Finally read Eugenesis (spoilers)

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:19 pm

Inherited a first-generation e-ink reader from a friend and promptly booted this up. Phew. What a ride. Rather awesome in every way. I loved James' sometimes thick and flowery description. Felt like he made up a bit for the lack of comic art.

The story was mindblowing, and all the bits that he tied in to other TF continuity were great. Everything happened because of 2012.

But where was it going from there? Jeez, the guy left us with a question mark the size of Cybertron! I thought the ending of Revelation was a bad cutoff, but now we have

(SPOILER)

Autobots and Decepticons giving birth to Quintessons? And we have a legion of reformatted TFs. I'm assuming that James wanted to provoke more stories from the TMUK community, but now, without a full corpus of the stories, there's no real way to figure out what was coming after this.

DJ_Convoy · Post by **DJ_Convoy** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:13 pm

I think there were a couple of follow up stories, but nothing that really, fully addressed it, save Telefunken*. Read that one, as well. I'd imagine you can still get it from TFArchive.

Eugenesis was what convinced me that James should be the man helming Transformers in the future. A fantastic read. Bold, and certainly not afraid to knock favorites out of the picture. The best, most fully realized fan fic I've ever read.

*I certainly know of TMUK stuff, but was never privledged enough to get one of the everything CD roms, so I've only read/seen a little bit... the stuff archived here and there online

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:22 pm

Apart from the slightly convoluted storyline of the time travelling Optimus, Eugeneis was outstanding. Staggering in its scope really, and it felt more like the TF mythos I grew up loving than any of the Dreamwave and IDW stuff back in the Noughties.

inflatable dalek · Post by **inflatable dalek** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:26 pm

A cut and paste of my thoughts when I read it a few weeks ago:

This is very much a book of enjoyable bits. Open, point at a paragraph and it'll almost certainly be well written. But as a whole, it just doesn't work as a novel. Nightbeat is the only character who gets a proper throughline from begining to end and is in any way changed by the experience. And tellingly he's the best thing in it.

With the rest, characters either get killed off before their subplot comes to any sort of resolution (more of that in a second), vanish for large chunks of the book (Ultra Magnus, Rodimus), or simply have the events have no impact on them whatsoever (Death's Head is just making time till he can go fight Doctor Who and only seems to be there so as to explain a minor inconstancy in The Incomplete... series, and Optimus is left with no memory of anything he experiences whatsoever).

What's annoying about all the many deaths, is that it repeatedly feels as if Roberts doesn't know how to resolve a subplot and just decides to kill everyone involved in order to deal with it. Any time as a reader I invest in, Prowl and Kup's rivalry, whether or not Rev Tone will be found out for disobeying orders, Sixshot's cowardice (which was actually one of the more interesting things in the book) is completely wasted by them all being killed off (well, except for Prowl somehow getting a magical cure for his certain death on the last page) before any pay off. Once or twice that could have been a nice twist of expectations, but it just gets silly by the end. And why was Centurion in it?

And the P.R.I.M.U.S thing was silly on many levels. Firstly, the Quintessons already have a really good motive for hating the Cybertronians and wanting their planet, giving them another one in the last segment is just pointless. Especially as it kills the action as the Galvatron and Ultra Magnus politely stop to listen to a lengthy exposition and theological speech as a planet blows up around them.

But most importantly for me, despite being disguised in a more complicated backstory with more technobabble, it's the cartoon origin story. With added silly acronym. Now, I think the cartoon backstory is fine for what it is, but it's much more ordinary and straightforward an origin for robots. The Primus backstory Furman created is more epic, more interesting, and a lot more powerful (especially at the point this book was written before Hasbro went a bit silly and you have people try and claim with a straight face the Marvel and TV Unicron's are both the same as each other and the Armada version).

I also think I had a slightly unfair problem with it due to its tie ins with TFUK. Now, I know Roberts wrote this with mainly people who knew that stuff inside and out in mind and with no idea the book would one day be available online for the whole world to read. But it does leave it feeling like the first X-Files film, loads of tie ins and pay off to the series that are off putting to anyone new coming in, and with all the toys pretty much back in the box by the end so the next "Episode" can carry on as normal.

Also in terms of stuff apparently from TFUK, I didn't buy the idea that everyone would regard the real Optimus Prime as dying in 1987 and Powermast onwards as a fake. That's completely at odds with how he was portrayed in the comic, and indeed, as early as Skids Hoist and co being awakened it's clear the Autobots have no problem with copying brains to make new versions of troops. Plus, the "Fake" Prime would have gotten some serious kudos for killing Unicron and saving everyone from the Swarn as well surely?

Another possible one is how Prowl is written. Oddly he seems far more like the later Dreamwave/IDW version than the capable, strong willed and clearly passionate (chasing Battlecharges halfway across America because he's pissed off) Marvel version.

Now, I did like the Redie stuff, the Quinticon time loop (which I was smug about guessing before the really obvious "How did this inhibitor chip get in my leg? Ow! I've just been shot with an inhibitor chip!" bit. Though oddly for something seeming to be trying to tie in with Beast Wars the idea time is fixed is at odds with how it works in that show) and the battle of Autobot City was brilliant. And, possibly unintentionally, the way that after all the fuss with the mind purge on Optimus, Thundercracker just kept the secret of his future knowledge to himself for 30 years was hilarious.

The actual biggest sign of how much Roberts has grown as an author is comparing the scene of Optimus confronting the captured Galvatron to him doing the same with Megatron in Chaos Theory. In the later, he's worked out, that's the story. The meeting of minds between two people who hate each other but know each other better than anyone. In Eugenesis it's used to swap cheap threats and exposition before going back to a dead end plot of some Transformer who can jump Universes being poorly or whatever.

Jack Cade · Post by **Jack Cade** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 1:36 am

Well, I've just finished reading this.

Blimey. I don't think it's flawless, but I don't think it's as troubled as inflatable dalek makes out. Pretty damned exciting and epic, actually. Need to think a little more about it ...

Post by **snarl** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 3:39 am

I never really read Eugenesis back in the day, I skimmed it and flicked through and inhaled it a bit when it first became available as a pdf.

To fill the gap between mtmte 14 and 15, I got stuck in. ******* loved it. First chapter is a bit of a grind, but after that... riveted. Couldn't put it down. Nailed it in about 3 days, which for me is very very quick.

I may have, without being aware of it, overlooked plot holes. But really, I loved it a very great deal. fit together so well, it is very, very satisfying, exactly the epic story Transformers G1 needed to draw the curtain down on the original Marvel run.

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 4:39 am

Yeah, I must say that it felt big in the same way G2 did and ReGen hasn't quite yet--a game-changer that looks at the TFs in a different way.

James has become a much better plotter since, though, although he's no less wordy. Good words, though.

Auntie Slag · Post by **Auntie Slag** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 12:43 pm

When Ryknia, Jolup and Sevax took over those three Cybertronian jet bodies and were confused as to why no other Decepticons recognised them... what was the answer to that? It confused the hell out of me...

Death's Head · Post by **Death's Head** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 5:28 pm

It was a stable time loop - they were always in those bodies.

Auntie Slag · Post by **Auntie Slag** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 6:09 pm

Far out, man :-)

Post by **Computron** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 4:11 pm

Where can one find a copy of said Eugenesis to read?

Auntie Slag · Post by **Auntie Slag** » Sun Mar 31, 2013 6:52 pm

Why, right here :-)

Post by **Computron** » Mon Apr 01, 2013 1:53 pm

Thanks muchly.

After reading the Eugenesis notes I'd forgotten just how much time jumping there was in the UK series. Enough to give me a headache just to figure out where everyone is supposed to be at any given time, especially when the events of the animated movie are shoehorned into the UK canon.

Post by **Computron** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 3:18 am

Finished reading it and loved pretty much all of it. I actually thought the Primus thing was quite clever. While I prefer the pure comic version of the TF's origins, Roberts did a pretty bang up job of meshing the cartoon origin with the comics and giving it some heft.

My only minor niggle was that Galvy seemed a little underpowered (I was waiting for him to just go berserk and kill himself some quints but it never really happened) and I never quite got why the Lifers were birthing Quint protoforms at the end.

That being said it really was highly enjoyable and I'm interested to see what else he salvages from Eugenesis to use in MTMTE. (Rung, The Institute, etc.)

Edit: to be fair I realize that having Galvy solve every problem would get boring fast.

Post by **Best First** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:05 am

Depends on how creative the violence he uses to solve it is...

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Wed May 01, 2013 3:10 pm

I wish I could use violence to solve every problem.

Death's Head wrote:It was a stable time loop - they were always in those bodies.

Bootstrap paradox makes my brain ache.

Post by **snarl** » Wed May 01, 2013 6:27 pm

Computron wrote: That being said it really was highly enjoyable and I'm interested to see what else he salvages from Eugenesis to use in MTMTE. (Rung, The Institute, etc.)

Yeah, I agree. You're reading bits and thinking "oh, I've seen a bit of that being explored in MTMTE, cool!

FFS, double JR's wages and have him write RiD already, he needs to be writing Prowl.

Post by **Computron** » Wed May 01, 2013 6:34 pm

snarl wrote:
Computron wrote: That being said it really was highly enjoyable and I'm interested to see what else he salvages from Eugenesis to use in MTMTE. (Rung, The Institute, etc.)
Yeah, I agree. You're reading bits and thinking "oh, I've seen a bit of that being explored in MTMTE, cool!

FFS, double JR's wages and have him write RiD already, he needs to be writing Prowl.

I agree. I'd love to see Prowl written with aspects of Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica. Someone who just can't handle command despite his best intentions. Great as an enforcer, but terrible as commander. Not because he is incompetent per sehour but rather cause he tries too hard to be Optimus rather than being himself.

In other words how he appeared in Eugenesis.