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by Hugh Cook |
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stranded in New Zealand |
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Section 132 Entry 0001. Date: 2005 January 08 Saturday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents) A new year is underway so let's start with some new year's resolutions. My most important resolution is to stay alive, even if that's not always the easiest thing in Japan, land of lightless kamikaze cyclists. Back in December, I actually went so far as to buy a torch (that is, a flashlight) to make my presence more visible at night. This was after an incident in the lightless wasteland of the approaches to the western exit of the railway station at Kita Matsudo. I was walking toward the lights of the station when something happened in the night, just to the right of me. And I had the weirdest sensation. The only way I can describe it is to say that I felt as if, out there in the night, a lightbulb filled with darkness had just soundlessly collapsed. A moment later I realized that the thing which had disturbed reality had been a cyclist going sailing past in near to total silence, with no lights showing. So I bought the torch, a little German-built number good for a hundred hours of illumination on one set of batteries. Instead of a lightbulb, it has three LEDs (that is, light-emitting diodes) which are good for something like 30,000 hours of use. Actually, before I bought the German torch I already owned a perfectly good American-made LED torch. However, that item has migrated to the master bedroom, where my wife uses it at nights to check on baby Cornucopia. Back in the closing months of last year, that torch became one of baby Cornucopia's favorite toys. It successfully survived all her exploratory efforts, but then was removed to a place out of her reach after she showed signs of thinking about trying the effects on the torch on the TV screen. (Hmm ... I don't seem to be able to kick through to the world of pretty pictures with my feet ... but maybe with this torch ...?) Anyway, to celebrate the start of the new year, I'm posting a gladiator story, INVASION OF THE CHICKENS, a fairly lighthearted effort, a story I wrote a few years ago. (My offerings toward the end of last year were getting a bit dark, for example the sex criminal story called SANTA CLAUS SEX CRIMINAL.) Here's the start of INVASION OF THE CHICKENS (the full text of which is on the site - just click and read.) |
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"What are you doing?" said Sharla the Swordswoman.
"I'm making plum brandy," said Vorn the Gladiator. And he was, too. He was using a traditional recipe much favored by the fighting men of the city of Chi'ash-lan. Take a handful of dried plums. Add as much raw alcohol as it takes to drown a rat. Stir thoroughly. Wait for as much time as it would take for a rat to actually drown. Then drink. "What are you doing here?" said Sharla. "Here. Now. That was what I meant." "Where else would I be?" said Vorn. "At Malfri Daldo Kobri Jem," said Sharla, intoning the holy name of the Sacred Grave of the Fossilized Mole. "And what would I be doing there?" said Vorn. "You know perfectly well," said Sharla. And Vorn did. According to the ancient prophecy of Tambris, today was the day on which the Karshagrin Chronoclivity, a fracture in the space-time continuum, would open at Malfri Daldo Kobri Jem. " ... upon which the City of Chi'ash-lan will be invaded by a monstrous regiment of Chickens, against which the mightiest of heroes will struggle in vain. Then will the City know the Rule of the Chicken. To the service of the Chicken will women bow. The Tyrant himself will dedicate his days to the happiness of the Chicken. The Chicken will he feed and the Chicken's droppings will he cleanse away. Yea, even the Tyrant! He will laugh when the Chicken is happy and weep when the Chicken is sad. And the City of Chi'ash-lan will be weakened by the Worship of the Chicken, and war will follow, and the City will be defeated by the Thogess of Naunt, and will bow to her milk in Humiliated Service, and will offer unto Her the Homage and the Tribute she demands." Vorn knew all that. But. "Vorn the Gladiator does not venture forth to do battle with chickens," said Vorn firmly. "That is not what Vorn the Gladiator is all about." |
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I had planned to include this story (that is, the INVASION OF THE CHICKENS story) in a projected short story collection which I had thought of publishing as a print-on-demand book. Some day. But I've come to the conclusion that the future doesn't exist. And that brings me to my next new year's resolution. Do it now. Do it today.
(Another problem with the short story collection idea was that I couldn't think of any way to make a unifying theme out of a pretty bizarrely assorted collection of stories. The default idea that I finally settled on - after a couple of years of thinking about it - was to order them by length, from shortest to longest. Anyway, I think the stories will do me as much good online as anywhere else.) Also, I've posted the full text of Shakespeare story, a story that was first published in the small British magazine Psychotrope back in the year 2000. The story is about famous texts warping and deforming, with the focus firmly on Shakespeare, so we could think of this story as a Shakespeare story, with the focus firmly on the texts rather than on the man. The story starts as follows:- |
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"Mr Arth? ... Gareth ...?"
"Uh ...." Ambushed in the corridor like this, the suavely fluent Gareth Arth found himself momentarily tongue-tied. An unaccustomed sensation, but easy enough to explain. For weeks, Gareth had been doing his best to steer clear of Zooloda, whose ardent admiration bespoke a naive accessability. In the last four years, Gareth had bedded seven of his students, impregnating three and marrying two. He was currently in the throes of his second divorce, and had taken a solemn vow to lead a life of monkish celibacy, at least until the end of the semester. But now here she was! Zooloda. Much younger than Madonna but just as blonde. Licking her Lolita lips, a question forming, she's going to ask you to - |
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No, it's not a story about Lolita lips, it's a story about Shakespearean texts and the public reception of texts made sacred by history and tradition ... and I had a real devil of a job getting it into print.
I wrote this story back in the days before I had a website, and I first submitted it to an editor in 1997. This story ended up being submitted to twelve different places, the outcome being that, as mentioned above, it did get published by Psychotrope. One rejection letter that I got came from an American editor whom I respected (and still respect) and he had three problems with the story. First, he didn't like the structure, particularly the way the plot accelerates in the last third. He wanted more balance. Well, I guess that's a matter of taste. Second, he wrote:- One of the most effective fantasy stories I ever read (effective in the sense that it's stayed with me now for about thirty years) had no explanation. I read this story in the pages of a scholarly journal called Playboy, and the plot is easily summarized. A man has a medical problem. Someone or something is doing operations on him during the night, and he wants this to stop. The schemes he resorts to include (if memory serves) sleeping in a suit of armor. I think (again, perhaps memory serves and perhaps it doesn't) that the story is told from the point of view of the victim's friend. Finally, the victim's worries cease when he suffers a frontal lobotomy. This is an extremely effective story, yet we never get any explanation of how or why these operations happened. The editor's third objection (and this is the one which, not to put too fine a point upon it, pissed me off) was that:- The Connie Wills story (again, if memory serves) concerns the censoring of Shakespeare (I think in a university setting.) However, it's a historical fact that Shakespeare has in fact been censored from time to time (most notoriously by a guy named Thomas Bowdler, who edited Shakespeare to produce sanitized, blanded-down versions of the plays, causing the verb "to bowdlerize" to be introduced into the English language. In other words, my feeling was that it was illegitimate to think that an American writer could, by writing on the "censorship of Shakespeare" theme, somehow put it off limits for other writers. Having had a few years to cool down, however, on rereading the respected editor's comments I find that even if the story were to be revised to meet his other objections, "I'm not sure you'll be able to erase my memory of the Willis story". In other words, Willis colonized the editorial mind first (and, probably, the minds of a great many other science fiction readers as well), and there's no good way of getting round that "first." On the Internet, however, I think the Sweetness and Light story has a reasonable chance of being first with this theme (censorship of Shakespeare) for a reasonable number of readers. Section 132 Entry 0002. Date: 2005 February 2 Wednesday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents) Back in December 2004 I wrote a "new year's resolution" diary entry with a January 2005 dateline. My plan was to upload this entry following my return to Japan on what was supposed to be a short holiday, flying out of Japan on December 13 2004 and arriving back in Japan on December 28 2004. However, I have been delayed in New Zealand by a health problem which is going to take some months to fix. Consequently, the blog is likely to be updated on an irregular basis. I hope by some time in 2006 at the latest to add to the zenvirus.com website the story of my present medidical difficulties (first symptoms, diagnosis, treatment), the three books of a fantasy series finished back in the 199s but not yet published, this being the OCEANS OF LIGHT trilogy, and I'm also hoping to beat the sprawling manuscript of my novel BAMBOO HORSES into shape and publish it as a print-on-demand book in 2006, or perhaps a little sooner, depending on how my stamina holds up. I am currently staying with my parents in New Zealand. As I have family here, and as I am a New Zealand citizen, this is the logical place to sort out my medical problem. Hello world, goobye world. Talk to you later, but don't hold your breath. . (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents) |
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