Bad Dog
Military Science Fiction Across A Holographic Multiverse
(Gate Walkers)
by Ashley R. Pollard Triode Press 317pp.
The first few pages of Pollard’s book may strike some as a bit of a slog. You get hit with a lot of military jargon right off the bat and might feel that you picked up an early Joe Haldeman novel by mistake. Further, the lineup of the Marine squad initially sounds so formulaic that for an insane instant I was reminded of the squadron of little bats that accompanied ridiculous mad Mervyn the Pumpkinhead in his doomed stand against the Eumenides. In fairness, Pollard did nothing to create that impression. It’s not her fault if one of her readers is nuts.
But stay with it. It gets better. Much better.
Sergeant Tachikoma of the Confederated States Marine Corps is tasked with locating and retrieving a platoon of armored army people who went to White Mountain in Afghanistan in 2071 and vanished. Yes, 50 years from now we’re still dicking around in Afghanistan. No wonder the United States collapsed. Secondary to that—or so she believes—she is to try to discover the source of a mysterious and very powerful magnetic pulse emanating from under the mountain.
There are two other groups taking an unusual interest in White Mountain: the Chinese, headed by Shángwéi Looi, commander of a special operations unit sent by the PRC to help the local Afghanis to destroy a potentially unassailable weapon and preventing the Americans from grabbing it, and Yeshua bin Yussuf, local warlord, one widely viewed by his followers (although not by himself) as being a Mahdi, or Messiah. While a common name and patronymic in that part of the world, “Jesus, son of Joseph” was an interesting choice. He regards “the pillars” under White Mountain to be maleun, a deep and sinister evil that must be destroyed and forever hidden from the face of Allah. He has struck up an uncomfortable alliance with the Chinese to that end.
After encountering unexpectedly strong resistance, Tachikoma (squad leader who is the semi-eponymous Big Dog) make it to the pillars, when they are briefly paralyzed—all of them, that is except Tachikoma, who walks between the two pillars and finds herself in a different world. She scrambles back, and is instantly killed when the mountain collapses on her.
Whereupon she wakes up in her cot the morning of that same day (July 2nd, for what it’s worth), alive, in one piece, but with full memories of the events that just occurred.
Everyone, including Tachikoma, compares the ensuing cycle of living out the day, fighting and dying, over and over, to Harold Ramis’ brilliant Groundhog Day, but it’s more like the extraordinary Russian Doll by Natasha Lyonne; darker, more nuanced, and utterly intriguing. As with Lyonne, Pollard’s main character is more interested in solving the cycle than Murray’s character was in manipulating it. Unlike Groundhog Day or Russian Doll, the solution lies not in modified personal behaviour but in simple ingenuity.
Pollard is meticulous in her depictions of military life. The jargon has the redeeming property of being authentic, or where of necessity invented, at least plausible. While most of the characters surrounding her take turns being red shirts, the characterizations ring true, and as the versions of the universe they are in progress forward, the characters deepen and the interactions change fluidly and with surprisingly complex patterns.
One of the more interesting interactions is between Tachikoma, now on her fifth go-around and fearing for her sanity and ability to cope, and the ship’s Navy shrink. Unable to deal with another round of futile battle and death, she ends up in sick bay, where she encounters Doctor Bullock, ship psychiatrist. Given that Pollard herself is a behaviour therapist in real life, I was interested to see how she handled a character that in most military stories is portrayed as inept or a buffoon. Perhaps not surprisingly, Bullock ends up providing a small but utterly essential part of Tachikoma’s ability to cope with and address the infinitely strange situation she is in. Bullock was a small but refreshing surprise in a book containing many such surprises.
Looi and Yeshua bin Joseph are also treated with respect, and a fair bit of cultural awareness, making for fully-realized adversarial elements in the story. Lower ranked Chinese personnel, in armoured suits known as “fatties” don’t fare as well, being reduced to video game targets. Another career interest of Pollard’s, as it turns out.
Going into the final 50 pages, I thought I knew how Tachikoma would break the cycle and live to see July 3rd, assuming of course that she did. About 30 pages later, she tried exactly what I expected—and it didn’t work. Then she tried something better.
I like a story where the author outwits me. Bad Dog is such a story. It’s clever, it’s subtle, and at the same time engaging and suspenseful.
I’ve mentioned Groundhog Day, Russian Doll and Haldeman in this review, but in the end, Bad Dog wound up reminding me of something far grander and more ambitious: The Expanse. The blurb on the cover promises that Bad Dog is only the first novel in a Gate Walkers series, and if Pollard’s first novel is the metric to go by, she’ll give The Expanse a run for its money.
I look forward to the next installment.
Available on Amazon.