The journey to the Core, mostly by elevator car, was long. It was over an hour, which was an eternity for someone as constantly wired as Sorthven was. As it rode in the car, it could smell the TA’s around it. It was not the same as a human smell, a thankfully distant memory for the neurorider, but it was still offensive when the stench confronted its sensors. Sorthven let out a melodramatic, electronically filtered groan, followed by, “Meat’s for meals”, loud enough for the people around it to hear.

Sorthven had very little remaining of its original organic body mass. Even its left leg, left hand, and vital, internal organs were too much to deal with for the former human. What made it even worse, the lower left quarter of its original face remained. The rest was a dull grey metal with no shine at all. The most colourful things about Sorthven were the scanners replacing its eyes. They glowed a dim green, unless it was pitch dark. In its black suit, a jacket and trousers with what appeared to be motorcycle boots from about a century before, the neuro was a menacing sight. Sorthven enjoyed that.

You’re running late, an internal voice registered.

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Let’s face it. Ray Bradbury is the bomb. He wrote some awesome works, and his advice for writers is simple and elegant. Basically summed up in “write,” and “don’t think.” This is what led to this revamp of the Bradbury Challenge to simplify it and focus it.

The Bradbury Writing Challenge is just that: a challenge to write your heart out for a year. The assumption is, as a writer, you are also a reader. So that aspect of the challenge has been dropped.

Every year, on 20th August, a post will go up here to mark the start of the Bradbury Writing Challenge for that year. You can share links to your challenge short stories on that post. If you have your stories on another platform, still do share them here on Substack.

Here are the rules, for what they are.

1. Any genre is great!
   If you’re a writer, write whatever lights your fire. If you’re not a writer yet, start with what you love.

2. Write a short story per week.
   The minimum word count is 1000 words. Anything under that is flash fiction.

3. Keep it raw.
   Don’t edit the crap out of it. Just let it be what it is and, if you think of turning it into a novel later, edit it then. For each challenge, just write it, read it, fix some typos, link it on the challenge post, and leave it. You have writing to do!

4. Keep it positive!
   If you’re going to comment, keep it positive. If you don’t like something, don’t comment!

5. Keep challenge entries free for readers.
   If you link a story you have written as part of the challenge, don’t tuck it behind a paywall. Let everyone enjoy it. It is recommended keeping it free for three months after you post it, but give people a good chance to read it and comment on it.

6. Link as many stories as you like.
   Share as many links to your challenge stories as you want. If you want to link all 52 of them in a given year, go for it!

7. Have fun!
   No matter what, have fun and enjoy writing. Do not get bummed if you miss a week! Or a month! Just write what you can and share it with us!

In places that use hashtags, please do use #BradburyWritingChallenge so we can find you on X, Bluesky, and so on.

It had taken a long time, but time really had no meaning anywhere in the Dreamlands, so Andrew figured the same was true here. The first sign something had changed was when Redevere tilted one of her pointed ears to their right and told Andrew to shut up. She stayed in that position for a few minutes, and then she jerked her head at Andrew, changing direction and heading in the new direction. Having heard nothing but utter silence, Andrew mutely followed, since he had no other plan.

People were moving aside, some muttering and murmuring comments about inconsiderate dolts and premature torments and torture. With every bump and shove, the crowd pushed back with yet more muttering, until Redevere spun and punched someone, a be-suited middle-aged man with a hole in his chest, in the face, sending him crashing through half a dozen other people. Suddenly, fewer people had audible comments to offer.

“You should try it, mortal,” Redevere said, grinning wickedly at Andrew.

The pair pushed on before Andrew could reply, not that he had anything to say, anyway. Redevere was leading the way, using her elbows to shove people aside and clear a path. The grin on her face said it all. For demons like Redevere, Hell was a place filled with anticipation and promise.

As they made progress, Andrew started smelling the sulphur much more clearly. He looked around, and he noticed the people nearby had changed subtly. They were all bearing the marks of extremely violent deaths, and many were wearing different types of uniforms. Some were even wearing armour. All of them bore the marks of a life ended in anything but peace. One of them turned to reveal a knight’s pot helm caved in across his face, blood still oozing from the occularia and vents. A woman in leather breeches and a leather armour top was holding her own head under her right arm. She glared at Andrew as he passed.

The stench had reached nauseating potency when Andrew began walking a little faster in the middle of the slightly thinner crowd. Cries and shouts were coming from somewhere in the distance, which made Andrew start to slow down again. He heard a whistling sound from above him and looked up just in time to see someone flying through the air past him. The fleshy, wet thud of the person landing, followed by the chaotic slaps of their body parts, caught Andrew’s attention. A young man with no face had landed and was now surrounded by his limbs, organs and other bits and pieces. He just lay there, but Andrew was looking on with increasing horror. The fragments started to slip and slide across the rocky ground towards the torso and the shattered remains of the head. Andrew held his stomach with his hand as he swallowed hard at what he was seeing. When the parts reached the torso, they slid and slopped into place, the gaps rejoining and new skin sealing them in. Andrew shook his head.

“I can feel you staring, you knave!” the young man shouted through the gap which had once been a mouth.

Andrew quickly turned away and hastened after Redevere. There was no need to hurry, because Redevere was standing and watching a mountainous hulk of a man swinging a giant jade club at a human who happened to be shoved into range. A whooshing swing, a sickening crunch and thud, and the human was sailing through the air. The giant was turning this way and that, searching for someone else to clobber. Every now and then, someone would get fed up and push another person into the vacant circle. Whoosh. Crunch. Thud. Whistle.

“Azerath, what the hell’re you doing??” Redevere called out.

The giant stopped searching, saw Redevere, a tiny woman by comparison, and lumbered over to greet her with a hug.

“Red, long time! What’s going on?” Azerath roared, which was actually his normal speaking volume, as it turned out.

“We’re looking for someone. A sailor,” Redevere answered when Azerath had put her down.

“Sailor? You that desperate?” Azerath grinned.

“Shut up,” Redevere squinted her eyes and shook her head. “Gabriel Neilsson. Have you seen him around here?”

“Neilsson? Sailor?” Azerath mused, scratching his head with the club’s handle. “You mean the Prune?”

“Prune? What the he . . . Oh yeah, he drowned, I think,” Redevere smiled.

“He’s a few hundred yards that way,” Azerath pointed. “And it wasn’t just drowning that got him, either.”

Azerath suddenly spun about, extending his arm to full length, and collected three people with the club. While the three bodies sailed away, Andrew and Redevere left in the direction indicated. Seeing Redevere’s friendliness with Azerath convinced a lot of people to make way and stop grumbling about the intruders of their personal space. News travelled fast in the Place of Waiting.

The passage between the people jammed together like a mosh pit seemed to know where Andrew and Redevere needed to go. Before long, it had led them to a small opening around a hunched over, dripping man with long dark hair and porcelain white skin. As he straightened up a little and turned, Azerath’s nickname came back to Andrew: the Prune. Neilsson’s skin was wrinkled like a albino Carolina Reaper chilli, deep crevasses cutting through his bloated, swollen face from which dark orbs stared out, obscured by folds of flabby whiteness. Andrew gasped. Redevere grinned and snorted, her torso shaking as she made odd grunting sounds.

Neillson opened his mouth, his face screwed up even more as he was trying to frown, but the watery, black liquid which flowed out over his chin and soaked into his shirt collapsed any meaning into a gargling cacophony. The old sailor was trying to repeat himself when he spewed more of the brackish water over himself and splashed Redevere. He held up a hand to the pair as he was hacking and wheezing to clear his throat. Andrew looked down at the ground and shifted from foot to foot as he was waiting.

“You shouldn’t be here, lass,” Neilsson stated, his voice sounded like it was filtered through water, bubbling and warped.

“Now why did you go and say . . . ,” Redevere started.

“The penitent is correct,” a massively loud voice roared from the not-to-far distance.

Andrew listened as heavy foot falls were coming even closer at a very fast pace. He turned and did not have to look for long. The glowing white of a huge body, standing at least twelve feet tall, made it impossible to miss. A pair of equally bright wings were extended a little, which exaggerated the size all the more. In the being’s right hand was a long, glowing sword made of metal that appeared to be made from flowing lava. Andrew backed up until he bumped into three people who were trying to make space for the new arrival. They were less than charitable about Andrew’s intrusion.

The giant with the sword stopped about ten feet away, poked Redevere with the tip of his sword, and growled at her.

“What are you doing here, infernal one?” it asked.

Andrew’s eyes shot wide at the choice of words, and it took him a moment to close his mouth again.

“Excuse me! What do you mean by ‘infernal’ here?” he raised his hand as he was asking.

The being turned to Andrew and, seeming to notice him for the first time, scowled at him.

“You are not a penitent,” the being grumbled.

“What did you mean when you called Redevere here,” Andrew jerked his chin at his companion, “’infernal’?”

“Your friend here is a spawn of the rebellion. An apostate from the light,” the being answered, which left Andrew a little more perplexed than he had been seconds before. Turning to Redevere, “Now, state your purpose here.”

“I need to ask the Prune a question or two,” Redevere replied. “It’s kind of personal.”

“One,” the giant said.

“Do you mind? Some space?” Redevere flicked her hands at the glowing giant, motioning for it to back up.

Andrew stepped closer to Redevere to hear what she was saying to Neillson, who had somehow stopped his coughing and hacking. Redevere was leaning right in close, an arm around Neilsson’s shoulder to hold him still and, Andrew guessed, to stop him from fleeing into the watching and odd crowd. Andrew was standing to Redevere’s left, opposite the Prune.

“You know where it is, don’t you? Where is the Key?” Redevere rasped in Neilsson’s left ear.

Neilsson shuddered when Redevere mentioned the Key, but Andrew had no clue about why the sailor would be nervous about it. As far as Andrew was concerned, it was just another ancient antique a rich collector had to have just so he could brag about it to his sycophants and rivals. Andrew shook his head at the thought of the sheer amounts of money being blown on this one antique. The fact a fallen thing, Andrew’s ex-spirit guide, was so driven to get her hands on it had Andrew as puzzled as everything else. He knew this realm was weird, but it was reaching new depths this time. Not even the Vale of Leng had anything on what Andrew had gone through this visit.

Andrew refocused on Neilsson as the sailor was finally getting some words out through the torrents of brine flowing from him.

“You? You think you’re getting it?” Neilsson’s body was wracked by a wheezing, hacking convulsion which Andrew figured was the sailor’s version of laughter. When Redevere said nothing, Neilsson managed to speak again. “No . . . never going to reach, slag.”

Redevere’s scowl deepened along with the redness of her skin, her eyes brightening. Andrew heard the cracks of her knuckles as she ground her hands into fists. Redevere’s shoulders twitched as she stepped towards Neilsson.

“No secret . . .,” the sailor puked up between bouts of dark water. “The . . . Vault.”

“Now, you leave,” the giant guard, glowing still, menaced Andrew and Redevere with his sword.

“How do we get out?” Andrew asked.

No sooner had he asked, the vaulted cavern vanished into a mist and Andrew found himself sitting next to Redevere in the belting heat of a sandy desert with vast plains punctuated by tall dunes. Andrew gazed around him in amazement. Redevere was glaring at everything, feeling anything by impressed.

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The plan was sketchy at best. Redevere had mentioned a portal between the Dreamlands and the Place of Waiting, but it was a mission to get to. The entrance was nestled behind the bookshelf of someone called the Crawling Creepiness, or something like that. The youthful looking demon was not clear about names, something people had mentioned to her a lot over the aeons.

Since returning from the fateful trip where Andrew had discovered the true nature of his ‘guide,’ Redevere had made herself at home in his apartment, and was having a great time. One thing Andrew noticed, not without a twinge of jealousy, was Redevere’s ability to live in the moment and cast all other cares to the wind.

“When you’re a fallen angel, you’re living on borrowed time. A lot of motivation to focus on the present, yeah?” was how she explained it when he had asked.

Now the pair were back in the Dreamlands, Andrew was wishing he was back in his apartment with his new partner living on borrowed time, and not here in the dark, dank valleys and gullies at the foot of Kadath, dodging creatures of nightmares Andrew really did not need to know about.

The guarded archway of the underground city was still a couple of hundred yards away, but the light thrown off by large braziers on the ground just near the entrance revealed hideous creatures in full metal armour, wielding vicious halberds with viciously serrated edges. Crouched beneath a tree, behind the trunk, the pair watched and waited. Far above them, on the summit of Kadath itself, Andrew knew was the one place no one with any brains wanted to go. It was a castle or something like that, but Andrew had never seen it and had intended to keep it that way.

The guards changed as the new watch emerged from the subterranean realm below. Andrew could see no way he and Redevere could slip through between the shifts, something a sharp, hissing intake of air by Redevere confirmed.

“We need another way in,” Andrew whispered.

“No crap, meatie. Ventilation,” Redevere replied.

Not exactly trusting his new infernal friend, but having little choice, Andrew followed her as she edged to their right, careful to stay under the cover of the trees and in the shadows. Andrew questioned the wisdom of keeping her pink tracksuit on, given it was hardly blending into the natural hues around them. If he ignored Redevere’s unnatural (to him) skin colour, she was quite an attractive wom . . . demon. Andrew shook his head violently, jolting his thoughts onto more relevant tracks. If Redevere had sensed his thoughts, she gave no hints of it.

After about an hour of trekking through the edges of the high altitude forest, Redevere stopped and pointed. Against a wall in the side of the mountain, a small plume of white smoke or steam rose lazily before the light breeze dispersed it into the night air. Without a word, Redevere turned straight for it, looked around the mountain’s side and the trees, and then stepped out into the open, striding straight for the source at the wall. Andrew had no choice but to summon up the appearance of confidence and follow the curvaceous demon.

The pair had nearly made it when a voice stopped them dead in their tracks. Andrew had to force his hands to remain down.

“Who goes there?” a loud, rumbling voice demanded.

“And who do you think you are talking to, you half-breed goblin?” Redevere snapped back, her index finger punctuating every word.

A swarthy, brown-skinned, leathery creature, dressed in the same armour as the guards at the gate and bearing the jagged halberd, closed his mouth. His eyes darted from Redevere to Andrew and back again. There was a slight wobble in the halberd’s point.

“I am looking for intruders,” the guard responded, pulling himself up to his full height, which was considerable.

“And do we look like intruders?” Redevere asked, somehow looking down her red nose at the taller guard, her pointed ears moving.

“Um . . .,” the guard mumbled.

“Would intruders be strolling about here for all to see? In the open?” Redevere pressed her advantage.

“Um . . . No?” the guard was taking a wild stab in the dark.

“See, you’re smarter than most,” Redevere smiled at the guard like he was the most gifted child in a class full of gifted kids.

“What do I tell the commander you are doing?”

“You tell him nothing, guard,” Redevere smiled more widely, and Andrew was sure she batted her eyelashes at him. “He’s a busy man. He doesn’t need to be bothered about us when we clearly belong here, does he?”

“No. True.”

“Good. What’s your name, guard? My friend here and I can put in a good word about your diligence tonight,” Redevere smiled.

“I am Drog the Bigger,” the guard’s eyes filled with pride at a job well done.

“Thank you, Drog the Bigger. You have done well, tonight,” Redevere almost intoned ceremoniously.

Drog lowered his halberd, turned, and marched away, continuing on his rounds with a renewed bounce in his step.

“They’re dumber than even mortals,” Redevere muttered, as she led the way to the vent.

The opening had a rusted grill over it, heavy bolts holding it down onto the rock of Kadath. Andrew gave the grill a small shake and was surprised to find it moved quite a bit. Redevere glared at him and put her index finger over her mouth. She grabbed one of the bolt heads with a hand and twisted, gritting her teeth, which were pointed and serrated. The bolt quietly sheered off. Andrew tried to do the same, but it was no use, despite the grunts he put into it. Redevere snorted when she saw him and continued with the other bolts, shaking her head and muttering something about flesh-imprisoned humans.

Andrew helped Redevere remove the loosened grill, and surprisingly Redevere said nothing rude about it. Underneath the grill was a narrow hole plunging down into the side of the mountain at a very sharp angle. Andrew was a thin man, so he would have no trouble moving down it and controlling his speed. Redevere, quite a curvy person with a generous figure, was going to find it tougher going. Redevere arched her eyebrow at Andrew when she caught him looking at her, a ‘what’s your problem’ look in her eyes.

With no better response coming to mind, Andrew climbed up to the opening, lowered his legs into it, and started sliding down with his feet, and then his arms, braced on opposite sides of the vent. He was a thin man, but he had a surprising amount of strength. He put it down to years of yoga. As he moved down, speeding up as he gained confidence, he heard Redevere enter the vent and follow him. The human paused every so often to allow the demon time to catch up with him.

It could not have taken all that long, but it seemed like it. Dimness inside the vent finally gave way to a growing light source at the bottom, which was hardly better than a dim candle. Andrew wondered what was at the bottom and why the light coming from it was so dim. With any luck, he hoped it was something like a storage room, with no one in it. The first clue he was wrong were the moaning sounds rising up through the vent. Andrew suppressed a shudder.

Then the stench hit him like a hammer blow to the inside of his nasal cavity. Redevere was happily humming a dirge to herself, giving the whole scene a dark and oddly dissonant feel. Andrew looked down just as the foetid miasma separated into stale sweat, tangy blood, and rotten faecal matter. The human had to clamp his mouth shut and tense his stomach up to prevent his last meal from raining down through the vent.

At the bottom of the hole, Andrew stopped with his feet just inside the vent’s shaft. He carefully listened, facing each ear down in turn, hoping to detect the smallest movement or whisper. There was nothing except the constant moaning emanating from what Andrew imagined were the ravaged remains of more than one inmate. Andrew was wondering what to do when Redevere hissed at him with a jerk of her chin at the opening, all emphasised by a scowl.

Suddenly, the hissing from Redevere was taken up by whatever was below them. Andrew heard not just one voice, but a multitude of them. There was nothing for it. Andrew braced himself for the drop and snapped his legs together, letting him fall into the space below. The drop came up short. Andrew felt his knees buckle, as he hit the floor much sooner than expected. He rolled through to the left, smacking into something soft and fleshy. The muttered curses were colourful, as Andrew stood and rammed his head up into the low, stone ceiling. He found he was face-to-face with a similarly bent over young woman who had a spoon poking out of her left eye socket. An older man, whose hand was on the spoon, just stopped whatever he was doing and stared at Andrew. Andrew stared back. Until a thud followed by more flowery swearing and cursing from different voices erupted behind them.

“Calm the hell down, morons! What idiot stands under a hole? Tell me that!” Redevere was raging at the people she had landed on, shaking a red fist at the four of them. She even kicked the youngest, an elementary school kid, in the ankle, getting the middle finger in response.

By the time Redevere had turned her attention to her surroundings, the hissing shushes had started being interspersed with calls to shut up and worse. Andrew noticed some of the voices were coming from further and further away. Andrew spotted one person who was saying nothing, and approached her.

“Excuse me, I’m really sorry to disturb you, but do you know whe . . .,” Andrew stopped short when the young woman with dark skin turned around.

Andrew took a step backwards, bumping in Redevere, who grunted loudly at him. The woman now facing them looked African, wearing what had been very nice clothing which had seen better days. Torn to ribbons and bearing gaping holes, the woman’s clothes suggested she had been through some hard times. Andrew’s guess was confirmed when she tried to speak.

“Thsha sha plash o aitin,” she replied, one hand on her face.

Andrew gasped when he noticed a dark, jagged line circling three sides of the woman’s face, and he realised the hand was holding her face back against the front of her skull. The edges were waving slightly with the woman’s movements.

“Pardon?” Andrew whispered, edging closer to the woman.

“Aiden. Aiden,” the woman repeated.

“She said, it’s the place of waiting, you dunce,” Redevere intervened.

Andrew looked about, wondering how they were going to find Gabriel Neilsson. It was not like he was going to jump and wave in this cramped place, with its ceiling just over a metre and a half from the floor. Then he had a brainwave.

“You,” Andrew said to the man he had nearly landed on quite loudly. “Yeah, old guy, with the spoon.”

The man turned, along with the woman who still had the spoon in her face, and glared at Andrew, index finger rising to his mouth. He shook his head with a scowl like Andrew was an ignorant tosser.

“Look, you want me to shut up. Fine. I need to find Gabriel Neilsson the sailor. The sooner I find him, the sooner I’m out of this joint,” Andrew said, raising his voice a little more. “Everyone, pass the word to your neighbours. Gabriel Neilsson. Sailor. Show yourself!”

Hisses and cries of ‘shut up’ changed to moans, which then morphed into muttered questions, all three words. ‘Gabriel Neilsson? Sailor?” It was a like a wave on a lake, the sound moving in an even circle away from Andrew and Redevere, as people passed the message to those around them. The sound dimmed and vanished when it had got too far away to hear. Those people around Andrew and Redevere had returned to their sullen, morbid silence.

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Heroes are something we all need and when they are absent, we are somehow less for it. Reading Robert E. Howard’s Chronicles of Conan the Barbarian, I may have been unjust to a certain resident of the Shire in Middle Earth in dismissing him as a whining little turd. For that thought, Conan the Cimmerian is to be thanked.

While we all like heroes for the most part, there are wildly divergent ideas on what a hero is, exactly. For some, they think of the Marvel and DC universes, peopled with widely varying characters from Superman to The Punisher. For others, sporting people may be heroes. For still more, even business tycoons like Elon Musk could be heroes. This illustrates the need for clarity on what exactly we are thinking of as a “hero” in this article. To start with, the Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘hero’ as “a person who is admired for having done something very brave or having achieved something great.” Christopher Reeve, the first actor to portray Superman back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, once said a hero was an ordinary person who did extraordinary things. Clearly, he was not thinking about Superman when he said that. For the sake of this article, I think both definitions are workable and precise enough.

Is Conan the Cimmerian a hero? Conan is certainly brave and performs great deeds. He is well gifted in the arts of combat and womanising, to be sure. He is also fearless against incredibly bad odds, though he tends to be a little more nervous around spiritual entities and those able to work great magic. Conan is a barbarian through and through, and a barbarian who appears very comfortable in his skin. Conan is also a very independent individual and his bravery does not depend on the presence of others. This accords very well to Western, especially United States, ideas of the ruggedly independent male hero.

Conan has also achieved great things. He has wielded power as a king of Aquilonia and even done very well in that position. The Aquilonians seemed to have actually liked him as their king, even though some of the nobles were a little less loyal when the road got rough. Conan has also defeated great enemies and, in doing so, benefited those who have not been able to help themselves. The elephant headed Yag-kosha is a case in point. This pre-Cataclysm being was held prisoner and suffered untold horrors at the hands of the evil Yara. Conan broke into the Tower of the Elephant with less than saintly motives, but was soon to moved to help the captive Yag-kosha and successfully did so. While Conan may not always have the purest of reasons to do something, he usually chooses the path of good when confronted with injustice. According to the Cambridge definition, Conan seems to qualify as a hero.

Bilbo Baggins appears less certain when it comes to being a hero. He has never wielded any sort of power except for one time when he gained possession of the titular ring. Yet, it could be argued the ring held the real power as it continued to subvert Bilbo’s sense of identity and free will. Bilbo also was not very heroic without people around him. He needed his friend from the Shire and a host of others willing to pitch in and help him on his quest to destroy the ring. In fact, using the Cambridge definition, it is Bilbo’s friends who seem more heroic than Bilbo.

When we consider the definition offered by Reeve, things get a little more complicated. Conan is never operating from the position of an ordinary person. From the viewpoint of his physicality, Conan is imposing. He’s muscled to a ridiculous level, moves like a tiger, and is blindingly quick in his reactions. Even as a mercenary or roving adventurer, it is clear Conan is nothing ordinary. The responses of ordinary people in his world serve to illustrate his extraordinary nature. By Reeve’s definition, Bilbo Baggins seems the more heroic type. He is physically a fraction of the person Conan is, and has nothing of Conan’s bravery or personal confidence. I would imagine Bilbo Baggins would sooner die than walk about naked except for a loin cloth and some leather sandals. Yet, Baggins still agrees to step well beyond his own limitations and embark on a quest into the unknown. He not only makes a choice to risk his own person, but he also goes against the very racial tendencies he has grown up with. That is, hobbits are homebodies. Unlike Conan, Bilbo is more than content being home and has absolutely no desire or need for adventure. Despite these factors of size, tendency and fear, Bilbo the Boringly Ordinary steps beyond himself into the vast gulf of his fears in a way that Conan can never match.

And this makes the hobbit all the more relatable. You might be different, but when I look in the mirror, I see nothing like Conan the Barbarian. I move more like a wallowing walrus than a lion, and I have the reflexes of a doped up sloth. Conan is very much the extraordinary person and for that, he is not as relatable as Bilbo Baggins. This is not a criticism, as Conan’s specialness makes him all the more appealing to readers. We can revel in his skill and skip ahead to catch a glimpse of his prowess and skills. It is exciting stuff to read of the Cimmerian’s exploits and victories, with the deities of his universe pulling him into their schemes and plans.

Yet, if there was ever a character who embodied Western comfort and joy of just being in your home, (recall the phrase a man’s home is his castle) , Bilbo Baggins is it. Homebound to the point of xenophobia, completely uninterested in anything outside the Shire and utterly fearful of the unknown, Baggins is truly the posterchild of the modern Western age. While Tolkien possibly based the hobbits on the English, I would suggest the resemblance runs wider than that. These are qualities share by many Western cultures and people in our time. Many people are fearful and insecure, much as Baggins was when Gandalf suggested he needed to travel. Most people do not wish to be bothered by events that make them uncomfortable, as Baggins did not. Bilbo Baggins is the utter embodiment of the absolutely ordinary. This is no hairy Martin Luther King Jr. This is no small version of Sir Edmund Hillary. And Bilbo is certainly no Muhammed Ali. And it is Bilbo’s very averageness, his deep mediocrity, that makes him the hero for the Everyman and Everywoman. It is for this reason, I suggest Bilbo Baggins is even braver than Conan of Cimmeria.

This is not to say Howard was any less of a writer than Tolkien. The contrasts between their heroes is more a contrast of type and purpose. Conan is the Escapist’s Hero. He is the hero in whom we can live vicariously and imagine ourselves performing great feats and swaggering around towns with women swooning and men fearful. Conan takes us outside of our reality and gives us a moment of pure dream-like fantasy in which we get the girl and vanquish the villainous wizard. Bilbo Baggins is the Realist’s Hero. Like us, when confronted by a huge snake in a pitch dark space, Bilbo would probably fill his pants. An rightly so. In Bilbo, anyone who is not the independent, ripped, sword-carrying whirlwind of might and power can find themselves mirrored. Bilbo shares our fears. Conan does not. Bilbo shares our weaknesses. Conan does not. Bilbo shares our inherent failings. Conan does not. For the average Jane and Joe, Bilbo is the hero of the suburbs. He does not offer escape in the sense which Conan does, but rather says we can do great things while being the ordinary, frail people we really are.

For all that, Bilbo Baggins just seems a little better of a hero than Conan for our time when heroes are sadly lacking in any real sense. Current fantasy novels and those of even recent history seem to lack the earthy hero of Baggins’ ilk. They lack this in a couple of ways. First, in the The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist, we have the protagonist Pug, who starts life as a nobody on the fringe of his society. Yet, as the adventure continues and develops, he becomes a magician of great power. Thereafter, though he is not without challenges, Pug acts from a position of power and confidence. He moves from a Hobbit typology to a Cimmerian template, but one without the ripped six-pack and muscles. Second, in The Song of Fire and Ice by George R. R. Martin, characters seem to have very little in the way of heroic tendency. Eddard Stark is probably the closest GoT has to a hero and, yet, the message is clear. Being a hero embodying any sense of honesty and loyalty is stupid. Eddard got himself killed because he would not compromise his values. Both Conan and Baggins would have faired the same as people of strong values. Even those who were like Stark in early life are shown to have compromised themselves in order to survive. Robert Baratheon is a case in point. A one-time friend and comrade of Stark, he soon became a corrupt, perverted and non-heroic type simply to survive in the capital. In Martin’s books, being a hero is not only dangerous, but it is also futile. Power is in the hands of the evil, and it is better to keep your head down and keep it attached.

In this sense, heroes in modern fantasy fail readers in an important way. Bilbo Baggins and Conan provide a guideline of what people should do when faced with evil and tyranny. Conan, for all his faults, is someone who still cares about justice, fairness, and people’s rights to live as they choose and be free. Baggins is a bit different, as I do not think he much cares about the freedom of the dwarves in the same way as Conan would. However, Baggins is concerned enough to do the right thing and make sure he takes responsibility for his choices. He is loyal to his friends, as Conan is, and he has strong values which may override his culturally imbued concerns and fears. “Heroes,” and I use that term very loosely here, in The Game of Thrones never go beyond themselves or seek to uphold any strong sense of value beyond what is beneficial for them. Apart from the Starks (possibly), most people in the GoT world are basically cockwombles who cannot get over themselves long enough to actually do anything worthwhile. They provide us with no model of being part of something greater than ourselves and upholding the value of doing good just because it is the right thing to do. Bilbo Baggins is a far greater person than John Snow.

To wrap up, we need more heroes of the type of Bilbo Baggins, as well as those in the vein of Conan the Barbarian. We need heroes who step outside themselves and expand their visions of who they are and what their world is as they pursue their goals based on clear value systems worthy of our respect and emulation. We need the ordinary people who perform extraordinary deeds.

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Andrew Sato walked towards his home with a sense of purpose, through the crowds of people who were, unlike him, trudging to their trains, buses, or, if they were lucky, their own private havens from humanity on wheels. No one simply walked anymore. Andrew looked at those people nearest him and saw the liquid emptiness of souls dragged into the mundane futility of the routine which life had become. This was all existence had become for most people in the cities of the so-called “developed world.”

Andrew shook his head slightly at the thought people once had the delusional audacity to refer to their own societies as the “first world,” as if this was a claim to greatness. Andrew had come to know better, at least in his opinion, and had come to dismiss the claims to greatness of those who would lead the “developed world.” Andrew let out a chuckle which was a little too loud and drew looks from the suited wage slaves around him. Hands thrust into the pockets of his pink business suit against the cool of the air, Andrew descended into the subway, one face among the millions the cameras would scan, register, and dismiss that day and every day.

The train ride home was mercifully short. Andrew lived in the inner suburbs, in an apartment he could only afford with the money he got from his business, as he called it, despite the derogatory comments of those who had no clue. As Andrew opened the door and entered his sumptuously appointed small apartment on the tenth floor, the faint waft of incense reached him. He liked the smells while he was working. Scent was an important stimulant to his astral self, or whatever people wanted to call it. Andrew was nothing if not a pragmatist, which made him a rarity in the business he was involved with. He went with whatever worked, even if it meant breaking the advice of some of the greatest names in the faith. He was almost like preserved unicorn’s urine. Andrew smiled to himself at the thought and wondered if he could make anything from that idea. The people who made up Andrew’s clientele were a lot less discerning, as far as he was concerned, making him feel much better about what he was doing. That is, charging a shed tonne of money to locate and retrieve mystical objects.

Avoiding food before a job was part of the routine. Andrew went straight to his study, filled with all the paraphernalia of modern spirituality, from crystals to the almost obligatory idol of Ganesha. He sat in a large, plush, red seat resembling a moon chair with an over-stuffed cushion jammed into the frame. Andrew loved it, and it was big enough to let him spread out and get really comfortable.

Andrew closed his eyes and started regulating his breathing, as he had done hundreds of times before. Fixing his conscious thoughts and mind onto one point, a single word, he soon started to feel his consciousness gently disconnect from its internal anchors. Andrew felt the familiar sense of falling in, something he had stopped jerking away from long ago. He let the sensation build up, carrying him along in its gentle curent after the sudden snap of disconnection.

Thought faded and condensed into light and shadow. Out of the amorphous air, shapes began to take form, as the light shifted and moved through the spectrum and hues beyond human vision. Andrew allowed himself to be swept along with the movement and change. The shadows became blocks of darkness. Other, smaller shadows emerged between the squares and rectangular presences. The dim mist lifted and retreated from Andrew’s vision. He looked about, seeing the familiar landscape, the buildings, and the trees. He had arrived.

Andrew walked down the road stretching away before him, entering the small village. It was a small town straight out of a medieval painting, but it had power lines along the streets, electric lamps illuminating the still dark morning, and oddly shaped cars parked along the sides of the roads. The blacksmith was up early, a man simply called John. His electric ute, a massive hulk of a truck, was parked outside the shop, from where the sounds of hammering, metal on metal, could be heard over the hoarse puffing of John’s bellows. As Andrew passed by, he caught John’s eye and waved a morning greeting. John, a man careful with his words as well as his gestures, merely nodded his head in greeting.

The shops, apothecaries with the black leeches, copyists, butchers, and more, passed by as Andrew walked along the main street under the warm orange glow of the street lamps. Plumes of smoke rose from the thatched roofs of homes, as people arose and got ready for the day. Andrew made for the church on the other side of the town.

As the old wooden building came into view around a bend in the road, Andrew suddenly stopped. He looked about, an eyebrow raised in focused concentration. His head tilted and his mouth dropped open a little. The town was unusually quiet for this time of the morning, even with the town folk rising for the day. Then it hit him.

Where were the cats?

The priest, an old man with long, white hair, and a long white beard, resembled what Andrew remembered Moses looked like in the old Charleton Heston movie. They were sitting in the priest’s small office, crammed full of books, bare wooden walls hanging with pictures of various scenes from different holy books the priest had read; not all of them from his own religion. Andrew was never sure why Father Paul Wentworth always appeared as a church priest, but he had learned to just run with it. They had often met in previous journeys Andrew had made to the town, and Andrew valued the man’s advice and wisdom.

“The cats left only a few days ago. The town’s worried. Some people are saying it’s a curse, but they’re just the fruitcake fringe. Personally, I think it’s just cats being cats. They found a better deal elsewhere,” Paul was explaining, finishing with a shrug.

“It’s not something I’d have thought I’d ever see,” Andrew commented, rubbing the back of his neck to ease the tension he felt there. In all the years he had been coming to this town, Andrew had always seen the cats.

“Me neither, son. It’s downright odd, if you ask me. Anyhoo, what brings you to our humble town?”

“A client’s asked me to find someone by the name of Gabriel Neilsson. I can’t go into all the details, but they’re looking for something they think once belonged to the man.”

“Can’t think of anyone by that name. But you might want to take a peek at the parish records. If this man of yours was here, his name’ll be in there somewhere.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate you letting me.”

“Don’t thank me yet, son. You haven’t seen how they’re organised,” Paul gave Andrew a knowing look and a sly grin.

Father Wentworth was right, and Andrew groaned at the sight of piles upon piles of large, leather bound volumes making up the parish records. Andrew had no idea how far back the records went. As far as he knew, this place was timeless in a way he had no clue about, despite the number of times, over the years, he had visited. In broad terms, the large volumes were arranged, or so they seemed, in basic order of centuries. It was hardly any help at all, but it was a start. Andrew knew roughly when his client came to him with the request to find the odd object, so he would work back from that date. It took him a few moments, and a surreptitious moment to cheat with the calculator on his phone, to convert the Earth date to the time frame used here. Time worked in weird ways in the Dreamlands, as previous wanderers had dubbed them.

Andrew looked over the stacks of parish records, then closed his eyes, and stood stock still. His mind rapidly slowed to a halt, as Andrew let his consciousness expand and search for the presence. It did not take long. After all, Andrew was a practised adept of the art, and it had taken long years to training to reach his level of skill.

The blue is the sea, came the whispered, baritone voice.

Andrew looked at the volumes before him, on shelves and tables, noting the colours. His eyes scanned right, left, and then back to the right. He passed over a number of blue spined volumes, but his eyes shot back to one in particular. The spine was a lighter blue than the others, and wavy creases had marred its smoothness over the years. Andrew lifted the other volumes from on top of it and pulled it out to the reading desk nearby.

Sea is the cruellest of mistresses, the voice came again.

Looking inside the parish volume, Andrew noticed something odd. The sections were arranged in alphabetical order, and some were in scripts Andrew knew were not human languages. He found the ‘S’ section and turned to it. ‘Sea’ started with the letter, so it was as good a place as any to start. His guide seemed to accept the plan in silence, which was usually a good sign. The entire book was arranged in groups of occupations held in life. Andrew had never seen such a weird thing before in any church record. Looking in the same section, Andrew looked up sailors, since his guide had mentioned the sea. In minutes, Andrew had the right name.

Gabriel Neilsson: sailor. Cause of death: drowned at sea.

That was not good news. Andrew would not be able to locate any residual spirit without at least some proximity to a corpse. If Neilsson was drowned at sea, it meant his grave here in the churchyard would be empty.

“So, guide, it’ll have to be you. You’ll need to get in touch with this guy,” Andrew commented to the air.

And that was when Redevere panicked. What the hell was she going to do? If the mortal she had been guiding for the last decade and a half could not get hold of the stiff through the usual channels, it could complicate things.

Well?

The human was losing patience. Redevere thought of a plan. Not a great plan, but it was something. She lied.

“There is a blockage between the departed spirit and myself,” Redevere said, whispering in that pathetic, James Earl Jones voice humans went all gooey over.

You’re supposed to find ways through this stuff, aren’t you?

Redevere could have groaned. She swore in Aramaic instead.

“The blockage is a barrier of divine proportions, my host,” she whispered, and it was technically true.

What? You’re the guide. You’re the navigator of realms. What could possibly be blocked to you?

The human sounded more than a little upset by the revelation of Redevere’s limitations. She had to think fast.

“You shall need something of the deceased man’s belongings,” Redevere whispered in the most authoritative voice she could muster under the circumstances.

He drowned! At sea! All his stuff’s with him at the bottom of an ocean famous for only one thing. It does not have a friggin’ bottom!

Redevere was sure other guides did not have to put up with this sort of drama. She wracked her mind searching for a workable lie she could foist onto the human and keep the whole ‘guide’ angle going, but there was nothing. Redevere would have to admit to this whiny sack of meat there was something she could not do. She needed this mortal more than he needed her, she realised with a rare burst of self-honesty. With a massive eye roll and an almost audible moan, Revedere did the unthinkable.

Andrew screamed and jumped back from the reading desk and the open parish record. His eyes went as wide as plates while his hands and legs started shaking like thirty thousand volts were being fed through him. When the sulphuric stench-laden smoke cleared, Andrew was confronted by a woman dressed in a very tight, pink tracksuit, the zip pulled down to show ample cleavage, with jet black hair flowing over her shoulders while two horns poked through the tresses. Her skin was a dull red, but gleamed in the dim light of the room. Her yellow eyes, like those of a cat, flashed at him.

She blew him a kiss.

Andrew backed up at least six more steps and would have retreated more if it had not been for the wall.

“Calm down, mortal. It’s me,” the woman snapped like she was talking to a wayward dog.

“It’s who?” Andrew squeaked.

The woman rolled her eyes and shook her head at the same time.

“It’s me,” came the familiar baritone voice.

Andrew sank down the wall to sit on the floor and put his face in his hands. The huge number of questions competing to get out of his head collided with the thoughts and horror rushing in. This guide, this thing knew everything about him. It had been living inside his head, with his permission, for years.

“Um, yeah. Can still hear you over here,” the woman muttered.

Andrew did some of his breathing exercises, and they seemed to help. He felt his heart rate slow down slightly, while he worked up the courage to open his eyes again and face whatever it was before him. The red woman was leaning against the tall reading desk, her chin propped in one hand on an elbow next to the open book, waiting for him to calm down. Her yellow eyes blazed with impatience, like she was a woman with urgent things to do.

“What are you?” Andrew asked, barely a whisper.

“Now it matters what I am, does it?” the woman’s eyebrow shot up, as she fixed Andrew with a glare.

“Not like that, . . .,” Andrew started.

“Sure it is, mortal. As long as it all worked, you were happy, huh?” Redevere cut him off with a wave of her long hand. “What I am depends on who you ask. Fallen angel, demon, spirit of the damned, take your pick.”

“Why now?” Andrew asked.

“Why now what?”

“Why show yourself now?”

“You’re looking for it. I need it. I can’t get to the mark. We need to work together on this one. Like for reals,” Redevere explained, imitating a self-entitled teen girl.

Andrew must have had an idiot’s look of incomprehension on his face, because the demon humphed at him before continuing.

“Are you lot completely dumb? This Neilsson person’s not here and his body’s not here. He’s in the Place of Waiting. He’s on the good side of it,” Redevere said.

“Why do we need Neilsson, anyway?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. You really are an imbecile, huh? Neilsson knows where the item is, doesn’t he? He’s dead. He’s not useless.”

“How do you know where he is? I only found out about him a few days ago,” Andrew asked, finally getting to his feet.

“Yeah, um. I might have known for a bit longer than you,” Redevere admitted, the look on her face daring Andrew to challenge her on it.

Andrew chose not to, but instead shifted angles suddenly.

“So, why should I help you?” he asked, arms folded across his chest.

“Your client is not the type to accept failure calmly. Let’s just leave it at that,” was all Redevere would say.

“I guess that tracks. So, what do I call you?”

“Redevere. And if you call me ‘Red,’ I’m going to gut you like a fish with the rustiest butter knife I can find, and feed your testicles to the ravens while you are still alive.”

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It’s Matt Dinniman’s fault. Dinniman, the next denizen of the Hell he speculates about in Dungeon Crawler Carl with one of the pineapple sticks getting shoved down his throat by Rory, is to blame. How dare he write a series I could not resist?

I had gone into a local bookstore, and the owners had a front table near the counter prominently displaying all eight books of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Some of the blame may lie with the staff, but only a minuscule speck compared to the gargantuan tonnage of blame slamming down on Dinniman’s nether regions. I had heard about this book, and it had, I confess, intrigued me for some time. But, with a reading list running to about 125 titles, I resisted. I was not going to get anything more to extend that idiotically spectacular list.

I found these eight volumes were actually scrubbed up, and not your typical, boring, naff hardcovers. They had bonus material. And lovely graphics on the front cover, under the dust jackets. Bloody, Dinniman. So, I bought the first volume. I happened to be in town on the next day, too, so I just popped into the bookstore again. I walked out with book two. At this time of year, I am often in my local town, so on days three and four, I ended up buying books three and four. I had to get some rat traps, so I ended up in a different part of town. The local bookstore there had books five and eight. I wound up buying book five, swearing I would wait until I read at least the first couple to see if they took.

My plan was to buy the remaining books from Amazon here if it turned out I liked the series enough. That was the plan. Yet, I found Amazon was running out of the editions I had been buying. Some were already out of stock. That torpedoed my plan just brilliantly. I did wonder if Dinniman was holding out on Amazon. I was sitting right here where I am now, trying to write Rising Late but, as you no doubt have already guessed, I caved like a soggy paper bag. I jumped into the car and drove into my local bookstore to specifically get the final three books. The idea of having to look at different editions on my bookshelf plagued me like a leprous rash, as I am a bit OCD about such things. I am sure Dinniman knew this.

I devoured the first book in a few days. I laughed a hell of a lot, and I rarely laugh at books. Carl the Pantless is a legend, and Princess Donut makes a great partner. The banter between the pair and their growing connection switches the manic energy of the story up just nicely.

So, what is this phenomena with which Dinniman exploits the vulnerable with his brilliance? Dungeon Crawler Carl is part of a sub-genre called “LitRPG.” Yeah, I had to look that one up, too. Basically, it is fiction written in line with gaming structures, such as menus popping up, and a few phrases I had no idea were phrases. Like, “debuff.” What the hell? The game aspect of Carl is where Dinniman’s genius comes in.

The Earth gets a visit from a massive galactic government system called the Syndicate, and the Borant Corporation is hosting this season of Dungeon Crawler World. A World Dungeon is created underground in the Earth, after an apocalyptic event wipes out a whole tonne of humanity’s population - like billions. A lot of the survivors choose to enter the dungeon, to which stairs have emerged at different points around the globe.

The Crawlers are contestants in a sadistic game of Dungeons and Dragons / Pathfinder / Your Worst Nightmare where they need to level up through combat and other activities, improving their stats block and gaining loot. All the while, mobs, various levels of mob bosses, and even some other Crawlers are out to kill them. In Dungeon Crawler World, death means death.

Princess Donut, gets elevated to partner level by the guide assigned to Carl and her, meaning she is no longer just the cat Carl picked up when his ex-girlfriend dumped him for another dude. Donut is a talking, fighting, Royal cat.

The pace is frenetic, packed full of insanity, and has a dark, satirical knife twisting deep inside the gullet of reality TV shows. Dinniman is a funny writer. There is a tonne of profanity, but if that is something you’re okay with, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a hoot. Even non-gamers like me will soon catch their rhythm. I was hooked into by page four. It is that good.

If you have been wondering about it, wonder no more. If fantasy embedded in a science fiction book which makes a serious nod to Douglas Adams is your juice, then join Carl and Princess Donut. You won’t regret it.

Goddamnit, Dinniman.

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I intended this article as a review, but the monumental nature of what mind.in.a.box (MIAB) had done overwhelmed me. In a work that has now spanned twenty years and seven albums, MIAB have achieved a work unparalleled in scope and depth, a modern icon in the cyberpunk scene. The only lack is the number of people who have actually heard of it, though in independent music circles, MIAB has a large fanbase.

The story, in very basic terms, follows Agent Black as he works for the Agency hunting rebels who have the ability to enter a place called the Dreamweb. Black goes undercover, and his success also his a problem. The target of his investigation, someone called “Friend,” commits suicide. Actually, Friend translates into the Dreamweb. The seven albums continue a singular story over their entire length, with intricate sub-plots which are not resolved until albums later. In Lost Alone (2004), Black encounters a beautiful female, but she remains a mystery until Memories (2015).

The storyline and the music are thoroughly in the cyberpunk subgenre, with voice clips, heavy synths, distorted vocals, clean vocals, and everything you would expect in epic cyberpunk. The music lends a sonic deepening to the story, the emotive hook to draw you along with Agent Black and the Agency, as well as Black’s development into something more than an Agency man of unquestioning loyalty.

A lot of bands have released concept albums, wherein they develop a single narrative or conceptual arch over an often longer than usual album. Many of these have stretched to well over an hour and around fifteen tracks, in my own experience. MIAB take that concept and inject it with a kilotonne of meth.

The noir elements in the Dreamweb saga bring a degree of uniqueness which sets it apart from the blinding neon of more mainstream cyberpunk. The continuation over seven albums to date has allowed MIAB to explore characters in depth and propel the listener to greater depths of investment than would have been possible on a single album.

One of the great things about such a long project as Dreamweb is the opportunity to witness the evolution of MIAB’s sound from 2004, when they put out Lost Alone, to 2023 when Black and White was released. In early years, the sound was less polished, with a more limited vocal range. Over the years, MIAB began pushing the envelope into more polished productions, as well as exploring wider vocal motifs. And it worked. Those later albums are something different and certainly are more to my own personal tastes.

What has Dreamweb contributed to cyberpunk? The idea that boundaries are meant to be pushed and musicians can tell real stories, in depth, and for a hell of a long time. It is not just writers who have the tools to spin tales over multiple volumes, but MIAB have shown a pair of musicians with the willingness to push their talent can do just that. Not only that, MIAB have shown they can create a depth of connection with the listener which writers have to work hard to achieve, simply because we cannot put wickedly cool music into our books’ pages.

What MIAB have created is not simply a version of an audio book. It is more than that, though they have departed in that direction, moving away from pure album, as well. Dreamweb still keeps to the roots of the music artform, but pushes it towards a richer narrative scope. They are still a long way from audio books, and there is no illusion here of “reading” anything, but a greater depth of involvement by using music to elicit responses which are not entirely intellectual or logical is achieved, in my opinion.

As the project of MIAB continues as a solo project for the moment, the contribution made by these seven albums to cyberpunk and music is still to be realised by the wider community. However, MIAB have carved a niche for their brand of storytelling, and they weave wonderful adventures through the cyberpunk landscape.

If you have not had a change to enjoy the MIAB sound, do get yourself over to their page on Bandcamp and take a look. You won’t regret it.

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I am reading three books at the moment. The first is The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, by Carl R. Trueman. For those of us who have no idea how Western culture cut its roots from it’s own value systems and made it hard for even medical professionals to define what a woman was, this book is a delight of insight. Trueman traces current identity politics quite a way back in history, and shows there is nothing new under the sun. He deals with thinkers like Karl Marx, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Freud, and a whole tonne more. So far, it has really introduced a lot of ideas and connections I had not seen before. Following this on from Melvin Tinker’s That Hideous Strength, Trueman’s book is definitely far wider in scope.

N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God is the second reading project I am dealing with. After extensive discourses on the nature of reading, and the terms used and a whole lot more, I got to the “good stuff” at about page 140. That said, all that foundational work was and is valuable. It really helps put Wright’s historical discussions into a wider context. I have had this book, and two others, for more than 5 years, just collecting dust on my shelf. This is one of those really solid reads you cannot rush. I bounce between this and Trueman’s book.

You might wonder at the thematic consistency of my reading. Simply put, there is none. Dinniman’s book is full of profanity at a level I have not read in a long time. Yet, it has already, at merely page 4, sucked me into the plot. Like Trueman’s book, I had long heard wonderful things about Matt Dinniman, and many people I follow on social like the guy’s books. When a local bookstore had the whole series, I started buying them one by one. I have 3. No doubt, I will soon have volume 4 in my grasp.

Drop a comment one what you are reading at the moment!

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Analytics are really cool and pretty. Call me a sucker for a colour-loaded graph or two. My favourite are the maps, which are really nice to look back on. They give some usual data like which time zone I should be posting the stories for. Maps also simply appeal to the D&D player and wargamer in me. Who does not like a good map? I can’t see the colours too well, so I may be modifying the colours here because of that. You see how much I love maps?

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COLOUR

‘Safety glass.’

Travis had a real problem with the term. His problem was only made concretely apparent when Travis careened through the windshield of his 1994 Toyota Corolla. The departure of his face with the passage of the windshield’s top lip did not help endear the phrase to him. The problems only got worse when Travis realised he was still on Earth and very much conscious.

Travis skidded to a stop a good twenty feet before his body, or what was left of it, did. Looking at the crumpled heap, if flesh, sans face and feet (they came off on the upper edge of the brick wall), there was no way the newly deceased was going to go over there for a closer look. It was a misty night, the roads still slick from the day’s rain. The forest in which Travis came to his glass-shattering end was thick with damp, and the wafting scent of pine still lingered in Travis’ awareness. The shadows were deep and dark, holes of a darker grey consuming what little light ventured nearby. Even dead, Travis was more than a little freaked out. He tried to touch a tree. His hand, at least he had those, passed right through it. He felt nothing. Suddenly remembering what had happened to his face, Travis’ hands slapped into his cheeks, fingers probing around like desperate worms trying to get underground before sunrise. The face was still there.

“What the hell,” Travis said to the air.

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I have had a rat in my kitchen for a month. As soon as I found it was there, I set some traps. Within a night, one of the traps trigger and I found the trap moved. I found the trap had been dragged across the kitchen by the rat, which had a front leg trapped inside the jaws. I lifted it up to get rid of it, and the rat slipped out of the trap. I tried to catch it, but the cunning thing had scarpered into the kitchen again.

I have reset the traps a few times now, and have not enticed the rat to try them again. So, in a feat of thought, I have changed the trap type. The new trap is a live catch cage set up, and I have a bit of a dilemma with this one. That is, if the rat goes inside.

My cat has been utterly relentless in his efforts to get the rat, with his efforts being the only way I have known roughly where the pest is hiding. It is this effort which has cause me some pause for thought. What should I do with the rat if it falls into my hands alive?

My first thought was to bash it with a hammer, but then I thought about Nut (the cat above) and his efforts to catch the rat. I did also play with the idea of just releasing the rat for about three and a half seconds. I thought, given Nut’s efforts here, maybe I should take him outside and release the rat in front of him. I mean, it would only be nature taking its course and I would be no more than facilitating a natural process.

Nut would greatly enjoy some fresh meat he has caught, along with the idea Nut and I would be doing the neighbourhood a small service in removing a pest from within it. Yet, the idea I am inflicting unjustified cruelty on the rat does not escape me.

This is where you come in. What is your opinion on this? Should I hand the rat over to Nut and let him have a fresh meal? Should a Christian do this? This is a deep rabbit hole and some thoughts from others would be helpful.

Also, I am just curious. What would you do?

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Without the divine, you have no basis for law. Laws become merely opinions.

I used to think I was a bit of a clever nut because I had argued the above, with the caveat that perhaps ‘natural law’ was the exception to the claim. It is not really. My point was and is without some sense of the divine beyond the created order and Us (the human race), any morality is based on a set of agreed, and acceptable, opinions. Therefore, to put forward a rather extreme example, one has no real basis for claiming the Holocaust of Nazi Germany was morally wrong beyond it is a matter of opinion based on a set of supposedly agreed rules to which the Third Reich clearly did not subscribe. Everything is up for negotiation unless there is a “transcendent frame” at work (Charles Taylor is the writer from whom I pinched the term).

Then I found out a few people, in particular Philip Rieff and Charles Taylor cited in Carl R. Trueman’s book, had beaten me to it. Such is the hubris I am want to succumb to occasionally.

Carl B. Trueman discusses the work of Rieff and Taylor and draws together a thorough analysis of Western culture as it stands today. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self considers how Rieff’s and Taylor’s work contribute to a wider understanding of how Western culture came to be the apparent chaotic mess of competing moral voices it is today and in such a short time.

Trueman places the current trends in culture in a much wider context reaching back centuries, though he limits himself to a selection of key thinkers in more recent centuries. In fact, Trueman says you can even track some elements of our social imagination back to the writings of Saint Paul and Augustine of Hippo, though he himself pulls short of doing that, which he says would render his work unwieldy and massive, but useless. Setting some clear terminological points down as a foundation, Trueman sets out on a tour de force of some of the major contributors whose ideas have developed in the context of technological, economic, and cultural conditions which have shaped aspects of Western culture as it morphes in very short periods of time. Karl Marx, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sigmund Freud, and more are placed into a wider stream of thought which covers philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature, and more.

Trueman presents his research in a massively well-referenced form, with notes at the end of each chapter. This is a book where readers can really dive into the endnotes and get some very good pointers towards further reading, if Trueman’s book is not deep enough for you. Trueman also makes the point that he attempts to be fair to the opposing sources he is quoting and aims to have those sources recognisable enough they would recognise themselves if they were to read his book. There is a lot to commend in Trueman’s approach to the subject.

I had first heard about The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self when I heard Melissa Dougherty talking about her own book Happy Lies: How a Movement You (Probably) Never Heard of Shaped Our Self-Obsessed World. Talking about her research for her book, Dougherty mentions Trueman’s book as the “meatier” source she would recommend to readers. I have found Trueman’s book very accessible, though a couple of really long sentences required multiple readings to parse the meaning a little more.

I am quite new to reading books on the history of Western culture from a Christian perspective rooted in faith. I have long wondered and been confused by the state of Western culture and how it overturned a lot of its own value system in such a short time. The confused, ill-equipped Christian for which Trueman and others are writing was and is me. If you are in a similar, confused state about the society in which you have found yourself, I recommend Trueman’s book as a great starting point to clearing up what we observe and setting it all in the wider historical context.

Before I read Trueman’s book, I had read the shorter That Hideous Strength: A Deeper Look at How the West Was Lost by Melvin Tinker. As it happens, Carl Trueman wrote the foreword to Tinker’s book. Tinker focuses on the influence of Neo-Marxist thought while similarly placing the current state of Western culture in a longer historical sequence which touches on some of the points in Trueman’s work.

For a briefer dip into the pool of how we got where we are, Tinker’s book is very good and clear. It is short (only about two hundred pages) but it will whet the appetite a little. The Triumph of the Modern Self will take you much deeper into the rabbit hole. Both of these books are a solid starting point for the perplexed Christian and just about anyone else who is asking what the hell.

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You can grab my book, NeoTokyo Dead, from all fantastic platforms!

I have done it about four times in the last couple of years. Maybe even more. I really don’t remember, but then, that is what it’s like. I just get my head in a good space, and it all goes smooth for a bit, and then they’re back like a weird aunt who has a distinct scent of formaldehyde and a breath even worse.

It seems I have voices in my head which tell me I need to delete everything and walk away. They are loud and persistent in their message. I have a colleague who is pretty good with a megaphone, and even better without it. I don’t know why she bothers with the thing, actually. The voice of disdain, a whispering sibilance in the recesses of my mind, is equally good at what it does, if a lot quieter in doing it.

It is times like now I really need to take a good, hard look at why I do what I do here. I do, at times, focus on the numbers I see spotted about. And when I do, and when the voices are there, the fun of being on any social media instantly gets sucked out it, like when the big bug on Starship Troopers sucks the brains out of the hapless soldier it manages to get its proboscis into.

I guess, like for anyone writing stuff and putting it out there, the question of whether we are wasting our time comes up. It sure does for me. Today, listening to some music that probably is not setting the right mood, I have started asking that very question. And today, on an emotional and self-indulgent level, I want to answer, “Yeah, I’m probably wasting my time.”

But a whole tonne of authors who have said anything about writing itself said writing is the marathon through the deepest circle of hell and beyond. I had little idea just how right they were. They all warned me, and, like the jester the proverbial village misplaced, I had the delusion tucked away that it would not be that hard.

What an idiot.

All I can do is laugh about my own folly and hubris. This stuff keeps you humble. So, to ask the burning question: why the hell do I write stuff at all here or anywhere? It is because I actually enjoy writing. And now that I am thinking about that reason, those voices are actually retreating into the shadows again. I mean, in a physical sense, I can feel their weight lift from my chest and stomach. If you’re freaked out, I sympathise. I would be a bit freaked, too, if I were reading someone else’s post with all this in it.

I also have no fixed theme to my Substack presence or that on X. I just write what I like and what I want. At times, I wonder if I need a more focused theme to what I write. But I write for fun and the enjoyment of it. So, if I am writing for fun and enjoyment, what do I need to care about a “focused theme” or…what is it influencers call it?…a “brand” for?

Remembering why you write is a key to mental health in the writing game, whether new and under the radar, and (I suspect) when you hit the big time. I am sure Matt Dinniman still has moments where he’s wondering what the hell he has let himself in for.

It is time to say screw it all and dance through the spaces in my head wearing nothing by a terry towelling dressing gown dancing to Men Without Hats’ The Safety Dance and just being whatever idiot I am and revelling in it.

I am too old to give a crap about what I “should” be doing. I need to learn to start acting like it.

If you’ve made it this far through my outburst, I really do appreciate it. Thanks for hanging with me this long!

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