Pre-narrative Briefings (short story)
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Pre-narrative Briefings formed part of the linking material of The Book of the Enemy. Each was a briefing in the form of a quote of varying length from a person or document, chosen to accompany the following story.
Of the nineteen parts, two were written by Michael Simpson and Lesley Brakken, and the remaining seventeen were written by the anthology editor Simon Bucher-Jones and attributed to fictional individuals. Biographies for these individuals appeared interspersed among the real author biographies at the end of the book; several of them were referenced within the corresponding briefings.
Summary of Briefings
Content of Briefings
Initial Briefing
Fifth Wave agents were exposed "to aspects of The Enemy's anderenseelenallein" (uniqueness and singularity) and the metabriefing forms a narrative out of these experiences. The agents are recovering from contact with The Enemy, so are stored orthogonally in time and relive the experiences they had prior, sharing memories with other agents in the same state.
Briefing A
Irma Ebbinghaus states that The Enemy is not a world, or a species, nor are people consistently of The Enemy. Rather, you must ask who benefits, those who create or those who consume, and the most sinister belief is that things not only could have been different, but might still be different. Of course, this is only the representatives of The Enemy. Behind that is, instead, a different kind of entity, a different experience of what it is to be.
Briefing B
The Oracle of Shakespeare talks about how art can show things that cannot be stated through words, how Gods and metaphors help us think about the world in different ways. It suggests that in the future, if the capacity for the appreciation of art is removed from the Great Houses the accommodation foreshadowed by the Utterlost Accords may be reached.
Briefing C
Michael Simpson comes out and compares the Great Houses to the Whig party, or, specifically, to having a specifically Whig view of history. Faction Paradox challenges this, disrupts the metanarrative, but at the same time depends on them so as to subvert them. The Enemy is the cold light of day of reality, the fact that the Great Houses aren't the center of the universe. The Great Houses being what they are, only have the way of thinking that this is an attack and that it's intelligent, and treat it as an enemy.
Briefing D & E
Irma Ebbinghaus and Entarodora agree that listening to records obtained from Faction Paradox in understand the enemy is important, yet disagree on how much emphasis to place on them, with Irma seeing them as suspect, and Entarodora viewing them as valuable pieces of insight from a viewpoint outside your own.
References
- Scarratt rejects the term "lesser species" as pejorative.
- The Utterlost Accords are mentioned.
- The Great Captains were House Military heroes in the War in Heaven.
Notes
- Pre-narrative Briefing Q appears between R and S.
- The pre-narrative briefings were followed by one "Post-Narrative Briefing", the final part of Subjective Interlock.
- In November 2017, Simon Bucher-Jones posted on his blog a cut excerpt from The Book of the Enemy. In it, the series of briefings is said to address "the essential problem of ENEMY IDENTIFICTION".[1]
Continuity
- Irma Ebbinghouse notes that agents of the Enemy are referred to as "Reps". (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)
- Robert Scarratt is "now definitely" dead. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)
- Powers that are not the Enemy, but have tried to take advantage of the Great Houses' paranoia, include the Mal'akh "hoping for a little payback"; (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, The Book of the War, et al) "the end-point summoned into the City of the Saved"; (PROSE: A Hundred Words from a Civil War, God Encompasses) defectors from the Sixth Wave; (PROSE: The Book of the War) a progressive timeship; (PROSE: Toy Story, AUDIO: The Shadow Play, et al.) and xenophobic mutants in personal war machines. (TV: The Daleks, et al.)
- The ideology of the Great Houses is compared to the Whig political party. The man with the rosette, one of the four surviving elementals, specifically wore the colours of the Whig party when the War was over. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, The Gallifrey Chronicles)
- Xenaria is considered a war hero and has been given the honorary title of "Xenaria Who Survived." (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)
Footnotes
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