Continuing the FAQ I ran out of time to finish yesterday:
Q: If you are going to post a picture of Mr. Ruffles, the
most famous cat in speculative fiction, you gotta republish “Take Me To
Your Litter Box.”
A: Whether Mr. Ruffles is indeed the most famous cat in speculative fiction is highly debatable. If you want to assert that he is, Lazarus Long and Jubal Harshaw will likely want to have words with you. (“Can your cat walk through walls? Hmm?”) In fact, we could probably fill an entire week with heated fannish arguments over exactly which cat is the most famous, notable, important, adorable, etc., etc., etc. cat in speculative fiction.
As for cat stories we’ve published, though: in spelunking through the archives, looking for tails tales to tout in The Best of Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE feature, I’ve found that we don’t just have enough cat stories to fill a week: we could parse it quite finely and do an “Anthropomorphic Cat Week.” Or a “Witch’s Familiar Cat Week.” Or even, as the illo at the top of this column suggests, an “Anthropomorphic Cats Playing Cards Week.”
Damn, we’ve published a lot of cat stories!
If I have to pick one story to recommend as a place to start, though, it has to be Carol Scheina’s “The Disappearing Cat Trick.” These cats can walk through walls.
Q: Speaking of The Odin Chronicles, whatever happened to Season 2?
A: Pete and his team of writers got waylaid by Otogu, and it turned into, pardon the expression, an exercise in herding cats. The good news though is that Pete has come up with a plan to complete the season, and he and his writers are moving ahead with that. I’m really looking forward to seeing the finished product and to publishing it, and most of all, to finding a home for the podcast version of Season One, as I spent a bundle on it and it’s already produced and in the can. Stay tuned for more details.
Q: Speaking of serials in general, I clicked the The Serials button in the top bar, and all I got was a message saying “temporary placeholder file.” What’s up with that?
A: The same thing that’s up with so much else on this site. The transition to people doing most of their reading on their phones happened much faster than we anticipated. When we created this site, it was optimized for reading on a desktop or laptop computer. A lot of the clever features we embedded in the site design aren’t even visible when you’re looking at it on a phone.
This problem was one of the things that made us realize we really needed to rethink and completely redo our web presence—but then Otogu struck, and the work remains unfinished.
Q: There’s that name again: “Otogu.” Where have I heard that before?
A: It is said that somewhere in the Far East, in the mist-shrouded K’themai Isles, there stands a great temple, built by the now-vanished K’bab peoples and dedicated to Otogu the Insatiable, Devourer of Days. In the heart of this temple there squats a grotesque giant idol, purportedly depicting Otogu himself, and while the idol is gilded with purest gold, the visage is that of a vast, flabby, and revoltingly toad-like creature, miserable with constipation. For though he consumes ceaselessly, despite all his straining, in the end, Otogu produces frustratingly little.
The K’bab legends as they have filtered down through the ages say Otogu is forever hungry because he feeds on nothing more substantial than time itself, and so is never sated. Further, the legends hold that in the very end Otogu will consume every last moment of every day, and in final desperation turn on himself, beginning with his own left foot and consuming even his own body until utterly nothing remains. And thus will the world end, although right up until the final seconds, Mankind will be too busy working to notice what’s happening.
The K’bab peoples are long gone, now; their myth of Otogu, barely remembered. Jungle has reclaimed the once mighty but now nameless city, save for the weed-strewn courtyard and the vine-covered temple mound. The first white man to see the temple, the daringly brave but severely navigationally challenged pioneering aviator Wrong-Way Wojciechowski, thought it a magnificent ruin as he flew over but was never able to find it again. Twenty years later the eminent archaeologist Professor Herr Doctor Arvid Morgenstern, working from Wojciechowski’s journal, was able to rediscover the temple and reach it on the ground, but he sent out just one brief, cryptic, and sadly direction-free message before disappearing forever into the hungry maw of the mysterious green jungle. In his message, Professor Morgenstern claimed to have found proof that the temple was not in fact a ruin, but merely incomplete. According to Morgenstern, the K’bab had just plain never found the time to finish the blessed thing, but they’d always meant to get back to work on it, one of these days…
All of which is a overly long and unnecessarily roundabout way of saying that Otogu is an acronym for “Other Things Of Greater Urgency.” At one time I was working on a book, Tales of the Otogu Mythos, but never found the time to finish it.
And I’m almost out of time for today. Time for just one more question:
Q: What can I, personally, do to help promote writers and writing?
A: Turn off your TV. Read something.
I can elaborate on that at greater length, and likely will next week, but seriously, that’s the single most important thing you can do. READ SOMETHING!
And I don’t mean on your phone. Turn off your TV, mute your phone—better yet, put it in another room, so it can’t elicit that Pavlovian response you’re conditioned to provide whenever it beeps, squawks, hums, chirps, or lights up—and spend 15 minutes or half an hour actually reading something. It doesn’t matter what: fiction or nonfiction; an article, a short story, or a chapter of a novel; but give something that was written by someone other than yourself your complete and undivided attention for more than a few minutes.
Try to do that every day. Do it for a week, and you’ll be amazed by the difference it makes in how you feel.
Out of time: more to follow next week. And in the meantime, don’t forget to watch for The Best of Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE, resuming next week!
1 comments:
The only other cat in speculative fiction that Mr. Ruffles even deems worth mentioning is Jonesy. Mr. Ruffles firmly believes that Jonesy would have sold out the humans in Alien in a heartbeat. And how do we know he didn't?
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