City of Saints and Madmen Part 30

King Squid

Collages (and layout) John Coulthart

Fig. 1. Communication Mark Roberts

The Exchange

All ill.u.s.trations by Eric Schaller

Glossary

Burning Leaves cover (Exhibit 1) Eric Schaller

View of Festival Fireworks (Exhibit 2) Eric Schaller

h.e.l.latose & Bauble cartoon (Exhibit 3) Eric Schaller

Kodfan cartoon (Exhibit 4) Eric Schaller

Morhaim Museum knife (Exhibit 5) Dave La.r.s.en

Rogers Torture Squid cover (Exhibit 6) Mark Roberts

Safe House Letter (Exhibit 7) Jeff VanderMeer, Eric Schaller

s.p.a.cklenest Nights Beyond Night cover (Exhibit 8) Mark Roberts

Lackpole's "Sp.o.r.n Zetbrand 3" (Exhibit 9) Mark Roberts

Deluxe Exchange photograph (Exhibit 10) Eric Schaller

Zamilon gray cap artwork (Exhibit 11) Hawk Alfredson

"Author" photo (author played by Simon Mills) Mark Roberts All layout not attributed to John Coulthart by Garry Nurrish, except for "The Early History of Ambergris," by Robert Wexler Note: Alas, due to generally poor Ambergris photographic technology, some images from the MorhaimMuseum have a quality similar to Victorian-era stills.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Thanks Thanks to two patient, long-suffering individuals: my beautiful monosyllable (and first reader) Ann and designer Garry Nurrish. I have, in so many ways, stolen irreplaceable time from you with this project. My appreciation of the unflappable Juliet Ulman, my editor, and the entire Bantam staff is boundless-thanks for your tireless efforts, and for bringing a new audience to this book. (Thanks to the ever-patient Glen Edelstein in Bantam's design department as well.) Thanks also to Eric Schaller (my long-time Ambergris conspirator, whose work sparked some of these stories), John Coulthart, Scott Eagle, Dave La.r.s.en, Mark Roberts, Wayne Edwards, Stephen Jones, Jeffrey Thomas, Michael Moorc.o.c.k (for your continued generosity and untiring energy), Brian Stableford, Richard & Mardelle Kunz, Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, Bill Babouris, Tamar Yellin, Dawn Andrews, China Mieville, Jeffrey Ford, Neil Williamson, Keith Johnston, Henry Hoegbotton, Tom Winstead, S. P. Somtow, Rhys Hughes, R. M. Berry, Scott Thomas, Robert Wexler, Forrest Aguirre, Andrew Breitenbach, and anyone I have inadvertently left out. Thanks for confirmation of encryption to Ann, Rudi Dornemann, Peggy Hailey, and Jason Erik Lundburg. Thanks to Erin Kennedy and Jason Kennedy. Thanks to my dad, Robert VanderMeer, his wife Laurence, my mom, Penelope Miller, my sister, Elizabeth, and my two brawling brothers, Francois and Nicholas.

Thanks to Richard Peterson and Scott Stratton for being good sports (as well as the leaders of major cults). Finally, thanks to the Squidophiles who provided many of the entries in the King Squid bibliography and whose names, albeit in altered form, have thus become permanently embedded in the firmament of Ambergris. J.V.

Credits "Dradin, In Love" first appeared as a trade paperback from Buzzcity Press, 1996.

"The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris" first appeared as a chapbook from Necropolitan Press, 1999 (including portions of the Ambergris Glossary).

"The Transformation of Martin Lake" first appeared in the anthologyPalace Corbie 8, 1999.

"The Strange Case of X" first appeared in the anthology White of the Moon, 1999.

"The Exchange" first appeared as a booklet from Hoegbotton & Sons. The text commenting on the Exchange is original to this edition.

"Learning to Leave the Flesh" first appeared in the U.K. magazine Dreams from the Strangers' Cafe. It also appeared as a performance art piece from Russia's Projekt Trotsky (Moscow) in 1999.

The versions set out in this collection const.i.tute definitive revisions.

Notes.

"The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris": Some text has been adapted from material written by such ancient chroniclers and leaders as the Byzantines Michael Psellus and Theodore of the Studium; Ruskin; the Romans Eusebius and Lactantius; the Papal diplomat Liuprand; and the Venetian Doge Andrea Gritti. My thanks to David Griffi n for allowing me to steal an idea from an unpublished short story for Tonsure's final journal entry. I am also indebted to John Julius Norwich, a magnificent historian, for his style, which I have perhaps appropriated, lovingly, for this novella.

"The Transformation of Martin Lake": Quotes attributed to "Leonard Venturi" were adapted from commentary by Lioneli Venturi in his book Chagall.

"King Squid": The opening lines of the novella were adapted from the beginning of the Austrian writer Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando's 1920s novel Masque of the Spirits.

"The Ambergris Glossary": Much of the "Calabrian Calendar" entry was conceptualized by Richard Peterson. Peterson also wrote the "Richard Peterson" and "Holy Little Red Flower" entries. Scott Stratton provided invaluable support materials for the "Strattonism" entry.

Contacting the Author

www.vanderworld.redsine.com

www.jeffvandermeer.com

www.ambergris.org

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Jeff VanderMeer (1968 - ?) spent his childhood in Pennsylvania, the FijiIslands, France, and Mongolia. His father Robert, an insect taxidermist, and his mother Penelope, a graveyard performance artist, traveled constantly for a variety of reasons, some nefarious. A 1986 graduate of Ulan Bator University's School of Writing, where he studied under the great fiction mystic Jugderdemidiyn Gurragchaa, VanderMeer drifted through several professions-instigator, landrician, maniacist, English instructor, opera singer's a.s.sistant, and dog care professional-before settling down to publish his first fiction, The Book of Frog (1991). Due to its international success, he was able to take up writing full-time.

After appearances in a number of notable periodicals and a famous "call to arms" aimed at complacent writers of fantastical fiction (rudely received), VanderMeer published his second book, Lyric of the Highway Mariner (1992). Although popular, Lyric failed to capture the public imagination. Little is known of VanderMeer's movements during the next four years, a few random sightings doing nothing to dispel the mystery. A French tourist claimed he saw VanderMeer in Samarkand in July of 1993. On the 10th of August 1994, the American Emba.s.sy in Uzbekhistan received a garbled cell phone call from a man claiming to be VanderMeer, asking for what sounded like an "emergency shipment of paper." A traveling priest saw VanderMeer in Timbuktu in October of 1994 and asked him to autograph his worn copy of The Book of Frog, but the man the priest approached angrily denied being VanderMeer. Further VanderSightings in Cairo and Sydney appear to be erroneous.

In 1996, VanderMeer resurfaced in Tallaha.s.see, Florida, recently married, sporting dual degrees in fungi and cephalopod studies from FloridaStateUniversity. When questioned by an interviewer from Modern Fantasy Studies, VanderMeer refused to explain his absence, but indicated that new fictions would be forthcoming. Indeed, Dradin, In Love and a story collection, The Book of Lost Places, appeared in that very year.

Throughout 199798, VanderMeer abandoned writing for a career in the field of cephalopod studies. His controversial findings on the Florida Freshwater Squid were published in the journal Mollusca in 1998 and, coupled with a paper ent.i.tled "The Empirical Evidence for the Squid-Fungi Connection," firmly entrenched him on the "exciting lunatic fringe" of both disciplines, as reported in an article published by Scientific American.

However, bored by science and thwarted in an attempt to join the professional racquetball circuit by an injury suffered while swerving to avoid squashing a bullfrog, VanderMeer returned to writing for good. According to his wife, Ann, VanderMeer wrote for 18 or 19 hours a day from January 1999 until July 2004. The results of this intense flurry of writing activity are, of course, now widely known: six novels, publication to be staggered every three months as part of an extended PR campaign by Bantam's new U.S. imprint Hoegbotton & Sons, the first novel published in July 2005 to acclaim and respectable sales. A trip to New York City to meet with his agent Howard Morhaim culminated in a very public breakfast at Martha's Vineyard with Paul Auster, John Irving, and a vacationing Martin Amis. A series of readings in major cities also attracted favorable media attention, a photograph of VanderMeer and his wife appearing in Entertainment Weekly.

However, in late January 2006, on the eve of the publication of this very edition, VanderMeer disappeared from his house. He left no note. He did not confide in his wife. The only clue: the galleys of the four main novellas included in this collection, found on his work desk, cut into sentence-sized sections and profoundly rearranged-pieces of "Transformation" stuck together with "Strange Case," pages from "Dradin" inserted into "The Early History." The purpose of these juxtapositions remains a mystery, although his wife believes that VanderMeer was attempting to communicate in some new and arcane manner. Regardless, VanderMeer remained missing. The only evidence of any kind as to his whereabouts is the photo accompanying this bio note, taken by the owner of a bookstore in Prague. Although the owner claims the photograph is of VanderMeer, experts who have examined it cannot conclusively identify the silhouette as the author in question. Bantam Books would appreciate receiving any information about VanderMeer's whereabouts, although no cash reward is being offered.

Frederick Madnok told me once that the idea first occurred to Louis Verden during his collaboration with Nicholas Sporlender on The Exchange . Whether Verden's idea was sparked by violent disagreement or by the nature of the story, Madnok could not tell me . . .

. . . Sporlender followed the teachings of Richard Peterson, the Fighting Philosopher. Verden had always been a rabid Strattonist-and strategist, as it turned out. At least, according to Madnok, who seems a reliable sort.

Madnok confirms that copyright pages always brought out the worst in Verden. At one party, a drunken Verden (never a pleasant sight) cursed the day he had been brought into the world "a Verden, rather than, say, an Aardvark." He was forever fated to have his name come second to Sporlender's, and for admirers of their collaborations to flock to Sporlender.

This especially rankled because Verden would make corrections to the text--additions and enhancements--while Sporlender often felt that his responsibility ended after he had turned in the final typed ma.n.u.script and ill.u.s.tration instructions. As for the idea behind The Exchange , Sporlender never commented, except to say in one interview, "It's all there, for those who read it correctly."