Something for Your Shelves: Fury

FURY. It's a somewhat abstract title; it has been apparently published under the title Destination: Infinity. Well, it was written by Henry Kuttner, first published in 1947 and re-issued by Gollancz for the Golden Age Masterworks collection in 2019. I found a copy of the latter kind second-hand.

Kuttner was born in 1915, lived in Los Angeles and died in 1958. He married the writer CL Moore (creator of Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith); husband and wife collaborated on a variety of stories under pseudonyms. He corresponded with Lovecraft and assisted Leigh Brackett in getting her first stories published. I'm not sure a biographical lens is the most useful with this book, but that gives you a measure of context.

It is several centuries in the future. Weapons of mass destruction have devastated Earth; humanity survives in sunken Keeps beneath the oceans of Venus. It has been at this long enough to lose any sense of real angst over having killed a planet and conditions in the domed Keeps are comfortable for enough people. The text describes it as 'stable but moribund'. Receding into the past are the names of mercenary groups that fought proxy wars - notably 'the Free Companions'. 

(Each Keep seems to be named for an American state - Delaware Keep, Montana Keep, Virginia Keep. The only exception I noticed was 'Canada Keep'; Wikipedia informs me that every Canadian province excepting the maritimes has a greater population than either Delaware or Montana. Did no-one else make it off Earth? Has the Soviet Union gone to the Red Planet? In the grim darkness of underwater Venus, there are only Yanks.

The vast majority of names, incidentally, are Anglophone.)

If this wasn't bad enough, several lineages of immortal mutants have risen to power within the Keeps (the Keeps themselves are formally democratic, but as the text notes: 'In the Keeps, the Immortals simply knew more than the non-Immortals. Psychologically a certain displacement became evident......Unconsciously the short-lived peoples of the Keeps began to look with dependence upon the Immortals....The Immortals, who knew what long, empty centuries were ahead of them, took pains to ensure that those centuries would not be so empty.'). 

The Immortals look entirely human, but live many centuries in reasonable health (they aren't sustained by constant medical intervention). An early book family gathering contains five generations of Immortals. One family of Immortals, perhaps the most influential are the Harkers.

Anyway, Fury is about a man called Sam Reed, born in Delaware Keep and coming to age in its slums. Anger and a focused, bitter drive propels him through the ranks of criminality to win a measure of prosperity and ability. This eventually leads him into contact with an Immortal called Robin Hale who plans to colonise the surface islands of Venus - against the long set policy of the majority of Immortals (who look to colonise the surface eventually, but not soon) - including the Harkers. A decades-long confrontation ensues.

Reed is a vindictive, energetic, unpleasant man. This is apparently just what is needed to drive the colonisation effort and enervate the society of the Keeps - including the Immortals.

***

Well, I shan't spoil the entire plot for you. But a number of things interested me about Fury. 

Firstly, the character of the Keeps and Sam Reed. The Keeps are dense urban constructs, full of paranoia about the native fauna and flora. Lots of narcotics use; enough crime to make people rich but not enough to endanger the system as a whole. Sullen, perhaps rather than squalid. Reed is the same way; remarkable but unpleasant; Byronic, perhaps. Both are somewhat more grimy than the Golden Age SF stereotype.

The exception might be the world of the Immortals. There's a careless ease to this, as well as a luxury. Couples lapse in and out of centuries long marriages. The wry, ironic, knowing strain in the Immortal character repeats itself; Reed occasionally connects them to Egypt - ancient, mysterious, wealthy.  This style of wealth strikes me as rather of the 1920s. Fury is not alone in this; reading about them, I thought back to Bester's The Stars my Destination (first published as Tiger, Tiger) and The Demolished Man. The future elites of all three do seem to share this Roaring Twenties-esque pattern to them (weren't we meant to be having one of those around now? I'd rather have the Charleston than NFTs).

 

The other obvious comparison for the long-lived of the future might be Heinlein's Methuselah's Children; but that space-faring road trip is an entirely different kettle of fish. The response of Heinlein's baseline humans to immortals is, of course, rather different to Kuttner's - but the destruction of Earth rather does change matters. 

The 1920s aside, the model of society in Fury has some obvious medieval overtones. The Keeps, for one. The aristocracy of the Immortals. The naming of a mercenary group as 'Free Companies'. The institution of a carnival, with the Immortals moving more freely in society. Religion is relatively muted, but there is the appearance of a 'Temple of Truth' with its Logicians that fills an interesting adjunct to the story. The 'moribund but stable' verdict echos a sort of traditional view of the Middle Ages. 

A medieval-inspired moribund post-apocalyptic humanity trapped in great imprisoning structures? Well, I didn't mention grim darkness for nothing. But it is a reminder that the novelty of cyberpunk was nothing to do with a class of tyrants in towers. 

The games of Immortal planning and intrigue - breeding a lineage of the short-lived as assassins for a certain Immortal target - is fascinating, but under-explored. Reed takes centre stage, so the hints of slow-grinding Immortal power, on-off marriages and careful manipulation remain just hints. The Immortals themselves seem more self-serving than villainous; their ills are echoed in Reed. 

Fury is not one of my new favourites. The prose is functional, but the plot just skips along where a few more heartfelt chapter breaks and a more formal structure could have done some good. Along with more Immortals. But it struck me by surprise, and got me to write a blog post on it. Something hooked me.

***

To add a final note of Bathos to proceedings, and in line with earlier references, I have recently been introduced to the following Twitter bot by a cunning gentleman. 

The Legacy of Horato

The city of Horato produced the Horatione Empire, which has shaped the languages, geopolitics and currency of Calliste for centuries since. If Loribides (and Malicarn thereafter) offer visions of the spiritual city, the model for worldly power and the acme of statecraft is Horato.

Therefore, here are some of the cultural legacies of Horato, which percolate through to modern Calliste in art and learning. 

Horato seems to have been founded by a combination of migration from one of the states near Loribides, mingling with a local population of herders. A congress of clan-chiefs gave way to an elected Prince attached to numerous assemblies. Following a series of costly victories which expanded Horatione territory at the cost of internal disruption, this became a 'Popular Despotate' which drifted into a Hereditary Despotate. Steady expansion of Horatione influence across southern and western Calliste eventually reached the point where hegemony became dominion and the title of Emperor was coined. Emperor succeeded Emperor (by fair means or foul) for three centuries, until the Horatione Empire fell, pressured by waves of migration and internal sclerosis. 

Horato was far from dogmatic on religious matters, an attitude which extended into its Empire. Worship in early Horato focused on the 'Old Protectors', a series of gods taken from the region of Loribides and variously augmented or melded with local deities. However, in the fourth decade of the Popular Despotate,  the magistrate Kallipyx the Elder, then Preceptor of the College of Priests declared that the prosperity and safety promised by the Old Protectors had been delivered. Horato had high walls and rich fields. Not every harvest was bound to be rich, but the foundations of comfort and safety were in place. Worship of the Old Protectors could (and would) dwindle - excluding certain occasions, sacrifices would take place only once in a fortnight. Foreign cults and temples, already present in a city with plenty of client states and close allies, began to flourish. Naturally, this included the Majestic Vision. While it was expected that a respectable citizen would attend the fortnightly worship and that the scions of the Horatione elite would learn the legends of the Old Protectors, the Horatione faith would never seriously revive. 

Horatione remains have produced a stereotype of its architecture. This is characterised by a series of round arches, each opening onto a space covered by a barrel vault. This model could provide both a template for street-level open-ended workshops and vendors, and for individual chambers coming off a central courtyard. At the monumental scale, four sides of such arcades could support a wider dome. The commonest building material was a form of flat brick, with dressed stone being used for floors, corners and arches. 

Frequent sculptural motifs were the Bull's Head, Garland and stylised Sun-Arc. The Bull's Head is more often connected with Princely Horato; the Sun-Arc came in later, with the Hereditary Despotate. Displaying the path of the sun from rising to setting, this was a conscious symbolic claim of broad dominion and more-than-earthly strength. The possible connotation that Horatione power would set even as the sun does was either undetected or carefully ignored. 

Unlike much of the rest of Calliste at the time, Horato did not take or keep slaves. Slavery was illegal for Horatione citizens; the keeping of slaves by resident foreigners was frowned upon - and only wealthy and influential foreigners could practically manage to keep and maintain a household of slaves in Horato. (Of course, by the time of the Emperors no foreigner would ever be as wealthy or influential as a Horatione). However, this form of exceptionalism aside, the rapid expansion of Horatione hegemony demanded workers. The 'labour tithe' was levelled on client states, protectorates and defeated enemies to provide corvée for Horato. Tithed workers were expected to spend several years in Horato and its domains, absorbing much of Horatione culture and mores in the process. This transfer of population, combined with the violent practices required by client states to provide the labour tithe, made Horatione practices quite as dislocating and exploitative as slavery. 

A feature of Horatione urban life was the municipal herald or 'Voice of the City'. This was a rhetor, dressed in a plain white robe and arm-wraps dusted with chalk. He (and it often was a He) would walk the streets of a district, arms spread, wearing a large full-face mask, lips modelled in such fashion as to amplify the voice. The Voice of the City was responsible for communicating edicts of the Prince, Despot or Emperor, bringing news of victories or defeats and announcing civic religious rites. 

Details of the Horatione military have been raised elsewhere; for now, it will suffice to say that the Magisterial Guard preceded the Imperial Corps of Intimates and that the early system of raising regiments based on civic and rural districts could not last in the changing environment of the Popular Despotate - in which social atmosphere the Siege Hands rose to fame.  

A certain privilege could be awarded to generals (principally those generals that never attempted to play the political game for their own sake) and decorated veterans. They would be kept after death as 'Sentinel Burials' on the city walls. Their bodies would be embalmed and wrapped in shrouds; shining white metal cases would be set around those portions of the body uncovered by armour. Propped up by spears and poles displaying their medallions and honour plaques, their death masks stare out beyond the city. The pole honours supporting them are strong and weatherproofed, but a Sentinel Burial can still slump or fall: this is, unsurprisingly, a bad omen. Either some dread foe is on its way to the city, or some milksop or traitor has, by action or inaction, betrayed it.

The psychological impact of the Sentinel Burials was noted even in their own time: only the boldest thief, it was thought, would scale the city walls where the vigilant dead waited. To Horatione defenders a standing army of their greatest soldiers was constantly on guard. Even those who note that it wasn't a literal army observed that the soldiers and armed citizens of a besieged Horato would never let their honoured dead fall into the hands of the enemy - or so the rhetoric went. Indeed, Annullina Perpetua (by her own account, an Imperial Sub-Secretary) in her Annals of a Pensionary bitterly notes that in the days of the final Emperor every single Sentinel Burial remained firmly upright.

Idleness and Paranoia

A recent (if November is recent) event of a game I am playing in saw my character ambushed in the course of carousing. While obviously, she wasn't carrying shield and sword, there was some debate about what how many coins she was carrying - as well as any expensive-looking personal items. 

I have no intention of re-inventing the wheel on this matter; we can make a rough guess at a character's civilian gear. Some charms, some money, a pocketknife. Exceptions for practiced thieves and tricksters, of course. Even if weapons may be openly carried, there is a distinction between the courtly small-sword and the claymore. One can imagine that wizards might be required to put a band around their spell-books, as a matter of security or courtesy. The same goes for their staffs; if it looks like it has an obviously magical function and Orvald the Orange is an outsider to the city of Zayana and can't claim it is mark of office, then it better not get brought out anywhere respectable.

But, of course, you wouldn't part an old man from his walking stick. Would you?

Enough on restrictions. This train of thought led me to the provision of non-encumbering items for two situations. These are not characterful or plot-enhancing, as Manola's (excellent) lists for different classes. They offer a modicum of roleplaying potential, but hopefully allow for unexpected uses of a relatively niche item. Carrying more than one would be unusual, and perhaps even uncomfortable. None are intended to be class-limited.

Firstly, let us consider 'hurry up and wait'. How many occasions will there be when a party of adventurers must wait, despite being largely ready to move on? Everyone's in their armour, with full packs - so no-one is actively relaxing - but still, the cleric needs to finish his prayers, the ranger is covering their tracks, the scholar is translating something on the cave walls. Small, portable amusements and pleasures. 

These are situated roughly as categories, rather than specifics. They all sit fairly closely in the pre-modern variety of settings that tend to characterise D&D (et al).

1. Dice or knucklebones. Not too ornate; probably not loaded. Will the testing of probabilities confuse oracular predictions?
2. Patience cards. Half the size of a regular pack, presumably less fancy, implies you know a few solo games. 
3. Prayer beads. Simple, easily pocketed. Can also be used to count steps. 
4. Counters (different designs on each side). Suitable for simple games like Noughts and Crosses or Nine Men's Morris. 
5. Blindfold. Privacy, easily obtained. A relatively fine piece of cloth. 
6. Compact musical instrument. A harmonica, a jaw harp, a tin whistle, a music box. Pocket-sized, not necessarily requiring any great talent, not a source of any real social cachet. If you play it and pass round the hat, you get coppers, not silver. Nothing loud enough to signal with, really.

The second category - as the title suggests - is hold-out items. Just in case. Nothing as impressive as a spy or practiced deceiver might carry, but present all the same. I have neglected to include the ever-popular boot knife. 

1. A lockpick. Only one, and hardly ideal for every lock, but concealable and useful.
2. A length of wire. A snare? A garrotte? Wraps neatly round the wrist; may be inside a piece of clothing.
3. Trade coin. The coin you never spend. A good weight of precious metal, valuable anywhere they like shiny things. It might even be a blank disc or gemstone. 
4. Marker stub. A small stick of material suitable for writing or marking most surfaces; chalk or wax pencil are possibilities. 
5. Treated handkerchief. Do not confuse with regular handkerchief. This piece of cloth has been treated so that you can breathe through it in foul air or poison gas. It can be moistened to create a seal of sorts over nose and mouth. It smells unpleasant.
6. Pocket mirror. A little larger than one square inch. Useful for signals, peering round corners and minor grooming.

All the above, of course, come from the school of equipment lists that is interested not so much in providing solutions for problems but in seeing what will happen when you give the players a new toy, no matter how small it is.

Rogue Movie & 2021

Recent viewing (well, as recently as last year) has been the 1976 Rogue Male. I've praised Geoffrey Household's 1939 novel on here before, and so happily picked up a BFI DVD (a dedicated set of notes on which is here) when I saw it. Made for the BBC, directed by Clive Donner, script by Frederic Raphael (who also did script work on that seasonal favourite, Eyes Wide Shut). 

Peter O'Toole plays the protagonist, unnamed - indeed, deliberately anonymous - in the original, but here given the name 'Sir Robert Hunter' allowing a normal flow of conversation; and for the credits to read 'HUNTER - Peter O'Toole'. Other characters played by Alastair Sims, John Standing, Michael Byrne and Harold Pinter (yes, that Harold Pinter). 

Rogue Male had been adapted before - by Fritz Lang, no less - under the name Man Hunt in 1941. This had altered the story rather and bore the weight of anti-Nazi propaganda efforts in 1941. 

Of course, Rogue Male is a suitable source for such a thing. The book features the nameless protagonist and narrator (an English aristocrat and hunter) taking aim at an unnamed dictator from a state that borders Poland. Well, Household was being relatively discreet in 1939, but the feel of the protagonist's torture, escape and pursuit through both the unnamed foreign power and Britain suggest Nazi Germany rather than the Soviet Union. Household would later confirm that he was thinking of Germany; to my mind the ambiguity of the framing narrative is part of the essence of the novel, but there is no real harm in knowing this. Naturally, the film would struggle to make an actor (and the set, and the costumes, and the spearcarriers....) look like either Hitler or Stalin. Maybe it could be done in some form of animation, but hardly live action. 

Va tacito e nascosto,
quand'avido è di preda,
l'astuto cacciator!

The narrator is caught and contends that he was only going to point his rifle at [Possibly Hitler]; it was a sporting stalk against the most dangerous game of all. Here is one of the major points of divergence between book and film: the text of the book has been written by the protagonist (even noting where he stopped work and started again). It takes time for him to admit - both to us, and seemingly, to himself, that he A) intended to kill [Possibly Hitler] and B) did it because of his love for a woman killed by the tyrannical regime. 

Of course, this slow-maturing portion of the novel cannot be reproduced in the film. Flashbacks, imagined sequences and montage make Sir Robert's motivation fairly clear. Further, other characters know of his romance, originally oddly concealed in an otherwise somewhat well-known man. 

Further, the film introduces Alastair Sim as a doddering Earl and government member to explain the delicate political situation of 1939 - things the book's protagonist could work out for himself. I can't find it in myself to complain about his presence, though the first name references to 'Neville' and 'Winston' are a bit much. Likewise, the plausibly Jewish lawyer of the book, Saul, is made definitely Jewish (Saul Abrahams, played by Harold Pinter). There is at least one piece of clearly framed British Union of Fascists graffiti shown on Sir Robert's return to London. The half-German adversary who uses the name 'Major Quive-Smith' is in the film no more than he appears - a Nazi sympathiser and English hunter, played by John Standing. 

So, the 1976 film is less veiled than the book, and is made with a dollop of hindsight. But it still captures the mood well; even if we cannot get so much technical information about Sir Robert's burrow or the surrounding farms, or miss his musings on British society, the impressions of his efforts in concealment, or the nature of his interactions with wider society are adequate. If O'Toole and Sim are perhaps sometimes over-arch or stereotyped (an escape through London is probably more compelling if Sir Robert knows how to ride the Underground!), well, it's all very finely done. Even if the protagonist's injuries are downplayed - who wants to cover up any leading man's face, let alone Peter O'Toole's? - we get a very strong impression of what has been done to him and the problems this causes. It all looks very good, as well. Strong, well-placed actors and settings. 

As ever, read the book first (or listen to the Michael Jayston reading). But I enjoyed this, certainly. 

***

I'm not given to reviews of the year, but 2021 did see at least one watershed for this blog with the launch of Punth: A Primer - bolstered by some kind words and good publicity. TRoAPW is the next such item on the agenda, but is still half-formed. My review of Magical Industrial Revolution was popular, and I may have to do a little more review work. 

In the meantime, enjoy the last days of Christmas and Epiphany, and let us see what 2022 brings.

[Postscript to say that this has got a lot of views for such a brief, commonplace post - perhaps more interesting is this other Rogue.]