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Coronation Special! Titus Groan with Toby Frost
370 Plays1 year ago
It's Coronation Day! Well, not quite. But in the UK we are steadily approaching the moment when the king, Charles III, formally takes the Oath and is crowned.
This month we're tackling Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, the first book in the seminal Gormenghast series. Titus follows the birth of the titular character and the first eighteen months of his life, which culminates in a very strange, ersatz coronation of its own. Joining Pete and me as we clamber across the rooftops and sneak through the dungeons of Gormenghast is the author Toby Frost, best known for his the Space Captain Smith novels, Dark Renaissance fantasy series, and Straken from the Warhammer 40K universe.
We consider the sprawling castle-state of Gormenghast and it means when the old and new clash head-on, and specifically what it means when the ossified state, for so long indulged in its own wilful blindness and ritualised behaviour, comes into contact with the shock of the new, especially when the "new" - in this case, the kitchen boy Steerpike) is violent, psychopathic, and ruthless. We consider the utterly bizarre and grotesque cast of characters, from the wilfully blind, Prospero-like Earl Sepulchrave, who ostensibly rules the castle, to the ensemble of witless, violent, and occasionally noble people who live beneath his crumbling sovereignty. And we consider Titus himself, a marginalised titular character if ever there was one, who only appears as a baby, and yet whose coronation the book slowly builds to.
Elsewhere, The Judge considers the coronation as a way of revivifying the state, just as we mentioned when discussing Excalibur last month). She considers the Crown Jewels, the Coronation Oath, and how the relationship between the Crown and its subjects has changed over the centuries. To see how a real monarchy like the House of Windsor can stop itself from becoming a fossilised version of itself a la Gormenghast, The Judge shows how the coronation is a living, shifting thing, where rituals, symbols and laws either change or stay the same to maintain a crucial balance between antiquity and modernity.
Though Bean is away this month he's still here in spirit as he won the 75 word challenge this March with his entry The Death Of Ageing, and The Martian Space Force find unexpected kindred spirits in the crazy, smelly, stupid inhabitants of Gormenghast.
Next month
Next month we'll be joined by the winner of the British Fantasy Award and one of the brightest lights of modern fantasy, the author RJ Barker, who will be talking with us about one of his greatest loves, Richard Adams's Watership Down.
Index
[0:00:00 - 56:42] Interview Part 1
[0:56:43 - 0:59:59] Skit
[1:00:00 - 1:15:05] The Judge's Corner
[1:15:06 - 1:16:21] Challenge Winner
[1:16:22 - 1:55:25] Interview Part 2
[1:55:26 - 2:00:40] Credits and close
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Gormengast Series
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome 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. Today we are talking about one of the strangest classics in British fantasy, Mervyn Peake's Titus Grown, the first book in Peake's Gormangar series.
00:00:35
Speaker
Published in 1946, it's an example of general fiction without any semblance of the fantastical, yet earns the fantasy label for its atmosphere, setting, and mood. Peake wrote two more books in the series, Gormengast and Titus Alone, before his death in 1968 cut short to completion of the fourth novel, Titus Awakes, which was completed by his widow Maeve Gilmore and published posthumously in 2009.
00:01:02
Speaker
The series has been included in several lists of the greatest fantasy novels, including Cawthorn and Moorcock's Fantasy, The Hundred Best Books, Fingal's Modern Fantasy, The Hundred Best Novels, and the Bloom's Three Hundred Must've Had Fantasy Novels. It has also been adapted by the BBC for a radio drama in 1984 and a TV miniseries in 2000. And joining us to talk about Titus Grown is the author, Toby Frost.
Guest Appearance: Toby Frost
00:01:27
Speaker
Hi, Toby is the author of 10 novels. Hello, Toby.
00:01:32
Speaker
Slow down. He's the author of the Space Captain Smith books published by Merman books, which science fiction comedies about hapless British space adventurer Isambard Smith and his disreputable crew, which Toby likens to Blackadder meets Flashman in space. So very British. Toby's had one written novel called
00:01:56
Speaker
Toby's written one novel called Stracken and several short stories in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, which are published by Games Workshop's Publishing Wing Black Library. He's also self-published two fantasy novels, Up to the Throne
00:02:11
Speaker
and Blood Underwater set in a magically supercharged version of the Renaissance. He's currently working on a third in the trilogy. His most recent book, The Impostors, is a science fiction adventure about robots, spies, and secret identities. And he's represented by our good friend, John Gerald. So welcome along, Toby. Hi there.
00:02:32
Speaker
Excellent. Good to have you along. Yeah, you can talk now. It's good to have you because we've been trying for ages to get to organize something where we can find a date that it works for everybody. We've been in talks for months and months, but life gets in the way, but it's good to see you here finally. How are you? Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks. Yeah, good. Thanks. How are you doing?
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, everything is good. Everything is good. We're trundling along. And we've got a very curious book. I'm very interested to see where our conversation takes us
Titus Grown's Impact on Toby Frost
00:03:05
Speaker
today. So, Titus Grown, first book in the Gormongar series. Tell us, why did you pick Titus Grown?
00:03:14
Speaker
One of the reasons I chose it was because it was one of the books that really struck me when I was younger. I first sort of ran into it when I was about 14. It was in the school library and the covers were really nice. I think it was Alan Lee who drew the cover.
00:03:32
Speaker
that particular cover, which I think he also did some illustrators for Lord of the Rings. But I tried... Yeah, he was a famous Tolkien artist concert. I think he worked on the Peter Jackson films as well, didn't he? Yes, he did, didn't he? Yeah. I tried reading it when I was 14, sort of bounced off it, came back to when I was about 17 and just loved it. I was absolutely fascinated by it. It really drew me in.
00:03:59
Speaker
I always think it's a really interesting book because it's a classic of fantasy that has nothing to do with Tolkien. I don't say that as any kind of insult to Tolkien, just that it was written before Lord of the Rings and a lot of fantasy has sort of been a reaction to or in some ways an imitation of or influenced by Tolkien.
Challenges of Adapting Gormengast
00:04:23
Speaker
and the Gormengast books kind of exist in this weird little bubble of their own so I thought they were quite interesting to talk about. They've got this sort of status as a classic but no one's quite ever given them that sort of huge adaptation and it feels like they're kind of always waiting to be adapted or sort of interpreted or something like that.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, I thought they'd be well, yeah, we mentioned the BBC miniseries. Did you did you remember watching that? Yes, I do. Yeah. Yeah. By and large, I think it's pretty good, actually. It's not bad. I remember it's I mean, it's pretty old now 2023 years, 23 years old. Yeah. Yeah. But I remember at the cast was decent.
00:05:08
Speaker
And the production values were pretty good. It seemed like a big deal when it came out. It did seem like a big deal, didn't it? You're right. But they condensed the whole of the first two novels into four episodes. And I think that's partly a reflection on the way that the books are written, which is with this huge, dense, pro-lix style, which we will talk about. I don't think it lends itself very well.
00:05:36
Speaker
to a screen narrative adaptation. I think that's right. Because it's almost like opera, you know, an opera, it takes like 15 minutes to say, Hello, how are you? And it's almost like that. I almost think if you were to adapt the Gorman Garst novels today, you might almost think about going entirely computer generated because much of it is about the setting and how it looks that
00:06:04
Speaker
being able to do that absolutely perfectly rather than have to scout and scout and scout for locations, I think would be a huge benefit. So maybe it's day for a big adaptation is coming closer.
00:06:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think the BBC one used models and was pretty good actually in terms of that, but obviously it had limitations at the time it was made. Interestingly, apparently there is an opera of Gormengast. Oh really?
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, apparently, in 1998, someone called Ermin Schmidt, who apparently was from a prog band called Can, made this. Oh, Can? Is that the German band from the 70s with the Japanese singer? I know nothing about Can. Oh, they're really weird, but they're quite good. Right. Apparently, he made that one. A bit like Gorman Gast, I suppose. I can see they can understand the connection. Yeah, yeah.
00:07:03
Speaker
Shall I try to explain what it's about? Titus Grown is set in a castle called Gormengast, which no location is given for Gormengast. It seems to exist on its own, really. The castle is absolutely vast, probably the size of a small town, and falling apart, basically. There's a sense of collapse and weirdness and decay throughout the whole book.
00:07:32
Speaker
It's about the first two years really of the New Earl's life. Titus Grown himself is the heir to the earldom of Gormingast. He will be the 77th Earl, I think it is. That's right. He is the son of Sepulcrave, the current Earl, and Countess Gertrude. And it's basically
00:07:57
Speaker
While he's a baby, he doesn't really do very much, the real, here is the wrong word, protagonist of Titus Groan is a character called Theobike, who is a sort of ruthless character who rises from being a sort of scullion in this vast kitchen in the castle.
00:08:18
Speaker
to, well, up and up and up the social ranks, basically, by various sort of dangerous and ruthless plans, and eventually intends to take over the entire castle.
Themes and Style of Gormengast
00:08:31
Speaker
It does function as a whole book, but it's in a bit like, you know you need more to finish the story, basically.
00:08:42
Speaker
It's a little bit like Fellowship of the Ring, which I didn't want to compare it to at all in that way. It rounds off, but it does need more. Yeah, it's certainly not comparable to Tolkien. Well, yeah, you're right. It predates Tolkien, although it doesn't predate Tolkien's milieu, the Middle Earth world. It doesn't at all, but it does predate Lord of the Rings, but it's completely different.
00:09:07
Speaker
It was thinking about the setting and you mentioned that
00:09:13
Speaker
Gormungast, the castle, the town and the sort of settlements outside the castle. You're never given, it's very non-traditional fantasy, even though it's a classic and it's like 80 years old. You're never given a map at the beginning of the book, which you're given in all fantasies. Rule one, you get a map. You don't get a map with Gormungast. You're sort of suspended in this ether. You don't know where it is. And I think that's because
00:09:41
Speaker
Gormagast isn't representative of any one particular place or time. So even though ostensibly it has the
00:09:49
Speaker
the superficial trappings of the fantasy setting, so castle, basically. Castle, earl, stroke, king, some sort of corruption of the land, which is the dilapidation of the castle, but it's not representative, actually, of medieval Europe, not necessarily. It's not the Roman Empire. It's not Western Europe, modern day.
00:10:15
Speaker
It's all of these things. It's just emblematic of a society in complete decay. And this is where I think you can see something that it does resemble and that it is actually in a fit of a genre with. And that is if you reach back to the early Gothic romances, Atranto, Melmoth the Wanderer,
00:10:45
Speaker
I've forgotten the name of the one with the genies. But the whole big castle in a time route space and the crumbling and the strange rituals, it's very much a gothic throwback, I think. But in a way that doesn't quite feel related, it's just the same impulse just popping up again.
00:11:11
Speaker
I think that I like the Gothic idea, but it's not quite Gothic because the Gothic usually is represented from the perspective of the outsider or the intruder into the Gothic. So somebody entering into an otherworldly realm or something that doesn't fit. Isn't Sterepike an intruder into the castle society? He is an intruder. He's a disruptor, certainly.
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the book in the opening, so a couple of chapters, he kind of flees the kitchen and starts this sort of trek, literally climbing upwards, but also sort of upwards in their society. And if he had stayed there, then I suppose he would have just been a sort of automaton who would, like the other people in the kitchen, endlessly just cleans the kitchen and makes food for the other members of the castle.
00:12:06
Speaker
So yeah, I suppose you've got him. In the sequel, Gormingast, you've got Titus himself, who is now a young man, and he becomes a sort of disruptive character because he doesn't want to do the things that he's required to do by ritual and duty.
00:12:23
Speaker
So yeah, that's an interesting one about Gothic novels. I agree with that. I was thinking about this earlier. The other thing that springs to mind is Dickens, possibly. Names are very Dickensian. Yeah, you've got people like Dr. Prune Squaller, the Castle Doctor. Sour Dust. And Sour Dust, the Marvel original, and people like that who have got these sort of bizarre names.
00:12:51
Speaker
One thing I find quite interesting about it is calling it gothic makes it sound very heavy, very depressing, and I find there's a sort of lightness to it, but I don't know if other people would find that, that there's something about the writing and a very slightly sort of sly, slightly tongue-in-cheek quality to some of it.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's not laugh out loud humor. It's, it's a, it's a dry, dry, there's a dry wit to it. So some, some parts are funny. Yeah. A quote I found that, um, Michael Moorcocks, um, wizardry and wild moments and Moorcock was a big, big fan. And I think if we were to talk about, um, Gilman Gaston later, fantasy would took
00:13:38
Speaker
Sorry that we would talk about Moorcock, but to just come on to this subject of lightness, he said, of all modern fantasies, Merv and Peake was probably the most successful at combining the comic with the epic, to produce a trilogy which can be read and reread for its insights into our own lives, showing our hopes and fears and alike, which is often outrageously funny.
00:13:58
Speaker
And what you said reminded me very much of that quote, because I think that is an aspect that its fans very much take on board. The way that it deals with these matters, which are quite dark, but in a very light, almost farcical manner. It's almost absurd, isn't it? It's an absurd piece. It's a very strange piece. And it is very dark. I think it's almost
00:14:26
Speaker
Existential terror because these these characters are just locked in you use the word automata before and all of the characters with the exception of Maybe prune squalor and certainly steer pike
00:14:40
Speaker
all of and laterally Titus, but not in this novel, all of the characters are basically automata. And they're just, they have no agency at all. And it's a very strange, very strange book. Well, in that respect, because there's a reasonable is a there's what 10 to 15 main principal players in the novel. And
00:15:00
Speaker
Almost none of them have any direct agency. The Flay and Swelter may be to a little bit, but even then, the only point to their existence is serving the Earl, Sepulgrave, and hating each other. That's it. And we don't even get a very strange enmity between the two because we never get an explanation for why they hate each other. And it's quite possible that they don't even know why they hate each other. They just do. And all of the characters are locked into this
00:15:30
Speaker
this existential perpetual grind of ritual and tradition of Gormengast. There's a bit where we see Sepulcrave going about his daily duties, and they're really bizarre. They're absolutely strange rituals that he has to carry out. I think one of them is he has to go to a certain cupboard and scratch a symbol on the back of it.
00:15:54
Speaker
and on a certain day at a certain time. And nobody knows why he's doing this, but he's got to do it. And there's this character, Sour Dust, and then his son, Barquentine, who's the master of ritual, who's the closest thing that the Gormingast world has to a sort of priest or a pope or some kind of bishop.
00:16:13
Speaker
whose job it is to kind of tell him where to go at what time, which ritual to follow. But yeah, he's more like a PA, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He sort of organizes his calendar. And there's very little, there's no reason ever given for this. It's just what happens. And you're right about the absurdity. One of the other things that it does remind me very slightly of is Alice in Wonderland, actually.
00:16:36
Speaker
because it's got that combination of madness and logic that it's crazy, but it's never totally ridiculous.
Gormengast's World-Building
00:16:47
Speaker
It's never laughed at. It's plausible. There's a plausibility to it. There's a weight to it. It's never quite
00:16:59
Speaker
It never quite admits it's silly, you know, it always sort of... I think that's tied into the fact that the place is so dilapidated and crumbling and it's ossified, that's the word, it's ossified because it's caught in
00:17:14
Speaker
Is this trapped by its own traditions and it's trapped by its own rituals and it's unable to break out of them and the characters are unable to break out of the daily cycles and daily rituals are unable to break out of their own that the trappings that they find themselves in like the the the ants what names.
00:17:32
Speaker
Cora and Clarice. Cora and Clarice, yes, who are unbelievably stupid characters. It's quite wonderful actually how stupid these characters are and how manipulable they are. But because the castle and the whole society is so ossified, I'm pleased that you mentioned the words priest or bishop for sourdust and barpentine.
00:17:57
Speaker
because the whole thing seems like there's a theological structure to what they're doing, so ritual and tradition and participatory gatherings, but it's totally removed from any sort of religious framework, and it's removed from an ethical framework as well, and it's removed from any sort of
00:18:22
Speaker
guiding principle. It's just there to exist for its own perpetuation. There's nothing there to grow the society. There's nothing there to replenish society. There's nothing there to revivify the society. A few weeks ago we talked with Brian Wigmore about King Arthur.
00:18:40
Speaker
Oh yeah. And the whole point of Excalibur about the film specifically, but we talked about the whole mythos really. And one of the principal themes, and this is, I mean, you'll know, this is principal theme across fantasy is the revivification of the land, especially where the lands become corrupted for whatever reason, whether it's the blindness of the state or the corruption of the state or war or pestilence, whatever.
00:19:03
Speaker
you know, prophecy, chosen one, whoever that might be, or whatever it might be, and the revivification of the land is classic fantasy theme. And in here, it's not revivification, there's no replenishment and making the land good again, it's just
00:19:21
Speaker
It's like a living fossil. There's inertia, that's all it's living for. It's living to perpetuate itself. I think you can see attempts to revive the land, revive the society. And it's interesting because the classic image of fantasy is
00:19:45
Speaker
an external force must be resisted and then the land will come back into balance and here it's the internal force has gone completely out of balance and it's the external force the hero villain Steerpike who is trying to revive things albeit for his own selfish ends and I think also the
00:20:15
Speaker
subplot with Kaeda and her fleet of castle and having the child.
00:20:27
Speaker
again it points in the same direction but it's very much from coming from the opposite direction and it's not talking about the triumph, it's talking about the attempt that in this case doesn't actually quite work but does still change things. I think this whole idea of the land in fantasy just doesn't really come into Gormengast and Titus Grown because
00:20:53
Speaker
there is there doesn't seem to be a land, you know, there's no sort of, which takes me to the point of the world building in this, which is quite different to the world building in a lot of, you know, modern post token fantasy, that some of it just doesn't like line up, you know, there's this description of the of the kitchen, which is full of the sort of carcasses of animals and so on, we have no idea where these animals are raised, you know, who gave Dr. prune squalor his doctorate, you
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, there's no idea that the outside world kind of, I think it's, I think it's Gormengast. There's a reference to the children in the castle school learning French. That's right. Yeah, you get an idea of the education because you have the schoolmasters in the second book, don't you? Yeah. Where are they going to go to speak French? Is this in England? It's sort of
00:21:45
Speaker
doesn't add up in a way. And if you want to look at it in that kind of quite rigid sort of almost like the rules of a role playing game or something like that, it doesn't make sense. But actually, in its own, that's not how you're really supposed to look at it, I don't think. Well, that's it. I mean, is it? This is the key question, I think about what my guest is it actually a fantasy novel?
00:22:11
Speaker
I think it is, but I think it's very different to the main strand of fantasy, the main tradition of fantasy. I think it's drawing from something which isn't the Arthurian legends, and it really isn't the legends of anywhere, actually. It's drawing, I think, from a sense of sort of
00:22:33
Speaker
almost morbidity, you know. Oh, definitely. I mean, you mentioned the Gothic novels, you know, that sort of inward-looking, morbid, unhealthy sort of feeling. I think it draws from that as much as anything else. Yeah. I think it's drawing from the morbidity of the 20th century as well. I mean, the steer pike certainly, I think, is emblematic of communism.
00:23:02
Speaker
That's my big take on Steer Pike. And he would have been, and Peek would have been writing at the same time as people like, well, he was this, I mean, this predates 1984 by two years, which staggered me a little bit because Steer Pike is almost like a prototype for some of the party members in 1984.
00:23:25
Speaker
with his agitation. And Pete would have been a contemporary of people like Malcolm Muggridge as well with his dispatches from the Soviet Union. And I think that the crumbling state of Gormangast, the city castle, is rewarded for its ossification with the agent for change that it deserves for not being able to change properly and not being able to
00:23:52
Speaker
manifest itself in the correct way over time. So it crumbles, it dilapidates. And when change comes, it's too brutal and sudden and cunning and clever for the state to actually be able to understand what's happening to it. It's too brutal. And Steer Pyke is very clever and very, very manipulative.
Influences on Mervyn Peake's Work
00:24:14
Speaker
And he's too disruptive for the castle to be able to cope with him.
00:24:19
Speaker
And I think there's something going on there, although I don't know Peek's background, so I might be sort of grasping at straws there. It's actually quite interesting regarding this because he was a war artist. He painted apparently some satirical pictures about Hitler.
00:24:39
Speaker
which had gotten the job kind of thing. And towards the end of the war, he was with the British troops who entered the concentration camp at Belsen, which, as you might imagine, sort of affected him very greatly and sort of disturbed him very greatly. So I think he had that sort of first-hand vision. And there's certainly bits of Titus alone, which seemed straight from World War II.
00:25:04
Speaker
There's a section about refugees and a sort of sinister man on the run, which feels very, very much like that sort of post-World War II feel. So yeah, I mean, I would have seen Steerpike...
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, as I'm not sure I call me for a communist or fascist, but a sort of a dictatorial character. Yeah, he's certainly a sign of that will for power. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's another thing to bear in mind about Peake's background that might have came into things here, which he was actually born in China. And he was born right during the revolution and founding of the Republic of China. He
00:25:50
Speaker
I think the family only fully relocated to England when he was 11. That would have been one of his formative experiences, the whole watching a society change brutally. And a very diversified society, I suppose, in parts.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's the BBC adaptation. It sets and some of its costumes leans quite heavily on that actually. There are some sort of clearly Chinese influences in the look of it. So yeah, I wonder about that. Apparently his dad was a missionary. So I do wonder actually if Peake sort of grew up in, again, a sort of quite shut off environment.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, it seems quite likely, doesn't it? Yeah, Gormungast. Yeah, it's, we've already said it's, it's completely isolated. There's no mention of the outside world at all, apart from, you know, there's, there's a little bit of sort of a Heathland outside the castle and a couple of settlements and that's it. It's almost perfect isolation for all of its vastness.
00:27:01
Speaker
And we don't get to see the majority of what happens inside the castle walls. Presumably, there are residential districts inside the castle walls. There must be some sort of dilapidated industry going on inside the castles. We don't see any of that. And each of the characters are sort of consumed by their oscillation. Sorry, Toby.
00:27:21
Speaker
No, I mean, I was going to say, I think we see that Dr. Brunschwala has a house. So presumably there are houses. And his sounds like it's a little bit nicer than the rest of the castle. He's quite an instant character because along with Steerpike,
00:27:39
Speaker
They seem to be the only two characters much capable of reflection. You said you've got these ten characters who have almost no agency and it's true. They do just go about their daily business of keeping the castle going. I think in terms of reflection I would add one other character to that and that's Fuchsia.
00:27:57
Speaker
And she is particularly interesting in terms of reflection because she is in far less of a position to change what she is doing, who she is with. She is far more in a stratified position than Steer Pike, the upstart or Dr. Poon scholar who's
00:28:25
Speaker
in this interestingly nebulous position. And therefore, there's a lot of frustration in her chapters.
00:28:34
Speaker
She's not worldly, but she's not stupid by any means. And you feel like she's one of the, she's possible, with the exception of Titus, who's just a baby, is one of the, one of the characters, or she's the only character, I suppose, because Titus is a baby, that has the potential to be saved from this doom loop that Gorman Gast is trapped in.
00:28:56
Speaker
It's just occurred to me that if Fuchsia was to take charge, I have no idea who she'd marry. Yeah, again, it's that question of who makes it. It's strongly her attraction to Steerpike is played on quite overtly. Yeah, he gives her feelings that she doesn't quite understand. And for Steerpike 17, he's a kitchen boy.
00:29:20
Speaker
He's not particularly attractive. He's got sort of hunched pointy shoulders. He's got a strange sort of ugly-ish face, but he's a man of action. He's leading the field of one. Yeah. Yes, by quite a long way. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And everybody in this book looks strange.
00:29:40
Speaker
you know, I think there's peak at peak added some illustrations and they're really sort of cartoony and everybody is weird. You know, yeah, all really peculiar, possibly inbred strange people. And future is probably one of the more normal looking ones, frankly. Yeah, she must be. But she's attracted to, to steer pike. And he knows this. I mean, he's very sophisticated for a 17 year old boy. He's not
00:30:07
Speaker
He's not frozen with fear like most 17-year-old boys in the face of an attractive 15 or 16-year-old girl. He knows exactly what he's doing and that's because he's a psychopath and his confidence levels are through the roof. He's also competent, but his competence is only in the realm of manipulation and cunning.
00:30:32
Speaker
an exploitation but she doesn't know this and so because she's quite naive she's led a very sheltered life literally and her only means of escaping the drabness of the castle is to go to her attic with her things which Steerpike
00:30:52
Speaker
interrupts where you said he's climbing the castle. He literally climbs the castle walls or some of the castle towers to escape and he ends up in Fuchsia's attic, her secret place. And she's a bit bamboozled by him. Yes. And because he's again, he's so different and he knows he can play on that. He plays on that with the two stupid aunts. He plays on that with Irma Prunesqualler, the doctor's wife.
00:31:18
Speaker
and he eventually plays on it with the Earl Sepplegrave himself. And probably Prunescaller as well actually, for reasons that are never quite made clear. Possibly just because he's intelligent, it seems to be very drawn to him to begin with and then sort of becomes increasingly suspicious of him.
00:31:37
Speaker
I think that opening scene where Steer Pike has manipulated Fuschia into taking him along to see the Doctor and he's making the case for why the Doctor should give him a position. It's one of the scenes that stuck most from the book with me and I think part of it is
00:31:58
Speaker
It's the way that you can see the doctor appreciating Steer Pyke on several levels. And the main level though is as a novelty. Here is someone who is alive, expressing themselves, intelligent, and there's nothing that indicates that the doctor actually needs an assistant.
00:32:19
Speaker
But he does need someone who's intelligent and alive, and that is how the Doctor accepts Dear Pyken, even if I think, even at this stage, he's possibly a little suspicious.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's a, yeah, that's a good point. He represents some sort of intellectual stimulation for the doctor. Yeah, it's implied that Prince was stuck with his sister Irma, who is, is a great phrase. She's cruelly laden with the family features. He's stuck with his sort of, you know, very irritating sister and the rest of the cast. Yeah, I think he's sort of
00:33:00
Speaker
He's one of the few, you know, as this character who is a grown-up, unlike Fuchsia, but is capable of reflection and thought, I think he probably is extremely bored and he probably welcomes Steerpike. Yeah, I think that's right. He's the sort of intellectual of the castle, I suppose.
00:33:17
Speaker
He's certainly taken to be the intellectual of the castle. He's again, he's sort of as eccentric and weird as the rest of them with his wittering flutey language and the way his habit of tittering every other word. Yes, he's half mad as well. I mean, he's sort of like a rather camp mad scientist or something like that with this sort of shock of hair and pointy nose and
00:33:40
Speaker
classes. There's an, actually, I read somewhere there's an argument that Prune Squalor is modeled on, I forget the actor's name, but a character from James Wales Frankenstein as a mad scientist character from that.
00:33:57
Speaker
There's probably an argument to be had as to whether Prune Schooler is given that he's this sort of arch perennial bachelor, whether he's actually sort of taken to be read as gay or not. I don't know. That's an interesting subject because
Character Analysis: Steerpike and Others
00:34:15
Speaker
in the research I did for this. Mervyn Peake spent a lot of time in artists' communes on Sark, the Isle of Sark, which at the time there were also a lot of variously gay people there. It's not like he was never around such people. They never had any influence on him. It's quite possible.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I noted that somewhere that I think it was before, yes, it was before he wrote this. Pete did a lot of illustrations for the books. And one book he illustrated was a book called All This and Bevan II, which was a humorous book by Quentin Crisp, who actually I don't know if they've ever met, but Prune Squalor does remind me very slightly of Quentin Crisp.
00:35:08
Speaker
So I do wonder if there's something there too. It could be. There's very little of...
00:35:18
Speaker
love, whether it's romantic, or, you know, procreative, or there's, you know, marriage, there's, there's very little love in the castle. There's a great line about, oh, the, the, the, the Countess, the Counting Countess, Stepplegrave and Gertrude, it says something about their brief and embarrassing union that produced titers. Yeah, well, it's, it's kind of surprising that the, I mean, he's, he's painted as this,
00:35:46
Speaker
decrepit old man, but so it's kind of surprising that, you know, at least one part of him still works enough to to produce an air. I think he just lives in a library reading books and that's that's why he lives in the library reading books. He's like Prospero, isn't he? He's just like he doesn't care about his castle state at all. He just wants to be with his books and his wife is a complete completely spiteful fruitcake who lives with her birds and cats and yeah, it's
00:36:15
Speaker
There's no, they're hardly ever together in the same room. Yeah. So there's no marriage. No. No, it's this. While, you know, while the fantasy, we've said that the land aspect isn't there. Again, the romance sort of aspect of fantasy isn't there as well. That sort of daring do feel, you know, heroism. Just it's kind of there in Sterepike.
00:36:41
Speaker
But again, that's a corruption. Like when he barges into a fusatic, you know, he is this sort of dramatic, exciting figure. And he knows it. Yeah. Remember that sword stick he gets? Yes.
00:36:56
Speaker
He gets distorted, but it's a he's a corruption of the heroic figure. So even though, like I said, I believe that he's he's the disruptor that the castle deserves because the castle has just allowed itself to fall into ruin. So the disruptor that they eventually gets is a spoiler. You know, it's
00:37:13
Speaker
And he does present himself as the hero. So there's a big set piece in the book, and there are not very many set pieces, but one of them is the fire in the library. And he sets himself up as the heroic savior, saving the entire family.
00:37:29
Speaker
from a fire that he started with the help of the two idiot sisters. I don't know if this is, you know, saying that most people would agree, but I think Peek's quite good at writing action, actually, in his own style. Yeah, I think so. It's a very strange book because I think the action and the dialogue is brilliant. But they're just these mountains of descriptive text in between them.
00:38:01
Speaker
After I read it, I fare dripped by all about the book, to be honest. Well, you know, that's kind of... I got some abusive voice notes for office leave. Yeah. Sorry. Why did you make me wrote 500 pages of this?
00:38:20
Speaker
with a bit of space in my mind I now look a lot more kindly on it but I remember thinking at the time almost this would work better as a short story collection because it's so much about the atmosphere and the prose rather than um the the narrative the plot the chain of events and what Dan was just saying but I think that is the thing yeah because of
00:38:44
Speaker
all this long atmospheric passages I think people do almost discount when the action happens and it is great I think for me the best action passage comes right at the end when
00:38:58
Speaker
I have forgotten their names. Yes, hunting each other. It's very drawn out, but it is gripping. Yeah, it's really good. That's really good. There's a knife fight as well between Kate's two lovers. Yeah, it's quite violent. There's a sort of viciousness under it all that we see again in Gormengar later on. Yeah.
00:39:26
Speaker
There is a sort of violence to the book as well. And when he does do that, he's really good. I think a lot of it is Peek just writing whatever he wants almost. And not having any rules follow, even the rules of a sort of epic saga or something like that.
00:39:43
Speaker
which is both a strength and a weakness. There are bits that I think, frankly, are far too long. I think the cada subplot goes on and on. There are bits that I know other people find really irritating.
00:40:00
Speaker
But, and he does do strange linguistic things. At one point he lapses into present tense for about 50 pages. There's a banquet scene where all the main characters are sitting around a table and Pete does this very modern stream of consciousness effect where each character gets basically a page long sentence of what they're thinking.
00:40:23
Speaker
And then he jumps to the next character. I think it's called The Reveries. And it's quite sort of experimental and strange, you know. I think part of it is just because he's just doing whatever he likes, you know, it's just a kind of a weird flight of fancy, you know, strange fight of fancy, sorry, not fancy. Yeah, as much as it is a fancy novel. Yeah. Yeah. It's got I do like that scene of The Reveries, because that's
00:40:52
Speaker
I think that's probably Peek at his most playful, I would say, and he's quite playful throughout the book, but that's genuinely funny. That's very funny, the Reveries, when you actually, when you start to get inside the characters' heads. I think there's something that there's much going on in a lot of their heads, like Nanny Slag is just...
00:41:10
Speaker
He's just perpetually worried and terrified of everything and Cora and Clarice are just these hideous postules of envy and entitledness and spitefulness. If you remember rightly, don't they have the exact same touch? They do have the exact same touch. Yeah, I see a barbell topic like that. One for the other one's thoughts.
00:41:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think he's the characters are really strong. Obviously, they're grotesque. Yeah. But I think also, it is a book about character, you know, that they are, they're not, how can I put this?
00:41:44
Speaker
They're not really archetypes. I was going to say that one of the things it reminds me of as well is a sort of not a medieval style fantasy, but a kind of country house full of sort of decayed and strange aristocracy.
00:42:03
Speaker
seen without any sort of affection. Let's look down to Nabi where everyone is mad. And yeah, I think that that's, I don't quite know what, if there's a tradition. Lovecraft writes Woodhouse, that sort of thing. Lovecraft writes Woodhouse, I like that.
00:42:29
Speaker
I'm sure there's a crossover somewhere. But yeah, Lovecraft, White Woodhouse. Yeah, I think Better Written, but yeah. It's got that strange gloom, but it's also... Oh, I think it's totally nihilistic. I mean, it's filled with existential angst, this book, which maybe is a result of the war and the societal upheavals that Peake saw, but I think it's filled with
00:42:54
Speaker
acts that how a society changes and what can an individual do when the gears of motion and fate are just inexorably grinding everybody within them.
00:43:07
Speaker
that the earl is the 76th earl of Goldman-Gast, and the 77th is on the way, but there's no sense that anything has changed for however many centuries that period of time encompasses.
Existential Themes in Gormengast
00:43:22
Speaker
I find it interesting that we don't know anything about the previous earls as well.
00:43:26
Speaker
there's no mention of what they've done or who they are. Well, I think that's intentional because that they're just a huge morass that is the past. Yeah.
00:43:39
Speaker
and there's no change. You can see it in the dusty day-to-day rituals of the castle. That's just how it's been for so long. It's that time of automata again, because we don't have their history as people, we just know of them as automata who did their part as our functionaries.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yes, function is a good word. I mean, they're sort of serving the castle, but not much more. It's almost like a system that has no purpose, but hasn't realized it has no purpose. Yeah. And in Sterepike, turns out he's the only one who's got any ambition. And because he's the only one who's got his ambition, it's like rocket fuel.
00:44:24
Speaker
and his ambition is terrifying because he's able to clamber over everybody, climb up all the dead bodies and get to where, and he, the way he manipulates Cora and Clarice, they're very simple characters, but he manipulates them by playing on their resentments and their bitterness and their envy, the fact that they're the sisters of the Earl and they should be the ones in power and why do they get nothing and the Earl gets the power and the glory of being the Earl of,
00:44:52
Speaker
of Gormenghast, and shouldn't they have just as much glory? And so he builds up this envy within them, just to exploit them. And just pause fuel on the fire in that way. It's a strange book, because the sort of dynamism comes from the villain in the book, the exception of a couple of subplots. The most active character is the villain.
00:45:19
Speaker
But there's not much sense that day-to-day gormenghast is particularly lovely. It's not vile. It's functional, but it's drab and rapid and a bit rubbish.
00:45:35
Speaker
One of the things that I think it was the judge, no maybe not actually, maybe I'm taking her name in vain, sorry your honour, that somebody said about the book is that none of the characters are likeable, which is true, maybe Fuchsia is an exception. I think a lot of people have said that. None of them are likeable and some of them are downright detestable. But all of them are entertaining.
00:45:57
Speaker
I think. Yes, that's true. I think, you know, even the characters who are idiots, like Cora or Nanny Slag, who's sort of, you know, ancient and probably a bit senile, you know, they're all entertaining people and they're all enjoyable to watch because they are grotesque. And sometimes it is a bit of a madhouse as Tea Party in the, you know, what crazy thing is going to happen now. And because you've got steer bikes to pushing all the characters, in some ways,
00:46:26
Speaker
He's a bit like there's an ex-Christian novel where a man doesn't commit murders, but encourages other people to commit murders. And in some ways he sort of gives them the option to kind of go a little bit further and take into their own grievances, into their own hands.
00:46:45
Speaker
And I think at that point they are entertaining. There are bits where he's talking to Cora and Clarice, and they're talking about how they want many, many servants. And it is entertaining, and they're awful people, and they're idiots, and they're sort of spiteful and nasty. But it's quite amusing, and it is easy. And you do think, what now?
00:47:05
Speaker
To go back to a name we referenced earlier, it's very Blackadder. Yes, actually. Blackadder meets Name of the Rose or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Again, there's the adaptation that we all want to see, isn't it? It's interesting to look at titles going from this angle and this very long line of British comedy involving
00:47:34
Speaker
this person pushing up against society, and they're not quite fully a hero, and they're not quite fully a villain. Most of the entertainment comes from watching them manipulate these forms of works. Yeah, yeah. And
00:47:58
Speaker
They're watching them overreach and clash because deep down they're just a twerp themselves. I can't get the image out of my head of now Baldrick playing Brother Adzo of Milk.
00:48:11
Speaker
Actually, you're right. I mean, it is like a sort of hellish sitcom, isn't it? Yeah. Because you've got that location that no one ever really leaves for very long. And these sort of, you know, cartoonish people, yeah, being awful to each other, you know, sometimes worse than others, but sometimes outright murdering each other. Yeah. I mean, when you put it that way, you can say compare it to modern fantasy, you could say,
00:48:36
Speaker
This is almost like a Joe Abercrombie novel. Yeah, it's like Proto-Grimdak, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I was thinking about what it might have influenced earlier. I think one of the things it might have influenced was the early days of Warhammer.
00:48:53
Speaker
And possibly I wonder about Terry Gilliam's medieval look, things like Jabberwocky and things like that where yes it's medieval but it's very very squalid. Yeah, it is like Grimdark. I think it's a little bit too knowing and a bit too self-aware to just be doing what Joab Gromby's doing.
00:49:14
Speaker
I'd agree with that. It's a bit, there's a meta level to Gormenghast, isn't there? Especially when you think about where the text goes in the latter parts of the series, when it is very weird indeed.
00:49:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, but I think that's actually a good point that there are sort of grimdark elements to this. Yeah. Because I am a massive nerd. I do. That's why you're here. I was gonna say. Fairly extensive list of who's influenced who on my computer. It's not
00:49:48
Speaker
as modern yet as I'd like, but I mean, I can tell you the three authors from three 2000s who've listed Merv and Peake as a major influence. Oh, yeah. That's the Australian author Shane McMullen.
00:50:03
Speaker
are very, very well known, obviously. There's China Mayville. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. And there's the man I mentioned earlier, Michael Moorcock. Yeah, he wrote a book called Floriana, which is dedicated speak. I didn't really get on with it. But I could really see the sort of, you know, the influence is very much Gorman Goss meets Queen Elizabeth. Yes. Yeah. And yeah,
00:50:32
Speaker
Once you look at the Moorcocks books, you can see so much of this appreciation of the grotesque, the hammering at stratified systems that feel very British, the puckish, bleak humor. And then you can see it flow on from the things Moorcocks influenced like Warhammer, like Abercrombie. And it's, I mean, to return to the question of is this fantasy,
00:51:02
Speaker
It so very much fits in with a lot of fantasy. Yeah, I think that's right. There's not a school of Mervyn Peake. I mean, you could trace a straight line from, say, Tad Williams or David Eddings to J.R. Tolkien.
00:51:19
Speaker
And I don't think there's anyone you can quite do that with this, obviously, with Peek. But yeah, I agree with you. There are fragments everywhere, aren't there? Gaiman's another big fan of Peek as well. Yes. He's been trying to adapt it, I think, actually. Has he really? Yeah, I would say. For film or? I think for TV.
00:51:39
Speaker
TV, that would be interesting. Yeah. And again, you know, he's got that sort of, quote, Gothic sort of feel, but more to him, you know, with a wit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think he would, you know, with his work on stuff like Sandman, which we spoke about a few weeks ago with Tadde Thompson.
00:52:00
Speaker
He, the game and it's, it's so well attuned to those sort of underlying structures of story. So, you know, even though Gormenghast exists as a sort of castle in a sea of nothingness, it was representative of these sort of underlying structures about how individuals and how societies can become, uh, how they can fall into decay and how they're forced to change. And if you want to talk about castles in a sea of nothingness, then dreams castle and Sandman. Yeah.
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think you can, you know, while there aren't sort of a school of books that are, you know, about decrepit families in enormous castles, you can see an awful lot of peaks influence in other books. I suppose it's what you might call a cult book, you know, in that you've got that sort of
00:52:54
Speaker
intense, quirky quality that is very appealing to some... It's certainly an acquired taste, isn't it? Oh yeah, definitely. If you read a book for likeable characters and easy prose, then you won't make it past page five of Gormorotitis.
00:53:11
Speaker
I'm not sure about this dislikable characters thing. I mean, I've been reading a set of spy novels by a guy called Mick Herron. Yeah. That there are very, very few likable characters in that. Oh, I'm all down for dislikable characters. But there's definitely a subset of readers who want characters to root for. Definitely. Yeah.
00:53:34
Speaker
It all depends on how you define like and how you root for in a fictional setting. Some of us, if presented right, will like and root for absolute bastards. What steer pike is set up that way? Yep.
00:53:51
Speaker
He's set up as somebody you want to root for because he's escaped from this horrific kitchen run by Abiathus Welter, which is, you know, murderous and disgusting. And he manages to escape. And you think, oh, yeah, good for you. And then Flay, this sort of spiderish insectoid master arms for the castle, captures him and
00:54:17
Speaker
If Steer Pike gets away from him and you think, here's somebody to root for, here's somebody to hang your hat on, and he turns out to be worse than any of them. Yeah, and Flea actually turns out to be a better man than you would think. Yeah, actually, one book which I have absolutely no evidence is influenced by Gormengast,
00:54:37
Speaker
but which reminds me and parts quite strongly of it, is Dune by Frank Herbert. Because Dune has got, at least the first book, has got House Atreides, which is this noble house with its strange advisors. And partly it's the outfits and the designs that you see in films and adaptations. But there's a sort of grotesque quality to those, I think.
00:55:07
Speaker
to people like Thufir Hawat and Gurney Halleck and those sort of characters. They're not as grotesque, but they're pretty bizarre people. And there's a character later on, I think, in June, the Emperor's Ambassador, Fenring, I think he's called, who reminds me strongly of Prunescorer, actually, who has a peculiar way of speaking and so on. And I suppose it's because of that noble house with a sort of leader and his kind of bizarre assistants.
00:55:34
Speaker
But yeah, June's always reminded me of that and quite a dark tone, I suppose. Well, we better not drop down that rabbit hole. Yeah. In fact, it's probably a good place to stop actually. Yeah. And that's, that's been a really good conversation. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. I mean, I would say, you know, I think it's a great book. It's a very strange one. But yeah, I think it deserves being a classic.
00:55:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's one of the it did take me a good week of thinking about it after I'd finished it to put all the pieces together because there are parts of it which are a bit of a slog. Yes, let's be fair. That's that's even if you love the book, I think that's reasonable conclusion that the huge walls of text that Peek throws at the reader with you know, sometimes you need a thesaurus to get through it.
00:56:24
Speaker
It's hard work, but when you step back and you can see the thing in the hole in the round, you can appreciate what Pete was trying to do and what he managed to do. Okay, we'll take a break there. Thanks, Toby. We'll see you a little bit later on in the show. See you in a bit.
00:56:47
Speaker
F milk carton. Yes? I don't think I can do it anymore. Do what?
Humorous Skit: Martian Space Force
00:56:53
Speaker
Go on. Say it, bungalow. The listeners need to hear this. Well, okay. I can't go on being a member of the Martian Space Wars anymore. And why is that? Well, you know, we never do anything.
00:57:12
Speaker
They'll make boilers with boards from earth, dry and fell, kill Jupitarians. I frickin' hate the Jupitarians! Just seems so boilers! Pushing on margins just... Oh, it's frickin' dumb. Wash your montagellar flampe out with soap. You went too far with that one. And anyways, your, I can't do it anymore. This enfranchised macadement, with all things Martian, is the very reason I brought you Gromgenhaas Castle. Why?
00:57:41
Speaker
I mean, this place, it's giving me the creeps. Did y'all see the state of the humans in this place? With their crazy names? I mean, who in their right mind would call their kids swelter? Or to flay? I mean, it sounds like what you do to tenderize an old thingamasnake, man. Plus, they smell! They're ugly!
00:58:03
Speaker
pulled the violence, irrational, and, you know, the smell. You said smell already. And who said anything about these people being humans? Questionable. I am going to give you the inspiration and motivation you need to overcome your crisis of conscience and carry on being a lieutenant in the Martian Space Force. And by that, I mean look around you. This place has been the hereditary home of the Groll family for centuries.
00:58:32
Speaker
And not a single room has been altered in that time. So all is not as it seems, if you follow. No, I have no idea. Not a freaking clue. I'm talking about the fact that not a single thing has been updated for centuries. These people are obviously in the mash in Space Force. And look how they are living. This could be due in just a few short centuries. Well, how is that supposed to help? I mean, this place...
00:59:00
Speaker
This place is freakin' dope, man. I mean, I'd rather hack off my left ventricle than become like one of them. Right, okay then. I'm gonna try a different tactic. Psychology obviously isn't working. I'm not sure why. It might be because you're too stupid. Anyways, I'm going to try a different motivational tactic. Do you know what this is? Yeah, it's a class one heat ray.
00:59:27
Speaker
What happens when someone is hit with a heat ray? They experience searing pain for a brief moment and then die. Well, if you ever threaten to stop being a lieutenant in the Martian Space Force, then I'm gonna hit you with a heat ray.
00:59:43
Speaker
Clearer? Well, I mean, I suppose it does simplify things a bit. Of course it does. Now, go back to doing whatever it is you do between episodes. The listeners want to hear from the judge.
UK Monarchy and Coronation Discussion
01:00:04
Speaker
Hello. Welcome again to The Judge's Corner with me, Demoris Brown.
01:00:09
Speaker
If you were following the Chronicles podcast last year, you will know that after the death of Queen Elizabeth in September, I did a talk on the law regarding the sovereign in the United Kingdom. With the coronation of King Charles on 6th May, I thought I'd return to the monarchy, so if you didn't catch my earlier talk, you might want to listen to it now, as it gives a general background which might be useful.
01:00:33
Speaker
As I discussed in that earlier talk, nowadays the crown passes immediately upon the death of the sovereign. But in England until the 13th century, the new monarch's reign only began at his coronation.
01:00:45
Speaker
Until then, he was known as Dominus Anglorum, Lord of the English. Emphatically not Rex Anglorum, not the King. If you know about the 12th century civil war called the Anarchy, or you've read Alice Peter's Cadaver novels, you may remember that Empress Mathilda was known to her supporters as Lady of the English, the title given to a pre-Coronation Queen. Only she, of course, never progressed further.
01:01:15
Speaker
Because the claimant to the throne only became monarch upon receiving the unction at the coronation, that is, being anointed with the holy oil, there could be weeks or months of an interregnum in which no one could legitimately exercise royal authority. And this at a time when the crown wasn't today's constitutional monarchy, but held real power. So, since its origins lie in this conferring of formal legal authority upon the sovereign,
01:01:43
Speaker
One might therefore think the coronation rite is itself a matter of law and legal precedent, but in fact that's not the case. Practically everything about the present-day ceremony is simply a matter of tradition, though one that has been moulded and amended over the centuries. We no longer have the king's champion in full armour riding on horseback into a coronation banquet and throwing down his gauntlet, for instance.
01:02:10
Speaker
Indeed, it isn't even a legal requirement that there be a coronation. Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936 in order to marry Wally Simpson, was never crowned, yet he legitimately undertook what are known as royal functions during his 325-day reign, most notably in giving royal assent to proposed laws.
01:02:32
Speaker
The only other acknowledged and accepted monarch never to be crowned despite inheriting the throne, so by that definition excluding both Empress Matilda and Lady Jane Grey, was his namesake, Edward V, one of the princes in the tower, whose coronation was planned
01:02:50
Speaker
But he was then declared illegitimate and was most likely murdered along with his brother after the uncle Richard of Gloucester seized the throne. Philip of Spain, king by virtue of his marriage to Mary Tudor, also doesn't appear to have had a coronation. But the Act of Parliament, which granted him the title, also ensured Mary herself retained all real authority and power. And at her death, his reign ended abruptly.
01:03:18
Speaker
As an aside, there is actually one man crowned king in England whose name never appears in a list of reigning monarchs. Henry II's eldest son, or rather the eldest to survive childhood, also called Henry, actually had two coronations, something that wasn't unusual with later monarchs by way of restatements of fealty and overlordship.
01:03:43
Speaker
though I'm not sure if he was formally anointed at either. He was known as Henry the Young King to distinguish him from his father, but in his case the coronation conferred no power, only confirmed him as heir and successor, though in the event he never came to the throne as he died young.
01:04:02
Speaker
The regalia involved in British coronations is deeply symbolic, as is the ceremony itself. The only coronation rite is still held in Europe. But since there are no legal ramifications surrounding them, I'll forebear from talking about the five ceremonial swords paraded in the coronation.
01:04:20
Speaker
the Swords of State, Temporal Justice, Spiritual Justice, Mercy, and the wonderfully named Sword of Offering, which symbolises the crown protecting good and punishing evil, and which is given to the altar, but then bought back for a hundred shillings.
01:04:38
Speaker
not to mention the mace, spurs, ampulla, orb, sceptre, armils, King Edward's staff, and the spoon dating from the 12th century, original purpose unknown, and one of the few survivors of Cromwell's wholesale melting down and recycling of the regalia after Charles I was beheaded. But if you're as intrigued by these things as I am, the Tower of London, where they're housed when they're not being flaunted in Westminster Abbey, has a website with details of some of them.
01:05:07
Speaker
But while they may have no legal importance, there is one aspect of the coronation which is required by law, the coronation oath.
01:05:17
Speaker
The oath is, in effect, a compact between the monarch and his or her people, and in England its earliest form is in the coronation service devised by Saint Dunstan for the Anglo-Saxon King Edgar in 973. The king had to promise three things. The church and the people would hold true peace under his rule,
01:05:39
Speaker
He would forbid acts of robbery and iniquity, and he would uphold justice and mercy in all judgments. That is, he had to maintain peace, order and the rule of law. But note that as far as peace is concerned, the church gets specific mention. The king was required to protect it and its liberties, an unsurprising clause when the church is intent on maintaining its power against secular authority.
01:06:08
Speaker
The exact form of the oath changed over the next several centuries, not least as a result of the steadily increasing role of the King's Advises in Parliament and the changing relationship of the Crown to its subjects. So while, for instance, in 1170, Henry the Young King promised to uphold the ancient customs of the realm, in 1308, Edward II had to swear to observe the future laws made by the community of the realm.
01:06:38
Speaker
A further change was made following the union of the crowns when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne, not least that the Stuart kings were required to have separate coronations in their two realms with separate oaths. Issues with Charles I as to the interpretation of his Scottish oath as it related to the Presbyterian religion led to Charles II being required to agree to the terms of that oath before even being allowed to enter Scotland and act as king.
01:07:08
Speaker
That done, he was crowned there in 1651, some nine years before his restoration in England, the last coronation to take place on Scottish soil, though not the last upon or above Scottish rock, thanks to the stone of schoon in the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey.
01:07:29
Speaker
The issue of religion was the cause of the most important change to the Coronation Oath, when the Catholic James VII and II was effectively deposed and his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, staunch Protestants, were given the thrones of the two kingdoms. But before they were crowned, the English Parliament brought in the Coronation Oath Act of 1688, the preamble of which seems to my eyes somewhat disingenuous.
01:07:59
Speaker
Whereas, by the law and ancient usage of this realm, the kings and queens thereof have taken a solemn oath upon the evangelists at their respective coronations to maintain the statutes, laws and customs of the said realm, and all the people and inhabitants thereof in their spiritual and civil rights and properties,
01:08:21
Speaker
but for as much as the oath itself on such occasion administered, hath hereto before been framed in doubtful words and expressions with relation to ancient laws and constitutions at this time unknown.
01:08:37
Speaker
Notwithstanding that effective concern over doubtful words and expressions, the real intent behind this statute was to ensure there would be no repetition of the problems experienced with the Stuart Kings. The monarch's power was to be curtailed and subject to parliamentary will, and there would be no further attempt to turn the country Catholic.
01:09:00
Speaker
Accordingly, they were to have questions put to them by the leading cleric at the coronation, preferably the Archbishop of Canterbury, and were to answer as laid down in the act.
01:09:11
Speaker
The archbishop or bishop shall say, will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England and the dominions their too belonging, according to the statutes in parliament agreed on and the laws and customs of the same? The king and queen shall say, I solemnly promise so to do. Archbishop or bishop, will you to your power cause law and justice in mercy to be executed in all your judgments? King and queen,
01:09:41
Speaker
I will.
01:09:43
Speaker
archbishop or bishop, will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion established by law? And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rites and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them? King and Queen, all this I promise to do.
01:10:13
Speaker
After this, the king and queen, laying his and her hand upon the holy gospel, shall say, These things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep. So help me God.
01:10:27
Speaker
The preamble to the Act also made it clear that Parliament intended not merely to circumscribe the powers of William and Mary themselves, but to ensure all future monarchs were bound, stating that one uniform oath may be in all times to come taken by the kings and queens of this realm and to them respectively administered at the times of their and every of their coronation. And it remains in force to this day.
01:10:56
Speaker
In strict terms, any deviation from the original wording invalidates the oath, which, since it's a legal requirement at the coronation, must in turn cast doubt on the legitimacy of the monarch.
01:11:10
Speaker
In practice, however, the actual wording has changed considerably over the last 300 years, not least because of the change in the constituent parts of the monarch's realms. After 1707, it was no longer the Kingdom of England, for instance, but of Great Britain, and then later the United Kingdom. The gaining of Commonwealth realms such as Canada and Australia has led to their inclusion. The loss of countries such as India gaining independence has led to their removal.
01:11:37
Speaker
all these being arguably implicitly allowed under other statutes. Any more wide-reaching alterations, though, can only happen by a further act of parliament. The monarch can't tinker with the oath on his own.
01:11:55
Speaker
Just as the coronation oath ensured the continued establishment of the Church of England, under the terms of the 1688 Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement of 1700, William and Mary and their successors were required by law formally to declare their adherence to the Protestant religion.
01:12:15
Speaker
As amended by the 1910 Accession Declaration Act, that declaration, which is to be made, subscribed and audibly repeated by the sovereign, remains a legal requirement at the coronation unless the declaration has already been made at an earlier state opening of Parliament.
01:12:34
Speaker
with a monarch saying, I do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God, profess, testify and declare that I am a faithful Protestant, and that I will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the throne of my realm, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my powers according to law.
01:12:59
Speaker
The Scots, incidentally, having been caught out by Charles I, don't wait for the coronation for confirmation of their religious freedoms. And the Scottish oath, in which the monarch must promise to inviolably maintain and preserve the settlement of the true Protestant religion, together with the government, worship, discipline, rights and privileges of the Church of Scotland, is sworn at every accession, binding the sovereign immediately.
01:13:25
Speaker
and King Charles swore that oath at his accession council on 10th September last year.
01:13:32
Speaker
It may be he was cognisant of the diversity of religious practice in Scotland nowadays, especially bearing in mind his previously stated wish to be defender of faith in general, not of the faith. Since before swearing, he emphasized that, I understand that the law requires that I should, at my accession to the Crown, take and subscribe the oath relating to the security of the Church of Scotland.
01:14:01
Speaker
but at least, unlike William and Mary in 1689, he wasn't required to promise. And we shall be careful to root out all heretics and enemies to the true worship of God that shall be convicted by the true Kirk of God of the aforesaid crimes out of our lands and empire of Scotland. Something which apparently gave them pause, since before accepting the terms of the oath, they checked they weren't themselves considered heretics by the Kirk, not being Presbyterian.
01:14:31
Speaker
Just as these oaths have changed in the past, they, and the coronation right itself, will continue to change and evolve in the future to take account of religious and cultural developments and the will of the people as expressed through Parliament. From the moment, though, we have a ceremony that is a mix of modernity and ancient ritual.
01:14:50
Speaker
pageantry and faith, the law and tradition, symbolism, homage and fealty, sumptuous costumes and glittering jewels. Let's make the most of it. The theme of the March 75 word challenge was second chances.
01:15:11
Speaker
And the genre was science fiction fantasy. The winner was Beanie Boy himself, who is away this month, so I'll be reading his winning entry, The Death of Aging.
75-Word Challenge Winner Announcement
01:15:24
Speaker
The Death of Aging by Christopher Bean. When was he? Immortality, like immolation, consumes you. Science doesn't understand that aging eventually kills itself.
01:15:40
Speaker
kills us. The poison chalice of immortality taught much. He learned even the toughest cliffbound olive trees die. Worse though, aging continues for immortals. He owns no mirrors, no hairbrush, no camera,
01:16:03
Speaker
As he witnesses seedlings turn into shaggy ewes and then die, he inches through time, a crepe-boned mummification of man, wishing he'd said, no, and wonders about immolation.
01:16:21
Speaker
Hi, welcome back to the show. We're here with Toby Frost. We've been discussing Gorgongast and Titus alone in the first hour of the show, but now we're going to talk a little bit more about Toby's own work. We touched on a couple of bits earlier on in Dispatches. For example, we mentioned Warhammer 40,000, and I think that's as good a place to start as any.
Toby Frost's Warhammer Writing Experience
01:16:42
Speaker
So Toby, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what it's like to be a writer for hire.
01:16:48
Speaker
Yeah. It's not something that we've talked about before and it seems like quite an interesting gig. So if you could tell us how that comes about, is that something that John, John Gerald introduced for you? Did he help you or is that something that came off your own bat? It actually came out of going to a convention a long time ago, a science fiction convention, where I basically gone with the space captain Smith books, which some about half, think about three by that point.
01:17:16
Speaker
And I got talking to a guy called James Swallow, who was one of Games Workshop's Black Library's writers. And he wrote stories about space marines, among other things. And he suggested I should get in touch with him and see if they're interested, which I did. The way they did it was to give me a short story to write, which I did. And then off the back of that, they said, do you want to write a novel? I was like, yeah, definitely.
01:17:45
Speaker
I think it's as easy as that.
01:17:48
Speaker
It was pretty much that. There was a choice, I think, if I remember rightly, of writing about entirely new characters or writing about a character who was already established in the game world but had never had any fiction written about him, never had any books written about him. This character is Colonel Stracken. And I went with Stracken because I thought, well, he's already established, you know, he's already there. You're not kind of starting from scratch, but he got a lot of room to go.
01:18:18
Speaker
It was very interesting to do. I think the first and perhaps hardest lesson you learn when you're writing in someone else's setting is you're not going to be the guy who changes the setting drastically. If all space marines are brave, you are not going to be the guy who writes the book about the cowardly space marine. You are
01:18:42
Speaker
You're there to produce something that's good and that is important, you know, you're not doing rubbish. But you're also there to produce something which is in keeping with what's gone before. So it's a bit like there's, you know, I don't know, five apples on the shelf and you're kind of producing a sixth apple or something like that. That's a really bad analogy.
01:19:05
Speaker
But yeah, you are not going- Because that's how apples are made. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. By writing about apples. Yeah, I know. For writing that with a rubbish analogy. But yeah, you're not going to be the one who breaks the system. And what that means is that you are working within the parameters of their world. And you can bring something new to it, which is your own slant on it, but you're not going to be able to reinvent it. And that's absolutely fine.
01:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, what so is there so is there how much
01:19:43
Speaker
So when you go into this, how much previous knowledge of the world, of the universe do you need to go in with? So stuff that you knew from gaming, because I know you're a tabletop gamer as well, aren't you? So I'm presuming you play Warhammer and Forti-K and D&D and all that stuff. So how much do you go in with that, you know, pre-arms of that knowledge and how much do you sort of learn as you go and blag and research like we do when we're writing, you know, most of the time?
01:20:10
Speaker
Bit of both. I think it would probably help to be an up-to-date player, which I wasn't actually. I hadn't done it for a couple of years, Warhammer 40,000. So I kind of knew a bit about the setting, but I didn't quite know the tone of what they wanted.
01:20:25
Speaker
because I was used to an older feel, which was more like 2000 AD, the comic, and was more sort of tongue-in-cheek and sillier and a bit more, you know, sort of had some more in-jokes. And they didn't really want that. They wanted a more serious kind of science fiction action novel, which was fine, but I had to get used to. I think the tone is actually quite an important thing to get what they want, not just in terms of events, but the feel that the book's got to have.
01:20:51
Speaker
And I remember a conversation with one of their editors where he said, well, how do you think the average person in the 40K world is? And I sort of said, well, are they a bit like a sort of peasant in Stalinist Russia? And he went, yeah, that's not bad. So, yeah, there's that kind of feeling. It's a matter of kind of getting accustomed to
01:21:16
Speaker
that tone sort of setting what you can get away with and what you can't. So there's a moment in Strackens where there's a guy piloting a sort of what do you call him sort of scout walker type machine you know a sort of bipod robot and he's smoking a cigarette and he chucks the butt out the window and the machine goes and stumps its foot and crushes the butt out.
01:21:39
Speaker
And when it came around to editing, that's sort of on the verge of too silly, but it's cool, so we're going to keep it in. And it's that kind of thing. There is a sort of rule of Google that applies here. Is it sufficiently awesome? Because when you look at the Warhammer world,
01:21:56
Speaker
Again, it actually used to be like what we were saying at Gormagast. There were just logic gaps. I remember saying, what do the guns sound like then? And there was a moment of quiet where we had to look it up. Because they're things like bolt pistols, aren't they? Which implies massive lumps of metal being fired from an oversized pistol. Is it like a cannon? Yeah.
01:22:17
Speaker
Well, it's very much rule of call. Once you start looking at the internal logic, I remember saying, because I was writing about the imperial guard, the sort of rank and file infantry conscripts, I remember saying, well, what do they get paid?
01:22:32
Speaker
And there was a pause, you know, and we all have to think about this. So what do they get paid in? And it's like, well, if they get paid, are they slaves? And it's like, well, no, not really. Yeah. And of course, that doesn't come up when you're moving small people around on a tabletop and you're simulating 20 minutes of gunfire. So yeah, it's quite fun, but also a bit of a challenge to kind of flesh out the whole setting.
01:22:54
Speaker
I think with a lot of science fiction and fantasy settings, if you start looking into the background logic hard enough, you start finding mistakes or gaps. I think that's probably the case in all fiction. It's at the end of the day still just supposed to be a representation.
01:23:13
Speaker
And as long as the verisimilitude is adequate, then the rest can hang off that. Shrek is making sure the audience is enjoying themselves enough that they don't want to ask those questions to begin with. Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly right.
01:23:29
Speaker
what you're doing is you're putting excitement in front of the you know the radio throwing exciting things and so yeah what you one thing I did find was I'm not going to be able to stop and write a philosophical novel you know this is they may be wearing robes but this is not name of the rose you know they are going to have a gunfight at some point and that's fine as well you just have
01:23:49
Speaker
You have to reconcile yourself to that and I don't think that means that you're going to write a second-rate or a bad book at all. I think there are people who would regard every bit of tie-in fiction, every bit of fiction for hire as bad. I don't think that's fair. I think what you're going to get is you're going to get entertaining fiction and you're going to get entertaining fiction which entertains in a certain way because that's what you expect from the story.
01:24:16
Speaker
you know, you're not going to read a Warhammer book and find a really good romance novel in there. But you might well find a really good action novel in there. And that's fine. You know, I guess the reader of, of, of a Warhammer, I thought for them, I may be a really good writer, Pete's racking his brains in the background there. But what so while he's racking his brains, I'll come in with the average reader, I suppose for 40k novel, and I've not read any,
01:24:42
Speaker
I suppose approaches the work with a certain amount of good faith because it's got that, it's got the seal on it, it's an official product. So there's going to be, they'll enter into the bargain with a good spirit. So you've got to do the same thing, you know, with your professional hat on as a professional writer, you've got to enter into that engagement in the right spirit.
01:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think as a writer, it was actually really useful in terms of a lesson in professionalism, actually, because you're submitting stuff that is of a certain type, you're submitting it within a fixed setting, you're doing it to deadlines, you know, and you're dealing with people who ultimately own this stuff more than you do, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose that goes to the fan base as well. Yeah.
01:25:31
Speaker
Yeah, and that's great for actually being a writer. These are really useful skills to develop. Sometimes writing is not just like this sort of seancey sort of just sitting there and waiting for inspiration to descend on you. Sometimes it is about writing two deadlines or writing
01:25:54
Speaker
things that you are not entirely sure about and have to research and things like that. So yeah, it was really good as an experience of just sort of pragmatism. This idea of the reader engaging because it's a professional outfit and so,
01:26:13
Speaker
As the writer, like you say, you've got to be professional in the way that you approach the work. The publishers are a highly professional outfit and they've got to produce something that they know is going to fly for their audience. I'm wondering, because there's this sort of setup and this is a niche product, let's be fair, I used to play 40K and I loved it, but it is a niche.
01:26:34
Speaker
market. And I wonder how much that sort of fan service, because it is fan service, is extrapolated into the wider genre market, where you have things like, well, let's go there, latter day Star Wars movies, which
01:26:52
Speaker
Some people love them. Bean, he will sing from the hills about all of the latter-day Star Wars films. Other people will not. I'm sort of in the middle. I don't really mind. I'm not a super fan. But there's this element of fan service that creeps into these conversations. And how much do you deliver for the fans and how much do you
01:27:18
Speaker
bring something new into the equation. This is kind of different. It's not Star Wars. It's not mass market appeal. It's niche. So you can say, we can stick with found service, but then in order to maintain its freshness and maintain its relevance to its audience, does it have to change things or do you think, you know, you just stick to the script or as a writer, is that just completely out of scope for you?
Balancing Creativity in Established Universes
01:27:44
Speaker
You just do what you're told.
01:27:46
Speaker
You can bring something to it and I think if you went and you looked at the sum total of black library novels, you would find that there are certain authors who do certain things and that there are people who will go to a book about, I don't know, Space Marines or something, who would not be interested in the book about
01:28:06
Speaker
some other aspect of the setting and would expect something maybe more sort of straight-up action or maybe more intrigue or something like that. So yeah, you can do something. When Stratton came out, Games Workshop has this sort of in-house, a magazine about its products called White Dwarf. Oh yeah, I remember White Dwarf, yeah.
01:28:30
Speaker
And it was mentioned in White Dwarf as one of the things that have come out this month. And I was interested to see that they said that Stracken has a sort of streak of black humor through it. I think it does. I think that's something I was able to bring to it, which might be because I'd been writing comedy science fiction before, or might be because I was used to an earlier version of the game where there was more black humor in the writing.
01:28:56
Speaker
So yeah, you can bring something new to it like that. Of course, when you get into things that have got a big fandom, you've always got the possibility of fans being upset by what's been made. I've never had anything like that. I think actually the people who are reading them are pretty reasonable guys and aren't going to kick off just because it isn't what they wanted.
01:29:19
Speaker
Again, as we're saying, if you provide a lot of entertainment, and it's good entertainment, then I think people are generally pretty happy. Star Wars is an interesting one, I think, because the people who are in charge for it are obviously rather shrewd about what they make. I was watching one of their more recent programs there, Andor, a couple of months ago.
01:29:41
Speaker
And I was thinking, you know, a small child will get almost nothing out of this, you know, slow and it's complex and it's multi-layered. It's a spy thriller essentially, isn't it? It's an espionage thriller. It's brilliant, by the way. Yeah, I really liked it. But I thought this is closer to a John The Carry story or a French Resistance story or something like that than it is to a sort of, you know, straight up, you know, kind of cartoony adventure story.
01:30:07
Speaker
And they're obviously wise enough to know that different audiences will want different things. It's interesting I think also that both Warhammer and Star Wars have got a retro audience as well. That they've got older people who are into this when they were kids. Now I've got the age and time and money to actually go back to it and enjoy it in a slightly more
01:30:27
Speaker
maybe more sophisticated, maybe more sort of tongue-in-treat kind of way. I don't know what the phrase would be. I think if we're talking about what audiences want for works like this, I mean, don't think they do want something new. One of the big criticisms of the new Star Wars trilogy was it's just the old ones repackaged.
01:30:51
Speaker
with Warhammer 40k. This is more of a rules criticism than a fiction criticism. I'm not deeply plugged into Black Library fandom. But I remember every time they'd come out with a new space marine supplement and people would go, oh gods, here we go again.
01:31:08
Speaker
You can't just have things in stasis to go back to Gormengast. If something's ossified, people are going to want to see it pushed. And I think that, to me, seems to be one of the interesting balances in doing that sort of
01:31:26
Speaker
fleshing out a universe. But you have to refresh things enough, but not too much, I guess. Same but different. Yeah. And that's a very hard thing to deliver, I think. I think you do run the risk, I think any series runs the risk of delivering the same but worse.
01:31:49
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, same but weaker. I think that's a real problem with any sequence that isn't sort of injecting itself with new blood, whether that's introducing new characters, new settings, new stories, new writers, you know. But you do run the risk, and I think Andor's quite a good example of this, that you can go as far as the setting or the tone or whatever will allow you
01:32:15
Speaker
And then you're any further and you're doing something which is so different to the story. Yeah. They balanced it very well, I think in Andor. Yeah.
01:32:25
Speaker
and the Mandalorian as well, which is different. It's lighter in tone. It's got that, you know, it's got spaghetti Western vibes. My kids, my two girls really like the Mandalorian for obvious reasons. It's got cutesy stuff as well as the, it's more traditional sort of Star Wars age target audience.
01:32:45
Speaker
But yeah, if I showed my, my, my older daughter either she's aware of and or she said, Oh, yeah, I've seen it advertised everywhere, but it looks a bit boring. Yeah, yeah, you probably would find it boring. But to pivot a little on the idea of diminishing returns, I remember a conversation we had about a couple of months ago, briefly,
01:33:05
Speaker
talking about how eventually an author who does the same sort of thing starts boring a lot of their audience. And I remember you saying that you'd had that fear of Captain Smith. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think the worry is that, I mean, the literal worry in some ways is that you actually literally repeat the same jokes.
01:33:26
Speaker
and it did come a moment I think it was the end of the fifth one where I thought I cannot think of a joke about lemmings that I haven't done you know because there's a lemming species I thought I've done everything I've done hibernation I've done cheek pouches I've done jumping off cliffs I've done everything I can think of about our lemming derived culture you know there are no more gags here and this has been mined and yo
01:33:48
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And there was a worry that you simply run out of jokes. Yeah, that was what I was going to ask next. Like, was there a moment when you're like, this, I can begin to see the downhill descent right now?
01:34:04
Speaker
I, yeah, actually, if I'm going to be honest about it, yeah, I got, there's a natural arc, especially given that I wrote six space Kevin Smith books, which is basically two trilogies, and some short stories. And that's a good number. There's also the fact that there's a galactic war on and the galactic war pretty much ends with the capture of the arch villain at the end of the second book.
01:34:29
Speaker
So, yeah, there are good reasons to pause there. I'm certainly not putting on the brakes because there's a lot of stuff I go back to. And I have gone back to it in short stories since then. But yeah, absolutely. There's a worry that you end up just doing the same thing, but weaker and weaker and weaker. I think when you get to that point, that's the time to stop, you know, when you basically leave on a high, you know. Yeah.
01:34:58
Speaker
Um, but yeah, yeah,
Comedy in Writing: Challenges and Techniques
01:35:00
Speaker
absolutely. I can certainly think of comedies where people say, oh, it's a great comedy, but don't watch the last season. And the one before that, yeah. And you can think, yeah, how much this is actually good, you know? I mean, honestly, I feel like with most comedies, comedies will have people say, no, it stays strong from start to finish or almost the exception, not the rule. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think some of the best comedies, you forget how few episodes there are.
01:35:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's a very British phenomenon, isn't it? I think of a TV sitcom that's very British. You do two series, maybe a special, and then boom, you're done. And that's the best comedy I've done. Eighteen episodes, twelve episodes or something. Yeah. It's almost nothing.
01:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, and that's great because it means that you're hitting it and you never, you know, you never tire the audience. You can get to the point where, you know, there are things that the audience wants to read and that's great. You know, they were like, oh, it's this guy. I love this guy. He's really entertaining. That's great. And if that guy is, his appearance is reliant on a certain type of comedy or certain sort of a background joke. You know, I mean, I've got a character in Space Captain Smith books, so the Slayer.
01:36:08
Speaker
who is a parody of every honorable warrior alien in science fiction, which there are quite a few. And he always does honorable warrior alien things. But that's his character. But the actual jokes, the individual jokes are different because, you know, yeah, they're all but they all derive from that same source. And I think that's quite nice when people go, Oh, great, you know, he so slayers appear, that means something funny will happen. But that does rely on you being able to keep coming out with entertaining new jokes. Yeah, yeah.
01:36:39
Speaker
And to pivot back to a moment, to gaming, and I get a feeling that The Slayer might be an answer to my question. Are there any particular thoughts on genre that you have gained from being a tabletop gamer or computer gamer? That's a really interesting one.
01:37:00
Speaker
I do think that books are still the cutting edge often of, not always, but often of science fiction and fantasy. It's like the way that something like The Matrix uses a lot of ideas that Philip K. Dick was exploring 30 years before it came out. And of course, the different
Narrative Depth in Games and Publishing Trends
01:37:23
Speaker
mediums. So you've got, I think it's interesting that you see something like, I don't know, a game like The Last of Us.
01:37:30
Speaker
Which has to me that as a reader, I've read stories like that pretty often. And I do think it's very similar to the road. But yeah, I think I think there are nods to the road and you could probably take it all the way back to the editor efforts by John Wyndham. Yeah, because apocalypse stories are kind of about the moral decisions that happen when everything falls apart. But it's interesting to see that.
01:37:56
Speaker
level of novel length, novel level characterisation put into a computer game. One interesting thing about the game of The Last of Us is that every so often little symbols appear over characters' heads, which mean an optional conversation can be had. And you don't get anything from the conversation except the characters talking. And they will just be computer game people just standing there and chatting.
01:38:23
Speaker
And it's interesting. It's just Egypt, but it adds to the character, doesn't it? Yeah, and it's doing something more. Yeah, it's kind of giving you something which isn't just killing stuff on a screen. So yeah, I still think that there are definitely things that writing does a lot better and is much better suited for. And I think some of those kind of
01:38:48
Speaker
weird experimental cutting edge things are best done on paper, to be honest, especially when there's it's we've had this conversation on the podcast before about how about the conflict between publishing as as a commercial industry, which has to make money. And this is kind of spinning on the same point about serving up the sort of books that, for example, Black Library wants to put out for its fan base.
01:39:17
Speaker
a publishing house wants to be able to service the market, but it's also, you know, it's a balance between highly conservative, and I mean conservative, not politically, but commercially, you know, it's got its commercial interests, and to serve, and economically, it's got to be able to make money. And the artistic stuff, on the other hand, it's got to be able to generate, must generate new ideas. It has to be open to new ideas, and there's a constant balance there.
01:39:46
Speaker
There's probably a strong sense in the last probably 10 or 15 years that publishing has become a little bit too conservative, again not politically, but with respect to pushing out stuff that is not quite as groundbreaking and not as adventurous as it was certainly in the 20th century.
01:40:08
Speaker
Yeah, on the forum we see quite a lot of discussions about hard science fiction against sort of self-science fiction. I think I'm increasingly starting to think that the division is between science fiction as a sort of literature of ideas and science fiction as a sort of literature of adventure.
01:40:30
Speaker
Yeah. And sometimes, and there's nothing inherently wrong with this, because it's a lot of what I write is this, you get an adventure story that is moved into science fiction terms. We don't see very many war stories like, say, where eagles dare, a story where you just kill thousands of baddies and blow stuff up and have exciting adventures.
01:40:57
Speaker
these days in cinema, but we do see films like say Starship Troopers, which are doing something quite similar in science fiction terms or aliens perhaps. Yeah. Well, even that, I mean, they're not new films. No, those are books that you're talking about there. No.
01:41:14
Speaker
Yeah, I see your point about that. These are sort of conservatism of fat and that conservatism sometimes is often is about that adventure rather than ideas. Hmm. And yeah, maybe we need to return to that. Yeah. I suppose ideally you combine the both. Yeah, it's the answer. Well, yeah, you same bit different. It's the same thing. So, but I just
01:41:44
Speaker
I guess the trend at the moment is for putting a fresh twist on old ideas rather than something that's radical. And sometimes you can go too radical and you can say maybe it doesn't work at all or it's too weird. So when we talked about House of Leaves, that certainly came up that it was too weird. But it found an audience and it's destined to just become a cult classic.
01:42:06
Speaker
Or maybe not even a classic but a cult book. Whereas these days there's a lot of very direct retellings. I mean, everything to some degree is a twist on what's happened before. It's about the amount of twist and the amount of distance.
01:42:21
Speaker
I mean, take something like the cult film The Warriors, which is actually based on ancient Greek history and literature. That is such a big twist that you're pretty much not going to know that unless you're very well educated or have just been on IMDB trivia. But when you see things that are marketed as a retelling of this fairy tale,
01:42:50
Speaker
then you know you're in a very close level of treading and footsteps and then you get Star Wars, you get all the Marvel remakes and it's, yeah. Yeah, it's difficult for something that's entirely new.
01:43:08
Speaker
not linked to an existing IP and is full of new ideas. And what constitutes new ideas, I think, changes as well. Maybe, I don't know, 50 years ago or something, that quite sort of hard science fiction idea of new tech was more interesting perhaps than it is now.
01:43:30
Speaker
you know, but then you get something like, you know, sort of side bunk novels, which are crossing science fiction with noir stories. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a very new idea there. And that's, that's,
01:43:42
Speaker
Yes, there's some tech there, but it's also a style. It's an approach. It's an atmosphere. What constitutes new, I think, changes from time to time. It's that continual search for freshness, which maybe it gets harder and harder. I don't think it's a case of all the good stories being told.
01:44:03
Speaker
I think it's... No, no, certainly not. I think there must be untold amounts of great stories out there that haven't found an audience yet. I just wonder, what's the appetite for certainly the big publishing houses to take risks in a difficult market? I really don't know,
Influences and Future Projects of the Author
01:44:22
Speaker
but... No, I'm sure we'll work... We've got
01:44:28
Speaker
some publishers coming up in future episodes. So this is something that we'll have to raise with them and see what the state of the market is. So let's move on. In fact, let's move back because I want to go back to the gaming. I just wonder how much your experience with gaming, tabletop, how does that influence your writing?
01:44:50
Speaker
I think, in a direct way, not much. But I think there's a sort of appeal that science fiction and fantasy has to me, which is all about moving into a different world. And it's a bit like I was mentioning, as Alan Lee pictures earlier, that they're extremely evocative. And it's not just what's being depicted, but how it's being depicted. It's an atmosphere thing.
01:45:16
Speaker
And I can remember maybe when I was, I don't know, 10, 15 or something, computers starting to get better and things like the Amiga coming out, which now look very primitive. But back then, I would just sort of gawp at other friends' computers when they were running. I just think this is absolutely incredible. And you'd see some little man running along the screen. And in the background, there were some mountains or a picture of a castle thingy. And my brain would always think, well, what's it like on those mountains? What would it be like to go there?
01:45:46
Speaker
So there's an element of exploring, I think, as well as just a challenge of winning, which I'm not actually that as interested in. But I think there's an element of exploring that comes from gaming. And some of the board gaming, tabletop gaming, that can come from playing those games, but it can also come from making the models for them, converting them, which is something I'm very into, making new models out of old ones, paint schemes, all that kind of stuff.
01:46:15
Speaker
There's a creativity that comes from this. Even down to things like Dungeons and Dragons where people have to create a character. They're making up a character who is going to be almost the lead character of an awful, but they're never going to write that novel if that makes any sense. So would you say this love of exploration can be seen in Captain Smith quite easily?
01:46:45
Speaker
Would you say that goes through all your novels or would you say like have your interests maybe changed a little? I think the nature of the exploration changes from book to book. I'm very interested, I've always been very interested in sort of the crime noir type plots where you are sort of getting to a truth, you know, like peeling away layers of an onion to get, you know, at the core.
01:47:15
Speaker
I think that's something that always appeals to me, that feeling of kind of moving the characters through the story, getting closer and closer to a kind of a confrontation or discovery that will be the sort of crux of the thing. Yeah, definitely see that in your most recent fantasy books.
01:47:32
Speaker
I mean, when you were talking about noir, I was going to ask, is that something that came up when you were writing up to the phone? Definitely. Yeah, definitely. There's, yeah, it's a very strong noir interest there. I remember at one point, the first time I ever sort of tried to write it, I basically had a copy of a Raymond Chandler novel, and a copy of a Dragonlance book.
01:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, which was sort of my reference points. And what came out of it was completely different. But yeah, absolutely, that sense of intrigue and characters sort of how they interact with each other sometimes. And we go back to Gormengast in a way. That idea not of just a sort of heroic plot where we're all gathering our allies and we're going to take down a baddie, but that sense of who can we trust? How do we interact? What do we want? That can be very appealing. And that's a kind of exploration. Yeah.
01:48:30
Speaker
I'm glad you mentioned Dark Renaissance, Pete, because I wanted to ask, how's book number three coming along? It's coming on fine. It's coming on fine. I mean, there is a gaming link to this, actually, because one of the inspirations for this was many, many years ago, there was a computer game called Thief, which was a sort of medieval-y, steampunk-y sort of game where you basically crept around, avoided guards and stole objects.
01:48:55
Speaker
And that was an amazing game in terms of that exploration field because you weren't just moving through rooms to kill things, you're moving through rooms to find things and pick up letters and read them. There's a 3D element, literally, but some more detailed field for setting. Yeah, the current book is coming on really well, actually. It's currently with the editor, Sam, of Crohn's.
01:49:21
Speaker
Oh, Sam. Excellent. Good work. Yeah, Deborah herself. Yeah. Again, it's...
01:49:29
Speaker
I feel that the more of these I write, the more confidence I've got. This is a slightly bigger story. It brings in more characters. It brings in a larger scope because there's a siege if a city is involved. Yeah, I'm really pleased with that actually. I'm really enjoying it. It's a setting that I really like going back to because you've got all the sort of
01:49:52
Speaker
all the all the kind of advantages of writing about a kind of renaissance setting but you're also writing kind of caricature in a way you know it's all slightly more exaggerated because you've got this aspect of magic that can just mean that your you know your your flying machine actually does work and doesn't just end up sort of margin drawing by da Vinci you know somehow or other it will take to the air and you can get around that and yeah it's great fun to do as a result yeah yeah. Are we likely to see that this year?
01:50:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm hoping to get that out sort of the next few months, actually. Yeah, it's, you know, the basic writing is finished. So it's just editing and cover art and that sort of thing. Yeah, so that's gonna be great. I'm really looking forward to doing that. Yeah, it's nice to be back in that sort of setting. Yeah.
01:50:40
Speaker
Yeah, and as the sort of future projects, well, I mean, both the Smith setting and the Renaissance one have got tons of mileage in, I think. The book I released last year, The Impostors, was a sort of spin-off from Space Captain Smith set in a sort of corner of their world. In fact, it's kind of Rogue One to Space Captain Smith's Star Wars, you know, it's a knock.
01:51:03
Speaker
it's a darker story and a more complicated one and a stranger one but it's still got a lot of the sort of there's a big you know big overlap in terms of style and tone it's just a bit less obviously comedic and yeah that was great fun to do so sometimes what you're doing is you're coming to a setting you're not creating something a setting from scratch you're coming in at a different angle you know and that's where the freshness is coming from
01:51:29
Speaker
Fantastic.
Recommended Authors and Conclusion
01:51:30
Speaker
Well, is there anything that we've missed? I don't think so. So before we go...
01:51:37
Speaker
We've got our usual couple of questions. So I'm going to ask you, what are you reading at the moment? At the moment, I am reading The Damnation Game by Clive Barker. Oh, Bean will be very pleased with you. I think... Barker is exceedingly gory and sort of gruesome, but he's also a fantastic prose writer.
01:52:04
Speaker
Yeah, I will put him in my top five writers of prose, basically. Who are your top five writers of prose? Oh, no, you got me there. I can give you I will. Okay. I know. Mervyn Peake is probably in there.
01:52:20
Speaker
Raymond Chandler and George Orwell are definitely in there. And as for five, well, that might change from day to day. But yeah, I mean, there's so many nice turns of phrase that he uses, and he's just got such a good sort of lyrical voice. And he manages to write in this kind of poetic sort of way, despite all the horrors he's describing, without becoming purple, without the prose becoming heavy and dead.
01:52:48
Speaker
So I've been reading a couple of crime novels before then which were okay and it's such a change to read someone where you genuinely enjoy just reading what they're writing, you know. You could almost sort of read a shopping list and it would be really good though it might be a bit terrifying.
01:53:07
Speaker
Yeah. Excellent. Well, maybe we'll have you back to talk about some Clive Barker. Bean will be over the moon, if that's the case. You never know. OK, one more question. OK. So that's what you're reading at the moment. What would you highlight to our listeners as recommended reading? What's Toby Frost's recommended book? OK, well, well, it's this exciting author called Toby Frost that I recommend.
01:53:34
Speaker
You've you've done your plug. Yeah, no, no, stuff I would really recommend. Gosh. I mean, again, it's those same authors. You know, I love the Raymond Chandler crime books. I find that I can just open them any page and something interesting will be happening. I'm a big fan of Orwell's essays, which is a bit of an unusual one.
01:53:59
Speaker
But there, again, the writing is so clear and it's just very, very, very sort of sharp, concise, clear writing and analysis. And I love those. One of my favorite books ever is Count Zero by William Gibson, which I just think is it's got one of the best openings I've ever read. It's just brilliant. So, yeah, that's a few. Gosh, what else would I recommend?
01:54:27
Speaker
epic fantasy. I recently read Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books. Those are interesting. I think they're really good. I think they're also quite wordy. He could be trimmed down a bit, but I think those are very good.
01:54:45
Speaker
Gosh, other books. You've given us a whole library. The Earl of Sepulgrave would take a take a farewell to get through all that. So that's good stuff. All right. Toby has been fantastic talking to you. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's been great. Yeah, it's been fantastic. Pete, got anything more that we've missed? Nothing at all.
01:55:09
Speaker
Here we go. OK, well, thanks so much for joining us again, Toby. It's been great fun. And, you know, maybe in the future we'll have you back and we'll talk about something, whether it's Clive Barker or something else. So until then, see you next time. Thanks.
01:55:34
Speaker
. . .
01:56:04
Speaker
This month's episode of Kron's cast was brought to you by Dan Jones and Pete Long, and our special guest, Taylor Frost. Additional content was provided by Damaris Brown and Christopher E. Special thanks to Brian Turner and all the staff at Kron's, and thanks to you for listening. Join us next month when our special guest will be the acclaimed fantasy author and winner of the British fantasy award, R.J. Barker.
01:56:30
Speaker
We'll be rabbiting on about one of the all-time great pieces of fantasy literature, Watership Down.
01:57:03
Speaker
And all the people rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, and all the people rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, rejoice,
01:57:30
Speaker
Rejoice, rejoice, and love will bring only to us. Rejoice, rejoice, and sing. God save the King! God save the King! God save the King!
01:58:04
Speaker
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
01:58:35
Speaker
God save the King! Lord, wave the King! May the King live forever! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! May the King live forever!
01:58:59
Speaker
May the day lead forever, forever, forever, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
01:59:22
Speaker
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
01:59:41
Speaker
God save the King! Come victory! God save the King! May the King live! May the King live! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
02:00:09
Speaker
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!