The Hearing Trumpet

As devoted as they were to the triumph of the irrational over the conventional, of the anarchic and revolutionary over conventional authority, the fractious assemblage of artists who called themselves surrealists were notoriously a boy’s club. The artist Leonora Carrington, who died this year at the age of 93, elbowed her way into their movement, deflated their chauvinism, and outlived them all.

Her 1976 novel The Hearing Trumpet (which appeared first in French, in 1974, and was subsequently self-translated) has yet to find the full readership it warrants. No doubt this is because Carrington was reaching out of her visual arts box.

The book opens as a kooky first-person account of the admittedly ancient and eccentric Marian Leatherby. When a friend gifts her with a prodigiously effective hearing trumpet, she learns that her family intends to send her to a home. The institution, run by a pair of parsimonious, judgmental Christian mystics, houses its inmates in bizarre structures in such shapes as a lighthouse, an igloo, and a circus tent. Marian’s fascination with the dining hall’s portrait of a leering, winking nun leads her to a mysterious medieval text of sorcery, corruption, Templars and a Holy Grail that serves as a font of suppressed women’s magic. And that's where it gets crazy.

Experimental in content but clear in its narrative presentation, The Hearing Trumpet is not just daffy but genuinely playful and funny. At the risk of spoilerage, its final cataclysm earns its expatriate author a uniquely feminist (not to mention lycanthropic) spot in the literature of cozy British apocalypse. A neglected classic that deserves sit on any shelf where the literary and the fantastical collide, alongside Borges, Calvino, and Pavic’s Dictionary of the Khazars.

Korad: Tomorrow's Ideologies

Last week we asked ourselves which crises threaten the empire’s stability, making room for the new ideologies that will soon arise to threaten the dominant ethos.
According to the new comment-and-like system, they are:

1. Debates between religious scholars erode faith
2. Imminent invasion by long-absent powerful aliens, in clandestine partnership with the scholar-lords of Montvale
3. More men are being born than women, sparking to a patriarchal, atheistic youth protest movement

A new belief system has been born somewhere in the Koradi vastness. Today it is obscure and tiny—much more so than the rapidly growing patriarch movement. Over the next few centuries, the new way will rise, persevere through a period of tumultuous struggle, and in the end eclipse the old order. Over the course of this transformation, it will change in response to the tests it faces. It is not the only nascent ideology. Two other competing belief systems will rise alongside it, challenge its hold over the people, but ultimately fall by the wayside.

This week we'll define those three nascent belief systems. Propose your idea for a new belief system using the comment system below.

To add a new answer to the question, start a new main comment thread.

To add a modifying riff or detail to someone else’s answer, append a reply comment.

Show your approval for an idea by liking the comment in question. Like as many comments as you want.

The original author of any main idea can count a riff on his or her idea as part of the main idea by saying so in a reply to the modification. If the original author does not make this approval, it is incorporated anyway, when the number of likes on a modification equals half or more of the number of likes on the main idea.

Link Round-Up: Qadhafi Mana, Diamond Planet

Recently discovered diamond planet sounds like something out of Jack Vance's Gaean Reach books.

Libyan rebel triumphantly acquires Qadhafi's mana (in numinous headgear form):

The Birds: Book

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Link Round-Up: Ouija Payoff, Lager Reveal

Universal pays Hasbro $5 mil not to have to make a Ouija movie.

Secret origin of German lager traced to creepy-looking orange galls on Argentinean beech trees.

FanExpo

I’ll be making one appearance at Toronto’s FanExpo later this week. The DMing Mastery panel features Ed Greenwood, Phil “Chatty DM” Menard and myself, and happens this Friday, at 4:00 pm, in room 715B.

Despite great attendance last year, the show’s upper powers have this time around scaled back tabletop panels to this one event. I’ll be dropping the show from my commitments list from next year onwards, so if you want to see me there, this will be your last chance for the foreseeable future.

What Attack the Block Nerdtropes

Earlier, I discussed nerdtroping, the process of popularizing older genres via the addition of geek-friendly tropes.

The delightful SF-horror-actioner Attack the Block (go see it, right now in mid-sentence, before continuing to the rest of this post) nerdtropes a surprising genre: the social realist docudrama. The genre represent the underrepresented, placing its working class or underclass characters in struggles typical of a broader struggle against difficult social circumstances.

Its classic presentation, as seem in the films of the Italian Neo-Realist movement, emulates cinema verite documentary in its pursuit of polemical credibility. The genre has long held a fascination for British filmmakers working from a leftist perspective. Pioneering films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (both based on Alan Sillitoe novels) continue to shape UK film today.

Attack the Block concerns itself throughout with the social conditions that made its delinquent heroes who they are. The council housing project that defines them is the object of alien attack—a dynamic mirrored when the police come calling. The final character turn that brings the alien-conquering protagonist salvation from outside authority comes when the audience viewpoint character finally understands the circumstances of his upbringing. It wraps the message in thrilling chase scenes, bloody surprises and refreshingly lo-fi monster effects. The realism may be dustbinned, but the social message throughlines the script from alpha to omega.

[Classic Post] Neologism of the Moment: Nerdtrope

nerdtrope
verb

To make an old genre palatable to a contemporary, audience through the addition of fantastical, geek-culture elements.

Deadlands nerdtropes the western. 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings nerdtrope the swashbuckler and chanbara genres, respectively. Mutant City Blues nerdtropes the police procedural.

We’re used to seeing nerdtroping in the definitionally geeky of hobby gaming world. Now that geek culture has gone mainstream, we’re seeing it in big commercial films. Cowboys and Aliens nerdtropes the western as Deadlands did before it. Reel Steel nerdtropes the boxing flick.

Classic Posts: A Meta Note

Efforts to fully port the entire LiveJournal over to this here new blog mothership have proven fraught. I’m declaring this an official disguised blessing. Much of the 7+ years of material on the LJ is ephemera and doesn't need to be preserved forever. I won’t be deleting the LJ, so if you still want all my backdated tomfoolery, you can still find it there. Until such time, that is, as the platform deletes itself and sails forlornly to its post-digital Valinor.

However, I will be reposting key entries from the LJ here, as I need to refer to them.

These “classic posts” will be called out as such in the post titles for easy skipping by those reading from an RSS feed. Nor will you have to worry about my link-announcing from Twitter, Google+ or Facebook, as I do the fresh posts.

The Three Reveals of Gen Con (Part Three): DramaSystem / Hillfolk

At Gen Con, brave questioners heard details on up to three unannounced projects. Over the last weeks, I’ve been making those revelations here.

The first: New Tales of the Yellow Sign

The second: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Now the third and final reveal: my new rules engine, DramaSystem, as expressed by its first game iteration, Hillfolk. The tagline for the project is: If Hamlet's Hit Points is the theory, DramaSystem is the practice.

Specifically, it picks up on the HHP observation that the core scenes of any narrative can be broken down into two categories: procedural and dramatic, and that RPGs have traditionally excelled at the former and given short shrift to the latter. You know those magical sessions where the rules melt away and you just find yourself freely interacting for four hours? And next week you can’t recapture whatever lightning found its way into the bottle? DramaSystem makes the free-flowing story-making happen as a matter of course. It changes the roleplaying dynamic, allowing you to create ongoing collaborative stories that unfold like serialized drama shows (“The Sopranos”, “Six Feet Under”, “Shameless.”) I’ve been in-house testing this for most of the year and am beyond excited by the results.

The first game is Hillfolk, in which you play the core members of a clan of uplands raiders at the dawn of the iron age. Their personal stories play out in a crucible of competing civilizations. Do their histories change the world forever?

Pelgrane Press will be publishing; I’ll be talking about it in stages in the weeks and months ahead. For the moment, here’s a peek at the character sheet. This is my playtest rough and has yet to undergo graphic design beautification. But you get the idea.

Link Round-Up: HHP Goes Boardgame, RPG PhD, West Memphis 3 Released

Chris Farrell applies the Hamlet's Hit Points method to board game analysis. See if you can spot the line that is exactly what I'd hoped a reviewer would say about the book.

Dissertation by Doctor of Roleplaying Michelle Nephew now available in affordable e-form.

The West Memphis 3 are to be released today, thanks in large part to a series of documentaries about their clearly unjust murder conviction. The third installment is due to play the Toronto International Film Festival in a few weeks; the directors are now rushing to add an updated ending. Among the celebrities helping their cause, it turns out that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh provided funding for the forensic tests that finally forced prosecutors to act. The three were released under something called an Alford plea, which stops short of an exoneration, leaves some charges on their records, but does not (contra early reports) require them to admit guilt.

The Birds

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Link Round-Up: MCB Love, Rat Exoneration, TIFF Hazard

Mutant City Blues receives much love on the 2 GMs I Mic podcast.

Rats blameless in 1348 Black Death outbreak, archaeologist claims.

Among the condos implicated in a city-wide epidemic of falling, shattered glass is the one atop the Lightbox, the spanking new HQ of the Toronto International Film Festival. Valerie and I have agreed that if one of us gets taken out during the festival, the other should bravely soldier on and continue seeing films...

Korad: An Empire in Crisis

Last week’s poll in our Korad world-building exercise told us about the province of Palth. The following entry now goes into the Korad bible:

Nomadic pastoralist yak-herders, the Palthians make winter camp at Bridlepost. Something destroys all other communities that get "too big". They just disappear. Palthians are an ornery bunch who just plain don't like being crowded. Palthians believe weather at one's birth mystically affects one's personality and character. Youth go on vision quests/rites of passage in the mountains. In Palth, orphaned children disappear within a fortnight, without exception.

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That completes our survey of Korad’s regions. Now it’s time to activate its core conflicts, as it becomes a place of contending ideologies.

In order for new ideologies to arise, the old one has to show strains severe enough to grant them purchase. As you'll recall, the prevailing culture is austere, militaristic, reverent of knowledge, and covertly matriarchal. The supreme Koradi deity is the Black Goat of the Fens (whom is symbolized by the sacred goat of the marriage ceremony), a million-teated, ever-pregnant creator who spews out fragments of the cosmos, which given enactment and form by her soldier-demiurges. Her great holiday is the Festival of Ideas.

The crucial social unit is the guild, which connects family and empire. An honorable Koradi remains ever willing to spy and steal.

For more detail, review the above-linked setting Bible.

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What now threatens the empire? Answer (and vote on the answers in real time) using the comment system below.

Okay, there are new rules coming up. You’re gamers; you can figure out and follow rules.

This system will speed the last stages of the now-overlong worldbuilding exercise, by folding the pitching and polling steps into one post.

To add a new answer to the question, start a new main comment thread.

To add a modifying riff or detail to someone else’s answer, append a reply comment.

Show your approval for an idea by liking the comment in question. Like as many comments as you want.

The original author of any main idea can count a riff on his or her idea as part of the main idea by saying so in a reply to the modification. If the original author does not make this approval, it is incorporated anyway, when the number of likes on a modification equals half or more of the number of likes on the main idea.

The three ideas with the greatest number of likes will be chosen as the primary causes of instability in the empire, to which the new ideologies must respond.

And… go!

Link Round-Up: Alien Big Rodent, Videodrome Weaponry

‎"The capybara is not a threat, just weird-looking."

MEAT GUNS!!

The Final Status

The judges have received their applications, the juridical process has gone down in all of its behind-the-scenes violence and splendor, and a winner may now be announced in the 2011 Gen Con buzzword competition.

As you'll recall, the object of the exercise was to use status in a verb, as if this is a thing sane men and women actually do. Extra points were awarded for context, audacity, and fake sincerity.

Touts had chosen as their early frontrunner Kevin Kulp, who, in a swashbuckling disregard for the public trust, snuck it into his opening speech at the ENnie awards.

Yet after much debate and soul-searching, the judges have given this year’s prize to a scrappy up-and-comer, that ranker from R’lyeh, Cthulhu himself. While guesting on the This Just In From Gen Con podcast, the purulent incarnation of cosmic indifference mentioned that he’d been statusing Nyarlathotep. In so doing, he scored points for all three of the bonus categories, plus a special prize for wrapping it in a joke that worked outside of the contest.

Accepting on behalf of the winged, octopoid deity will be his public relations handler, Graham Walmsley.

Don’t despair, Kevin. When you’re up against an elder god, it’s always safest to come in second.

London oddsmakers still have Mr. Kulp down as the man to beat in ‘12. I have seen next year's word, and can attest that it is positively bone-chilling in its douchery. The competition will be fierce and without quarter.

Link Round-Up: Timely Review, TIFF Imminent

Dan Harms reviews Out of Time, the Trail of Cthulhu print compendium of non-1930s PDF scenarios.

Very exciting TIFF '12 announcements today: To, Tsukamoto, Lanthimos, Toyoda, Sono...and the 1st Whit Stillman in 13 years. Not to mention Juan of the Dead... Program book day is only a week away!

The Three Reveals of Gen Con (Part Two): Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Last week, I spilled my first reveal of Gen Con: New Tales of the Yellow Sign.

Now for the second reveal, earlier teased as “my imminent conquest, alongside an esteemed colleague, of a new medium.”

This would be a new podcast I’ll be launching in tandem with the Prince of Cairo, the ever-voluble, irrepressibly erudite Kenneth Hite.

Our title? “Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.” Need I say more?

I thought not.

Yet I will, regardless. We’ll be trading palaver on games, film, history, eliptony and bookhoundery. Regular features will include Ken’s Time Machine, in which Ken tells us how he’d solve a given historical problem, if equipped with the means of chronotravel. We’ve already been asked if we’ll be fielding audience questions, and the answer is yes, we will!

We’re aiming for an early fall launch. Simon Rogers of Pelgrane Press is executive producing. He’s already lined up an impressive list of sponsors, but if you contact him right quick there might still be a slot left.

Watch this space for further details as our audio battle plan marches to inexorable fruition.

Link Round-Up: Razed Plays, Ashen Stars Themed, Terror Cloud

What Will Hindmarch learned running his post-apocalyptic GUMSHOE game Razed at Gen Con.

Ashen Stars gets theme music, composed by James Semple and Yaiza Varona.

Esoterror cloud experiment attacks rural New Brunswick.

The Birds

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