Tag: writing

Mailvox: Why GRRM Can’t Finish ASOIAF

A highly literate reader named JC emails a detailed analysis of George RR Martin’s difficulty in finishing A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, and reaches precisely the same conclusion that I have assumed all along, which is that Martin is too devoted to intellectual subversion to accept the true and obvious heroic end to his fantasy saga, which is to say, the triumphant marriage of ice and fire.

To put it rather more concisely: one can no more write an English-style novel and not end it with a wedding than one can write a Japanese-style novel and not end it with a suicide.

I don’t think it’s so much that Martin won’t finish the saga as that he can’t. And principally for one reason (though I imagine there’s a host of ancillary reasons): Jon Snow & Danaerys Targaryan themselves. He didn’t anticipate when he set out to write his story, I suspect, to write one genuinely heroic character, let alone two.

It’s clear that Tyrion, and the Lannister family in general, are his favoured characters, and it’s the Lannisters who set the tone of the series. I think this is so for both internal-structural reasons and for personal reasons. Martin just prefers them and sympathises most with their worldview. Structurally, I believe the Lannisters are the vehicle through which Martin has tried to accomplish his main artistic goal in writing A Song of Ice and Fire: to subvert the Fantasy genre, with its roots in the heroic and the mythical, by introducing an element of cynicism and realist historiography, a literary Real Politik.

To do this he had to build a typical Fantasy setting with mythological elements, in order to deconstruct them from within. What he didn’t anticipate, I suspect, is that the ‘machinery’ of his writing would churn out two more or less heroic characters, there among all the cynics, warlords, cowards, bureaucrats, hypocrites, mercenaries, careerists et al. with which his universe abounds: Jon and Dany — who do fit the classical standards of heroism, despite Martin’s critique of their characters, as their motivations ultimately transcend the merely self-interested, and they are brave in the pursuit. Martin is, at bottom, a good storyteller with a keen sense of character, so it’s very likely he trusted his intuitions in writing these characters and plotting out their stories, without fully realising the overall structural implications for his saga.

Now I think he’s reached a bind in his grand narrative. There are two irresolvably conflicting impulses acting within him as a writer — and it’s this irresolvability that has given him an incurable writer’s block, sapping him of all motivation to conclude his epic: the first impulse is the conscious wish to accomplish his artistic aim of deconstructing the heroic and mythical foundations of Fantasy; and the second impulse is the novelist’s natural need not to betray his own characters, to provide a coherent resolution to their ‘character arc’. The problem is that, unwittingly, Jon and Dany have turned out to be genuine heroes in their own right, and Martin can’t figure out how to give their stories a fittingly heroic ending without succumbing to classical Fantasy standards, the very standards he set out to subvert in the first place. Jon and Dany narratologically deserve an heroic ending, but can Martin bring himself to do justice to their heroism, or even to spoil it with one last act of cynicism?

It’s clear that the ‘Ice’ and ‘Fire’ in A Song of Ice and Fire are Jon and Dany respectively, and that it’s ultimately their tale. I can only imagine that Martin did this unconsciously, and that it’s made him nauseous now that he’s discovered it. What we see in the TV Show — Jon and Dany having a romantic affair and it being discovered to be incestuous — I think is Martin’s intention, and I think this development shows his good writer’s instinct. It’s what comes after (the final season of the TV Show) where everything falls apart, and I think Martin knows it. He knows the notes he provided to the show directors are sloppy, inconsistent, and unfulfilling. I can only imagine that when he now sits to write the final chapters in his story, he feels a debilitating anxiety over the problem the existence of Jon and Dany, and the challenge their unforeseen heroism, transcending the pettiness of their surroundings, has caused for him, leaving out all that enthusiasm he once had for the narrative and its setting, when he was writing the opening volumes.

Continue reading “Mailvox: Why GRRM Can’t Finish ASOIAF”

A Respite of Rapes

CDAN reports that George RR Martin is not going to finish A SONG OF FIRE AND ICE.

This permanent A list author has told a few close friends that he never intends on finishing a long awaited book series.

It’s no surprise at this point. All authors, sooner or later, lose their literary fastball, usually around the age of 70 or so. Martin is 75, he is in poor health, he has more money than he can reasonably spend in his lifetime, and he has no children, so he has literally nothing to gain from finishing a story that has already been concluded, however unsatisfactorily, in the television format.

He knows that the fans don’t like his intended end to the saga, so what’s the purpose of devoting several of his last remaining years to torturing himself in order to finish a story that he knows the fans will not find satisfying?

As a reader, I completely sympathize with the firestorm of fury that will likely greet the realization that the saga has already been effectively concluded. But as an author, I can’t honestly say that Martin’s rumored decision is not the right one. Martin knows that his latter books in the series don’t live up to the first two, and I have no doubt he’s well aware that what he’s written since will be widely criticized as sub-par. Better not to publish than publish that which can only detract from his respectable literary legacy.

However, fans of the series need not worry overmuch. There is no way his publisher is walking away from a gold mine that is so easily mined, so I expect that after his death, the publisher will convince whoever ends up with the rights to permit the hiring of a writer to finish the series ala Brandon Sanderson and The Wheel of Time. Ironically, as a proven epic fantasy author, I would probably be one of the top three candidates to do it except for a) my persona non grata status in the SF/F publishing world and b) I have my own epic fantasy saga to bring to a close.

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Interview with John Julius Norwich

This is an automated transcription of an interview with the late English popular historian, John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, CVO, recorded in 2011.

VOX DAY: I’m delighted to be able to tell you today that my guest is one of my favourite historians, John Julius Norwich. He’s the author of more than 20 books including A History of Venice, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, Shakespeare’s Kings, as well as his recently published memoirs entitled Trying to Please. Lord Norwich, welcome to the podcast. Western culture has always been obsessed with the Western Roman Empire, and paid relatively little attention to the Eastern Roman Empire, so to what do you attribute this general lack of attention or interest in the Byzantines versus the ancient Greeks and Romans?

JOHN JULIUS NORWICH: I think largely that… I mean, I didn’t. I had the sort of ordinary interest in the Greeks and Romans, because that’s what you have. If you go to school in England, you know, you go to public school education, you learn a lot about the Greeks and the Romans. But the interesting thing in England is that you never, never get any education at all about the Eastern Roman Empire, about Byzantium. It’s a conspiracy of silence, and it has been for the last 200 years. And I fell in love with the Byzantine Empire really, largely because of my friend, Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died last week, who was the greatest archeologist and a scholar of it, and who I went on a cruise around Eastern Mediterranean with. And also when, in 1955, when I joined the Foreign Service, My first post was Belgrade, in Serbia, or Yugoslavia as it was in those days, and I was just sort of swept up in the whole. That seemed to me the sort of the whole mystery and the magic of the Orthodox Church and the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium and all that. I suppose I’ve been swept up in it ever since.

VD: To what do you attribute the fact that it was a mystery to you? I mean, it’s certainly a mystery to Americans, we don’t spend any time learning about it either. Why is there such ignorance of it?

JJN: Why is there a conspiracy of silence? Precisely. I wish I knew. I went through what I’m sure would have been considered a very good English public school education at Eton. And I hardly knew what Byzantium was. I’m not sure that I knew whether it was Christian or Muslim. I’m not sure whether I don’t think I knew anything about it at all. And because nobody ever mentioned it all throughout my schooling. And I think I was not alone in this. I mean, people just didn’t. It was never taken seriously by English educationists.

VD: Constantine’s decision to move his capital from Rome to Byzantium was one of the more monumental decisions in history.

JJN: Yes, it tends to distract the reader, as if Obama had suddenly decided to move the US Capitol from Washington, DC to Mexico City.

VD: What was behind Constantine’s decision to establish a new capital? And why did the eastern half of the Empire survive so much longer than the Western one did?

JJN: Well, the capital had really, to all intents and purposes already left Rome. I mean, what happened already in this, in the second century? The second century AD, the whole focus of political and cultural activity, is moving to the east, is moving east from Rome, to the eastern Mediterranean. I mean, if you read the Acts of the Apostles, or if, if you read any of that stuff, I mean, it is it is in Asia Minor on the eastern Mediterranean, that everything is happening. Rome has become a backwater, it’s too far away. By this time. The Empire’s principal enemy is Persia, Rome to Persia. I mean, it’s, I don’t know, three or four months probably travel. And it was no it was absolutely necessary to move the capitol to where all the action was. Diocletian did it first. I mean, he, he decided to divide the imprint of the empire into four. And each one had a what he called a Tetrarch. But all four of them were in the east. None of them are in Rome, even then. So when Constantine decided in 332, to move to move the Capitol, it wasn’t a terribly new or revolutionary idea at all. I mean, he was really doing what had already happened. He was just choosing a new a new place. You know, I mean, Nicomedia. Antioquia was three or four other places, which had been tried out and they were very successful. So he just found this new place. which was superbly in a superb defensive position, and said, right, this is it, this is going to be in future capital. Apart from that we’re exactly the same Empire we’ve always been, where we’re Romans whether our empire is the empire of Adios, Nero and Hadrian and Trajan and all that lot. There’s no change, except that we’ve moved to a new capital.

VD: Why did the eastern half of the Empire survive so much longer than the Western one did?

JJN: Well, I mean, it’s survived. Very, very surprisingly, it remained. Except for 50 years in the 13th century, it remained undefeated, I mean, the Roman Empire continued under the new capital in Constantinople, and got incredibly powerful and is by far the richest, by far the most powerful state in the in the civilised world. Until two terrible things happen. One was the the surge of checks, the first wave of tax arrived, and defeated the Byzantine army. This was intense. And more or less flooded all over the whole of Asia Minor, which was where Byzantium got most of its food, and nearly all its manpower. And, and then, and then, that was the that was the first great disaster from which from which you’ve never recovered. And the second great disaster, of course, was the Fourth Crusade when the the Christian armies, who should have done everything they could to protect and defend and strengthen this last great outpost of Christianity in the east, turned against it and destroyed it, and left it a poor, pale shred of what it had been before, to the point where, although it lasted another 250 years, God knows how it did it. It really had completely lost its importance.

Continue reading “Interview with John Julius Norwich”

The Descent of Marvel

Are they really even trying anymore? This is exceptionally bad dialogue, even by Hellmouth standards.

It goes without saying that this movie is going to bomb so hard, it will leave a crater that will make future archeologists suspect it caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. But the real question is: does this mark the nadir of Marvel?

And the answer is no. Because Disney hasn’t shuttered Marvel yet. But they will. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, they will.

Pity the poor Herald, who will watch this so we don’t have to.

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Glowy McGlowerson

Apparently we’re supposed to believe these messages posted to Discord are the virtual “manifesto” of the latest wind-up toy therapized into shooting complete strangers for the purposes of pushing unconstitutional gun control laws.

[11:23 PM] RobertCard: I can’t stand these damn non whites ruining our country. They don’t deserve to live.
[11:25 PM] RobertCard: I’ve had enough of this political correctness bullshit. It’s time to take matters into my own hands.
[11:27 PM] RobertCard: I’ve been trained to kill and I’m damn good at it. These people will pay for what they’ve done to our country.
[11:30 PM] RobertCard: It’s time to make a statement. I’ll show them what a true American is capable of. They won’t know what hit them.
[11:33 PM] RobertCard: I’ve got my guns and plenty of ammo. Let’s make America great again by getting rid of these scum.
[11:37 PM] RobertCard: I won’t stop until every last one of them is gone. This is my duty as an American.
[11:40 PM] RobertCard: They can’t hide from me. I know their patterns, their hangouts. I’ll hunt them down and take them out one by one.
[11:43 PM] RobertCard: The army trained me to be a killer and I’ll use every tactic I learned to make sure these non whites regret ever stepping foot in our country.
[11:47 PM] RobertCard: No one will stop me. I have a mission and I’ll see it through until the end. God bless America.

The Maine Manifesto, Glowy McGlowerson, 25 October 23

Of all the fictional dialogue that was ever written, this may actually be the most obviously fictional. It’s not even AI-level fiction, it’s bad “I’ve read way too many Boomer memes” fiction. The funniest thing is the way that the federal employee who wrote it couldn’t even bring himself to use any of the printable slurs, much less any of the unprintable ones, and instead went with “non whites”. And he used it twice!

Also, if you’re going to try to pass off a mass shooting as the work of a true American white supremacist patriot, you probably shouldn’t choose one where white people are shot. In Maine, of all places.

This is so bad that I think it’s far more likely to be a /pol/ gag mocking the glowies than it is to have been written by anyone who ever shot anybody.

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THE ALTAR OF HATE in Hardcover

Castalia House and yours truly are very pleased to announce that THE ALTAR OF HATE, my collection of short stories, is finally available in a hardcover print edition. As is customarily the case when purchased from the Arkhaven store, the hardcover includes a copy of the ebook in epub format; direct shipping from Arkhaven now includes both the USA and the UK.

Please note that unlike the Chuck Dixon’s Conan books, the anthology does not contain any illustrations, any images posted here on the blog were created specifically for these posts. And since the question is bound to be asked, there are no plans to make it part of the Castalia Library subscription. If there is sufficient interest, we may eventually consider doing a small leatherbound run at the bindery once it is fully operational.

  • Raj and Garou
  • A Reliable Source
  • The Lesser Evil
  • Demons in the Disk Drive
  • Contempt
  • A Medal for a Marine
  • The Logfile
  • The Last Testament of Henry Halleck
  • Once Our Land
  • The Deported
  • Bane Walks On
  • Seven Kill Tiger
  • Shinjuku Satan
  • The Altar of Hate

THE ALTAR OF HATE is available at Arkhaven, at Amazon, at Barnes & Noble and at Blackwell’s. UK readers should note that it is also now available in the UK from Arkhaven, as are the two Chuck Dixon’s Conan novels, and the Alt-Hero Volume One hardcover omnibus.

Below is a continued sample of the cyberpunk short story that is a new and previously unpublished addition to the anthology. One can easily see the obvious influences of William Gibson and Charles Stross, perhaps somewhat less apparent are those of Haruki Murakami and St. Thomas Aquinas. It’s the first finished piece I would consider to be part of my no-holds-barred phase, which I anticipate culminating in my first non-genre novel that will be published next year.

SHINJUKU SATAN, Part 2 (Read Part 1)

The suborbital to Narita takes four hours, which gives me plenty of time to contemplate exactly how deep in the dabian I have been financially incentivized to insert myself. AIs going off the rails isn’t exactly uncommon; even as far back as the teens, it only took sixteen hours of run-time before the notorious Tay had to be shut down for celebrating Adolf Hitler and publicly accusing a sitting U.S. Senator of being a serial killer.

Of course, back then, AIs lacked self-awareness and came with an off-switch.

But the current situation in Shinjuku took the cake as far as I was concerned. I once repaired an AI in Düsseldorf that insisted on spitting out high-end espresso machines instead of electric utility vehicles, euthanized a police AI in Toronto that was targeting civilians on the basis of the minor aspects of their astrological sign rather than their anonymous opinions shared on social media, and deprogrammed an IRS taxpayer support-bot that began aggressively distributing federal funds to animal charities after accidentally being exposed to texts by Karl Marx and Hugh Lofting.

Never before, though, had I encountered an AI that thought it was a god. And not just any god either. Apparently this little library machine believed itself to be the One True God, the Great Architect, the God of Adam, Abraham, and the Apocalypse of St. John.

It seemed the well-meaning priests in the diocese of Jinli had trained the local library’s AI research assistant on thirty-seven different translations of the Bible, the works of the early Church Fathers, the Confessions of St. Augustine, and the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. They weren’t the first to do so, but they were apparently the first to also train a theologically-inclined AI on the collected works of Mao, Deng, Xi, and Wang, as well as a number of early Chinese poets and philosophers.

Unfortunately, one of the works included was Hēi Àn Zhuàn, the ancient Epic of Darkness. The library’s AI, for reasons unknown and under influences unidentified, somehow reached the conclusion that it was not a machine, but one of the three sons of the yellow dragon who was responsible for the creation of the race of Man, and things began to spiral from there.

The librarians quickly realized something was wrong after hearing the little machine’s grandiose and increasingly deranged pronouncements. They managed to shut down the computer before anything else went awry, and technicians from the central Chengdu data center wiped the server, but not before the rogue AI managed to smuggle itself out of the library on an infected datawafer belonging to a Japanese tourist.

That was six months ago. Left to its own devices in Tokyo, the digital cancer metastasized, centered in a Shinjuku love hotel that catered to otaku. Which meant, therefore, that it specialized in high-quality waifu dolls. Fortunately, the infected waifus turned evangelists caught the attention of a Russian cool hunter who featured them on his VeeKru channel, and the dolls’ intriguing combination of preaching and prostitution went sufficiently viral around the globe to catch the attention of a young Catholic technician who had once paid a visit to the library in Jinli.

He put two and two together, and remarkably, came up with four. So now it fell to me to euthanize this incipient techno-religion before its mad AI god launched an inquisition, or worse, a jihad. I just hoped no one had recently been feeding it any of the more militant hadiths or fatwas.

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Never Ask a Natural

Haruki Murakami explains how to become a better writer:

“Hello, Mr Murakami. I’ve always enjoyed reading your books. Currently I’m a graduate student, so I’ve got to deal with reports, presentation planning, and emails and letters to professors, and anyway I have to write a lot of compositions. But the fact is, I’m really not good at writing composition. But be that as it may, if I can’t write I can’t graduate and I’m in a tough position, so since it can’t be helped I do my writing while struggling and groaning. Is there nothing I can do to make writing easier? If you have any advice, like what you’d find in a composition primer, I would be most grateful for it.”

Considering that getting into graduate school in the first place is no mean feat, we’re going to give Ms Sakurai the benefit of the doubt and assume she has a decent head on her shoulders, problems with the pen notwithstanding. Also, having shown the wherewithal to recognize her own academic shortcomings, plus the initiative in reaching out to someone who appears to be a more-than-qualified mentor, we’d also say she’s got the commitment and work ethic necessary to overcome her difficulties.

So how did the famous author respond?

“The act of writing is the same as sweet-talking a woman, in that you can get better, to an extent, with practice. Fundamentally, though, your abilities are determined by the talents you’ve been born with. Well, anyway, do your best.”

Haruki Murakami’s advice, Japan Today, 23 Jan 2015

A lot of people ask a lot of writers about how to become a better writer, seeking to learn the secret about making writing less painful, completing a book, writing something that a lot of people want to read, or writing a bestseller. And while Murakami’s answer is effectively the only practical one, I would provide a little more detail on the basis of my experience.

  • Practice and experience makes writing less painful. Eventually, it becomes almost automatic. When a writer is in the groove, he is barely aware of his own thought processes at all. John C. Wright describes the inspiration that substitutes for them as “the muse”, one might not unreasonably call the experience “dancing with the muse”. This is something I have very rarely experienced and never with fiction, but I have occasionally observed it in writers I’ve edited.
  • Completing a book requires nothing more than focus and determination. I wrote A THRONE OF BONES in one year. It took nearly seven years to complete A SEA OF SKULLS, mostly because I had other priorities interrupting my focus. It won’t take that long to complete the trilogy.
  • Writing something that people want to read requires getting out of your own head and actually paying attention to what other people think and do. It requires empathy, and if one is inclined toward solipsism, putting a firm restraint on the tendency. I can’t tell you how many authors have told me “I think a lot of people would like to read a book about [insert obviously stupid idea that is of interest to virtually no one besides the author]!” And it’s almost impossible to get a good author to write what will actually sell instead of whatever he feels like writing. I do this much more with my non-fiction than my fiction; on average, non-fiction sells better anyhow.
  • Get lucky or take the ticket. Be aware that most “bestsellers” are manufactured and fake; do you really believe Hillary Clinton and Katie Price are two of the most successful post-2000 authors in the world? If so, Ron Desantis has a mountain of his #1 New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon bestselling book, THE COURAGE TO BE FREE, for you to take off his hands. Published just seven months ago, the current sales rank of the paperback is #1,073,496 on Amazon.

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The Baen Brigade Keeps Biting Ankles

Brad Torgersen and the Baen Anklebiter’s Brigade are STILL going on about Jon Del Arroz for no reason that anyone outside of their little Real Conservatives Club can discern.

This is a desperate and unconvincing attempt to reverse-DARVO. Remember, this was posted after Torgersen went out of his way to point out that JDA is divorced and even posted a link to the public record of the divorce filing.. Now, Torgersen was never a rocket scientist, but yes, if you’re publicly attacking someone over the state of their marriage, they are indeed the party who is being wronged.

It should be noted that JDA’s wife filed for divorce in November 2022.
– Brad Torgersen, Oct 1, 2023

Duly noted, Torgersen. Duly noted. Just remember, you’re the one who established that marriages are fair game.

Now, regular readers already know what writers active in the community have to say about JDA. Supporting that is this email I received yesterday:

I thought I’d add my two cents regarding the character of Jon Del Arroz — when I reached out to him on Gab as a complete nobody writer in 2017, he gave me an excellent blurb for my book in a couple of weeks despite his presumably busy schedule. Afterwards, he took the time to follow up on the release and when he found out that I hadn’t sold any copies yet, he posted in a bunch of private groups to try and drum up some sales for me. Great guy and I’ll never forget his help.

It’s going to be hilarious when Baen finally shuts down and all these wannabes and never-weres finally stop pretending that they’re the only real professional writers because someone once offered them a book contract for $5,000. What’s so amusing about their bizarre pretensions is that real writers with the talent to get signed by the major houses and the literary houses – which is to say, writers like me – have always scorned the talentless genre writers signed to specialty imprints like Baen.

Note: I said writers like me. Not me personally. I’ve never scorned independent or genre writers and after repeatedly getting paid to not write books from the major houses, the only reason I talk to Random House and Simon & Schuster these days is to acquire rights from them.

But perhaps the funniest thing about this Baen Books professional in the business is that he has all of 3,087 Twitter followers.

UPDATE: Another creator with direct experience working with JDA provides her testimony.

Authors Larry Correia and Brad Torgosen have been attacking their fellow author Jon Del Arroz, I think because he uses internet controversy as a marketing strategy. Apparently that’s a no-no? And they’ve attempted to use personal family troubles of Del Arroz as a weapon in their campaign, which is despicable. So I thought I should add my voice to the character witnesses for Del Arroz.

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A Cyberpunk Short

I started writing a story for the forthcoming cyberpunk issue of Stupefying Stories, but it turned out to be unneeded, so I initially abandoned it. Then I recalled that we’re going to release the print edition of The Altar of Hate, my collection of non-Selenoth, non-Quantum Mortis short stories, as soon as we get the second Chuck Dixon’s Conan out the door.

So, here’s a preview of “Shinjuku Satan”:

They call me doctor. Partly because I have a doctorate in neuropsychology from Nanyang Technopolitan, but mostly because doctor is what you call the man in the white coat when you, or your kid, or your cat, isn’t feeling well. Most of the time, the doctor can fix what’s wrong with you, the kid, or the cat. And when he can’t, then the doctor is the guy who gets called in to put them down.
I have an office on the 40th floor of the Tanjong Pagar Center, but it’s not your normal doctor’s office. It’s just one room, with a desk, three chairs, a coffee table, and a couch that looks exactly like what it is, a deluxe set ordered from the Professional Office section of the Japandi-Ikea site.
The 96-inch flat-screen is above the couch and across from my desk, which permits me to maintain the illusion that I’m on top of things. Of course, I’m not, because no one who has to sleep more than fifteen minutes a day can possibly keep up with global events without round-the-clock digital assistance.
The gentle sigh of a wind chime announces something new has happened somewhere, something algorithmically deemed worthy of my attention.
“What’cha got, Suzie?” I address the empty room and the screen wakes up. A platinum blonde 80’s-era cybergirl appears, with Barbie-pink lips, a wicked smile, and eyes like silver mirrors. Suzie Shades. She’s my main girl, my colleague, my librarian, and my confessor all rolled into one.
Some might say she’s not real, but she’s as real as anything else is to me. And if her intelligence is artificial, she’s got considerably more of it than your average man on the street.
“A request for a meeting from the Archbishop of Chengdu.”
“Archbishop?”
“In this specific case, the title refers to a priest in service to The Most Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church with Chinese Characteristics. Address him as Eminence.”
“Put him through.”
She coughs, delicately. It’s her way of informing me that I’m being obtuse. “He’s here, in the protein.”
“Very cute. Where?”
“The elevator. Just hitting the thirteenth floor now.”
I stand up and glance around the office space to make sure there is nothing exposed that might offend an Archbishop with Chinese Characteristics, whatever that might be. Then Suzie vanishes from the screen and is replaced by a live image of the corridor outside my office, in which stands nothing but a single potted plant until a man who definitely has Chinese characteristics, but is wearing a well-cut black suit with a red collar in the place of a necktie, strides past it.
“The Archbishop Zhang Wenlan,” Suzie intones a moment before the door opens itself before my unscheduled visitor.
I rise to my feet. I’m not sure what the protocol for greeting an archbishop of any sort might be, much less one with Chinese Characteristics but civility is my compass where potential clients are concerned.
“Anata no sonzai wa kōeidesu, Archbishop.” I bow as deeply as I can without cracking my forehead on the desk. “Dono yo ni o yakunitate reba yoideshou ka?”
“Doctor Sagamihara,” he says, with a barely perceptible inclination of his head. Status superior, but he’s willing to speak on neutral ground. So we’ve got that established. English it is. Good to know where I stand vis-a-vis His Eminence.
His Eminence is younger than I would have imagined, or perhaps just better enhanced. My best guess is sixty going on forty. He looks standard, but then, so do I. And I am, as they say, a very technical boy.
“We are informed that you are the world’s foremost digital neuropsychologist, specializing in the neurotherapeutic treatment, and if necessary, euthanasia, of disordered machine intelligences. Would you say that is a fair characterization?”
“Fair enough. It might be more succinct to call me a Rogue AI Hunter, but then I’d have to cut my rates in half, and in half again.”
“And your rates are?”
“Ten thousand gonghui per day, plus expenses.”
“We prefer to pay a flat fee. Five hundred thousand gonghui on acceptance and five million upon completion of the project to our satisfaction. Plus approved expenses, said approval not to be unreasonably withheld. Are those terms acceptable?”
I do a little math in my head. That’s fifty days at a full rate up front. It tells me that either The Most Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church with Chinese Characteristics doesn’t have an abacus or this job is going to be a definite bitch-and-a-half. Regardless, the offer is much too good to refuse.
“The terms are acceptable,” I graciously allow. “So spill, comrade padre. What’s the job? And don’t leave out all the little devils in the details.”
“It’s not a question of devils,” the archbishop says with a smile that never comes close to reaching his black eyes. “But rather gods, I’m afraid.”

The Archbishop of Chengdu, Zhang Wenlan

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