Free The Worlds of Farscape by Sherry Ginn Page B

not fully understand and cannot control. Crichton’s position in this situation must feel at least somewhat familiar. Like most of the population of Earth, Crichton grew up in a world where it often seemed that the Powers That Be had forgotten the true nature of the forces they were using to determine global military-political policy. Despite the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and literally hundreds of test detonations, the leaders of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. all too often seemed to forget that behind the rhetoric and posturing and acronyms lay slaughter on such a vast scale that it was measured in megadeaths. 10
    Crichton bears this knowledge, knows it at his very core, and yet even he becomes hypnotized by it. Trapped in the disabled drilling elevator on Katratzi, Crichton reactivates his bomb, and drops it down the shaft to the crystherium chamber. Tellingly, he does so without consulting any of his friends and allies, including Aeryn, who are trapped with him. Like his forebears, Crichton has made his nuclear policy unilaterally, and after deterrence has failed, Crichton launches. Afterwards he reflects on his actions in one of the most moving scenes of the series. Sitting with Aeryn, having already made inroads into a bottle, Crichton lets his bitterness and self-loathing overflow:
Everything old is new again. Except the old thing’s getting really old. Hey, Honey, guess what I did at work today? I wore a bomb... A nuclear bomb in a field of flowers... I could get lucky. Tomorrow I could have a bigger bomb. I could kill more people. Maybe they’ll be innocent people. Children, maybe ... [“La Bomba” 4.21].
    Much of Farscape ’s historical message lies in this short monologue, for in the late 1990s and early 2000s, everything old did indeed seem to be new again. India and Pakistan faced one another over nuclear arsenals. Terrorists invoking the name of God seemed able to strike anywhere, American missiles remained targeted on Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Russian missiles on Washington, D.C., and New York City. Governments had changed, but not nuclear policy.
    Even worse than this cyclic progression, though, is Crichton’s knowledge that he has been corrupted and become a purveyor of this madness in its most deadly form. No longer can nuclear policy be put aside as a problem of governments, of semi-faceless bureaucracies of generals and presidents. It has become entirely personal, and Crichton’s very own Cold War has ended very differently than did its larger Earthly cousin. He himself brought death and fire to “a field of flowers,” and, innocent or not, the beings on Katratzi slain by his action never had a chance, never had a choice, because John Crichton’s nuclear policy failed. It is no wonder that he is slowly weeping by the end of the brief monologue above.
    In The Peacekeeper Wars Crichton says to Aeryn, “War and peace. War and peace. Did you know that Woody Allen’s version is better than Tolstoy’s because it is funnier? And absolute power corrupts absolutely” ( PKW ). Knowingly or not, he is speaking to himself, for with the escalating danger posed to Aeryn and their child by the war raging around them, Crichton has again become corrupted by the idea that he—and he alone—possesses the power to decide between war and peace. “Unlock the knowledge,” he orders the Ancient he has nicknamed Einstein, “I have to make peace” ( PKW ). In a lovely role reversal, it is the cold, logical, militant, gung-ho Aeryn Sun who points out the flaw in Crichton’s thinking:
AERYN: This is what you want. This is what you want!
CRICHTON: No, Aeryn, it is not what I want! It’s just that fate keeps blocking all the exits. And no matter what I do, I just keep circling closer to the flame.
AERYN: Then pull back. This war is not your responsibility.
CRICHTON: You and the baby are