Mass Effect and Lit

[pookakitten]

Started typing a response to someone about my reply in the Women of ME post and decided it probably merits its own topic.

What SF literature do people see as similar to or inspirations for Mass Effect?  What books do you think Kaidan may have read as a kid about humans in space?

The main series I can see all sorts of similarities to ME is Lois

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm. A lot of the elements of Mass Effect have been in lots of space opera-y scifi, so the ones it reminds me of tend to just be the ones I like :)

Anyway, the Culture novels by Iain M Banks have a lot of nuanced conflict between different alien cultures where there isn't a neat good guy/bad guy Us/Them dichotomy.

The Ooloi in the Xenogenesis trilogy (aka "Lillith's Brood") by Octavia Butler reproduce by absorbing whole species, though in such a completely different (and more sympathetic) way to the Reapers that it's more of an interesting contrast than a possible inspiration.

Hmm. I know there was other examples but they have of course all evaporated from my mind.

[pookakitten]

Yeah, I'm not about to draw parallels to books I don't like, usually because they never get finished.

Ooh... a Butler fan. A pity she died before finishing the Parable trilogy. I think I read some of the Lilith's Brood books. The species had a third gender that mixed and matched DNA from different species? I don't know, they remind me more of the asari.

Another pair that reminds me of Miranda and Oriana are Cherryh's Cyteen and its sequel Regenesis. Basic plot is clone raised to be intellectual successor to her murdered mother. One of the most unnerving scenes is when Ari 2 sees her mother's clothes and realizes she's going to be larger on top. The worst one was when she realized she'd have her mother's streak of cruelty and accepted it. Makes Miranda and Oriana liking the same music seem trivial.

[alias_sqbr]

You know what, they are more like the asari.

Yes, I've read Cyteen but not Regenesis and it has some interesting stuff about clones and genetic destiny. That and the Vorkosigan books make me a little sad we didn't get to see more of Oriana.

[zidane]

Alistair Reynolds' Revelation Space series features machines that systematically destroy advanced civilizations as they emerge. The first book even opens with a xenoarchaeology dig and a guy going nuts from terrifying visions.

Heck, in the first book there's even something called Cerberus (it isn't a shadowy organization involved in mad science projects that go horribly wrong, though).

Aside from that, it's very different from ME-there's no FTL travel, and no living alien species (just genetically modified variants of humans).

[fegli]

I don't have much useful to say here, but I just kinda assumed that Joker was less fragile in ME2 because of Cerberus interference, and hence how they got him to work for them.

[popehippo]

Asari as a single-sex species was handled WAY better by Ursula K LeGuin in Left Hand of Darkness.

[notmysandbox]

aha you beat me to it

It's such a great book. Now I feel like rereading it.

[alice_the_raven]

Slightly off topic, but I always wondered why ME used the name Kaidan, a Japanese term for horror flicks. aka Kwaidan. Like Kasumi is 'mist' and also the name of a sword form.

[corinne_c]

I always thought Kaidan Alenko was more of an Eastern European name (that's entirely based on the surname) and I have two friends who's first name is Aidan. I kind of imagined it as "Aidan Alenko" and since it doesn't look that great, they put a K in front.
Anyway, that's me and my 2 cents.

C.

[popehippo]

Maybe his parents are horror flick fanatics? XD

[thirteenthchime]

I think it's just one of those names that "sounds nice" (think of the recent popularity of Jaden, Aidan, Hayden, etc. in the past 20 years) and isn't tied to any particular ethnic group - perhaps reflecting the lessening impact of ethnic identity in the future? Kaidan or Kaiden can theoretically come from Japanese, Arabic, English, Irish, German...it's made up of sounds that crop up in a lot of languages that also happen to sound nice. I don't think they were cribbing it specifically from Japanese or any other language, especially because it's often misspelled in Bioware's own or supplemental materials.