#51
Palace Of The Red Sun
By Christopher Bulis
Here’s a milestone for the marathon: the last ever Doctor Who novel by Christopher Bulis. He wrote 12 of them if you count the Bernice Summerfield books, which I do. That’s a somewhat load-bearing guy for two different publishers. No mean feat.
I think it’s important to recognise that crazy level of output because, without wishing to be unkind, Bulis is not considered one of the creative trailblazers of Doctor Who lit. Through his fairly long Wilderness Years career he maintained a mostly meat-and-potatoes approach to sci-fi, occasionally pushing the boat out for a State Of Change (famous villain) or a Sorcerer’s Apprentice (SF+fantasy) or a Vanderdeken’s Children (kinda complicated). At his best he wrote novels that seemed familiar but also embraced their genre of choice and rollicked along nicely, such as Imperial Moon. If nothing else he could turn his hand to writing any of the Doctors; in just over five years he wrote for all of them.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to hear that his final book, Palace Of The Red Sun, doesn’t suddenly veer into uncharted territory. It has all the things that cause people who don’t like Christopher Bulis novels to roll their eyes in despair: it borrows greedily from the probable video collections of its readers in order to stitch together an SF-tinged-with-fantasy romp that anyone hoping for a very original work can dismiss out of hand — as indeed they did, based on reviews such as Discontinuity Guide which labelled it “Dire.”
On balance, I don’t think I’m one of those people. Whilst I haven’t exactly been effusive about these things, more often than not I’m swept along by them. Bulis generally sticks to ideas that have been proven to work and he has a good grasp of pacing — you’d hope so after 12 books. I’m a simple man: keep each chapter focused on the same character or group of characters and I’ll be your friend.
Palace Of The Red Sun is an almost constant example of that “DiCaprio pointing at the TV” meme, but I read most of it in a day which ought to count for something. We open an a royal court getting overthrown by some intergalactic bully, only to find that the royals have fled. Shades of Masters Of The Universe or maybe even Krull there. The action moves to a different planet where a primitive society lives in conflict with some uncaring Lords, all of whom are possibly derived from the same society — don’t suppose you’re familiar with The Face Of Evil or State Of Decay? There are aspects of this place such as sprites that lean towards fantasy (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice much) while gardens full of robots somehow give rise to a machine with a mind of its own (too many references to mention, but Bulis’s A Device Of Death is in there), and in the royal court a young princess despairs at having to choose between two strangers as suitors. (How long have you got?!) That’s before we get into the weeds of what’s really going on here, about which I’ll be discrete and just say that several eras of Star Trek got there first.
Some of this is deliberate — and I don’t mean the occasional bits of lampshading. (“Frustrating and possibly anti-climactic, but there it is and we must make the best of it.” / “‘Doctor, isn’t this sort of thing happening twice on one small world a bit much?’ ‘It is not such a great coincidence as it may seem.’” Oh, mate. Yikes.) Dexel Dynes being reused from Bulis’s The Ultimate Treasure is a clear example of here-we-go-again, but he’s harmless enough and it’s a good idea really, since a shady journo probably would continue to follow bad guys in space, and consequently he’d keep getting in the Doctor’s way. The only problem is a) I’d forgotten about him entirely so it wasn’t much of a thrill to see him again, b) he doesn’t interact with the Doctor or Peri for most of it so they don’t need to remember him much either, and c) Dynes barely distinguishes himself as a character here or even really does anything — which perhaps helps to explain a).
There’s at least one plot point that’s deliberately old hat, about which, mixed feelings. The actual mechanics of this form perhaps the best (only?) surprise in the book, but baking that into a story that’s roughly 80% reused ingredients makes it a bit hollow that the author has successfully identified one hackneyed thing, as if such meta suspicion is usual in his books. (On the other hand, it’s a lot harder to spot that way.)
What about the new stuff, then? We’ve got a villain, Glavis Judd, supposed Protector of multiple planets but obviously in reality a wrong’un. He’s trying to break into Esselven, a very small planetoid with an unusual force shield. Bulis finds Judd pretty interesting, having him reminisce (for no apparent reason) about his back story in ways that recall Silver in Hope. Judd never gets much of a foot in the door though, as first of all it’s quite tricky to get down to that planet, second, hardly anyone down there knows about him anyway. Consequently the main plot of the novel feels, deliberately at least, like a sub-plot. (As for what secrets he’s trying to prise from Esselven, the whole reason for his quest, that ends up being a no-plot.)
It’s what’s on the planet that counts, provided you can stop rolling your eyes at all the familiar story beats. The big stuff admittedly doesn’t quite come off: Esselven is so small and in such an orbit that the days don’t visibly change, meaning the concept of “days” is more of a habit that’s been handed down, but only to the higher classes. That’s interesting! But then you have things like characters referencing winter — how can there be seasons here? And how do the plants survive in constant daylight? It feels like a rare Actually Original Idea (or original enough that it has no immediately obvious analogue) that didn’t quite get the development it needed.
The characters are better. I quite liked Green-8, the sentient robot palling around with the Doctor. (Who adorably fashions a robot disguise so they can sneak about as twinsies.) Green-8 spends most of the book making inroads to having a personality, which honestly isn’t as boring as it sounds. Also quite good, surprisingly: Princess Oralissa. She might have a very old hat predicament on her hands but her gradual suspicions about the world around her, awakening from a more or less fairytale framework to recognise something sci-fi instead, is one of the book’s stronger elements. I even found myself imagining (don’t laugh) a whole book about Oralissa that started as something trite and then spun off elsewhere. She and Green-8 are the ones you’ll care about by the end, if indeed that applies to any characters in your case.
The Scavengers are less enthralling. This is the plot point Peri gets lumbered with, first getting stuck in a work camp (yes I know we’ve done that before) and then escaping to find fellow worker Kel’s dreary hometown. The Scavengers are caveman-style monosyllabic (until, curiously, they’re not any more) and Peri quickly realises she could have just not bothered and stayed hidden in a building instead. On a personal level, there are numerous scenes of Kel either declaring his intentions for Peri or otherwise just copping a feel, which feels like a sorry default setting for an attractive companion from an abrasive era. (It didn’t leave me enamoured with Kel either.) Peri is at least better written here than in The Ultimate Treasure, but that still doesn’t transform her Scavenger scenes into something that needed to happen to progress the story. Bulis is clearly just keeping her busy.
The same is true of the Doctor, as he doesn’t do anything other than look for Peri and vaguely investigate Esselven until Page 180, and he doesn’t find out about Judd until it’s nearly over. It’s perhaps fair to say that the situation on Esselven is important enough on its own, but something’s got to give when you’re doing both, especially when Esselven is a lords vs peasants story but also an ancient mystery but also a potential robot uprising but also a [Star Trek thing] and a [twist ending thing]. Judd seems inconsequential after all that, which of course is what he deserves and then what he gets, which is sort of neat?
Hmm… wasn’t I saying something about Palace Of The Red Sun being good, actually? Here’s the thing: reviewing it is when all its flaws become more apparent and harder to ignore. Many of Bulis’s books work just well enough while you’re reading them, and I found that to be the case here. The characters are a mixed bag, but I found the two most significant ones likeable and interesting enough to care how those plot threads turned out. There are too many plot threads but a few of them paid off. (The collective sense of business also reaches a sort of critical mass that’s always moving, at least.) The Doctor and Peri don’t have a huge impact on events, but they join in with a certain sense of camaraderie by the end that I found quite winning. It all comes together nicely enough, with perhaps an awkward nod to the Doctor’s rather unilateral decisions at the very end.
I’m aware that I’m damning it with faint praise. Bulis might be my most damned-with-faint-praise author, this book possibly being the starkest example. Nevertheless, despite a host of flaws and are-we-sure-about-thats I found Palace Of The Red Sun pacey enough and fun enough to make it through 280 pages quickly and in a good mood. It’s jolly. Whatever else you can take away from it, that is simply not always a given when you pick up a Doctor Who book, and it might be Bulis’s legacy that he managed it more often than not.
6/10
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