John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 141

The Fifth Edition PLAYER'S HANDBOOK (first impressions)

So, I've now bought my copy of the new PLAYER'S HANDBOOK for 5th edition D&D* (a week ago today, Tuesday the 19th, the first day it was available in bookstores). It'll take a long time to absorb properly;** I expect that even with regular playing (which I hope to continue on an ongoing basis -- it's really felt good to be back playing D&D again after the drought of the 4e years) I'll still be coming across things that are 'oh, they changed that?' for quite some time to come -- D&D being one of those games where the basic concept is easy; it's the plentitude of detail that acts as a check on those trying to game the system. What follows are my first impressions as I skim through the book, trying to get a sense where this new edition fits into the tradition of AD&D (particularly 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition).

THE ART:
I see from the cover that they've gone for murky this time around -- complicated and dark. I had to read the caption inside to figure out what this was a picture of, despite having played through the adventure this scene comes from. By contrast, I thought the interior art was, on the whole, pretty good -- the chief exception being the horrible picture of a kender they tried to pass off as a halfling (p. 26), while they had a perfectly good picture of a halfling they labelled 'gnome' (p. 35).***

PLAYER CHARACTER RACES:
All the standard character races from 1st edition are here, including  the gnomes (who shd have been dropped at the end of second edition but now seems permanently grandfathered in, alas). Also here are the dragonborn (who are there for folks who want to play a wookie but have wandered into the wrong game) and tiefling (who's there for readers of tween supernatural romance). If they were going to include a non-traditional PC race, I with they'd have gone with the Warforged (sentient golems). But these interlopers are easily ignorable; at least this edition contains the half-orc (removed from the nerf'd 2nd edition). Too bad they spent so much space describing all the ethnicities of the Forgotten Realms, since that's pretty much wasted space to everyone not playing in the Realms (which I suspect will be most people).

CLASSES: 
All the third edition classes are here, plus the warlock -- this latter seems an odd choice, given how it's simply a variant of sorcerer (better they pick one or the other or, better still, neither).  Thieves are still called 'rogues', which is terribly RenFair of them but seems to be locked in since 3rd edition. Wizards have a lot to do and get an interesting spell selection to do it with, so thumbs up there. It's my impression that rangers and fighters are underpowered, but I need to roll up one of each to see if the front-line combat characters can hold their own. I've heard rumors that they've actually made the bard a viable class, which wd be something to see, but a low priority to play.





THE PARAGRAPH ON SEXUAL ORIENTATION:"You can play a male or female character without gaining any special benefits or hindrances. Think about how your character does or does not conform to the broader culture's expectations of sex, gender, and sexual behavior . . . "You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender. . . You could . . . play a female character who presents herself as a man, a man who feels trapped in a female body, or a bearded female dwarf who hates being mistaken for a male. LIkewise, your character's sexual orientation is for you to decide." (p. 121)
--My, how times have changed. While Gygax deserves a lot of credit for the use of "he or she" when describing characters in 1st edition, that got rolled back later under 2nd edition, while 3rd edition compromised with alternating examples by gender. But 1st and 2nd edition were purely heterosexual worlds,**** as was 3e so far as I remember. Now far from being banned by the Code of Ethics gay/transgender characters are explicitly included in the rules. 

PERSONALITY/BACKGROUNDS CHAPTER:
Nice to see the classic Alignment system still in place (p. 122),with the addition of a tenth option: 'unaligned', to be applied to animals and others lacking the cognitive ability to make a moral choice. The Backgrounds seem to be pretty random so far as a suite of options for all PCs goes, and the four tables accompanying each (Personality Trait/Ideal/Bond/Flaw) sure take up a lot of space (about seven or eight pages, all told). Good to see them devoting space to material designed to encourage role-playing, but think the results are something only newbies will be using.


INITIAL IMPRESSION AND PRELIMINARY CONCLUSION: 
Very promising so far. This looks and feels and plays like D&D. It'll need tweaking, but it looks to be far more open to tweaking than the rigid structure of 3rd edition. With any luck we'll see a breakdown of the 'only right way to play the game' that came from D&D being treated with a MtG ideology and a florescence of homerules as people customize this for their home campaigns.

More later

--John R.


*that is, the fifth edition of the AD&D rules, though it's not called that; the fifth edition of the D&D rules, by Troy Denning (and Tim Brown?), came out back in 1991


**though I've already found my first typo (in the sidebar on p. 31 where "chapter 5" shd read "chapter 6")

***THE WIFE SAYS: They had a little problem there with their Gnomenclature


****about the only exception I can think of was in the unofficial JUDGES GUILD module DARK TOWER, by Paul Jaquays, where one evil wizard liked to use magic jar to swap among a collection of bodies of both sexes he kept on hand.

M. le Comte de Rateliff

So, thanks to Janice for the following link, to a short film called THE DUEL AT BLOOD CREEK [2010]. For the first thirty or forty seconds I thought it was a remake of/tribute to the opening scene of Arthur and his squire from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, leading into the Black Knight/You Shall Not Pass episode, recast into eighteenth century garb. But it turned out the filmmaker (Leo Burton) was up to something cleverer than that. Here's the link (be warned, though, that it includes some unbleeped profanity):

http://vimeo.com/13121783

Watching this makes me want to dig out my copy of EN GARDE, one of the earliest rpgs [GDW, 1975], part of the first wave of post D&D-games, when imitators of Gygax and Arneson were trying to expand the concept into other genres (another example being TSR's own BOOT HILL). In EN GARDE,  PCs are gallants in the era of THE THREE MUSKETEERS, and might rise to be Musketeers themselves (or alternately their chief rivals, the Cardinal's Guard), if they live long enough (which, given the lethality of the dueling system, is unlikely).


And, speaking of France in the ancien regime, while looking up something entirely unrelated a few nights ago, I came across a wholly unexpected appearance of the name RATELIFF in an unusual context: one 'M. le Comte de Rateliff' who was, at least according to an online scan of the ALMANACH ROYAL,* one of the 'marechaux de camp** in the French army in Janvier (January) 1770. It's quite unusual to come across folks who spell the name the same way I do (with the silent e), and I've never seen it in a French context before (according to family tradition it's either German altered to sound more English, or English altered to sound more 'American'); it's probably English, one of a number of inadvertent variants of Ratcliffe (which goes way back in England; one of Richard III's chief henchmen, in both Shakespeare's play and real life, was a Ratcliffe).

So, interesting, but not significant. I assume this title 'Comte de Rateliff' vanished, probably along with the family, during the Revolution that followed less than twenty years later. Still, I'll keep my eye out, in case I come across more references to them down the road.

--John R.
current reading: THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA by Philip Roth [2004], the Fifth Edition PLAYER'S HANDBOOK [July 2014]




*link:
archive.org/stream/.../almanachroyal1784adam_djvu.txt


**which translates literally to 'Field Marshall', but was apparently instead equivalent to a two-star general.

ex-Wotc, the list

So, all the looking back of my previous post made me curious about how things were going at GenCon and especially how to debut of the new edition of D&D was doing. I found a review on EN World, but after skimming it decided that, having waited so long, it made more sense to wait a while longer and judge for myself when I get ahold of my own copy (which I expect will be within a few days now). However, while poking about I found a sub-site listing "Ex-WotC Employees" (by which they mean people who worked on the rpgs, not Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering folks). I'm glad to discover that such a list exists, and EN World seems like a good place to host it; here's the link.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=Ex-WotC-Employees

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find I'm not on the list -- editors usually fall below the radar. Reading through it, though, I was surprised to find how many folks got left off. In fact, I'd say this lists represents about half the people who worked at WotC on rpgs (i.e., D&D and a few other one-offs or less prominent games), maybe a little less. So in the interests of adding a little to the historical record, here are some names I can think of off the top of my head, without even pulling products off the shelf to check credits, of some of my co-workers from WotC between 1997 and the end of 2006 who somehow failed to make it onto the extant list. For those who are interested in such things, I've marked those who were also at TSR before coming to WotC that with an asterisk.

*Jon Pickens

*Stephen Schend

*Dale Donovan

Gwendolyn Kestrel

*Cindi Rice

*Miranda Horner

Kij Johnson

Rich Redman

*Ed Stark

*Thomas Reid

*Keith Strohm

*Dave Wise

Brian Campbell

Jason Carl


Another thing I was glad to find (oddly enough, under the same heading of "Ex-WotC Employees") is a list of CURRENT WotC employees in rpg-r&d. I tried to keep up with the comings and goings after I left but quickly lost track of who was in, who was out, who was temping (and thus temporarily in), and who was freelancing (and thus might be either in or out). It's been true of TSR (and later WotC) for most of its history that people outside the company found it almost impossible to keep track of who was on the inside (i.e., who was currently working there and doing what). So it's good to see this listing -- though a little disconcerting to see that out of fourteen names, only five (about a third) seem to be designers or editors, the rest being management of some kind. However, I may have misunderstood the job titles.  It's also interesting to note that the department is now completely post-TSR: there's not a single person dating back to the TSR days still working in WotC rpg-r&d; I think Bruce Cordell and Kim Mohan must have been the last (although both Steve Winter and Steve 'Stan' Brown have temped there recently enough that they might be able to put in a claim for that title).

So, here's hoping the addition of some of the missing names might help provide a fuller picture of the people who oversaw the twilight years of second edition, the launch of third edition (and later reconsolidation as 3.5), and all that followed.

--John R.
just finished: VIRTUAL UNREALITY by Ch. Seife [2014].

How Gygax Lost TSR ("Ambush at Sheridan Springs")

So, today being the mid-point of GenCon, and with the release of the new D&D PLAYER'S HANDBOOK being just four days away, I found myself in a nostalgic mood -- curious if Fifth Edition can undo (some of) the damage from Fourth Edition, eager to find out what out of the many different elements that appeared and disappeared and reappeared in playtest variants over the past two years made it into the final mix, hopeful the end result will be closer to the game I loved to play than the versions available in recent years (say, the last decade and a half).

Next week will tell. In the meantime, I went back and read the recent piece, posted on July 28th, by Jon Peterson, author of the extraordinary history of the creation of roleplaying games, PLAYING AT THE WORLD (which I have but have still not yet read, it being a dense 800+pages). Having documented the stages by which the first rpg came about, and the various roles played by Arneson, Gygax, et al, now Peterson is turning his attention to later events -- in the present case, to the sequence which led to Gary Gygax's ouster at TSR, in an article he calls "Ambush at Sheridan Springs"* (201 Sheridan Springs Road being the familiar address of the TSR Building, where I worked for five years between 1991 and 1996, so these events were long past by the time I came on the scene, though I heard about them piecemeal from employees who'd been there at the time).

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Pederson's account is its straightforward, matter-of-fact approach. For example, nowhere in his piece is there a sentence containing the words  'Gygax, cocaine, Hollywood, hot tub business meetings, borrowed blondes'.**  Instead, he presents the facts as he can establish them from the paper trail of stock issues, board meeting notes, and the like. And it turns out that there's a lot of contemporary evidence to build a reconstruction of events upon. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of our hobby, and especially of TSR and D&D.

A few caveats, though. Peterson's decision to accept the evidence at face value enables him to write fairly and dispassionately about events that have for too long been presented in he said/they said mode. But there are perils to being too trusting. Thus, Peterson sets the scene in his opening paragraph as saying that at the time (fall 1985) "they" (presumably the r&d staff at TSR) "were putting the finishing touches on his Oriental Adventures." Except that the full extent of Gygax's contribution to O.A. was (a) saying they shd do such a book and (b) putting his name on the cover. Checking the credits inside show that the book was actually written by Zeb Cook, not Gygax. Somewhat more accurately, in the same sentence Peterson notes how Gygax "was the lead on Unearthed Arcana", yet Gygax put his name on both the cover and in the internal credits as if he were the sole author of all the material therein, which was not the case.  I'd also query the description of the D&D cartoon as a "success" -- I'd say that it was a bad product that damaged the reputation of the game for years to come.


The truly amazing thing that emerges from this essay, for which Peterson deserves great praise, is that Gygax had such tunnel vision. He could see the advantages of making a smart move that put him in an advantageous position (exercising his option to buy 700 shares of stock, giving him a controlling majority) but was completely blindsided when his opponent for control of the company made the same counter-move (exercising their option for a similarly large stock purchase), giving them control of the company. It's like two rivals each taking up a dueling pistol, one party firing his, and then him forgetting that the other person still has a loaded gun. Bizarre.

So, highly recommended. It makes me really look forward to more, and once again confirms that however weighty a tome I really do need to knuckle down and read his history of the hobby.  Here's hoping he turns this later material into a second volume tracing the fate of D&D after its early days.

--John R.


* http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-gary-gygax-lost-control-of-tsr.html

**He also deliberately avoids sensationalizing the story -- for example, when asked in the comments if it's true the first Mrs. Gygax contributed her shares to her ex-husband's ouster, his neither-confirm-nor-deny response is tactful and yet speaks volumes.

We Take Stay-cation on the Road (wind farms and yurts)

So, having cut short our cross country trip (an extra week away wd have been just too expensive), we got to spend that time doing things closer to home, like riding the camel last weekend at the Bonnie Lake renaissance fair. And for the last two days before it was back to work and back on our normal routine, we took a trip to central Washington (around Vantage) to meet up with our friends Anne and Sig (hi Anne. hi Sig) and visit the Wild Horse Wind Farm. Unfortunately the air quality was so bad they curtailed the tour, which apparently usually ends with going inside one of the towers and looking up at the turbine. I had thought they were afraid particulates in the air from all the wildfires currently raging might damage the equipment, but Janice says no, the air outside was a health hazard. Still, we got to walk around the visitor's center, heard a presentation about the wind farm, and poked about a bit outside. It's an interesting experience to be surrounded by the giant wind towers, slightly weird and sinister in appearance (shades of boom-bodies and sorns) and curious how they respond individually to the wind -- so that at any given time some were quiescent, others just barely turning over, and still others rotating at full speed. Kind of like watching a room full of cats. The visit was made slightly surreal by the arrival, just before the talk began of about two dozen Japanese schoolgirls, a tour group travelling in buses marked 'CWU' (Central Washington University).

From the wind farm we crossed the Columbia and headed towards a winery (an odd place for a Prohibitionist) when we checked into a yurt, with Anne & Sig in the next yurt over. After a gourmet meal in the winery's restaurant we wander around the grounds, including up and down the rows of grapevines. As evening closed in we put out the lawn chairs and sat and waited for the Perseids, although somewhat apprehensive about the effect of the so-called Supermoon on our viewing. It turns out we need not have bothered: the haze from the distant fires was so thick that we couldn't even see the moon, much less the starry sky. There was one bright star overhead (Arcturus?) and the others saw a single meteor flash by (I missed it) before that area was blotted out as well. Still, it was a pleasant night to sit out and look up.

The next morning we had breakfast at the winery restaurant, and concluded that the B-team handled breakfast while the chef exerted himself in the evenings. Then we drove back across the Columbia to Frenchman's Coulee, a spectacular landscape (apparently a dry ancient lake bed) of eroded rocks: basalt columns and dry scree, where (pointed in the right direction by some friendly rock-climbers) we hiked about for an hour or so. It reminded me a bit of the hoo-doos in Yellowstone, but looked even more like something out of Rider Haggard, the sort of landscapes that might have inspired Kor. The one thing we saw that was very much of the modern era was a flight of three DC10s flying in formation -- our guess is that they were on their way to drop water or flame retardant on one of the area's not-entirely-under-control wildfires. We saw this three times, but whether they were the same planes or different planes of the same type doing the same run we cdn't tell.

Biding farewell to the dry stoney landscape, we head to our final stop:  the picnic area next to the ginko petrified forest/ petroglyph site (which we'd gotten to see on an early trip earlier this year: well worth visiting). Anne and Janice both outdid themselves, and we had quite the picnic feast -- again, made slightly odd by the arrival, just about the time we were ready to start eating, of those same three CWU vans with what were probably the same Japanese schoolgirls -- I'm pretty sure I recognized the interpreter from the day before. They seem to have come for the petroglyphs, not the petrified wood, and left after not too long -- only to have one van come back a half hour or so later; I suspect that one student got inadvertently left behind. One highlight of our stop was seeing a herd of little deer-like animals -- antelope perhaps? -- pass through, grazing on the green green (sprinkler-watered) grass that v. much stood out from the surrounding typical western/central Washington dry, bleak landscape.

From there it was goodbye to Anne and Sig for the drive back to west of the mountains, where it was thoroughly typical that we ran into a rainstorm not long after re-entering King Country. The cats were fine and very happy to see us (thanks, Kathy), so All Ends Well.

And Wednesday morning it was back to our normal schedule: Janice to the office, me to a morning of volunteering with cats followed by an afternoon of starting to draft a paper proposal for next year's Kalamazoo, which got sidelined by the arrival of revised proofs for the new edition of my book (about which more later). So, back to work! It was a great vacation while it lasted, and did us both good. It's amazing how many interesting things there are to do in Washington, for the standing stone circle on Whitbey isle to that basalt landscape near Vantage. We're already starting to think about the next time . . .

--John R.
current reading: THE JOURNAL OF INKLINGS STUDIES (Vol. 4 No. 1); SKIP-BEAT (manga) vol. 32; VIRTUAL UNREALITY by Charles Seife (about how to tell whether something you see online is true or not).

The Cat Report (W. 8/13-14)

Quite a change after having missed just two weeks. Mr. Scruffs gone after all these months (hope he and Caspar are enjoying their new digs up in Issaquah, and soon get adopted), poor Phoenix back to the clinic for some medical assistance, and Mace having come and gone without my ever seeing him. Glad the spice kittens all found homes -- usual for so many (three) to go together. 

Along with the four cats I knew (MOLINNI, TAWNY, MAEBE, and BUXTER) I found the three new cats: PERRY (who's v. friendly, and a great walker) plus the bonded pair BAYOU (a beautiful cat, friendly but still shy of the new surroundings) and ALEXI (a brown tabby terrified of her new surroundings).
Started the morning by giving five of the cats walks, but only Perry-the-Winkle really seemed to enjoy it. She'll be a great walker once she gets to know the lay-out of the store. As it was, she explored and got her bearings, covering the quiet half of the store. She's something of a talker, with a little squeaky mew; reminded me a bit of Pigeon Squeaks from when I first started volunteering. Once the walks were over and I opened up all the cages, Perry committed the faux pas (as Tawny saw it) of getting in Tawny's favorite spot. While Perry snoozed happily, Tawny hovered, checking several times to see if the intruder had gone. Since Molinni had claimed her usual spot in the basket, and Buster and Maebe had taken the top spots on the cat-stands, I made a kind of cave for Tawyn by draping a blanket around the cat-stand she was on (the one near the cabinet), converting its mid-level into one big teepee cave for her. She seemed to like this, and stayed there the rest of the morning.
Both Maebe and Buxter were relaxed and mellow. Neither minds being petted, and doesn't mind the other cats about so long as they all keep a respectable distance. Since we broke them up as a bonded pair I'd thought Maebe was fine with being on her own but Buxter seemed a bit depressed. Doesn't seem to be the case anymore; guess they've both made the transition. 
Molinni, who I suspect is the smartest cat in the room (certainly the most strong-willed and independent) played a little with the laser pointer but mostly wanted to divide her time between her basket and the area around the door. 
Of the new bonded pair, Alexi is in terrified revert-to-feral-cat mode. She let me pet her but it was like she was a million miles away. She sniffed food I put next to her but aside from a lick or two of the wet food didn't seem to eat. I cleaned the cage around her so as not to upset her more than minimally. She was so passive she had drool hanging out of the side of her mouth. Thought about pulling her out and just holding her but decided to not risk upsetting her on what after all is just her second day in the new surroundings.
By contrast, her partner Mr. Bayou is friendly and already starting to settle in. He slips out, explores a little, then gets startled and scurries back into his cage. Then a little while later he does it again. He didn't like being out and exposed atop the cat-stands, but he was much admired by visitors. I'm not surprised: think he's the most beautiful cat I've seen in quite a while.* When he discovered I had CATNIP, all his suspicions of me melted away.

Health concerns: Mr. Bayou sneezed a mighty sneeze twice or maybe three times. Molinni suddenly threw up just as I was leaving. Alexi is lethargic. Other than that, they all seem okay.
Thanks to Shari for covering my shift while I was gone, and then gone again.--John R.
*and huge. Mustn't forget how huge he is -- he's so long it looks as if there were an extra half-cat inserted between his front and rear sections. Or how funny it looks when he tries to make himself small and comes out as an enormous flat puddle. Or how he wags his fluffy little stump of a tail when happy. Think he's a blue-point Himalayan Manx, a combination I've not seen before.

BONES OF THE OX wins the Mythopoeic Award!

So, thanks to Janice for the news that TOLKIEN AND THE STUDY OF HIS SOURCES (Jason's original title having been the much better  THE BONES OF THE OX), edited by Jason Fisher [McFarland, 2011] has just won the Mythopoeic Award for Inklings scholarship. As one of the contributors ("SHE and Tolkien, Revisited", a reworking and expansion of a piece I did way back in 1981) I'm very pleased, and I know Jason must be excited to have this, his first book of Tolkien scholarship, recognized.


And there was tough competition too: the newest bid to be the definitive Lewis biography, McGrath's ECCENTRIC GENIUS, RELUCTANT PROPHET, as well as Boenig's CSL AND THE MIDDLE AGES on the Lewis side, and Atherton's and Olsen's books on the Tolkien side. I usually volunteer to be on the award committee but had to sit it out this year, since one of the books I contributed to was a finalist (and, now, winner).* So, obviously, I'm pleased by the news.

Here's the link to the announcement:

http://www.mythsoc.org/news/mythopoeic-awards-2014-winners-announced/

Congratulations to all the winners, and all the finalists, and all the nominees.

--John R.


*I also contributed a blurb to Corey Olsen's book on THE HOBBIT, but that's probably within the bounds and hence no conflict of interest.

Poe's ALONE

So, in the interests of equal time (Poe being both a great prose writer and a great poet), here's the least-known of all Poe's major poems and a great favorite of mine.  It's an early work, written about 1829 when he was about twenty, and one we almost lost, given that Poe never published it during his lifetime
(he wrote it in a friend's book as a sort of extended inscription). I think I may have posted this one before, but if so it's been a while and a good poem bears repeating (and re-reading).

The image is a photograph (daguerreotype). Poe only grew the famous mustache the last five years of his life; before that he'd been cleanshaven, with sideburns. But since he became famous in 1845 (about four years before his death) for writing "The Raven", which was an international hit (he dedicated the English edition to Elizabeth Barrett), and since daguerreotypes were only invented in 1839, most of the pictures we have of him (some seventeen in all) are photos taken from near the end of his life.

Here's the picture, followed by the poem:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Edgar_Allan_Poe_by_Samuel_S_Osgood,_1845.png






From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a daemon in my view —

Poe's SILENCE

So, in my post about Poe the other day, I made passing reference to his little short piece SILENCE, which I consider the first modern fantasy short story. Since it's not one of his better known or frequently anthologized pieces, thought I'd reproduce it here for the benefit of those who are curious.  It was written in early 1833, or possibly late 1832, when Poe was twenty-three years old, making it an early work,* part of his proposed first collection of stories, TALES OF THE FOLIO CLUB.



SILENCE -- A FABLE

"Listen to me," said the Demon, as he placed his hand upon my head. "The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of the river Zaire. And there is no quiet there, nor silence.

"The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow not onward to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh one unto the other.

"But there is a boundary to their realm -- the boundary of the dark, horrible, lofty forest. There, like the waves about the Hebrides, the low underwood is agitated continually. But there is no wind throughout the heaven. And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing and mighty sound. And from their high summits, one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling and loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever, until they roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon. But there is no wind throughout the heaven. And by the shores of the river Zaire there is neither quiet nor silence.

"It was night, and the rain fell; and, falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall lilies, and the rain fell upon my head -- and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the solemnity of their desolation.

"And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was crimson in color. And mine eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood by the shore of the river, and was lighted by the light of the moon. And the rock was gray, and ghastly, and tall, -- and the rock was gray. Upon its front were characters engraven in the stone; and I walked through the morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto the shore, that I might read the characters upon the stone. But I could not decypher them. And I was going back into the morass, when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock, and upon the characters; -- and the characters were DESOLATION.

"And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the rock; and I hid myself among the water-lilies that I might discover the actions of the man. And the man was tall and stately in form, and was wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old Rome. And the outlines of his figure were indistinct -- but his features were the features of a deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the mist, and of the moon, and of the dew, had left uncovered the features of his face. And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in the few furrows upon his cheek I read the fable of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude.

"And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and looked out upon the desolation. He looked down into the low unquiet shrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher at the rustling heaven, and into the crimson moon. And I lay close within shelter of the lilies, and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude; -- but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock.

"And the man turned his attention from the heaven, and looked out upon the dreary river Zaire, and upon the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the pale legions of the water-lilies. And the man listened to the sighs of the water-lilies, and to the murmur that came up from among them. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude; -- but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.

"Then I went down into the recesses of the morass, and waded afar in among the wilderness of the lilies, and called unto the hippopotami which dwelt among the fens in the recesses of the morass. And the hippopotami heard my call, and came, with the behemoth, unto the foot of the rock, and roared loudly and fearfully beneath the moon. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude; -- but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.

"Then I cursed the elements with the curse of tumult; and a frightful tempest gathered in the heaven where, before, there had been no wind. And the heaven became livid with the violence of the tempest -- and the rain beat upon the head of the man -- and the floods of the river came down -- and the river was tormented into foam -- and the water-lilies shrieked within their beds -- and the forest crumbled before the wind -- and the thunder rolled -- and the lightning fell -- and the rock rocked to its foundation. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude; -- but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.

"Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became accursed and were still. And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven -- and the thunder died away -- and the lightning did not flash -- and the clouds hung motionless -- and the waters sunk to their level and remained -- and the trees ceased to rock -- and the water-lilies sighed no more -- and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed; -- and the characters were SILENCE.

"And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his countenance was wan with terror. And, hurriedly, he raised his head from his hand, and stood forth upon the rock and listened. But there was no voice throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were SILENCE. And the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar off, in haste, so that I beheld him no more."



             *    *    *    *    *    *

Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi -- in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty sea -- and of the Genii that overruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much lore too in the sayings which were said by the Sybils; and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around Dodona -- but, as Allah liveth, that fable which the demon told me as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all!  And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back, within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh. And the lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the Demon, and looked at him steadily in the face.



--I cd explicate this tale, but there's really no need.** And while it's clearly ancestral to works by Dunsany and especially Clark Ashton Smith, both of whom excelled at the prose poem, its key significance is in the frame story. Most 19th century frame stories existed to explain away the magic, to put the impossible within a context that nullified or negated it: from Carroll's 'it was all a dream' to Poe's frequent trick of unreliable narrators. A true fantasy does not explain away the magic, and that's very much the case here: there is a frame, but the frame-story of the narrator's encounter with the Demon is no less fantastic than the story the Demon (probably an efreet) tells.

--John R.



*even though Poe died when he was forty and his career spans only about twenty years from start to finish, there's a clear grouping of early stories which are more hit and miss than his later command of the short story. Thus there are some gems among the early material, but also several flops; the latter become few and far between once he mastered his craft.

**fans of Douglas Adams will recognize it as an early Total Perspective Vortex tale, neoClassicists as a descendent of Pope's "Chaos and old Night"

Today I Rode a Camel

So, this whole not-being-on-deadline thing could work out. Since Janice and I had originally planned on attending MythCon as part of our trip to the East Coast, she took several extra days off work, which she's now using for a well-deserved rest. Meanwhile, after having back-to-back deadlines since, I think, sometime back in 2012, I'm now enjoying the feeling that while I have several ongoing projects, none of them are tied to a hard deadline.

So, today we went to the Bonney Lake renaissance fair. We'd made it down to this last year and enjoyed ourselves, and the same proved true this year as well: we saw a tournament (the bad guy won, no doubt to get his comeuppance later in the day), saw a wicked funny standup comic who was actually funny (same guy as last year; he's still just as good), browsed in some of the shop-tents (didn't see Gwendolyn's tent, but did see Janice's friend Maiya's), and rode a camel. Her name was Matilda. She's a little dromedary who good-naturedly took the two us us (Janice and I together) around her field twice. So there's something I've never done before that I most unexpectedly got to do.

Then it was back home to face a Where Were You inquisition from the cats, followed by a quiet evening, with Janice reading and myself watching Batman (the 1960s series, which I originally watched back in the day and am now finding highly amusing to re-watch as an adult) and catching up on email. This would have been a CALL OF CTHULHU evening, but the combination of low turnout and my wanting to put more prep time into this, the Seattle leg of their ongoing adventure, caused me to move it back two weeks.

And now, time for an evening reading session myself. I could get to like stay-cations.

--John R.

current book: THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA by Philip Roth