Author's Note: Hey, it's obvious that I don't own Cowboy Bebop. That's
Sunrise's bag. This is simply a fan-penned story that's a little
indulgence in self expression. There's no possible way I'm profiting from
this, except in practicing my writing skills. Everything copacetic with
the lawsuit-guard? Groovy.
Hope everyone likes this story. It's sort of the brainchild of too many Rolling Stone articles, a fascination with the Beat Generation, and one too- many rewinds of "Eddie and the Cruisers." I hope it works half as well as I meant it to.
....................
Introduction to Beat Magazine's Dec. 2081 issue, the featured story: the Retrospect Sessions.
....................
In 2071, ten years ago, the bounty-hunting trade went bust. After a brief, exceptionally profitable heyday, the vigilante-for-hire business imploded like no industry had since the dot-com bust at the turn of the century. With public interest at an all-time low, an intrasystem recession attacking all but the strongest industries, and a general feeling of peace following the collapse of numerous organized crime syndicates by freelance vigilantes; there was simply little need for a bounty-hunting trade swollen to the breaking point by countless unemployed agents.
As bounties grew scarcer and the rewards grew smaller, a majority of those involved in the field simply left to seek more gainful employment elsewhere. Only a small faction of holdouts remained to pursue what little prey remained, and that was sufficient to keep in check what crime the police could not handle. The meteoric decline in bounty-hunting's first major wave coincided with the demise of two of it's touchstones, the television series "Big Shot" and the preeminent hunter of his day, Spike Spiegel. "Big Shot" served as the focal point of the trade, the source by which most hunters found their latest target, and with its absence, there was too much work involved in tracking down bounties for most hunters to bother with it any longer.
As for Spiegel, his death was little heralded at the time. Most of those who really knew him were already dead; and while respected, he was just another mysterious figure (one of many), who few on the hunter's circuit really understood. In any rate, it would be another five years before anyone other than a few misfits that shared a ship with him would care about the passing of Spike Spiegel, but once those five years were up, Spiegel became to the public's perception of bounty-hunting what Neal Cassady was to those who idolized the Beat Generation, or Jim Morrison to those who worshiped rock-and-roll.
The spark that lit the fuse of the public's mania for all things bounty- hunting, much like Cassady's immortalization by Jack Kerouac, can be lain at the feet of one of Spiegel's closest associates. More often than not, for the four years since Spiegel's death, Faye Valentine had found herself alone, haunted by debt and memory, with little means to ease the burden of either one. Fortunately, the solution to both was to present itself very soon. Making the usual stop at a bar for the night, she told her tale of misfortune to a young man. This man, writer Hal McLauren, was entranced by Valentine's story. The two of them became friends, and with McLauren's help, Faye Valentine's memoir, Hard Luck Woman, was published in 2076.
Hard Luck Woman was a best-selling smash. The public devoured it, the colorful characters, fantastic happenings and heart-rending finale becoming all the more potent for the fact that it was, in fact, a true story. While bounty-hunting itself was not resurrected in it's original form, the new enthusiasts began to adopt its trappings, turning the lifestyle into a pop trend or fashion statement...like college kids in the fifties flocking to coffeeshop poetry readings in an attempt to mimic the Beats, it soon became fashionable to slum in a half-derelict spacecraft doing odd jobs, rather than finding a decent apartment and a respectable job. Sales of tobacco products, virtually flatlining save for a small group of devotees, skyrocketed as hordes of bounty-hunter-wannabes latched onto them as yet another way to be like their idols, to the horror of the medical establishment. Retro mod suits, utilitarian paramilitary jumpsuits, samurai gear, and hotpants became the tent poles of the new "it" style.
And of course, Hard Luck Woman, though virtually the Bible for hunter-chic, was not the last book (and eventually movie) to be made about the inspiration for this trend. Bounty-hunting had become so massive prior to its collapse, that there was no end of subjects to raid. Some ex-hunters tried to cash in on their stories...there was the exceptional Martian Samurai series of novels, for example...and on the other end of the spectrum, there was the wretched "Bad Muthas" film based on the life of the Shaft brothers. It became very difficult to distinguish fact from fiction...for every pinpoint-accurate biography of Koffy, there were five disasters like The Fatty Rivers Story that were so misleading or completely falsified that they set back an accurate accounting of the bounty-hunter era back years. The fascination with these space cowboys has provoked a mind-numbing degree of scholarly debate and waffling over what is and is not the truth, the sort of pop history that's as confusing and byzantine as that of the original gunslingers on Earth's Wild West.
It also didn't help that the most intriguing subjects for this mania were among the most difficult to nail down the facts about. Valentine herself, though one for spinning an entertaining yarn, was not considered the most reliable source of information because of her background. The elusive Jet Black, one of the most revered figures of this mythos, has (on the rare occasions he's been located) refused to be interviewed. "Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV"has been even more difficult to track down, with no record of her anywhere and only the word of Valentine that she actually existed. Actually, barring the actual bounty details we can verify, there's very little about the Bebop story that anyone can point to as anything other than conjecture.
That is, until now. During the past year, Beat Magazine, admittedly just one of countless publications following the trail blazed by Spike Spiegel and the Bebop crew, commissioned one of our editors, Kurt Mendoza, to track down the surviving three and get their stories. Some of these accounts will be familiar...others new and surprisingly different than what we've come to believe. It's possible that some of these findings will be controversial. But ultimately, we hope that it is all the truth, at long last.
Hope everyone likes this story. It's sort of the brainchild of too many Rolling Stone articles, a fascination with the Beat Generation, and one too- many rewinds of "Eddie and the Cruisers." I hope it works half as well as I meant it to.
....................
Introduction to Beat Magazine's Dec. 2081 issue, the featured story: the Retrospect Sessions.
....................
In 2071, ten years ago, the bounty-hunting trade went bust. After a brief, exceptionally profitable heyday, the vigilante-for-hire business imploded like no industry had since the dot-com bust at the turn of the century. With public interest at an all-time low, an intrasystem recession attacking all but the strongest industries, and a general feeling of peace following the collapse of numerous organized crime syndicates by freelance vigilantes; there was simply little need for a bounty-hunting trade swollen to the breaking point by countless unemployed agents.
As bounties grew scarcer and the rewards grew smaller, a majority of those involved in the field simply left to seek more gainful employment elsewhere. Only a small faction of holdouts remained to pursue what little prey remained, and that was sufficient to keep in check what crime the police could not handle. The meteoric decline in bounty-hunting's first major wave coincided with the demise of two of it's touchstones, the television series "Big Shot" and the preeminent hunter of his day, Spike Spiegel. "Big Shot" served as the focal point of the trade, the source by which most hunters found their latest target, and with its absence, there was too much work involved in tracking down bounties for most hunters to bother with it any longer.
As for Spiegel, his death was little heralded at the time. Most of those who really knew him were already dead; and while respected, he was just another mysterious figure (one of many), who few on the hunter's circuit really understood. In any rate, it would be another five years before anyone other than a few misfits that shared a ship with him would care about the passing of Spike Spiegel, but once those five years were up, Spiegel became to the public's perception of bounty-hunting what Neal Cassady was to those who idolized the Beat Generation, or Jim Morrison to those who worshiped rock-and-roll.
The spark that lit the fuse of the public's mania for all things bounty- hunting, much like Cassady's immortalization by Jack Kerouac, can be lain at the feet of one of Spiegel's closest associates. More often than not, for the four years since Spiegel's death, Faye Valentine had found herself alone, haunted by debt and memory, with little means to ease the burden of either one. Fortunately, the solution to both was to present itself very soon. Making the usual stop at a bar for the night, she told her tale of misfortune to a young man. This man, writer Hal McLauren, was entranced by Valentine's story. The two of them became friends, and with McLauren's help, Faye Valentine's memoir, Hard Luck Woman, was published in 2076.
Hard Luck Woman was a best-selling smash. The public devoured it, the colorful characters, fantastic happenings and heart-rending finale becoming all the more potent for the fact that it was, in fact, a true story. While bounty-hunting itself was not resurrected in it's original form, the new enthusiasts began to adopt its trappings, turning the lifestyle into a pop trend or fashion statement...like college kids in the fifties flocking to coffeeshop poetry readings in an attempt to mimic the Beats, it soon became fashionable to slum in a half-derelict spacecraft doing odd jobs, rather than finding a decent apartment and a respectable job. Sales of tobacco products, virtually flatlining save for a small group of devotees, skyrocketed as hordes of bounty-hunter-wannabes latched onto them as yet another way to be like their idols, to the horror of the medical establishment. Retro mod suits, utilitarian paramilitary jumpsuits, samurai gear, and hotpants became the tent poles of the new "it" style.
And of course, Hard Luck Woman, though virtually the Bible for hunter-chic, was not the last book (and eventually movie) to be made about the inspiration for this trend. Bounty-hunting had become so massive prior to its collapse, that there was no end of subjects to raid. Some ex-hunters tried to cash in on their stories...there was the exceptional Martian Samurai series of novels, for example...and on the other end of the spectrum, there was the wretched "Bad Muthas" film based on the life of the Shaft brothers. It became very difficult to distinguish fact from fiction...for every pinpoint-accurate biography of Koffy, there were five disasters like The Fatty Rivers Story that were so misleading or completely falsified that they set back an accurate accounting of the bounty-hunter era back years. The fascination with these space cowboys has provoked a mind-numbing degree of scholarly debate and waffling over what is and is not the truth, the sort of pop history that's as confusing and byzantine as that of the original gunslingers on Earth's Wild West.
It also didn't help that the most intriguing subjects for this mania were among the most difficult to nail down the facts about. Valentine herself, though one for spinning an entertaining yarn, was not considered the most reliable source of information because of her background. The elusive Jet Black, one of the most revered figures of this mythos, has (on the rare occasions he's been located) refused to be interviewed. "Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV"has been even more difficult to track down, with no record of her anywhere and only the word of Valentine that she actually existed. Actually, barring the actual bounty details we can verify, there's very little about the Bebop story that anyone can point to as anything other than conjecture.
That is, until now. During the past year, Beat Magazine, admittedly just one of countless publications following the trail blazed by Spike Spiegel and the Bebop crew, commissioned one of our editors, Kurt Mendoza, to track down the surviving three and get their stories. Some of these accounts will be familiar...others new and surprisingly different than what we've come to believe. It's possible that some of these findings will be controversial. But ultimately, we hope that it is all the truth, at long last.