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But now for something REALLY IMPORTANT

Important to me, that is.

Here’s a new review of SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH, from the widely-read fantasy blog The Wertzone:

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/

Guyal the Curator’ by John C. Wright sees Manxolio Quinc, Chief Invigilator of Old Romarth, investigating the arrival of a stranger in the city suffering from amnesia. Their investigation of his origins sees them running afoul of the ill-tempered titan Magnatz. This another successful story, with a startling ending. The only problem with this tale is that the Dying Earth seems to have unexpectedly re-acquired its Moon (which, as previous stories had established, had wandered out of Earth’s orbit millions of years earlier).

Unfortunately, the editor rejected my novella, THE STARTLING AND UNEXPECTEDLY LACHRYMOSE YET DECIDEDLY INERRANT TALE OF THE RETURN OF THE ANTIQUE MOON, where I explained in clear yet excruciating detail how Morreion led John Koenig and the team of Moonbase Alpha away from the stars in Argo Navis, and guided the long-lost yet ghost-infected satellite of Earth back to her proper orbit: Cugel the Clever, attempting to pocket the Sublime Lunar Influent which directed that haunted orb’s astral wayfaring, unfortunately rises a tidal wave across Ampridatvir, swallowing that ancient yet luxurious metropolis in cataclysm: cataphracts, damsels, mages and magnates, and their many generations of quarrelsome but magnificently-plumed racing birds are expunged in an instant of horror, and the Nine Glass Towers of Phandaal, with all their otherworldly treasures, lost. Cugel, affecting an air of nonchalance, wears the Sublime Lunar Influent as a hat-ornament, and so escapes the alert gaze of avenging Epopts lining the roads toward Xzan. Their curiosity is not provoked even when a mischievous pelgrane attempts to snatch the hat from his head, but expires in jerking convulsions. He sells the infinitely potent periapt at a fair, but his proceeds are expropriated from him by the cunning of a comely tavern wench, who is actually the Witch Desmei.

Naturally, I did not have room for all this in my other story, so it is hoped the reader will simply make allowances. There is no reason to question this explanation, which glitters with a patina of verisimilitude!

Surely we cannot expect that both the world-famous author and the penetrating intellect of the preceptor and editor of this magnificent volume would make a glaring continuity error! The concept is nugatory, and I dismiss it with a saturnine laugh!

About

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

July 21, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
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