#cherryh

[geoderocks]

I made some sketches for C.J. Cherryh’s amazing Foreigner series. (I’m no great artist, obviously, but had a lot of fun doing these).

In the first book Cherryh describes atevi faces as ‘not by any remote kinship human, but sternly handsome in planes and angles’. So here is my attempt with the Banichi portrait - and of course Bren in one of his long coats (subtle lace included). I haven’t dared to have a go at Jago, Ilisidi or Cajeiri yet, but maybe will put my subpar drawing skills to the test sometime ✏️

[idylls-in-juniper]

Lyrics:

[Chorus] I have no use, I have no pride I have no hope, so they say of me Mahn past his youth, Mahn past his prime Mahn upward bound now in infamy Raised Hanni male in an old Hanni clan Golden mane, thunder voice, long I held Mahn land I was lord, I was god, I was Mahn to the core My own son clips my ears. Now I rule no more Shamed by defeat, too proud to die Hanni male, I feel passions I can't deny I took shelter with females and from defeat ran Just to find greater shame in more distant lands [Chorus] Feared like a beast, kept like a child Clear the rows! Hanni male! Ring the cry so wild! Both on ship and in port my defeat stalks with me In closed minds that deny what a male might be Proud Hanni male with a strong Hanni hand I can think past my instincts. I'll make my stand And gods rot any merchant refusing to see I am lord of myself as no beast could be [Chorus] A male upward bound now for victory!

[shiisiln]

I don’t know if it’s a fandom per se, but I do quite love the Chanur’s Pride books!

love your fanart, her expressions are spot on lol

got a new drawing tablet yday so expect to see me start posting a ton of sketches haha. this is pyanfar chanur from cj cherryh's the pride of chanur series. idk if there is a fandom but i hope there is.

i finished the first 2 books and am started on the 3rd!! it's sort of first-contact between one human (not the pov char either which is sick) and a group of hani, catwomen spacers, but also LOTS of political intrigue between various alien species as well as merely global rivals between diff groups of hani.

this is pyanfar she's the pov char and the captain of Pride of Chanur and she is perfectttt

[petermorwood]

More on pre-electricity lighting.

Interesting to see this one pop up again after nearly two years - courtesy of @dduane, too! :->

*****

After experiencing a couple more storm-related power cuts since my original post, as well as a couple of after-dark garden BBQs, I've come to the conclusion that C.J. Cherryh puts far too much emphasis on "how dark things were pre-electric light".

For one thing eyes adjust, dilating in dim light to gather whatever illumination is available. Okay, if there's none, there's none - but if there's some, human eyes can make use of it, some better or just faster than others. They're the ones with "good night vision".

Think, for instance, of how little you can see of your unlit bedroom just after you've turned off the lights, and how much more of it you can see if you wake up a couple of hours later.

There's also that business of feeling your way around, risking breaking your neck etc. People get used to their surroundings and, after a while, can feel their way around a familiar location even in total darkness with a fair amount of confidence.

Problems arise when Things Aren't Where They Should Be (or when New Things Arrive) and is when most trips, stumbles, hacked shins and stubbed toes happen, but usually - Lego bricks and upturned UK plugs aside - non-light domestic navigation is incident-free.

*****

Here are a couple of pics from one of those BBQs: one candle and a firepit early on, then the candle, firepit and an oil lamp much later, all much more obvious than DD's iPad screen.

Though I remain surprised at how well my phonecam was handling this low light, my own unassisted eyes were doing far better. For instance, that area between the table and the firepit wasn't such an impenetrable pool of darkness as it appears in the photo.

I see (hah!) no reason why those same Accustomed Eyes would have any more difficulty with candles or oil lamps as interior lighting, even without the mirrors or reflectors in my previous post.

With those, and with white interior walls, things would be even brighter. There's a reason why so many reconstructed period buildings in Folk Museums etc. are (authentically) whitewashed not just outside but inside as well. It was cheap, had disinfectant qualities, and was a reflective surface. Win, win and win.

*****

All right, there were no switches to turn on a light. But there was no need for what C.J. describes as stumbling about to reach the fire, because there were tinderboxes and, for many centuries before them, flint and steel. Since "firesteels" have been heraldic charges since the 1100s, the actual tool must have been in use for even longer.

Tinderboxes were fire-starter sets with flint, steel and "tinder" all packed into (surprise!) a box. The tinder was easily lit ignition material, often "charcloth", fabric baked in an airtight jar or tin which would now start to glow just from a spark.

They're mentioned in both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". Oddly enough, "Hobbit" mentions matches in a couple of places, but I suspect that's a carry-over from when it was just a children's story, not part of the main Legendarium.

Tinderboxes could be simple, just a basic flint-and-steel kit with some tinder for the sparks to fall on...

...or elaborate like this one, with a fancy striker, charcloth, kindling material and even wooden "spills" (long splinters) to transfer flame to a candle or the kindling...

This tinderbox even doubles as a candlestick, complete with a snuffer which would have been inside along with everything else.

Here's a close-up of the striker box with its inner and outer lids open:

What looks like a short pencil with an eraser is actually the striker. A bit of tinder or charcloth would have been pulled through that small hole in the outer lid, which was then closed.

There was a rough steel surface on the lid, and the striker was scraped along it, like so:

This was done for a TV show or film, so the tinder was probably made more flammable with, possibly, lighter fuel. That would be thoroughly appropriate, since a Zippo or similar lighter works on exactly the same principle.

A real-life version of any tinderbox would usually just produce glowing embers needing blown on to make a flame, which is shown sometimes in movies - especially as a will-it-light-or-won't-it? tension build - but is usually a bit slow and non-visual for screen work.

*****

There were even flintlock tinderboxes which worked with the same mechanism as those on firearms. Here's a pocket version:

Here are a couple of bedside versions, once again complete with a candlestick:

And here are three (for home defence?) with a spotlight candle lantern on one side and a double-trigger pistol on the other.

Pull one trigger to light the candle, pull the other trigger to fire the gun.

What could possibly go wrong? :-P

*****

Those pistol lanterns, magnified by lenses, weren't just to let their owner see what they were shooting at: they would also have dazzled whatever miscreant was sneaking around in the dark, irises dilated to make best use of available glimmer.

Swordsmen both good and bad knew this trick too, and various fight manuals taught how to manage a thumb-shuttered lamp encountered suddenly in a dark alley.

There's a sword-and-lantern combat in the 1973 "Three Musketeers" between Michael York (D'Artagnan) and Christopher Lee (Rochefort), which was a great idea.

Unfortunately it failed in execution because the "Hollywood Darkness" which let viewers see the action, wasn't dark enough to emphasise the hazards / advantages of snapping the lamps open and shut.

This TV screencap (can't get a better one, the DVD won't run in a computer drive) shows what I mean.

In fact, like the photos of the BBQ, this image - and entire fight - looks even brighter through "real eyes" than with the phonecam. Just as there can be too much dark in a night scene, there can also be too much light.

*****

One last thing I found when assembling pics for the post were Folding Candle-lanterns.

They were used from about the mid-1700s to the later 20th century (Swiss Army ca. 1978) as travel accessories and emergency equipment, and IMO - I've Made A Note - they'd fit right into a fantasy world whose tech level was able to make them.

The first and last are reproductions: this one is real, from about 1830.

The clear part was mica - a transparent mineral which can be split into thin flexible sheets - while others use horn / parchment, though both of these are translucent rather than transparent. Regardless, all were far less likely to break than glass.

One or two inner surfaces were usually tin, giving the lantern its own built-in reflector, and tech-level-wise, tin as a shiny or decorative finish has been used since Roman times.

I'm pretty sure that top-of-the-line models could also have been finished with their own matching, maybe even built-in, tinderboxes.

And if real ones didn't, fictional ones certainly could. :->

*****

Yet more period lighting stuff here, including flintlock alarm clocks (!)

[oldschoolfrp]

Dueling a dragon -- Alan Craddock's cover art on White Dwarf 44, August 1983, was previously used on a 1982 Methuen edition of CJ Cherryh's Fires of Azeroth. This issue's credits incorrectly list Jim Burns as cover artist, omitting Craddock's name.

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Where did all these regulations come from?

After 40 years of war with the Regul, humans signed the treaty of Kesrith and took on some of the Regul rules, or "Regulations." Because the Regul have perfect memory and cannot lie, their rules are very strict, and come with severe punishments if ignored.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I love how many conversations in the Foreigner series are just

Bodyguards: We have reason to believe that this guy wants to kill you

Bren: Oh that's easy to solve, I'll just go visit them and we can talk it out

Bodyguards: Bren-ji they will kill you.

[wizardsvslesbians]

We feel that Bren Cameron would be a perfect skrunklo for the tumblr set, if only they knew him. With special guest Ann Leckie!

[ashanimus]

Xenofiction Fans: Read Hunters Unlucky

Xenofiction fandom is really stagnant--I think that as impressive as some of the like, warrior cats and wings of fire animations I've seen out there are really impressive I really wish there were other titles that came to the attention of so many talented and energetic people! There's so much creative xeno out there, from the older titles that inspired modern ones, to the modern ones geared more towards adults like Abigail Hilton's "Hunters Unlucky" universe.

i especially like the latter because of how fannish they are, in the BEST way possible. It's one of the coolest combinations of technical skill, lush creativity and the fannish self indulgence that make me really really happy. Its a xenofictional epic with fantasy species and dense with complicated feelings, relationships and emotional processes that are IN the text rather than extrapolated from.

I also have found these books in particular challenging because things aren't drawn in terms of heavy black and white, and the conflict of old generation vs younger ones and the million little well meaning steps that it takes to get to a miserable status quo is REALLY fascinating.

I will add that while the title novel and the follow up are friendly for all that these books are significantly more adult in terms of the themes and content discussed usually described in the genre, especially lately. They're also quite a bit more explicitly LGBT, but perhaps not in the way one might think reading that sentence.

This is a bit of a crap review tbh and I'd like to do something a bit more thought out but I have a lot of feelings and really want people to experience something new, challenging and ultimately really inspiring. I've been turning these stories over in my head like rotisserie chickens.

[side-sidecast]

cloning in cyteen is all cool and interesting until i have to design distinguishable characters whoare identical clones of each other :,) okayyy anyways here are concepts about the warricks and tape machines

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[oodlesodoodles]

[retroscifiart]

Art by Don Maitz for Cyteen by CJ Cherryh (1988)

[geekynerfherder]

'The Book of Morgaine by Doug Beekman.

Cover art for the novel, 'The Book Of Morgaine', written by CJ Cherryh, published in 1979.

[aaronsrpgs]

book I finished / book I started

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

Book rec: Cuckoo's Egg by C.J. Cherryh

Here is my first non-DC book rec, which originally came to me by recommendation from @audreycritter.

Cuckoo's Egg is an old school sci-fi from award-winning author C.J. Cherryh, who is a big deal and yet whom I'd never read before this book. (Also, her website is bananas. 10/10.) It's technically third in the series, but I think Cuckoo's Egg functions really well as a standalone, and this is where those rock-solid found family and good dadman feels are.

All you need to know is there's a stone-cold soldier who is highly respected in his field who takes an abrupt retirement to raise an alien infant. (Well, alien to him. To us, the dad is the alien; the child is human.) And you guys, he. loves. his. ugly alien son. so. much.

It's like Disney's Tarzan if all the other apes were like "ew what a little freak" and Kerchak were the one being like "THIS IS MY KID BACK OFF."

Like someone else we know, the dad is very very bad at using his words to tell his son how much he loves him, but it's there. It's there. And as the son grows, the narrative alternates between their POVs which is delicious.

There is also an absolute banger of a line that I am going to steal for a fic title someday: "This one was his safety that kept the games all games."