Radiance

 

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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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
The Deep Blue
Devil
The Man in the Malachite Mask
Doctor Callow's Dream
And If She's Not Gone, She Lives There Still
takes place

 

Locations

 

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.

The prologue is where you take your coats off. Relax. Leave your shoes at the door. Invoke the muse, call down whatever royal flush of gods you want pulling the action between them. O Muse, O Goddess. Sing, Speak, Weep. Give unto me the song of rage. Hand over the arms and the man on the double-quick. Hit that horn and play me the voice of the many-minded traveller who could not get home. Keep a front-row seat for that masked demiurge, a plum spot for that jazzy old Word in the Void, or let it be on your head.