The Hallelujah Chorus

Date: Fri, August 1, 2042 08:16:18 (EDT)

To: All Residents, Guests, Visitors, and Their Sordid Entourages

From: Miranda Maris (m@maris-institute.org)

Subject: Tonight’s Festivities

Message-id: <20421316180326_512530.70601_AX020@maris-institute.org>

Content-Type: text

Status: O

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Since this has been the proverbial Week From Pell, I am afraid that the Hyperspace Jig will simply Not Be Enough. Therefore, please come prepared to participate in the traditional midnight performance of the Hallelujah Chorus around the pool. This is mandatory, as Miz Miranda needs some definite cheering up. Those who feel they need to practice beforehand, should meet in the Grand Ballroom at eleven. Bring friends (or whatever passes for friends in your sad, lonely, meaningless lives).

The Calvert Ballroom will be dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives in the Timbuktu disaster. Works of art, performances, memorial services, and remembrances are all welcome and encouraged. The U.N. Timbuktu Relief Fund and International Red Cross/Crescent/Wheel will be on hand to accept money, clothing, nonperishable food items, and volunteers. Donated materials will be auctioned on Sunday afternoon for the benefit of the Relief Fund.

-M.

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NOTE: Don Sakers will be on panel discussions and other program events at this weekend's Darkover Grand Council in Timonium, Maryland. The Darkover Grand Council, a three-day celebration of diversity and creativity, is our favorite convention. Look for our room party on Friday night...and yes, the Hallelujah Chorus will be sung in the hotel lobby at midnight on Saturday. 

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copyright (c) 2010, Don Sakers
Find out more in Dance for the Ivory Madonna
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The Empire of the Iaranor

A long time ago, oh, a few hundred Galactic Revolutions of Nephestal, the Iaranor thought they had ended war. They had an Empire, very like the Human one, except that it didn't control the entire Galaxy. Their colonization had not reached so far. Fewer planets were fit to support life, in those days.

The stories tell that there was a long period of peace, a Pax Iaranori I suppose you would call it. The Iaranori built many beautiful buildings, and made lovely decoration, and stumbled across some profound and stunning music. And their biologists made efforts to breed aggressiveness out of their race.

Well, this Empire of the Iaranor lasted for a good long time, but it didn't get much larger, nor did the Iaranor respond when hostile Core cultures made forays into the Scattered Worlds. Soon their Empire began to crumble around the edges, simply from entropy.

Finally the Emperor -- an Iaranori named Takonnen -- took action. He undid what the biologists had done, reintroduced the genes for aggressive tendencies, bred an entire planet of atavistic Iaranori.

Under their chieftain, Batydded, these new Iaranor supernovaed forth and, in a generation of bloody war, doubled the size of the Empire until it embraced every Iaranor in the Galaxy. Batydded herself led expeditions against the Core worlds, toppled their structures of government, and removed Core military influence for millions of years.

That generation of Iaranor produced works of visual art, symphonies, drama, and literature that dazzled all subsequent civilizations. Ismallia, Batydded's capital, is still one of the most impressive worlds in the Galaxy.

The Empire soon fell apart into warring factions. The Iaranor live longer than Humans, but they do not live slower. Batydded lived to see her Empire torn apart, and the Iaranor went through hundreds of generations of ignoble strife before they finally reached true racial maturity.

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copyright (c) 2010, Don Sakers
Find out more on The Scattered Worlds site
Like the blog? Buy a book from the links to the right --->
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