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Title: V: The Second Generation (V)
Score:
Author: Kenneth Johnson
Rating: Not available
Hits: 152

Review of V: The Second Generation (V)

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Comments for V: The Second Generation (V)

• Posted on 2009-10-25
  I always wondered what happened to V
  
  Most of the reviews for this book have been not the greatest saying that it isn't well written, but maybe those people are English majors and know what well written books are, but I'm not an English major, I just enjoy Sci-Fi every once and again and when I discovered that the mastermind behind the original series "V" had written a sequel, I had to read it!
  This book is a very good read and towards the climax I couldn't put it down! It has old familiar characters as well as new ones and catches the fan of the original up to date with what happened in that parallel Earth taken over by the Visitors!
  There are some things in the book in which either I missed or weren't really explained, like what happened to Robin Maxwell and her possible pregnancy that was mentioned towards the end of the first mini-series, as well as how the Leader of the Visitors changed from a him to a she.
  There are some others that I would like to know what happened to them, but over all I think the plot and style of this book is very good and is a must for all V fans.
  I think it would make a great film for the big screen!
  I have mixed feelings about the new "V" series about to begin on ABC in a few weeks, but I am glad that this book was written and that I was able to follow up on great characters that inhabited my imagination so long ago.
  
  
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• Posted on 2009-10-16
  Sex-crazed monsters from outer space
  
  Unlike most other reviewers I am more familiar with the earlier books than with the screen versions, so I wasn't quite as distraught as others at discovering that the new book didn't exactly match the TV series. Do they ever?
  
  The Next Generation isn't completely consistent with the earlier novels but, then again, they weren't completely consistent with each other anyway, so nothing much has changed there.
  
  It's a slickly-written effort, which - as others have remarked - is more like a screenplay than a novel. I guess the episodic style and quick jerky scene changes add a certain cyberpunk vitality that will no doubt look terribly dated in another 20 years, but for now serves to direct our attention to how very young and vibrant the new characters are. Or something like that.
  
  The science is so ludicrous that it must surely be meant as humour or parody.
  
  Stealing half the world's oceans? One of the physical characteristics of water (unlike many other substances) is that it's more or less uncompressible. So you can't suck up half the world's oceans and store it in spaceships unless you have spaceships that are, well, as big as half the world's oceans. Which the Lizards don't have.
  
  And human-Visitor balf-breeds? Come on. Even assuming the amazing coincidence of basic compatibility of size and shape of equipment, there are no other species on our own planet that we can interbreed with. Yet apparently one exists halfway across the galaxy.
  
  The ending of the novel pretty clearly sets us up for a sequel, no doubt featuring the Zedti. Their human-like breasts are described in some detail in the book, and I have no doubt that the Zedti will also prove to be sexually compatible and capable of interbreeding with us.
  
  Most of the human characters are fairly two-dimensional. As others have commented, a lot of them die horrible deaths, but it's hard to care much. By contrast, the Visitors seem so much more alive, and the tension and political maneuvering between Diana, Jeremy and Shawn makes the scenes involving them jump right out of the page.
  
  By the end of the book I was hoping for a Visitor victory. They seemed so much more interesting.
  
  Sure, the book has some flaws, but really with lesbian lizard monsters from outer space, what more can you ask for.
  
  
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• Posted on 2009-09-30
  The most masochistic thing I've ever done: finish this book
  
  [Mild spoilers]
  
  Huge disappointment and truly awful.
  
  It doesn't bother me that this book picks up after the first miniseries. I don't dislike The Final Battle. The production value had gone inexplicably down considering how successful the first miniseries was, and I think the ending with Elizabeth is too deus ex machina. (I would rather have seen John continue to argue with Diana that they'd lost and it's time to go.) I loathed the TV series. So that's easy for me to ignore. I understand Kenneth Johnson picking up where he did because he had creative differences with people working on Final Battle and had his credit changed from Kenneth Johnson to a pseudonym, Lillian Weezer. (He's still credited with his real name as creator of the series.)
  
  I was really looking forward to The Second Generation. I love V and The Final Battle, and I wanted to see what the *creator* would do with the story. Now I have to ignore this book like I do the TV series of V. It's a little too similar to what George Lucas did to Star Wars with those horrible prequels. (And I disagree with people who say Johnson's and Lucas' stories are theirs to do with what they choose. No. They have become our stories. Lucas and Johnson break the storytelling contracts they made with us, their audiences, when they continue their tales in such absurd ways that ring false.)
  
  I re-watched the first miniseries before reading this book so I'd know where the characters were story-wise. I bet Kenneth Johnson didn't do that. Robin Maxwell is nowhere to be found despite the first series ending with hints that she's pregnant with a Visitor's child. Julie and Donovan don't even show up until around page 130! They're more like supporting characters...and just as one-dimensional as all the other characters.
  
  I agree so much with the other negative reviews here that I don't have much to add: cardboard characters you don't care about, plot holes, amateurish.
  
  The reason I decided to add my review is Johnson's bigotry towards fat people. Fat=evil to Johnson. Not only is that bigoted, it's lazy writing. "Oh, this is a bad character. How will I describe their physique? Fat." Again and again. I think Blue is the only large character who is not a jerk, and I suspect it's because he's black. In fact, Johnson describes Blue as "strong" more than "fat." Similarly, all of the good characters are good-looking. How very creative...
  
  Johnson obviously has no idea what a 250-pound woman looks like, as he describes the wrestler as some hideously and enormously fat monster. I wish he'd Google the BMI project and get some idea of what different weights actually look like, not just what Hollywood erroneously guesses them to look like.
  
  This book is a slow and torturous read because it's boring and his writing does not flow. The first 150 and last 50 pages were drudgery. The rest flowed somewhat better, but it's still terrible not to care about any of the characters, especially considering how much I adore Julie and Donovan from the first two miniseries.
  
  One thing I loved about the original two TV movies and is nowhere to be found here is how Julie and Donovan are co-leaders of the Resistance. Sure, Donovan is broken in this book, but I disagree with the decision to write him that way, on so many levels.
  
  Basically this book is a slight variation of Final Battle that is worse storytelling and makes little sense. It's also not entertaining in the least.
  
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• Posted on 2009-09-12
  Baloney
  
  Call me a nerd, but this writer should do cursory Google search to see the gaps in his thinking.
  
  There is roughly 326 million cubic miles (1.34 billion cubic km) of water on the Earth. The original aliens brought 50 motherships that were about 1 mile in diameter each. Individual ships could hold, at maximum, 1/20th of a cubic mile of water (assuming space needed for cargo holds, shuttle bays, engines, quarters and whatnot). Even if the aliens sent an extra MILLION ships (and that's a HUGE exaggeration) to the Earth after the original first series, they would ONLY have taken 50,000 cubic miles of water on that visit alone. While this is, indeed, a lot of water and would have caused notable climate shifts, it would not be more than a drop in the bucket in comparison to the rest of the oceans.
  
  Even with the number of motherships I allow for, the Sirians (Visitors) would need 6,520 trips to haul ALL of it back to their star system. At a 17 year round trip, it would take 55,400 years just to take HALF of the water on Earth. Then one has to consider: how can the visitors do without so many ships while at war? Presumably a million ships, with--say--a crew of 20,000 each (total of 20 billion people) would be quite useful in their war against the "bug" aliens.
  
  Lastly: why come to the Earth and take our water? Thousands of time MORE water, as well as EVERY mineral in the universe, awaits the visitors in other areas of the solar system, that is FAR easier to reach, without having to deal with the troublesome humans. Presumably any alien with the ability to traverse the cosmos would have the intelligence and technology to reach the waters & minerals on Titan, Europa, Mars and the comets far more easily than coming to this tenuous rock.
  
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• Posted on 2009-07-22
  Original but Lacking
  
  As a child of the 80's I can assure you that once upon a time most households would tune into network television for major miniseries events. Heck, Shogun, a miniseries from the late 70's, was singlehandedly responsible for introducing Japanese food en masse to US. Roots brought the troubling history of slavery into our living rooms in a way it was never seen before. V: The Miniseries was definitely one that is remembered by anyone who went through the 80's as being an interesting take on what would happen if fascism reared its ugly head in our own backyards. Some minor spoilers ahead. Consider yourself warned!
  
  In the early 80's the Earth is approached by 50 enormous spaceships, filled to bursting with aliens who would later be known as Visitors. The Visitors approached in the spirit of friendship, but soon their secret and nefarious purpose for coming here was revealed; they needed our water, and more chillingly they needed food. Human food. Scientists, singled out by the Visitors as being the only ones who could reveal their sinister plans, were systematically apprehended, rounded up, and "converted", or brainwashed so that they would obey the Visitors' every command. A police state quickly sprang up, one in which cooperative citizens, or collaborators, were given limited freedom, while scientists and their colleagues were forced to go underground, where they formed the Resistance, a worldwide network of scientists and sympathizers, who were determined to throw off the shackles of the Visitor occupation.
  
  V aired as a two part miniseries, and was later followed by V: The Final Battle, a 3 parter which was noticeably lesser than its forebear. V: The Series continued the story but was painful to watch in many ways (Diana's sequin V-top is burned forever into my brain). V: The Second Generation is interesting right off the bat because it dismisses The Final Battle and the Series altogether and continues along the story arc provided by the original miniseries, which just about anyone will tell you was the best part of the program. This means no more red dust. No more Elizabeth, aka "The Star Child". But it also means no more Ham Tyler, played by the ever solid Michael Ironside. V: The Second Generation will ask you to dismiss all of these elements and proceed from where the end of the original miniseries left off, with Juliet Parish and Elias Taylor sending a message off into space asking anyone "out there" for help.
  
  The novel is set 20 years after the events of the original miniseries. The Resistance has been greatly diminished after Diana initiated the "Great Purge of 1999". It is almost impossible to move freely about without interference from Visitors or their cohorts. To make matters worse the Earth's water supply is greatly diminished. San Francisco, where the vast majority of the novel takes place, is now situated not on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, but a vast desert. More Visitor motherships have arrived to hasten the process of sucking Earth dry of water. Anyone who is even hinted at with being involved with the Resistance is immediately incarcerated and placed into stasis for further use as expendable ground troops for the Leader, or worse, used as food.
  
  Enter the Zedti, a race of insectoid life which has arrived on Earth in response to Julie and Elias transmission into space from 20 years earlier. They look human, but exhibit amazing combat and medical abilities. But are the Zedti here to help the Earth? Or are they here for their own nefarious purposes?
  
  Many previous posters bring up the point that the book moves at a pace in which it is difficult to guage how much time has passed in days, and boy, is that ever the truth. I got the idea that the novel takes place over the course of a week or two, but truthfully that's just dead reckoning. It's clear that Kenneth Johnson has a gift for telling a gripping story, but it is in the details that he starts to fail just a little bit. The total removal of the events of The Final Battle is difficult enough (the absence of Ham Tyler is almost enough to warrant removing a whole star by itself), but when beloved characters like Elias are not there, and indeed, aren't even mentioned, it tends to spoil fond memories of the show. We're introduced to some new characters, such as Nathan, a former Vistor Teammate (formerly known as Vistor Youth), a hot shot pilot who switches allegiance to the Resistance early in the book, as well as Margarita, a red-headed firebrand who takes a special liking to inflicting harm on Visitors. There's also the "dregs", a sort of human-Visitor hybrid species which have characteristics of their parents (hair, some skin, and scales), and which are relegated to a very low societal caste. Many of your favorite characters from the miniseries are to be found here, but some are notably absent, and it is felt throughout the book.
  
  The book proceeds at an even pace and then reaches an almost feverish rate towards the end. I suspect Johnson wanted to wrap things up quickly and have the heroes cavort about at the conclusion of the book. The Zedti contingent is built up to be mysterious, and even a little menacing, through much of the novel, however when their "secret" is revealed it is something of a let down. Johnson is a screenwriter, and so the book reads much like something you'd find in a production office, rather than what you'd expect from a bookstore shelf. It's not at all a bad book, it's just a tad bit different and a little off the beaten path, as far as style goes. I think it was a mistake to completely drop everything that happened in V: The Final Battle, but by the same token I understand why Johnson did. The Final Battle wasn't his baby, and as such he wanted to continue "his" story. The problem is that The Final Battle already belongs to the rest of us, problems and all. I add one star for the whiny Robin Maxwell being blessedly absent from the book, and an extra for there being no "Star Child", with her deus ex machina abilities. But there's no Ham Tyler or red dust, or even a few of the more memorable Visitors like Steven or Brian, and that ends up taking a star or two away as well.
  
  Given that a reboot of V is coming out this Fall, I doubt that this book, decent as it is, will ever see any screen time. I have mixed feelings about this, but I suspect it might be for the best. V: The Second Generation is a good book which keeps up a good, albeit frenetic pace, and is certainly recommended reading for any fan of the original series. If you can forgive some of the shortcomings listed above I have no doubt you'll find the book enjoyable, much as I did.
  
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