The Stars We Steal

A while ago, some random sock puppet on the internet told me that I was in the ‘star chamber’ and I had no idea what that meant.

At that time, I was reading Ready Player One in which ‘the star chamber’ was referred to as a secret project’s list of people on whom extensive information had been collected. It was a dangerous place to be because they were being included in project plans and if they were threatening the project’s goals they could be targeted for elimination.

I’ve seen lots of mentions of stars in media products lately, so I’m going to pretend to be an astrologer for a moment and see if I can read anything in these stars.

A dystopian book series I haven’t yet read is called Ophelia Scale — The Stars Will Fall.

Two groups disagree about whether technology should reverse or progress and the story culminates with the sky shaking and the stars falling out of the sky. I wonder if stars are a metaphor for people who had been picked out and given an unfair advantage by being lifted into the public eye — for better or worse. Usually for the worse, I imagine, unless you are the sort of person who is happiest while living on a rollercoaster.

Or was the metaphor about satellites that would fall out of orbit? Was the destruction of the old manor a statement about leaving the past behind and embracing progress? This is all associative speculation and requires a high tolerance for uncertainty.

A bestselling British author named JoJo Moyes who has publicly been accused of plagiarizing her story about women in Kentucky from a book written only a few months earlier by a woman in Kentucky also used a title related to stars.. as something that could be given to someone like a military award or rank. I found this strange since the contents of the book were not related to stars at all.

Then there is the concept of stars being stolen.

“All the stars that we steal from the night sky will never be enough… never be enough for me!”

Narcissists make the best employees because they are so self motivated.

With all of this in mind, I’ve decided to read a book called The Stars We Steal by a prominent publishing insider vlogger on YouTube named Alexa Donne whose debut novel was basically Jane Eyre set in space with a poor woman wandering into a haunted space ship called the Rochester. The sequel is basically Jane Austen’s Persuasion set in space.

The synopsis that overlaps with my book is as follows:

1. A young woman breaks off an engagement because of their class difference.
2. She invents a critical new technology.
3. Her father wants her to get married and give up on the tech.
4. There is a mysterious hacker of a machine where she works.
5. She has a pragmatic female mentor but no mother.
6. She visits a dance party.
7. She visits a swimming pool.
8. She is searching for a husband, but doesn’t like any of the candidates.
9. Her family has money troubles and she tries to be independent through her invention.
10. She marries anyway amid revolutionary politics.
11. She is a reluctant royal.
12. She feels less loved than her younger sister.
13. She gets close to a man but finds out he is a playboy thief.
14. A drunk guy from a dance club does something to her ear that she doesn’t like.
15. She is a victim of theft from a man who expressed romantic interest in her.
16. She tries to get meetings with influential people who can validate her invention, but fails.
17. Love song lyrics from the 1980s add atmosphere. (Donne p. 244) (Hacker p. )
18. She finds out that a man she loves is a smuggler with his own boat. (Donne p. 250) (Hacker p. )
19. There is a dramatic moment in a large gathering of her peers moment when her mentor publicly steals her invention and she is devastated. (Donne p. 343)
20. There is the implication that her mother was killed by a swimming pool by the very group that had stolen her invention. (Donne p. 327 )
21. Paper is expensive in this world and only used by the rich. Her love interest writes her a letter on paper.
22. Because she challenges the plans of the woman in charge of the system that stole her invention, she almost dies and is rescued.
23. The guy she marries is described as a sexy dork.
24. The story concludes with her invention being distributed and her getting recognition.
25. The epilogue is related to the seashore and a woman with a bad marriage.

None of these elements are in Persuasion and a subset of them occur in a lengthy sequence that is in the same order as in my book, so, I look forward to quantifying these overlaps and adding them to my data set. I’ve read Persuasion before and it can be compared to For Darkness Shows the Stars another recent novel inspired by Persuasion. The author of The Stars We Steal has spoken about IP book contracting and about how the market gets flooded with copycat works after someone succeeds in subverting genre stereotypes. I find it rather evil that the person who subverted the stereotypes is not acknowledged in many cases.

It looks like elitism and slavery are big themes in this book. Everyone gets mentally poisoned except for an elite few who treat the helpless and stupid victims like chattel. They aren’t sure what to do when a smart person emerges from the herd.

My heart has been torn ever since I started reading love stories over three years ago. I can’t stop myself from looking up at the sky and wondering what has been written in the stars.

When I asked someone who seemed to know what it meant to be in the star chamber, “What should I do?” he only said, “Fight for your life.” If someone else is writing your story, is that a fight you can win? Do you want to win? Sometimes when you win, you lose.

Then again, if you surrender or get too caught up in the story being created, you could end up like Amy Chua. She was elevated into the stars with her elitist book about being a tough mom who knows how to extract high performance from her kids.

I believe that I am the manatee mother.

I thought she was just a mom, but it turns out that she and her husband are both Yale law professors and her star dropped out of the sky when her husband was forced to temporarily resign from his position for sexually harassing students. She wound up getting profiled as someone who had exclusive parties at which she fed young women to sleazy men.

It wasn’t until I read this very interesting article in The Atlantic that I realized how unfair such exaggerations can be. She was just a power broker who turned a blind eye to bad behavior from men and she was rewarded for that blindness… up until she wasn’t.

The higher you fly, the further you fall.

I imagine that the billionaires who are getting shot into space are well aware of this. When they signed up to headline their projects, could they back out when it was time to blast off? I doubt it.

That looked terrifying. Why no footage from inside the capsule? Did any of them pass out or puke?

I’d prefer to end on a happier note. How do I get to the Starship Rochester? It sounds interesting.