The Gap Cycle
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The Gap Cycle is a science fiction story, told in a series of 5 books, written by Stephen Donaldson
- The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story, Bantam/Spectra, 1991
- The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge, Bantam/Spectra, 1991
- The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises, Bantam/Spectra, 1993
- The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order, Bantam/Spectra, 1994
- The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die, Bantam/Spectra, 1996
As explained in the author's afterword in The Real Story, this series started life as a novella in which characters representing villain, victim, and rescuer would switch places during the course of the narrative. He found the result unsatisfying, and the book was shelved until he had the idea of setting a retelling of Wagner's Ring Cycle in the same universe, and casting the characters from The Real Story in roles from Wagner's opera. The Real Story novella became Volume 1, and the rest of the series explores the Wagner theme.
The series is not the Ring Cycle explicitly retold, but more an interpretation set in a future universe.
Like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, the author's other major work, the story is very adult and can be very dark and bleak at times.
[edit] Plot Summary
Morn Hyland, an ensign with the United Mining Companies Police, is on her first mission aboard the UMCP destroyer Starmaster (which is crewed by members of her extended family). When they arrive at Com-Mine Station, a ship, Bright Beauty, piloted by the pirate Angus Thermopyle, flees, and Starmaster follows. Witnessing Angus slaughtering a small mining settlement (Angus had left Com-Mine without supplies and needs air scrubbers), Starmaster attempts combat, but is almost destroyed by a massive internal explosion. Morn suffers from gap-sickness, a mental disorder that inflicts itself on a small portion of people who travel through the Gap (the series' analogue to hyperspace). Symptoms of gap-sickness vary wildly; in Morn, it manifests itself as an uncontrollable urge to engage self-destruct, and is triggered by exposure to high-gravity conditions. Morn, left alone on the auxiliary bridge when Starmaster engaged Angus' ship, experienced gap-sickness for the first time, and attempted to destroy Starmaster.
Angus boards the wreck hoping to salvage some air scrubbers, murders Morn's father (who had survived Morn's attempted self-destruct) and kidnaps Morn. Seeking both control of her gap-sickness, and Morn herself, Angus places a zone implant - a remotely-controlled electrode - onto her brain, which allows Angus to control Morn's every feeling and action. By giving Morn an unauthorised zone implant, Angus has committed a capital crime, and will be executed if he is caught.
On the way back to Com-Mine, Angus activates Morn's zone implant, allowing him to repeatedly rape and abuse her. Unwittingly, he also starts to form an emotional attachment to her.
Back at the station, Morn makes contact with another pirate - Nick Succorso, captain and owner of the ship Captain's Fancy, who she sees as a potential rescuer. She aids Nick in framing Angus for stealing station supplies, and Angus is arrested. Before he is taken away, though, Angus gives Morn the remote control to her zone implant, in exchange for her silence. With the control in her possession, Morn is effectively a superwoman and is able to disregard fear, pain, or fatigue; but by accepting the control she is also complicit in Angus' crime against her.
Morn leaves with Nick in his ship. Nick, however, turns out to be every bit as nasty as Angus. When Morn turns out to be pregnant (with Angus' child, although she tells Nick it is his), Nick takes Morn to Enablement Station, a space station in alien-influenced space. The aliens are known as the Amnion and are masters of genetic manipulation. Where humans control space through physical, military and political means, the Amnion gain control by genetic methods - mutating non-Amnion lifeforms into Amnioni. Only the technological and military might of the UMCP keeps them at bay.
At Enablement Station, the Amnion use their advanced biological technology to speed up Morn's pregnancy, allowing her to give birth much earlier than normal. Her child, named Davies after her now-dead father, is force-grown into an adult and imprinted with Morn's mind. During the imprinting procedure, Morn uses her zone implant to retain her sanity. This surprises the Amnion, as normally the process of mind-imprinting destroys the original mind - Morn has used some process to preserve her sanity, but the Amnion don't know what this process is. If they can discover and replicate this process, the Amnion can create a huge army of human-resembling Amnion and potentially gain control over human-inhabited space. As such, Davies becomes very valuable to the Amnion. When Morn breaks Davies out of the Amnion's captivity and flees aboard Captain's Fancy, the Amnion commit an act of interstellar war and pursue them into human space.
Meanwhile, the UMCP has "requisitioned" Angus from his prison on Com-Mine Station, and transformed him into a cyborg under their direct control, to be used as a tool against other pirates. Secretly though, Angus has orders to rescue Morn from Nick and return her to Earth.
Warden Dios, Director of the UMCP, turns out to be playing a very deep game. His boss, Holt Fasner - known as "The Dragon", is CEO of the United Mining Companies and owner of the UMCP, and is the most powerful human being in existence. Fasner is utterly corrupt, and Dios wants to end the corruption - corruption in which he has been entirely complicit. Dios is using Morn and Angus to create an artificial crisis in which he can expose the Dragon's corruption and remove the UMCP from the UMC's control - destroying himself in the process. If Dios is to be successful, Morn is required to arrive on Earth to testify that she helped Nick (who is an occasional agent of convenience of the UMCP) to frame Angus with the assistance of Com-Mine Station Security - an act which led to the passage of the Prempt Act and made the Dragon the de facto ruler of humanity.
[edit] The Gap Cycle vs. Wagner's Ring Cycle: a comparison
The most obvious similarity between these two works, apart from the stories, are the names of the various characters. Warden Dios approximates Wotan, ruler of the Wagnerian gods. (The eye-patch that Warden wears is a dead give-away, but his surname, Dios, may be seen to be a corruption of the Latin word Deus. Also, "Warden" is an obvious and deliberate mis-pronunciation of "Wotan".)
Similarly, Holt Fasner's name can be seen to be a conflation of Fasolt and Fafner, the names of the two giants who build Wotan's stronghold, Valhalla. Also, "The Dragon", Warden's nickname for his boss, hints at Fafner morphing into a dragon after killing Fasolt. Appropriately, Warden cannot be seen to be plotting against Holt, because he is his primary trusted employee; and in "The Ring", Fasolt and Fafner are protected from any direct action Wotan can take against them because of the bargain they made with him in agreeing to build Valhalla.
Also, Holt's apparently prescient mother, Norna, is likely named after the Norse fates, the Norns.
Sometimes, however, the names in Donaldson's book are not as reliable indications of the Wagnerian characters they parallel. Min Donner's name, for instance, suggests she is the Gap Cycle's equivalent of the Thunder God, Donner. However, Min's actions in the books suggests she also represents Brünnhilde, Wotan's favourite Valkyrie daughter. Notably, in "The Ring", Brünnhilde, like the Gap Cycle's Min, also tries to carry out Wotan's/Warden's deepest desires, even though he has not explicitly instructed her to.
Likewise, Godsen Frick's name hints that his character parallels Fricka, Wotan's wife and goddess of love and marriage. In fact, Godsen's role within the Gap Cycle shows that his purpose more closely aligns with that of Wagner's Freia: the price that Wotan/Warden must pay Holt/Fasolt and Fafner for building Valhalla/giving the UMCP almost total power. Further, the fact that Donner, Wagner's very male Thunder God, becomes Min Donner, the very forceful female head of UMCP's Enforcement Division, is nicely reversed when Donaldson changes Fricka and Freia, two rather passive goddesses, into the rather effeminate Godsen Frick the male Director of UMCP's Protocol Division.
With the character of Hashi Lebwohl, who represents Loge, the cunning Trickster god of fire in the Ring Cycle, Donaldson's naming schema is less obvious. Quoting the author himself:
"Some things I can explain. Others happen purely by intuition or "feel," and them I can't explain. So:
"Leb wohl" ("farewell") is what Wotan sings to Brunhilde as he puts her into an enchanted sleep (as punishment for defending Sigmund and Sieglinde against him) right before he summons Loge to guard her with fire. (All of this, of course, is from Wagner's "Ring" cycle.) Thus Loge's fire becomes the symbol of Wotan's love and respect for Brunhilde, and of his bereavement at losing her--and at everything that follows from her defiance. So it isn't much of a stretch to see the fire (and therefore Loge) as Wotan's farewell gift to Brunhilde, the magic which eventually enables her to bring about his destruction.
But "Hashi" I can't explain. It just popped into my head--and felt right. However, it may conceivably be a reference to "hashish," and therefore to Hashi's rather dissociated (or perhaps I should say oblique) relationship with people and events. (On the other hand, I may just be grasping at straws. <grin>)
(Quote taken from here.)
As to the names of the Cycle's three main characters....Donaldson, in his Author's Note at the end of The Real Story, explains that he came up with the names "Angus Thermopyle", "Morn Hyland" and "Nick Succorso" while driving, and used them in his series because he liked the sound of them.
One other name is of note: that of the Amnion. As noted earlier, the Amnion establish and maintain their empire through genetic, rather than physical and/or political means. Given this fact, the name "Amnion" must be derived from the Greek word amnion (plural amnia; adjective amniotic), which the Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines as the "innermost membrane enclosing [a] foetus before birth".
