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The Newcomes, by William Makepeace Thackeray

Lady Kew at the Congress

When Lady Kew heard that Madame d’Ivry was at Baden, and was informed at once of the French lady’s graciousness towards the Newcome family, and of her fury against Lord Kew, the old Countess gave a loose to that energetic temper with which nature had gifted her; a temper which she tied up sometimes and kept from barking and biting; but which when unmuzzled was an animal of whom all her ladyship’s family had a just apprehension. Not one of them but in his or her time had been wounded, lacerated, tumbled over, otherwise frightened or injured by this unruly brute. The cowards brought it sops and patted it; the prudent gave it a clear berth, and walked round so as not to meet it; but woe be to those of the family who had to bring the meal, and prepare the litter, and (to speak respectfully) share the kennel with Lady Kew’s “Black Dog!” Surely a fine furious temper, if accompanied with a certain magnanimity and bravery which often go together with it, is one of the most precious and fortunate gifts with which a gentleman or lady can be endowed. A person always ready to fight is certain of the greatest consideration amongst his or her family circle. The lazy grow tired of contending with him; the timid coax and flatter him; and as almost every one is timid or lazy, a bad-tempered man is sure to have his own way. It is he who commands, and all the others obey. If he is a gourmand, he has’ what he likes for dinner; and the tastes of all the rest are subservient to him. She (we playfully transfer the gender, as a bad temper is of both sexes) has the place which she likes best in the drawing-room; nor do her parents, nor her brothers and sisters, venture to take her favourite chair. If she wants to go to a party, mamma will dress herself in spite of her headache; and papa, who hates those dreadful soirees, will go upstairs after dinner and put on his poor old white neckcloth, though he has been toiling at chambers all day, and must be there early in the morning — he will go out with her, we say, and stay for the cotillon. If the family are taking their tour in the summer, it is she who ordains whither they shall go, and when they shall stop. If he comes home late, the dinner is kept for him, and not one dares to say a word though ever so hungry. If he is in a good humour, how every one frisks about and is happy! How the servants jump up at his bell and run to wait upon him! How they sit up patiently, and how eagerly they rush out to fetch cabs in the rain! Whereas for you and me, who have the tempers of angels, and never were known to be angry or to complain, nobody cares whether we are pleased or not. Our wives go to the milliners and send us the bill, and we pay it; our John finishes reading the newspaper before he answers our bell, and brings it to us; our sons loll in the arm-chair which we should like; fill the house with their young men, and smoke in the dining-room; our tailors fit us badly; our butchers give us the youngest mutton; our tradesmen dun us much more quickly than other people’s, because they know we are good-natured; and our servants go out whenever they like, and openly have their friends to supper in the kitchen. When Lady Kew said Sic volo, sic jubeo, I promise you few persons of her ladyship’s belongings stopped, before they did her biddings, to ask her reasons.

If, which very seldom happens, there are two such imperious and domineering spirits in a family, unpleasantries of course will arise from their contentions; or, if out of doors the family Bajazet meets with some other violent Turk, dreadful battles ensue, all the allies on either side are brought in, and the surrounding neighbours perforce engaged in the quarrel. This was unluckily the case in the present instance. Lady Kew, unaccustomed to have her will questioned at home, liked to impose it abroad. She judged the persons around her with great freedom of speech. Her opinions were quoted, as people’s sayings will be; and if she made bitter speeches, depend on it they lost nothing in the carrying. She was furious against Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry, and exploded in various companies whenever that lady’s name was mentioned. “Why was she not with her husband? Why was the poor old Duke left to his gout, and this woman trailing through the country with her vagabond court of billiard-markers at her heels? She to call herself Mary Queen of Scots, forsooth! — well, she merited the title in some respects, though she had not murdered her husband as yet. Ah! I should like to be Queen Elizabeth if the Duchess is Queen of Scots!” said the old lady, shaking her old fist. And these sentiments being uttered in public, upon the promenade, to mutual friends, of course the Duchess had the benefit of Lady Kew’s remarks a few minutes after they were uttered; and her grace, and the distinguished princes, counts, and noblemen in her court, designated as billiard-markers by the old Countess, returned the latter’s compliments with pretty speeches of their own. Scandals were dug up respecting her ladyship, so old that one would have thought them forgotten these forty years — so old that they happened before most of the Newcomes now extant were born, and surely therefore are out of the province of this contemporary biography. Lady Kew was indignant with her daughter (there were some moments when any conduct of her friends did not meet her ladyship’s approbation) even for the scant civility with which Lady Anne had received the Duchess’s advances. “Leave a card upon her! — yes, send a card by one of your footmen; but go in to see her — because she was at the window and saw you drive up. — Are you mad, Anne? That was the very reason you should not have come out of your carriage. But you are so weak and good-natured, that if a highwayman stopped you, you would say, ‘Thank you, sir,’ as you gave him your purse: yes, and if Mrs. Macheath called on you afterwards you would return the visit!”

Even had these speeches been made about the Duchess, and some of them not addressed to her, things might have gone on pretty well. If we quarrelled with all the people who abuse us behind our backs, and began to tear their eyes out as soon as we set ours on them, what a life it would be, and when should we have any quiet? Backbiting is all fair in society. Abuse me, and I will abuse you; but let us be friends when we meet. Have not we all entered a dozen rooms, and been sure, from the countenances of the amiable persons present, that they had been discussing our little peculiarities, perhaps as we were on the stairs? Was our visit, therefore, the less agreeable? Did we quarrel and say hard words to one another’s faces? No — we wait until some of our dear friends take their leave, and then comes our turn. My back is at my neighbour’s service; as soon as that is turned let him make what faces he thinks proper: but when we meet we grin and shake hands like well-bred folk, to whom clean linen is not more necessary than a clean sweet-looking countenance, and a nicely got-up smile, for company.

Here was Lady Kew’s mistake. She wanted, for some reason, to drive Madame d’Ivry out of Baden; and thought there were no better means of effecting this object than by using the high hand, and practising those frowns upon the Duchess which had scared away so many other persons. But the Queen of Scots was resolute, too, and her band of courtiers fought stoutly round about her. Some of them could not pay their bills, and could not retreat: others had courage, and did not choose to fly. Instead of coaxing and soothing Madame d’Ivry, Madame de Kew thought by a brisk attack to rout and dislodge her. She began on almost the very first occasion when the ladies met. “I was so sorry to hear that Monsieur le Duc was ill at Bagneres, Madame la Duchesse,” the old lady began on their very first meeting, after the usual salutations had taken place.

“Madame la Comtesse is very kind to interest herself in Monsieur d’Ivry’s health. Monsieur le Duc at his age is not disposed to travel. You, dear miladi, are more happy in being always able to retain the gout des voyages!”

“I come to my family! my dear Duchess.”

“How charmed they must be to possess you! Miladi Anne, you must be inexpressibly consoled by the presence of a mother so tender! Permit me to present Madame la Comtesse de la Cruchecassee to Madame la Comtesse de Kew. Miladi is sister to that amiable Marquis of Steyne, whom you have known, Ambrosine! Madame la Baronne de Schlangenbad, Miladi Kew. Do you not see the resemblance to milor? These ladies have enjoyed the hospitalities — the splendours of Gaunt House. They were of those famous routs of which the charming Mistress Crawley, la semillante Becki, made part! How sad the Hotel de Gaunt must be under the present circumstances! Have you heard, miladi, of the charming Mistress Becki? Monsieur le Duc describes her as the most spirituelle Englishwoman he ever met.” The Queen of Scots turns and whispers her lady of honour, and shrugs and taps her forehead. Lady Kew knows that Madame d’Ivry speaks of her nephew, the present Lord Steyne, who is not in his right mind. The Duchess looks round, and sees a friend in the distance whom she beckons. “Comtesse, you know already monsieur the Captain Blackball? He makes the delight of our society!” A dreadful man with a large cigar, a florid waistcoat, and billiards written on his countenance, swaggers forward at the Duchess’s summons. The Countess of Kew has not gained much by her attack. She has been presented to Cruchecassee and Schlangenbad. She sees herself on the eve of becoming the acquaintance of Captain Blackball.

“Permit me, Duchess, to choose my English friends at least for myself,” says Lady Kew, drumming her foot.

“But, madam, assuredly! You do not love this good Monsieur de Blackball? Eh! the English manners are droll, pardon me for saying so. It is wonderful how proud you are as a nation, and how ashamed you are of your compatriots!”

“There are some persons who are ashamed of nothing, Madame la Duchesse,” cries Lady Kew; losing her temper.

“Is that gracieusete for me? How much goodness! This good Monsieur de Blackball is not very well bred; but, for an Englishman, he is not too bad. I have met with people who are more ill-bred than Englishmen in my travels.”

“And they are?” said Lady Anne, who had been in vain endeavouring to put an end to this colloquy.

“Englishwomen, madam! I speak not for you. You are kind; you — you are too soft, dear Lady Anne, for a persecutor.”

The counsels of the worldly woman who governed and directed that branch of the Newcome family of whom it is our business to speak now for a little while, bore other results than those which the elderly lady desired and foresaw. Who can foresee everything and always? Not the wisest among us. When his Majesty Louis XIV., jockeyed his grandson on to the throne of Spain (founding thereby the present revered dynasty of that country), did he expect to peril his own, and bring all Europe about his royal ears? Could a late King of France, eager for the advantageous establishment of one of his darling sons, and anxious to procure a beautiful Spanish princess, with a crown and kingdom in reversion, for the simple and obedient youth, ever suppose that the welfare of his whole august race and reign would be upset by that smart speculation? We take only the most noble examples to illustrate the conduct of such a noble old personage as her ladyship of Kew, who brought a prodigious deal of trouble upon some of the innocent members of her family, whom no doubt she thought to better in life by her experienced guidance and undoubted worldly wisdom. We may be as deep as Jesuits, know the world ever so well, lay the best-ordered plans, and the profoundest combinations, and by a certain not unnatural turn of fate, we, and our plans and combinations, are sent flying before the wind. We may be as wise as Louis Philippe, that many-counselled Ulysses whom the respectable world admired so; and after years of patient scheming, and prodigies of skill, after coaxing, wheedling, doubling, bullying, wisdom, behold yet stronger powers interpose: and schemes, and skill and violence, are nought.

Frank and Ethel, Lady Kew’s grandchildren, were both the obedient subjects of this ancient despot: this imperious old Louis XIV. in a black front and a cap and ribbon, this scheming old Louis Philippe in tabinet; but their blood was good and their tempers high; and for all her bitting and driving, and the training of her mange, the generous young colts were hard to break. Ethel, at this time, was especially stubborn in training, rebellious to the whip, and wild under harness; and the way in which Lady Kew managed her won the admiration of her family: for it was a maxim among these folks that no one could manage Ethel but Lady Kew. Barnes said no one could manage his sister but his grandmother. He couldn’t, that was certain. Mamma never tried, and indeed was so good-natured, that rather than ride the filly, she would put the saddle on her own back and let the filly ride her; no, there was no one but her ladyship capable of managing that girl, Barnes owned, who held Lady Kew in much respect and awe. “If the tightest hand were not kept on her, there’s no knowing what she mightn’t do,” said her brother. “Ethel Newcome, by Jove, is capable of running away with the writing-master.”

After poor Jack Belsize’s mishap and departure, Barnes’s own bride showed no spirit at all, save one of placid contentment. She came at call and instantly, and went through whatever paces her owner demanded of her. She laughed whenever need was, simpered and smiled when spoken to, danced whenever she was asked; drove out at Barnes’s side in Kew’s phaeton, and received him certainly not with warmth, but with politeness and welcome. It is difficult to describe the scorn with which her sister-inlaw regarded her. The sight of the patient timid little thing chafed Ethel, who was always more haughty and flighty and bold when in Clara’s presence than at any other time. Her ladyship’s brother, Captain Lord Viscount Rooster, before mentioned, joined the family party at this interesting juncture. My Lord Rooster found himself surprised, delighted, subjugated by Miss Newcome, her wit and spirit. “By Jove, she is a plucky one,” his lordship exclaimed. “To dance with her is the best fun in life. How she pulls all the other girls to pieces, by Jove, and how splendidly she chaffs everybody! But,” he added with the shrewdness and sense of humour which distinguished the young officer, “I’d rather dance with her than marry her — by a doosid long score — I don’t envy you that part of the business, Kew, my boy.” Lord Kew did not set himself up as a person to be envied. He thought his cousin beautiful: and with his grandmother, that she would make a very handsome Countess; and he thought the money which Lady Kew would give or leave to the young couple a very welcome addition to his means.

On the next night, when there was a ball at the room, Miss Ethel chose to appear in a toilette the very grandest and finest which she had ever assumed, who was ordinarily exceedingly simple in her attire, and dressed below the mark of the rest of the world. Her clustering ringlets, her shining white shoulders, her splendid raiment (I believe indeed it was her court-dress which the young lady assumed) astonished all beholders. She ecrased all other beauties by her appearance; so much so that Madame d’Ivry’s court could not but look, the men in admiration, the women in dislike, at this dazzling young creature. None of the countesses, duchesses, princesses, Russ, Spanish, Italian, were so fine or so handsome. There were some New York ladies at Baden as there are everywhere else in Europe now. Not even these were more magnificent than Miss Ethel. General Jeremiah J. Bung’s lady owned that Miss Newcome was fit to appear in any party in Fourth Avenue. She was the only well-dressed English girl Mrs. Bung had seen in Europe. A young German Durchlaucht deigned to explain to his aide-de-camp how very handsome he thought Miss Newcome. All our acquaintances were of one mind. Mr. Jones of England pronounced her stunning; the admirable Captain Blackball examined her points with the skill of an amateur, and described them with agreeable frankness. Lord Rooster was charmed as he surveyed her, and complimented his late companion-inarms on the possession of such a paragon. Only Lord Kew was not delighted — nor did Miss Ethel mean that he should be. She looked as splendid as Cinderella in the prince’s palace. But what need for all this splendour? this wonderful toilette? this dazzling neck and shoulders, whereof the brightness and beauty blinded the eyes of lookers-on? She was dressed as gaudily as an actress of the Varietes going to a supper at Trois Freres. “It was Mademoiselle Mabille en habit de coeur,” Madame d’Ivry remarked to Madame Schlangenbad. Barnes, who with his bride-elect for a partner made a vis-a-vis for his sister and the admiring Lord Rooster, was puzzled likewise by Ethel’s countenance and appearance. Little Lady Clara looked like a little schoolgirl dancing before her.

One, two, three, of the attendants of her Majesty the Queen of Scots were carried off in the course of the evening by the victorious young beauty, whose triumph had the effect, which the headstrong girl perhaps herself anticipated, of mortifying the Duchesse d’Ivry, of exasperating old Lady Kew, and of annoying the young nobleman to whom Miss Ethel was engaged. The girl seemed to take a pleasure in defying all three, a something embittered her, alike against her friends and her enemies. The old dowager chaffed and vented her wrath upon Lady Anne and Barnes. Ethel kept the ball alive by herself almost. She refused to go home, declining hints and commands alike. She was engaged for ever so many dances more. Not dance with Count Punter? it would be rude to leave him after promising him. Not waltz with Captain Blackball? He was not a proper partner for her? Why then did Kew know him? Lord Kew walked and talked with Captain Blackball every day. Was she to be so proud as not to know Lord Kew’s friends? She greeted the Captain with a most fascinating smile as he came up whilst the controversy was pending, and ended it by whirling round the room in his arms.

Madame d’Ivry viewed with such pleasure as might be expected the defection of her adherents, and the triumph of her youthful rival, who seemed to grow more beautiful with each waltz, so that the other dancers paused to look at her, the men breaking out in enthusiasm, the reluctant women being forced to join in the applause. Angry as she was, and knowing how Ethel’s conduct angered her grandson, old Lady Kew could not help admiring the rebellious beauty, whose girlish spirit was more than a match for the imperious dowager’s tough old resolution. As for Mr. Barnes’s displeasure, the girl tossed her saucy head, shrugged her fair shoulders, and passed on with a scornful laugh. In a word, Miss Ethel conducted herself as a most reckless and intrepid young flirt, using her eyes with the most consummate effect, chattering with astounding gaiety, prodigal of smiles, gracious thanks and killing glances. What wicked spirit moved her? Perhaps had she known the mischief she was doing, she would have continued it still.

The sight of this wilfulness and levity smote poor Lord Kew’s honest heart with cruel pangs of mortification. The easy young nobleman had passed many a year of his life in all sorts of wild company. The chaumiere knew him, and the balls of Parisian actresses, the coulisses of the opera at home and abroad. Those pretty heads of ladies whom nobody knows, used to nod their shining ringlets at Kew, from private boxes at theatres, or dubious Park broughams. He had run the career of young men of pleasure, and laughed and feasted with jolly prodigals and their company. He was tired of it: perhaps he remembered an earlier and purer life, and was sighing to return to it. Living as he had done amongst the outcasts, his ideal of domestic virtue was high and pure. He chose to believe that good women were entirely good. Duplicity he could not understand; ill-temper shocked him: wilfulness he seemed to fancy belonged only to the profane and wicked; not to good girls, with good mothers, in honest homes. Their nature was to love their families; to obey their parents; to tend their poor; to honour their husbands; to cherish their children. Ethel’s laugh woke him up from one of these simple reveries very likely, and then she swept round the ballroom rapidly, to the brazen notes of the orchestra. He never offered to dance with her more than once in the evening; went away to play, and returned to find her still whirling to the music. Madame d’Ivry remarked his tribulation and gloomy face, though she took no pleasure at his discomfiture, knowing that Ethel’s behaviour caused it.

In plays and novels, and I dare say in real life too sometimes, when the wanton heroine chooses to exert her powers of fascination, and to flirt with Sir Harry or the Captain, the hero, in a pique, goes off and makes love to somebody else: both acknowledge their folly after a while, shake hands, and are reconciled, and the curtain drops, or the volume ends. But there are some people too noble and simple for these amorous scenes and smirking artifices. When Kew was pleased he laughed, when he was grieved he was silent. He did not deign to hide his grief or pleasure under disguises. His error, perhaps, was in forgetting that Ethel was very young; that her conduct was not design so much as girlish mischief and high spirits; and that if young men have their frolics, sow their wild oats, and enjoy their pleasure, young women may be permitted sometimes their more harmless vagaries of gaiety, and sportive outbreaks of wilful humour.

When she consented to go home at length, Lord Kew brought Miss Newcome’s little white cloak for her (under the hood of which her glossy curls, her blushing cheeks, and bright eyes looked provokingly handsome), and encased her in this pretty garment without uttering one single word. She made him a saucy curtsey in return for this act of politeness, which salutation he received with a grave bow; and then he proceeded to cover up old Lady Kew, and to conduct her ladyship to her chariot. Miss Ethel chose to be displeased at her cousin’s displeasure. What were balls made for but that people should dance? She a flirt? She displease Lord Kew? If she chose to dance, she would dance; she had no idea of his giving himself airs; besides it was such fun taking away the gentlemen of Mary Queen of Scots’ court from her; such capital fun! So she went to bed, singing and performing wonderful roulades as she lighted her candle and retired to her room. She had had such a jolly evening!! such famous fun, and, I dare say (but how shall a novelist penetrate these mysteries?), when her chamber door was closed, she scolded her maid and was as cross as two sticks. You see there come moments of sorrow after the most brilliant victories; and you conquer and rout the enemy utterly, and then regret that you fought.

Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 12:00


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Monthly Archives: March 2014

Ships of the Fleet – Sparrow Class Destroyer

The end of the Contact War found Battle Fleet facing a number of unique challenges as it moved forward into the post war period. Under the pressures of the conflict, the first generation of human starships had designed and built without any fundamental understanding of many of the key technologies. Instead human designers were forced to copy blindly without an understanding of why particular features were necessary. The post war Foundation Program promised to solve this problem (see entry RIVER CLASS for more details) but in the short term the Battle Fleet faced both a serious capability gap and a danger that without growth, political will for what was in effect a stateless military might fade. So while it was important that the fleet begin to make good its wartime losses, it was equally important not to financially commit too deep to a generation of ships which were likely to become obsolete in a fairly short time frame.

sparrow full burn

This combination of factor effectively ruled out the simplest option of building another batch of the comparatively large and expensive Storm Class Cruisers, however the option of building a smaller design out of off the shelf parts promised more possibilities. While the first generation cruisers had been constructed in what were in effect government shipyards, post war a number of commercial enterprises had entered the sector. The fleet was keen to widen the sector and a class of small ship offered the chance for several companies to gain warship experience.

With speed of the essence, much of the design followed what were at that time established conventions – the hood over the main turret and the bridge mounted below the turret. Still there were some innovations within the design. In all previous designs the missile launchers had been internal to the hull but in such a small ship there would be no room for reloads, so instead these were mounted externally and angled nine degrees off the horizontal. Another break with convention was the mounting of the maneuvering engines.  Set in an X formation rather than the usual cross layout, this was found to offer better performance. This layout reduced the possible firing arcs into the broadside but with the existing turret layout on Sparrow this was found to be acceptable, although it has not been repeated.

Sparrow angles

The design of the bow structure and the housing for the jump drive was another deviation from fleet practice. Formed into an open ‘butterfly’ design, this layout was both lighter and radiated heat better than the fleet’s standard ‘ram bow’ layout. Unfortunately it also gave a stronger radar return, making the vessel a more obvious target and so was not repeated in later warship classes. However the design was to prove highly influential in first generation of civilian starships.

Sparrow entered service in 2038, with the other 8 members of the class following over the next three years. In their first five years in service the Sparrows were engaged in an extensive series of trials and exercises mostly within Earth’s solar system. At the end of this period the fleet had come to the conclusion that as combat vessels the Sparrow Class was of marginal value at best.

While in theory the plasma cannon was capable of striking targets at up to seventy thousand kilometres, the single mount, with it fairly low rate of fire, under combat conditions struggled to hit targets beyond thirty thousand kilometres – suicidal range against an armed opponent. While the lack of armour or even splinter protection, combined with the limited point defence grid meant fighters would present a serious threat.

Battle Fleet had however always accepted that the Sparrow Class would be stepping stones to more capable designs and the experience gained fed into later designs. The development of the light plasma cannon for example, can be traced directly back the Sparrows.

Ambush 2

As a small but homogenous  group the Sparrows were frequently used by the Fleet Tactical Development Section to field test new tactics and frequently ‘role-played’ as much larger ships. Additionally a large number of second line duties fell with the capabilities of the class, particularly perimeter patrol.

The expectation had been been that the class would serve for eight years before being downgraded the pure training ships. The discovery of Dryad, followed by the establishment of Earth’s first extra-solar colony and the greater than expected success of the River Class Cruisers, extended the Sparrow’s front line career to more than fifteen years. With their small heat sink, operations outside of Earth solar system were difficult but the type freed up larger ships for service elsewhere. The aftermath of the abortive Temple invasion of Dryad in 2041 was the only time members of the class spent significant time away from Earth.

Sparrow firing 2

While the class had not been built with upgrades in mind, the lack of armour meant relatively easy access into the ship’s structure, while the fleet’s rapid expansion and need for training ships, meant class continued to be useful enough to justify re-engining and re-reactoring at the end of the 2040’s and it was only in 2059 that the class was finally reduced reserve.

It has often been the case that smaller ships fail because designers or administrators expect too much. The Sparrow class represent a rare occasion where a small ship exceeds expectations. While always ships of modest capabilities the Sparrows continued long beyond their intended lifespan to prove useful in a variety of roles. There most useful role however was to indicate a minimum size for a true starship and all follow on designs having been at least fifty percent larger.

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Filed under science fiction, Ship design, Ships of the Fleet, starship

Writing when you’re INSPIRED!

There’s that old saying that everyone has a book in them. Personally I’ve never believed it. Now I do think anyone who reads has a book in them but maybe that’s just splitting hairs.

There another saying that might not be as old but one I do believe. It runs thus: only writing when you are inspired is fine – just as long as you are inspired every day.

Getting into the writing ‘zone’ is time consuming.  Writing is more time consuming. Good writing is… Well I’m sure you’ve worked out the pattern.

The reason I say this, is that at the moment I’m having a bit of an attack of real life: which is probably going to go on for the next few months. But if I plan to get anywhere with the writing then I have to keep writing during this.

That’s the thing with writing, if you plan to do it, then you have just to do. None of this Inspiration nonsense, just crack on.

Filed under Random Rants, Writing

Announcement: Book Three of the Nameless War – The Last Charge

So if you have clicked into this post, you are likely a reader of the first two books of the Nameless War. Having presumably enjoyed them you are now wondering when book three – The Last Charge will be out.

The answer is two years – October 2014 to be more exact. Why so long? Well as you maybe aware I am an amateur writer, I have a day job, so writing has to fight for space in my ‘hobbies’ time slot.  Believe me if I could release book three next month I would. But that isn’t an option and in my opinion it is very bad form to promise a delivery date you know you can’t meet. Whatever else I am proud of my first two books and I want to be equally proud of book three, that means writing it well rather than try to write it fast.

In the mean time I plan to continue to put up background information here and I welcome any comments anyone would like to make.

Thank you

NOTE: Just bumping this one up to the top in case people are having problems finding it.

Filed under Book Three of the Nameless War, Self Publishing, Writing

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Tag Archives: star wars

Let the dead rest?

This post is going talking a bit about Rogue One and will be veering a bit into spoiler territory but since it has now been out for a few weeks I’m assuming you’ve either seen it or aren’t interested in seeing it.

What I’m going to be talking about is the appearance of dead actors in new films, something that has become topical with the sad passing of Carrie Fisher. As well as appearing in 2015s The Force Awakens, Fisher had apparently signed up to appear in two more Star Wars films, I’ve heard that her filming for the next film was already done but according to media reports Disney – the owner of the franchise – is now in line to receive an insurance payout of perhaps $50 million. Which rather hints that she was due to have at least a reasonably significant presence in the third of this series. The question is will Disney write her character out or will Fisher appear anyway because recently we’ve seen there are options. Now those of you who have seen Rogue One will be aware that the film has seen the return of the character of a young Princess Leia and much more significantly Grand Moff Tarkin, as originally played by Peter Cushing. Since Cushing passed away more than twenty years ago and Fisher was no longer a teenager, these roles were fill by CGI ‘actors’, which has raised a few eyebrows.

Now in some respects Rogue One brings nothing new, in others it breaks very new ground. There is a long record of deceased actors appearing in new works via clever editing, smoke, mirrors and body doubles. If an actor dies during the course of a shoot – like say Oliver Reed during Gladiator – it is pretty reasonable that directors use what they have to fill in the blanks. Equally it doesn’t seem wrong reuse and modify clips of older work to do something new with an older actor/character combination – an example of this was a Doctor Who episode of a couple of years ago where with some careful editing the then current Companion was shown interacting with the Doctor’s various incarnations, the actors being in many cases being long dead.

Where Rogue One breaks new ground is with Grand Moff Tarkin, who supporting character with a significant speaking role. This is not old material being reused or a double being used to fill in few seconds of film, but instead new material wearing the mask of a diseased actor. Now in my opinion the digital Tarkin did not look entirely convincing but that’s just a question of technology and sooner or later we are going to get CGI character indistinguishable from flesh and blood. What will happen then. Will we see old favorites digitally rise from the grave to act again? In the case of Tarkin, I would imagine Cushing’s original contract allowed for his image to be used (pretty much the reason all those thousands of Star Wars toys could be produced) although I doubt anyone in the late seventies was thinking terms of digital actors.

I’d be really curious to know what the legalities of using someone’s appearance actually are. I know there have been court cases in regards merchandising, so I assume that if someone decided to make a new John Wayne film, agreement with his estate would have to be reached. As I write this the thought crosses my mind that I’ve been focused on actors and actresses but there are biopic films – there’s one on Jackie Kennedy this year – could movie studios choose to not to use an actor at all and instead have the image of the actual historical personage? Could we see digital actors that were never real people star in what are at least nominally live action films – an idea which know films have at least brushed against already.

The answer I suspect will, as if is so often the case boil down to this stuff:

Here's Johny!

Certain actors are inherently ‘bankable’, their appearance in a film guarantees a certain return. There is an entire secondary industry revolving around the private(ish) lives of celebrities. Would audiences be as attached to a collection ones and zeroes? Ultimately the entertainment industry will follow the money. If it makes sense on the profit and loss account it will happen. If it does not, then no matter how good the technology gets it will not.  In end it will be tastes of the majority that make the decision.

Filed under Film Review, Random Rants, science fiction

Democracy deficit in SF&F

So the US election – wow, what a long drawn out painful affair that’s been, one that we sincerely need a break from. Okay so let’s talk about democracy in science fiction and fantasy.

Democracy isn’t actually all that well represented in SF&F, instead it’s fair to say that empires and other non-democratic governments are staple of both, sure there are exceptions but that’s what they are – exceptions. Where they do appear it’s particularly noticeable in SF they appear on the heroes side, although often poorly defined, while the opposition will be often described as as an empire or some other less than benign term. In fantasy the difference between the heroes and villains tends to be even more wafer thin, with the goods guys getting the wise and fair king, the bad the blood thirsty despot. Either way they’re usually the absolute ruler.

Fantasy’s default setting is a version of Medieval Western Europe. Now I’m not a scholar of medieval history but I do know a reasonable bit about English history of the period. In the case of the English kings of the medieval period, even the strongest of them were not absolute rulers. In theory they were but in practice below the monarch were the various nobles, these were people that had to be kept on side. Kings who failed to do so found themselves coping with either a lack of cooperation or outright rebellion – King John of England 1199 – 1216 being a case in point. Certainly it isn’t a democracy as we would recognise it but is still well removed from the idea of one-guy-calls-all-the-shots. The medieval or ancient period did see more formalised democracies, notably in ancient Greece. These would be more recognisable for us although the franchise would still be limited to people who were: male, free, wealthy, middle aged and landing owning – a franchise that was only exceeded in Britain in the late nineteenth century.

So if fantasy often takes its cues from a perceived version of history what about the future? Well if science fiction is a guide, empires and other non democratic forms of government have a fine future ahead of them. Obviously there are a few science fiction democracies, Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets is probably the best known although is pretty weakly defined in the films and television episodes. It also has the very underused Romulan  Star Empire, which despite the name was also described as having a ruling senate (which was wiped out in a virtual after thought in the underwhelming Star Trek Nemesis). There is also the Expanse Book/TV series that does portray both Earth and Mars as being democratic governments – at least on the face of it. Earth in particular elected officials appear to be borderline figureheads with the real power wielded by a tiny number of un-elected officials.

So why does SF&F have a problem with democracy? Three reasons I think 1) due process, 2) personalities 3) removal of ambiguity.

Even allowing for the excitement of 2016, politics is often a dry affair of committees, budgets and the various checks and balances, the more robust that democracy is, the more road blocks there will be between intention and action. Possibly this explains why in the Star Wars universe the first Death Star seems to have taken twenty odd years to build but the second, once the imperial senate was ‘swept away’, was banged out in a couple of years – no funding committees for the project to bog down in. Score one for for the totalitarian regime, yeah sh*t gets done!

Only problem is if we take a look at one of the most famous regimes – Nazi Germany – what you find is one that was horribly inefficient. Hitler had the final say so everything revolved around getting his ear, if you could manage it, then all kinds of pet projects could be authorised. Projects that ranged from mere duplication of effort to full on droolingly crazy. The same has proven true of various other despots, the top guy has a notion and there’s no one there to stop them. The really is that a lot of that due process, committees, going to tender and all the rest of it are in the name of efficiency and effectiveness. True out in the real world democratic governments have managed some massive screw ups but non-democratic governments have done the same and more. Where they manage to match democratic nations it has usually only been because standards of living being massively lower.

The other thing about democracies is elections, constant bloody elections, one that can see the sudden removal of leaders for reasons that have little or nothing to do with their actual performance. Take for example President Barack Obama, he has apparently a high approval rating but he will gone within weeks because that is the process within the USA. From a story telling view though it would be a pretty horrible way to deal with things if half way through, the established character disappeared to be replaced with one the writer and reader would have to get to know. Which brings us to our next area.

Now I write military science fiction, many years ago I remember reading someones comment that if you wanted to do a scientifically accurate space war, then your story would be about the life and times of Z-571 the nuclear tipped interplanetary missile. While you could certainly write it, finding someone to read it would be tricky.  So by extension a realistic democratic political system will see political figures removed with resulting changes in policy. Imagine Return of the Jedi, with the Alliance about to launch their attack on the second Death Star, only to hear that the Emperor has lost a vote of confidence and the new administration is proposing peace talks. That would be the point where you’d either walk out of the cinema or wing the DVD out the window.

Stories are about people. Writers create and develop characters then tell stories via them; generally there is limit to how many major characters a story can successfully support. In reality democracies tend to have a lot of people involved in the decision making process – even one like America where there’s a strong single executive officer. Trying to realistically portray this is likely to burn a lot of word count on an area that the reader might regard as secondary to the alien invasion, robot uprising, zombie apocalypse or whatever is the main point of the story.

If having a portraying functional democracy is tricky then doing two steepens the difficulty curve significantly. It is probably no wonder that the opposition side so often is described as an empire, if they’re a empire and the side the protagonists are on isn’t, then the implications are clear who are the good guys.* Sometimes this is the right decision – for the like of Star Wars (the originals) this worked because it went for the tropes. It needed the lack of ambiguity. For others it can be a missed opportunity for some real grey morality and added depth. Personally I’ve always felt that an author has to decide where the core story is going to be and to this the majority of the word count is dedicated, still that doesn’t mean the subordinate sections need default to cliché. I’ve only really touched on the various forms of government but history provides plenty of possibilities for those who go looking for them.

* I wonder a bit whether the preponderance of fictional empires can be traced back to the dominant role in entertainment that the USA has – a country formed when it successfully fought and broke away from an empire?

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Blood, guts, gore and women?

I’ve recently been reading Tank Men by Robert Kershaw which covers tank warfare during the two world wars; not the mechanical details or grand strategy that saw these machines sweep across the battlefield, but instead it is about the people inside them and I’ll say now that for anyone with an interest in the topic, it is well worth a read. Primarily for it’s visceral portrayal  of the results of combat.

World War Two tanks were not easy to get in and out of at the best of times (I doubt they are much better now).  If you were a crewman in a tank when the armour was penetrated, if you were lucky you were unhurt and could get out. If you were slightly less lucky you were dead and never felt it. If you were unlucky you were hurt or trapped and couldn’t get out when it began to burn. It was a fear common to all tankers, regardless to which country they belonged to. I did a battlefield tour of Normandy a few years ago, which obviously included visiting a number of military graveyards. In the British, the gravestones are laid out in neatly spaced rows, except some gravestones are place pressed up with no spaces between them. Usually two to five graves, generally the bodies within are airforce or armoured regiments. It is to signify that while they knew who was in a particular tank or plane, when the bodies were recovered from a burnt out wreck, there was no way to know which body was which person. All pretty horrible stuff. In fact – speaking as someone who has never served in the armed forces – I would say probably impossible to imagine or even properly describe by those who have seen such things, but as a writer of Military SF I have to try.

At 5 am, the first wounded came back, cheerful, optimistic.  We splintered fractures, covered wounds with sterile dressings and relieved each other for breakfast at 6.30 am.  As the day wore on, sunny and scorching hot, the tide of casualties rose.  Dozens and dozens were carried in.  Our treatment centre always had 3 upon the trestles being attended to and soon the approaches were lined with a queue.  Hour after hour we worked and evacuated and still the flow continued.  Ghastly wounds there were, of every type and state of severity.  Heads with skulls so badly smashed that bone and brain and pillow were almost indivisible; faces with horrible lacerations; jaws blown completely away leaving only two sad eyes to plead for relief from pain.  Chests pierced through with shrapnel and lungs that spouted blood from gushing holes.  Arms were mangled into shapeless masses left hanging by muscle alone and waiting the amputation knife.  There were abdomens pierced by shell splinters and displaying coils of intestine, deadly wounds.  Buttocks were torn and in some cases spinal injury had followed bringing paralysis.  But the leg wounds!  Thigh bones splinted; knees without knee caps, legs without feet red, mangled flesh and blood flooding the stretcher.  And others trembling uncontrollably, sobbing like children, strapped to the stretcher and struggling to be free; screaming and, when a shell landed near the ADS (Advance Dressing Station), shouting, ‘They’re coming again, O God they’re coming again.’  Not heroes, but sufferers nonetheless.  We ate our lunch of biscuits and corned beef with bloody fingers and when relieved by 9th Field Ambulance at 6 pm we had treated 466 British soldiers and 40 Germans.

Private Jim Wisewell, 223 Field Ambulance, RAMC, describing the carnage wrought upon 185 Brigade of 3rd (British) Division during 8th July, 1944 in operation Charnwood.

Film and television, even at its grittiest, is never going to match that kind of brutality, in fact sometimes when it tries, the effect can come off as more comical than anything else. The fact they we know what we see is the product of the makeup artist’s craft renders even the most realistic effects unbelievable. In fact one of the most realistic and disturbing depictions I’ve seen is the 1965 pseudo documentary The War Game, where the effects were by today’s standards primitive but the use chilling*. So it is probably now wonder that most film and television prefers to depict battlefield casualties as people who fall down nice and neatly. While I was writing the Nameless War I did try to cover this, which has lead occasionally to the question ‘is there any characters you didn’t kill?’ To which I joke ‘yes, the ones I maimed instead’. But in all seriousness it was an attempt by me to convey, without over doing it, the awfulness of war and making it back doesn’t mean coming back undamaged.

I now while I was considering this post – and procrastinating – I came across a article We Have Always Fought – Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative

As somebody with more than a passing knowledge of history (All the Thing That Came Before Me), I’m passionately interested in truth: truth is something that happens whether or not we see it, or believe it, or write about. Truth just is. We can call it something else, or pretend it didn’t happen, but its repercussions live with us, whether we choose to remember and acknowledge it or not.

When I sat down with one of my senior professors in Durban, South Africa to talk about my Master’s thesis, he asked me why I wanted to write about women resistance fighters.

“Because women made up twenty percent of the ANC’s militant wing!” I gushed. “Twenty percent! When I found that out I couldn’t believe it. And you know – women have never been part of fighting forces –”

He interrupted me. “Women have always fought,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Women have always fought,” he said. “Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people.”

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women’s History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.

Half the world is full of women, but it’s rare to hear a narrative that doesn’t speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man’s daughter. A man’s wife.

The rest of this article can be found HERE and again is well worth a read through; I came to is via a forum I occasionally glance at and before it became an argument, the point was made that we don’t see women killed very often in military type film and television and see them maimed even less often. Literature does better but film and television haven’t made much forward motion in decades. As far as I can remember the recent Force Awakens had a token female X-Wing pilot – assuming all alien pilots were male – and she made it back. The various imperial stormtroopers and pilots are assumed to be male (with one exception). While women were visible on the Star Killer base/planetoid if they were killed, it was off screen unlike the waves of Stormtroopers that got gunned down. Now you might be thinking ‘does this guy want to see women dead or maimed? What kind of sicko is he?’

Well let me put it like this. As We Have Always Fought points out women have always been a feature of warfare. In SF a man’s main advantage, his on average greater physical strength, is far less important. Flying a fighter doesn’t make the same physical demands as say fighting with a sword. To refuse to put women onto the fictional battlefield, the fictional casualty dressing station and fictional battlefield grave as uniformed personnel, is to write them out of the narrative completely. I have heard that in the first of the original three Star Wars films an actress was filmed as a rebel pilot, complete with fireworks behind her and the usual comment on the X-Wings combat performance – I’M HITTTT!!!!……. but it was cut from finished film.

Sure you can point to the occasional named hero or villain but where is the female faceless goon or red shirts? As a society we are still reluctant to see women getting killed or hurt in defence of their society** or subjugating the galaxy which does inevitably diminish women by default. For literature in particular it is a relatively easy one to start to address, a handful of hers instead of hims will give a sense of a more inclusive world and something on which we can build.

As ever thoughts and comments welcome.

* The film being a depiction of Great Britain is the aftermath of a nuclear strike.

** although crime drama is quiet happy to kill them by the bucket load.

Filed under Random Rants, science fiction, Writing

Don’t break your universe or responsible use of FTL

NOTE: During this post I’m going to be mentioning plot points from number of books, films and television series, including Star Wars: The Force Awakens and New Battlestar Gallactica.

Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

In fact space is so big that trying to express it in any units of distance that you as an individual can have personal experience of, will rapidly result in a figure with an unworkable large number of zeros at the end. On a day to day basis this isn’t too much of a worry but if you are a science fiction writer or scriptwriter, then in presents something of a problem. Unless you’re prepared to limit the story to a single solar system or spend years or centuries getting between stars, you need to have some kind of Faster Than Light (FTL) travel system. While not completely impossible, trade, warfare or even exploration become a damn-sight more difficult without an FTL system. The problem however is that currently as far as we know traveling faster or even at light speed, is flat out impossible. While real world science has offered some small crumbs of comfort – wormholes, quantum tunneling, the recent EMDrive, etc – basically crossing interstellar distance in anything less than years is off the table. So FTL is often given a pass within stories that otherwise are attempting to be Hard Science Fiction, a fact that can often leaves the most dedicated Hard SF writers guilt-ridden.

There are basically two forms of FTL in science fiction, the Star Trek style, where ships fly through… something and can change course, speed and even potentially fight other vessels. The alternative is the Jump model, where a ship jumps from point A to point B, not interacting with the space in between the two points. Sometimes this is due to the engines carried by the ship, in other settings it is fixed ‘jump points’ through which the ship travels. The important thing to remember about both models is that scientifically they are both baloney, basically they run pure Handwavium – a substance obtained when the writer waves their hands and says ‘don’t ask awkward questions, just accept it and move on’.

Establishing limits

Okay so if we’re willing to break the laws of reality once, we might as well not worry, the FTL drive will do whatever the plot needs it to do any any given moment. That’s okay right? No, no, it is not. Breaking internal consistency will break any story, even one outside the genre of science fiction or fantasy. Imagine watching a police drama where the lead character is established as overweight, over-the-hill, smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. Where early in the episode he attempts to chase a suspect and wheezes to a halt after twenty yards. But when the plot requires can suddenly run like a cheetah. That lack of consistency will see the viewer reaching for the remote.  Within fiction internal consistency is sacred, figure out what can and can not be done then once the rules are established keep to them!

But more insidiously, the writer needs to consider the implications of those rules.

Now viewers of New Battlestar Gallactica might well remember this scene from season three episode four. To get around the enemy ships guarding New Caprica, Galactica jumps into the upper atmosphere launching fighters during free fall to destroy the enemy positions, before jumping back into space.

Visually there is no doubt that this is really, really cool. However it also blasts a massive hole in the internal logic by making planets completely impossible defend. Think about it for a moment, if this is possible then why not strap an FTL drive onto a nuclear bomb or even a big rock? Orbiting starships can provide no defence when a projectile only appears a few hundred meters above the target. A few scenes later we see human ships jump out after lifting off only a few hundred meters from the surface, which begs the question why do these ships need space engines? Why not an interstellar helicopter, one that can take off from the ground, then jump into space, jump to where it wants to go, then jump into the atmosphere there and lower itself back to the ground.

Elsewhere in science fiction new Star Trek invented transporters capable of beaming an individual from one solar system to another, again rendering the central premise of the setting un-workable. While during the recent Force Awakens film we saw the Millennium Falcon being used to penetrate the shields of the Starkiller base by only emerging from FTL within the atmosphere of the planet. Which again begs the question if this is possible why not simply pound the target with nuclear ( or whatever ) weapons until the problem goes away? Sure a percentage, maybe even a large one, will fail but if one got through, then others will also manage it.

Now to a certain extent film and television has the advantage that the narrative keeps moving, the viewer doesn’t have the time stop and immediately think about what has been shown and the possible implications. Literature doesn’t have that advantage.

Those of you who have read my Nameless War Trilogy will be aware of something I called the Mass Shadow, an area of gravitational effect around planets or other large space bodies. Within a Mass Shadow a ship could neither jump in or out and would instead have to travel to the edge at sub-light speeds. Now I didn’t invent this just to torture my characters ( not just ) I did it to make it possible to have a war in space. Without it the basic setting would not work, because enemy ships would be able to appear above a planet and nuke it vigorously before anyone of the ground could say Whoops Apocalypses. With it ships were forced to jump well clear of a planet and with that I was able to explore all kinds of tactical difficulties and options. Most space based science fiction literature that I have come across makes use of similar mechanisms for the same reasons. The only one that I have come across without a limiting factor is John Scalzi‘s Old Man’s War setting; in this it is possible for space vessels and armed drones to jump in above a planet and immediately be able to fire on the surface. In essence it is possible for a planet nuked out of existence before it knows it is under attack. However Scalzi has made this workable, the life supporting planets are the prize being fought over, rendering weapons of mass destruction unusable.

Science Fiction allows us to break the rule if we are unwise but what we should seek to do is change them but only once and consider the implications. Whatever the rules, they offer both limitations and opportunity and we must consider both. If the question is asked ‘why don’t they simply do X’ then a solid answer has to be given, ‘because I say so’ is not going to cut it. There can be the great temptation break or bend the rules to get characters out of an difficult situation but to do so leaves a setting with no substance and if you find yourself writing you way into such a scene, then time to step back and be responsible in your use of FTL.

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The end of the line… and pauses along the way

I don’t know what proportion of science fiction and fantasy novels are part of series as opposed to stand alone but it is fair to say that they are far from uncommon. Now it should be pointed out that there are different kinds of series. There those like say the Chronicles of Narnia which use the same setting and have some character overlap but are basically stand alone books that can be read in any order. Then there series like Lord of the Rings in which there is a single grand story arc across two or more books, all of which need to be read and read in one fixed order. It is the latter category I want to say a little about.

It isn’t hard to see from where the lure of the series comes; creatively it gives more room in which to develop and flesh out a story, this is specially important for science fiction and fantasy since we have to burn so much word count on world building. Since an individual novel is limited to between forty and a hundred and fifty thousand words(1), while even a short series can be multiples of that, the extra words allows the writer to avoid having to make compromises to keep the word and page count acceptable. From business standpoint it looks even better, sell one large book for twelve Euros (dollars, pounds, shillings, rubles, yen, goats, whatever) or two for nine, ninety-nine. If the reader wants to get the complete story, they have to fork over for each and every book. In fact on that later point occasionally publishers have split into two books that were intended as a single volume. But in doing so a new problem is introduced.

The ending of any story is the pay off, regardless of genre or style, a bad ending can completely undo any good work that has been done up to that point. The ending needs to resolve the major plot threads and if the reader is left unsatisfied or feeling cheated, well then that’s a reader who won’t be looking that writer up again. But for a single arc series it can’t tie everything off, it needs to provide a satisfactory close and at the same time provide a launchpad for the next book of the series. What is needed is a sub-ending.  The writer Shantnu Tiwari makes an impassioned case that the very worst sub-endings are cliffhangers. While I can’t get quite as worked up, thinking back across my own reading history I can think of a few cliff hanger ending I’ve read and while they didn’t make me throw the book across the room, they didn’t make me rush out and buy the next book either because there was that lack of pay off. The other problem with the cliffhanger is that there is likely a gap between the publication of individual books, of between months to years (20+ and counting in the case of one series I know of). Will the reader still have excitement to pick it back up, will they still remember what was going on? The best sub-endings I seen are the ones that felt like they could have been the end of the series, for my money Juliet E McKenna‘s first series nailed this perfectly.

So, if you are sitting out there somewhere idly considering writing your own series what am I saying? I’m saying you need to plan ahead (2). You absolutely must know where each book is going to end. Even if the big finish at the end of the series is absolutely amazing, it’s going to count for nothing if most readers abandoned ship at the end of the first book.

While we’re on subject of endings, lets move onto big ones, not just the end of a series but the end of a setting. It’s a personal belief of mine that all setting have their limits. Regardless to genre or even medium, each setting has its limits. Now quiet where those limits are depends on the nature of the setting. It is hangs off a single character then the limit will be reached fairly quickly (3) while one based on a large world or universe in which individuals can come and go will have more legs (4) but even there are limits. I suspect it’s one of the reason I never got into comic books, by now Batman should have either cleaned up Gotham City or be dead, either way as a story without a final end holds no attraction to me. Obviously there is a damn good reason why the likes of Batman, Star Trek or any other property keeps soldiering on:

Here's Johny!

Here’s Johny!

Be you an individual author or a good old fashioned soulless corporation walking away from an cash stream is going to be difficult to do at best and often impossible. Search the internet on any particular established series or franchise and it won’t be hard to find someone somewhere who feels its gone off the boil, the glory days are gone, it’s now just ploughing the same furrow. The solution to this if a solution is needed is in the hands of the consumer. We need to be ready to pursue to new and original. While we can continue to enjoy the glory days of our old favorites we should be ready to abandon them if they don’t come to an actual end.

FINAL THOUGHT: I say all that as someone who is very much a hobby writer. I don’t rely on my writing to pay the bills, just pay for the luxuries. I’ve certainly not had anything like a huge hit which I’ve continued to milk. Obviously if I do I may well turn into a huge hypocrite but at least if that happens, I’ve given everyone some good material to work with.

(1) Ref SFWA Award FAQ and Writer’s workshop.

(2) Yes I do know what I said in a previous blog entry about my tendency to do more winging it than planning. I did know where the Nameless War and Last Charge were going to end when I started them, the Landfall Campaign it was figured out while WIP, which is a writing technique I call ‘making life difficult for yourself’ [patient pending].

(3) Say a few books, two or three of films or a television series

(4) Example Star Wars or Star Trek

I can now be found on Twitter.

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Ships of the Fleet – Aellr destroyer.

An Aellr design that pre-dates contact between the Confederacy and humanity, the Psirtas class (named after towns on the colony worlds of the Confederacy) was one of the workhorses of the Defence Fleet. The first human sighting of this design came in the calamitous days running up to the First Battle of Earth. The smallest of four ships that approached the planet, with its prominent missile launcher mounted to one side of the jump drive, Psirtas class was immediately categorised by the human defenders as a destroyer. Unfortunately this misinterpretation was one of a pattern mistakes made by both sides that would see the Confederacy and Earth blunder into the profoundly avoidable Contact War.

NOTE Given the ongoing political tensions between the Confederacy and Earth background have come from secondary sources and may not be entirely accurate.

Aellr destroyer 1

The Psirtas class originate approximately fifty years before first contact; as with most Aéllr designs the class was intended to provide the Defence Fleet with a multi-role platform capable of performing search and rescue, personnel transport and internal security. As with all Aellr ‘warships’ of this period, any military role was of very much tertiary importance and little more than a fading relic of the Aéllr Reunification War of more than a century earlier. Intended to compliment the much larger Hinhle (Province) class cruisers, the Psirtas placed emphasis on acceleration over range.

The design can be divided into three main segment. The forward-most section, mounted the jump drive, main bridge and the two hard points for mission specific equipment. When serving in the military or internal security role, these would mount a turret, each one carrying a single plasma cannon. Alternatives to these fittings were shuttle hangars, high definition sensor arrays or docking arm. The point defence guns – primarily intended for anti micrometeorite duties – and the probe/missile launcher were permanent fixtures.

Mid ships was the centrifuge with two large pods. It is believed a small secondary bridge is housed within one pod but for the most part this space is given over to crew facilities. Several members of the class, usually when de-militarized have been observed with six secondary pods fitted to a large circular ring that connects the two primary pods. It is believed that like the forward hard points this a mission specific fitted when more living space is required.

Astern is the engineering section, protruding from the ventral and dorsal surfaces of which are the engine nacelles. The length of these is to allow the engine plume to clear the centrifuge during breaking manoeuvres. The decision to extend the engine pod in the vertical axis appears to be to facilitate the class’s search and rescue role, allowing the ship to come closer along side another vessel while maintaining the same deck orientation. A side effect of this choice of orientation is that the ship’s profile in the broadside arc was considerably larger than would have been the case if the nacelles had been side mounted. This provides another clear indication how low a priority the class’s military role was. The ship’s radiator panels are housed in the broadside circular assembly which when deployed resembled paddlewheels, leading to the class’s human nickname ‘pedalo’. Physical protection was limited to anti-radiation shielding while sensors systems took the form of small clusters scattered across the main hull.

 Aellr destroyer 2

Overall the Psirtas class with its emphasis on adaptability was very much a conservative design, following with standard practice of the time. The only significant break from previous practice was the absence of a raised bridge, a feature of Aéllr government ships since the Reunification War.

By the time of first contact between Humanity and the Aéllr, the Psirtas class were in their middle years, with the expectation of at least another three decades of service. While an exact number constructed is not known, it is believed to be in excess of thirty, although by first contact the earliest members of the class had been withdrawn from service. When the Aéllr taskforce was dispatched to earth a single member of the class was included to act as a scout ship. The decision to include this vessel with the ships that directly approached Earth, seems to have been born of a genuine belief that the force would face no opposition. In fact the Psirtas was to prove very much a weak link. An early direct hit to the ventral nacelle rendered the ship virtually uncontrollable while the two point defence guns left a large blind spot astern. The taskforce’s attempts to support the ship meant that it neither closed on Earth nor retreated out of range between waves of human fighters.

 Aellr destroyer 3

In the aftermath of Earth the casualty averse Defence Fleet appears to have come to the conclusion that the class was too fragile for front line operations. For most of the rest of the war the class remain within the Confederacy’s borders, covering for the Hinhle class ships that were being used to prosecute the war against Earth. The Psirtas would see direct combat when the cruiser Onslaught entered Confederacy space in the last year of the war, the Battle of the Three Systems being the most notable event of this campaign.

Post war it would appear that the remaining members of the class were returned to their civil role. It is believed that at least a dozen remain in service with the Defence Fleet with perhaps half as many again now owned either privately or by individual colony worlds. However sources indicate that the Defence Fleet no longer rates the class as part of it’s fighting strength.

Author’s Notes: As the first alien race humanity  encountered, with the war between them being the background event that did the most to shape the Battle Fleet Universe, the Aéllr are a very large part of the setting which I’ve wanted to explore for a while – especially since describing in Volume Two of Ships of the Fleet the human Contact War cruisers. Most of my ship designs are fairly brick like, in part because it is how I imagine then and in part because with the software I have access to, they’re a damn-sight easier to make. But I wanted to explore the possibilities of a design using much of the same basic technology but with a very different set of priorities at least as far as the limits of my talents and my computer processors capabilities.

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Intermission 为了 Rugby and Coldplay!

So that was my longest blogging hiatus yet. And yet I have returned. I surprise myself. When I started this blog, I never ever thought I’d keep going this long. And certainly never expected to be able to perform the revolutionary – to stop, and then start again. Reasonable excuse though for the last few days though 😉 First it was dissertation proposal time (as mentioned in last post infact). Result: IN. Also Econometrics assignment: IN. Continuing earproblem: 差不多 OUT. Plus 6-hour karaoke session, coldplay concert, and live at the rugby 7’s in Hong Kong, GET IN!!!

Rugby 7’s included v short games with 24 national teams and a lot of loud fans. I’d never even heard of it really until a few days before. Am now a convert bowing to the ground and begging to be brought in from the cold. Here’s some awesome snaps taken by Will who was visiting from Dalian, mainland China:

HKU students go bananas at the front

HKU students go bananas at the front

Can you spot me? My shoulder also ended up on the front cover of the China Daily. I’ll see if I can get it scanned it to prove it. Also, the tickets were a bargain for students – 50 HKD each for the first day, that’s about 4 pounds.

Look how full the stadium is!

Look how full the stadium is!

I was only at games on the Friday, they were pretty expensive for the weekend, but did get to watch Scotland “thrash” the USA (before getting knocked out by Kenya), and Canada lose to Samoa. Fiji won the whole thing, which my sister Viv will be pleased about since she used to live there and got quite into rugby at the time.

The atmosphere the nights out after rugby was mad. My dutch friend said it was like carnival. Wan Chai and LKF were chokka with mostly expats dressing up and getting pink, while wearing costumes such as beer cans, fire fighters, spongebob squarepants outfits, or a boot. I’d never quite appreciated how anglophone rugby is – totally swamped with Brits, Australians, South Africans, etc. I missed the sunday nightout after the games had finished and the girls from HKU went out to try and find rugby players. However it is believed there was much success.

Look how close we were to the action!

Look how close we were to the action!

Working backwards, on Thursday night went to a friend’s post-birthday-karaoke. Small place, all-you-can drink included in the price. Four of us (who had class early the next morning) went for noodles around the corner first, and returned to find everyone else wasted. They all had to leave before us too – we stayed until closing 🙂 Here’s a rather waxworkesque picture from around 4am or so. It was followed by dim sum.

Shame about the lack of dance moves shown :-(

Shame about the lack of dance moves shown.

But Wednesday too was pretty mind-blowing. Coldplay. Waaaaw. Used to listen to X/Y repeatedly while hiding on the balcony in Yinchuan and reading the song of ice and fire and agatha christie. I’d got the impression they were a bit twattish in real life, but now that I know them intimately following 2-hour concert at distance of 100 yards, I’m not afraid to admit I was quite, quite wrong. They put on a really good concert, obviously enjoyin themselves and trying to make it fun with lights and pics and randomness and yellow balloons and paper butterflies falling from the sky and running to the back of the 11,000 stadium to sing for others and self-deprecating comments and wowness. There may also have been some sign-stealing and losing. Nicked this photo from a friend who was closer to the action than us.

Heroworshipping at this best. Roll over Meatloaf ;-)

Heroworshipping at itsbest. Roll over Meatloaf.

I may have given the impression that last week was all fun and games. Ho ho ho. I would have included photos of (attempting to) study as well, but you would probably die of boredom, and my room is disgustingly messy at the moment. Now its back to the grind… apparently only 3-4 teaching weeks in Hong Kong left before exam period leave. WTF?!

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Emergent Journalism

Reports from the front line of journalism instruction

My prior blog

This blog is published by Jack Rosenberry, a professor of Media and Communication at St. John Fisher College in Rochester NY.

It was started in July 2014, replacing a blog that had been maintained at drrosenberryspage.blogspot.com  from 2009-2012. A few favorite posts from that prior effort are:

Carnival within a Carnival: A crowdsourced reply to this month’s Carnival of Journalism (Thursday, February 23, 2012)

College-based community media workshops (Thursday, February 17, 2011)

Virtual editions and news-payment models (Friday, March 5, 2010)
New collaborations validate research from past (Wednesday, May 26, 2010)

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St Margaret's Church, Leicester

St Margaret's Church is an ancient Anglican parish church situated on St Margaret's Way in Leicester, England. It is a Grade I listed building.[1]

St Margaret's Church, Leicester
St Margaret's church, Leicester.jpg
View from southwest
Coordinates: 52°38′25″N 1°08′11″W / 52.64030°N 1.13625°W / 52.64030; -1.13625
Denomination Church of England
Parish Leicester
Diocese Leicester
Province Canterbury
Canon(s) Barry Naylor

Parts of the transept date from c. 1200, and parts of the aisles from the late 13th century. Most of the church was rebuilt in Perpendicular style c. 1444,[2] under William Alnwick, the Bishop of Lincoln. The west tower, which is 108 feet (33 m) high, was built at that time.[3] It contains a ring of 14 bells[4] including a flat sixth.[5] There was a Victorian restoration by George Gilbert Scott in 1860,[3] and another in 1881 by George Edmund Street.[2]

The church contains stained glass by Thomas Willement dating from the 1840s, and William Wailes of 1864.[1]

The alabaster effigy of John Penny dates from 1520, although his original tomb was replaced in 1846.[6] He was the abbot of Leicester Abbey from 1496 to 1509,[7] and subsequently Bishop of Carlisle.[6]

Rollo's tomb in the churchyard

The churchyard contains the 1765 tomb of Andrew Rollo, 5th Lord Rollo. The Doric, Grade II* listed structure is faced with slate relief sculptures.[8]

The organ dates from 1773 but is now much enlarged. A specification of the organ can be found on the National Pipe Organ Register.[9]

  1. ^ a b Historic England. "Church of St Margaret (1074072)". National Heritage List for England (NHLE). Retrieved 28 March 2015.
  2. ^ a b "LEICESTER CHURCH GATE SK 5805 (east side) 4/27 St Margaret's Church". Images of England. English Heritage. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  3. ^ a b "The ancient borough: St. Margaret's, A History of the County of Leicester: volume 4: The City of Leicester (1958)". British History Online. Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
  4. ^ Rounds and Call Changes on 14 at Leicester St Margaret; Youtube
  5. ^ Dove, R. H. (1982) A Bellringer's Guide to the Church Bells of Britain; 6th ed. Aldershot: Viggers; p. 65 (records 13 bells including a flat 6th)
  6. ^ a b Cocks, T. Y. "Penny, John (d. 1520)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  7. ^ Hoskins, W. G.; McKinley, R. A., eds. (1954). "Houses of Augustinian canons: Leicester abbey". A History of the County of Leicestershire: Volume 2 (Victoria County History). London. pp. 13–19. Retrieved 3 August 2015.
  8. ^ Historic England. "Tomb of Andrew Lord Rollo to the north east of St Margaret's Church (1250247)". National Heritage List for England (NHLE). Retrieved 28 March 2015.
  9. ^ "The National Pipe Organ Register - NPOR". Retrieved 10 November 2014.
  10. ^ Kroeger, Karl (2001). "Valentine, John". In Sadie, Stanley. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 26. London: Macmillan. pp. 207–8. ISBN 0-333-60800-3.


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Definition of Dussehra in English:

(also Dusserah, Dasehra)

  • The tenth and final day of the Hindu festival of Navaratri, usually in October. In southern India it especially commemorates the victory of the god Rama over the demon king Ravana.

    • ‘Because of Dussehra, the place was teeming with devotees.’
    • ‘They remind me of the large effigies of Ravana and his tribe that are burnt along with loads of fireworks every year all over north India around Dussehra.’
    • ‘Festivals like Ugadi, Samkranthi and Dussehra are very important occasions when they get together and organise traditional celebrations.’
    • ‘Day ten, variously known as Vijaya Dasami, Dasara and Dussehra, marks the commencement of learning.’
    • ‘But unlike other parts of India, Dussehra here has nothing to do with Lord Ram or his return to Ayodhya.’
    • ‘Thackeray gave his call in October during his annual address at a rally on the occasion of the Hindu festival, Dussehra.’
    • ‘All the major festivals - Teej, Gangaur, Dussehra and rath yatras - start from the palace, as they have for centuries and weekday visits to the temple of Gobind devji are mandatory for the family.’
    • ‘On October 5, there is Dussehra and Lakshmi Puja.’
    • ‘Various religious committees in different parts of the city take out separate shobha yatras in connection with festivals like Janamashtmi, Shivaratri, Ram Navami, Dasehra, etc.’
    • ‘This is prepared for the beginning of the festival of Dasehra, a ten-day festival celebrated all over India to commemorate the victory of the good Prince Rama over the army of the demon Ravana.’
    • ‘But of course the secular harvest festivals of Dussehra, Onam and Vaisakhi are celebrated too.’
    • ‘On Dussehra this year, more than 10,000 snake charmers from across the country gathered at the 700-year-old temple in Charkhi Dadri, Haryana, to attend the annual snake charmers' panchayat (conference).’
    • ‘He said during the interrogation of the above said it was noticed that members of these gangs generally looted labourers going from Punjab to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, etc. during Divali and Dasehra.’

From Hindi daśahrā, from Sanskrit daśaharā.


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Definition of très in US English:

  • Very (usually with reference to a fashionable quality)

    ‘a hurricane hit the très exclusive cabanas, leaving them open to the public for the first and only time’
    • ‘I'm really excited at this prospect, but also très nervous.’
    • ‘The pullover's gorgeous and très fashionable, but it's torture to wear.’
    • ‘Romancing the Stone is still lots of fun, très silly, and makes me want to set something similar on New Zealand's West Coast, although we have neither crocodiles nor alligators, and few guns.’
    • ‘Let's stay together: I've been asked about the imponderously dull demerger question, which finally goes to vote très soon.’
    • ‘The offspring of this ménage à trois is a menu that is both down-home (if your home happens to be the Indian subcontinent) and très downtown.’


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Spectrum New Member

I'm a 29-year-old female, and I live in Opole, Poland 150.

I speak Polish, some English, and a tiny bit of Spanish.

  • Membership 5y
  • Something to tell the world!

    Hello everyone! I'm girl from Poland who wants to meet new people and improve language skills. Who know, if you write to me maybe we become a friends? :) I can speak English, and I really want to learn Spanish. I can help learn Polish. I'm interest foreign country and culture.


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Université Adventiste d'Haïti

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Haitian Adventist University)
Jump to: navigation, search
Université Adventiste d'Haïti
Type Private
Established 1921
Affiliation Seventh-day Adventist Church
Students 617
Location Carrefour area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Campus 78 acres (320,000 m2)
Website www.unah.edu.ht

Université Adventiste d'Haïti (Haitian Adventist University) is situated some five miles (8 km) southwest of Port-au-Prince, in the Carrefour neighborhood.

It is a part of the Seventh-day Adventist education system, the world's second largest Christian school system.[1][2][3][4]

First established in 1921 as Séminaire Adventiste d'Haïti, near Cap-Haïtien, the school was moved to Port-au-Prince in 1933. It was authorized to offer complete secondary work by the Ministry of Education in 1935. In 1946 the seminary was moved to its present site. Authorized to offer the Baccalaureate degree by the Ministry of Education in 1959, in 1964 it was granted General Conference authorization to offer two-year postsecondary work. The degree of Bachelor of Theology (license) was authorized by the General Conference in 1973. Currently, the institution offers degree programs in other areas also.

The school offers degrees in business administration, education, and theology. It also offers diploma programs in secretarial science, music, modern languages, and other areas.

See also[edit]

  1. ^ http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/1115/For-real-education-reform-take-a-cue-from-the-Adventists"the second largest Christian school system in the world has been steadily outperforming the national average – across all demographics."
  2. ^ http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/denominations/seventh_day_adventist.htm
  3. ^ "Department of Education, Seventh-day Adventist Church". Retrieved 2010-06-18.
  4. ^ Rogers, Wendi; Kellner, Mark A. (April 1, 2003). "World Church: A Closer Look at Higher Education". Adventist News Network. Retrieved 2010-06-19.


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New Country Hits

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
New Country Hits
New Country Hits.jpeg
Studio album by George Jones
Released July 1965
Recorded 1965
Genre Country
Length 30:08
Label Musicor
Producer Pappy Daily
George Jones chronology
Mr. Country & Western Music
(1965)Mr. Country & Western Music1965
New Country Hits
Old Brush Arbors
(1965)Old Brush Arbors1965

New Country Hits is an album by American country music artist George Jones. It was released in 1965 on the Musicor Records label.

New Country Hits features Jones's first studio recording of "Take Me", a song he co-wrote with Leon Payne and would record more famously with Tammy Wynette. The album also includes the hits "Love Bug" (inspired by Buck Owens and the Bakersfield sound) and the self-pitying "Things Have Gone To Pieces". Although he stuck to country music with a vengeance, Jones did his best to record a wide range of songs under the country umbrella, stating in the 1989 documentary Same Ole Me, "I've always tried to be versatile. I've always tried to do up-tempos and novelties and ballads." The album is also noteworthy for its cover, which features the singer's backing band the Jones Boys. Like Buck Owens' Buckaroos and Merle Haggard's Strangers, Jones worked with many musicians who were great talents in their own right, including Johnny Paycheck, who played bass and sang harmony with Jones before going on to his own stardom in the 1970s. Paycheck is seated next to Jones on the cover of the album.

Upon release, New Country Hits rose to number 5 on the country music album chart. Critic Eugene Chadbourne of AllMusic writes that "the slightly strained, bluegrass-influenced high-end vocals are here, along with overwhelming dips into the baritone end and phrasing that rivals that of jazz singer Billie Holiday's" and adds that "the musicians sound wonderful here, creating a sentimental old-time country sound when necessary in the devastating "I'm Wasting Good Paper" or delivering the type of twangy honky-tonk country fans associate with Bakersfield..."

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic 4/5 stars link

Track listing[edit]

  1. "Love Bug" (Wayne Kemp, Curtis Wayne) - 2:03
  2. "Til I Hear from You" (George Jones, Jack Ripley)- 2:26
  3. "I Made Her That Way" (George Jones, Dale Ward) - 2:24
  4. "I'm Wasting Good Paper" (Earl Montgomery)- 2:29
  5. "Along Came You" (Wayne Kemp, George Jones, Jack Rich) - 2:30
  6. "I'd Rather Switch Than Fight" (Wayne Kemp) - 2:05
  7. "Things Have Gone to Pieces" (Leon Payne) - 2:52
  8. "If You Won't Tell on Me" (Dallas Frazier) - 2:35
  9. "Memory Is a Flower" (George Jones, Jimmy Day) - 2:59
  10. "Feeling Single, Seeing Double" (Wayne Kemp) - 2:07
  11. "We're Watching Our Step" (Melba Montgomery, Earl Montgomery) - 2:58
  12. "Take Me" (George Jones, Leon Payne) - 2:40

Chart positions[edit]

AlbumBillboard (North America)

Year Chart Position
1965 Country Albums 5

External links[edit]


text:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Parnassian poets)
Jump to: navigation, search

Parnassianism (or Parnassism) was a French literary style that began during the positivist period of the 19th century, occurring after romanticism and prior to symbolism. The style was influenced by the author Théophile Gautier as well as by the philosophical ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer. The name is derived from the original Parnassian poets' journal, Le Parnasse contemporain, itself named after Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses of Greek mythology. The anthology was first issued in 1866 and again in 1869 and 1876, including poems by Charles Leconte de Lisle, Théodore de Banville, Sully Prudhomme, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, François Coppée and José María de Heredia.

The Parnassians were influenced by Théophile Gautier and his doctrine of "art for art's sake". As a reaction to the less-disciplined types of romantic poetry/and what they considered the excessive sentimentality and undue social and political activism of Romantic works, the Parnassians strove for exact and faultless workmanship, selecting exotic and classical subjects that they treated with rigidity of form and emotional detachment. Elements of this detachment were derived from the philosophical work of Schopenhauer.

Despite its French origins, Parnassianism was not restricted to French authors. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of Parnassians, Olavo Bilac, Alberto de Oliveira's disciple, was an author from Brazil who managed carefully to craft verses and metre by maintaining a strong emotionalism in them.[citation needed] Polish Parnassians included Antoni Lange, Felicjan Faleński, Cyprian Kamil Norwid and Leopold Staff.[citation needed] A Romanian poet with Parnassian influences was Alexandru Macedonski.[citation needed] Florbela Espanca was a Parnassian Portuguese poet (Larousse).

British poets such as Andrew Lang, Austin Dobson and Edmund Gosse were sometimes known as "English Parnassians" for their experiments in old (often originally French) forms such as the ballade, the villanelle and the rondeau, taking inspiration from French authors like Banville. Gerard Manley Hopkins used the term Parnassian pejoratively to describe competent but uninspired poetry. He identified this trend particularly with the work of Alfred Tennyson, citing the poem "Enoch Arden" as an example.[1]

Inline citations[edit]

  1. ^ Hopkins, Gerard Manley (2002). The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 185–186. ISBN 978-0-19-953885-0.

General references[edit]

In France
  • Maurice Souriau, Histoire du Parnasse, ed. Spes, 1929
  • Louis-Xavier de Ricard, Petits mémoires d'un Parnassien
  • Adolphe Racot, Les Parnassiens, introduction and commentaries by M. Pakenham, presented by Louis Forestier, Aux Lettres modernes: collection avant-siècle, 1967.
  • Yann Mortelette, Histoire du Parnasse, Paris : Fayard, 2005, 400 p.
  • Le Parnasse. Mémoire de la critique, ed. Yann Mortelette, Paris : PUPS, 2006, 444 p.
  • André Thérive, Le Parnasse, ed. PAUL-DUVAL, 1929.
  • Luc Decaunes, La Poésie parnassienne Anthologie, Seghers, 1977.
In Brazil
Essays and criticisms
  • AZEVEDO, Sanzio de. Parnasianismo na poesia brasileira. Fortaleza: Ceará University, 2000.
  • BOSI, Alfredo. An intuição da passagem em um soneto de Raimundo Correia, in --- (org). Leitura de Poesia. São Paulo: Ática, 2003.
  • CANDIDO, Antonio. No coração do silêncio. in: ---. Na sala de aula. São Paulo: Ática, 1985.
  • CAVALCANTI, Camillo. Fundamentos modernos das Poesias de Alberto de Oliveira, doctoral thesis at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 2008.
  • FISCHER, Luis Augusto. Parnasianismo brasileiro. Porto Alegre: Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, 2003.
  • MAGALHÃES Jr., Raymundo. Olavo Bilac. Rio de Janeiro: Americana, 1974.
  • MARTINO, Pierre. Parnasse et symbolisme. Armand Colin, 1967. (Parnaso y symbolismo, Ed. Ateneo)


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Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 78.djvu/659

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[78 STAT. 617]
[78 STAT. 617]
PUBLIC LAW 88-000—MMMM. DD, 1964

78 STAT. ]

SEC. 6. (a) The membership of the Conference meeting in plenary session shall constitute the Assembly of the Conference. The Assembly shall have ultimate authority over all activities of the Conference. Specifically, it shall have power to (1) adopt such recommendations as it deems appropriate for improving administrative procedure: Provided, That any member or members who disagree v»^ith a recom- ^ ^^"^"""^ mendation adopted by the Assembly shall be accorded the privilege of entering dissenting opinions and alternative proposals in the record of Con^rence proceedings, and the opinions and proposals so entered shall accompany the Conference recommendation in any publication or distribution thereof; and (2) adopt bylaws and regulations not inconsistent with this Act for carrying out the functions of the Conference, including the creation of such committees as it deems necessary for the conduct of studies and the development of recommendations for consideration by the Assembly. (b) The Conference shall include a Council composed of the Chair- Council. man of the Conference, who shall be the Chairman of the Council, and ten other members appointed by the President, of whom not more than one-half shall be officials or personnel of Federal regulatory agencies or executive departments. Members other than the Chairman shall be appointed for three-year terms, except that the Council members initially appointed shall serve for one, two, or three years, as designated iJy the President: Provided, That (1) the service of any member shall terminate whenever a change in his employment status would make him ineligible for Council membership under the conditions of his original appointment, and (2) except as provided in item (1), above, any member whose term has expired may continue to serve until a successor is appointed. The Council shall have power to (1) determine the time and place of plenary sessions of the Conference and the agenda for such meetings and it shall call at least one plenary session each year; (2) propose bylaws and regulations, including rules of procedure and committee organization, for adoption by the Assembly; (3) make recommendations to the Conference or its committees upon any subject germane to the purposes of the Conference; (4) receive and consider reports and recommendations of committees of the Conference and transmit them to members of the Conference with the views and recommendations of the Council; (5) designate a member of the Council to preside at meetings of the Council in the absence or incapacity of the Chairman and Vice Chairman; (6) designate such additional officers of the Conference as it may deem desirable; (7) approve or revise the Chairman's budgetary proposals; and (8) exercise such other powders as may be delegated to it by the Assembly. (c) The Chairman shall be the chief executive of the Conference. I n that capacity he shall have power to (1) make inquiries into matters he deems important for Conference consideration, including matters proposed by persons inside or outside the Federal Government; (2) be the official spokesman for the Conference in relations with the several branches and agencies of the Federal Government and with interested organizations and individuals outside the Government, including responsibility for encouraging Federal agencies to effectuate the recommendations of the Conference; (3) request agency heads to provide information needed by the Conference, which information shall be supplied to the extent permitted by law; (4) recommend to the Council appropriate subjects for action by the Conference; (5) appoint, with the approval of the Council, members of committees authorized by the bylaws and regulations of the Conference; (6) pre-