Published in 2008; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here
The 1000 Days of Disbelief
Published as three mini-novels, 2010/11; main webpage is here; ordering lynx for individual mini-novels are here
Goddess Gambit
Published in 2012; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here
Circa the Year of Dome 2000, Anvil the Artificer, a then otherwise unnamed, highborn Lazaremist later called Tvasitar Smithmonger, dedicated the first three devic talismans, or power foci, that he forged out of molten Brainrock to the Trigregos Sisters.
The long lost, possibly even dead, simultaneous mothers of devakind hated their offspring for abandoning them on the far-off planetary Utopia of New Weir. Not surprisingly, their fearsome talismans could be used to kill Master Devas (devils).
For most of twenty-five hundred years, they belonged to the recurring deviant, Chrysaor Attis, time after time proven a devaslayer. On Thrygragon, Mithramas Day 4376 YD, he turned them over to his Great God of a half-father, Thrygragos Varuna Mithras, to use against his two brothers, Unmoving Byron and Little Star Lazareme, in hopes of usurping their adherents and claiming them as his own.
Hundreds of years later, these selfsame thrice-cursed Godly Glories helped turn the devil-worshippers of Sedon's Head against their seemingly immortal, if not necessarily undying gods. Now, five hundred years after the 1000 Days of Disbelief, they've been relocated.
The highest born, surviving devic goddesses want them for themselves; want to thereby become incarnations of the Trigregos Sisters on the Hidden Continent. An Outer Earthling, one who has literally fallen out of the sky after the launching of the Cosmic Express, gets to them first ...
Published in 2010; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;
Contagion Collectors
- Sedon Plague -
Published in 2010; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;
Janna Fangfingers
- Sedon Purge -
Published in 2011; two storylines recounted side-by-side, the titular one narrated by the Legendarian in 5980, the other indirectly leading into the 'Launch 1980' story cycle; main web presence is here; Character Companion starts here; ordering lynx are here;
In the Year of the Dome 4825, Morgan Abyss, the Melusine Master of the Utopian Weirdom of Cabalarkon, seizes control of Primeval Lilith, the ageless, seemingly unkillable Demon Queen of the Night. The eldritch earthborn is the real half-mother of the invariably mortal Sed-sons but, once she has hold of her, aka Lethal Lily, Master Morgan proceeds to trap the Moloch Sedon Himself.
In the midst of the bitter, century-long expansion of the Lathakran Empire, the Hidden Headworld's three tribes of devil-gods are forced to unite in an effort to release their All-Father. Unfortunately for them, they're initially unaware Master Morg, the Death's Head Hellion herself, has also got hold of the Trigregos Talismans, devic power foci that can actually kill devils, and Sedon's thought-father Cabalarkon, the Undying Utopian she'll happily slay if they dare attack her Weirdom.
Utopians from Weir have never given up seeking to wipe devils off not just the face of the Inner Earth, but off the planet itself. Their techno and biomages, under the direction of the Weirdom of Cabalarkon's extremely long-lived High Illuminary, Quoits Tethys, have determined there is only one sure way to do that -- namely, to infect the devils' Inner Earth worshippers with fatal plagues brought in from the Outer Earth.
Come All-Death Day there are more Dead Things Walking than Living Beings Talking. Believe it or not, that's the good news.
Published in 1990; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here
The Damnation Brigade
- Phantacea Revisited 1 -
Published in 2013; main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here
Cataclysm Catalyst
- Phantacea Revisited 2 -
Published in 2014, main webpage is here; ordering lynx are here
Kadmon Heliopolis had one life. It ended in October 1968. The Male Entity has had many lives. In his fifth, he and his female counterpart, often known as Miracle Memory, engendered more so than created the Moloch Sedon. They believe him to be the Devil Incarnate. They've been attempting to kill him ever since. Too bad it's invariably he, Heliosophos (Helios called Sophos the Wise), who gets killed instead.
On the then still Whole Earth circa the Year 4000 BCE, one of their descendants, Xuthros Hor, the tenth patriarch of Golden Age Humanity, puts into action a thought-foolproof, albeit mass murderous, plan to succeed where the Dual Entities have always failed. He unleashes the Genesea. The Devil takes a bath.
Fifty-nine hundred and eighty years later, New Century Enterprises launches the Cosmic Express from Centauri Island. It never reaches Outer Space; not all of it anyhow. As a stunning consequence of its apparent destruction, ten extraordinary supranormals are reunited, bodies, souls and minds, after a quarter century in what they've come to consider Limbo. They name themselves the Damnation Brigade. And so it appears they are -- if perhaps not so much damned as doomed.
At least one person survives the launching of the Cosmic Express. He literally falls out of the sky -- on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head. An old lady saves him. Except this old lady lives in a golden pagoda, rides vultures and has a third eye. She also doesn't stay old long. He becomes her willing soldier, acquires the three Sacred Objects and goes on a rampage, against his own people, those that live.
Meanwhile, Centauri Island, the launch site of the Cosmic Express, comes under attack from Hell's Horsemen. Only it's not horses they ride. It's Atomic Firedrakes!
Now available for ordering online, the third graphic novel from Phantacea Publications extracts the complete 'Soldier's Saga' from Phantacea2-6 as well as the 'Hell's Horsmen' sequence as drawn for pH-7 and the 'Origin of the Devil' from the PhantaceaPhase One project.
Illustrators include Dave Sim, Ian Fry, Sean Newton, Verne Andrusiek (later Andru), and Ian Bateson; full colour cover by Verne Andru off his black and white Rhadamanthys Revealed proposal as reproduced here and here; dedicated webpage is here.
- Double-click to enlarge in a separate window here and here -
What was once, will be again
Thirty-six years after its original release, Jim McPherson completes his Launch 1980 project to novelize all the Phantacea comic books with the release of "Helios on the Moon"
pH-3 artwork by Richard Sandoval, 1978; rollover adjustments made by Jim McPherson, 2013
Jim McPherson continues his ongoing project to novelize the entire Phantacea comic book series
Double-click on image to enlarge in a separate window
Dedicated webpage can be found here; back cover text here; lynx to excerpts from the book start here and here; check out material that didn't make it here and related excerpts from its scheduled follow-up, 2014's "Helios on the Moon", here; for the time being its Auctorial Preamble is reprinted here and here
Centauri Island
- The web-serial enlarged radically -
Ian Bateson's unpublished artwork from Phantacea Seven provides the basis for the first full-length phantaceaMythos Mosaic Novel since "Goddess Gambit".
Ian Bateson's breathtaking wraparound cover for the novel utilizes his own dragons from pH-7. Those from the unfinished cover for the Phantacea Phase One project can be seen here and here.
Images in this row double-click to enlarge here and here
So proclaims Nergal Vetala, the Blood Queen of Hadd.
When her soldier falls out of the sky she's not only back in the pink again – as in arterial – she reckons she's found the perfect foil through which to play, and win, a Trigregos Gambit.
She might be right as well.
Thus Ends 'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' Trilogy
For more on the actual celestial phenomena upon which the eye-collages were based, click here. There's additional information re the Sedonic Eye here and here. The complete cover for Phase One #1 is here whereas yet another variation of it is here. The left eye double-click is the full cover for "Goddess Gambit", artwork by Verne Andru 2011/2. The right eye double-click is of Ian Bateson's enduring, 1986 Sedonic Eye as prepared by Jim McPherson, 2011. Gambit's main webpage is here.
"The 1000 Days of Disbelief" is not only 3/3rds Done, it's E-done (albeit for Kindle, not kidding nor kindling)
In part to celebrate the 35th Year of Anheroic Fantasy, Phantacea Publications is pleased to announce that "Feeling Theocidal", Book One of the trilogy, and all three mini-novels extracted from 1000-Daze are available on the Kindle platform from amazon.com and a number its affiliates worldwide.
Subtitled Sedonplay, Sedon Plague and Sedon Purge, the mini-novels commence, continue and conclude Book Two of 'The Thrice-Cursed Godly Glories' trilogy.
Watch for e-versions of Book Three, "Goddess Gambit", and its full-length predecessor in the Launch 1980 story cycle, "The War of Apocalyptics", coming soon from Phantacea Publications.
Like the first two mini-novels extracted from 1000-Daze, "The Death's Head Hellion" and "Contagion Collectors", "Janna Fangfingers" contains a book-specific character companion. An Auctorial Prefatory and the opening chapter extracted from Gambit round out a 230-page volume bargain-priced at only $12.00 per book CAD and USD, vastly less as an e-book.
(Please note: although their character companions are for the most part applicable to Feel Theo, in large measure they're not so much so to either War-Pox or Gambit, which tend to feature characters more prevalent in the phantaceacomic books and web-serials.)
Together they carry on recording the multi-millennia-long chronicles of the gods and goddesses, the demons and monsters, of antique mythologies — the same seemingly endless saga also presented in the 1990 graphic novel, "Forever & 40 Days — The Genesis of phantacea", and the three, thus-far-published, full-length mosaic novels featuring Jim McPherson's PhantaceaMythos.
Each of the mini-novels is complete unto itself. Among many another character, they feature ThrygragosEveryman and his firstborn Unities (the incomparable Harmony, Thunder & Lightning Lord Order and Uncle Abe Chaos) in their freewheeling prime. On top of that, Fangers presents a framing story set in 5980 Year of the Dome. As such it could be considered a prequel to the Launch 1980 story cycle that began in earnest with War-Pox and eventually picks up again in Gambit.
[Check out www.phantacea.com for extracts, synopses, teasers, and a grab bag of even more intriguing graphics pertinent to Phantacea Publications' 35th anniversary.]
If they're not, kindly direct local librarians and neighbourhood booksellers to www.phantacea.com in order to start rectifying that sad situation. Either that or, if you're feeling even more proactive, click here, copy the link, paste it into an email and send it to them, along with everyone else you reckon could use a double dose of anheroic fantasy. It will certainly be appreciated.
Help build the buzz. The more books sell, the faster the PHANTACEA Mythos spreads.
E-books for Kindle, Kindle Fire, I-pad, I-phone and other applications can be ordered through amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and other amazon affiliates worldwide. An interactive e-book containing the entirety of "Feeling Theocidal", as built specifically for Adobe Reader, is available direct from the publisher. (Certified cheques or money orders only, please.) E-books on other platforms are also available. Check you favourite online bookseller for the latest list and ordering instructions for Phantacea Publications.
BookFinder.com lists the latest releases from Phantacea Publications along with a goodly number of additional booksellers carrying them. Also listed therein are almost all of the PHANTACEA Mythos print and e-publications, including the graphic novel and some of the comic books.
Another interesting option for the curious is Chegg, which has a rent-a-book program. Thus far its search engine shows no results for phantacea (any style or permutation thereof) but it does recognize Jim McPherson (a variety of them) and the titles of many releases from Phantacea Publications.
As for the Whole Earth (other than the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head, at least as far as I can say and always assuming it's still around in what be its 61st century), well, this page contains a list of a few other websites where you can probably order the novels in a variety of currencies and with credit cards.
Of course you can always email or send me your order(s) via surface mail. No matter where you live or what currency you prefer to use, I'll figure out a way to fill your order(s) myself. Just be aware that I can only accept certified cheques or money orders. Plus, I'll have to charge an additional 12% to cover Canadian and provincial goods and sales taxes as well as Canada Post rates for shipping.
On Midsummer Day, 4376 Year of the Dome, Gorgon Tethys committed an unspeakable crime right in front of DjinnDomitian, the Heliodromus of Mithras; that same devil possessed the praetor sitting in judgement at Tethys's trial later that year
The major exceptions were their multiple millennia old, pre-Earth pursuers and seemingly inexhaustible tormentors: the Hate-Sedon Utopians of Weir and their Trinondev Warriors Elite. Invariably mortal, but long-lived – barring injuries or illnesses, even the mixed bloods or hybrids lived healthily deep into their second or third centuries – they were of course, like fallen angel devils, extraterrestrial in origin.
To this day, if perhaps not for very much longer, that made them technologically far, far, advanced compared to any of the planet’s indigenous populations. However, they generally stuck to their own Weirdoms, which meant they didn’t play much of a role in Headworld affairs.
Besides, the purebloods living up north in the primary and still foremost Weirdom – that of Cabalarkon, Sedon’s Devic Eye-Land – were inbred imbeciles too self-centred to be religious. If it weren’t for their automatons and indentured Sarpedon underclass there’d likely be no such thing as purebloods or a Warrior Elite anymore.
In further fairness to Domitian, the devil possessing the praetor, one of the strangest, pudding-proof-unworldly traits Utopians had was that their males were black-as-midnight in a starless sky whereas their invariably statuesque females were white-as-daylight on a salt flat. The only trace of blackness the Tethys bastard had about him was, as events evinced, confined to his heart.
On Midsummer's Eve, in the Year of the Dome 4825, Thrygragos Lazareme sent his solid-looking seeming to the Weirdom of Cabalarkon
"I’m also called Thrygragos Everyman for a reason, child. In case you were skipping classes when your parents or teachers got around to me, no matter what their race is whoever sees me thinks I’m their God. I call it my ungodly gift when I’m feeling anarchic, which I usually am. How come you’re not reduced to reverence yourself?"
"Because you’re a man and I’m from Shenon, Witch Isle. We don’t have male deities; at least we don’t in the quarter-queenship I come from. And I didn’t think Utopians had deities period."
"Not deities, Entities, capitalized and plural, a man and a woman, the sun and the moon if you prefer, though it’s nowhere near that straightforward. To them I must look like the Male Entity. I won’t have black skin because neither of the Entities had black skin, and I’ll only have a pair of eyes, but I might be bald and gnarly and have a big beard that keeps me decent since I could be naked.
"To put it unappreciatively, as you may or may not know the idiots of Weir leach off the Sarpedons. That saps their willpower the same as if it was syrup out of a maple tree. It also leaves them simple and, in my experience, simpletons almost always have gods. In a Weirdom empowered by imbeciles, the Sarpedons have just enough sense left to keep their predisposition to idolize anyone, let alone the Dual Entities, to themselves.
"Rather, they had. The cat’s out of the bag now, unless it’s the squirrel. Devils will be queuing up for a shot at their adulation from now on, which might be good news for their continued existence. But, hey, their secret’s safe with me and I won’t tell if you won’t."
On the 21st of Azky, 5456 YD, Jordan 'Q for Quidnunc' Tethys won the 5 Blades Championship of Weir; Kanin City's then High Illuminary, a very pregnant Melina nee Tethys Somata (whose husband Zalman Somata was the prediluvian megalithic metropolis's reigning Master), was scheduled to pin the medal on the winner; instead, DatongHarmonia, the Unity of Panharmonium, the devic half-mother of Mel's deviant twins-to-come, strode forward to do it for her; the medal's prong was poisoned
From the looks of her Zal’s Mel may be something of a regenerative mutant but she couldn’t possibly be a pureblood Utopian. For one thing, she was no inbred imbecile like the majority of Cabalarkon’s purebloods. For another, her gracefully aging parents lived with her in Kanin City at the Masters Palace.
While they could trace their ancestry back much more than a thousand years, to the borderline legendary pair of George Masterson and Ute also born Tethys, they weren’t purebloods either. Indeed, Daddy Tethys was more white-skinned than black-skinned whereas Mommy Tethys was the reverse, exactly the opposite to the usual state of affairs in most Weirdoms, Kanin’s included.
Finally, she wouldn’t have been allowed to marry Zalman if she was a pureblood for the lone qualifying reason that devil-gods – third generational Master Devas – could not possess purebloods. You didn’t need to be a tale-telling court chronicler like Quill Tethys, an Illuminary of Weir like both Zal and Mel, or even a deliberately kept barely educated, howsoever-superior swordsman like Quidnunc Tethys, to know that was the secret behind the roughly 600-year success story of the Mastery of Marutia.
Many of those there couldn’t have been happier. One wasn’t. That one, a ‘dobury’ by the name of Nanapollo, stuck a finger times two into each of the beer-bearers nostrils.
‘Doburies’, sometimes also, mistakenly, known as ‘snot-snakes’, were a lumpy, very much dough-like faerie genus – an anthropomorphic tub of lard bleached white, to supply their most widespread depiction. Polydactyl, they always had too many fingers on, only usually, two hands. Today was one of those unusual days.
There were three of them and only one of him. Consequently, Nanapollo extended three hands on three arms. The third’s elbow, wrist and finger joints hinged appropriately. However, growing out of the top of his chest as the arm did, it was akin to a skinny, grotesque goitre. As monstrous as it appeared, the generative effort didn’t particularly pain him. He nevertheless grimaced as he did so.
The Outer Earthlings who’d been at the Danq did too, bracing themselves psychologically as he latched six fingers securely within their six nostrils. They’d endured this predictability-to-the-point-of-routine ritual more than a few times before, after much the same missions as well, albeit to different canteens elsewhere on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head. The Danq was hardly the only beer hall that brewed fine pilsners. Pure pill-lovers merely judged it the best.
Insertion accomplished unquestionably unenthusiastically, yet both professionally and therefore satisfactorily – Utopian biomages deliberately bred doburies largely for just this function – Nanapollo took a deep breath.
Masters of Cabalarkon rule in the same way captains of Utopian so-called millennial or generational ships did pre-Earth — by conscensus
The trick, on the Whole Earth long unique to Masters of the Weirdom of Cabalarkon, was that they ruled by unspoken consensus. The only real way to tell if they had the support necessary to lord over anyone else living within Sedon’s Devic Eye-Land was if everything essentially extraterrestrial continued to work properly. It didn’t, or stopped while they were ruling, then that was it for their term. Exit stage exile, as the saying went.
Such was the self-centred mental might of Daddy Cabby’s Idiots of Weir, as funnelled through their Masters of same. It did nothing to ensure their longevity, or comparative lack thereof, though.
The Masters' Chain of Office, post-Thrygragon and, indeed, to this day (28 Maruta 5980)
Tethys knew his stuff. An all-red, bloodstone necklace from which dangled a mirrored medallion, triangular in shape and out of which stared a solitary eyeball, with a curved blade underneath it like a cedilla, was the standard chain of office for a Master of Weir.
“Mind you again, Sal’s is just a facsimile. That’s the real thing. So is the Cloak of Many Colours. Master Helena had the original six, anything-but-sacred objects.”
“And we don’t,” Centauri muttered, perhaps deliberately not quite inaudibly.
“Best thank your Almightiest Ubiquity for that. The real Female Three in particular aren’t just anti-devil. They’re positively virulent, anti-anyone. And I should know.”
Word to the wise: you see a Trinondev with his veil drawn you better hope
he’s on your side. He isn’t, you better have some armour-piercing bullets in your gun
and, even then, you better have some similarly equipped buddies blazing away at
the same time from all sorts of angles. The force shields they project, usually in the
form of gargoyles, are that strong.
Utopian purebloods, hybrids and clones in the Dome's 60th Century
AA [Amos Annulis, actually Ringleader] was particularly pleased to see the three Utopians there: Golgotha Nauroz and the Sarpedons, Demios and his wife, Morgianna, the latter of whom was born Nauroz but brought up Somata, after her grandmother and great-grandmother. Golgotha was an eighty year old, nearly seven foot tall string-bean of a man. Actually a clone, his skin was so tight to his skull he earned his nickname: Black Skull-Face.
Although a few inches shorter than Golgotha, and much broader than most men in his homeland, Demios was as night-black as anyone from the Weirdom of Cabalarkon. Golgotha wore an azure robe and similarly coloured turban, veil not drawn, while Demios was in his trademark black: shirt, pants and boots. Both carried eye-staves but, since Demios’s eye-stave manufactured its own eyeorbs to replace the one on its top should it become full, only Golgotha had a shoulder satchel containing extra eyeorbs. Neither was manifesting a gargoyle off the eyeorb atop his eye-stave. Neither was either of them carrying any sort of gun or blade. For Utopians, even Utopians in exile, eye-staves were the only weapon they needed.
In contrast to her husband of thirty years – 30 being the age when slower aging Utopians attained their maturity – Morgianna was as day-white and almost as expressionless as a pureblood Utopian woman. Which she wasn’t, not quite. While father Augustus was pureblood, mother Pandora wasn’t, although her ancestry reputedly included some Utopian. If she was that old, which she wasn’t, Morg could have been the model for Auguste Rodin’s statue of Eve.
Some one hundred and seventy thousand light years earlier, Weirstar exploded. It wiped out the entire planetary system of Weir, possibly the first and, according to descendents of its survivors, greatest civilization in cosmic history. Its cause was artificial but the nearly insane Entity who instigated the star’s destruction had taken care to move the most progressive society in all of Weir’s worlds to a planet in a relatively nearby star system.
That planet became what to this day its inhabitants still occasionally call New Weir.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Throughout the cosmos, courtrooms were much the same as they were on the Earth. The judge sat on a raised dais behind his or hers bench, used a gavel and pronounced sentence. Secretarial staff sat in front of the judge’s bench. Prosecutors, defenders, appellants, advocates, adversaries, all were arrayed facing the judge.
This being a courtroom of a visionary there was no jury nor any audience, save those invited. Above and behind the judge’s dais was another platform, inset into the wall. Traditionally three empty chairs, more so than thrones, were placed upon it. They were for the three de facto deities of New Weir, the Trigregos Sisters: Devaura, Sapiendev, and Demeter.
Immortal and ageless, the Sisters rarely appeared, but the empty chairs remained as a symbol of those who truly ruled New Weir.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
The judge was the nominal Visionary. Black-skinned and tattooed with the symbols of his office – in his case the letter, or chromosome, ‘Y’ – he would sit blindfolded as he listened to the person or persons making their case or cases. He would take in their arguments with both ears, whereupon he would open both eyes, the horns of the Y, and peer into the future, the shaft of the Y.
As with any prognosticator he would see any number of potential futures. His task wasn’t to see ‘the future’ as such; that even Utopians acknowledged wasn’t possible. Rather, he was expected to ‘judge’ the best possible future and thereafter pass sentence on ways appropriate to attain it. His ruling was made public and almost invariably heeded. At least it was until unforeseen circumstances changed such that it must ‘needs be’ changed as well, sometimes by the same visionary, sometimes by other ones.
The judge’s gavel was a pipe. He screwed off the top of the mallet, inserted a raw fibre called ‘haoma’ or ‘soma’, removed the nib at the end of its handle, struck a match, and lit the stuff. He puffed it into smoking cinder and inhaled deeply. Held it for a long while, mentally focusing himself for the task ahead, then exhaled profoundly.
With the courtroom thereby filled with the smell of interesting incense, he adjusted the blindfold covering his two eyes and summoned the appellant.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Almost two hundred millennia earlier, it [the first Mother Machine] had occupied an entire planet, the nerve-centre of the ancient planetary system of Old Weir. It stored every bit of information Utopians managed to collect and was accessible to every Utopian who wanted to consult it.
However, sometime before the destruction of Old Weir, it became at least semi-sentient and an actual mother. Mandroids were its offspring. Dull automatons at first, they eventually became the receptacles for the intelligence, the consciousness, the compos mentis spirit, of dying Utopians.
Then came the Solitary Entity and, with the collaboration of the named-hero, Cabalarkon, a geneticist, he co-created the Devil Sedon, the first devazur. This Sedon killed the Entity, apparently not for the first nor the last time. This Sedon thereupon broke the stranglehold that the Mother Machine had been exerting on Weir System. His actions plunged Old Weir into what its annals still referred to as its Darkest Ages.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
By the time 59/1980 comes along on the Whole Earth, Galactic Weir has many Mother Machines
The Entity, though, had a glimmering of mercy left in its being. By some technological miracle, so the story went, it or he transferred one the outermost planets of Old Weir to a nearby, uninhabited galaxy. That planet became New Weir and that galaxy, over the course of multi-millennia, became New Weir System. Perhaps ten thousand planets, lit by at least two thousand stars, now comprised Galactic Weir.
Each one had a Mother Machine, with satellite systems that shared information with other Mother Machines and their satellites. Having learned their lesson from the first one, multiple generations of subsequent Utopians resolutely kept all of them unintelligent.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Many Zebranid 'Lepers' are actually Utopian purebloods
Hush and Gush hated each other. Their offspring, Sal and Morg, didn’t. Sal did hate her husband, however; mostly because he was far more popular in the Weirdom of Cabalarkon than he, its consensus Master. Consequently as soon as he could he exiled him. Much to his shock, Morg left with her beloved, never to return.
Many Utopians followed the Sarpedons out of Cabalarkon at the time, in 5950, or soon thereafter. Zebranids were their offspring. They actually were visibly striped, hence their designation. That didn’t make them lesser Utopians. Indeed, many were purebloods. However, since they were born outside the Weirdom, they never ate the longevity-sustaining, but foul-tasting slop churned out by Cabalarkon’s Mother Machine.
And that left them black and white rather than, dependent on their sex, either black or white.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Having a white daughter and a black son perhaps not as impossible as it might first seem in terms of non-Utopian twins
Then again, years after they were last seen, Demios turned up with Melina – who, like Morgianna was white as bleached lightning – and announced they were twins. Until then hardly anyone out here realized something like Celestine having a white child by Ubris was both possible and perhaps not all that rare.
(In terms of the twins, it had to be an extreme form of super-fecundation, also called hetero-paternal fecundation. Morgianna, though, as white as she was, had a year older black brother named Saladin, the same as westerners called the Saracen conqueror of Christian Jerusalem in the 12th Century of Current Era. In Amsterdam, beginning in September 1938, they’d attended the inaugural class of the first Academy of Man together.
(Everyone at the time just assumed they had different fathers and neither Sal nor Morg disabused anyone of that notion. Of course again, none of those on Centauri Island after his Enormity’s passing had any idea an originally extraterrestrial race known as the Utopians of Weir shared the planet with top-of-the-food-chain humans.)
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
There's a Serendipity and phantacea entry re this on pHantaBloghere
Demios and Melina now Zeross were members of what was once termed the Sarpedon underclass. Up until comparatively not so long ago in the Weirdom of Cabalarkon, Sedon’s Devic Eye-Land, the Idiots of Weir leached off them. Consequently near drone-like in their slavish embrace of duty, they did most of the hard work that kept Cabalarkon functioning as a Utopia for the majority of its inhabitants.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
NOTE 1: There's an entry on the Sarpedon Underclass specific to the way they lived within the Weirdom of Cabalarkon during "The 1000 Days of Disbelief"here; NOTE 2: As per the above, five hundred years earlier the Sarpedon Underclass seemingly mistook ThrygragosLazareme for the MaleEntity, whom they apparently worship; NOTE 3: Use the Search Engine at the top of the page to find out more about Demios and MelinaSarpedon, who appeared in both the 'Heliodyssey' and 'The Damnation Brigade' web-serials as well as, for Demios, "Goddess Gambit" and, for Mel-Illuminatus, "Decimation Damnation"
A "bird's eye" view of New Weirworld's Utopians in 19/5980
As for his companions – more like observers – gigantic was a gross understatement. Those below him were proportionately at least twenty times his size. The only reason their voices didn’t deafen him was that they must have somehow sonically dampened his immediate environment.
Additionally, men and women might be misnomers. Though humanoid they definitely weren’t human. Besides their skin pigment, the only way he could differentiate their sex was that the whites had more pronounced protuberances in the areas of their breasts. Finally, no more amazingly than anything else he supposed, he appeared to be sitting in a birdcage.
Was effectively the bird.
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
On the equivalent of Monday the 8th of December 1980, the very day the former Beatle John Lennon was shot down in cold blood, Ubi takes Mik Starrus on a tour of New Weirworld. Ubi's providing the commentary:
One section, which seemed much like the hospital he’d been in, took up two levels of the massive structure. There were about a dozen of what had to be sperm tanks since they contained motile nucleated cells with tails swimming around in a semi-clear liquid. What particularly struck him was that the sperm were all blackish.
Nearby, behind a series of glass windows, were slates of honeycombed, flesh-like egg cartons. The ovules inserted within the receptacles were marble white and appeared just as hard. Milling about the room were a large number of black or white technicians with charts and various paraphernalia with which they were conducting tests.
"Everything we need, from birth to death, is contained within this edifice – as it is within most towers in the city. This for example is the Nativity Ward. Here we are bred, our genes selectively knitted together according to the needs of the tower, of the city, of the planet, and of Weir System, in that order."
... from "Helios on the Moon", the third entry in the 'Launch 1980' story cycle
Utopians, after multiple generations of inbreeding, were more like Dystopians;
not much better than low-browed ignoramuses at least in terms of appearance. Even some of the clones oozed bodily fluids in an approaching stereotypical
manner. For
far too many of these unfortunates, Akbar thought perhaps cruelly, what was truly
amazing was not so much they were able to clothe and feed themselves – clothes and
food being mostly artificially replicated, as if they were still on millennial spacecraft,
by means not so much unknown as imperfectly understood.
No, it was that they still recalled how to put one foot in front of the other and
call it walking. He doubted they could spell it, though.
... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of theDamnationBrigade saga
As the Undying Utopian says to what's become of Cyborg Cerebrus beneath the Cabalarkon City's Citadel of the Sleeps in mid-Tantalar 5980:
"It’s not that Sleepers don’t want to come out and play. Or even just have a look around. It’s more like they can’t. You see, Sleepers can be revived with blood. A couple of drops and they’ll
sit up, take notice and even talk to you. A pint or so and they’ll step out of their sepulchres and walk around for a while. But if people don’t come to see us, don’t drip blood in our vats, we just stay under.
“Our situation is somewhat analogous to why folks leave flowers on their loved
ones’ graves. They figure if they don’t show they still care their loved one’s spirit will
become
moribund; have a more difficult time resurrecting. Neglect atrophies
us.
In my case, the Master often visits me. In the case of most of these others, no one
visits them.”
“So they’re more dead than sleeping.”
“More, yes. But not dead. Many of those within these catacombs would revitalize if you sacrificed a baby. Some would get out and run a marathon if you
cut open your arteries and drained your life’s blood into their coffin. But you’d be
dead and they wouldn’t be running
around for long. They’d need more and more
blood. And, if they didn’t get it, they’d die the Immediate Death, not persist in a
semi-permanent state of Imminent Ditto.”
“So you, we, are vampires.”
“Not really. Without immersing ourselves in Cathonic Fluid, we would certainly die. If we got out and tried to subsist on blood, we wouldn’t last very long,
either. Our appetite would be insatiable. No, much better to stay in our tubs and wait for Utopian scientocrats to find the key to immortality.
Or the cure for our
particular disease or physical
affliction.
“And that last has happened ..."
... from "Wilderwitch's Babies", the 2016 continuation of theDamnationBrigade saga
There may be no cure for aphantasia (defined as 'having a blind or absent mind's eye') but there certainly is for aphantacea ('a'='without', like the 'an' in 'anheroic')
Ordering Information for PHANTACEA Mythos comic books, graphic novels, standalone novels, mini-novels and e-books
Downloadable order form for additional PHANTACEAMythos Print Publications
Throughout the cosmos, courtrooms were much the same as they were on the Earth. The judge sat on a raised dais behind his or hers bench, used a gavel and pronounced sentence. Secretarial staff sat in front of the judge’s bench. Prosecutors, defenders, appellants, advocates, adversaries, all were arrayed facing the judge.
