Down (novel)
Down was the sixty-sixth Virgin New Adventures novel. It featured a reappearance of the People, who were introduced in Ben Aaronovitch's The Also People.
Publisher's summary
Mankind expects pain. However it seems 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 Summerfield 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 woolly 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...?
Chapter titles
- Prologue: The Worldsphere
- Reality
- Chapter 1: 'The Nightmare Begins!'
- Chapter 2: 'The Travellers from Beyond Infinity!'
- Chapter 3 'The Beast from Below the Waves!'
- Chapter 4: 'The Return of the Chrome Crusader!'
- Chapter 5: 'Peril from the Dawn of Time!'
- Chapter 6: 'Attack of the Death-Nazis!'
- Reality
Plot
During the formative years of the Worldsphere, God isolated every single member of the People who were "Truly Crazed" onto their own continent, the si!Cera!ca ri!Qisla. Over time, all but one were cured. The last of the Truly Crazed, si!Xist-i!xatl-iVa!qara, was essentially cut off from the rest of reality. During this time, !X warped his reality into a hellscape to suit his own twisted desires.
One day, a member of the Department of [Entirely Optional] Corrections named Fos!ca visits !X's reality. Initially, !X simply torments Fos!ca - such as by showing her a dead duplicate of herself - but stops once Fos!ca reveals that she has been sent by God to accompany !X while he investigates a planet (with God choosing !X due to the treaties of non-interference signed by the People).
On the planet Tyler's Folly, Bernice Summerfield is dragged from the ocean in an off-limits "quake zone" near McClure's Atoll and thrown into jail. An RSF officer named Pupp is perturbed by the prisoner, as she asked what to "the commander" while being dragged out of the sea - making Pupp assume that she is an agent of the Earth Empire. Before interrogating Bernice, Pupp pulls the files of the St. Oscar's University expedition to the planet - revealing that Bernice was (officially) accompanied by two students from the Neuro-seismology Department. After Pupp leaves, his "chunkputer" mysteriously turns itself on and scans through the files that Pupp accessed.
Once in Benny's cell, Pupp tries to get Bernice to admit that she is an Imperialist agent by picking apart the story she told when she was first thrown in jail - that Tyler's Folly is hollow and has a thriving ecosystem within it. Though Bernice does not break down, she does agree to tell the "whole story".
In the Xan Burrosa market of Dellah, two Neuro-seismology students named Ash and Lucretia discover a mysterious glass-like object that was pulled out of the oceans of Tyler's Folly after an earthquake. While they try to buy the object, a mysterious bald man with a Germanic accent attempts to buy it out from under them but fails to do so as he has none of the local currency.
A week later, Bernice wakes up after a party to a call from Ash (who met Benny at one of the professor's lectures on Mars) inviting her to look at the artefact she found. On arriving at the Neuro-seismology Department, Bernice finds that the two students have cut open the object and found a diary written in by the legendary explorer Nils Kryptosa detailing his final voyage. Though Benny assumes that the diary is a fraud, she finds it odd that someone would construct such an elaborate fraud. Lucretia leaves for her room to get her research scratchpad but is overwhelmed by feelings that something is wrong before she is knocked out by a mysterious figure and kidnapped. After Lucretia goes missing, Bernice and Ash begin looking for her. The Goll security of Tyler's Folly refuse to help them and they find no trace of the man who sold Ash and Lucretia the object from Tyler's Folly. As such, they are forced to travel to the watery world. The two travel to McClure's Atoll (where Kryptosa supposedly entered into the world beneath the surface of Tyler's Folly. Unbeknownst to them, they are not alone on Tyler's Folly.
Meanwhile, !X and Fos!ca warp into the orbit of Tyler's Folly in a bathosphere - which begins "falling" towards the planet. During this planetfall, Fos!ca tries to avoid the last of the Truly Crazed and jumps at every little noise. Once the bathosphere falls into the oceans of Tyler's Folly (presumably near McClure's Atoll) where they are noticed by an explosive shellfish and a giant squid. To escape being destroyed by the giant squid, !X pulverizes the beast's pupil using the bathosphere's suspensor fields. Shortly after this, the bathosphere begins moving uncontrollably as it gets caught in a gravitational anomaly. This gets noticed by a mysterious creature living in the depths of Tyler's Folly.
Presumably at the same time that Benny and Ash make planetfall, Lucretia awakens and finds that she has been tied up with her only company being her own reflection. She begins to talk to her own reflection but is noticed by her captors (with one of these captors having the same accent as the mysterious man from the Xan Burrosa market) who knock her out again.
Though Benny and Ash hear the bathosphere making planetfall, they ignore it and begin exploring McClure's Atoll. They find various inscriptions in "grave-robber script" in the tunnels beneath the Atoll before a 'quake rips through the tunnels - trapping the two women underground. Ash hears a figure moving through the tunnels. Once this figure comes into view, it is revealed to be the pulpzine hero Mr. Misnomer.
Characters
- Bernice Summerfield
- !X (aka si!Xist-i!xatl-iVa!qara)
- Kommander Ernst Katastrophen
- Lucretia Caroline Scannon
- Fos!ca
- Ashtaroth "Ash" Juliandis
- Quinton Pupp
- Frans Nils Kryptosa
- MEPHISTO
- God
- The SSSSSSS
Worldbuilding
Archaeology and paleontology
- In the twenty-second century, it was discovered that the supposed dinosaur Archaeopteryx was actually a fraud created using pigeon bones.
- An Osgood-DeBono test is a test to measure the truthfulness of an artifact. It uses a "Realometer" and its system of measurement is a "Fact".
- Frans Nils Kryptosa was an archaeologist, explorer, and the "Meister of Natural Sciences" at New Heidelberg University who discovered various "lost" civilizations. Named works penned by Kryptosa include In Search of Ancient Mu and A Short Trip to the Centre of Creation.
- Grave-robber script is a type of hieroglyph used by archaeologists in the twenty-third century to mark objects due to archaeologists being regarded as essentially a criminal underclass in those times. Though its use is largely extinct by the 26th century, Bernice Summerfield has at least a competent understanding of it.
Books
- The SSSSSSS use at least 18 official hymns and the handbook Mein Pantz by Bernard Richtmanstances.
Food and drink
- Burnitser-Holtz is a brand of alcohol which is said to turn saliva black.
Law and order
- As !X is not part of the People's society he is not bound by the Time Lord-People Treaty.
- Due to protests from the Stellenbosch VI Nelson Mandela Memorial Commune, the members of the Republican Security Forces use body cameras to record their actions.
Literature
- Mr. Misnomer is the front-man of a series of extremely lucrative and influential pulpzines from the 2530s. Known pulpzines include "Mr. Misnomer and the Fiend Without a Future" and "Mr. Misnomer and the Thousand-Fathom Horror". His known enemies include "Dr. Harbinger" and possibly the "Nemesis Doomsday Engine" while known companions include "Binky Sharperton".
Locations
- !X and Fos!ca are of the People who live in the Worldsphere, both it and Tyler's Folly are examples of Dyson spheres.
- The Xan Burrosa market is a market on the planet Dellah. It is close enough to St. Oscar's University that students frequent it.
Organisations
- SSSSSSS stands for Stella Stora Sigma Schutz-Staffel SturmSoldaten. They are the most ineffective Nazi group since the Outer Hebridean National Party.
- Notable groups within the People's society include the "Rare and Exotic Pollutants Interest Group" and "Tiny But Interesting Interest Group".
Planets
- Kryptosa was born on Ordifica.
- The Worldsphere is 17 galaxies from Dellah.
- The SSSSSSS' power base is a small sausage factory on Smarley's World.
- Tyler's Folly is a planet within the Cygnus Mortis constellation (the same constellation as Dellah, which is one of its interstellar neighbours). Originally purchased by a man named Jodecai Tyler (whom is the namesake of the planet), it is a watery world ruled over by a nigh-fascistic police state known as the Republican Security Forces whom are separatists from the Earth Empire. Its people (the "Tylerkind") have slight genetic differences to regular humans and use this to keep separate from the Empire.
- Thrapos 3 is a planet known for producing low-quality technology.
- Sarah-361 is a colonyworld whose population was ravaged by a plague. Due to this, its governing forces enacted various measures to unnaturally create a population boom (such as trying to illegalize celibacy) and enacting a form of eugenics to make traits "desirable in human beings" proliferate. Due to growing up on this world, Lucretia Scannon became extremely embarrased about her own body and usually wears a dufflecoat.
Psychology
- Teleportaphobia also known as "Molecular Vertigo" is described here as the fear of matter transmission.
Religions
- The Tashwari believe (or at least claim to believe) that their race was created by a group known as "the Seeders" who "walked the pathways of time before time itself was poured into being" and seeded Dellah with life using an object known as the Grail of Zzzztii.
Species
- Katastrophen is reminded of buffo frogs.
Vehicles
- The SSSSSSS submarine uses warp drive but goes through oceans between planets instead of space.
Notes
- The introduction of Down listed a web address (www.ndirect.co.uk/shebeen) stated to contain background material to the novel. Though the link is no longer active, the novel's glossary, footnotes, and appendices were archived here.
- 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.
- The submarine was originally intended to be black, but after the cover artist rendered it as pink, Miles rewrote its colour.[1]
Continuity
- PROSE: The Also People introduced the People and was the first meeting between Bernice and the People.
- Ordifica is mentioned in PROSE: Ghost Devices and seen in PROSE: Interference - Book One.
- Frans Nils Kryptosa was previously mentioned in PROSE: Beyond the Sun and PROSE: Ship of Fools.
- Students often return from Xan Burrosa with a counterfeit Martian "Spear of Tuburr". (PROSE: Legacy, GodEngine, COMIC: Ascendance)
- The planet Youkali is referenced. This planet was first mentioned in SLEEPY and later features in Return of the Living Dad.
- A constable remembers watching a vidcast of Summerfield testifying on Stanturus Three. (PROSE: Dragons' Wrath)
- Earth uses mind probes in cases of severe security breaches. (TV: Frontier in Space)
- Fos!ca thinks the Metatraxi are "famous" for eating their own parents. (PROSE: Alien Bodies, AUDIO: Crime of the Century)
- Bernice steals a Selachian palmtop from one of the Nazis. (PROSE: Killing Ground, The Murder Game, et al.)
- Bernice jokes the sequel to Down Among the Dead Men will be called "Fear and Sloathes in Las Vegas". (PROSE: Sky Pirates!)
- Ash recalls the President of Earth who served from 2536 to 2541 was female. (TV: Frontier in Space)
- Believing time travel would undermine the capitalism, the Time-and-Motion Lords prevented its development in human economic space, leading to the creation of the first official time machine being pushed to the 50th century. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
- Katastrophen notes transmat has been used since the 21st century. (TV: The Seeds of Death)
- For In Search of Ancient Mu, Kryptosa investigated Vo'lach Prime (PROSE: Ghost Devices) and Yemaya, (PROSE: SLEEPY) as well as "a dead world at the centre of the galaxy, which legends claim was the birthplace of the very first humanoid civilization". (PROSE: Dead Romance)
- Tyler's Folly and its continued status are later mentioned in PROSE: Alien Bodies, Beige Planet Mars, The Infinity Doctors, and Dead Romance.
External links
- Down at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: Down at The Whoniverse
- The Cloister Library: Down
- Down The Director's Cut by Lawrence Miles via Internet Archive - The Wayback Machine
