Metafiction (audio story)

Metafiction
Main character(s):	Kaston Iago
Featuring:	Justina
Main setting:	Kaldor City, 2889
Key crew
Publisher:	Magic Bullet Productions
Writers:	Alan Stevens, Fiona Moore
Director:	Alan Stevens Alistair Lock
Producer:	Alan Stevens
Release details
Release date:	July 2012
Format:	15 minutes
Production code:	KC007A
Kaldor City extras
← Previous	The Prisoner
Next →	Skulduggery

Metafiction was an audio play in the Kaldor City series. Written by Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore, it took the form of a dialogue between Iago and Justina, who was interviewing him about his background on the orders of Uvanov.

Publisher's summary

"A reputation? What as? A bunch of crooks, killers and mindlessly destructive psychopaths?"

Company Chairholder Uvanov has tasked his personal assistant Justina with finding out everything she can about the mysterious assassin Kaston Iago. But is his tale of criminality, revolutions, galactic war, and mindless violence, the truth... or some kind of strange space-operatic fantasy?

First performed as a short stage play at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival in 2011, "Kaldor City: Metafiction" is a must-hear for all fans of the series, answering the question of who Kaston Iago really is.

Plot

to be added

Cast

• Iago - Paul Darrow
• Justina - Patricia Merrick

Worldbuilding

• Iago is apparently a member of the Assassin's Guild. Company Security have no record of any such organisation. The Assassin's code is not to reveal to any details about the Guild.
• Kaldor is a colony planet of Earth.
• Iago was born on Earth. Justina is unfamiliar with the planet, as are presumably most people in Kaldor City. Iago likens Kaldor to Earth in the sense that it's a closed minded xenophobic society around which it's convinced the universe revolves.
• On Kaldor, the usual protocol when it comes to Bank Fraud is for the guilty party to be bailed out with taxpayers' money, with the banker returning to work after a decent interval. According to Iago, this is usually the situation on Earth too.
• Iago postulates that the single greatest failing of the human race is the desire to be subjugated, freeing one from the tyranny of choice.
• The Federation had 12 battlefleets crewed by highly trained professional killers.

Notes

• The story was only released as a download.
• An alternate ending, "Version Two", was also made available with purchase of the Magic Bullet Productions story The Time Waster; in it, one of Iago's mentioned pseudonyms is "Frank Archer", Paul Darrow's character from The Time Waster.
• The title of the story, meaning a fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the story's artificially, refers to the idea that Kaston Iago might in fact be Kerr Avon from Blake's 7, and as such the story plays with the listener's expectation of this. (See notes section in AUDIO: Occam's Razor for additional reasons as to why this might be so.)
• The final seconds of the story can be interpreted as a 'breaking of the fourth wall'. This is supported by AUDIO: The Prisoner in which both stories feature characters seemingly aware they are part of a fictional world.
• "Version One" follows directly from Death's Head, with Iago speaking with Justina Kessel; in contrast, "Version Two" is set between Storm Mine and The Prisoner, with Iago speaking to a facet of the Fendahl.

Continuity

• It is mentioned that Iago has recently become part of Uvanov's personal staff, which places the events of this story between AUDIO: Occam's Razor and AUDIO: Death's Head. However, due to the nature of this story, it is also possible that it takes place within the Fendahl gestalt, as per AUDIO: The Prisoner and AUDIO: Storm Mine.
• Justina and Iago discuss whether the human race is part of some cosmic plan being thought up by a divine and omnipresent being, foreshadowing the emergence of the Fendahl in AUDIO: Checkmate.
• Uvanov recently made a proposal to the company board concerning the opening up of trade links between Kaldor and other colony worlds. (This would seemingly help reconcile the continuity of the Kaldor City series with AUDIO: Robophobia in which Kaldor City has a massive interstellar robot trade; as the plot of AUDIO: Occam's Razor is dependent on the notion that Kaldor City has no contact with other worlds.)
• Iago mentions "the great illusion". In AUDIO: Death's Head Iago and Carnell both make reference to a great illusion. A prominent theme of the series is the nature of reality and fiction.
• Iago describes his life before he arrived in Kaldor City, in the process referencing many episodes of Blake's 7 and filling in some blanks from the continuity of that series:
  • Iago was once convinced of embezzlement. He defrauded the Federation bank for either five million (A2: Space Fall) or five hundred million; (C10: Ultraworld) this discrepancy is explained as one number being to the amount he was convicted for, the other the amount he got away with.
  • He was sentenced to life on a penal planet. Fourth months into an eight month journey to the planet, Iago managed to escape from the prison ship along with two fellow prisoners, a revolutionary and one other, when the ship became involved in a salvage operation to recover an alien spacecraft. (A2: Space Fall)
  • Once in control of the alien spacecraft, Iago, along with his two comrades, set course for the penal planet to rescue additional crew members, arriving three hours later just as the prison ship was docking. (A3: Cygnus Alpha) Justina questions how the prison ship could have only taken three hours to arrive when it originally had fourth months left to its journey. Iago suspects they made a jump through negative hyperspace, but he isn't exactly sure what that means.
  • Iago's starship could travel at "standard speed". One standard unit is about half a time distort unit, or possibly two thirds of a time distort unit. Iago doesn't know how fast a time distort unit is, as it's not his field. (In Blake's 7, it was never specified what "standard speed" meant. The Federation used a "time distort" scale.)
  • The revolutionary said he'd been wrongly convicted, but most of the prisoners Iago met also said they'd been wrongly convicted. Iago was seemingly the only genuine criminal there.
  • Along with his fellow crew members, Iago
    • liberated a group of dwarfs whose oppressor was another dwarf in a tank; (A5: The Web)
    • shut down an operation involving an enslaved population forced to mine a radioactive substance known as Monopasium 239; (B4: Horizon)
    • instigated a war shortly afterwards with an alien battlefleet from another galaxy bent on genocide, resulting in the death of billions; (B13: Star One);
    • stole some energy crystals from a mine which turned out to be fake, after departing from their firebrand leader; (D8: Games)
    • accquired a vast amount money which turned out to worthless; (D10: Gold)
    • visited a planet whose entire surface was covered in sentient sand; (D9: Sand)
    • blew up a huge glitter-ball hanging in space containing a gigantic brain with all the knowledge of the universe; (C10: Ultraworld)
    • travelled deep into the twelfth sector and blew up the people who had built their starship, and blew up their craft's identical sister-ship; (B1: Redemption)
    • were approached by an outside party to rescue a scientist from his employer, but ended up rescuing a killer robot duplicate by mistake; (D6: Headhunter)
    • blew up an experiment on the edge of the sixth sector to reveal the ultimate destiny of the human race, (C13: Terminal) which Iago says is to evolve back into monkeys; and
    • crash-landed their second ship on the frontier planet Gauda Prime, where they encountered their former leader. (D13: Blake)
  • Iago believes Freedom City was blown up during the war, (B11: Gambit) along with Space City. (B2: Shadow)
  • On Gauda Prime, moments after Iago's entire crew were killed, he himself was surrounded by a force of fifty heavily armed Federation Guards. (D13: Blake) He escaped by shooting out the lights in the room.
  • After Gauda Prime, Iago busied himself with gunrunning, taking on contract work as a mercenary, and organising the occasional revolution. (Blake's 7 fan audio The Logic of Empire)
  • The money Iago acquired during the bank-fraud disappeared before the war. For safe keeping, Iago arranged for the money to be transferred to a special account held aboard a space-station that had been constructed by a consortium of neutral planets, meaning that technically it existed outside of normal legal jurisdiction. However, his crew accidentally blew it up. (A10: Breakdown)

External links

• Official Metafiction page at Magic Bullet Productions