"A Discordant Melody"

by Sean Williams

 [E]vil things, in robes of sorrow, 
  Assailed the monarch's high estate ;
 (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
 Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
 And, round about his home, the glory
 That blushed and bloomed
 Is but a dim-remembered story
 Of the old time entombed.

These lines of verse are quoted from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Haunted Castle", a poem that evokes a sense of terror and dreadful inevitability in a tale already steeped with both. "The Fall of the House of Usher" and its nested verse were key sources during the writing of Earth Ascendant. Poe's tale of the fracturing psyche and the destructive nature of human imagination was one of three serving as inspiration for each of the books of Astropolis. Robert Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer lurks at the heart of Saturn Returns, while Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde performs the same role for The Grand Conjunction.

What do such Gothic stories have in common with New Space Opera by a twenty-first century science fiction writer? Even at first glance, a lot. A considerable number of Gothic tropes appear in Astropolis, not just once but numerous times. Throughout his (mis)adventures, Imre Bergamasc encounters many doppelgangers of himself and his friends, some of which could be considered ghostly, undead, or even vampiric. His fragmented memory is analogous to a discovered manuscript, similar to those pored and obsessed over by many Gothic protagonists. Historical or ruined settings play an important role, as do castle-like structures, underground spaces, shipwrecks and graves. Immoral, or at least fallible, religious figures abound. Unjust persecution, mob violence, poisonous family secrets, unspeakability, sexual danger and incest also put in an appearance.

And beneath it all, the inescapable central theme: that no matter how one strives, corruption awaits--corruption of the body, of one's morals, of society, of the self.

Melmoth the Wanderer is the story of a man who sells his soul to the Devil for an extra 150 years of life with predictably messy consequences. It's also a tale told via nested stories--accounts within accounts that occasionally loop back on themselves, so someone who started off as a narrator may later appear as an actor in someone else's tale. The structure of Saturn Returns borrows heavily from that idea, with Imre past and present seen through many different eyes--including his own. The emergence of Imre's former self as a being in his own right, "Himself", comes to fulfilment with the discovery of a deal he made with the long-dead Forts, a deal that made him something both more and less than human.

Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde contains one of Gothic literatures most recognisable antagonists, after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bran Stoker's Dracula: the eponymous Doctor Jekyll's "dark half", given flesh by a chemical process designed to free his virtuous nature from the stigma of sin. The notion that psychological corruption underlies outward respectability is often read as a biting critique of the time in which it was written. That theme finds a place in the last book of Astropolis, alongside Imre's determination to confront his own "dark half", the revenant he has been pursuing for over one million years.

If premature burial and bad weather (where is the "dark and stormy night" in humanity's bright future?) seem rather grim topics sometimes, I am consoled by the wordplay that inspires to a large degree the writer's craft. Taking the lyrics of Gary Numan and transforming them into dialogue is one particular pleasure indulged in this series--to the effect, hopefully, of creating a sense of other-worldliness in Render that would not exist were he to speak in a contemporary, "normal" voice. Another is taking the works and lives of Stevenson, Maturin and Poe and folding them into these far-future narratives, again to create a sense of anachronistic tension, but also to wear my sources on my sleeve, and to provide an extra layer of meaning for those intimately familiar with the Gothic.

It may not be apparent to many, when Render agonises over Imre's role in his betrayal during Saturn Returns, that he is quoting songs called "A Question of Faith", "In a Dark Place", "Haunted", and "My Shadow in Vain". Similarly, some might recognise the ruined liner Deodati as a nod to Mary Shelley, and that the founder of the First Church of the Return is called "Mother Turin", which can be abbreviated to "Ma Turin". The "Aldobrand Cipher" is an undisguised reference to Robert Maturin's play "The Castle of St Aldobrand". Another play, "Fredolfo", became a place-name, as did his great-uncle, Oscar Wilde. Maturin's pseudonym, Dennis Jasper Murphy, provided the name of the main character of Cenotaxis (a related novella released by MonkeyBrain Books in 2007). "Balzac beamers" are named after Honore de Balzac, who wrote a sequel to Maturin's classic novel in 1835.

Stevenson offers a peculiar challenge when it comes to such wordplay, for his works and his milieu are so familiar that finding exotic names associated with him can be difficult. Nevertheless, vessels such as the Memory of Markheim--named after a man who meets the Devil, or possibly an angel--and Perpetual Franchard abound.

No such problems exist with Edgar Allen Poe, from whom I have sought inspiration many times before. My fantasy novels, all set in a post-Apocalyptic world that remembers Poe through his words but not as a person, frequently mine this rich vein. The Stone Mage & the Sea contains a purloined letter and sets "A Dream Within a Dream" to music. The Sky Warden and the Sun quotes Poe's short story "William Wilson" ("Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned ... to the earth art thou not for ever dead? ... And a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?") while The Blood Debt appropriates a stanza from the poem "Eldorado". Poe's magnificent "The City in the Sea" provides a key plot point in The Storm Weaver and the Sand, while at the same time adding to a general mood of nostalgic hopelessness:

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air,

While from the proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

To return to Poe for Earth Ascendant was an indulgence I had initially tried to avoid, thinking that I might use Horatio Walpole's The Castle of Otranto as a source text instead. Regarded as one of the very first Gothic novels, Otranto is without doubt a worthy work, containing ominous prophecies, supernatural disruptions, and deliciously purple prose--plus no shortage of evocative names. Thematically, however, its fit was imperfect, and so it was to Poe I turned to fill the breach.

Earth Ascendant is several tragic stories at once. The failed relationship between Imre and Helwise reaches a grim head when she tries to wrest control of the galaxy from him. Their son, Ra, born not out of love but as a political bargaining chip, struggles to find a role for himself in the shadow of such titanic entities. Imre's physical and emotional entanglement with the women around him shows no sign of improvement in either Sevaste, false priest of his own religion and later parasite-infected harbinger of dark times ahead, or Emlee, his mistrusting bodyguard to whom he ultimately bequeaths his estate, before fleeing into the darkness in pursuit of his own mad quests. MZ, more of a ghost from the past than even Imre himself, seeks forgiveness for his own crimes but inadvertently leads Imre to a death that is no less shocking for being temporary. Dark ambitions, dark secrets, and the mystery of dark matter cast long shadows across the future of humanity, and what better writer to capture such complexity than Poe?

The description of Roderick Usher's deteriorating mansion, with its "many dark and intricate passages" filled with "sombre tapestries," "ebon blackness," and "armorial trophies", is redolent with an "atmosphere of sorrow ... and irredeemable gloom." Seen first reflected in the foul lake that will ultimately swallow it whole, it possesses a fine crack in its structure, one that is almost invisible but nonetheless serves as its defining feature. The symbolism was irresistible. If the mansion is the Returned Continuum, that crack is the widening divide between the First Prime and his Regent. If the mansion is Imre's life, then the crack stands for the separation between his present self and the rest of him, wherever he is.

Similarly, the decidedly grotesque relationship between Usher and the corpselike Lady Madeline--who, on finally dying, returns in order to fall on Usher and rob him too of life--resonates with Imre's relationships with both Helwise and Himself. The "sickening of the heart" that leads to Usher's downfall could also befall Imre, if he isn't careful. But what use is care in the face of such "unredeemed dreariness"?

"[A]s a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom."

Whether Imre will manage to rise above his fate remains to be seen.

Some of the passing references to Poe are more obvious than others. His first book was credited to "a Bostonian"; he travelled under the assumed name "Henri Le Rennet"; "Edgar A Perry was the name under which he registered for the army; "Reynolds" was the name he called out while dying. The Metzengersteins are a family of his creation; Zaknythos is alluded to in one of his dedications. "Al Aaraaf" is a poem about a place where people who have been neither particularly good nor particularly evil during life stay until receiving forgiveness and admission to Paradise. I've used the proper spelling, Al-A`raaf, because it was a closer match to my taste. Similarly I changed "Hans Pfaall", the name of an explorer who saw the surface of the moon, to Hansfaall, and "Ulalume" to Ulalune, the last creating a pun on "lune", the French word for moon. Most visible, perhaps, is the voice of MZ's deranged fragment, which paraphrases "The Haunted Castle" with abandon.

Words within words...

Tales within tales...

Writing is often described as a lonely job, and indeed at times it can be. But even in our deepest moments of isolation, a writer can take comfort in being part of a continuum stretched, not just around the world, but backwards in time, to the earliest days of the novel and beyond. The giants on whose shoulders we stand might have been all too stooped in everyday life, but the extremes of their imagination remain. Whether the trails they blazed lead to the heights of human accomplishment or down into the tortured depths of our psyches, with confidence, and with at least one eye eager for sights that no one else has seen along the way, we unhesitatingly follow.

And travellers now within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows, see

Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody ;

While, like a rapid ghastly river,

Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh - but smile no more.