alexanderwales
patreon
Thresholder, ch 150, Epilogue: Release Valves
🕑 Added 2025-01-13 18:25:49 +0000 UTCIt's the end of the world as we know it.
~~~~
Casper dressed well for the confrontation, in a tailored suit that he’d procured from one of the more meticulous libraries and had altered to fit. In his time moving from kingdom to kingdom, helping to organize rebellions and resistances, he usually dressed like a laborer, a man who worked with his hands. Looking and dressing the part was a necessary piece of the process. He kept his hands calloused as much as he could, because that was a signifier that he, too, was someone who spent his time doing things, not just talking. His actual role was nothing but talking, though sometimes he chipped in with work so that people would give him the time of day. He’d picked up enough skills to not embarrass himself.
The visit to Thirlwell’s castle required a different sort of look and demeanor, which is why he had the suit. It was a sign of respectability and belonging. He was there representing the Intra-Cooperative Global Command Authority, treating with the queen and her new king as, essentially, equals. He had no entourage with him, though there were another half dozen people sitting in a tavern three blocks away — a tavern that had been closed in order to hold them in, with soldiers standing outside it. This was diplomacy, of a sort. Everyone’s safety and ability to leave had been guaranteed. But it was Casper alone who would meet with the queen and king. That was fine: he had history with Dirk, and this was better done singly, so there would be no cross-talk or individuation.
The throne room was relatively small, a throwback to a simpler time, a relic of the old castle that the next castle had been built on top of. It was a symbol of the legitimacy of the kingdom, in some sense, but in terms of organization and logistics there were certainly better places. A larger room, one without a throne but with an enormous table, was used in many affairs of state. They had chosen the old throne room though, one with pillars of stone holding up the arches of its roof. There were two thrones, one large and one small, delicately carved from wood and inlaid with precious stones that had been set so as to catch a little light no matter what angle you viewed the throne from. It was a travesty, untold labor for a symbol that would only ever be seen by a handful of people, unused for most matters of state given that this throne room was too small for all but ceremonial purposes — or intimidation, as the case might be.
The queen of Thirlwell sat in the larger of the two thrones, and beside her, in the smaller one, was “Thom Faulk”, a clone of Dirk Gibbons, the former spymaster of Thirlwell. The queen was in a white and gold dress with a crown atop her head, dripped in jewelry. Thom beside her was in stately black clothes with buttons of gold, stitched and embroidered so that shiny pieces of black stood out against those that were matte, all a solid color, distinguished only by how the light played over it. This too was obscene to Casper’s eyes.
The throne room had three doors, two at the back and one at the front, but all were closed now. The three of them were alone, with no guards or attendants. The conversation would be private. It would need to be, given what they were going to discuss. He’d been checked for weapons, and their guards would be right outside.
Casper did not bow. He did not recognize the authority of this queen, or any monarch. This was the last, and that made her special, but special only in the way that the last tree remaining in a forest that had been cleared was special. The axe was already sharpened for her to be felled.
“Greetings,” said the queen once his escort had left. “I suppose we’re setting formalities aside?”
“In the long history of diplomatic relations between the culture and the monarchies, setting aside formalities has been a necessity,” said Casper. He looked at Thom and raised an eyebrow.
“Then let’s commence,” said the queen. “My father was the one responsible for the missile attacks. We will unilaterally disarm and render ourselves incapable of that sort of thing. This will be accomplished through a joint committee overseeing our military capabilities. In exchange, the ICGCA will agree to stop all intelligence operations within Thirlwell, will set up a system of exchange for immigration and emigration from the island, and will cease any attempts at agitation or propaganda within Thirlwell.”
“You want to make the current arrangement into something static,” said Casper.
“No,” said the queen. “I want to make a new arrangement that ensures the continued survival of this kingdom, in whatever shape it must take to make that happen.”
“Monarchy is fundamentally incompatible with the culture,” said Casper. “A ruler handing down orders from on high with a pretense of legitimacy is not the culture. It’s especially not the culture when that ruler is there through birthright rather than being elected, but it wouldn’t be the culture in either case.”
“I’m not claiming that we’ll adopt the culture,” said the queen, frowning at him. “That’s exactly what we don’t want to have happen. In fact, what we want is for all proselytizing to stop. Those who wish to live in the culture will be free to leave Thrilwell in a structured way. Contrarily, those in the culture who wish to live under monarchical rule will be welcomed in.”
Casper considered this. “That’s a radical change in policy.”
“I am not my father,” said the queen. “I intend to make a number of radical changes in policy, in fact.”
Casper raised an eyebrow. “I’m interested to hear what these changes in policy would be.”
“Our goal is, of course, to compete against the culture,” said the queen. “We’d like to show people a better way. We want to demonstrate the superiority of the monarchical system. There are, however, certain aspects of the culture which are broadly popular, not elements of ideology, but praxis. We’ll be instituting social safety nets, to the extent those are still needed when people can simply leave the island of their own accord.”
“In the history of this world, many things have been tried,” said Casper. “You are not the first to think that you can externalize your problems to us, your mentally ill, your criminals, your homeless, your needy. You are not substantially different from those who have come before you.”
“I am,” said the queen. “Not because of my lineage, but because I’m the last. We have our own systems for dealing with social and economic ills, and those are the first line of defense, but if people choose to leave, you must agree that we shouldn’t stop them, that you shouldn’t stop them. You have always welcomed defectors, that’s the culture. We’re hoping to build a more voluntary society here.”
“It won’t work,” said Casper. “We have seen this all before.”
“No,” said the queen. “You, in fact, have not, because, again: I am the last. This is the last. You have, until now, benefitted from people seeing what direction the wind is blowing and leaving with what they could, but now there’s nowhere for them to go. We took a census last week, one that accounted for most of the country, and our population is burgeoning. A full thirty percent of the people living here weren’t born here.”
“Is that so?” asked Casper. He kept his voice mild. “And you suppose that this trend will continue. That you can leech from the culture, sucking its blood, sending out what you see as waste.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that,” said the queen. She frowned at him. It was undiplomatic language, but this was something that diplomacy required. “We’ll be perfectly fine here, so long as we have our own counter culture. There are dissident elements, but many of them have been organized and placed by your people. There are malcontents, but many of them have been unwittingly imported. That’s what we aim to stop. If the monarchy is allowed to be safe from subterfuge, and the people organize against us, then we won’t stop them — but we don’t believe that will happen.”
Casper stared at her, unwavering. She had a point, a single, solitary point, which was that Thirlwell had been the beneficiary of voluntary movements. There were former heads of state living in the city, monarchs in exile who would never be restored to their throne, most of whom no longer put much effort into their claims. There were, around these people, entourages and enclaves, but Casper hadn’t known how extensive they were. Unfortunately for efforts to overthrow the monarchy, they were mostly true believers.
And obviously she was lying about simply allowing a revolution if there was a groundswell of support.
“This is the last kingdom,” said Casper, taking a different tack. “You’re right that it holds a unique position. But we will not allow it to survive, not with you as a ruler — not with any ruler. If your plan is to take advantage of voluntary movement, then we’ll do everything in our power to stop you. We have Berus now, and it’s stable thanks to support from all across the world. We’ll embargo ships entering or leaving your harbor. We’ll make sure that you can’t offload your effluence onto the rest of the world.”
“We plan to establish domes, thank you very much,” said the queen. “We’ve been using lantern designs that are relatively clean for ages anyway.”
Casper watched her. Her face was painted for the occasion, and that made it harder to judge what she was thinking. This was not a discussion about appropriate levels of effluence or the construction of domes. It wasn’t about technology. It was about governance.
“Does it escape your notice that we have a significant amount of power and will?” asked Casper. “I’m telling you only the things I think are obvious and common sense, the things that I can say on my own without the consent of the GCA.” He was tinting his words with threat. It had helped more than one monarch see the light and voluntarily abdicate their throne. “We would, through the old rules, be well within our rights to retaliate against what your father did.”
“I am not my father,” said the queen. “And his life was brutally taken by one of yours.”
“Perry wasn’t one of ours,” said Casper. “The whole business with the thresholders seems concluded, it’s neither here nor there.”
“You want to sweep the past under a rug?” asked the queen. “I won’t stand for that.”
Casper folded his hands behind his back and regarded Dirk, who sat there on the second throne. Thus far, Dirk hadn’t said anything. They knew each other, and knew each other fairly well, though largely in a professional capacity. Casper was not particularly fond of Dirk, and had always imagined that the feeling was mutual. Whatever play Dirk was making here, he hadn’t taken an opportunity to inform anyone of it.
“I’ve made my wishes known,” said the queen. “There’s no reason we can’t be amicable. Voluntary trade is the culture. I suppose you think you have the will to sit ships in the water and stop us from sending anything out, and to do the same with airships, threatening to kill men who are looking only to put some coin in their pocket, but I think you’re wrong. I don’t think the culture does have the will for warfare of that sort. Either you’ll get us from within, or not at all. So let’s take a step back, lay down our respective swords, and settle on a course of diplomacy that will take us through the next few years.”
“We want this settled,” said Casper. He raised a finger and pointed it at Dirk. “That man, your spymaster, is an agent of the culture.”
Dirk didn’t so much as budge. The queen covered her mouth to hide her laughter.
“Did you think that I didn’t know that?” she asked. “That he would have risked going into this meeting with the possibility that you would betray him?”
“And you’re fine with that?” asked Casper. “That doesn’t change how you feel?”
“No,” said the queen. “If anything, it’s an asset. He’s on my side, you see.”
“He is?” asked Casper, looking pointedly at Dirk.
“I am,” said Dirk with a slow nod.
“Explain that, please,” said Casper.
“She’s a decent woman,” said Dirk. “She’s not her father. She was never destined for the throne, and she’s had her own sympathies toward the culture. Casper, we need a release valve, we need a place for people to go, somewhere to put our own malcontents, not the criminals, but the ones who have a yearning to prove themselves.”
“If they want to prove themselves, they can do that with service,” said Casper. “We have plenty for anyone to do.”
“There’s a mindset,” said Dirk. “And you know it. We used to call it greed, but I’ve lately started to think that it’s something else, some kind of yearning for more. It’s not the culture, but it was always a big ask trying to get everyone to fit inside the culture. There are still parts of the world where they’re not quite there, a decade down the line. There are elven communes that are only barely the culture. There are places we say are the culture, but it’s just a community of three hundred people, and we know they don’t really get it.”
“You’re saying that our life’s work is a failure,” said Casper. “That’s why you’re siding with her.”
“I’m not siding with her,” said Dirk. “She’s already met me in the middle. And there’s a real cause, here, for an out for people who feel like they need one. Maybe that’s one of the roles this kingdom can play, as a counterweight.”
“Dirk, no,” said Casper. “I know you’ve always worried that the GCA would dissolve, that we’d wrap things up and there’d be nothing for men like us to do, but you know that this won’t play. We’re a single world, everything is interconnected, it simply does not work for these externalities to be working against us, this has been proven time and again.”
“I think this case is different,” said Dirk. “You were in Berus, you saw the devastation the thresholders caused. They’re gone, but their kind are still out there, and if there are other worlds, there needs to be a place that takes seriously the idea that we might be under threat. If I could be certain that the GCA was going to stay solvent, that it would be a guiding light — but we both know that they’re weak, even with men like us as part of them. There are too many people who have grown too old, too ready to lay down and roll over. If we hadn’t accomplished what we did, when we did, we might not have made it to the finish line.”
“And this is your last hope for something grander, something better, a place you can fit?” asked Casper.
“It’s part of it,” said Dirk. He looked over at the queen. “We’ve talked it over.”
“And if I go out and tell everyone that you’re an agent of the culture?” asked Casper.
“Do you think we’re not prepared for that?” asked the queen. “Do you think we haven’t planned contingencies?”
Casper considered this. That they had contingencies in place didn’t mean those were contingencies they wanted to use. But if he thought like Dirk … well, Dirk would try to frame it as a coup. The queen had turned one of the most storied agents of the culture, and who was to say she hadn’t done it ages ago? Who was to say that he hadn’t been made spymaster with a full understanding that he would work against the people he was supposed to be working for? It would undercut the culture, and Dirk would go along with it. The only one who would know when he had actually flipped was him, and he could claim whatever he wanted.
“You understand,” said Dirk after a moment passed. “Thirlwell is in a good position. The monarchy will weather the storm. It’s not inevitable, but I know the culture inside and out, and I’ve been in deep cover here for ages. With me here, all the excesses and injustices of monarchy will be curbed.”
It was incrementalist talk, reformer talk, and Casper supposed that Dirk had to understand that. They had run into it before. Perhaps Dirk had always held sympathies.
“You have two goals here,” said Casper as understanding slowly dawned on him. “You want this place, but you also want the culture’s opposition to this place. You think it makes the culture stronger to have an enemy.”
Dirk shrugged. “Do you disagree?”
The queen turned to him. “You hadn’t mentioned that.”
“It’s a benefit, at least from my perspective,” said Dirk.
“Not mine,” said the queen with a frown.
Casper watched the two of them. This was the first sign of discord, and it hadn’t taken much. Dirk had freely admitted that he’d prefer the culture was strong, and that this was a method to do that.
“It’s no happy accident,” said Casper. “Dirk worries that the GCA will collapse or become a shade of itself. It’s something he’s worried about for a long time. A single strong kingdom, an eternal enemy, that’s something that resolves at least a little of the problem.” He looked sharply at the queen. “And that will be your role, as the nightmare that lurks in the middle of the ocean. You’ll be reviled around the world.”
“Feh,” she said. “You think you can get me with that? I’m already reviled. I’m already watching my back. Someone killed my father, and shortly after that, someone killed my brother.”
Casper narrowed his eyes. “Your father was killed by a thresholder, nothing much to do with us, at least so far as I understand it. The string of assassinations were all thresholder related in one way or another, though I can’t divulge more information than that.”
“Those assassinations were met with cheers,” the queen replied. “There were public executions of the nobility in Berus. I know your kind, and how far the compassion of the culture extends.”
“Growing pains,” replied Casper. “I argued against the executions, for what it’s worth.”
“And you were not able to stop them,” the queen replied. “No, I will watch my back from here on out. The only reason you’re allowed to stand in front of me without a sword to your throat is that I have Thom beside me. If he had wanted to kill me, I would be dead, and if he had wanted to depose me, I’d have been deposed. I’ve staked my life on him.”
“I’ve had occasion to stake my life on him too,” said Casper. He nodded. “He’s never let me down until now, for all his other faults. But of course you don’t know him, not at all, and this alliance is too fresh, too new to put any stock in.”
“You’re doing this wrong,” said Dirk. “You’re trying to destabilize, and what you should be doing is building bridges, engaging in diplomacy. This is too sharp, too naked. You know that.”
“I came here today in the hopes of a smooth abdication,” said Casper. “I will do whatever is in my power to achieve that.”
“It’s not happening,” said the queen. Her delicate fingers, whose nails had been painted gold, gripped the arm rests of her throne. “We have loyalty. We have believers. We may not have the might of Third Fervor anymore, but you don’t have Perry or Fenilor.”
She said the name like a threat, but word was already spreading through the rest of the world. Statues would be torn down and history would be amended. It was impossible for a monarch to accept that the culture did not depend upon the past for its legitimacy, that it did not worship the founders as incorruptible heroes. Fenilor had killed hundreds, had violated the precepts of the culture, had introduced the effluence through ignorance or negligence, and had threatened the entirety of the world for what very much seemed to be his own self-aggrandizement, at least if Casper could trust the transcripts.
The queen could — and probably would — attempt to slander the culture by way of Fenilor, but they would uncover his secrets first, as best they could, and by the time her poison got to anyone’s ears, the people would be inoculated.
If she ever had a chance to spread that poison, anyway.
“Thom is firmly by my side,” said the queen. “He’s made his play. He knows a great many secrets, some of which the culture does not want getting out. He knows the weak points and knows what would throw the GCA into disarray.”
“This is true,” said Dirk. “It’s not information that I would use lightly. I’m not against the culture, I’m in favor of us having some kind of harmony, you have to understand that Casper.” He frowned slightly. “I do wish that you’d brought the others. I wish that we could be more civil about this than we’re being right now. There’s cause for disagreement, not threats, implicit or otherwise. There’s no rush.”
“We want this finished,” said Casper. He kept his tone mild. “We ideally want it finished today.”
Dirk leaned forward on his throne. His eyes searched Casper’s face. “Why?”
“You’re not privy to everything else that’s going on,” said Casper. “And you won’t be, for the foreseeable future. What you’ve been doing here, what you’ve tried, it’s simply not the culture, and I think you know that.”
Dirk looked over at the queen, then back at Casper. “If you have another card, then play it.”
Casper looked at the floor and rubbed his forehead. That was the signal.
One of the doors at the back of the small throne room opened up, and rather than the stone walls of the castle, there was the metal corridor of the Farfinder. A dozen people had been waiting for this moment, and they came out quickly in a crouched tactical stance. They had gunpowder weapons of superior make to anything that Thirlwell had seen.
The queen began screaming for help, but before a sound could leave her mouth, the room was enveloped in absolute silence. She struggled, and Dirk tried to pull a knife — an Implement, in fact — but these were trained soldiers, and it was simply no contest. The queen was manhandled and hogtied, with no sound of scuffle reaching anyone’s ears. Casper watched, his heart beating faster. If this was all going to get out of control, this is when it would happen. All it would take is for a guard to come in, or for the baffling of the sound to fail, or for it to work better than it was supposed to and extend beyond the throne room, catching a guard outside and alerting them that something untoward was going on.
The soldiers accomplished the entire operation in twenty seconds, just as they had planned to, and they had no sooner retreated than duplicates of the queen and Dirk came down that same corridor, wearing identical clothing.
They weren’t exact duplicates. This other Dirk was quite divergent, and while they had tried to get the haircut and facial hair as close as possible, it wasn’t quite perfect. The queen’s duplicate was a closer match, but she had bags under her eyes and a certain haggard expression that had not left her in all the time they’d been preparing her.
The sound came back on and the door to the Farfinder closed again, leaving the throne room looking exactly how it had looked.
“Well,” said Casper, letting out a breath. “That’s that.”
“No,” said this new Dirk. “There’s a chance he prepared for this contingency.”
“Then we’ll deal with it,” said Casper. This was something they had discussed. Passphrases, deadman’s switches, things that confidants and servants were supposed to look for, it was all possible. It was the sort of thing that Dirk would do, though if he was going to do it, he’d have been better off telling them so as to prevent this in the first place.
“Let’s get this over with,” said the false queen.
“Very well,” said Casper with a nod.
He produced the documents from a folio and they were signed quickly. It was inauthentic, she had no authority to dissolve the kingdom and abdicate the throne, but Casper rejected the very idea that the monarchy held any power in the first place. This would all come out eventually, and perhaps Thom Faulk had set things up to disclaim any sudden diplomatic move … but it wasn’t as though Thom Faulk was coming back, nor was the queen.
“You have work ahead of you,” said Casper as he took his copy of the documents. “I’ll let you get to it.”
He left them behind and exited the throne room, allowing himself to be escorted through the halls of the castle. His work was done, at least for today. There was organization to do, there were symboulions to help bring into existence, and the whole structure of the country would need to change. The guards escorting him would lose their jobs, and the castle would be turned over to the people in some way or another. Most of the fine things would go to newly established libraries.
But it would take time for the plans that were in motion to reach their next steps. The clothes that had been made aboard the Farfinder would not last, they were some strange kind of magic, so the false queen and the duplicate Dirk would have to retire to their rooms and change out of them. The dissolution of the monarchy would be carried out through a number of planned steps, most of which were explicitly enumerated in the document that had just been signed.
When Casper was finally returned to the well-guarded tavern, he sat down at the table with the others, who were waiting for him.
“Plan A or Plan B?” asked Moss.
“Plan B,” said Casper.
“Shame,” said Moss. He clucked his tongue. “It would have been cleaner to do it the other way.”
“They wanted peace,” said Casper. “That Dirk had his own conceptions of how the world might look. If we weren’t going to lose the Farfinder soon, I would have been tempted to hear him out.”
“Fuck him,” said Velli. “Let him rot. We need to root out the others. They can’t be trusted. They’re not the culture.”
“I worry how it looks,” said Moss. “To the Farfinder, and the people who will come after.”
“Mmm,” said Casper. “You think it will pay off, in the end, these ships across the multiverse? You think the GCA will direct resources toward it, rather than away from it?”
“Maybe,” said Moss. “The technology is fascinating, and perhaps vital.”
“It’s a release valve for those high achievers who need something more,” said Casper. “I’ll give it that.”
“And if we encounter a monarch who sees what we did to our last monarch?” asked Moss. “Someone who has more power than we do, who sees how we used raw might when we could? It’s not a good starting point for diplomacy.”
“No,” said Casper. “But worlds are different from nations. Two worlds are connected only by the thread of ships that haven’t even been built yet, and that’s only theory. We’re not going to have effluence creating monsters in our oceans because of some other world. We’re not going to be accepting their problems. They won’t leech off what we’ve built.”
“We don’t know that,” said Moss. He looked down at the woodgrain of the table and ran a workman’s thumb across it. “And we don’t know that the culture will hold.”
“It’ll hold,” said Casper. “We have to believe it will, to fight for it.”
“It’ll hold,” said Velli, folding her arms. She looked at Casper. “The loss of the Farfinder is going to hit hard. No more shuttle service.”
“Soon,” said Moss. “Though there are those in the GCA who believe rapid transport needs careful evaluation. There are people who don’t like how fast news spreads, how rare and precious the engines are, how much we’re stratified, and I can’t say they’re wrong.”
“That’s for the future,” said Casper. He drummed his fingers on the table. “We need to get Thirlwell in order. It wasn’t primed and ready. It’ll be difficult going.”
“We’ll put in the work,” said Moss, nodding absentmindedly. “That’s the culture.”
Comments
iridium248
Without Fenilor, the Culture will likely implode, so this is probably all academic. Their utopia can't exist without a Great Man figure propping it up.
Leaf
It’s the nature of the culture, it reviles the very thing that made it successful. There is no place for dirk in the culture which as far as I’m concerned means that the culture is fundamentally flawed. King dirk was definitely right.
Darryl Greensill
Velli being so eager to purge the Dirks is ominous.
Darryl Greensill
Thank you for a great chapter and a great book! Can I make one request please? Could you find some way to put in the line “but these were special circumstances” somewhere in regard to Dirk’s missions?
Thomas
The highlight of the book for me was the Farfinder's first appearance and the contact with Perry afterwards. Those were fun interactions. I also loved March's ascension to near-full personhood—that was a long time coming. Also, the chapter where Perry finds Felinor's hideout was great. Still remember the creeping tension I had reading it. The King's assassination was the funniest moment. The best fight was Perry vs Third Fervor. The one that ended underwater. This has the best politics, sociology, and worldbuilding of all the volumes. I love the culture. Love how you set it up, the contradictions, the debates and all of it. That said, I do wish there had been more emphasis on the magic—more tinkering with the masks, deeper exploration of the domes etc... All in all, it's a really good volume. I would probably still rank the last volume a bit higher, mostly because I liked the villain (Jeff) and the side characters (Brigitta and crew) more. I'm Iooking forward to the next volume.
Nedardo
Thank you for writing!
Lorenzo
Fantastic chapter, as always :)
patreonizing
>“I worry how it looks,” said Moss. “To the Farfinder, and the people who will come after.” Yeah, it...doesn't look good, honestly. Plan A genuinely would have been ideal, since it shows the culture is strong enough not to *need* to employ an iron fist against the last redoubt. That they aren't afraid of Thirlwell persisting, perhaps even flourishing. And not even their own fist - Markat does have some other majjycks that we haven't seen, but I seriously doubt this kind of stunt would be remotely easy to pull without the Farfinder. (Why are they assisting this coup anyway? I thought they had a pretty noninterventionist bent, and Nima's the one who really couldn't stand the culture...she'd be feeling pretty vindicated by these events!) Plus the fact that Casper does, in fact, grasp the point of release valves, yet is okay with installing a much huger multiversal one vs a local and easily contained one. I have to side with Dirk Faulk here, it genuinely seems like an inconsistent approach that hasn't been thought all the way through. Conformity of thought is a common downfall to things like the culture. What would happen if a literal monarch like the Earth King from The Great Arc shows up? Let alone an actively-hostile threat, once the complacent culture has lost its institutional muscle to defend itself? *That* is the value of competition, having to keep yourself sharp and continuously improving. Fenilor would have understood, as much as he was...uh...sociopathic in praxis. One also has to wonder how much the queen means what she says. If she's honest and forthright, then I'm frankly impressed - Fenilor misjudged her ineptitude for rule, probably shoulda let her brother take over instead. However, if her clone is (grudgingly?) willing to go along with this deception...it's sorta unclear how much clones diverge from their originals, and she's been kept prisoner for quite some time by now, but you'd think such convictions would spring from first principles rather than mere context. Her and Faulk woulda made for good Thresholders. A pity.
Kevin Vermeer
Sometimes, with all the stress of adult life and the world we live in, I like to settle down in a comfy chair and pick up "This Used To Be About Dungeons" or something like it and just lose myself in an utopia (a utopia?) for an hour or two. Other times, though: > “It’ll hold,” said Casper. “We have to believe it will, to fight for it.” Not sure how much I believe in what Fenilor's ideal culture became, or whether its assumptions apply to our own human universe that's almost but not quite post-scarcity... but the sentiment here, believing in a society that's better and working to achieve that, is just palpable and I love it. I'm no Dirk or Fenilor or Moss, I'm hopelessly out of my element when it comes to political science. But AW, I really respect what you do as an author, and I think it's hard to underestimate the way your stories set in fantasy worlds shape the way thousands of people think about the real world.
