The fact-checkers at Darkover and Snell are mystified by two forthcoming manuscripts presented to us for fact-checking: “Prisoner of State” and “Minister of State Security” by Susan Ruth. We at Darkover and Snell originally believed these to be serious – indeed academic, works on the all-important topic of state security, its governance and the apparatus needed to effect it.
These books are not what they appear.
Central to our concern is this: does the Regency of Mercia, the Northlands and Scotia exist?
We continue to be unsuccessful in contacting the reclusive researcher, Susan Ruth, on whose notebooks these works are said to be based. The last known sighting of Ms Ruth was at a dog show in Brisbane, Australia, where she was jotting down grooming tips for wolf hounds. This is not what we are accustomed to at Darkover and Snell.
A few days ago a parcel arrived containing a series of pages of one of Ms Ruth’s research notebooks. As you can imagine, hope ran high at Darkover and Snell. Alas, these extracts have no verifiable names, facts or data; they are bereft of geographical or historic exactitude: and we can find no living trace of the individuals or organisations mentioned therein. At Darkover and Snell we believe reality is just that – real, verifiable and testable. In Ms Ruth’s books facts become fantasy and reality vanishes into something else entirely.
The papers that have come into out possession are interesting as juvenilia, marginalia or “colour”. Susan Ruth has shown a preference for linguistic oddities, lists of names and groups of linked words; for folkloric visions and questionable beliefs. There are a handful of illustrations, and while some might be termed landscapes and others reveal buildings, they utterly lack cartographic specificity or geometrical validity.
Currently at Darkover and Snell we are unable to declare what these books are. They are not the rigid academic volumes we were led to believe they were. We have found no proof that The Regency of Mercia, the Northlands and Scotia exists anywhere, anytime.
DEVAWORLD 