Can anything more accurately represent the Laundry series than coffee-stained paperwork menaced by tentacles?

Of course not.

Here's an Audible link (US), for anyone else who loves the audiobooks.

Very much looking forward to the rest, Charlie!

...And I fuck it up, here's the correct one

The supposed link to read the first chapter is duff ... There's an intro, followed by "click on this link" - which I cannot see & I'm not the only one, apparently. Grrrrr .....

Head's up to Host.

This (imgur link - http://imgur.com/pwB87GR ) is what IO9 does to your embedded work if you don't allow scripts/trackers etc.

I mean, I can read the actual Enochian language you write in, but many cannot.

So what really happened to Bob in Japan? Wasn't there going to be a short story on Puroland?

It's not IO9 doing it, it's bloody scribd. For reasons known only to them and Cthulhu they have chosen that abortion of a site to host the content on (the area in which it's supposed to appear is a scribd iframe), so no wonder it doesn't bloody work. Nothing ever works on scribd.

Wow! Laughed and laughed and laughed.

Once I overcame the eldritch wards to get there...

Thanks, really looking forward to reading the full book. The first chapter feels as if it has the style of The Atrocity Archives - which I should reread sometime soon.

...FWIW the scrambling is just a partial letter substitution code so the content is recoverable, if one can be arsed...

= 0 1 a A b B c C d D e E g G h H j J ` @ k K l L m M n N o O S [ U W X ^ Y change to ? ; - j J l L b B a A c C e E g G n N k K d D h H o O i I m M R T S U W Y P

Ah I see the Pterry footnotes have arrived. Good.

The visitor holds a diplomatic visa & you don't want to keep people like that waiting .... Tell that to a Norwegian ex-PM who was held by Trumpolini's ignorant, arrogant goons, about a month back! ( Kjell Magne Bondevik ) Um

Yes, but I haven't written "Escape from Puroland" yet (or the novella about Derek the DM, "A Conventional Boy"). Blame my novel-length backlog and work on "Ghost Engine" overrunning. Maybe in the next year (during the one-year gap between Laundry novels).

I feel a little dirty for reading ahead of release... like a Stross junkie

It might depend somewhat on the browser you are using, on Android, Opera Mini didn't work, but plain big Opera for Android did the job, and I read quite a chunk yesterday[1].

Though I was still somewhat distracted, "In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year, the bipolars hang from the trees my dear."[2]. Not that you were that much into Soundgarden, though " Black Hole Sun" and "Troublegum" (Therapy) are most likely the first albums me and my brother bought that we could still listen to today[3], and as mentioned below, I was already in a strange mood before.

So before I skip my antidepressants[4], don a washed out tattered black hoodie and get chased around the Hawerkamp discos by a mob of the 1% of Mediterranean looking guys giving the other 99% a bad rep after they asked me if I had "teile"(slang for entactogens or psychedelics) to sell and didn't like my answer ("Do I look the part?" I guess the answer was, sadly, yes), for old times sake...

"Yeah, but we had fun!"

Any more intersubspecies "romance" with the Alfär, aside from Alex and Cassie Highest Liege (do we get her TrueName™, BTW, AFAIR I had something ironic worked out, but I can't remember), of course? Just asking, because my first comment to "but they are a bunch of sociopaths with powers beyond your ken" would be "like quite a few law and business students I knew".

On another note, I just signed up for DortCon, err, UCon as a Gopher again, so if Charlie and/or Feorag want some Pinkus beer, let me know.

[1] Which is doubleplusgood, because I was stuck in some kind of hypomanic/atypical depression state for a few days and had quite some problems reading texts, but I'm getting better. And realising you were quite likely more of a punk in your late teens/early twenties than quite a few of the mohawks in school/university, autistic traits nonewithstanding (or because of them) is quite nice to counter your imposter syndrome, subtype fellow traveller in a subculture. And you are kinda glad there were not more people like yourself around... [2] Can we agree I have N-word privileges with depression? [3] Yeah, that was with 17, speak about slow learner. And if I really wanted to annoy my brother, I know where the old Roxette CDs are in the cellar, what could he do, I still think Bad Religion REALLY(e.g. more than usually) only sucked after "Stranger than fiction", and if it gets really annoying I'm going to throw in some new Pro-Daesch lyrics for WIZO's Pro-RAF songs. But I digress... [4] Says the local "alternative medicine"(like "alternative facts") guy, "They don't work either way, try some aurum metallicum", and you ask yourself how in the twisted warp spawned tyranid invested weltanschauung underlying homeopathy somebody feeled depressed carrying a gold brick around during some "Stoffprüfung". Might have been the price tag.

You must, surely, be ready for a fill in Year of a Short Story Collection? The novella/short story would work at the turn of the year ? Xmas /Newton Mass Time? Then you could move to the Collection for the Mass Market/plus limited edition illustrated collection in the Fill In Year? Simples. Also, Jim Butcher appears to do all right from the SS Collection and Graphic Novels type thingys - plus? ... Comics/Graphic Novel/Short Stories? ... BEN AARONOVITCH appears to be doing quite well from this sort of thing ... https://forbiddenplanet.com/events/2015/07/15/ben-aaronovitch-and-andrew-cartmel-signing-rivers-/

Can it be So Hard?

Ah, HA! So it is YOU who has the Original Enochian Dictionary of POWER. NO, Wonder that SO many second hand book shops have closed down in the UK in the past few years ..SO many Fakes on the InterWebThingy ... https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Jn1ObzRBRpwC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=Enochian+Dictionary+of+POWER&source=bl&ots=H7Wd49Jg3t&sig=nbtLT6Mur9FBtbMmN5KtAF1EZAk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii5fDWhv_TAhWqIMAKHfEhCokQ6AEIMzAB#v=onepage&q=Enochian%20Dictionary%20of%20POWER&f=false

On another note, any Mhari POV stories in the making?

Just asking because she comes up as one of the more sympathetic characters again. Which is not saying much, compared to Bob's self-absorbed ramblings, and I guess you can't stay 10 years in HR without at least some people skills. And then there is the whole compartementalization issue, is there some literature on the topic BTW?

Still, it might be interesting to see things from her POV. Maybe she is just very good with the honne and tatemae game. Or maybe it is heartfelt, though there might be some complications with old exes and so.

Personally, I hope there is somebody waiting for her at home, though hopefully with a full body condom bearing Enochian inscriptions or some Alfär vaccine.

"Combat Poet" Awesome. Just have an image of Robert Calvert running around in a flying helmet destroying possessed Starfighters .

"Combat Poet"? Ever read Beowulf?

On another note, any Mhari POV stories in the making?

She's the most likely narrator PoV for "The Labyrinth Index", aka book nine (the next one after "The Delirium Brief"), although it's not definite yet. Note that I'm taking a year out between Laundry novels (which will be covered by the space opera "Ghost Engine" and maybe some Laundry short fic plus the ongoing "Empire Games" trilogy).

(I last took a sabbatical in 2007, I have been producing two books a year for some time now, and I REALLY REALLY need another sabbatical soon before I burn out.)

Oooh, news feed has some "Astronomy" fun: Finally! The Galaxy’s Most Mysterious Star Is Dipping Now, at long last, the star has begun a steep decline in brightness — it’s already 2% dimmer after a single night of observation — and telescopes all over the world are at the ready. For the first time, astronomers are catching Tabby's star in the act, and that means the mystery of what causes the star to dip and dim in brightness may soon be solved.

Background, for those who want alternative explanations (other than alien megastructures): Have Aliens Built Huge Structures around Boyajian’s Star?

Please note that this dictionary doesn't explain WHICH Enochian it's dealing with.

We already know there is Middle Enochian, which is only suited for cursing and creating zombies. Middle Enochian has some dialects, which seem to be quite diverse grammatically, so the situation might be similar to Chinese dialects, which are mentioned to be more like different languages. We don't know about Old and New Enochian, or about other historical variants in our universe.

The Alfär are using Enochian for plain communication; being a spoken language, there is likely some language change, it's also likely to have some countermeasures to keep unintended consequences at bay.

And then, I guess there might be a sanitized version of Enochian for research, education or computational demonology. Somewhere between Sanscrit, court language and Lobjan.

Sadly, most dictionaries only deal with Middle Enochian. They are also, like Italian or Russian dictionaries, somewhat sanitized, keeping quite a few of the swearwords out. Usually class starts with handing out some photocopied pages containing said swearwords, though modern copiers relying on computers lead to some strange side effects...

Your definitely deserve a vacation or sabbatical, and I hope you enjoy your time away. In the long run maybe you can change your contractual terms so that you're putting out one book every 7-9 months instead of two-a-year, (assuming you can afford it and the publishing process allows.)

Also, while I love your work, every once in awhile I get to the end of one of your books and think, "that was just a little rushed," where "rushed" means something like "It needed a denouement that was 2-4 pages longer, 3-5 paragraphs fixed, and a month's break before the final author's edit." No horrible authorish sins, mind you, and I still love the final products enough to reread your work repeatedly, but there's definitely a slightly rushed feel, and I think an extra month or two in your process for each book would probably fix every problem I've ever had with one of your novels.

Sorry, that (Boyajian’s Star) was supposed to go in the previous thread; copied it there. Replies if any go there.

As already said, take all the breaks you need, maybe we could donate an Arctic or Antarctic Island. Someting in the Tropics came first up, but we know your reaction to temperatures. Maybe with some greenhouse for coffee and hops?

And, well, maybe you should adopt some aspects of GRRM when dealing with people pestering you on twitter; everytime they ask about the next book, Mo gets another suitor (somewhat more likely than a new ex of bob showing up, maybe)

And while we're talking about blasts from the past, any updates for the Laundry RPG? E.g. can Alfär use an Erich Zann original, or do they have their own variants (maybe using some variant scale, I'm the black sheep of a musician family, so don't ask me about microtonal and like...)

Having spent quite some part of the late nineties with German Hiphop fans, that's not exactly the image coming up with me...

Yeah, my image was Tupac vs. Biggie in Old Enochian. WMDs.

There's a plot point for future Laundry fiction; some white dude who raps in Old Enochian and claims Deep One ancestry. Maybe its Lecter returned for another round...

Actually, I'm thinking about some followers of the Black Pharaoh:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuwaubian_Nation

They even influenced one or two Hiphop acts, IIRC.

As for EMINEM DOMAIN, the Black Chamber was hardly cooperative, but astroturfing some US fan club, we were able to trace Mr. Mathers pedigree to a small town near Boston in the late 17th century. It gets somewhat murky at this point, though...

I was thinking more of "hey, we discovered a new ethnic group, so I'm going to make some money with a little cultural appropriation... Hey Cthulhu, what are you doing here?"

On another note, any Mhari POV stories in the making?

Just asking because she comes up as one of the more sympathetic characters again. Which is not saying much, compared to Bob's self-absorbed ramblings, and I guess you can't stay 10 years in HR without at least some people skills. And then there is the whole compartementalization issue, is there some literature on the topic BTW?

Still, it might be interesting to see things from her POV. Maybe she is just very good with the honne and tatemae game. Or maybe it is heartfelt, though there might be some complications with old exes and so.

Personally, I hope there is somebody waiting for her at home, though hopefully with a full body condom bearing Enochian inscriptions or some Alfär vaccine.

Dammit, I hate posting with Opera Mini. Err, mods, could you delete the last message?

Actually, Old Enochian is only known from some ANNING BLUE SKULL texts from the Huronian Glaciation. Problem ist, they are in a corrupt writing system using symbols for emotions and concepts, likened by some inveterate souls to emoticons.

As usual, I couldn’t resist. It doesn’t scan, but hopefully it's all good fun! I borrowed the entire last verse about "giving up your pain" (except for the phrasing) from one of my kids, who played the best Priest of Cthulhu that haunted house had ever seen! . . . I’m squamous and rugose And soon I’ll be batrachian Pray Yog Sothoth Neblod Zin And the world will get on track again!

I’m gonna go beneath the waves On the day I get my scaly skin But now we’ll worship Dagon And I’ll pray in Old Enochian

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh The Old One Lies Dreaming Cthulhu R'lyeh In His home beneath the waves Wgah'nagl fhtagn But he’ll come back one day!

From the basalt fortress of G’harne To old Leng in the dusty desert The ancient ones abide and wait And tell you to live for pleasure!

You are a scar on the eye of God But you gotta still be nice So give up your very human pain To the rite of sacrifice!

Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh The Old One Lies Dreaming Cthulhu R'lyeh In His home beneath the waves Wgah'nagl fhtagn But he’ll come back one day!

Not for a while, but I'd just been to see Hawkwind so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Lockheed_and_the_Starfighters came to mind .

Eater of soles.

I died.

Me too. That was a great bit.

Oooh, how juicy... "Reaches end of chapter."

Well, that was awesome, and 11 July can't come soon enough, but...Schiller?!

Disregarding him still being alive in the first place, how is he able to travel to the UK? Hell, how is he not running for his life? The Laundry and the Black Chamber know who and what he is, what he's done and what he tried to do. How come the US hasn't obliterated him and his servants, and destroyed his organization?

And even if the Black Chamber is evil enough not to care (which, okay, I would totally buy), why in the flying bleep wouldn't the Laundry have him killed as soon as he crosses into their territory and comes to their awareness? And meeting the Prime Minister?! Shouldn't the Laundry brief the guy in Nr. 10 as soon as possible on what exactly Schiller is?

Basically, my mind is going crazy trying to figure out how this guy can move around openly without getting killed with extreme prejudice. It's like seeing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi flying into the UK openly and without a care in the world.

It's like seeing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi flying into the UK openly and without a care in the world.

Or like seeing the Bin Laden family's private jets expedited departure from the USA on September 12th, 2001?

Yeah, that could never happen.

(All your questions are answered in the next couple of chapters. You will probably not like the answers, but that's the whole point!)

(All your questions are answered in the next couple of chapters. You will probably not like the answers, but that's the whole point!)

...It's going to involve politicians being denser than osmium, isn't it?

...It's going to involve politicians being denser than osmium, isn't it?

Considering that this is the book that had to be rewritten after the post-Brexit debacle convinced Charlie that he'd seriously underestimated politicians' similarity to headless chickens—yes, probably.

Nope, it's MUCH worse than that!

But not all politicians are fools ...

(The elevator pitch for this book was "House of Cards" meets "A Very British Coup" meets the Laundry Files. Be afraid; be very afraid.)

"Combat Poet"? Ever read Beowulf?

A non-comic version of a gonnagle? "The fliers screeched. Some crashed into the snow, but the ones still capable of flight swarmed off among the trees...[The poetry] was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul." (Chapter 9 first page, Pratchett's 'Wee Free Men')

I told myself I was NOT going to read the excerpt, because that would be inflicting torture on myself by having to wait for the release date. But nooo, I had to scroll it for 'Combat Poet'. Then having scanned it, trying not to read it, well, I went and read it. Seven more weeks, damnit!

Disregarding him still being alive in the first place, how is he able to travel to the UK? Hell, how is he not running for his life?

You might well ask why Gerry Adams was given a US visa after the killing of US citizens by PIRA but before PIRA disarmed (or why Martin McGuinness died peacefully after a period as the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland). Or why Menachem Begin was granted a visa to visit the UK in the 1970s (look up the King David Hotel bombing). I'm not sure whether Yitzhak Shamir ever visited Sweden (see the assassination of the UN mediator in 1948)

It's called realpolitik, and sometimes it's more productive in the long term than "mowing the lawn" (watch "The Gatekeepers", it's an excellent film).

Of course, there's always scope for delusional politicians... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._King#Support_for_the_IRA

the Bin Laden family's private jets expedited departure from the USA on September 12th, 2001 More details &/or linkie, please? That one passed me by.....

@43 Greg, this was most famously publicised by Michael Moore, who got it from Craig Unger. Moore occasionally plays a bit fast and loose, but I'm prepared to assume Vanity Fair does fact-checking. Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_9/11_controversies and http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/10/saving-the-saudis-200310

A very British coup?

Does that mean we're in for years of armies marching, cities being burnt to the ground, and so forth? Because that's what I remember from history class regarding regime change in the British Isles. :D

Folks, this is good

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Very_British_Coup

It's time to give the Schiller novel a re-read.

I like the strange bedfellows alliances that come up in these stories. We have the Deep Ones making an alliance of convenience with the hairless apes up top. The Cthonians I think are remaining aloof from all of this. TEAPOT found his self-interest ran along with the apes, too.

It stands to reason when an omnicidal threat to the entire world shows up, monsters existing within that ecosystem will also feel threatened. You can get some crazy alliances of necessity, on par with getting in bed with Stalin because, holy crap, the Nazis are even worse.

I find the modern Christian eschatology stuff to be pretty frightful stuff. Rapture, Tribulation and all that. And it's gotta be extra frightening for Israel. "Ok, so yeah, Christians were behind most of the pogroms you've faced in the past thousand years but listen, we're all cool now. We love our Jewish friends so much! We want to see you in Israel! Why is that? Because it's necessary to presage the Second Coming. Jews have to be back in Israel. And you'll be given a chance to accept Jesus as your True Lord and Savior. And if you don't then you'll be cast into the Lake of Fire along with the rest of the sinners. So hurrah for Israel! We got your back."

These evangelicals may be crazy but their money's green and their weapons are super effective. Let's just hope we're right about their meshugaas being meshugaas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_family#The_bin_Laden_flights

At least 13 relatives of Osama bin Laden, accompanied by bodyguards and associates, left the United States on a chartered flight with Ryan International Airlines (Ryan International Flight 441)[25] eight days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, according to a passenger manifest released on July 21, 2004.[26] The passenger list was made public by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), who obtained the manifest from officials at Boston's Logan International Airport. None of the flights, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of Sept. 13 and the 9/11 Commission found "no evidence of a political intervention".[27]

Looked shady as hell.

Here's the other one that happened recently. If a Democrat were president, this would be a 24/7 scandal on all networks. But it may be that Trump's antics are sucking up all the oxygen in the room. The optics on this are just awful. Look at the video of the event. You see Erdogan speak to his security head who then speaks with the guards who launch the attack.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/us/turkish-embassy-protest-dc.html?mcubz=1

Erdogan Security Forces Launch ‘Brutal Attack’ on Washington Protesters, Officials Say

WASHINGTON — Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, including his government security forces and several armed individuals, violently charged a group of protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence here on Tuesday night in what the police characterized as “a brutal attack.”

Eleven people were injured, including a police officer, and nine were taken to a hospital, the Metropolitan Police chief, Peter Newsham, said at a news conference on Wednesday. Two Secret Service agents were also assaulted in the melee, according to a federal law enforcement official.

The State Department condemned the attack as an assault on free speech and warned Turkey that the action would not be tolerated. “We are communicating our concern to the Turkish government in the strongest possible terms,” said Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman.

I see a time-table sort of like this: Schiller spends some time, maybe months, in the temple on top of the pyramid. Maybe the thing inside wakes, maybe it merely communicates with Schiller and teaches him lots of amazing new stuff. At some point the Black Chamber shows up and drags Schiller away. He's just fine with it, either because the new American President is an idiot or because he is now powerful enough that he is no longer afraid of the Black Chamber. Or maybe he gets home on his own and arranges the election of the idiotic American president so he can come out of hiding...

Either way, a couple years later he's in England and up to his old tricks, but with lots more power than he had previously. How much he (or his friend in the Pyramid) had to do with issues like the invasion of Leeds, (did the invaders have other possible destinations?) or the Mandate, or the APOE and Lecter (who told who about what?) is currently unknown, but probably worth looking into at some point. And Iris. Definitely Iris!

The other, more interesting evolution is that the same thing is happening to the Laundry as happened to the NSA in the real world. Their technology has permeated the government - how the fuck does the BBC get a Class-6 ward? - and is probably moving into the world of high-tech crime, like the virus that encrypts your brain unless you pay a huge ransom in bitcoin. By now, there's probably a large underground of ritual hackers the Laundry doesn't know about because they've been busy dealing with Case Nightmare Red and Case Nightmare Green, probably escalating up to God Game Rainbow, plus Vampires, TEAPOTs, and Lecter's version of "ET phone home." But meanwhile the L'nux kernel is now up to version .96 and ready for mainstream release...

Which means that my joke above about some White dude claiming to be descended from the Deep Ones and rapping in Old Enochian is completely reasonable in the mainstream Laundry timeline. He's probably recording his stuff in the L'nux version of Audacity or Ardour and making his videos in Blender, (which now uses Enochian as a macro language.)

Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to July, and trying very hard not to commit fan-fiction.

This was tried, actually, at a very low level against Wilsundra ( Harold Wilson) ... Senior services people were approached & got a very dusty answer. [ Apparently Mountbatten's was particularly full of string Naval Language! ] In other words, it's total bollocks.

Thanks, both of you. Yeah, the Erdogan brutality was not unnoticed, for now. I wonder what the remaining Armenians think of this?

how the fuck does the BBC get a Class-6 ward? Yeah well ... I hate to say it, but surely Bob's killer move in the interview is simply to ask: Excuse me Mr Paxman, but why are you wearing a "6" WArd & where did you get it from?" And watch the interesting squirmings.

P.S. "STRONG" naval language, dammit! ( #51 )

"I don't know what you're talking about..."

This is getting tedious. I'm going to have to crack a book when I get home.

The book... yeah, well, early seventies, this woman published a book on magick (please note the spelling is deliberate, we're not talking prestidigitation, nor gaming). She was A Idiot. Included ALL 48 Keys of John Dee, without any attribution (or even calling it that), and that's what I'll have to check.

She also published in the book a Rite to Mars, which began "I, Frater Purdurabo...." For those unfamiliar with at least some occultism, that's not part of the rite... it was Aleister Crowley's magickal name. (And if you've never heard of him, you should look him up. Called himself the Beast, and got thrown out of Italy by Mussolini....)

So all this talk of High, Middle, and Low Enochian, yeah, I'll go check the original....

mark

Ah, and then there's the other interesting things about alla that: 1. Rummy, Condi, and the rest all said, to Congress under oath, "who could ever have thought of flying a plane into the Pentagon?" Well... maybe the Pentagon, who had an exercise for the whole Pentagon on Nov 30-31, 2000, for how to respond to a plane being flown into the Pentagon. And this was on the web page of the Military District of Washington, the *official DoD website. For years. 2. A golfer's private jet went off course, and within 15 min, there were fighter jets around it. You're going to tell me it took more than half an hour to scramble fighters? There were also stories floating around that the fighters had been told to stand down... and only three people could have given that order: Rummy, Cheney, or Bush.

mark

Well, Dee is next to worthless on advanced Enochistics. He basically just got the recorded message from some kind of DANUBE CROSSING answering machine (only said answering machine had a psychotron and a hologram projector as an output). As for the sigils, they are actually only the control panel, and some obscene DANUBE CROSSING scratchings.

And some of the words are just customers swearing, since said answering machine was used in an imbiss.

Started the whole thing, but we got better.

Well as one form on magic is Kabbalistic tradition which is all about language I suspect that the OCINT section of MOSAD are fairly badass.

Yeh I must admit that crossed my mind too I can by the black chamber being fatally compromised some how and Shiller comes back with some power over the black chamber.

But doesn't explain why the other agencies haven't put a kill on sight order on him and given that Persephone and Jonny are "external assets" and would presumably want Shiller dead. Also the Russian French and Israeli OCIT orgs are probably less bothered about this sort of thing.

I presume the nut job element in the remaining cultists that worship the deep ones could be manipulated / geased into a terrorist attack (via ramona) - or if you want to get even darker kill two birds with one stone geas some captured Islamic terror suspects into doing it after all Shiller is a good representation of the great satan.

Talking about murderous nut-jobs were we? Yuck

To give you an example about the problems with Dee, we now know said answering machine was from the Fertile Crescent, about 3000 BC, which explains some odd facts.

Enochists were always somewhat surprised by Dees notion Enochian was ancestral to the Semitic languages like Hebrew or Arabic, because neither our modern knowledge of Middle Enochian nor even Dees material support the claim. For starters, at least Biblical Hebrew is highly inflectional, while Middle Enochian grammars are notouriously hard to categorize, but original Middle Enochian seemes to have been analytic, like Modern Chinese.

Lately, we have come to realize there is a DANUBE CROSSING superstrate effect in quite a few early Near Eastern languages (could the harpy please abstain from muttering about serpent people) AND a DANUBE CROSSING substrate in some of Dee`s material. Usually, substrate and superstrate effects are quite different, but somehow in this case they look quite similar. I'm an Afroasiatic or Proto-Elamite scholar, but I have been told tey still have a hangover and look back to the old days.

Lesson to learn, don't expect Sir William Jones to get far in a discussion about laryngeal theory. Or Friedrich Müller when talking about the classification of Omotic. Where both guys were on a much more mature base than Dee, even if you take K syndrome into consideration.

Err, make that "not an Afroasiatic or Proto-Elamite scholar". ;)

Well, I'm looking forward for the Mhari POV. At the moment, I'm developing my own little theory, maybe I can ask you about it at DortCon. (damn, I can be as dense as Bob at times, err, always. Though I identify much more with Alex or a lower digit Kinsey scale Brain...)

Er, would Bob's geas allow him to ask Paxo where he got a class 6 ward from on national TV?

Very old news in the US. His family had basically disowned him for years as a rich nut who was out of control.

The government allowed them to fly out for their protection as the rest of the family actually supported US interests (business) in various ways around the world.

Ah, and then there's the *other interesting things about alla that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_for_the_day_of_the_September_11_attacks

Not really - the simple answers are that it was an out-of-context problem, and that hindsight is 20/20 vision. The attack involved four aircraft, hijacked within the USA, and the provision of pilots for each. They were flown short distances to keep the reaction times minimised; and the time between the first and third plane strikes was under an hour. The situation was chaotic and confusing, information wasn't shared effectively.

It's an expensive process keeping aircraft at ten minutes notice to move, so you only have two of them ready to go. As soon as you launch them, you move the next pair up to readiness, but that takes time (you don't just climb in and turn a key). It takes five minutes from the order to start engines, to take off.

So; NORAD is alerted at 0837; Flight 11 hits WTC at 0846; the F-15 alert pair for the Eastern seaboard are scrambled at 0846, and take off from Otis at 0853; Flight 175 hits WTC at 0903; F-15s at arrive at Long Island by 0909; are tasked to patrol over Manhattan at 0913. It still looks like a two-plane attack on New York. Flight 93 wasn't even hijacked until 0928 (the flight crews were in the process of being warned at the time).

At 0921, the FAA tell NORAD that there's another aircraft that they think may have been hijacked, and that is heading to Washington. Langley scrambles its F-15s at 0924, they take off at 0930; Flight 77 hits the Pentagon at 0937 (the Langley F-15s are still 150 miles away).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._military_response_during_the_September_11_attacks#Phantom_Flight_11

In other words, it's only suspicious to those who insist that TWA800 was shot down, Apollo 11 was faked, and the WTC was rigged for demolition. You know, swivel-eyed loonies.

Well, sort-of. There WERE suspicious aspects, and evidence that they were hastily covered up, though all the plausible ones were arse-covering to hide previous official negligence or incompetence, very like the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster and God alone knows how many others. One is why it was so much of an out of context problem, given that similar scenarios had been talked about on the net for years (and even more whitroth's comment in #56), and all the suspicious behaviour of the perpetrators. The other is the collapse of the third tower, where there is some evidence that it did so partly because it had not actually been constructed quite according to its specifications.

New York. (Sniffs) You get the wrong construction company, and suddenly you're not in your happy place anymore.

You left out "arse-covering to avoid risk of criticism". The most common one, IMHO - you don't have to have done anything wrong, you just...

As for "similar scenarios", I rather suspect that the expectation of the staffs concerned (presumably driven by exercise scenarios that they'd run over the years) was a single aircraft attack, double at a push, hijacked abroad and flown towards the USA, with scenarios finishing at the point where the F-15s appear on its wingtips and escort it to a suitable airfield (and, cue the FBI Hostage Rescue types).

In other words, an unconscious assumption that there would be time to think, time to act. Except, there wasn't.

That is not the aspect I was referring to - I accept that a multiple aircraft attack could reasonably have been discounted on probability grounds - even your scenario would have provided adequate protection only probabilistically, anyway. But there were a lot of things that were done afterwards that would have helped with a single aircraft attack (plus equally many insane ones). Why was nothing done before if they had thought of such attacks?

Plus, as Troutwaxer says, constructors getting a nod and a wink ....

Is there any chance you could share the chapter in a form that's anything other than the eldritch abomination known as scribd? I can understand publishers mandating DRM for ebooks and all that, but there are some things that are just too evil to do and scribd is high on that list.

In other words, it's only suspicious to those who insist that TWA800 was shot down, Apollo 11 was faked, and the WTC was rigged for demolition. You know, swivel-eyed loonies.

Ahem, yes. I got a local-ish example last year, when some nuts decided to take over a remote wildlife park (by breaking in on a holiday when everyone was at home). There was a lot of talk about how if brown people had tried this 'the government' would have come in with heavily armed soldiers and shot everyone. In reality the nearest town is 30 miles away with a six person police force. The nearest city is a 300 mile drive. (I'll understand if British readers have a hard time imagining '300 miles to the nearest city.') There was no possibility at all of jack-booted stormtroopers magically showing up in the wilderness, yet some people couldn't understand this.

I never cease to be amazed at the swivel eyed lunatics you let have guns in the US.

With all these militias wandering about any loss of central control is going to result in the US going the way of Libya pretty quickly.

I would have thought the model for the remains of the US would be Salem, actually.

I never cease to be amazed at the swivel eyed lunatics you let have guns in the US.

It baffles us sometimes, too.

Since guns are necessary tools in remote areas, the thinly spread populace around Malheur is very well armed when measured by guns per person. One of the worries of law enforcement was that some of the locals might come around one night to sort things out themselves; happily this did not happen but the nutters were deeply unpopular visitors.

Slight divert, but poss relevant to the new book. A very (minor) British Coup in progress?

Am I the only one thinking this is Project Fear 2017, and basically just a device to ensure a Tory landslide?

For offshore readers Tories/Conservatives like to paint themselves as the Law and Order party.

There was a lot of talk about how if brown people had tried this 'the government' would have come in with heavily armed soldiers and shot everyone. [...] There was no possibility at all of jack-booted stormtroopers magically showing up in the wilderness, yet some people couldn't understand this.

It's 100 miles from Bismarck to Standing Rock.

As I watched it taking over on twitter from complaints about dementia tax and Tory inconsistency, it didn't take long for my thoughts to pass through "oh how bloody convenient" and get to "it's a false flag operation by the Conservative party".

I worry a little about my cynicism levels occasionally. But yes, terribly convenient that just after May screwed up her u-turn on a screwed up policy and suffered a huge drop in the polls, everyone else stopped campaigning for a week. (Everyone else? Well, yes; merely by being PM, May is getting to talk lots about how strong and stable she is and not only effectively continue campaigning, but do so without being challenged or questioned by anyone. And it's all suddenly focussed on lawnorder, too, where the Tories are traditionally seen as the "strong" party, despite the way crime always seems to go up when they're in power...)

A very (minor) British Coup in progress?

The Conservatives have a 12% lead in the polls - the best in over 20 years - while Labour are struggling to drag themselves back from self-destruction. There is a near-zero chance of anything other than an enlarged majority for the Government (much though I would like to see a return to a Coalition).

So, exactly why would anyone need to run a false flag operation?

As Chrisj puts it, "I worry about my cynicism levels occasionally". Having the thought cross your mind is fine; failing to discount it almost immediately, however, puts you into the same swivel-eyed territory as mentioned earlier...

... and get to "it's a false flag operation by the Conservative party".

So, a 24-hour turnaround time from "curses, we're getting a hard time on the campaign trail over a May U-turn" to a terrorist attack. That's not long enough to brief, arm, recce, and conduct an attack. Any attack. Far less one that absolutely must remain secret at all costs until the end of time.

Exactly how does this work? Is there a ruthless and relentlessly efficient secret cell within CCHQ, keeping a short list of potential terrorists at 24 hours notice to move? "Damn, Boris got near a microphone - send a signal to Agent 009, let's allow some children to be murdered!". This from an organisation that can't even suppress the stories of "cash for honours", MPs' expenses, or a bullying scandal that led to suicide?

There's cynical, and there's delusional. In this case, Occam's Razor applies.

PS Here are some internal responses to Op TEMPERER... hopefully reassuring to those who tend to eye HM Armed Forces with a lack of understanding or even suspicion :)

It could be more subtle, like having vague intel about a planned attack but using it to deniably apply just enough influence to clusterfuck the response, making the outcome inevitable if not specifically predictable. You know, like 911. Not being in a position to need it makes for that much more deniability. The real false flag activities aren't big single events like terrorist attacks but patterns and trends. If you can nudge things just enough so there are periodically successful terrorist attacks generally then you can point to that phenomenon to justify desired policies. The conspiracies that underlie history aren't explicit conversations of people meeting in rooms, but rather they are accumulations of actions and reactions taken based on awareness of complex consequences.

I don't believe its a false flag. As you say Occam applies.

The more interesting question (that its almost impossible for a civilian to answer) is Is there an element of Tory opportunism in play :

Meanwhile, back in chapter 1 ...

"two jet fighters"

... buggrit. I thought the second Typhoon was going to survive its encounter, as "they circled each other warily"

Likewise, in case that wasn't clear. "Terribly convenient" is in large part shorthand for "No editor in their right mind would let you get away with this in a novel unless it was (going to turn out to be) a false flag or had been trailed heavily". So-called reality has a habit of doing things that simply wouldn't be acceptable in any but the laziest fiction.

OTOH, I do believe the Tories are enthusiastically milking the incident for everything they can get. And as a side issue, we get to see the Trump administration failing to keep their mouth shut on shared intelligence again because they can't bear to not tell everyone that they know a secret...

You wrote: In other words, it's only suspicious to those who insist that TWA800 was shot down, Apollo 11 was faked, and the WTC was rigged for demolition. You know, swivel-eyed loonies.

I don't know, so I'm asking: was that an intentional insult, suggesting I was one of them?

My opinion is that the fighters were not scrambled as fast as normal, period. Worst case: Bush, Cheney & Rummy decided to take advantage of the attack, and not respond asap.

Shooting down the plane... they could have, though normally I believe they'd flip the wing, and I have serious doubts that the hijack pilot could handle that.

mark

About the collapse of the towers, my late ex, who was a real engineer, always thought that a significant factor in the collapse was how close the towers were built... and that they vibrated, heavily, like a tuning fork, and that massive vibration contributed to it.

It could be more subtle, like having vague intel about a planned attack but using it to deniably apply just enough influence to clusterfuck the response, making the outcome inevitable if not specifically predictable. You know, like 9/11.

Again, as with the "why wasn't the plane stopped from hitting the Pentagon", it just doesn't survive contact with evidence and reality. Namely, the sheer number of US intelligence bodies (currently 17, but at the time, ISTR that The Economist produced a wiring diagram that suggested there were well over 20 with no one person in charge).

Read this, and you'll understand... http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/0817946624_65.pdf

The problem with conspiracy theories such as you propose is that they either assume a single, clean, hierarchical structure with an evil plotter and lots of dutiful, unimaginative, and unwitting underlings who avoid any initiative (not the case in the USA); or they require a cabal of like-minded and co-operating individuals who are all able to keep a secret (because otherwise the people who have the "vague intelligence" in one area don't have the authority to affect the response in other areas). The most recent series of "Homeland" attempted to capture some of the issues involved...

:) If you get to "... how about deliberately leaving the organisation badly structured so that it will be less-able to respond to a threat! Eleventy! Muhahaha, it's an evil plot!", I'd suggest that it's rather a stretch to claim conspiracy, or even causality, over cockup :)

I don't know, so I'm asking: was that an intentional insult, suggesting I was one of them? My opinion is that the fighters were not scrambled as fast as normal, period.

Please don't take it as an insult unless you're wedded to the belief that it was deliberate. In which case, you can consider yourself insulted (sorry). I would merely point you to the sources that point out the timings between "tell NORAD" and "planes in the air", remembering that the alert aircraft require at least five minutes from "scramble" to flying: it takes five minutes to start up the engines on an F-15.

First strike: NORAD is only told at 0837; the F-15 ready alert pair for the Eastern seaboard are scrambled at 0846 (as the first plane hits), take off from Otis at 0853; second plane hits at 0903, six minutes before the F-15s get to New York. The only possible saving is the nine minutes it takes NORAD to commit the fighters; not enough to stop the first strike, and only three minutes to identify one airliner among many, get into a firing position, and work through the SOPs to shoot it down. So, not going to happen.

Second strike: NORAD told about "other hijacked aircraft" at 0921; the next F-15 ready alert pair for the Eastern seaboard are scrambled at 0924, take off from Langley at 0930; Pentagon hit at 0937. The only possible saving is the three minutes response time within NORAD. Still not enough to arrive over Washington DC, identify one aircraft among many, get into a firing position, and launch. So, not going to happen.

Where, according to your conviction, would the "scramble them faster" times come from, that would make a difference? What, exactly, is the "normal" time between scramble and launch? Why exactly are roomfuls of USAF officers and NCOs at NORAD, pledged to defend the USA against all enemies, deliberately going to slow their response down to allow the Pentagon to get smashed?

Charlie has just tweeted this: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/05/that-critical-threat/

Meanwhile... WTF with US media leaking (maybe) sensitive information regarding the Manchester mass murder? Incompetence on the part of the Trump admin? ( Most likely explanation IMHO ) ... or deliberate ubdermining oif 5-Eyes because of usual US arrogance + rethuglican desire for control so dump the other 4 Eyes because "We're the US &^ we don't fricking need these others" ??? Very Chinese-Interesting

Alternative explanation is that Feeb/Intelligence employee doing it to hit back at the Trump for Comey etc by making him look bad.

In any other situation sight of of Five Eyes leaking like a sieve would be hugely entertaining.

Alternative alternative is that someone in US intelligence is leaking Manchester stuff because they think it'll shut down all non-vital sharing from non-US agencies (to the US) before someone else gets burned the way MOSSAD did. (And while sharing suspect names and crime-scene forensics from an open investigation is still bad, it's nowhere near the same scale of bad.)

Politicians generally don't think that long-term, but I'm willing to believe that there are people in the intelligence community who think like that.

I'd probably put Trumpite stupidity as the most likely option, mind.

Try this one on for size: could it be the Trumpolini administration itself that's leaking (remember how Cheney was all upset that someone in his office had outed Valerie Plame... but no one was ever caught?), in its continuing effort to discredit the intel community?

All because they have, or are finding, all the links to Russia and other criminal acts by the crew?

Hey, the wrong-wing are always yelling "FALSE FLAG", so such a thing is clearly on their minds....

Several details: 1. There were only two on the entire east coast? 2. The Pentagon attack - based on the wikipedia article, the cockpit was stormed at 08:55, and the Pentagon hit at 09:37. That's over 40 minutes. Remember that I mentioned that before 9/11, a rpo golfer's private jet went off course, and had fighters around it in 15? 3. The flight that crashed in PA - again, 35 min from hijacking to crash. A long way across OH and PA.

And you say "NORAD was told". They run RADARs. They would have seen this stuff, including on the TV. From when the first flight hit the World Trade Tower, everything vaguely near ready should have been scrambled. There should have been dozens of fighters in the air in three-quarters of an hour (by 09:30).

One last thing: you wrote, "Why exactly are roomfuls of USAF officers and NCOs at NORAD, pledged to defend the USA against all enemies, deliberately going to slow their response down to allow the Pentagon to get smashed?"

What I saw in major newspapers was that there was supposed to be an exercise that day, or the next (think fire drill), and that added to the confusion.

mark

Going back to the eagerly awaited book. The mention of a squadron of Dragons...can we look forward to some mickey taking of the Dragonriders of Pern?

Remember that I mentioned that before 9/11, a rpo golfer's private jet went off course, and had fighters around it in 15?

...were said fighters already in the air, or were they launched from startup? Was the President (or other high-value asset, say Air Force One or Marine One) in the area such that it warranted an increased readiness level? We don't know.

Claiming that one example of an aircraft intercepted in 15 minutes, is proof that all intercepts should be that fast (and by extension, evidence of malice) is very poor logic.

Remember, until now hijacks have been one-at-a-time, and no-one has really thought through "airliner as kamikaze" (less Tom Clancy, and even then it was just one). The situation is confusing; two aircraft have hit New York, and NORAD has now got a CAP orbiting Manhattan. From the information available to NORAD at the time, having dozens more aircraft orbiting New York is rather bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Even assuming there were "dozens of aircraft" at a flight-ready status, you now have to find their flight crews, their ground crews, you have to arm them, fuel them...

And if you do launch "dozens of aircraft", what do you do in two hours time when they're all running low on fuel? Where do their dozens of replacements come from? How do you maintain a CAP if you need to carry on for a half-day?

While they obviously increased readiness for other aircraft, they don't get told until 0921 that there are other hijacked aircraft in the air. Scramble at 0924, airborne at 0930, but too late - the aircraft hits the Pentagon at 0937. They were up in time for Flight 93, but by then the passengers had forced the hijackers to crash the aircraft.

And you say "NORAD was told". They run RADARs. They would have seen this stuff, including on the TV. From when the first flight hit the World Trade Tower, everything vaguely near ready should have been scrambled. There should have been dozens of fighters in the air in three-quarters of an hour (by 09:30).

This is 2001. The Cold War is over, the End of History has been announced. The NORAD radars, unsurprisingly, are long-range radars facing outwards across the direction of threat (you know, BEAR and BACKFIRE and ICBM coming in on the shortest route over the pole)... so keeping "dozens of fighters" at 40 minutes Quick-Reaction Alert on the Eastern Seaboard would achieve... what, exactly?

Teen-series fighters cost tens of thousands of dollars per flying hour just in running costs - let alone the twenty to thirty maintenance man-hours per flying hour that go with it. If the aircraft are committed to QRA, then so are their flight and ground crews - no other training or maintenance is possible for the committed aircraft. It's a demanding workload. Now consider that you've got to arm all of these "dozens of aircraft" - you don't just leave your fighters hanging around with missiles fitted and guns loaded, you plan it.

Here's a pilot's description of the effort in maintaining the Duty QRA - remembering that this is at the height of the Cold War, two thousand miles closer to the Soviet threat than CONUS. For half of the UK, a single pair was at five minutes notice, and another pair ready to move up if the first is launched (in other words, two pairs at 5 minutes notice).

http://www.projectoceanvision.com/vox-07.htm

Here's a more modern, post-9/11 description (apologies to all for linking to the Daily Torygraph):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11859954/Watch-the-RAFs-Quick-Reaction-Alert-in-action.html

So, no. I suggest that your reasoning is based on hindsight, and fails on contact with economic reality. If you continue to insist (in the face of additional information) that the lack of intercept alone is proof of deliberate malice, then I'm sorry - you're deep into tinfoil hat land, eyes swivelling furiously.

Yes, only two ready to scramble fighters for the east coast. It's America, not Britain or France. There's the entire Atlantic between them and any likely enemies. (Unless you think the USA in 2001 was terrified of Canada and Mexico.)

More generally, why do people who's usual default position is that the military are reactionary, conservative, unimaginative, always fighting the last war etc, etc expect that they should have reacted instantly to something that had never happened before?

That's not so inconsistent really. It helps if you consider the difference between the two opinions to be a matter of the timescale over which they are deploring the same underlying attitude.

I ran into a fellow Stross-fan this afternoon in San Diego. I was eating lunch and he was at the next table saying something about this author he liked so I tuned in and he was talking about either Accelerando or maybe Singularity Sky, then he mentioned the author's name... apparently he lurks here, but doesn't post.

Nice to run into a fellow-Stross-enthusiast either way. Hello!

There were another couple of fighters on QR down in the Savannah area, I think. Fourteen QR fighters total for the continental United States, all pointing outwards to cover any foreign threat.

Be careful what you wish for. Charlie's idea of ThreadFall might be closer to this

Sheffield is 35 miles from Leeds where we last met the Alfar.

I'll just say that I was determined to hold out and wait for "Nightmare Stacks" in paperback, but I gave in and I'm glad I did because it came at just the right time and made my day. So, should I accept the inevitable and pre-order "Delirium Brief", or would that be taking the wrong lesson from it? I mean, the lesson might be "go with impulse" rather than "always pre-order Stross". And currently my impulse is still telling me to wait for paperback. But then again, experience is telling me to pre-order.

Give up. I mean, I wasn't even going to read the preview chapter and then... Anyway, matched sets of books look so much nicer on the shelf, and why deny yourself by wainting?

Or even 'waiting'. sigh

It seems a good guess from the end that, contrary to Bob's and everyone else's assumptions, the BBC didn't get a ward and inside info, a specific host did because of his ties to Schiller(-not-the-Weimar-poet) etc.

...the BBC didn't get a ward and inside info, a specific host did because of his ties to Schiller.

You're quite possibly right about that specific issue.

On the other hand, I can't believe that OGH isn't thinking about what's been happening with (for example) the NSA's collection of zero-days and how what used to be sooper-sekrit tech has made its way to the street, which "finds its own uses for things."

If we don't see a story which involves this issue soon, I may have to commit fan-fic.

In any other situation sight of of Five Eyes leaking like a sieve would be hugely entertaining. REALLY? You have obviously not thought that through, if at all. So there's a 5-eyes major failure & leak & the islamists get a major, possibly nuke, attack in on a European city. Or Putin decides to occupy the Baltics, because our intel is compromised. Or, or, or .... NOT nice.

Intel is also very useful in preventing wars, in case you had forgotten.

Ooh so excited and in time for my birthday too this preorder is the best timing ever!

Charlie,

I got the Atrocity Archives - I didn't seem to have h/c, so bought it for my Nook. Two things: first, on page 26 of that, it reads "four bureaucratic values", instead of "for bureaucratic values".

Later, when Bob and Mo are about to go to the Netherlands, the night before, he tells her they've got to be at the door at 07:00, but the next chapter begins with his alarm ringing at 08:00.

And if Bob's unreliable... it could be a combination of his attraction to/love of Mo, and the extremely serious internal changes he goes through, from the programmer to the now-getting-really-scary heir of Angleton.

mark