The Seven Principles of Governance

The Book of the New Sun is (rightly) a moderately famous bit of speculative fiction - the sort of thing brought up by the kind of book-reading type who blew right past Asimov, Tolkien and Le Guin long ago. I have to include myself in that - I've mentioned Wolfe's works enough times on here before. 

Anyway, of all the images or ideas or characters from The Book of the New Sun that get referred to or are popularly circulated, there's one that seems a trifle neglected: a passage on 'The Seven Principles of Governance'. This is found in Chapter XXXIII from The Shadow of the Torturer - and it is reproduced below.

I appreciate the Scholastic tone, reminiscent in its tone and form of Aristotelian Medieval thought - but clearly referential of systems of government we would not call Medieval. Which is, in a fashion, a perfect summation of a Feudal Future; though if one must put Wolfe's New Sun in a sub-genre, Dying Earth comes first. The drift into theology and mystical experience is also quietly fitting, and indicates the eventual direction of the quartet of novels. Not to chide unduly - but I hope the reader of the New Sun recalls the Seven Principles of Governance as clearly as Terminus Est.

Panther Skins and Golden Fleeces

I have, in the past, showed some interest in the Caucuses. I recently finished reading a copy of The Knight in Panther Skin, the Medieval Georgian epic. Here's some assorted thoughts.

Vepkhist'q'aosani ('The Knight in Panther Skin') was written by Shota Rustaveli in the twelfth century, during Georgia's Golden Age under Queen Thamar. I read the 1977 translation by Katharine Vivian published by the Folio Society (as pictured below); the Marjory Wardrop translation from 1912 is available online. Vivian attempts a freer, prose translation than Wardrop; neither is in the rhymed quatrains of Rustaveli. The name of the text is given variously as The Knight in the Panther's Skin, The Man in the Panther's Skin, The Knight in Panther Skin (these differences are not unique to English: 1889 saw Der Mann im Tigerfelle and 1975 Der Ritter im Pantherfell).

What's it about? Rostevan, King of Arabia has no sons, but one daughter, Tinatin. Avtandil is the son of his commander-in-chief and dear to him; Avtandil wishes to marry - and must go about this carefully. When out hunting with Avtandil, Rostevan witnesses a knight in a panther's skin crying by a river - who refuses human contact and attacks those sent to greet him. Rostevan sends searchers after the Knight - eventually including Avtandil. 

That's enough summary to work with for the time being. Why is this an interesting work? What's distinctive about it? Well, without dipping into the Boosterism one sees on the Wikipedia entry or the introduction to the 1977 text, it's neatly structured, with the stories of Avtandil and the Knight (eventually revealed to go by the name Tariel) mirroring each other neatly. There's a great deal of tension between social bonds - the bond of Knightly comradeship, the bond of lovers, the bond of King and Subject, the bond of parent and child, the bond of servant and master. The careful resolving of the plot without breaking these bonds is interesting to watch. 

Beyond that, this is clearly a book from a well-connected society. That the protagonist is an Arab rather than a Georgian is telling; Tariel, it is discovered, is an Indian prince. Characters from 'Khateati' - that is, Cathay - that is, China - appear. There is reference to Egyptians, Greeks, Franks, Russians, Persians - as well as African slaves and sorcerers. Rustaveli's own prologue indicates that this is a 'Persian tale I found in the Georgian tongue' that he has set in verse. One gets a sense of travel and the exotic: it would be reductive but not precisely wrong to refer to it as a mix of Chivalric Romance and the Thousand and One Nights.

It should be noted that Rustaveli's Arabia and India are not depictions of his own time. No particular depiction of the desert appears in his Arabia. India apparently has mullahs who recite the Koran, but who are unmentioned in Arabia. Likewise, the coronation of Princess Tinatin with crown, sceptre and mantle by her father is clearly European. The Epilogue calls these 'strange stories of kings of a far-off ancient time' - so don't obsess overmuch over such details. 

Vivian's introduction paints the poem as Universal in spirit: it does not sit in one tradition or overarching culture. The characters are not explicitly Christian - even if King David and the Apostles are mentioned, there are no prayers to Christ or the Blessed Virgin (apparently the poem was later attacked by the Georgian clergy). Neither are they heathens: a spirit of general monotheism suffuses things, with the sun as a symbol of the one God. Avtandil finds himself praying to the seven stars of the medieval heavens. Twelfth-century Georgia (which had been Christian before there even formally was a Georgia) had expanded under David IV (Great-grandfather of Thamar) to stretch from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea at Baku - capturing much land that had previously been Islamic, including the present-day capital, Tbilisi. It is not a stretch to associate Rustaveli with knowledge of a variety of religious traditions.

Speaking of Thamar, there are a number of redoubtable princesses in The Knight with the Panther Skin. More than in any work of courtly love? Perhaps not, but Tinatin's aforementioned coronation is a clear  reference to female royal power and position (however devoted she may be to her father). Together with passages in the prologue and epilogue, the shadow of Thamar lies heavy on this work.

Enough of that. A few things I wish to glean from all this.

Shota Rustaveli, apparently.

***

I've been interested before in historical or alternate names for the planets which can be used for a bit of quick worldbuilding when you can't really be asked to make up an entire new solar system. As I said above, Avtandil finds himself invoking the seven heavens of medieval cosmology (the planets as far as Saturn, plus the moon and sun).

Anyway these are named below, together with a brief extract from Vivian's text. The same section from the Wardrop translation is here.

Zual, whose nature is calamity - Saturn
Mushtar, supreme judge and arbitrator between heart and heart - Jupiter
Marikh the warrior and avenger - Mars
Aspiroz the fair - Venus (Hesperus)
Otarid - Mercury

***

The Terrae Vertebrae setting from which Punth was spawned had as a premise that each state in Vertebraea would be based on some medieval epic. I think I've said before that I wouldn't mind introducing some sort of mountain kingdom along with the rest of Punth's neighbours. Well, here's an obvious opportunity.

Marikylo, the Kingdom of the Eight Vales

In the mountains of the Spine of the World, there are the dwarfholds, the great peaks and plateaus only occupied by that stubborn, hardy and independent folk. But in the densest region of the mountain range, there are a string of valleys that have been the home of an ancient folk, who migrated there centuries before the Nirvanite empire ever rose. Marikylo.

Eight high but sunny valleys are joined by passes worn by centuries of use. At each of the handful of passes, a fortress lies: the High Keeps. These are in the gift of the King of Marikylo. Most of the nobility hold a position in their own right, as head of a clan or possessors of valuable estates - but the rank of Castellan indicates a greater trust, to say nothing of greater powers and privileges. Of course, not all High Keeps are alike. Some connection regions in the vales so long settled and so long loyal that the Castellan has very little in the way of active duties: these are regarded as a next to a sinecure. 

Others abut restive regions or passes to the outside world or are the sites of contact with the High Mountain Dwarves - these require a surer hand. The principal division among the elites, then,  is between those families that rely on Royal patronage and the profession of arms - the Panthers - and the stockrearers and farmers - the Rams. Naturally, ancient history and memory of autonomy as a petty kingdom animate a number of other interesting feuds.

How do the Mariklyne live? From the mountain herds of sheep - known for producing a very fine cloth - they take wool, milk and meat. In the sheltered, warm valleys they have citrus groves and vineyards. The Dwarves are glad to have an agricultural trade partner on hand and produce ironware for Marikylo. There is trade and carriage of items across the mountains - and here the Mariklyne prosper.

Marikylo lies between Nirvanite and Talliz and Punth: it has connections to Kapelleron lords and Ka-Punth tribes, to Fahflund merchant houses, to Talliz Boyar families. If you need to get something across the mountains in a hurry, you will be dealing with Marikylo. The necessity of trade and the security of their surroundings has produced a welcoming culture - so long as the High Keeps stand. It is said that Marikylo produces three things in abundance - Mountaineers, Middlemen and Masters (that is, scholars).

Of course, other things can be found in the mountains than Dwarves. Witches - Dragons - the bleached skeletons of ancient armies that still clutch antique swords. There are places where even the hardiest shepherd will not take his flocks. 

Salopian Youth

Stepping forward from the last such post, I mentioned Dorothy L Sayers. I suspect it is in the climax of one of her novels (Strong Poison) that I first heard and remembered a line from Housman's Shropshire Lad. This time, it did make it into the BBC Radio version - but I shall try to avoid sounding too much like Ian Carmichael. 

I've picked out two entries from A Shropshire Lad: XXXIV and LXII. XXXIV is shorter and, not just in subject matter, perhaps the most Kiplingesque. LXII's combination of classical reference, melancholy, bitter humour and rustic boozing is particularly memorable. 

Enjoy.

Marchbanks at the Breakfast-Table

Recent reading has included The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, by Robertson Davies (1913- 1995) and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes* (1809 - 1894). Both are the reported (comic) speech or writings of a slightly overbearing man of letters in their specific locale. Both were initially published in newspapers or periodicals; Autocrat in The Atlantic Monthly (as it then was) in 1857-58 and Marchbanks in the Peterborough Examiner (Peterborough in the Province of Ontario) in 1942. Holmes merely wrote for The Atlantic; Davies held various positions at the Examiner - both authors seem to have realised the possibilities of collection into a book fairly promptly.

Robertson Davies, 1982, according to Wikipedia.

A word on format and content: The Autocrat is a series of monthly columns collected into a volume. The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (1986) contains The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947, compiling weekly diary material from 1945-46), The Table-Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949, collecting observations of Marchbanks organised as if they were all uttered at a seven-course formal dinner) and Marchbanks' Garland (1986, made up from material in Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack, 1967, which was apparently organised by signs of the Zodiac. The Garland contains letters and diary entries alike). Davies has continued the metafictional game in Papers by presenting himself as editor, making extensive footnotes contextualising or commenting on material from the 1940s and even preparing an introduction with an aged but still unmistakable Marchbanks. 

This isn't quite a review, of course, merely a collection of thoughts. Still, I shall say that while I enjoy both, they work in different ways. They are commenting on different times with different mores. A different tone, of course: the unmistakably Yankee voice of Holmes is different to the Canadian Davies (as to which sort of Canadian - "I am the usual Canadian cocktail: Welsh, Scots, quite a bit of Dutch, a dash of Red Indian, but no English. And all, of course, dominated by the old Empire Loyalist bias." From The Paris Review's Art of Fiction interview series, No. 107, published Spring 1989). The poetic Holmes is distinct from the playwright and novelist Davies; the audience of the Autocrat are largely more gracious than those confronted by the spiky Marchbanks - who is cantankerous and a little fogeyish, where the Autocrat is domineering but gracious.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I am reading both from books, of course, though The Autocrat may be found online. It would be interesting to see both in their original periodical context. If no-one has done so already, a coffee-table book of high quality pictures of chapters of (say) David Copperfield or The Three Musketeers as originally serialised and presented next to adverts or columns on goodness knows what else would be a fine thing. 

Rating or scoring either The Autocrat or The Papers is fairly pointless, to my mind, but I have taken to reading a chapter of The Autocrat in the early afternoon and a dozen pages of Marchbanks before bed. Davies was more the journalist. Indeed, he does seem to have played to the crowd more - a frequent theme of The Diary (later Marchbanks deals with slightly more literary material) is the struggles of Marchbanks with his stove and snow-shovelling - something with which, I take it, householders of Ontario in the 1940s could sympathise. 

Indeed, Davies does seem to have used Marchbanks as a means to vent. Marchbanks is more independent and pricklier than I think he could have been, either as editor of the Examiner or as Master of Massey College (discussed previously here). Of course, Marchbanks has a set of experiences and background roughly identical to Davies. Wish fulfilment? Well, Marchbanks doesn't have a beautiful wife, or a series of elaborate affairs (could one have even eluded to such in the Peterborough Examiner?) or a sumptuous lifestyle. But perhaps. 

It's interesting seeing Davies's footnotes to Marchbanks's material in The Papers. This was in 1986; Davies was in his seventies. Some elements are toned down, some are made more explicit. His introduction even discusses an outlandish fetish enjoyed by Marchbanks. But there's a definitely fogeyish element to it, particularly in Davies commenting on a proclamation of Marchbanks frequently to the effect of 'This has, of course, only continued and become more so, such that...." 

Has the cosmopolitan, loosely liberal Davies been suborned by his grouchy alter ego? You will find people saying that this happened to Evelyn Waugh, as if to say: 'How dare the author of Vile Bodies become a Catholic and try to live as a country squire!' Well, I believe that Waugh was probably more embittered and splenetic than Davies, but even Waugh had some self-awareness - witness his later novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Penfold, dealing with the hallucinations and paranoia of an elderly writer following a BBC interview (written not so long after Waugh's own BBC interview....). So I shall say that Davies is probably being a little indulgent, but I am not sure that this is a literary demerit. 

It occurs to me in writing this that columns of this kind have vanished - as far as I know from newspapers and periodicals. Humorous columns and comment remain, but generally at least nominally about something. If the desire for this sort of humour persists - and I think it does - where did it go? Into comedy as an independent entity, I suppose - the sitcom and the panel show. Ed Reardon's Week springs to mind. More specifically, I suspect that the most exact parallel to the Autocrat and Marchbanks might be online. The Blogger working under a nom-de-plume is a familiar enough presence. But the comic twists, the colourful griping, the conversations with fictional correspondents or sparring partners**, the chance to present yourself or an alter ego as rather neater and wittier - and dominating more conversations than you actually are - surely this is familiar? "In the future, we will all be The Autocrat for fifteen minutes." Of course, I suspect there is more self-discipline involved in creating and sustaining something like The Autocrat or Marchbanks than the common or garden Twitter account, which makes them worth revisiting. 

Anyway, a few items gleaned from The Autocrat and The Papers for your use and enjoyment.

Names of Samuel Marchbanks' correspondents include:

1. Haubergeon Hydra
2. Raymond Cataplasm, MD, FRCP
3. Minerva Hawser
4. Amyas Pilgarlic
5. Cicero Forcemeat
6. Mrs Kedijah Scissorbill
7. The Rev'd Simon Goaste
8. Apollo Fishhorn
9. Nancy Frisgig
10. Richard 'Dick' Dandiprat

Assorted encounters from the Breakfast-Table:

1. Frontiersman and woodsmen have taken to using knives patterned in replica of the short swords of an ancient empire. What could this portend?
2. A woman on a street-corner with a permanent lob-sided smile holds forth on the difference between the Albino Blonde and the Leonine Blonde.
3. You can hear the ticking of your own brain, the constant whirring of the human clockwork. What will make this stop? What will deafen the noise? Who has done this to you?
4. A group of pasty scholars have set up a sparring ring on the common. Their efforts to advance themselves in the Sweet Science appear sincere, but pitifully inexpert.
5. A wild-eyed gentleman starts explaining the process of divine revelation to you in terms of the pearly spiralling chambers of an infinite nautilus shell. It is unclear whether you are going in to the centre of the shell (and the heart of all things) or out into progressively larger and more wondrous spaces. Perhaps both.
6. Addressing an Assembly meeting, a veteran recently elected Consul stumbles over his words and uses some less than statesman-like expressions. His audience react with muted distaste to this, but are clearly willing to forgive him much on account of his scars. 

*Not to be confused with his son, the legal scholar and judge Oliver Wendell "You sure as shootin' better not be shouting fire in a crowded theatre down there," Holmes Jr.

**Who may not necessarily be Strawmen or Steelmen or what have you.

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.

+++

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?

+++

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.

+++

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. 

+++

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. 

Product Placement

I enjoy the work of Dorothy L Sayers. She is known best as an author of detective stories, but she also wrote plays, translated Dante and created advertisements - as, for instance, 'Guinness is Good for You!'

Anyway, her novel Murder Must Advertise contains two montage-like sequences of advertising slogans. The adaptations of Murder (BBC Radio and Television, both with Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey) leave these out - which is a shame, as I rather think they have a good rhythm. So I have recorded both - please see below.

Enjoy.

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

February-March '23 Miscellany

A few things to mention here. 

***

Layer Cake is a 2004 film. It is not about baking. 

It's about a business-like cocaine dealer in contemporary London getting into escalating situations within the criminal underworld beyond his cosy specialist niche. It may get mentally grouped with Guy Ritchie, but is in fact the directorial debut of Matthew Vaughn and adapts a novel by a chap called J.J. Connolly who appears to have done very little since. Daniel Craig as the nameless protagonist. All packed into a lovely compact one hour and forty-five minutes.

I don't suppose this is a spectacular looking film - though I do get a (vaguely nostalgic) 'Blair-era' sense from it. Not that I myself associate that period with drug deals - it's something in the way they make London look (institutions that once might have been stuffy looking open and casual), the mobile phones, the music in the nightclubs. There's some long slow sequences that work quite well. The bits dealing with the actual, tense, protracted business of being a middleman dealing in proscribed substances are worth imitating. 

You will find people who call this film 'Daniel Craig's audition to play Bond'. Not altogether untrue, I suppose, but don't go in expecting a performance like that in Casino Royale. If there is any Bond in it, it's the Bond of Fleming's books, which has only vaguely been captured by Toby Stevens in the BBC Radio dramas. 

(Perhaps also the bachelor pads, alcohol, stake-outs, tight-lipped meetings and vertiginous sense of being on over one's head contribute; Re. that last point - Fleming-Bond is not an expert in volcano lairs [is anyone?] and isn't supposed to deal with regiments of goons. Neither, I suppose, is Movie-Bond - but Pastiche, Parody and so forth eventually prevail). 

Craig offers a callous professionalism and relative lack of suave-ness. His Bond, though moderately craggy, is a rather polished marketable craggy.

Frankly, though, stand-offs and gunfights are the least interesting bits about Layer Cake. It's really about the monologues: narration from Craig's anonymous protagonist, speeches from scarred underworld veterans and his crime lord superiors - who have a wonderful sense of presence themselves; look out for Michael Gambon and Colm Meaney. 

And much of these are well-delivered and charismatic and not blatantly boastful or false - and to some degree self-serving or deceptive or manipulative. Or set rules that are promptly jettisoned when convenient. This is most obvious in the opening sequence - "I'm not a gangster, I'm a businessman whose commodity happens to be cocaine" - but it persists throughout. If gangster films are about power and society, this is a very middle-class film (that the opening sequence contrasts Craig with yobbos behaving badly abroad may be of note; see also the code-switching in the nightclub). Has the phrase 'a thriller of manners' been coined?

*** 

Pilgrim. Found at Itch.Io by Mateo Diaz Torres, who also did A Most Thoroughly Pernicious Pamphlet. Anyway...

You have been chosen. As a member of one of the tower-sanctioned expeditions known as pilgrimages, you must descend into the unspeakable chaos of the ruined old world. As you go, you will be charting unknown territories and setting foot in ancient, powerful, and extraordinarily dangerous places. Should you return alive, the rewards will be great. [...] However you see your journey personally is irrelevant to the architects. They need information, technology, and updates from the world outside to keep the horrors below on the other side of the spire’s walls. Regardless of your reasoning, it is not a choice. You must go.

Appetite whetted? It's a neat little eighty-three page setting about adventuring into the ruins of the old world, full of indecipherable tech, killer robots and yet stranger things. The comparison that struck me reading it was Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines - more in tone than content, though the megastructures of both are a more direct point of comparison. Both are very busy, bustling post-apocalyspes. 

There's some low-lying religious theming (the idea of pilgrimage, a Babel-ish tower, demons, a fallen world), but not enough to become obvious or onerous. Evocative rather than blatant: there doesn't appear to be a definite kind of story you should be telling. Which I appreciate.

It also looks good. Sketch illustrations like those in the Pamphlet, boxes and borders in a simple but distinctive style. Compare Punth: A Primer or In the Hall of the Third Blue Wizard - apparently, I'm a fan. Not so fond of the Microsoft Word shape art used to fill in some of the white space. I see what it's going for in the slightly-gnomic blocks and geometric patterns, but it needs to look a little more finished if it's going to work properly. 

But if that's my biggest problem, this is at least a work worthy of your time. Pay what you want on Itch, so go and take a look.

***

Jodorowsky and Gimenez's The Metabarons. I've been mulling over some thoughts on 'Feudal Future'-style space opera, and wanted to take this in. I'd read The Incal previously, and come across the whole semi-mythologised Jodorowsky's Dune. 

I've seen people call The Incal inconsistent, lacking in coherent world-building (which isn't everything, of course, but given the galaxy-spanning subject....). So it's no real surprise that Metabarons takes advantage of an episodic, generational tale to dart around a bit and use a series of left-over ideas - Cf. the castrated Othon von Salza and (Jodorowsky's) Duke Leto, and their method of making an heir.

Going into this knowing some of that, and plugged into the Grand Narrative of The Incal (which may or may not have been retconned?) almost makes this into, what, Funhouse Dune? The satyr play to Dune's Classical Tragedy? (But the Satyrs are Robots without the usual desire for drink and sex as a kind of meta-humour??) Though, actually, it's all too sincere and full of big Metabaronial emotion to be parodic, no matter how many times they mention 'Paleo-Marx'.  

Enough of this. Time to examine The Metabarons in isolation. It feeds you a stack of ideas and scenes and galactic institutions in quick succession. You never see an isolated farming planet; it's always a farming planet with a mystical secret at its core or a sect of psychic botanists growing beetroot the size of a Citroen 2CV by stroking iridescent beetles. Presumably there's a bunch of boring planets out there: the court of generic decadent nobles have to get their wealth from somewhere. 

And this is good fun! Inventive and notable and carefully illustrated. It's big and it doesn't stop being big. Further, it's unremittingly personal. It doesn't turn into being about Freedom or Justice or The Cause - rather, it stays about this Metabaron and their desires, and the interlocking of sexual desire and the wish for an heir. A most operatic space opera - especially how some modern productions can dial up the eroticism.  The Metabarons manages to work; that's the main thing. 

***

Random second-hand fine: Jack Vance's Emphyrio. 

I had my expectations semi-set for this from the noisms post 'On Emphyrio and Vance's Libertarianism'. Still, such an interpretation didn't stay at the forefront of my mind as I read: there's enough world-building and simple entertainment. That must be a good rule-of-thumb for quality, no? If you read an article saying X is really about Y but you read it and you note Y but also interesting ideas or images A, B and C?

Anyway, the assorted craftsmen of the planet Halma live under Lords, Guilds and a snooping bureaucratic Welfare Agency (all libertarianism's foes combined into one Legion of Doom?). The Lords, in addition to owning key portions of their infrastructure, also export their finished pieces across space. There's got to be a planet of these fellows in every feudal future setting, right? Some fiefdom in Dune turning out cabinets for Atriedes and Harkonnen alike, some ascetic cyborg Chippendale in Metabarons. The emphasis just on Halma and the city of Ambroy keeps this pleasingly 'grounded'. 

I agree, incidentally, with noisms that the father of the protagonist, Amiante, is the real hero. Ghyl Tarvoke's deeds are clearly of an heroic stature, but they feel sort of perfunctory next to the slow, careful resilience of Amiante. 

The wonder of the goods produced on Halma and the resistance to mechanical reproduction is interesting - in an age of Ikea, the care spent on these by the narrative and the characters feels desirable. Of course, this might lead one to believe that the government and culture of Halma was likewise desirable, in that it protects and sustains such things - but the snooping and sniping by the Welfare Agency rather undercuts any argument in that direction.

Tonally, it rather differs from The Dying Earth or Lyonesse (the only other Vance I know). An exception for the leaping religion of Halma, which seems like it could slot as an episode in Cugel very neatly. This actually feels a little like a weakness to the novel: religion should fill or purport to fill some human need, and quite what it offers is never as clear compared to the Guilds or Agency. 

(Is it a problem of any novel of political rebellion that we never inhabit the mind of a true believer for the regime? Ghyll spends much of the first act confused or neutral.)

The actual final revolt feels oddly Burgher-ish. Like some event from Swiss or Flemish or Dutch history, with a foreign power routed and an honest-but-angered citizenry. 

Another novel worth your time, and one that has sparked a few ideas. Watch this space.

***

Last and First Men; a strange film adaptation of Olaf Stapledon's history of the future. Released in 2020 posthumously by the Icelander Jóhann Jóhannsson and first introduced to me at Coins and Scrolls. 

I regret not watching this on the big screen. There's films that do not benefit from being watched on my laptop; this is one of them. 

I have read Stapledon, but a while back. I'm not sure there's a better way to adapt Last and First Men and still have it feel like 'a movie' rather than an art project. So: long, even narration by Tilda Swinton and lonely decontextualised cyclopian monuments. More than the sum of its parts? If properly approached. Moving? Maybe not. Something to appreciate? Yes.

***

War of the False Primarch: a blog fleshing out a conflict from Warhammer 40,000. An interesting fan-led project; a bit too Space Marine-heavy for my tastes - but it's fun seeing what people come up with an the various conversions it involves.

Stodgy to read, and I wouldn't mind a PDF of the material instead. But worth dipping a toe in the water and seeing what people have come up with.

World of Lazarus: A Worked Example

 I wrote in my World of Lazarus review:

• There's a nice section on how an organisation a GM creates might grow and plot to advance itself. A component I can see myself using elsewhere. 

Very well. Let's give this a try.

We will speculate that a minor family under Minetta aims to carve out a domain of their own in former Soleri territory. This is semi-plausible - given that A) there is no sovereign authority in the East African territory that World of Lazarus maps out as former Soleri territory and B) Minetta is relatively laissez-faire as a Family goes - not that they would be intensely relaxed by this move, but this can give said minor family more starting room to manoeuvre. 

What shall we call them? Let's give this minor family a name from the Karnataka and the Mysore region - Urs, and have them unite with a warlord; a former Soleri colonel who can muster enough diplomatic niceties to integrate himself into X+65 international society. We'll call him Gadarat, after an Aksumite king and base him in the plain around Djibouti. Urs-Gadarat will try to set up a Trans-Erythreaean power base...

[That is, one set up across the Indian Ocean. I'm being wilfully obscure, I suppose - but Trans-Indian could mean, e.g. between Mumbai and Kolkatta or Chennai and Lahore. So we're using an older phrase for the Red Sea and beyond, because I want a non-confusing equivalent to Trans-Atlantic or Trans-Pacific.]

....in, the aim would be, a quadrilateral with corners at Cochin, Hyderabad, Aden and Zanzibar. Penetration into the Ethiopian Highlands and the Nile below Khartoum can wait. 

This draws on A) a history of trade across the Indian Ocean, B) The Aksumite empire mentioned above had territory in Ethiopia and what is now Yemen and C) a desire to see another scattered set of family territories like Bittner on its arc across the North Atlantic, another thalassocracy. (I take it that sea trade in X+65 persists despite fancy future aeroplanes, &c. No one's seriously restarted travel by airship. The Macau Accords would likely affirm something like present Freedom of the Seas for de facto King Canute reasons.)

***

Let's trace out a year by some of the tables in World of Lazarus.

The first stage of Urs-Gadarat is a Plot action: a Surgical Strike against Mogadishu to knock out the local rulers (a group of strongmen operating through puppet-Magistrates). Initial strike by helicopter, with drone reconnaissance; reinforcement by Land forces from the Jijieh-Gode highway (widened by Soleri). The defence advantage is matched by the intelligence Urs drones are able to provide. A qualified success: the Gadarat strike force suffers severe casualties. But in the next fortnight Urs civil engineering teams are able to clear and operate the harbour, opening it to vessels from other Minetta sub-groups. 

Attempts to Grow Urs-Gadarat properly into the interior of the Horn are stymied by an Organisational Threat: Shortages.  Their ports might be secure and there may be no military threat, but compliance is slow. Farms, mines and production facilities can only produce the desired commodities with assistance -  crop-strains, machine tools, vehicles. Repayment is more likely with U-G managers and enforcers in place, but this will still require a sacrifice of Capital.

And U-G is Plotted against. Their expenditure has not gone unnoticed in Minetta, and the scheme is now more obvious. Any action against Minetta is Undermined. 

The proper response to this is a Plot of Corruption. Influence and Capital are applied to Minetta inspectors, who may convincingly state that this is Gadarat's action, with Urs purely involved in a commercial sense. 

A further season of Growth will now be needed: A Hardening of Systems - both Urs enclaves in Mysore and the Djibouti-Mogadishu line.  Harar will stand as a strong point protecting the Horn region. Mysore assets will undergo a reinforcement from the veterans of Mogadishu - newly trained in the advanced weapons and battle-drills of a Family-level army.

The slow trickle of profits from existing Urs properties and new acquisitions allows Recapitalisation by U-G. But all this does now go unnoticed, and a mix of proxy efforts go against them. The Khartoum Clique begins selling arms to the Provisional Governate in Addis Ababa, and Nkosi flames into life rumours of U-G injustice in Mogadishu. Bad PR. Growth in the next year will struggle.

Accordingly.....

***

So...this was a fudge. I'm not quite using the Modern AGE mechanics here - it's a partially random, partially chosen set of ideas, which I hope hang together. A better option would have been to copy out the relevant tables, scrubbed of explicit mechanical detail. 

But was this satisfying? Eventually, yes. It's aping a real story or set of events, but by X+66 we have decent powder-keg in the former Soleri territory. There's the possibility of war along the Awash river valley and the ridge of the Ahmar mountains. The Islamic shrines of the city of Harar devastated - incensing religious leaders in the Minetta bailiwick, who have a ready-made strike against Urs-Gadarat....

Let's call the above, then, the turning of a starting-handle. Lots of sweat and grinding, but the motor is now purring nicely.