Down (novel)
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Publisher's Summary
'Mankind expects pain. However it appears to outsiders.'
Tyler's Folly: a colony world on the unattractive side of Earthspace, a planet wracked by earthquakes and crawling with off-world bodysnatchers. When the local authorities pull a bedraggled Professor Bernice Sumerfield out of the ocean in an off-limits 'quake zone, they naturally want to know what she is doing there... but the professor can only mumble something about wooly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers.
According to Bernice, the planet is hollow, its interior inhabited by warring tribes of cavemen and strangely unconvincing prehistoric monsters. Some dark and ancient god rules this underground kingdom -- albeit a dark and ancient god with a penchant for thirties pulp adventures and Saturday morning action serials.
Can Bernice's claims be true? Is Tyler's Folly really under threat from an ageless subterranean horror? And why does so much of her story revolve around the utterly amoral alien known as !X...?
Characters
!X (aka si!Xist-i!xatl-iVa!qara)
- Of The People, but he has removed himself from their society.
- Therefore he is not bound by the Time Lord – People Treaty.
- An explorer and archaeologist who wrote In Search of Ancient Mu and A Short Trip to the Centre of Creation.
The SSSSSSS
- SSSSSSS stands for Stella Stora Sigma Schutz-Staffel SturmSoldaten.
- They are the most ineffective Nazi group since the Outer Hebriden National Party.
- They use at least 18 official hymns and the handbook Mein Pantz by Bernard Richtmanstances.
- Their power base is a small sausage factory on Smarley's World.
References
- !X and Fos!ca are of The People who live in the Worldsphere, both it and Tyler’s Folly are examples of Dyson Sphere’s.
- Teleportaphobia also known as Molecular Vertigo is described here as the fear of matter transmission. Specifically it is the psychological disorder that makes a person fear matter transmission as each time you are matter transported your body dies and another is re-created at the receiving end.
- Kryptosa was born on Ordifica which is the same planet which Fitz Kreiner is pulled ouf the The Cold on.
- The SSSSSSS submarine uses warp drive but goes through oceans between planets instead of space.
Notes
- There is a web address (http://www.ndirect.co.uk/shebeen) in the introduction of Down which did contain background material to Down, however the link no longer works.
- Down re-introduces the People, this includes Ben Aaronovitch's unique pronunciations for their names, a full explanation can be found in the introduction to The Also People.
Continuity
- The Also People introduced The People and was the first meeting between Bernice and The People.
- Ordifica gets mentioned in Ghost Devices and seen in Interference.
