Grass (short story)
Grass was a short story published in the September 2001 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, making it the first published entry in the Faction Paradox spin-off series, discounting the original printing of Dead Romance itself as a Virgin New Adventures novel. It was subsequently reprinted in Mad Norwegian Press' reprinting of Dead Romance as an explicit entry in the Faction Paradox series.
Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
Grass marks Lawrence Miles's first appearance in our pages, although he notes that he has previously published work in various anthologies, magazines, comic books, and computer games. His recent work includes a board game concerning Imperial Rome.
Grass ruminates on American history and what might have been…
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the period between the Louisiana Purchase and expedition of Meriwether and Clark, a French woman named Lucia Cailloux and her Shoshone guide named "Broken Nose" (a name given due to him breaking the nose of a Frenchman) walk to a crater in the wilds of Montana which has mammoths within it.
Lucia literally stumbles into the crater and startles one of the mammoths - which rears up and then, exhausted, falls back down unto the earth. Lucia touches the mammoth for a brief moment before she is found by Broken Nose.
Some time later, Lucia presents a box to President Thomas Jefferson made of ivory (presumably the ivory of the mammoths) which has blades of grass (presumably from the crater) in it. Shortly after this, Jefferson sends Meriwether and Clark on their expedition. The two explorers find the crater - which has become an elephants' (or mammoths') graveyard. Not knowing about the existence of the mammoths, they assume that the graves are those of Native leaders and that the trails of the mammoth are an attempt by the French to desecrate the graves.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
to be added
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The story is most notable to the wider Faction Paradox mythos for the first mention of George III's mammoth.
- Miles cited Damon Runyan as an influence on this story.[1]
- Grass won Best Non-Who Prose Fiction in the 2001 Jade Pagoda mailing list awards.[2]
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Catherine II's gift of a mammoth to George III is mentioned. (COMIC: Political Animals, PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)
- Jefferson's expedition to find mammoths in the American midwest is mentioned in PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.
- PROSE: Christmas on a Rational Planet previously established that the French Shadow Directory uses the term "Caillou" to denote individuals around whom world itself would shift and buckle.
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ This Town interview
- ↑ Jade Pagoda awards (2008). Archived from the original on 22 September 2008.
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
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