I’ve been in a reflective mood, so I’d like to do something a little different today. Yesterday marked twenty years since the release of Terror on the War Front, the seminal work by a writer from our Trident family that inspired me to pursue journalism myself.
His name was Thomas R. Huntsman.
Huntsman knew exactly who he was. A fearless writer who would call anyone out, anywhere, any time.
He dragged you along with him on a drug-fueled escapade across the galaxy in search of the Galactic Dream. He scorned objectivity and reason, in search of something far more powerful: truth. Not one truth handed down from above, but a multitude of truths found down in the muck.
Huntsman told us to wake up and smell the bullshit as the Galactic Union faltered and tottered its way towards the horrors of the War of Unification. He hurled vitriol at corporations and government alike in his early years, and he gained a following amongst the anti-authoritarian crowd who were tired of the war, the lies, the propaganda.
Huntsman kept his nose to the ground like a bloodhound as he ventured forth into the bleeding heart of the war. With his attack dog style, he went for the throat. He took on corrupt Union governors, the failings and foibles of the new provisional government, and the hypocrisy of just about everyone he met.
Something he found there changed his outlook. After the war ended, he was no longer content to live life stumbling from one hallucinogen to the next. He never shared exactly what it was, and anyone asking got both barrels of his famous scorn. It remained a part of himself he never touched on in his work, and never explained. Whatever it was, it drove him to pick himself up, get clean, and join the Trident family.
I believe Huntsman saw something that few else could in the aftermath of the war. The Trident motto, “Perception is Reality”, and the failed Union promise of the Galactic Dream weren’t so incompatible. The future lay not with the half-dead remains of the Union, but with the new world struggling to be born.
A passage from one of Huntsman’s letters made that clear:
“To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.”
“But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires — including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.”
Tragically Huntsman’s own striving to be himself finally came to an end six years ago after a long battle with substance abuse – a struggle that haunted him for his entire life. His death was sudden and shocking after years of sobriety. He is remembered as a symbol for writers and journalists everywhere, and an icon in the Trident family. His work is immortalised in films such as Terror and Resentment in New Reno, as well as his many columns, now collected into book form.
I do my best to live by his words. My job is to be Jacqueline Desant, and to find meaning in that. Right now, that means sharing stories with you. It was Huntsman’s work that inspired me to take this path, and, like him, to join the Trident family.
I’m not sure that I can capture the inimitable and legendary spirit of Huntsman in this column, so instead I’ll leave you with one last quote:
“Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
He was a man who always chose to brave the storm.
Here’s to you, Tom.