The Beasthouse (short story)

The Beasthouse was a 2008 digital short story written by Lawrence Miles as the blog of the time travelling son of Fu Manchu.

	Fu Manchu's son
	Fu Manchu, Joseph Merrick, Five-Man Council
	19th-21st century Earth
	Lawrence Miles
	6 July 2008
	Online short story

The story featured references to several elements of Miles's previous works, including the White Peacock cult introduced in the Faction Paradox novel The Book of the War. The Beasthouse was set in a world where time travel had inseparably culturally entangled the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Publisher's summary

For now, the true author of this journal must remain nameless, voiceless, and 28% more shrouded in mystery than any other shadowy figure from the murky London underworld of the late 1800s. He must also remain faceless, since medical science has not yet found a way to reverse the side-effects of what he simply calls "the process" (patented 1894, outlawed 1895, drug-dumped in Somalia 1996). We can only tell you that:

1. He's the son of one of the three leading criminal masterminds of the nineteenth century. Oh, you know. The one with the moustache.
2. He's the co-founder of the White Peacock Arms Company, the only weapons manufacturer which still takes pride in breeding giant scorpions for the Oriental market as well as producing landmines for regimes across the globe. He's also the only living CEO of the Company, in accordance with the principles of natural selection.
3. His reminiscences of his own century, and his thoughts on our "modern" age, have been transcribed to the aethernet in 2008 by Lawrence Miles.

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Fu Manchu's son
• John Wayne
• Big Jim McTumour
• Fu Manchu
• Joseph Merrick
• Fu Manchu's son's mother
• Idi Amin
• General Gordon
• Alphonse Moreau
• Five-Man Council
  • The Man Who Sold the World and the Man Who Sold the Welsh
  • The Man With the Golden Gun and the Man With the Pricing Gun
  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the Man Who Nudged Liberty Valance
  • The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo and the Man Who Broke Some Plates at Monte Carlo
  • The Man With the Child in His Eyes
  • Natalie Imgruglia

Worldbuilding

• Joseph Merrick and Kate Thornton are two 19th century celebrities who travelled to the future to join 20th or 21st celebrity culture.
• Faraday crushed James Clerk Maxwell's legs while attempting to travel in time with a 24-horse "time carriage".
• Eminent Victorians was written by Lytton Strachey.
• Sax Rohmer's accounts of Fu Manchu's life were "generally absurd".

Notes

• Author Lawrence Miles previously used the epistolary style in his 1999 New Adventures novel Dead Romance.
• The final section mentions "the affair of the White Iscariot". In Miles' "Alternate Season" of Doctor Who story ideas which began with his published spec script The Book of the World, the episodes of the two-part finale are titled "The White Iscariot" and "Them".

Continuity

• The author is the son of a moustachioed leading 19th century criminal mastermind. (PROSE: All-Consuming Fire, The Book of the War)
• Another facet of the Order of the White Peacock appeared in PROSE: A Choice of Houses.
• Joseph "Elephant Man" Merrick became famous for his freak show appearances. During a circus tour of northern England he ran away with Brenda. (PROSE: Fellowship of Ink)
• Dr Moreau previously appeared in the Land of Fiction in COMIC: Character Assassin.
• Graduates of l'Academie Sinistaire include Chairman Mao (TV: The Mind of Evil) and Spring-heeled Jack. (COMIC: The Curious Tale of Spring-Heeled Jack)

External links

• The Beasthouse full text online