Fleharish Broad

Cursar Pakken and Duissane
infiltrate Bellicent Island

About 3 years ago I wrote two chapters of a sequel to Jack Vance's novel Trullion (see The League of Yrinna). After almost 40 years of wondering about the fates of Duissane Drosset and Glinnes Hulden, it was fun to continue exploring their lives and learn about their interstellar adventures on planets such as Numenes, Layerna and Yrinna. However, the mission of Duissane and Glinnes on the planet Yrinna was not the end of the story.

Alastor Cluster

source

Distant Planets such as Yrinna and Cynk (located within in Alastor Cluster) were where R. Gohrlay successfully used the Phari to solve the problem of connecting humans to the Bimanoid Interface, but my information sources are fragmented and incomplete. The origins of the tryp'At and the Ek'col remained mysterious and it was those two type of human variants that were crafted to efficiently use of the Bimanoid Interface and make possible the Final Reality.

Wyst

I have been sifting through the infites that I recently received from Yōd. It appears that I was close to learning the origins of the tryp'At and the Ek'col back in 2015. However, since I am tryp'At, there has been an effort to keep me in the dark and ignorant of my own origins. The key to further understanding of the hidden connections between Duissane and the tryp'At was finally penetrating the mysteries surrounding R. Gohrlay. I've actually been making some progress in that direction here in 2018.

Marune

Back in 2015, I discovered that Inspector Jantiff Revensroke (Vance's protagonist in Wyst) of the Whelm had traveled to the planet Marune and obtained evidence for the existence of alien endosymbionts inside some special minority populations of the humans of Alastor Cluster. For example, the Idite, Ambal and Gensifer clans and some Rhunes had long been viable hosts for Phari endosymbionts.

Return to Trullion

see

However, long after the first few humans received their Phari endosymbionts, Alastor Cluster continued to function as an incubator, the site of continuing human breeding experiments aimed at finding a human gene pattern that was fully compatible with the Bimanoid Interface. Duissane was the culmination of those genetic experiments. After their mission on Yrinna, Duissane and Glinnes returned to Trullion.

"lost" money

Returning to their home planet, Duissane and Glinnes were forced to continue using the under-cover identities that they had been provided with for their mission to Yrinna. They were still trying to avoid arrest for theft of 30,000,000 ozols from the Lords of the Fens.

The central part of the Fens, including Fleharish Broad, near the home of Glinnes on Rabendary Island (source).

original cover art by
Edmund Emshwiller
and see this

Upon returning to the Fens, Glinnes quickly learns that Akadie the mentor has traced the roots of the Fanscherade movement to the secretive Society of Matriarchs, which has a base of operations on Bellicent* Island, at the heart of the Fens, adjacent to Fleharish Broad.

"starmenters" are the space
pirates of Alastor Cluster

Investigation of the Order of Lords has revealed that Lord Gensifer had been acting as the local agent of the Gensifer Clan which operates out of their headquarters on the planet Yrinna. The starmenter Bandolio was to have captured both Duissane and Glinnes during his raid on Welgen. Duissane and Glinnes were to have been transported to Yrinna by Bandolio, but quick action taken by Glinnes during the raid allowed them to avoid capture.

The League of Yrinna
original art by Boris Vallejo

Of course, there were great forces at work trying to bring Duissane and Glinnes to Yrinna. No sooner had Bandolio's attempt to capture them failed and new forces were aligned to bring Duissane and Glinnes to Yrinna.

Eventually, Duissane and Glinnes were deployed by the Whelm as spies on a mission to investigate the League of Yrinna, an ancient alliance of space pirates. The modern Hussade League of Yrinna provided Glinnes with cover for a secret operation on the planet Yrinna. During their "Spare time" in between playing several hussade matches, Duissane and Glinnes manage to discover how the Phari secretly control the human population of Yrinna and most of the Alastor Cluster.

Infiltrating the Society
of Matriarchs (see)

Cursar Pakken and Duissane infiltrate Bellicent Island where they discover that the Society of Matriarchs is headed by R. Gohrlay (who uses a cover name: Lady de Vaenz). Using her technology for viewing the future, R. Gohrlay now suspects that the children of Duissane and Glinnes might be able to fully use the Bimanoid Interface. The main problem that R. Gohrlay is trying to deal with is that Duissane has some ability to see into the future by connecting to R. Gohrlay's positronic brain.

Time Travel War

Duissane accuses R. Gohrlay of using the Fanschers to commit genocide against the Trevanyi. R. Gohrlay is planning to send Duissane and Glinnes far back in time and bring into existence a new Reality in which the Time Travel War can be ended. Grean the Kac'hin arrives and detects that Duissane is pregnant with twins. Grean uses advanced nanite technology to secretly remove one of the embryos from Duissane's body. The special gene combinations of that stolen child eventually will be used by the pek to help create the Ek'col.

source
(Sedronite, image credits)

The details of exactly how the tryp'At and the Ek'col were created remain hidden. At one time I had imagined that the answers might be found by Azynov inside the AR Simulator. However, most of the crafting and polishing of the tryp'At and the Ek'col was apparently accomplished in the far past of the Ekcolir Reality.

Lord Gensifer formed the Fleharish Gorgons as a new Hussade team. According to legend, two of the mythical Gorgons were immortal.

in the Ekcolir Reality

At the end of Trullion, Lord Gensifer disappears under a dock, and everyone assumes that he was killed by merlings. However, his body was never recovered. There are hints in the infites that I received from Yōd indicating that Lord Gensifer was an artificial life form, crafted by the pek and used as their tool to facilitate a starmenter raid on the Fens that would capture Duissane and Glinnes. Zeta speculates that Glinnes, who was also briefly a member of the Gorgon team, may have been the other immortal Gorgon.

source

__________
*note: there is a difference in the Vance Integral Edition map of the Fens, "Bellicent" is changed to "Bellicnet".
__________
Related Reading: R. Gohrlay in the distant past
  2018: the investigation continues

Next: Qazation

Visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers.

Cover 500

cover 1

I like to acknowledge arbitrary numerical milestones since doing so provides me with an opportunity for reflection and meta-analysis. Back in 2015 I reached 500 posts to the wikifiction blog. In 2013 I began keeping a special image album with book and magazine covers (Album Archive, Google Photos). Now I have reached 500 images in that image album. Here in this blog post, I look back at 10 of the cover images from my Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers.

Miners of Earth

When I started my image album for science fiction covers, I was writing about Thomas, the author of a story called Miners of Earth. I imagined that Thomas also wrote a book called Daveed the Luk'ie, which was actually a fantasy story.

source

Another early cover that I had created was an imaginary magazine cover. In the Exode saga, Gohrlay was the woman whose brain was scanned to obtain the neural circuity template used in positronic robots. My cover for Science Horror Stories depicts Gohrlay undergoing a destructive brain scan. Most of the book and magazine covers in the Archive are for science fiction stories. It now seems strange that two of the earliest covers were for a fantasy story and a horror story.

Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

source

One of the unusual covers in the Gallery is an animated gif for The Legend of Uvadekoto.

source

In 2014 I engaged in a project where I began with some public domain pulp magazine covers and transformed them into imaginary covers depicting concepts from the Exode saga. I imagine that all living things on Earth are a mixture of biological cells and invisibly small zeptites.

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I made use of the skills that I was developing to make covers for the books in the Exode saga. I had a lot of fun making a cover image for Foundations of Eternity. That is Grean the Kac'hin using time travel technology to deal with the sudden arrival of a Buld spaceship on Earth.

source and image credits

By 2014 I was deep into creating covers for books that had been written by my imaginary collaborators such as Ivory and Anney Fersoni.

2015

Some of the covers in the Gallery are for imaginary books that I wish my favorite authors had written. There is Wayness on the Planet of the 19 Moons (larger).

source

Gwyned (larger) is the sister of Thomas. Thomas and Gwyned had to be brought into existence in order to end the Time Travel War between R. Gohrlay and the Huaoshy. The mother of Thomas and Gwyned was an Asterothrope while their father was an Ek'col.

source

I like to imagine that in previous Realities there were analogues of famous writers who wrote different science fiction stories, ones that do not exist in our Reality. For example, Hafren Wells wrote a book called Nanomancy (larger view).

500

One of the frustrating aspects of making cover images is finding images of people who look like they are doing something interesting. For the 500th upload to the Gallery of Covers, here is an alternative depiction of the Klyz[e] Teleportation Terminal (larger image). We can imagine that she is using some kind of hi-tek control interface in advance of teleporting to a distant planet.

Next: Bellicent Island

Visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers.

Great Tales

1944

Edward Hamilton Waldo changed his name at the age of 11 and is known to science fiction fans as Ted Sturgeon. He was born in 1918, so this year (here in 2018) I have been celebrating 100 years of Ted Sturgeon by looking back at some of his stories.

Killdozer comic

Sturgeon's 1944 novella "Killdozer!" was the inspiration for a 1974 TV movie. I remember advertisements for that movie, but I never saw it (review). I lived another 44 years not realizing that Ted Sturgeon was in any way connected to that movie. There was also a comic (review) that was based on Sturgeon's story.

cover by Karen Nelson

Here in 2018 I finally read "Killdozer!" in my copy of Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Here is what it says on the inner flap, "... Killdozer! tells what happens when a mutant energy force with intelligence and a will to destroy is liberated ...".

The introduction to Great Tales was written by Isaac Asimov and it is called "The Age of Campbell". Asimov described how John Campbell dominated science fiction during the 1940s and how he had taught dozens of writers that "... science fiction was not about adventure primarily but about science. It was not about mad scientists, but about hard working thinkers."

"The Wages of Synergy"

After all of his highfalutin words in the introduction, Asimov did not say anything about Sturgeon. Apparently Sturgeon went through a rough period in the early 40s and he actually worked for a time operating a bulldozer.

Standard advice is "write what you know", but really now, are there any science fiction fans who want to read about bulldozer clutches?

In the Ekcolir Reality

The Dead Hand of Campbell

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Upon looking at the text of "Killdozer", I noticed that it has three parts. The first page, 7 paragraphs, is entirely in italics and it is easy for me to imagine that it was either written by Campbell or lifted by Sturgeon from old stories such as Campbell's 1932 "The Last Evolution". I can picture a scene with Campbell handing Surgeon a sheet of paper with those 7 paragraphs and asking Sturgeon to write a story based on Campbell's idea. I wonder if a young Campbell had nightmares about monsters under his bed and those frights set the tone for his science fiction.

source

7 paragraphs
Imagine an ancient technologically-advanced alien civilization that created "electron-beings" that were "spawned in mighty machines". Those artificial lifeforms "became the people's masters" and "great were the battles that followed". Eventually, it was discovered that the great war could be ended by using neutronium as an insulator that could trap and imprison the enemy, the "mental life-medium".

Cthulhu

Then the bulk of the story begins. A construction crew is using a bulldozer to dig up some old stone ruins, the stones shift and, "... something whooshed out of the black hole where the rocks had been. Something like a fog..." Suddenly the bulldozer throws off its driver and starts running itself and killing off members of the construction crew.

Who goes there?

The third part of the story is the ending, the final page. Again, I suspect it was written by Campbell. That last page is a confused mess, but I think it was Campbell's attempt to put an end to the alien being that turned the bulldozer into a killing machine.

Exode saga

Did the evil alien force migrate from the bulldozer into the IRBM that is mentioned on the last page of the story? Should we assume that the alien being took control of the experimental rocket and tried to continue its mayhem? I don't know. 

Alternatively, was it well meaning Earthlings who deployed the missile in an attempt to explode the fuel drums and dynamite stores on the island and make certain that the evil alien force was stopped? 

Anyhow, apparently the page limit had been reached and the story had to be ended, so Campbell ended it.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Arnold Kohn
and Frank Freas.

Exode

"Killdozer" is of interest to me because I've recently included an ancient alien artifact in the Exode saga. The problem I face is that for my story I want an alien artifact that can both 1) be quickly recognized as being of alien origin and then 2) just as quickly have its existence be expunged from the record.

I must confess that I have been struggling with this question for my story: exactly how many people must die in order to erase physical evidence of the artifact from Earth? Is even one death too many? 

This is usually the place in my own stories where I arrange for the person who must be killed to be duplicated and sent off to Observer Base.

Ya, my stories have lower body counts than a Ted Sturgeon story such as "Killdozer!".

source

Related Reading
Fictional Chemistry
Helix 1954
Host
Baby is 2018
Straitjacket
Star Trek 50
Baby is Three
Sturgeon's Law

Next: the 500th cover image

Visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers.

Album Archives

error generated when trying to manage
an album archive in Google Photos

Last month I began to wonder how Google was going to deal with existing Google+ Album Archives if they are shutting down Google+. So far, the answer seems to be: "Not very gracefully".

Today I'm getting a 404 error when using the "more options" menu item "manage in Google Photos" to link from a Google Album Archive to Google Photos.

Google bugs

If I go to my Google+ account, view the "profile" and click on "About" then there is a link to my image Album Archive. In the past, those image Album Archives had a Google+ URL "https://plus.google.com". Now there is a "https://get.google.com" URL.

source

If I select the Book and Magazine Covers archive then I can select a link called "Manage in Google Photos" (see the image below). The images begin to open in Google Photos then the 404 error occurs (see the image at the top of this blog post).

If I access the Book and Magazine Covers archive using the older style plus.google.com URL, then the page looks somewhat different. From that archive page, I can use a different link to Google Photos (see below) and then the archive will open without the 404 error.

I've been worried that all of my older image archives might simply disappear when Google+ is phased out. Since 2013 I have been using my "posters" and the Book and Magazine Covers archives that I created within my "alisence" Google+ account (this is a "brand account" that is linked to my YouTube account). There are many hypertext links to those archives from this blog.

Today I tried to link my main Google Photos account to the "alisence" "posters" and the Book and Magazine Covers archives.

How Brand Accounts Work

As shown above, I was able to upload three videos to the "alisence" Book and Magazine Covers archive from my main Google Photos account. About two hours later, they were visible within Google Photos from the "alisence" account. However, those images do not seem to have been transferred into the old Google+ archive.


The image archives for my Blogger blogs are associated with my main Google account (Album Archives). There is also another Google+ account associated with my main Google account.

However, those (above) are not all of the Album Archives. When using Blogger to create new content for the wikifiction blog, I can access images that I have previously uploaded. I'm now also getting updates about the linked "alisence" account and its Google Photos  activity. Internal to Blogger, if I click on "From Google Album Archive" then additional archives are visible (current album archive for this blog):

The two archives labelled 2018-11-23 (above) are the "posters" and the Book and Magazine Covers archives that I am now sharing between my "alisence" Google Photos account and my main Google Photos account that is linked to my Blogger blogs. The Album Archive called "posters" contains the one image that I uploaded today using my main Google Photos account. The Album Archive called "Book and Magazine Covers" contains the three images that I uploaded using my main Google Photos account.

source

I suspect that the "share your library" feature in Google Photos was not really designed to link together a "brand" account with a main account in the way I am doing it.

Album Archive, native view (495 images):

...same Album Archive in Google Photos (498 images):

Visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers.

I would not really mind switching over to using Google Photos for everything if 1) Google would display my stored images to people without harassing them to make an account and 2) if Google Photos was a stable photo-sharing application. They keep changing it and introducing new bugs. Today I noticed that Google had inserted an "estimated location" into an image in my album for books and magazine covers. "Sakarun" is apparently Sakarun, Croatia, a tourist destination that probably advertises heavily on Google.

Notice that my image is actually for an imaginary location, Bellicent Island on the planet Trullion. I'm not interested in having Google insert "estimated locations" into my album for such images.

Google's instructions for editing a location are shown to the right. I first tried to enter the correct location, Bellicent Island on the planet Trullion, but Google Photos only seems to except locations that already exist in their data base. I then entered "no location and now my album looks like this:

I conclude that Google Photos will continue to be a source of irritation for me since I don't use it in the way that Google expects most people to use their service. I know that Google is in the business of figuring out people's locations and then pushing location-specific advertising at them. If that is Google's plan to monetize Google Photos than that is fine, but must they do it in such an inept fashion?

Today I uploaded an image to an album using Google Photos. That was several hours ago and that new image is still not being displayed in the album. I guess all of their processing CPU cycles are going to other things such as estimating locations. The image to the left shows how Google Photos tried to force me to identify my own image today. This was just the first of several attempts, all of which I had to dismiss with extreme prejudice, particularly since none of these faces is mine.

2023 Update. Today I got an email from google.com saying, "Starting on July 19, 2023, Album Archive will no longer be available."

Related Reading