I just finished reading it. Loved it. Bin the end I have one big question.

Has the good Dr. Wilson recently been rereading H Beam Piper?

F. Paul Wilson's Secret History of the World as reading project for 2018 (it'll probably take me longer than a year).
I wanted a place to capture my thoughts as I move through each story or novel.
I'll have the full list up here in this post, and update it with what's finished and what's being read at the moment.

Please no spoilers to any of the books that I haven't read yet!


My Questions Before I got started.
[SPOILER]

• First is the order, I understand the order on the website is Chronological but is it also the recommended reading order, does it make sense or spoil things later by reading it that way. I.e. Star Wars has six episodes, but if you watch Episode 1-3 first, you are spoiled on the big twist of Empire, so chronological isn't really the best way to read it.
  
• There are numerous short stories tied to certain books i.e. Conspiracies (April) (includes “Home Repairs”+), should these shorts be read before or after the novel in question, is that short even in the right place chronologically?
  
• Any other tips on how to read the series?
  

[/SPOILER]

I'll underline complete stories. Bold the Currently Reading Story, [Read Date]


The Past (9 Novels, 6 Shorts)
“Demonsong” (prehistory) [Dec, 2017]
“The Compendium of Srem” (1498) [Dec, 2017]
Warednclyffe (1903-1906)
“Aryans and Absinthe”** (1923-1924) [Dec 2017]
Black Wind (1926-1945)
The Keep (1941) [Jan 2018]
Reborn (February-March 1968) [Mar 2018]
“Dat Tay Vao”*** (March 1968) [Mar 2018]
Jack: Secret Histories (1983) [Mar 2018]
Jack: Secret Circles (1983) [Mar 2018]
Jack: Secret Vengeance (1983) [Mar 2018]
“Faces”* (1988)
Cold City (1990) [July 2018]
Dark City (1991) [Aug 2018]
Fear City (1993) [Aug 2018]
“Fix” (2006) (w/ Konrath & Peterson)


Year Zero Minus Three (3 Novels, 3 Shorts)
Sibs (February) [Sep 2018]
The Tomb (summer)
“The Barrens”* (ends in September)
“A Day in the Life”* (October)
“The Long Way Home”+
Legacies (December)


Year Zero Minus Two (7 Novels, 3 Shorts)
“Interlude at Duane’s” (April) ** / +
Conspiracies (April)
(includes “Home Repairs”+)
All the Rage (May)
(includes “The Last Rakosh”+)
Hosts (June)
The Haunted Air (August)
Gateways (September)
Crisscross (November)
Infernal (December)


Year Zero Minus One (8 Novels, 2 Shorts)
Harbingers (January)
“Infernal Night” (with Heather Graham)
Bloodline (April)
The Fifth Harmonic (April)
Panacea (April)
By the Sword (May)
The God Gene (May)
Ground Zero (July)
The Touch (ends in August)
The Void Protocol (Sept)
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium (ends in September)
“Tenants”*
The Last Christmas (December)

Year Zero (4 Novels, 2 Shorts)
“Pelts”*
Reprisal (ends in February)
Fatal Error (February)
(includes “The Wringer”+)
The Dark at the End (March)
Signalz (May)
Nightworld (May)

Count Left: (26 Novels, 13 Shorts)
Total Count: (35 Novels, 17 Shorts)

Other Stories that deal with the Secret History:
[SPOILER]
“The Cleaning Machine”
“Feelings”
“The Years the Music Died”
“Lipidleggin’”
“The Last One Mo' Once Golden Oldies Revival”
“Menage”
“Doc Johnson”
“Feelings”
“ICU” (only a few folks have seen this)
“(the answer)”
“Muscles”
“The Years the Music Died”
Masque
Nightkill
Buckets
Traps
Foet[/SPOILER]

NO REPLY
Recorded 9/30/64
Released 12/4/64 on Beatles for Sale

I just listened to “No Reply” maybe ten times in a row. It’s been my fave Beatles tune since the day I heard it. I never tire of it. Quite a shock to learn it was not written for The Beatles.

When I looked up “No Reply” on beatlesbible.com, I learned that John had written in for a guy named Tommy Quickly who shared their manager, Brian Epstein. I knew Lennon and McCartney had written songs for Peter & Gordon and Billy J. Kramer and the like, but those tunes never seemed fit for The Beatles anyway. “No Reply,” however…

Lennon says he was inspired by “Silhouettes,” the old hit by The Rays, but his take is much darker.

Check out the lyrics and their rhyme scheme:

[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD]Verse 1[/TD]
[TD]Verses 2 & 3[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]This happened once before
I came to your door
No reply >>>
They said it wasn’t you
But I saw you peek through
Your window >>>
I saw the light! >>>
I saw the light! >>>
I know that you saw me
’Cause I looked up to see
Your face >>>[/TD]
[TD]I tried to telephone
They said you were not home
That’s a lie
’Cause I know where you’ve been
I saw you walk in
Your door
I nearly died!
I nearly died!
’Cause you walked hand in hand
With another man
In my place[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

I’m a fan of inter-verse rhymes and use >>> to highlight them here. (“Your window” and “Your door” don’t rhyme, of course, but they thematically unite the verses in that they both divide him from his lover.)

The arrangement is spare, mostly acoustic, with Ringo’s offbeat playing perfect for the verses. Those verses are all sung by Lennon except for the lines “I saw the light!” and “I nearly died!” where McCartney’s harmony packs a wallop of shock, anger, and anguish.

Lennon (as he often did) said he wrote the whole thing, while McCartney says John arrived as usual with the song lacking a vocal bridge – what he likes to call “the middle eight.” So who to believe? I choose Paul. The verses are dark and hurt and angry – pure John. The bridge however picks up tempo, is all in harmony, adds handclapping, and closes with:

“And I’ll forgive the lies that I
“Heard before when you gave me no reply.”

What’s that I hear? A chance for redemption? The verses carry not a whiff of forgiveness – too much hurt and anger there. But the bridge lets a ray of hope peek through.

And that’s gotta be McCartney.

There. I’ve put down everything I know and feel about “No Reply” in the hope of figuring out why I like it so much. I still don’t know

Reading for Bootcamp always reveals confusions about where to start the story and whose story it is. For perspective, look at THE MALTESE FALCON. Here are the events of the story as they happened:

• 16th Century: the falcon is made of gold and jewels by the Knights of Malta as a gift to the King of Spain.

• It’s stolen by pirates and passed around Europe for centuries.

• At some time it’s coated with black enamel to conceal its value.

• 1928: valuing the falcon at two million dollars, fat Caspar Gutman has traced it to General Kemidov, a Russian exile in Constantinople.

• Gutman sends Brigid O'Shaughnessy and Joel Cairo to get it.

• After obtaining the falcon, Brigid ditches Joel and flees with Floyd Thursby and the falcon to Hong Kong, then San Francisco.

• In San Fran, Brigid decides she wants to be rid of Thursby. Posing as “Miss Wonderly” she hires Sam Spade and partner Miles Archer to follow Thursby, supposedly to find her sister, who ran off with him.

• That night, planning on getting Archer and Thursby into a fight, Brigid leads Archer into an alley. Either Archer will kill Thursby, or he’ll kill Archer and be arrested, allowing her to vanish with the bird. When Thursby backs off, she kills Archer with Thursby's gun to frame him.

• Gutman is hunting the falcon; his gunsel Wilmer kills Thursby.

• Frightened now, Brigid returns to Spade for protection.

• Eventually Gutman learns Brigid’s falcon is fake and Spade figures her for Archer’s murder. Gutman heads to Constantinople for the real falcon. Spade turns in Brigid for the murder.

• At the end, the falcon remains lost – “the stuff dreams are made of.”

Lots of disagreement on the definitions of plot and story. For my ad hoc definitions let’s just say that STORY is the sequence of events and PLOT is how you relate those events

Plot comes down to Storytelling – taking the events of the story and choosing the order in which to reveal them via various personalities and agendas in such a way as to have the most dramatic, thematic, and emotional impact.

The first things to decide are whose story you’re telling and where to start. If it’s…

SPADE: Start with the classic P-I opener: a beautiful dame walks into his office and wants to hire him. He thinks she’s square and has to figure out what a lying, thieving, murdering conniver she is.

Hammett, a former Pinkerton, chose Spade. This looks like the best choice because Sam’s partner has been killed: “When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it.” He’s hearing lies from all sides and must find his way to the truth. He’s the moral center of this version.

But is this the only way to tell the story? Gutman and Brigid – either one, handled properly, could anchor an interesting tale. Think of WICKED: the author took a famous story, extended the timeline into the past, and told "The Wizard of Oz" from the Wicked Witch’s POV. So if you choose…

GUTMAN: Start with his learning that General Kemidov in Constantinople has the falcon. He hires Brigid to get it, learns he’s been double-crossed, and goes on the hunt for her and the falcon. He’s on a mission but this P-I Sam Spade keeps getting in his way. And he’s got to control Wilmer.

BRIGID: Start with her being hired to go to Constantinople. She’s a sociopath and can’t resist stealing the falcon and either seducing, double-crossing, or killing (sometimes all three) anyone who gets in her way. Maybe she’s got a secret grudge against Gutman – maybe he’s partly responsible for her behavior.

Hell, you could go fantasy and throw in a resurrected Knight of Malta relentlessly pursuing the falcon to return it to its place of origin.

Been looking for something to write? Have at it.

Hi everyone,

Our campaign for our audio adaptation of Paul's novel. Fully licensed and with Paul's full approval please help us make this a reality by donating if you can and sharing the link.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/f-pau...17173674#/

Thank you,

Dan

I just finished RPJ Early Years trilogy. Loved them all. I listened to them as audio books, and unfortunately, I missed something in Dark City. Since I only have the audio books, finding the answer would be extremely tedious, so I was hoping someone would know the answer. Who was the woman who told Bonita that Jack was in trouble when Bonita's brother was getting ready to cut off his foot? Thank you ahead of time for any answers.

Does anyone have any thoughts on or knowledge of the serious unavailability of the more recent Repairman Jack novels in paperback?

I'm trying to fill out a few gaps in my personal collection and was missing Fatal Error, Ground Zero and The Dark at the End. I got lucky and was able to find two of them in local stores and online. However, I was only able to buy a terrible used thrift store copy of Fatal Error. Looking online these only appear to be available from speculators at complete rip-off prices. There was a copy of Dark at the End for over a hundred dollars and any new copy of mass market Fatal Error is at 30 or much more. Older novels in the same series are still commonly available at cover price.


Maybe FPW or someone else knows if there is another print run planned so myself and other huge fans can obtain them? Hopefully with the current cover art.


I own three copies of the original Tomb just so I can lend them out or give them to any prospective reader to get them hooked on one of my favorite authors of all time.

Showtime’s Masters of Horror (a series of one-hour horror films directed by “masters” such as John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, John Landis and others) chose to adapt my short story “Pelts” for its second season. The notorious / infamous and enormously talented Dario Argento chose to direct it. These are dispatches sent to the RJ website from the set.

Since MoH films all of its features in Vancouver, that’s where I went. I couldn’t spare the time for the entire two-week shoot, but I could manage a couple-three days.

“Pelts” Shoot

4/18/2006
A few words about the adaptation: They’ve kept the basics but altered the ending and added lots of sex. My story held the promise of sex – it fueled one character’s actions – but it never happened. (Ah, frustration.) In fact, not one of the people who schemed to gain from the pelts got what they wanted. That was one of the points of the story.

Am I upset? No. Am I about to throw a hissy fit for you? No. Sure, I’d have preferred them to follow my nobody-got-what-they-wanted arc, and preserve the story’s symmetry, but when you sell film rights, the operative word is “sell” – which means you no longer own them. They belong to someone else. You hope they’ll treat your story with respect, but there’s no guarantee. I learned that the hard way with Michael Mann’s adaptation of The Keep. But in that case my book was raped. Here, “Pelts” has simply been tarted up without corrupting its essence.

If you’re not JK Rowling, with every filmmaker in the world bidding to adapt Harry Potter, thus allowing you to demand cast and script approval, you either take your chances or refuse to sell any rights at all.

So, I arrove in Vancouver late Tuesday night, too late to visit the strip-club shoot. (NB: There’s no strip club in my story, but that shoot would have been, um, interesting.)

4/19
Wednesday is a night exterior shoot with crew call at 3pm. Mick Garris – the creator and guiding light of the series – calls in the morning and invites me to go to the location along with him and director Dario Argento. We all gather in the lobby at 1:30. I've met Mick before. He’s a screenwriter, director, producer, novelist, and a gracious, unpretentious, genuine man – about as unHollywood as you can imagine.

He introduces me to the maestro and his translator, Francesca. Dario Argento turns out to be a slight man, about five-eight, with a quick smile and an amiable manner. His heavily accented English is serviceable and Francesca helps him when he gets stuck on a word.

The location for the Jamesons' farm is a historic site about 40km outside of Vancouver. We all make small talk and stroke each other for a while. I try to get him to see that the Jake character shouldn't get it on with the stripper because the motif of the story is that no one involved with the pelts gets what they want. Dario is totally opaque to the idea. So he and Francesca put their heads together over the day’s call sheet while Mick and I catch up.

We turn off a country road onto a dirt drive lined with equipment trailers and cranes and generators and the all-important catering truck. Even though it’s after 2pm, they're serving breakfast. I have some peppers and eggs and bacon while the other three grab fresh-made grilled-cheese sandwiches.

The house sits 200 yards from the road. It has no power lines running to it so it’s perfect for a remote place in the Jersey Pine Barrens. The set designers have wound vines all around the front to give it a more unkempt look.

Beyond that, on a rise behind the bend, they've erected two walls with a roof to serve as an old Piney woman’s shack – from the right angle you'd think it was a complete building that had been sitting on the spot for fifty years.

Beyond that the land slopes off to where they've erected the “ruins” Dario requested. In the story there’s a species of spleenwort growing in a straight line. It can't grow in the acid soil of the Barrens, so when you see it you can be pretty sure a building (or maybe one of the “lost towns” of the Barrens) used to sit there and the stuff is growing over the limestone of the foundation.

Since this is film, Dario wanted a more visual hint that some other structure preceded the Jameson farm in the area by a long, long time. What they've given him is a couple of piles of worn, broken blocks (styrofoam, but you'd never know) indicating maybe an ancient gateway, and beyond that something that may have been a monolith or temple stone in its heyday. I’m impressed.

A light rain begins as they start the shoot. People grumble but it isn't going to stop them. Today’s scenes involve furrier Jake Feldman and his assistant as they find the pelts and what’s left of the Jamesons. John Saxon plays Pa Jameson but he’s not involved today.

Meat Loaf plays Jake, and Mick introduces me to him as the guy who wrote the original story.

“You dreamed this up?” Mr. Loaf says as we shake hands. “You're one sick guy.”

I hear that a lot; I give my standard reply: “Thank you.”

Between setups Mick, Meat (his folks named him Michael Aday but he wants to be called Meat -- I kid you not) and I sit and gab in the set’s “video village” – a tented area where we can watch monitors and see what the cameras see as they shoot. He’s natural and unassuming, and serious about his acting. He wants to know more about Jake and how he feels when he first sees the pelts. I tell him these aren't just pelts, they're uber-pelts and he’s seeing his whole future open up before him. He's seeing paradise by the dashboard light.

After hours of lots of activity and very little footage being shot, I'm ready to go. The temperature has dropped, a wind has sprung up, and I'm not dressed for this. Mick is heading back to the hotel to meet with Tobe Hooper about budgeting his upcoming film, and so I hitch a ride.

Back in my room, I write into the night.

4/20
Crew call isn't until 4pm so I spend the day writing. I break to go out and buy a new digital camera since my old Fuji had finally crapped out. All of the photos from yesterday are gone -- or never were. I find a Sony Cyber-shot on sale and snag it. The guy tries to sell me something with more features but if I use a camera four times a year it's a lot.

I'm supposed to ride over with Dario at 2:45. I get there at 2:35 and they've already left. Swell. I call the production office and they say I can ride over with Meat Loaf. So I do. I want to talk about music but he wants to talk about how the film differs from my story. I give him my fiction-imposing-symmetry-on-the-chaos-of-reality theory and why leaving out the homeless woman breaks that symmetry. He says he likes my ending better, but he may simply be polite.

We stop at a convenience store because he likes to drink Diet Coke with ice -- with ice -- and they don't have ice on location. We also have to find a florist so he can buy flowers for a woman he fears he inadvertently insulted yesterday. It's like driving around with an eccentric but lovable uncle.

They drop off Meat at makeup and me at the farm house location. Same as yesterday, they're serving breakfast. I grab some bacon and eggs and head up to the house. Dario is effusively apologetic when I tell him about being left high and dry -- he didn't know I was coming. I reshoot all the photos I took yesterday -- the ruins, the shack, etc., then go to the basement set where all of the day's interiors will be shot.

This is the scene where Larry, the trapper's son, performs a facectomy on himself. Covered with blood after bludgeoning his father to a pulp, he enters, opens a bear trap, and slams his face into it. The bludgeoning is in my story, but the trap is not. It's an AA (Argento addition) -- but I kind of wish I'd thought of it.

The prop is a real bear trap that's had its springs welded so they can't snap the jaws. Opening the trap takes the most takes because the actor's having a tough time making it look like he's struggling against the springs.

With retakes, lighting changes and different setups for master shots and close ups, it takes almost 4 hours to film a sequence that will run 40 seconds tops on the screen. I look around. Everyone's smiling. They're delighted with the progress we're making.

Meat arrives for the scene where Jake discovers Larry's body with its ruined face (a dummy). He's been on the road doing driving shots for a later sequence. Now, with the interiors, the master shot and close-ups are done in half an hour. He's outta there.

So am I. I say my good-byes and get an Italian left-right double embrace from Dario. I promise to send him the first-edition
chapbook of “Pelts.” (Hope I have an extra.)

On the way out I meet John Saxon who's playing Pa. No time for more than an introduction and moving on. He'll be shooting scenes with Larry down by the ruins. I'd love to watch but frankly I'm bored.

I drive back to the hotel with Meat. We commiserate about conglomeratization -- he about music, I about publishing. I get him talking about touring for his new album coming in the fall and his early experiences as an actor -- Rocky Horror in particular.

I realize how boring acting can be. They picked us up at 3:30 and now they drop us off at 9:30. They've needed him for maybe 90 minutes of those six hours. No wonder some actors get into drugs.

Meat wants to see the original “Pelts” story so I get his email address and promise to send it to him ASAP. He's too tired for a trip to the bar and I don't like to drink alone, so we shake hands and head to our respective rooms.

My Vancouver trip is, for all intents and purposes, over. All that's left is the plane ride home tomorrow morning.

Am I glad I flew 6000 miles roundtrip for this? Yeah. Very. I met some great people and saw pieces of my story come to life.

Stephan Hunter was a Pulitzer Prize winning movie critic, first for the Baltimore Sun, then the Washington Post. He has seen LOTS of movies and knows a shitty film when he sees one. The past tense refers to the fact that he has retired from the movie critic business. He is now a thriller writer (a very good one) and his most recent book (G-Man) has an afterward explaining his impetus for writing it was just how incredibly horrible and fucked up his 2009 movie Public Enemies was. For FPW fans the book is worth buying just for the afterword.

Enjoy

My favorite writing project to work on?

Hands down, FTL Newsfeed for the Sci-Fi Channel.

Yes, I know it's Syfy now, but back then it was the Sci-Fi Channel.

FTL was the first – and for a while the only – original programming on the Sci-Fi Channel. It was an interstitial show, a daily one‑minute news blurb from 150 years in the future that ran at various times during the day Monday through Friday, and repeated on the weekends. In fact, an FTL was the very first piece of programming broadcast by the channel (introducing Star Wars).

Let me give you a little background.

In the summer of ’92 I got a call from a guy named Bob Siegal from USA Network saying they were launching the Sci-Fi Channel soon and could I design a world 150 years in the future? I said sure. Then he said he needed it all done and set to go in 6 weeks. I was finishing The Select at that time, trying to get it ready for the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair, and knew I couldn't deliver. Matt Costello and I had shot the bull a few times at various NECons and I'd been impressed with how bright and quick and versatile he was; I'd also gathered that he had a work ethic similar to mine (which is, simply, sit down and do it). Plus he lived only an hour outside the city. (The Sci-Fi Channel was Manhattan based.) So I gave his name to Bob Siegal.

Matt called me back and asked if I was sure I didn’t want it. I reconsidered and said why don’t we split the work? We worked our butts off, meetings, conference calls, faxing, modeming, and finally e‑mailing files back and forth – this was cutting edge in 1992. We delivered (on time, I might add) a future scenario detailing the socio‑political‑economic‑technological status of the entire globe and near space for the year 2142 that, quite frankly, blew them away.

We didn't write the actual scripts at first. A fellow named Russ Firestone adapted them from our bible. We'd lay out the story arcs in narrative and in a flow sheet that showed what was happening when and where throughout the year on a month‑by‑month and week‑by‑week basis. We'd usually hand that in during the summer, then get called sporadically throughout the year to provide fillers for the newsfeeds. But they let Russ go after two seasons and asked us if we wanted to do the whole thing. We signed in July 1994, and from September '94 onward, scripts as well as story were all ours.

That was when the fun began.

As before, Matt and I would meet a couple of times a year to map out the large story arcs. But as scripters we’d sit down every quarter and break the arcs into 13-week sections, then block out the 65 individual spots (5 per week for thirteen weeks) that were taped in NYC over a four-day period every three months.

We’d sit in one or the other’s kitchen and toss quips back and forth, each taking the topic in question to the next level of possibility, until we started laughing. That was when we knew we’d gone too far, and we’d back up a step.

Matt and I were very well paid for having a lot of fun – hell, we would have done it for free. Plus, we were given carte blanche. The folks from USA Network (the parent company) running the channel weren’t sci-fi oriented; it was a kind a mystery to them, so they let us do what we wanted. The show was surreal in a way: serious, sinister storylines peopled with goofy characters. I remember executives coming up to us and saying, "Is this really science fiction?" We'd nod sagely. "Absolutely." They'd walk away scratching their heads. But we had an insurance policy: We’d cast the head of USA Network, Kay Koplovitz, in a major role as (what else?) the president of the North American Union. Not a Glenn Close by any means, but she was a trouper, learning her lines and hitting her marks.

Not only was it hands-on experience in screenwriting – the equivalent of writing a four-hour-and-twenty-minute movie every year – but we got to work with great people. We had Gilbert Gotfried, Timothy Leary, Peter Straub, Jeffery Lyons, Kreskin and others doing guest spots. Rhonda Shear (remember USA’s “Up All Night” movies?) was a regular as Bimbetta Mondaine; so was Tom Monteleone as a future mafia capo. Vida Pelletier took over as our producer and we loved her. She was up for anything. We’d make an off-the-wall suggestion and she’d say, “Yeah, we can do that.” We got to work with the crazy people at Image Post who did fabulous editing. All those crawls you see on the news stations now? FTL had those to the Nth degree back in the early 90s.

In the fall of ’96, after a run of a little over 4 years, we received word that this current batch of newsfeeds we were taping would be the last. The network wanted the FTL budget for its own movies and such. The last feed aired Christmas week. We wished we’d had enough warning to allow us to tie up some of the storylines, but all in all, no regrets.

FTL launched 9/24/92 and ended 12/20/1996. Where are those 1,106 episodes? I doubt very much anyone has them all – including USA Network. (Or, if USA does they have them, I doubt they know where they are). I have most of them, but a gap occurred when the network switched video production companies. So I think I can safely predict that there will never be a complete compilation of FTL Newsfeed. And as time goes on, my videotape copies will deteriorate to the point where they are unplayable.

Sic transit Gloria.