Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 37

Five Star Reviews: Unsong

WOW. Uh… one-sentence summary… “The Apollo 9 crashed into the heavenly crystal sphere surrounding the Earth and cracked it, letting the Divine Light back in.” Or “A low-level kaballist working for a major theonomics corporation runs afoul of the UN agency in charge of policing the use of names of God.” How about “a manifesto on the moral necessity of the conquest of hell”? Or just “Theodicy.” Also puns. Bad, bad puns.

I cannot emphasize enough how much I loved this book. I read it when I was suffering from spring-time-depression and it really helped me. Distraction, yes, escapism, okay, wish fulfillment, certainly, but there’s something both comforting and inspiring about the way Unsong‘s characters turn their determination into action. Plus, I learned a whole lot about kabbalah, and that can’t hurt.

Wealthgiver

So, I’m starting a new book…

The Thracians were an ancient people who lived in various places on the Balkans north of Greece, and spoke a language that was (maybe) distantly related to Greek and Albanian. They were Christianized in the 4th century, then died out. But what if they didn’t?

By the 4th century, the Thracians (who called themselves the Bessi) were restricted to the Rhodope Mountains in southern Bulgaria, an area famous for its caves. What if the Thracians retreated to those caves? What if they only pretended to Christianize? What if they continued worshiping the old gods and speaking the old language, pretending to be whatever religion or ethnicity was politically convenient and killing anyone who found out the truth? What if the tumultuous history of the Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires was actually the result of the cryptic machinations of the cave-Thracians?

Then comes the Russo-Turkish war., and the Treaty of San Stefano. In 1878, it’s clear that the Ottoman Empire is falling apart, and the Thracians’ land is going to be carved up into newly independent nation-states. The young, Swiss-educated oracle-priestess knows that to survive, her people must finally come out of the shadows and join the nations of the world. It is an uphill battle. Until a Ukrainian doctor defects from the Tsar’s army and flees into the hills north of Thessaloniki. Ignoring the warnings of local shepherds about the terrible monsters that there, he sets up camp in the mouth of a cave. In the middle of the night, he is awakened by a strange, wet, fungal smell, and the hands gripping his ankles, dragging him down into those cold, dark depths.

Junction Audiobook

I am quite excited that Tantor Media (Tantor freaking media!) has recorded this audiobook of Junction.

“When Japanese nature show host Daisuke Matsumori finds himself on an alien world, he hopes to rekindle his passion for his work. Traveling through a newly discovered wormhole in the Papuan highlands, he joins biologist Anne Houlihan on Junction, a patchwork planet of competing alien ecosystems.

When their exploratory party crashes in the alien wilderness, Daisuke and Anne try to lead bickering soldiers and civilians back to civilization alive. As they trek across one unearthly biome after another and members of the party continue to die, however, Daisuke wonders whether human politics might be more deadly than alien biology. One of his companions might be a murderer.

Contains mature themes.”

Yeah. There are some mature themes.

Afternoon Sunlight

Afternoon sunlight

Through the shoots of day lilies

Please don’t step on them

Interchange: What is the What if?

What is the what if?
What if life could easily get to and from orbit?

What is the time frame of the story?
Interchange takes place over a little over three weeks.

What is the setting? How big is the stage?
Interchange is set on Junction between the Earth portal and Howling Mountain, and in geosynchronous orbit over Howling Mountain. The stage is mostly the interior of the all-terrain mobile lab that they drive there.

Why are you excited about this story? (what is it about?)
I’m excited about Interchange because it shows that “survival is beautiful” isn’t the end of the story. We don’t just survive and then stop (that would be death, which is rather the opposite of survival). We can’t reach the finish line and then just keel over. We have to sustain our efforts every day. And in order to do that, we must be intelligent.

I Remember This

I remember this

The hyacinths in their cones

With bees everywhere

A Seagull at Dawn

A seagull at dawn

It only flaps once or twice

The rest of us work

The Neo-Thracian language

Let’s think about the Neo-Thracian language.

The Point of Divergence is a vision received by a early 4th-century Bessi oracle, telling the Thracians to switch from worship of Dionysus to Pluto and unite against the Christians. The oracle’s charismatic interpreter becomes the chief priest of a new cryptic cult of Pluto, which becomes a secret society of spies and assassins, centered in the Rhodope Mountains.

A hidden nation of Thracian-speaking people thus survives to modern times, pretending to be either Greek or Bulgarian or Turkish and murdering any outsiders who found out the truth. Fun!

So I’m thinking the Neo-Thracian language is spoken overwhelming by second-language learners, with most people only learning it as teenagers when they’re initiated into the Mysteries of Pluto. By the 19th century, the only people who speak the language from birth are hereditary (female) oracles and (male) priest-interpreters. Which means the language should be fairly standardized and isolating, right? What else should I be thinking?

The Maiden and the Wealthgiver 1

Kori Utzemeli was 16 when she realized that the myth of Persephone was about her.

“Now, the daughter of Demeter was Persephone, also called “Kore,” the Maiden. And she was carried off by grim Hades to his kingdom the underworld…”

Kori stopped listening. She flipped back in her Greek notebook. Hades. Eldest son of Cronus, lord of the underworld after Zeus’s rebellion. Also called the Wealthgiver, “Ploutodoter,” or simply the Wealthy One, “Plouton.”

The Maiden and the Wealthgiver. They had different names in the Crypt Language, of course, but the meanings were the same.

For the first time, Kore understood the meaning of her initiation ceremony, and the nature of her arranged marriage.

“God damn me!” she said, and received a hefty punishment from her Greek instructor.

The Old Copper Domes

The old copper domes

of the university

And the cloudless sky