Bryce Fegan: A Guest Post On Fairytales

As a brief break from the A to Z Challenge, I thought it might be interesting to give you a guest post by Bryce Fegan, whose picture storybook The Grumpface will be available in the next couple of weeks. Bryce is an Aussie writer living in Canberra, and thought the post by fellow Canberra-dweller Gillian Polack was fascinating, though, of course, unconnected with children's fiction. He is sharing his thoughts about the importance of fairytales and explaining how this entered his book. Enjoy!

Where did all the Happily-Ever-After’s Go?

Books have long been portals into worlds otherwise inaccessible to us. They take us to places of incredible depth and wonder, and make us long for the adventures and meaning our protagonists inevitably find. Books often describe worlds that not even major films can fully capture. In books we are free to experience these worlds at our own pace. We are free to dwell in moments of inspiration, wonder or emotion. We are free to let our imaginations soar – constructing scenes that have meaning to our own experiences and our own desires. These small, rectangular objects are precious, because in the complex and changing world around us, they not only offer us refuge but they allow us to escape into another dreamer’s imagination. It is here that hope abounds. Hope for a better world, a more exciting world, a world of meaning. It is here that we are confronted with the strange reality – that despite the acceptance we have for the world around us, we all yet have a deeper hope that there might be something more. 

What makes fairy tales so powerful, is that they generally distil this deeper hope into the simplest of narratives. They don’t try to be outstandingly clever or to produce tear-inducing twists. They are safe and accessible stories. Stories that have an undefinable magic to them. Stories that feel cosy and warm, while describing scenes that are otherwise dark and cold. They are stories that are constructed so simply, they can be understood by young children, yet so deep, they somehow maintain their pull on us, well into adulthood.

Fairy tales tend to capture our hopes in broad and relatable terms. They often echo our natural desire that good always wins over evil, that success comes with hard work, and that the fantastical exists in even the most mundane places. They reach into our deepest yearnings, and whisper to us through the dark – that magic may yet exist, that our true destiny may yet be revealed, and that our life may yet have an incredible purpose. It is the ability of a fairy tale to play so masterfully upon these hopes that makes them so timeless. 

Unfortunately, by and large, the magic of fairy tales have been eroded by our modern reality. Replaced by narratives that prefer to reflect on ‘issues of the day’, or the harsh realities of life. Even the emerging trend of ‘modern fairy tales’ or ‘fairy tales with a twist’ tend to reflect the idea that our evolved societies are required to update the simplicity and relevance of these narratives to reflect our more mundane, daily struggles. Certainly there is nothing wrong with these modern styles of books – many are written very well and are indeed quite relevant. Yet I would argue that many of these modern retellings borrow only the surface-elements of a fairy tale, while leaving behind the very thing that has made our traditional favourites so transgenerational.

I have already touched on some of the broad hopes that are injected into every memorable fairy tale. However many fairy tales will also include additional concepts that contribute to their uniqueness. The most obvious, is that they tend to be made up of morally consistent characters. These morals will inevitably dictate their destiny. So naturally, the honest, pure-of-heart and caring characters will always win. The evil, selfish and greedy will always be stronger, but without a change of heart, will always lose. The greatest fairy tales throughout history are often those with characters that exist in relative obscurity, only to rise (against all odds) to the heights of mastery or true-purpose. And this, is perhaps the most important hope that fairy tales play upon. Put another way, fairy tales provide us with the hope that happily-ever-afters really are possible.

The Grumpface

I decided to write The Grumpface after looking through a number of modern fairy tales and feeling as though they were missing something crucial. It took some contemplation but it appeared to me that these modern tales had traded that deeper hope we tend to see in Andersen, Perrault and Grimm, in order to appeal to the sensibilities of our time. Some were fantastic books in their own right, yet none of them contained that deeper magic (to borrow from C.S. Lewis). I yearned for new titles with the familiar enchantments of those older tales, and having been one of those people who has written fiction their whole life, I turned my attention to filling this void.

The Grumpface is a fairy tale that (at the very least, attempts) to hark back to those familiar stories we grew up with. It is about a clumsy young inventor’s quest for love, and the challenges he must face to find it. But it is also a tale of bravery, absurdity and happiness, and the power of these qualities over negativity and sheer grumpiness.

Our tale begins in a small village that sits beside a dark forest. Dan, the hero of our story, is an optimistic, young inventor who suffers the unfortunate trait of being clumsy. Working day and night on his inventions, he hopes that his efforts might gain the attention of Bella, a flower girl whom he secretly admires.

When it comes to his attention that Bella has no more roses to sell, he decides to brave the dark forest in order to find her one. The only problem is that the forest is inhabited by a grumpy creature known as the Grumpface, and this creature is not known for his kindness to lost travellers.

It doesn’t take long before our poor hero is confronted by the Grumpface who quickly challenges the young inventor to three tasks. If he is able to pass even a single challenge, he will be freed, if not, he will remain forever in the forest.

It is my hope that this tale is enjoyed by children and adults alike. After all, most good fairy tales are. I have also tried my best to inject that magic and wonder that these tales are known for. Yet if there is one thing I hope The Grumpface does more than anything else, it is that it reconnects those who read it with that deeper hope. 

The Grumpface will be available in Kindle, ePub, Hardcover and Paperback from most online bookstores from May 1.

About the Author

BCR Fegan is an Australian author who has written a number of fairy tales and fantasies for children and young adults. He is inspired by stories that resonate deeply with our desire for adventure, yearning for magic and search for meaning.

More information about The Grumpface - http://www.taleblade.com/books/the-grumpface/
Amazon -  https://www.amazon.com/Grumpface-B-C-R-Fegan-ebook/dp/B06XFFK7VZ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34546012-the-grumpface

N Is For ... Ninja! A To Z Challenge 2017

                                             

 






 

Ninja, Hokusai print. Public domain

There has been a lot of nonsense spoken and written about the ninja, the professional spies and mercenaries of Japan. My favourite idiocy is the story of the dwarf ninja who came up from a toilet pit and killed his victim while he was relieving himself. Ouch! Also, they were supposed to have mystical, magical powers.

Actually, I imagine the ninja clans would have been only too happy for people to believe they had magical powers - it made for good marketing. If you want to read some wonderful fiction set in a world in which the ninja actually do have supernatural powers, I recommend Lian Hearn's series Tales Of The Otori. But that's fantasy fiction. 

But the stories were spread because they were very good at what they did do - espionage, arson, assassination, mercenary soldiering, etc. Their disguises were excellent. If they had spent all their time in those cool black costumes we imagine them wearing, they might have had trouble convincing anyone they were not spooky assassins! 

In feudal Japan, you couldn't ask samurai, the equivalent of European knights, to go sneaking around spying and killing people without facing them "mano a mano". That was - tacky. Worse, it was dishonourable. So the daimyos, the lords, had to hire professional spies. If caught, they would die horribly, like the vile, dishonourable, loathsome creatures they were. But hey, it was a living! 

There were two clans, from the Iga and Koga areas of Japan, who set up training in remote villages. A ninja - or shinobi as they're known within Japan, from a word meaning "hidden" - started training in childhood. They learned martial arts, of course, and did a lot of tough exercises, but also learned a regular occupation they could carry out while gathering information. Medicine was useful as an occupation, for obvious reasons. But there were plenty of others. 

Not that there weren't security efforts going on. For example, there were the famous squeaky nightingale floors, so called because they "sang" when someone stepped on them. That would definitely get the attention of the guards. But what could you do when the ninja you wanted to avoid were actually living in the castle as sleeper agents? And while they couldn't actually walk through walls, as legend had it, there were plenty of crawl spaces for those who knew where they were. 

And then there were ninja working for the lord of the castle. In the case of one siege, a ninja slipped out into the enemy camp and stole the banner. Next morning it was waving from the castle walls. Maybe it would have been more useful to simply kill the enemy leader, but that kind of psychological "Nyah, Nyah!" worked too. 

In the 1400s there were around seventy ninja clans on Honshu, the main island of Japan. The leaders were jonin, the middle men the chunin, whose job was to arrange contracts with employers. The genin were the actual fighters, who often didn't know who their boss was, probably wise. 

There were ninja working for just one noble family. The most famous ninja leader, Fuma Kotaro Noboyuki, was part of the Fuma clan who were working for the Hojo family. He lived in the sixteenth century and has become a part of Japanese folklore. Kotaro led a group of 200 ninja. Apart from the spying, he led them in a night attack on the Takeda forces. First, they faked an attack, sending in horsès with straw dummies as riders, while the real ninja smuggled themselves in. In the dark and confusion, the Takeda were doing the ninjas' job for them, killing each other instead of Kotaro's men. 

I can imagine the enemy leaders crying out, "Oh, the cads! That is completely dishonourable!"

Sneaky but smart!

Tomorrow: O is for Odysseus!

Q Is For... Q! Gadget-Maker Supreme: A To Z Challenge 2017

                                                         

Did you know there actually is a Q? You know, the geek who builds fascinating spy gadgets for secret agents? Well, of course, there has to be someone doing it, but a newspaper article I stumbled across while looking for something starting with Q actually said that the current Q working for the British intelligence agency MI6 is a woman. It didn't mention her name and most of the article was about how women are now doing well in the intelligence services in general - here's the link if you want it - but it tells me that Q stands for Quartermaster. Who would have thought it? Though it does fit in nicely with the Roman frumentarii - wheat collectors - who worked as spies while doing their jobs as quartermasters(see I is for Inte resting Spy Bits And Pieces). They didn't make gadgets, though.

I guess it makes sense, though. You go to a quartermaster in the army to get uniforms and supplies, so why not supplies of gadgets?

What would it take to be one of these people, I wonder? In this day and age, we're a lot more technologically sophisticated than during the Cold War. As someone commented in my gadgets post, it might be a bit difficult to get a lipstick gun through customs these days! And technology has improved since the Cold War. Computer hacking is more common than sneaking around dark offices getting information from filing cabinets. It's safer too, for the agents concerned. So, no need for glow-in-the-dark mini-cameras in rings or whatever.

But still plenty to do. You'd need a real technical genius with imagination. And they exist.

Because I'm a reader and viewer I'm going to divert for a few fictional Q characters.

There is Smithers in Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider YA fiction. He's a very fat man who is very good with his gadgets. In Stormbreaker, the first novel, he supplies the young spy with such items as a yoyo that is motorised, clips to the belt and has 30 metres of very strong thread for climbing, a jar of zit cream that can be used for picking locks when the cream touches metal and a Game Boy that has four games on it, each of them doing something that is definitely not about game-playing.

Toby Venables has done a series set in mediaeval England, Hunter of Sherwood, with Guy of Gisburne, the villain of the Robin Hood stories, as the unlikely hero. This Gisburne is more or less a cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones, according to the author. He is working for Prince John, who is basically his M, and has his own Q, a Welshman called Llewellyn, who gives him all sorts of useful stuff to take on his adventures.

Terry Pratchett's History Monk Qu creates gadgets for the monks to take when they go out into the world to fix problems in time. He likes things that go bang. In Thief Of Time he is working on a begging bowl that can be turned into a deadly weapon, and you can also eat rice from it.

The gadget maker in Get Smart is Carlson. His gadgets are sometimes over-the-top, such as the car phone disguised as a cigarette lighter and cigarette lighter disguised as a phone. Max drives him crazy by wrecking his gadgets before they're used, eg the spy fly and the gun umbrella, which goes off when Max opens it.

Navy SEALs wearing diving gear. Public domain

Now, back to the real world. Check out this interview in Gizmodo, with a real-life Q. Ralph Osterhout says he started life with a love of all things James Bond. He learned to shoot, drive and fight. When he was only twenty-two, he says, he even built a mini-submarine because of one he'd seen in a Bond movie. True? Well, that's what he tells the interviewer. I don't imagine it was one you could do a lot with, but young geeky fannish types can do the most amazing stuff. I know a guy who does high-quality props for the movies; before that, he created a K9 robot dog that was better than the original one in Dr Who (it did three movements - the one on TV was actually three props that did one thing each), just so he could dress as Tom Baker for science fiction conventions. I went to a convention where the guest of honour was Jeremy Bulloch, who played Boba Fett in Star Wars. For fun, he put on a suit of Boba Fett armour made by a fan in the audience and wore it up the aisle as he approached the podium. As he stripped it off, he said that was better than the one he'd worn in the movie! Ralph Osterhout was just another fan who was even better than the ones I've mentioned - though I think those two guys I've mentioned could probably make gadgets for spies if they wanted to. It's a tech thing and a lot of kids I know even now would be able to have a go, at least. Fans go over the top, creating stuff you can use in real life, rather than props that are just good enough to convince viewers in films, so they can use them at SF conventions. Of course, there's CGI now, but they can do that too.

Ralph didn't actually work for the government until he had already been making underwater gadgets that they decided they could use. By that time, he was running a company making high-tech underwater gear. He built night-vision goggles for Desert Storm and two dive vehicles he had built were used in James Bond movies, though those would surely have been just props.

Ralph can't share all the gadgets he has made, but told his interviewer some fascinating stuff. There's one bug that is disguised as bird poop that lands on a window. Mind you, I'd want to wash my window if I saw something disgusting on it, but if you're several floors up and in an office, you leave it till the window washers can get to it and by that time it would have done its job.

I'll let you read the interview - no point in telling you everything he said!

P Is For Popov...Dusko Popov: A To Z Challenge 2017

 

                                                            

        

Dusko Popov 1940. Public domain.

"The name is Popov. Dusko Popov."

He probably never said that, but Yugoslav lawyer Dusko Popov may well have been one of the inspirations for the fictional agent James Bond. Like Bond, he enjoyed the good life, wine, women and song, not to mention fast cars. Early in the war, he offered his services to British Naval Intelligence, which accepted him. He had already agreed to spy for the Nazis, so he would be a useful double agent. Fortunately, he was a double agent for the British. 

At this time, the U.S. was not in the war. It didn't join until after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, in December 1941. If the U.S. authorities had paid attention to one of his reports - a warning about the impending attack - history might have been very different. At the very least, the death and destruction left by the bombing raid could have been avoided, even if it was then decided that the attack plans warranted the U.S. entering the war anyway. He had been sent to the U.S. by the Nazis to find out details of the fortifications at Pearl Harbor. But J. Edgar Hoover, in charge of the FBI, didn't trust him, knowing he was a double agent, and didn't pass on the information to his superiors. 

Dusko passed on fake information to the Nazis, which helped win the war for the Allies. For example, he told them the Allies would land at Calais rather than Normandy. After the war, he settled down in France and got married. His wife and children didn't know anything about his wartime adventures until he released an autobiography in 1974, Spy/Counterspy. The autobiography was apparently mostly accurate, with a few colourful bits of fiction thrown in. 

Dusko Popov lived till 1981, when his smoking and drinking finally caught up with him and he died at the age of 69.

So, what about his James Bond connections? He used to call his uncle for advice on the phone number 26-007. 

And the British Naval Intelligence officer who hired him was called Fleming. Ian Fleming. 

O Is For...Odysseus: A To Z Challenge 2017

                                                       

    

Odysseus and the Sirens. Public domain.

Today we're going to take a trip into the world of Greek mythology.

You've probably heard of Odysseus, the King of the small island kingdom of Ithaca. He is known more often by his Roman name of Ulysses. He was the guy who came up with the idea of constructing the Trojan Horse. (And we still have that term for a piece of computer malware used to hack into your computer account!)

But before that, Odysseus did a bit of spying. He was the smartest of the Greek heroes. In my opinion, he may have been the only one of them who had a brain, actually. Odysseus had never wanted to join the expedition to Troy. He had a kingdom to run, a wife he loved and a baby son, Telemachus. But he had been part of a group agreement meant to stop the suitors of Helen of Sparta from getting into a war with each other. In fact, the agreement had been his idea. 

Trying to get out of it and failing, he reluctantly went off to the Trojan War. When it had been going for ten years, Odysseus had had enough. More than enough. There was a prophecy that Troy would never fall until the Palladium, a stone sacred to the goddess Athena, was removed from its hiding place under the city. Odysseus didn't fancy another ten years or more parked outside those walls.

He disguised himself as a grubby old beggar and sneaked in. After ten years, presumably there were holes and tunnels and I bet there were lower-class Trojans and Greeks selling each other supplies. Anyway. He got in and went off to find out where the stone that could help him get home was located. While he was about it, he looked around him.

Queen Helen saw and recognised him.  That was actually good news for him, because she, too, had had enough. Helen took him to where the stone was located and helped him get out of town.

The rest is mythology. Without its magical protection, Troy fell to Odysseus's next bright idea,the Trojan  Horse, with some help from another Greek spy, Sinon, planted to tell the Trojans that he'd been left behind and the Horse was an offering to the gods. 

Unfortunately for Odysseus, he was stuck with ten years more of travel before he finally made it home and then he disguised himself again, to make sure of his welcome. He didn't fool his old hunting dog, which recognised him through the disguise and licked his hand before finally dying... He did fool nearly everyone else.

Odysseus would have made a good professional spy, no? 

L Is For...Hedy Lamarr: A To Z Challenge 2017

Hedy Lamarr. Public domain image

Hedy Lamarr was a beautiful glamour star in Hollywood in the 1940s. She had been in some German films before fleeing Europe, but her career really took off when she reached the U.S.

But she wasn't just a pretty face. As the trophy wife of an arms dealer working for the Nazis in her native Austria, she was taken to meetings to be shown off. Like other possessors of trophy wives, her husband never thought she might actually be listening to the secrets he and his customers were discussing. No doubt he thought that any brain in that beautiful head was occupied with clothes, make-up and the next party. 

Little did he know...

Hedy - then Hedwig Kiesler - had a very good brain, one she was not going to use in support of the Nazis. She ran off to Paris(there's a story about her drugging her maid in her escape). There, she met Hollywood producer Louis B Mayer, who offered her a contract. 

In the U.S. she wanted to become a part of the National Inventors' Council. Instead, she was asked to raise money for the war effort by selling kisses. She did this, raising a lot of money in one night by selling kisses at $25,000 each! Her lips must have needed a retread after all that... 

Hedy Lamarr was not a spy. What she did was contribute - potentially, anyway - to blocking enemy interference with, or eavesdropping on, submarines. At a party she met a composer called George Antheil. Between them, the composer and the actress worked out something based on player piano rolls. It's called frequency hopping and it's still in use, but not for counter-intelligence or blocking the enemy.

It was not adopted by the U.S. Navy till the patent ran out, well after the war.

Nowadays, you use the invention of Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil every day, whenever you use your smart phone. The principles went into WiFi, CDMA and Bluetooth. As a result, the two of them were inducted into the Inventors' Hall Of Fame. 

When the elderly Hedy was invited to come and collect an award for contributions to science, she snorted, "Hmph! About time!"

It certainly was. And nice to know that someone who could have been a femme fatale spy instead became an inventor. 

Tomorrow: M is for Herbert Dyce Murphy, the Aussie Cross-Dressing Spy

M Is For... Herbert Dyce Murphy: A To Z Challenge 2017

   

                                                

The Arbour by E.Phillips-Fox, Public Domain.

Over a hundred years ago, a young lady stood painting pretty watercolour views of  French railways. Watercolour painting was a common activity for young middle class women at the time and nobody looked twice at her except, perhaps, to admire her.

But the young lady was not a woman - and the painting was for the purposes of information gathering. World War I had not begun, but at this time, Britain was not on the friendliest of terms with France or Belgium. If the countries did go to war with each other, the soldiers would be using trains. 

The young man was Herbert Dyce Murphy, an Australian who had been studying in England. Born in Melbourne in 1879, to a wealthy pastoralist family with two properties, he decided he was not interested in the family business and, during his summer holidays, worked as a sailor, something that worked out well for him later in his life. 

 Let's get it straight. Herbert was not, as far as we know, transgender. He was not even a transvestite; the female clothes were just part of the job. When he finally decided he had had enough, he threw off his woman's disguise and returned to his male life. What he was, was a fine actor. That was how he got the gig in the first place, when he was seen playing a female role in a Greek play at Oxford University. The intelligence person who saw him offered him a spying job, disguised as a woman because a young lady doing watercolours was far less likely to be suspected than a man taking notes. Photography existed, but this was 1903, long before the tiny spy cameras of the Cold War. 

Herbert learned from a family friend how to move like a woman, especially getting in and out of a hansom cab. He grew his hair, because it was safer than wearing a wig. When he was ready, he got on a yacht and went on holidays up and down the French coast. Like other young ladies he had a chaperone. In his case, it was to make sure nobody got near enough to Miss "Edith" as he was calling himself, to ask questions. 

Somehow he got away with it for five years, according to the stories he told later. By that time, the young man was less girlish and probably had more trouble hiding the stubble! Miss Edith retired as a spy and became Mr Murphy again. 

While he was at it, though, he had quite a few adventures - and admirers, including a Frenchman who proposed to him and a German officer who chased him through a train. Once, during a storm on his ship, he came rushing out in a pink nightie to help(just as well the crew knew about him!)

 See that painting at the top of this post? The young lady with a parasol might just be Herbert! Well, that's what he claimed, anyway. If you're ever in Melbourne, take a wander through the Ian Potter centre, which is the Australian art section of the National   Gallery of Victoria, and decide for yourself. Myself, I'll never see that painting again without a giggle. 

The adventures continued. After retiring as a spy, Herbert went to sea as a navigator. He applied to go on Ernest Shackleton's expedition to the South Pole, but was refused because he was "too effeminate"!  Instead he went with Douglas Mawson's Antarctic expedition. 

Eventually, he retired from it all and went back to Melbourne, where he bought a property on the Mornington Peninsula and ran summer camps for disadvantaged children. There, he led adventure activities and, in the evenings, told them stories of his exciting life. Did he tell them about those five years as a spy? Probably not, but he had plenty of other stuff to share.

 He married at fifty-four and lived to a ripe old age, passing away in 1971. Here's to you, Herbert and Miss Edith! 

K Is For...KGB: A To Z Challenge 2017

                                                                       

                                                       

Image from Wikimedia Commons

                                                            

       

 Soviet intelligence agency the KGB, an acronym for Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, Committee for State Security, was around from 1954 till the Soviet Union's collapse in the early 1990s. At that point, the KGB split up into a lot of smaller organisations. Recently, it has been suggested that Vladimir Putin, now President of Russia, is planning to reinstate it. He was a member in his youth and seems to have learned a lot from it. He was in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, and burned KGB files to keep protestors from getting them. (That was around the time when the Stasi, the German secret police, were shredding 16,000 sacks of their own documents. Apparently, 250 of those have been reconstructed by hand, but the rest will have to be done by computer technology or it could take 400 years!) 

The golden days of KGB versus CIA were during the Cold War era, when both agencies were spying on each other's countries, whether it was wiring a cat for sound(the CIA) or presenting the U.S. embassy with a carved replica of the U.S. Great Seal that was bugged. The CIA's cat plan didn't work, by the way, while the bugged Great Seal remained in place for several years before anyone caught on.

Have you ever seen "Spy Vs Spy" in Mad Magazine? There were two cartoon spies, one wearing a black coat and hat and one in white, constantly tricking each other. That's what I think of when I think of the Cold War spying between USA and USSR. Not to mention "Boris and Natasha", those two Soviet spies who were the villains in the Rocky And Bullwinkle Show. Boris wore the black coat and hat of a cliched spy, Natasha wore a glamorous evening gown at all times(was she meant to be a honey trap?). Cliches, of course, but the idea had to come from somewhere. 

Spying is a nasty game - and nobody plays nice. There was one incident in 1985 where Soviet diplomats were kidnapped by Hezbollah and held over a war in Syria where the USSR was on the "wrong" side. At first there were negotiations, but when a hostage was killed, the KGB kidnapped a relative of one of the Hezbollah leaders, dismembered him and sent some of the bits to his family, with a warning along the lines of, "We know who you are and where to find you.". The Soviet hostages were returned unharmed, without further discussion. Message taken.

Gadgets were used as much by the KGB as by the CIA. For example, there was the lipstick gun, mentioned in my post on gadgets, used in about 1965. It did a single shot, which you had to hope was enough. 

There was the poison dart umbrella, one of which was used to kill a dissident Bulgarian journalist, Georgy Markov, in a London street in 1978. It was only a few days from when he felt a sting in his leg to when he died of ricin poisoning. 

Smuggling microfilm was made easier for KGB agents by hollow coins and cuff links.  

What about the KGB's disappearing ink pen, with ink that made a message disappear after a short time? That was developed in the 1950s. Believe it or not, you can buy them now on-line, presumably for kids to send notes in class, or for embroiderers to use for outlines. How has the mighty gadget fallen!

Tomorrow: L is for Hedy Lamarr, glamorous star and inventor of communications technology...

J is for... Jargon: A To Z Challenge 2017

                                                 

                                                 

Enigma machine. Creative Commons licence.

If you're a secret agent, chances are you have your own jargon, just like any other occupation - and it certainly comes up in films and TV shows about spies!

Here are some spy words which I found on the Spy Museum web site, as well as reading them both in fiction and non fiction. If you're interested, follow this link and read some more.

A is for agent of influence. It's his or her job to work for a foreign government to affect policy. (A good fictional example of this kind of agent is in the Get Smart episode "Hoo Done It?" in which we learn of an agent so good that he persuaded the Japanese government to attack Pearl Harbour so as not to blow his cover. Maybe a bit overdone, eh?)

B is for babysitter: a spy name for a bodyguard. I don't think I'd want that kind of babysitter for any children in my life... Or maybe it might be a good idea provided they could play games and put them to bed. Protection is good! 

C is for Colossus: the world's first electronic computer, used to unravel German codes during World War II. I believe it was destroyed after the war, to preserve the secrets of Bletchley Park. 

D is for double agent. He or she pretends to be working for one country, but is really gathering information for another one. A fictional example was, of course, Professor Snape in the Harry Potter series, who was pretending to be a double agent for Lord Voldemort, but was really a double agent for Professor Dumbledore. Actually, when you think about it, this is slightly bizarre. Both sides know he's a double agent, but both sides assume he's a double agent for them. Does this often happen in real life? And could you call them a double agent if everyone knows he's a double agent, but he's only pretending to be a double agent for one side? Would he be a triple or quadruple agent? Too confusing! On to the next letter.

E is for Enigma: a machine the Germans used for encoding messages during World War II. The British broke the code by raiding an evacuated German sub and taking, not the machine, but the code book. 

G is a good one - how about ghoul which is what you call someone whose job is to hunt up potential fake names for agents, using obituaries and cemeteries. That is, use the name of someone who is dead for your agent. Yuk!

H is for honey trap - the use of an agent whose job it is to find out things by seducing the person for information, or lure them into a trap.

L-Pill is a name for the suicide pill used by agents to kill themselves when necessary. Some suicide pills from fiction: in Get Smart, flavour of the month was strawberry. In Blackadder 3, the Scarlet Pimpernel had some concealed in a few disgusting places on his body, and they had some over-the-top symptoms before death... The most memorable for me, though, was the one in Dune, in which it's hidden in a tooth. Duke Leto, who has been captured by his enemies, crunches down on it and not only kills himself but the enemy bending over him, by breathing out a poisonous gas.

M is for mole: someone used by one organisation to penetrate another. (Does that Get Smart episode in which Max joins KAOS to find out what they're doing to CONTROL count as an example?) 

N is for nursemaid: a Russian slang term for the official sent with a group to another country to make sure nobody defects. Judging by the number of defections from the Soviet Union over the years, it can't have been very effective! 

R is for Raven: a male agent who does the seduction thing for information. The female version is Swallow(see honey trap for both)

S is for sleeper agent. They live and work in a country. They could be your next door neighbours or your workmates. Then... Something happens between their country and yours and they're activated to do the job they are really there for. 

Enough for now! If you'd like more info, check out the link above. 

Tomorrow: K is for KGB factoids

I Is For... Interesting Spy Bits And Pieces: A To Z Challenge

                                                      

   

I couldn't find any spies whose names began with "I", and "invisible ink", which is in my book, just doesn't cut it.

So, instead, I'm sharing with you some interesting stuff that would have been under "Did you know?" in a book of mine. And some that I would have liked to give their own posts, but chose another topic under that letter. 

Did you know... Giacomo Casanova was, among other things, a spy for Venice. Yes, that Casanova, the famous lover. Who was also, late in life, a librarian. (Yay, Giacomo! Librarians rock!) We don't know a lot about it, because he began spying after his autobiography finishes, but he did spy. I have a soft spot for Casanova. He was no Don Juan, more of a serial monogamist. He actually liked  - and respected - women. They liked him. 

Portrait of Casanova. Public domain.

Did you know... Julius Caesar employed spies, including one who handed him a report with a list of the conspirators minutes before he was assassinated - and he didn't read it! What a waste of money, eh?

Actually, Ancient Rome was just full of spies. It was a spy paradise. And the secret service, from the time of Hadrian, was run by the legions' quartermasters - yes, you read right. They were known as frumentarii, wheat collectors, who had to pick up wheat and other supplies from the locals in whatever province their legion was in. How better to pick up information and who better to do it than the men who had to go here and there collecting supplies? 

Did you know... King Alfred of Wessex, the one who is supposed to have burned the cakes, is said to have spied on the Danish enemy at one time. He could play the harp well enough to perform and harp music was a regular part of life in a lord's hall. So he entered the enemy camp disguised as a musician and, while he played and sang, listened in to enemy plans. 

     Public domain.

History and legend are overflowing with spies and spying! 

H is for ... Mata Hari: A to Z Challenge 2017

                                                                     

Wikimedia Commons 

                                             

   

These days, the name "Mata Hari" is used as another way of saying, "female spy." When someone says, "Oh, she's a real Mata Hari" you know what they mean.

But the lady who bore that name was not a professional agent - and we don't really know who she was working for. Maybe even she wasn't sure who she was working for! So - was she even a spy at all or just an exotic dancer who hung out with a lot of military men? 

Born Margaretha Zelle in 1876, she became an exotic dancer and used the name Mata Hari as a stage name. She had a Dutch passport, and Holland was neutral during World War I, so during the war, it was easy enough for her to travel around. She certainly needed the money spying would bring. By that time, she was over forty and the theatre bookings weren't coming in as much. She was a courtesan in Paris and hung around with the military bigwigs.

She agreed to spy for the French, for a million francs. Well, that's what she said, anyway, when the British confused her with another German spy and took her to England for questioning. The French denied she was working for them, but she was released anyway and went to Spain, where she may have spied for the Germans. 

Actually, she denied ever having spied for Germany during her trial. Slept with German officers for money, yes, but not spied, she said. Maybe that's true. She was certainly set up for a fall when she was arrested in Paris in 1917, a hundred years ago, and not allowed to see anyone except her lawyer, who was a former lover. The trial was not fair. 

Whatever was the truth of the matter, she died bravely, taking off the blindfold and blowing a kiss to the firing squad.


Tomorrow: I is for Interesting Spy Bits And Pieces

G Is For... (Spy) Gadgets: A To Z Challenge 2017

                                                

  

Have you ever watched a spy movie, perhaps James Bond, and muttered, "Oh, come on, now!" as he draws his bizarre and unlikely equipment?

Mission Impossible is full of unlikely technology, put together and designed by a tech called Barney(whose son appears in the remake of the series, played by the son of the actor who played Barney).  

The Man From UNCLE had wrist phones which became shoe phones in the first UNCLE movie. In one scene agent Ilya Kuryakin is hanging beside another prisoner, unable to reach his shoe phone. When asked why the phones have changed, he replies,"Progress!" 

Get Smart features poisoned lipstick(which Maxwell Smart avoids by using plastic lips)and Max's own equipment, which includes a car phone that is posing as a cigarette lighter and a cigarette lighter disguised as a car phone. In one episode Agent 99 asks why the scientist is giving them a tape recorder disguised as a camera and a camera disguised as a tape recorder - why not the other way around? "Because," says the offended scientist, "my mind doesn't work that way."

Oh, and that shoe phone, of course. In the first episode, it rings while he's at a concert and he has to leave the hall to answer it. Mel Brooks commented that this was the first time on film/TV where someone had a mobile phone ring inconveniently in the theatre.

Yes, it was having fun with the tropes of spy fiction. And yet...

And yet, you'd be surprised what over-the-top equipment exists/ has existed over the years. Go check out the CIA web site for some of it. That's where I found some of the gadgets for my chapter on the subject in Your Cat Could Be A Spy. I must say, it was a lot more fun than the Australian web site, which just had information about how to apply to become a spy, like any other public service job!

 Poisoned lipstick? Maybe, maybe not, but there have indeed been lipstick guns(those were Soviet equipment.)

There were microdot cameras which could take photos the size of the full stop at the end of a sentence. Like this one.

But those were not the most bizarre equipment used in war and Cold War. During World War II agents of the SOE(Special Operations Executive) arrived in boats in some Asian countries, wearing shoes that made tracks of bare feet in the sand, because most locals didn't wear shoes and boot prints would have looked suss.

The SOE also stuffed dead rats with explosives in Germany so that they would explode when shovelled into furnaces. That didn't work, by the way - the Nazis caught on.

Did you think "bug" was just another name for a listening device? Well, the CIA had a listening device disguised as a dragonfly! Unfortunately, it couldn't keep on course...

CIA dragonfly. Public domain image

In the 1970s the CIA was using pigeons to carry aerial cameras, because who would notice a high-flying bird taking pictures? (During the American Civil War, hot-air balloons were used for aerial spying)

And then there was the animal poo... Fake tiger droppings were used during the Vietnam war to work out the movements of enemy troops in the jungle. Well, who was going to go near a pile of dung? 

One of my favourites is the CIA's robot catfish, used to collect water samples around enemy nuclear plants. It was so realistic it fooled other fish. Boy, would those bigger fish have been surprised when they took a bite!

Tomorrow: H is for Mata Hari

E is for Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Spy... A To Z Challenge 2017

                                               

                                                    

Sarah Emma Edmonds in disguise. Public Domain

If you've ever read Terry Pratchett's novel Monstrous Regiment, you'll remember the fun he had with folk songs about girls who disguised as men to go to war, usually to find some sweetheart, tra la la... His heroine, Polly, is looking for her brother, not a sweetheart, and eventually discovers that, actually, everyone in her troop is a disguised woman! That includes the crusty old sergeant. 

It might surprise you to learn that it happened in real life, quite a lot, including during the American Civil War. Maybe that's even why it turned up so much in folk songs? Harry Turtledove has a character in his alternative universe Civil War novel The Guns Of The South, Mollie Bean, aka Melvin, who may have been inspired by a real person. Well, he used some names, anyway, and developed them into his characters.

Sarah Emma Edmonds was a Canadian girl who had run away from home to avoid an arranged marriage and an unpleasant father. So once the Civil War began, she could decide on which side she preferred. She chose the North and, as a man called "Frank Thompson", joined the Union army, with which she fought until she desperately needed hospital treatment and went to a private civilian one to avoid being caught out as a woman. She had intended to return, but by the time she had recovered, "Frank Thompson" was in trouble for desertion. She did plenty more before the war was over, but the spying adventures I have in mind happened while she was being Frank Thompson. 

As a Union spy in Virginia, she used a wig and skin dye to disguise herself as a black slave called Cuff. A black male slave. In this role, she was helping to build fortifications in Yorktown. When the dye began to run after rain, "Cuff" explained that "he" was turning white due to a white mother. They must have bought it, because she survived to carry back information she had picked up while carrying water around the camp. In fact, one night she was handed a gun. Apparently, there had been enough losses that the Southerners needed slaves to fight! 

They really didn't get it, did they? But then, anyone who bought that line about turning white due to a white mother would also buy a bridge...

Sarah's adventures didn't end there. She did some nursing, including of a dying soldier who confessed to her that she was a woman and asked Sarah to bury her privately.

After the war, she married and had three children and, eventually,  got the desertion charges against "Frank Thompson" dropped. In fact, she applied for, and got, a war pension.

She must have had some amazing stories to tell the kids!

Tomorrow: F Is For Fictional Spies

D Is For Dabneys - Civil War Spies: A-Z Challenge 2017

                                       

  

During the American Civil War, spying was common(at one point, all you had to do to find out what the other side was doing was to read the local newspapers!). Some of the top spies for the North were African Americans, both those who had escaped and those still in slavery. It even had a name, Black Dispatches. Southern slave owners who didn't think their chattels were human didn't think to avoid talking secret stuff in their presence. (Mitch Vane did a wonderful illustration for my book Your Cat Could Be A Spy in which a couple of white men are talking secrets. "Is it O.K to talk?" asks one. "Yes, there's nobody here," the other agrees...in the presence of several slaves.)

There were not too many spy couples, though. One slave couple, the Dabneys, escaped and joined a Union camp on the banks of the Rappahanock river in Virginia. Mr Dabney got a job in the camp and, while there, admired the telegraph system, asking for the details of how it worked. He and his wife put their heads together and came up with a simple but devious plan. 

Soon after, Mrs Dabney announced that she was going to cross the river to Confederate territory, where there were military bigwigs and the woman she had previously worked for. She doesn't seem to have had much trouble, though it was a huge risk. She got a job as a laundress - even Generals need their clothes washed.

Not long after this, Mr Dabney started reporting rebel plans to the Union leaders. The plans were completely accurate, though he never left the camp for rebel territory. He even knew when fake plans were being made to fool the Union leaders.

Finally, they asked him how he did it and he took them to a high spot where they could look across to the houses on the other side. He pointed at a cabin in the suburbs, where a line of washing hung. Each shirt, he told them, represented a different Confederate General. Its position on the line told you where that general was going. One shirt, pinned like a fish trap, said, "Fake plan! Trap!"

Yes, simple but cunning, this washing telegraph. If Mrs Dabney had been caught, that would have been the end of her, but who would think to stop discussing military plans just because the washerwoman has come in to collect the dirty clothes? And even if they did get suspicious of her for listening, what evidence did they have? Their drying clothes? She never left. She didn't even have to look across the river. 

So the plot worked, and beautifully. Hats off to the Dabneys!

Anyone got any other stories about actions this clever? 

Tomorrow: E Is For Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Female Soldier And Spy

F Is For Fictional Spies: A To Z Challenge 2017

                                               

I have to be honest: I'm not all that familiar with James Bond. I have only seen a few of the films and read none of the books.

But you can't leave him out of a discussion of fictional spies, any more than you can leave Marie Curie out of an account of women scientists or Ned Kelly out of a history of Australian crime.  

So, while I'm not that familiar with "Bond, James Bond" I have read Charlie Higson's wonderful Young James Bond YA series, set in the 1920s, when James is attending Eton. He doesn't spend a lot of time at school, actually, but gets out for adventures. The last novel in the series has an epilogue set in World War II, when he's a naval commander. Before that, he has adventures that reflect those of the secret agent he will be one day. There was, in each novel, a brave and beautiful girl who had the adventure with him. Charlie was kind enough to agree to an interview on this blog with one of my students, mostly about his YA zombie series, but I added a question about Young James Bond and those brave and beautiful girls. Were they, I asked, meant to be Bond Girls? Charlie said yes! 

Still in YA, there is, of course, Alex Rider, brought up by his uncle, who turns out, after his violent death, to have been a secret agent. Alex is required to finish his mission or see his beloved American nanny/minder deported. He becomes an MI6 agent and has several more adventures. They're fun, though I don't think he's as nice a boy as the young James Bond from the Higson novels. 

On TV in the 1960s, there were a number of spy shows. I'll just comment on two here, though I might mention more in my next post, on gadgets.  

The Man From U.N.C.L.E was great fun. It was actually about two men, Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn, and his Russian partner, Ilya Kuryakin, played by David McCallum, working for an organisation called U.N.C.L.E (United Network Command for Law Enforcement). Their boss was Alexander Waverley, played by Leo G Carroll. They were fighting an evil organisation called T.H.R.U.S.H. I'm not sure what that stood for. Solo, the American, got all the girls, of course, though it was Ilya's photo that hung over this little black duck's bed! However, there was an episode in which Ilya got one girl and Mr Waverley got another, while Napoleon was left to mind the store for the weekend. Mr Waverley's "girl" was played by Anne Francis, who had played opposite Leo G Carroll in the ghost comedy Topper. 

If U.N.C.L.E had fun with spy tropes,  Get Smart had fun with U.N.C.L.E. The names of the two organisations CONTROL and KAOS(geddit?) didn't stand for anything. The boss was just referred to as the Chief, though in one episode we did find out his first name when an old flame turned up and called him...Thaddeus? 

The hero, Maxwell Smart, was a klutz who somehow managed to solve the mysteries and resolve the crises in each episode. He was not meant to be very bright, but some of his solutions suggested he was not quite as dumb as portrayed. Almost, but not entirely. 

Max lived in a swish apartment full of gadgets to protect him from invaders, including a net, an invisible barrier, a club that came down on the head of an enemy when the soda siphon was used, even a spear on the staircase. He needed them, because somehow every villain seemed to know where he lived and how to get into his apartment. In one episode he asked someone how they had found him and got the answer,"I looked in the phone book." That was the only time I remember him asking. 

Generic KAOS agents wore cliched black coats and hats, though the semi-regulars, such as Siegfried, didn't. 

Max had a partner, the beautiful and intelligent Agent 99, whose name we never found out, even when her mother appeared. They eventually married and she went on working as an agent.

The series sent up not only the spy genre but many classic films, and Don Adams, who played the role of Smart, got to play Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Coleman and others. In one episode, where he had to moonlight as a PI due to budget cuts, he was visited by two Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre lookalikes. The Peter Lorre character got to say, "No, I'm Sydney, he's Peter!"

My favourite spy series of all time! 

Do you have a favourite!

Tomorrow: G Is For Gadgets

C Is For The CIA And Castro... A-Z Challenge 2017

Castro. Public Domain

Ladies and gentlemen, today I continue my A-Z Challenge on the theme of spies and spying.

I would like to present to you some of the CIA's attempts, during the Cold War(another C), to assassinate the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro - or, failing that, to embarrass him. Communism was a huge fear in the U.S. at the time, what with the Soviet Union having as many nuclear weapons as they did, and what did they have next door? Another Communist country! 

Given that Fidel Castro lived long enough to die of old age in the 21st century, you can assume he survived. But again, there must have been CIA members with too much time on their hands, time enough to come up with over-the-top ideas. (Don't even get me started on the telepathy thing they tried against the Soviet Union!)

Castro seems to have avoided the exploding cigar the CIA sent him, and the powder that was supposed to make his beard, of which he was proud, fall out and the drug that was supposed to be pumped into a studio where he was making a speech, to make him look stupid.

The next idea was to present him with a poisoned wetsuit that was to kill him when he next went scuba diving. Fortunately, the diplomat who was supposed to hand over the wetsuit decided his country couldn't afford the trouble it would cause and swapped the wetsuit for a clean one. 

It must have made Castro feel invulnerable when all those plots against him failed. There's no doubt he was a survivor! 

Tomorrow: The Dabneys in the Civil War.

B Is For Aphra Behn: A-Z Challenge 2017

Imagine if J. K Rowling had gone into the spy game. Or Stephen King, perhaps. There were quite a few bestselling spies in history, including Daniel Defoe, Christopher Marlowe and Ian Fleming(sort of. He was in charge of other spies, including one who might have inspired James Bond, of which more in a later post).

Aphra Behn, a 17th century Englishwoman, was a novelist, poet and prolific playwright. You are more likely to have heard of the playwright Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote about three plays. She wrote over 100, some of them still being performed today, pastoral poetry and Ooronoko, a novel about a slave uprising.

But her adventures as a spy began in 1666, when England was at war with the Netherlands. She was sent to Antwerp by King Charles II. Her code name was Astrea. She was meant to communicate with a William Scot, who had valuable information and was living in the Netherlands, and persuade him to become a double agent for England. He had, among other things, killed a couple of British agents, so she was to offer him a pardon. 

He agreed and gave her the information that the Dutch were planning a raid up the River Thames. At great risk to herself, she smuggled the information back home ... and was ignored. The raid happened.

Things went wrong during this trip. Scot may have betrayed her. But what really went wrong was the money. King Charles wasn't very good at paying. She was stuck in Holland till 1667. She had to pawn her jewellery and somehow scrape together the money to get home where, if she was ever paid, we don't know about it. To add insult to injury, a warrant was issued for her arrest for debt! 

In fact, it was because she was broke that she started writing plays, to raise money - and became a huge success, one of the first women in England to make a living from her writing. 

She must have concluded that spying was a mug's game. 

Tomorrow: C is for the CIA and Castro.

A is For...Acoustic Kitty: A-Z Challenge 2017

The theme is spies and spying, so I can be flexible.

Project Acoustic Kitty was a bright idea by someone in the CIA during the Cold War, in the 1960s. I can only assume there were people in that organisation who had too much time in their hands. I think that was around when they were trying various bizarre ways to kill, or at least embarrass, Fidel Castro. Anyone who thinks the CIA is behind every conspiracy going in the world should read about some of these plots and decide if the CIA plotters are really that good. 

Anyway... The plan was to wire a cat for sound. You could do all sorts of things with that. Like, listen in to conversations in your Cold War enemy's embassy. Just imagine it, sir! We can have this cat wandering around among the guests at a party, or maybe at a secret meeting, being stroked on the ambassador's knee. It can't miss, sir! 

Someone obviously hadn't heard of the expression "like herding cats." That is, impossible - a cat won't follow orders and you can't make it do anything it doesn't want to do. 

So they got this cat - a tomcat - and inserted a microphone, with an antenna in its tail. Training? You have to be joking! If the cat was hungry, he went for a snack. If a female wandered past, well, he was a tom. Dogs have masters, cats have staff. 

Finally, they got him ready and decided to test him out, only to have him run over by a car on the very first day. An agent had to run over and grab kitty to retrieve the equipment.

So ended the one and only effort to use a cat as a spy.

                                           

   

The A-Z Challenge 2017 - A Bit Late!

Okay, so last year I did it unofficially. I thought I might try visiting the official page this year. It seems a bit fiddly - you have to visit it each day with your link and comment on five blogs, which makes it sound like it's a bunch of bloggers commenting on each other's blogs, but still, there were 521 comments on that page and that was just for B. You never know who will turn up.And because I'm late I will be doing two posts to start. I'll stick the badge on later, when I can get to my laptop - you can't add pictures on an iPad for some reason, except through the app, which has been scrapped and only does pics on the actual post anyway. (I still have the app).

My theme is spies and spying, mainly using my children's book, Your Cat Could Be A Spy(This Book Is Bugged in North America). You can still buy it on line or order it through your bookshop, as it's gone to POD. You just can't find it on the bookshop shelves any more. (If you enjoy my posts I hope you will consider buying a copy, for yourself or your child, as I never got a cent in royalties, despite the book selling out. The advance was never recovered, as most of the copies were sold through Scholastic Book Club, which is totally necessary if you want your children's book to be published, but you receive about 2% of the net, not the RRP. And the net isn't much because they buy - and sell -the books cheap.)

I don't think I can get past W, though I'll search, but I was delighted to find I had pretty much all of the other letters of the alphabet via my book's index.

Look for my first post, Operation Acoustic Kitty, soon after this goes up!

Lois McMaster Bujold And Blake's 7!

Lois McMaster Bujold has denied her characters had anything to do with  Star Trek and it's her universe, so we must respect that, though I have to say that there is something Klingon-like about Barrayaran culture. And by the way, the Ferenghi would settle happily on Jackson's Whole if they were nastier, but they came after the Vorkosiverse.

But there are two, possibly three, characters who certainly were a tribute to the British SF series of the are 1970s/early 80s, Blake's 7. 

Blake's 7, for anyone too young to remember, was a show that started as a dystopia set on a wrecked Earth, in which people live under domes and are drugged to keep them placid and obedient, and went on to become a space opera in which the rebel leader Blake and his "Dirty Dozen" style followers were fighting the evil Federation from a magnificent ship and encountering aliens. 

The series had a villain, Servalan, who led troopers - stormtrooper types, only wearing black armour instead of white. But Servalan wore elegant gowns and heels instead of a uniform. She was tiny and had close-cropped hair, which made her no less terrifying. 

She had a sidekick, Travis, who was a Space Commander. He was not nice, in fact hated by the rebels, but respected by his men, who knew that they could count on him to look after them. Servalan treated him badly. 

There was another character, a reluctant rebel - one of Blake's people - called Kerr Avon, played by the then-gorgeous Paul Darrow. Avon had a sarcastic wit and spoke some of the show's most memorable lines. 

Got it? Now let's find these characters in the Vorkosiverse. Two of them are definitely meant to be there, Servalan and Avon. I think Travis is there too, although the character is a lot less sympathetic than Travis.

Servalan appears in The Vor Game, as Cavilo, leader of the mercenary army Randall's Rangers(she killed Randall and took over). Cavilo does wear a uniform, but not when we first meet her. Miles, going undercover as an arms dealer called Victor Rotha, first sees her passing on a space station and assumes she is someone's "expensive" mistress, due to her sparkly clothing. That doesn't last long once they actually meet; he notes she doesn't have the body language of a courtesan, who would have a desire to please. But even then she is wearing sparkly clothing. In fact, the description of her red, high-collared costume is specifically that of one worn by Servalan in a Blake's 7 episode called "Gambit." 

And she finds a weapon use even for her perfume. 

The only physical difference I could find between Servalan and Cavilo is that she's blonde and Servalan is dark-haired. Personality-wise, they are very similar, though I suspect they would hate each other, especially if they wanted the same thing. And they do - power. I thought Cavilo might return at some future time, but I don't think she has. Admittedly, I'm three novels behind in the series. 

I keep imagining the voice of Jacqueline Pearce, the actress who played Servalan, whenever I read Cavilo's dialogue. 

And then there is Captain Duv Galeni, whom we first meet in Brothers In Arms, the novel I'm rereading now. The description given of him sounds a lot like Avon. I keep hearing the beautiful voice of Paul Darrow, who played the role of Avon. Duv Galeni is the son of a rather dreadful man who can't get it into his head that the war between his planet, Komarr, and Barrayar, is over. Barrayar conquered Komarr about thirty years ago for practical reasons and then didn't become tyrannical, so most people, especially the younger generation,  are fine with it now. Not all, definitely, and in the novel Komarr, set several years later, there is a major plot that will kill thousands. But most. In fact, by A Civil Campaign, Emperor Gregor of Barrayar is marrying a Komarran business woman. 

Duv Galeni has Avon's dry wit, as well as his appearance. Avon was arrested for major computer hacking which nearly made him hugely wealthy, except he was being watched - and betrayed. Duv is a decent man who is constantly having to prove himself to the Barrayarans - and has to deal with his terrorist father, whom he had thought was dead before he turned up in Brothers In Arms, working on yet another plot - and willing to do dreadful things to his own son in the interests of the Cause. But Duv's personality has a certain Avon-like flavour, though he becomes less Avon-like as he becomes a regular character in the series, takes on an important job, falls in love. 

 Like Avon, he has to deal with nasty things in his past. And both men are brave and honourable(Avon would protest at the notion that he's honourable, but whatever he does, betrayal isn't in it, even when he would be better off). 

I am not sure that LMB intended Cavilo's sidekick, General Metzov, to be Travis, but there is a basis for comparison.

We first meet General Metzov in the first part of The Vor Game("The Weatherman"). Metzov is in command on Kyril Island, nicknamed Camp Permafrost. It's a winter training base on Barrayar. If you're part of the permanent staff, you probably got into trouble for something at some stage. Nobody goes there voluntarily. Miles is assigned there as his first posting with the promise of a plum posting afterwards if he can keep a clean nose for six months, with the notion that if he can survive there, he can handle any job thrown at him. He is considered to have a problem with subordination and needs to get over it before he can be trusted with regular command.

And, as Miles suspects, Metzov did get exiled there for having done something nasty during the Komarran war, which is known but unproven. While Miles is there, he issues a criminal order. Miles manages to stop a massacre, but after that, no commander is likely to want him, which leads to his doing something else that ends up with the encounter with Cavilo - and Metzov, who has been kicked out if the army without a pension, so has become a mercenary. 

Come to think of it, it all happens in a very short time.

Travis had been known for a massacre of five thousand rebel colonists. Nobody wants to work with him, except Servalan, who can use him to do her dirty work, though she doesn't mind doing it herself as well. He hates Roj Blake, whom he had encountered before and who was responsible for his loss of an eye. The hatred is mutual, as is the obsession. 

Servalan uses his obsession with Blake. Cavilo uses Metzov's obsession with Miles(though Miles isn't obsessed with Metzov, he just understands how dangerous the man could be to him and his mission).

He hasn't lost an eye, but he has lost his job and pension, for which he holds Miles responsible. Cavilo, like Servalan, sends her sidekick on dangerous missions, using his obsession to help them along.

But Travis is, in many ways, a tragic figure. Metzov deserves what he gets in the end, even if he gets it from the wrong source.

By the way, Camp Permafrost gets a mention in a comical context in A Civil Campaign.

I believe you can get Blake's 7 on DVD still - and, interestingly, there are some new stories on YouTube, amateur productions by young cast who must have had parents who were fans. 

If you're a Vorkosiverse fan, why not check out the early episodes of Blake's 7? Both Blake and Travis are gone after Season 2 and those seasons are better anyway.

Updated Contact Details

As of now, I've added contact details to my review and posting policy and deleted the "contact me" page. I suppose I should have done it a while ago. It's confusing to have both. I do apologise to those of you who need to contact me for other reasons - I've had some poor sods write a comment because they couldn't find my email address - but you'll just have to skip the policy and go to the bottom.

Recently, I received a review request from a local writer who hadn't read the review policy page, on which I say I'm not taking anything except from publishers I deal with until I can get down my pile of TBR. He should have, I suppose, but that's neither here nor there. He no doubt felt that as his book looked like the ones I was reviewing and he had looked through some posts, his work was appropriate for this blog. And it was, under normal circumstances.

I told him I had to decline for reasons outlined on my review policy and he pointed out politely that Contact Me and the policy were on separate pages. I had been thinking about it for a while and now I've done it.

So, please, if you're thinking of sending an inquiry, go to the Review Policy page, which is now the Review Policy and Contact page. That way, you won't get confused and I won't have any more marketing company inquiries that have ignored the policy page and gone straight to Contact. No further excuses, although I have had some that said, "Yeah, we read that, but we hoped you'd make an exception..."

If you want to say something about a post, please put it in the comments. That's what the comments are for.