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Dungeons Deep and Caverns Old: A History of Fantasy #fantasy #literature #speculativefiction

Previously inOUR SPECULATIVE FICTION CRASH COURSE SERIES:A History of Science Fiction

When Heinrich Schliemann was seven years old, his father presented him with a Christmas gift: a book entitled The Illustrated History of the World. In this book, Heinrich discovered, was a full-page image of an ancient walled city, its stately buildings and towering citadel engulfed in swathes of orange…

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hi. today i am starting a new season of IN A WALLED CITY with a big episode called The Historian. this is one of the more challenging, personal, and ambitious audio fiction projects i have ever done. it is narrated by my friend and longtime collaborator Valerie Monique Evering

you can listen to it for free at all the usual podcast places. if you want to support the show financially you can also buy it on my bandcamp. there is a link to a transcript in the show notes. its also on bandcamp in the lyrics section.

the story in this episode is one i started writing before any of the others. as a reminder, the show is nonlinear and you can dive in at any point. and this episode, in spite of its length, is a good entry point. its a bit more direct.

its a story that had been kicking around in my head for years as something i would “do someday”. the impetus to actually make it for real was listening to the Start With This podcast by Night Vale Presents - i highly recommend it if that kind of situation applies to you!

i have been through a lot since i started writing this one. its hard to describe the place its come to inhabit in my head and heart. at times i was certain i would never publish it. but ive put so much into it & even if that energy doesnt return in forms i expect, now is the time.

I.

We follow every road, cross every field
our maps coated in finger oil
the stains of generations

We keep all names new and old,
on small wooden plaques
or old dominos
threaded on twine or twisted fishing line
carried on the belt
and around the neck

Among our people, the sound of these names -
they brush and click against one another
is our most Sacred sound.

We like it when you hear our approach
when you hear us on your road

You quicken, you liquidize
your memory hears us before your self
begins to boil
to foam and rise

We do not sell answers
this is forbidden to us

We freely give any name in our mind
ancient or weeks old –
the histories bestowed on us, our heavy burden
is also free

You offer, and we accept
the night of rest
warm nourishment
a few small wooden plaques
or old dominos

On our noisesome belts we carry
towns, cities, roads, mountains, rivers
objects strange and mundane
process and plans
plants and creatures
favorite dishes passed down through generations

The only names we do not carry are human
this too is forbidden

Your names, our names
temporal or permanent
these may be written
only on the inside of an onion skin

We are cherished and hunted
sought everywhere

Some bring us within their walls
celebrate us, bestow upon us
names newly made, or old stories newly learned
They make us heavier.
They give us more noise.

Others seek us to silence us
to cut names from our belts
to burn or bury
They have many good reasons
reasons we understand
But we do not comply

We go to great lengths
We protect ourselves

We were born the day the old net fell
dissipated in distrust
fragmented and cloistered

As the age of paper unfolded we quickly earned a natural trust
and right to cross gates
wander in and out of walls
and gathered friends to walk with us
to watch our backs against those who would lighten us

It did not take long for our numbers to grow
As new waters came into the valley
we walked along canals
balances on the little walls
met with carriers of salt
rode with Fivers the length of their Way

In the days when paper cracked and peeled
it is said one fourth of every other hold
came to walk with us

New cultures bubble and foam across the plain
Old paper blows and washes out to sea
fresh skin glistens in the sun
green and gold and pulsing

Our flow across fields
the lines we draw between
walled cities, far towers, open circles, wide farmsteads
we acquire weight and thickness
and shine into the glass eyes above
dead and living
bound to old nets
and new gardens

In this way we speak
The names we carry are tiny
The names we carve into the earth reach for hundreds of miles

Words that stretch across the land
these are the names of countries, cities, rivers, and mountains
in our own secret tongue
Forever unknown even to us
none of us has ever seen them

Glass eye above, you hold us.
Liquid eye on the other side,
we wait for you.

II.

It was March when she fell into the Vision
The first March of the liquid days
When the remnants of the fakery
Still wet in the streets
Waiting to be washed away
Or dried into dust and carried off by winds

In April came the days of Seperation
The waves of dreams from the east
The flow over and under the Sierra
Her Vision was a rock in the stream
Vortices shed behind her

By May the formalities had fallen apart
Concrete and sands shifting under the feet
A shift quicker than anyone had anticipated
The turning of some hidden mechanis
Or opening of a door
You looked behind you and it was already done

These were days of bright colors
Of opening
Unguided masses of the east
Pulled through and into the searing valley
This has happened again and again

But those who had crossed the sands
Or walked the ridges and ravines
Now floating just above every surface they crossed
Tongues bound, silenced by the strength of that first pull
She was the first to greet them

The current were strong in those days
She took position in the center of the valey
In the beginning it was only her senses
With expert use of Overlay
From the edge of her fields
Alone under the sky

Then she sent her people unto the land
To gather stones, the width of the circle
And with this built her tower
Rising from the middle of the San Joaquin

Those who came to her
Learned to breathe that sacred water
Soon word travelled on those currents
And seekers came from all direction
The wild marches of the north
The communes and bastides of the valley
Even the glistening shapes of the Bubble
And then word spread to the mirror cults of the Southland

In those months of heat and haze
She was visible only to those far wanderers
Selected by her watchers
Allies waiting at crossroads
Or within the webs of aid that sprang up in those days
Words and deeds sent to her
By crow and bee

With Autumn came visiblity
In other lands this is a time of darker skies
Rain and turning leaf and cold wind
Here it is the time of burning
A new and focused heat

But distance is distance
And light is light
So here too we have that clarity
That sharpness of season
And so she began to glow
Blue and violent spillig across fields
Winding through canyons
Crossing the horizon

Eyes awoke and turned to face her all at once
They came for her – at first small and local groups
The Bubblers to record and categorize
To steal and mock and recreate
The Christkeepers to silence and burn
To meld and reshape and funnel

And then the air changed, the Southlanders came
High ranking channelers of the miror cults
in shining capes and glittering tights
Envoys from the realms of Glendale, Cessna, Orange, Pasadean, Waterworld, and the Citadel, naked and direct, covered in shifting and confused signs
Wanderers of the desert communes and priestesses of Salton, come with flowers , vines, and warnings

Overwhelmed and ever weary, she took from this widening flow
And spun an elaborate filter
A circle five miles around her tower
Sinking into both sides of the river

Any who would approach her, the Source of San Joaquin
Must carry a living plant, one year of age or older
Not yet found within her Circle

Thus was born her famous garden

By December she had become fully real
The flow into her Circle narrow, slow, intense
The return into the world bright, jagged, searing
They came with palm, succulent, and vine
They left wrapped in currents and winds
Eyes glowing, tears streaming

In January came the days of new accord
When flowers turned to signs and letters
Were wound over the gates of cities
When Mia Marisol, in person, approached
Bearing citrus micrantha
And left with a map of ways to slip
Between every mirror of the Southland

It was February when the waters around the tower
Began to froth and rise as mist
Unsnapped from the grid
She divided and dissipated
The line of her circle wound back up around its spool
The tendrils of her garden, still bound to her
Reaching for the sea.

III.

Those who cover themselves in empty signs
And piecemeal tongues
Those who live in loudness
Wrapped in fragile image
Snared and stretched and caught in the gaps
Become as paint and pasetel
Smeared gradient and shining dust
This is your service and your bridge
Become rose, become ultramarine, become lime, become magenta, become iris, become azure, become sienna, become canary, become puce, become mustard, become sea foam, become umber. become crimson, become ochre, become gold, become vermilloin, become feldspar, become violet, become sage…

(@lizardywizard​ prompted a nonhuman mourning their loss of nonhumanity fic! This isn’t exactly what they were thinking of, because I realised that one of my alien starfish settings would be gr8 for this shit. Instead of nonhuman becoming human it’s nonhuman becoming a different nonhuman!! It is also Very Dark, cw hospitalisation and experiments and body horror and shit. @conductivemithril I’ll tag you too since you reblabbed that thing going ‘statistically I probably won’t hear about it’ - here you go you beat the odds.)

My mother was the first person I knew. Within her womb I accessed her psychic landscape, too delicate to yet strike out on my own Inside, protected by her presence. The others came to us and stroked at her edges, finding the places where her imprint changed, the shapes which I would become. Before I was even born, I came to know my herd.

And then I was born, and I felt and tasted and smelled with my skin. I was small, no more than a little blob amongst my fellows. I had no limbs, no eyes, no teeth - secretions from my skin dissolved plant matter as I moved over them and allowed me to absorb the nutrients. Outside, I felt the heat of my herd. Inside, in our psychic network which allowed us such a rich social life, I felt the distinct impressions of everyone.

My mother moved with me when I was young, slithering on top of me when the wolves came to prey upon us. I felt her on top of me both Inside and Outside, and in that place I felt secure. We had only our venomous outer skin to deter predators, but children and their parents were kept in the middle of the herd, where they would be safe from the needling strikes of predators. I felt them tear apart one of my fellows, and my skin wept, because the wolf tore into her with its five limbs and dragged her entrails onto the dust. It hurt. It always hurts when they kill us. We feel it every time. The worst is when they’re injured, but not dead, sending out their pain-signals and cries for help Inside.

There were others who lived in this world. Most ignored us - we were too difficult to eat, too outwardly-basic to work with. But the parrots were different. They stayed close to us, herded us into pens, gave us food. In return, they dragged sticks over our skin and collected our slime. They were not threatening, aside from separating herds sometimes, and our Outside life does not bother us so much as long as it keeps us alive. The parrots had no language, no Inside world, no way to communicate with us; they were dumb creatures, silent in their groups. I wondered, often, how they lived together in such a condition.

This was a mistake.

One day I was separated from my herd. This was not so strange, but I alone was taken; I cried out to my mother Inside, and squirmed my displeasure Outside. I was taken to a cold place, far enough from my herd that I could not hear them. Inside, I saw a slim few others, their imprints jagged and weary. I asked them, in our manner, what was going on. They murmured, with pain-signals and weariness, that they did not know.

I soon found the reason for their pain. The parrots forced something into me with a single thin tooth, like the injection of poison but more slow, more deliberate. It pained me. It made it difficult to see Inside. It was only the first of many experiments.

I felt others die, but their pain was distant and far from me. I cried out, and heard only whispers in reply. There was not even familiar heat Outside to comfort me.

They put me to sleep often. When I awoke I was always in pain, but this time - this time, there was a foreign thing on my slick flesh, a solid thing which I could not remove. I had to contort myself to flow over it and gain a measure of its meaning. It was roughly oval, pointed at one end, attached to me on the other, in four sections which clasped tightly together. I had felt others screaming distantly Inside about these objects, but there was nothing I could do. My confines had nothing I could grip to wriggle away.

I screamed, what is happening to me? What will become of me? I knew my shape was jagged too, sharp with pain and fear, so far from the gentle slopes of my youth. I wondered if my mother would recognise me.

The next time I slept and woke, I felt more strangeness Outside. In my flesh, there were other things, now. I could feel them when I moved. They were solid, and did not give. I almost felt as if I could manipulate them, but it was to no end. These feelings only grew stronger as they tinkered with me, further integrating the object into me. There were tubes I could vibrate. And then, most painful of all, they took my breath from me - forced it from my skin into a bag embedded in my flesh. I panicked, breathless, until my writhing expanded and contracted the bag. It pulled air from the oval beak, and into my body. Impossible. Impractical! And yet I could breathe, and I dared not stop.

As their meddling continued, I found I could not only make the tubes vibrate, but also move the beak. There were four parts to it, which moved mostly in concert. They were linked at the base by thin strips of flesh. They were foreign, and I did not want them. I screamed in pain, and the answers I heard were so far away, I was sure I had been moved.

Next came more structures, more solid parts inside my giving flesh. Entire systems of structures. Slowly, slowly, and I was sure I was dying every time. And then I woke, and I heard noises, but they were Outside of me. I screamed Inside, and heard nothing Out. It was not right. It should not have been possible. It made it so much harder to hear the faint voices of the other tortured souls.

It was so loud. For ages I heard nothing but the noise Outside, a confusing jumble of impossible sounds. And then they refined their work, and then I got used to it, and then the noises took form. Hissing. Grinding. Click-popping. I heard the clacks of the beak which had been forced on me, and further away I heard other clacks, too. Clacks and vibrations. They were not mine, not meant for me, I did not want them.

I was taken to rooms which were more quiet, which made the clack-vibrating easier for me to hear when it happened. The sounds were meaningless to me, but it kept happening. Clack-clack, tirrr, hrak. Slowly, deliberately. I mimicked the sounds with my own forced appendages. There was a piece of flesh at the base of the vibrating tube which opened and closed. There were tendrils coming off of it which smacked against the inside of the beak. Meaningless noises. They introduced me to objects, made noises. I returned the noises. I was so bored, so isolated, I would have done anything. They moved me to objects when I made certain noises. Eventually, I realised they were telling me the names of those objects.

So they did have language. A terrible, false language, too loud and too physical, formed of disgusting noises made against solid flesh. They were like everything we were not, and I was becoming like them. I screamed Inside, and heard only screams in return.

It was not over. They put me to sleep again and again, and I felt firm matter nearby the beak, raised solid flesh around it. More solid systems hooked up to my own. And then - finally - light.

It was overwhelming. Here was nothing I had ever felt before, information totally alien to me. I screamed. I could not turn it off.  I could moisturise the flesh, pull a membrane over it and back again, but it did nothing for the light. Eventually, when I got used to the light, I saw other things too. Something wrong and mutilated against a reflective surface. Me? It was bloodied and listless, and its shape -

Its shape! Its shape! I realised, with a start, that this too was an aspect of Inside they had drawn unwillingly into the Outside world. That was why the light was so wrong. That was why it hurt. This was never meant to be! I screamed, and screamed, but I heard no answer, only distant pain-signals and hopelessness in rough patterns.

The shapes outside had no such information. They were only form, without the riders of emotion and intent which made the communication so vital. As time went on, the shapes became more clear, more detailed; I saw that I woke up in a darkened room with the objects they had tried to get me to name. They had form here, too. I flowed over them with my mutilated body and recognised them. The parrots, too, had form - beak and eye and two legs and three manipulating tentacles which almost felt like my own flesh when they touched me. I hated when they touched me. They were warm.

They showed me flat surfaces with patterns on, and named them. I repeated the name. They flipped to a different surface, and named it something different. I repeated the first name. They punished me. I repeated their second name, even though they were wrong, and the object was the same. Eventually I forced myself to see the patterns as the important thing, not the object, even though that was so foreign to me. They clacked to one another with tones I had come to know as disapproving.

Again, I unwillingly slept. This time, when I woke, I could not feel myself Inside. I screamed, and found I was voiceless. I reached for my form, wounded and pained, and could not feel it. They had taken it from me - the Inside, my real world, my home. I made a noise, because I could not scream. I hated them. I hated them!

The noise-patterns continued. I realised what the patterns meant, found myself able to understand a little of the noises they said to each other. I bided my time until I knew enough, and then, when one of the parrots took me to the quiet room to learn, I spoke.

“What - have - you do?”

“Oh, this is terribly exciting - we’ve waited so long for you to use language on your own! We’ve been trying all this time to give you the tools to express your intelligence!”

“Why?”

“We’ve known for decades that you’re one of the smartest animals on the planet, but no one would believe us when we said you might be sentient! And here you are, having a conversation with me! Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes. Fix me.”

“Oh, I’m afraid we can’t do that. First we have to run tests, actual tests, and we’ll need to determine this isn’t a fluke, and of course we’ll want to know all about you, like how do you experience those electrical charges you have? Are they a method of communication? Oh, was I right?!”

“Fix me.”

“No, no, I’m afraid I really can’t. Even if I wanted to, this is cutting-edge science - I’m afraid this is permanent.”

I understood little of their noises, but I knew they answered negatively. I felt ice cold. They had done this, and they would not fix it. There was only one more thing I could ask. There was only one thing which would save me from this hell.

“Destroyed me.”

“I- I’m sorry?”

“Destroyed me.”

“I know you must feel that way, but you’re really a first in all of our experiments. Can’t you feel pride in what you’ve become?”

“Destroyed me.”

They did not understand. They had said the other subjects had been destroyed. Why would they not destroy me as well? I did not know how to tell them to kill me, to let me die. I did not know how to tell them I could not live like this, cut off from the Inside world, a freak of my people. My mother would not recognise me. The wolves would not even smell me.

Even if they did not understand, it was true.

They destroyed me.

I would say nothing else when they spoke.

                    (I. The Faeries live in a world not unlike our own, beside us, below us, always.)

Samantha and I lived in the middle of nowhere. Literally, there was a general store and a hairdresser and a post office and a bar in town, and, like, that was basically it? No fucking clue how the hairdresser kept in business when all her customers were farmers. So, like, there was shit all to do, so we made our own fun, yeah? Between our families we had, like, ten acres of land, and most of it’s crops, but there was a forest bordering our west side, so we went and dicked around in there a lot.

                    (II. When the Faeries look upon this world, there is no stopping their magic.)

So, Samantha was running ahead of me, red hair to the wind. She always was quicker, and with me on my period, it just wasn’t a fair matchup at all. “Hey, wait - wait up! Why do you always have to get so far ahead?”

“You will /not/ believe what I’ve found in here,” Samantha called back, not slowing down even a little. “You’ve just gotta come and see!”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Sam, just give me a minute!”

                    (III. But there are rules which even the Fae obey.)

I eventually caught up to her, knelt at the base of a tree which looked like it was alive back when the King of England was still the ruler of basically everything. There was a great hollow inside, even big enough for someone like me to fit.

“Go on, go inside,” Samantha said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Why the fuck do I want to crawl inside some moldy old tree?”

“Just do it!”

“Ugh, okay, fine,” I got to my knees, crawled inside. The air smelt rancid, and I’m pretty sure I felt a spider crawling on my arm. Sam tossed a torch in after me, and I flicked it on.

                    (IV. Desperate men, for instance, may beseech the Faeries with a gift of blood.)

There were patterns drawn on the inside of the tree. I shone the light up the hollow trunk - they went up, and up, and up, further than I could have reached even if I was able to stand up properly.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“You’re telling me,” Sam replied.

“And you’re sure your skinny arse didn’t scrawl these in yourself?”

“I am /way/ too short to do that.” And she was right, as much as I wanted to pin this on her. “So, like -”

                    (V. But to attract the attention of the Fae, for most, is tantamount to death.)

She must have said something, but her words, suddenly, sounded like they were underwater. Distantly, I heard the strings of an orchestra.

“-lieve me if I’d told you,” Samantha fades back in, after a moment. I lean against the back of the trunk, bringing a hand up to run through my hair.

“Shut up a second,” I say, sounding so unsettled that Sam actually does. “Didn’t you hear that?”

“Hear what? You’re crazy, Jen. There’s nothing–”

She faded out again, and this time my sight clouded, too. “Sam? Sam!” I cried out, trying to feel the entrance and pull myself out. There was something in the wood, or something, like – like maybe a mushroom had sent out spores and it was making me crazy? That sounded right. I had to get out of there.

I found the lip of the trunk, and tugged myself out, tumbling to the ground. The strings in the background were getting clearer, louder. A hallucination? It had to be. It didn’t sound like any of the symphonies my mother liked to put on while she was doing her work. There was just something wrong to them, like someone had heard violin music and tried to mimic it without truly understanding what a violin was, or how music worked at all.

Noise. That’s the word. It was all just noise. Pretty noise, but not music at all.

“Sam,” I said, my voice trembling more than I’d like, “I’m really freaking out here, and I just - I need some help, like, please, I’m not fucking kidding here.”

At first I thought my vision wasn’t getting better at all, but I realised that it was resolving - I was just looking into a bright-arse light. There were greens and browns, blurry hints of the forest, and no sign of Samantha at all.

“Hello, Jenny,” said the light, scratchy-voiced and lilting. “We have heard your plea. We are listening.”

                    (VI. Be clear, be concise, and pray to your Gods when they cannot hear you.)                        

24:58 10/10/38 hairbrained: lol i cant believe i’m up this late
00:01 11/10/38 alicexplosions: I know, right? I just can’t sleep after the news.
00:02 11/10/38 hairbrained: u’d think theyd be more careful but nooooo gotta start bustin into ppls homes
00:03 11/10/38 hairbrained: u sure ur ok?
00:05 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Yeah, I’m okay. I live in the middle of nowhere. You should probably find a place to bunker down for the night, though.
00:08 11/10/38 hairbrained: ugh yeah but this spots got wifi and u kno i gotta keep in touch w/ my top grrl
00:09 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Haha, thanks. Love you too babe.
00:09 11/10/38 alicexplosions: But you seriously gotta find somewhere to sleep.
00:10 11/10/38 alicexplosions: I don’t care if you’re the ~maiden of coffee~, you gotta sleep eventually.
00:12 11/10/38 hairbrained: ughhhhh look at me gettin schooled by some NERD
00:14 11/10/38 hairbrained: movin around is just gonna make em more suspicious like tho
00:16 11/10/38 alicexplosions: If they’ve got one of us on their side, you know they’ll find you if you stay in one spot.
00:17 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Come on. Please.
00:19 11/10/38 hairbrained: f iiiiiiiiii n e ill get on it
00:20 11/10/38 hairbrained: kisses!!!!!
00:20 11/10/38 alicexplosions: <3
00:21 11/10/38 hairbrained is now offline.

-

14:32 11/10/38 hairbrained is now online.
14:45 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Sorry I didn’t see you get online for a few minutes.
14:45 11/10/38 alicexplosions: The news has been crazy.
14:46 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Are you okay?
14:47 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Come on, you didn’t leave your computer out in the open, did you???
14:49 11/10/38 hairbrained: calm ur titters girlio in here
14:50 11/10/38 hairbrained: *im
14:51 11/10/38 hairbrained: was just in anothr window
14:52 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Phew. Sorry. How’s it going? Managed to evade them so far?
14:54 11/10/38 hairbrained: no alice i’m talkin from max security lockup numba 17
14:55 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Can we not joke about that??
14:56 11/10/38 hairbrained: yeah sorry.
14:57 11/10/38 hairbrained: im ok for now, chillin out in this fast food place cuz theyve got some top fuckin wifi
14:58 11/10/38 hairbrained: tho i did have to
14:58 11/10/38 hairbrained: uh
14:59 11/10/38 hairbrained: nvrmind
15:00 11/10/38 alicexplosions: No, it’s okat, you can tell me.
15:00 11/10/38 alicexplosions: *okay
15:02 11/10/38 hairbrained: oh kat u can tell me still works haha
15:03 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Haha, I guess it does.
15:04 11/10/38 hairbrained: neway its just
15:04 11/10/38 hairbrained: like
15:06 11/10/38 hairbrained: there was this girl right
15:07 11/10/38 hairbrained: obvs workin for em
15:08 11/10/38 hairbrained: so she tries to get me to come with her and i guess i kinda
15:12 11/10/38 hairbrained: i mean shes not ever gonna bother me again i guess
15:14 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Oh.
15:14 11/10/38 alicexplosions: Are you okay?
15:18 11/10/38 hairbrained: no
15:19 11/10/38 alicexplosions: I’m so sorry.
15:21 11/10/38 hairbrained: its ok
15:23 11/10/38 hairbrained: i mean its not ok but
15:24 11/10/38 hairbrained: not much u can do abt it
15:25 11/10/38 alicexplosions: I love you.
15:26 11/10/38 hairbrained: same 2 u
15:27 11/10/38 hairbrained: i goyya go
15:27 11/10/38 hairbrained is now offline.

-

09:21 12/10/38 alicexplosions: Kat?
09:21 12/10/38 alicexplosions: Kat, I heard from my dad that they’re closing off the rail line tomorrow.
09:22 12/10/38 alicexplosions: You’ve gotta get on there now if we’re gonna get you up here.
09:23 12/10/38 alicexplosions: Gods, I hope you get this.
09:23 12/10/38 alicexplosions: Please stop running and find a hotspot.
09:24 12/10/38 alicexplosions: This is really important.
11:39 12/10/38 alicexplosions is now offline.
13:11 12/10/38 hairbrained is now online.
13:15 12/10/38 hairbrained: woooow u nevr leave a bunch of offline msgs
13:17 12/10/38 hairbrained: haha thats wild
13:19 12/10/38 hairbrained: can guess it from the temp of stuff here tho
13:25 12/10/38 hairbrained: i dont rekon i can catch that train
13:26 12/10/38 hairbrained: theres police everywher
13:28 12/10/38 hairbrained: i’m not gonna kill a bunch of innocent ppl
13:30 12/10/38 hairbrained: who think theyre just doin their jobs
13:32 12/10/38 hairbrained: im stealin someones unlocked wireless rn
13:33 12/10/38 hairbrained: but i think theyll find me soon
13:34 12/10/38 hairbrained: only so many backyards can hide a girl u kno?
13:38 12/10/38 hairbrained: i guess i wanted to say im sorry
13:39 12/10/38 hairbrained: and like
13:41 12/10/38 hairbrained: i’ll try to catch that train
13:42 12/10/38 hairbrained: but
13:43 12/10/38 hairbrained: just dont expect me i guess
13:43 12/10/38 hairbrained: ilu
13:44 12/10/38 hairbrained: bye
13:59 12/10/38 hairbrained is now offline.

After death, a woman has a brief conversation with a strange entity. Can love and justice exist in a cruel world? 452 words.

“Do you believe in a loving God?”, said the variform cluster, wisping about Martha in a way which she did not quite believe exuded curiosity.

“I don’t much believe in a God at all,” said Martha, “and I don’t see why I have to justify myself to a cloud.”

“A cluster,” said the variform, which puffed about Martha’s cheeks and retreated a foot or so away. “Love-justice harmony. We believe you should believe in a loving God. There is a cavalcade of proof.”

Martha thought it was rather odd, speaking to a puffy cloud-cluster with clouds all around her and not a human in sight. But then, after all, she was dead, and she supposed that dead women oughtn’t fuss too much about their conversational partners.

“You don’t believe us,” said the cluster, and it was disappointed – she could smell it. “There are infinite chances for destruction to reign upon your world. Flames bursting into flames and sucked into the vast expanse of void. And yet, you persevere. You are still here. You have been here for billions of years, and you developed from nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing has not come to reclaim you.”

The variform coiled up above Martha, chanting amongst itself. “Love! Justice! Love! Justice!”

Martha resolved not to be intimidated by a strange cloud, and brushed herself off.

“Now that all seems rather presumptuous to me.”

“Why?” The clouds came crashing back down, as if crushed by the weight of her count. “Why?”

“If it’s really love and justice, what about all the suffering in the world? My brother’s wife was killed, you know, in that awful war a few years back. And I - well - goodness,” Martha staggered back, and fell right into the puffy ground. “I died, too, I suppose. After a long struggle with illness. I don’t need to tell you about all the suffering I felt there!”

The cluster curved into itself, and again, in a way which Martha thought must have been a visual trick. “Small things.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are alive. You are alive! You and millions of little creatures which lived upon you and within you and your family and the insects and many, many algae. What higher justice than this? You have lived life and experienced existence and the void has not consumed you.”

“You’re rather strange,” said Martha.

“You’re all very strange,” said the cluster. “But I hope you will know, before the nothingness takes hold. We love you.”

Martha lay back against the ephemeral clouds, closed her eyes, and smiled. “It was an interesting conversation.”

The cluster swarmed over her body as she slept for the last time.

It was always so very happy and so very sad.

a/n:my tumblrbuddy lizardywizard expressed a sadness at a lack of a certain type of fiction and then i got inspired to try and write a thing approximating some of those themes woops

positive instrumentality time with aliens and earth creatures ahead

The Awake-place smells like earthworms and new tubers, and I do not know why anyone would want to leave. If I dream I am shulesh again, with smooth-scale sides and the horn-coverings from which I breathe; and I can burrow into the earth and it will fold between my scales. I will feel it and smell it and taste it. But when I am Awake I feel, and smell, and taste. It is no different, but for its variety.

There are so many people here. I am not yet moved to find my own - if I am shulesh, I do not want to speak with my people. But here, in this Awakened world, there are tens, tens upon tens, tens and tens of tens. People who do not smell or taste, people who do so many other things entirely. They are all allowed. They are all permitted. In this world, we do not dream. There is no earth to claim you, no water to swallow you up and drown. These things exist, but they cannot hurt you. Not unless you let them.

The Awake-place is the best I know.

No one knows how we arrived here. There are people who feel fluttery against my scales, who smell of leaves and feather-dust, who say we sung the right note. That one day, in their song, they just harmonised with the universe. There are another people from that place, and they feel like me but they’re smooth and wet and they dig through the water instead of the earth – they say it was a song, too. And another people, from far far away, who melt over me and across and they say it was a symphony they joined.

But I do not believe the flutter-people or the ones who dig through water. There are another, tall enough you would climb to their top and you would not be on the ground at all, who stride across the land and veil themselves in skins they didn’t grow. They say it was prayers, or meditations. Keeping still-mind and contemplating and considering. And I like this explanation, because this is how I Woke Up. It is with my own company that I did. In long years between the matings, reflecting upon the smell of rotten roots and taste of bad earth. But why? I asked why. I asked why and I never learned but I Woke Up.

The flow-people make sad notes I can feel about how their others haven’t arrived. I know it’s possible to go back to sleep, to go and tell others to Wake Up. I haven’t. I can’t imagine leaving. But they do, and they are sad, because their others will not come with them and Wake Up. They’re afraid. They think they’ll lose something, I think? That the earth won’t taste like anything and you’ll fall through it and open up into water and drown.

It’s impossible to describe! You can fall through but it’s under your power. And you can dig into water, and you won’t drown. You can dig through the water – the smooth-skinned singers tell me this is called ‘swimming’. You can dig up onto the surface and the air will not burn, and the hunters will not bite, and you can dig up into the air and right through the sun. There doesn’t have to be a sun. This is important, for some people. I am not impressed with a lack of sun, though I am impressed that I can dig through it, because it is part of the sky and we do not know the sky. I am impressed with how hot it feels. Almost uncomfortably so.

Does that make any sense?

… like I said, it’s impossible to describe.

With the Awake, I don’t have to describe. I can become them and they can become me and they know, without me saying anything. I think I leave a piece of myself behind, every time it happens; a little piece of them is left in me. I have a little piece of damp from the smooth-skinned swimmers, a scrap of someone else’s wool from the many-veiled striders. I think, soon, I will meet another shulesh here, and perhaps then I will have enough of everyone that I’ll be able to put aside the laws of my nature and come to them as well.

Can you imagine? Being able to put aside the instinct to strike out and run away? I could not imagine. But there are so many people here who can. Who do! It’s strange, but I don’t think it’s frightening.

There is still so much for me to learn.

I do not want to wake up.

Lunarpunk

Lunarpunk is the sister aesthetic to solarpunk, but darker, I was actually surprised to see it has it’s own flag presented below. The basis is people moving to the moon and waiting for the earth to heal while in colonies, there would be tons of difficulties with low gravitational pull, constant unfiltered radiation from the sun, and probably even keeping warm, very compelling in my opinion.

It looks much like the solarpunk flag, but unlike the solarpunk flag, lunarpunk doesn’t have a political movement attached 

Tidalpunk

Tidalpunk is basically humans moving to the sea because the land has been left unhealed for so long, it’s almost uninhabitable, so people are living on or under the sea until the land is able to start healing again/ Expansion in population has led to housing out at or under water that’s Eco-friendly and doesn’t harm wildlife, sadly this one doesn’t have a flag. Luckily it has an aesthetic though.

Sustainable, ocean-based living? Yes please, makes me wish I knew how to swim though. To be perfectly honest I’m out of ideas on this post, so if you have any more ideas, please feel free to re-blog with what sub-genres relating to solarpunk you could find. I’m certain there are niche ones that I haven’t found yet.

As always, this has been @punkofsunshine, see ya’ll soon.

Now and then we get asked for advice on creating a book collection. Most of our collectors know exactly what they want to collect and how to go about it, but for new collectors it can be a difficult task.

One of the biggest sticking points, particularly over the last decade or so, is concern about getting the key titles. We were recently offered a collection of Ian Rankin books, it was a nice collection, mostly in decent shape, but lacked the key title, Knots and Crosses. The collector was looking to sell because he couldn’t justify spending £1000 or so on a nice copy, and an ex-library copy just didn’t seem right. So he planned on selling the rest of the set to finance a purchase of Knots and Crosses and taking it from there.

This is something we see increasingly; the price of collection highlights has increase hugely over the last couple of decades as the true scarcity of these items is better known through improved information access and the demand is similarly increased as their prices become more visible. We’re going to talk below about various strategies to deal with this.

Accept that Goalposts Move

Now, it’s important to note that the vast majority of collectors don’t have a goal in mind when collecting. At first, yes, most do, but as that collection grows, the goalposts move - nearly always. Sometimes this is manifest through a sell-off, where the collection is sold to finance a new one. Sometimes the completed collection becomes part of a collection and other interests take precedence (I’ve got a full set of Heinlein’sUK hardbacks, I’m going to get the US hardbacks now or I’ve got all BernardCornwell’sbooks, I might move onto Patrick O’Brian now). Most often though, the side collections and diversions take seed much earlier on, particularly when opportunity offers.

The best thing about this though, is that this is good and almost vital. 

1. Accepting this leads to accepting the fact that collecting is about the journey not the result.
2. Accepting this lessens the impact of completion; the collection will never be complete so that missing volume isn’t asvital (tenuous point in some cases)
3. Accepting this vastly improves the chances of finding books for the collection. The joy is in the chase of course not the capture.

How to Pick a Starting Point

A lot of people specialise, we have collectors who just buy Stephen King proofs, others who just buy Nebula award winners. These kind of collectors have often been through the process of deciding what they want and are acceptant of the limitations and costs. But if you don’t have a specific definition, or even if you do, our recommendations are as follows.

Build on your Interests

IfHaruki Murakamiis your favourite author, then perhaps that would be a good place to start. Write his name on a piece of paper, but nothing further. If you like modernism, write that on the piece of paper. Books with high production values, write it on the paper. Books you’ve read, write it down. The Vietnam War, write it down. Significant moments in the history of literature, write it down.

Perhaps your interests aren’t as clearly defined and you’re interested in curious inscriptions, true rarities or forgotten books. Still, write it down, but take a moment to think how those rules are defined. Books with curious inscriptions - does the inscription have to be by the author? What defines curious? True rarities - What defines a true rarity? No copies on the market, unrecorded in bibliographies? Forgotten books - Are these books that have been out of print for fifty years? Perhaps they don’t have an entry in Wikipedia? Perhaps there’s no reference online? Once you’ve produced the definition, write it down.

Maybe you want to just collection books that take your fancy - then you don’t need this list. You’re happy, your horizon is wide and distant. Guard you secret jealously.

Think About your Budget

This is one of the most important things to consider. Try not to think about what you might be able to afford in the future (it will never be enough), think about how much and how often you want to be able to able to invest (invest in the enjoyment not the financial return). Here at Hyraxia Books we have collectors who know the books they want and will pay for them over a number of months. That’s fine, and they’ve usually accepted that that means fewer purchases. Others don’t like to do that, they enjoy the buzz of the chase so would rather spend £100 one week, £50 the next, £250 a month later. They might spend £1000 over a year, and think that they could’ve got one really nice book, but generally it’s more about the chase.

For many, this is just an as-and-when - you know how much you’re willing (or able) to spend on your collection. It’s just useful sometimes to take a step back and realise that many of the expensive books aren’t out of your reach, it might just take a bit of planning.

So with that in mind, pick a handful of prices, or better still, a range of prices you’re willing to pay. It might be wide £25-£2000, or it you might have thought that you’d like to buy a book every fortnight, so your range is £50-£100. Alternatively, you might have an idea from shopping the kind of prices that you consider: £500, £750, £2000, £1500. Write them down on your paper. The range isn’t as vital as understanding budget constraints, but it helps keep your collection in check. If you’re looking around the £500 mark, £10 books might lessen the collection, and similarly, if you limit yourself to £10, then the £500 book might tower over all the others.

Vitally though, the prices are secondary to the collection. This is important. If you want to get every book written by John Steinbeck then you still might need to plan, but your range should reflect the requirements of the definition.

Think About The Books

So, on your paper you have your budget and your interests. You have to now decide how they are going to reconcile. So if you’re interest is George Orwell and your budget is £500-£2000, you are not going to get a full set of first editions in dustjackets. If your interest is Magic Realism, and your budget is £25-£250, then you’re not going to get a first Argentinian edition of 100 Years of Solitude. So how do you reconcile that?

Let’s be practical here. If-you-try-hard-you-can-achieve-anything doesn’t apply. The majority of people will to spend a couple of hundred on a book every now and then will never spend a few thousand. So to reconcile you have to add a little further detail to your piece of paper. So, if you wrote T.S. Eliot as your interest, and your budget doesn’t allow for the first edition of The Waste Land, then you need to think of alternatives, for example:

• Later editions
• First editions from other countries
• Limited editions
• Signed copies
• Copies in lesser condition
• Interesting copies
• Magazine printings
  

Write those things below the list, and now those editions apply to T.S. Eliot. You now don’t have a problem, well, you do, you still can’t have that first edition of the Waste Land, but even if you could, you might not be able to have a signed First Edition, and even then, you ain’t getting the manuscript.

Of course, this is entirely unacceptable for some, perhaps even for most. Later editions, second impressions, jacketless copies are simply unacceptable to some. In that case, you need to think about payment plans or be incredibly diligent in your searches. 

Think About the Scope

So, you’ve written down your list of editions to satisfy your interest in Iain Banks, but your conclusion is that you wouldn’t be happy with a US first edition of The Wasp Factory where the others are all UK first editions, and your wife or husband won’t let you spend £50 a month for the next six months. This is when you start to widen the scope. If you collect all the other books, but are lacking The Wasp Factory, then you’ll be sitting with an incomplete collection until finances improve, a bargain comes along or the spouse is silenced. So widen the scope a little from the off. Perhaps it’ll include Banks’ science ficiton novels, perhaps it’ll include proofs, or interesting signed copies. Maybe you’ll increase the scope to include other Scottish writers, or similar books / authors you’re interested in. Having a larger set of books that would fit in your collection means that you’ll always be further from completion, which sounds bad, but it means that you can always improve your collection and you’ll be happier with it.

Our own personal collection approaches the scope from two sides to try and approximate a good plan. It’s essentially a cross-section of Speculative Fiction. I love Haruki Murakami, I’ve had all his first editions, all his limited editions, all his deluxe editions. I got a copy of Sleep, one of 45 copies only to read on the colophon that there 15 additional reserved copies that I was very unlikely to get hold of. It’s also a £3000-£4000 book. These two facts told me that I would not be in a position to complete a Murakamicollection, not for a while anyway. So I would be looking at an incomplete collection, but not incomplete in a good way, incomplete in an irritating way. So I sold some of it as our first catalogue.

I still like Murakamithough, and he still needs a place in our collection. So we restricted ourselves to four of his books. And as our collection is a cross-section of Speculative Fiction, they have to be speculative. So for us personally, four is key. I don’t know why four, it just seemed right for us. So I got my piece of paper and wrote Speculative Fiction on it (actually a spreadsheet). Then I created a dozen boxes with four entries. The first box said Murakamiin it, the second said Robin Hobb, the third said Magic Realism. At that point, the collection had blown wide open. The cross-section wasn’t just authors any more, it was genres and categories. The next box was Edwardian Weird Tales. Now we were getting specific, but to me the definition of our collection was coming into focus; it was a description of speculative fiction right across the board, from the earliest stories to the most recent. Each area of the genre was to be represented by either four key or interesting titles, authors or oeuvres. Once the oeuvres were included the scope was enormous. I wrote Greek Myths in one box. Now the scope was ridiculous, but completion was in sight, and could even be surpassed. Take one section for example, Cyberpunk. Not a huge fan of Cyberpunk, but I like it in our collection. I need to pick four books, not even key titles; there are more than four key titles so it’s just a representative selection. We added a signed copy of Neuromancer, UK first edition. The key title, as good as it gets (actually not, a proof would be nicer, or a copy inscribed to Bruce Sterling…manuscript?). Book number two hasn’t been bought yet or decided. It could be the Nov 1983 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories (though that doesn’t fit with our budget requirements). Snow Crash? Yep, it has to be Snowcrash, maybe I won’t get the Bantam first edition at the price I want, so maybe we’ll go for the Subterranean Press edition from a couple of years ago. The point is, the books that could make it into our collection are many more than there is room for. And maybe in a few years I’ll upgrade that Sub Press edition, maybe I’ll stretch it to five books.

A final word on scope, is that as the boundaries of your definition become more and more vague, your collecting becomes much more fun. Start to include ephemera, prints, meta-works, anthologies etc.

Think About Condition

You will hear it from everyone condition, condition, condition. It’s the collector’s equivalent of location, location, location. I’m sure if we had some tedious, uninspired TV show that’s what it would be called. But as anyone who’s moved house knows, location is just one factor. Condition’s important, always go for the best that you can afford…no always go for the best that works within your budget. Yes, a fine copy will increase in value a little quicker than a very good copy, and may be easier to sell. But I wouldn’t worry too much if it’s so restrictive that it affects the balance of your collection and collecting. Does that copy of Dr. No have to be fine? Are you happy spending a little less and getting a copy of Thunderballas well?

Learn When to Say No

Even if your funds are limitless, and some essentially are, you still just don’t want to amass. Amassing dilutes the collection, it lessens the highlights and achievements. If you find yourself in the position of buying 200 books from a friend who has lost interest in collecting books and has moved on to coins (I shudder at the thought). Then buy them, treat yourself to those you really like, those that fit in with your definition or those that offer a new branch that you really like. Get rid of the others. Sell them to a dealer, take them to auction, or just put them in a box in the loft.

If you don’t, you’ll end up losing sight of the (ever changing) definition. It will lessen the impact of your own collection, particularly if some of those books surpass your treasures in terms of value and / or prestige. Of course, like I say above, this might be an opportunity to expand your definition and that’s fine, but you need to think it through.

Collections Can Shrink

Book collecting is a long game, it takes years, a lifetime, several lifetimes. Your tastes will change, as will your budget, as will the market. Keep this in mind because some of your treasures will lose their appeal, some will lose their value. There’s nothing wrong with trimming off the fat now and then. Similarly, if you have a copy that’s a little poorer than you’d like, maybe missing a jacket or even an ex-library copy. Maybe you loved Colin Dexter when you were forty and it was on the TV. When the time is right, sell it. You might make a loss, you might make a profit.

The important thing is that you don’t let books stick around when they no longer fit the definition, or if they just don’t suit. I do this as a dealer, I usually price faded copies quite low because it’s my bug bear. They stare at me on the shelves - they have to go.

Don’t take this too lightly though. If you have a nice Brighton Rock in dust jacket, that just no longer appeals to you, bear in mind that it might take a couple of decades to get another copy.

Ignore the Above

Ok, that works for me, it works for a lot of our collectors. But for many people, increasing the scope, or removing edition restrictions totally undermines their collection. In that case, keep your definition tight, buy just exactly what fits that definition and ignore what I’ve said.

A Word About Investments

If you look at the selling prices of many books from 20 years ago, and compare to now, you will immediately be aware of how wealthy you could’ve been. Similarly, if you look at the results of the last 20 FA Cup Finals, you will be immediately aware of how wealthy you could’ve been. Don’t collect with a view to getting a decent return. It might happen, it might not, some books will go up in value, some will go down. Collect for the chase, even if that chase is for a bargain. 

Having said that, do bear in mind that the vast majority of books will be worth much less than retail price in the future. Salman Rushdie’sFury will never be worth more than £10-£20. Even if his next book is better than the Divine Comedy,Fury, will always be a cheap books. There are thousands of them. Having this in your collection might be necessary, but understand it’s value - it’s not a financial investment, it’s part of a collection.

Midnight’s Children on the other hand, the Booker of Bookers. It’s already expensive, but surely it’ll go up in value? Right? Maybe. The Booker prize might cease in 2025, and fade into obscurity. But it’s still a good book, a great book, it’ll always be remembered, right? Maybe. Lots of great books have been forgotten, lots of great books are cheap.

If you’re concerned about a return on investment, take into account the scarcity, market values, copies on the market, time on the market, quality of the writing, significance of the author to literature in general, significance of the book specifically, anything unique?

Conclusion

So, what’s the conclusion? Well, this isn’t a cover-all type of situation. It’s more of a way of mitigating the concern that you’ll never get exactly what you want. Every collection is different, every collector has their own method and motivation and most collectors probably accept this already. Sometimes it can be fun to relax your definition a little, or to have a think about approaching your collection from a different angle. For us personally, we started many moons ago with the notion of being completists; it was never as fun as it is now.

We get enough people at book fairs, sellers included, asking us what Speculative Fiction is that we thought an explanation was merited.

Note: I have no intention of arguing the case that science fiction and fantasy are as much skilled works of art as regular literature; that argument has been covered enough times and it bores me. Time determines what is art not genre.

As the term suggests speculative fiction is fiction that involves some element of speculation. Of course, one can argue that all fiction is speculative insofar as it speculates what could happen if various elements of a story were combined. Yet we feel that this term is descriptive enough to encompass the type of literature we want to categorise. First, a word about genre

Book genre is of limited use and is often more harmful than good. If you went into a bookshop and asked for literature, you’d be taken to the fiction section. If you said that you were looking for any Darwinian literature you’d be sent to the science section. At some point it was determined that literature suggested artistic merit. Yet we also use it to cover a particular grouping of written works. The point is that classifying the written word is a little futile as common usage will usually dictate what that classification envelops, and common usage is of course open to interpretation. Genre does however allow boundaries to be set for marketing purposes; if a reader enjoyed a number of books in a certain genre then there’s a reasonable chance they’d enjoy other books in the same genre. From a critical perspective, understanding genre helps align a work of literature with one’s expectations; certain tropes and mechanisms are, to some extent, more acceptable in one genre than another.

Now, this element of speculation. The speculation in speculative fiction isn’t concerned solely with speculation over how various story elements might interact, but speculation over the fabric of those elements. A work of speculative fiction takes one or more elements of an otherwise perfectly possible story and speculates as to what would happen if that element existed outside of current understanding or experience. Essentially, it’s writing about things that aren’t currently possible. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a father-son story of survival, nearly everything is contemporaneously possible, except one thing the setting of the story is plausible future. 

When you pick up an Agatha Christie, a Jane Austen or a Graham Greene, regardless of how the story unfurls, and how perhaps unlikely the story, it’s always within the realm of possibility (poor writing and deus ex machina aside). Yet a Philip K. Dick, a Tolkien or a Stephen King will always seem impossible, given current understanding.

The word current is key, to allow inclusion of scientific speculation. A seminal work like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars has a lot of the science in place to explain how the colonisation of Mars might / could take place (I assume the science is correct; it doesn’t matter to me personally but I know a lot of readers are particular in this area). The speculation is on how plausible, but currently theoretical, scientific and technological advances might solve a problem. 

There is a slight grey area where such scientific knowledge and its technical implementation exists and is currently possible and a good story has been written about it. Imagine a book about travelling to the moon written in 1969. Imagine it’s not an adventure, it explores personal relationships between the characters and their heroic journey. For someone unfamiliar with planned space travel such a book would seem like science fiction, yet it was of course entirely possible in 1969. I personally wouldn’t classify such a work as speculative fiction as it doesn’t fit the definition, but I’d certainly class it as science fiction if I were to market it as it would fit the bill for many readers. Similarly a book like Psycho, it’s a work of horror but there’s no supernatural element and it’s plausible and possible given current understanding.

For books like The Hobbit orCarriethecurrent part of the definition becomes less important; Middle-Earth neither has nor probably will exist, neither will telekinesis. Of course, as science progresses some things that are currently implausible will be come plausible, if not possible. Space travel being a great example; progress is constantly being made.

Speculative fiction is also an umbrella term so includes the majority of works in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres, also smaller genres such as magic realism, weird fiction and more classical genres such as mythology, fairy tales and folklore. Many people break speculative fiction into two categories though: fantasy and science fiction, the former being implausible the latter being plausible (in simplistic terms). This is helpful for those interested in having some sort of technical foundation upon which to build their speculation, and those who aren’t.

When one thinks of science fiction, one thinks back to the 1930’s and the Gernsback era, perhaps earlier to Wells and Verne. One might even cite Frankenstein. When one thinks of fantasy one thinks of Tolkien, perhaps Victorian / Edwardian ghost stories, Dracula, perhaps Frankenstein. It seems comfortable to think of these things as modern endeavours. Anything earlier often falls under the general category of literature (in the non-speculative fiction sense). Take More’s Utopia,you’d find that under literature or classics, not under fantasy. Similarly Gulliver’s Travels. Again, this is just marketing; there’s no reason why Gulliver’s Travels should not be shelved next to Lord of the Rings other than to meet a reader’s expectation.

At Hyraxia Books we like to think of certain classic works not simply as works that have contributed to the literary canon, but also as works that have contributed to the speculative fiction canon. For us, Aesop’s Fables,Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, Otranto, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Iliad, The Prose Edda, Beowulf and the Epic of Gilgamesh are not simply classics, but also speculative fiction classics. We don’t like to think of the genre starting in the last two hundred years, we like to think of literature (in the non-speculative fiction sense) having branched off from the speculative rather than the other way round. We like to see how that story has played out over the millennia.

That is how we define speculative fiction for the basis of our stock. Of course, we stock other items too, many of which we are very fond of.

In this post we’ll be looking at John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and the White Devil.

This is just the second post on our blog and already I’m breaking the rules somewhat. To remind you, the idea of this blog was to look at works of speculative fiction that have fallen from the general reader’s view. These are books that may well be beloved of the scholar and classicist, but for the general reader of speculative fiction they may as well be from Mars (OK, that’s a terrible analogy, it would’ve been better to say that they may as well be from earth).

So, why the John Webster then? Well, the answer I’ve come to is that there is a strong element of myth and horror in both The Duchess [of Malfi]and The White Devil, with their dark subject matters. I admit though, this is not enough to warrant inclusion. So how about the fact that they’re not actively promoted in modern culture. Again, a massive lie, both are currently being performed in London, the White Devil by the RSC no less.

So, I ask myself again, why did I pick the book? Well, the honest answer…all my speculative books were packed ready for WorldCon, and this was the only one that look remotely speculative left on the shelf [and I’ll admit, I know very little about either play]. However, I’ll justify myself by treating this as an examination of something I read recently noting that there was an element of lycanthropy in The Duchess. Coupling this with the disturbing undertones of his works we have a sort of proto-horror without the supernatural element. For the sake of brevity we’ll focus primarily on The Duchess, though The White Devil does have a couple of ghosts in it, which I’m pretty sure plant it firmly in the speculative camp.

John Webster, as many no doubt know, was a 17th century playlist remembered for his dark and macabre Jacobean dramas. The plays he’s best remembered for are the two aforementioned, with The Duchess being first performed privately around 1612-1613. He is credited as having provided some of the groundwork for the Gothic movement in literature of late 18th / early 19th century. Though it would be a stretch to describe his work as Gothic, it certainly slithers along with the same unsettling backdrop. Webster is one of only a handful of playwrights who have had their works under almost constant performance since first publication

The Duchess was first performed publicly by The King’s Men, the company of actors to which Shakespeare belonged and who first performed his plays. The date of performance seems tricky to tie down but the consensus seems to be between 1614 and 1621. The first edition of the book was published in 1623. 

So let’s have a look at the particular edition of the book that we have in stock [Bodley Head, 1930]. Like I said before, the book looked somewhat speculative sat on the shelf. To be more precise it looks like a work of the developing genre of supernatural horror from the turn of the century, adorned with a typically decadent design more familiar to book buyers of the 1900-1910 era. The book is illustrated by Henry Keen, whom I assume provided the device on the upper board and spine which are repeated on the jacket and the illustrated endpapers. Little is known about Henry Weston Keen. He died in 1935 in Switzerland and was born in 1871. Christie’s sold a set of five signed lithographs in 1995 for £225. Now if we were to very liberally compare him to the bastard child of Goya and Dore, that £225 would be a supreme bargain. Alas, his work isn’t Goya or Dore, nor is it Clarke or Beardsley, though he does appear to borrow elements from all the aforementioned. That said, his work does have a slightly sinister resonance, particularly the vignettes. If one were to savagely remove the plates from the book and present them to a bookish type, one wouldn’t be surprised if they thought they were from a book of Gothic horror. The Cardinal’s Window plate is particularly Gothic with the looming tower to the left of the frame. 

The book carries facsimiles of recommendations by fellow dramatists William Rowley and Thomas Middleton, and a John Lane. This last name is proving difficult to research primarily because a much later John Lane was a publisher, ironically, a partner (with Elkin Mathews) in Bodley Head. The best guess we have is a poet of that name who the Dictionary of National Biography has as being active around 1620, apparently a friend of Milton’s father who published only two pieces - I assume that reputation far outweighed publication prowess in those days.

The facsimile title page notes that The Duchess was performed at Blackfriars privately and then publicly at The Globe. The White Divel was first published in 1612 [spelling is correct as per title page - I’d be interested to find out why it was spelt as Divel, it doesn’t appear to by etymologically linked]. The title of The Duchess per the title page is The Tragedy of the Dvtchesse Of Malfy, auction records show two copies, both from the 1930s, one listing reports that this was the first play to record the names of the characters with the actors - an interesting note. This copy sold for £12 with some leaves provided from a later copy. The second copy was seemingly complete and sold for £55 (£3,500 with inflation). Major British institutions hold copies including the BL, V&A, NLS and Leeds University (I may pop and see it). Anyway, that’s not the book I have.

So, finally, to the lycanthropy claim. Well, whether we’re talking about a physical transformation from man to wolf to man, a reported transformation, or a metaphorical transformation is not really the point. It seems that it’s likely a literary device with lycanthropy not only accentuating the beastliness of Ferdinand but also taking a swipe at Catholic prelacy, power in general and emotionally decay. But there’s certainly something deeper wherein Webster is suggesting that emotion can to some extent dictate the physcial. Either way, this is certainly a narrative element of speculative fiction, and so I feel justified in including it here!

Let’s have a look at a few lines, and you can judge for yourself:

“PESCARA: Pray thee, what’s his disease?

DOCTOR: A very pestilent disease, my lord, They call lycanthropia.

PESCARA: What’s that? I need a dictionary to’t.

DOCTOR: I’ll tell you. In those that are possess’d with’t there o'erflows Such melancholy humour, they imagine Themselves to be transformed into wolves; Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night, And dig dead bodies up: as two nights since One met the Duke ‘bout midnight in a lane Behind St. Mark’s Church, with the leg of a man Upon his shoulder, and he howl’d fearfully; Said he was a wolf, only the difference Was, a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside, His on the inside; bade them take their swords, Rip up his flesh, and try: straight, I was sent for, And having minister’d unto him, found his grace Very well recover’d.”

To summarise, while Webster’s plays might not be for the regular reader of speculative fiction, they certainly gel nicely with those readers of speculative fiction with a penchant for the weird and macabre, particularly those who enjoy the works of Hope Hodson, Machen, Blackwood etc.

Our copy is available here: Link

The Latinx Archive is a two-volume anthology of speculative fiction written by U.S. Latina/os which will be published by Wings Press in 2019. They are looking for original and unpublished short stories, poetry, plays, and graphic arts. The anthology will be published in English, but submissions can also be in Spanish or any Latin American indigenous language.

Please share. More information at the source.

youstoodmeupforayardsale:

coolhotdad:

my perfect crime? I memorize the entirety of the macy’s store inventory. I then go on aliexpress.com and find exact replicas of every single purse in the store. I break in at 3am, and replace every purse with a cheaper version of the purse. I take my real purses home and open up an online store on the darknet featuring fake purses. I then sell these real purses as fake purses, making it so that when the feds catch on to my antics, they spend countless years trying to figure out who can replicate purses this well, and who is selling them. Soon an entire division of the FBI is dedicated to finding me and figuring out how my “fake” purses appear to be real. 45 years later they finally trace my ip address and break into my villa in texas and shoot me right in the leg when i attempt to flee. While this would normally not be a fatal wound, due to my constant devotion to my online fake real purse storefront i have suffered an iron deficiency for 35 years. My blood can’t clot and I start to bleed out. Turns out the woman who shot me was a girl who i made out with once in college, and she holds my dying body in her arms and asks me how my fake purses were so real. I spend the last moments of my fleeting life telling her about how every five years i break into a different Macy’s and replace all the purses, and that the purses I have been selling online for a severely discounted price were actually all real, and I have been doing this purely for the gag of it all. When my former college girlfriend gets home from work after rightfully murdering me for my crimes, she goes into her walk in closet, looks at the 13 gucci purses she owns, and realizes that they’re all fakes.

this passed the bechdel test

Sci-Fi Sunday: An Intro to Science Fiction

Sci-Fi Sunday: An Intro to Science Fiction

Welcome to the first Sci-Fi Sunday. This is going to be a regular feature on the blog. Why? Because science fiction is my jam and it is a highly underrated genre. My life is one of dodging weird looks and being called strange for my love of science fiction. Even as a child, I couldn’t get enough. Sunday nights were the best because Buck Rogers, Space 1999, Star Trek, and the original Battlestar…

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Love Not Found is a series exploring themes of love and intimacy in an era when humans choose to forego physical contact similar to The Naked SunandDemolition Man.

It features a sweet, sincere main character who smiles through her own emotional difficulties and a richly developed ensemble cast with multiple LGBTQ+ couples. Fans of Steven UniverseandSailor Moon will enjoy the strong themes of love, friendship, and romance that are at the very core of the series!

This Kickstarter campaign is funding the second volume of Love Not Found (collecting chapters 8-14 of the series).

The book will contain nearly 300 pages of FULL COLOR comics and bonus content including concept art, story notes, and character bios.

Additionally, It will see Standby Mode in print as well as other unique Love Not Found bookmarks, stickers, prints and more!

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Love Not Found Vol.2 - Kickstarter launches June 22!

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Visit the Official Project Page for Love Not Found volume 2 and click the “Notify on Launch” button to be notified as soon as the campaign launches!

Backing the book early helps a campaign tremendously! You will only be billed after the campaign concludes and the funding goal is met.

Spreading the word about the project is a FREE way you can help in a huge way! If you enjoy the series, are excited to check out this project, and/or end up backing it tell your friends and social media acquaintances!