Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 3

The Miracle of the Voices

O Magnum Mysterium



"You voted for Kamala, right?"
Frank looked away from the road and into his wife's accusing, anxious face.
"Of course, honey."
Lilian turned her profile to him. Age, and the light that filtered through the drizzle on the windshield, had turned her skin velvety. Brake lights from the car ahead reflected off her cheek.
"No, that was a joke," she said.
Frank had to crane his neck to look for a gap in the next lane. "Oh, uh huh?"
While he concentrated on driving, Lilian clutched at the door handle, twisting her hips as if unable to find a comfortable position. "I can't help thinking about it," she said. "More than half the country voted for Trump."
"That liar," mouthed Frank as he turned and accelerated, assuring his place in the next lane over. "Foof! So! Mikey's gonna love his truck, huh?"
It sat on the seat behind them, embedded in a cube of cardboard and plastic the size of an oven. Beside it were the bottle of wine and the strata, baked because what if Derek and Diane's oven wasn't working.
"I don't know." Lilian rubbed at the skin over the round bones of her wrist. "It's a truck. It's so gendered. Don't you think?"
Frank nodded, tracking the patterns on the retaining wall. "He loves trucks. 'Truck' was his first word after 'no.'"
"I know that, Frank."
Frank continued to focus on the road, his mouth firm.
A terrible silence rose until Lilian said, "I'm just worried."
He nodded a little and glanced her way. "I hear you. It's all right to be worried," Frank recited. "And you know? I bet you in two years, there'll be a blue wave, just like last time."
Lilian's shoulders relaxed. "No, that's complacency. That's why we weren't ready to keep him out of the White House. We'll keep up the resistance." She looked up from her lap. "And I can ask Diane what she's doing to fight."
Frank flicked her a nervous smile. "That's a good idea."
"Look out for that pickup. I don't like the way he's driving."
Frank got out from behind the truck and braked to avoid rear-ending the car in the next lane. "Look at these dopes on the road! Ha," he said, and swung his hand over the wheel as if flinging a Frisbee. "Maybe they're the ones who voted for Trump!"
"Don't, Frank."
"Guess there's no way to know."
The freeway rose and curved over housing developments and trees. Lilian searched Frank's face as he signaled and took the next exit.
Derek and Diane lived in a large, rented home on the bank of a slough. Spanish mission, it was called, which meant white stucco and a low profile.
"The magnolia's lost its flowers."
"Frank, it bloomed in May."
They rang the doorbell and waited, food and presents cradled in their arms, smiling at the closed door.
It opened a crack and slammed shut. Opened again. An eye peered up at them from between clumps of brown hair. The door slammed again, hard enough to rattle the windows.
"Michael, no! Stop that."
The doorknob turned, but the door shuddered under the thrown weight of a four-year-old boy.
"No door!"
"Stop, Mikey."
"Roar!"
The door opened a third time, now at the hand of Derek, their son. His own child squirmed in the sweatered crook of his arm. "Come in, quick. Merry Christmas."
"Merry…" Lilian's eyes darted up past him. "Where's Diane?"
"Traffic!" Mikey flung his hands up and slithered out of his father's grip. Screaming, he ran out the door.
"Don't let him get away." Derek pushed past his parents. "Mikey, don't play in traffic."
"Broom. Broom! A red truck. Grandpa, let me down."
"Don't put him down yet." Derek maneuvered himself between Frank and the road. "Mikey, go inside kiss Grandma."
"What about kisses for Grandpa?"
Mikey sank his heel into Frank's belly and made it back to the house before the old man straightened.
At the noise of Mikey's approach, Lilian turned away from her Diane, but not quickly enough to avoid her grandson, who dove into the backs of her knees. Diane grabbed her and held on until Lilian had regained her balance.
Derek sidestepped the present still in the doorway. "Mikey, did you tackle grandma?"
"No I kissed."
"She doesn't look kissed. She looks tackled."
"No!"
"It was a kiss," said Lilian, straightening. "Thank you, Mikey."
Derek shot his mother a frown taking a knee before Mikey. "That isn't the truth, is it, kid?"
"Give grandma a kiss, Mikey."
"Mom, wait." Derek put a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. "Mikey, are you brave enough to tell me the truth?"
Mikey frowned and turned up his nose. "Harrumph!"
"In front of your family? On Christmas?"
"It's all right." Lilian tried to meet her daughter-in-law's eyes. "You tell your child 'no.' I've read that that's not as traumatizing as we used to think."
"Right. Sorry." Diane ducked to pick up Mikey. "It's okay. Sorry. Lilly, I haven't asked if you want something to drink."
"Let me down, Mom!"
Derek got up and pulled the door closed behind Frank and the present.
Diane had spent the previous day polishing the cabinets and the smells of beeswax and orange oil turned the Spanish mission into a dark and towering cathedral. Candle-flames nodded over wax in the shapes of fir trees and Santa's head, illuminating the two stratas in their pans, the fruit salad, and the mugs of coffee.
A choir sang softly from a hidden speaker, and the Christmas tree threw shards of colored light across the walls. Cars, trucks, warrior robots, and the elements of hopeful STEM kits had been spread evenly across the floor to a depth of six inches.
Mikey waded through his bounty, new truck on his shoulder, shouting "Brow! Broom! Action! Watch out, Grandma."
Frank leaned forward and raised his voice in an effort to be heard. "Which is why we can't understand it. We were just talking on our drive down here. How could half the country have voted for the man? Derek, what do you think? You think there was hacking?"
"I don't know, Dad." Derek pulled back, shoulders raised and voice fast and breathless. "I don't really watch the news."
"Mikey," said Diane, "should you be doing that?"
Frank spread his hands in disbelief. "But you gotta stay informed, kid. Now, more than ever."
Derek shrugged again. "Yeah, I guess."
"Mikey, think about what you're doing."
"Well, what are they saying at work?"
"Nobody can say anything."
"I know what you mean." Frank leveled his finger at his son, whose eyes focused as if on the barrel of a gun. "Your boss came out for Trump, didn't he?"
Derek lifted his eyebrows and scrubbed a hand through his beard. "Our founder? Yeah?"
"Three," said Mikey. "Two!"
Frank leaned further. "Why do you think he did that? Because he feared what Trump might do to him if he didn't kowtow?"
"Frank, I think that's offensive," said Lilian, nodding in Diane's direction.
"Submit?"
"I don't know," Derek told them. "Who knows what anyone is thinking? Right? Mikey, don't throw that truck."
It crashed through a mound of empty boxes.
"I dropped it."
"That wasn't dropping, Mikey, that was throwing."
"Good thing he didn't hit the tree," said Frank, and Mikey started laughing.
"Oh, my God." Derek turned in his seat and put his hands on his knees. "Hey, Mikey, you want me to go get out the tablet?"
"Uh, Derek?" Diane leaned closer to her husband, lowering her voice and keeping her eyes on her in-laws. "It's Christmas."
"I understand," Lilian told her, and her hands under the table turned her own phone face-down. "There's so much toxic masculinity on YouTube."
Derek grit his teeth and growled at his wife, "But there's things I want to say."
She drew back. "So, say them."
But now everyone was looking at him. Derek put his hand over his mouth.
Lilian looked from one child to the next as silence swelled. "But how are you, Diane? We should have asked you sooner about your work."
"Yeah," said Frank, eagerly turning his attention from his sulky son. "I bet they're doing something big at the university. Some sort of protest in the works?"
"Probably," said Diane. "But, well. Sorry, but I guess I didn't tell you before. I don't work there any more."
"Since Mikey's last birthday," Derek grumbled.
Lilian put her hands across Diane's wrist. "But what are you going to do? And how could they fire you?"
"I wasn't fired. I took a leave of absence. And I'm looking for a new job right now." Diane smiled and ducked her head. "In the private sector."
"Oh, the private sector," Lilian recited before she registered Diane's expression.
"Mom. Mommy!" Mikey was under the table.
"What? Yes, Mikey, what is it?"
"Where's the goose?"
"It's still in the oven."
"It's cooked," said Frank.
"What I mean," Lilian said, "is that there's so much more misogyny in the private sector. Even than in academia."
"Right," Derek declared. "The university was a snake pit."
"What? What happened?" asked Frank.
Derek's eyes darted away and his hand went back to his mouth. "Never mind."
"Sorry," said Diane. "Yes. Never mind."
This was enough to make Lilian take hold of Diane's wrist. "Was it sexual harassment?"
"Well." Diane looked to Derek, but he was glowering at the wall.
"Mommy!"
"What?"
"Is the goose crispy?"
"I don't know, Mikey." She looked back up at her mother-in-law. "Sorry. I have no right to complain. There are people in this country who are dying because they don't have jobs." She passed her hand palm down over her head, ducking slightly and smiling disarmingly. "I'm really privileged to have—"
"What's it thinking about?"
"What's what, Mikey?"
His frustrated sigh from under the table sounded exactly like his mother's. "What is the goose thinking about?"
"Nothing. It's dead. Derek, will you?"
"Go play, Mikey. Let us talk."
"That's not what I meant." Diane turned back to Lilian, who was still gripping her wrist. "I mean that I will work when I get my new job, but, you know." She paused, but when nobody stopped her, she had to continue. "I don't have to watch what I say so much?"
Lilian pulled back, eyes wide. Her hands left Diane to clutch each other. "What does that mean?"
"No, that doesn't sound so bad," said Frank. "Don't have to watch what you say. I wouldn't mind that sometimes. Lilly?"
"Frank. Don't interrupt her."
"I don't know." Diane waved her hands like a stage magician directing her audience's attention. Her expression was one of fear. "It was a big department. There's a lot of different viewpoints to be aware of, and?"
Lilian turned to Frank. "It was bullying. Like what happened to me."
Diane hung her head, and put her hands away. "Yeah."
Derek moved as if to hug her, but patted her shoulder, instead. "Sorry, babe."
"What are you apologizing for?" Frank asked him.
"Empathizing, Dad." And in a lower, less sarcastic voice directed at his wife: "I know it gets exhausting."
Frank squinted across the table. "Someone harassing you too, now?"
Lilian swatted his shoulder. "Come on, Frank, how could they be? We're talking about Diane and her hurt."
"No, no, it's been good for me," Diane assured them. And, when more details seemed to be expected, "I'm glad to have more time to spend on…" she turned her head, searching. "Myself."
"Yes, that's all right," said Lilian uncertainly. "If it's on yourself."
"I've been able to work out again, for one thing."
"Oh, working out. I'm so glad."
"You've lost weight."
"Frank!"
Diane smiled a little. "It was hard to give myself permission, you know? To not be Diane the health policy instructor and just, uh, honestly…" She looked at Derek, who had stood up.
He raised his nose. "We've been completing an awful lot of sentences."
Mikey was okay. He had climbed into the large freezer in Derek and Diane's garage and curled himself into the hole where the goose had been. He was trying to shut the freezer door from the inside when his dad found him.
"No!" Mikey wailed from Derek's arms.
"Don't sit in the freezer!" Derek raised his hand above the back of the boy's head, but looked up at the rest of his staring family and froze. His face reddened.
"You know what?" he said. "Let's take a walk."
The adults distracted themselves with the business of Mikey's coat and mittens and getting his boots on the right feet. In the front yard, they could argue with him about who should ride in the stroller ("Mom!") and on the bridge, everyone could be worried about the traffic on one side and the slow, brown slough on the other.
"You see that, Mikey? That's a coot."
"Yeah, just like me."
"No! Mikey, you have to stay with Mom."
"I got him, Diane. I got him."
By the time they arrived at the park, they had temporarily exhausted their ability to worry. But silence gathered around the little hills and the pond. They each of them looked around, but saw only frazzled palm trees and the green turds of Canada geese. The clouds had burned away, but the sky was as scary as the view over the edge of the bridge.
"Honk honk!" Mikey made a dash for it, pretending to be either a truck or a goose.
"I'll get him." Frank did his best to catch up.
Derek looked ready to escape as well, but Diane asked, "So, Lilly, what's going on at your church? Are you still involved in the Women's Auxiliary?"
Fear flashed across Lilian's face. "Well, of course we're all still shocked about the election."
"Oh, of course." She turned and raised her voice. "Come back, Mikey!"
"Maybe the Auxiliary could make a rule like 'no politics,'" Derek suggested.
"You can't avoid politics." Lilian spoke gently but firmly, as if about homework. "Everything is political. Silence is violence."
"Yeah." Derek turned. "Just sort of herd him back this way, Dad. Okay?"
"Honk honk!" The little boy powered up the hill and threw himself at Lilian's knees. This time, he did kiss them.
"You want to show Grandma the geese?" asked Diane.
"Come on, Grandma! Watch out, they can bite. They can bite hard. Like this!"
"You protect Grandma," said Derek.
"I'm sure I don't need protection."
Mikey tugged Lilian past Frank, who stooped and bent forward, hands on his knees.
"You okay, Dad?"
"Fine, fine." He straightened, groaning. "Man, I can see how you lost weight, Diane. That kid's a better coach than the girls at the fitness center. Women. I should come here twice a week." He didn't give his son or daughter-in-law time to respond. "What were you kids talking about up here? Ha. Trump didn't do anything while I was gone, did he?"
"Um, Dad?" Derek's hand went to his mouth again, but he spoke around it, scratching his beard and looking away. "I'm a little worried about Mom? Um." He checked his father's expression. "She just, she's taking this election stuff awfully personally."
Diane looked up at him. "You mean you think it isn't personal for her?"
"Uh. Yeah." He pressed his fingers to his lips and leaned into them, as if thinking deeply.
Frank watched his son and daughter-in-law. "Well, yeah, I guess it is personal and stressful. For everyone." When they didn't respond, he turned away. "Ha. Look at that kid go. He's a firecracker all right. Gonna take over the world some day, huh?"
"Yeah." Derek let go of Diane's arm and stood next to his father, watching his son. "I don't know how he's going to handle nursery school."
"But he has to go to school," said Diane in a tone of terror.
"Even after Trump guts the education department," said Frank. "We'll think of something. Looks like they're coming back."
"Should she be carrying Mikey like that?" Diane started down the hill.
Derek jogged past her. "I'll take care of it. Mom, you don't need to lug him around like that. Let me have him. Mikey, you can walk."
"I'm pooped, Dad."
"No, you're not."
"I can carry him. Well, if you think he should — oof!"
Mikey kicked off his grandma and landed on his dad's chest. "Mecha-Daddy," he said, pulling himself onto Derek's shoulder.
"Okay, okay. Mecha-Daddy." Derek reached up to twist his son's legs into position. "You're all right up there?"
"No, I'm the head! I talk. You say bvvv-tshr."
Derek took a heavy, stop-motion step, making noises like a hydraulic system.
"Action!"
"Not so loud, Mikey, that's Dad's ear."
"No, Dad, say bvvv-tshr."
Lilian picked her way towards Frank and Diane. "Well, we certainly taught those geese a lesson."
"Sorry he made you carry him," said Diane.
"No, no. I missed this." Lilian looked from husband to daughter-in-law. "What have you been talking about? Oh, that reminds me, I got a news notification while I was chasing after Mikey." She reached into her coat pocket and Diane looked up into the sky.
"What's wrong, sweetie?" asked Frank.
"It's nothing. I'm just tired."
Lilian nodded, still searching. "Me too. It's the stress of always lying."
Frank and Diane snapped their attention onto her. Lilian pulled her hand out of her pocket and held it up as if in self-defense. "What did I say? Lying? I meant we always have to be polite, I mean to put up with people. Strangers, you know, and you're always wondering which of them might have," she took a step back, "might've been on the wrong side."
"Oh," said Diane. "Right."
"I think what she means to say…"
"I'm sure you know, Diane, that I don't usually let him speak for me."
"Of course, Lilly. I wouldn't think that."
"Maybe we should head home?" said Derek.
"No! Mecha-Daddy, run away!"
"Mikey, I'm tired."
"No, you're not."
"Like Mom and Grandma." Derek knelt. "Mikey, get down now, I really am tired."
Mikey tightened his grip on his father's hair. "That isn't the truth."
"It is. Ow!"
"No! Are you brave enough to tell me the truth?"
Derek stopped with his hands under his son's armpits, looking up into the faces of his family.
For a moment, nobody knew what to say.
Lilian felt as if the ground were splitting beneath her. She always knew the right thing to say, but now, facing this terrible question, her voice failed her.
"I voted for Trump," said Frank.
"Huh what?" Derek paused with his heavy son halfway-off his shoulders. "Me too."
Diane turned on them. "Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded, and both men cringed.
"Put me down, Dad!"
"Because I voted for him too."
"Ha!"
Derek's arms trembled. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Mikey kicked, and Derek let him down in a motion just slow enough to not count as a fall. "I wanted to stay married."
"Me too."
"Ew! That's poop. Is that goose poop?"
Lilian pressed her pinkie into the inner corner of her eye. "Oh," she said.
She could hear Frank's footsteps on the grass behind her, but he didn't try to hold her.
Diane looked up from Derek's embrace. "Oh. I'm sorry, Lilly."
And what could she say? "I feel like a fool. I was so afraid of what you'd think of me." She grabbed her shoulders and and clenched her teeth. "And now I'm crying. Isn't that just. Stupid."
"Come here." Frank said from behind her. "Better to stop being stupid than keep on being stupid, right?"
Turning took more courage even than speaking. But when she saw his face, he still loved her.
"Me too," she told them.
"Brow!" Mikey shoved his parents aside and ran at full speed down the hill toward the lake. They let him.



The story above is dedicated to Marilyn Simon and Zero HP Lovecraft, who have written of their wishes to talk to their families about politics. It would be foolish to expect your conversation to be as painless as the ones in my story, but not so foolish to pray for some kind of miracle.

I should also note that, although I borrowed a house where we used to live and a certain Christmas dish, the family in this story little resembles mine. We didn't all vote the same.

November Newsletter: The Dragon's Back

My garden gate has a latch that hasn’t worked in at least sixteen years. To keep it closed, somebody welded a pair of hex-nuts to the gate and wound a thick wire of appropriate length around the frame. When you exit the gate, you can, if you turn around and use both hands, hook the wire through the hole in the outermost nut and close the gate.
It was a Sunday afternoon, chilly and bright gray. I closed the gate behind me and turned from it to stride off in the direction of dinner with friends. I was thinking, “Finally. I broke the dragon’s back.”
At 9 AM on Saturday, I had called Pavlina, away on a team-building, and told her I planned to relax and “play with Thracian.” I shut my laptop on Sunday, at 1 AM.
I know more or less what I was trying to do. There are two fairly good examples of the past tense used in inscriptions on Thracian grave markers: igekoa and gegeoeka. It’s plausible that they are both past tenses of “I live,” related to English “quick.” The i- at the beginning of igekoa looks like the augment that prefixes Ancient Greek and Sanskrit past tense verbs (English “I lived”). These languages also reduplicate the first syllable of a verb to mark the perfect aspect (English “I have lived”). The -k suffix might also indicate the perfect, as in Greek. Was it the same in Thracian? In pursuit of this question, I burned my entire Saturday.
There is nothing that it’s like to be caught up in an obsession. It’s a flow-state, a fugue, when awareness, reflection, and memory are swallowed up by the task. 1st person active present athematic. 1st person active present imperfective. 1st person active present thematic. I ground down my list of Proto-Indo-European verb suffixes, walking each through the sound-changes I’d derived, comparing each to Ancient Greek, Phrygian, and proto-Albanian. Every mistake or new interpretation would pull me back up to the top of the list to start the grind again.
Did igekoa mean “I had been living” and gegeyoeka “I had lived”? The truth is that there isn’t enough material to answer questions like that. If Thracian were just a little better-preserved, I’ve be able to definitively answer questions about its grammar. If worse, I could just invent whatever I wanted without fear of contradiction. But the language is just the right combination of known and unknown to draw me on. Endlessly, I now see.
That’s why I smiled on Sunday. Before, for years, there had always been family or work to force me out of my fugue. I’d think, during a class or a meal or a trip to the beach, that if only I had enough uninterrupted time, I’d be able to determine for certain how an ancient people spoke. When I finally got that time and sacrificed it, the answer I got was “You won’t.”
On Sunday, I slept in, had my breakfast, called my family and went back to my book. When people read Wealthgiver, they’ll like it for its characters, their relationships, and the atmosphere of exotic danger that surrounds them. Only once they’re drawn in will they bother to read the made-up words in italics, and very, very few will ever examine the suffixes. I want those who do to find something, but “world-building” is fundamentally decorative. These active-indicative-past-perfect flourishes might amuse or intrigue, but they will never warm a heart or nourish a soul. For that, I need to live a life.
With this in mind, I finished the translation I hadn’t even started on Saturday. It was the last one I’ll need to make, since the rest of the book is in English. With the dragon’s back broken, I went downstairs and took a hot bath. I soaked and read about determinism until it was time to get ready for dinner. I got dressed, went out to see my friends, and closed the gate behind me. Those eight seconds of messing with the hook gave me more to write about than fourteen hours of obsession.

Now, in December, it is the month of sales. My alternate history Tesla-punk romance The World’s Other Side is now on Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it for free if you’re a member. And even if not, it’s not that expensive and it has hover-cars. Treat yourself.
While you’re at it, take advantage of my sales on Patreon and Substack, where for less than $3 a month, you can join the readers of Wealthgiver and tell me whether I got the imaginary verbs right.
***
And I read some things in November:
Undermining the System by Inadvisably Compelled
The previous book in the series ends with Cato freeing one planet from the oppressive artificiality of the System. Now he has to do the same thing on as many planets as possible simultaneously, facing resistance from enemies who take him seriously. The author digs deeper into why someone might support the System, although some of the arguments are better than others.
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
I listened to this audiobook on my morning runs, and it make pre-dawn exercise a pleasure. I was reminded of Tom Sawyer, except it’s set in turn-of-the-century India with international espionage as the plot. Otherwise, there similar humor and compassion, with brightly-colored impressions of broad, deep characters. “She chuckled like a parrot over the sugar-lump.”
What Christians Believe by C.S. Lewis
Lewis takes you from atheism to "a child saying a child's prayer," then to the problem of evil and the nature of Christ. I appreciate his religion as a way for people who are already adults to continue to grow up. I'll have to read it again.
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Like Innocents Abroad, this is a collection of short essays, descriptions, and reminiscences that the famous author wrote as a famous author. Some of it seems to have been written to give his readers something to do, but there are a few spots of real inspiration. The story of Twain’s past as the pilot of a paddle boat are the perfect balance of fact and feeling.
Biomedical Self-Engineering by Jon Svenson
When Carl, a divorced night watchman in his 70s, is bitten by an alien, he becomes an animorph. He absorbs DNA from every animal he touches and can use those genes to alter his body. So, after he clears out his tumors and shrinks his prostate, Carl touches a dog so he can sniff out buried gold, which he uses to invest in failing business. It’s…not what I would do if I had DNA powers, but after a while I really wanted to know if Carl would be able to turn that restaurant around! Like most LitRPGs, this book is idle wish-fulfillment, but it’s saved from being boring by an unusual protagonist with interesting things to do.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
This is the most distance I’ve seen between a book’s reputation and its content. At best, people talk about Atlas Shrugged like it’s a shoddy story straining under its philosophical burdens, but when I read it, I saw a Russian science fiction novel.
In one scene, a group of government functionaries on a train need to be in California by midnight. Because most of the rail line’s employees were hired for political reasons, all rail lines but one are closed and there is no functioning diesel locomotive. The management, also political, is less concerned about fixing these problems than passing the blame, so the decision of what to do is finally made by a mid-level manager. This manager had a brother who killed himself after his workplace was nationalized by the People, and the news of this suicide was suppressed so as not to damage the People’s morale. Now, the manager orders that the a coal-burning locomotive should pull the train through a tunnel in the Rocky Mountains, a solution that will asphyxiate all its passengers but get their corpses to San Jose on time. “And?” the manager thinks to himself, “who is on that train? I bet it was People.”
I’m going to have to write a longer review of this book.


See you next month.

October Newsletter: Round the Meridian

So there I was, teeth gritted, knuckles white on the wheel, grinding down Vasil Kanchev on a flat tire at eight kilometers per hour. The garage was close. I could see it. I could leap the traffic meridian and be there in less than a minute. To do that, though, I would have to abandon Pavlina’s Nissan Leaf, the car I had lamed. On I ground, because I had promised myself I would and because there is no way to make a goddam left turn on Angel Kanchev.
It was my lack of experience and trusting nature that had put me in these straights. When the “Tire Pressure Low” indicator came on on Pavlina’s dashboard, I plugged a gas-station air pump into one tire after another and crouched there while it hissed, as if I knew what I was doing. The indicator stayed on.
During my next attempt, I experimented with waiting longer. I even considered the numbers displayed on the air pump’s gauge. 28. Remarkable. Would that be in PSI? Bars? The guide on the inside of the frame of the Leaf’s driver’s side door said 36PSI/2.5BAR, so perhaps I should aim for number 36. It sure was taking a long time to pump the tire up to that level.
A panicked gas station attendant stopped me before I’d gotten must past 32. Staying I’d over-inflated the tire, he depressed the head of the valve with the metal tip of the air pump. I give reader the licence to judge who was the greater fool in this situation. And now that you’ve had a moment to consider, it won’t surprise you to learn that by next morning, the tire was flat.
When Pavlina pulled out of our driveway on her way to work, the front tire on the passenger side of the Leaf made a noise like a wet tarpaulin dragged across gravel. She turned right back around and stowed the car, which she’d deal with later.
By God, I vowed, she would not.
“I am a good husband,” I said as I forced the car another meter down Angel Kanchev. “This is the highlight of my day!”
To my left, the barrier rail crawled by. To my right: crying toddlers in the arms of their parents, on the way to school. I fought the shimmy in the wheel, my ears filled with the despairing flap of flaccid rubber. I imagined the state of the rim as the traffic cavorted around me, honking. Finally, I reached the end of the street, which was an 18-way double intersection.
Like a pilot in a squall, I set my jaw and tightened my grip. There was no light to aid me and the traffic was going out. My only chance was a U-turn. So I hove to, and rounded the meridian.
The Nissan Leaf gradually flopped back up Vasil Kanchev, to where a provident parking space waited in front of the garage. The physical trial was finished, but now began the economic and psychological examinations. I only had enough money for one new (used) tire, and the mechanic didn’t want to make only one replacement.
“Can you walk with only one shoe?” he asked.
While I meditated upon this koan, he embarked on his own exploration of patience and compassion, working down a list of suggestions from replacing all four tires to just the front two to just the flat one, in exchange for my promise to have both front tires replaced as soon as possible.
In the time it took me to walk to the ATM and back, the job was done. That evening, Pavlina said, “Oh, good. I don’t have to do it,” and I felt like an admiral.

In October I began serializing Wealthgiver. As of the time of this writing, we’re up to five chapters, with another twelve edited and ready, a buffer that stretches to late January. Two thousand words a week seems like a pace I can keep to. Knock on wood, readers should be able to get a new chapter every week until the book ends in June.
Paying readers. The first seven chapters will be available to the public, but in two weeks (the 21st of November), I’ll erect my pay-wall. My goal until then is to attract as many free subscribers as possible. Please help me with that; subscribe on Substack or Patreon. If you enjoy Wealthgiver, please recommend it. You can even buy a gift subscription for a friend.
In other news, Upstream Reviews released my expanded review of Space Pirates of Andromeda, which you can read here. I’m rather proud of it, and of course I had a blast reading the book itself. I do wish someone would comment, though. I want to know what other people think. Go read the review, read the book, and tell me what you think.

And I read some books I read this month. (note: the links are Amazon affiliate links)
Invading the System by Inadvisably Compelled
I have a weakness for Progression Fantasy, where the protagonist gains skills and levels up like a video game character. Take the gamification too far, though, and you have a LitRPG. Compelled gets that.
In this book, post-singularity Earth was invaded by the System and turned into a deadly game of wizards killing monsters (and civilians and each other) in return for power. Survivors in space used biotechnology to fight back, and managed to drive the perverse incentive structure off Earth. But just as the last portal to the other System worlds was closing, one post-human super-soldier slips through. He calls himself Cato, and it is his mission to pursue the System to its source and annihilate it. A fun, fun book.
A Man at Arms by Steven Pressfield
I was greatly inspired and instructed by Pressfield’s War of Art. I got some good use out of The Story Grid, too, but here we see Pressfield’s system fail to deliver transcendence. In a story about a Jewish boy and a dishonored Greek mercenary dodge a cruel Roman legionary to help a girl deliver Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians, I didn’t feel much. The story painted one numbered step after the next and rushed me into the end.
There were a few moments of grace, though. The novel’s worth reading for the line “I am all stings.”
Rich Man’s Sky by Will McCarthy
I usually give up on bad books quickly and don’t bother to write reviews of them. This book, however, wasted enough of my time that I feel it my duty to warn you off. It was very disappointing.
The premise is excellent, but I suspect McCarthy tried to stretch the first act of his story into the first novel of a trilogy. We end up with a book that is mostly filler: digressions, characters who have nothing to add, meaningless sex, and a protagonist who keeps not getting it. Because the author doesn’t allow her to see what’s in front of her face, she comes off as clueless and bitchy. Corcoran’s Aristillus series is much better, and so is McCarthy’s earlier work.
Storm Between the Stars by Karl K. Gallagher
I’m getting used to Gallagher’s style, which relies on the reader to figure out the characters’ feelings from their words and deeds. At first, it feels like you’re reading an after action report, but the effort it takes to notice them makes the emotions more serious. My heart really did speed up as I watched the oppressive Censoriate bear down on our plucky space-traders. Will they make it out with lives and freedom intact?

See you next month.

Haint Blue Salt

A ghost story in honor of Halloween, available only to paid subscribers and patrons:


It would be nice if I could say I knew her car was haunted the very second I got in, but that's just pride. Fear, too, maybe, of getting old.
Used to be, I could spot a ghost from three blocks away. Didn't even need to see its haunt, but there's that pride again. I hear you, boy. Lie back down.
It was a long time since I was in the profession. I was glad of it. I came to Bulgaria for love, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider the other thing. "Escape" would be too dramatic a way of putting it, but let's just say I was ready to quit eating the dead.


https://danielmbensen.substack.com/p/haint-blue-salt?r=7etwc
https://www.patreon.com/posts/haint-blue-salt-114939036
A ghost story in honor of Halloween, available only to paid subscribers and patrons:


It would be nice if I could say I knew her car was haunted the very second I got in, but that's just pride. Fear, too, maybe, of getting old.
Used to be, I could spot a ghost from three blocks away. Didn't even need to see its haunt, but there's that pride again. I hear you, boy. Lie back down.
It was a long time since I was in the profession. I was glad of it. I came to Bulgaria for love, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider the other thing. "Escape" would be too dramatic a way of putting it, but let's just say I was ready to quit eating the dead.


https://danielmbensen.substack.com/p/haint-blue-salt?r=7etwc
https://www.patreon.com/posts/haint-blue-salt-114939036

The Thing in a Clock

"Maybe you don't recognize me," he said. "I'm Kaloyan's dad.* I'm on a diet and exercise regime and I've lost 20kg. You've lost weight too!"
I had approached Ellie's birthday party with calm determination. She wanted to celebrate in Sofia with her friends in a "children's center," which meant Pavlina and I would have to stay there the whole time, talking to the other parents.
This wasn't my first rodeo. I pre-ate. I made myself coffee at home. I went into the parents' area and turned down the music and the space heater. Now in a bearable environment, sated on protein and coffee with milk, I could speak from a position of strength about diet and excerisze. I was profoundly grateful to be given this topic of conversation.
It was true that I didn't recognize Kaloyan's dad. The embarrassing fact is I have a habit of zoning out during Bulgarian conversations. Although I could focus on remembering people's names and faces, or even deciphering what they're saying, I often prefer to save that energy for inventing excuses for my incivility.
But that's a hard way to live. I don't want to be the guy who spends the party squinting at his phone. I want to be able to talk to my neighbors, other parents at my kids' school, other writers in Sofia.
Now comes my second admission: it's that last necessity that pushed me over the edge. I need to be able to participate in the writing scene in Sofia. In order to do that, I need to be able to sit at a table and talk with Bulgarians.
All right, then! Challenge accepted. I couldn't motivate myself with appeals to courtesy, neighborliness, or filial duty, but professional development I can do. 
I talked with Petar about his busy Saturday schedule, and the reconstruction at TSUM with another dad whose name I can't remember. Kaloyan's dad wanted me and Ellie to go "winter-skating" with him. I don't remember how we got onto the subject of Dimitar's escape from Russia.
I knew that one of Ellie's friends was from Russia, but I assumed his parents had just dropped him off and left. The bearded man at the other end of the table had spent most of our conversation squinting at his phone, but when he spoke, it seemed to me that his Bulgarian was perfect. He even had the Sofia accent where unstressed /o/ becomes /u/. It was only after Kaloyan's dad complimented Dimitar on his Bulgarian that I focused and heard his /je/ rather than /e/. But even then I might have just assumed he was from Pleven.
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It turned out that Dimitar's dad had been Bulgarian, so he'd only had to recover his childhood language after moving here last year. His own son, though, had only come to this country with two words of the language.
"That teacher is good," said Pavlina. "Ellie's older sister's teacher recommended her to us because she knows what to do with bilingual children."
"We couldn't believe it when we came here," Dimitar said. "We step out of the plane and there's a public Russian school? It's very good for us, of course, but how can you use tax money to teach kids Russian? Why not German or French?"
There are public German and French elementary schools in Sofia, too, but we all knew that the real question was "why learn Russian at all?"
"Pavlina heard some high school students ask that question," I said. "Do you remember? Last year."
She took the cue. "At the graduation ceremony," she said. "I was backstage with Ellie and I overheard some seniors talking. One of them asked, 'what will we do with Russian after we graduate? We can't go back to Russia. We can't work for a Russian company.' But another one said, 'we know a whole language. We can find something to do with it. We don't know what will happen in the next twenty years.' During the ceremony, one of those boys recited 'Monument' by Pushkin,' and it was excellent."
Dimitar was pessimistic about the next twenty years. "Russia had democracy for one month in 1917 and one year in the 1990s. Otherwise it was Fascist, then Communist, and now it's Fascist again. Next, you know, the thing in a clock," he made pendulum motions, "will swing the other way and Russia will be Communist again."
I understood that Dimitar had checked out of Russia. He wanted to think about the future of his family in Europe. I was just glad for him that they'd gotten out.
The conversation continued, but after a while I realized I hadn't understood most of what was being said. I'd been working by Bulgarian social muscles for an hour and a half and the carbs in that piece of cake weren't doing my brain any favors.
I excused myself and went for a walk until the party was over. When we got home, I lay on my bed, exhausted, until it was time to go to sleep.
We got to do what we got to do. More than that, we got to be able to do what we got to do. That means exercise. Work the muscles, develop the skills, so that when the challenge comes, you can meet it. Nobody know what will happen in the next twenty years.

As I’m sure all of you know, I have begun serializing Wealthgiver both on Patreon and Substack. That crunchy cover art is the work of Artyom Trakhanov, who is always a pleasure to work with, and whose skills speak for themselves. I literally only just now noticed the skulls on the ground under Andrei's feet. Cheers, bate.
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And I read some books this month.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

I picked up Chesterton because he was an influence on C.S. Lewis, but I have to say I got more out of Lewis. Chesterton gets preoccupied with his own choice of words, so doesn't always get to where he's going. That's fine for the autobiographical aspect of this book, but as far as theology goes, I don't think he convinced me of anything I didn't already believe - and I want to believe. Still, this book was a comfort.

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

I liked it. My wife really liked it.
It's a pared-down book, which I appreciate. The Basic mental tools - definite optimism, the important truth question, zero to one - are useful. I'll have to come back to this book.

King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
I tried to read this once, stopped, and came back to it as an audiobook. I wasn't put off because of the slow start - in fact my favorite part was the detailed description of outfitting an expedition through the Kalahari desert. But the lost tribe they found was disappointing. I would have been more interested in learning about the real 19th century Zulus.
Space Pirates of Andromeda by John C. Wright
It's not often you get to read a real homage, in which the writer loves the source material and extends it. Here, John C. Wright asks "what if the Star Wars sequels were good?" Space Pirates of Andromeda gives us a very satisfying answer.
Wright plays his usual trick of packing an epic trilogy's worth of detail into the backstory, of which he then reveals very little. There's a robot in a tophat and a winged pirate queen, but you don't get to hang out with them. You're mostly on a pirate ship. To be fair Wright dumps so much punishment on his protagonist that you spend most of your mental energy wondering how the boy's gonna make it out of this one.
I also have to admit I loved the little asides about why robots are all built with hands and why supertech guns shoot balls of plasma rather than bullets. Those are some sweet justifications.

Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen
Theft of Fire is a brutally honest blast, pulling us through the development of a relationship between people who cannot, but must, trust each other. I wasn't satisfied with the ending, and I don't think the science fiction goes far enough to distinguish itself from Firefly and The Expanse, but the characters really work. The sex and violence, as intense as they are, work too.

What Is Art? by Lev Tolstoy

It would be better if Tolstoy had spent more time describing what art is rather than what it isn't. There's quite a lot of complaining. But Tolstoy does answer his own question: art is the infection of a one person with the experience of what it is like to be another. I don't have a better suggestion.
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict
The best anthropology is the kind that tests hypotheses. In The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Benedict's posits that the apparent contradictions in WWII Japanese society were caused by a basic desire to be respected, and what is worthy of respect is to act wholeheartedly, holding nothing back. It's a good explanatory model, and more importantly it produces prescriptions that seem to have worked. Benedict unapologeticaly offers advice to Douglas MacArthur's SCAP government on how to best govern Japan according to American interests. It seems to have worked.


See you next month
*None of these names are real

Wealthgiver starts

The story short: Wealthgiver starts today 

The long story:
I'm serializing my new novel on Patreon and Substack. As with Fellow Tetrapod, I’m doing the final edits on Wealthgiver as I serialize it. This is exciting for me, and it means that I’ll be changing things based on reader feedback. So that’s more exciting for you.

Wealthgiver will continue until July 2025, at which point I’ll make the complete novel available for purchase and begin serializing it for free on Royal Road. Until July, only my paying patrons and subscribers will be able to read the novel or effect its writing. After that, I’ll have some new stories ready for you.

In the mean time, my previous novels are now available for purchase on Patreon. Patrons can already read them, but if you're a non-patron and you want to try out some of my work, I can recommend PETROLEA, THE WORLD'S OTHER SIDE, and GROOM OF THE TYRANNOSAUR QUEEN. Meanwhile, FELLOW TETRAPOD is still free for everyone.
​
Speaking of free, free subscribers and patrons will still get my newsletters once a month. In fact, they'll get them a week earlier than before. Paid subscribers, on the other hand, will get Wealthgiver, the next serial novels and short stories for $3 a month.

So, join me, readers.
And thank you,
Dan

Surface Fish

Subscribe I find it best to just dive into the sea. Get the shock over with. And anyway, we were in Greece. The water wasn’t cold.
It was early September in Nea Iraklitsa and we still had to keep the air conditioners on all day. Maybe that was the problem. I sneezed one day while hanging laundry out to be scorched and two weeks later I still felt like my head was stuffed with mucus. So it was that I toppled, top-heavy, into the Aegean, where I left my snot behind.
There are surprising fish down there. Goatish ones that nose through the sand where you’ve stepped, slender ones striped or yellow with black eye-spots on their tails. I once saw a pipefish and another time a cuttlefish rippled up to me where I stood in the shallows and flashed Rorschach patterns before jetting away.
This summer, though, was the first time I’d seen the surface-feeding fish. They’re about the size of a car’s electronic keyfob, oval and very thin. From below, their narrow, pale bellies blend in with the sunlight shining through the surface. From above, their dark blue backs are invisible. You can stand in the midst of a school of them and be totally unaware of it. At dusk a surface fish might jump after one of the mosquitoes you’ve attracted, but all you’ll hear is a plup.
Maggie figured out how to spot the surface fish. With your goggles on, you dip your face into the water until the surface is at the level of your eyebrows. Then you look straight forward to see the wheeling ranks of silver-blue ovals.
I tried to do it and coughed. Deep, somewhat frightening coughs that fizzed and rattled in my chest. I didn’t like it. I wanted to be rid of it, so I reached down into myself and brought up a thick, yellow wad as big as my thumb. A clam, as the kids called it in elementary school in Maine.
I treaded water and breathed deep, watching the yellow clam until a fish ate it.
And with that, what better enticement can I give you to buy a paid subscription?
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More details to follow in a separate post.
August was a surprisingly busy month. I experimented with sharing my process and wrote a few posts about constructing the fictional, Thracian-derived language of the Good people of Wealthgiver.
Aside from swimming, conlanging, sneezing, coughing and spending time with my family, I also wrestled with the identity authentification system of Stripe until I finally got it activated and enabled paid subscriptions on Substack. But more on that in the next email.
And I read some books.
Closing Down by Yakubian Ape - This short story was good enough for me to recount it to my wife. That’s a high bar. It’s about a ghost - the ghost of turn-of-the-millennium America. The big box stores have gone bankrupt and are full of junk that’s only just barely worth the price of hauling away. Although maybe the price is higher than you think. Go read it.
Causes of Separation by Travis J.I. Corcoran - I was going to wait longer and stretch the time between the first book of this excellent duology and its sequel, but I couldn’t help myself. Causes of Separation gives us the invasion of the Moon by the Earth. In fact we get two invasions - the one we should have gotten in the first book and the other, bigger one.
I do have my complaints. This second book felt rushed, with fewer of the fun digressions of the first. It wasn’t just that I missed the Dogs. Corcoran had a chance to illustrate how a libertarian people would fight a war, and he doesn’t make the most of that chance. Important things that should have happened on screen do not, and the end was only okay.
But I can only gripe like this in the first place because I read the book, and I read it because I enjoyed the hell out of it. The science fiction is well-balanced and the jokes are funny. The characters ring true and so do their problems. I don’t know if Corcoran plans to stay in this universe or move to another for his next book, but either way, I’ll follow him.
Terrors of Pangea by John C. Wright - What a blast. Other authors would give their adventurer a break to recover. Our hero escapes the villains with the help of a fellow warrior or friendly native or ancient god and gets a beautiful nurse to feed him and tend his wounds so he’s ready for the next action sequence. Or at least he gets a nap.
Nothing of the sort for Preston Lost on the Last Continent! Lost is relentlessly attacked, pursued, drowned, stung, and hurled off precipices starting at about page two. The friendly native doesn’t speak his language, the fellow warrior is crippled trying to kill him, the ancient god doesn’t have any food to hand, and the beautiful nurse is a prisoner in need of rescuing. The whole book treads the line between presenting impossible problems and solving them.
When I was younger and less wise, I read the first chapter of Terrors of Pangea and put it down because I thought it was silly. It is, but the Gray-piloted flying saucers and albino dinosaurs are underpinned by a great deal of careful thought. Everything hangs together: the action, the world, the exploration of the main character, who is “not a reckless man.” I’m holding the sequel in reserve for when I’m feeling down.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain - I’d only read bits and pieces of this before - episodes from Tom Sawyer’s last summer of boyhood. That makes sense, since this book is so episodic, but there’s a real through-line with the boys and their games bumping up against real thieves and murderers.
Starship’s Mage Omnibus by Glynn Stewart - This book went its entire length without ever getting quite boring enough to make me quit. I was really hooked by the premise: the royal monopoly on magical warp-drives has intentionally crippled the spaceships it sells, so that if it ever comes to a war, the Mage King will have an overwhelming advantage over his clients. Except an outsider mage jailbreaks his ship, turning it into a major threat and a target of the Mage King and every pirate, gangster, and planetary government who wants to learn its secret.
But then Stewart keeps failing to deliver. The scary warlords and witch-hunters turn out to be reasonable people who were never really a threat. I was disappointed.






See you next month

Heart Drain

Subscribe "Her mom divorced him. Her sister won't talk to him. He lives alone in a little apartment with all his guns."
It was a long, peaceful July evening in Sofia, and I was finally out of the hospital. I had nothing to do but regrow my internal membranes and repeat gossip about the family of an old friend. I'll call her Irene.
"It's sad," I said, "because this man spent his whole adult life building his family. Marry, buy a house, raise three daughters, and it all just falls apart."
I lay on my back on the couch in our lawn, watching the bats work against the darkly glowing sky. My daughters were inside, probably watching videos on their phones.
"Irene? Wasn't she the home-schooled girl?" asked my mom. She had flown out to help me recover. "Her family was always a little weird. Very religious."
I didn't share her disapproval. My recent contact with death had left me aware of my need for religion. It was as if a clinging sheet of plastic had been pulled off my face, and I could no longer ignore the things that mattered.
"Yes," I said. "Weird. Someone said something a bit too extreme, and the normal people went to find another church. That would leave a group that was less normal on average. Now someone else would say something more extreme and the community would get even smaller.”
Pavlina knocked her wine glass against the arm-rest of her chair. "Brain Drain. When everyone who's smart and ambitious leaves, you get," she said, "what's left."
We three sat there, considering the fact that we were in Bulgaria. My mom had been horrified by the black mold growing on the bathroom walls of my room at the hospital. She didn't even know yet that my second surgery had only been necessary because of a doctor's mistake after the first one.
I was past caring about that. Leaning on my rack of fluid-filled bags, learning how to walk again, I had asked myself "why did this happen?" "Because one molecule bumped," into another was like trying to eat sand. "Because your enemies attacked you," was like drinking lye. I’d spent a month reading Terry Pratchett and watching the kestrels that nested in the hospital's neglected attic. I was glad to be in Bulgaria. Also, if I'd gotten a colostomy in the US, the medical bill would have bankrupted us.


"Heart Drain," I said. "It wasn't the smart ones who left Irene's father's church, it was the good ones. The people who stayed were like a tide pool in the sun. They got saltier and saltier."
If my mother and wife rolled their eyes at me, I didn't see it. The sky was darker now and the bats were hard to make out.
"Well, I'm glad she's out of it at least," said my mom. "How is Irene's baby? Say hi to her for me."
Except Irene wasn't out of it, at least from my perspective.
Irene and I kept in touch for years, writing long emails and critiquing each other's stories. I must have sent her hundreds of thousands of amateurish words, but by the time I got to my first published book, something had started to go wrong.
"He likes her because she doesn't remind him of his EX-WIFE?" Irene wrote in the all-caps of outrage. "She reacts to the oppression of the patriarchy by feeding into their classification of her as a child?" She told me I was infantilizing a black character because he was short and had a round face.
I didn't know what to do. Irene was reading my work like she was a censor, but I couldn't tell her that. I didn't want to be mean, and also I was starting to understand that to push back against a certain type of comment might be a career-limiting move. In the end, I couldn't bear to send her my manuscripts. We would talk about other things.
My readers will know that selective silence wasn't enough. Irene's increasingly extreme ideology infected everything we talked about. Food, gardening, our children. Her final email told me how much Irene limited her son's screen time and why that was so important. I read it, stumbled downstairs, yelled at my daughters who were of course staring at their phones, and realized that I had a problem. I had to leave this conversation.
For about five years, I only handled the internet with tongs. My app-blocker was strict. My emails were terse. My posts avoided readers, because readers might comment. I kept my head down and told myself that I still had my agent, my publisher, my colleagues. I would work and that would be enough.
My readers will know that it wasn't. My agent became more demanding and my publisher colder. Every science fiction convention was worse than the last. My fellow writers were angrier, pettier, more likely to end your career for you.
I once asked a stranger at a con what the badges on his lanyard stood for. "Well of course I declared my gender," he said, pointedly. "Why wouldn't you?"
I nodded silently. And I left. I stopped going to conventions. In the words of one of my colleagues, why would I pay to spend time with people who hate me? I hear that subsequent cons have become absolutely unbearable. It's not worth reading much traditionally published genre fiction, either. Heart Drain has hit scifi hard.
None of this is news to anybody, but now we get to my question for you, my readers. What do we do now?
What attracted me to the Literary Right was its kindness and generosity. Come to us and say what you're thinking. We'll disagree with you, and then we'll get back to writing. Now, based on the essays of JE Tabor and John Carter, I wonder if I was naive. If I say the wrong thing to you, will you try to get me fired? Harass my colleagues? Get my books pulled? If I suspect you might, and if others suspect it, you won’t be able to have honest conversations any more. If you become powerful enough to threaten the rest of us, we’ll go along with it, nodding silently, until we leave.
Imagine us in another ten years. Will we be surrounded by fractious, squabbling, honest fellow writers, or will we be alone in our small apartments, surrounded by our weapons?

Thracology

SUBSCRIBE We rounded the corner of the university and walked up the street, the two of us. I stooped and leaned sideways, eyes scanning the concrete as I thanked Professor Yanakieva for agreeing to meet with me.
"It's no trouble," she said. "I'm retired. I just don't know how I can help you."
We hadn't reached the cafe yet, but I took the opening. "Did Thracian have cases?" I asked.
The Thracians were a Classical Age people who lived north of the Greeks. Unlike the Greeks, however, they didn't write much down. Aside from four inscriptions, a handful of words recorded in Greek sources, and some names of people and places, there is no surviving documentation of the Thracian language.
There are coins, Professor Yanakieva said, that show the name of the Thracian king Seuthes with the spelling "Seuthou" - the Greek genitive case - but others that show "Seutha." Is that the Thracian genitive? We crossed the street and walked into the small park behind the national library, past the lawn-bowling pitches and into the shade of a circle of large walnut trees, where a cafe surrounds a mostly dry pond. We ordered a pair of espressos.
"Okay," I asked. "What about aspiration?"
"We just don't know," she said. "Sometimes a Thracian name will be recorded with a delta and sometimes with a tau or even a theta. Maybe Thracian plosives had different qualities from Greek. This is all in my paper."
It was. I'd read all her papers and input their data into my succession of huge spreadsheets of Thracian sound shifts.
"What exactly do you want to do with Thracian?" she asked. "You said you were writing a novel?"
I told her I did. When I began Wealthgiver, I had thought it would be a straightforward task to track the sound changes between known Thracian words and their Proto-Indo-European ancestors. Six years later, I have learned a great deal about classical Greek, Phrygian, Proto-Albananian, and Indo-European linguistics. I'm on my third version of the spreadsheet.
"And you want to include whole sentences in Thracian?"
I intend to include prophetic poetry in Thracian. I didn't say that, but Professor Yanakieva was still cautious. "Have you heard of the Bessian Bible?"
"Oh that," I said.
What happened is someone got a hold of a Coptic bible, noticed the Greek loan-words in it, and pretended that everything else was a descendant of Thracian.1
"I've read many conspiracy theories," I said, much to her relief. "My project is a speculative reconstruction, like paleontologists make of dinosaurs."
"But paleontologists have a whole skeleton!"
I thought I heard some envy in the thracologist's voice, and remembered my friend Vladi, who is thrilled to unearth a single fragment of a femur. But I didn't want to get sidetracked. "Okay," I said, "so we have a tooth."
She laughed. I felt like I'd passed a test. "Do you know about Zoni? It was a church in Greece, but the church was built on top of a temple to Apollo. Worhippers would write a prayer on a clay pot and smash it, so we have many examples of the ritual formula "Abolo Uneso somebody ekaie." Abolo is the god and uneso probably meant holy."
"Yes!" I showed her my notebook with copies of those inscriptions:
(they're written right to left)
"And that e in ekaie. Is that," I asked, "augment?"
She lit up. "It might be!"
I could feel the coffee taking effect, and see it in my guest, as well. But I looked at my watch. "I have to go pick up my daughter in about five minutes," I said. "I'll pay for the coffees."
I had time for one more question. "I only found one paper on the Zoni inscriptions," I said as I came back from the bar. "This one by Brixhe. But there are many more, right?"
"Yes. All the inscriptions from Zoni are published in the year-book of Sofia University 1954. They include the bilingual tablet."
"The what!?" I said, thinking of the Rosetta Stone. Also, I had to go pick up my daughter from Russian camp. But a bilingual inscription? That was revolutionary! It could blow the Thracian language wide open!
"It's damaged," said Professor Yanakieva. "The top of the Greek part and the bottom of the Thracian part are missing, so we can't decipher it. Didn't you say you have to pick up your daughter?"
"Well, she can wait five minutes."
"How old is she? Eight? She'll be frightened if she has to wait."
In fact, I was the one who had to wait because Ellie wasn't done making her noisemaker. I didn't mind because my brain was on fire. A bilingual inscription. I poured over it for the next month, and I have a sketch of a translation here. Professor Yanakieva says it's "amusing" and sent me links to more papers.
My reconstruction continues, a dinosaur based on a tooth. Maybe I got the legs wrong and put the nose on backwards, but I'm not afraid of making mistakes. I write speculative fiction, and my goal is plausible wonder. I think I got it.
***
In the month of June I finished working on the penultimate draft of Wealthgiver and...started working on the Thracian language that will appear in Wealthgiver. Here's my plan: I'll work on the language stuff over the summer (and writing up some of it for you, my readers) and getting ready to begin serializing Wealthgiver here on Patreon in the last week of September. I will polish the manuscript as I serialize it, the way I did for Fellow Tetrapod, so your feedback and advice will have an impact on what you read.  
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And I read some books this month
The Initiate by James L. Cambias
There's a thematic point in this book where someone tells the main character, "you tell me not to do it because it is evil, and you tell me that evil is what I should not do. For we, who do not fear judgement, what reason is there to do anything other than what pleases us?" The main character answers him - I won't spoil the book by saying how. I will say that the first time I read The Initiate, I was disappointed with that answer, but now I see that Cambias had a different, better one for us. I won't spoil that, either. Go read the book.
The Knight by Will Wight
I'm trying to figure out why the books in this series bore me so much more than the excellent Cradle series. It's not the change in genre, because in fact this problem started to manifest in the later Cradle books as well. Since 2020 or so, Wright's novels have become longer and less substantial. A lot of things happen, but the connections between one event and the next are weak. The characters don't react as deeply or stand out as strikingly as they used to. Certainly, the word-level writing style has deteriorated. I couldn't even finish The Knight. It felt inflated and thoughtless, as if it was compiled rather than written. Whatever process Wright has adopted since the pandemic, I hope he returns to the old one.
The Higgs Boson and Beyond by Sean Carrol
Ironically for a summary of particle physics from the standpoint of quantum field theory, this book is too certain. Electrons ARE waves. Interactions with the Higgs field IS mass. There's none of the nuance of "according to this model," or "experiments have shown." There's too much space and too little substance devoted to the funding and construction of particle accelerators, and we're left without knowing much about Higgs boson itself. Carrol does okay with his central metaphor about a celebrity try to move through a crowded room, but he doesn't take it any farther. Why is being slowed down by the Higgs field a good explanation for inertial mass? What does that have to do with gravitational mass? PBS Eons goes deeper.
The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman
God damn I love reading Feynman. When other physicists proclaim, he clarifies. When others offer up half-baked metaphors, he gives us thoughts experiments that are both helpful and funny. How precisely could we determine the a bowling ball's velocity and position by bouncing ping-pong balls of it? What would an Aztec astrologer say to Galileo? What if mysteries in physics never run out, but new discoveries get harder and harder to make? In that last case, Feynman would consider himself very lucky to be born when he was.
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
A friend of mine read this book and argued about it with me in high school. Maybe I wasn't ready for it then, but I was now. C.S. Lewis explains what he thinks Christianity means, for example when it comes to God as an anchor for objective good. He is not so much persuasive as illuminating.
How Asia Works by Joe Studwell
This is one of those books that changes the way you look at everything. I now listen to Economist podcasts about the French election and think about DeGaul's post-war industrial policy. I see what you did there, orienting on exports. Or my wife tells me about A Suitable Boy and I recognize the importance of agricultural land reform. My friend Paul in Japan was incensed when I told him that cherries are too expensive there, but I'm right, and now I know why. What a pleasure it was to read How Asia Works. A heartfelt thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Psmith, who recommended it.
Wintersteel by Will Wight
This is the apex of the Cradle series and Wight's best book. It asks an important question: how can you dedicate your life to improving yourself without leaving your loved ones behind? In answer, there's a kiss.
The War Revealed by Karl Gallagher
The renaissance fair that was teleported to a fantasy world has overcome their first orc invasion. Now it's time to meet the elves! Again, Gallagher's characters are very true to their natures. An agorophobe magician doesn't thank the protagonist for helping her develop her power of flight. She's mad at him! He scared her! Again, Gallagher lets this truth shine through prose that is so clear it feels like a synopsis. You have to slow down and imagine before you're hit by the emotional impact of what you're reading. I didn't like this one quite as much as the first one - maybe because there were fewer surprises. The biggest was that this is the second book in a fantasy series, and it ends. Good job!
Guest Law by John C. Wright
Hypocritical medieval courtiers...in space! As with most of Wright's work, my only complaint was that this one was too short. The future history he describes could and ought to support a trilogy at least.
Taboo: 10 Facts You Can't Talk About by Wilfred Reilly
The outline of this book is good, but it lacks something in the execution. Reilly is a political scientist, and would have done well to team up with a statistician or an economist. That could have elevated his examples from anecdote to data. Does the media really fail to report the police killing white people? Reilly found instances where that seems to be the case, but specific instances aren't enough. When I repeated the arguments Reilly made to my wife, she got angry at me. Maybe she would have been less angry if I'd had some more rigorous data? Don't worry, we apologized to each other.
 Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
I read this book to my daughters. Ellie (8) was bored and demanded yet another repetition of Dory Fantasmagory, but Maggie (11) liked the horses and the grandpa. What struck me, though, was a scene where the child protagonists are incensed at the sight of captured feral colts being separated from their mothers, and take their complaints to the manager. He tells them that this is how young horses grow up. It's hard for the children to understand now, but when they get older, they'll see that this is for the best. And he's right. I can't think of any children's book written since the 80s where the adult was right and the children were wrong, and I'd like to see more.
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Animal Farm covers a lot of the same ground as The Gulag Archipelago, but in a much condensed and more impressionistic form - not so much a story as a description. I wondered as I listened to this audiobook what Orwell would have changed if he had known Russia's history from 1989 to 2022. Maybe not much.




See you next month


1 In fact, Coptic is a descendant of Ancient Egyptian. Way more interesting than a dumb conspiracy theory.

May Newsletter

For the most interesting thing that happened to me this month, see The Cyclist. I didn't think it would be in good taste to combine that story with my self-advertising and book reviews.


I spent the month combating my lust for the Thracian language. Every time I sat down to do anything, I had to make myself not play with Thracian instead. So expect more news about the language soon. At the time of writing this, I'm up to W in the catalog of sound shifts.
I finished the "skin" draft of Wealthgiver, which means I'm on track to start serializing it starting in October (or the end of September on Patreon). I'll give it another revision as I serialize it, the same as I did with Fellow Tetrapod. I hope in this way I'll still be emotionally involved in the story while the readers are reading it, and I'll be motivated to do a better job with advertising.
If you want a chance to really get involved, why not critique this draft of Wealthgiver? Send me a message and I'll send you the current version.
The serialization of Petrolea is nearly done. It got a bit of attention on Substack, but I think the fact that I've already finished writing it means I'm not excited about advertising it. Once again, if you like robot dragons and discussions of the pros and cons of environmentalism, give it a try.


And I read some books this month
The Fifth Head of Cerberus
This is very much a first book. All of Wolfe's things are there - memory, growing up, girls - but he's trying to be somebody else. I was reminded of LeGuin and Solzhenitsyn. I do appreciate his ideas in embryonic form, though, and I'd recommend the first of the book's three stories.
Outlaw of Gor
I read book one of the Gorean Chronicles several years ago and gave book two a try after reading there was some interesting sexual philosophy in it. Well, it's not my thing, and the story isn't well-developed enough to make the book fun otherwise. The language was neat, but that was about it for me.
The Art of Writing and the Gifts of Writers
Finally, some advice on how to write a book review. C. S. Lewis tells us to avoid the trap of inventing stories about the author's motivation and he shows us what real love looks like for an author and his or her work. I need to read me some Rider Haggard and Dorothy Sayers.
The Powers of the Earth
What a book! I haven't felt this way since I read The Martian. And like the Martian, Forces is idiosyncratic in a way you wouldn't see in mainstream science fiction. There are two stories, one about an exiled soldier hiking on the moon with a pack of illegal uplifted dogs, the other about the libertarian misanthrope who helped found the moon colony and must now overcome his antisocial nature to build his home's defenses against an upcoming invasion from Earth. The novel doesn't do what you'd expect. It neither begins nor ends where an agent or editor or writers' workshop instructor would recommend. It's just utterly enthralling. Not because of its message or its use of tropes or language, but because it's a labor of love. Corcoran loves Brin and Heinlein. He loves engineering and dogs. He loves playing with the toys he's made, and he's sharing them with you. This is everything fiction should be. Endless thanks to Jane Psmith for recommending this book.
Traction
I read this so I would know what my wife was talking about when she described the "new process" she's using with her CTO. Since I'm self-employed and don't have a team yet, there was a lot in this book I wasn't ready for. My best take-home was the concept of a 90-day project horizon. Yes, looking back I can see that my projects all run for about three months before I have to take a break and switch to something else. Good to know.
Swan Knight's Sword
In this medieval tale of chivalry set in the 21st century, a boy grows up and claims his inheritance. I appreciate what the author has to say about temptation, and the magic and setting are top notch. As always, Wright is generous to the point of profligacy with his storytelling. Magically hidden states, runaway witches, history professors corrupted by the secrets they've read, ideas that other authors would horde away for future books, Wright throws at you in passing. I would have liked more development of the love story, which we got in book one, but needed more of in book three.
Vanity Fair
This is the story of the good Amelia, the wicked Rebecca, and the compassionate, befuddled author who judges them both. Each woman gets the life the other wanted, and Thackery comments on this, their time, and the human condition. I appreciate what he was trying to do, but I found he lost his way somewhere after the war. I liked Anna Karenina better.




See you next month