tr.v. axe
To remove ruthlessly or suddenly

The manuscript turns out to be about 25,000 words too long. Massacre time.

There is a sort of bizarre satisfaction in destroying things you have laboured to create. I always used to build sandcastles as close to the water’s edge as possible so that I could watch the tide tear them down.

Garçon, the long-handled axe, s’il vous plaît.

One of the main elements in the Bonenfant memoirs is the way Pascal encounters evil in so many different forms. The nature of evil is a thorny one, tied up with medicine, free will and predestination. I don’t intend to solve that problem here (maybe in another post) but to share a child’s insight.

My son is six years old and is obsessed with Lego Star Wars. I don’t know if you have ever encountered it but it is a computer game based on the Star Wars movies but with all the characters and scenery made out of Lego blocks. It is good for kids because there is no blood – only lego tiles flying in all directions. Dying is just a temporary embarrassment as you regenerate almost immediately.

Robert has a strong narrative sense and he has invented another story-game played completely outside the computer where there is a sort of parallel Star Wars story and all the characters are womp rats. Master Jedi Womp Rat is the main character but there are lots of others including the Emperor Rat and Darth Rat.

The story took a twist when, with Emperor Rat on the verge of defeat, Darth Rat decided to renounce the dark side and turn good. His motive, Robert announced, was not that the Emperor had threatened his son. It was because he realised the Emperor was going to lose and he didn’t want to die with him. Thus he decided to revert to being Aniken Rat.

There is a sort of pure medieval morality about this. Be good and you will go to heaven; be bad and you will go to hell. Regardless of any abstract sense of whether Good is in itself a good thing you should turn good because staying bad will be detrimental.

Master Jedi Womp Rat also managed to subvert the battle droids (which Robert and his friend call ‘Roger-Rogers’) by offering them better working conditions – regular cleaning and polishing, good quality power supplies and so forth. Again the ethical pragmatism. Leaving aside the whole questions of whether droids can in any way be regarded as evil, it makes sense that they should go for the side which gives them the greater rewards.

I find this uncluttered idea of good and evil refreshing. Children have a simple morality. They don’t have any concept of mortal sins versus venal sins except that you get in more trouble for the former. Their world view is simple – good things are rewarded, bad things punished.

The question for adults must be, is this all there is to it? If the thing you were being rewarded for (Darth Rat serving the Emperor) suddenly changes to a thing you will be punished for (Darth Rat doesn’t want to die) then doesn’t it make sense to change also (welcome back Aniken rat)? Is this why we are taught that Satan is the father of Lies? Because if we could believe in his rewards then would they, in fact, be evil?

Perhaps Pascal’s memoirs will tell me more. It’s a fascinating topic.

May the womp be with you!

I shall be at the 32nd WisCon convention in Madison, Wisconsin from May 23-26. I’ll be speaking on a panel about material culture in science fiction and fantasy, drawing on my years of being an archaeologist. And, of course, enjoying all the other stuff going on.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Spent quite a lot of time today getting this website sorted. There’s still a few style aspects I’m trying to pin down and the old 18th century data needs to be tweaked for the new style to work. Fortunately the 18th century data is stitched together with templates (my own bit of Perl programming, he said modestly) so making global changes to it won’t be hard. Mostly a matter of menus.
I’m also putting the final details together in Volume 1 of the Memoirs – re-editing the last chapter, checking a few historical details. Stuff like that.

It seems like a good day to get this site rolling. My personal website has been around for a while now and you are welcome to visit it but this one is for my writing – particularly the work on the Bonenfant Memoirs.

The memoirs, while containing some aspects of the supernatural, are firmly rooted in 18th century London. Insofar as I can determine all known historical events are just as portrayed but are mixed in with apparently fantastical encounters with magical and demonic creatures.

Editing these memoirs has required considerable research into the 18th century and I have created a section to share some of that research. It includes a subject listing of Thieves’ Cant, various bits of information on currency and wages and sundry odds and sods. I will update it with more research as I go along.