The Graeae
Christmas Card, mailed to C. Brass c/o Oxblood Films,
Yemaya, December 1952
The Ingénue’s Handbook
How Many Miles to Babylon?: Episode 974
And If She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still:
The Case of the Reappearing Raconteur
PART FIVE - THE RED PAGES
The Man of the Hours
Goodbye
The Howler and the Lord of the World
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For Heath, who taught me about light
and my father, who taught me how to get the shot
Chronology
(Some dates are approximate due to known issues with reconciling standard and sub-light transit calendars.)
1858: Conrad Wernyhora and Carlotta Xanthea launch the Tree of Knowledge from the Hawaiian islands, Earth
1872: Violet El-Hashem born in Marrakech, Earth
1876: Hathor Callowmilk Corporation founded
1883: Percival Unck born
1891: Mary Pellam born
1902: Proserpine, an American colony on Pluto, is destroyed. Cause unknown.
August 1908: Mary Pellam’s first significant role (Meet Me on Ganymede, dir. Hester Jimenez-Stern)
24 March 1914: First episode of How Many Miles to Babylon? broadcast throughout the inner Solar System
29 October 1914: Severin born in the Lunar city of Tithonus
6 January 1915: Premiere of The Red Beast of Saturn (dir. Percival Unck)
25 January 1916: Erasmo St. John born on location in Guan Yu, Mars
1917: Enyo, a Russian mining settlement on Mars, is destroyed. Cause unknown.
3 July 1919: Premiere of Hope Has No Master (dir. Percival Unck)
1921: Severin sees Mary Pellam for the first time in The Seduction of Madame Mortimer (dir. Thaddeus Irigaray)
1922: Percival Unck and Mary Pellam wed
1924: The Abduction of Proserpine (dir. Percival Unck) released
3 July 1924: Anchises St. John born in Adonis, Venus
14 January 1930: The Achelois sets sail from Tithonus Harbour for The Miranda Affair (dir. Thaddeus Irigaray) wrap party
1936: Self-Portrait with Saturn (dir. Severin Unck) released
Christmas 1937: Erasmo and Severin become romantically involved
1938: The Famine Queen of Phobos (dir. Severin Unck) released
1939: The Stone in Swaddling Clothes departs for the Outer System
1940: The Clamshell built
1940: Fifth Venusian census, the last to record the village of Adonis
1941: And the Sea Remembered, Suddenly (dir. Severin Unck) released
1943: The Sleeping Peacock (dir. Severin Unck) released
June 1944: Moscow Worlds’ Fair / The Clamshell departs for filming of The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew (dir. Severin Unck)
16 November 1944: The Clamshell lands at White Peony Station for Radiant Car principal photography
21 November 1944: Radiant Car film crew sets out from White Peony Station
1 December 1944: Crew arrives in Adonis, Venus, first contact made
2 December 1944: Auditory phenomena commences
3 December 1944: Severin disappears
1946: Erasmo St. John debriefed by Oxblood Films
10 October 1947: Severin’s funeral in absentia
1951: Severin’s funeral
1959: Production begins on The Deep Blue Devil (dir. Percival Unck)
Spring 1959: Posthumous publication of Erasmo St. John’s book The Sound of a Voice That Is Still
1960: Major rewrite on The Deep Blue Devil, retitled The Man in the Malachite Mask (dir. Percival Unck)
Winter 1961: Major rewrite on The Man in the Malachite Mask, retitled Doctor Callow’s Dream (dir. Percival Unck)
Summer 1961: Major rewrite on Doctor Callow’s Dream, retitled And if She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still (dir. Percival Unck)
December 1961–October 1962: The action of
Locations
The Moon
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
Being unable to retrace our steps in Time, we decided to move forward in Space. Shall we never be able to glide back up the stream of Time, and peep into the old home, and gaze on the old faces? Perhaps when the phonograph and the kinesigraph are perfected, and some future worker has solved the problem of colour photography, our descendants will be able to deceive themselves with something very like it: but it will be but a barren husk, a soulless phantasm and nothing more. “Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!”
—Wordsworth Donisthorpe,
inventor of the kinesigraph camera
Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.
—George Eastman
Talking pictures are like lip rouge on the Venus de Milo.
—Mary Pickford
Come Forward!
Come forward. Come in from the summer heat and the flies. Come in from that assault on all senses, that pummelling of rod and cone and drum and cilia. Come in from the great spotlight of the sun, sweeping across the white sands, making everyone, and therefore no one, a star.
Come inside and meet the prologue.
It is dark inside the prologue. Dark and cool and welcoming. Whatever is to come, the prologue welcomes you absolutely, accepts you unconditionally, receives you graciously, providing all that is necessary to endure the rest. The prologue is patient. She has been told often that she is wholly unnecessary, a growth upon the story that the wise doctor must cut off. She has time and again found the doors to more fashionable establishments closed to her, while tables are set with candles and crystal for a top-hatted in medias res, a pedigreed murder at midnight, a well-heeled musical number. This does not trouble the prologue. She was fashionable when plays still began with sacrifices—and if you catch her in her cups, she will tell you that any show that jumps into the action without a brace of heifers burning centre front still strikes her as a rather tawdry affair. The prologue is the mother of the tale and the governess of the audience. She knows you have to bring them in slow, teach them how to behave. All it takes is a little music; a soft play of lights; a flash of skin; a good, beefy monologue to bring everyone up to speed before you expect them to give a witch’s third tit who’s king of Scotland.