NOT SEEN ON ROBOTECH TV: ROLF EMERSON

When Carl gave the mission for Brian and Jim to take the Robotech story to the realm of science fiction literature, I'd like to think that there were moments where they ran into secondary characters and said..."We gotta expand on him/her! Maybe not the whole backstory, but enough to make them an essential piece to the Robotech narrative.

Case in point;

"Major General Emerson, Chief of Staff, Ministry of Terrestrial Defense"...Army of the Southern Cross.

In the RNU...this was the result of BLACKMAIL!

Excerpt;

Leonard tilted his big head to regard Emerson. "And on your end?"

"I want my own rank reinstated."

"Only if you agree to serve the Army of the Southern Cross."

Emerson nodded, as if having anticipated the counterdemand. "But in return I'll expect to be granted absolute authority over Space Station Liberty."

"Granted, Major General Emerson."

That particular story though.....is for another day.

But there's more to his backstory;

..." this was Rolf Emerson, hero of a dozen pivotal battles in the Global Civil War, the Robotech War, and the Disorders that followed them."

One of those "There has to be more to this!"

With so much else covered in the Novels that's important to the RNU,  Jim Luceno does give us this and regardless of its brevity, DOES bridge things;

"Hell, back in Australia, before the Visitor, I fought against the Neasians when they tried to march into Melbourne. Then, five years later, I fought with them when the Exclusionists had a go at the place...

...I was fifteen when Macross Island became the center of the world. Me and a couple of friends sailed there all the way from New Zealand, just to get a look at the ship, but the supercarrier Kenosha had the place blockaded. Like nearly every other sixteen-year-old, I enlisted in the RDF in the hope of getting posted to Macross, but that never happened. Instead, I was stationed right in Sydney and assigned to cleaning up the mess the Exclusionists had left behind."

It's not everything...but it's miles better than "just something".

Nicely done guys.

- John

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EXCERPTS: RN - Southern Cross, The Masters Gambit, Zentraedi Rebellion

IMAGE: Robotech : TAS, False Start

P.S.

I hate having to refer to the "franchise".....been there, done that., and it's become irrelevant. But these Novels as originally written by Brian Daley and Jim Luceno....NOT the "Shadow rewrites"...have, with all their ambitious concepts and contradictions, stood the test of time and will always be a superior story to anything that the Tommy "Yuniverse" has EVER produced for Robotech. 

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