Thursday, 19 June 2025

In the style of....

 A description of the first lunar landing, but in the style of J.R.R. Tolkien (via Google Gemini):

As the fourth age of Middle-Earth dawned, and the memory of ancient wars faded into legend, a new tale began to unfold, far above the shadowed peaks and sun-drenched plains of the world. From the Undying Lands of Men, from the bustling shores of the Great Western Sea where mighty engines of thought and craft were forged, an enterprise of unparalleled audacity was conceived.

A vessel, wrought of gleaming metals and intricate mechanisms, named Columbia by its creators – a name echoing the very spirit of exploration and discovery – set forth from the coastal lands, bearing within its heart three valiant sons of Men. Among them were Aldrin and Collins, skilled and resolute, but it was Armstrong, the quiet leader, whose destiny it was to be etched forever in the annals of time.

For three days and three nights, they journeyed through the vast, star-strewn Ilmen, the very space between worlds that had ever been the domain of the Valar and the Eldar. Their destination was no earthly shore, nor a hidden vale, but the very countenance of the Moon itself, that pale orb, distant and mysterious, which had for countless ages hung silent sentinel above Middle-earth.

As they drew nigh, two of the voyagers, Armstrong and Aldrin, descended into a smaller craft, fashioned for a singular purpose. This vessel, named Eagle, for its swiftness and keen sight, began its perilous descent towards the Moon's desolate bosom. Below them lay a land unlike any seen by mortal eyes: a vast, grey waste, pockmarked with craters like the scars of ancient battles, and strewn with dust as fine as the ash of forgotten fires. The silence that reigned there was profound, a silence older than the mountains of the Earth, broken only by the quiet hum of their own intricate machinery and the measured words of their communication with the distant Earth.

With a skill born of long training and an innate courage, Armstrong guided the Eagle through fields of treacherous boulders and over gaping chasms, seeking a level ground, a place where their bold quest might find its footing. The shadows were long and stark in that airless realm, and the light of the distant Sun beat down with an unearthly clarity. Then, with a gentle shudder, a faint tremor that ran through the very structure of their craft, the Eagle settled. "The Eagle has landed," came the voice, calm and clear, across the immeasurable distance, a declaration that echoed with the weight of ages.

Then, from the Eagle's belly, a ladder was extended, reaching down into the silvery dust. And behold! Armstrong, the first of Men, stepped forth upon that alien soil. His first stride, a small step for a Man, was indeed a giant leap for all Mankind. He looked upon a landscape of stark, unadorned beauty, where the Earth, a jewel of sapphire and cloud, hung suspended in the blackness of the heavens. Aldrin soon joined him, and together they walked upon the Moon, gathering samples of its ancient dust and stones, planting the banner of their distant home, a testament to the enduring spirit of courage and curiosity that burned within the hearts of Men.

For a brief span, the silence of the Moon was broken by the footsteps of Men, by the whisper of their voices, and the glint of their visors reflecting the distant Earth. And when their task was done, they ascended once more into the Eagle, leaving behind only their footprints and a few tokens of their visit, symbols of a journey that transcended the boundaries of the world. They rejoined their companion Collins in Columbia, and together, they turned their faces homeward, bearing tales of a world unseen, and bringing with them a new chapter in the great saga of Men, a chapter that spoke of dreams made manifest and horizons pushed back, forever changing the way they looked upon the silent, watchful Moon.

Wednesday, 4 June 2025

Reading List

 From Roderick, by John Sladek (1980)

Most nights he simply read one book after another; he might before dawn get through two or three like Call Me Pig, Doc Bovary’s Wife, The Ego Diet, Ratstar II, God Was My Co-conspirator, Dream New Hair, Sink the Titanic!, Dragons of Darkwound, or Aversion for Happiness. He could shift easily from a spy thriller like The Pisces Perplex to a guide to courtroom-drama therapy, Make a Federal Case Out of It; and on to an unusual medical theory in Your Eyes: Do They Leak Light?

Friday, 16 May 2025

In the Style of...

 The opening scene of Neuromancer in the style of... who?

The flickering neon signs of Chiba City bled into the rain-streaked windows of the bar, each letter a distorted glyph in some alien language. Case nursed his drink, a synthetic concoction that tasted vaguely of regret and stale electricity. The sky outside wasn't a sky at all, just a dead channel, a static hum of nothingness that mirrored the emptiness in his gut. He felt eyes on him, not the usual predatory gazes of the Sprawl, but something colder, more calculating. Were they real, or just echoes of his own fractured psyche? He blinked, and the bartender's face seemed to shift, the familiar features replaced by something subtly inhuman. "You looking for something, cowboy?" the voice rasped, a digitized whisper that seemed to crawl directly into his brain. Case swallowed hard, the synthetic liquor burning a trail down his throat. "Just a way out," he muttered, knowing even as he said it that there was no escape, not in this city, not in this life. The matrix shimmered at the edge of his vision, a promise and a threat, a world where reality itself was a negotiable commodity. And somewhere, in the tangled web of data and delusion, he knew they were waiting.


Friday, 19 July 2024

Early mention of cryonics (1865)

 From Guy Deverell (1865) by Sheridan Le Fanu - an early mention of cryonics:

“But there’s another process, my uncle, Monsieur Varbarriere, says, by slow refrigeration: you are first put to sleep, and in that state frozen; and once frozen, without having suffered death, you may be kept in a state of suspended life for twenty or thirty years, neither conscious, nor growing old; arrested precisely at the point of your existence at which the process was applied, and at the same point restored again whenever for any purpose it may be expedient to recall you to consciousness and activity.”

Thursday, 6 January 2022

Eclectic editing

From Patrick S. Tomlinson's book "In the Black", an actual published book edited by an actual editor and published by an actual publisher (namely Macmillan):

Saturday, 22 May 2021

The Citogenesis of Adam Roberts

A while back I noticed that the Amazon listing for "The Compelled" by Adam Roberts and François Schuiten had something of an oddity in the "About the authors" section, in reference to Mr Roberts:

His science fiction has been praised by many critics both inside and outside the genre, with some comparing him to genre authors such as Pel Torro, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid.

[Pel Torro, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid were some of the many pen-names used by super-prolific British author Lionel Fanthorpe for his 1950s pulp sci-fi novels, some of which were famously churned out at a high rate, sometimes one per week... someone was clearly having a laugh at Adam Roberts' expense - but who, and how did it make it on to Amazon?]

A little research (read: Googling) revealed that the text seemed to have been copied and pasted from an earlier version of Wikipedia's Adam Roberts page, which bizarrely enough had a genuine citation.

Delving into the history of the Wikipedia page, it appeared that the text was first inserted by a mischevious Wikipedian in December 2017, naturally without any citation. It lingered until November 2018 when it was removed by a passing editor who recognised it for the limp attempt at humour that it was.

However, the offending sentence was later reinstated in September 2019, this time with an actual citation from a real book, the Portuguese Verdadeira História Da Ficção Científica (The True History of Science Fiction). However, the book in question appears to have merely copied & pasted the original sentence from the mischevious earlier Wikipedia entry.... Needless to say there's a name for this sort of circular reference generation, and that is citogenesis. Wikipedia naturally has a list of such incidents.

Edit: It received a mention in the April 2023 edition of Dave Langford's Ansible newsletter:

Adam Roberts’s Amazon blurb for Stealing for the Sky has an ‘About the author’ coda that after the mention of his being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature ends: ‘His science fiction has been praised by many critics both inside and outside the genre, with some comparing him to genre authors such as Pel Torro, John E. Muller, and Karl Zeigfreid.’ [JB]

Saturday, 15 May 2021