TO REVEAL AN ANSWER: The piece of writing at the end of the last post was derived, basically, from some fairly negative and somewhat fantastical feelings about the experience of reading the Horus Heresy books. With a little element of the King in Yellow mixed in.
Roboute Guilliman: You, brother, should remove your armour.
Horus: Indeed?
Rogal Dorn: Indeed, it is time. We have all set aside our pauldrons except you.
Horus: I wear no pauldrons.
Roboute: [aside, to Rogal] No pauldrons? No pauldrons!
And on that revelation, trailing corposant, I move to another lurid book.
CONTEXT: P J Stuart, author of the blog False Machine, a version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and several interesting RPG products ran a Kickstarter to take a majority of that blog material and preserve it in a weighty tome. Behold, the above. It is as larger as many editions of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, if a little lighter. (Quite a pleasing weight, really.) The cover is a distinct orange, with letters that seem to shift as you read them. That might just be a faulty bedside lamp, or fatigue on the part of Yr. Hmbl. Crrspndt., but I wouldn't put it past Patrick to have hexed it somehow. Illustrations from several artists, often former collaborators with PJS. Fascinating set of marbled end papers by Scrap Princess.
....but I don't need this. I've read a bunch of the original posts, even commented on them. (Some comments are reproduced in the text of the book above. It's remotely possibly I'm there, I haven't checked thoroughly yet. Full Disclosure, &c, &c.)
Anyway, if a charming visitor to my snug garret were to ask over a glass of Oloroso 'My dear, what is that fascinating book on your shelves?', how would I answer them?
[QUICK NOTE: the Blog is False Machine. The Book is Speak, False Machine, whatever it says on the cover. Occasionally, I'm going to need to compare the two so they need different names.]
MOVING ON: On one level, everything in False Machine is either an RPG product or fuel for RPGs. Patrick Stuart is a man who will read and review works of fantasy - EG, Gormenghast or The Worm Ouroborous, or histories of the sort of period that have inspired fantasy fiction, as A Distant Mirror - as readily as a work on the Psychoanalysis of Fire. This isn't to posit this work as merely fuel for the capital-P Product, but it is to indicate that there is a final aim in place for much of the work in here, a set of objectives.
Now, most of the stuff that went into the actual books isn't in Speak, False Machine. The posts for Veins of the Earth became Veins of the Earth. Good thing too. But this references character and action on the part of the author. So, a newcomer should think on that.
The various articles have been changed slightly. Spelling mistakes and ungainly turns of phrase have not been corrected, we are assured. But other things have changed. Some comments are included, many are not. Illustrations that offer context have gone. See for instance the post called on False Machine 'Five.. Four... Three.. Two... ONE!' It must be shorn of the referential images that indicate the origins of the work without interrupting the flow of the fiction, or the end table that lays out the similarities in several works. It must rely on the title alone, which may be reference enough.
Of course, one understands why such images are not included, but something may be lost. To refer back to my own work at the top of the page - how clear was that little mystery?
The material is not only presented in a reduced form, it is also framed differently. Blog posts that may have been weeks or months apart can now be put side by side, and there is benefit in this. Now we can read all about the Horus Heresy back to back (Hoorah?).
Back to back, and also in two columns. This sounds silly to make into a point in a new paragraph, but if you're used to a post being in one column, with a predictable set of links and gadgets at the side, it is a little strange to see it in two columns, and have the experience of your eye wandering across.
TO CONTINUE: It is very online. Sometimes that phrase is used as an insult: in this case, it is basically descriptive. False Machine was and is a web-log. It should not surprise a reader that Speak, False Machine bears the hallmarks of the internet.
There's a freedom of tone. Speak, False Machine has a good number of reviews. There is also a great deal of flippancy, plenty of cursing and a pool of references deriving from online cultures (hence a section titled 'Weebery'.) As good as these reviews may be, they would not appear in this way in the pages of a high-brow weekly. Certainly not at this length: word limits online are a very different thing to those in print. Quotes can be longer, explorations more discursive.
Thus, the rough set of points or ideas expressed by the (hilarious) 'WWII - Written and Directed by JJ Abrams' could be expressed by the sort of less strait-laced weekly magazine, but would probably not take that form or be expressed to that degree and so would be X degrees of magnitude less memorable. Now, do I prefer the rough-hewn original of that post on False Machine, or the smoother-formatted version in Speak, False Machine? The former has my fondness as the original, but the latter is superior. The evenness of the columns and text allow the wit to shine that much more.
To speak also on something I have kept at arm's length - there is also a portion of interpersonal drama. False Machine allowed for others to comment on it: it is a social medium of a kind. Further, Patrick Stuart has and has had long-term collaborators. It was honest and correct to include it - certainly, I might have been tempted to leave it out.
So, a mix of material. Review, essay, fiction, comment, verse. Sometimes niche, sometimes universal, usually interesting.
But is it any good?
Yes. Some of it was probably more interesting to live than to read about, but this is not a Curate's Egg.
Is it a book you would have lying around your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?
Well, I have no wife, but should a paramour in the midst of a certain charming entanglement of limbs and digits start talking about the Dover Beach Expanded Universe - well, my heart's beating would doubtless reach a furious tempo.
Can you not give us any real criticisms?
I suppose it's a little odd to be holding a weighty tome full of stuff that has the internet aura of disposability, but to that's more an issue with context than content. In any case, this is less offensive in that regard than some books of Current Events I've seen reproducing an activists social media posts.
I see. Thank you, Mr, umm, ... -
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