Announcement and Reading Schedule
Aug 28, 2022 21:29:57 GMT
drleevezan, RGBoyd, and 5 more like this
Post by doctornolonger on Aug 28, 2022 21:29:57 GMT
Welcome to the Book Club of the War!
This September is the 20th anniversary of The Book of the War, the first book in the Faction Paradox series. It was designed by Lawrence Miles, the Faction’s creator, from the contributions of 9 other authors. Practically every page presents wild new ideas that intricately interconnect to build a vivid panorama of the many sprawling fronts of the War in Heaven, and nearly every FP story since has touched back to The Book as a shared background.
Despite how core The Book is to the series, its unconventional format means it’s usually recommended that new readers work up some familiarity before reading it: for instance, starting with the FP audios and Dead Romance; or if you’re a Who fan, first reading the two Eighth Doctor novels where the Faction debuted, Alien Bodies and Interference.
But there’s another way to read The Book – one which sets up and leads into the FP audios and novels, and which promises to help the reader unlock the series’ many secrets (including maybe even the identity of the Enemy!). Lawrence Miles explained it in a hidden page on the old FP website:
For the 20th anniversary of The Book’s release, over the next few months several of us on this forum will be following this secret pathway and sharing our thoughts about what we find. Whether this will be your first time reading or your fiftieth, please join in!
Coordination
shuncucker has kindly offered to take responsibility for making sure as many people as possible can participate in the read-along. If you don’t already have The Book, please message shuncucker and they’ll do their best to take care of you!
Every week I’ll provide page numbers for the entries we’re reading. (I cannot condone piracy, but for anyone using the bootlegged epub, it’s as easy as scrolling back through the entry you just read to find the next entry’s link!)
If you fall behind or can’t keep up, no worries: each thread will be posted separately, so you can follow the reading order at your own pace and chime in whenever you want! No one will mind, even if it seems like everything’s already been said; the motto here is the more, the merrier.
Schedule
I’ve used my best judgment when it comes to combining sections so we can be done by the end of the year, but some weeks are unavoidably lighter or heavier in wordcount than others. I’m very open to comments, suggestions, and corrections: this is a living document
On these dates, I’ll start a thread in this board about the associated entries:
5 September: The Core Entries
"Causalities of War"; Spiral Politic; Great Houses; House Military; Celestis; Faction Paradox and "Faction Paradox Family"; Remote; Lesser Species; Yssgaroth
12 September: The History of Faction Paradox
Anchoring of the Thread; Armour; Audience of the Ruling Houses; Caldera; Eleven-Day Empire; Fashion Paradox; Gregorian Compact; History; Imperator Presidency; Intervention; Linearity; Loa; London (Eighteenth Century); Morlock; (House) Paradox; Recruitment; Ritual; Severance; Sombras que Corta; Stacks; Stendec; Tower Hill; Unkindnesses; Westminster
19 September: The History of Earth
Analytical Engine; Book of Enoch; Burton; Byron; (Ada) Byron; Canon per Tonos; Clockwork Ouroboros; Eleven-Day Empire: The 1834 Attack; Ghost Clusters; Grand Families; Grindlay’s Warehouse; Grotesques; Karachi; Liber Sanguisugarum; Mal’akh; Maltese Incident; Mountains of the Moon; Musical Offering; Napoleonic Era; "Princess of Parallelograms"; Shelley Cabal; Society of St. George; Speke; Star Chamber; Walking Dead; Xianthellipse; Scarratt
26 September: The A-Z of the War
Entaradora; "Monsters" Coda; Xenoprediction; "You" Diversions; "Probability" Doctrine; Confusion; Utterlost; Zero Time; Gravity Spiders; Time-Thickening; Apportation; Women (Dressing Up as); Nechronomancers; HEM; Ordifica; Intercreationals; Leviathans; Quintessence; Redemption Cult; Forced Regen Missions; D-Mat; Burlesque Devices; "Killerbots" (Autonomic); Vaccinations (Temporal)
3 October: Houses and Orders
Jungle Children; Hauserkinder; "Justine’s Story"; Arpexia; Babels; Casts; Catherion; Ixion; Leathean Campaign; Order of the Weal; Thessalia; War Predictions; War Predictions: Chatelaine Thessalia; Zo la Domini
10 October: The History of the Homeworld
Closed Session; Dronid; Dvora; Enemy; Faraway Declaration; First Message from the Enemy; Head of the Presidency; Homeworld; Lineacrux; Nine Homeworlds; Noosphere; Presidency; Protocols of the Great Houses; Regen-Inf; Ruling Houses; Sex; Space (Five Famous Battles); Timeships; Tobin; Umbaste; War King; Yeh; Appendix III; Compassion
17 October: The History of Posthumanity and The Academician’s Story
Earth; Posthumanity; Praxis; Siloportem; Time-Travel: Posthuman; War Predictions: The Rivera Manuscript; Appendix IV;
Academicians for Game Logic; Devonire; Grandfather Paradox (Representations); Grandfather’s Arm; Kaiwar; Paradox Anxiety; Thousand-Year Battles; Waves; Appendix I
24 October: The Non-History of the Celestis and The Shift’s Story
Anarchitects; Chaotic Limiter; Conceptual Entities; Fluxes; Gargoyles; Meme; Mictlan; Order of the Dragon; Ottoman Purges; Sacrifice; Shifts;
Beshielach; Dating War Era Events; Greater Autrobulan Franchise; Lords Celestial; Memeovore; Planetesimals; Reboots; Worldofme
1 November: The City of the Saved
City of the Saved; Timebeast Assault; Verrifant; Mirraflex; Mantissa; Het Linc; Secret Architects; Uptime Gate; Lefcourt; Krymtorpor; Ghetto of the Damned; Foaming Sky; Order of the Iron Soul; Pinocchio; Rump Parliament; Timon; (House) Halfling; Piltdown Mob; Sons of Tepes
7 November: The Impaler’s Story
Tirgoviste; Ulterior Worlds; Vlad III; Wallachia; Djinn; Edimmu; Gragov; Halved Birth; Investigators; Investigator 31; Mark of Indenture; Poenari Relic; Rasputin
14 November: The Thirteen-Day Republic
Anastasia; Cult of Celebrity Death; Dyavol; House of Lords; Malachite Room; Nadim; Octavia; Red Burial; Removal of Members; Thirteen-Day Republic; Valentine’s Day; Winter Palace; Witch-Blood
21 November: Labyrinths
Biodata; Diaspora; Eremites; Faction Precursors; Foyle; House of the Rising Sun; Labyrinths; Remonstration Bureau; Voodoo Charter; Venue Accords; Weaponstores
28 November: The Ghost Dance
A’daltem Ano’nde; Belial; Catch-the-Bear’s War Bonnet; Ghost Shirts; North American Warrior Tribes; Nun’aha’wu; Open Doors; Pai’ngya; Peyote Dream-Runners; Sand and Snow Ammunition; Tenskwatawa; Appendix II
5 December: The History of the Remote
Anchormen; Broken Remote; Fallahal; Jallama Reed Transmissions; New Young Gods; Remembrance Tanks; Shadow Masks; Simia KK98; Viewers and Listeners Protocols; Wovoka
12 December: Faction Hollywood
Brookhaven; Brookhaven’s Follies; Cwej; Cwejen; Faction Hollywood; Fat; Gauntlet; GCI Processor; Hollow Spectaculars; Hollywood Bowl Shooting; House of the Seven Gables; Mount Usu Duel; "Mystery of Edwin Drood"; North Los Angeles Cabal; Order of the White Peacock; Production Hell; "Through the Eye of Eternity"; Vandemeer
19 December: The End and Coda
"Briefings"; Humanity; Nanotechnology; Nevitz; Time-Travel: Biodata Principle; Younger World Story;
(House) Lolita; (House) Tracolix
And that’s it! Looking forward to discussing the first entries soon
Marking the first five decades of the conflict, THE BOOK OF THE WAR is an A to Z of a self-contained continuum and a complete guide to the Spiral Politic, from the beginning of recordable time to the fall of humanity. Part story, part history and part puzzle-box, this is a chronicle of protocol and paranoia in a War where the historians win as many battles as the soldiers and the greatest victory of all is to hold on to your own past…
This September is the 20th anniversary of The Book of the War, the first book in the Faction Paradox series. It was designed by Lawrence Miles, the Faction’s creator, from the contributions of 9 other authors. Practically every page presents wild new ideas that intricately interconnect to build a vivid panorama of the many sprawling fronts of the War in Heaven, and nearly every FP story since has touched back to The Book as a shared background.
Despite how core The Book is to the series, its unconventional format means it’s usually recommended that new readers work up some familiarity before reading it: for instance, starting with the FP audios and Dead Romance; or if you’re a Who fan, first reading the two Eighth Doctor novels where the Faction debuted, Alien Bodies and Interference.
But there’s another way to read The Book – one which sets up and leads into the FP audios and novels, and which promises to help the reader unlock the series’ many secrets (including maybe even the identity of the Enemy!). Lawrence Miles explained it in a hidden page on the old FP website:
Obviously The Book of the War isn’t meant to be read in a linear order: [but] the truth is that there’s a secret pathway running through the whole volume, a way of reading the complete story by moving from link to link without ever arriving at the same entry twice. If you know the pathway then it’s possible to read the book "normally", i.e. from start to finish.
For the 20th anniversary of The Book’s release, over the next few months several of us on this forum will be following this secret pathway and sharing our thoughts about what we find. Whether this will be your first time reading or your fiftieth, please join in!
Coordination
shuncucker has kindly offered to take responsibility for making sure as many people as possible can participate in the read-along. If you don’t already have The Book, please message shuncucker and they’ll do their best to take care of you!
Every week I’ll provide page numbers for the entries we’re reading. (I cannot condone piracy, but for anyone using the bootlegged epub, it’s as easy as scrolling back through the entry you just read to find the next entry’s link!)
If you fall behind or can’t keep up, no worries: each thread will be posted separately, so you can follow the reading order at your own pace and chime in whenever you want! No one will mind, even if it seems like everything’s already been said; the motto here is the more, the merrier.
Schedule
I’ve used my best judgment when it comes to combining sections so we can be done by the end of the year, but some weeks are unavoidably lighter or heavier in wordcount than others. I’m very open to comments, suggestions, and corrections: this is a living document
On these dates, I’ll start a thread in this board about the associated entries:
5 September: The Core Entries
"Causalities of War"; Spiral Politic; Great Houses; House Military; Celestis; Faction Paradox and "Faction Paradox Family"; Remote; Lesser Species; Yssgaroth
12 September: The History of Faction Paradox
Anchoring of the Thread; Armour; Audience of the Ruling Houses; Caldera; Eleven-Day Empire; Fashion Paradox; Gregorian Compact; History; Imperator Presidency; Intervention; Linearity; Loa; London (Eighteenth Century); Morlock; (House) Paradox; Recruitment; Ritual; Severance; Sombras que Corta; Stacks; Stendec; Tower Hill; Unkindnesses; Westminster
19 September: The History of Earth
Analytical Engine; Book of Enoch; Burton; Byron; (Ada) Byron; Canon per Tonos; Clockwork Ouroboros; Eleven-Day Empire: The 1834 Attack; Ghost Clusters; Grand Families; Grindlay’s Warehouse; Grotesques; Karachi; Liber Sanguisugarum; Mal’akh; Maltese Incident; Mountains of the Moon; Musical Offering; Napoleonic Era; "Princess of Parallelograms"; Shelley Cabal; Society of St. George; Speke; Star Chamber; Walking Dead; Xianthellipse; Scarratt
26 September: The A-Z of the War
Entaradora; "Monsters" Coda; Xenoprediction; "You" Diversions; "Probability" Doctrine; Confusion; Utterlost; Zero Time; Gravity Spiders; Time-Thickening; Apportation; Women (Dressing Up as); Nechronomancers; HEM; Ordifica; Intercreationals; Leviathans; Quintessence; Redemption Cult; Forced Regen Missions; D-Mat; Burlesque Devices; "Killerbots" (Autonomic); Vaccinations (Temporal)
3 October: Houses and Orders
Jungle Children; Hauserkinder; "Justine’s Story"; Arpexia; Babels; Casts; Catherion; Ixion; Leathean Campaign; Order of the Weal; Thessalia; War Predictions; War Predictions: Chatelaine Thessalia; Zo la Domini
10 October: The History of the Homeworld
Closed Session; Dronid; Dvora; Enemy; Faraway Declaration; First Message from the Enemy; Head of the Presidency; Homeworld; Lineacrux; Nine Homeworlds; Noosphere; Presidency; Protocols of the Great Houses; Regen-Inf; Ruling Houses; Sex; Space (Five Famous Battles); Timeships; Tobin; Umbaste; War King; Yeh; Appendix III; Compassion
17 October: The History of Posthumanity and The Academician’s Story
Earth; Posthumanity; Praxis; Siloportem; Time-Travel: Posthuman; War Predictions: The Rivera Manuscript; Appendix IV;
Academicians for Game Logic; Devonire; Grandfather Paradox (Representations); Grandfather’s Arm; Kaiwar; Paradox Anxiety; Thousand-Year Battles; Waves; Appendix I
24 October: The Non-History of the Celestis and The Shift’s Story
Anarchitects; Chaotic Limiter; Conceptual Entities; Fluxes; Gargoyles; Meme; Mictlan; Order of the Dragon; Ottoman Purges; Sacrifice; Shifts;
Beshielach; Dating War Era Events; Greater Autrobulan Franchise; Lords Celestial; Memeovore; Planetesimals; Reboots; Worldofme
1 November: The City of the Saved
City of the Saved; Timebeast Assault; Verrifant; Mirraflex; Mantissa; Het Linc; Secret Architects; Uptime Gate; Lefcourt; Krymtorpor; Ghetto of the Damned; Foaming Sky; Order of the Iron Soul; Pinocchio; Rump Parliament; Timon; (House) Halfling; Piltdown Mob; Sons of Tepes
7 November: The Impaler’s Story
Tirgoviste; Ulterior Worlds; Vlad III; Wallachia; Djinn; Edimmu; Gragov; Halved Birth; Investigators; Investigator 31; Mark of Indenture; Poenari Relic; Rasputin
14 November: The Thirteen-Day Republic
Anastasia; Cult of Celebrity Death; Dyavol; House of Lords; Malachite Room; Nadim; Octavia; Red Burial; Removal of Members; Thirteen-Day Republic; Valentine’s Day; Winter Palace; Witch-Blood
21 November: Labyrinths
Biodata; Diaspora; Eremites; Faction Precursors; Foyle; House of the Rising Sun; Labyrinths; Remonstration Bureau; Voodoo Charter; Venue Accords; Weaponstores
28 November: The Ghost Dance
A’daltem Ano’nde; Belial; Catch-the-Bear’s War Bonnet; Ghost Shirts; North American Warrior Tribes; Nun’aha’wu; Open Doors; Pai’ngya; Peyote Dream-Runners; Sand and Snow Ammunition; Tenskwatawa; Appendix II
5 December: The History of the Remote
Anchormen; Broken Remote; Fallahal; Jallama Reed Transmissions; New Young Gods; Remembrance Tanks; Shadow Masks; Simia KK98; Viewers and Listeners Protocols; Wovoka
12 December: Faction Hollywood
Brookhaven; Brookhaven’s Follies; Cwej; Cwejen; Faction Hollywood; Fat; Gauntlet; GCI Processor; Hollow Spectaculars; Hollywood Bowl Shooting; House of the Seven Gables; Mount Usu Duel; "Mystery of Edwin Drood"; North Los Angeles Cabal; Order of the White Peacock; Production Hell; "Through the Eye of Eternity"; Vandemeer
19 December: The End and Coda
"Briefings"; Humanity; Nanotechnology; Nevitz; Time-Travel: Biodata Principle; Younger World Story;
(House) Lolita; (House) Tracolix
And that’s it! Looking forward to discussing the first entries soon
