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Author: M Harold Page

Scottish-based swordsman and writer. I teach German Longsword for Edinburgh's Dawn Duellist Society, and currently write historical adventure franchise novels for a living. If you read my writing, you'll spot that Harold Lamb is a big influence. You might also guess that I listen to a lot of Viking Metal, especially Tyr and Turisas.
Truth in Historical Fiction

Truth in Historical Fiction

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Writerly boots on the ground in 12th century France (this illustration is a test, by the way).

Anet, Northern France, AD 1176
The summer breeze rustled the oaks where the tournament company of King Henry the Younger waited in ambush. It carried with it the sound of hooves, jingling harness and men chatting.
Sir William Marshal suppressed a grin. “Here they come, messers.” (*)

I was frankly terrified when I first put my writerly boots on the ground in 12th century France and perched on the shoulder of a 30-something William the Marshal as he lay in ambush with his lord, the bratty Henry the Younger.

In a sense, everything in my life had prepared me for this moment. I’d always been obsessed by Medieval History, spent my childhood dragging family around castles, read Malory at 11, Froissart at 12, and could recite the deeds of the Marshal when I was younger than that. I studied the subject to postgraduate level. I even have a sword scar and can teach you how to use a longsword.

Despite all this, writing that first line was terrifying.

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Shaka When the Walls Fell: The Brunnen-G When They Sang “Yo-Way-Yo”

Shaka When the Walls Fell: The Brunnen-G When They Sang “Yo-Way-Yo”

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One episode in a really big fat franchise, but it’s the one people meme.
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There’s something about the way those lines resonate. (click for source)

I’m not a Trekkie so I had to google it. You know? That meme: “Shaka When the Walls Fell.”

Turns out it comes from a really clever Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where the universal translator for once doesn’t work because the aliens talk crap all the time in allusions (link).

So, if you are a Tamarian, you don’t say, “I am feeling depressed because my girlfriend dumped me.” Instead, you say, “Rastar when she wandered alone and rejected.”

Cute idea that makes a good point: Literal — word for word — translations aren’t always very useful. For example, in medieval King Arthur stories you might find people’s kidneys yearning for each other. A better translation might be “heart.”

(It rather breaks down when you imagine the day-to-day. How does one say, “Mummy, can I have a drink of water?” Or, “Please adjust the size by 5mm.” And what did the people of Shaka say when the walls came down? But then, I am not a Trekkie.)

This is just one episode in a really big fat franchise, but it’s the one people make memes of, and I don’t think it’s because of the interesting angle on xeno-linguistics. Nor do I think it’s about the humor. There’s something about the way those lines resonate.

One line from one episode out of nearly 200. It doesn’t describe onscreen drama; it all happened offscreen long ago. Nor does it relate to the serial characters or their culture, the Federation.

So, though it’s a script-writing win, it also arguably points to a series-building fail. The aliens of the week are more resonant than the entire crew and their story.

Now, who remembers Lexx?

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The Limits of Wargaming #2: Betrayals, Surprises and Strategic Advantage

The Limits of Wargaming #2: Betrayals, Surprises and Strategic Advantage

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(Click to buy print)
The King’s forces have fortified themselves into a bend in the river. (Click to buy print)

10th July 1460, near Northampton, England. Battle of Northampton. It’s the Wars of the Roses. King Henry VI — well His Grace’s advisers, anyway — the Lancastrians, if you must — versus the Yorkists led in this case by the Earl of Warwick .

The King’s forces have fortified themselves into a bend in the river.

They’ve got a ditch, wooden stakes, perhaps carts, certainly cannon.  They’re gearing up for a rerun of the Battle of Castillon (an English defeat so utterly embarrassing that the swords of fallen English men-at-arms are a scholarly category in their own right!)

Warwick’s men advance into a hail of armour-piercing arrows, cannon balls and crossbow bolts. It looks as if he’s going to try to grind through the defences — the battle will be down to killing power and morale.

Except it doesn’t turn out that way.

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The Limits of Wargaming #1: Morale, Untried Doctrine and Friction

The Limits of Wargaming #1: Morale, Untried Doctrine and Friction

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A lot of pre-modern battles do just come down to morale.

One warm French afternoon in AD 1176, William the Marshal and the Young King found themselves without their comrades on the main street of the little village of Anet. At the other end stood a local knight, intent on capturing them, plus infantry archers and spearmen.

“What shall we do?” asked the Young King (Henry, heir to the throne of England, who I always imagined played by Rick Mayall at his brattiest).

“Charge them by God!” said the Marshal (I tend to cast Russel Crowe).

And so they did.

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Lovecraft’s Dreamlands Via Graphic Novel: Jason Thompson’s The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath & Other Stories

Lovecraft’s Dreamlands Via Graphic Novel: Jason Thompson’s The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath & Other Stories

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Thompson’s Dreamlands has an Orientalist feel but an alien one. (Click to enlarge.)

Jason Thompson sent me a copy of his The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath & Other Stories. It even came in a cool envelope, but I’ll get to that.

I’ve been on a bit of a Lovecraft quest.

HP Lovecraft is more than a Geek-only in-joke, there’s still something powerful about his works — or so I discovered reading “The Festival,” “Shadow over Innsmouth” and “Whisperer in the Dark” to my 8-year-old daughter. She experienced the stories as like Scoobie Doo, but when you pull off the bad guy’s mask his face is made of worms.

So, though the style is dated and thus heavy going in places, the structure is sound: he really nailed the whole “unfolding mystery leading to horrible revelation” trope. (I must therefore take back what I said before, I’m sure people do read HP Lovecraft for pleasure from time to time, much as we might also read Malory, because I am now one of them.)

Lovecraft’s power goes way beyond spinning a spooky yarn. He has a knack of being intriguingly vague with great certainty.

The intriguingly is the important part that people often miss.

As frustrated teenage writers discover, vague descriptions of random stuff you made up are not in themselves intriguing. What makes Lovecraft intriguing as well as certain is that he is referencing what feels like a fully realised and disquieting story world, his famous Cthulhu Mythos.

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Two Months Until Xmas! Alternatives to Halo Mega Bloks You Need to Test Right Now

Two Months Until Xmas! Alternatives to Halo Mega Bloks You Need to Test Right Now

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Lovely toys. Bit of a curse.

In my geeky neck of the woods, Halo Megablocs are a bit of a curse.

Oh, they are lovely toys! The mini-action figures are robust, the equipment and vehicles lovingly follows the original designs. (The company is also really good about sending out replacement parts, by the way.) Armed with a couple of boxes of the stuff, kids — mostly boys, in my experience, but your mileage may vary — can capture the atmosphere of the original video game series.

And there-in lies the problem.

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Normally 16+ for violence… played by much younger kids (including mine).

Halo video games normally rate around  16+ for violence. However, the shear fact of the existence of a Lego-like tie-in range is a dead giveaway that they’re played by much younger kids. My son ‘Kurtzhau’ has been playing it since he was 8 — we had some great father-son split screen sessions, hunting aliens together, but my original intent was just to expand his MilSF slot to include more than just Clone Wars.

Now he’s 12, it’s lovely watching him teach his 8-year-old little sister ‘Morgenstern’ how to play. And most of her male classmates who have an Xbox have the game, so this lets her play with the boys  —

— and why not? Halo has a wonderful imaginative genuine SF setting, fantastic music, immersive artwork, and though there’s violence, it’s not particularly graphic and has unpleasant consequences. In the single player missions, there’s even sophisticated tragedy of war and dodgy politics threads. In the arena modes, you get a chance to use teamwork to beat the opposition.

The snag is that the grit and grim of the franchise is attractive because it feels adult, which means the kids quickly grow out of the Mega Bloks toys…

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Series Architecture: The Same But Different in EC Tubb’s Dumarest

Series Architecture: The Same But Different in EC Tubb’s Dumarest

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Toyman EC Tubb-small
Oddly compelling…

EC Tubb’s Dumarest serial is oddly compelling… so oddly compelling that, if you like the first book, you end up slowly chugging through the series.

For those who’ve just tuned in, this is an incredibly long mid-20th century low Space Opera serial that influenced the roleplaying game Traveller. Note, series not serial: though there is forward momentum, each book is standalone — it’s more Deep Space Nine than Babylon 5. Also note the low. This isn’t exactly Conan in Space, but the Cimmerian would not be out of place.

So, Dumarest wanders a Grapes of Wrath galaxy — think how we met Rey in The Force Awakens — in search of Earth while pursued by the fanatical Cyclan, cyborg monks with no emotions other than the hunger for power and pride in their intellect.

It’s very much The Fugitive does Space Western. There are exceptions, and Tubb often kicks off with a short story before settling down the real meat. However, in almost every episode, Dumarest is the archetypal Drifter who becomes involved in gothic goings on in one of the local great houses, usually because that house faces some external threat.

(The houses are usually Gormenghast-style piles crammed with extended family and fuelled by dwindling fortunes. However, from time to time he swaps in military unit, spaceship, expedition, clan or band, with similar effect.)

This happens so consistently, that the books should be too formulaic to keep coming back to.

But we do. Each novel is the same but different.

How did — does — he do it?

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A Story Checklist for Writers

A Story Checklist for Writers

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Checklists were developed because nobody could fly the B17 without crashing it
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“Can Conan raid the Tower of the Elephant? Yes, but rather than looting, he ends up liberating the enslaved alien demon. Now he must continue his adventures.” (Read on to find out why this is relevant!)

I read this book by a surgeon. It was called The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right and it was mildly terrifying (and I promise this relates to writing…).

Nowadays before an operation it’s the thing for — usually — a senior nurse to work through a list with items like: “Does the patient have any allergies? Has the anaesthetist raised any concerns…? Is this even the right patient for this operation..?” There are also checklists for  emergency situations such as reviving somebody fished out of a pond to make sure critical injections aren’t missed.

Why this is mildly terrifying is because (a) checklists significantly raise patient survival rates, and (b) the medical profession has only recently adopted them! (It’s a bit like that time my doctor mate remarked, “Oh that was before we went over to evidence-based medicine….” Erk?)

Why this is interesting for writers — and why I’m talking about this book here — is because  checklists help in situations when people are working “in flow.”

They were first developed because nobody could fly the B17 without crashing it. The test pilots got together and made up a list for the co-pilot to read out at different stages: “Engine revving enough? Flaps at right setting…?” Now checklists are pretty standard not just for the aviation industry, but also for manufacturing and construction.

Checklists work because they are not procedures. They don’t tell the surgeon, “cut along dotted line A” or the pilot, “Steer down the runway.” Rather they act as gates between different phases of a project or procedure. They don’t get in the way of flow, so much as force you to pause and take stock before getting going or moving on.

For a writer like me this is interesting because it’s all too easy to dive in too early to drafting — because flow is addictive — without planning properly, and even easier to send off work that’s not properly polished — because writing is both exhilarating and mentally tiring.

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Two Interesting Roleplaying Kickstarters!

Two Interesting Roleplaying Kickstarters!

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70s Military Space Opera or screen SciFi with a horror element
I Love the Corps
The rules nicely balance story simulation with tactical gaming

We interrupt normal programming to draw your attention to two roleplaying-related Kickstarter campaigns!

First we have a fast-paced Military SF Horror game.

Earlier this year at Conpulsion, I had the fun of playing the beta version of I Love The Corps. My son — 12 — and his mate — 13 — also had a go and loved it.

It’s a Military SF game with a feel that’s best described as 70s Military Space Opera or screen SciFi with a horror element — think Halo, Verhoven’s Starship Troopers, Babylon 5 or Aliens. This is not the super science far future war of, say, Ken McLeod’s Corporation Wars.

Rather, this is the kind of game where Special Forces in powered armour exchange laser fire on the surface of Mars, while ground support drops combat trucks reminiscent of Warthogs.

The rules nicely balance story simulation with tactical gaming  — there are the usual points you can exchange  for stunts and stunning escapes, but ultimately the dice are a harsh mistress… which lends an edge to the experience.

Not only is action structured around cinematic scenes and montages, the mechanics support it! There is a neat system for automatic ability check scores when doing something in what I would think of as narrative summary. Characters can also satisfyingly rampage through low powered NPCs. Most of what you need is on the character sheet. The end result is fast-paced but substantial.

Go check out the Kickstarter page and take a look at the more detailed material there.

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Air Pirates, Acrobats, and Zeppelin Fleet Action: The Ring of Seven Worlds

Air Pirates, Acrobats, and Zeppelin Fleet Action: The Ring of Seven Worlds

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(click to enlarge)
Ring of the 7 Worlds - Cover
…very hard to review without spoilers.

The Ring of Seven Worlds  (by Gualdoni, Clima, Piana, and Turotti) is a meaty Steampunk graphic novel sent to me by Sloth Comics when I was looking for reading for my daughter… and it’s very hard to review without spoilers.

It delivers a Steampunk (or is it Valve Punk?) setting with a Studi Ghibli feel in which Seven Worlds connect through a now sealed gate — the ring of the title — and of course the gate unseals and there’s an invasion that kicks off a rollicking adventure for two teenagers: a girl air-acrobat and a highborn boy.

And of course there are air pirates and zeppelin-on-zeppelin fleet action.

Meanwhile, in the background we have threads for clearly delineated power politics, gritty insurgency, and, ultimately… ah well, no spoilers.

Unlike some graphic novels, it does have a proper plot that makes a breathtaking kind of sense and takes you on a real journey. But again; no spoilers!

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