Jim Hawkins in Outer Space

 Treasure Planet
by Hal Colebatch & Jessica Q. Fox
Baen Books, 2014, 336 pages, $25.99

Treasure Planet, the latest novel in the science-fiction series of the Man-Kzin Wars, first created by Larry Niven in 1988, is a re-telling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure Treasure Island. Hal Colebatch has carried forward his own stories of the twenty-fifth-century interactions between humans and the gigantic kzin felinoids, based on the imaginary but credible planet of Wunderland, part of the Alpha Centauri galaxy that is relatively close to Earth.

The novel’s setting is the aftermath of the defeat of the kzin occupation of Wunderland, with kzinti and humans learning to live in their version of a multicultural society. Together they face the danger posed by unregenerate kzin pirates who are the antagonists of Treasure Planet, led by the cunning and morally ambiguous kzin Silver, equipped with a prosthetic leg. Jim Hawkins has been renamed Peter Cartwright, while the wise and courageous Dr Lemoine is instantly recognisable as Stevenson’s Dr Livesey. The characters of Billy Bones, Captain Smollett and Ben Gunn have all been transmogrified into kzin, while the leader of the treasure-seeking expedition is the kzin chieftain Orion-Riit.

In the book’s dedication Hal Colebatch pays tribute to Stevenson’s story lines, characterisation and dialogue. Accordingly the plot of Treasure Planet is remarkably faithful to the original, and the eighteenth-century seafarers’ speech of the piratical kzin becomes strangely appropriate. There are of course some major departures. The schooner Hispaniola is replaced by the spacecraft Valiant with its own computer-based intelligence and distinct personality—but one that can be disabled by a pirate hacker. Instead of a treasure map, the “McGuffin” of Stevenson’s narrative, there is an electronic but perilous memo pad.

The young protagonist Peter, for all his courage, lacks the physical strength to best the kzin pirates unaided in hand-to-hand combat, but proves decisive in opening the portal to the treasure, which takes the form of advanced knowledge. In good science fiction, the science or indeed the mathematics must carry conviction, as they do in Treasure Planet. We can surmise that Colebatch’s co-author Jessica Q. Fox may have contributed much of this detail.

However, the most significant innovation is the character of Marthar, a young aristocratic female kzin who is Peter’s confidante and friend. She combines bravery and physical prowess not only with the kzin sense of honour, but also with a growing self-awareness. As the ultimate misogynists, the kzin had deliberately bred intelligence out of their females. Marthar therefore depends upon an implanted neurotransmitter to avoid reversion to mewling dependency. The kzin capacity for adaptation and progress is noted when a kzin noble like Orion-Riit shows himself capable of apologising to a subordinate. “In the old days … kzin discipline had been largely a matter of swinging claws and hot needles.”

The ongoing theme from Colebatch’s earlier Man-Kzin writings is the mutual respect that humans and kzin hold for each other: twenty-fifth-century multiculturalism. It is Marthar who states tersely, “We’re kzin … I only kill the bad guys and I kill ’em quick. Saves complications.” Yet she insightfully tells Peter:

you humans do it differently from us. We are not kind. But deep down you are utterly ferocious on a level we kzin can’t reach. All the truly frightful things you can’t face, you let your subconscious handle. That’s how you beat us. Only you don’t see it … You fool yourselves into thinking there’s something nice in your core. But down there in the id, you have a monster lurking, little Peter.

The narrative is enhanced by a wry, ironic humour. When after a terrifying pursuit, the kzin equivalent of Blind Pew meets his end, Peter observes, “I had seen yet another death, and was heartily glad of it.”

Stevenson’s Treasure Island essentially is a moral tale where a young man comes of age learning judgment and the values of courage and unselfishness. Treasure Planet likewise is a moral journey for its two young protagonists Peter and Marthar. Hal Colebatch and Jessica Q. Fox open our imagination to new forms of knowledge and leave us to consider such questions as the preservation of individuality against the temptation to surrender to an amoral and mindless collective.