Synopsis | Background | Characters | MS. Info | Sample Chapters | Contents
Writing Inventory | The Martian Marauders | Nonprofit Ladies

The novel, Jack Commer, and all writing on this page copyright 2007 by Michael D. Smith

Synopsis

Jack Commer leads a peace mission in his flagship Typhoon II to end the war with Alpha Centauri, but the crew is beset with Star Drive anxiety and an engine explosion strands the ship 392 billion miles from its destination.

Ship’s engineer and physician Phil Sperry debates whether to confess his secret love for Jack’s wife Amav to the gentle and understanding Dar, Emperor of the Martians.

The Typhoon rescues human refugees from the war, but they fill the crew with unease. Navigation Officer Will Connors abruptly Converts to worship of the Alpha Centaurian Emperor.

Jack’s diary records the previous month and a half of crew Conversions. Three remaining Nonconverted are confined to the Typhoon proper, while the blissfully Converted refugees, USSF crew, and Martians have full run of the luxurious attached Pod. Jacks knows his mission has failed and that humanity itself is at risk of being absorbed into the Alpha Centaurian Grid.

Amav’s diary describes her mistaken marriage to the petulant child Jack. Phil’s diary describes his Conversion and his reluctant acquiescence in a plot to kill the captain.

Twelve year-old Bobby, an emotionally damaged refugee, writes a story about a boy and girl stranded on an alien planet. Disgusted at the story’s sexuality, Jack barricades himself in the Control Room.  But after flooding the ship with death rays to kill two Converted attackers, he realizes the damage he’s done to his marriage with Amav.

Centaurian stormtroopers take the Typhoon II, killing several captives before hauling the rest off to face the dismembered Centaurian Crab Emperor. Polot, Ship’s Archivist aboard the Imperial Flagship, inexplicably frees himself from enslavement to the Centaurian Grid.

Facing the Maximum Centaurian Torture, Jack is exiled to the surface of a barren planet. But his experiences echo those in Bobby’s story, and he realizes that Bobby has prophesied Jack’s reunion with Amav on the planet.

The Converted humans and Martians are sent back to Sol on a twenty-one year journey as Copilot Joe Commer’s Conversion is agonizingly stripped away. The supposedly catatonic Bobby, discovered piloting the Typhoon II, relates how he hacked into the Centaurian Grid, contacted Polot, and came up with a plan to rescue Jack and Amav.

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For the fun of it, and as a writing exercise, in 1986 I finally finished my 1965-66 eighth grade novel The Martian Marauders, then later that year wrote this sequel, Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, USSF. But those two novels remained in draft form as I moved onto other novels, and I didn’t begin to think of them as forming part of a trilogy until the Commer universe invaded my 2000-2003 novel Nonprofit Ladies. I then did thorough revisions of the first two novels to make them congruent with the new novel--so imagine my 2006 consternation when I reread Nonprofit Ladies and decided its tone was completely off, that it was now the one needing to be brought into line with the fun stories of the first two novels. More on that.

I’m pleased with the final Jack Commer. It seems to be a theater piece, complete in itself. There are only four settings: the Typhoon II, the Pod, the Emperor’s Receiving Hall, and the torture planet. This novel would be easy to stage, the characters incubating in these spaces.

A 1985 novel I have no plans to resurrect, Parts I and II, was an energetic, sprawling “ideological mess,” but it had an interesting centerpiece where a character newly converted to “Evil” participates in a stonoid plan to kill the commanding officer of his army company. I lifted that scene for Typhoon II ship’s engineer Phil Sperry in this novel.

And a March 1986 dream of the writhing, dismembered Crab Emperor provided a central image for Jack Commer.

For want of a better title I’ve been referring to the trilogy as The Jack Commer Trilogy, even though I expect Jack’s part in the revision of Nonprofit Ladies to be fairly minor, his brother Joe being in the ascendant in that novel.

There is a Jack Commer pastel and a Jack Commer drawing.

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Characters

Jack Commer
Typhoon II Pilot

Joe Commer
Typhoon II Copilot

Amav February-Commer
Jack’s wife and planetary engineer

Dar
Emperor of the Martians

Phil Sperry
Typhoon II engineer and physician

Bobby Athens
Twelve year-old refugee from a captured Centaurian warship

Polot
Ship’s Archivist aboard the thirty-five mile-long Imperial Flagship GnlSaljPraraq

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MS. Info

Written	1986, 2004-2005
Chapters	13
MS.	219 pages (Times New Roman 12, double-spaced)
Words	60,000
Currently input in	Word 2000
Previously published	No parts yet published

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Sample Chapters

1. Jack’s Anxiety	Jack Commer leads a peace mission in his flagship Typhoon II to end the war with Alpha Centauri, but the crew is beset with Star Drive anxiety and an engine explosion strands the ship 392 billion miles from its destination.
2. Explosion!	Ship’s engineer and physician Phil Sperry debates whether to confess his secret love for Jack’s wife Amav to the gentle and understanding Dar, Emperor of the Martians.
3. Danger!	The crew uneasily notes something disturbing about the human refugees taken off a stolen  Centaurian spaceship--a point reinforced when Navigation Officer Will Connors abruptly Converts to worship of the Alpha Centaurian Emperor.
4. Jack’s Diary	Jack records the previous month and a half of crew Conversions and the failure of his mission.
11. Let’s All Wallow in Mental Illness	Polot, Ship’s Archivist aboard the Centaurian Imperial Flagship, observes the captives brought before the dismembered Crab Emperor.

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Contents

1. Jack’s Anxiety
2. Explosion!
3. Danger!
4. Jack’s Diary
5. Amav’s Diary
6. Phil’s Diary
7. Bobby’s Diary
8. Daily Addendum by Ship’s Captain
9. Danger!
10. Captured!
11. Let’s All Wallow in Mental Illness
12. The Execution
13. The Radiators

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