Tricky Words: a Primer
An Abridged Glossary for ‘Other Places’
It has occurred to the staff of The Tricky Genre Press (Ed. well, to Tulip really) that some of the blogs we have recently posted about jjhudsson’s latest EPUB novel Other Places Which Also Are the World’s End contain quite a few ‘tricky words’ (Ed. that’s Tulip’s phrase for them).
If, for instance, you dipped into our blog on the naming of things on Planet Nea, you may have found yourself wondering about the meaning of words like ‘geodysphoria’ and ‘verivectors’, even if you came away with a working knowledge of the Nea light-cycle. We know we did.
Our EPUB of Other Places contains an extensive Glossary of Terms at the end. But what of the cheapskate visitors who have yet to cough up the very reasonable price for the download?
Fret not. Our hearts are not made of stone. Here is your very own abridged glossary to help you wile away those sleepless nights.
Who is Gao? Can you eat Palangats? Is Rogue Portal really an indie band? Read on to know for sure…
Abridged Glossary for Other Places Which Also Are the World’s End.
Ariadne (Programme). See Vestigial Negative Energy Theory (VNET).
Cloud Well. See Great Central Basin.
Cocoon. See Transvector Sphere Transit Capsule.
Collapse, the. An Neo-apocolypse that occurred on Earth in the first weeks of August 2079. The Collapse saw control of most digital technology in the world ceded from humans to an unknown entity called the Programme. This included most military, banking, communications and governmental systems. The term Neo-apocolyptic was applied in Stage 1, after the ReAlignment, when it became evident the event was not intended to be world-ending (see Clades, ReAligment, Programme). The event ended on 9 August, following nuclear detonations at five locations.
Deslizarisation. [vul.= sliz]. The process of arriving through a port. The term originates from the Old Earth Spanish verb meaning ‘to slip between.’ A portalnaut is said to ‘deslizarise’. The term ‘deslizaration floor’ is used interchangeably on Nea with ‘portal aperture’; both terms means refer to the space in which the portal opens onto.
Discord, the. The period of social unheaval on Nea that followed the Dome 3 disaster. The Discord culminated in the removal of the inaugural Provost, a circumstance that paved the way for the cessationist movement on the planet that eventually severed ties with Old Earth.
Gao. A Chinese portalnaut from the first outport. Gao unexpectedly returned (pre-Collapse). She survived her return port for three weeks before succumbing to acute radiation sickness. During this time Gao was able to tell Funes many important features of Nea, notably the water content, breathable air, orbital locking and organic life (llanex). She did not mention bauressium.
Geodysphoria. A Neah term describing the acute loss of direction and disorientation experienced under Nea’s geomagnetic fields. It differs from ‘topographical disorientation’ in that it is not a neurological disorder; it stems from physical anomalies not usually experienced on Earth.
Great Central Basin (GCB), [coll. Cloud Well]. A geological feature occupying much of the solafacial surface of Nea. It is a continental wide depression caused by a collision with a massive ice body during the formation of the Gydda constellation. During the Pre-Surtian period the ice melted to form an ocean. Most of this water subsequently evaporated during the volcanic Surtrian period. However, a central lens of ice remains, and it is this that drives the climatic cell that gives the basin its modern name.
ICPIT [acronym]. International Conference on the Physics of Interstellar Transit. There were twelve such conferences from 2027 (Osaka) to 2077 (Boston). Professor Evlynne Menlo was President of the ICIT from 2067 to 2073, organising the 10th (Vienna) and 11th (Barcelona) conferences.
Light-madness or dust-daze, the aggressive formation of myloid-derived diffusible ligands in the brain. Without light filtering even relatively short periods of exposure to Nea’s sun (a few days or weeks) can lead to the onset of dementia. Alphamelvitran (Amel) effectively absorbs these harmful rays.
Monastery, the. Located on the foothills of Mount Peril, the Monastery was originally a storage depot used in the construction of the Domes on Heligoland. The complex is now used as a ‘reflection centre’ for those Neah—particularly strandloopers—who find it difficult to adjust to life in the Domes. During and after the Collapse the site was used to quarantine unscheduled portalnauts until their status on Nea was established.
Neah, the [coll.]. A citizen or resident of Planet Nea.
Nebrasov. A Russian portalnaut who was found dead in a suburb of São Paulo, Brazil in 2077. His badly burnt body was clutching a can of baked beans. Authorities quickly shut the story down. It was reported in the papers that the mystery man was the victim of gang related violence. An autopsy revealed similar attributes to Gao. Formally, nothing more is known of his return port. However, the interested reader may care to study the blog on the Lighterman-Nebrasov Portal where an interesting theory is explored.
Palangats, [abrev. ‘pgt’]. A palangat is the Nea unit of ‘distance travelled’ that accounts stochastically for ’drift’ caused by errors in P-Z values and overall geomagnetic flux. A kilometre travelled by a wanderer on Nea may turn out to have been no more than a few meters or as much as fifty kilometres ‘on the ground’. Palangats were devised to normalise distance times so they might be compared. This is done using an error factor and various other geomagnetic parameters, usually expressed as kilopalangats (kpgt), for example 1.47 ± 443 kpgt.
Porting. A form of interstellar transit effected by use of a Transvector Rigas Sphere. Based on the theory of Lorzenian wormholes, the technology gets around the requirement for the vast quantities of negative energy that would be required to sustain the throat of a traditional wormhole, by creating a sphere of negative energy, which effectively slips through space-time without the need for an articulating tunnel or bridge. The transport system was developed by Professor Adán Maria-Casares Rigas, but the difficult accomplishment of navigating a so-called Rigas Sphere was the lifework of Evlynne Anne Murchlund Menlo. It is estimated that mortality rates for porting were c. 63 percent.
PrimePort. The original, or founding, members of the human settlement on Nea. The ‘Funesian’ intent behind the Nea porting programme was to create a ‘model society’ based on high-level intellectual endeavour. Thus, the planet’s physical and social organising principles are based, in large part, on the medieval university. PrimePorts were to be the only level in this society, with novices performing such menial duties as were required until they had attained the level of PrimePort. Co-Ports, strandloopers and slammers were only ever intended to be temporary residents of Nea.
Programme, the. An artificial general intelligence comprising an unknown number of agents, networks, large language models, databases, programmes, routines, sub-routines and lines of code whose overriding purpose is to preserve human life on Earth. It is responsible for the Collapse as well as the recovery (MEDVAC), hygiene (DSEQ and ELIM) and ReAlignment (CLADE) programmes.
Rogue Portal. See Stable & Open Port.
Roughton Heath. The name is taken from the parish of Roughton in Norfolk, England, on Old Earth. In September 1933, the physicist Albert Einstein spent three weeks in an isolated hut on heathland under the care of Oliver Locker-Lampson on route to the United States after fleeing Nazi Germany.
Slammer. A paramilitary deployed to close rogue portals on Nea. Although few in number, they exercise a formidable physical, if brutal, power that is only marginally under the control of the PrimePorts.
Stable & Open Port (SOP) [coll. ‘Rogue portals’]. A Transvector Rigas Sphere portal that has remained open and in a relatively stable condition such that transit via the sphere may be possible. A SOP forms when a Transvector Rigas Sphere becomes trapped within a wrinkle of space-time. In this condition, one surface of the sphere may be thought of as ‘facing’ one space-time, while the other (or others) face different space-times. A portal is said to be ‘stable’ if its flux is predictable such that its articulating surfaces may be determined, thereby allowing transit.
Transvector Sphere Transit Capsule. [coll. ‘Cocoon’]. A life support vehicle by which humans traverse a Rigas Sphere. Each capsule is designed to cocoon one person within a complex system of shielding, the principal component of which is a magnetic trap lattice. The other chief technological element was a sophisticated personal biometric environment (P.B.E), or ‘pebble’. This system is minutely calibrated to the traveller at Earth Source using a complex raft of biometric data such that each pod is inextricably linked to the intended traveller.
UN-WGIT [abrev. ‘United Nations Working Group on Interstellar Travel’]. The working group was established by a resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 29 July 2047, under the auspices of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs [see the blog UNWGIT, Undone]. It was based in Vienna. Under its four Overarching Objectives is the mission to “To oversee an international programme of research to explore and evaluate the theoretical, technical, scientific, ethical and legal options for safe human interstellar travel…”
Vestigial Negative Energy Theory (VNET). The theory in Lorenzian physics that underpins Return Portal dynamics. Stemming from the pioneering work of Evlynne Menlo in the late 2040s, the theory proposes the recycling of negative energy, thereby negating the need for Rigas Bubble nurseries at both surfaces of a Rigas Transvecting Sphere. It was developed into operation as part of the Ariadne Programme, run under UN-WGIT.
Well / Cloud Well, the. [coll. the Great Central Basin].
So now you know almost everything. Of course, we left out some of the juiciest details from these definitions. There’s a whole lot more where that came from lurking at the back of Other Places Which Also Are the World’s End. But if you’re still not satisfied, today we publish on the site an annotated EPUB, which includes no less than three hundred and forty notes on the text by jjhudsson himself. If you’re interested, why not download the annotated version of Other Places?
Notes
Blog cover image is The Rosetta Stone, © Hans Hillewaert / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons. The image has been cropped and some background removed.
