Shadows of the Apt » beetles

Helmess Broiler and Jodry Drillen

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:06:13 +0000

Contains some spoilers for book 4 and later.

Brief diversion on the writer's art to look at these two characters, a brace of Beetle-kinden politicians. Unprepossessing stuff, surely.

However, what the two of them, bitter rivals as they are, demonstrate is the ability of characters to get completely out of control. Along with many writers, I've often gone off on one about the plot and characters having a life of their own, and I'm never sure whether people think this is just authorial poseuring or what, so:

If you've read as far as the Scarab Path, you'll remember these two. Jodry is one of Stenwold's allies, and he kicks the plot of Scarab off by prompting the Khanaphir expedition that Che is a member of. Helmess is the man whose thunder he's stealing, an opponent of Stenwold and all round less reputable character. That's the first we hear of either of them.

Except of course that's not true. However, it was the first I wrote of either of them. And, if you've got as far as Sea Watch you'll know that they both become rather important characters thereafter. Their shared achievement, however, is to somehow concoct an Apt-powered time machine and make subsequent appearances before their intended first outing.

I was writing the first draft of Scarab Path (then called Sacred Servants) at around the same time as my agent was helping me get Empire into shape, and one of his suggestions was an early chapter in which Stenwold gets heavy in the Assembly, Churchill stylee, and for that I needed a foil. It could have been anyone, but i had this chap Helmess Broiler kicking about, and so he got the job. The man of suspect loyalties became a more concrete antagonist, and of course, if you've read Sea Watch, you'll know where that all goes to.

Similarly, Jodry Drillen was new-minted for Scarab Path, but then I ran into something of a timing issue in Salute the Dark. Stenwold returns from his jaunt to the Commonweal and is met by Lineo Thadspar, the old Speaker for the Assembly. Except that Salute had a rejigging in which the order of some sections changed, and abruptly Lineo was basically bedridden when Stenwold needed to chew his ear off. Before I could put in a casting call, enter Jodry Drillen, already with his eyes on the Speaker's newly vacant sandals, handling Stenwold like a professional.

It's very likely that without those chance substitutions and additions, neither character would have become sufficiently fleshed-out (literally, in Jodry's case) to become the major players they are in Sea Watch and beyond: twin careers in politics born entirely out of editing necessity.

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New Story: Cities of Silver

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:54:38 +0000

This is going to be the last short for a while, as I'm on the very cusp of starting on Book 9, which so far going under the working title of "I haven't the faintest idea what the title will be" or, given that my publishers have a fondness for punchy titles, "I haven't the faintest idea what the title will be of doom".

Cities of Silver is the first outing for Doctor Ludweg Phinagler (1) who will hopefully return for a few more adventures later. He promises to be a useful vehicle to explore some corners of the kinden's world that the main plot won't have the change to seriously examine (indeed if anyone has anywhere in particular they would like the good doctor to go, by all means pipe up.)

It's also worth saying that I am obviously lying through my teeth about "short". This one ballooned into something more like a novella than a short story. The Doctor does tend to go on.

Finally, this story stands as an artifact within the kinden's world. It is a book (2) printed and sold in Collegium, and cheaply at that, in the general category of "awful books", originally stories to inspire awe, but more lately simply sensationalist unlikely stories. Hence the actual truth of anything that our narrator Fosse sets down should be treated with a pinch of mineral salts.

Nonetheless, the story can be found here. Enjoy.

(1) Anyone who has been obsessively reading this blog since Way Back™ may remember the distant genesis and inspiration here.

(2) or at least an English translation of one, I suppose.

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New story (as promised) — The Last Ironclad

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Sat, 21 May 2011 22:16:48 +0000

I've been getting my teeth into some more short story writing before the bell tolls and it's round one for the next actual book (book 9, title still up in the air, unfortunately (1)). This new offering is The Last Ironclad and, as the title suggests, it's a direct follow-on from Ironclads, which you should read first if you haven't already. The reason that this particular story got written, out of the whole bundle of ideas I have bubbling away, is that it's actually important to Heirs of the Blade — in fact, if you're familiar with the shorts on this site, a few faces and names will leap out at you from Heirs. It's an odd thing — the stories were always intended to let me go explore things I didn't think I'd get a chance to — like the Commonweal in the Twelve-Year War. Now Heirs of the Blade is due shortly, and a lot of that is set square in the middle of the Commonweal, where I finally get to show you what life's really like over there (2). That means I've been dredging my own earlier shorts as reference material, and as the plot came together, some of the more interesting characters from the stories became caught in it, feeding back into the series that had spun them off.

As well as the separate story I've written for Tor's proposed author anthology (no word on that yet), I am midway through a third which should get done before I need to start on book 9. This won't be prequel material, but instead a very definite exploration of an area I'm unlikely to go back to much in the series. Anyone who wanted a proper look into Lake Limnia, your time may yet come.

So: I leave you with The Last Ironclad.

(1) Either I get the title right from the start or it's always like a slightly ill-fitting piece of clothing, try as I might…

(2) Stenwold's flying visit in Salute the Dark notwithstanding.

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New Story: The Chains of Helleron

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:39:58 +0000

As most of the recent stories have been, this is another sequel. In this case it's the sequel to The Sun of the Morning, and unlike Rooftop Lovers or The Price of Salt it follows very closely on. The explots of Captain Mornen and his company are intended to form something almost like a novella (and I suppose I am following on from Glen Cook's Black Company to a certain extent, another story of soldiers which had an episodic quality, and which effectively established a little sub-genre perhaps best described as Band of Brothers fantasy (1), a baton that Erikson has since taken and run with magnificently.

One thing that is, to a certain extent, unavoidable, is that telling a story through individual stories results in compromise, and The Chains of Helleron isn't quite as self-contained and satisfactory as I'd like, for there is a certain proportion of it that only makes sense as a segment of a sequence — notably characters that are introduced but do not get much of the action. In the end I've settled for this, on the basis that there should be a third story along eventually that will help everything along. Working on the later books of the actual Shadows of the Apt series, I've discovered something similar in macrocosm. As the series grows, I am put to greater foreshadowing of future events in order to maintain the series structure. Each book will have its own story arc, its beginning and its end, but a certain amount of material will be unable to resolve, pending developments in later books.

You can find The Sun of the Morning here and, if you've not read it, do get it under your belt before attempting the new one.

After that, you can find The Chains of Helleron here.

(1) Yes, I know Black Company predates Band of Brothers (the book and the miniseries, albeit not the wartime experiences on which they are based).

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Faculties of Literature

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:13:29 +0000

Literacy in Collegium is close to one hundred percent. Indeed, literacy across the Lowlands is extremely high. Collegium's academic credentials have a lot to do with this. The College and the Assembly ensure that a basic education is available for all, and charitable institutions such as the Way Brothers provide schools in Helleron and other cities. However the root of all this is in truth with the Moth-kinden, once Collegium's masters. They themselves have a long tradition of literacy and education, and they ensured that their favoured servants, the Beetle-kinden, were also able to read and write, in order to perform the relatively elevated tasks the Moths demanded of them. This intellectual emancipation, of course, is one of the contributing factors to the Beetles' great revolution. Other slave-kinden of the Moths were not educated in the same way, but the concept, the idea of knowledge as a mark of privilege and power, was deeply ingrained in them and, once free to do so, the Ant-kinden and others pursued the written word with a grim determination.

In the Spiderlands, the Spiders themselves have always been literate and, for reasons akin to the Moths', so have their closer servants. Beyond the immediate circles of the Aristoi, however, standards vary from satrapy to satrapy depending on the preferences of the subject races. The Empire has a similar policy. Wasp-kinden are expected to be able to read and perform basic arithmatic, and slaves are often trained to do so, so as to take over those more educated tasks that Wasps themselves still consider demeaning.

Meeting this largely literate population is the printing press and moveable type, innovations that the Beetle-kinden have had for almost two centuries now, as well as the ability to produce relatively cheap paper. These Apt contributions merge with a longer-standing tradition that places high value on story-telling, music, dance and the dramatic arts, and result in an extremely rich intellectual landscape across the Lowlands and beyond.

Theatre and Drama

Traditional theatre for the Beetle-kinden generally consists of farce with a healthy dose of topical satire. There are more and less highbrow versions, with varying injections of music, but an evening at the theatre in Collegium or Helleron is generally not complete unless a major statesman is lampooned and someone is caught in flagrante with a man in drag. However the Beetles are also great importers, and they will happily pillage any other artistic traditions they can get their hands on.

The Mantis-kinden set great store by oral tradition, and their preference is for either solo instrument or unaccompanied voice. They tell stories and sing sagas which almost always revolve around the tragic history of some hero or other, who sets herself up against the world, fails owing to some flaw, makes a horrible mess of everyone's life and then dies trying to redeem herself. Mantis tragedies are sometimes ripped off by Beetle dramatists, creating a whole new mongrel style of theatre, full of speeches and bloodshed. The Mantids themselves seldom attend.

Also popular are plays in the Fly-kinden style, which traditionally centre about the escapades of a rogue, wanderer or similar lowly individual, who falls in love, gets embroiled in the schemes of his betters, plays tricks and escapes with his hide intact. The Flies usually poke fun at larger kinden (when these are performed in their native settings, Fly actors don outsize clothes and take to the air to impersonate other peoples), but their stories also often have a curiously melancholy feel. The rogue gets away unpunished, the rich and powerful are usually humiliated, and yet at the end of the play they are still rich, and he's still poor, and there is a sense that the hapless protagonist must run twice as fast just to keep what little he has.

Ant-kinden plays simply do not travel, being chorus-heavy pieces "performed" mostly in the internal speech of the Ants' mindlink, and whilst the Moths have a considerable tradition of mystery plays, tragedies and philosophical pieces, they are sufficiently opaque that the Beetles tend to find them incomprehensible and dull.

The grandest dramatic traditions are those of the Spider-kinden, who are perhaps the keenest exponents, and consumers, of the dramatic arts. There are a number of distinct genres within the Spider theatre, including revenge plays and complex mime pieces with mirrored romantic and political plots but the Spider drama that travels best is their 'naif' dramas. These generally involve a Spider Aristos travelling amongst foreigners, or some far satrapy of the Spiderlands (or sometimes coming home after long foreign travels), becoming involved in their feuds, being manipulated by the local players, and often falling in love. Many of the naif dramas are through-sung, and they span a range between deep tragedy and light comedy.

It is notable that much of the dramatic tradition of the kinden can be seen as a way of the author turning the mirror on her audience. Mantis heroes are almost invariably failures, by the strict tenents of Mantis honour, and it is their fall that creates the story. Beetle stories punish the guilty and the pompous, and Fly plots highlight the inequality and impotence that their kinden often face amongst others. Spider-kinden drama, and most especially the naifs, generally centre upon an agonist, or pair of agonists, who are genuinely pure, honest and guileless, and who weather the vicissitudes of the world because of it.

Literature

As well as being a melting pot of dramatic art the Beetle-kinden have sparked something of a revolution in literature. Whilst the Moths and Mantids cling to their hand-written scrolls, printed Beetle books are becoming popular everywhere else. Even Spider-kinden, who set such store by elegant handwriting and calligraphy as an art form, are not immune to the lure of mass-produced literature. Spider-kinden, in common with many of the Inapt, tend to prefer live readings (after all, what are literate slaves for?) but they have always had a fondness for reading poetry in private, and the printing presses have ensured that many a Collegium parlour has witnessed a Beetle raconteur mangling Spider verse. The Beetles themselves, however, are prolific in producing home-grown prose, inventing their own genres in a field that is constantly developing. The idea of reading for pleasure is relatively new but has grown riotously over the last few decades to become fashionable and popular at many levels of society. Whilst there are books printed immaculately on vellum, inlaid with gold and with manual illustrations, these are chiefly for export. Collegium's home market craves variety and quantity, and the books produced are made in bulk as cheaply as possible.

The current popular genres that throng Collegium book-sellers are:

Polemics — political tracts, usually presenting their point by allegory, often using animals to represent public figures. These are usually very short, illustrated with unflattering woodcuts and printed by the hundred on hand-cranked presses. They are usually to be had for free. Polemics have long played a small but influential role in political debate, and it is common for rivals to sponsor derogatory polemics about each other. However the very ubiquity of the polemic has lessened its impact, and these days even the most vitriolic pamphlet is unlikely to do a great deal of harm. Instead a new tradition of comic polemics with less of an axe to grind is slowly taking over. Polemics are universally anonymous, for obvious reasons. Reprinted collections of past polemics are becoming a popular item.

Romances — purportedly historical tales, usually set before (or during) the revolution, rehashing Spider naif opera, Mantis tragedy and actual history in order to produce stories full of blood and thunder. The current favourites include The Tragedy of Lystresae, Lucis and Lucea and Tarvaeos the Charlatan, all solid faux-histories of the Bad Old Days. In the last few years a new brand of romance has emerged set after the revolution, featuring Beetles, Ants and Fly-kinden rather than the old Inapt races. The reading public is so far unsure about these experiments, the one notable success being The Lay of the Bloodfly, unusual in that it glorifies the exploits of a pirate active off the Collegium coast only a generation ago. Romances are traditionally anonymous, the writer identified by, for example "A Gentleman of Seldis" or even "One Who Was There". It is widely believed that this is because the majority of romanticists are current or retired academics, who would not want to prejudice the reputation of their factual writings.

Sophistories — philosophical satires which use devices such as the "journey to a land where everything is done backwards" to send up and highlight societal problems. They make for elevated reading, and the satire is sufficiently disguised that a stranger to Collegium can happily read the story and take it for nothing but a very highbrow example of the genre below. The best known sophistories are certainly The Flea-kinden by Knowles Sarter, in which the unnamed protagonist is shipwrecked on an island inhabited by tiny people, and Damall's An Artificer's Voyage to the Moon, whose hero finds lunar cities of goat-kinden, horse-kinden and sheep-kinden whose bizarre societies are reversals of the Lowlands' own.

Awful Books — this is an emerging genre less than a decade old, differing from romances in that the settings are usually contemporary, though almost always somewhere exotic (and/or made up), and differing from sophistories in that they have no pretense to satire or social commentary, offering only cheap spectacle. The name was originally intended to denote books that inspired awe and wonder but the alternative interpretation is, say the serious academics, entirely just. The premise of an Awful Book is that the author is recounting his travelogue in some distant land, perhaps amongst the Moth-kinden, in the Spiderlands, or in some unheard-of place altogether. The hero, almost always a Collegiate Beetle to date, and generally accompanied by some manner of servant or colleague, has various escapades, meets lunatic magicians, evades dangerous animals, acquires dubious treasures, meets beautiful foreign princesses and discovers lost cities, and all in all has a high old time in a way that would make the sophistory protagonists green with envy. Some of these books are simply adventures, others are written to evoke horror, or involve complex principles of speculative artificing. The genre is yet young, and read mostly by students at the Great College, artificiers' apprentices and the like, but its appeal is growing. The universal rule for Awful Books is their claim to be true accounts, and it is likely that a number of genuine travelogues have been consigned to this category by their readers, or indeed their printers. The original inspiration for works such as these, of course, is the story of (NAME), a pioneering aviator whose revelations of the Spiderlands (some of which at least were later found to be true) were taken as, and widely printed as, fiction on his return to Collegium.

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John, Paul, George and Stenwold

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:38:47 +0000

It's the turn of the Beetle-kinden for December, as we begin the home run to February and the release of Dragonfly Falling. The Beetles are a mainstay of Empire in Black and Gold and its sequels: Stenwold and Cheerwell are two of the most important protagonists, Collegium perhaps the single most key place. Still, this is an accident of plot and locality. The story of the Wasp war could be told just as easily from the point of view of a Sarnesh tactician, for example, or an itinerant Spider-kinden rogue — or a Wasp Rekef Major, for that matter. Perhaps eventually it will be. We see the war through Beetle-coloured spectacles, but their race is neither uniquely destined, nor drearily "vanilla". Indeed there are Beetles and Beetles, and the Collegium breed is notably different to their cousins in Helleron, their more distant relatives in Myna, or the multitude of Beetle-kinden living and working industriously within the Empire.

So, I give you a new story, To Own the Sky, which comes with it's very own extra-special Christmas bonus, as shown here and another of David Mumford's splendid pieces of kinden art (and one of my favourites) here .

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To Own the Sky, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:32:20 +0000

This month's story is a delve into the history of Collegium and the Beetle-kinden, taking place a generation before the events in Empire in Black and Gold. The world of Empire is the immediate product of the world shown in this story, from the advances of the Apt to Collegium's burgeoning conflict with the Ant-kinden of neighbouring Vek and their alliance with the Sarnesh.

You can find the story here

There is also something of a subtext to this story that has nothing to do with the world of Empire per se: this story was written for my writing group, the Deadliners, whose tradition is for twice-yearly short stories to be written to a particular set of rules. The rules this time were that each member would have to produce a children's story, and then write an adult story that mirrored or included the children's story in some way. The results were… interesting. Needless to say one frequently sat through the kids' piece squirming with the knowledge that Unspeakable Horrors were waiting just out of sight. Also, our resident gentle-humourist-in-chief, produced one of the most stomach-turning pieces of horrible stuff I've ever heard read.

However, as a very special Christmas present, the unplumbed depths of my children's piece can be found here complete, yea verily, with illustrations from the author's fair hand. Enjoy.

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Beetle-kinden, by David Mumford

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:08:06 +0000

Industrious and adaptable, the Beetle-kinden are the Lowlands’ great innovators, forever labouring to improve their lot. Merchants and artisans, scholars and artificers, their tireless drive for progress has driven forward the boundaries of technology and trade through an interplay of philanthropy and ruthless self-interest. Beetles truly embody the best and worst of the post-revolution world, finding new heights of altruism and new depths of greed.

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The Prince, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:50:21 +0000

The latest Shadows of the Apt short story is to be found here.

A lot of this batch of stories are, as you may have noticed, taking place specifically up in the Commonweal during the Twelve-years War with the Empire, a conflict over before Empire in Black and Gold starts, and taking place in lands that we're unlikely to actually see first hand for some time. So why?

Nothing in Empire makes sense without the Twelve-year war. Salma, for example, is a child of that war. He would have been around eight years old when it started. It dominated most of his life. His father and his foster-sister were both casualties of it, as were many other people he knew.

And then there's Thalric, whose duty committed him to atrocity in that same war, who was just a young officer when Myna was taken, but came out of the Commonweal clash a bloody-handed veteran.

But most importantly, there is the Empire. The Empire was already a great and accelerating force when it commenced its invasion of the Commonweal, but it was in its battles with the Dragonfly-kinden that it honed its skills, especially its new technologies. Those skills are now to be turned on Stenwold's people and the rest of the Lowlands.

And of course, it was a near thing, in the end, once Myna and its neighbouring cities were conquered. What a small change of strategy would have seen the imperial forces chasing Stenwold all the way back to Collegium seventeen years ago, rather than turning their attention north?

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New short story: Fallen Heroes by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:20:58 +0000

Most of the short Shadows of the Apt fiction on this site will touch on the main series, even if sometimes only peripherally. It is entirely possible that Varmen or Averis may at some point cross the pages of a future volume. However, with a nod to the fact that Balkus the Ant was the lead in Loyalties, I fully intend to steer clear of over-using the main characters. After all, they can't be everywhere at once.

With that resolution, here's a story that, in part, is about a certain Mantis kicking his heels in Helleron between chapters one and two of Empire in Black and Gold, but, despite that, is purportedly about Fly-kinden.

Download Fallen Heroes here.

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