Brobdingnagian Announcements: Philip Jose Farmer Plus Adams

Two pieces of big news side by side:

The City Beyond Play, the book I co-wrote with Phil Farmer, is back in "print" as an e-book! I just got the heads up from friend and fellow Farmerian fan and author Christopher Paul Carey, who among other things co-authored the Farmerian novel The Song of Kwasin, upcoming in the omnibus Gods of Opar. Huzzah! I need to get cracking on learning the ins, outs, and wily ways of marketing e-books.

In other news, I've been asked to contribute bonus material to a forthcoming reprint of the Phil Farmer classic The Wind Whales of Ishmael, the science fiction far-future adventure sequel to Moby Dick. This was through the efforts of another friend and fellow Farmerian fan and author Win Scott Eckert, who among other things co-authored PJF's The Evil in Pemberly House. This piece is due by October; I'll post more when I know it.

Instigating An Historic Battle

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 1/31 AND 2/1/12

New Words: 3650 (1800 / 1850) on Chapter 2 ("The Entrada") of Arizona. After Coronado's demands that the Zuni of Hawikuh subject themselves to the Pope and the King of Spain meet with resistance, Coronado attacks the pueblo, marking the first battle between Native Americans and Europeans in the North American Southwest.

Total Words: 78700.

Book Year: 1540.

Reason(s) For Stopping: Getting ready for work, both days.

Mammalian Assistance: Vegas yesterday, none today.

Exercise: Walking Tucker around the neighborhood (twice yesterday), and walking down to campus.

Stimulants: None.

Today's Opening Passage(s):

Yesterday: Vasco startled awake to the sounds of battle.

He’d learned how to sleep when hungry with disturbing ease, and now shouting from the hilltop pass where he camped roused him with an empty belly, his mind half-dreaming so he was only barely aware of where he was, and so craving water he was dizzy. And he was afraid. Shamefully afraid, as he’d shamefully fallen asleep while helping guard the pass between Cibola and the captain general's force, he thought somewhere in the back of a brain desperate to come fully awake. He took a moment to realize his horse was gone.

Today: The bronze artillery was hauled up; the crossbowmen formed ranks; the musketeers lined up likewise. The artillery fired, frightening Hawikuh’s defenders from the walls but doing little damage against the thick adobe. The others were meant to provide cover fire for the soldiers who would press their way into the pueblo, but the strings on the crossbows—sun-rotted and perhaps neglected when men’s stomachs constantly demanded attention—broke in short order, and the musketeers were so hunger-weak they could barely stand, much less light the fuses and fire their long guns.

Darling Du Jour (with thanks to my friend Tamara Stoneburner for her help with Coronado's compliment):

For the time being the Cibolans remained peaceful, Augusto’s leg was healing well, and Vasco allowed himself to relax enough to settle himself on a boulder just outside the pueblo with his ink and paints. He had no easel—that had traveled with Don Hernando de Alarcon’s mysteriously absent supply ships. But his lap was sufficient for the tiny canvas that began filling with the browns and greens of the landscape stretching out defiantly before him, the layered mountains in the distance and the almost straight lines of the pueblo’s houses. For a moment he was barely aware of the shadow looming over him until it spoke.

“The colors are magnificent, the textures rich,” Coronado said. Vasco jumped up with surprise and a salute. The captain general was still in rough shape, his face and head bruised, but he walked unaided. He smiled faintly, nodding to the canvas Vasco clutched. “Very exotic—nothing like home. It will be good to show your pictures in New Spain.”

Only after the captain general limped away did Vasco realize how deeply the troubles in Coronado’s visage flowed. It wasn’t simply his wounds that pained him, or even Alarcon’s missing ships—though while there was plenty of food for the vanguard now, it wouldn’t be nearly enough for the thousand other mouths who would soon rejoin them, not without Alarcon. No, Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was already considering the expedition a failure.

There were no riches in Hawikuh save the edible and potable varieties. Most Cibolans questioned about gold, silver, silk, and spices professed ignorance; the handful who admitted seeing gold and silver claimed they received it by trade and weren’t certain where it came from. Coronado had staked his wealth and honor, and the wealth and honor of his viceroy and Vasco and numerous other high-born Spaniards, on finding the Seven Cities of Gold. But this was no Aztec or Inca land. This was no Gaul or Hibernia or even Germania. Only a quiet, secretive, contemplative people who scratched a living out of unforgiving earth, who as far as Vasco could tell worshipped nature—getting on their knees and raising their arms to the sun as often as they did now to the cross. Whose only real earthly treasures were corn and water.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Stirling; dancinghorse; Cahill.