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The Worm of the Ages

25 December 2015 by 17 Comments

A myth of Färinor, taken from The Tower of Vargon.

The Loring poked the fire vigorously with a stick, making the flames leap on high and sparks climb dizzily into the night. His bald head seemed to glow in the sudden light, and his dark eyes glittered sorcerously. ‘Has nobody got a story to tell us?’

‘Old or new?’ asked Kataki.

‘Old, to be sure,’ said the Loring. ‘Tales and apples are bitter when picked unripe.’

Mazuj sighed. ‘My grandmother used to tell stories, but I don’t remember them well enough. Avel?’

‘I don’t remember my grandmother at all. I was too young when the reapers took her.’

‘Then it falls to me,’ said the Loring. ‘I never had a grandmother, but I can tell you a tale as old as I am, if that will do.’

Kataki laughed. ‘Were there tales so long ago?’ she asked archly.

‘There were deeds,’ the Loring answered; ‘they were made into tales later.’

Avel looked so eager that he almost seemed to smile. ‘Is it a true tale, Master Loring?’

‘As true as words will allow, child. It will not go easily into your speech, but I shall do the best I can.’ The old man stretched his limbs one by one, then sat cross-legged with his hands on his knees, facing the three children across the fire. ‘Hear and heed,’ he intoned, ‘while I tell of the Worm of the Ages.’ [Read more…]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: , ,

The Kings of Old

24 December 2015 by 7 Comments

A carol.

The kings of old wore purple and gold
while children in rags knew hunger and pain.
They sacrificed to idols of clay,
their blood and their labour they offered in vain.
A child is laid in a manger,
yet princes bow down and presents they bring:
Now sing, choirs of angels,
proclaim to the world the newborn King!

The kings of old in darkness and cold
abandoned all hope and thought themselves wise.
The children ask, ‘Is there nothing better?
If night is for ever, why do we have eyes?’
But a star shines in the darkness,
and green is the tree that promises spring.
Rejoice, all who sorrow:
a new life begins when Christ is King!

The kings of old, their people they sold,
enslaved them in lies, enchained them in sins,
despair and death in sad iteration—
Each generation ends as it begins.
A way leads out of the prison,
and Heaven’s bright gates are beckoning:
Hear, all ye nations,
and all shall be free in Christ the King!

Filed Under: Verses Tagged With:

Smoke signals for experts

20 November 2015 by 4 Comments

Mary Catelli inquires:

So working on the world and how do you send letters magically?

Without involving owls, thank you.  I send the kids to a magical school already.  So no owls.  Or doves or eagles or . . . .

I could have them sent by mailman.  Still, a magical means to send them would add to the world-building.  But eliminate winged messengers, and what other form of magic would be metaphorically suitable to transport them?

Something to brainstorm, I think.

Your Humble Correspondent replies:

The enchantment for this requires matched pairs of amulets: rings for choice, since they are so compact and convenient and easy to carry about. Each pair of rings is imprinted with the essence of both parties to the correspondence. You place your ring in a hearth or brazier, prepared to receive enchantment in the usual way, and the recipient (who is expecting your letter at any moment) does the same with his. You then build the smallest fire that will sustain itself, and burn the letter in it; whereupon the vibrations of essential fire in the matched rings will call each to each, and the other party can read your letter in the flames of his own fire, or in the ashes.

N.B. If, like any civilized person, you are carrying on epistolary friendships with many other people, you will want to get a specially constructed hearth with rows of brass pegs in the firebox, so that you can receive letters from whichever of your acquaintance wishes to write to you. When sending a letter, of course, you must remove all the rings except the one intended. It is considered good manners to kindle a fire in the sunset hour and keep it alight for some two to four hours thereafter, so that all correspondence may be conducted in the evenings.

Filed Under: Miscellany

Muggle magic

16 November 2015 by 4 Comments

Mary Catelli wonders aloud:

Read an article on Harry Potter. In which the author asked why the wizarding world didn’t have TV.

Duh. Because the images would go walking around and vanishing and maybe even talking to you instead of saying their lines.

though, actually, the mobile pictures of the wizarding world might be fun but they aren’t very useful for the basic purposes of pictures. Suppose you actually wanted a photograph of your family to show people. It would be awkward if one child’s image was shy and ran off. And for historical purposes, you want an illustration that doesn’t stop depicting what you want.

Sculpture can be stationary. why not flat images? How much magic does it take to do what Muggles can do with mere chemistry?

I respond, with the lessons I learnt at G.K.C.’s mighty knee:

The sad and solemn secret of Elfland, of which Hogwarts is an outpost, is that the fay-folk lack one great and awful power given to us Muggles by our Creator: the power of ‘Thou Shalt Not’. So it is for us to say, ‘I make a photographic image of thee, and thou shalt not walk out of it.’ When we tell a thing to stay put, it stays, backed by the colossal might of Nature and Nature’s God. It is because the fairies have not this power that all fairy-gold turns back to dust.

Filed Under: Quotha Tagged With: , , , , ,

1915-2015

11 November 2015 by 5 Comments

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae was a physician and occasional poet from Guelph, Ontario. Upon the outbreak of the Great War, he was called to the colours under which he had served, and despatched to Belgium with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. As brigade surgeon to the 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery, he treated the wounded under fire during the Second Battle of Ypres in April and May, 1915. During the intervals of the battle, he wrote the rondeau above, which was published anonymously in Punch that December and immediately became world-famous.

In every war before the advent of antibiotics, and a good many wars since, disease was a greater killer than enemy fire. Lieutenant Colonel McCrae (he had been promoted from major during the war) died of pneumonia and complications in January, 1918, ten months before the armistice. He was one of 60,000 Canadians killed in the First World War, out of a population of only eight million.

We still remember. God save us all from breaking faith with those who died.

Filed Under: Quotha Tagged With: , , , ,

Message fiction, Victorian style

4 November 2015 by 2 Comments

But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: ‘Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.’ These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed.

― Andrew Lang

The apple-blossom fairies are mostly gone, thank God, but the same failing recurs in other guises. The same could be said of most of the critical darlings of any given moment, especially in our genre (which is insufferable when not humble): They try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed.

Hat tip to Mary Catelli.

Filed Under: Quotha Tagged With: , , ,

Mission acc… no, better not say that.

1 November 2015 by 1 Comment

Finished Phase 1 of the Great Flat Cleaning. Phase 2, which involves going through the spare room and throwing away masses of rubbish that I’ve stored in there for years, will wait until I get caught up with other work. Meanwhile, the rest of the place is more or less presentable and certainly clean enough to work in.

Quasi-regular posting will therefore resume this week. In the queue: another M*A*S*H post, another bit of Theyocracy from the McStudge, and (once I work out the details) a follow-up to ‘Ozamataz’ and ‘Legosity’. I also plan to get some solid work done on Where Angels Die this month, and maybe even get the Style is the Rocket collection on the market. Busy times ahead.

Filed Under: The Superversive

Respect clichés

28 October 2015 by 2 Comments

Respect clichés. Clichés are old and wise and powerful. Nothing gets to be a cliché without being used and used and used — and nothing gets used that much without having a lot going for it.

—Mary Catelli

Filed Under: Quotha Tagged With: ,

Life, Carbon, and the Tao

27 October 2015 by 10 Comments

My essai for the first anniversary of L. Jagi Lamplighter’s Superversive blog is now up in full:

Part One: What’s so special about carbon?

Part Two: What’s so special about the Tao?

Reposted on SuperversiveSF in one piece.

Go, read, and I hope you enjoy.

In other news, I shall not be writing this week, as I have finally enlisted some help to do a top-to-bottom cleaning of my flat, which is many months overdue. The accumulation of books and papers was making it impossible for me to hoover up the dust, and the dust was making it difficult to do anything else. I have been living largely on a diet of antihistamines and facial tissue. Enough of that!

Filed Under: Essays, The Superversive Tagged With: , , , ,

ERB to 4E

21 October 2015 by 1 Comment

I have nothing to say about this that John C. Wright has not already said better.

Aeons ago, Forrest J. Ackerman, the science fiction fan to end all fans, wrote a fan letter to Edgar Rice Burroughs. Mr. Burroughs replied exactly as follows:

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Amen, ERB, and thank you, 4E.

Filed Under: Quotha Tagged With: ,
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