Today’s the birthday of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the writer responsible for the creation of characters like Tarzan, John Carter, David Innes and many other friends that kept me company when I was a solitary kid in suburban Turin.
Category Archives: Companions on the Road
Five (more) Companions for a Night Out
… but let’s play the meme game “out for a wild night with five imaginary friends” in a slightly different manner, now.
What if I were to select five historical characters, five real persons, that is, to share my table at the restaurant, my box at the theater, and later a nightcap in my favorite night-spot?
Obviously, the catalogue of fascinating historical characters is sohuge and varied, that picking any five is a feat for the foolish, but let’s consider a smaller subset.
This is, after all, karavansara, where adventure and fiction meet and intermingle… so, what about a night out with five of those 20th century scholars-adventurers I love so much?
Let’s see… Continue reading
[…] it’s very true that the East and the West have totally different perspectives on time. In the West there is a sense of importance given to time […]. But in the East inaction is as vital a movement as action. The East sees time more as a journey, completely separated from order. There is chaos in the journey – it is a big part of the journey actually.
[Fatima Bhutto]
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The Amazons of Samarkand
Historically inaccurate, maybe… but cool!
As I already mentioned, with a new series in the works, I’m researching my next (?) short story.
One finds the most wonderful things, in old travellers’ tales.
Here’s a snippet from the diaries of Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, Spanish envoy in the court of Timur Leng (or Tamerlane), in 1403.
It is exactly the sort of information I was looking for.
And I thought you might like it, too.
Fifteen days journey from the city of Samarcand, in the direction of China, there is a land inhabited by Amazons, and to this day they continue the custom of having no men with them, except at one time of the year; when they are permitted, by their leaders, to go with their daughters to the nearest settlements, and have communication with men, each taking the one that pleases her most, with whom they live, and eat, and drink, after which they return to their own land. If they bring forth daughters afterwards, they keep them, but they send the sons to their fathers. These women are subject to Timur Beg; they used to under the Emperor of Cathay, and they are Christians of the Greek Church. They are of the lineage of the Amazons who were at Troy, when it was destroyed by the Greeks.
Related articles
- Samarkand – Crossroads of Cultures (2001) (marocpostcard.wordpress.com)
- Day 20: Bukhara to Samarkand (dudewheresbaatar.wordpress.com)
Companions on the Road – Martin & Osa Johnson
Sometimes it feels like a conspiracy.
Martin Johnson was the cook on Jack London’s Snark during the ship’s two-year cruise in the Pacific.
Johnson put together a sideshow with photos and stuff from that adventure, and made a living travelling through rural America.
In Kansas, he met a young woman called Osa Leighty.
They fell in love, got married, and became adventurers.
It was 1910.
In the following years, Martin and Osa Johnson were captured by cannibals on tropical islands in the Pacific, explored Africa, met European royalty and assorted savages, and made lots of documentaries, which were extremely popular.
Much of the material in the films – some of which were among the first talkie documentaries ever produced – was later remixed and restyled as a series of TV documentaries in the ’50s.
Continue reading
Peter Fleming
“São Paulo is like Reading, only much farther away.”
I admit a long-standing fascination for espionage at its most basic – not james Bond ultratech but Deighton spycraft, in other words.
Espionage as people, not gadgets.
From the Elizabethan Secrert Service to the black ops of recent years, I’ve collected books, handbooks, stuff.
And in terms of espionage, one has to wonder at the personnel of the WW2 British secret outfits.
David Niven and Christopher Lee working with commandos and Information Services…
Occult bestseller author Dennis Wheatley churning out plans and fake papers to be leaked to the Germans (including a complete plan for the invasion of Europe, written on a single weekend, fueled only by champagne and turkish cigarettes)…
Rosita Forbes travelling the world and taking notes, Elizabeth David (the food writer) wandering through the Mediterranean and Southern France…
John Blofeld, sure, and of course the Fleming Brothers, Ian and Peter.
John Blofeld
His father was the inspiration for the James Bond villain.
I discovered John Blofeld‘s The Secret and the Sublime when I was sixteen.
The book, in its gaudy, cheap Italian paperback edition, was interesting for two reasons.
First, because it connected with my growing interest for zen and taoism.
Second, because it promised to reveal Taoist Mysteries and Magic – which was extremely good, because I was tired of the standard, psaeudo-celtic, or D&D-derived magic in fantasy stories, and was looking for some off-beat inspiration*.
In the end, the book was useless in developing my own magic system – but in retrospect, it was probably instrumental in convincing me that “magic system” is the wrong idea when writing fantasy.
Magic should be magic – and sure as hell it feels that way in Blofeld’s book.
On the other hand, Blofeld’s book fueled my interest in the East, which is one of the reasons I’m writing this blog, and I still feel a strong affection for this small book. Continue reading
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