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Blake's 7 rec
One of the B7 fans and writers I met at Star One was Gillian Taylor. She's a professional writer of Westerns, not a genre I like though I did read one of hers, Darrow's Law, a couple of years ago because of its Avon and Vila avatars (Sheriff Darrow and his deputy Keating). Perhaps she has to pull her punches for those books; it didn't engage me or my emotions but her two stories in the B7 zine Star Four did. Her Rehabilitation is a moving account of just how damaged Vila was by the 'readjustments' he went through as a child, and Four Little Words was a blackly funny Orbit AU.
Gillian gave me the URL of her website and I've only just got round to looking at it. There's a lot about her Westerns there, but she has a B7 page containing an essay on Orbit and a PGP story. These I'd like to recommend. To find them, click on Fan Fiction. Warning: she has annoying loud soundbites on this page and her very nice drawing of Vila which mercifully play only twice.
Orbit, an episode analysis is thought-provoking and though I might not agree with everything, it's encouraging to find someone else who thinks that it's one of the central tragedies of B7. Gillian charts Vila and Avon's relationship through the series and even cites how the actors were choreographed in Egrorian's lab, something I'd never noticed. This is well worth the read and I'd love to know what others think.
Reunion is, in her words, "a post-GP story featuring Vila and Jenna. Jenna finds her old companion has changed in many ways since Gauda Prime, some for the worse, and some, surprisingly, for the better perhaps." I really enjoyed this. I can easily see Vila as being like that after all he's been through (and in fact in one of my unwritten PGPs he's eerily close) and Jenna is capable and unsentimental. All of the characters are well-drawn except perhaps Attica--why does she like Vila so much? Well, I do, but I'd like to know why she did on so little evidence of how lovable he really is [grin]. An excellent story, and it reminds me that I must read more fanfic. I've been neglecting the Hermit library and my collection of zines.
I just thought I'd recommend this little site as I doubt many people know about it and I enjoyed the essay and story so much.
Oh, and read Star Four too, not just for Gillian's two stories, but the other excellent fiction including Sally Manton's wonderful A Christmas Canto.
The voices, the voices
Reunion I wasn't so keen on. Jenna I could believe in, but Vila didn't "talk" to me the way he does in your fiction. It wasn't his voice in my head, and I didn't have an instant picture of him, but that may just be because he didn't conform to my nostalgic image of him.
Thanks for recommending the site.
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No, it was a different view of a changed Vila, but one I can see might happen. Some writers (like Kathy Hintze who otherwise writes good Vila) miss out his humour, but Gillian did have him come up with a few remarks to show us the Vila we know and love was hiding in there and may emerge now things have improved for him. Poor Vila.
I must look at Orbit again (I've only seen it twice) to see what she means about how he and Avon move in those scenes.
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