September-October 2024 Miscellany

Orlando Furioso

As referenced previously, I have been reading Orlando Furioso, the work of Ariosto. In some ways, actually saying commenting on this is superfluous - it has been so influential, whether it be known or not, that further remark is probably less than useful. 

I examined previously one segment of it, perhaps the wildest (in terms of sheer wonder). But the piling up of overlapping quests, ensorcellments and duels is most impressive - and will probably bring to mind the longer-lasting kind of heroic fantasy series (be it a novel or something animated).

Interestingly, there's little hint of the 'National Epic' about it. The specific ties to place and people relate to patrons and local rulers in Italy. No wonder it drifted out of memory in a (Romantic, post-Wagner) world. 

***

Speaking of, I recently watched Die Walküre for the first time. Perhaps you won't be so very charmed by Siegmund and Sieglinde's circling interaction, but the frustrated machinations of Wotan, caught between ambition, law, familial affection and his own prideful nature are fascinating. It's the sort of grand conflicted potency that still animates certain strands of popular media.   

***

Megalopolis, dir. Francis Ford Coppola

I don't generally bring to my readers' attention something I think less than good, or at least interesting. I suppose this is an exception.

Perhaps you've already seen the critical responses. This film has a poor reputation. I went in unknowing (beyond certain actors and 'America as modern Rome').

What a strangeness; what a lack of subtlety and deftness and invention. Perhaps we may expect that from a film calling itself a fable, that implicitly develops on the broad lessons and characters of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

THE HEART MUST BE THE MEDIATOR
BETWEEN THE HEAD AND THE HANDS!

But then it does so while spinning together an over-complex plot, a series of lush visual references that are far too specific (in their 2024-ness and their Roman-ness) to make sense. Cf. again Lang.

  

[You can find this intertitle on a shower curtain. 
In order to imply what about your ablutions?!]

This goes doubly so when referencing the Catiline Conspiracy, and all the associated cultural connotations. If you are going to invoke Marcus Tullius Cicero*, it would be a mistake to place him as a power-hungry blowhard. Certainly a Cicero-esque figure can be an antagonist, an opponent - but what a waste to invoke a great public speaker and lawyer, and then equip him with the poorest of arguments. This is aside from the various suggestions the trial of a traitor to a republic might bring to mind. 

If it's a fable, it's far too specific. If a fantasia, it's too obvious. If a 'relevant' political-social drama in an uchronia, too blatant and unnatural. 

***

A recent discovery (when looking up images of Balaam and his Ass) was Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874-1925). A Jew, born in Austro-Hungarian Galicia - now in the western part of Ukraine. He became an artist, with a line in both Art Nouveau and Orientalism.

See this image of a young Moses (and an old Moses):

or an older King David:

Note the Lammasu.

His image of Judea is a Near Eastern people among Near Eastern peoples. To say nothing of a muscular one: consider Moses above, and this (bearded, explicitly masculine) angel confronting Balaam.

  

From all that, it may not be a surprise to learn that he was involved in early Zionism, even visiting then-Ottoman Palestine. 

I don't mean to imply that his work only focused on such themes - he was an illustrator who took commissions. Including some lovely bookplates.

This bookplate is straight out of E.R. Eddison.

At any rate, I'm quite enchanted by some of these.

Samson in captivity. Remind you of something?

An invite to the Inhalatorium

***

The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays, Marguerite Yourcenar, 1962

This pairs (to a certain extent) with Jacques Barzun, whose Dawn to Decadence I've been working through. In both cases, we have a French writer, writing in English (Yourcenar lists a translator, but at the time most of these were written, she had lived off the coast of Maine for many years - I'm moderately sure that translator here means 'editor for Anglophone consumption') on a variety of literary and historical topics from across Europe. Piranesi is front and centre, but there are pieces on Thomas Mann, Agrippa D'Aubigne and the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf (never heard of her before). So, in part, this is a fascinating survey and introduction. Unlike Barzun, of course, it isn't drawn into a grander scheme. 

So, these are new (to me). They are well-situated in European letters. They are also beautifully written - delightfully clear and frequently beautiful. To say nothing of funny:

"A client of necromancers and astrologers, Catherine [de Medici] would doubtless have been less surprised to find herself accused of the crime of sorcery by d'Aubigne than acquitted of it by scholars who no longer believe in the powers of the Evil One."

As with the Memoirs of Hadrian, throughly recommended. 

***

It's been interesting reading reviews of Hugh Cook over at False Machine - see here and here. Just from the reviews, The Worshippers and the Way sounds oddly like Punth avant la lettre - I'd be fascinated to hear from any readers who could say for sure!

*As once portrayed by Anton Lesser. 

To the Moon, Like All Lost Things

I've been reading Orlando Furioso, the epic poem of Ludovico Ariosto.  

Lacking or ignoring the many heroic poems of the early Middles Ages, from the Song of Roland to the Germanic and Icelandic sagas, the chief Renaissance epics were a peculiar blend, created by four Italian poets: Boiardo, Pulci, Ariosto and Tasso. The first two begin to the 15C, the other pair to the 16th. Once as familiar throughout the West as Shakespeare and Goethe are now, those four names and their glory survive only in their country of origin. When the gondoliers of Venice sing for the tourist, it may be bits of Tasso's epic. As late as the beginning of the 19C, Ariosto and Tasso were read, quoted and enjoyed by educated Europeans. At the same time, Dante's Divine Comedy, also an epic adventure and now one of the "great books" was looked down on as Gothic, a piece of medieval obscurantism. What is the "more human" subject of the other four Italian epics? ... Instead of the old epic's warriorlike sober sadness, the provide for the sophisticated Humanists and courtiers the excitement of love-making and of what has been called the "The Marvellous", the miraculous, performed by black or white magic.

From From Dawn to Decadence, Jacques Barzun, 2000.

Alas, I've next to no Italian. I'm reading the translation by Guido Waldman - prose rather than the original verse, first published 1974 by Oxford University Press. 

Anyway, let's look at Canto 34. Orlando - Roland - is mad (furious, even). His English cousin Astolfo goes on a journey to recover his lost wits. He enters one of the chambers of Hell, then ends up in the Earthly Paradise with St John the Evangelist. The Saint then takes him to the Moon in Elijah's flaming chariot to recover the lost wits of Roland.

The chariot passes through a barrier of flame, that covers the earth (Cf. The Discarded Image). They ascend to the moon - which is as big as the earth, and in appearance like untarnished steel. It is apparently inhabited: castles and nymphs are mentioned. 

Then, as Waldman has it: He was led by the Holy Apostle into a valley shut in between two hills, where everything that is lost on earth (be that the fault of time or fate) fetches up miraculously. What is lost here collects up there. I do not mean only dominion and wealth, subject to the vagaries of fickle Fortune.....

Let's skip forward to compare a Canto, quickly:

75 Le lachryme e i ſoſpiri de gli amanti inutil tempo che ſi perde a giuoco, E l’otio lungo d’ huomini ignoranti Vani diſegni che non han mai loco, I vani deſideri ſono tanti Che la piú parte ingombran di ql loco, Ciò che in ſomma qua giú perderti mai La ſu ſalendo ritrouar potrai.	LXXV  The lover's tears and sighs; what time in pleasure And play we here unprofitably spend; To this, of ignorant men the eternal leisure, And vain designs, aye frustrate of their end. Empty desires so far exceed all measure, They o'er that valley's better part extend. There wilt thou find, if thou wilt thither post,  Whatever thou on earth beneath hast lost.
From the original.	From the William Rose translation.

Waldman: The tears and sighs of lovers, the useless time lost in gaming, the chronic idleness of ignorant men, the empty plans which know no rest, the vain desires are in such numbers that they  clutter almost the whole place. In short, no matter what you ever lost ere you would find if you went up there.

But we soon find some solid objects:

[Astolfo] noticing a lofty pile of tumid bladders from which seemed to emanate a hubbub of cries, he was told that these were the ancient crowns of Assyrians and of Lydia, of the Persians and Greeks - once so illustrious, now forgotten almost to their very names.

There's quite a few of these, so I'll add them in bullet point form - again, all Waldman.

• 'gold and silver hooks...gifts made in hope of reward to kings, to greedy princes, to patrons'
• 'garlands he saw which concealed a noose: all flattery....'
• 'Verses written in praise of patrons wore the guise of exploded crickets'
• 'gilded bonds, jewel-studded shackles' which are 'Love affairs pursued to little purpose'
• 'eagles' talons....the authority which lords vest in their servants'
• 'bellows littering the hillside....the praise given by princes and the favours conferred on their favourites'
• 'Cities and castles and treasures....in a confused jumble of ruins. They were treaties, he was told, and ill-concealed plots.'
• 'snakes with maidens' faces: the work of coiners and thieves'
• 'broken phials: service as wretched courtiers'
• 'A great mess of pottage....is the charity left by a person after his death'
• 'a great mound of sundry flowers once sweet-smelling but now reeking....was the Donation of Constantine to good Sylvester'
• 'quantities of bird-lime for ensnaring; your charms, good ladies'
• 'Folly, however, whatever it's degree, is missing from there: it stays down here and never leaves us.'

Orlando's wits are eventually found. 'Wits' take the form of 'a soft, tenuous liquid, apt to vaporise if not kept tightly sealed'. They come in different size phials - and, of course, men lose them for many reasons: in loving, in search of honours, in search of wealth, in trusting princes, in magical baubles, in jewels or paintings. 'Here the wits of sophists, astrologers and poets abound.' 

***

Now, it would hardly be objectionable if you read this post and promptly went out to read Orlando Furioso. However, here's another use for it all.

Let us imagine that Ariosto's moon has some sort of magical realm. It has to be bigger than a vale between two hills - say a great spreading plain between mountain ranges. 

We have hazards to overcome: a wilderness with talons ready to scratch, oddly enticing bird-lime,  and the overpowering odour of rotting flowers. 

We have animal and human threats: serpents with the faces of beautiful young ladies, rival adventurers (who, having lost all folly) are dangerously clearsighted about the possibilities of applied force.

We have valuable magical artefacts: Bellows that can puff Charm Person, Golden shackles that men will willing don themselves. To say nothing of the prestige of an ancient crown or the eternally rare Wits of Men.

We have resources to compete over: pottage-lakes and sheltering ruins.

We have intersecting functions of powerful devices: crowns that can command talons, hooks that can pull down crowns, talons that can claw and maim hook-wielders.  

Anyway, a hexcrawl (say) journeying through all that could prove interesting. Like a more lively version of the Wilderness of Taroc.

The Rest of All Possible Worlds: Publish and Be Damned

The press is one of the great movers of the new age. If you are going to spread ideas or report on a new discovery or promulgate a new law, printed materials can make this happen.

This includes for player characters. A good way to build a reputation is to print an account of your travels and discoveries - even if people violently disagree, the fact that they have to publicly speak against you (or a pseudonymous figure that everyone in the know can identify) will allow your star to rise. 

For TRoAPW's purposes, we will speak of three sizes of publication:

• Pamphlet
• Treatise
• Book

and three types of audience it may be geared to:

• Broad-as-possible
• General
• Specific (and technical)

That's not necessarily low-, middle- and highbrow, but the connection could be made.

We may say that in a city (near the press itself, or on a notable trade route to get them) a fully-fledged book goes for 20 silver pieces, a Treatise 10 and a Pamphlet 2. 

Actually getting something printed and on the booksellers' stalls yourself requires one of the following:

• Paying for it yourself
• Convincing a printing house to print it - usually on the basis that there is a way for them to make their money back
• Convincing a wealthy patron to put up the funds

Or, indeed, a combination of the above.

The costs of paying for it yourself are predictable enough: time and money.  Getting a printing house involved is likely end up with your work edited or suitably adjusted for the market.  Getting a patron involved may distract from your own fame, and indeed yoke you inevitably in the public eye to Lord X or Prefect Y or Arch-Priestess Z - aside from the tie of obligation involved. 

Of course, decent quality maps or illustrations will add to the cost of getting a book printed. 

It is assumed that if a character lacks the skills or inclination to sit down and write themselves, they may hire a hack to do it for them - usually at a rate a little below the average 'white collar' wage in the city you find them. A more highly placed collaborator can do a better job, but may cost more and absorb some of the resulting fame. 

So, what benefit comes from all this?

TRoAPW publishing sits alongside the usual set of carousing rules - but with wider social possibilities. If the Crucible Society want to gain fame from their exploits in the Bronzemount Free State or acclaim for their contributions to the field of Pneumametrics or draw attention to the plight of stranded sailors in the Alamgir Empire, then publishing can accomplish this. 

Looking across to The 52 Pages, in terms of hazard and unforeseen consequences, publishing looks more like 'Training' than the various other options. 

Unless a player wins the jackpot - the right book at the right time with the right distribution network and the right kind of people recommending it - it is assumed that any profits accumulating to them are fairly low. The roof stays over their heads. 

Actually trying to write for that kind of profit is difficult - by the time everyone's aware that they should be paying attention to (again) the plight of stranded sailors in the Alamgir Empire, that section of the market is swamped.
Writing on behalf of a cause or faction - Pneumametrics, say, or in favour of the Jointe in Tsymric - can get you a certain measure of publicity, but a smaller audience than you might hope.
In any case, player characters shouldn't be trying to be professional authors!

There are, of course, two more things to consider.

Firstly, grimoires. It is just about possible to pass on details of a spell without actually having to exactly reproduce a page of a grimoire. Think of an off-the-shelf spell as being like an equation with the final answer not yet given, but all the working shown - and which must then be rewritten for presentation in beautiful calligraphy. 

Accordingly, there are extra costs involved (even before you get to the point of dealing with the magical regulations for that jurisdiction). This involves things like specialist printing presses and secure 'behind the counter' retail transactions. Can't have someone else completing the equation!

So, a pamphlet length account of a new spell costs as much as an ordinary treatise, a treatise with (say) half a dozen spells as much as a full book and a full book with a good number of spells inside it - perhaps as much as ten times the cost of a romance.

***

Secondly, censorship.

Nowhere in Calliste has a formal freedom of the press, or of speech*. There may be city quarters where nobody cares what you say, or what you write - but a law may well have been broken all the same.

Let us speak of six levels of censorship.

1. Review and adjustment of all printed material
2. Review, adjustment of most
3. Review, &c of many
4. Review, &c of certain targeted works
5. Review, &c laser-focussed on certain works
6. Absolute minimum review.

1. and 6. are both basically non-existant- the former for reasons of state capacity, the latter for reasons of social structures.

This is further complicated by how keen the authorities are to actually carry out their duties. The lax censors of the Margravate of Fuchsunddachs may be commanded to review most material throughly (3.) but don't often manage this - unlike the Duchy of Brocq-et-Tod, whose Public Truth Commissioners carry out targeted censorship far more efficiently and dutifully. 

Thus, one pictures something like the below.

1	Painstaking review of all works
2	Painstaking review of most works	Lax review of all works
3	Painstaking review of many works	Lax review of most works
4	Painstaking review of targeted works	Lax review of many works
5	Painstaking review, laser-focused on certain works	Lax review of targeted works
6		Lax review, laser-focused on certain works
7	Absolute minimum review

But states don't have the same laws, or the same short-term policy objectives, or be rooted in the same cultures. The Grand Republic of Melesvulpia may have a robust tradition of political debate and broadsheets, but maintain public order via significant controls on what books of magic can be printed. 

So we might conceive of something like the below.

	Books of Magic		Books of Magical Discussion		Political material		Religious material		Military material
1	Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works
2	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works
3	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works
4	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works
5	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works
6		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused
7	Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review

This is not exactly complete - it leaves out, for instance, pornographic material. 'Targeted' in the above refers to a certain type of (EG) magical work - thus necromancy, mind control and so forth.

You will also note that Books of Magic and Books of Magical Discussion are different categories in Calliste. For reasons discussed above, they are different things (just one spell would be enough to make a theoretical tome into a Book of Magic). It may be assumed that most legal systems would wish to keep a closer eye on Books of Magic than Books of Magical Discussion, but Calliste is a big place with a wealth of little principalities and enclaves! 

Of course, it should be noted that states may also wish you to add something to a publication - a seal of approval, for instance. This is aside from states (or state actors) seeking, commissioning or encouraging publishing. 

Illegal presses may exist, allowing you to dodge the above but will have their own complications. The price will be at least comparable to a legal press - any costs (in time or coin) you avoid in not going before the censor you accrue in (for time) the necessary discretion an illegal press requires and (for coin) the premium they extract.

***

So as not to end on that note...TRoAPW is portraying a world in which substantial, influential works are being printed and circulated. Difficult to have an Enlightenment without that. Lawmakers are (perhaps) more often curious than censorious. Publishing in Calliste may be difficult, but it is also widespread. 

I don't insist on TRoAPW being a 'glass-half-full' setting (things might be going badly wrong!) but the glass definitely isn't empty.

*And, indeed, even places that proclaim both may have various organisations, cultural tendencies, &c. that suppress or discourage a certain kind of book.

A Map: Possibilities and Realities

I acquired a book called North Russian Architecture in a give-away a few months back. A small item, pages of heavy high-quality paper, a wood-effect hard cover. Published 1972 in the USSR, translation by Kathleen Cook. If it didn't have pages about six inches square in area, I might call it a coffee-table book.

Opening it the last few days, I found it to be quite charming - if the sort of volume replaced these days by Wikipedia and digital photography*. Many details on the wooden Churches in Lake Onega, for instance - which really are incredible. An interesting testimony to the abundance of a resource fuelling architectural creativity.

Among the material within, I found this map, showing Solovetsky Monastery, on the islands of the same name in the middle of the White Sea.

    The key is not conveniently positioned, so I reproduce it here:

Towers:
A - Spinning, B - Assumption, C - Watch, D - North, E - Kvass-Brewing, F - Kitchen, G- South, H - White

Gates:
I - Holy, II - Herring, III - St Nicholas, IV - Kvass-Brewing, V - Kitchen, VI - Assumption, VII - Archangel

Buildings:
1 - Cathedral of the Transfiguration (1558-66), 2 - Cathedral of the Assumption and refectory (1552-57), 3 - Trinity Cathedral (1859), 4 - Bell-tower (1777) and Church of St Nicholas (1834), 5 - Passage, 6 - Church of the Annunciation (1596-1601), 7 - Church of St Philip (1798-1859), 8 - Hospital building, 9-17 -  living quarters and domestic buildings, 18 - Water mill, 19 - Chambers (1615), 20 - Chambers (1642).

Heady stuff - with that assortment of gates and functions and religious areas. All the more so when one reads that Ivan IV (the Terrible) gave the monks cannons. So much that adventurers could tamper with, so many options. Is the herring gate somehow enchanted for monastic anglers? Does the spinning tower revolve?

If you were primed to assume that Solovetsky Monastery was made of wood - well, so was I. However, it is of brick and stone. Don't worry; your version - in northmost Tsymric? - can be wooden.

The other unexpected discovery was in my cross-checking; as it emerges, the Solovetsky Islands were the site of one of the earliest Soviet prison camps. This makes geographic sense: in 1923, the sites of the old Tsarist penal colonies in Siberia (EG) were cut off during the Civil War, and the Allied Archangel Expedition had wrapped up by then. The White Sea would be accessible by rail from the Muscovite heartland and the islands would make escape difficult. I had encountered this before, but it hadn't lodged in my mind like the names of (say) Alcatraz, Devil's Island, Wormwood Scrubs, Botany Bay or Dartmoor. Thankfully, I have encountered attractive maps to be questioned before and I do not regret picking this up by chance.

To end on a milder note - I have encountered few other things in following up for this post, including the Anglican Church in Riga (Cf. St Olaf's, Balestrand), the Estonian and Latvian naval jacks, and the source of the Pinega River, in the Krasnoborsk marshes, at the confluence of the Black and White Rivers - which sounds like something out of the Painted Lands.

*Occasionally it lapses from art-historian technicalities or tour brochure gloss to refer to something oddly specific. See this passage, when referring to old Autumn fairs:
'...they would trade in distaffs, clay toys, household utensils and birch-bark boxes. Similar boxes painted with strange green and red flowers with white and blue leaves are still made by Dmitri Matveyevich Novinsky, a local craftsman who lives not far from Verkhnyaya Uftyuga in the village of Novoandreyevka.'

July-August 2024 Miscellany

Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian, 1951
(trans. into English 1954 by the author and Grace Frick)

Historical fiction.

Read in light of a recent spell of reading historical fiction about classical antiquity - see also The Corn King and the Spring Queen and Gore Vidal's Creation. 

It purports to be the memoirs of the emperor Hadrian, written to a young Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian lays out the course of his life in a number of sections, from youth to military service to supreme authority to impending death. The sections are named for lines of a poem, apparently written in Hadrian's last days.

All well and good. But what makes this an interesting book and worth your time? For one, I find the style most appealing. Magisterial, in a way that rather fits. This was not just fun to read, but a work I very deliberately stopped myself from reading to quickly (unlike Vidal).

For another, the figure of Hadrian is beautifully drawn. Even considering the purposes of a memoir, it's a rare portrait of a historical figure that feels so natural and so unfamiliar. Compare and contrast the last paragraph here. The other obvious comparison is I, Claudius*. This differs - not least in being less explicitly drawn from Suetonius - in the approach. Unlike the afflicted, sensitive Claudius (who is, of course, also writing his memoirs - albeit to a mystical future audience rather than a defined successor) surrounded by a family variously boorish, hedonistic, Machiavellian or mad, Hadrian is far less of an outsider. He writes as one immersed in his work as a soldier or imperial administrator, one clearly with factional leanings and politics, if not as a partisan. When he is finally made Emperor, he is able to use that office far more adroitly than Graves's Claudius. This is coupled with a sort of measured indulgence on his part - Epicurean rather than gluttonous - which makes him more obviously vital. 

Further, he appears to have a far more developed religious belief than Graves's characters. He participates in rites of a dozen different cults and undertakes magical experiments. When someone in I, Claudius is proclaimed a god - especially if they proclaim themselves a god - eyes are rolled and eyebrows are raised and the whole business is treated as lamentable (largely). When it happens in the Memoirs of Hadrian it is far more natural; an exceptional event, to be sure, but not an unthinkable one. 

The death of Antoninus is interesting, and connects with the portrayal of those events in Mike Walker's Caesar! But Hadrian narrates this story and his grief is the equal of his distance. 

I shall be re-reading this. I shall also look out for more of Yourcenar's work; she seems to have lived an interesting early life, ending up on an island off the coast of Maine. There is a book of essays - The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays - which not only has some material that complements the Memoirs of Hadrian but also deals with that perennial OSR figure Piranesi. 

[On that Note .... time for some carefully separated nerd-talk. Hadrian is an accomplished imperial figure, a decorated soldier - he's well-liked, physically active, well-travelled. He delves into the occult, is a member of numerous secretive religious bodies, sees the sacrifice of those near him, is willing to consider that he may become a god.

He would be, I think, a fascinating model for an ambitious somewhat sympathetic sorcerer-king type. Think Paul Atriedes in imperial mode. It's been at least a decade since I opened any of Jordan's Wheel of Time, but I suspect that later books had this kind of approach to the messianic Rand al'Thor. Even Warhammer 40,000's God-Emperor of Mankind (at least in his 30k not-yet-a-plot-device version) works. Hadrian's background and mortality feels far more natural to producing the grandiose golden armoured chap than the whole perpetual and/or shamans business.]

*Have a brief reminder of some of Brian Blessed's best work as Augustus. 

***

Robert Sobel, For Want of A Nail, 1973

Historical, fiction?

There's an experience some of you may recognise. You find out about alternate history and it's sold as exploring a world where (say) Julian the Apostate was far more successful or a British Civil War broke out over the Abdication Crisis. 

But then you read one or two famous works, and it seems that it's less about that world than using it to explore something else. Alternate history as a means to explore questions of identity, to re-iterate moral lessons from the past, to assess the tendencies of the present or to parallel the sweeping effects of a technology, to ground a work's aesthetic or genre roots (Dystopia, adventure fiction)....

Think, in the last few years, how many have picked up a copy of The Man in the High Castle after seeing the television series. 

Anyway, For Want of a Nail is that rare thing - an alternate history that is just a history. A history from another timeline, complete with references and GNP figures and election results - and a critique from another author at the end. And in 1973, rather than from an obscure forum in 2006. However, this is a novel of three elements. 

It is a world where - as the subtitle say - Burgoyne won at Saratoga. The American War of Independence dies in its cradle and a new settlement is implemented - the Confederation of North America. Meanwhile a number of defeated rebels travel into Texas to found the state of Jefferson - which will eventually merge in the aftermath of war to create the United States of Mexico.

Yes, this is a world without the United States - though one shouldn't assess the CNA and USM as merely 'Greater Canada' and 'Greater Mexico'. There's a more to it than that, and Sobel is going to explain as much over many chapters. 

The history and dynamics of both are laid out in a fairly convincing way - the statistics might be made up, but seem to be fairly consistent. There are things that a contemporary history wouldn't do, or would feel obliged to mention - but that very fact makes one think about the business of writing history, especially when one knows the whole thing is very much fake. Either way, it's quite convincing - nothing too spectacular, nor so conspicuously hard-nosed and materialistic to look fake. Men - even quite wealthy men - are swayed by appeals to grand causes, or to national pride, or to utopian ideals. 

That is the first element, a well-confected not-history. The second element is a boardroom drama in which Ayn Rand was given a brief spell as script doctor.
The USM gives birth to a firm, Kramer Associates. Which slowly gains power in a number of vital industries, influencing the fate of the USM and being actively involved in its elections. One can only assume its directors all look as (fittingly) smug and self-satisfied as Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair. 

Anyway, even when Kramer Associates gets booted out of Mexico, it hops over to the Philippines and then Taiwan. Then detonates it's own nuclear device. I'm well aware of powerful corporations in our own past - as the East India Companies (Dutch or British) or those that gave us the phrase 'banana republic'. Even so, Kramer's continual success is a trifle too dramatic to take entirely seriously, though I will grant it is arresting.

The third element is the history of the rest of the world, which occasionally produces some eyebrow-raising moments - as when the Global War in the 1930s and 40s between (largely) the British Empire and the German Confederation (The CNA sits this one out) leads to things like the Germans going from Ottoman Turkey to Indochina conquering most everything in their path in three years. Rather than indulge an image of turbo-Blitzkrieg, I will quietly assume that those territories were only ever lightly held. 

But the first element is the dominant one, and that remains interesting. A deal to profitably chew over here.

***

The mod Fallout London has been released, to much fanfare and comment. I have written on this before and had an eye on it for a while.

I haven't yet played (and I'm not altogether likely to). But I have dug into some material online. Is it impressive? Yes, it is a tremendous accomplishment. Have I revised my opinions of it? Not quite, in the same way as I can admire the work put into (say) a skyscraper while disliking the building itself. No matter how many obscure firearms appear in the game.

Among other things, and acknowledging the limitations of a mod, I'm a little disappointed by the lack of a status quo ante ending (Cf. siding with the NCR in New Vegas). Although I would be intrigued to learn if the conclusion to The Prisoner influenced one part of it. 

***

HCK over at Grand Commodore has recorded a reading of 'Hell Screen' by Ryunosuke Akutagawa - I enjoyed it! An interesting comparison with Togo Igawa's version for BBC Radio.

***

A tantalising project coming up from the False Machine - a novel called Queen Mab's Palace, about 'an adventure through a decaying, dying space-ship inhabited by crazed transhumanist radicals, through the eyes of a Medieval Scribe.' One to keep an eye on. 

City of Libations

You must never call it a necropolis, for it is no such thing. It is merely the city where the dead dwell. No memorials, no tombs, no graveyards are to be found there.

The dead dwell there, and have a sense of obligation to the living. At set intervals through the year, therefore, the dead make offerings to them. Shrines radiate out from the city like the spokes of a wheel, set at the end of long roads of white stone. Before the shrines are gardens and covered arbours. The shrines themselves vary in ornament and detail, but not in form. There is a broad double door at the front, facing a back wall with a shallow stage. In the left and right walls are small doors, facing one another in line with the stage. It is usual for a bench to run along every wall other than the back.

Each shrine is associated with a village or the quarter of a town. The people of the region go to their shrine, which they furnish and decorate with painted patterns, geometric motifs and local symbols. Sometimes they sweep out leaves or cobwebs, but the shrines themselves remain curiously free of decay. 

On the days when the dead make their offerings, everyone in the village is meant to come. It is known that the very ill cannot or should not, and that women heavy with child may not - no stigma is attached to this. The misfortune of illness, the laborious necessity of childbirth and the empty gap in the year's cycle is considered burden enough. The wayfarer is not compelled to come, neither are they told what day is coming. A resident outsider, as a foreign merchant, may in time become part of the ritual. 

In the early morning, the village will rise, dress and march the long miles to the shrines. There, they do two things before entering. In the gardens before the shrine are set long troughs of rainwater, with which they wash hands, face and feet. Then, they sit to eat at long benches. The food varies with season and locale - but it is generally both portable and plentiful. Often it is cooked on fires in stone braziers. Flatbreads are not uncommon. 

Aside from the usual business of the daily meal, this has two functions. Firstly, it prepares the villager for the effects of a libation. The wine of the dead is strong and it is largely considered best to have something in your belly before you imbibe. Secondly, the wine of the dead is not of the living; it is otherworldly. Therefore, it is best to face it with a ballast of the mundane within you. There is the tale - invariably passed down from the teller's grandparents - of a lean season, and men eating balls of clay before entering a shrine.

When they have eaten, all enter. Those that tire readily are seated on the benches; most stand. The main door is closed and the shrine is lit only from high windows. after some time, the side doors open and the dead enter. A prominent villager stands nearest the stage, holding a large bowl. Unseen, the dead cross the stage, and moisture is seen condensing on the bowl. Eventually, the last of the dead passes by. In local tradition, this may be the newly departed, the oldest in recollection, the famously tardy, the notably dutiful or something else entirely. The bowl is now full and the side doors close.

Within the bowl is a strong, pallid wine. The taste has been compared to plum brandy. Villagers each extract a small travel cup from their clothing and advance to take a measure. Slowly or quickly, they drink and leave. It is consider well-mannered to pause briefly outside and see how your companions are doing, but this is not a place for conversation. The last out will close the doors and clear any remnants from the garden.

Curiosity is expected of men, and this includes villagers. It is quite common for a youth to walk a ways down the white stone road where the dead walk - but not generally on the day of a libation. Some eventually become brave enough to enter the city itself. 

Those who do report back on two things. Firstly, the white stone which makes up the roads is used for the houses as well. Secondly, the lack of any of the patterning and motifs that artisans would employ in houses or clothes or other worked items in the village. Third, the half-silence that moves in a slow bubble around them as they pass through the courts of the city. Fourth, the cypherbirds. Cypherbirds are seen outside of the city as well, but clearly make the city their home. From a distance they appear to be peafowl of a sort of drab cream colour. Those who actually make into the city have seen them fan open their tailfeathers, displaying inscrutable symbols on a pallid screen. No-one agrees quite what these mean; to the bold, they are pictograms of courage and strength - to the splenetic, they show spite and insolence. To the fearful, they confirm each contradictory fear.*

Those that go the deepest into the city report a taller building with three arched entrances at the front. No light can be seen from within these, nor any sign of a door or side passage. Some have thought this a vault; some a great meeting hall, some a temple. Faded glyphs cover the outside, which may be the same as those on the cypherbirds. 

Curiosity is expected of men, and this includes those not from the villages. Bandits, treasure hunters and bravos have long assumed that the city of libations has within it fabulous wealth. So, they attempt to cross the walls, avoiding the open roads of white stone and the shrines. They find themselves confronted by dense walls of cut thorn, rather like those reported on the savannah. However, these thorn branches appear to be petrified.  

If they can safely cross these, they must climb the walls, and then they must navigate a crowded cityscape of toughly-built homes and high walls. Further thorn clumps are found within. They will be followed - by the cries of cypherbirds, by swarms of insects, by dull roaring that may or may not be the wind, by footprints - and by the open eyes of the dead. 

You must never call it a necropolis, and tomb raiders are unwelcome. 

*   'To the melancholy this sound is melancholy and to the hysterical it is hysterical. To me it has always sounded like a cheer for an invisible parade.'
Flannery O'Connor writing in 'The King of the Birds' on the peacock.