Lewis and Saturn in the 41st Millennium

If at the height of heaven Saturn's
cold and harmful star were lighting his black fires.....

Pharsalia, Bk 1, Lucan, trans. Susan H. Braund

....at length old Saturn lifted up 

His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,

And all the gloom and sorrow of the place....

Hyperion, Keats

I made a long comment on this post on Monsters and Manuals. noisms invited me to expand on it. 

1) noisms suggests an approach to Warhammer 40,000 - at least as far as roleplay is concerned - rooted in the theology of Christian speculative fiction authors as Lewis, Tolkien and Gene Wolfe. This wouldn't necessarily be apologetics, but would round out some of the ideas suggested by the setting. A 40k roleplaying game in which the PCs 'try to do good'. Wolfe (not unreasonably) is suggested as the most obvious point of comparison.

2)  It's tempting, taking that 'try to do good' remark, to imagine levering Pollyanna into the Grim Darkness of the Far Future. I would say noisms doesn't mean this, and further that the proposed 40k RPG would want to be of a tone with existing 40k. Further, I would suggest that there is a degree of material that can be found in the work of C.S. Lewis that fits this rather well. 

3) For completeness, I shall mention that Lewis did write about dystopian future states - notably in the lecture series collected as The Abolition of Man. As interesting as that might be, the future state of controlling pallid intelligences and hollowed-out underlings is a poor match with the Medievalism and decay of the 41st Millennium. An age of chains, not an age of rot; a panopticon-world, not a dungeon-world. 

Now, there's a quiet tendency to talk about the Chronicles of Narnia in terms of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The events, tone and theme of that work are (relatively) bright. The instantly recognisable scene of Mr Tumnus contributes to this, as does the inclusion of Father Christmas and the repeated phrase of  'Always Winter, Never Christmas'. Narnia is peopled by talking animals, not human beings. While this tone isn't consistent through the entirety of LWW, this has a touch more of the childlike in it than later Chronicles. Where we might look is to that final work, The Last Battle.*

4) The theologian and literary critic Michael Ward wrote a book in 2008 called Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis. This is not an entirely obscure work - I'm not revealing anything very special here - the BBC made a documentary based on it and Ward himself is moderately prominent. 

Anyway, Planet Narnia lays out much of Lewis's writings on the seven heavens** of Medieval Cosmology - the Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Certainly Lewis (as one who taught Medieval and Renaissance literature) knew of these and wrote about them in non-fiction - see Ch. 3 of The Discarded Image. He wrote poetry on them - in part, it seems, as an intellectual exercise. The Cosmic or Ransom Trilogy was written in the 1940s, after the discovery of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto but focuses on the Medieval planets (the one reference seemingly to them makes it appear that they are older and have ceased to support life or relevance). The various planetary geniuses that go by the term Oyéresu (singular Oyarsa) have in them a resemblance to the Classical deities as rendered by Medieval minds.

Ward's thesis is that the varying tones in the Chronicles of Narnia are attributable to each book being connected to one of the seven heavens. 

--At this point, some of you may be wondering which book is connected with which planet. Well, if I may - please don't look that up now! Even granted that I've given the game away regarding Saturn in my original comment and in this post, I would be fascinated to know what your guesses would be. Answers in the comments.

I don't propose to lay out his full argument here, but it's a fascinating lens to examine them through. Some of you may be mulling over at this point 'Does this mean Lewis believed in astrology?' - Ward, of course, answers this. I might compress his response and my own thus: more than someone who refers to a person or thing as 'Lawful Evil', 'Chaotic Good', &c, but less than he did in the Trinity or Newton's Laws of Motion.

5) So, The Last Battle is Saturnine. What does that mean?

Myn is the ruine of the hye halles, 

The falling of the toures and of the walles

(Incidentally, thanks to the Middle English in Traitor General and the presence of a pardoner in The Armour of Contempt I'm pretty certain that Abnett knows his Chaucer.)

Quoting Lewis in The Discarded Image, we get : 'In the earth his influence produces lead; in men, the melancholy complexion; in history, disastrous events....He is connected with sickness and old age.....A good account of his promoting fatal accidents, pestilence, treacheries and ill luck in general occurs in [Chaucer's] The Knight's Tale....sometimes called The Greater Infortune, Infortuna Major'

'My dere doghter Venus,' quod Saturne, 

'My cours, that hath so wyde for to turne, 

Hath more power than wot any man. 

Myn is the drenching in the see so wan; 

Myn is the prison in the derke cote; 

Myn is the strangling and hanging by the throte; 

The murmure, and the cherles rebelling, 

The groyning, and the pryvee empoysoning: 

I do vengeance and pleyn correccioun 

Whyl I dwelle in the signe of the leoun. 

Myn is the ruine of the hye halles, 

The falling of the toures and of the walles 

Up-on the mynour or the carpenter. 

I slow Sampsoun in shaking the piler; 

And myne be the maladyes colde, 

The derke tresons, and the castes olde; 

My loking is the fader of pestilence.

The Knight's Tale, Chaucer
(Try reading it aloud.)

But Saturn is not Satan. Exactly. (Likewise, Jove is not God). See Bernardus Silvestris.

...the Usiarch Saturn, an ancient to be most strongly condemned, cruel and detestable in his wickedness savagely inclined to harsh and bloody acts. As many sons as his most fertile wife had borne him he had devoured newly born, cutting short the beginning of life....how destructive a threat he would pose to the future race of men by the poisonous and deadly property of his planet. While Nature, after observing his labours, judged him harsh and treacherous, yet she believed that the old man must be respected, as it was said that Chronos was the son of eternity and the father of time.

Cosmographia, Bernardus Silvestris, (Microcosmus 5.5-6),  trans. Winthrop Wetherbee

There is no avoiding Saturn, though one may escape the grasp of the Devil. His influence is more woeful than foul. 

Of course, this picture is complicated by Virgil - the Aeneid in Book VIII has a passage describing a Golden Age brought about by Saturn, as does Eclogue 4. These appear to be images that pre-date the melding of Roman and Greek myth. On a practical note, the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum was the state treasury - one doesn't place one's treasure in the keeping of a loathsome god. See also the Saturnalia, the festival with a brief return to an age of plenty and equality.

To turn (naturally) from Virgil to Dante, we ascend to the Paradiso. Dante and Beatrice pass through the spheres of Paradise, each associated with a Planet. Saturn is not named - Longfellow refers to the 'Seventh Splendour' in his translation (Canto XXI). His sphere is that of contemplatives - Dante meets with St Benedict and St Peter Damian.

There are also some fascinating extracts on Saturn from the astrologers/astronomers of the Islamic world (as Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi), that were transmitted into Christian Europe. Some of these are familiar enough in terms of their content (melancholy, misfortune, cold, plague), though the level of detail is different to the literary uses of Saturn.*** Book Three of the Picatrix or Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, however, (in addition to the claim that the image of Saturn is 'the shape of a black man wrapped in a green cloak with a dog-like head and a sickle in his hand') makes the claim that his is the 'retentive virtue' (Cf. Mars and the 'attractive virtue', or Jupiter and the 'augmentative virtue'). This is interesting as a Saturnine neutral quality, and applies itself equally to Time gnawing away at men, and to the holding or maintaining of wealth.

6) I doubt Lewis read the Picatrix - literature, not magic was his field - but it's an interesting contrast and part of the wider scheme. Either way, let's talk about Lewis's Saturn. 

By his own account, Lewis's own generation - who fought in the Great War and then wrote an awful lot about it - were born under Saturn. However, he denied the final authority of Saturn, the claim of the universe to be 'Saturnocentric'. Quoting Ward, that quality which Lewis called Saturnocentric 'means astringent, stern, tough, unmerry, uncomfortable, unconciliatory, and serious, though not necessarily profound or virtuous.' 

40k has of course, been quite willing to make reference to the Great War.

That Hideous Strength features a scene with the decent of the planetary influences into the manor at St Anne's. The introduction to Saturn goes like this:

All thought of that [the cold outside]: of stiff grass, hen-roosts, darks places in the middle of woods, graves. Then of the sun's dying, the Earth gripped, suffocated, in airless cold, the black sky lit only with stars. And then, not even stars: the heat-death of the universe, utter and final blackness of nonentity from which Nature knows no return.

Meanwhile, at the focus of Saturn's descent, things are different.

Saturn, whose name in the heavens is Lurga, stood in the Blue Room. His spirit lay upon the house, or even on the whole Earth, with a cold pressure such as might flatten the very orb of Tellus to a wafer. Matched against the lead-like burden of his antiquity the other gods themselves felt young and ephemeral. It was a mountain of centuries sloping up from the highest antiquity we can conceive, up and up like a mountain whose summit never comes into sight, not to eternity where the thought can rest, but into more and still more time, into freezing wastes and silence of unnameable numbers. It was also strong like a mountain; its age was no mere morass of time where imagination can sink in reverie, but a living, self-remembering duration which repelled lighter intelligences from its structure as granite flings back waves, itself unwithered and undecayed but able to wither any who approach it unadvised. [Characters] suffered a sensation of unendurable cold; and all that was strength in Lurga became sorrow as it entered them.

Ward mentions at this stage the 'godly sorrow' of St Paul in 2 Corinthians 7.8-11. If there is a Saturnine human character in That Hideous Strength, it is the Ulster scientist and rationalist Andrew MacPhee - a serious-minded type, sceptical of some of Ransom's wilder claims, apparently a happily unattached bachelor. By the conclusion, he is dressed in an 'ash-coloured and slightly monastic looking robe' - once again, note the reference to contemplatives. He may be a rough tribute to Lewis's tutor William Kirkpatrick.

An adaptation of Ward's chapter in Planet Narnia on Saturn may be found here. Those who recall that work will remember the scenes of darkness and despair, the leaden weight, the deceptions, the appearance of Father Time - to say nothing of the death of so many of its characters. The Last Battle, as he notes, ends with the return of the Jovial. We may compare Aeneid VIII here - Saturn's golden age comes after his displacement by Jupiter.

7) Fine: of the Seven Heavens, Saturn may be most apt for 40k. But how do we have a virtuous struggle - and even a victory - under Saturn?

First of all, to be Saturnine is different than to be Martial. This is not just a matter of degree - Infortuna Major and Minor - but also of quality. The bracing contest and clash of arms under Mars is different to the crushing weight of years under Saturn. This also means, I would say, less chance of an ongoing series. The regiment going on to another world, another battle. The contest must be final.

The protagonists must, I suspect, be on the defensive - or a 'best defence is a good offence' endeavour. But that which it preserves must be consistent with the Saturnine. A lonely outpost of survivors, a hospital of the maimed, a hermetically sealed library or a depopulated mega-structure, its furnaces and power plants finally cooling. Player Characters should be (as in the Saturnocentric quote above) stern and unconciliatory, though for 'Let justice be done though the heavens fall' reasons. Contest of arms should be costly and uncertain. 

"I tell you naught for your comfort,

Yea, naught for your desire,

Save that the sky grows darker yet

And the sea rises higher.

"Night shall be thrice night over you,

And heaven an iron cope.

Do you have joy without a cause,

Yea, faith without a hope?"

The Ballad of the White Horse, Bk. 1, GK Chesterton

I said before that this would this would involve 'a bitter struggle, despair, trudging, misfortune'. Trudging and footslogging is often rather neglected by 40k, at least when it comes to Space Marines; but for our purposes, an emphasis on fatigue and becoming overwhelmed is necessary - which takes the fun out of being a muscular super soldier. (Admittedly, the later Horus Heresy books had good moments of this.)

To repeat myself again, 'the triumph is in some distant preservation for a coming dawn (...a New Sun). Resting on the association with contemplatives and monasticism, perhaps we see an iteration of [the conclusion to] A Canticle for Liebowitz.' Interestingly, while the Imperium of Man is the natural fit for all the above, it strikes me that the Eldar would also fit quite well. Their tragedy and decline is as pronounced, of course, but we have not the short lives and brutal deaths of humanity, but the slow dwindling, like the space elves they are. 

Coupled to this is their method of preservation, the spiritstones. An Eldar soul may be retained in one of these rather than falling to Slaanesh in the Warp. They are gathered into the Infinity Circuits of their space-faring craftworlds. This does not appear to be much of a paradise, in so much as we know much of it. Death, but deliverance from damnation; an eternity of contemplation. Life for survivors among depopulated cities or amidst distant echoes of old friends - who must still be preserved. Of the craftworlds, Iyanden may express this best.

Anyway, I think that indicates ample scope for the Saturnine as a theme or mode in 40k. 

*Please assume, as in the original comment, that I am aware of some of the discourse and criticisms of The Last Battle and that I can add nothing the informed would find relevant or interesting to that here.

**Discussed and employed here before!

***See this article for some extracts. Also, the association of Saturn and the Jews, which may be the result of the connection between Saturn's day and the Sabbath. 

Manners Maketh ___?

Blame Montefeltro. A post like this is from time to time quite fun, and real life has been in the way lately. Something meatier soon.

Thriller of Manners: Crime's like anything else, really. It has rules - quite strict ones, with lots of people who'll be shocked if you break them - right up until it doesn't. 

Robinsonade of Manners: Trapped on a desolate isle and forced to contemplate his own isolation and the course of his life thus far, a castaway is obliged to fabricate an all-encompassing etiquette manual from scratch in order to rebuild his life and enable him to re-enter Society when rescue finally comes.

Urban Fantasy of Manners: I learnt it the hard way - when on your first date with that vampire with the tousled hair and the leather jacket and the beauty spot, don't order the steak tartare.

Bedroom Farce of Manners: "Gentlemen, now we have found ourselves all in the same lady's wardrobe, how exactly are we to pass the time? There is the signal possibility that we will be here for a while."

Solarpunk of Manners: In the pastel-shaded environmentally-friendly egalitarian neo-tribal future, is there a polite way to say that the neighbour's hollyhocks are overshadowing your solar panels?

Ostern of Manners: In the remote reaches of Pseudobaninsky Oblast, there's a band of desperate men: Tsarist lickspittles, quarrelsome treacherous profit-seeking capitalists, long-winded long-bearded priests - with minds as tangled as their whiskers. Then there's the man who has come to show them a new way to live. 

Submarine Film of Manners: "Cursing like a sailor? Lady, when you are obliged to spend life in close proximity with a double-dozen of your fellows in a tin can built for ten, I assure you that you will develop a very delicate set of customs."

Southern Ontario Gothic of Manners: In the worn Victorian residential quarter of Roxburghe, ON, we are supported - or perhaps impaled - by three pillars. Our British legacy, the frigid Northern weather and the continually twined sight of squalor and prosperity across the border. Nursing these delightful wounds, my fellow petite Roxbourgeoisie have produced a certain strain of propriety suited for scab-picking on Sunday afternoons.....

What else is there? Contributions welcome.

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee....."

There have been more deaths in Abermawr. These have been discussed and analysed sufficiently in the past, and I see no reason to add to any previous memorials.

But the adventuring doesn't slow down. New characters are rolled up, backstories compiled, adventurers take over empty rooms in the slowly accumulated compound. The newcomers pick up the notes of the previous party and pick up where they left off.

Who is briefing them? The domestic staff? Magical familiars? Friends and family? How would they come to know all this? A little unlikely. (Not that that this quite matches the Three Mile Tree scenario at present.)

A thought crossed my mind: what if one escaped? Maimed, injured beyond the level of fighting-fit, but possessed of all the knowledge needed to set up a new party of adventurers. If an agreeable trajectory for players is full-blown establishment and possibly even retirement, it should be no surprise that someone becomes a manager.

The most ghastly fate of all.

The process is thus: TPK. GM taps Player A on the shoulder, asks her if she wouldn't mind having Character X stick around via a tiny little Retcon as M to a pack of 007s*. (The less flattering comparison is presumably the maimed recruiting sergeant in Starship Troopers). Player A says Yes; off-screen Character X crawls out of the dungeon minus left hand, right leg and fearfully scarred over the left eye. Character X takes over HQ duties, including bringing the newcomers up to speed.

Does this appeal? Certainly, if this was a new season of a television serial or Book Five of the Chronicles of XYZ, the reappearance of Star-Captain Fletcher Irving or Lady Steelheart might delight an audience. Master Bernardus escaped from the Platinum Immortals of the Supreme Syndic and has undergone a change in appearance, mannerism and motivation....allowing his actor to display a greater range.

Would such a thing work at the tabletop? Well, recurring figures in campaigns can delight the players. If your mysterious employer in the concealing cowl turns out to be our old friend Ajax Barjazid, it could do likewise. If cleared with Player A, who has fond memories of Ajax's STR 18 and CON 17, and doesn't appreciate this shabby resurrection. 

But cue the seeking of magical solutions: Get Barjazid a healing miracle! Get him a magical iron hand! Tear it off a god! Let's Corum that beautiful bastard Barjazid! That might even be an interesting quest, but this is all in some sense the same as bringing them back from the dead.

Mike Mignola's Corum.
(Looking less than delighted by the Eye of Rhynn and Hand of Kwll.). 

Anyway, if the Adventuring Party is in the sort of frequent deaths-no resurrections arrangement, I at least like the image of a scarred veteran directing the next generation (though perhaps a surviving NPC is better). But this is the sort of thing where tastes will differ, and there's probably something I missed. 

*Or whatever the collective noun is. A martini of 007s? An Aston? An innuendo?

Faufreluches: Vorontsov at Bay

Faufreluches: the rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. 

'A place for every man and every man in his place'.

I'm calling this little series after the above concept from Dune because I've never been able to chase down its derivation. Initially, I put forward a number of ideas about where the appeal of the strand of science fiction sometimes called 'Feudal Future' lies. I closed by asking:

2) Having assembled such a list can I devise, if not the greatest Feudal Future, at least an adequate one?

Then I sketched an outline of a Feudal Future, centring on the suspended imperial government of the Thousand-Day Regency. Now to apply that to a specific case within that future.

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The Scene

ZHIV-MOROZ. A planet around the star Thuban. A cold world, like a fallen stick of chalk crushed by a hobnailed boot. Snowy plains and mountains are slit through by abyssal black crevasse-seas. 

Humanity clings to this hostile world  - for what reason? For whom? Zhiv-Moroz produces little in the way of foodstuffs; the metal and raw materials it produces are sufficient for domestic use and far too costly in transportation to extract at scale. The craftsmen of Zhivkone may be known for their elegant carriage-work, but even in the best of times this is insufficient to sustain that city at a profit. 

The answer lies in the trees. The vast stretches of woodland, where the Thuban Conifer grows. The resin of the conifer is lightly sensitive to psychic energy - a unique property, as near as can be told. The witchfinders of the Pastorate have many methods, to be sure - but few as sure as the resin. The orderlies of the Office of Detection make shallow cuts in their palms and coat them in the resin. Passing their hands in ritual gestures, they can feel the pull on the resin and focus the zone of sensitivity. Thus they are known as the Lacquered, or the Shellacked. 

The resin is the commodity that allows Zhiv-Moroz to prosper. It is gathered by tappers, made stocky by their heavy coats and carrying harnesses. They flood out of railheads for fortnights in the up-country workstations. But the keeping of the trees, the protection of the woods - this is the part of the Thub'nak Nomad Hosts.

Following the snow-bison and the Moroz deer, they are a class apart from the Tapper Guilds. Maintaining their privileges over the wilderness, they will pursue the trespassing lumberjack as much due to outrage at his violation of their land as to maintain the plantations of Thuban conifers and protect the profits the resin brings. They accept payment only in goods: high-energy fuels,  tools and spares for their snow-cruisers, livestock for their herds, ammunition for their antique rifles. 

Onto Zhiv-Moroz, into its hunched and shivering cities, its lonely and echoing forests, its isolated Pastorate hermitages and Stadtholder survey towers - onto this cold pebble in the void, who is it that is coming?

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The Overture

The House of Vorontsov is a line of Magnates that are dated to the first years of the Regency. They are Earls of Mizar and Alcor. Twenty times they have held a Principal Office in the Siegneuria; a hundred times recognised as a caucus spokesman. They are almost all dead.

In Terren, City of Half-Moon Plazas, the Citadel is a fortified necropolis. In the Fortress of Gaheris, never again will a cadet lift a lance in honour of the Paladin. No-one dances in the gardens of Five-Beacon House. A tailored plague has taken them all: an assassination fifty years in the making. 

Eduige Vorontsov was Viscountess St Moab, perhaps fifth in the line of inheritance. When House Vorontsov was granted fiefdom of Zhiv-Moroz, it was an honour, and the fruitition of plans she herself had furthered. The opportunity to be installed as Governor of that distant, famed world was one she eagerly grasped. Now news of a world in mourning reaches her in transit at the Aldebaran Mews, and she knows that cold Zhiv-Moroz will be her sanctuary and her tomb.

On distant ancient Terra, her great-uncle Ippolyte knows that he is compromised, knows that his far-off home will fall into Provincial Administration, plaything of Secretariat and Schematician. The Vorontsov voice on the Siegneuria, he sees his death in every shadow, but must play out his hand as long as he can.

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The Cast

Eduige Vorontsov: The Countess Vorontsov. Younger than you think; younger than she thinks. The last Vorontsov. A mix of the ambitious and the vindictive. However alien the Governor's Palace in Zhivkone feels, her path will lead her to places stranger still. 

Achilla, Last Captain of the Nibelungs:  Pale, near-hairless, squat, cynical, perceptive. A Janissary, last of his kind. Achilla fills the role of Inspector-General of the Vorontsov Forces and tactician. 

Isolde of the Hôtel Fomalhaut: As winning as only a Glossatrix can be, and as loyal as the strictures of her order permit. Chamberlain and Advisor to Eduige Vorontsov. 

Ippolyte Vorontsov: Holding the title Baron Vorontsov of Sixvales. Old, sustained by the constant cycle of Terran court life. Highly worried about Eduige.

Sarq Trianon: Confidential Clark to Ippolyte Vorontsov. As trustworthy as anyone on Terra at all connected to the Siegneuria. 

Gaspard Tamerlano: Margrave of the industrial world Salammbo. Wealthy, unscrupulous, generous with everything except power. Resents the prominence of Vorontsov in the Siegneuria and on Zhiv-Moroz alike. 

Gariballad Tamerlano: Lord of the Outer Ring; heir and chief enforcer of Gaspard Tamerlano.

Eustazia Caffrez: Spymaster to House Tamerlano. A disgraced officer of the Secretariat. 

Argante d'Akunin: Fifth-Level Director; Schematician with a remit including the Thuban System. Known to be acquainted with Gaspard Tamerlano. Provider of five-year plans and armoured trains to the people of Zhiv-Moroz.

The Cohort Choleric: Reputed as pitiless and mercenary, even by Janissary standards. Known to favour the use of single-edged hacking blades.

Guildmaster Passek: Possessing the mastery of a planet's industry, he still has the scope of a Beancounter. Dwells in Zhivkone; knows all too well the life outside. 

Stanislas Storkov: Resin Assessor and Professional agitator in the pay of House Tamerlano. 

The Host of the Western Scarp: A Thub'nak Nomad group, known as some of the least biddable rangers. 

Ruslan: Current hetman of the Host of the Western Scarp. Older than he thinks. 

Almira Chapuys: Stadtholder-General of Zhiv-Moroz. An eccentric among Stadtholders; a rare diplomatic link with the Thub'nak.

Leodegar: Arch-Pastor of Smolgrod and Metropolite of Thuban. Trained as a preacher, expected to act as an aide to an industrial process.

Tancred, Duke of Omnium: Chair of the Signeuria, Honorary Member of the College of Martyrs, Marshal of the Left. Powerful, so long as he is quiet. 

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Other Notes:

• Again, no pictures.
• House Vorontsov bears the symbol of a rearing chestnut horse, with a human skull for a head and armoured forelegs. This is shown on a lozenge of split Prussian Blue and white. (Variations exist.)
• House Tamerlano bears the symbol of a green snake wound about a gauntlet, shown on a roundel of burnt orange and white. (Variations exist.)
• The premise of the above started as Dune but with Dr Zhivago instead of Lawrence of Arabia, something I've mooted before. I hope the setting of the Thousand-Day Regency, as well as other suggested changes, have made this a little less blatant.
• Presumably some Nomad Hosts act as typical cavalry, but maintain snowcruisers for high-value transport. 
• The Kharkovchanka is not a Nomad Snowcruiser, but it could be an ancestor. 

Faufreluches: The Thousand-Day Regency

Faufreluches: the rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. 

'A place for every man and every man in his place'.

I'm calling this little series after the above concept from Dune because I've never been able to chase down its derivation. Last time, I put forward a number of ideas about where the appeal of the strand of science fiction sometimes called 'Feudal Future' lies. I closed by asking:

2) Having assembled such a list can I devise, if not the greatest Feudal Future, at least an adequate one?

Here we go.

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The How

I don't intend to lay this out with tags from my previous post ("Lady Hentzau wears the distinctive Bayonet and Sun-in-Demi-Eclipse crest of House Nicksenhauer [Simplicity/Familiarity]"). You already know that it is intended to tick boxes on that list. 

I shall do one post on the wider setting, following with one on a particular series of events. Given that I'm not quite trying to write a novel or a tabletop game or a comic series or what have you, this gives an opportunity to show how it might be applied to any of the above.

Individual posts shall display in-universe material before anything making explicit real world reference. Mention of other Feudal Future works shall be avoided.

I don't have a pet illustrator, and the strictures of the Butlerian Jihad oblige me to avoid AI art. Descriptions of costume or manner that might ideally be communicated visually will occur.

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The What

The First Year was announced with the birth of the first child in the permanent settlement of Alpha Centauri. No-one remembers the child's name, but the calendar had been proposed by a man called Semyon. Both Semyon and the child are long since dust. 

It is the year 6,191, and mankind is changing.

Spread across the stars, humanity expanded and contracted, forming a new grid of settlements under the Stellar Regulatory. Trade flourished, and the species began forming itself allies and servants - the birth of genetically engineered subspecies of soldiers, settlers and spacefarers, guided by the machine brains embedded into the bureaucratic regimes of the Regulatory. However, unexpected to all the central planners, mankind was changing.

Predictive and telepathic abilities occurred sporadically at first; the first so-gifted were secretive to a fault. But they were soon detected on a wider scale, and frequently imprisoned or killed. But among the teeming hosts of the inner systems, one man announced it widely: "mankind is changing!"

A telepath and psychic of unusual power, his doctrine stated: This change could not be stopped, and it was intolerable that it be directed by the machine-minds. Mankind alone would be authors of their own future, masters of the coming Kingdom. But clearly, Psychic Man had not yet fully manifested across the whole population. Until that time, there would be a Regency, led and guided by him who stated first and foremost that mankind was changing.

The Regent waged bloody war against the tattered remains of the old world and the machine-minds. In this, he was aided by his Paladins, psychic warriors of rare ability and by the cohorts and armadas of the Janissariat, the gene-crafted slave soldiers of former days, promised a place among the citizenry of the new Regency. After victory on the steps of the Regulatory Central Complex in Mindanao and the smashing of the machine-minds, one doctrine would govern the species: Mankind is Changing.

The foundations of the new order would take a lifetime to build, if not more. The Regent was long-lived by the count of men, but his years were not enough. The surgeons eventually announced that he had perhaps a thousand days left to live. The Regent, by the urging of his trusted Council and popular acclaim had himself and a hundred of his Paladins sealed into temporal suspension vaults beneath the Palace of the Massif. Once every four terrestrial years he would emerge for a day, to review the state of the fledgling species. Until that time he would stay frozen, knowing that mankind was changing.

The Regent has remained in the Palace for three thousand years, cared for by the Maiors of the Palace and watched by the College of Martyrs. At the set intervals he emerges, or at other moments of high crisis - to counsel or to command humanity. Sometimes from the ancient machinery of the vaults will come one of the peerless warriors, a Paladin, the victor of a thousand psychic wars, ready to defend the order of Regency. But mankind is changing.

The old unity of people, paladin and janissary has dwindled. The Regency is upheld by Seven Pillars, seven esoteric ministries, connecting and sustaining the scattered worlds of humanity. The Mint, the Stadtholders, the Mews, the Pastorate, the Glossatrices, the Schematicians and the Secretariat. Between these are strung a web of influence and obligation supporting the Magnates. Technically, any man who owns property under the light of two suns is a Magnate. But only a few hundred families live like Magnates and can aspire to a seat on the Siegneuria. Feud and vendetta divide them, and civil strife has blossomed into outright war on many occasions. Exhaustion and the pressure of the Pillars brings ceasefire, if not peace. Still, mankind is changing.

On a thousand worlds, men watch for the coming of the gifted. In the Palace, gloomy masters tally up the days remaining to the Regent. Beyond human space, machine-mind legions and rogue Janissary-supremacists lurk. All know that this will not last.

It is the year 6,191, and mankind is changing.

+++

The Who

The Palace: Ornamented and honoured for millennia by the Maiors and a thousand pilgrims, the ancient and puissant of the Palace emerge rarely, if ever. When they do, it is, it is as a figure from legend sprung to life as they spread honour, wisdom and disruption in equal measure as they undertake spiritual quests.

The Paladins never claimed to be immortal, and even they have fallen. Paladins walking the worlds of the Regency are said to seek replacements and apprentices, to sit in psychic communion at the side of the Regent as the decades shuffle by.

The Janissariat: Muscle-wrapped brutes, made doubly disproportionate by ancient war-plate. Cyclopean spacecraft with pilots wired to their ancient systems. Bulging-eyed expeditionaries carrying rugged technology from the age of the machine-minds, seeking out new worlds fit for the many myriads of the Regency.

Why do they do it? Money. Glory. The quasi-acceptance of the Magnates. The chance for a regular supply of new recruits, so that their free company, their flotilla, their squadron of war-walkers may not slip into history, another failed servant of humanity.

The Magnates: Either in the cosmopolitan fashion of Terra or Procyon or Mintaka - or in ostentatiously local costume. Clothing, jewellery and banners show clan-badges, crests, personal heraldry, unit insignia and devotional iconography. A single magnate with her escort is a swirl of carefully chosen colour and symbols, moving as a glittering mass. A collection of magnates at a grand occasion resembles a watch mechanism in their jewelled, predictable movement. 

Behind all of it, the cocktail of duty and privilege and schooling and martial training designed to make a Magnate a great servant of the Regency - and his family, and his planet, and his household guard.

The Seven Pillars

The Mint: Every world of the Regency differs a little in its economic makeup. The officers of the Mint facilitate trade, interstellar banking and levy the minute but omnipresent tax of the Regency. Models of propriety and obedience in public life, this is matched by a heightened camaraderie after business hours.

The Stadtholders: On every world, there is a resource. Herds of livestock, paddies of rice, veins of rare ore, stands of pine. Perhaps the locals know how to look after it. But the Stadtholders can tell you how to make a profit off it, and keep making one for the next five generations.

The Stadtholders keep rural customs and are obliged to spend much time isolated in the field. But their coffers and connections go as far as any Magnate's.

The Mews: Hunched and beady-eyed, snappish and hungry, the Lords of the Mews are unhappy when on the ground. On the grounded star-dromonds and system-runners, the vast folded spans of the Banff Propellor Arrays wait for them. Transit among the stars is swift, thanks to the Curtmantle drive. Finding one's destination is the hard part.

Rare minds, possessed of a unique instinct - to dive out of Curtmantle space and settle on a new world, to see and seize in a single moment unafraid of comets or star-fire or dimensional shearing -  only these can draw the worlds of humanity together. 

The Lords of the Mews wait to return to their cockpits, to spread their ship-self's wings and seize the stars in their talons.

The Pastorate: The Regent knew that Mankind was Changing. The Pastorate are there to make sure that Mankind knows it too. Teachers, counsellors, ritualists - bearers of the vision for all mankind. Of all the estates of the Regency, the black-clad Pastorate are the most widespread, carrying the teachings of the Regent to every corner of human space. It is they who repeat his name once a terrestrial year in the Perennial Obituary. And in the round-arched aisles of their temples and retreat centres, they find and tutor the gifted.

The Glossatrices: Mankind is changing, and men will change from each other. Translation, cultural conventions, laws and mores, etiquette all differ in a hundred tiny ways from planet to planet. If you want to avoid a foolish mistake, find a Glossatrix. Poised, polished and unfailingly polite, the Glossatrices provide not only the desired finishing to raise up a young Magnate, but also are the best source of interpreters and translators in the Regency. This has also given them an iron grip on interstellar culture: the Glossatrices know best which art travels. 

The Schematicians: No one corporate body could control the industries of the Regency. The magnates and provincial governors are far too jealous of their own local power bases to allow that. But the plans, the blueprints, the secrets of industrial technique - these can be bartered. The keen-eyed, pin-sharp Schematicians offer precisely this: the knowledge necessary to maintain industrial refineries, chemical plants - and the dense urban populations needed to man these.

The Secretariat: Filing, assessing, numbering, stamping, inspecting, storing, retrieving, summarising, redacting, reviewing: they will do it. The Regency gathers much information: it is only the Secretariat who will retrieve it, with beribboned clerks working away at their ledgers on the stepped sides of the data wells, watched by supervisors decked in the dozen colourful ornaments they have earned by skill, service or outrageous flattery. The relevant form will have passed through their hands - at some point. 

+++

Other Notes

• Working title was The Infinite Regency. I like the time-limited angle better.
• Overall tone is Romanesque, not Gothic.
• The Mint dress like Hanseatic Merchants who have discovered Art Deco. And Private Members' Clubs.
• The Secretariat have buildings reminiscent of Indo-Saracenic and Dzong architecture.
• The Pastorate go for an overall Classical-Georgian look, but with numerous chambers devoted to a variety of artistic styles for contemplative purposes.
• The Glossatrices tend towards an early seventeenth century look - think Jacobean architecture and Dutch still-lifes. Dress probably tends towards 'Haute Couture Nun'.
• The Schematicians have very plain, very neat offices with off-white screens on the walls and plain wooden desks.
• I have less of a notion as to how the Stadtholders look, but some probably sound like Texas Oil Men.
• Even an undressed Janissary probably looks uncomfortably mannerist.
• Meeting a Paladin is like meeting a Grail Knight. Meeting a Janissary is like meeting someone from the Ring Cycle.

Adequately Feudal? Next Time: An attempt to sketch out a plot in this set-up.

Faufreluches: Feudal Future

Faufreluches: the rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. 
'A place for every man and every man in his place'.

I'm calling this after the above concept from Dune because I've never been able to chase down its derivation. Anyway, as the last post made clear, the idea of the 'feudal future' has been on my mind a bit - perhaps, really, since this post by semiurge. 

Anyway, the question I have put to myself - and, by extension, to you: where does the appeal of the Feudal Future lie?

We can trace the derivation of the concept, certainly - Patrick Stuart does that nicely enough here. But there's a distinction between an idea emerging and its longevity. I think we must claim some degree of longevity for the popularity of the Feudal Future: Dune has gone through several adaptations - the last even being fairly well regarded. Warhammer 40,000 persists, even thrives. Leaving aside specific series or universes, recent science fiction has its share of space empires shown, to some degree, from within (no isolated farmboys): Martine's Memory of Empire, Leckie's Ancillary Justice, Muir's Gideon the Ninth. That Galactic Empires were the subject of parody or jest as early as Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965) or Fit the Ninth of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (first broadcast 1980) is at least one further way to gauge this.

(From Fit the Ninth: 'The term imperial is kept though it is now an anachronism. The hereditary Emperor is now nearly dead, and has been for several centuries. This is because in his last dying moments he was, much to his imperial irritation*, locked in a perpetual stasis field. All his heirs are now of course long dead, and the upshot of all this....'

A dying but never dead space emperor? Nothing new under the fading suns.)

A working definition is in order. A Feudal Future is not necessarily one where monarchies exist - the Klingon Empire (or any given monarchy encountered by the heroes) does not make Star Trek a Feudal Future; likewise Le Guin's Rocannan's World and The Left Hand of Darkness. It must be in the future - the All-American Flash Gordon getting whisked off to Mongo is out. It must be off Earth, I would assert - which rules out the post-apocalyptic (e.g., The History of the Runestaff) and the near-future dystopian (Lazarus). A Canticle for Liebowitz must be considered influential, but not necessarily representing an entry in the annals of Feudal Futures. There must be a feudal sensibility among the protagonist's civilisation - which I think rules out Star Wars, which leans either to the blandly liberal or the totalitarian, despite the presence of Princess Leia (the NPR Radio version might sneak under the wire, however). Compare and contrast the populations governed by Firefly/Serenity's various cattle barons and planetary magistrates. 

You may dispute all the above - but that's what I'm working from in this. 

Alas, Anderson's High Crusade must also be excluded.

Anyway, a few possible answers, some inspired by contributions of my fellows. 

+++

Scale and Distance

The distance between the stars mean that any interstellar polity will have to have regional governors wielding significant power; whether they are consuls of the Greater American Republic or lords-lieutenant of the African Planetary Union or satraps of the Malay Star Empire. They don't have to be drunken or incompetent, but they will end up with a somewhat feudal affect. Even if one only has a veneer of historical knowledge, there's a sensical element to it.

Simplicity/Familiarity - Borrowing from History/Historical Fiction

'Knights in Space take cues from previous depictions of Knights, Blog Readers Unsurprised.'

To offer a trifle more detail on this - Feudal systems have lots of display of rank and lineage, lots of ties to personal motivations: We fight not over trade or human rights or the succession of our preferred heirs to the throne of Ruritania, but because my Father killed your Father. And we do it wearing our distinctive heraldry. (There's a difference, of course, between real feudal histories and fictional ones in the streamlining and simplifications of systems and groups. Even works that draw from a realist palette can be boiled down to Team Wolf versus Team Lion in the telling, no matter how long and thorough the appendices. Boil down further for adaptation; distill once more for water-cooler discussion.)

Space Opera may originally have been coined in reference to Soap Operas or Horse Operas, but larger-than-life depictions of interpersonal conflict in soaring language with obvious visual cues mean that the likeness to Wagner-Handel-Beethoven-Verdi opera would eventually be made. 

All this allows for various complexities to be spun around a simple, comprehensible plot and inter-character relations. As an image of this, consider the literal (well, translated) text of the libretto compared with all the on-stage goings on in this version of Giulio Cesare. Imagine how all that might be described in a novel, and the implications in the reader's reception of all the costume and set and so forth.

Mix-up possibilities

There is the joy and interest of seeing the familiar juxtaposed with the new. This is true of every science fiction work that referenced a New Frontier or a Wagon Train to the Stars - and the contrast is heightened when it is not merely rugged frontiersman in space but mendicant friars, or samurai, or fifteen-foot robotic knights. Vary as necessary for institutions, stock characters, &c.

Reaction to Secular/Rational Futures 

Let us say that the Feudal Future explodes into the wider consciousness with Dune in 1965, with Foundation as a respected forerunner. We get Lord of Light in 1967. Some of this is simply part of New Wave SF - though one wouldn't call (say) Dangerous Visions really related to any Feudal Future elements. We should also look to the wider 1960s cultural shifts.

Anyway, if the clean, smooth, bland, secular, rational, vaguely egalitarian (probably Western) future (or present) was being questioned, it should not be entirely a surprise that it might be questioned by dirty, jagged, vivid, zealously religious, instinctual, hierarchical futures**. Dune, The Incal, Lord of Light - all Dionysian rather than Apollonian. (Of course, this doesn't mean that every author longed for a dirty, jagged, &c, future. It may mean only that they wished to explore profitably ideas that might be encountered in such a future.)

It has not escaped me that the 1960s was a while ago and that Feudal Futures have persisted in popularity. But cultural trends don't spread evenly, and the very reaction I speak would reoccur in later generations***.  

Detail and Variety - Across the Board

Now, works of Science Fiction before any given Feudal Future may have imagined a number of different worlds or aliens or technologies. Wonder and strangeness form part of the appeal. But would these have been applied to the protagonist and the civilisation around him? Less likely. 

Of course, an Atriedes or a Hawkwood is more approachable and familiar than a Harkonnen or Decados. But for all that they act as (ostensibly) nice clean White Hat factions, they are participating in the wider space empire - with Bene Gesserit and swordmasters and mentats on their staff. Compare 40k; zoom out from that squad of guardsmen - who might as well be GIs with laser rifles - and you find commissars in gold braid, psychic email servers and cyborg priests singing a hymn in praise of the rack and pinion gear. 

It's not that a non-Feudal Future couldn't do this, necessarily. Think of Banks's Culture: as strange, in its fashion, as the Idrians or the Empire of Azad. Still, this is, I think, part of the attraction: participating in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, rather than being a tourist. No chance of beaming back aboard the Enterprise.

Add to this - and tying into the above point on Reaction - there's the aesthetic element: a rebellion against Little Boxes on the Hillside. Characters dressed in hulking Gothic armour or elaborate uniforms, interiors with handworked furniture and traditional portraiture, buildings (to say nothing of megastructures) dripping in statues and ornament. Hence my writing this so soon after reading Emphyrio, which both has an element of appreciation of the products of an isolated, stratified world and condemnation of the laws, mores and living conditions its inhabitants endure (aside from other ethical conditions).

Motivated Borrowing 

I've called this 'Motivated Borrowing' to fit in with the above; if one may borrow from history or historical fiction for plot reasons or a sense of delight, one may also do so with an explicit agenda (and a more focused one than the cultural motives I suggest above). It should come as no surprise that we depict history in a variety of ways: 'the Golden Age', the 'Time of Barbarism', and so forth. These may be caveated or hung about with subtleties as desired, or as the skill of the writer permits. These depictions may be consciously used to advance a particular view.

You know all this already: I, stepping a degree further, venture to suggest that the same is true of fictions aping history. This is most apparent in historical plays in modern dress - but could readily be extended to feudal futures. Obviously, a work positing a certain quasi-familiar but fictional political arrangement is in an excellent position to discuss government and politics. 

This is all in addition to those Feudal Future works that actively announce themselves as a satire, of course; Nemesis the Warlock is perhaps the definitive example. 

Anyway, another source of appeal: to have one's worldview reinforced by a depiction of the future referencing the past. Speaking in general terms, a left-winger might look at a Feudal Future and say 'How terrible! We should purge or reform the warlike and superstitious elements of our society!'; a right-winger might look at it and say 'Even in the distant future, conflict and belief will still be with us: we cannot rid ourselves of these and any attempt to do so will fail or cause great harm!' 

Of course, any depiction of a Feudal Future presumably could possess no more authority than its author possesses and correctly communicates knowledge of human nature - something which is difficult to assess. The two puppets in the last paragraph are both mistaken and any actual human being holding such a belief similar to either expressed would be capable of (at the very least) camouflaging them in caveats and subtleties. 

I don't think this is necessarily one of the stronger draws: there's a reason I separated 'Motivated Borrowing' and other Cultural Reactions. But it's not not there.

+++

Two questions, at the end of this remain to me:

1) What have I missed? What element of Feudal Futures draws you, if any?

2) Having assembled such a list can I devise, if not the greatest Feudal Future, at least an adequate one?

Contributions in the comments for 1). For 2)...watch this space.

* "Son of a bitch, they Golden-Throned me! What in the name of Almighty Zarquon do I do now?"

**Emmy Allen positions such a questioning under the horror umbrella in this post. 

***HCK's post 'Embodying Existential Debate' is a near-perfect example of just this.

Bandwagon: The Bloggies and the Rule of Five

Hope the New Year is treating you all well thus far. 

Anyway, a time-sensative (hah) post addressing other blogs.

***

Prismatic Wasteland has proclaimed the Bloggies - 'Awards for some of the best OSR/Post-OSR blog posts to come out in 2022. There will be five awards: Best Theory Blogpost, Best Gameable Blogpost, Best Advice Blogpost, Best Review Blogpost, and, the biggest one, Best Blogpost.' Voting is, I understand, on Twitter. 

[I am not now on Twitter and have not been in the past, under this nom-de-plume or any others. The current moment would be an unlikely one to join.]

Now, this may be of interest to you as a reader of this blog. It crossed my path when I found out I was on the list for my review of Demon Bone Sarcophagus. I suspect that this made the list because it was a fairly prompt, timely review that made it onto The Glatistant. I'm not certain this was my best piece for this blog*, and it's certainly not better than some of the competition, which includes False Machine and Against the Wicked City. Anyway, here's hoping this persists. I quite like these whole blog arrangement.

***

Thought I'd try applying the Rule of Five discussed here to The Rest of All Possible Worlds. I suspect that this is better suited to smaller regions than Calliste, but let's give it a try anyway.

Five Quincentenaries Ago: [.....millennia seems like too much.]

• Procophon has the Majestic Vision.
• The City of Horato begins to flourish.
• Some of the first known grimoires are received into the Library of the Supreme Satrap.

Five Centuries Ago:

• The Kingdom of Pavaisse takes on something like its present boundaries (plus the Prizelands, but minus Joachimsland).
• The School of Malicarn institutes the role of the Overseer.
• Lhulache of Laldiel pens her Great Rule and Compromise, which becomes the popularly accepted model for colleges of magic thereafter.
• Lictors in Datresse storm the Guildhall and throw fifty alderman into the river.

Five Generations Ago: [Generation = 30 years. Seems a better unit of time than Score for this]

• The Printing Press becomes viable and widespread in Calliste.
• Serious competitors emerge to the School of Malicarn, with their own interpretations of the Majestic Vision.
• Sailors reach what will one day be the Buccaneers' Archipelago and (more importantly) decide to return next year.

Five Decades Ago:

• Emperor Boniface II marries Beatrice von Dottore.
• The first Anti-Grimorean pamphlets are published.
• The Armies of the Sublime Prince retreat from the Arpadhian plain.

Five Weeks Ago: (but you might only be learning of these now)

• The Governor of Transmontane Tsymric is recalled on charges of corruption.
• A second permanent Malmeric factory is granted land by a Prince of the Alamgir Empire.
• The first Manual of Nematism is issued by the Grand Academy of Caspianstadt.
• Tabulators set up the 'Society of Elevated Grocers' in Datresse.

Go forth into Calliste, and perhaps beyond!

Speaking of The Rest of All Possible Worlds, I have elected to update the Mechanics and Gazette post with details of the various magical debates.

*Not that I have any definite idea what actually is, of course. Suggestions in the comments, I guess.

"When all else fails, have a lizard with a gun come through the door."

This indoor scene needs pepping up. Consult the below, or roll 1d6.

1. The click of clawed feet echo down the road. There is a knock on the door. There are four soldiers outside, each with a cornflower-blue coat and a tall periwinkle shako. Four muskets with four gleaming bayonets are also on display. The first fusilier darts a forked tongue over sharp teeth. "Your pardon, sir, but we have orders to search this house. It is believed to be the site of an illegal printing press."

2. The door's unlocked. That's odd. You're generally quite careful about such things. Your hands ball into fists. You nudge the door open with a toecap. On the other side is the stark muzzle of a sawn-off shotgun, and a scaled hand holding it. "Told you what would happen, O'Grady. Told you what'd happen if you couldn't make yerr payments." The muzzle lowers slightly. "You ain't that bastard O'Grady! Where is he?!"

3. You're in the front parlour. The noise of the street drones on in the background. Then, there are muffled shouts, a cry and an almighty crash somewhere from your front door. You run into the hall. The door has been splintered asunder by the muzzle of a great bronze cannon. Behind it, there is a heaving mass of scaly flesh. You hear military oaths, and the sound of an aristocratic voice. "Packmaster! Get this curséd lizard moving! The Marshal wants these field pieces by the front line tonight!"

4. An iguana with a string tied to it crawls under the cellar door. As the little beast skitters forward, you see that the string is tied to some heavy object. Under the door comes a slim little nickel-plated pistol with a hand-written note: FROM A FRIEND.

5. "Aah, I see you've spotted my old hunting rifle!" Vindemiatrix the Golden rejoins you in the cavernous library, by a typically draconic roaring fire. He hands you another drink: it smells like paraffin and vermouth. "A lovely piece, don't you think? I wonder if it still shoots."

6. Lunchtimes are busy at the Hessian Grill, but it's the one place in the neighbourhood you can get good labskaus. Your order arrives, just as you finish a glass of switchel. Fork loaded, you are about to take your first bite....
"Everybody be cool: this is a robbery!"
Third time this week.

From Warren Ellis's Nextwave: Agents of HATE.

Context is available, but do you really care?

A Double Century and Noisy Sheep Shearing

This is post number two hundred, so something different from usual: you shall hear me speak, interviewing noisms of Monsters and Manuals - the occasion being the Kickstarter for In The Hall of the Third Blue Wizard, a brand new 'zine with a variety of contributors.  

 

Things discussed include: 

• John Le Carre
• Dad's Army
• Open-air musuems
• The Fetial Priesthood
• The Great Fold
• In The Hall of the Third Blue Wizard (Submissions, Kickstarter)
• The Ordnance Survey and Thomas Pynchon's Mason-Dixon.
• Herodotus and Xenophon
• My creations: Punth: A Primer (and how it grew out of Terrae Vertebrae) and The Rest of All Possible Worlds.

I hope the above will be of some interest, and look forward to another hundred such posts!

An Experiment with Covers

I have in my library a number of old paperbacks with rather fine covers. These do not depict directly the contents of the book, but are rather patterns, abstract or otherwise. Here is one of these.

Now, you will note that this is the back cover, lacking the title. I wonder if those seeing these for the first time can identify the writers or subjects or time periods that these books discuss just by seeing these characterful covers. So take a look and put your answers in the comments.

I shall say that these are all volumes of poetry, generally by English-speaking authors, largely from after the 16th century.

It would be wildly optimistic of me to expect that you will get it spot on. But it will be interesting to see how close you get.

These last two have price labels printed as part of the cover.
Could this be of any assistance? Who knows!