Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“No sign of anyone,” said John. He set down his Hawken rifle, muzzle to the sky, and rolled a lump of tobacco meditatively in and out of a hollow tooth. “Saw a dog, but it ran away. Might have been a stray, might not.”

“Same.” Samuel, though technically the leader of the party, tended to defer to John in military matters. The bullet that still rattled around in his side from the Black Hawk War was enough to see to that. “I haven’t seen anyone but tied-up horses. Turned ’em loose so they wouldn’t starve.”

“What do you suppose,” John said, “happened to upend a town of 100 souls such that we can’t find even one outside the graveyard?”

Samual looked back toward the party they were guiding–15 near-starving souls for whom the settlement of Eldridge had represented salvation. “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” said he. “We take what’s left and bed down here for a few days. If they come back, we’ll pay. If not…” he let the sentence trail off into the raw fall air.

“The tables were set for dinner, flies in the food,” said John. “I’m not sure anything I have could help us against whatever Injun or otherwise takes a man before he’s finished eating his dinner.”

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The maid showed Burgess into Forrestal’s sitting room. A servant tottered in with steaming tea and biscuits, though Burgess could tell at a glance that both were poor quality and quite old, quite stale.

Mr. John Forrestal arrived a moment later, an impressive barrel of a man in pince-nez held betwixt hearty muttonchops. “Mr. James Burgess, is it?” he said. “Solicitor with Hamilton & Burr?”

“Quite right,” said Burgess, offering his hand. Forrestal declined to take it. “I assume you’ve had the opportunity to look over the papers I left with my calling card?”

“Quite.” Forrestal walked to the sitting room window and gazed out it. “My brother and I had not spoken for over two decades,” he said. “You’ll forgive me if I am not as visibly bereaved as seems proper. I have, in the interim, thrown myself into charitable works in an attempt to make amends for Peter’s…indiscretions.”

Burgess set down his case and began leafing through it. “Yes, I’ve seen the papers on file. The Charitable Association, the Workhouse Improvement League, the Liberal Party…it is quite the basket of bleeding hearts you have allowed to suckle from the proverbial teat.” Ordinarily Burgess would not have spoken so, but the man’s chilly and rather rude welcome had him in a testy mood.

“More than suckle,” snapped Forrestal. “I involve myself as a volunteer as well as a benefactor, and donate of my time and expertise as an accountant to the financial nitwits who run these sucklers.”

“As you say,” Burgess agreed. “Very kind, I’m sure.”

“And as an accountant, I have an…offer…for you, should you care to consider it.” Forrestal did a military about-face, his spectacles opaque and white with reflected sunlight. “Peter was a barrister specializing in fraud, so when it came to committing the act himself, he covered his tracks well. It was prudent for him to take leave, but the sum he left upon his death must have been substantial.”

Burgess pursed his lips. “It’s all in the papers, Mr. Forrestal.”

“Indeed. And I also see from the papers that the whole is to be awarded to…her…should you ajudge her competent of recieving it.”

“And if not, it will be awarded to the only other living next-of-kin,” said Burgess drily.

“She…is a carbunkle on my family,” Forrestal said. “Our great shame, an idiot and a cripple, scarcely capable of seeing to her own day-to-day needs, let alone a substantial estate. There are charities that could use that money for the benefit of mankind, solicitor. And there are many loopholes that can see Hamilton & Burr amply…rewarded…for their services in seeing that the monies are dispersed properly.”

“In that case,” said Burgess evenly. “You ought to suggest as much to your niece and, as of now, only living relative. If she is as much an idiot as you say she is, no doubt the suggestion will be taken up quite readily.”

Burgess and Forrestal glared at each other a moment, all that was unsaid between them hanging thick and dusty in the air. “So be it, then,” growled Forrestal. “Mary! Show the solicitor to Melindas chambers. And make up a room for him in case his business with that creature demands more than an afternoon’s time.”

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…while most readers are familiar with the media-savvy ghost hunting concerns that emerged during the boom in the early 1980s, and to a lesser extent the mid 1970s, very few people realize that ghost hunting as a profession has its roots in the early 20th century.

“These photographs, advertisements, schematics, and other materials are essential to understanding the early history of ghost hunting, which not many people know was centered in Michigan,” said project director Amanda Hughenckiz of the HPL. “Most people think of ghost hunting pre-1970 as nonsense with nets, and we aim to debunk that.”

Key items from the collection include photographs of an early horse-drawn neutron spirit-catching beam from 1904, a picture of a ghost hunt at a spiritualist going wrong that resulted in 3 poltergiests being captured and frozen in ice (a method that ghost hunters did not learn was ineffective at preventing further hauntings until 1947).

Inspired by this.

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SEAN CONNERY

Best: Goldfinger
Some critics prefer From Russia With Love because it is a more faithful adaptation of the book. But for my money, “more faithful” means “more deadly self-serious.” When you’ve got a motion piture that people are STILL parodying 50 years later, you have got something special. No other Bond captures the perfect dichotomy of action and urbanity, serious stakes and silliness, as this did. Connery should have given SPECTRE a rest and gone after crime lords more often! Do yourself a favor and listen to John Barry’s score too alongside the prototypical Bond song, too. I will say, though, that the barn scene gives off some SERIOUSLY rapey vibes today, and if ever there was an occasion for “Greedo-shot-first” tinkering with a film, that scene is it.

Worst: Diamonds Are Forever
You could argue that Dr. No was objectively worse, but Diamonds is so disappointing because it is less than the sum of its parts. Sean Connery! Guy Hamilton! Jill St. John! John Barry! The final defeat of Blofeld! And yet for all that, the movie is a languid mess. Connery phones it in. The plot is jokey and makes no sense. Blofeld goes out with a confusing whimper. Bond races a cheesy lunar lander. More than anything, I wish that this film and OHMSS could swap Bonds. The hokey jokey tone of Diamonds would be a much better fit for Lazenby. The saddest thing? It’s still a better Bond movie than Connery’s unofficial Never Say Never Again.

GEORGE LAZENBY

Best: OHMSS
One of the best Bond foils ever in Diana Rigg. Fantastic, high-octane alpine stunts. Groundbreaking Moog-based score by John Barry. One of the warmest, saddest songs ever. One of the warmest, saddest endings ever. OHMSS is, by any definition, a hidden Bond gem that is as tragically overlooked now as it was in ’69.

Worst: OHMSS
When you only do one Bond movie, well…yeah. George Lazenby looks the part, but he can’t act it. He’s a black hole in the middle of an otherwise terrific film, and just can’t sell it. Lazenby might have grown into the role, but he clearly felt that he was too hot for prime time and let his swollen ego take him away from a seven film contract (!), even though he’d never make another movie, come crawling back in a few years, and wind up spending his twilight years as the one James Bond who will come to your convention so long as his check clears.

ROGER MOORE

Best: The Spy Who Loved Me
Roger Moore eventually grew into the Bond role just as Lazenby might have, compensating for his awful first two entries in the series with this witty, urbane, and action-packed entry. It brings back the same mix of world-ending stakes and eyebrow-waggling fatuousness that the best Connery Bonds had, but with the added zing of better special effects and a terrific female lead who is every bit Bond’s equal. The movie was so good that they basically remade it two years later as Moonraker. Just try to ignore all the disco-era trappings in the decor and Marvin Hamlisch score.

Worst: Live and Let Die
Like a time capsule from the shagg-carpetiest corner of the 1970s, this film looks and acts as if a blaxploitation film had gotten a few pages mixed up with a Bond film when two copyists smashed into each other. Borderline racist, ridiculously silly, and so campy it hurts, it’s a miracle the Bond series survived the one-two-three punch of Diamonds, this, and The Man with the Golden Gun.

TIMOTHY DALTON
Best: The Living Daylights

Basically concieved as an antidote to View to a Kill, which was quite silly with a geriatric Bond that seemed lost in time. Daylights was framed as a hard-nosed Cold War thriller–the last time Bond would tangle with the Soviets outside of flashbacks–with electrifying action scenes and a dazzling final Bond score by the late, great John Barry. It even used an Ian Fleming short story as a jumping-off point, and its literal jumping-off points in the form of a skydiving intro and finale were also terrific. The subplot about Bond helping basically Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan is a little uncomfortable today, though not as much as Rocky III.

Worst: Licence to Kill
A Bond film that doesn’t seem like a Bond film, it takes an interesting premise and squanders it in an attempt to feel like a stereotypical late-80s action flick. The action is limp until an admittedly rousing final chase, the film is full of bizarre non-sequiturs like a wannabe Gordon Gekko working for a drug lord and Wayne Newton as a televangelist (!). It’s also by far the most stomach-churning Bond ever, even when compared to the face-drilling scenes in Spectre: guys get fed to sharks, fed to maggots, exploded in pressure chambers, and ground up in industrial machinery. Q’s expanded role is terrific, but just not enough to save this mean, gross film.

PIERCE BROSNAN

Best: Goldeneye
Like Skyfall, this is a “revisionist Bond” that successfully marries aspects of the clasic formula with a new geopolitical and sexual reality. Bond is in a world that’s dominated by computers, shades of grey, and no longer has the confort of a monolithic Soviet enemy or easy sexism. In many ways, he’s a man out of time, and Goldeneye takes the time to consider that, and the lonliness it brings, while still packing in explosive stunts and witty one-liners.

Worst: Die Another Day
Like a reverse Roger Moore, Brosnan’s Bonds got sillier and more dated as they went on, and this was by far the worst of them. Squandering an interesting premise of Bond abandoned and tortured, it offers up mostrously silly scenarios without anything to balance them out. Why not have an albino Korean with diamonds in his face drive a gadget car against Bond’s invisible Aston Martin in an ice hotel? Why not give the performer of the worst Bond song ever a cameo? Perhaps the most unforgivable sin of this film is that it led the producers to cast aside 19 movies and 40 years of continuity due to its sheer awfulness.

DANIEL CRAIG

Best: Skyfall
Like Goldeneye, a revisionist Bond about how a man like this can exist in our modern world. But unlike that, it takes him to a deeply personal place and leaves with him deeply wounded. No other film but Goldeneye delved even a little into Bond’s past, and the progression by which Bond brings a technologically-savvy foe every bit his equal in savagery down to his own level is masterful. Add in the best Bond song since, well, Goldeneye and you have easily the best Bond film since, well, Goldeneye.

Worst: Quantum of Solace
Plenty of Bonds are bad. But very few are so bad as to contaminate their predecessors; even Diamonds didn’t do this, as Bond’s hunt for and slaughter of his wife’s killer is the high point of that film. Quantum takes up Casino Royale‘s dangling plot threads and prompty forgets about them in a muddled transition to water issues in Bolivia that makes even less sense in retrospect as it does in situ. Worse, its resolution to the previous film’s cliffhanger is dreadful–it took until 2015 for us to find out what happened to White, for instance, and the whole Vesper subplot is tied up in a hasty three-minute epilogue! Add in a Bond song so misguided it rivals Die Another Day, and you see just why the produers let Skyfall take so many gambles. It was the only way to wash out the bitter taste.

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That horror movie was like a Girl Scout camp. They were both pretty in tents.

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Atsui Mojiretsu was a chef at Mentoshi Noodle City, the most prestigious noodletorium in Kyoto. Locals, gaijin, and visiting dignitaries alike would often go out of their way to stop by Mentoshi Noodle City for a sample of the famous lo mein, the gourmet ramen, the spaghetti al dente, the linguini al perfecto.

But even though Mojiretsu was second only to Alto Chef Ōmugi, he was not–and indeed could not be–satisfied with his culinary creations. Mojiretsu was dissatisfied with his spaghetti in particular, and would feverishly cook and recook it whenever he had a spare moment.

In time, Mojiretsu’s obsession was too much and he was fired from Mentoshi Noodle City with regret. And yet he still cooked and cooked, brushing off those who said he made too much spaghetti. Eventually, his small home was filled to the brim with noodles and Mojiretsu was not heard from again.

Some years later, census takers entered the Mojiretsu home to find that he had made so much spaghetti that the giant mass of pasta was almost large enough to be officially classified as its own state. Entering it, they found vast rolling spaghetti plains and impenetrable fortresses of al dente noodlery.

And all throughout the noodly land there were great tales of the mysterious man who had come from they knew not where to become the king of the new spaghetti country.

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Krane Wupinkov was born in 10,165 to Olga Wupinkov, one of the legendary 100 Concubines of House Vorona.

That noble and ancient House maintained the Great Harem as a breeding stock of the purest human stains as a bulwark against future uncertainties. The wry had often noted that Duke Vorona was always assumed to be of the highest stock himself, which given the curious habits of some of the Dukes, was not beyond question. The 117th Duke, reigning at the time of Krane’s birth, was notorious for converting part of the lush family estate into a gigantic Zen garden that he would spend hours raking each day.

Perhaps this is why Olga took up with an Orc of the Duke’s Own Green Host. The Host had served House Vorona loyally for many years, with their traditional lands and way of life safeguarded in exchange for military service. Needless to say, despite the 117th Duke’s proclivities, the birth of a half-orc child in the Great Harem was the cause of no end of scandal, and Olga promptly found herself dismissed.

Returning to her former station, that of the lowliest peasant, with her son, Olga found it very difficult to make ends meet. Krane therefore fell in early with the gangs of street toughs in the Voronan capital of Olengrad. His considerable strength and cunning made him rather successful as a cutpurse, cuthroat, and cut-rate street performer. Though Olga wished for her son to go into the priesthood, he instead was noticed by Manyfingers McGee of the Olengrad Fortune Guild and trained as an assassin.

Krane asserted to his mother that this was functionally the same as the priesthood because in both cases he was bringing bad men closer to their maker.

As an assassin, Krane was very successful, able to use his unmistakably Orcish appearance to lull adversaries into underestimating him. He racked up over 100 successful kills but was increasingly distant from the profession. Olga’s stories of the rich and easy life available to nobles inspired him to begin using his earnings to try and make himself presentable in polite society.

Thus, despite his thick Olengrad Rus accent and massive 6’5″ frame, Krane poured his money into lessons on etiquette, dancing, and performing. Specifically, he trained under the legendary heavy metal performer Deejay Singh in the arts of the electric mandolin. Heavy metal was, after all, the traditional music of the Green Host. Armed with an electric mandolin, Krane set out to buy his way into high society as a half-Orc bard.

Wearing the finest clothes and trying to practice his manners, Krane is nevertheless on the blunt side and apt to resort to stabbing as a frustrated expedient. He is also completely mercenary, looking out only for himself and possibly his mother, though he will warble a heavy metal ballad on his electric for the right price.

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On the fourth planet, the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the system was called off. There was nowhere that the atmosphere was right; it was too thick elsewhere. There was nowhere that the oxygen and liquid water required for life existed in the proper proportions. Even allowing the remote chance that something could evolve, could survive, nothing had returned the signals they had sent using mathematics and radio waves, the universal language.

On the sixth planet, the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the system was called off. There was nowhere that the atmosphere was right; it was too thin elsewhere. There was nowhere that the sillicon and liquid ammonia required for life existed in the proper proportions. Even allowing the remote chance that something could evolve, could survive, nothing had returned the signals they had sent using infrared and polysaccharide pheromones, the universal language.

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“I’m due to make an appearance in 5 minutes in Courtroom 5,” I said, rolling down the window.

“And you just ran a stop sign to get there?” said the cop. “In front of the Xanadu Hall of Justice? Not an auspicious start.”

“Look,” I said. “I couldn’t see the sign because of that delivery truck parked in front of it!”

The cop craned his neck and nodded. “Okay,” he said, laughing. “You get off with a warning this time. Park over there and hustle to your courtroom.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Do yuo know where Courtroom 5 is?”

“No idea!” he cried over his shoulder. “But I’d get going if I were you. They’re not in order!”

I didn’t see what he meant until I got inside. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Xanadu Hall of Justice looked like a casino–it was, after all, part of Xanadu! But I was amazed by the glitz on display inside, with lawyers and judges walking among throngs of people, water fountains and slot machines, blinking lights and the sound of jangling cash.

I also saw what the cop had meant by “they’re not in order.” Before me, I saw Courtroom 1, Courtroom 19, Courtroom 7, and Courtroom 3. In that order. Frantically, I looked around for the proper one, and didn’t see it amidst the glitz.

I ran around a corner, thinking it might be there, only to inadvertently find myself in line for a water slide. I had to hastily excuse myself, stepping over chorus girls and mafia men in bathing suits.

The other way, around the opposite corner, brought me to the plaza that held Courtroom 5 (along with 13, 6, 4, and 20). I burst through the zebra print doors just as my watch clicked over the my official court date.

“Well, glad you could join us,” the judge said, raising her eyebrow. Her dais was low and gaudy, with the advocates’ tables in wront of it covered with purple velvet and backed by white countoured clamshell chairs. “Have a seat.”

I hopped into one of the tall clamshell chairs.

“You can try the ones at the other table if you like,” said the judge. “They recline.”

She seemed rather easygoing, for a Xanadu judge, so I hopped over obligingly.

“Of course,” she added, “you can use the hot tub too if you want.”

I craned my neck and, sure enough, there was a large hot tub where most courtrooms would have benches. One of the advocates was already therein, sporting a glittery bikini.

“I only wish I’d brought my bathing suit,” I said with a sheepish grin.

“Very well, court will now come to order,” said the judge. “Oh, and I hava a note here for you from the parking lot. They say you left a diamond in your car?”

“Well, you know, it’s funny…I’m accused of something relating to a diamond. I bet people will conflate the two.”

The judge laughed good-naturedly. “We can only hope.”

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Forbidden connections
Always asymetical but
Always changing sides
We know not what to
Call them, names fail
We know not how to
Mourn them, for they
Never really existed
All we know is that
A something occurred
A brief spark, light
Brighter than suns
If only for moments
And now it is no more

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