The Moment of Eclipse is a collection of short stories by Brian Aldiss. Yes, it is weird that I aspire to write fantasy yet seem to be constantly reading science fiction. In my defence, all the fantasy books I have to read are very long and all the science fiction has been under 200 pages. Is this a psychological thing and I’m being tricked by font sizing? 100% yes. Does it really matter because fantasy and science fiction are the same genre? Shut your mouth, every online book seller! They’re very different genres! Don’t you dare trot out that Arthur C. Clarke quote about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic! That guy also wrote this:

SOME WOMEN, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of an un-holstered lady officer through the control cabin.

Is this the person you want defining the genres? Be reasonable. Anyways, moving on from rampant sexism in the sci-fi genre, I’d like to talk about The Moment of Eclipse and… hold on… let me check my notes… oh… oh no.

The first Brian Aldiss novel I read was Hothouse and I love Hothouse. It’s the best Dying Earth type story I’ve read and there’s a lot of things I like in it. Like the bit where a spooky song compels anyone who hears it to throw themselves into a volcano and there’s a weird beckoning hand in there. 10/10, love it. Perfect. The second Brian Aldiss novel I read was Non-Stop and that was fine, probably undercut by every sci-fi TV show having stolen it’s core premise. Then I read Finches of Mars and I found it to be wild horny but it did have a mad horse making a speech about the end of days. So, what would Moment of Eclipse be like? Perhaps a mix of all three? Yes. Yes it is. Also, this will contain spoilers for everything.

The Moment of Eclipse

A film maker is obsessed with a married woman. She is married to an ambassador who is being moved to Lagos. The film maker follows them, hoping to seduce the wife. When he gets his opportunity he finds his sight is eclipsed from within. Turns out he’s riddled with parasitic worms but a doctor gets rid of them. He stops being obsessed with the woman because of this unpleasant experience. Not that good a story but it does set the tone for the rest of the book, which is to say it’s going to be awash with weird imperialism, racism, and sexism. Volcano hand, save me!

The Day We Embarked for Cythera…

I looked at this one on the index and drew a complete blank. Then I skimmed through it and kind of remembered it but not what it was about. From my research, it appears to be about people lounging around in a field. People talk about it’s “poetic prose” which I always take as a sign it’s not for me. The only poetic prose I’m interested is that crafted by the sonorous voice of the spooky volcano hand.

Orgy of the Living and the Dying

Tancred (good name) is a soldier stationed in India and he hears voices.The mysterious voices themselves are actually quite well done in the formatting, an entire line is underlined and just interjects itself in the story. It’s good! That’s the nicest thing I have to say about this. Tancred is cheating on his wife with Sushila;

Sushila now was almost nineteen, a mature and strong minded woman.

Cool, cool. Also, Tancred first met her when she stayed with him and his wife 3 years ago when she was studying nursing. So, obviously, when he got the chance to be stationed in one of the famine stricken parts of India, he tracked her down! Because since he first met her, when she was 16, he really wanted to sleep with her.

The plot of this one is that bandits attack the UN camp to raid the food stockpile and then Tancred kills them with… sound? Like a weird sound system? I assumed the voices in his head were caused by this sound system but they weren’t, he just hears voices that are sometimes lines of dialogue from the future and sometimes just other stuff. In the collected reviews at the back of the book, the TRIBUNE says

ORGY OF THE LIVING AND THE DYING is simply one of the most perfectly realized short stories you will ever read

Don’t you put such a powerful curse on me, Tribune! This story was awful. I considered stopping right here, not only because of how wretched I found this story to be but also because my wife is Indian and what if she glances at what I’m reading? I’m not one of your characters, Aldiss! I don’t hate my wife, don’t ruin my marriage…!

Super Toys Last All Summer Long

This is the short story that the film AI is based on. I liked it! Man makes a robot child for his wife because they can’t have kids and then the government gives them a license to have kids. You do kind of feel bad for the robot child, David, and it also doesn’t faff about. It’s good, it’s short and it avoids the Indian subcontinent entirely. A welcome break.

The Village Swindler

Oh no, we’re back! Jane Pentecouth is travelling in India when her father has a heart attack. She is helped by Dr. Chandauri,

a beaming and terrifying Hindu.

This story was vile. This story is just constantly turning to look at you and going “Is there not a savage barbarity in the Indian soul that even the kind hand of the British Empire could not fully smother?”

Wrong audience for that one, buddy. I despised this. In the story, Jane’s father needs a heart transplant and a beggar she encountered earlier offers his heart in exchange for 50 rupees. Jane is distraught by this, it’s so cruel! Dr. Chandauri just laughs because that guy’s heart isn’t even worth 50 rupees! He’s an untouchable so his heart would be weak cause he was so poor all his life! What savage barab-

Just fuck off? This and a few other stories are very concerned with how India is doomed to failure once the kind British leave and it’s just infuriating. India is actually doing pretty well all things considered and, even if it wasn’t, is that not less a reflection of the Indian soul than the incredible damage done by colonialist exploitation? Like what is this? I hate this so much.

Down the Up Escalation

Again, don’t remember this. Looked over it. I think a guy working in publishing is looking over his aunt’s manuscript and maybe has a heart attack? I don’t know. This short story collection has a spaceship on the cover, why is it doing this to me?

That Uncomfortable Pause Between Life and Art…

I got nothing. Paintings? Something? Wait, it’s short. I’ll just reread it.

Man meets older woman in the canteen at the V&A museum. They kind of talk about art. Some stuff about technology. Also, they’ve both been to INDIA. I guess this is probably based on some encounter Aldiss had but just cause he had to live it doesn’t mean I want to hear about it. In fact, if anything I’m looking for the literal opposite of that.

Confluence

I cannot begin to explain the flood of relief I experienced when I read the opening line of:

The inhabitants of the planet Myrin have much to endure from Earthmen, inevitably perhaps, since they represent the only intelligent life we have so far found in the galaxy.

Space! The Final Frontier…! I read on eagerly only to discover that this entire story is a translation guide. Like this:

en io play : The deliberate dissolving of the senses into sleep

gee kutch : Solar empathy ge nu : The sorrow that overtakes a mother knowing her child will be born dead

ge nup dimu : The sorrow that overtakes the child in the womb when it knows it will be born dead

gor a : Ability to live for eight hundred years

And I bet if I’d come across this story without being slowly consumed from the inside by a hatred of the British Empire, I might have given it more time. Like it’s an interesting way to tell a story, I bet you can get all kinds of insight by how the words relate to each other, but I was done. Or I would have been done if I wasn’t on holidays and this was the only book I had left to read. Well, I guess we just press on. Maybe the next story will somehow turn everything around and be amazing.

Heresies of the Huge God

THE NEXT STORY WAS SOMEHOW AMAZING. I love Heresies of the Huge God so much that I momentarily forgot about the horrors of Empire and was all about the horrors of Big Lizard.

A Big Lizard lands on Earth. And I mean a Big Lizard, one that spans continents. The lizard has impenetrable skin and nothing humanity can do can get rid of it. One day, it just leaves. Then, a few years later, it comes back.

Except, it’s clearly a different lizard, it has more legs, but the religion that sprung up in response to the Big Lizard decided it must be the same one because it’s the Huge God. As science and modern technology has completely failed to deal with the space lizard, people have just decided the Big Lizard is god and have constructed a narrative that makes sense of everything. The story is written by a worshipper of the Huge God and it’s a history of the world as understood by the church. It’s really good.

In the churches of the world, the Huge God was asked to give a sign that he had Witnessed the great victory over the American unbelievers. All who opposed this enlightened act were destroyed. He answered the prayers in 297 by moving swiftly forward only a comparatively Small Amount and lying Mainly in the Pacific Ocean, stretching almost as far south as what is now the Antarter, what was then the Tropic of Capricorn, and what had previously been the Equator. Some of his left legs covered the towns along the west American seaboard as far south as Guadalajara (where the impression of his foot is still marked by the Temple of the Sacred Toe), including some of the towns such as San Francisco already mentioned. We speak of this as the First Shift; it was rightly taken as a striking proof of the Huge God’s contempt for America.

It’s so good. I love it. Join Volcano Hand atop the Pantheon of Cool Aldiss Ideas.

The Circulation of the Blood.

This time, the British guy, Yale, actually left his wife to marry the Indian woman, Caterina. Is this progress? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. When Yale is gone on an expedition, his wife sleeps with her step son because, as rationalised by Yale, that’s just what happens when you leave a woman around a virile man. Cool, I hate this.

Oh also, this story is about immortality. Yale is a researcher and found some fish are immortal now because of some virus. He calls up his boss, Devlin, who comes to the island Yale lives on to say he knows about the immortality virus and he and a group of rich people have already used it on themselves. Devlin is about to kill Yale to keep the secret then Yale is like “But your immortality virus got into the sea and now whales are immortal yet they’re all beaching themselves on this island! Don’t you see what this means?”. Devlin is disquieted enough by this that he fails to kill Yale and leaves. Later, Yale speaks to Caterina and is like “lol, whales always do that here, I just wanted to freak him out. We gonna be immortal, baby!!!” which is a funny ending. I assumed there would be some terrifying consequence but I guess I got played.

… And the Stagnation of the Heart

Oh wait, there it is. Yale returns and we’re in India again (Nooooooooo!). This story is about the whole two tiered humanity of immortals vs regulars. There’s famine and immortal goats and, you know, maybe, just maybe, there’s some sort of inherent sav-

Let me stop you there. I don’t care. The story also contains this line:

The government will pay. Like all Indian legislation this bounty favours the rich and the strong at the expense of the poor and weak. Like everything else cool Delhi justice melts in the heat.

I actually read this one out to my wife, we’re still married. There’s something so weird about a British guy going “Of course, this favours the rich in society at the expense to the poor!” as I am currently just like… existing in modern Britain? Did you grow up in a house without mirrors, what is this?

The Worm That Flies

Argustal, an ape man, is looking for special stones. He comes across some tree men, people who became trees, and they offer him a lift. He finds his stone and heads back to his village. Then he has a terrible dream about being small. Crow, a weird dude, tells Argustal that the small version of him was called a “child” and everyone was a child once!

Twist, this is a continuation of the last story! The immortality virus rendered everyone sterile and now they’ve all been around for thousands of years and society has regressed entirely. Humans can’t remember most of their lives and many have changed their forms, some turning into the tree people or ape people or whatever. Argustal might even be Yale! He collects the stones because they’re actually records of the past but he doesn’t really understand them any more. He tosses one and maybe death comes back to the world? I’m not entirely sure, but I liked this one a lot.

Working in the Spaceship Yards

Dude works in the shipyard and has a relationship with Nellie.

The women were very emotional. Many of them fell in love with androids. The men were very bitter about this. My first love, Nellie, the FTL-fitter’s mate, left me for an android electrician. She said he was more respectful.

Go get it Nellie, know your worth.

Swastika!

Hitler didn’t die in the bunker, he moved to Belgium and now lives under an assumed name. The main character meets him for a nice chat. Story basically boils down to the fact that if you consider Hitler to be the avatar of Nazi ideology then he couldn’t possibly be dead because his ideology is still very much around. It’s pretty well done, like it’s inherently farcical to have a nostalgic Hitler reflecting on how it all went wrong but the kind of cosy, familiar tone of the piece really captures the odd nostalgia that people can have for terrible things. Also, when Hitler is being racist at least it’s clear I’m supposed to think he’s terrible. However, whenever India comes up I have to wonder if, you know, all taken together, was the British Empire a civilising influence upon the lawless parts of the world? To which I once again say please fuck off forever.

So yeah, that’s the book. Does

the presence of one Giant Lizard forgive all the awful stuff in this collection? No, obviously not.

Still, that being said, I would like to stress how big that lizard was:

The Huge God landed in what is now the Sacred Sea, upon which in these days sail some of our most beautiful churches dedicated to His Name. At that time, the region was much less pleasing, being broken up into many states possessed by different nations. This was a system of land tenure practised before our present theories of constant migration and evacuation were formed.

The rear legs of the Huge God stretched far down into Africa – which was then not the island continent it now is – almost touching the Congo River, at the sacred spot marked now by the Sacrificial Church of Basoko-Aketi-Ele, and at the sacred spot marked now by the Temple Church of Aden, obliterating the old port of Aden.

Some of the Huge God’s legs stretched above the Sudan and across what was then the Libyan Kingdom, now part of the Sea of Elder Sorrow, while a foot rested in a city called Tunis on what was then the Tunisian shore. These were some of the legs of the Huge God on his left side.

On his right side, his legs blessed and pressed the sands of Saudi Arabia, now called Live Valley, and the foothills of the Caucasus, obliterating the Mount called Ararat in Asia Minor, while the Foremost Leg stretched forward to Russian lands, stamping out immediately the great capital city of Moscow.

The body of the Huge God, resting in repose between his mighty legs, settled mainly over three ancient seas, if the Old Records are to be trusted, called the Sea of Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Nile Sea, all of which now form part of the Sacred Sea. He eradicated also with his Great Bulk part of the Black Sea, now called the White Sea, Egypt, Athens, Cyprus, and the Balkan Peninsula as far north as Belgrade, now Holy Belgrade, for above this town towered the Neck of the Huge God on his First Visit to us mortals, just clearing the roofs of the houses.

As for his head, it lifted above the region of mountains that we call Ittaland, which was then named Europe, a populous part of the globe, raised so high that it might easily be seen on a clear day from London, then as now the chief town of the land of the Anglo-French.

It was estimated in those first days that the length of the Huge God was some four and a half thousand miles, from rear to nose, with the eight legs each about nine hundred miles long. Now we profess in our Creed that our Huge God changes shape and length and number of legs according to whether he is Pleased or Angry with man.

It’s so good.

I watched Marvel’s Ironheart, it wasn’t good. At six episodes, it somehow had too much and not enough going on, as if they’d cut out everything they could but still needed to establish characters for future projects forcing the paper-thin plot to be stretched to include them all. However, I’m not writing a review of Ironheart, enough of the worst people you could imagine have already done so, but more to talk about the real issue afflicting our society: Star Trek.

Unrelated to anything, but Ironheart tries to do his diegetic title thing where the show’s name appears in the world. First one is cracks in a pavement, another is negative space in an overhead shot of a banquet. They also cut to this street sign for no reason and I feel it undermines the concept if it’s just… a printed sign? Also, it happens in episode 2? I get what you’re trying to do here Marvel but please try harder???

Now, Star Trek is the greatest show in the history of the universe but, to be specific, I’m talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sure, I have a fondness for the others, but Star Trek TNG is the best one and I am willing to argue that till the end of time. However, as many such arguments have already been made (also by some of the worst people you can imagine), I’m not going to relitigate this on my website for my fantasy novel. Instead, let me paint you a picture.

Riri Williams was born in 2005 so she’s 20 max in Ironheart. She has a friendship with Xavier, who is the older brother of Riri’s friend Natalie. So, Natalie is probably around the same age as Riri as they were friends in school. I’m not sure how old Xavier is supposed to be but, since he’s presented as kind of a love interest, let’s say he’s around 23. He can be a few years north or south of that, it doesn’t really matter in my calculus.

So, Riri and Xavier bonded over their love of Star Trek. Makes sense, it’s the best show ever, but what makes less sense is they bonded over Star Trek, as in The Original Series. You know, the one that ran from 1966 to 69, a mere 60 years ago.  Sure, Star Trek TNG finished up 8 years before Riri was born but how did she dodge the 7 seasons of 22 episodes that were likely still in syndication? When she reconciles with Xavier through a letter, obviously the thing she quotes is Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Not Star Trek Into Darkness, a film that came out in 2013 that is essentially a remake of the Wrath of Khan, but the film that came out in 1983. You know, the film that is widely accepted as being the best Star Trek film. That’s the one Riri likes, the good one. She doesn’t have time to waste on TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, or even the new Star Trek series made in her lifetime.

Normally, shows get around this by going “oh yes, PARENT loves that show/music/dance hall jive so that’s how I got involved in thing that wouldn’t otherwise been culturally prominent”. Ironheart doesn’t even do that, Riri just loves TOS. Because? Well, does there need to be a because? Does effect really need a cause? She loves Spock and the Kirk, you know, from TOS.

This isn’t how nostalgia works. The reason I got into Star Trek was I used to turn on the TV at 4:45pm I would get the last 15 minutes of Star Trek TNG, aka the period in which the episode is resolved. One day, the end of the episode Masks, widely regarded as one of the worst episodes in Star Trek (when you discount the racist ones), and it was like a fever dream. Data has a mask on, Picard had a mask on, they were saying weird stuff, they were calling each other Masaka and Korgano. I was hooked. I needed to know more about this show. Turns out, it wasn’t all like that, but I still became a fan.

Like sure, it’s possible that Riri and Xavier had a similar experience and this anecdote was one of the many things cut from the show (Like the reason we’re supposed to be afraid of Red Hood. He can go invisible and bend bullets but an Iron Man suit seems a little bit stronger?) but that’s not what happened. What happened was they needed these characters to bond over something, they’re both kind of nerdy, so maybe it could be Star Trek. But it should be TOS because that’s the most famous one and we want people to recognise it. Otherwise, they’d have bonded over a niche, less recognisable thing and that level of specificity might make the characters seem more well-rounded and believable but at the cost of the audience just turning off the tv because they didn’t immediately understand a reference. Better to paint in the broadest possible strokes and add no believable detail because we only understand nostalgia as an abstract, commodified thing that is inherently good and in no way tied to a specific part of childhood .

Would the show have been saved if Riri instead loved Enterprise and Captain Jonathan Archer? No, no it would not. Would I have liked it? Well, it would have been the best thing in the show. Yes, that is a damning indictment of the show but man, loving Star Trek The Original Series is really emblematic of the shallow, paint by numbers nature of the plot. Maybe it’s about grief? Everything is about grief when you think about it. Maybe it’s about grief but also a way to set up the son of an Iron Man villain for future projects.

Also, unrelated to anything but:

How can Mephisto, played by who I thought was a cross between Adam Sandler and Nandor from What We Do In The Shadows but turned out to be Sascha Baron Cohen, and Red Hood (Off screen and off hood) both have slices of pizza when only one slice has been taken from the pizza? Also, why is the pizza cut like that? Is this an American thing? I don’t have any safety crust to pick up that middle bit, I know I could use that pizza trowel thing but I don’t want to. Like I get that Mephisto is the devil and all but this feels like a step too far.

I recently took the ferry to Ireland and the crossing was scheduled to take four hours and one minute. Four hours and one minute is a long time so I picked up the copy of The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu I’ve had checked out of the library for several weeks now (They have a second copy! This isn’t that much of a crime!).

Upon seeing the book my wife said: “You’ve already read that.”

I was indignant, as indeed I often am. I had not read it! Certainly, the Matalan receipt for two identical pairs of pants (They’re good) I was using as a bookmark confirmed I’d started it, but I certainly hadn’t finished it. It was a preposterous thing to even suggest, that I would be bringing a book I’d already read on holiday. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she would make such an accusation, but I tried my best to not let it ruin the holiday.

Then, later in the day, I realised she’d been thinking of the book I’d just finished; The Wandering Worlds by Terry Greenhough. Reluctantly, I conceded my wife was not the deranged fantasist I had repeatedly suggested she was. Anyway, since I have been made aware of this significant happenstance, I decided I would share my thoughts on the books. So here we go!

The Wandering Worlds

Yes, I bought it cause it had a cool ship on it. How else am I supposed to judge a book?

I got into sci-fi as a genre because I like a big idea. Sure, good characterisation and writing is fine and all but it’s gotta have some weird hook. You’d think the hook of The Wandering Worlds would be some kind of world prone to wandering and I guess it technically is. The book starts on a survey ship flying a predetermined course through a solar system recently acquired by their corporate masters. While conducting their survey, they come under a psychic attack by aliens. The book starts with four of the younger crewmembers, essentially the apprentices to the main cast, either dead or in a coma from this psychic attack.

In retrospect, I like this premise. I have to specify “in retrospect” because when I read the book I didn’t realise they couldn’t deviate from their course and I only learned this from reading the handful of Goodreads reviews of the book. Obviously, my lack of reading comprehension isn’t something I can hold against the book yet I am going to because this book was awful. Sure, I now realise that their refusal to turn around and leave when faced with an alien threat makes sense that wasn’t my problem with the book. Stupid decisions I can accept, what I have an issue with is stupid everything else.

Here is the first mention of a Wandering World in the book:

For relaxation he toyed with ideas from widespread space-lore, the legends and the lies and the gossip of his trade: whispers of mythical creatures out past the boundaries of the charted places, idle talk of anti-matter galaxies and the Wandering Worlds. Imagination or reality? Fact or fiction? He didn’t know what to believe.

I often like when a story makes an offhand mention of something that will turn out to be central to the plot so I can’t really fault the book for just throwing it in there with no build or set up. How about the second time it comes up? In this scene, KEEK (He’s an alien, I’ll get to it) is having a debate with Ruthe Ogan (She’s a Woman, I’ll get to it) on the mysteries of the universe.

The spell got ready to break as he went over the question of how to continue. Where do I go from here? The answer appeared and he showed proper gratitude. Thanks, gods — whichever of you are responsible; the Wandering Worlds story! He’d scoffed at it himself before experiencing the shocks and surprises of cosmic diversity, laughed at a legend apparently fanciful and silly. But time told strange truths and now his attitude was more open, less sceptical. Wild myths had a sobering habit of proving not so wild after all. The Wandering Worlds, then! ‘Take for example planets that stray out of their systems at a whim and -‘

Now I want to stress, at this point no one has seen any evidence of a wandering world, people just keep bringing it up at random. It’s only in thirteenth chapter, of this fourteen chapter book, that the crew realise that the sixth planet in the system is a wandering world when it begins actively wandering off. It also seems to be made of hyperdiam (a world I thought was cool until I realised it’s just “Hyper Diamond”) and it was responsible for the psychic attacks for some reason. Years of Star Trek had left me primed for a reveal that it wasn’t an attack but instead a form of communication but no, it was an attack. They were being attacked. It was an attack.

The majority of the book is being worried about another ship that seems to be trying to kill them and lay claim to the system. Again, I imagined Captain Picard dealing with this problem and realising that the ship either didn’t exist or was the cause of the alien’s psychic attacks. No, it was another ship trying to kill them and lay claim to the system. It’s just a book where not all that much happens and while that’s not the worst thing in the world the characterisation is.

Keek is an alien and the psychic attacks don’t seem to affect him. Is this a hint that there’s more to him than meets the eye? Calm down, Commander Sisko, it doesn’t mean anything. Keek is a small little alien dude with some psychic powers and I’m not entirely sure why he exists. At the end of the book, it’s suggested that the Wandering World is a life form and I think it’d have more impact if this utterly alien form of life was the first intelligence humans had met. Instead, we know that there’s also a race of short people who seem to mostly do menial work and aren’t really taken seriously.  Unfortunately, Keek does exist and it seems the reason for his existence is to help Jocelyn, another crew member, because she is blind.

Anguish marred his flat, noseless face as he gazed sympathetically at her open eyes, blank for two decades. Life had allowed her four years of infancy, seeing, then had savagely taken away the fathom-less blue of summer skies, the polychrome wonder of sunset. On to her vision had fallen irremediable blindness, a night with no hope of a dawn.

Keek is very hung up on the fact that Jocelyn is blind.

Then by contrast the bad obtruded: death menacing the crew, strain inside, uncaring space outside – and Jocelyn’s blindness! He couldn’t hold down the injustice of it, the calamity. It hurt him more than it hurt her.

And is often reminded of her

Black blindness engulfed him and he thought of Jocelyn.

Another crew member, Andri, has a similar obsession.

Or had they landed on four? Would he see 13 again? And you, sweet blind Aphrodite?

Ambitions flecked the wave-crests like outflung spume: to be finally free; to find true belief, to quit the probe-game, to live a good life and stay faithful to the gods and a blind girl.

Jocelyn exists to be pitied and never gets much characterisation beyond being blind and that being sad. Oddly, Keek is right in that does seem to be much more cut up by Jocelyn being blind than she does and that concern manifests as an obsession.

What did the rest of the crew contemplate when they stared into space? He asked himself the question and immediately answered it. Ruthe Ogan: the majesty of Creation, the glory of the Almighty Being responsible for it all. Van Channen: the setting in which he had to do an onerous job. Andri: more or less the same, though with an inscrutable something at the back of his thoughts.

And Jocelyn: nothing…

Oh come on Keek! She can have thoughts! Not being able to see space doesn’t mean she can’t think about it! She’s working on a spaceships, she’s definitely thought about it!

I would say the way the books treats Jocelyn is heavy handed but in comparison to its treatment of Ruthe Ogan, well lets just say Jocelyn is drawn with feather touch while Ruthe Ogan is rendered with power drive.

Channen grimaced as he looked at Her ugliness: wide, mannish shoulders, big sagging breasts, crinkly grey hair and a face etched hideously by a lifetime of cynicism and spite. Religious fanaticism smouldered in her crazed eyes. Nobody liked her

Where Jocelyn is a slight thing to be pitied by all, Ruthe Ogan is characterised by her religious fanaticism and the fact she is TOO LARGE

Keek — what’s that funny little phrase he so cheekily attaches to Ruthe? Oh, I remember: Ogan the Ogress.

A chair squeaked protest as Ruthe Ogan’s obese figure twisted on it.

‘Van!’ Ruthe’s voice was a throaty growl, sounding masculine.

A figure appeared in the doorway: Ruthe Ogan, a sculpture of grooves, sharpened edges, planes, the curve of large breasts, the lines of square shoulders.

Shockingly, Ruthe gets a bit of an arc. Though people start off initially hostile to her, they eventually recognise she’s not all that bad and has actually been doing a good job. Then, after they have to strap themselves to their chairs to perform a manoeuvre to avoid crashing on the Wandering World, she dies. Why does she die? Well:

The non-human stopped, sickened, when he saw the body. It lay terribly mutilated in a corner, head split messily. Something caught in his throat and he nearly vomited. Blood splashed the bunks, still dripping.

Her breasts were bare, clothing ripped open by the violence of the fall. ‘She never deserved this, but I think maybe she pined for it. Her God didn’t help, did he?’

‘Weight,’ Andri explained laconically. ‘The spin whipping her against the straps, probably wrong way up.

She was heavy. Leather breaks.’

She was too big! If this “God” truly is all powerful, then he why did he make her so large? If she were slight and dainty, like sweet precious Jocelyn she’d have been fine. A lesson learned.

All in all, The Wandering Worlds was a chore and I did not like it. The Wandering Earth on the other hand…

The Wandering Earth

This isn’t the edition I had but I forgot to take a photo of it. Cool pyramids though.

As this is a series of short stories, I decided to tackles this story by story.

The Wandering Earth

The titular story starts us off. The sun is going to do a weird thing and the Earth will be burnt to a crisp. Humanity decides to put engines on the planet and zoom off. They do. I kind of hoped the story would be longer and chronicle the planets entire journey through space but it ends with people trying to turn the planet around cause the sun seems fine and then the sun does the weird thing. Close call. It’s fine, it’s a cool idea which is what I’m looking for.

Mountain

A big spaceship appears over Earth and its gravity begins to pull the ocean towards it, creating a mountain of water. Nearby on a boat, a guy who loves mountains but has taken a vow to never see mountains because he was responsible for four people dying on a mountain, is overwhelmed by his mountain lust. He swims up it and the aliens are like “Finally, a dude who loves digging up”. You see, they evolved inside the core of their planet and had to dig out and are on an expedition to see what’s at the edge of the universe and perhaps dig through it. A lot of the character stuff in this one is insanely clumsy but again, I like the idea.

Of Ants and Dinosaurs

…did I skip this one? I don’t remember anything about it. I’ve returned the book to the library (See, I’m a hero!) so I just have this index I found online to go on. Did my book have this? I don’t know. Maybe it was good, I don’t know.

Sun of China

The story of a man who starts in rural China and eventually becomes a window cleaner who then becomes a space window cleaner (of solar panels) and then decides to sail the windows (array of solar panels) into space. It’s fine. There is a funny bit at the end where the main character talks about going off on his one-way trip to space.

That is true; we will not return. Some may be satisfied with a wife, kids, and a picket fence, never so much as glancing beyond their small world; others will give their very lives for even a glimpse of something no human has ever seen. I have been both, and it falls to me to choose the manner of my life, and that includes a life on a mirror, drifting through space many light years away.’

And even though we’ve been with this character throughout the whole story, the first time he mentions his wife and children is when he’s about to abandon them forever. Look, maybe that was an outlook unique to this character and won’t crop up again.

The Wages of Humanity

A story about a hitman hired by billionaires to kill poor people cause aliens are going to equalise wealth throughout the world and these poor people have refused money and thus will bring the average down. It’s not very good?

Curse 5.0

A woman writes a computer virus to get revenge on her cheating ex. Over the years, it becomes increasingly deadly as it’s upgraded by women who support the general premise of getting revenge on your cheating ex. Eventually, Cixin Liu himself, in a drunken stupor, upgrades the virus and swaps out the name of the cheating boyfriend with a wildcard, meaning the virus targets everyone. The thing that struck me in this story more than anything else was Cixin Liu explaining what a wildcard is:

Wildcards were an ancient concept, originating from the time of our mentors (this was what the age of the ancient operating system, the DOS, was now called). The most commonly used wildcards were ‘*’ and ‘?’. These two characters could stand in for other characters in a string of characters. ‘?’ referred to a single character, while ‘*’ referred to any number of characters and was the most frequently used wildcard. For instance, ‘Liu *’ referred to every person with the family name ‘Liu’; ‘Shanxi *’ referred to every string of characters starting with ‘Shanxi’. A single ‘*’ referred to any and all possible combinations of characters.

And like, I get this is a story is a joke, but is giving the reader an explanation for wildcards part of that joke…? Like, he’ll drop something about Big Gravity with no explanation but he’s taking time to explain wildcards? What is this, am I being fooled. I don’t like this!!!

The Micro-Age

Dude returns from a failed mission to find a new planet for humanity. Earth is destroyed and he’s sad. But wait, there are still humans! They’re just tiny! Ho ho! That’s it. Has this exchange:

‘So you say that there are no women with you?’ the girl asked again, her eyes widening in genuine shock.

‘As I said, I am the only one. Are there no other spaceships out there that have yet to return?’ the Forerunner enquired in return, desperate to keep the fire of hope alive.

The girl wrung her delicate, elfin hands before her chest. ‘There are none! It’s so sad, so very terribly sad! You are the last of them, if… oh…’ She could barely contain her sobs. ‘If not by cloning…’ The girl was now crying uncontrollably.

Huh, women existing primarily as a means to beget children? Man, I hope this doesn’t become/is already a theme! Also, making people small makes them more emotional and a woman is in charge of the small humans we encounter. Look, I’m not saying anything here.

Devourer

A crystal appears and warns Earth that lizard people are coming to eat the planet. They are! A lizard ambassador arrives and explains they’re going to tear apart the planet and keep humans as food. The lizards are coming in a giant ring ship that’ll circle the planet and it’s too powerful for humans to stop. Earth throws the moon at it. The ship narrowly escapes and eats Earth anyway. The lizard ambassador is impressed and when they leave Earth it’s not a total husk so maybe some humans can repopulate, get to work ladies!

Also, the lizards were dinosaurs!!! Could have done without that final twist but they throw the moon at a spaceship! You love to see it.

Taking Care of Gods

Earth was seeded by a race of immortal humans who created us to look after them now they’re old. This was fun! At the end the old humans warn that we they seeded 3 other planets with humans and they’re jerks who’ll destroy us. Then they fly off cause humans keep pitying them and that’s kind of insulting. It’s not exactly a subtle allegory but the idea of creating an entire civilisation to look after your in old age is kind of funny. Funnier than explaining wildcards at least. Seriously, was that a bit? I keep thinking about it.

With Her Eyes

A guy is asked by his boss to wear special glasses on his holiday and share the experience with someone who can’t go on holiday. The woman he shares the experience with seems to really like flowers and nature. Turns out, she’s the boss’s daughter and she’s trapped in the core of the planet with no hope of rescue. It’s fine but I can’t shake the feeling that the person trapped in the core is a woman just because a man would obviously solve the problem or at the very least not be so maudlin about dying alone in the molten core of the planet.

The Longest Fall

A scientist is being frozen until a curse for his cancer is created. His son must decide whether to be frozen as well or stay his mother. Oddly, despite the fact his mother had had a child already and thus completed her purpose in life, the child decides to stay with her. Don’t worry, this is solely for narrative purpose! When the scientist wakes up in the future, he is apprehended by an angry mob because his son made a tunnel through the Earth from China to Antarctica and this had adverse effects on the environment and economy! Also, some people died. They throw him into the big hole as revenge but while he’s falling someone calls ahead to Antarctica so they just catch him and put him back to sleep. He wakes up in the future and now the tunnel is being used to launch spaceships and everyone thinks it’s cool. Fun fact, the son is the boss from the previous story and spent the end of his life falling up and down in the hole in the hopes if his signal was close enough, he could talk to his daughter. That’s kind of nice I guess?

And that’s the last one! So, what did we learn from this analysis of two books with similar titles? Well, whether the world wanders or stands still, women are not well treated in the Sci-Fi genre. Hell, maybe just in general? Wait, does the bit at the start of the blog still read as me being a petulant little nuisance to my wife or does it just read like I’ve internalised Sci-Fi’s view of women? Oh no, I don’t want to go back and edit that, I’m so tired of typing…!

Also, it was cool when they threw then moon at that lizard spaceship, I liked that.

The core concept of Rogue Moon is interesting, compelling and almost entirely sidelined to focus on characters who are neither of those things.

Something has been discovered on the moon. It’s a weird box. Maybe? Whatever it is, it needs to be investigated. Except, this book was published in 1960, before the moon landing, so how do we do that? Radio transmission that’s how.

 “Just like that? No rockets, no countdowns? Just a bunch of tubes sputtering and squish! I’m on the Moon, like a three-D radiophoto.” Barker smiled. “Ain’t science great?”

Dr. Edward Hawks has developed a way to transmit living people via radio waves. A subject is scanned and broadcast to a relay that reconstitutes them at the other end. When the US government discovers the strange moon box, Hawks is ordered to use his technology to figure out what it is.

Hawks begins his investigation but there’s a problem; the moon box keeps killing people for what seems like completely arbitrary reasons.

It is, for example, fatal to kneel on one knee while facing lunar north. It is fatal to raise the left hand above shoulder height while in any position whatsoever. It is fatal past a certain point to wear armor whose air hoses loop over the shoulders. It is fatal past another point to wear armor whose air tanks feed directly into the suit without the use of hoses at all. It is crippling to wear armor whose dimensions vary greatly from the ones we are using now. It is fatal to use the hand motions required to write the English word yes/ with either the left or right hand.

However, the transmitter technology effectively makes two people, the scanned person on earth and the version transmitted to the moon. So, when the moon box kills the duplicate, you can scan the original and start again. Except there’s another problem, the moon box doesn’t allow any information to leave:

Non-living matter, such as a photograph or a corpse, can be passed out from inside. But the act of passing it out is invariably fatal to the man doing it. That photo of the first volunteer’s body cost another man’s life. The formation also does not permit electrical signals from its interior. That includes a man’s speaking intelligibly inside his helmet, loudly enough for his RT microphone to pick it up. Coughs, grunts, other non-informative mouth-noises, are permissible. An attempt to encode a message in this manner failed. You will not be able to maintain communication, either by broadcast or along a cable.

So, not only will the box kill you but there’s no way for anyone outside the box to know why it killed you. Except, while conducting some of their trials, Hawks realises that if the original subject is kept in a sensory deprivation tank, their mind syncs with their double on the moon. For a period, they act as one person, meaning the original experiences everything the double does, right up until the moment they die. This solves the problem of mapping the moon box but introduces the psychological problem of everyone the box kills remembering their own death.

This is the starting point of book and let me say right now, I love all of this. This is so interesting and there’s so many directions you can go with almost any aspect of it. I love the moon box, I love transmitting people via radio, and the trauma inherent to knowing you died. It’s good, it’s really good. The problem is it’s like 10% of the 173 pages of the book.

So, the book begins with Hawks needing a new subject to send to the moon, one who can deal with dying all the time. He speaks to Connington, the Stetson wearing, Cadillac driving head of HR, and he has the perfect man in mind: Al Barker. A fearless daredevil, Al Barker seems like the perfect man for the job. His main problem is that he’s a difficult man to like but ultimately that means he’s just like everyone else in this book.

I don’t care about any of the characters, and I don’t even think the book is trying to make me care. It feels like it’s focusing on characters to show it’s a real book, not just some sci-fi story. These are real, flawed people and they have complex relationships to each other. Except not really? The book tries to tell me that Barker is an unfeeling, ruthless scientist but it primarily does this by having other people tell me that. Al Barker is an arrogant daredevil who rubs people the wrong way but again, this is mainly conveyed by people saying he’s hard to work with. Connignton, the HR cowboy, is a character who doesn’t even need to exist, his primary purpose being connecting Barker and Hawks. Okay, that’s it. You can be done now.

Or, we can have him give a speech where he talks about how good a HR manager he is.

Connington laughed again, his high heels planted in the lawn. “Me, I’m personnel man. I don’t look cause and effect I don’t look heroes. Explain the world in a different way. People—that’s all I know. ‘S enough. I feel ’em. I know ’em. Like a chemist knows valences. Like a physicist knows particle charges. Positive, negative. Atomic weight, ‘tomic number. Attract, repel. I mix ’em. I compound ’em. I take people, an’ I find a job for them, the co-workers for ’em. I take a raw handful of people, and I mutate it, and make isotopes out of it—I make solvents, reagents—an I can make ‘splosives, too, when I want. That’s my world. Sometimes I save people up—save ’em for the right job to make ’em react the right way. Save ’em up for the right people. Barker, Hawks—you’re gonna be my masterpiece. ‘Cause sure as God made little green apples, he made you two to meet…  An me, me, I found you, an’ I’ve done it, I’ve rammed you two together. … an’ now it’s done, an’ nothing’ ever take the critical mass apart, and sooner, later, it’s got to ‘splode, and who’re you gonna run to then, Claire?”

Claire is Barker’s girlfriend and she is Woman; a manipulative creature who is as mysterious and inexplicable as any moon box and spends all her time in a bikini lounging by the pool. It’s a Sci-Fi book from the 1960s, so I’m not expecting it to have good opinions on women, but there’s not all that much to Claire. She flirts with other men just to drive Barker wild! But she’ll never leave him because he’s the only man strong enough to tame her! Right, okay, can we get back to the moon box?

Well, not really? There’s a lot of interesting stuff bubbling under the surface of this book but nothing ever goes anywhere. We end the story not knowing much more about the mysterious box apart from how to cross from one side of it to the other but I’m fine with that. That all ties into the overall theme of the book that there’s no great answer that will solve it all, every advance creates new problems that once addressed will lead to yet more problems.

I’ve read plenty of Sci-Fi that was carried by its ideas and this could have been one if the ideas were the focus. Instead, the things I don’t care are explained in painful detail while the interesting stuff is glossed over in a monologue. In writing this blog, I’ve realised there was a lot of things I liked about the book yet when I was reading it I couldn’t wait for it to end. Like, look at this:

“I’ll take my own shirt off, sonny,” he rasped, and pulled it off over his head. As Sampson unbuckled the leg’s main strap, Barker looked twistedly at Hawks and ticked the edge of the armor shell with his fingers. “New artifices, Mage?” He seemed to be expecting some special response to this.

Hawks frowned. Barker’s grin became even more distorted with irony. He looked around him. “Well, that’s one flunk. Anybody else care to try? Maybe I should tie one hand behind my back, too?”

The ensign said uncertainly to Hawks, “It’s a quotation from a play, Doctor.” He looked at Barker, who solemnly wet a fingertip and described an X in the air.

“Score one for the NROTC graduate.” The other men in the dressing team kept their heads down and worked.

“What kind of a play, Ensign?” Hawks asked quietly.

“I read it in my English Lit course,” the ensign said uncomfortably, flushing as Barker winked. “Merlin the Magician has made an invincible suit of armor. He intended it for Sir Galahad, but as he was making it, the needs of the magic formula forced him to fit it to Lancelot’s proportions. And even though Lancelot has been betraying King Arthur, and they’ll be fighting in the joust that day, Merlin can’t let the armor just go unused. So he calls Lancelot into his workshop, and the first thing Lancelot says when he comes in and sees the magic armor is: What’s this—new artifices, Mage?”‘

Barker grinned briefly at the ensign and then at Hawks. “I hoped you’d recognize the parallel, Doctor. After all, you say you’ve read a book or two.”

Personally, I don’t think it’s a good enough parallel to warrant inclusion, but I can forgive it. What I can’t forgive is the fact it keeps going.

“I see,” Hawks said. He looked thoughtfully at Barker, then asked the ensign, “What’s Merlin’s reply?”

“‘Aye. Armorings.'”

Barker’s mouth hooked upward in glee. He said to Hawks,

“‘Armorings? Sooth, Philosopher, you’ve come to crafting in your tremblant years? You’ve put gnarled fingers to the metal-beater’s block, and hammered on Damascus plate to mime the armiger’s employe?'”

The ensign, looking uncertainly from Hawks to Barker, quoted:
“‘How I have done is no concern for you. . . . Content yourself that when an eagle bends to make his nest, such nests are built as only eagles may inhabit. —Or those who have an eagle’s leave.'”

Barker cocked an eyebrow. “‘And I’ve your leave, old bird?'”

“‘Leave and prayer, headbreaker,'” the ensign replied to him.

“‘You like me not,'” Barker said, frowning at Hawks.
“‘And surely Arthur’d not command you to enwrap this body’s hale and heart beyond all mortal damage. Nay, not this body—he’s not fond of my health, eh?—Well, that’s an other matter. You say this armor comes from you? Then it is proof, weav’d up with your incantings? ‘Tis wondrous strong? For me? As I began, you like me not—why is this, then? Who has commanded you?'”

The ensign licked his lips and looked anxiously at Hawks. “Should I go on, Doctor?”

He shouldn’t but he does. For two pages. I know it’s probably crazy to say a 173 book should be shorter but, while trying to find out what play this is, I found out that this book used to be shorter. In a review by Mark R. Kelly (no relation) for on BlackGate.com which suggests Budrys made it up and, even more chilling, it wasn’t in the original published version of the story. In fact, most of the stuff I found incredibly tedious seems to have been added to this expanded version. Take for example a brief excerpt from the several pages of description granted to Hawks going into a gas station.

He frowned and looked around at the doorframe behind him. He found a bell, suspended from the frame where the swung-back main door would have brushed it. It had been noiselessly cleared by the smaller screen door. He reached up and bent the bracket downward. His precise gesture failed to disturb the bell enough to ring it, and he stood looking at it, his expression clouded. He half reached toward the bell, brought his hand back down, and turned around again. A number of cars passed back and forth on the highway, in rapid succession.

This is wild to me. There’s a certain art to short stories that makes them different from… well… longer ones. Like you cut out the chaff from Rogue Moon and it’s a really good short story. It’d have so much more momentum and the sci-fi aspects wouldn’t feel so underdeveloped cause we wouldn’t have so many scenes were we desperately wished it’d get back to the point. I get that you probably can’t add too much extra to the sci-fi plot, it being about the unknowable mystery and insignificance of man in the grand cosmic scale, but that is reason to pivot to including the cowboy HR manager master plan to steal a guy’s girlfriend. 

Still, with all that said, there are some things I really liked from the book that I present to you in a bulleted list for some reason.

• As a partial counter the fact that the Moon Box doesn’t allow information to leave, the investigator is given a tablet tied to a cord. The idea being that, once the person dies, the tablet can be reeled back to check the investigator’s notes. This is great, this is how DnD players would tackle a mystery box and I love it.
• This section dealing with the Moon Box:

  Perhaps it’s the alien equivalent of a discarded tomato can. Does a beetle know why it can enter the can only from one end as it lies across the trail to the beetle’s burrow? Does the beetle understand why it is harder to climb to the left or right, inside the can, than it is to follow a straight line.

• As any piece of technology can fail, Hawks has to take multiple scans of Baker before they send him to the moon. He explains it like this:

  When Thomas Edison spoke into the horn of his sound reproducer, the vibration of his voice against a diaphragm moved a needle linked to that diaphragm, and scratched a variable line on the rotating wax cylinder. When he played it back, out came ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ But there Edison was stopped. If the needle came loose, or the wax had a flaw, or the drive to the cylinder varied, out came something else—an unintelligible hash of noise. There was nothing Edison could do about it. He had no way of knowing what part of a scratch was song, and what was noise.

  After this he goes on to explain it again with photo negatives but no, stop that. “No way of knowing what part of a scratch was song, and what was noise” is such a good line. 
• In parts I feel were added in the rewrite, there’s a few scenes where Hawks is being pressured to get better results. It doesn’t really play into anything and it amount to nothing but there’s something very real about inventing a way to transit humans and then your boss is like “Yeah but you gotta make it cheaper. Can’t we just sell some of these computers? You surely don’t need all of them.”
• People who remember dying on the moon end up with a lot of psychological issues. When Hawks meets one of these he asks:

  He sighed at last and asked Weston, “Can you do anything for him?”
  “Cure him,” Weston said confidently. “Electroshock treatments. They make him forget what happened to him in that place. He’ll be all right.”

  This is so grim and I love it.
• The alternative title for this was THE DEATH MACHINE which is a great name because it can either refer to the Moon Box or the scanning process that creates people just to kill them. Don’t get me wrong, I bought the book because Rogue Moon is a good name (It didn’t have blurb) but that title should be given to a book about a moon wandering off or, at the very least, a moon that can do stealth attacks.

There was probably more but if I can’t recall it now then it doesn’t matter. What does matter is the thing about this book that made me immediately hostile to it. At the start of the book Hawks meets the researcher who will be shocked back into good health, he says this:

“An dark . . .” he said querulously, “an dark and nowhere starlights…” His voice trailed away suddenly into a mumble, but he still complained.

Now it’s not the fact that he said something querulously (Why is he so whiny about dying? Jeez.) but rather I read this and thought “Surely it’s ‘a dark’? Is this a reference to something?”. So I googled it I only found references to this book and a reference to this book made in a My Little Pony fanfic that was based on Finnegan’s Wake. I have no greater point to make about this, I just felt like I needed to include it.

Anyways, Rogue Moon. 2/7.

Something I may have neglected to mention in my About page was that myself and my partner currently live in England.

I say “currently” but given we bought a house here now, it’s probably gonna drag on for a while. Now obviously, it isn’t ideal for an Irish man to be living in the heart of his ancient enemy but it could be much worse, I could be living in Dublin.

Awful.

Anyways, one of the good things about living in England is they have good second hand bookshops. Thanks to the amazing resource that is The Book Guide, I get to plan trips based entirely around going to different bookshops. It’s great. Now, we were slightly spoiled by going Suffolk and Norfolk first and stumbling upon the greatest bookshops ever? Yes, yes we were. But our latest trip to Kent and Sussex was still pretty good! I promise to eventually get round to writing about the bookshops themselves but today it’s about some of the books I ended up getting.

The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud

I have already read the Bartimaeus Sequence books but since I didn’t have a paper copy I decided to get this. It’s hardback! I like hardback books because they always reminds me of a new Terry Pratchett coming out, Eason’s bookshop in Limerick buying too many, and then it being cheaper than the paperback in a few months time. So thank you for the four hardback Discworld books, Eason’s purchasing manager.

Anyway, the Bartimaeus books are great. Fun fact, that skeleton is a former Prime Minister. Not the one you’d hope though!

The Gypsy by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm

I have been very slowly making way through Brust’s Vlad Taltos books (The divorce book slowed me down) so this caught my eye. Then my eye remained caught by everything else going on in this cover:

This is just Johnny Fives Aces with a confused owl. Why is the guy just… squatting on some girders? Also there’s a knife embedded in the presumably metal girder? This cover raises many questions but does answer the question “Who is Megan Lindholm?” by saying it’s Robin Hobb, an author I primarily know because they were near Terry Pratchett in the Eason’s shame corner of Sci Fi and Fantasy. I intend to read this but, even if I didn’t, it is too powerful an artefact to ignore.

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson

The Night Land is the worst good book I have ever tried to read. Here is an extract from a random page I opened:

And lo! in a moment, an echo to come out of the dark mountains to our backs; so that we lookt round very sudden; but whether the echo did be truly an echo, or some strangeness, or some unnatural call to come downward out of the gloom and horror of the Gorge, we did be all unsure; and indeed must run downward a while more, until that we did be all breathed, and to halt presently where we did feel to be utter free of the Gorge and of the strangeness that did seem to our minds, in that moment, to lie upward in the darkness of the great mountains.

The book was written in 1912 and, my understanding is, this is not why it’s written like this. This is a deliberate choice by William hope Hodgson. I don’t enjoy this style but the world of the Night Land is so compelling that I keep going back to it.

Fun fact about this copy I bought, it’s a part 2! When I picked it up in the bookshop I was warned of this, they had sold volume 1 the previous year without knowing it was in two parts. However, as this broadly lined up with where I’d gotten in my ebook version I decided to buy it anyway. Also, I think there’s fundamentally something very funny about just owning part 2 of The Night Land.

Also, after comparing it to the Project Gutenberg ebook, I learned that volume 2 begins at an arbitrary point, mid scene? Wild.

Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys

I’d never heard of this author or book so I was intrigued. The reviews at the back only made me more intrigued.

“A masterpiece… shows that a science fiction novel can be a fully realized work of art” James Blish

“A fine novel” Brian Aldiss

“Comes very close to realizing our ideal of science fiction” Alfred Bester, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Makes undeniably clever use of the dramatic potential of death and resurrection… designed to be enjoyed for its tension and savoured for its skill” Irish Times

“The cream of science fiction” Daily Telegraph

Well if it’s good enough for the Irish Times then who am I to say no? Arbitrarily, I decided this was the first book from the collection I’d read.

Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock

I’ll level with you, I originally got into the Elric books because I read a post on a forum that said they heavily influenced Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. Beyond the soul stealing sword, I don’t really think they did, but I still enjoyed the book. At home in Ireland I have my Elric omnibus and it’s good looking book.

However, this is not dissuade me from buying this little Stormbringer.

Behold the sky of teeth. I love it. Stormbringer is great and has really stayed with me over years, mostly because of it’s ending being very tragic but also very funny. So much so I immediately read out my favorite part of it to my wife and she was like “that’s awful” and I was like “hahah, yeah!”. It’s great.

Thieves World edited by Robert Asprin

When you start looking for funny fantasy books Asprin’s name comes up a lot. I read the first of his Myth Adventures series and it didn’t really click for me. Still, it was enough that when I saw his name I pulled the book from the shelf to be greeted by this:

There they are, the lads. From reading the back of the book, this seems to be a series of stories written in a shared universe. Apart from that, I know nothing about this and that’s how I want to go into this. As a veteran of online roleplaying, I love fantasy settings where different writers contribute and I look forward to seeing which hack tries to insert something that’s a rip off of an existing property and doesn’t fit at all. Like the guy who joins the forum and just adds Skyrim. Just straight up Skyrim.

Anyways, that’s it for now. Mostly because in previewing this post I realised the site is making all the pictures too big so I’m going to go edit that now. You don’t need to see the Stormbringer sky teeth in that much detail, believe me.

On the 5^th of November 2002, Johnny Cash released what would be his final album American IV: The Man Comes Around. The album was mostly covers, the most notable of these being Cash’s take on Hurt by Nine Inch Nails. When Trent Reznor, the song’s writer, was interviewed by Geoff Rickly for the Alternative press, had this to say:

I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine any more.

Johnny Cash’s cover of the song seemed to be better known than the original these days and while it’s not unheard of for a cover to overshadow the original, there’s something very interesting to me about how that might affect an artist. It was that interest that ultimately led me to buy this:

I paid £5 for this, £4 of it was postage.

So I make the discovery that track 5 of American IV, I Hung my Head, wasn’t a cover of an old country classic but rather a song by Sting. Not even Sting and the Police, just Sting. I wasn’t that familiar with Sting, the only song I really knew by him was another cover, namely Roxanne from the 2001 film Moulin Rouge. I haven’t actually seen the film, I just like weird covers.

Anyway, I was curious what Sting may have thought about Johnny Cash’s cover. Well, there’s a small bit on the Wikipedia page about that:

The Cash cover changes “salt lands” to “south lands”, and “stream” to “sheen”. Sting supposed the latter was due to a misprint in the lyrics Cash was using.

I thought, that’s kind of underwhelming? Surely there’s more. So I follow the citation to Lyrics by Sting. I wasn’t intending to buy it, but then I read the reviews. This one has always stuck with me:

Can’t help feeling a little short changed by this . supposedly the lyrics of Sting , but it’s incomplete. For instance, “Roxanne” in which the line “Roxanne (put on the red light)” is repeated 26 times, in this book it’s only printed 13 times. Similarly “Can’t Stand Losing You” on record has the line ” I can’t, I can’t, I can’t stand losing” repeated 22 times, in the book we only get it 11 times. What good is a book with only half the lyrics of each song printed? I could go on and on, but then I’m not Sting,

That’s a good review. There was another one which was an odd reminiscence about someone thinking Sting was full of himself and how he and his friend used refer to this book as “Leereeks” because the lyrics reeked. Also a great review but since this person made a point that they didn’t actually buy the book their review has been deleted.

So, temptation won out. I bought Lyrics by Sting. He didn’t really have much more to say on Johnny Cash’s cover of I Hung My Head but about the song itself he said this:

I wrote my version of the song in 9/8; the guitar riff just occurred to me that way and reminded me of the gait of a galloping horse dragging a corpse. The story of a terrible accident, guilt, and redemption materialized out of the title and out of the haunting image of the riderless horse.

I’d never really thought about it before the music dictating the lyrics really interested me. Sting didn’t have a story he wanted a tell, instead he tells the story the music wants to tell. Sting pretty much says this outright in an interview with Rick Beato (I love this interview) and I think it’s a really interesting aspect of his craft. However, it’s not the most interesting part. This is:

Songwriting can be a little like fishing: There are times when you land something in the net, and other times when you get “nowt.” The frustrating thing was, it sounded like a hit to me even at this early stage. There must have been a few days of this frustration. The crows began mocking me audibly, and the sheep in our top meadow started to look at me with sad concern.

“Nine syllables is all I need,” I would say to myself.

“Faith, have faith. If I ever, if I ever… lose my faith. Two syllables to go.”

A crow at rest in the high treetop gave out a bisyllabic cry in the sardonic laryngitis that is crow song.

Did he really say, “In you”?

“That’s it: If I ever lose my faith in you.”

I ran home, with the cawing derision of the crows in my ears while the sheep resumed their grazing.

That’s right, a crow helped write the song If Ever I lose My Faith in You. Sting was trying to figure out the lyrics and then a crow listened in and made a suggestion. That’s why I’m writing this. I want you to know this. I want everyone to know this. I could have just said this at the beginning but you needed the journey. That crow is a co-writer. Wikipedia won’t tell you the crow did the lyrics, instead it tries to distract you by saying the song uses flattened fifth, the tri-tone banned by the Pope for being wicked. Sure, that’s cool (Although it doesn’t appear to be real) but where is crow? Why no crow? Crow needs some credit on this.

So yeah, a crow helped Sting write a song. They’re a cool bird.

There is nothing new under the sun.

(more…)

I originally planned to make this site with Drupal, the open source CMS for those who love views (not political), but that install failed so I just went with WordPress. Then I looked at the available themes, didn’t like any, and thought maybe I should make my own.

I should not have done that.

To be clear, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I’m just less happy with the amount of time involved in the turning out process. Web Design is one of those things where you’ll do the first 90% easy and then it’s the remaining 10% that will kill you. Icons, alignment, margins, and constantly getting sidetracked by things that ultimately won’t matter to anyone but you. Is this theme better than one of the standard ones? Functionally, probably not. But is this theme more indicative of who I am as a writer? Yes. In the sense that I sometimes become hung up on something, commit too much time to it and then, upon review, decide that there were better, easier and more effective ways to go about it.

Anyways, that being said lets go on a self-indulgent tour of what I consider to be The Best Bits.

Homepage

The animation on the front page is the entire reason this website exists. You may be reading this and thinking “What animation?” and to that I say “No, no! You were supposed to linger on the impactful visuals and notice the gradual transition…!”. So, if you missed it, here it is:

Yes, that’s a 40 second video of a website background transition. Yes, that is an unreasonable amount of time to linger on anything. I tried speeding it up but that made it seem unnaturally smooth; like a Youtube video at 2x speed or me promoting my book (You should buy it. When you can. Which is not right now). As a compromise, I made the background of the content area on the front page slightly transparent so you might see something happening as you’re wondering what Fair City and Ballykissangel are (I’ll never tell).

The animation itself represents a scene from my book, Beneath the Irithni Eye. Kind of. No spoilers (Here or anywhere else, you can’t even buy it yet!), but the book takes place in the run up to an eclipse when the smaller of the planet’s two moons passes in front of the Sun. The eclipse is known as the Irithni Eye (Hence the being beneath it of the title) and the animation makes that literal by transforming into a giant, bloodshot eye. That’s cool right? I think that’s cool. It’s symbolic. I’m an artist. Buy my book (Once again, you can’t yet).

Art

I know this may be a controversial take, but I think .svg is the best image format. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good .png, but lossless, scaling, vector-based graphics? You can’t beat that. To ask a mere .jpg to compete with that is like asking an ant to do battle with the sun.

So .svg is clearly the best for small visual elements like buttons, but what about larger pieces? Well, you can certainly try!

At some point I decided I wanted to have some different visuals on the blog pages and I ended up with these. Are they as cool as the tree animation? Obviously not, nothing is, but I like them. Again, they’re all things from my books, although some of them are from books I haven’t actually written yet. Surely, it’s only a matter of time (if I stop making .svg art).

Flair

I made my site and I was like “This needs some kind of… extra pointless thing” and so I made this:

He’s a neat little guy! It’s a bird! From my book. Honestly, you are missing out on a lot of great references by not having read it (Once more, I must stress that it isn’t available yet but I feel teasing it’s release with website UI elements is a really underappreciated form of marketing).

However, what isn’t a reference to anything at all is this this:

I don’t know what this is. It’s a shape I made, sure, but I don’t know what it represents. I did include it on my little dragon guy image (His name is Zalmorak) but right now it’s just a shape. It may always be a random shape but, if I learned anything from being a D&D Dungeon, Master it’s that sometimes you just have to take swings. They’ll either all tie together in an incredible satisfying way or people will just forget and you’ll never have to address them.

Sidebar

Fun Fact, it collapses if you press the meaningless symbol. Will anyone ever use this? No. If you click it by accident does it remember you did that and auto close when you refresh the page? Yes, although it’s briefly visible for a moment because I didn’t have the collapse code store a cookie on your browser as EU Cookie Law would require me to ask “Hey, can I store a variable on your browser for a feature you’ll never use?” and then have the current version as a fallback for when you said REJECT ALL. I guess I could adopt that awful approach that’s like “You can only reject cookies if you pay me” that a lot of places are doing now but as made this site to appeal to agents so I think that might put an undue strain on our future relationship.

That’s It

That’s all the fun stuff, the rest is very serious. Anyways, the website is done now. I should probably get back to writing things.