Skip to main content

story identification - Looking for a book with a humanoid alien group called the "Red Bar" (due to a scar across their butts) who fight against human marines in power suits


The story is about a tribal culture on another planet who worship something called "the light". Human marines in power suits conquer them.


The story focuses on one group who fought against the invaders called the "red bar" something or other. (jarem I think, but it was so long ago...) They got the name red bar because as kids they were watching adults training for battle, something they were not supposed to do, and the person who caught them whipped them with some sort of weapon that left a scar across their butts.


I have searched the internet exhaustively for it but I can't remember the author or the book title. I likely read it in the 80's so it would have been published about 30 years ago.



Answer



You are thinking of "The Jaren," a novella by Barry B. Longyear. (You had just one letter wrong in your memory of the alien word that was invented by Longyear for the occasion.) I first read it around the mid-1980s . . . in other words, at roughly the same time that you did. Checking just now, I see that it was originally published in Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine, Fall 1979, but I know I encountered it as a reprinted story in an anthology. I even remember the title of the book: Isaac Asimov's Adventures of Science Fiction, which ISFDB says was actually edited by George Scithers.


That anthology was first published in 1980, and I know I checked out a hardback copy from my local public library a few years later. I suspect that might be the same way you stumbled across it, way back when! Here's a scan of the front and spine of the book jacket; it might ring a bell in your memory.


enter image description here



Incidentally, the ISFDB entry tells me that the story was published, in that volume, under the byline of "Frederick Longbeard." Apparently it was published that way in the magazine, originally, and my best guess would be that George Scithers chose to keep that pen name on it when he included "The Jaren" in this anthology, so as to avoid accusations of blatant favoritism when he also included another story which carried the "Barry B. Longyear" byline. (Don't get me wrong -- I enjoyed reading both stories when I first saw them, as well as several other things in that book, and so I'm not accusing Scithers of making lousy selections regarding what to include.)


I can assure you that your memory of some of the main plot elements is reasonably accurate. The tired old alien ex-warrior who is telling his life story to a human does, in fact, say that when five boys were all caught spying on somebody, they all got a minor burn across their backsides as a disciplinary measure, and then one of them -- the natural leader of the group -- suggested that the best way to save face was to make a virtue of necessity by saying that the five of them would now form a "jaren" (a squad of five friends who would train to fight together) whose official warpaint (each new jaren got to pick its own) would involve a red bar of paint across that portion of their anatomies. Of course, it was inevitable that word would quickly get around about what had happened and why they wore their paint in that spot, to cover the burn scar, but it would still put a more positive spin on the whole thing!


At the time of the framing sequence that begins and ends the story, it's decades later, and the other members of that jaren are long dead, after trouble with the humans escalated into a bloody war which superior human technology won. (Plus the fact that the alien warriors had an elaborate "honor code" which badly handicapped them at first in the ways and means they would use, or refuse to use, in clashing with humans.)


The alien telling the story-within-a-story concludes by saying that the birthrate among his people has dropped down to zero (or something very close) since the conquest, which he thinks shows that his people still have their pride, and refuse to just become subjugated slaves or whatever, generation after generation. The human narrator of the framing sequence is very disturbed by this perspective on what has happened to this planet's native population as a result of human interference.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...