Bob Studholme's Blog, page 6
April 23, 2012
Dear Finns
It's Iron Sky, isn't it? Since I posted about it and how much I want to see it, I've had a lot of page views from Finland. I WWOOFed there two years ago with Martti Gronfers and love the place. We've had Finnish friends here in UAE who've now moved on, love them still.
Initially, I was attracted to the news of a SF film made independently in Finland. Then I read more about the project and decided I loved every part of it. If anyone out there has seen it, I'd love to know if it comes up to expectations. Come on people.There's an awful lot of love in this post.
Initially, I was attracted to the news of a SF film made independently in Finland. Then I read more about the project and decided I loved every part of it. If anyone out there has seen it, I'd love to know if it comes up to expectations. Come on people.There's an awful lot of love in this post.
Book Review Die a Dry Death - Greta Van De Rol
Beautifully realised account of a true story. The story of the wreck of the Dutch ship, the Batavia, is a true one. Ms Van de Rol has clearly researched not only widely, but very well to be able to retell it as she does. It's not just that the clothing and equipment used are correct, but that the atitudes of the people are of their time. Social differences are so important as to be defining, torture is regarded as a way to the truth, the fact that one of the main characters does not believe in Hell makes his actions justifiable to himself and (in a way) comprehensible to his fellows - he was clearly in a pact with the devil that he didn't believe in. The characters in the book are skillfully writtten and brilliantly concieved. Each one is consistently themselves, so, while they only do what they (historically) did, their motivations for their actions convince. All are fully rounded, with a full ration of human contradiction, though. The villain, Cornelisz, is a cold-blooded manipulator, who never kills another, but has no trouble in getting others to do it for him. He insists on seducing the Lady Lucretia rather than forcing her, however. She, in turn, beds with him to save her life, but suffers guilt over the fact that his love making stirs her more than her husband's ever did. Every part of this book worked for me perfectly, especially the ending, which is Ms Van de Rol's own convincing speculation on events which history does not record.
April 21, 2012
Iron Sky
I haven't seen this film. I probably won't get the chance to. I am already convinced that's my loss. Iron Sky is a comedy about a gang of Nazis who escaped to the Moon at the end of WW2 using anti-gravity technology. They decide to invade the Earth when President Sarah Palin restarts the space programme and lands another tin box on the Moon right by the base.
It's made by Finns (this is a purely good thing), was made on a church mouse budget - I really think they had to pass round the hat to raise the cash for it - and they seem to have used imagination rather than cash.
You can find the trailer here and can petition to have it shown in your area here.
If you do get to see it, please don't forget to tell me how it was.
It's made by Finns (this is a purely good thing), was made on a church mouse budget - I really think they had to pass round the hat to raise the cash for it - and they seem to have used imagination rather than cash.
You can find the trailer here and can petition to have it shown in your area here.
If you do get to see it, please don't forget to tell me how it was.
April 17, 2012
Moving down the river
AdamThere was a small settlement at the river, where a stone bridge crossed over, with a jetty on the downstream side. I couldn’t see much of the settlement, as it was walled, with crenelated and clearly well-maintained walls. A pele tower of lichened stones stood higher than the other buildings and looked out over the farm houses and fields outside.Again, it looked like Northumberland, a land fought in and over for years until the Union of the Crowns, except our towers are ancient ruins. As someone taken, by the age of nine, to just about everything the Romans and the Reivers had made, I wondered what would make that wall a necessary expense.We walked to the jetty where some small wooden boats were tied up and waiting for us. The boats were made of overlapping wood planks, rather than plywood, and looked solid. The seniors sorted us, kids and adults, to each boat. I was in the one with the Scot, a wild-haired, wild-bearded, bloodshot-eyed guy who might have been mid-thirties, hard to tell with that beard. He’d the look of an amiable character, but one you wouldn’t cross if you met in a pub, not unless you were desperate for a head-butt.He untied the boat and pushed it off. I looked at the sail, still furled, and then at the little flag on top of it. It wasn’t so much as twitching; there wasn’t a breath of wind, so I dismissed the idea of sailing. I wondered how we were going to get downriver, and thought we must be going to drift, when the Scot lifted a hand to the mast.“Hoist,” he ordered, and the sail did, all by itself. Still no wind, but it didn’t bother him. “Mind the boom there, eh,” he said, and blew a kiss lightly at the mast. The sail filled as though a breeze had just come up, the boom swung around and the boat started moving smoothly through the water. I heard a few wows from the other passengers, but, when I looked around, I saw the other boats were the same; sails gently filled by a wind that wasn’t disturbing a hair on my head. Why be surprised? This was meant to be a world where magic worked, after all.“Okay now lads and lassies. My name is McGregor. You may address me as Senior McGregor, if you’re feeling polite, or just Senior if you’re feeling lazy. There are those who refer to me as Jock, but you are not yet among them, so don’t make the mistake o’ trying that, okay? Now, one way and another I had a bit of a night last night, y’know? So, what I really want to do just the now, is to get my head down and grab a few zees, right? Keep it down to a low scream and wake me up when we get to the city, okay?”Then he curled himself up on the seat at the back of the boat and went instantly to sleep – the snores were genuine and a dead give-away. The rudder seemed gripped by some invisible hand and kept the boat aimed neatly down the centre of the river. There wasn’t much more to say or do about all that, so I turned my attention to my fellow passengers.I was sitting third in line next to one of the two girls in our boat. From her face I guessed her to be about thirteen. Her hair was in tight corn rows and she had the same looks as a couple of Ethiopian girls I had studied with on my uni course. She had that lean, East-African build, and a face that belonged on Sade’s baby sister. I was about to introduce myself when one of the boys in front of us turned around.He looked at me, nodded and then dropped me from his world while he turned his attention to the girl. “Hi, er, do you speak English?” The ice on the reply, “Yes”, would have slowed most blokes, but he didn’t seem bothered. “So, er, what part of Africa are you from then, eh?”You could tell she considered her reply, from the way she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, her head cocked slightly to one side before saying, “Have you heard of the bit called Kingston-upon-Thames?” The boy was now obviously groping for reverse gear, but didn’t make it in time.“I speak English, better than you do, but I don’t want to speak it with you, savvy?” she said and then, for good measure, turned to me and added, “And you can bugger off too.”Well, I’d been about to go for polite conversation, rather than a proposal of marriage, but gratuitous insults from imaginary people get up my nose, even without me having a headache. I fixed her with my own best steely glare.“I checked on the way down and you do have a good arse, but since it’s only sitting on a bench next to mine I don’t think it gives you any right to be rude. If you aren’t floating back this way tomorrow, you can start thinking you’re somebody, till then you can take that attitude and stuff it.”Two things struck me about these words as they came out of my mouth. The first was the accent was Belfast, rather than Geordie. Not that I minded exactly - I think the Belfast accent has a fine ring, like someone working metal on an anvil, but it wasn’t mine.Maybe because of that came the second realisation; it had come out as harder and a lot more aggressive than I’d have liked. I wasn’t exactly trying for diplomacy much, but that was boorish.The rest of the boat was obviously listening for how she’d reply. From the look on her face though, something in there had bitten and there wasn’t going to be any come-back. Her eyes dropped to her lap and she looked a bit cowed.A feeling of guilt about snapping at a little girl was coming over me when she looked back up and said, “Sorry, that wasn’t called for, was it? I’m a bit… well it’s all a bit much to… y’know. Erm…”I stuck out a hand. “Let’s start that bit over, eh? I’m … Brendan, pleased to meet you.’ I shrugged. ‘I snapped a bit as well, didn’t I?”She grinned and took the hand. “Miya. You from Ireland?”“Belfast, sort of,” I told her, and then threw in my mate Eamonn’s old line, “We used to make the best terrorists in the world; then they started making ‘em cheaper in the third world. What can yeh do?” She was unsure whether to be shocked or amused; the reaction Eamonn always used to get too, so I nodded at the boy who’d started this. “How about you?”“Oh, I’m Lewis. Hi.”The ice was only half-broken, so I elected myself host and got everyone else to introduce themselves too. The others were all from the South of England. I’m a Northerner, a Great Northerner and very, very Northern, so that didn’t look like a good start. He wouldn’t have written many good parts for Tynesiders, I knew, but he couldn’t stand Scousers or Mancs much either. I asked if anyone knew what’d happen next.As it turned out, a few of them did; bits of it at least. Some had relatives who had been through this before. There wasn’t, well, there couldn’t be, anyone on the boat who knew less about this world and how it worked than me. I spent just about all the rest of the boat ride listening, or politely faking it, as each chipped in their information and opinions on different people they knew the names of, training we’d get etc. etc. All providing, of course, we passed this Initiation test.Part of me wanted to be making notes of all this, otherwise I’d forget it; but it didn’t really matter. I’d only be here for the day, after all.That didn’t happen in Book One. Where is that supposed to have come from?
JamesWe all noticed the laddie on the way down to the boats. If he had dandruff, you could probably use it as an ingredient in a spell (not one for an aphrodisiac, ‘cos some things have limits, but ye know what I mean) - it was that obvious he was a Mage. I did my usual trick of ‘falling asleep’ on the trip down and listened in to the crack. I threw a wee bit of forgetfulness at them so they wouldn’t mind me much.Usually the girls are quite a mature bunch and the boys are just a spotty crowd o’ wee scunners. No their fault, of course, they are just wee laddies, but I often feel like dipping them in the river headfirst for a bit. Who was it said it’s lovely to hear the sound of children at play, just so long as you’re no close enough to hear what they’re saying? Sound man.Anyway, young Earle wasn’t like that. With my eyes closed I would’ve been hard pressed to tell ye how old he was. I mean, his voice hadn’t broken yet, so the noise was young, but the questions and the way he managed the others just wasn’t an eleven year old, ye ken? I wanted to write that crack about the good arse on the back o’ my hand. There was bound to be a time I could use it. Great line from a kid with a cat feather sticking up behind him, looking like the tail on something annoyed.
JamesWe all noticed the laddie on the way down to the boats. If he had dandruff, you could probably use it as an ingredient in a spell (not one for an aphrodisiac, ‘cos some things have limits, but ye know what I mean) - it was that obvious he was a Mage. I did my usual trick of ‘falling asleep’ on the trip down and listened in to the crack. I threw a wee bit of forgetfulness at them so they wouldn’t mind me much.Usually the girls are quite a mature bunch and the boys are just a spotty crowd o’ wee scunners. No their fault, of course, they are just wee laddies, but I often feel like dipping them in the river headfirst for a bit. Who was it said it’s lovely to hear the sound of children at play, just so long as you’re no close enough to hear what they’re saying? Sound man.Anyway, young Earle wasn’t like that. With my eyes closed I would’ve been hard pressed to tell ye how old he was. I mean, his voice hadn’t broken yet, so the noise was young, but the questions and the way he managed the others just wasn’t an eleven year old, ye ken? I wanted to write that crack about the good arse on the back o’ my hand. There was bound to be a time I could use it. Great line from a kid with a cat feather sticking up behind him, looking like the tail on something annoyed.
April 16, 2012
Book review Olives by Alexander McNabb
I attended a workshop that McNabb presented at the Dubai Literature Festival where he said he'd self-published Olives after being turned down by over 80 agents. What a crowd of pillocks they were. This is an incredibly well written book. The hero doesn't know what is the truth of his situation until the very last page and you won't either. The writing is very high level, the knowledge of the Middle East and the political situation very detailed. I've visited Jordan as a tourist and recognised places, scenes and bits of atmosphere that he describes, so know that he does all of that well.
I believed this book. Everything in it convinced me. The Arabs were like the ones I work with, those charming folk who can be so easy to like and so hard to understand. The characters were all real people to me, their motivations often confusing, but always credible. This is a book that I'll be lending to friends and nagging them to read. They'll thank me for it, though, I know they will.
I believed this book. Everything in it convinced me. The Arabs were like the ones I work with, those charming folk who can be so easy to like and so hard to understand. The characters were all real people to me, their motivations often confusing, but always credible. This is a book that I'll be lending to friends and nagging them to read. They'll thank me for it, though, I know they will.
April 14, 2012
Book Review - The Case of the Vanishing Heart.
This is a review of a fellow Sand member's book, now published on Smashwords at:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/150509
I'd have to admit that when I read the first chapter, I wasn't too impressed. Competently written, but something that had been done before and better. I was thinking of writing back to the author suggesting that she really needed to come up with some angle that would grab the reader. Something novel, something I hadn’t seen before. Then I read chapter two and realised that she’d more than beaten me to that punch. The first chapter was a knock off of a Raymond Chandler type private detective, but not PV Tkach’s. Her character is Persephone and the detective, Jersey, is Persephone’s. She’s writing the characters that just appeared in her head and, while she’s an ok writer and gets much better during the course of this book, she isn’t going to win any prizes.
PV Tkach, however, has a huge range and could probably write the scotch out of Chandler's hand. Chapter two didn’t just give me a clue that this was a more interesting piece of writing than I thought, it grabbed me, wrung me out and made sure I wouldn’t stop reading until I’d found out what was happening here.
Chapter three took me back to Jersey and his secretary Pearl. By now, however, I was fascinated to see not only how their story was going, but how it reflected what was happening in Persephone’s life. It just got better and better. I got involved with Persephone, really felt for her, her kids and her conflict with her ex-husband and I got involved with Jersey and Pearl, really wanting them to solve this case and pay the rent.
This is a remarkable story in its own right, but also a revealing look at the writing process and how the author reacts with their own work. It becomes a vehicle for Persephone’s own liberation as solutions to her problems start to boil out of the invention of Jersey’s world.
I can’t recommend this highly enough. It’s a startling cross-genre piece whose separate parts do so much more than just complement each other. I wouldn’t normally read this kind of women’s fiction, though I have read a lot of Chandler. After finishing it, I’m still not sure that I’d read so much women’s fiction, though I will if Tkach writes it.
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/150509
I'd have to admit that when I read the first chapter, I wasn't too impressed. Competently written, but something that had been done before and better. I was thinking of writing back to the author suggesting that she really needed to come up with some angle that would grab the reader. Something novel, something I hadn’t seen before. Then I read chapter two and realised that she’d more than beaten me to that punch. The first chapter was a knock off of a Raymond Chandler type private detective, but not PV Tkach’s. Her character is Persephone and the detective, Jersey, is Persephone’s. She’s writing the characters that just appeared in her head and, while she’s an ok writer and gets much better during the course of this book, she isn’t going to win any prizes.
PV Tkach, however, has a huge range and could probably write the scotch out of Chandler's hand. Chapter two didn’t just give me a clue that this was a more interesting piece of writing than I thought, it grabbed me, wrung me out and made sure I wouldn’t stop reading until I’d found out what was happening here.
Chapter three took me back to Jersey and his secretary Pearl. By now, however, I was fascinated to see not only how their story was going, but how it reflected what was happening in Persephone’s life. It just got better and better. I got involved with Persephone, really felt for her, her kids and her conflict with her ex-husband and I got involved with Jersey and Pearl, really wanting them to solve this case and pay the rent.
This is a remarkable story in its own right, but also a revealing look at the writing process and how the author reacts with their own work. It becomes a vehicle for Persephone’s own liberation as solutions to her problems start to boil out of the invention of Jersey’s world.
I can’t recommend this highly enough. It’s a startling cross-genre piece whose separate parts do so much more than just complement each other. I wouldn’t normally read this kind of women’s fiction, though I have read a lot of Chandler. After finishing it, I’m still not sure that I’d read so much women’s fiction, though I will if Tkach writes it.
April 3, 2012
Possible revision.
My stuff is up on Youwriteon.com, or at least a sample from the start of the book is. The lowest marks I get from there are always for structure and pace, with people often telling me that it jumps around from character to character too much. I've previously looked at it and thought that I didn't know how to change this and still make it work for myself, so done nothing. Today, however, I looked at it again and thought I'd just change it round an bit and see how it worked. Surprisingly for me, though probably not for those who've been telling me that, it works well and I haven't lost the things that I thought I would by the edit. I'm posting the newer version below on the off-chance of getting some comments back about it.
Prologue
My name is Gaia, and this document my testimony of the Last Days and the Resurrection to come.
You will not find me in these pages. This is the story of Grandfather and those he saved. The tale is told in their voices, and so of them you will meet many. One might say a legion.
What was for them an adventure was, for my family, the beginning of our history. So this is, in many ways, an indispensable part of my story and that the reason why I must introduce myself. My achievements are not modest; still, I do but continue the Great Work of saving and converting which Grandfather and my parents began.
Ours is an uncommon chronicling, as we are an uncommon family, so I will commend to you the words of Sir Francis Bacon, who wrote, in The Advancement of Learning:
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties".
For those who tell you this tale did not know all of its twists, and what they knew, they did not always tell clearly. Moreover, I am my Grandfather's grandchild, and we spin stories as spiders do webs.
McLeod watched as the two settled back onto the couches and were helped into helmets. Despite himself, he felt unease on seeing his daughter's face covered by the visor. It made her look an insect-headed alien, and, in some way he couldn't have explained, made the sticking-out wisp of her brown hair look stolen. The techs jacked them both to the central unit and reclined the couches to the horizontal.
Then the guy beside him spoke.
"Okay,"
A hushed voice, not whispering, but as if at a bedroom door and not wanting to disturb the occupant.
More respect than that bloody suit showed.
"Here we go." The tech tapped his touch-screen and both reclining figures took small, sharp in-breaths, followed by soft sighs.
Like her falling asleep.
The tension McLeod hadn't been aware of holding released as both bodies relaxed.
"Well then Mr. McLeod, that's about it for now. The first stage will take about fifteen to twenty minutes for her, perhaps a few more for him, then they'll have their day. She'll be back with you in…" He wiggled a hand in a 'more-or-less' gesture, "…fifty minutes to an hour. She might have a bit of jet-lag, because of the time difference."
"It's that unsure, is it?"
"It's case by case. We've usually found kids are quicker to connect, so we'll probably have to hold her back a few minutes while he catches up. The compression is set for a half hour, though, that part's certain. Once we've got them both logged in, we'd be able to do this again in about thirty seconds. And the commercial version will compress much more than this, of course." He grinned, "No one wants to wait for as long as half an hour to live a day nowadays, eh?"
"Was it like this with the others?"
"Well, not the characters, no." His eyes glanced back at some memory, while his mouth twisted to suggest a tangled situation. "They all took a minimum of a weekend. Some of them two. But those had to be much more detailed readings, being as we don't have them available real-time, like this. But we've all been in there, and for us, yeah, I suppose, pretty much like this. You'll have to try it yourself some time."
"Not really my thing; having my mind read and all."
"Oh, take my word for it, it's a blast in there, you'd love it. You've read the books, I take it?"
"The first two as bed-time stories. After that she read them herself, and I got all the details over the table at meals."
"Yeah, mine's nine and we're at that stage with her too. Well, there's nothing much more to see here, erm, would you like a coffee or something while you're waiting?"
"Aye, that'd be grand."
They left the room. Another tech watched, impatient, 'till they'd exited, immediately changed the compression factor on both screens, initiated the simulation, and then left as well, his mind on something stronger than coffee. The two on the couches slumbered on, unsupervised, save by the machine.
A watcher might have noticed the girl's touch-screen reading flicker, and, like a malevolent stagehand removing a vital prop, the character assignment figure change from 1001 to 321. But you are the only watcher, dear reader, and your observation does not collapse any wave form. It will not change the story back.
For, in that moment, history altered. No, please don't think that melodramatic. I've thought about it very, very carefully, and that statement isn't exaggeration at all.
Day One
Adam
It was night. For some reason, I'd been expecting a storm, but, although very dark, it was warm and pleasant. I was standing near the top of a vertigo-inducing set of stairs. Somewhere outside; in a city with traffic noise. Somewhere with stone walls, cobbled streets and perhaps a faint smell of after-the-pub-piss. I had a moment of thinking I knew this place before the memory clicked and I realized it was the Dog Leap Stairs, going down to the Quayside. Newcastle? Was that right? Was it supposed to start here, or was that just because it was me doing the crossing?
Someone touched my arm, and I got an impression of there being several other people with me. The one nearest ushered me on towards the stairs and started a low chanting. Something about the rhythm made it sound familiar, but I couldn't place where I'd heard it before.
It lasted for only a moment, seconds at the most, but there was an odd sense of the tone persisting after the voice had stopped. Something like a finger round the top of a wineglass, but right at the edge of hearing. Then the scene straight in front of me broke, pixelated and flowed away, like watching sand fall through an egg-timer from above. Someone walked into that warp in the air, melted and swirled to nothing.
The hand touched me on the arm again, urging me forward. A voice, a man's, the accent Northern Irish, said, "Don't worry, just walk straight into the Gate, you'll be grand." I didn't understand why, but I believed him and walked on before thinking, of course I'd be alright, how could anything here hurt me?
As my foot touched the edge of the swirl, it broke up and flowed away. That wasn't just what I saw; it was exactly how it felt. I'd have pulled back with the shock, but I had no time. Before I could do anything, I'd become a million grains of Adam, flowing and falling, but somehow doing it straight forward. I'd have screamed, but my throat had gone. Then my mind fell away and there was nothingness.
The grains of sand crashed back into each other and somehow became me again. An improvement on being nothing, yes, but not an experience I could enjoy. My skin was trying to crawl off my body and my stomach up my throat. Both feelings went quickly, but I didn't feel good. Some aspects of verisimilitude could easily be cut, to my way of thinking.
I was now standing in daylight on a grassy hill. Somewhere off in the distance was the glint of early morning sunlight on water. I tottered forward to where a Scot was saying to come and sit down. There were others, adults and kids, coming out of the thin air behind me. No one crashed into anyone else, but everyone had the same kind of bedsprings-recovering-from-an-orgy look to them.
I flopped down on the grass, propped myself up on an elbow and thought, 'Oh,________'.Ah, the ____ nannyware. I couldn't even think a good curse. The grass, anyway, felt good; it felt real. Really grassy grass stalks tickled and gently prickled at my hands and the back of my neck. There was a smell in the air of full summer. I was preparing to lie down on that real grass and feel even better, when something offered me a drink.
It was a dwarf. There'd have to be some here, though, wouldn't there? Pun completely intentional, but it'd be a minimum. This one was about a metre tall with muscles like a small wrestler. Clean-shaven, and dressed more like a coffee-shop waiter in charcoal grey than an extra from Lord of the Rings, it… he, held the tray towards me and mumbled, "Dringim."
I took a cup and sipped at it. The taste was a lot like rooibos, which I drink to escape endless cups of green tea, but the effect was incredible; I was instantly clear in the head. It was obvious everyone else around was feeling the same. There were a few 'wows'- but not 'like wow's', which the kids all say now. A small thing, but it registered as a neat touch. You hear it everywhere; the kids in Kyoto were 'like-wowing' before I left, but we never used the expression back then.
A last figure flowed out from the thin air of the Gate; outlined on this side by standing stones covered in runes. It became a tall, lean, dark-haired man, dressed all in black- jeans, shirt and some kind of trench coat. His collar was open and he looked as if he hadn't shaved or slept, except perhaps in the clothes, for a few days. His eyes were bloodshot, with bags and black circles beneath them. Looked like he'd escaped from the lead role in a Hollywood blockbuster. He blinked, shook his head as if to clear it, and picked up a cup with a mutter of "Thanks, Gava."
He took a long swig from the cup, and I swear the red in his eyes faded away while he was drinking. When he lowered the cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the stubble was still on his face and the creases still in his clothes, but the signs of exhaustion had vanished. He gave a sigh and a healthy sounding belch and said, "Ah, better." It was the voice from the other side of the gate.
He moved in front of the bodies sprawled on the grass and addressed us.
"Seekers. Welcome to the Land. I know the first Crossing is not a pleasant thing, but we have to press on. From here we must walk to the river. Then we'll take boats to get us to the City of Black River Bridge. There you'll undergo your Initiation - the Ceremony of Opening." He paused and looked around at us.
"For some of you, that'll mark the end of your stay here," That was said seriously enough to make it sound like bad news. "While for others it'll mean the beginning of your training." That somehow didn't sound as if anything more cheerful was in store. "To all, I wish you well, I wish you well. Now please," he gestured, "To your feet. The walk to the river will take about two hours. You'll be so kind as to follow the Mages."
There was a thing about him; what he said, you did. This guy was a lot like Uncle Steve - a leader; you could read it in every line of him. Not a violent man, at a guess, but one who was very confident in his own abilities and both used to giving orders and having them followed.
I stood up and realized I reached only as tall as the middle of his chest. Before I had time to think he was some kind of a giant, I noticed a boy standing slightly to one side of him. The boy couldn't have been more than twelve, more likely eleven. He was the same size as me; possibly a little taller. I was eleven years old again.
Take my word for it, when I say it's the sort of thing that can ruin your day, I'm not joking at all. I'd known it was going to happen, yes, but as a fact like something I'd read in the Zeppelin's in-flight magazine. You know the thing, 90% of Dubai's buildings have been green-roofed, oh isn't that interesting? It's very different to feel it in your suddenly-much-smaller bones. I worked hard and managed a 'Damn' - a whispered one. It wasn't nearly enough.
Hah! Believe me sonny, you ain't seen nothing yet.
The walk down to the river did take about two hours. No one was wearing a watch, which we did then and I do now, and yes, I knew better than to expect Tatches tattooed onto wrists. Even now, in Japan, that's more a Tokyo or Osaka thing, oddly not popular in Kyoto. But no one had a mobile even, which kids of this age would have had, so I could only guess from the height of the sun.
The track was a dirt pathway through countryside that reminded me of Northumberland, out near Hexham. Rolling hills, clumps of trees, cattle or something like them in small groups. A blue sky with cotton wool clouds like the lid on a chocolate box. The weather was like late May or early June when I was a kid; more like late March nowadays.
Between the flowers and the butterflies the meadows looked as though someone'd got bored of green and used the rest of the rainbow to over-paint every scrap of it. Walking past caused clouds of Persian miniatures (well, they weren't cabbage whites) to lift and ground - so many the fields looked like landing strips for magic carpets. The air was country clean and fresh and there were none of the modern British summer's palette of burned browns.
I spotted some Sweet Cicely on the way down and snacked on seeds from it. Delicious. Uncle Steve had taught me about it and nettles and dandelion leaves when I was a kid. My flat-mates had appreciated the knowledge during the Year Without Summer. Even with the rationing, damn near all we could get by way of greens was what we found growing wild. All before the Swiss dumped the salt, and the Vertical Farms and the People's Supermarkets with their vegetable factories started up, of course.
No one talked much on the way. For myself, I was uncomfortably aware of being a kid again and not sure how to speak to the others. Most of the kids seemed overawed by what had happened to them. They couldn't know each other, so'd be unsure how to start conversations. They probably also still felt a bit sick; I did. Though what was I thinking, they just hadn't been given any lines to say, had they?
The Mages, the adults, were at the very front and very back of the group, and their body language said they were watching, not just strolling. I overheard a conversation between one of the taller boys and a Mage, where the boy asked why we didn't fly or go on runners to the city. The reply, in a very dry Yorkshire accent, was none of us could fly yet and no one was going to risk us falling off runners. That conversation stopped there, but it did prompt a girl to ask how would we fly when we learned, on broomsticks?
"Oh, no my lovely, never have anything to do with broomsticks for flying." This was from a slightly older, well-upholstered Welsh woman. "Tried that when I first came here, I did. Witches never rode broomsticks without they stuffed a couple of nice soft cushions down the backs of their knickers first. I'll never be persuaded otherwise, see. Barely walk, I could after, and that was only ten miles as the crow flies too. And balance on that thin bit of stick? Tuh, Old wives' tale about flying on broomsticks, in my opinion. You stick to cloaks my lovely, and your bum will thank you, see?"
The tall Irishman, grinned at this and asked, "Didn't young Richard say if you just used the broom part, you could do things on a broom that made it far superior to a cloak? A comfortable seat, your hands free? Surfing the sky, I think he called it."
"Don't you start me on the wit and wisdom of the amazing Tricky Dicky Banister, Niall Ferguson. Bristles up the backside is the least of the things I wish for that young man. Still cleaning spirit voices out of my toilet after his last clever scheme I am". She sniffed in disdain. "Pass an Initiation he may well have done, but he's every inch a fool and terrible tall for his age that boy. And there's not a Mage in the Land can argue the point with me neither."
"Argue with you Megs?' said the Yorkshireman. 'There's not a Mage in the land as'd dare. All too keen on waking up same shape as they went to bed the night afore."
The last of the Mages, a lean, muscular-looking woman with a mild Jamaican accent, tutted at this last. "An' I will ask you to stop the scandalous remarks about my friend in the presence of all these minors Jacob. It is not seemly to suggest she can or will witch them into small creatures if they back answer her, however true it might be."
That, give or take a snort of laughter from Megs, more or less put an end to talk from the Seekers. The Mages settled back into walking silently and we went on like that. I did see something in the Irishman's eyes as he looked at the Jamaican and thought… but no. They were characters, weren't they? There couldn't be anything going on there.
I had a feeling that whole scene was deliberate, though. He'd been getting at someone when he wrote it, making some kind of point, but I couldn't think who or how. I wondered if this was his first chapter, or just a way it'd start for someone coming in like me. This might have been the way he introduced his protagonists. If so, it read like an old joke, a bad old joke – there was an Irish man, a Welsh woman and a… - without a punch line. Confusing if, like me, you didn't know what was going on. I'd have stopped reading by now. I'd have wanted something more than this. But then, I wouldn't have cracked the cover in the first place.
Twenty minutes later, both Niall and the Jamaican stopped to look at some birds flying towards us from the distance. They were big and an odd shape.
She looked a question at him. "You think?"
"Unusual to see them so far over," he nodded, "Best check".
She reached into a bag slung over her shoulder and pulled what looked like a crystal ball from it. I saw the ball fog as she peered into it, eyes narrowed to slits.
"How many, Niall?"
"Five."
"Four here. What formation?"
"Standard V."
"I'm missing the point; it'll be the leader."
Without another word, and still gazing intently into the crystal, she reached out her other hand. A ball of electric blue light formed in it. Then she turned to the birds, her eyes leaving the fogged ball in one hand just as the light ball left the other. I'd say she threw it, but it didn't move like an ordinary throw – there was no rise and fall. It went through the air like a ruled line, dark blue on sky blue, and exploded by the first of the odd-shaped birds, which squawked and dropped like a drunken sycamore seed – falling and twisting, but incapable of doing it elegantly.
Everyone went over to where it lay, motionless, on the ground. The Yorkshireman kicked the obvious corpse onto its back with a toe and grunted, "Ridden." It was statement rather than question, but the Jamaican nodded confirmation.
"Shielded. The crystal couldn't see it."
The thing he had kicked had wings with a span of over two metres, but the body of a cat. It was oddly and massively muscled over the shoulders, but otherwise next door's ginger tom with eagle wings. Until you looked at the face. That belonged to something that'd chew through your chest and then rip your heart out through the hole. This thing didn't go in for saucers of milk and tickles behind the ears.
"What is that?" someone asked.
"Chimereagle." The reply meant nothing to me or the kid who'd asked.
"They're always half eagle and half something else, depending on local environment. This one had been sent to spy on us."
The kids all looked at each other, eyes wide with excitement or fear. The adults, I noticed, did the same, though their expressions were of guarded puzzlement. Then the Yorkshireman shrugged.
"Nowt more to do with this, is there?"
He looked at us and nodded his head to one side.
"Walk on."
I picked up a feather that had fallen from the thing. It was perfect; barbules locking into each other and a pattern of cat camouflage making it look pretty. What had its owner been coming to do? The thought occurred that this world had teeth in it. I worked up a 'damn' much easier this time. I stuck the feather in my back pocket and fell in with the rest.
Bugger.
Meganwy
I'm sure, if you're a dance teacher, or something of the kind, you can look at any random person and take a guess at their potential as a dancer. Even a fairly quick look would show if they had natural poise, or grace in their movements, ennit? Bottom line, of course, is you could teach them something. But as you watched them, you'd know if this one might ever be great, or'd only just learn to tell the difference between their left and right foot, that sort of thing. Same for anything else you know well; you know what to look for, ennit?
It's both similar and different for us, see. A Mage can spot someone who has Potential just by looking at them, in the Land or out of it. Those who haven't - well you can't teach them anything, try as you might.
Explaining how we know is a different matter though, ennit? It's like saying, 'She's the one in the pink dress', to someone who's colour-blind, see? Potential doesn't have a colour, any more than colour has a smell, but a Mage knows it's there. It's not auras neither, though I can see auras. It's what we do and you don't.
So I can tell you we could all 'see' young Brendan had massive Potential, but I can't tell you what it was that told us. I'd have put money on him being one of the Chosen of the Land, but no one would've taken the bet. They could all see it too.
Strange to be back in the Land, it was. I'd been away for about a month and I suppose I'd got used to the other world. Coming back was like opening a cupboard of memories I hadn't looked in for a while. Some of the things in there I'd nearly forgotten I had. Didn't really notice till we got to the boats and I had to call up the sails, but I felt that way a few times over the next few days. Can't recall ever feeling like that before.
Sharp, he is, Jake. The Seekers would go for that line about spying, but the rest of us knew better. You want to spy, you send a familiar. Sent to attack us, those beasts were. Take a pride leader and you get the rest of the pride, see, with chimereagles. What he goes for, they go for too. Far more dangerous to the mage if a familiar gets hurt – hospitalise someone, you can if you kill their familiar, while you only give 'em a bad headache if you drop the beast they're riding - and much harder to organise a large group. My Morgan, see, flies as a sparrow, fights as a wildcat and spies as a mouse. Niall's Satsuki flies and fights as an eagle, spies as a housecat. Even getting them to travel together is hard, ennit?
Sloppy attempt, whatever it was designed to do. He must have put it together in a desperate hurry. We know chimereagles only come from places where there were big magic battles in the last war. Fallout, ennit? And they are all on his side of the island now. They were bound to look odd flying in Duergar lands. Now what would prompt that?
Phoebe
I woke up in a bed. I'd expected something more dramatic. The Seekers would come to the Land through a Gate and I thought I'd be a Seeker. I couldn't remember what Silvester had said, but it looked like I was already there. Something felt bad though. I had a bit of a headache and a cramping pain in my stomach. I had to pull back the bedclothes before I could see what it was. Blood on my pyjamas, down between my legs. Yada.
I knew what it was, of course, even though it was the first time. Auntie 'Lexie had told me all about it, and Dad had been getting me books and stuff about it for just forever – to help me prepare. My friend Sara had already had hers and all the girls had been talking about it, you'd guess, innit? Didn't mean it wasn't just mecha gruse. It was. Well, for a second.
Then I thought I could tell Dad and he'd let me have the party he'd promised for it. He'd said it was a change I should celebrate. I think he read that line in a book. Then, of course, I realized Dad wasn't here, I was well off the range of a GPS tracker, and I couldn't have a party until I got back. Which made me wonder.
A girl couldn't get into the Land until she'd started her periods. Everyone knows that. So maybe this wasn't real, and they'd just given me one to make me feel like I was ready, even though I knew I really wasn't. And (far, far away ikky) even if this was my first time, it wouldn't be hers. It's tres freak to feel you're having someone else's period, believe me if that's never happened to you before, and my day was about to go glom when a Duergar came in through the door.
I nearly leapt out of bed and danced around the room! This wasn't like watching them on a DIV. This was real. Right there in the room with me, carrying a tray. She looked me up and down (mostly up of course) and saw the bloodstains. She nodded and said, "Ah. Me thingim allsame. Me bringim this one for Mma. Makim you better mor. You go cleanim youseleva en dringim thisfella." She nodded at a door and passed me a cup of something. I got up and sort of hobbled to the door, trying not to let my legs touch. Yada. Big, big ya.
You had to slide the door to the bathroom. I remembered and didn't try to push it. The bathroom looked just like the ones you see in the DIVs. There was a big, deep, circular tub made of wood, set into the floor, full nearly to the brim with steaming hot water.
I knew you had to scoop water out of the bath and wash yourself first, so started to strip off the pyjamas. I jumped when I saw the dark skinned woman out of the corner of my eye, but sussed I was looking into a big, steamed-up mirror. Then I nearly squealed. I was Malaika!
There's a line in Book One where someone asks if Malaika is good-looking, and the answer is she's too busy being gorgeous to have time left for just good. And there she was looking back at me. From the steamy mirror. With no clothes on.
I really had to look away. I mean, Malaika is tres, tres hot, with a bod to just die for or from, but I was like staring at it. I felt myself blushing hotter than the bath water. It would take a while to get used to that being me. I took just a small peek again and thought, 'Oh I wish!'
I could get used to it. I could suffer that.
I mean, I have got brown hair and brown eyes and when Dad tells me I am going to be a stunner at sixteen and he's going to buy a club to keep boys away he always sounds like he means it. That's my dad though. He once told a friend of mine he was really Tony Blair, and he'd escaped from prison by digging a tunnel with a bent teaspoon.
We didn't completely believe him, but that was 'cos we didn't know who it was. We had to go wiki the name up on a pokkecom to read the history and find out Blair was still in prison. Well, we were only eight at the time. What did we know?
Anyway, the point is; it isn't impossible I could look nearly as hot when I'm older. But that nearly would be just like Earth to Moon near, not Earth to Sun near. Sort of comparatively nearer than Sara could get, 'cos she's blonde, but not close enough to whisper in an ear kind of close. I'll never pwn boys.
I grabbed a towel and covered myself a bit and took another look at my new face. I pushed a strand of hair back behind my ear and grinned and just … Like wow.
I had a drink from the cup before starting to wash and the effect was like magic. (Duh!) The headache and cramp just vanished. The stuff must have been chia, but it tasted like the milky tea Dad always makes for me. I still wasn't keen on getting into the bath after washing – I didn't think the bleeding had stopped too and just didn't want to lay there in it. Far, far away gruse – so I towelled myself dry and went back to the bedroom.
The Duergar had gone out, but there was underwear and a set of loose, dark grey cotton pants and a top laid out on the bed. Apart from a sanitary pad, it was all senior Mage clothing. I had a feeling I had to get ready for something formal going on.
Then it came to me. I was being dimmy this morning. Naturally, the Seekers would be coming and I'd have to go and take part in the Opening. All this would have to start with Brendan going through his Initiation, even if I wasn't doing one. Of course, he'd pass and the Light of the Chosen'd shine from him, but it all needed to happen so Senior Niall would know he was capable of great things. I dressed as quickly as I could.
Good. She's accepted who she is. Maybe this time things will work out as I want them to.
Getting to the hall from my bedroom was a piece of good luck. I turned the right way down a corridor, went down some stairs and through a door that lead into the Main Hall. Adults and kids sat at tables, eating and chatting. I went to a serving table and helped myself to a bowl of muesli, some kind of red fish and some chia, then looked for somewhere to sit.
"Lai! Hey, over here!" Oops, Aki, Malaika's best friend in the Land. How was I going to carry this one off?
I sat down beside her and she looked me in the eye. "Ah yes, Gramma said it was so. Sorry to tell you friend, but it shows. Drink lots of her special chia and don't bite off any heads, some of them never use shampoo and they will taste foul."
The accent was dead right and it was just like being with Eriko Yamamoto. I nearly asked for an autograph.
I grinned and sat down next to her. "We have to go to the ceremony today, innit?" I asked, "What time should we set off?" I thought this was a bright thing to say, 'cos I wasn't sure how I'd get there by myself.
"Ah, that's so, eh?" replied Aki, carefully looking at anything in the room except me. "I do have a small favour to ask of you there. Nothing that will be too much for my very best friend in the universe to understand, of course, but I have agreed to go with someone else." She gave me a quick look that had triumph in it, and I guessed. Well, I've read all of the books is one thing, and I'm a girl is another. It could only be one person.
"Daniel!"
"Yes, but keep it quiet please. We are going to set off early and walk part of the way there. He thinks we are going to pick medicinal herbs, but I have no such plan."
My eyes must have widened, 'cos she tapped me on the nose.
"Talking child! Talking! Well, mostly talking. He may be the cutest thing here, but he has a terrible problem with commitment. He is going to say some important things today, though he does not know this yet."
She gave me a look asking if it really was okay with me, so I told her, "Tres, tres okay." That only got me a puzzled look. Stupid! The books never use modern teenspeak. She wouldn't know that expression.
"I mean, no problem."
That was something Malaika says all of the time, though only olds like my dad ever say that now. I ate and Aki sort of drifted away into thought, so nothing much was said through the rest of breakfast. I made some mental notes. Some things I say, people here wouldn't. Some things I knew, 'cos they happened in the later books, people here couldn't. Lots to remember.
No one knows how things turned out between Aki and Daniel, and if they ever got over the row, 'cos the last book never got written. I think they would, but Alistair Cameron always said there'd be surprises at the end of the story, and he wasn't going for a happily-ever-after kind of finish.
Though, with me only being here for today, I wasn't going to be around for the argument and couldn't change things much anyway. Mind, I was a bit impressed to know they got together on the day Brendan entered the Land. That isn't written down anywhere and I'd thought it was much later. When I finished my breakfast, I put the bowl away, wished Aki a good day, and headed out.
There was a large cloak room just before the front door of East Gard's Hall. The two long walls had lines of hooks with cloaks on them. I found a hook with Malaika's name and picked up the cloak.
I knew about this bit and was half looking forward to it - half afraid I'd wee myself. I put on the cloak and fastened it with the shiny brass clasp. It slightly hugged my shoulders when wrapped around me, but I could throw it over my back and get it out of the way. Tell the truth, I wanted a mirror, to see how it looked on, 'cos Malaika looks serious good in a cloak, but there wasn't one around.
I walked out through the door. It was like the DIVs. There was a gravel driveway going to a gate in the distance, with gardens on either side. I knew people did drive up that gravel, in carriages pulled by draft beasts or riding on runners, but I was going to use it for my runway, just like I'd seen Malaika do. I wondered about flying wearing a sanitary pad. Maybe I should be using tampons? No one tells you that sort of thing, do they?
It's lucky there's a long bit about this in Book One, where Brendan and the other Apprentices are taught to fly - you don't see it in the DIV though. I was still quite little when Dad read it to me, and I can remember practising take-offs in my bedroom with a towel over my shoulders.
Well, no one was watching, so… I re-slung the cloak and held it out like bat wings. It wrapped neatly around my arms and gripped them, like it was holding them up. It was much longer than my arms, but the end part still stuck out like there was something underneath it. I walked forward to let it billow out behind me and then ran, flapping, just like I did when I was little. You see some of them just sort of leap and take off in the DIVs, but I wasn't ready for that yet, so I took a long run-up.
I was feeling far gone harpic, but suddenly the cloak took over the flapping and I was struggling to run fast enough. I think I might have shrieked when the ground fell away from me, but the cloak just kept on doing the flying, flapping my arms for me. In less than a second, I seemed to be higher than the trees. Two seconds later I knew for surely, 'cos I was at the end of the driveway and was flying over them.
It still felt a bit low, so I just thought about going faster and the cloak flapped harder. I angled myself steeper and shot up into the sky. It tells you in Book One that East Gard is at the top of a steep-sided valley on the road to the coast. Well, in a few seconds, I was high enough to see that. I was heading north, with the road running west and east below me. The cloak felt to be stuck to my back and down my legs as far as my ankles and was holding all of my body up. I felt like I was lying on some enormous swing fastened tight to the sky, and falling out of the sky was like...like no chance; I was far away secure. I stopped pumping my arms for a minute and did a gliding turn. And there was the city, with its wall and castle. There was the river, with the bridge and boats.
I can't describe the feeling that filled me then. It was like last year when Sara and me went on a roller coaster. We squealed and screamed all the way through the ride; not 'cos we were scared, but just 'cos we were so excited. I squealed and screamed again now and pumped myself higher and higher into the air, then swooped down and up again until I looped overhead in a circle. Then I corkscrewed down towards the ground, pulling out into another rising glide.
I don't know how long I flew. I was a bird, I was just pure flight, and I was strong. The cloak was doing all the work. It lifted me up into the sky with just me thinking about moving my arms, but when I pulled hard I felt myself rocket through the air. And when I glided… I could just close my eyes and feel the wind against my hands, knowing the littlest movement of my fingers would send me swooping in a great circle.
The world was beneath me and I was above all of it. I could see forever and there was nowhere I couldn't go. I felt… I felt…there's no words for what I felt.
I got up above a cloud and wanted to just fly all day exploring the top of the clouds. I think I would've done too, 'cept I flew over a gap in the clouds and saw the city again. Black River Bridge! I knew what it looked like from Jack Hughes' illustrations in the Encyclopaedia of The Land, and I couldn't wait to walk on its streets for real. And I'd get to meet Senior Ferguson, my favourite character in all of the books, more even than Brendan Earle really. I just had to go there!
Prologue
My name is Gaia, and this document my testimony of the Last Days and the Resurrection to come.
You will not find me in these pages. This is the story of Grandfather and those he saved. The tale is told in their voices, and so of them you will meet many. One might say a legion.
What was for them an adventure was, for my family, the beginning of our history. So this is, in many ways, an indispensable part of my story and that the reason why I must introduce myself. My achievements are not modest; still, I do but continue the Great Work of saving and converting which Grandfather and my parents began.
Ours is an uncommon chronicling, as we are an uncommon family, so I will commend to you the words of Sir Francis Bacon, who wrote, in The Advancement of Learning:
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties".
For those who tell you this tale did not know all of its twists, and what they knew, they did not always tell clearly. Moreover, I am my Grandfather's grandchild, and we spin stories as spiders do webs.
McLeod watched as the two settled back onto the couches and were helped into helmets. Despite himself, he felt unease on seeing his daughter's face covered by the visor. It made her look an insect-headed alien, and, in some way he couldn't have explained, made the sticking-out wisp of her brown hair look stolen. The techs jacked them both to the central unit and reclined the couches to the horizontal.
Then the guy beside him spoke.
"Okay,"
A hushed voice, not whispering, but as if at a bedroom door and not wanting to disturb the occupant.
More respect than that bloody suit showed.
"Here we go." The tech tapped his touch-screen and both reclining figures took small, sharp in-breaths, followed by soft sighs.
Like her falling asleep.
The tension McLeod hadn't been aware of holding released as both bodies relaxed.
"Well then Mr. McLeod, that's about it for now. The first stage will take about fifteen to twenty minutes for her, perhaps a few more for him, then they'll have their day. She'll be back with you in…" He wiggled a hand in a 'more-or-less' gesture, "…fifty minutes to an hour. She might have a bit of jet-lag, because of the time difference."
"It's that unsure, is it?"
"It's case by case. We've usually found kids are quicker to connect, so we'll probably have to hold her back a few minutes while he catches up. The compression is set for a half hour, though, that part's certain. Once we've got them both logged in, we'd be able to do this again in about thirty seconds. And the commercial version will compress much more than this, of course." He grinned, "No one wants to wait for as long as half an hour to live a day nowadays, eh?"
"Was it like this with the others?"
"Well, not the characters, no." His eyes glanced back at some memory, while his mouth twisted to suggest a tangled situation. "They all took a minimum of a weekend. Some of them two. But those had to be much more detailed readings, being as we don't have them available real-time, like this. But we've all been in there, and for us, yeah, I suppose, pretty much like this. You'll have to try it yourself some time."
"Not really my thing; having my mind read and all."
"Oh, take my word for it, it's a blast in there, you'd love it. You've read the books, I take it?"
"The first two as bed-time stories. After that she read them herself, and I got all the details over the table at meals."
"Yeah, mine's nine and we're at that stage with her too. Well, there's nothing much more to see here, erm, would you like a coffee or something while you're waiting?"
"Aye, that'd be grand."
They left the room. Another tech watched, impatient, 'till they'd exited, immediately changed the compression factor on both screens, initiated the simulation, and then left as well, his mind on something stronger than coffee. The two on the couches slumbered on, unsupervised, save by the machine.
A watcher might have noticed the girl's touch-screen reading flicker, and, like a malevolent stagehand removing a vital prop, the character assignment figure change from 1001 to 321. But you are the only watcher, dear reader, and your observation does not collapse any wave form. It will not change the story back.
For, in that moment, history altered. No, please don't think that melodramatic. I've thought about it very, very carefully, and that statement isn't exaggeration at all.
Day One
Adam
It was night. For some reason, I'd been expecting a storm, but, although very dark, it was warm and pleasant. I was standing near the top of a vertigo-inducing set of stairs. Somewhere outside; in a city with traffic noise. Somewhere with stone walls, cobbled streets and perhaps a faint smell of after-the-pub-piss. I had a moment of thinking I knew this place before the memory clicked and I realized it was the Dog Leap Stairs, going down to the Quayside. Newcastle? Was that right? Was it supposed to start here, or was that just because it was me doing the crossing?
Someone touched my arm, and I got an impression of there being several other people with me. The one nearest ushered me on towards the stairs and started a low chanting. Something about the rhythm made it sound familiar, but I couldn't place where I'd heard it before.
It lasted for only a moment, seconds at the most, but there was an odd sense of the tone persisting after the voice had stopped. Something like a finger round the top of a wineglass, but right at the edge of hearing. Then the scene straight in front of me broke, pixelated and flowed away, like watching sand fall through an egg-timer from above. Someone walked into that warp in the air, melted and swirled to nothing.
The hand touched me on the arm again, urging me forward. A voice, a man's, the accent Northern Irish, said, "Don't worry, just walk straight into the Gate, you'll be grand." I didn't understand why, but I believed him and walked on before thinking, of course I'd be alright, how could anything here hurt me?
As my foot touched the edge of the swirl, it broke up and flowed away. That wasn't just what I saw; it was exactly how it felt. I'd have pulled back with the shock, but I had no time. Before I could do anything, I'd become a million grains of Adam, flowing and falling, but somehow doing it straight forward. I'd have screamed, but my throat had gone. Then my mind fell away and there was nothingness.
The grains of sand crashed back into each other and somehow became me again. An improvement on being nothing, yes, but not an experience I could enjoy. My skin was trying to crawl off my body and my stomach up my throat. Both feelings went quickly, but I didn't feel good. Some aspects of verisimilitude could easily be cut, to my way of thinking.
I was now standing in daylight on a grassy hill. Somewhere off in the distance was the glint of early morning sunlight on water. I tottered forward to where a Scot was saying to come and sit down. There were others, adults and kids, coming out of the thin air behind me. No one crashed into anyone else, but everyone had the same kind of bedsprings-recovering-from-an-orgy look to them.
I flopped down on the grass, propped myself up on an elbow and thought, 'Oh,________'.Ah, the ____ nannyware. I couldn't even think a good curse. The grass, anyway, felt good; it felt real. Really grassy grass stalks tickled and gently prickled at my hands and the back of my neck. There was a smell in the air of full summer. I was preparing to lie down on that real grass and feel even better, when something offered me a drink.
It was a dwarf. There'd have to be some here, though, wouldn't there? Pun completely intentional, but it'd be a minimum. This one was about a metre tall with muscles like a small wrestler. Clean-shaven, and dressed more like a coffee-shop waiter in charcoal grey than an extra from Lord of the Rings, it… he, held the tray towards me and mumbled, "Dringim."
I took a cup and sipped at it. The taste was a lot like rooibos, which I drink to escape endless cups of green tea, but the effect was incredible; I was instantly clear in the head. It was obvious everyone else around was feeling the same. There were a few 'wows'- but not 'like wow's', which the kids all say now. A small thing, but it registered as a neat touch. You hear it everywhere; the kids in Kyoto were 'like-wowing' before I left, but we never used the expression back then.
A last figure flowed out from the thin air of the Gate; outlined on this side by standing stones covered in runes. It became a tall, lean, dark-haired man, dressed all in black- jeans, shirt and some kind of trench coat. His collar was open and he looked as if he hadn't shaved or slept, except perhaps in the clothes, for a few days. His eyes were bloodshot, with bags and black circles beneath them. Looked like he'd escaped from the lead role in a Hollywood blockbuster. He blinked, shook his head as if to clear it, and picked up a cup with a mutter of "Thanks, Gava."
He took a long swig from the cup, and I swear the red in his eyes faded away while he was drinking. When he lowered the cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the stubble was still on his face and the creases still in his clothes, but the signs of exhaustion had vanished. He gave a sigh and a healthy sounding belch and said, "Ah, better." It was the voice from the other side of the gate.
He moved in front of the bodies sprawled on the grass and addressed us.
"Seekers. Welcome to the Land. I know the first Crossing is not a pleasant thing, but we have to press on. From here we must walk to the river. Then we'll take boats to get us to the City of Black River Bridge. There you'll undergo your Initiation - the Ceremony of Opening." He paused and looked around at us.
"For some of you, that'll mark the end of your stay here," That was said seriously enough to make it sound like bad news. "While for others it'll mean the beginning of your training." That somehow didn't sound as if anything more cheerful was in store. "To all, I wish you well, I wish you well. Now please," he gestured, "To your feet. The walk to the river will take about two hours. You'll be so kind as to follow the Mages."
There was a thing about him; what he said, you did. This guy was a lot like Uncle Steve - a leader; you could read it in every line of him. Not a violent man, at a guess, but one who was very confident in his own abilities and both used to giving orders and having them followed.
I stood up and realized I reached only as tall as the middle of his chest. Before I had time to think he was some kind of a giant, I noticed a boy standing slightly to one side of him. The boy couldn't have been more than twelve, more likely eleven. He was the same size as me; possibly a little taller. I was eleven years old again.
Take my word for it, when I say it's the sort of thing that can ruin your day, I'm not joking at all. I'd known it was going to happen, yes, but as a fact like something I'd read in the Zeppelin's in-flight magazine. You know the thing, 90% of Dubai's buildings have been green-roofed, oh isn't that interesting? It's very different to feel it in your suddenly-much-smaller bones. I worked hard and managed a 'Damn' - a whispered one. It wasn't nearly enough.
Hah! Believe me sonny, you ain't seen nothing yet.
The walk down to the river did take about two hours. No one was wearing a watch, which we did then and I do now, and yes, I knew better than to expect Tatches tattooed onto wrists. Even now, in Japan, that's more a Tokyo or Osaka thing, oddly not popular in Kyoto. But no one had a mobile even, which kids of this age would have had, so I could only guess from the height of the sun.
The track was a dirt pathway through countryside that reminded me of Northumberland, out near Hexham. Rolling hills, clumps of trees, cattle or something like them in small groups. A blue sky with cotton wool clouds like the lid on a chocolate box. The weather was like late May or early June when I was a kid; more like late March nowadays.
Between the flowers and the butterflies the meadows looked as though someone'd got bored of green and used the rest of the rainbow to over-paint every scrap of it. Walking past caused clouds of Persian miniatures (well, they weren't cabbage whites) to lift and ground - so many the fields looked like landing strips for magic carpets. The air was country clean and fresh and there were none of the modern British summer's palette of burned browns.
I spotted some Sweet Cicely on the way down and snacked on seeds from it. Delicious. Uncle Steve had taught me about it and nettles and dandelion leaves when I was a kid. My flat-mates had appreciated the knowledge during the Year Without Summer. Even with the rationing, damn near all we could get by way of greens was what we found growing wild. All before the Swiss dumped the salt, and the Vertical Farms and the People's Supermarkets with their vegetable factories started up, of course.
No one talked much on the way. For myself, I was uncomfortably aware of being a kid again and not sure how to speak to the others. Most of the kids seemed overawed by what had happened to them. They couldn't know each other, so'd be unsure how to start conversations. They probably also still felt a bit sick; I did. Though what was I thinking, they just hadn't been given any lines to say, had they?
The Mages, the adults, were at the very front and very back of the group, and their body language said they were watching, not just strolling. I overheard a conversation between one of the taller boys and a Mage, where the boy asked why we didn't fly or go on runners to the city. The reply, in a very dry Yorkshire accent, was none of us could fly yet and no one was going to risk us falling off runners. That conversation stopped there, but it did prompt a girl to ask how would we fly when we learned, on broomsticks?
"Oh, no my lovely, never have anything to do with broomsticks for flying." This was from a slightly older, well-upholstered Welsh woman. "Tried that when I first came here, I did. Witches never rode broomsticks without they stuffed a couple of nice soft cushions down the backs of their knickers first. I'll never be persuaded otherwise, see. Barely walk, I could after, and that was only ten miles as the crow flies too. And balance on that thin bit of stick? Tuh, Old wives' tale about flying on broomsticks, in my opinion. You stick to cloaks my lovely, and your bum will thank you, see?"
The tall Irishman, grinned at this and asked, "Didn't young Richard say if you just used the broom part, you could do things on a broom that made it far superior to a cloak? A comfortable seat, your hands free? Surfing the sky, I think he called it."
"Don't you start me on the wit and wisdom of the amazing Tricky Dicky Banister, Niall Ferguson. Bristles up the backside is the least of the things I wish for that young man. Still cleaning spirit voices out of my toilet after his last clever scheme I am". She sniffed in disdain. "Pass an Initiation he may well have done, but he's every inch a fool and terrible tall for his age that boy. And there's not a Mage in the Land can argue the point with me neither."
"Argue with you Megs?' said the Yorkshireman. 'There's not a Mage in the land as'd dare. All too keen on waking up same shape as they went to bed the night afore."
The last of the Mages, a lean, muscular-looking woman with a mild Jamaican accent, tutted at this last. "An' I will ask you to stop the scandalous remarks about my friend in the presence of all these minors Jacob. It is not seemly to suggest she can or will witch them into small creatures if they back answer her, however true it might be."
That, give or take a snort of laughter from Megs, more or less put an end to talk from the Seekers. The Mages settled back into walking silently and we went on like that. I did see something in the Irishman's eyes as he looked at the Jamaican and thought… but no. They were characters, weren't they? There couldn't be anything going on there.
I had a feeling that whole scene was deliberate, though. He'd been getting at someone when he wrote it, making some kind of point, but I couldn't think who or how. I wondered if this was his first chapter, or just a way it'd start for someone coming in like me. This might have been the way he introduced his protagonists. If so, it read like an old joke, a bad old joke – there was an Irish man, a Welsh woman and a… - without a punch line. Confusing if, like me, you didn't know what was going on. I'd have stopped reading by now. I'd have wanted something more than this. But then, I wouldn't have cracked the cover in the first place.
Twenty minutes later, both Niall and the Jamaican stopped to look at some birds flying towards us from the distance. They were big and an odd shape.
She looked a question at him. "You think?"
"Unusual to see them so far over," he nodded, "Best check".
She reached into a bag slung over her shoulder and pulled what looked like a crystal ball from it. I saw the ball fog as she peered into it, eyes narrowed to slits.
"How many, Niall?"
"Five."
"Four here. What formation?"
"Standard V."
"I'm missing the point; it'll be the leader."
Without another word, and still gazing intently into the crystal, she reached out her other hand. A ball of electric blue light formed in it. Then she turned to the birds, her eyes leaving the fogged ball in one hand just as the light ball left the other. I'd say she threw it, but it didn't move like an ordinary throw – there was no rise and fall. It went through the air like a ruled line, dark blue on sky blue, and exploded by the first of the odd-shaped birds, which squawked and dropped like a drunken sycamore seed – falling and twisting, but incapable of doing it elegantly.
Everyone went over to where it lay, motionless, on the ground. The Yorkshireman kicked the obvious corpse onto its back with a toe and grunted, "Ridden." It was statement rather than question, but the Jamaican nodded confirmation.
"Shielded. The crystal couldn't see it."
The thing he had kicked had wings with a span of over two metres, but the body of a cat. It was oddly and massively muscled over the shoulders, but otherwise next door's ginger tom with eagle wings. Until you looked at the face. That belonged to something that'd chew through your chest and then rip your heart out through the hole. This thing didn't go in for saucers of milk and tickles behind the ears.
"What is that?" someone asked.
"Chimereagle." The reply meant nothing to me or the kid who'd asked.
"They're always half eagle and half something else, depending on local environment. This one had been sent to spy on us."
The kids all looked at each other, eyes wide with excitement or fear. The adults, I noticed, did the same, though their expressions were of guarded puzzlement. Then the Yorkshireman shrugged.
"Nowt more to do with this, is there?"
He looked at us and nodded his head to one side.
"Walk on."
I picked up a feather that had fallen from the thing. It was perfect; barbules locking into each other and a pattern of cat camouflage making it look pretty. What had its owner been coming to do? The thought occurred that this world had teeth in it. I worked up a 'damn' much easier this time. I stuck the feather in my back pocket and fell in with the rest.
Bugger.
Meganwy
I'm sure, if you're a dance teacher, or something of the kind, you can look at any random person and take a guess at their potential as a dancer. Even a fairly quick look would show if they had natural poise, or grace in their movements, ennit? Bottom line, of course, is you could teach them something. But as you watched them, you'd know if this one might ever be great, or'd only just learn to tell the difference between their left and right foot, that sort of thing. Same for anything else you know well; you know what to look for, ennit?
It's both similar and different for us, see. A Mage can spot someone who has Potential just by looking at them, in the Land or out of it. Those who haven't - well you can't teach them anything, try as you might.
Explaining how we know is a different matter though, ennit? It's like saying, 'She's the one in the pink dress', to someone who's colour-blind, see? Potential doesn't have a colour, any more than colour has a smell, but a Mage knows it's there. It's not auras neither, though I can see auras. It's what we do and you don't.
So I can tell you we could all 'see' young Brendan had massive Potential, but I can't tell you what it was that told us. I'd have put money on him being one of the Chosen of the Land, but no one would've taken the bet. They could all see it too.
Strange to be back in the Land, it was. I'd been away for about a month and I suppose I'd got used to the other world. Coming back was like opening a cupboard of memories I hadn't looked in for a while. Some of the things in there I'd nearly forgotten I had. Didn't really notice till we got to the boats and I had to call up the sails, but I felt that way a few times over the next few days. Can't recall ever feeling like that before.
Sharp, he is, Jake. The Seekers would go for that line about spying, but the rest of us knew better. You want to spy, you send a familiar. Sent to attack us, those beasts were. Take a pride leader and you get the rest of the pride, see, with chimereagles. What he goes for, they go for too. Far more dangerous to the mage if a familiar gets hurt – hospitalise someone, you can if you kill their familiar, while you only give 'em a bad headache if you drop the beast they're riding - and much harder to organise a large group. My Morgan, see, flies as a sparrow, fights as a wildcat and spies as a mouse. Niall's Satsuki flies and fights as an eagle, spies as a housecat. Even getting them to travel together is hard, ennit?
Sloppy attempt, whatever it was designed to do. He must have put it together in a desperate hurry. We know chimereagles only come from places where there were big magic battles in the last war. Fallout, ennit? And they are all on his side of the island now. They were bound to look odd flying in Duergar lands. Now what would prompt that?
Phoebe
I woke up in a bed. I'd expected something more dramatic. The Seekers would come to the Land through a Gate and I thought I'd be a Seeker. I couldn't remember what Silvester had said, but it looked like I was already there. Something felt bad though. I had a bit of a headache and a cramping pain in my stomach. I had to pull back the bedclothes before I could see what it was. Blood on my pyjamas, down between my legs. Yada.
I knew what it was, of course, even though it was the first time. Auntie 'Lexie had told me all about it, and Dad had been getting me books and stuff about it for just forever – to help me prepare. My friend Sara had already had hers and all the girls had been talking about it, you'd guess, innit? Didn't mean it wasn't just mecha gruse. It was. Well, for a second.
Then I thought I could tell Dad and he'd let me have the party he'd promised for it. He'd said it was a change I should celebrate. I think he read that line in a book. Then, of course, I realized Dad wasn't here, I was well off the range of a GPS tracker, and I couldn't have a party until I got back. Which made me wonder.
A girl couldn't get into the Land until she'd started her periods. Everyone knows that. So maybe this wasn't real, and they'd just given me one to make me feel like I was ready, even though I knew I really wasn't. And (far, far away ikky) even if this was my first time, it wouldn't be hers. It's tres freak to feel you're having someone else's period, believe me if that's never happened to you before, and my day was about to go glom when a Duergar came in through the door.
I nearly leapt out of bed and danced around the room! This wasn't like watching them on a DIV. This was real. Right there in the room with me, carrying a tray. She looked me up and down (mostly up of course) and saw the bloodstains. She nodded and said, "Ah. Me thingim allsame. Me bringim this one for Mma. Makim you better mor. You go cleanim youseleva en dringim thisfella." She nodded at a door and passed me a cup of something. I got up and sort of hobbled to the door, trying not to let my legs touch. Yada. Big, big ya.
You had to slide the door to the bathroom. I remembered and didn't try to push it. The bathroom looked just like the ones you see in the DIVs. There was a big, deep, circular tub made of wood, set into the floor, full nearly to the brim with steaming hot water.
I knew you had to scoop water out of the bath and wash yourself first, so started to strip off the pyjamas. I jumped when I saw the dark skinned woman out of the corner of my eye, but sussed I was looking into a big, steamed-up mirror. Then I nearly squealed. I was Malaika!
There's a line in Book One where someone asks if Malaika is good-looking, and the answer is she's too busy being gorgeous to have time left for just good. And there she was looking back at me. From the steamy mirror. With no clothes on.
I really had to look away. I mean, Malaika is tres, tres hot, with a bod to just die for or from, but I was like staring at it. I felt myself blushing hotter than the bath water. It would take a while to get used to that being me. I took just a small peek again and thought, 'Oh I wish!'
I could get used to it. I could suffer that.
I mean, I have got brown hair and brown eyes and when Dad tells me I am going to be a stunner at sixteen and he's going to buy a club to keep boys away he always sounds like he means it. That's my dad though. He once told a friend of mine he was really Tony Blair, and he'd escaped from prison by digging a tunnel with a bent teaspoon.
We didn't completely believe him, but that was 'cos we didn't know who it was. We had to go wiki the name up on a pokkecom to read the history and find out Blair was still in prison. Well, we were only eight at the time. What did we know?
Anyway, the point is; it isn't impossible I could look nearly as hot when I'm older. But that nearly would be just like Earth to Moon near, not Earth to Sun near. Sort of comparatively nearer than Sara could get, 'cos she's blonde, but not close enough to whisper in an ear kind of close. I'll never pwn boys.
I grabbed a towel and covered myself a bit and took another look at my new face. I pushed a strand of hair back behind my ear and grinned and just … Like wow.
I had a drink from the cup before starting to wash and the effect was like magic. (Duh!) The headache and cramp just vanished. The stuff must have been chia, but it tasted like the milky tea Dad always makes for me. I still wasn't keen on getting into the bath after washing – I didn't think the bleeding had stopped too and just didn't want to lay there in it. Far, far away gruse – so I towelled myself dry and went back to the bedroom.
The Duergar had gone out, but there was underwear and a set of loose, dark grey cotton pants and a top laid out on the bed. Apart from a sanitary pad, it was all senior Mage clothing. I had a feeling I had to get ready for something formal going on.
Then it came to me. I was being dimmy this morning. Naturally, the Seekers would be coming and I'd have to go and take part in the Opening. All this would have to start with Brendan going through his Initiation, even if I wasn't doing one. Of course, he'd pass and the Light of the Chosen'd shine from him, but it all needed to happen so Senior Niall would know he was capable of great things. I dressed as quickly as I could.
Good. She's accepted who she is. Maybe this time things will work out as I want them to.
Getting to the hall from my bedroom was a piece of good luck. I turned the right way down a corridor, went down some stairs and through a door that lead into the Main Hall. Adults and kids sat at tables, eating and chatting. I went to a serving table and helped myself to a bowl of muesli, some kind of red fish and some chia, then looked for somewhere to sit.
"Lai! Hey, over here!" Oops, Aki, Malaika's best friend in the Land. How was I going to carry this one off?
I sat down beside her and she looked me in the eye. "Ah yes, Gramma said it was so. Sorry to tell you friend, but it shows. Drink lots of her special chia and don't bite off any heads, some of them never use shampoo and they will taste foul."
The accent was dead right and it was just like being with Eriko Yamamoto. I nearly asked for an autograph.
I grinned and sat down next to her. "We have to go to the ceremony today, innit?" I asked, "What time should we set off?" I thought this was a bright thing to say, 'cos I wasn't sure how I'd get there by myself.
"Ah, that's so, eh?" replied Aki, carefully looking at anything in the room except me. "I do have a small favour to ask of you there. Nothing that will be too much for my very best friend in the universe to understand, of course, but I have agreed to go with someone else." She gave me a quick look that had triumph in it, and I guessed. Well, I've read all of the books is one thing, and I'm a girl is another. It could only be one person.
"Daniel!"
"Yes, but keep it quiet please. We are going to set off early and walk part of the way there. He thinks we are going to pick medicinal herbs, but I have no such plan."
My eyes must have widened, 'cos she tapped me on the nose.
"Talking child! Talking! Well, mostly talking. He may be the cutest thing here, but he has a terrible problem with commitment. He is going to say some important things today, though he does not know this yet."
She gave me a look asking if it really was okay with me, so I told her, "Tres, tres okay." That only got me a puzzled look. Stupid! The books never use modern teenspeak. She wouldn't know that expression.
"I mean, no problem."
That was something Malaika says all of the time, though only olds like my dad ever say that now. I ate and Aki sort of drifted away into thought, so nothing much was said through the rest of breakfast. I made some mental notes. Some things I say, people here wouldn't. Some things I knew, 'cos they happened in the later books, people here couldn't. Lots to remember.
No one knows how things turned out between Aki and Daniel, and if they ever got over the row, 'cos the last book never got written. I think they would, but Alistair Cameron always said there'd be surprises at the end of the story, and he wasn't going for a happily-ever-after kind of finish.
Though, with me only being here for today, I wasn't going to be around for the argument and couldn't change things much anyway. Mind, I was a bit impressed to know they got together on the day Brendan entered the Land. That isn't written down anywhere and I'd thought it was much later. When I finished my breakfast, I put the bowl away, wished Aki a good day, and headed out.
There was a large cloak room just before the front door of East Gard's Hall. The two long walls had lines of hooks with cloaks on them. I found a hook with Malaika's name and picked up the cloak.
I knew about this bit and was half looking forward to it - half afraid I'd wee myself. I put on the cloak and fastened it with the shiny brass clasp. It slightly hugged my shoulders when wrapped around me, but I could throw it over my back and get it out of the way. Tell the truth, I wanted a mirror, to see how it looked on, 'cos Malaika looks serious good in a cloak, but there wasn't one around.
I walked out through the door. It was like the DIVs. There was a gravel driveway going to a gate in the distance, with gardens on either side. I knew people did drive up that gravel, in carriages pulled by draft beasts or riding on runners, but I was going to use it for my runway, just like I'd seen Malaika do. I wondered about flying wearing a sanitary pad. Maybe I should be using tampons? No one tells you that sort of thing, do they?
It's lucky there's a long bit about this in Book One, where Brendan and the other Apprentices are taught to fly - you don't see it in the DIV though. I was still quite little when Dad read it to me, and I can remember practising take-offs in my bedroom with a towel over my shoulders.
Well, no one was watching, so… I re-slung the cloak and held it out like bat wings. It wrapped neatly around my arms and gripped them, like it was holding them up. It was much longer than my arms, but the end part still stuck out like there was something underneath it. I walked forward to let it billow out behind me and then ran, flapping, just like I did when I was little. You see some of them just sort of leap and take off in the DIVs, but I wasn't ready for that yet, so I took a long run-up.
I was feeling far gone harpic, but suddenly the cloak took over the flapping and I was struggling to run fast enough. I think I might have shrieked when the ground fell away from me, but the cloak just kept on doing the flying, flapping my arms for me. In less than a second, I seemed to be higher than the trees. Two seconds later I knew for surely, 'cos I was at the end of the driveway and was flying over them.
It still felt a bit low, so I just thought about going faster and the cloak flapped harder. I angled myself steeper and shot up into the sky. It tells you in Book One that East Gard is at the top of a steep-sided valley on the road to the coast. Well, in a few seconds, I was high enough to see that. I was heading north, with the road running west and east below me. The cloak felt to be stuck to my back and down my legs as far as my ankles and was holding all of my body up. I felt like I was lying on some enormous swing fastened tight to the sky, and falling out of the sky was like...like no chance; I was far away secure. I stopped pumping my arms for a minute and did a gliding turn. And there was the city, with its wall and castle. There was the river, with the bridge and boats.
I can't describe the feeling that filled me then. It was like last year when Sara and me went on a roller coaster. We squealed and screamed all the way through the ride; not 'cos we were scared, but just 'cos we were so excited. I squealed and screamed again now and pumped myself higher and higher into the air, then swooped down and up again until I looped overhead in a circle. Then I corkscrewed down towards the ground, pulling out into another rising glide.
I don't know how long I flew. I was a bird, I was just pure flight, and I was strong. The cloak was doing all the work. It lifted me up into the sky with just me thinking about moving my arms, but when I pulled hard I felt myself rocket through the air. And when I glided… I could just close my eyes and feel the wind against my hands, knowing the littlest movement of my fingers would send me swooping in a great circle.
The world was beneath me and I was above all of it. I could see forever and there was nowhere I couldn't go. I felt… I felt…there's no words for what I felt.
I got up above a cloud and wanted to just fly all day exploring the top of the clouds. I think I would've done too, 'cept I flew over a gap in the clouds and saw the city again. Black River Bridge! I knew what it looked like from Jack Hughes' illustrations in the Encyclopaedia of The Land, and I couldn't wait to walk on its streets for real. And I'd get to meet Senior Ferguson, my favourite character in all of the books, more even than Brendan Earle really. I just had to go there!
March 30, 2012
Argy-bargy in the SF World
I found this on Twitter. Of all the authors mentioned the only ones I know are China Mieville and Sherri Tepper. I loved Grass by Sherri and most things that I've read by China (Kraken, The City and The City, King Rat very much, Perdido Street Station not quite so much, Embassy Town - umm, impressed by the invention).
I was particularly taken with one comment in the list. The commenter pointed out that, in this group, Arthur C Clarke would not have been shortlisted for his own prize. Interesting and probably true. The last thing I read by Arthur was The Light of Other Days, which, since it has clearly been done by someone who can do characters well enough to write the biros off Arthur, strikes me as being more a book by Stephen Baxter. I haven't read anything solely by him yet, so I don't know, but I have strong suspicions.
One point this brings up is the difference between the writers of the Golden Age and now. I loved Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke when I was a kid, but I wonder if anything but early Heinlein would keep me interested now. Later Heinlein was too full of people who were essentially Heinlein for my tastes. Asimov and Clarke were a bit like Kilgore Trout, great ideas.
Another point brought out by the commentators was that it was good to see a really good rant going on, especially when this was about SF, which they all cared about. I do too, so I like the fact that people are getting up and shouting about this. I might be going out on a limb here, but I would class The Hunger Games as being SF. In the suburbs of the genre at least. It's in the future, has genetically modified animals and a firm view that people are still going to be people, whatever the tech can do. It's also well written, doesn't have shiny boyfriends or girls who have a pathological obsession with guys who can kill them anywhere. (Is it something about teenage girls liking blokes who show restraint? He hasn't ripped your throat out in weeks, it must be love - and that counts).
I like this as a general trend. I'm really happy that the biggest selling film of the times is one that is set in the future, gets people to think about ethics, uses of technology (oppression), has a really strong independent female lead (father of a 12-year-old girl writing here) and is clearly leading towards revolution. I'm going out to buy the other two books to find out if the word 'occupy' sticks up in them in any way, but won't care if it doesn't.
I was particularly taken with one comment in the list. The commenter pointed out that, in this group, Arthur C Clarke would not have been shortlisted for his own prize. Interesting and probably true. The last thing I read by Arthur was The Light of Other Days, which, since it has clearly been done by someone who can do characters well enough to write the biros off Arthur, strikes me as being more a book by Stephen Baxter. I haven't read anything solely by him yet, so I don't know, but I have strong suspicions.
One point this brings up is the difference between the writers of the Golden Age and now. I loved Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke when I was a kid, but I wonder if anything but early Heinlein would keep me interested now. Later Heinlein was too full of people who were essentially Heinlein for my tastes. Asimov and Clarke were a bit like Kilgore Trout, great ideas.
Another point brought out by the commentators was that it was good to see a really good rant going on, especially when this was about SF, which they all cared about. I do too, so I like the fact that people are getting up and shouting about this. I might be going out on a limb here, but I would class The Hunger Games as being SF. In the suburbs of the genre at least. It's in the future, has genetically modified animals and a firm view that people are still going to be people, whatever the tech can do. It's also well written, doesn't have shiny boyfriends or girls who have a pathological obsession with guys who can kill them anywhere. (Is it something about teenage girls liking blokes who show restraint? He hasn't ripped your throat out in weeks, it must be love - and that counts).
I like this as a general trend. I'm really happy that the biggest selling film of the times is one that is set in the future, gets people to think about ethics, uses of technology (oppression), has a really strong independent female lead (father of a 12-year-old girl writing here) and is clearly leading towards revolution. I'm going out to buy the other two books to find out if the word 'occupy' sticks up in them in any way, but won't care if it doesn't.
March 29, 2012
Adam
The grains of sand crashed back into each other and somehow became me again. An improvement on being nothing, yes, but not an experience I could enjoy. My skin was trying to crawl off my body and my stomach up my throat. Both feelings went quickly, but I didn't feel good. Some aspects of verisimilitude could easily be cut, to my way of thinking.I was now standing in daylight on a grassy hill. Somewhere off in the distance was the glint of early morning sunlight on water. I tottered forward to where a Scot was saying to come and sit down. There were others, adults and kids, coming out of the thin air behind me. No one crashed into anyone else, but everyone had the same kind of bedsprings-recovering-from-an-orgy look to them.I flopped down on the grass, propped myself up on an elbow and thought, 'Oh,________'.Ah, the ____ nannyware. I couldn't even think a good curse. The grass, anyway, felt good; it felt real. Really grassy grass stalks tickled and gently prickled at my hands and the back of my neck. There was a smell in the air of full summer. I was preparing to lie down on that real grass and feel even better, when something offered me a drink.It was a dwarf. There'd have to be some here, though, wouldn't there? Pun completely intentional, but it'd be a minimum. This one was about a metre tall with muscles like a small wrestler. Clean-shaven, and dressed more like a coffee-shop waiter in charcoal grey than an extra from Lord of the Rings, it… he, held the tray towards me and mumbled, "Dringim."I took a cup and sipped at it. The taste was a lot like rooibos, which I drink to escape endless cups of green tea, but the effect was incredible; I was instantly clear in the head. It was obvious everyone else around was feeling the same. There were a few 'wows'- but not 'like wow's', which the kids all say now. A small thing, but it registered as a neat touch. You hear it everywhere; the kids in Kyoto were 'like-wowing' before I left, but we never used the expression back then.A last figure flowed out from the thin air of the Gate; outlined on this side by standing stones covered in runes. It became a tall, lean, dark-haired man, dressed all in black- jeans, shirt and some kind of trench coat. His collar was open and he looked as if he hadn't shaved or slept, except perhaps in the clothes, for a few days. His eyes were bloodshot, with bags and black circles beneath them. Looked like he'd escaped from the lead role in a Hollywood blockbuster. He blinked, shook his head as if to clear it, and picked up a cup with a mutter of "Thanks, Gava."He took a long swig from the cup, and I swear the red in his eyes faded away while he was drinking. When he lowered the cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the stubble was still on his face and the creases still in his clothes, but the signs of exhaustion had vanished. He gave a sigh and a healthy sounding belch and said, "Ah, better." It was the voice from the other side of the gate.He moved in front of the bodies sprawled on the grass and addressed us."Seekers. Welcome to the Land. I know the first Crossing is not a pleasant thing, but we have to press on. From here we must walk to the river. Then we'll take boats to get us to the City of Black River Bridge. There you'll undergo your Initiation - the Ceremony of Opening." He paused and looked around at us."For some of you, that'll mark the end of your stay here," That was said seriously enough to make it sound like bad news. "While for others it'll mean the beginning of your training." That somehow didn't sound as if anything more cheerful was in store. "To all, I wish you well, I wish you well. Now please," he gestured, "To your feet. The walk to the river will take about two hours. You'll be so kind as to follow the Mages."There was a thing about him; what he said, you did. This guy was a lot like Uncle Steve - a leader; you could read it in every line of him. Not a violent man, at a guess, but one who was very confident in his own abilities and used to giving orders and having them followed.I stood up and realized I reached only as tall as the middle of his chest. Before I had the time to think he was some kind of a giant, I noticed a boy standing slightly to one side of him. The boy couldn't have been more than twelve, more likely eleven. He was the same size as me; possibly a little taller. I was eleven years old again.Take my word for it, when I say it's the sort of thing that can ruin your day, I'm not joking at all. I'd known it was going to happen, yes, but as a fact like something I'd read in the in-flight magazine. You know the thing, 90% of Dubai's buildings have been green-roofed, oh isn't that interesting? It's very different to feel it in your suddenly-much-smaller bones. I worked hard and managed a 'Damn' - a whispered one. It wasn't nearly enough.
Hah! Believe me sonny, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Hah! Believe me sonny, you ain't seen nothing yet.
March 26, 2012
Oh dear, oh dear.
Not about my book, but definitely about writing and the response it can get. If you look here you will find the story of how a parent complained that a school teacher read to her child from Orson Scott Card's classic SF book, Ender's Game. I haven't read it in a while, but rate it as an intelligent, well written book. For those who don't know, it tell the story of the battle school, which takes young kids in a future Earth and trains them for a war against an alien race, known in the book as the Buggers.
For the Brits who read, I have to point out that Card is American. For the Americans, you might want to know that that term translates as Sodomite in the UK (and maybe Australia/New Zealand, I'll have to check on that one, though.)
That wasn't the reason for the complaint, though. Apparently, the parent thought the work pornographic. It seems that the kids in the book use a few swear words. I won't argue, though I don't remember that standing out when I read it.
I would point out that the book is on a list of the 100 best books for Young Adult readers. That Card is a Mormon, so is a bit unlikely as a source of child corrupting porn. That the story, from one point of view, is all about comradeship and loyalty. The bit you might not like is that there are some murders and Ender does commit them. He doesn't know that, though. The adults who run the school keep that fact from both him and the others, as they don't want this very promising strategist to be put off, or kicked out. In the end, (I don't think this is a spoiler), Ender is tricked into fighting and completely destroying the aliens. He is led to believe it's a training exercise.
He finds out, too late, that the aliens - social insects - didn't realise that they were killing intelligent beings. They'd taken us to be like themselves and thought the creatures they could see must be just appendages of the hive queens. You don't kill hive queens - that would be barbaric - but the workers and drones they deal with as we would a termite infestation.
The writing is high quality, the characters ones that you can engage with, the story one to inspire thought. A number of people have decided that is the real reason the parent complained, as there is a very clear link that any intelligent child might make between the kids who get tricked into becoming genocidal murderers and the US army. Or any other to be honest, but this took place in America, so...
I don't know the parents, so I won't comment on that, but the idea of trying to raise your child in such a cotton-wool wrapped vaccuum strikes me as foolish. It won't protect them, it will just leave them without defenses in a world that has much worse to offer than a few swear words.
This matters to me as the father of a 12-year-old daughter and a writer who knows that the kids in my daughter's year group are already using words that they know better than to use in front of me. I think it's a part of growth, a phase that they need to go through. One of Aki's classmates once told her that you have to swear when you go into secondary. We all pooh-poohed that idea, but I'm sure that she can curse like an average 12-year-old (better than a nun, worse than a sailor) by now. They'll all play with it for a while and then grow out of it, meanwhile learning who not to get caught by.
For the Brits who read, I have to point out that Card is American. For the Americans, you might want to know that that term translates as Sodomite in the UK (and maybe Australia/New Zealand, I'll have to check on that one, though.)
That wasn't the reason for the complaint, though. Apparently, the parent thought the work pornographic. It seems that the kids in the book use a few swear words. I won't argue, though I don't remember that standing out when I read it.
I would point out that the book is on a list of the 100 best books for Young Adult readers. That Card is a Mormon, so is a bit unlikely as a source of child corrupting porn. That the story, from one point of view, is all about comradeship and loyalty. The bit you might not like is that there are some murders and Ender does commit them. He doesn't know that, though. The adults who run the school keep that fact from both him and the others, as they don't want this very promising strategist to be put off, or kicked out. In the end, (I don't think this is a spoiler), Ender is tricked into fighting and completely destroying the aliens. He is led to believe it's a training exercise.
He finds out, too late, that the aliens - social insects - didn't realise that they were killing intelligent beings. They'd taken us to be like themselves and thought the creatures they could see must be just appendages of the hive queens. You don't kill hive queens - that would be barbaric - but the workers and drones they deal with as we would a termite infestation.
The writing is high quality, the characters ones that you can engage with, the story one to inspire thought. A number of people have decided that is the real reason the parent complained, as there is a very clear link that any intelligent child might make between the kids who get tricked into becoming genocidal murderers and the US army. Or any other to be honest, but this took place in America, so...
I don't know the parents, so I won't comment on that, but the idea of trying to raise your child in such a cotton-wool wrapped vaccuum strikes me as foolish. It won't protect them, it will just leave them without defenses in a world that has much worse to offer than a few swear words.
This matters to me as the father of a 12-year-old daughter and a writer who knows that the kids in my daughter's year group are already using words that they know better than to use in front of me. I think it's a part of growth, a phase that they need to go through. One of Aki's classmates once told her that you have to swear when you go into secondary. We all pooh-poohed that idea, but I'm sure that she can curse like an average 12-year-old (better than a nun, worse than a sailor) by now. They'll all play with it for a while and then grow out of it, meanwhile learning who not to get caught by.
