Favorite Part of Death Game
Continuing my favorite parts of all my books, I think this may be my favorite part of Death Game, Radek Zelenka's backstory. I love Radek so much on the show -- he's a competent expert with no need to show off, easily underestimated and braver than he looks, a short untidy techie who will yell back at Rodney and always comes through for his friends and who occasionally has some very serious moments. I think my favorite Radek moment in the show is in the episode Adrift, when he and John have to make a spacewalk to do vital repairs and Radek gets a micrometeorite through his leg in deep vacuum and continues on to do the job. And later in the episode he's back at his console on crutches, coming through as always. So what makes him tick?
Radek is often written as though he were American, but he's not. He's Czech, and though he's about the same age as John, Rodney and Sam he grew up in a different world. He grew up in Eastern Europe, "behind the Iron Curtain" as we said then, and his life has been much harder in some ways. Certainly he's had to go ten miles further to catch up to the technology of the west -- John and Rodney and Sam probably had Texas Instruments computers in the house when they were twelve, PCs in their schools, Atari and Apple and BASIC. Nobody had PCs in their house in Czechoslovakia in 1981! Radek had to play catch up as an adult to things that the others learned when they were fourteen, and he had to do it in a foreign language. That's how smart he is. That's how dedicated.
In a way, Death Game is as much a historical novel as the Numinous World books, only it's about our present history, about the last four decades as the main characters of Stargate Atlantis have lived them. I put as much effort into their backstories, especially Radek, John, and Lorne, whose stories are about historical moments in our recent history, as I do into things that happened thousands of years ago. John's was easy. John's story really happened as a composite of things that happened to four of my friends. Lorne's was easy. I knew I wanted to connect to Michael and Jenny from SG-1, and some of his story is based on my cousins. But Radek was different -- a different culture, a different world, one that at the time I thought was as remote as the back side of the moon, places that we would never go, people we could never talk to behind an impenetrable barrier. Radek's story was the most work. I am very grateful to several friends from Eastern Europe who helped with it. All errors of course are my own.
I was two and a half years old on August 21, 1968, when Russian tanks rolled into Prague. I remember there was fear. I remember my mother was arrested. I was not there when it happened, but I remember the absence of her, the way my grandmother clutched me, a scarf over her hair and her things ready to go.
My grandmother -- what is there to say of her? She was a young woman when we were annexed by the Nazis, a young woman when she got out of Prague for Plzen because of the fear of bombs. My mother was born there in the winter of 42, child of one occupation as I was child of another. So you see, my grandmother had done all this before.
I suppose I cried for my mother. I do not remember. She was held three weeks and then released. She was one of the lucky ones. Some disappeared forever, but no one denounced her enough, I suppose. She was guilty of nothing except being in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in a peaceful demonstration. And so they let her go eventually. They could not keep everyone, you see.
She regretted it all her life, I think. She got away free, and so many others did not. It was betrayal to live and be happy.
My grandmother did not think so. "It is stolen," she told me. "All of this is stolen. Every moment is a moment between the wars. Every moment is snatched from death. You be a thief, Radek. You learn how to steal."
My father was different. He was nearly twenty years older than my mother, a youth rather than a baby before the war, and he was a serious man. He did not have my mother's fire. Perhaps he once had, but he never got over the pneumonia he had in '39, all winter in a work camp before they needed industrial labor too badly to keep them there when they could be building vital things for the war effort, men like my father who were neither Slovaks nor Jews. Those, they killed one way or another. Those like my father, blue eyed with German first names? He had work in a factory. You see he was lucky too. I have it on both sides, the Devil's luck.
It was not so lucky when time came to go to university. My mother had been arrested as a dissident, though she had not been sentenced. My father had been released by the Nazis. University depended on politics as much as anything, and my family was suspect. I should not have gone to university, except that I was very, very good.
And I am also very, very good at not getting caught. I am simple, you see? I am an egghead. I do not think about politics or sex or religion or any of those things. I do not even know who is in office. I have my head in a book, my mind on physics. I am a little egghead wimp, and I am no threat to anyone. I will toil very nicely in the background, doing things that make the reputations of my professors, and never ask for credit. It is good to have Radek Zelenka on one's team. He will get it done and never make trouble. I am good at getting by.
I was two and a half when the Russians came. And I was twenty three when we threw them out.
I was there on November 17, 1989. We did not know what would happen. We did not know if the army would fire on us, if the Russian tanks would come as they had before. We had learned what to do about tear gas, and how to help someone who has been beaten. I was there when the riot police came. You may not think I am much of a fighter, but that is not the point. The point is not to fight, but to make a barrier of your own body. The point is to be unmoved. Breathe through a wet handkerchief, and be unmoved. I was not much hurt, just some bruises from the scuffle. I am lucky too.
I was twenty four when we won, when we had our country back.
I got my doctorate at Cambridge, and now I am in a distant galaxy doing things my parents and my grandmother could not have dreamed of. And one day I will go home. I will teach and I will research and I will be astonished by the things that children think of.
Or perhaps I will die here. Perhaps the Wraith will have me one of these times, or any of the other innumerable hazards. If it is so, then it is, but I do not plan for it to be. I have the Devil's luck. It may be true that every moment is stolen between the wars. But you and I, Ronon, we can steal.
I'd love to hear what you guys think!
Radek is often written as though he were American, but he's not. He's Czech, and though he's about the same age as John, Rodney and Sam he grew up in a different world. He grew up in Eastern Europe, "behind the Iron Curtain" as we said then, and his life has been much harder in some ways. Certainly he's had to go ten miles further to catch up to the technology of the west -- John and Rodney and Sam probably had Texas Instruments computers in the house when they were twelve, PCs in their schools, Atari and Apple and BASIC. Nobody had PCs in their house in Czechoslovakia in 1981! Radek had to play catch up as an adult to things that the others learned when they were fourteen, and he had to do it in a foreign language. That's how smart he is. That's how dedicated.
In a way, Death Game is as much a historical novel as the Numinous World books, only it's about our present history, about the last four decades as the main characters of Stargate Atlantis have lived them. I put as much effort into their backstories, especially Radek, John, and Lorne, whose stories are about historical moments in our recent history, as I do into things that happened thousands of years ago. John's was easy. John's story really happened as a composite of things that happened to four of my friends. Lorne's was easy. I knew I wanted to connect to Michael and Jenny from SG-1, and some of his story is based on my cousins. But Radek was different -- a different culture, a different world, one that at the time I thought was as remote as the back side of the moon, places that we would never go, people we could never talk to behind an impenetrable barrier. Radek's story was the most work. I am very grateful to several friends from Eastern Europe who helped with it. All errors of course are my own.
I was two and a half years old on August 21, 1968, when Russian tanks rolled into Prague. I remember there was fear. I remember my mother was arrested. I was not there when it happened, but I remember the absence of her, the way my grandmother clutched me, a scarf over her hair and her things ready to go.
My grandmother -- what is there to say of her? She was a young woman when we were annexed by the Nazis, a young woman when she got out of Prague for Plzen because of the fear of bombs. My mother was born there in the winter of 42, child of one occupation as I was child of another. So you see, my grandmother had done all this before.
I suppose I cried for my mother. I do not remember. She was held three weeks and then released. She was one of the lucky ones. Some disappeared forever, but no one denounced her enough, I suppose. She was guilty of nothing except being in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in a peaceful demonstration. And so they let her go eventually. They could not keep everyone, you see.
She regretted it all her life, I think. She got away free, and so many others did not. It was betrayal to live and be happy.
My grandmother did not think so. "It is stolen," she told me. "All of this is stolen. Every moment is a moment between the wars. Every moment is snatched from death. You be a thief, Radek. You learn how to steal."
My father was different. He was nearly twenty years older than my mother, a youth rather than a baby before the war, and he was a serious man. He did not have my mother's fire. Perhaps he once had, but he never got over the pneumonia he had in '39, all winter in a work camp before they needed industrial labor too badly to keep them there when they could be building vital things for the war effort, men like my father who were neither Slovaks nor Jews. Those, they killed one way or another. Those like my father, blue eyed with German first names? He had work in a factory. You see he was lucky too. I have it on both sides, the Devil's luck.
It was not so lucky when time came to go to university. My mother had been arrested as a dissident, though she had not been sentenced. My father had been released by the Nazis. University depended on politics as much as anything, and my family was suspect. I should not have gone to university, except that I was very, very good.
And I am also very, very good at not getting caught. I am simple, you see? I am an egghead. I do not think about politics or sex or religion or any of those things. I do not even know who is in office. I have my head in a book, my mind on physics. I am a little egghead wimp, and I am no threat to anyone. I will toil very nicely in the background, doing things that make the reputations of my professors, and never ask for credit. It is good to have Radek Zelenka on one's team. He will get it done and never make trouble. I am good at getting by.
I was two and a half when the Russians came. And I was twenty three when we threw them out.
I was there on November 17, 1989. We did not know what would happen. We did not know if the army would fire on us, if the Russian tanks would come as they had before. We had learned what to do about tear gas, and how to help someone who has been beaten. I was there when the riot police came. You may not think I am much of a fighter, but that is not the point. The point is not to fight, but to make a barrier of your own body. The point is to be unmoved. Breathe through a wet handkerchief, and be unmoved. I was not much hurt, just some bruises from the scuffle. I am lucky too.
I was twenty four when we won, when we had our country back.
I got my doctorate at Cambridge, and now I am in a distant galaxy doing things my parents and my grandmother could not have dreamed of. And one day I will go home. I will teach and I will research and I will be astonished by the things that children think of.
Or perhaps I will die here. Perhaps the Wraith will have me one of these times, or any of the other innumerable hazards. If it is so, then it is, but I do not plan for it to be. I have the Devil's luck. It may be true that every moment is stolen between the wars. But you and I, Ronon, we can steal.
I'd love to hear what you guys think!