Freelance Traveller

Hellspark

reviewed by Jeff Zeitlin

This review originally appeared in the November/December 2025 issue.

Hellspark. Janet Kagan
Original Publication: 1988
Current Availability: eBook (Baen Books)

Janet Kagan has proven to my satisfaction that she can do two things well: She can write a good story, and she can build interesting culture. Note: cultures, not worlds; even when her cultures are a good match for the world they’re in, there’s often something about the portrayal of the world itself that just feels “off”. She also does “culture fragments” well; this is where she comes up with (and describes) aspects of a culture that will affect the story in some way, but she doesn’t need to work out the entire culture because it’s not actually relevant to the story. (Whether she actually does work out the entire culture for her personal “writer’s guide” is unknown to me.)

The story is a complex one with several intertwined threads; communication plays a key role throughout. In bringing the story to its conclusion, the main character has to find evidence of a murder, act as judge in the trial of the suspect, establish that a newly-discovered species is sentient (in the Traveller sense of ‘sophont’), and establish communication with that species. In the process of telling all this, Kagan makes the point that communication is more that the words that one says; there is an entire cultural context that must go along with them, and within that context, proxemics [definition/recognition of personal space and interactions between two people’s personal spaces] and kinesics [body language] will play a key role, to the extent that having the wrong “proxemics and kinesics” can garble the message one is trying to convey.

Kagan focuses on telling the story, not on making sure you know all the details of her created technology through ‘infodumps’. You encounter the technology only as it impinges on the characters’ actions or thoughts, and only to the extent that it does so – for example, the characters only think about their “2nd skins” when they need or use one of its functions; when it comes up, the character doesn’t think about everything that it is and can do, nor does s/he ever have to explain to another character what it is or can do.

Psionics (called “espabilities” in the story) play a minor role in the story; one of the characters is known to have such “espabilities” and another is suspected of it – but the entire tone of the story where espabilities are discussed suggests that they are neither reviled (as in Traveller’s Third Imperium) nor granted high status (as in Traveller’s Zhodani Consulate); rather, they’re acknowledged as existing, and they’re not portrayed as being especially “powerful” – we don’t see any examples of teleportation or telekinesis, and nothing suggests that they’re possible – although we do see that “death curses” are treated as reality.

Anyone who has read this story and H. Beam Piper’s “Fuzzy” stories will notice some interesting parallels between them; this isn’t a retelling of the Fuzzy stories, though, but an entirely different story using related themes but with a different focus. As with the Fuzzy stories, though, the denouement perhaps says more about us than about the aliens we are trying to judge as sophont or not.

Over all, an excellent read, and a recommended addition to your collection.