes, based on Ellison’s award-winning teleplay, Edward Bryant has created a story filled with wonder and adventure.

  PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES

  by

  HARLAN ELLISON AND EDWARD BRYANT

  Published by ReAnimus Press

  Other Books by Edward Bryant:

  (All Coming soon from ReAnimus Press)

  Among the Dead and Other Events Leading to the Apocalypse

  Cinnabar

  Wyoming Sun

  Particle Theory

  Neon Twilight

  Darker Passions

  Flirting With Death

  The Baku: Tales of the Nuclear Age

  © 2012, 1975 by Edward W. Bryant Jr. and Harlan Ellison. All rights reserved.

  http://ReAnimus.com/authors/harlanellisonandedwardbryant

  A NOVEL OF THE STARLOST #1

  PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES

  By Edward Bryant & Harlan Ellison

  Adapted from the Award-Winning Script by Harlan Ellison

  Licence Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  DEDICATION

  INTRODUCTION

  THE STARLOST: UPDATE

  PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  The authors wish to pay their respects to the long and honorable line of dreamers who have employed the “enclosed universe” theme as the basis for works of fantasy. Without their visions, this book would not have been, unless we’d predated their visions, in which case someone else would have written this book and they’d be paying homage to us as classic dreamers... but that’s another story. Thanks to Homer for his ship of Odysseus; Jonah and his whale; Melville and Ahab for their whale and the Pequod; Mark Twain for Huck and Jim’s raft; James Joyce for Leopold Bloom and his mind; Dante, Verne, Wells, Cyrano, Lucian and, earliest in sf—as best we can trace it—Don Wilcox; to Robert Heinlein for “Universe” and “Common Sense”; to Brian Aldiss, John Brunner, Edmund Cooper, Harry Harrison, J. T. McIntosh, Alexei Panshin, Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, E. C. Tubb, William F. Temple, Poul Anderson, James Blish, Clifford Simak, and Kate Wilhelm. And to Katherine Anne Porter. If we’ve overlooked anyone, we’re bound to hear about it.

  E.B. / H.E.

  DEDICATION

  Phase One:

  This one is, of course, for HARLAN ELLISON, as well as other victims of radiation virus, space senility, and the committee system.

  E.B.

  Phase Two:

  That’s nonsense. His name doesn’t appear first on the byline because I’m awash with charity. I had the original dream, yeah, but this would be a script, not a novel, if it hadn’t been for his talent and patience and hard work and, most of all, his deadpan friendship. So this one, clearly, is for that Solar Star, ED BRYANT.

  H.E.

  Life is not a spectacle or a feast;

  it is a predicament.

  —GEORGE SANTAYANA

  Articles and Essays

  INTRODUCTION

  SOMEHOW, I DON’T THINK WE’RE IN KANSAS, TOTO

  by Harlan Ellison

  Six months of my life were spent in creating a dream the shape and sound and color of which had never been seen on television. The dream was called The Starlost, and between February and September of 1973 I watched it being steadily turned into a nightmare.

  The late Charles Beaumont, a scenarist of unusual talents, who wrote many of the most memorable Twilight Zones, said to me when I arrived in Hollywood in 1962, “Attaining success in Hollywood is like climbing a gigantic mountain of cow flop, in order to pluck one perfect rose from the summit. And you find when you’ve made that hideous climb... you’ve lost the sense of smell.”

  In the hands of the inept, the untalented, the venal, and the corrupt, The Starlost became a veritable Mt. Everest of cow flop, and, though I climbed that mountain, somehow I never lost sight of the dream, never lost the sense of smell, and when it got so rank I could stand it no longer, I descended hand-over-hand from the northern massif, leaving behind $93,000, the corrupters, and the eviscerated remains of my dream. I’ll tell you about it.

  February. Marty the agent called and said, “Go over to 20th and see Robert Kline.”

  “Who’s Robert Kline?”

  “West Coast head of taped syndicated shows. He’s putting together a package of mini-series, eight or ten segments per show. He wants to do a science fiction thing. He asked for you. It’ll be a co-op deal between 20th Century-Fox and the BBC. They’ll shoot it in London.”

  London! “I’m on my way,” I said, the jet-wash of my departure deafening him across the phone connection.

  I met Kline in the New Administration Building of 20th, and his first words were so filled with sugar I had the feeling if I listened to him for very long I’d wind up with diabetes: “I wanted the top sf writer in the world,” he said. Then he ran through an informed list of my honors in the field of science fiction. Let Asimov chew on that for a while, I thought, blushing prettily.

  Then Kline advised me that what he was after was “a sort of The Fugitive in space.” Visions of doing a novel-for-television in the mode of The Prisoner splatted like overripe casaba melons; I got up and started to walk.

  “Hold it, hold it!” Kline said. “What did you have in mind?” I sat down again.

  Then I ran through half a dozen ideas for series that would be considered primitive ideas in the literary world of sf. Kline found each of them too complex. As a final toss at the assignment, I said, “Well, I’ve been toying with an idea for tape, rather than film; it could be done with enormous production values that would be financially impossible for a standard filmed series.”

  “What is it?” he said.

  And here’s what I said:

  Three hundred years from now, the Earth is about to suffer a cataclysm that will destroy all possibility for life on the planet. Time is short. The greatest minds and the noblest philanthropists get together and cause to have constructed in orbit between the Moon and the Earth a giant ark, one thousand miles long, comprised of h
undreds of self-contained biospheres. Into each of these little worlds is placed a segment of Earth’s population, its culture intact. Then the ark is sent off toward the stars—even as the Earth is destroyed—to seed the new worlds surrounding those stars with the remnants of humanity.

  But one hundred years after the flight has begun, a mysterious “accident” (which would remain a mystery till the final segment of the show, hopefully four years later) kills the entire crew, seals the biosphere-worlds so they have no contact with one another... and the long voyage goes on with the people trapped, developing their societies without any outside influence. Five hundred years go by, and the travelers—the Starlost—forget the Earth. To them it is a myth, a vague legend, even as Atlantis is to us. They even forget they are adrift in space, forget they are in an interstellar vessel. Each community thinks it is “the world” and that the world is only fifty square miles, with a metal ceiling.

  Until Devon, an outcast in a society rigidly patterned after the Amish communities of times past, discovers the secret, that they are onboard a space-going vessel. He learns the history of the Earth, learns of its destruction, and learns that when “the accident” happened, the astrogation gear of the ark was damaged and now the last seed of humankind is on a collision course with a star. Unless he can convince a sufficient number of biosphere worlds to band together in a communal attempt to learn how the ark works, to repair it and reprogram their flight, they will soon be incinerated in the furnace of that star toward which they’re heading.

  It was, in short, a fable of our world today.

  “Fresh! Original! New!” Kline chirruped. “There’s never been an idea like it before!” I didn’t have the heart to tell him the idea was first propounded in astronautical literature in the early 1920’s by the great Russian pioneer Tsiolkovsky, nor that the British physicist Bernal had done a book on the subject in 1929, nor that the idea had become very common coin in the genre of science fiction through stories by Heinlein, Harrison, Aldiss, Panshin, Simak, and many others. (Arthur C. Clarke’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning bestseller, Rendezvous With Rama, is the latest example of the basic idea.)

  Kline suggested I dash home and write up the idea, which he would then merchandise. I pointed out to him that the Writers Guild frowns on speculative writing and that if he wanted the riches of my invention, he should lay on me what we call “holding money” to enable me to write a prospectus and to enable him to blue-sky it with the BBC.

  The blood drained from his face at my suggestion of advance money, and he said he had to clear it with the BBC, but that if I wrote the prospectus he would guarantee me a free trip to London. I got up and started to walk.

  “Hold it, hold it!” he said, and opened a desk drawer. He pulled out a cassette recorder and extended it. “Tell you what: why don’t you just tell it on a cassette, the same way you told it to me.” I stopped and looked. This was a new one on me. In almost thirteen years as a film and television writer, I’d seen some of the most circuitous Machiavellian dodges ever conceived by the mind of Western Man to get writers to write on the cuff. But never this.

  I thought on it for a moment, rationalized that this wasn’t speculative writing, that at worst it was “speculative talking,” and since a writer is expected to pitch an idea verbally anyhow, it was just barely legitimate.

  So I took the cassette home, backed my spiel with the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey, outlined the barest bones of the series concept, and brought it back to Kline.

  “Okay. Here it is,” I said, “but you can’t transcribe it. If you do, then it becomes spec writing and you have to pay me.” I was assured he wouldn’t put it on paper, and that he’d get back to me shortly. He was sure the BBC would go bananas for the idea.

  No sooner was I out of his office than he had his secretary transcribe the seven-minute tape.

  March. No word.

  April. No word.

  May. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity. Marty the agent called. “Kline sold the series. Go see him.”

  “Series?” I said, appalled. “But that idea was only viable for eight segments.... A series, you say?”

  “Go see him.”

  So I went. Kline greeted me as if I were the only human capable of deciphering the Mayan Codex, and caroled that he had sold the series not only to forty-eight of the NBC independent affiliates, but that the Westinghouse outlets had bitten, and so had the entire Canadian television network CTV.

  “Uh, excuse me,” I said, in an act of temerity not usually attributed to writers in Hollywood, “how did you manage to sell this, er, series without having a contract with me, or a prospectus, or a pilot script, or a pilot film... or anything?”

  “They read your outline, and they bought it on the strength of your name.”

  “They read it? How?”

  He circumnavigated that little transgression of his promise not to set my words on paper, and began talking in grandiose terms about how I’d be the story editor, how I’d have creative control, how I’d write many scripts for the show, and what a good time I’d have in Toronto.

  “Toronto?!” I said, gawking. “What the hell happened to London? The Sir Lew Grade Studios. Soho. Buckingham Palace. Swinging London. What happened to all that?”

  Mr. Kline, without bothering to inform the creator of this hot property he had been successfully hawking, had been turned down by the BBC and had managed to lay off the project with CTV, as an all-Canadian production of Glen Warren, a Toronto-based operation that was already undertaking to tape The Starlost at the CFTO studios in Toronto. It was assumed by Mr. Kline that I would move to Toronto to story edit the series; he never bothered to ask if I wanted to move to Canada, he just assumed I would.

  Mr Kline was a real bear for assuming things.

  Such as: I would write his series (which was the way he now referred to it) even though a writers’ strike was imminent. I advised him that if the strike hit, I would be incommunicado, but he waved away my warnings with the words, “Everything will work out.” With such words, Napoleon went to Leipzig.

  At that time I was a member of the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America, West. I was very pro-union, pro-strike, pro-getting long overdue contract inequities with the producers straightened out.

  Just before the strike began, Kline called and said he was taking out advertisements for the series. He said he’d had artwork done for the presentations, and he needed some copy to accompany the drawings. I asked him how he could have artwork done when the spaceship had not yet been designed? (I was planning to create a vessel that would be absolutely feasible and scientifically correct, in conjunction with Ben Bova, editor of Analog, the leading sf magazine in the country.) Kline said there wasn’t time for all that fooling-around; ads had to go out now!

  It has always been one of the imponderables of the television industry to me, how the time is always now, when three days earlier no one had even heard of the idea.

  But I gave him some words and, to my horror, saw the ad a week later: it showed a huge bullet-shaped thing I guess Kline thought was a spaceship, being smacked by a meteorite, a great hole being torn in the skin of the bullet, revealing many levels of living space within... all of them drawn the wrong direction. I covered my eyes.

  Let me pause for a moment to explain why this was a scientifically illiterate, wholly incorrect piece of art, because it was merely the first indication of how little the producers of The Starlost understood what they were doing. Herewith, a Child’s Primer of Science Fiction:

  There is no air in space. Space is very nearly a vacuum. That means an interstellar vessel, since it won’t be landing anywhere, and doesn’t need to be designed for passage through atmosphere, can be designed any way that follows the function best. The last time anyone used the bullet design for a starship was in The Green Slime (a film that oozes across the “Late Late Late Show” at times when normal people are sleeping).

  But it indicated the lack of understanding of sf by
television executives. Look: if you turn on your set and see a pair of white swinging doors suddenly slammed open by a gurney pushed by two white-smocked attendants, you know that within moments Marcus Welby will be jamming a tube down somebody’s trachea; if you see a dude in a black Stetson lying-out on a butte, aiming a Winchester, you know that within moments the Wells Fargo stage is gonna be thundering down that dusty trail; if Mannix walks into his inner office and there’s a silky lady lounging in the chair across from his desk, you know that by the end of act one someone is going to try ventilating Joe’s hide. It’s all by rote, all programmed, all predictable... which is why sf seems to be having such a resurgence: it isn’t predictable. Or at least it shouldn’t be. A science fiction story has to have an interior logic, it has to be consistent, to get the viewer to go along with it. Rigorous standards of plotting must be employed to win that willing suspension of disbelief on the part of viewers that will get them to accept the fantastic premise. Break that logic, dumb it up, and the whole thing falls apart like Watergate testimony.

  But the ad was only an early storm warning of what troubles were yet to befall me. The strike was called, and then began weeks of a kind of ghastly harassment I’d always thought was reserved for overblown melodramas about the Evils of Hollywood. Phone calls at all hours, demanding I write the “bible” for the series. (A “bible” is industry shorthand for the precis of what the show will do, who the characters are, what directions storylines should take. In short, the blueprint from which individual segments are written. Without a bible, only the creator knows what the series is about. Kline had no bible. He had nothing, at this point, but that seven-minute tape. With which item, plus my name and the name of the executive producer, Doug Trumbull—who had done the special effects for 2001 and had directed Silent Running—he had sold this pipe dream to everyone in the Western World.)