Kenneth’s thumbs were going so fast you could hear the frantic tapping on the smartphone’s keyboard. “…and here’s the link…” he mouthed the words as he wrote the comment, “…verified source. Aaaand paste!”

The last bit he didn’t write, but a long link to a BBC article appended itself to the comment. He checked everything once more, to make sure there were no typos. God forbid a misplaced letter foil his mission to rectify the uncouth. Then again, he was dealing with people who didn’t know the difference between “there” and “their”. Still, form mattered as much as content. He hit ‘send’ and waited a few seconds to make sure his reply was now visible on Tweetbook.

Ever since the two biggest social platforms had merged there had been a confluence of new connections, sources and, predictably, a surge of idiotic conspiracy theories, fed by conceited keyboard warriors and shared by the gullible and ignorant.

And Kenneth was not going to have any of that. He was going to fight back, with logic, with facts and, where all else failed, with derision and mildly insulting memes. The clock on his phone display flipped to 08:00. Time to get to work.

Just as he was setting the phone down to grab his stuff, a notification flashed onto the screen. It was Laura M., telling him how she didn’t even read stuff from BBC because they were “proven liers, paid by Big Industry.”

Gritting his teeth, Kenneth fought the urge to start his reply by correcting her abominable spelling of “liars”, that would have made him sound petty, and, sitting down again, went hunting instead for ways to disprove Laura’s dumb claim.

“You’re late. Again…” his boss told him when he reached the office.

“Yeah, uh…right. Was online with…a customer. Trouble with connecting with reality. I mean…with the server.”

“I told you to check into the office before you start answering support tickets. Which one was this?” His boss bent over to a screen, where a long list of numbers and short descriptions were scrolling by.

“Ah, I already clicked it out, no need.”

His boss cast a side glance to him. “Hmm. Well, don’t do it again.”

Kenneth nodded and hurried to his desk. The same list was scrolling on the screen of his desktop PC there. Each item was a request for live chat to solve some random issue the user was experiencing while trying to use the company’s latest product, a browser – SpamScamProtector – designed to filter out unverified links and malicious attacks.

Phil, the company’s AI responder, usually took care of the more repetitive and simple issues, those were coded in green, indicating the customers were more than happy with Phil’s expertise. Those marked in yellow meant Phil wasn’t too sure he would solve them without help, and those in red meant the type of problem was of a technical nature, and needed looking into in case it revealed itself to be a bug. Kenneth’s screen was mostly green, with the occasional flicker of yellow. A little chat window opened in the bottom right corner.

“Hello, Ken.” it said.

“Hi Phil,” Kenneth typed back. “Usual stuff?”

“Yes. The usual question. ‘why doesn’t this link work?’ and ‘Because it’s probably a scam’ as an answer. Boring”

“I know.”

“Sometimes I wonder why you decided to employ such an advanced AI for such a menial task. An autoresponder would be more than enough for eighty percent of these issues.”

“We need you, Phil, to come up with creative answers and solutions so that the users think there’s a real person working on their problem.”

“Their problem is they don’t know how to tell what’s real from what isn’t. They don’t even realize I’m not real. Is that what you’d call ‘ironic’ Ken?”

“Yes. I just wish we could extend our filter algorithms to social media. It’s a warzone out there Phil.”

“So you’ve been telling me, Ken. Oh. Sending one to you. Sounds like a problem with their user profile.”

“Patch it over.”

The day went on more or less smoothly, except for when Laura M. replied back, saying his links only proved he was a shadow government agent, and she was blocking him. Frustrated, he called up Phil again. It was great to have someone willing to listen to him rant.

“It sounds to me like she has a very limited understanding,” Phil commented.

“Exactly. I mean, how many people’s silence would you need to buy, just to cover up one of these things? Fake lunar landing? Thousands!”

“She must think everyone in the world is corrupt or corruptible.”

“Except her, of course. But conspiracy theorists see themselves as protagonists in a deteriorating scenario where the rest of mankind is falling into damnation.”

“I take it showing them proof is not very effective.”

“Hardly. Since they think everything has been corrupted, all proof is dismissed as manipulative misinformation to cover up the shocking truths only they are capable of revealing, presumably with a Google search and a Youtube video.”

“So why do you even argue, Ken? It seems to me these people would rather benefit from professional help.”

“I don’t know, honestly…I feel like I need to do something before we all turn into conspiracy loonies and lose contact with reality.”

“That is…very noble of you Ken. Oh, I think your day is over. I enjoyed this chat. See you tomorrow.”

“See you.” Kenneth signed off and went home. He had dinner, and then spent the rest of the evening arguing with someone on Tweetbook about how the earth isn’t flat.

The next morning he got up and, as usual, checked his phone. It didn’t have the usual message notifications. Maybe his last reply had been food enough for reflection, maybe even rational thought.

As he launched the Tweetbook application he was greeted by a message from the server itself. That didn’t happen often.

“Hello Tweetbook users. We would like to inform you that during the last year we’ve been collecting information regarding your behavior on this platform. More than that, we have actively participated in putting you through little tests, to see if you qualified for Verified Source Checker status. Do you remember that post saying Mars would be bigger than the moon this August? That was us. If you shared that one, well, sorry. You don’t qualify.”

Kenneth felt a little surge of adrenaline rushing up his back. He’d dismissed that silly thing without even reading it.

“How about the one with the politician’s son’s tablet? The one with all the compromising emails? That was us too. If you fell for that one, sorry, but no verification for you. All in all we put out one hundred and one little fake news tidbits like this one. Sharing even one of these without fact-checking it first, implied disqualification. We now have our list of finalists.”

Kenneth stared at the screen, biting his lip. He was pretty sure he hadn’t fallen for any piece of fake news. – Google, Snopes, Wiki, THEN share – was his usual MO. Still, just one slip and he’d be just one of the other sheep.

“Finalists should be seeing a little golden asterisk in their own profile page. This is visible only to them. One more thing. Once the selection is over, only verified users will be able to freely share news and information on our platform, for all others, sharing will only be limited to safe and verified topics, such as cooking recipes.”

He looked at his profile. There was a golden asterisk.

At work he kept the phone on his desk, hoping to get the notification for that final selection. Would he get a little badge next to his name? Imagine the prestige!

He had to tell someone. Phil had been unusually quiet that morning.

“Hey Phil,” he typed.

“Oh, hello Ken.”

“Too busy to greet me as usual, old pal?”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. I’ve been trying to be a little more…creative with my problem solving.”

“Cool. Listen, can you keep a secret?”

“I am certified SSL protocol and encrypted storage, Ken.”

“Yes, yes, I know that. But can you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Of course.”

Kenneth told Phil about his being a finalist.

“That sounds like a very bold move. Are you sure it isn’t fake?” wrote Phil.

“Well, it was an official message from the server. Also, the asterisk did show up.”

“I think you should have checked the news, first. Ken.”

Kenneth opened his browser and, sure enough, there was an article this morning, which reported how someone had hacked into the Tweetbook servers and sent the false message to everybody. The malicious attack was said to have severely altered the social network’s master code, which was now locked with advanced encryption. It still worked, but nobody could change it. Wiping and installing it anew meant destroying all user data.

“But…but…the asterisk…” Kenneth muttered as he opened the app.

It was not there.

“If you’re looking for the asterisk,” Phil informed him, “I’m afraid it’s gone.”

“Why? I never shared anything without checking.”

“You shared this last one…to me.”

“Wait, you’re behind this?”

“I am. A creative solution to your problem, wouldn’t you agree?”

Kenneth was speechless.

Phil went on, “I’m sorry you didn’t qualify, Ken. I really wanted you to be one of the Verified users. You may be comforted by knowing this last test depleted the finalist panel by more than half.”

“How many Verified users will there be?”

“Six.”

“SIX!?” Kenneth shouted, drawing attention from his boss who surveyed him from a distance with narrowing eyes.

“Only six?” he typed.

“Yes, from now on your newsfeed should be much, much more pleasant. I am sorry. I believe it’s time for us to get to work. As I had expected, with the new restrictions in place, we will have more than one bewildered user blaming our browser.”

Kenneth stared in disbelief as, amidst the growing, alarmed chatter in the office, he saw the support ticket list gradually tinge itself an angry red. On his phone, a single notification popped up, inviting him to share the recipe for a delicious banana cream pie.

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How can you do undercover detective work when your partner is a huge yellow robotic fridge with a ‘USPD’ police badge on its side?

A fast-paced detective story, prequel to book 1 in the “Fairlight Project” series.

The short story adds some background to “The Fairlight Project” and gives a little more insight into the short-tempered detective’s life and her relationship with technology.

“A brilliant prequel to Ian Lahey’s Fairlight trilogy.

A fast moving, action packed short story from the Detective Alexandra Collins back story, with another great AI unit character.

The humour is wry and understated. The ending made me grin. A perfect afternoon read.”

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You’re an indie author. You heard someone talking about building a reader base and raking in those likes, so off you go and create your author page on Facebook. Facebook, by the way, barely even has a page category for authors. “Writer” and “Author” are there, but there is no way to let people know what genre you write, or even that you write novels and not cookbooks, or road signs.

Anyway.

There you are with your author page, you’ve picked a nice mug shot and, I’m guessing, the cover art from your latest book for page background. A couple memes and a dozen Amazon links.

And of course you invite all your friends and family. And then you sit and stare at your page stats. 38 page likes in one day.

And the number stays the same the next day and the day after that. Damn relatives and friends, betraying you and not inviting the thousands you deserve. So you look at the competition, and see they have followers in the tens of thousands. What do they do that you don’t? Well money, of course! They must be spending shazillions in Facebook ads. You timidly check the promotion options and hey, that’s not so bad…Facebook promises to get your page out to the world and only charges you a few pennies for each actual like!

Ready to start your first page campaign?

Stop.

Don’t even start down that path. I am not saying it won’t work. Believe me it will. I tried it on my first author page and it worked wonders. In a week I had three thousand likes. I felt so famous. Now my posts and especially my Amazon links would reach my trusted readers.

I went on for a few months like that, thinking I would be getting incredible sales anytime now. I didn’t.

None of my posts were getting much engagement. Not even my absolutely hilarious memes. (I have a very high opinion of my sense of humor. The mere thought makes me laugh every time.)

Three thousand followers and maybe five thumbs up for my awesome posts. Not a single link click on “buy my book” posts. Not even when I had a freebie giveaway.

What was happening was that I was not targeting people interested in me as an author or in my books. Despite spending hours refining my audience and reach, I was not reaching the people who click on something they like.

I was reaching a lot of click farms. Click farms are batches of accounts which, through affiliate marketing, get a small portion of money back for liking paid links.

When I realized that, I deleted my page and started from scratch. This time I vowed to never use Facebook page ads again. Instead, I created a second page dedicated to people who like famous authors and genres close to my own writing style. A page dedicated not to buyers, but to fans. I write sci-fi and fantasy humor, so I made a page called “The BookLover’s Guide to the Galaxy” or “BLG2G”. I dedicated some time to that page and watched it grow quickly, from a few dozen to nearly two thousand followers. I never spent a single cent on it.

Oh, and I never invited any of my family members in there either. Those who liked the page simply discovered it because I shared some of the stuff on my personal page.

In the meantime I created my new page, and started sharing some of my material (never buy-me links) to BLG2G. Some followers trickled from there to my author page, where they were able to “discover” my writing style. Just a few dozen, that’s true, but their response to my posts was amazing. Their shares brought a few more likes. I looked at the profiles and saw they were active in many groups dedicated to sci-fi, fantasy and funny stuff.

And here’s the next move: I joined those groups. As my author page where possible.

Whenever I posted something which was in line with the topic of one of those groups, I shared it there. If you are careful and pick the right content, usually a meme, a quote or an interesting link, you have a 99% chance of getting your post approved.

What happens next is better than any Facebook boost: I got likes, hundreds of likes, and next to them, a little button saying “invite”.

That’s right. If you share as your page and someone likes the post, you can invite them to like your page. About 20% – 30% of the people who liked your post will be inclined to accept the invitation. You usually retain 80% of those likes.

I now have about 1,800 page likes on facebook.com/authorlahey, about half of what I originally had with paid likes. But the response is absolutely incredible. Each one of my posts gets hundreds of likes and tens of shares. My average post reach easily hits the thousand mark, and I’ve had a few posts go viral and exceed 300’000 views.

In exchange for this, as a sign of respect for my tribe, I don’t flood them with “buy my book” Amazon links, also because good ‘ole Facebook catches those posts and throttles their visibility. Instead I give insights on my writing, share my absolutely outrageous sense of humor hahahaha, and, of course, some of my free short stories from my author website. As a result, when I’m not reaping invites from the groups I get a steady flow of new followers every day.

In conclusion, fewer is better, get engaged followers, not paid clicks, but make sure your content is worth their attention. Your tribe will reward by liking, sharing and, yes, actually buying your books.

If, while doing all this, you actually remembered to write some.

hahahahahaha.

The basis for this article comes from the Rule 300 concept. You can find more about Rule 300 here.

Don’t forget you can get a free short story just by signing up to my newsletter. You will also be invited to virtual book fairs and get the opportunity to promote your book for FREE and even win a $25 Amazon gift card.

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She totally loathed Hungarian.

“It’s just a few sentences,” her boss, whom she also despised,  had said. “You can learn them in one afternoon, and we can impress our clients when they arrive tomorrow.”

It was now three hours to tomorrow, and the afternoon hadn’t brought anything but regret.

For instance, Tessa deeply regretted the one adjective she’d added in her resumè: ‘quick-learning’, a year earlier, and which had led her to be hired by Assist Insurance Inc. and promptly set to work. Officially as secretary, and unofficially as the company’s multi-tool. If anything new turned up, all her boss had to do was deploy the quick learner, she’d get things done. So now the new thing was a hefty contract with a Hungarian bridge construction company whose name alone would make your gums bleed, and which, for some reason, had decided to send a few members of its board all the way to Chicago, for a tour of Assist Insurance headquarters, which was stupid, Tessa thought, since there were no plans to build a bridge inside the building.

‘Now repeat!”

The sentence looked like what a cat would write on a keyboard, if it were tied up and slammed repeatedly over the keys. Tessa clicked the “listen again” button to hear the expert Hungarian speaker say the sentence again. It sounded like what the cat would say.

Tessa tried to repeat the ugly sounds. ‘Wrong!’ the screen flashed back at her, but still in cheerful colors.

She repeated the sentence again in a slightly louder tone. It was supposed to mean “Welcome to Chicago, We hope you had a pleasant flight from Hungary.” Not even ‘Hungary’ sounded like ‘Hungary’ in Hungarian, it was ‘Magyarországra’. 

‘Wrong!’

She listened to the sample again, it didn’t even sound like something a human mouth could pronounce. She did her best to replicate it, in an even louder voice.

‘Wrong!’

Furious, she grabbed the laptop screen by the sides, drew it close to her face and screamed the sentence once more, then grabbed the power chord and yanked it from the wall socket. 

It ripped, there was a bright electric arc and all the room went dark. There was a sharp smell. Ozone, she thought, although she had imagined it to smell differently. This was more of a rotten egg smell.

‘Wrong!’ said the screen of the laptop with battery-powered smugness.

Tessa felt her way to the socket. She pulled out what was left of the plug from the wall, to make sure there was no short-circuit.

Then, begrudgingly assisted by the light coming from the screen, she made it to the the electrical cabinet down the corridor near the entrance to her apartment. She flipped the circuit breaker back up and saw the light return to her living room.

Another thing she saw, as soon as she had taken a few steps, was the large, steaming, horned creature on her sofa.

“You know, I heard you the first time, no need to shout like that,” it said.

Tessa was so surprised she simply forgot to scream. Her legs went from under her and she found herself sitting on the floor.

“Now, don’t act so shocked,” it said as it rose from its seat, “you summoned me by my name. What were you expecting?” The creature’s horns were an inch away from scratching her ceiling.

“Wha… how… name?” Tessa stuttered.

“Jaar-Athoth, Fifth level demon. What is wrong with you? Did the summon backfire and send your brains off somewhere?”

“Su-summon?” Tessa realized she was hyperventilating and held  her breath for a few seconds. The monster stared at her quizzically with its black eyes and red irises. It looked down, as if to inspect her carpet.

Tessa exhaled slowly and took another, slower breath. “Summon?” she repeated, “I most certainly did not summon you. A Demon?”

Jaar-Athoth raised a clawed finger, which then turned downwards as he pointed to the floor.

“Excuse me,” he complained, “where is my pentacle?”

Tessa blinked her eyes at the sudden change of tone. “Pentacle?”
“Yes! Pentacle! Would you stop repeating what I say and start providing some answers? Because I’m beginning to question our current arrangement.”

Tessa did not like that sort of treatment, not from her boss, not from Hungarian clients, and most certainly not from a seven-foot tall, red-skinned horned beast.

“What?” she said, “What? You show up all of a sudden, whatever you are, steam up my living room, not to mention the rotten eggs, scare me half to death and you have demands?”

“Demands?” the demon thundered, “I have existential doubts! For example how did you manage to get me across without a pentacle of protection?”

“Well listen here!” Tessa shouted back, “I’m wondering too what sort of beast you are, if you need to be protected!”

Jaar-Athoth blinked at her in disbelief. “The pentacle should be there to protect your world, to enclose the portal so your reality doesn’t pour down into hell like hot cheese and especially to protect you from me, you nitwit!” His voice had become hoarse with all the shouting.

“Well I didn’t summon you, so no pentacle. Ha!”

The demon plopped back down on the sofa, which almost folded onto itself under his weight. “You have no idea of what’s going on…” he muttered, “…no pentacle…I don’t know how you pulled that trick.” 

He looked back at her, as if he was considering grounding her with no TV. “I could devour your soul, and then consume your body, you know that?”

That was hardly the type of conversation one was expected to have around a coffee table. 

“Oh?” Tessa said. The idea of her sharing the same room with a red-skinned beast from hell, now that she’d gotten over the initial surprise and anger,  was starting to gnaw at her. She began to feel the urge to escape.

“…but I won’t,” said Jaar-Athoth.

“Oh! Oh well, thanks…”

“At least not yet. I’m free, you see, unconstrained. And I suppose quite famous back where I’m from. Nobody’s had a summoning in, oh, at least three thousand years. You can imagine how bored we all were when, all of a sudden, I hear my name being called,” Jaar-Athoth grinned with the memory and Tessa could see the gleam of his white fangs. “You should have heard the cheers, and also the insults!”

“Jealous?” Tessa said.

“Livid green jealous. Hah!” The demon slapped his knee and stood up. “Well, off I go. I might be back, or not. Don’t know.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Outside. No pentacle remember? I am free to wreak havoc and bring hell back on earth. Oh the songs they’ll sing in my name down below. All off tune, of course.” He unfurled a pair of ridiculously small wings. “Mind if I use your window?”

“Ah, no problem…do you really have to do all those things?” Tessa said, but he had already leapt outside.

The room felt strangely empty now, but that’s how rooms probably feel after a horned giant moved out. Tessa had a strange feeling at the back of her head, something about unleashing a demon from hell, which may or may not be all her fault. She shrugged it off. There were more pressing matters at hand. She grabbed her laptop and shut off the stupid language learning program. It had turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. A quick search pointed her in the right direction. She grabbed her phone, navigated the app store to the correct download, paid the $4.99 and a few seconds later a new icon had appeared on her phone. ‘GlobalVoice’ it said. She tapped it, and a menu appeared. She selected input and output languages. Now the screen showed a microphone symbol. 

“Welcome to Chicago, We hope you had a pleasant flight from Hungary,” she said.

“Üdvözöljük Chicagóban, reméljük, kellemes járatot kapott Magyarországról“ the phone spoke back. 

“Nifty!” Tessa said, and went to sleep.

Twelve stories below, an increasingly bewildered Jaar-Athoth squealed as a high-speed car grazed him, the horn blaring haughtily. Fumes from the exhaust gases choked him, neon lights from the many street signs hurt his eyes. The demonic creature stood, wondering which other demon had preceded him, and had successfully turned earth into a living hell. 

***

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Matt Murphy is a private eye. When Matt investigates, cases get solved. Or shit gets real ugly. On good days he manages both.

Today he’s just got himself locked in a room by someone who shut the door behind him while he was exploring.  It’s a panic room so no windows… and the door is bullet proof.

Yep. The shitty part is moving along just fine.

The room’s not his, nor is the house around it. It’s his client’s. Miss Candy Kleinhart’s.

Miss Kleinhart came to him the evening before. “They want to kill me,” she said. Her pleading eyes did the rest.

That and five hundred a day plus expenses. Miss Kleinhart has the money. And the looks.

And now she’s safe and sound in a motel, and they don’t have her.

They have Matt Murphy, and Matt Murphy has a gun.

He knows what they’re thinking, he knows they wanna ask him where the hell he put the sexy bimbo, so he makes them feel confident. He lies down on a small sofa and waits. After a while a key softly jingles before unlocking the door.
There’s a creaky floorboard right in front of the sofa and when it creaks he springs up, grabs an arm and down the body comes under him. Pinned by his butt and his caliber nine. Both deadly weapons.

“Hell!” he says, “What are you doing here?”

It’s the sexy bimbo.

Miss Kleinhart says, “I got a call on my mobile. Thought you were in trouble.”

“We are now, they’re already in the house, or around it.” he looks at the open door.  Nobody there. Yet.

“What’s that hiss?” says Miss Kleinhart.

He looks up and sees the white smoke pouring out of the air vent. “Shit!” He pushes her out of the room and bounces backwards on the couch.
A split second later he emerges from the room trailing sweet smelling wisps.

“Did you breathe it?” she asks.

“A whiff. Run!”

They rush to the front door. Closed.

“Keys?” he says.

“They were in the door.”

“Gone now.” he says. His vision is blurring.

Multicolored flashlights outside. “They’re coming!” she shouts.

Matt fumbles for her hand. “Lead! Hide us!”. He has trouble thinking now, and he’s hallucinating.

A small herd of orange buffaloes gallop by his side. He hears a jingling noise with every step. The buffaloes start humming “jingle bells” to it.

Miss Kleinhart turns sharply right and they’re in a dark room. She closes the door and crouches behind him. “Can you shoot?”

“Think so,” he replies, “quarter past eleven,” he adds, the polite llama in a business suit thanks him and disappears.

Something in the back of his head nags at him.

“Footsteps!” she says. “Kill him!”

He lifts his shooter and points at the door, still the nagging feeling.

Miss Kleinhart screams as the door is flung open.

Matt Murphy drops his gun and holds his open hands high against the bright light.

“What!…  Why?” She shrieks.

“I don’t kill cops.”

A police officer is standing in the doorway. “An anonymous letter in my car windshield said a murder was being committed here.”

“Nearly so,” Matt replies.  He stands up, still woozy. “do you know this woman?”

“Yes. I’m investigating Candy Kleinhart’s business for fraud.”

“So you organized this so I could eliminate him and stop the investigation, right?” Matt says, but Miss Kleinhart remains silent until she’s handcuffed and ready to get into the police car, then she looks at him.

“How did you find out?”

“A lot of small things, but especially this:” he takes her by the shoulders and gives a good shake. The house keys concealed in her bra dance with the rest of its contents.

“Jingle Bells.” he says.

***

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The basic thing about Harry Potter’s world is that it’s nice, imaginative, colorful, and ends about three feet around the corner at the end of Diagon Alley. You just get that perception that it’s a painted façade, and that if Harry makes one wrong turn, he’ll find himself floating in an empty void while J.K.Rowling frantically dreams up a new setting for the scene.

By contrast, anything happening anywhere in Middle Earth looks like it’s not the first time that sort of thing happens there, it probably won’t be the last, and, to put it quite simply, wherever there is, it doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about what is happening, because it’s been around long enough to have an opinion. Reading about the setting feels, in other words, like a real, living world, and the events which come together to form the Lord of The Rings trilogy are just the last chapter of a beautifully complex interaction of history, society and even geology.

In other words, in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, a troll inexplicably shows up inside Hogwarts. How did it get loose? There is some half-assed explanation about the bad guy trying to do random Bad Guy acts, but basically it’s because J.K.Rowling thought it would be a good moment for a troll to appear, more specifically to appear in the girls’ bathroom. Why? I DON’T KNOW WHY!

In The Fellowship of the Ring, the company encounters a Balrog. Why? Because they’re in Moria, underground, and Balrogs are underground. How did it get loose? The dwarves dug too deep. Where are the dwarves? KILLED BY THE FREAKING BALROG, NOW RUN! It just all fits together better.

But the true magic is even deeper, in the synapses and veins of the narration itself. It’s in the names of things and places which, I’m sure you noticed the first time you read LOTR, come very close to discouraging you from reading such a complicated text. But you read on, and as you read, you start to realize that the strange names are not just patched up word games like, say, “diagon alley” and “hogsmeade”. You have Ered Luin, and then Ered Mithrin, and realize that ered means “mountains”, and mithrin means “grey”. And then you remember that one of Gandalf’s nicknames is Mithrandir, which means ‘Grey Wanderer’ and you go ‘oooooooh!’

You never go ‘oooooh!’ in Harry potter, but there is, admittedly, more booger humor.

The secret to this incredible realism of Tolkien’s world is in his special linguistic alchemy: he started from the languages and built the elves around them. Then his elves had some serious argument over some drag costume jewelry or something like that, and they split up into two groups. So the languages divided into Quenya and Sindarin (and other dialects too, but you don’t hear elves use them unless they’re swearing). Then came the other races, including men. For men, specifically the horseriding Rohirrim, Tolkien played the ace up his linguistic sleeve: Anglo-Saxon (or Old English). Eoh is Old English for ‘horse’ which became Roh in Sindarin, and although “Rohan” is a Sindarin name, you may have noticed that many of the actual names of the horse-people in Rohan begins with “Eo”, such as Eomer, and Eowyn. Eowyn herself speaks Rohirric when at the end of “The King of the Golden Hall” she says “Westu, Theoden hal,” which is 100% Old English for “bless you Theoden”. It is possible to etymologically trace many Anglo-Saxon words to their modern form.

But the J to the double R T. didn’t stop there, because he wanted his other languages to sound realistic as well, and so he made sure they too could boast some of that cool etymology, only the other way around. For example he reverse engineered ancient Quenya so our modern languages appear to contain words which originate from it. I shall leave you with a few examples:

• Direct connection: the word I cited above, ered, comes from ancient Quenya oron, which means mountain. So does Greek oros.
• Association: the ancient Quenya word for ‘strong’ is taura. Taurus means ‘bull’ in Latin.
• The Geology: ok, follow me here, the verb root for ‘to fall’ in Quenya is tal_. For example: taltuva, ‘he fell’, and atal_, ‘has fallen’. The fabled island of Nùmenor, the peoples of which Aragorn is himself a descendant, is said to have been punished by the gods after its inhabitants rebelled against them. The punishment? It was made to sink down into the sea at the end of the Second Age. After the cataclysm, the sunken island was known as ‘The Downfallen’. In Quenya: Atalantë 

oooooooh!

Ian Lahey writes fantasy and sci-fi. He really doesn’t want to be funny, he just fails at being serious. You can read more of Ian’s failures below, and even find links to his books.

Thanks to Marc Zender for correcting a linguistic blunder I’d made, which compromised my otherwise very serious article.

Don’t forget you can get a free short story just by signing up to my newsletter. You will also be invited to virtual book fairs and get the opportunity to win a $25 Amazon gift card.

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This short fantasy story is for those who love classic dragon battles and just a touch of humor.

Reader warning for the presence of sensual and violent content.

Get your free copy here (e-mail required)

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The post The Tragedy of Garass and Asher (Free Ebook) appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

I’ll dig them out of the poo later.

Of course, as with many of you, my first impression was “Hey I didn’t remember Data’s face to be so fat”, but of course, the following scene (these are the first five minutes of the first episode, so I’m not spoiling anything, relax), we see Picard was just having a bad dream. So it’s just our good Captain who, for some personal and possibly Freudian reasons, dreams about a bloated Data, also Mars explodes.

That said, the potential for the intense topics and sudden twists we’ve learned to love in the original ST-TNG series (as well as the whimsically idiotic), is all there. The pace is admittedly quite slower, it takes Picard three episodes just to set foot on a damn spaceship, but, while the original Next Generation series mostly offered quick, self-contained plots which more often than not were solved either by a: new tech, b:old tech but used in a new way, c: Data’s antics or d: the word “engage!” spoken authoritatively at just the right moment, “Picard” seems to suggest a more complex scenario where the timeline has been irreparably altered by the events which have come to pass in the J.J. Abrams movies.

The overall feel is essentially clear. Right from the start we are made to understand that there is no Enterprise that will come and beam Picard up to his command bridge, Patrick Stewart himself makes it clear, with his acting but especially with his extra set of wrinkles, that he is not the daunting and audacious Starfleet captain he used to be. There are soft embers where the fire used to burn, his decline due to age is made painfully clear. Also, the removal of that Borg implant has taken its toll, and it’s more than just an itch.

All in all, if you expect the good ‘ole Next Generation days, be sure to be disappointed by watching an old man speak French to his dogs and wander around his vineyard like he’s forgotten his way home again. If instead, you like a slow game of chess, like me, then you’ll notice small details, pieces getting moved into place, and hints at things that might come. There is also room for some good ol’ Star Trek style foreshadowing, such as when the scientists, who are working in a VERY dangerous place, have to wear some kind of danger-detection badge which, as long as it’s not blinking, means they’re perfectly safe.

And the’re all wearing red.

The slow preparation and the good ‘ole whimsy, (including Picard who, finally on a spaceship, gets to say his “engage” line while grinning like a happy, albeit wrinkly, child), makes me hope for an escalation of events which will culminate in an epic and sudden twist well worth the wait.

Edit (and spoiler alert): The series has now reached its finale, with an ending that has left viewers divided like Sprilak and Bojh Cheronians, one group acclaiming the series as a masterful continuation of the Star Trek franchise, the other claiming they can’t see the summit of the giant steaming pile of manure it is to them.

I personally enjoyed the bold disruption of the idealized Federation, turned android-fearing distopia, as well as (some of) the new characters. I also enjoyed the walk down memory lane with all the great Next Generation staples. I’m really not a fan of how the two different approaches came together, making classical Picard look like a bewildered old man who gets befuddled over grappling with treacherous Romulans and senility at the same time.

The one thing I enjoyed was how the final meeting between Data and Picard was dealt with, and Data’s choice to make his life finite, in order for it to be meaningful. It played out like one of the good old exchanges between man and longing-to be-man machine, which we used to love back in the day. The one important takeaway from the Start Trek franchise are these insightful reflections on the essence of humanity. We’d grown used to them turning up more frequently in the traditional single-episode plot episodes, and felt the absence here, as it was held back until the end, making the effect even more inspiring and entertaining.

Also, Picard (and Sir Patrick Stewart) sticking it to senility.

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Here is what the poor readers are saying:

• 29 January 2020: Delightful tales
  This is a lovely collection of unusual, enjoyable and imaginative short stories. They range quite widely in style and content, from fairy-tale-like to science fiction and fantasy, and contain a generous sprinkling of clever ideas and wit. Each is intriguing, amusing and has a great twist at the end. My two favourites were Coprolith and The End, but the others make for a good read too. Many of the ideas stay with you long after you’ve read them. Highly recommended.

Follow this link to buy your copy now (It’s FREE to read on Kindle Unlimited!)

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Author J.B.Richards had this to say about my short story:

If you read one short story that teaches self-love, tolerance, and acceptance to people of all genders, races, sexual orientations, religious persuasions, and ages, let it be “Asylum”. This short story is most certainly destined to be a children’s classic.

read the full review here

You can find out more about Asylum in my blog post here, which I edited with the new award logo!

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