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ReReadable Books

May 2006

"Neptune: The Disinformation Factor"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Since January we have been discussing the transit of Neptune over the U.S. Natal Moon and the effect that may have on the U.S. public’s taste in art, especially the new popularity of blended Romance, Science Fiction and Fantasy that thematically focuses on Neptunian idealism and spirituality. Neptune’s key attribute is the tendency to blur distinctions. In April and May of 2006, Neptune makes station retrograde on the U.S. Natal Moon, and does another pass in January 2007.

In the U.S. natal chart, Neptune is in the 5^th House (Entertainment) and rules the 11^th (Popularity) while the Moon is in the 10^th and rules the 2^nd (Values) and 3^rd (communication) (as well as the U.S. Sun).

NBC TV’s new show E-Ring was created by David McKenna and Ken Robinson, a former Green Beret who consults for CNN on terrorism and military intelligence. McKenna penned the pilot script. Jerry Bruckheimer is executive producer.

E-Ring is a major network prime time action drama set in the Pentagon as West Wing is set in the White House. I have to class both these shows as Urban Fantasy.

E-Ring is a blend of accurate futurology (keeping in mind how long ago the show was first pitched and when the episode you are seeing today was written), wish-fulfillment fantasy, government conspiracy, with a variety of action-adventure that should appeal to people over forty.

Here we focus on the commanders behind desks sweating out the field situations they are ultimately responsible for resolving, and we get a vision of all the other factors that bear on the situation besides what the people in the field must confront.

The people who work in the field shooting and running for cover have put their lives on the line for issues and matters that have little or nothing to do with the problem they must confront as Warriors.

Their commanders make decisions and contrive strategies based on what they have gleaned from their own Warrior Initiation and field experience. In E-Ring the real Warriors are behind desks or gathering signatures on pink sheets to order an operation. This show depicts the interface between the Civilian and Military power-structures with plausible fantasy and urban myth to dramatize how Neptune interferes with the flow of power.

In the sixth episode, "Weekend Pass" (see tv.com for details) Suriname citizens believe they have witnessed two U.S. Marines attacking a fourteen year old girl. Neptune blurred their perception as it often does for eye witnesses. Actually, the Marines rescued the girl from a Suriname attacker, but a riot ensues based on belief and idealism. The Marines escape to hide in a school.

In the E-ring of the Pentagon, Jim Tisnewski, the star of the show known as JT, gets word of the situation and uses satellite imaging and the Marine’s Morse code SOS to locate them and discover that a mob besets the school.

There is political resistance to mounting a rescue. Suriname can’t manage it because the choppers the US had given them had not been maintained for lack of funds. The Suriname army refused to obey their President’s order.

A Pentagon reporter (Robert Picardo the hologram Doctor of Star Trek: Voyager ) gets hold of a video of the incident itself and reluctantly turns it over to JT who gives it to the Attaché from the Suriname Embassy who is an ex-military man and friends with the head of the Suriname President’s Security.

When JT, in a restaurant on a date (shimmering Neptune Romance with a CIA Agent), sees the tape broadcast, it has been altered (Neptune: disinformation) to show that the Marines raped the girl.

Broadcast in Suriname, this version of the tape ignites riots and a military coups wherein the Attaché’s faction takes over the corrupt (Neptune) government and allows U.S. forces to rescue the Marines. But one of them has died – the one who was engaged. The fiancée says she and this Marine had taken vows of chastity so that when they were married, it would be the first time for each of them.

This show uses all the tricks of reality tv combined with many of the government conspiracy and ineptitude elements that made X-Files and Roswell so popular.

Given the real-world headlines, the American people are primed to believe this show is actually a documentary – the fantasy is that close to reality, and somehow these shows are being aired with a spooky simultaneity with breaking headlines. These episodes could easily be believed (Neptune) by a vast majority of people who disbelieve (Neptune) CNN Headline News.

Now look at the supremely popular novel series I’ve been reviewing for so many years, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint Germain series. The 2005 novel is States of Grace.

I recommend this series for those who love Historical Vampire fantasy. But admittedly, though I never tire of them, Saint Germain (being dead, you know) doesn’t change. The story of his life – no existence – doesn’t change either. His biggest problem is Neptune – people becoming suspicious or jealous or disinformed turn on him and drive him out of town, dissolving (Neptune) what he’s built..

States of Grace is set mostly in Venice in the 1530’s. Venice, where the streets are running water, is a difficult place for a vampire to exist, but St. Germain owns trading ships and considers it worth the trouble.

In this novel, once again, St. Germain takes up with a human woman who knows what he is and offers herself freely to him. His bonds with his women are eternal. Their informed consent and love is the only thing that truly engages and feeds his heart. He is a Neptune phenomenon through and through, more so than most Vampires.

Saint Germain feeds mostly on women when they are asleep – he comes to them in dreams and provides sexual release which gives him energy. He takes only a few sips of blood and is sustained by love, or the illusion of love.

In Venice in 1530, St. Germain has entered the printing business, using his ships to transport stock and his wealth to buy up printers who are having a hard time because of the religious (Neptune) repression. Censorship of printing is depicted so graphically that any modern American will cringe and think immediately of the terrorists who want to institute a worldwide Moslem caliphate.

And yet that religious censorship in the 1500’s was nothing more than an attempt to foster the most idealistic values of Christianity. Today Neptune is urging the U.S. Group Mind to emphasize such idealistic values as the way out of the current "moral corruption."

States of Grace gives us a sobering look at what Neptune can do to the dawn of an information-age. The paperback is likely to be out in fall, 2006.

P. N. Elrod’s superlative series, The Vampire Files, continues with Song In The Dark, a deep and clouded examination of Good Vs. Evil in Mob run Chicago. In the previous novel, Cold Streets, Jack Fleming, a vampire learning the tricks of that lifestyle on his own, is skinned alive in mob vengeance. He breaks loose and devours his torturer in mindless bloodlust. In Song In The Dark, he is still trying to come to terms with what he did, and the effect his fear of his own bloodlust has on his love life with a human woman.

Meanwhile, he’s filling in for his Mob Boss friend who is recuperating from dire injuries. And he’s keeping the truth of his inner torment from his human friends in a campaign of disinformation that uses every Neptunian trick.

Jack was a reporter in his former life, and is now partners in a Private Eye business with a human, Charles Escott, who knows what he is and still believes in his ability to live only on cow’s blood from the Chicago stock yards.

Jack especially doesn’t want Escott to know about his blacker urges, hoping they’ll go away. Meanwhile, he must solve a mystery that is just the sort that Escott is good at resolving. So he must work closely with his comrade and hide his condition.

This novel is all about how the things you don’t know can harm you, but the things you think you know which aren’t true can harm you even more.

The modern vampire novel depicts the vampire not as a mindless evil force but a person struggling to live within unacceptable parameters. This produces novels fraught with Neptunian issues, Romance, Seduction, flimflammery, misdirection, disinformation, false identities, continual loss of house and home, and most of all a clash of Ideals.

Even Saint Germain can – and does – kill for blood when deprived amidst dire injury. The modern "good" vampire idealistically strives to avoid this or target only humans who "deserve" to die because they kill.