WHERE THE SHADOWS LIE . . .

So, yesterday I found out, thanks to a friend in England* about yet another modern-day real-world book featuring Tolkien, or at least his writings, as major elements in the plot -- as in, 'what the world thinks is fantasy turns out to all be true'. This time it's not a Dan-Brown wannabe, as in MIRKWOOD, but a detective novel called WHERE THE SHADOWS LIE, by Michael Ridpath, the first of projected 'FIRE & ICE' series. The amazon site, where it's available for pre-order, has two reviews that praise it to the moon -- suspiciously enough, since the book won't be available until August. Perhaps, although they give no indication as to this, they read the English edition, where it's been out since last summer. Here's the plot synopsis from amazon.com:

"Amid Iceland's wild, volcanic landscape, rumours swirl of an eight-hundred-year-old manuscript inscribed with a long-lost saga about a ring of terrible power. A rediscovered saga alone would be worth a fortune, but, if the rumours can be believed, there is something much more valuable about this one. Something worth killing for. Something that will cost Professor Agnar Haraldsson his life. Untangling murder from myth is Iceland-born, Boston-raised homicide detective Magnus Jonson. Seconded to the Icelandic Police Force for his own protection after he runs afoul of a drug cartel back in Boston, Magnus also has his own reasons for returning to the country of his birth for the first time in nearly two decades - the unsolved murder of his father. And as Magnus is about to discover, the past casts a long shadow in Iceland. Binding Iceland's landscape and history, secrets and superstitions in a strikingly original plot that will span several volumes, Where the Shadows Lie is the first in a thrilling new series from an established master."

Taken along with the recent books by Dowling and Hillard, does this mean we're on the cusp of a flood of Tolkien-as-character/it's-all-real/modern-day Middle-earth fiction like the 'Tolk-clones' explosion of the seventies & eighties? Are Hillard and Dowling and Ridpath the McKiernans and Donaldsons and Brooks of this new decade?

I sure hope not.

--JDR

*thanks, Jessica

Yuggoth Again

So, two weeks or so back I saw mention of the purported discovery of a new planet out at the edge of the solar system. Again. This has been going on every few years since at least the early seventies, but hope springs eternal and no sooner is a theory disproven than a new one arguing a slightly different variant replaces it. This time they're calling it TYCHE, and predicting that it's four times the size of Neptune and comes complete with rings and moons, its orbit being way out in the Oort Cloud. Here's the link:

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/the-mystery-of-the-giant-planet-hidden-in-our-solar-system.php?ref=fpb

The amusing part about the story is the two scientists' announcement of the discovery, along with the declaration that they're now going to start looking for some evidence to prove their theory. You'd think it'd be the other way around, right? But then the search for PLANET X has been going on for a long time, whether within the orbit of Mercury ('Vulcan'), or on the other side of the sun (called 'Mondath' in DR WHO; I forget what the real-world scientists who proposed the Earth's dark twin called it). Mostly, though, they look beyond the furthest known planet to see what might be out there on the edges of the solar system, which turns out to be stranger and more interesting all the time.

Historically, it's a search with mixed results. Uranus they found more or less by accident, as (somewhat closer to home) was the discovery of Ceres. Neptune was the great success story: predicted by a French mathematician and discovered (after a search lasting, it is said, only a little over an hour) by a German astronomer using his data (although the waters got muddied a bit by an English claim demanding co-credit on dubious grounds).* The search for Pluto went on for decades, and inspired Lovecraft (who'd been a keen amateur astronomer in his youth) to create the cold, dark, sinister world of Yuggoth, to which he prescribed chaotic properties quite unlike any real-world astronomical phenomenon.

Or, as Bellairs' King Gorm puts it when describing recent events in his all-too-interactive magical planetarium:

"We've been having some trouble with Sector 8," he said . . . "A couple of planets are doing a horn-pipe, and before long --apocalypse! I think we must blame the terrible black planet Yuggoth, which rolls aimlessly in the stupefying darkness. Ooop! Watch out!"

[They] hit the floor as a five-pronged comet . . . came whooshing down at them . . ."

--Jn Bellairs, THE FACE IN THE FROST [1969], p. 50

Perhaps they shd name the mythical Tenth** Planet YUGGOTH -- it's only fitting for a mythical planet to have a fictional name.

--JDR

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*cf. "The Case of the Pilfered Plane" by Sheehan, Kollerstrom, & Waff in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (Dec 2004), wh. produces a strong case for deliberate fraud on the part of the English claim -- the English had all the pieces but didn't put them together until after the fact, when they were assembled to create a credible paper trail for their own claim.

**or Ninth, if you don't count Pluto, which I do.

Verlyn's Book

So, I was delighted on Thursday to see the following post by Jason Fisher about a forthcoming book from Verlyn Flieger:

http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/02/verlyn-fliegers-forthcoming-collection.html

Ever since I saw Shippey's ROOTS AND BRANCHES, my first thought was "what a great idea" and my second "when will Verlyn put out one?" And now that's come to pass with GREEN SUNS AND FAERIE: ESSAYS OF JRRT. Looking at the table of contents Jason provides confirms that I've read many of these, and heard many others delivered at conferences and symposiums over the years: to have them all collected together in one place will be great. And of course there are some I've missed, so this'll be a good chance to read those as well.

It's already available for preorder on Amazon, with a projected release date of August (just six months away). Horray.

And now, I immediately begin to think of how nice it'd be to see a collection by Wayne & Christina . . .

--JDR

Huck Finn: it maketh a mock

So, a few weeks back* I posted about the new bowdlerized edition of HUCK FINN, and how I look askance at the project -- I understand their motivations, but it's a slippery slope (just look at the DOCTOR DOLITTLE books) and those who start down that path rarely end well.

Although they do sometimes produce unintentionally hilarious results, as in two 'politically correct' collections of nursery rhymes I picked up years ago which never fail to bemuse me: POSITIVELY MOTHER GOOSE and FATHER GANDER NURSURY RHYMES. The latter adds a second verse to nursery rhymes to make them end happily (e.g., JACK & JILL), while the former rewrites the original in such a way that their original point is entirely lost -- e.g.

"Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet

Eating her curds and whey

Along came a spider who sat down beside her

And brightened Miss Muffet's whole day"

Now thanks to the latest issue of THE FUNNY TIMES (March 2011, page 4), I'm reminded more than ever of the power of mockery to deflate censorship. Here's someone else's take on the bowdlerizing of HUCK FINN that's more succinct and eloquent than I cd ever hope to be (although be warned that the questions at the bottom of the cartoon contain some offensive language; might want to skip those):

http://boingboing.net/2011/01/12/tom.html

I'm mightily impressed by how Bolling, the cartoonist, keeps trumping himself panel after panel -- this is not a set-up for a pay-off at the end, like most strips, but pure gold all the way through. I was particularly taken with "Why, it's African-American Jim!" and "Well, if it isn't Joe 'Who Happens To Be Native American, But Has Many Other Attributes' ", plus the addition of life preservers and helmets to Huck & Jim on the raft -- that really seemed to nail the mindset of the censors. A friend got the giggles over the Federalist/States' Rights panel. Like I said, good stuff all the way through.

Nor is TOM THE DANCING BUG the only one to have some fun over this; that whole page of FUNNY TIMES is devoted to the Twain censorship flap, and includes various other suggestions, one Inklings-related in the form of a retitled THE LION AND THE WARDROBE -- though whether that one's meant to avoid offending wiccans (a la Xander Harris) or anti-witch Xians ('thou shalt not suffer . . . ') is hard to say. The latter, I suspect.

Like I said, a slippery slope.

--John R.

current audiobook: THE BOOK OF ALMA

current reading: OSSIAN REVISITED

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*cf. my post of January 6th: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2239062544101975016&postID=6371039324480042595

I wound up turning off the comments on this post, but shd point out that at least one person took my up on the suggestion in the Update to post further about the topic on his own blog:

http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-are-words-for-when-no-one-listens.html#comments

Evil Comes To Town

So, last Thursday (the 17th), I noticed several news vans at the Regional Justice Center in downtown Kent when I swung by on my way to meet up with Janice after work. I had a strong suspicion of what was going on, based on a news story in the local free weekly paper the week before: Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, has coming to town to plead guilty to another murder (his 49th)*

http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/south_king/ken/news/115933534.html

Sure enough, the next morning Janice saw a gaggle of news vans already there when she passed by on her way in at 7.30. And some of them where still there when she got off late that afternoon (say fiveish). I assume a few reporters had been at the RJC the day before to do a little background/set-up for the main story to follow, but given that the arraignment, plea, victim's family speeches, and sentencing wd all be over in just a few hours that afternoon, it's a bit odd the reporters were there for all-day coverage. All I can assume is that they did 'live updates on our breaking story' for dramatic effect. I'm a little surprised Congressman Richert didn't show up for a little speechifying, having parlayed his failure to catch the Green River Killer for twenty years (during which time he murdered seventy-one women) into a political career, but so far as I know he didn't.

As for Ridgeway himself, it's good to know they have him safely locked up for life. It's no less than he deserves. -- though a little disconcerting, reading the terms of his confinement, to realize that they're slightly less harsh than those Bradley Manning has been subjected to for the past seven months without ever even been charged with a crime. Something seems a bit off there.

And, despite the fact he'll never be able to hurt anyone else, it's still chilling to know that someone like this was physically here, that near to where we live, in the here-and-now.

--John R.

*the terms of his plea bargain, according to the article, being that he pled guilty to all the murders where they could find the bodies of his victims -- 48 in all -- and confessed to twenty more where the bodies were never recovered, with the understanding that he'd plea guilty to each that might be found afterwards.

Farewell, Raina

Yesterday heard the sad news that Raina, the Cordell's cat, has died. She was about thirteen and a half.

I first met Raina the first month or so I was in Seattle, living by myself at the Woodcliff Apartments on East Hill in Renton. She was a personable young stray, a beautiful half-grown cat expecting her first litter of kittens, who was happy to be petted and given the occasional treat. She even wandered into my apartment once, having jumped the fence and considered the open sliding patio door an invitation.

I certainly had no objection, being fond of all cats at all times. Unfortunately, this was just a week or so after Parker had flown out (in a carryon bag, escorting Janice on her first visit out to see me, about a month after I'd arrived in the Pacific Northwest myself). And it turned out he had objections to another cat entering his territory. It was bad enough, from his point of view, that he'd had to exchange a house and fenced yard for a little two-bedroom apartment,* but he drew the line at other cats dropping in (which was odd, since he'd tolerated the semi-stray that came with our previous house, Tiffin -- but then Tiffin had been a v. mellow cat).

The first thing I knew about Parker making Raina's acquaintance was a growl and a hiss from down the hall and the sound of much clattering as two cats raced by: Raina in the lead and Parker in hot pursuit. She made the little patio, cleared the (six-foot) fence in a single bound despite being v. much pregnant, and made good her escape.

Not long after that she was taken in and adopted by Bruce & Dee, who provided a good home both to her and her five kittens. And when the kittens were old enough, we adopted one of them: Rigby. Of the other four, Bruce & Dee kept one (Bengal), Lisa Stevens adopted one (Jake), and I think a fireman we didn't know took the other two. For several months we took Rigby down to see her mother and play with her brother once in a while, until one visit when Rigby and Bengal decided each was a stranger. That was the end of that. Poor Bengal, a v. sociable cat who won a contest and had the world's greatest room for a cat specifically designed for him,** died a year or two back, and now we hear Raina is gone as well. Too bad; she was a beautiful cat, and a friendly cat, looking exactly like our little Rigby (herself now our senior cat but still as petite and almost as mighty a leaper as ever) except she had long hair whereas Rigby has shorthair. One other thing Raina and Rigby had in common was that Rigby loved to be chased by Parker; she wd stir him up and then tear away, with him making pretty good speed right behind her. This seemed to make a certain amount of sense, given that he'd actually chased her before she was even born -- and she got away from him that time too. Since Parker died she's tried to get our younger cats, Hastur & Feanor, to chase her, but while they'll express an interest they tend to wind up looking in astonishment in the direction she took; they're just no match for her.

And so goodbye to Raina, a good cat who lived a good life who I'd not seen in a long time but will still miss.

--John R.

*though still more than twice the size of his and my first apartment together, on Kane Place in Milwaukee's Lower East Side.

**since dismantled, I'm told, alas.

Zombies for Christ

So, Janice made an interesting discovery recently during her read-through-the-Bible, which has now reached the Gospels.* There's nothing like reading slowly and carefully to notice things the eye or mind tends to skip over when reading the same book piecemeal, out-of-sequence, and out-of-context -- which is how most of us know the Bible.

The passage in question comes near the end of the Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 27, verses 52-53. The context is the events that take place in Jerusalem immediately after Jesus's death:

• [50] . . . yielded up the ghost.
• [51] And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.
• [52] And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.
• [53] And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

What's so surprising about this is that I don't think I've ever heard a sermon preached about it. In my own mind, I'd remembered it as ghosts of the hallowed dead appearing and testifying, but Matthew is v. specific that graves open and physical bodies come out of them and walk the city streets. He's silent about what happens to them afterwards, which I admit to wondering about now; the other three gospels don't mention the risen dead at all. The gap between Jesus's death and the dead rising is also an interesting detail, and another thing I'd overlooked.

So, next time there's a zombie parade in town -- which, frighteningly enough, is an annual occurrence in these parts** -- I wanna see 'ZOMBIES FOR CHRIST' t-shirts out there in the crowd. It's only fair.

--John R.

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*I'm about a third of the way through THE BOOK OF MORMON, myself -- but then, I'm doing them as audiobooks

**better known as the Fremont Zombie Walk.