Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome along to Crohn's Cast, the official podcast of SFF Chronicles, the world's largest science fiction and fantasy community. I'm Dan Jones. And I'm Pete Long.
Speaker: Today, we're talking about Richard Adams' Watership Down, a Homeric odyssey that charts the escape, exile, exploration, settlement, and conflicts of a group of rabbits in the English countryside. The book follows Hazel, who leads the Lapine group that includes his brother Fiver, who possesses the Cassandra -like visibility to foresee disaster. The doubt he enforces a bigwig who's always ready for a scrap, and a collection of others, including the storyteller Dandelion and the quick -witted Blackberry.
Speaker: Together they escape the catastrophic destruction of their home and seek a new place in the world. Four square miles or so of Oxfordshire country becomes an epic landscape in which they encounter tragedy, adventure, injustice, unlikely kinships, danger, tyranny and peace. A classic of children's literature, but a sophisticated read for any age, Watership Down won the Carnegie Medal for Children's Literature
Speaker: the annual Guardian Prize, and also spawned the 1978 film adaptation that traumatised a generation of children forever. Joining us today is the critically acclaimed and award -winning author R .J. Barker. Hello, R .J. There he is. He won the 2020 British Fantasy Society Robert Holdstock Award for Best Novel for his fourth novel, The Bone Ships.
Speaker: His debut trilogy, The Wounded Kingdom, The Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins, and King of Assassins, was nominated for the David Gemmell Awards, the Keechee Golden Tentacle, Compton Crook, and the British Fantasy Society Best Debut and Best Novel Awards. He followed this with the award -winning Tide Child trilogy, The Bone Ships, Call of the Bone Ships, and The Bone Ships Wake, which alongside its awards was compared by Bookslist to Her Game of Thrones and Moby Dicks, a high praise indeed.
Speaker: His newest book is released in June 2023 so get your pre -orders in now. It's titled Gods of the Weirdwood and is the first book in the new trilogy set within the bounds of a forest straight out of darkest folklore with outlaws fighting an evil empire and the warring deities so we'll definitely be getting the lowdown on that a little bit later on. RJ leaves in Leeds with his wife and his son and the collection of questionable taxidermy which unfortunately you can't see but we can see on the interview.
Speaker: Yeah, we all have to post some pictures, some odd art, some scary music, although not scary to some, and books, books, books, loads of books. All three people on this call, actually, we got something in common because we used to play in rock bands a long, long time ago. But it looks like we've got something else in common because we decided we were fairly rubbish musicians. And RJ returned to his first love, which was fiction. So hello, RJ, how are you?
Speaker: Hello, hello, Dan and Paul. I'm really well. I'm a bit croaky because I will quickly tell you my tale of woe because my plan was I was meant to go for Germany with my German publisher to Leipzig book fair. My plan was I was going to read Richard Adams, watch it down on the two planes there and the two planes back because it was about a 19 hour trip getting there and back and I got covered.
Speaker: which scuppered that quite well. And I couldn't concentrate to read. So I've only really started in the past, rereading in the past two days, fortunately. I've read it a lot. What's going to ask, how many times have you read it? I did. When I was younger, I used to read it every year or so. It's absolutely one of my favorite books. And I'm always surprised when I go to it, how much new stuff I find in it, and how much I don't remember about it when I come back. This was quite different, because I've never
Speaker: I'm not a kind of, I'm not someone that really looks into things, I just do stuff and I read things and I enjoy it and then I move on and that's how I was looking at it. And I was reading it in a different way, I was looking at it critically. And I was like, I'm only doing the first 100 pages and I've got like 20 posters stuck in it. As a writer, I saw it in a very different way.
Speaker: It is layered with different meanings. I remember this was the first time I'd read it since I'd read it as, I'm guessing, around the age of 12, possibly, something like that. And back then, it's just a children's book about a bunch of rabbits who have some adventures in the countryside and eventually find somewhere to live.
Speaker: That's it. And then rereading it. Well, firstly, I don't remember it being this big. It's a proper doorstep of a book, which is expecting a lot of children. But, you know, as J .K. Rowling proves, you know, if you write good stuff, you can make children get addicted to the written word. And there's loads going on in Watership Down. Yeah, I looked for my original copy, which is my mum's book that she gave to me. And it's a much smaller book and much smaller type. And I don't think I could have read it. I was like, what? What?
Speaker: It's so tiny. But yeah, I think that's why it's big and tight, but it is a massive book. It's like 600 pages. Yeah, it's a big old doorstep. So why did you choose Watership Down? All the books that we could have, and we bandied about a few different names, didn't we, when we were chatting about what books you might have picked. But you settled on Watership Down. I love this book. And going back to it, I realised how much of it is in what I do.
Speaker: It's fascinating to me. I've always been quite an odd person. I've never quite fitted in anywhere.
Speaker: And I think when we talk about music, that's why I went into music, because I didn't see anyone like me in all the other things I did, because I read them raciously as a child constantly. But I didn't find myself in any of those books. I didn't find someone like me. And I saw it in, like, metal pans. I remember it looks like a girl. I can do that. But I think I very strongly
Speaker: just clicked with Hazel and Fiverr as being like me. I just think, yeah, I can see myself in you and I think that's what it is. I think that was the, or like I would have liked to have been. I've never been as much of a leader as Hazel is. But I think that's where it resonated with me.
Speaker: I just thought, yeah, I can see myself here. Well, they are, at the beginning of the book, they are essentially misfits, especially Fiverr. We'll go into a little bit of the world building a little bit later on, but Fiverr's, his rabbit language name is Hoeru, which means little thousand. We'll explain that maybe a little bit later on. But it certainly means the runt. So he's the runty one of the litter. And yet he possesses this, this
Speaker: third eye or second sight, this Cassandra -like ability that Pete mentioned in the introduction, that he's got the ability to foresee disaster, which what struck me on the rereading of the book is it goes straight into the story. There's very little exposition. It goes straight into the story. Fiverr has a vision of what's going to happen to the warren where the rabbit colony is living at the moment.
Speaker: And he says, something bad is going to happen. I don't know exactly what it is, but something bad is going to happen. We need to leave now. And that immediately makes him a misfit and an outcast more of a misfit and outcast because he's already the runt and Hazel, his big brother believes him, which makes him an outcast and a misfit and off they go. And they, you know, once they get cobbled together, they sort of ragtag bunch of followers. But yeah, they're not.
Speaker: Certainly at the beginning, they're not what you would say are typical hero figures at all. But at the start of the book, I was really struck by the first line of it. It is a killer, killer first line for something that, because you know, I know what's coming and it's just... You've got your copy there.
Speaker: primrose is whatever and that's it and it's nothing it's really simple but it's not it's telling you that something is ending and it's just like as soon as I read I thought oh god that's so clever I'm nicking that next thing I write and just I don't really know that um rich dad was quite dismissive about this book and
Speaker: nearly always said no to the children's story about some rabbits, yeah. And I think it's kind of a death of the earth thing that often you can't see your own work, because as I was reading it, I kind of thought he clearly served in the army at some point, because you could feel that. So I went and looked it up and he did serve in the army. And you can feel him filtering through into it. And Big Wiggy is obviously a sergeant major.
Speaker: Hazel is a commanding officer. I'm not sure where Fiverr fits into the army, to be honest with you. I don't think he does on this. That's the whole misfit vibe you were getting, I think. Yeah. But I didn't notice that as a kid at all. But as an adult, it's just, oh, yes, he's really old. I didn't pick up on it even this time around the fact that, well,
Speaker: Obviously, there is a military aspect to some of the colonies. We get to talk about General Woundward. He's obviously running a military -style dictatorship. He's running his own tyranny. But yeah, you're absolutely right about the military aspects of the rabbits themselves.
Speaker: So let's talk about the world building then. Let's get straight into that. We've already mentioned the language. Actually, I'll address the point that you raised that Adams was a bit dismissive about the book. I mean, should we take that with a pinch of salt? Because throughout the book, he's scattering
Speaker: what he introduces each chapter with an overt reference to. I've got a few listed here. I've done this. Yates, Napoleon, the Acts of the Apostles, Joseph Campbell. I mean, that's just the first six or seven, but it goes on and on like that. So I mean, are we really supposed to take Adam's word that he's dismissing it as just a children's story? Yeah, I think he's just a grumpy old man.
Speaker: It's like when everybody says to me, what is watershed down about? I always say some rabbits go somewhere because that is the plot. Well, that's pretty accurate. But it's just layers and layers and layers. I'm sure we'll get onto the goth rabbits, which I think had a profound effect on where my life was going to go.
Speaker: I think Adam's whole sense of what a children's book looks like might be quite different to ours. I don't recall many children's books that had untranslated French in them. To be fair to him, it's not as unbearably harrowing as his other ones. Is it Shardick, the one about... No, it's not Adam's. He wrote one about a bear and the plague dogs. Oh, I don't know that.
Speaker: Very Adam's, aren't they? Because Covid has absolutely wrecked my head. I just have to make sure that they are him. If you were watching this, I'm Googling, which is excellent. Which is good audio, this is. Let's talk about the world building then, while our guest is currently surfing the web. We've got untranslated French, but Adam's has gone further than that. He's gone the whole JRR Tolkien route and invented a language.
Speaker: for the rabbits, which is very strange because it's not as though the rabbits would be able to speak their own language in reality any more than they'd be able to speak English. But they have this language and it's got its own grammatical structure and it comes with its own mythology and creation myths and stories and songs. It's a very strange thing to put into
Speaker: again which is basic what's on the surface a really simple children's adventure but coming back to it adds so much depth. Yeah and it should be pointed out that it's beautiful as well as the pandemic. They call it the pandemic at some point. I marked one of the little poems
Speaker: Yeah, I think the some of the best written parts of the book are the stories within the story. So the story of Ella Ryra. Ella Ryra is like the Christ figure of rabbits, who's always in a conversation with what's the God rabbit remind me?
Speaker: Frith. The Black Rabbit of Inlay is like death, isn't it? It's essentially the rabbit incarnation of death. And Ella River is always up to tricks and outfoxing farmers and other animals and how the rabbit got his tail, which is kind of like a just so story. But those stories are beautifully written.
Speaker: It's a little bit that I did hear of the Le Pan language, where Bigwig says it. And it's beautiful. It's just lovely to say it. I like words, kind of. I like words for the meaning and I like words just for the sound of them as well. And it's... And it kind of sounds Norse when you say it out loud. It kind of has that. And then when you get translation of it.
Speaker: is the stinking thousand we meet them even when we stop to pass our droppings it's quite sort of earthy and but it doesn't sound it whenever you come across it it's just got this lovely kind of mouth feel to the words and i think i think that had a massive effect on me as well i love that i love that he went and did it and i wonder if if he did it last i always think if he went back and if he wrote it in his english and then went back and
Speaker: I've got no idea. I mean, from a writer's perspective, we mentioned Tolkien already. Tolkien seems to get mentioned a lot when we're talking. And we've never covered Tolkien, but he always seems to be hanging around in the background. He started with his language building first. That was the main thing. And then the story sort of hung off the hook of the language. But if you start with a language, I mean, that's a hell of a tough thing to do. So it does make more sense if you're writing a conventional
Speaker: novel narrative that you would start with the narrative and fill in the gaps later.
Speaker: Which is very similar to The Hobbit, isn't it? That's the same thing, isn't it? Yeah, with The Hobbit. Just a bit of fantasy trivia. Tolkien started writing The Hobbit about a mile over there in Headingley. There's a blue plaque in the building he stayed in when he was a lecturer at his university. Oh, yes. In Headingley, did you say? Yeah, yeah. Headingley leads. Very cool. Do you go and pay homage? Pay a little pilgrimage every now and then?
Speaker: fantasy heresy, not a big fan.
Speaker: Oh, well, you're not the first to say that. It's OK. I appreciate it for what it is, but I think it reads very dated and it's not my type of fantasy. So how did Watership Down there influence what your writing is all about? Because when I read the Game of Thrones comparison,
Speaker: about two thirds of the way through the bonus ships at the moment, I can see that. I mean, that makes sense, that comparison, which again, is a sort of a different tack from Tolkien, isn't it? While appreciating what Tolkien did, it's a completely different tack, but where did Watership Down fit in? One of the things that we're obsessed with is friendships and old friendships. And you've got that in the bonus ships with Meha Centauron.
Speaker: I personally wouldn't claim Game of Thrones as an influence at all. I've read the first two books. Yeah, and in my first book, the Assassin books, in those I came out to tell stories of their legends, just like they do with, and that was a direct reference to this. It's more in those books than I think it is in the Boneships, because the Boneships is
Speaker: also a big homage to Patrick O 'Brien, who I adore. But I think there's an age of writers that were writing in the 50s and 60s that seems to quite resonate with me. But it's the friendship in this that hit me. And this is a massive spoiler. We deal with spoilers all the time. It's absolutely fine.
Speaker: The moment in this book where it absolutely breaks me is not when Hazel passes to the site because I don't think that's sad. I think personally I think that's a misreading of what the book's about and how it works. It's when Bigwig stands up to wound warp and says my chief rabbit has told me not to move. I feel teary just saying that.
Speaker: Because at any point in that book Bigwig could have turned around and gone, actually, I'm the biggest. I'm the biggest. But he doesn't because he's become friends with Hazel. Right, he's more than just friends. He respects Hazel for what he's done, which he doesn't always for all the book.
Speaker: There's a thread of, I've come this far because I didn't know what else to do at the start, but there's a sense of doubt of maybe I'm actually the right rabbit. And he slowly learns. And I love that, that journey of slowly learning. And I think that's in everything I do. It's very interesting.
Speaker: I mean, my mind immediately went to the way that Gerten learns to realise just who Idor is through the first trilogy. I loved writing that. We'll get onto that later on. That was really joyous. But yeah, that's kind of... Every book has a moment coming in there that is...
Speaker: what this book builds to for me. That's the moment in everything else. And the other thing that I noticed about it is I will flick backwards and forwards. I'm very bad at staying on, but more or less tells you to applaud the book.
Speaker: Yeah, that seems about right. For me, I've only read the book once. I, for this, I never read it as a child. So, I mean, this was my first read of Wardship Down and I actually, because I have God's of the Weird Word as a review copy, I was
Speaker: reading them at the same time you know doing a bit of compare and contrast and the thing that really stuck out to me was the way the landscape is treated in both and just how important it is and how much tensions paid to like the little details and I was wondering how that resonated with you yeah I think the landscape in this I mean it's a very I call it very British very English feeling landscaping
Speaker: And it's really weird when I'm reading it, I can smell it. I can smell very summer and what it's like to walk through those country lands because I'm in a group in Leeds, it's a big city, but it's a very green city. And I think landscape is probably a big part of everything I do because the assassin books were all in my head based on Yorkshire molds. Yeah, as a bloody student, it reminded me very much of Yorkshire.
Speaker: Yeah, and I saw Strip Mine, which is where the idea came from, magic sucking the life out of the land. And then The Burned Ships is all about the sea, because I love the sea. It's big and it wants to kill you, and I'm fascinated by it. And then this is Forest. I don't know what landscape I'm going to move on to next.
Speaker: Is landscape, is that the starting point for you in looking at landscape first, like the setting and then does the story fall out of that or is it the idea first? I don't really know. It tends to sort of be quite everything at once.
Speaker: Like I have an idea and I'll do that and then I write it and see what happens and go back to it. So it's a bit of a discovery process? Very much a discovery process. Okay, interesting. Interesting. I was also bordership down as a child of southern England, now in exile. It made me quite homesick in places.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's it's a very particular England in vaudeville. Yeah, well, it's West Oxfordshire, isn't it? It's that sort of way. I think a couple of specific place names are mentioned every now and then. But I think it's an England that doesn't and never has existed. Well, it's a mythical landscape for the purposes of the story. It's an epic mythical landscape. And like we said in the introduction, it's got sort of
Speaker: despotic areas and it's got unspoiled areas and it's got areas which have been colonized by humans and it's got waterways. So there's that sense of movement when there's the waterway, which is a major part of the story, the rivers and the canals, a major part of the story. So it's
Speaker: It probably, parts of the English countryside, as you say, it's very recognisable, while it might not necessarily exist in reality, it is that bucolic ideal of English countryside, which is undercut a little bit by the threat of danger, a bit like the sea. You mentioned the sea, it wants to kill you, but it's also that promise of treasure and discovery and adventure.
Speaker: The same thing applies to the English countryside, I think, in Watership Down. Partly thinks that this isn't England that people who voted for Brexit think they're getting. It's that version of kind of 1950s England. There's a brilliant bit in it where he says about most rabbits have never left their warring.
Speaker: which is, that is a very sort of 1950s English thing, people who would be raised to this, very Miss Marple and all that, people who would never leave their village. And I quite liked that. The honeycomb.
Speaker: Warren, the honeycomb Warren. No, no, it's right at the beginning. Oh, right. Oh, the original Warren, the original Warren. Yeah, it's talking about here Selene and Fiverr, saying that the furthest I've ever been, because most of them will never leave to Warren. Well, that theme crops up again. We'll come to Ephraphar and Woonwort a little bit later. But the second Warren that they come across, where the rabbits are cowed and subdued, almost like Stepford rabbits,
Speaker: They never leave and they realise that's because there's something out there that occasionally, like a god, essentially just picks them off and they don't know which one of them is going to be picked off and it's the humans. Smoking them out and just taking a rabbit to take away and eat, you know, cook for their dinner and so they're completely cowed.
Speaker: The behaviour that the rabbits have at the beginning is replicated elsewhere in the book, but for different reasons. Not because they don't want to leave, it's because they're so terrified yetrified that they just stay exactly where they are.
Speaker: Yeah, I love the goth rabbits. Are they the goth rabbits? Yeah, they're the goth rabbits. So they stay indoors during the day, I get it now. Yeah, they don't want for anything, so they've got a lot of time to write poetry about death. Yes, of course they are quite morbid.
Speaker: And I think that's the first time I ever came across poetry. Well, that's not true. No, because my mum loved poetry, so I was aware of kind of a lot of Victorian poetry and Edward Lear and stuff like that, you know, Matilda who went to death.
Speaker: Who's the boy that got eaten by a lion? Don't tell the lion, hate him. Don't annoy the lion, it'll eat you. Which is a brilliant life lesson. But the poetry in What You've Done is very different in that it's really quite morbid and dark. And ladies and gentlemen, that's how it ended up in a in -goth club in the mid -nineties. They don't have very goth names, though, do they? Strawberry is the rabbit that escapes the honeycomb warren. Yeah, that could be ironic, couldn't it?
Speaker: Let's have these limbs full of life because we know life is short and we're going to die. That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I knew a graph called Blossom. So it fits. Yeah, it does. Yeah. But I've just got to that bit in it.
Speaker: I guess it's another example of those odd friendships which run through the book. And they're unlikely friendships, I suppose, aren't they? So strawberry is the one. Is it just strawberry? I believe it's just strawberry. It's just strawberry who leaves the second rabbit and it takes a huge amount of courage, a leap of faith from strawberry to leave what's essentially certain death. So this honeycomb
Speaker: Warren is essentially certain death. It's just that they all cluster together and they don't know which one of them is going to be plucked out by the humans and killed. Well, that's the interesting thing because the one who is plucked out and killed just before strawberry leaves is Strawberry's mate, his doe, whose name I can't remember because it's utterly unpronounceable. It's not Heisendly, is it?
Speaker: No, that's later. And so, strawberries leaving becomes not just an act of courage, it's also an act of despair. Like, he's lost what he's had there. And I think something that, looking back, I see a lot of them watershed down is that line between courage and despair and what's prompting it.
Speaker: It's quite a bleak book because the rabbits from that warren come and they invite them. They say, look, you need somewhere to live. We have somewhere to live. And there's more food than we can ever eat. There's everything you need. But what they're actually doing is they're improving their own odds to survive. Yeah. By getting in these other rabbits and actually tell them that there's a good chance you can end up in a snake. Well, it's all of these things that happen in Wardship Down are about Hazels
Speaker: mainly Hazel's growth as a leader and at the beginning essentially he follows Fiverr's instinct on instinct or at least out of faith but he learns wisdom and learns how to take decisions based on what he sees in front of him so it would be very easy to say yeah let's stay in the warren and stay in the warren we've got lots of food to eat we don't need to go exploring the countryside anymore we'll be
Speaker: will be fine here, but you're right. The rabbits are only out to increase their own odds of survival. And their odds of survival are bleak anyway, because staying in that warren is going to result in certain death. And eventually, Hazel realizes that this is not, it's a bit like The Walking Dead, you know, the zombie series, because every now and then they happen upon this oasis of peace and order and safety.
Speaker: which every single time and you'd think they'd learn after the first three or four times, every single time it turns out to be it's either run by some sort of brutal dictator or there's something else sinister going on and they just have to leave and move on. It's the same thing and so they're acquiring, Hazel is acquiring wisdom along the way. That Warren as well that in the whole sequence I find it quite difficult to read because there is
Speaker: Almost a miasma to the writing. There is this feeling of something being deeply wrong for the minute they turn. The minute you meet that first rabbit. And it doesn't act like a rabbit should.
Speaker: That's the clue. And they're all saying, they're not worried about it, it's just... They noticed that it's odd, yeah. Yeah, it's not frightened and they can't work it out. And Adams did his research, didn't he? What was the name of the book? Something like The Private Lives of Rabbits, something like that. Yeah, he mentions it. He mentions it as one of the references, don't forget the author's name. But he did his homework, so he knew
Speaker: how rabbits would behave and he knew how they wouldn't behave. And so he was able to, I think it's a really clever incorporation into the plot and how he reflected the characters of the rabbits. Talking animal books are, I love a talking animal book. I'm a sucker for them. But it has to be talking animal books where they feel like animals. Like somebody said to me, I should read Redwall. You'll love Redwall. And I hated Redwall.
Speaker: Because first of all, it's not meant for somebody my age, it's meant for somebody who's quite a lot younger, I think, at the first book especially. But they're not talking animals. It's a fantasy story that happens. They're just the people that Brian Jakes knew around the Liverpool docks turned into animals. And you could just turn them right back to humans and the stories would work. Yeah.
Speaker: So I was thinking that same point. I mean, I grew up in the Red Bull books, but I mean, they are so different. So different to Watership Down.
Speaker: I tried to get my son to read them, but he wasn't having it. I don't know why, he didn't just do click with him either. But as well as what Shiptown has done to Wood, which is like the R rated version of what Shiptown, what Shiptown with moles, sex and violence. But they act like moles.
Speaker: that they don't act like people, and I love that. That's why I like Adrian Tchaikovsky's work so much. Yeah, he's good at that stuff, isn't he? Yeah. He was really good in the Dogs of War, at capturing the dogginess, I think he called it, the dogginess of Rex, the main character. And the other ones, dragons and bees and... Phenomenal. The other one. But what was the bear called? I forget. Honey, I think. Anyway, yeah, yeah. Yes, I mean, it's so simple.
Speaker: you think it's so obvious that you couldn't not do it but making your rabbit characters actually act like rabbits and yeah you're right it creates that really sinister off feeling but then i suppose we should probably come to well actually before we come to ephraim the rabbits there's another odd friendship i wanted to bring up which is kahar the girl
Speaker: I love it. Tell us about Keio. I mean, I think Keio is a fabulous character. Fabulous character. Really well written, really strange, odd, unlikely, again, a misfit. And alien and not of their world. And that is how you learn how much
Speaker: has changed that instead of running away, which is what you really should do, he befriends this really quite unpleasant goal. Well, I mean, I guess, yeah, it speaks in a strange they call it like, yeah, we call it countryside Creole or something.
Speaker: It's something like that. Yeah. I think I always think of him as Russian. That's kind of the vibe. I was getting a Hungarian sort of middle European type vibe from him. But apparently I did read somewhere that he's supposed to be Norwegian. I'm sure I read somewhere that he's supposed to be Norwegian. And I've met a few Norwegians over the years.
Speaker: I don't think that's written like if it's supposed to be a Norwegian accent then Adams has failed badly so I think middle European. But again it comes to part of me thinks it is that going back to
Speaker: Richard Adams, war service, because you've got infantry and air support then. And that is how they use him later on. Yes, that's a really good point. He is their air support, isn't he? They use him for reconnaissance as well, don't they? Yeah, he's just brilliant. And at the end day, they scatter his droppings around to give an impression he's still there. He's also, I think,
Speaker: at the beginning you said they should be scared of him you know what's that great big bird out there don't go near him and you're almost like a dragon you know yeah like you said alien otherworldly potentially very dangerous but you know there's a little bit of st george and the dragon so hazel thinks no
Speaker: we're going to go up to it, or I'm going to go up to it, I'm going to engage with it and see what happens. And from that, so it's like the dragon guarding the treasure, because he engages with this crazy, dangerous creature, he actually manages to extract something of, you know, sort of unfathomable value out of it. There is probably quite a lot of key heart that went into the Glen in the boat ships. I've never thought about it until this moment.
Speaker: Really? Yeah, now you've said it, it's quite, I've always thought, oh it's a Skeksis, but it's not, it's Kiha. Of course it's Ki, yeah. Skeksis as in, what, Dark Crystal? Dark Crystal, yeah. I imagine the sort of Skeksis was one of my starting points with it, but actually, Kiha lives in the back of my head. You know those things that don't appear in terms of he says it to you and you go,
Speaker: well it's the knowledge you all the time until but you didn't know until somebody said it yeah i mean he's he is a in that sense he is kind of a classic uh fantasy character i don't know he was just a classic fan a classic dramatic character who appears dangerous and roguish and otherworldly and ends up being
Speaker: you know, somebody of great value and who can establish a great friendship with you. I guess Aragorn is a bit like that because he's sort of strange and dangerous to begin with. I love it on likely friendship as well.
Speaker: Just to go back on Vif, on what you were saying about the wartime service for a moment, I feel like if you were to call Hazel a character archetype, he's the reluctant officer. He finds himself forced into this position of command that he has no real idea that he's suited for, but because... I'm like Stanley Baldwin in Zulu.
Speaker: Yeah, or Frodo in Lord of the Rings, or Jorah in The Bone Chips. And I think the goal is one of Hazel's moments of having shown his growth as
Speaker: reluctant officer because he's now able to completely approach it like this is his natural situation. There is something dangerous and he is able to just say it's less dangerous to go and talk with him than to stay here.
Speaker: I like that reading of the boneships as well because you're right, Jorunn is essentially humiliated right at the beginning of the book and then very quickly he becomes essentially officer class. The other thing about Hazel, just to go back to the officer thing, and it happens quite early on, his skill is, and it's a brilliant lesson for anybody, his skill is not that he's the cleverest or the strongest, it's that he listens
Speaker: when they reach the stream.
Speaker: Fiver and Pipkin can't get across because they're knackered. And Dandelion says, oh, that thing floats. They're like, what the fuck? What? But it was blackberries. Blackberries. I always get blackberry and dandelion. Blackberries. Dandelion's a storyteller. Blackberry's the genius. He's the genius rabbit. Yeah. And they're like, what do you mean it floats? What's flirting? And he's going, no, no, no. Get him on it. It'll work. And Hazel, the way it's phrased is Hazel just knows that he's clever than he is.
Speaker: And it's clever that we do it. And that's a proper leader. I need the glory. It's someone who wants to get it done. And that's the antithesis of the wound waters, isn't it? I'm so glad you said that about listening, because I was just, as we were mentioning earlier, about the rabbits going through exile in the countryside.
Speaker: It reminded me of a conversation that we had when we had Emily Inkpin on as a guest a while ago, and she chose The Left Hand of Darkness as her book. And as we were talking about that, we fished out the parallels between that and
Speaker: the Exodus story with Moses leading the Israelites out of tyranny from the Pharaoh and into the desert and before they reach the promised land they have to go through the desert which is terrible and there's a similar sort of thing happening here they leave somewhere where okay there might be a disaster on the way but they actually want to go back to the place that's a catastrophe because they're going through
Speaker: the desert. Now when they're in the desert in the Exodus book and it's the same with left hand of darkness, the characters are bickering and they're bitching and they're backbiting and they're complaining and they're moaning and Moses listens to them and comes up with the answer and in that respect the answer is the Ten Commandments. He said this is what you need to do to solve all your problems. In left hand of darkness is the two characters reaching
Speaker: a sort of platonic love and a mutual understanding and respect for each other. And in this book, it's Hazel, like you say, growing as a leader and enabling him to continue taking them with him to wherever it is that they need to go. But they've got to go through these trials and tribulations in order for him to reach that. There's a lovely bit where he's just after they've left the war on.
Speaker: and Hazel is having his crisis of confidence which he has to have because that's part of the character arc and he's talking to Pipkin who's hurt and saying come on we can do this we can do it and because you're in his head you hear him thinking am I doing this for him or me and then once they've done it one of the other rabbits says oh
Speaker: I was quite annoyed by you keeping saying that, but actually if it was what I needed to hear, you were right, we could do it, we did it. But you know that actually Hesel was terrified, where they think, oh, you knew, you knew all along and it's kind of, it's really lovely and clever. It gets very much to the heart of leadership there.
Speaker: So let's compare him to General Woundwort. We've mentioned him a couple of times in passing. And again, he's a fabulous character. Yeah. You know, he's a vicious son of a bitch, bigger than Bigwig. And we're told frequently Bigwig is a big old rabbit. He's quite happy to have a scrap and have a scrap with plenty of other animals outside, you know, from the
Speaker: the uh the yuhreh which is the thousand so that's in the rabbit talk. The yuhreh means the thousand because everything wants to kill them so their enemies are called the yuhreh and bigwig doesn't get like let's get into a scrap and we're told that wound war is even bigger than bigwig yeah he's very aggressive and he uses it he uses his strength as a means to acquire and maintain power so he's
Speaker: the ultimate contrast for Hazel. I've not got that far yet and it's a while since I've read it, but I'm always left with the feeling that wound war is actually powered by fear.
Speaker: And it's... Sorry, catched a bit. Yeah, pigs catched, colonizing the show. My cat stood sat the window there looking at me and saying, why aren't you letting me in?
Speaker: Oh yeah, I've had to kick my cat out as well. Yeah and I can't but it isn't made me think that just something about all his control and all keeping people there and it's all about keeping the outside away and then it's like his castle it just so it struck me as its failure you get that line at the end I'm not who's afraid of a dog that he has. Yeah it's a great line. It's stupid for a rabbit
Speaker: to prove that he's not frightened. Yeah, and it's not just a dog, is it? It's like a wolfhound or something ridiculous, isn't it? A massive great big dog. Yeah, it's their secret weapon. And that's a brilliant sequence. There's a particular quote that came into my mind, and I'm going to quickly see if I can find it since you said it. But I think at some point,
Speaker: Someone says, okay, here it is, it's from Captain Holly, and it's, Big Rick was right when he said that he, he being General Runewalk, wasn't like a rabbit at all. He was a fighting animal, fierce as a rat or a dog. And here's the key word, he fought because he actually felt safe for fighting and running. And I think that is the heart and soul of what you just said. He felt safe then.
Speaker: He's a pitiable character in a lot of ways. Because there is a moment where he could make a good decision. They're given the option. And that is where you find out that he's actually a monster. That's when, isn't that when Bigwig infiltrates Ephrathar? Ephrathar being the Warren that rules. With Iron Paul.
Speaker: Yeah, with an iron port. Isn't it Hazel who masquerades as a messenger from Hazel's own camp and he goes into Ephraphar and he gives him an offer. Yeah, an offer, not an ultimatum, an offer. The commix, I wonder what it's just like. Well, he's a tyrant, isn't he? And so he either has all of the power or he has none of it. Yeah.
Speaker: exact word use. Again, I've got the quote open. It's like, at that moment in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwall the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of Vision and Genius, which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. Well, that's it. Yeah, it's very clever stuff. It really is. And by this time, the rabbits have gone somewhere.
Speaker: they've done it, they've found their promised land. Well, yes, they found it, but they need to mate. So that's why they're engaging with Efirifar, because they've had interactions with Efirifar at this point. But they realise, and this is maybe something we could talk about, they don't have enough doe, so they don't have enough female rabbits, so they're not going to be able to mate. So there's a dearth of female characters up to this point. It's only when
Speaker: Bigwig infiltrates FFR and poses as an officer, an exiled officer, and then they take him into their ousla, which is their officer class, the sergeant majors of the operation. And we start seeing some of the female rabbits, like, as you say, unpronounceable names. So I'm going to attempt it.
Speaker: Yeah, they're sort of Polish, Hungarian, I don't know what's going on with these names. Heisenfellei, that's the one I can say. Heisenfellei. Heisenfellei. Is she the one that leads the doze out of Ephraphra? Yes. Yeah.
Speaker: And tremendously brave. And it's another thing that kind of makes you think that it is a book about the military because there's no women in it up to this point. It's all the blokes doing their blocky things and going off there. And it's not Hazel's best decision to not take any girls. Here we go.
Speaker: The Thuthanang is one of the female names. I don't know what's going on with the naming conventions in there because all of the male rabbits have names like Bigwig and Hazel and Fiverr and Dandelion and his enthalae and the Thuthanang.
Speaker: Female rabbits also do all the work, don't they? They're the ones that do the digging. They do the digging. That's right. Boys don't dig. Boys don't dig. Yeah, they go and eat breakfast and keep a bit of order and make baby rabbits and fight occasionally, and that's about it. Obviously, I've referenced fascist and that.
Speaker: don't deliberately paint it in that way. But what I like about that whole thing is it all exists just for that moment, which I started out at the beginning when Bigwig says, my chief rabbit has told me to hold this run. And it's just brilliant. And they win because wound war can't
Speaker: He just can't make the leap that maybe, that to him, if Bigwig who's fought into a standstill is not the chief rabbit, there's a much bigger rabbit who's fiercer and harder and that's why he backs off.
Speaker: When it's not true, and all it is, is Bigwig is prepared to doubt to protect his friend. I was listening to a podcast a while ago with Franz de Waal, the primatologist, and he studied chimpanzees in the wilds in Central Africa for a long time. They have wars with one another, so one troop will go to war with another troop.
Speaker: And if the dominant male in the troop is a wound wart character, then he can rule for a certain amount of time with the iron fist, but sooner or later he'll get torn apart. And so even in nature,
Speaker: And obviously, this is a rabbit analogy, you know, you know, not chimps as we're going to rabbits. But the point stands that the alpha male in the troop is the one who can forge the best friendships and the best relationships with the other chimpanzees and not just the other males, but the females as well. So the ones who can demonstrate reciprocal behavior.
Speaker: And I guess, listen, you know, in whatever fashion a chimp listens to another chimp, but you see my point. And this is where Hazel, he is the alpha male, even though he's relatively small, he could never take on big, we're going to fight, but he is the alpha rabbit. He's Hazel, he's called Hazel Ra, isn't he? Which is rabbit talk for the king. It's that whole idea of how the whole
Speaker: anyone who calls himself an alpha man or you immediately can write off as an idiot, because it means that they don't understand the whole idea of it. Because it's not about... Because with social animals, it's about being successful in that social setting. It's not about being able to kick the shit out to somebody. Because that's the last... There's a really interesting thing she said about chimps showing that... I can't remember I read it, but...
Speaker: In the troops where they have a very sort of domineering male, the females will, more of them will go behind his back with other males who are not, who have more social skills. They'll like, sneak off with them. Well, that doesn't, that's not surprising at all, really. No, because you want a child, you don't want someone. I've always thought to anyone who says they're alpha male, I just think, yeah, you're the person that everyone can't wait to leave the party.
Speaker: your wound war. Yeah, that's who you are. You're that person that partied everything, he'd just go, please. Right, is there anything we've missed with the war to shut down? The last thing I would say is a lot of people, and you said it at the beginning about it being harrowing, because Hazel dies at the end. Yes. And I don't think it actually is, because
Speaker: What happened to it is Hazel has done everything he possibly can. And he's given the opportunity to move on to the early next place, which is to join the Owser of the Black Rabbit of Inlay. That's like being told you, look, you've succeeded. You are the best rabbit.
Speaker: You've given everything you could. It is a moving piece and there is a sadness attached to that because he dies.
Speaker: We mentioned Ellerira, so he's like the Christ figure of rabbits, and Hazel's been able to get as close to Ellerira as it's possible for a rabbit to get, and so he's rewarded with that in taking up his position with the black rabbit with death. But it's like that. Do you remember in the Harry Potter books and the movies, there's the Beadle the Bard stories, and there's the story of the three brothers who tried to cheat death, and the one... Oh, yes.
Speaker: who takes the invisibility cloak at the end of his life, he greets death as if being greeted by an old friend. And that's the sense that I think get here with Hazel.
Speaker: And it's, I don't know if you've listened to any of our episodes before, but the, no, not the most recent one, but the most recent one was Titus Grown, but the one we did before that was the Excalibur, the 80s film, the John Bormann. Oh, I love that film so much. You'll have to go back and listen to it. I will, I will definitely go back and listen to that. Can I tell you a story about that film? I'll finish the point and then tell us about Excalibur. At the end of that, where Arthur goes to Avalon, it's the same thing.
Speaker: It's exactly the same thing. There's the Avalon parallel with Hazel. Tell us about Excalibur. It saved my life once.
Speaker: I was wandering through Leeds, quite drunk, very, very gossed up. I had massive hair, I was covered in makeup. When I was younger, I just looked like a girl. Men used to chat me up all the time and I used to have to go, look, I'm not a girl, I'm just skinny and I've really long hair. But because I was drunk, I wasn't watching where I was going. I took a wrong turning and I turned, ended up outside one of the roughest clubs in Leeds.
Speaker: surrounded my men with no necks, who clearly did not appreciate me. Yeah, they were slowly surrounding me and I had no idea what to do. And I don't know to this day why I did this. What I did was I stuck my hand in the air and I said, any man who would follow a king. And I gave the speech from Excalibur that Arthur does.
Speaker: There was this moment of silence and then somebody produced a traffic cone and put it on my head.
Speaker: And I led them round the square. It leads to the statue of the Black Prince. And then they just kind of vanished. Well, that's awesome. So you're crowned. Actually, we should mention this. We're doing this recording on the day of the coronation. So King Charles is crowned a little bit earlier today. Now we've got this lovely story of you being crowned. Yeah, I'm the official king of Leeds. I'm called God Phragalia. Yeah, because of Excalibur. That traffic gun. That's super.
Speaker: I don't think we can top that, so we should probably stop this half of the show right there. That was lots of fun talking about Watership Down. And we will join you a little bit later on in the show. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. What? I said a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Speaker: I know what you said. I mean, what in the nine triangular's of bongalorn are you talking about? It's a proverb. The humans, they use them all the time. In fact, the 932nd most popular human thing to you. Well, next to crack cocaine and fidget spinners. I mean, you said you wanted to do a show about them. All right, the show. I almost forgot.
Speaker: Hello, listener. You are listening to Mars Radio 14, the third best radio station in the Martian Space Force Broadcasting Spectrum. My name is Captain Half -Milk Carton. I've been joined by Lieutenant Bungalow, who is just back from Earth. And on this show, we're going to be talking about proverbs. Well, you wish, Bungalow. That's my bit to say.
Speaker: matter who says it. The listeners don't give a crap who says it. All they care is that it is said. It matters to me a lot. There's no point in me if I don't have things to do and say. I have milk on the u was ever proven for that. It goes do not become a tree unless you like to stand around a lot with your arms outstretched.
Speaker: That doesn't sound right, bungalow. And come back to the thing you were saying about the two bushes. What are they? It was two birds, not two bushes. And birds are small creatures with feathers that lay eggs and fly around the place, excreting as they go. It's delightful, really. Oh, like Martina Ruddlespitch. Yeah, yeah, I guess. Like her only, you know, smaller. Why would I want two Martina Ruddlespitches? Sorry, I mean two small Martina Ruddlespitches. Well, I mean you wouldn't. What you want is one small Martina Ruddlespitch, like in your hand.
Speaker: That'd be nice. I can do that, yeah. Right. It sounds messy. Are there any other proverbs? Oh, any amount of them. I mean, I mean, humans can't get enough of this stuff. They just can't. Right. That's the truth. I know you said that. I did. For obbligong's sake, have you asteroids in your head bungalow?
Speaker: Can you give another example of a human proverb? Before I mush your anterior vestibule into frungal? Actions speak louder than words. And what do you mean by that? It's another human proverb. Okay.
Speaker: Then what do humans mean by that? Well, they mean that if you kick something, like say a box or an echelon cylinder, then the resulting sound is far superior to anything your vocal chords can create. That is the greatest load of gibberish I have ever heard. Well, I mean, it might seem like gibberish to you half milkard, but proverbs are a big deal to humans. And I mean, you know what they say about you?
Speaker: Hello and welcome to The Judge's Corner with me, Damaris Brown.
Speaker: If you were a regular listener last year, you'll know that as well as my talks on legal matters we authors need to know about, such as copyright and defamation, I also covered topics which had historical legal aspects we could use in our stories. In a return to the latter, this month I'm following up on the talk I gave in March, where I discussed trial by combat in John Borman's film Excalibur, as I'm looking at the early history of criminal trials in England.
Speaker: Since I spoke at some length about the specifics of Trial by Combat, I won't repeat that detail now, but it will help inform what follows. So if you haven't yet listened to the Excalibur Cron's cast, do go listen to it now.
Speaker: As I explained then, judicial combat was only one of a number of trials by ordeal which arose across Europe in the early medieval period, a time of devout faith coupled with an absence of both central authority and sophisticated legal systems. These trials by ordeal covered a variety of tests, but all involved the accused having to do something
Speaker: or submitting to having something done to them. And as the word ordeal suggests, that something was usually painful at best, dangerous at worst.
Speaker: The rationale behind them lay in the belief that God not only watched what went on in the human realm, but actively intervened in human affairs with miraculous results. And since he knew who was innocent and who guilty, and he could control the outcome of any trial, that outcome would necessarily be divine judgment on the accused.
Speaker: In Anglo -Saxon England status ordained who faced what test. Nobleman, Thanes and Freeman underwent the ordeals of fire and hot iron, presumably because these were less degrading. The accused had a plenches hand
Speaker: or, if the offence was serious, his bare arm up to the elbow, in a vessel of boiling water, to retrieve a stone at the bottom. Or he would be made to carry red -hot iron over a set distance, nine paces say, or three yards, or to walk barefoot over red -hot ploughshares. In each case the wound would then be bound in cloth and sealed for three days, after which the limb would be bared and examined in the presence of witnesses.
Speaker: The iron would be blessed and prayed over at the trial, so that it should be a pleasing coolness to those who carry it with justice and fortitude, but a burning fire to the wicked, which suggests that the truly innocent should emerge unharmed, and that initially at least any evidence of burn or scolding would be deemed proof of guilt.
Speaker: However, later texts speak of a diseased discharge. And if this is found in the mark of the iron, let him be led forth guilty. If, however, it is clean, let praise and glory be given to God. That is, if the burn were healing well, it was proof enough of innocence.
Speaker: Those lower in status than the Anglo -Saxon freemen, such as husbandmen, face the less honorable ordeal of cold water, tied wrist to ankle or thumb to toe, and immersed in deep water. Post conquest, one detailed ritual was laid down.
Speaker: If anyone has been accused of theft and he denies having done it, on Tuesday at Vespers let him be led to the church for the purpose of purging himself, clothed in woolen garments and walking barefoot. And there, that is in the church, let him remain until the Sabbath day with legal guardians, making a three -day fast on unleavened barley bread and water and salt and watercress.
Speaker: On the Sabbath day, when the Mass is finished, let the man be stripped not only of his woolen garments, but also of his undergarments, and let him be girded about the loins with new linen cloth lest his genitals be seen, and let him be covered until the hour or time
Speaker: with a cloak or cape because of the cold. And so let him be led to the pool of water with procession and litany. Let the accuser and the defendant swear oaths, such as those about to engage in judicial combat swear. And let the hands of the accused be tied together under his bent knees. Then let a rope strong enough to hold him be bound around his loins. And let there be made a knot in the rope at the length of his longer hair.
Speaker: and thus let him be lowered into the water gently, lest the water be disturbed. If he sinks to the knot, let him be drawn out as saved. If not, however, let him be adjudged as guilty by those watching.
Speaker: Other written rituals aren't quite so detailed and talk of the accused being plunged into the water. But again, if they sink, let them be considered guiltless. If they float, let them be judged guilty.
Speaker: Although for most of us this ordeal of water is most closely associated with its later use by self -proclaimed witchfinders in the 16th and 17th centuries, women probably weren't subject to it originally. Records for the years between 1194 and 1208 show seven women being sent for ordeal and all undergoing the trial of hot iron.
Speaker: It's possible this was done for reasons of modesty, but one theory is it was a matter of mercy. Women, with a higher proportion of body fat, are far more likely than men to float, and, accordingly, far more likely to be found guilty by a water test, so they were given instead a better chance of being acquitted.
Speaker: There was a surprisingly high rate of acquittal for the trial by Hot Iron. Early 13th century records from Hungary show that of 308 trials, some 210 accused were declared innocent.
Speaker: Just as with trial by combat, since these ordeals were appeals to God, they were overseen by the church. The trials of hot iron actually took place in church, and it was the priest's role to determine guilt or innocence on examining the wound. Again, one ritual was set down post -conquest, giving precise detail as to the priest's duties.
Speaker: After accusation has been legitimately made and a three -day period completed in fasten prayer, let the priest, dressed in holy garments, with a pair of tongs take the iron placed before the altar, and singing the benedicte omnia opera, carry it to the fire. Let him place the iron in the fire and sprinkle it with holy water, and while it heats up, let him celebrate mass.
Speaker: Then let the priest say a prayer over the iron which has been taken off the far and laid on wood. Afterwards let the gospel be read. Once the gospel has been read let the priest sprinkle holy water over the iron.
Speaker: The clergy themselves had a somewhat less exacting ordeal if accused, for they had to eat, or try to eat, what was known as the morsel of execration. The legal commentator Sir William Blackstone, writing in the 18th century, defined it as
Speaker: A piece of cheese or bread of about an ounce in weight, which was consecrated with a form of exorcism, desiring of the Almighty that it might cause convulsions and paleness and find no passage if the man was really guilty, but might turn to health and nourishment if he was innocent.
Speaker: There is, of course, a psychological element here, since a pious man feeling guilty about his offending might well suffer a dry mouth and consequently be unable to swallow stale bread. And that bread wouldn't be the fluffy white stuff of our time, of course, but lightly dense barley bread, dark, coarse, heavy and dry, in the words of Elizabeth David, the renowned cookery writer.
Speaker: I've not discovered any research into how many clergy were accused and found guilty by this test. But one tale, alas almost certainly apocryphal, has Earl Godwin, father of Harold Godwinson, the defeated king at the Battle of Hastings, meeting his doom in 1053 from a secular ad hoc version of the trial. Since at a banquet with his son -in -law, Edward the Confessor, with whom he was not on the best of terms, Godwin is supposed to have said,
Speaker: May this crust, which I hold in my hand, pass through my throat and leave me unharmed, to show that I was guiltless of treason towards you, and that I was innocent of your brother's death, whereupon he choked on the crust and died, so much for hubris and tempting fate.
Speaker: With the exception of that trial by bread, these ordeals seemed to us brutal, even barbaric. But they were an improvement on what came before in the Anglo -Saxon world, namely, no trial at all, only the law of the sword and private revenge, and with it, the ever -present risk of blood feuds escalating into all -out warfare, albeit latterly tempered by the concept of wear guild or blood price, whereby an offence could be settled by the payment of compensation.
Speaker: But for some first offenders, there was an alternative to trials by ordeal, namely, Compigation, or trial by oath. Its first requirement was easy. The accused had to swear on oath, asserting his innocence. By the Lord, I am guiltless, both in deed and counsel of the charge.
Speaker: The slightly more difficult part, which is where some accused came unstuck, was to assemble enough men to appear on his behalf and swear, by the Lord, the oath is clean and unpurged, which he hath sworn. Nothing more was needed, no evidence, no investigation, just the man's denial, and the compagators, those vouching for him, swearing or know that he was truthful.
Speaker: To modernise, this seems almost farcical as a method of justice. We'd expect a guilty man to lie in his family and friends to support him regardless of the truth. Certainly by the 12th century, there was similar scepticism, and restrictions were drawn up around the complication.
Speaker: Yet we are undoubtedly missing the importance of oath taking to the Anglo -Saxon mind. It is not merely a matter of integrity and of the guilt of perjury if the oath is falsely given. An oath is calling out to God as witness and calling down God's wrath if one lied.
Speaker: Interestingly enough, over a thousand years later the echoes of this trial by oath still reverberate in the English legal system. Most obviously, the majority of people giving evidence in court still swear on oath using a holy book, though since 1695 those unable or unwilling to swear, such as Quakers, may affirm instead.
Speaker: In addition, those vouching for the accused under the trial by oath are obvious precursors of our present -day character witnesses who give sworn testimony as to the accused virtues such as his or her honesty and integrity.
Speaker: Although the number of propagators or oath helpers required varied, depending on the accused's rank and what was alleged, it settled down eventually to the accused securing his acquittal with just 12 men. And if that number rings a bell, it should do. It's arguably the very beginnings of the English jury system.
Speaker: Notwithstanding the inadequacy of these trials of ordeal and oath as a means of achieving justice, one advantage was that they brought finality. If God had decreed someone was innocent or had not struck down an oath taker for lying, who was man to gain say him?
Speaker: Well, in fact, from early on, there were people who understood that trial by combat was flawed. And certainly after the conquest, although the old Anglo -Saxon laws remained in place for the most part, with a greater drive to centralization and the growing sophistication of the courts, the old ways began to be reconsidered. Certainly William Rufus, son of the conqueror and his heir in England, wasn't convinced that the Almighty was minded to intervene in trials by ordeal.
Speaker: What is this? he demanded, on learning that some fifty men accused of crimes against his forest lords had all been deemed innocent. God is a just judge. May he perish who henceforth believes that.
Speaker: Complication seems to have been the main method of justice immediately after the conquest, though a legal treatise of around 1118 said the ordeal of Hotan was to be offered as an alternative because of the harrisings committed by evil men and the conspiracy of perjurers.
Speaker: and it was actually required if the accused was himself extremely untrustworthy, or was accused by three people at the same time, or the oath helpers wouldn't support him, or if he were friendless or a foreigner. Then, in 1166, the Assize of Clarendon set out that certain accused, murderers, robbers and thieves, had to be put to the trial of cold water.
Speaker: But Henry II seems to have had reservations about it, for the ordeal was not available to those taken in possession of the spoils of robbery or theft, or those of evil repute, or who confess to the crime.
Speaker: That is, notorious or obvious offenders weren't to be given a way out of conviction by appealing to God through the ordeal, and anyone of ill repute who did undertake the trial and was acquitted was then required to abjure the realm.
Speaker: Elsewhere on the continent, reason and intelligence were used to argue against the continuance of trials by ordeal. In 1231, they were banned in Sicily on the order of Emperor Frederick II, with ignorant beliefs in their efficacy being summarily dismissed.
Speaker: The simple -minded believe that the element of cold water will not receive a guilty man on account of his bad conscience, when, in fact, it is the retention of sufficient air that does not allow him to sink.
Speaker: By this time, theological arguments against trials of ordeal had also overcome opposition. And the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 removed all clerical oversight from them, ending their spiritual legitimacy. Four years later, the jury system in England was established with a trial by petty jury. And that's a subject for another talk. So how are we to bring any of this arcane trial law into our writings?
Speaker: For those of us writing fantasy in a world similar to early medieval Europe, certainly trial by combat can be used to good effect, as by George Martin in A Song of Ice and Far. But there's no need to restrict that trial to the nobility as there, and as it was in France in reality, but instead have it available to all ranks of society and show it in all its sordid brutality, as I discussed in March.
Speaker: The other trials by ordeal would also give depth to medieval world -building, with opportunities for all kinds of characters to be involved. The most obvious being a healer who ensures the cloths bandaging a scolded arm are impregnated with salves, or the accused's enemy who arranges for the cloths to be filthy and promote infection. There is also much that could be done with a priest or other official overseeing the trial, and the possible arguments and recriminations when he interprets the test.
Speaker: One Icelandic saga deals with a girl who undergoes trial by Hottan to prove she's telling the truth about who made her pregnant. When her hand is unbandaged, the saga records that the priest was slow to decide.
Speaker: The man representing the putative father promptly yells, why are you such a blot on your father's name that you don't state outright that her hand is burned? While the man representing the girl, who just happens to be the other man's enemy, accuses the priest of having taken a bribe to speak against her. The priest counters with, it's out of order for you two to pronounce the judgment and take the case out of my hands. The decision is mine to make.
Speaker: and then says the girl must undergo the trial again to make things clear, a solution which simply further alienates the two sides and ends in armed conflict. So, one pregnant girl leads to out and out warfare via a trial by ordeal. Who couldn't make an exciting story out of that?
Speaker: Perhaps your world is on the cusp of creating a better judicial system with your valiant legal hero leading the change, but opponents want the trials of ordeal to continue, particularly the might -is -right ethos of trial by combat. Or perhaps you have a group of people such as firewalkers who can undertake seemingly miraculous feats without harm. How would trials of ordeal evolve to counter them?
Speaker: Don't dismiss trials by ordeal because you're not writing European -based fantasy. Similar systems have existed in other countries at different times, including India, Malavant, West Africa and Iran. Nor dismiss the idea because your fantasy is set in the equivalent of later centuries with more sophisticated legal systems.
Speaker: Compigation, that swearing on oath without other evidence, remained in certain matters such as actions for debts until the 19th century in England, and trial by combat itself was a legal option here until as late as 1819. Indeed, it was only abolished then because a suspected rapist and murderer challenged his accuser to a duel and went free when the accuser was sensible enough not to fight the brute.
Speaker: Trials by ordeal can also be relevant in any world with a dominant religion, especially one where central secular authority is weak, whether in fantasy or dystopian science fiction, if the people believe their god or gods can intervene in their lives to demonstrate guilt or innocence.
Speaker: Even if religious faith isn't strong, perhaps the authorities have an understanding of psychology, so they know an accused might reveal his or her guilt in how the trial by ordeal is undertaken, or recovery from it afterwards. Every society produces laws and a system of justice, so it's an integral part of all world building. Think how yours may have evolved, and what
Speaker: The April 75 word challenge was on the topic of liminality and the genre was, anything goes. It was won by M. Rose Nagel with her entry, Hair of the Dog.
Speaker: Ding -ding! The alchemist looked up, and his stomach flopped. What is that? Bristly fur poked out of its pores, human teeth crowded in its long snout. On hind legs with people -toes, the disturbing creature shambled up to the counter. It's a long story, it sighed. Anyway, I can't seem to turn human or werewolf now. Got anything for that?
Speaker: The alchemist did, actually, hair of the dog, to leave inhibition behind for good. Hello and welcome to Mars Radio 14, the third best radio station in the Martian Space Force. My name is Lieutenant Bungalow of the Martian Space Force, and today myself and Captain Half Milk Carton here have been joined by the great Martian Explorer, Bongalon Chupstone.
Speaker: who was the first Martian to have set foot on Venus, oooh, and who has just returned from Venus, oooh. Welcome to Mars Radio 14, Bangalore. What they do is constrict the blood flow to their ears to warm up.
Speaker: or if they get cold. And I have to say that it's not often the case as it is hot on Venus for most of the year. But if they do, they dilate the blood flow, which gives them a chance to cool down. Ah, for a really long sink, bungalow. I thought you said this fellow would be great in an interview. I did!
Speaker: I mean, he IS half milk on. That's all really valuable information. Really valuable. I mean, no Martian is known as apart from Mr. Chubstow, I mean, until now that is. Because no Martian has ever been on Venus before.
Speaker: Right, okay. Well, then can you explain to him how radio works? Like, you know, maybe introduce what he's going to say. So the Martians listen might have some sort of clue what he's rapping on about. Ah, yeah, okay. Fair enough, half -milkorn. I will. I'll start again. My name is Lieutenant Bungalow. By the nine triangulations of Emily Funk. Have you asteroids in your head? Skip that bit. Just start by maybe, I don't know, asking the fella how he got to Venus. And what the first thing he saw was.
Speaker: Oh! Oh, yeah, right, okay, I see half milk art. Hello, Bongalon Chubstow! Now, I know we were talking before the show started, but the listeners, they don't have a frickin' clue what you were saying during that time because they couldn't hear you, of course, yeah. So, could you tell them just how you got to Venus? I used a rocket.
Speaker: Right. Yes. And, yeah, okay, so, you know, what was the first thing you saw when you landed? Ooh, Venutians. Yeah, okay, so, yeah, what did they look like, you know? The Venutians? Ah, for a big unsafe job, though. Of course the Venutians!
Speaker: You were just talking about them. Well, they had very long ears relative to their body size and incredibly fast and agile with large hind legs and claws and they eat their own excrement. What? Big ears. Probably so they can hear predators approaching. Oh, and they sleep with their eyes open. My guess is that is also an evolutionary trait which developed to alert them to approaching predators while they slept.
Speaker: What's this about eating eggscreatment? Oh, that's just something they do to help with the fermentation of the grasses and leafy plants they eat. They're herbivore, you know. There are no plants on Venus. You're right, half milk carton. There's not, huh? Mr. Chubstow!
Speaker: Did these Venusians live in, you know, holes they burrowed into the ground? Yes. And how many planets out from the sun did you say Venus was? Three. So the one next door to us? Yes. Right. So tell me this. Did you ever think that the Venus you landed on might have been Earth? And the Venusians you might have seen might have been rabbits? No. Although, come to think of it, it might have been Earth. I'm always getting those things mixed up. They look so similar. Right.
Speaker: Well, let me clear it up for you. If you find yourself hastily compressing and vaporizing to death, then there's a good chance you're on Venus. And you're probably on Earth if you find yourself watching fast, agile creatures eating their own dirt. Oh, I like to be like that. Be like which? Fast and agile or sitting around eating your own muck? I've tried eating my own muck. It's rotten. Your best bet is to add a bit of tantoin butter. Ha, for obliquely honest sake. We leave it there, folks.
Speaker: Welcome back to the show. We're here with RJ Barker. We've bugged around with Watership Down, and we're going to have a little chat with RJ about his work, his career, maybe a little bit of heavy metal if we get the time. We'll start with God to the Weirdwood, I think, because that's quite nicely timed.
Speaker: This episode is going to be coming out around about the same time as Gods of the Weirdwood. The release date is at the end of June, RJ? June the 27th. June the 27th, there you go. So this episode is coming out a little bit before that, so just in time to get some pre -orders in. Can you tell us a little bit about it? I know you mentioned it a teensy bit earlier about the setting, but give us the lowdown on it.
Speaker: Well, I describe Watship Down as some rabbits go somewhere, and I'll describe it on some weird wood as a man doesn't go anywhere. I think you need to work on your elevator pitch. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of Robin Hood, but it exists in a world that's nothing like ours. They don't have metal and...
Speaker: I really not heavy metal, actual metal. What a world building thing that would be. But it's basically it's a story of a man who was the chosen one. Literally he was the farm boy that the priests came and they said you are the one and you are going to make our world better because there were tilts
Speaker: So one side is cold, and one side is hot, depending on how it's tilted. But basically, whoever's in power, they just keep it tilted their way, so they're having a lovely time. And then the other people are having a terrible time, and they eventually get angry, and there's an uprising, and a war, and they tilt it the other way, and it all starts again. And there's a kind of warrior class who can use magic, who are just awful, and will kill you for fun, because they're not nice.
Speaker: But Khan was meant to be the one who tilted the world back. And he got to about 15. He didn't really want to be this person. It was quite a brutal training regime. And then suddenly it turned out it wasn't him. It was someone else. And everyone was gone. And he just didn't know what to do.
Speaker: He had all this power that he hadn't fully learned to use and bad things ensue. Then you meet him in his probably late 30s and he's a hermit living on his own in the middle of this one. He just wants to be left alone, but life is not going to let him be alone.
Speaker: It's hard. It's about somebody running from something and running from who they really are and the fact that they can't escape it. Well, I like the sound of it already. So even though the responsibility evaded him when he thought that it was his to take up, it finds him eventually in some other form. That's what it sounds like.
Speaker: Yeah, but on a much smaller scale. Yeah, but I guess that's not necessarily any less important. No. You know, responsibility scales up and down, doesn't it?
Speaker: Now you've said it and from what I've read I'm going to provide my pitch for the book and you tell me how horribly wrong this is. It can't be any worse than RJ's own pitch for the book. It's a man who doesn't go anywhere yet. It's like Rosemary Sutcliffe decided to write Star Wars except Luke Skywalker was trying to avoid everything instead of running towards it.
Speaker: Yeah, basically. And the whole book is kind of this extended metaphor of him. That's what it's about. It's about somebody trying to run away and not being able to. And there's a village near that he wants nothing to do with. And very slowly, he starts to create bonds with people and realize that maybe it's something he needs. And
Speaker: And that sort of grows and then we end up with kind of, I don't know how far you've got Pete, I don't know. I don't think it's a spoilery type of book, to be honest with you. It feels like just from this small snippet, and I not read, obviously a word, I don't have a review copy, feels like we know where this is going.
Speaker: But in a broad sense, you know, not knowing any of the characters, we don't know the characters, but we can tell where this is going. And it's already, you know, even though we know roughly what the template of the narrative is going to be, it's going, it's not going to be any less compelling for that. And people watch Star Wars, like, Ben Bean's watched Star Wars probably like 50 times. And he doesn't love it any less for not, for knowing where it's going to go.
Speaker: it sounds like it could be a really compelling story. And that sort of adoption of responsibilities is not the same as Hazel, isn't it? It doesn't necessarily want it. It kind of ends with what I like to describe as the single samurai. If you've seen
Speaker: sort of the end of Curtis Howard's Seven Samurai, that scene. I love that. It's one of my favourite things and I kind of recreated it, except there's just one of them. There's only one book that's been brought in. And that kind of is where it builds up. But there's a lot of mental stuff going on in the background that is building up for what's going to happen in the other books.
Speaker: I think you're meant to be giving some head scratches right now. Yeah, he'll bite me if I do. He's an awful cat. I love him. He's a good guest. Yeah, he's terrible. He's not ever used with this affectionate or noisy. It's because we're talking about rabbits.
Speaker: That's what he is. Yeah, he doesn't approve talking about rabbits. Yeah. Can you see? He's doing the proper thing. So yeah, and it's kind of the most world -building thing I've done is Go to the Weird Wood. And I think the story relies on the world rather than... Yes, it's very well -building forwards.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's really deliberate in a really odd way. And I wanted to write this book that was really, really layered because where it's going to go is not... It's going to surprise people what's happening later on down the line. And it's all in that first book. Okay. So there's lots of foreshadowing going on.
Speaker: Yeah, lots of foreshadowing, lots of stuff. I guess, quite subtle foreshadowing that makes it retroactively. Yeah. And it's an extended character study as well, this man who... I mean, I'm thinking about it until I'm racking my brain. What did you say the character's name was, Khan?
Speaker: Okay, I mean that's a fairly old, I'm pretty sure the story, I've gone back to my literature 101 here, but when I studied the Bible in my first year, or at least the parts of the Old Testament, and the story of Abraham is essentially the same story as what you're saying here with Cahan.
Speaker: Because he's born into a promise, let's say, but he doesn't do anything with it. And he's an old man by the time he's called to adventure. And then he goes out and encounters tyranny and disaster and catastrophe and plague and famine and all of that stuff.
Speaker: But it's an old story. I guess, again, it's saying that responsibility will find you, even if you don't want it to. And the sooner you adopt it voluntarily, again, like Hazel going up to Kehar the seagull, if you do it voluntarily, you're going to get the reward out of it. Yeah, well, it's good. And it is that. It's a really weird book for me. It's got to be weird because I wrote it.
Speaker: during lockdown, and my health is kind of up and down. It's quite bad. And I cannot see this book for that. I really struggle with it. Ed read it, and he went, yeah, it's missionary. But he's my agent, and he has to say that. This is Ed Wilson. Yeah, we like Ed. He's friends with Ron's cast. We've had him on. He talked about, I don't know if you listened to it. He talked about House of Leaves with us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was great fun. He's dared me to read it.
Speaker: It's dead. Oh, you must read it. You must read House of Leaves. It's insane. Yeah, I've ordered it. But yeah, I find God's Tweet really difficult to describe. It's really odd because it doesn't... I don't think it quite fits into any of the fantasy things that are going on at the moment.
Speaker: that seems to be quite a trend for talking about gods in the old sense and obviously that's in the name and um a lot of the early book so i kind of see it fitting there but i mean i'm gonna have to wait until i read the whole thing but it is it is a bit different that's for sure and it's i mean i think the big thing for me is
Speaker: Again, that sense of staticness. There's so much of fantasy that's about going places. And this is, I think, you were sort of like what you were saying, the world makes sense and it's like exploring the world.
Speaker: But I'm curious as to whether there was anything you were trying to do with this book that you couldn't fit into past books or you looked at your past books and was like, that was fun, but now I want to do this. Because there's something that strikes me about your careers. You're very restless as an author. This is your third fantasy world, your second genre, although we don't talk about your alter ego.
Speaker: So yeah, Chiosa says, any deliberate impulses you were trying to get out here? I'm not sure I'm a very deliberate person. I just know that I want to do something different when I started it. The weirdest thing is about Gods of the Weird World is what I wanted to write was a really fast -paced kind of Robin Hood pastiche that was really easy to read.
Speaker: And I've failed on a spectacular level to do that. It's not often I tell other writers that, yeah, you failed, but yeah. In the best possible way, yeah. But it's kind of this, what I'm trying to do is, I think
Speaker: One of the earliest things I read in fantasy that there's a few books that are big as well as watch it down and the CJ Cherry's more game books Yeah, which had a massive effect on me and I'm definitely That they're there in both the assassin books and to burn ships touch our books The other one is the Second Chronicles Thomas covenant. I never read the other ones. I
Speaker: I was always skint, so all my reading was done from charity shops and I picked up all three of the second chronicles of Thomas Goodman. So just to be clear, you haven't read the first trilogy of that? No, no, and I knew nothing about
Speaker: Yeah, it's a staggering piece of work. In fact, we should be covering Lord Fowl's Bane at some point in the show. Yeah. And I think that's weird would probably its closest thing. You have a hero who refuses to pick up the mantle. And in the way Thomas Covenan will
Speaker: that you spend the entire trilogy screaming at and just use the ring, you idiot. And Kahane is somewhat similar to that in that he's frustrating. But it's a study of a man who's very scared, I think.
Speaker: and scared of himself and what he can do and what he's done and that fascinates me. And a study of someone who desperately wants a friend but doesn't know that. That turns up a lot in my fiction. Yeah. Again, very, very gutted.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very, because I think that comes up, I don't know why. Maybe I desperately want a friend. But there's a writer called Mark Catley, who's a TV writer, just before I got published.
Speaker: I went on a course of theatre writing that he ran and he told me the best thing about characters which I just never thought about consciously before and he just said every character should have what they need and what they actually want and what they need is often at odds with what they want because Kahane thinks he wants to be left alone.
Speaker: That is desperately what he wants and what he will tell everybody. But what he needs is somebody to say, look, it's going to be all right. We can get through this if we do it together and burst into song. And it is his journey towards acceptance and that with power, with great power comes great responsibility and all of that sort of thing.
Speaker: But I think I kind of got lost in the woods in it as well. I love the woods in it. But as you said, you implied earlier that you're a discovery writer and there's great fun when you're writing in getting lost in the world. And especially when you're writing genre fiction, there's huge scope for getting lost in the world. And as long as the writing, we're often told you shouldn't pad things up with too much world building. But if it's beautifully done,
Speaker: And if it's immersive, then not everything has to, again, I haven't read it, but not everything has to always be driving the plot. Things can exist just to be beautiful and to be immersive.
Speaker: I think it is quite a pretty book. And when I go back, I'm not good at reading my stuff. I can't go back to my books. But every time I have to go back, I'll be doing a reading from them. And when I go back and read books, I go, yeah, that writing is pretty. But it's too...
Speaker: I don't know whether any of the writers have talked about this. The run -up to releasing a book is just like somebody turning screws in the back of your head and you go slightly mental. It's like doing a PhD. Everyone I know that's doing a PhD has gone slightly mental towards the end of it. And releasing a book is quite similar because you can know something's good, but because it's art, you don't know if other people will get that from you.
Speaker: Yes. Your entire life. Yeah. There's always a certain amount of, like there is the cliche of the artist bearing their soul, but I think there's also, especially for writers, there's at least a sort of quasi or semi autobiographical element to a lot of stuff that's written.
Speaker: you know how else could it be you pour yourself or aspects of yourself into a book so it does make sense you know that it's being poured over and taken apart and put back together again by essentially industry before it's released onto the public and then the public has its way with it as well but it's quite it's quite weird as well because i'm like 50 odd thousand words into the third book now
Speaker: And I'm really pleased with the second book and the third one. And it's always the first book. I said to my editor, I said, I've got it. I don't know what people can make of this book. I don't even know if it's a good book. She pointed out that I've said that for every book I've released. Every single one I've sat there and gone, this is the worst. It's terrible. It's a terrible book. It's just that you have no chill until it's out. Then I'm like, OK. It's a weird thing to do, be a writer.
Speaker: I don't hold much truck with the false modesty thing. It's a terrible book. If you believed it was truly terrible, you probably wouldn't have admitted it in the first place. After you've written a certain amount, you get to understand it's got some merits. As Philip Pullman once said, it's good enough.
Speaker: You know, it gets to a certain level. It's good enough. I can submit that. And then the editors can have their way with it. And it's a really weird thing that you know, on a technical level, that it's of a level. And I know that I joke about it, but if Ed had read it,
Speaker: He'd be coming back to me and managing my expectations if he thought it was terrible. And every time I made this, Jenny would not have released it. She'd just turn around and say, no, we have to, this is not that great. You know all that. But it doesn't make any difference. You just use that. For what if actually no one knows?
Speaker: But I know it's a good book as well. I know that I really, I struggled writing it, but I really kind of was deep into it in a really joyous way. It's such a complicated thing. Because what I do is I write these big, quite difficult to write fantasy things because there's depths and layers and layers and layers of world in them that comes out later on.
Speaker: And this is the most of that, I think. And then in between, I write the books just like froth. And I don't knock them out. That's my holiday. This is your, these are your alter ego books, right? Yeah, yeah. I've not really looked at those. Should I? It's kind of the monsters type thing. No, no. I dearly love them. Have you ever come across happened meant?
Speaker: No. Joelle Lansdale's happened Leonard books. I don't think so. They're crime novels. Crime novels, yeah. They're about a couple of lads who live on a cancer state. One of them's a medium, but he's not, he's a colonized. But he's kind of got a good heart. He's doing it, he's trying to help people along in life. And the other one is a sea gangster who's a borderline psychopath.
Speaker: And they just get themselves in trouble and they're trying to do the right thing and they're joyous to write because they're just like, oh, I can create as much chaos as I want. And you don't have to build a world because it's our world and it already exists. And I just fly through them and I write. I've also got like, I think three other books with Ed at the moment, a fantasy one, crying one, and something else.
Speaker: Which I write a lot, I love to do it. Tell us how you fell into writing then, because you said you did a bit of rock music earlier on in your life, that didn't work out, as it doesn't for most of us, but then you went into writing. I often find that people who have an artistic temperament
Speaker: have more than one string to their bow. So if they're a writer, they might be, you know, a proficient musician, or they might be, you know, quite good at visual arts or something else like that. I'd love to say that I was a proficient musician. Well, okay. You have a musical temperament. Let's put it diplomatically. Excuse me. I look really, really good on a stage. Yeah, I always had books I always read and then I
Speaker: fell in, I saw Welcome to the Jungle that comes and runs this video of it when I was about 14 and I just thought I want to do that. That's it. I want to do that and promptly more or less stopped going to school. Oh so you meant it. Yeah, yeah. It's funny because appetite for destruction was my gateway drug as well. Yeah. I think it was so of its time and so sort of
Speaker: that sort of skirted that line between punk and metal, didn't it? Yeah, and I don't think people now realise how aggressive this is. And glam as well. Yeah, and real, I think that's the thing about it. Kit Power, a friend of mine was saying, he was making fun of people who liked the Smiths because Morrissey turned out to be awful. And then he said, but I really like guns and roses, so can I even say that?
Speaker: But I always say that, yeah, you can't, because Guns N' Roses didn't have a light to you. They were quite different about the fact that they were horrid. But yeah, and I played in bands, and I was terrible. I was just one. What did you play? What were you, guitar? I played bass. I'd play bass. Yeah, because I thought it was the easiest. It's not the easiest. No. No, it's not. You need a really good sense of rhythm, and I don't.
Speaker: But I had a really good time and then I ended up in a band that were actually very good with a friend of mine who was an incredibly talented guitarist and eventually I realised I couldn't keep up and I just said look up.
Speaker: after this is not making me happy, I'm going to go and do something different. And I did, about a week later, he said, look, you might not be the best musician, but you're the heart of the band. Come back. We need you here. We'll just write simple stuff for you. And I came back and rehearsed. And at the end of it, he went, actually, I think you had a point. So you get. He could have just invited you back to be there, Chazz Smash. That would have worked better.
Speaker: Yeah, you're the best. I can't be the best. Yeah, you could have been the best. Just cool it with the Miracas for a bit. Yeah. I don't want to work in a concert all my life and that was literally all I was qualified to do. That is a bit of a USP, isn't it? A goth biz. Do you have any goth with the Miracas at the front of the band doing some dancing?
Speaker: never been done. That would be different. But also, can't dance. The best, blesses. No, no, best. Can't dance. But I've never been one for drugs. And I think that I think you really need the drugs to do that. But it certainly needed the drugs. I decided that I'd become a novelist. That was what I decided.
Speaker: which immediately bred not going to school because I had to teach myself how to write and I did and I made that decision that I would be published by a big publisher or nothing and that was what I was going to do and it took 13 years
Speaker: from that decision. Well, this is a good, a lot of our audience of writers, whether some of them have been published, I would say the majority have not, but I think it's instructive to hear that, that you say, A, that you had to teach yourself, B, that it took 13 years, and I'm guessing a fair amount of failure along the way to get to where you are now.
Speaker: had a weird failure because I never really submitted stuff. I think I submitted two or three manuscripts in the entire time. Quite a lot of short stories. I once got paid $5. That was my entire earning in the 13 years before I saw my first novel.
Speaker: odd belief because everything in my life has just sort of kind of happened in a slightly left -of -cent away rather than the way you're meant to do it. That was how things would happen. And it was actually Simon Spanton, he used to work for Galance, so a short story I'd written called The Shepherd on my blog and said, that's too good, can I put that on the Galance blog? Because if you leave it on your blog, no one will ever see it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks, Simon, for the backhanded compliment. And then he said, have you got anything else that I can look at? And I sent him something and he didn't like it at all. But he sent it to one of his authors who we thought would like and they did and they passed it to their agent who's called Rob. And he came back to me and said, have you got anything else? And I sent him a science fiction novel I'd worked on.
Speaker: And he came back and said, the first third of this is brilliant and the rest of it is awful, but we can fix it. And I think I was kind of his wild card. He just kind of thought, you are just doing what you want to do. You're not really paying attention to what people are telling you to do. This is instructive as well, because I think a lot of writers and certainly a lot of the writers we talk to extremely hung up about the
Speaker: the rules, the framework that you have to adhere to in order to write a novel. I've always maintained, I see a lot of myself in you actually because I never trained in it. I'm what you might call an enthusiastic amateur. I had to learn it from the ground up basically based upon my job.
Speaker: vast extensive reading catalogue. But there is room for the enthusiastic amateur who can bring what they, if they truly believe in it and they are willing to learn and take on different perspectives and learn from the ground up, you can actually make it. And if you've got that specific goal, you said you had that specific goal, I am going to be traditionally published, going to go with a big publishing house or bust.
Speaker: Monte Carlo or Bust. And so you can do it, but it took you 13 years and sounds like a lot of slug. Yeah, I didn't get there with Rob. We put out the science fiction novel and lots of people read it and I got the best turn down I've ever had. And I think it's from Orbit who said, we already have Ian Banks, we don't need the next one. And I was just like, that's pretty good. Yeah, you can turn me down for that. It would have been even better if somebody else had liked it, but no one did.
Speaker: And then kind of, I wrote Age of Assassins in six weeks because I'd been on sub and I couldn't write while I was on submission. It just sort of froze my brain. And as soon as I came out, I was like, right, I'm going to write a book. And I wrote this book.
Speaker: I sent it off to Rob and he came back to me and said, I've got good news and bad news. Good news is I think this is good, it's got something. Bad news is I'm letting you go. And it was because he was downsizing his agency. And he gave me a list of agents and I sent that stuff to these agents and I heard nothing for ages. And eventually I got back to him and said, I'm going to try some more agents. I just wanted to ask you if you knew any of them. And he said, oh yeah, they should be fine.
Speaker: And then he said, and you should contact Ed Wilson. And I was who? And he said, oh, it's literary horror on Twitter. And I'd seen him on Twitter and just thought, oh, literary horror, I'm not literary. I can't submit to you. But Rob said, no, I think you'll get along with Ed. Just submit to him. And not one other agent got back in touch with him, but Ed was back in touch in a week.
Speaker: I must admit, again, there's this perception out there that agents are, because they're the gatekeepers to the industry, that they're kind of snooty and a little bit standoffish and aloof. And that, you know, because they only send you form responses and form rejections, that they're not that amenable. And then you get somebody like Ed, who sort of blows that perception out of the water. He enjoys talking to writers.
Speaker: He's revolutionary. I love him and he's the perfect agent for me because he never says don't do that when I say I'm going to write this thing. Okay, then. Yeah. It must be great having somebody who's got that attitude in your corner, you know, back in your world. Yeah. And he does and he's not frightened to sort of tell me what I'm being an idiot either. He's quite sort of, he'll just go no. Well, you need that and you need to be able to
Speaker: to trust somebody. You don't want insincere flattery all the time. No. You know, sincere praise. He's absolutely on my side. And he's always right, which is really annoying. He'll say stuff and I'll think, really, Ed, really? And then yes, yeah, really. But yeah, he picked a page of Assassins and
Speaker: And he just thought, I know exactly what I'm going to do with this book and who will pick it up. And I was like, okay. And then he sold it and I received not a big advance by any amount compared to some people, but more money than I've ever seen in my entire life. And it changed my life in that moment.
Speaker: And I love him. Well, there you go. A lot of people have listened to our show because we talked to people and we talked to publishers and agents and plenty of authors. And some people come back on the episode threads and say, oh, I'm so depressed because this this writing like is sound is so hard. And I agree. I think people listen to your story and hopefully they'll be
Speaker: a little bit motivated, you know, they'll have a little bit of energy, they'll be energized and think, yes, it's possible. You know, it's not easy, but it is possible you can do it. If somebody's got to do it, why not me? And every day I wake up and think, oh, I'm a writer.
Speaker: I'm actually, I'm doing this, and I almost never don't have, like I write Monday to Friday, and I must never have a day when I don't write, apart from I've been writing a bit less lately, because I picked up Skyrim again, which was a mistake, and I shouldn't have done it, and I'm quite across from myself, but I love it. And quite often you sit down and I sit down and think, oh God, I don't know what I'm gonna write or how I'm gonna write, and then I write this out some words.
Speaker: And I can always do it. Yeah. Well, Tade said to us last time, he was on, we were talking about his writing process and he said, sometimes you just got to allow yourself to write crap. Yeah. Just, you know, there's no such thing as writer's block, I think. I think the writer's block thing is wanting to pour out something perfect in the first instance, you know, fully formed, but it doesn't work like that. So somebody's just got to vomit up what's there and then you can sort it out later.
Speaker: And often it's not that bad, sometimes it's a bit crap, but you have to force, you know, once you get the bit of momentum and flow going. I know Tardy quite well, and we both have that attitude. Chas Brenchley, I don't know if you know Chas Brenchley the writer. No, no. He wrote a book called Dead of Light, and it is tremendous, tremendous writer.
Speaker: He also gave a general bit of advice that what works is what works for you, and that is the most freeing thing I've ever had in my life. Because up until that point, I've been reading things, and people have been going, oh, you must do this and you must do that.
Speaker: and kind of tailing my voice because I'm a very voicey writer in that you're like it or you won't. I think that's the thing I know with each of my books, with Weirdwood. I know that some people are going to read Weirdwood and they're going to be like, a hundred percent into this. This is mental. I love it. And some people are going, no, not for me. But you could say that about any book ever, couldn't you?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's a thing to aim at. Yeah. Definitely. I think the less, the more middle of the road, I don't like easy. Well, no, I think you should challenge yourself. I agree.
Speaker: And I don't want comfortable either in fiction. It's really... It's difficult, isn't it? Because publishers often want, they want comfortable because they want something that they're pretty confident is going to sell. So they need to feel comfortable with something. Whereas the job of the artist is always to sort of be sort of doing that tightrope on the edge of what's known and what's not known and trying to figure out how to articulate that.
Speaker: When we did Bone Ships, I didn't pitch it as you usually pitch it. I sent Jenny a five -page prose poem written in the style of the world. And she went, all right, why didn't you, Jenny? And I just think she's a hero for reading that and just going, yeah, let's do this. And I think the day before it came out, someone, a writer friend, said to me, oh, but it was so good putting out your book. What do you mean? Well, everyone knows that shipbooks don't sell.
Speaker: I was like, I didn't. Nobody told me that at any point. It wouldn't have stopped me. That's the book I was going to write and that's how it worked. But it's a weird, weird world. I completely lost the plus track. Pete was going to talk about $8 though. I didn't want to steal that from him while I remember.
Speaker: I completely forgotten what I was going to say about him, other than I do absolutely love that character. For me, Age of Assassins was one of the books when I was getting into exploring new fantasy again, rather than just rereading what I love for my childhood, was one of those books that struck me as the perfect balance of all the things that I loved.
Speaker: plus a whole new attitude. And I remember you talking about CJ Cherry and it's like, I definitely get a lot of the same atmosphere in it. And I think one of the great things about it is it's not told from the view of the chosen one, it's told from someone near the chosen one. And the way
Speaker: of you of who the chosen one is or was meant to be dances around and there's a character in the first book called Idol who's he's the heir he's a spoiled unhappy woundwold for one of a better word and the way over the books he's given an opportunity to
Speaker: be in a different role, have different expectations and the way he becomes happy within himself and is able to be the friend that Gerten was always looking for or he kind of thought he had somewhere else.
Speaker: all the time it was Eidor and he's this end of the book he's just this big lovable oaf who's incredibly solid as a human being. He's happy, dependable, loyal. I don't know if you've read much David Gemmell. I've read him, I've read just the legend
Speaker: and those book, is it adrenaline books? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was an archetype that Gemmel loved to do based on his own stepfather of this vogue of a brawler who you wouldn't trust really with your money or your drink or anything else, but you would absolutely trust of your life. That was what I saw an idol. Yeah. Huge fan of that character. And Dan was talking about
Speaker: discovery writing. I was meant to die in the first part of the second book and there's a scene where Gert meets him again
Speaker: and what happens is not what Gerten expected to happen and it kind of just wrote itself and by the end of that I just I knew exactly where he was going from that point and I just oh you make total sense now. I think that's a nice feeling as a writer when all of a sudden your plans just melt away and this new far better plan just appears and says hi we've got some business to do here and it's like
Speaker: It's almost like a sacred moment. It's kind of a magical journey as a book. That's what I'm trying to get out with it. I don't know if you've read these from about it. It's the journey of discovery and I read a lot of Celtic
Speaker: the old kelp myths and stuff like that. And I think there's a lot of that in it of the dark mysteries that are out there. It's really odd. I often don't know what a book is until I've finished the entire trilogy. And then I look back and I can see, oh, that's what it is. But I know that that is built into weird. There's the idea that you need to be damaged
Speaker: to achieve wisdom and that is the process. You need to suffer. Yeah, and not necessarily physically suffer. No. You need to confront... Most suffering, arguably, isn't physical. It's physical pain, but suffering is something different.
Speaker: It's more existential. It's being confronted with the possibility of despair, I suppose, isn't it? It's a theme I come back to again in my work. You have to run towards the thing that frightens you most. Absolutely. And Jorunn as well, Jorunn is terrified.
Speaker: throughout the entire trilogy. Jung made that observation when he was doing his mythological studies and he put it in Latin, which escapes me at the moment, but essentially the thing of greatest value is hidden in the place where you least want to look.
Speaker: That's good. I like that. I'm going to steal that off. Well, yeah, it's going to be good. And if you say it in the original Latin, it sounds even better.
Speaker: Weirdly, it's this looping journey of this man who keeps coming back to the same place. It's so funny, you know, that idea of a looping journey, like a meta journey where the same thing keeps happening. That was one of the things we read into Excalibur, which is essentially the same story, which is taking place in different scales over and over again in different scenarios throughout the whole story. And it scales up and down. So it happens at a micro level, such as the interaction between
Speaker: two characters where there'll be a confrontation and something dies and then it revivifies and that happens in a group of characters, so with the Knights of the Round Table, and it also happens to the whole nation state of England. When things die, they're confronted with a conflict, they die and they revivify and you have to confront things and it just keeps going on and on. It was so clever. If you're tapping into that, it's so funny that these
Speaker: One of my favorite quotes is from Umberto Eco, the Italian writer, who's one of my favorites. And he wrote an essay about the intertextuality of texts in which he argued that every book, every book is simultaneously referencing every other book all the time.
Speaker: which is another way of sort of the Joseph Campbell archetypes of a story following a certain structure. But I think Echo puts it really nicely because the reader, as the conjurate, makes connections that nobody else can make. And so you can make, as I've just connected Excalibur with gods of the weird word, but maybe so did you without even realising it. You said it was a massive film for you.
Speaker: Arthur is in a lot of stuff I write. Like the Age of the Assassin books are an Arthurian story that they were imagined as that. Even to the point that Gerten gives the king a sword, he literally does that. In my head Gerten is Merlin and Rufus is Arthur.
Speaker: This is the most childish thing ever, and I've not told anyone officially. It's good we like a scoop. Yeah, it's, it's, um, spoilery, if you've not read it, but, um, Gern has a friend who is the one that is going to be king, but nobody knows he's going to be the king, and a traditional thing, and he's called Rufra. R -U -F -R -A. Now, just say it backwards. I think we know where we're going with this.
Speaker: And it was my placeholder name. I'll just write Arthur backwards. Got me. Ah. Nothing like a placeholder name that sticks. Yeah. And by the end, I was just like, no, no, that's who he is. That's the right name. It's going to stay. That's so cool. Has anybody figured that out? Somebody must have figured that out. No. Really? I've seen you point out on Twitter before that Ida also sounds a bit like Arthur. And also, Ida was speaking referred to as a bear.
Speaker: with two authors. Why have one when you can have two? And I have a friend who I talk my books at all the way through. Each book, he's lovely. We play badminton and we get very little badminton, but I talk my books at him and he just takes it all.
Speaker: He's responsible for the Glen in Bonet, because originally I was going to have a world where it was just birds and there were wind wizards. And he said, I love the idea of those bird wind wizards. That's not what I said at all. Birds and wind wizards. But by the time I got home, I had this amazing idea of these bird wizards.
Speaker: And next time, I'm going to bird wizard. What a shock. He was an Arthurian scholar. It's what he did his PhD on. So there's a lot of stuff in the Assassin books that's like deep after stuff that he gave him. So yeah, you should put this in. That I have forgotten now, because I can't keep a thought in my head for
Speaker: Maybe it's sort of hanging in there in the subconscious somewhere. As we're talking about scoops and exclusives, tell us about the Muppet.
Speaker: When I first met Ed Willson, my agent, when he picked me up, after I'd been unceremoniously dumped by my last agent, he asked me, what is the thing that I would want most in the entire world? And I said, a Muppet of me, because I love the Muppets. There's just Muppet Christmas Carol. There is no better film at all.
Speaker: And I had clearly put that in the back of his mind and kept it there. And then when we sold Weirdwood, he gets his orders present. He always does that. And he had been conniving, that is the right word, behind my back with my wife throughout the whole of lockdown. And they were sending pictures backwards and forwards. And they had a group of people who used to work for the Muppets, set up their own company, and they made a Muppet of me.
Speaker: And he's here. He lives in the bedroom. He's called Jay. Awesome. Yeah, I love him. I love him so much. I'll send you a picture of him so you can put him on. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Is there is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Because we're running out of time. Is there anything that we've missed? No, we didn't even get into process or anything, which is quite because I don't have one. I just sit around. Well, I think we've got a good handle on your process, actually. Yeah. Yeah. It just comes out.
Speaker: We didn't talk about metal either. Well, we touched on it, didn't we? We touched on it. The only thing I always think, and I think it's a really odd thing, is that when it comes to art, what I produce, and also what I like, the music I like is either really dark or really angry. And my fiction is really dark. There's always hope going through it. Like, weirdwood is very dark. It's the darkest thing I've written, but there is this
Speaker: thread of hope and people who really wish to change the world and make it better and people who are actually good. I always think that in art what I'm always looking for is the bits that aren't in me because I wear all black and I have really long hair and I'm six foot and I can look quite threatening if it's a bit shady and you can't see my face and I don't smile or talk in that which case it just ruins it.
Speaker: But I always think that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the bits I don't have because I'm not angry, never have been, and I'm not in the least bit. You probably picked that up. A bit dark. I'm just kind of like chill. And I love that about art, that suddenly we can explore these places of us that aren't us.
Speaker: fell into heavy metal. I was always into rock music when I was younger and my dad had all the classic rock collections. So that sort of CDs and records I used to listen to and then I sort of graduated through Guns N' Roses and then into Metallica and then
Speaker: some harder stuff like Machine Head and Pantera and all those guys and then I got into some real hard stuff like Strapping Young Lad and Devin Townsend. But I always thought that metal, it appealed to me and my sort of artistic side because it always skirts that line between order and chaos and it sounds chaotic, it really does but it sort of takes it and makes some sort of order out of it. It is angry and aggressive which is
Speaker: It sounds like chaos, especially if you're not used to it. The first time I listened to Pantera, I thought, no, it's just noise. It's actually just noise. Then you listen to it a few times. You think, wow, this is really good. You know, there's a lot going on here.
Speaker: and you sort of break it down. And I think my rights, I like to approach writing in the same sort of way that it might look a little bit chaotic. I sort of throw everything at the kitchen sink manuscript when I'm doing it and just see what happens, which is the chaotic side. And then I've got to sort of organize it into some sort of order.
Speaker: And I, when I, I did get onto some sort of prog rock as well. So I enjoyed dream theater and symphony X and, and I like maidens, proggier stuff as well. But there's, I mean, what do you think of that, of this idea of like, it looks chaotic and maybe it feels chaotic when you're putting it together and then you can sort of organize it and order it and you've got something that skirts the line.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, think about music that's really clever is it's not chaotic, because if it is, it falls apart. Well, I think it needs, music is so strange, it needs a bit of chaos, it needs something, otherwise you've just got a manufactured pop song that has four chords and it just repeats, repeats, repeats, repeats, you know exactly what's going to happen, but the really good stuff has a little bit of chaos, like a bit of, where you know, the unexpected. It's the difference between what's on the surface and what's in the centre.
Speaker: All of the music in the centre is incredibly organised. A lot of it on the surface appears chaotic. Have you come across zeal and ardour? Yeah. They're astounding. I'm going to give you a recommendation for you to go away and listen to something. Two tracks by the same person. I doubt you would ever come across some music because they're a country band.
Speaker: Well, they're kind of country by way of the Sisters of Mercy. There's an artist called David Eugene Edwards and he was a band called 16 Horsepower. Do you know 16 Horsepower? You are the first person I've spoken to. That blew my mind the first time I heard 16 Horsepower. There's a track called American Weeds, which makes the accordion scary.
Speaker: I was like, what is this? I've never heard anything like this. But recently he did a track called Fab Tool with some French electronic music people. And watch it on YouTube because watch the video as well. And it's the most jaw -dropping music I've probably heard in a decade. I just never heard it. I don't know about you.
Speaker: I think we're all of a similar sort of vintage on this call. Pete's probably the baby of the three of us. But I got to a certain point where I only wanted to listen to the music that I was familiar with growing up. I was like, no, I've got my comfort zone and I'm quite happy with that. And every now and then something new comes along. Not very often these days, discovering loads of new music. Occasionally something comes along. So I'm really pleased that you mentioned that.
Speaker: Yeah, they're a band called Woven Hand now. It's really odd because David Eugene Edwards is very religious, which he's not, I'm not. I thought they were Satanists when I first heard them, because it's not a version of religion that I understand. He's a lovely man, very left -wing. But if you listen to the way he sings about God, he must just be terrified all the time.
Speaker: Well, please Pete has heard of 16 horse power. So rare you meet people that you don't know I Will give one recommendation back. Have you heard of a band called a forest of stars? No This avant -garde black metal band a lot of violin a lot of it's this Victorian occult rage against everything wrong kind of theme to the lyrics Look up a song called drawing down the rain in particular Okay
Speaker: I'm there for that. And I hate to be rude, but honestly, RJ's left me in a mood to go read Gods of the Weird Words, so... Well, we're probably out of time, so you probably can go. He's going back to it. That's just all you want to hear is somebody going out to go and read this book. Well, look, RJ, it's been fantastic having you on. It's been absolutely great fun. It's been loads of fun. And yeah, we've enjoyed every minute of it. So thank you so much.
Speaker: And yeah, I mean, who knows, maybe we'll perhaps we could have you on again as a guest in the future sometime. Yes. Yeah. And if I do come on again, don't forget this, I'm going to do a private cathedral by James Lee Burke, which is a crime novel. But it's a crime novel in which the heroes are hunted down by a thousand year old assassin from hell. And the denouement takes place on the River Styx.
Speaker: A Private Cathedral by James Lee Burke. Yes, it's about Book 20 of his Day of Robber Show books and
Speaker: at no point in them is they're an assassin from hell. There's the little hints that maybe something supernatural is happening occasionally, or maybe he's just drunk. And then in a private cathedral, he just goes, nah, I'm all in. That sounds awesome. Okay, that's awesome. You never doubt it. But I'll let you go because my wife wants to come watch a television and she's going, will you be like half an hour? Fair enough. Okay, no, it's been
Speaker: Fabulous talking to you. Thanks so much. Yeah, it's been brilliant. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye This episode of Crohn's cast was brought to you by Dan Jones Pete long and our special guest RJ Barker
Speaker: Additional content was provided by Damaris Brown, Brian Sexton, Jay Stalaper, and M. Rose Nagel. Special thanks to Brian Turner and all the staff at Kron's, and thanks to you for listening. Don't forget to like, subscribe, rate and review, and continue the conversation at sffchronicles .com. Join us next month when our guest will be Anne Perry, the Publishing Director of Quercus Books.
Speaker: And we'll be joining Pete tonight to talk about Naomi Novick's multi -award -winning high fantasy from 2015. Uprooted. And I first let my eyes on you. But I was hard to know you'd fit my ear -olds too. With your incessant talking. You'll be coming a bit. Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit
Speaker: Grab it, grab it, grab it
