Black Projects,
White Knights

All of human history may be merely the byproduct of a mysterious, amoral corporation

	Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers
	By Kage Baker
	Golden Gryphon Press
	Trade Hardcover, September 2002
	297 pages
	MSRP: $24.95
	ISBN: 1-930846-11-8

Review by Cynthia Ward

n the waning days of Spanish California, Joseph is a mission friar serving two gods, the heavenly Father and the worldly Dr. Zeus, Inc., a powerful corporation located centuries in the future. Joseph's life is a peaceful one—until a fellow time traveler and Company employee, the dark-tempered botanist Mendoza, appears in Santa Barbara. A local Indian family's scanty garden holds the only known grape vine infected with a unique "Noble Mold": the botrytis responsible for Black Elysium, a powerfully hallucinogenic wine. However, the family won't sell the vine. Joseph has no choice but to help Mendoza appropriate the vine—after all, he has already done so. History cannot be changed, and in the future, the Company makes Black Elysium. Yet in obeying the dictates of time and the Company, must Joseph betray the Indians and destroy their lives?

Joseph, Mendoza and other characters from Kage Baker's Company novels reappear in the 14 stories of Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers. As "The Literary Agent," Joseph cajoles a delirious Robert Louis Stevenson into pitching screenplays for the unborn art of cinema. When "Lemuria Will Rise!", Mendoza is sent to rescue a valuable, extinct primrose from Pismo Beach—but what if a babbling old hermit's Ascended Masters are more than a delusion? When a "Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu," Joseph plays guardian angel to a suiciding mortal. And a badly damaged Mendoza finds herself matching wits with "Hanuman," an augmented and diabolically clever Australopithecine hominid.

Four of the stories follow a remarkable young nobleman, Alec Checkerfield, from early childhood on a Caribbean yacht to adolescence in near-future Britain. "Smart Alec" loses everything he loves—parents, nursemaid and the sea—when he is sent to a neo-puritanical London and put under the control of the Playfriend, a rigidly programmed computer. In "The Dust Enclosed Here," Alec meets the holographic spirit of William Shakespeare, the Company's illegal copy of the Bard's mind. Then Alec is sent to Pre-Societal Vocational Appraisal, which determines children's future careers and weeds out the freaks. Alec, remarkably tall and frightfully smart, may be locked away for life—just another "Monster Story." Or maybe "The Likely Lad" will be killed: Escaping to the nautical life he loves, Alec becomes a smuggler of that dangerous and forbidden drug, sugar.

A collection as welcome as fine wine

Like her novels In the Garden of Iden, Sky Coyote, Mendoza in Hollywood and The Graveyard Game, Kage Baker's collection Black Projects, White Knights follows the shadowy activities of Dr. Zeus, Inc., a corporation known by its employees, not very affectionately, as the Company. The time-transcending Company exploits history, looting the past of lost treasures, missing art, extinct plants and anything else that will enhance the bottom line. Despite the Company's careful fidelity to known history, Ms. Baker's books can be read as alternate history. Or they can be read, more scarily, as secret history.

To facilitate its grand theft, the Company turns its employees into immortal, time-traveling cyborgs who can destroy a mortal with the flick of a finger—in a word, gods. But like the ancient Greek gods, Company operatives aren't necessarily better than mortals at resolving moral quandaries. And the Company itself exhibits a ruthless amorality that would daunt even the most fraudulent corporate executives of A.D. 2002. Current events give horrifying resonances to these sharply written tales of godlike tools of a potentially eternal super-corporation.

Kage Baker fans will be delighted that Black Projects, White Knights collects 14 Company stories, including three originals. Newcomers to the series should know that this book raises more questions than it answers; for example, Alec's origin and ultimate fate are not revealed. Meanwhile, hard-SF fans may not be pleased with some characters' psychic powers, nor will they believe the vast scope of Alec's cognitive abilities and the convenient incompetence of future programmers (while still quite young, Alec deletes his cybernetic guardian's ethical programming without otherwise incapacitating it). And readers new and old will notice that Alec's superhuman shenanigans never place him at genuine risk. However, most newcomers will follow this entertaining, well-written collection by rushing to read Ms. Baker's novels.

The psychoactive botrytis is fictional, but California does have a mystery wine: zinfandel. The vines probably originated in Europe, but no one knows where. Open a bottle: This robust red wine is a perfect accompaniment for this fine feast of short fiction. — Cynthia

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Also in this issue: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

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