Angus stumbled forward, his mind blurred. The fish turned its great dazzling eyes upon him. They were blue as summer sky, flecked with dark blue spots of velvet night.
‘Dance,’ Mary whispered.
Angus stepped closer, and the fish began to move. First it swayed its head, then its fins, then its tail. Then all parts of the great golden fish were in motion. Angus felt his feet gliding this way and that through the water, beating time. The fish drew closer, until their bodies were touching. Together they twisted and turned through a dance so intricate it could never be learnt. Yet Angus knew it. He felt it flowing up from somewhere deep inside. As they moved, Angus realised the fish’s scales were staining his skin. Wherever they touched, they left golden metallic patches.
The dance went on and on. It must have lasted days, but there was no way of knowing. He never tired, and Mary stood, silent—watching. He saw his toenails shrink back to normal, and the dirt on his feet melt away. The more he danced, the less tired he got. His chest grew clear, and his breathing came easier than ever. At last, the fish withdrew, and swam away—high up into the blackness of the towering ceiling.
Mary stepped forward, taking his hand. ‘Aye, now it’s done, my bonny golden laddie.’
Angus saw his reflection in the rippling water. His face and hair were golden, and his eyes glowed a quiet blue.
He turned to her, and smiled.
……………………………………………
Dee Raspin hails from a small coastal village in the Scottish Highlands. A Creative Writing graduate of Napier University, she writes science fiction, horror, and stuff she finds funny. She can be summoned with the words ‘Lovecraft’ and ‘steampunk’, or small offerings of tea and cake.
Interview: Dee Raspin
by Noel Chidwick
Congratulations on becoming the winner of Shoreline of Infinity’s Story Competition for Readers with your story The Great Golden Fish. We thoroughly enjoyed it, an enchanting tale set in the wretched time of the Clearances, of loss, hope and renewal. Obviously Stephen Pickering’s artwork was the source of inspiration, but what drew you to telling your story the way you have done?
Dee Raspin: Many thanks. It’s a huge surprise! I’ve always been too nervous to submit anything, but as soon as I saw Stephen’s artwork I was really excited. I’m from the Highlands myself and I’m also quite into steampunk, so the setting and the steamship were an amazing combination! As soon as I saw the ship, I wanted to know what it was doing in such a traditional scene. The fact it was fish-shaped struck me as interesting, due to the link between fishing and The Clearances. Also, it was strange to see a fish catching a man! It looked so friendly, too—very round and welcoming. I decided it sympathised with all the unwilling would-be-fishers, and wanted to offer them an alternative existence.
Then, I started thinking about the crofter in Stephen’s panels. Before the ship shows up, he seems quite downcast and his croft looks empty and lifeless. I thought he’d lost someone—his wife, perhaps. I tried to picture her. I wanted her to be full of all the missing life. I imagined her as hard working, loud, busy and practical—yet with a softer side and a strange, almost supernatural, understanding. She’d be so robust, even death wouldn’t stop her. I thought she’d be able to anticipate the fish’s intentions, and speak from the afterlife without seeming sinister.
Lastly, I really wanted to know where the ship would take the crofter. I wanted the destination to be as surreal as the ship itself, yet somehow familiar. I decided it would take him home—but not to the home he knew. This would be a place where the dead could be reborn into fresh lives, that time couldn’t touch. The mechanical steamship made me think of robots, and it seemed right that a fish should work the final change.
You say you are quite into steampunk—which books and writers inspire you—steampunk and otherwise?
DR: The first author I really got into was Dickens. I enjoyed his comic characters, and London sounded like this massive labyrinth of mystery and crime. Then I came across Terry Pratchett. I loved the Discworld series: instead of London there was Ankh-Morpork, and all these wonderful inventions and magic. Then, for one reason or another, I ended up reading H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. After that, I was hooked. Everything about his work struck me as unique. His language was as bizarre as his monsters. It was fun and terrifying at the same time. So those are the authors who’ve probably influenced me the most, because I’ve read them the most!
On the Scottish side, I really enjoyed the traditional atmosphere of Ian Crichton Smith’s works, Neil M. Gunn’s The Silver Darlings, and Burns’s poetry, too. As for modern stuff, I was fascinated by Ken Macleod’s The Night Sessions. The idea of robots finding God really intrigued me—and they had such huge personalities, too. I used to think robots were lifeless, clinical things.
As for books which actually describe themselves as steampunk, one of the first I read was The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder. I think it was quite a lucky start for a beginner, because it has just about everything: time travel, ghosts, huge genetically modified creatures, robots, Rasputin—the list goes on! I’m still figuring out what I like, so the short story collection Ghosts by Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense was quite nice. In particular, I enjoyed Richard Harland’s Bad Thoughts and the Mechanism and Lucius Shepard’s Rose Street Attractors.
As for non-fiction, I thought The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick was an amazing read. It’s a really interesting account of the evolution of science, and the eccentric personalities involved.
As for older things that are bit steampunk, I really enjoyed William Hope Hodgeson’s Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder and Jules Verne in general—especially 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Lastly, one book that always sticks out in my mind is The Third Policeman by Brian O’Nolan. It’s so bizarre, it’s unnerving. It was really inspiring to see fiction go places I’d never imagined.
I’m also not sure which of the above directly influenced my story, but I really enjoyed all of them.
I’d forgotten about the Third Policeman. That is a great book—weird, twisted, a great story and hilarious. Darn: I’ll have to go back and re-read it.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, Dee? What keeps you busy? And writing: what are you currently writing, and what are your writing ambitions?
DR: Hmm, I’m quite into science, I guess. I studied biology at university, and became quite interested in bacteria—it’s weird to think we’re surrounded by all these tiny invisible ecosystems. Anyway, when I graduated, I applied for lab jobs, but they were looking for candidates with industrial experience. So I started volunteering in museums, and working in customer service and retail.
After a while, I thought about going back to university. I wasn’t sure I still wanted to do something science related, though. Eventually, I decided to have a bit of a change. I applied for a place on Napier’s creative writing course, and was lucky enough to be accepted. After graduating, I worked as an admin assistant in a bank. When my contract came to an end, I moved up to the Highlands to visit my family, and started writing whilst applying for jobs—that’s where I am now. I’m, er, taking a creative break!
At the moment, I’m currently working on my first novel. As it stands, it’s the story of a world in which there’s a clockwork mechanism called the Godwork. Society emulates clockwork—individuality is unthinkable: everyone wears the exact same costume, fitted with a unit which converts their speech into identical mechanical tones. Beneath their costumes, each person wears custom stilts—so everyone appears the same height. Even age and gender aren’t acknowledged. When the Godwork begins to rust, and the mechanism starts to fail, pure chaos creeps in. So it’s about oppressive order, versus destructive chaos and the effects on individual identity. It still needs an awful lot of development, but I’m quite enjoying piecing it together. I’m working on a few short stories, too.
Dee, it’s been a pleasure to chat with you. Congratulations again—and good luck with your writing!
The Beachcomber
Mark Toner
SF Caledonia
Monica Burns
This article will be the first of a regular column in Shoreline of Infinity, in which I will explore Scottish science fiction from across the centuries. I hope to discover what could be named as the oldest piece of Scottish science fiction there is.
Along the way, there will be some surprises: authors you wouldn’t normally regard as SF writers (like John Buchan in Issue 1) and some stories that the modern reader may be able to be re-evaluate as science fiction. Scotland has produced some top-class and very often influential SF writers. So instead of stripping away national identity, this column will celebrate the many, often overlooked, examples of good Scottish science fiction.
The first writer I happened upon was David Lindsay (1876-1945), author of A Voyage to Arcturus.
Monica Burns is one of our talented illustrators, but she is also taking a Masters in Creative Writing at Aberdeen University. As we got talking, it turns out she too is curious about science fiction in Scotland so we set her a challenge; what are the earliest examples Scottish science fiction? Who wrote them? What can we find out about them? Monica accepted the challenge, which, it seems, is turning into a quest.
—Editor
David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus (1920) is a daring, epic adventure. It is a philosophical exploration of good and evil, the soul, and the very nature of existence. Some modern critics have put it in league with Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, published 60 years later and now lauded as a modern Scottish classic. In spite of its recognition now, the novel has never had a place in the mainstream. In David Lindsay’s lifetime, A Voyage to Arcturus sold very few copies. Throughout the 20th century, the book was found under labels like ‘cult classic’ or ‘underground’—which makes it sound very inaccessible. A Voyage to Arcturus shouldn’t be cast off because it is considered a cult book. It is written in fluid prose that’s easy to read, and the adventure itself is uncomplicated despite all the bizarre, imaginative things Lindsay creates in the novel, such as new colours in the colour spectrum, ulfire and jale—you will be surprised how easily you can almost see them.
At its most basic level A Voyage to Arcturus is a journey through an alien planet. It gives so much more, however, than just a simple quest story. Lindsay has taken world-building to an exceptional level. On his planet, Tormance, he creates many branches of philosophy and spirituality, creeds and ways of life, along with all the complex conflicts that come with each of these.
The esteemed literary critic, Harold Bloom, whose academic work spans the vast canon of literature from Chaucer to Kafka, liked A Voyage to Arcturus so much that his only fictional novel was a quasi-sequel of Arcturus, called The Flight to Lucifer. It has been said that A Voyage to Arcturus also greatly influenced the work of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien.
The story begins in Hampstead, London, with a séance. In front of a horrified audience, the medium summons a spirit: a strange otherworldly young man takes shape before their eyes. The séance is violently brought to a halt as a stranger bursts in. He calls himself Krag, and he seems to know about this spirit, claiming he has been to its native realm. Maskull, the story’s hero, and his friend Nightspore, accompany Krag outside into the street where he tells them of adventures he could offer. They go with him to the north-east coast of Scotland, to an old observatory. From there they are to fly in a crystal ship towards the brightest star in the northern hemisphere of our sky, Arcturus. Krag claims that an inhabited planet called Tormance orbits Arcturus, and that he must go there.
When they land on Tormance, Maskull awakens to find himself separated from his friends. Meeting native people along the way, he navigates his way through this bizarre world seeking answers. He finds his strength, faith and morals tested to the extreme.
The novel is largely philosophical. It has been compared to Dante’s Divine Comedy and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress: allegories from the 14th and 17th centuries. Although it is a 20th century novel, A Voyage to Arcturus harks back to the medieval tradition of allegory—a literary device where the characters, landscape and interactions are more symbolic than realistic because they contribute to an overarching spiritual or moral message. The characters personify certain moral viewpoints in order to test the protagonist. You can forgive Lindsay for not populating his book with psychologically complex characters like we’re used to encountering in modern literature, because it is intriguing to guess at what the characters represent, and what lesson Maskull is supposed to learn from them. Like any good philosophical text, and indeed any good SF story, it will have you pondering late into the night.
If that is not your cup of tea though, the philosophical element isn’t so heavy handed that nothing else is enjoyable. For one, the novel’s setting is incredible. It is a feast for the imagination. Even if you just want to skim through the book, Tormance is an excellent place to explore. There are bizarre creatures, strange incidences and sublime landscapes. There is more than enough to keep any reader entertained.
Many critics have remarked on the “strange genius” of the man behind Arcturus. Lindsay was a shy, bookish person, and little for definite is known about his life. He was born to a Scottish Calvinist family in 1876, and spent a lot of his life in the south of England. Every year he would holiday in the Borders, from where his family had originally hailed, and was educated for a time in secondary school in Jedburgh.
When his father left his family, young Lindsay was made to give up his university scholarship to help earn money for his family. He spent twenty years as an insurance broker in London. The outbreak of WW1 interrupted his literary career further, and so it was only when he moved to Cornwall after the war that he was able to become a full time writer at the age of 44. A Voyage to Arcturus was published in 1920.
