#ongoing Terra Ignota spam
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Found this on twitter today and it’s kind of spectacular. It gets at a lot of the subtler sources of my fascination *and* my discomfort with this series (other than, you know, the obvious ones: all the “justified” murder-and-atrocity, and the gender thing. And, just Mycroft in general.) ETA, for clarity: Don’t get me wrong, I *like* this series. But there’s certainly a lot of things in it that make me really really uncomfortable, which then made me think hard about *why* I’m so uncomfortable. (And also read some 18th century philosophy, and 1950s science fiction, in this particular case.) Terra Ignota made me - probably - *the* most productively uncomfortable I’ve ever felt.
That’s a recommendation. But only for a very particular kind of person/reader.
I still haven’t read the fourth volume and this article has spoilers, but I still chose to read it, because there’s no way I’m reading the fourth book anytime soon, as I would have to reread the first three first, to make any sense of it, and I’m just not good at long books, let alone series made up of several long and dense books, atm. Anyway, the spoilers proved of the global but vague variety. I’m ok with knowing how the war turns out, in this vague and general sense.
#I'm tagging this with my old tag#even though my ongoing spam hasn't been ongoing for years now#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#man I had some weird times with those books#esp. the first one
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There is now a first TLTL fic, it seems.
It’s a bonkers crossover with Doctor Who and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. o.O I tried to read it but my brain checked out pretty quickly going “what is this I don’t even”. This is... not what I would have expected the first fic in this fandom to be.
The obvious crossover for this fandom would be Hannibal, wouldn’t it? Though you’d have to put some DW or whatever in there just to make it possible for the characters to meet, of course, given the 400 year gap.
Or just give us one of the many potentially fascinating and/or hilarious scenes referred to but not described in the book. I’d pay good money to see in some detail how the plastic soldiers took down Mycroft, how Chagatai’s first encounter with ten-year-old J.E.D.D. played out, and how Madame brought Saladin to heel with one night of philosophical conversation. I’m also curious about that dinner Kosala had with Carlyle to bring them up to speed on the Mycroft situation.
(I’ve been hanging out in the DW section of AO3 recently in another installment of my vain quest to find fic that fulfills my exacting requirements. DW has to be the most frustrating fandom in which I’ve ever read; in 12 years of checking at intervals, I’ve found fewer than 10 fics that really hit the spot for me. Considering how prolific that fandom is, that is an amazingly low quota of “success”. ETA: of course, that is mostly because I’m looking for highly specific scenarios.)
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My favourite (spoilery) review yet. This sums up how I feel, too:
“I can’t recommend this book and I really liked it. I agree with its detractors more than its fans but I’m definitely a fan and not a detractor. It is possibly a deeply immoral book but might be the exact opposite.“
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And today’s award for “Most Terra-Ignota-sounding sentence found in a non-Terra-Ignota context” goes to:
“[Diderot’s Encyclopedia] was a treasury of subversive erudition with which, said Carlyle, ‘only the siege of Troy offers some faint parallel’.
- David Coward, Introduction to Jacques the Fatalist, p.xi
Carlyle! Troy! Diderot! Encyclopedias! Subversion and erudition! I could fill like half a Terra Ignota bingo card with just that one sentence!
#I lol'ed#what a weird comparison though#what does the siege of Troy have to do with subversive erudition?#I mean I'm sure what Carlyle was actually comparing here was the scale of the project of editing the encyclopedia#that makes more sense#Coward just repurposes the quote oddly#Hmpf liveblogs the Terra Ignota Reading List#Terra Ignota reading list#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#Jacques the Fatalist#books
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“I believe,” he thought. “I have faith.”
He jaunted again and failed again.
“Faith in what?” he asked himself, adrift in limbo.
“Faith in faith,” he answered himself. “It isn’t necessary to have something to believe in. It’s only necessary to believe that somewhere there’s something worthy of belief.”
- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#Gully at his most Mycroft#Hmpf liveblogs the Terra Ignota Reading List#Terra Ignota reading list#books
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Update on the Bester reread: Foyle’s mad plan resembles Perry’s - vaguely; mostly in terms of its elaboration - but he becomes something a bit more like Mycroft in the last third of the book. Though neither of the two TI characters are *that* similar to Foyle, ultimately. He starts in a different place and ends up in a different place than either of them, I think. Still, they clearly share some literary DNA. I should probably read The Count of Monte Cristo to see how many of the themes and character traits can be traced back to that.
Also still need to think some more about The Stars My Destination, and then maybe do a post on reddit.
(Trivia section: Both The Stars My Destination and Too Like the Lightning had earlier/alternative titles containing the animal that the books’ main character is frequently being compared to: Tiger, Tiger! for TSMD, Dogs of Peace for TLTL.)
I should finish my crazy essay about mass murderers first, though...
#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#books#Hmpf liveblogs the Terra Ignota Reading List#Terra Ignota reading list
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“Naturally.”
Papadelias: “How? There must have been thousands.”
Martin Guildbreaker: “Tens of thousands. At first I asked the Romanovan Censor if they could do some calculations for me, but they were too busy. Their deputy Jung Su-Hyeon Ancelet Kosala was also too busy, and Toshi Mitsubishi is biased, so I asked Mycroft Canner.”
Papadelias: “Naturally.”
- TLTL, p. 423/424
1.) I can’t even tell if Papadelias is being sarcastic here.
2.) Are any of them ever aware how fucking weird their constant reliance on Mycroft is?
3.) ESPECIALLY IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE, WHERE MYCROFT, EVEN IF WE COMPLETELY IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT HIM (DIFFICULT AS THAT IS), IS JUST AS LIKELY AS TOSHI TO BE BIASED???
Martin ends up hiring a set-set instead, because “Mycroft was also too busy”, lol - which seems like the sensible option he should have come up with in the first place, tbh. If you have tens of thousands of datasets to analyse, you don’t ask a person with a merely human brain, not even if it’s a brain like Mycroft’s. (Most definitely not if it’s a brain like Mycroft’s, actually, if you have any sense.)
#just sharing another small WTF moment#non-spoilery I think because nobody could 'get' it without context#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#the constant WTFery of everybody's relationships with Mycroft and Mycroft's relationships with everybody#this is now a tag#I'll have to retag some of my older relevant entries
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One of the things about these books is that with most of the characters, you’re kind of constantly guessing:
Is this strangeness I’m seeing here just cultural (or philosophical) difference?
Or is this character actually insane, even in their own cultural and philosophical context?
Or... is it something else again entirely (the supernatural)?
I’m actually enjoying this uncertainty here, and would be sad if it should end up being collapsed into just one possible explanation eventually.
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Bonus: if Mycroft really were a dog, he’d be this one.
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Kudos to Oxford World’s Classics for their choice of blurb on the back cover of Jacques, btw:
“Your Jacques is a tasteless mishmash of things that happen, some of them true, others made up, written without style and served up like a dog’s breakfast.”
-- (Source not given)
I am officially intrigued.
Also: PUPPY!!!
#so many dogs#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#Hmpf liveblogs the Terra Ignota Reading List#Jacques the Fatalist#books#Terra Ignota reading list
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“Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me! Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars."
-- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
The ending of TSMD has me even more convinced that the absence, in TLTL and 7S, of “common people”, is a very deliberate thing we’re supposed to notice.
#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#Hmpf liveblogs the Terra Ignota Reading List#Terra Ignota reading list#books
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Thematic resonance, offered without comment
“No,” Foyle roared. “Let them hear this. Let them hear everything.”
“You’re insane, man. You’ve handed a loaded gun to children.”
“Stop treating them like children and they’ll stop behaving like children. Who the hell are you to play monitor?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Stop treating them like children. Explain the loaded gun to them. Bring it all out into the open.” Foyle laughed savagely. “I’ve ended the last star-chamber conference in the world. I’ve blown the last secret wide open. No more secrets from now on... No more telling the children what’s best for them. Let ‘em all grow up. It’s about time.”
“Christ, he is insane.”
“Am I? I’ve handed life and death back to the people who do the living and dying. The common man’s been whipped and led long enough by driven men like us... Compulsive men... Tiger men who can’t help lashing the world before them. We’re all tigers, the three of us, but who the hell are we to make decisions for the world just because we’re compulsive? Let the world make its own choice between life and death. Why should we be saddled with the responsibility?”
- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
#the star-chamber isn't the Salon De Sade#Gully Foyle isn't Mycroft (nor Perry)#but 17-year-old Mycroft would find something to approve of here#and so would present-day J.E.D.D. Mason#note how often MASON and Kosala are identified as the world's mom and dad in the books#the world of TI has some growing up to do too#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#Great Men and tigers and dogs#Hmpf liveblogs the Terra Ignota Reading List#Terra Ignota reading list#books
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There’s a very particular kind of baffled, disbelieving laughter these books elicits from me frequently, and I think this may be a desired effect? Or it might not. It’s hard to tell.
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My Terra Ignota notes so far.
Left: 15 pages of rereading notes on TLTL
Second from left: (so far) 3 pages of rereading notes on 7S
Middle: 11 pages of notes organised by themes (gender, race, class, violence, Mycroft, inconsistencies, Big Ideas, religion, conspiracies etc.)
Second from right: 3 pages of assorted lists (names of writers and philosophers, names of tertiary characters, U-speak vocab)
Right: 8 pages of general notes / things I would like to discuss with people
*Really* need to turn this shit into some actual posts but that takes energy...
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"Cellar Christians!" Foyle exclaimed. He and Robin peered through the window. Thirty worshippers of assorted faiths were celebrating the New Year with a combined and highly illegal service. The twenty-fifth century had not yet abolished God, but it had abolished organized religion.
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
#ongoing Terra Ignota spam#I bet this kind of thing also happens in Ada Palmer's 25th century#also note how the driver of much social change in The Stars My Destination is the discovery of a super-fast mode of transportation#Gully Foyle is Edmond Dantes is Casimir Perry of course#Hmpf liveblogs the Terra Ignota Reading List#Terra Ignota Reading List
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Terra Ignota dog masterpost
* The first book's original title was "Dogs of Peace".
* Dominic's name for Mycroft is "stray"/”stray dog”/”chien errant”, and he treats him almost literally like a dog, a lot of the time. Other people also use that term for Mycroft, and similar ones. One particularly striking example: In the two and a half pages which Sniper spends on describing Mycroft, they describe him as (or compare him to) a "creature", a "scavenger", a "stray", a "predator", a "beast", a "dog", an "inhuman thing", a "wolf", a "fawning puppy". A lot of these terms are also applied, at various points, by Mycroft to himself (esp. “creature” and “thing”, I think.)
* Both Sniper's physical description of Mycroft, and Mycroft's description of Saladin contain a reference to (an impression of) fangs.
* Mycroft is awfully keen on calling people "master". Very doggy behaviour!
* Saladin is described in nearly as doggy (or wolfish) terms as Mycroft.
* Dominic. Canis Domini.
* Dominic is also described as a “bloodhound” and “hound” by Mycroft, I think.
* "My fall was almost silent, and I landed on all fours like an animal, so with my dappled uniform of gray and beige I must have seemed a beast." (TLTL p. 155) - Another example of the books suggesting a physical animality about Mycroft.
* The dog-and-cart-driver simile Mycroft tells to Bridger during that night in the cage at Madame's. (And what a doggish worldview that is...)
* And for that matter: Mycroft and Saladin being locked in a cage by Madame - like a pair of dogs.
* Also, Mycroft being locked in various other small box-like spaces at various points.
* Mycroft and Saladin's favourite school of philosophy in their youth was the Cynics - named after "kynos" = "dog".
* Running, Mycroft says, he equals a greyhound.
* Reaching a bit, but: in the first scene in which we encounter him, Mycroft first acts as a watchdog for Bridger and Thisbe, throwing Carlyle to the ground like a large dog might. Then he spends a lot of the rest of the scene cowering under a table... as dogs do.
* He actually spends a lot of time on floors, cleaning up (during his theological convo with Carlyle), being terrorised and kicked about by his “betters” (in Julia’s office when Dominic drops by). He also has to pick his food up from the floor in Alexandria, that one time when MASON gives him a sandwich. -- Granted, all this kind of comes with the territory of being a slave.
* Saladin registering as a dog on the tracker network. (Also, Bridger too.)
* Having a bit missing from an ear is also something that tends to happen to dogs a lot more often than it happens to humans...
* The chapter title "A Boy and His God", while probably referring to Carlyle and Bridger-as-a-sign-of-the-Divine, could be read to simultaneously also refer to Bridger and Mycroft, with Mycroft in the (metaphorical) role of the palindromic Dog.
* Mycroft’s hair colour is described as “off-black, closer to a grayish tint than brown”, which is one hell of a weird colour for a gene-tweaked, slow-aging, physically still 17-year-old, 31-year-old man of the future. Surely, premature greying isn’t a thing in that future, not that early in a 150-year lifespan? -- But greyish-black *is* a fur colour that occurs in dogs.
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