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Acid rain

Christian Lisboa is born in Chile, lives in Santiago, and is electronic engineer. Works on analytic instruments and knows therefore about installing, training, maintenance and calibration . In his scarce free tie, he writes what he sees, hears and feels, what he does since high school times. Acid rain is the second short story that Christian has wanted to publish on The Uchronicles.


Acid rain



During the dawn, the weather balloons detected an increasing of the air density in all the continents. Nevertheless, this increase was masked by a very worrisome factor for all the inhabitants of the civilized centers: the moisture of the acid rain diminished his pH from 5,7 to 5.4. The United Nations called to an urgent meeting to all the environmental commissions urbi et orbi, and the more environment care jeopardized governments began to apply sanctions, from fines to the temporary closing of the supposedly responsible chemical industries.
In all the humid zones of the planet, at the dawn,. the nimbostratus kind cloud concentration allowed to foretell a heavy shower during the day, but no one meteorological institute spread a strange phenomenon, caught by very few observers: the stratocumulus, in spite of to be found at low height, occupied in addition a great space in the atmosphere, arriving at heights superior to the six kilometers, zone occupied normally by the altostratus or altocumuli.
Indifferent to the climatic change, the cities normally woke up of his drowsiness and began their anxious grind. The mothers woke up their children to send them to the school, hoping that the torrential rain began later, when they were well protected under the safe ceiling of the schools. Million workers dared to use their bicycles to arrive at the industries, million women chose their clothes privileging the combination of colors, ignoring the necessity to protect itself of the imminent heavy shower.
And the rain began. Precise, like synchronized according to the time zones, in each humid region it rained in the morning from ten past eight. Torrentially, as everybody feared. More than one hundred millimeters of rain in a day, without stopping at any moment. And it continued on the following day without variation, a nd to the subsequent one.
The floods began, the people evacuations and the emergency plans in all the planet were activated.
The brains had arrived during the night, in each region of the world. They were leaved about twelve kilometers height by his transports, because those could not descend to level zero. In addition, at that height they were undetectables by the terrestrial military installations. If some pilot of some of the hundreds of commercial flights that furrowed to the sky to that hour had seen them, he have been surprised observing “a cloud being fused with the clouds", enormous floating objects that descended smoothly in the dark sky. But nobody saw them. They reduced the descending speed when they mixing itself with the alto-cumuli, and then stayed per hours in that invisible strip for the humans eyes. They were prepared to stay during many hours without food, just with the humidity that they caught through their hundreds of small tentacles. During thousands of years they had done this type of travels, preparing them carefully until last of the details, analyzing meticulously the composition of the air and the water, the fauna and local flora, the energy variations, the organized biological societies, the culture. In no planet they had failed. They knew clearly that they could find some resistance, but normally the problems appeared with the less intelligent species, those than they had more developed the territorial instinct. The intelligent beings trusted their technological instruments, those that easily were evaded by the brains.


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Do you read Italian? Then try my last novel, Figlio della Schiera, published by Chinaski, 187 pp., 9,00 euros.

WHAT'S ALTERNATE HISTORY?

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The independent Genoa: an example of alternate peace (without Bonaparte)

Which kind of alternate world could we imagine in case of a sudden death of Napoleone Bonaparte in 1796, while he was busy with the Italian Campaign? This military operation had one of the most important siege at the Cosseria’s fortress, between Liguria and Piemonte regions, in the first half of April. Taking the control of this region was very important because of Genoa’s economic role. That’s why I wrote a novel that will be published in Italy in the next months, and that's also why I have interviewed dr.Franco Bampi, professor in Genoa University, Engineery faculty. Born in 1951, Bampi is also a very well-named local historian and a member of various cultural organizations. He is persuaded of the importance of saving genoese language and traditions and would love to restore the independence of the ancient Genoa Republic. Which was the actual historical background in which Genoa was in 1796, just before Bonaparte crossed the Alps?


In 1796 The Republic of Genoa was far more vital and active than one could imagine. It was a very strong financial power, which was getting a lot of money from different nations, because of interests connected with private and public loans. That was why the big and powerful genovese families were all wealthy; besides, the quality of life that the Genoese people led was far more advanced than elsewhere in Europe. The Genoese leading class, the citizens who were inside of the so-called “Albo D’Oro”, and who were the local aristocracy, loved the Republic and always respected the Imperial Feuds which were lead by Genovese families, without wishing to annex them.
Genoa always claimed and defended the independence , the souveranity and the territorial integrity of all Liguria, the land that was given to the city from Emperor Frederick on June 9, 1162. However, by the end of XVIII century, the laws of the Genoese Republic were about to grow too old. The so-called “Leges Novae”, approved and sanctioned by oath in Saint Lawrence’s Cathedral on March 17, 1576, even if modified and integrated with other rules in the course of the centuries, were still medieval laws. And Genoa was keeping inside of Liguria a central role which was felt as more and more unsatisfactory from the people living on the Rivieras. They wanted to count more inside of the Republic’s government.

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Alternate history as a graphic novel

Erik Svane is an interesting person. Essayst and writer, a cosmopolitic upbringing, he is becoming famous as being the author, together with Dan Greenberg, of a comic series, Géneral Leonardo. The weird thing in this series - and the thing that interests The Uchronicles, is its basing itself on an alternate history point of divergence: Leonardo da Vinci succeeds in building his strange warmachines and in changing the course of 16th century. Here comes an interview with Erik.



Erik Svane, where do you come from and when did you start when your alternate history (AH) interest?


Well, my father is from Copenhagen and my mother is from New York, so I have dual citizenships, i.e., I am Danish-American, although (due to my father being a diplomat) I was born in… Prague! I cannot say I am interested so much in alternate history (AH) per se as I am in simply well-written, well-researched books that bring pleasant surprises. For instance, of course you know that two of the most common scenarios in AH is how would today's world be had Hitler won World War II or had the South won the American Civil War (almost invariably, it turns out that the North lost at the battle of Gettysburg).
Now, two of the earliest AH books I read were Ward Moore's "Bring the Jubilee" and David Poyer's "The Shiloh Project". It so happens that I find the latter book much more interesting not only because Ward Moore's story is mainly a time travel history but because in Poyer's "Shiloh Project", there is so much effort in trying to make the CSA (and the whole continent and, indeed, the whole world) alive real: whereas Ward Moore has an idealized South where President Robert E Lee freed the South's slaves and the CSA is doing nothing if not thriving and (what remains of) the US is simply a basket case, Poyer also has the slaves freed, but living in a South-Africa-type apartheid; when not rioting, the blacks try to escape to the North — I should say to the rump USA — by crossing a Berlin-type wall across the American continent, which naturally leads to a Cold War atmosphere reigning between South and North (or between the CSA and the rump USA). In addition, there is not only tension between Northerners and Southerners as well as between blacks and whites, but also between the South's reigning aristocrat class that are descended from the antebellum planters and the region's so-called "poor white trash".
Finally, in "The Shiloh Project", you keep unearthing small "treasures" such as an airship called the President McClellan (suggesting, albeit not stating outright, the — hardly illogical — premise that President Abraham Lincoln lost the election of 1864) or a Second-World-War-type conflict between the USA and Japan (the Shiloh Project of the title refers to the North's building of a super-bomb to drop on Yokohama) or, yet again, France's government of the 1860s continuing to our day (and the French living under the rule of Napoleon VII). It's the same delight you find in Robert Harris's "Fatherland" (to use the second most common scenario in AH), in which, more than halfway through, you suddenly find out that the President Kennedy that we have been reading about and that an aging Adolf Hitler has been opposing in the early 1960s is, first of all, not John F. Kennedy but Joe Kennedy and later, not JFK's elder brother Joe Kennedy Jr but both men's (equally aging) father, Joe Kennedy Sr.

What is the historical character that intrigues you the most?

There are many, including Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill…

Why did you choose comics?

Should I say, "I didn't choose comics, comics chose me" (laughter)? I have always loved comics, but not just any comics. Like with books, films, and AH stories (in any medium), I like stories that are believable and well-researched, that bring pleasant surprises, and that are a delight to read. My favorite authors include Carl Barks (I had the pleasure of interviewing the creator of Uncle Scrooge 14 years ago), Harvey Kurtzman (Two-Fisted Tales), Jean-Michel Charlier (Blueberry), and Goscinny (Astérix) and they are the creators I hope to emulate.

Did you ever write any AH story that did not become a comic strip?

Well… when I was a teenager, I imagined a story in which Denmark became a dictatorship and (with the help of… Belgium!) proceeded to conquer all of Europe, visiting untold disasters upon the conquered peoples. This tongue-in-cheek story was not long, probably less than a dozen pages, it was full of winks and nods to current affairs, and I used it only to send in letters to my friends over a period of three or four letters.

Leonardo's rise in your stories is very interesting. According to you, how come he did not succeed in most of his warfare machines?

In real life, you mean? Not in the comics I write for Dan Greenberg and for the Éditions Paquet? Well, human and animal muscle was not strong enough to make the machines advance for a sufficient amount of time, so we had to wait for the industrial revolution for machines of that type to be invented.



The character you describe is a very open and Renaissance-like one. Is that your favourite period?

Not really. My preferred period is the modern era, starting from the 1750s, or thereabouts. Specifically, I prefer the Civil War and the Second World War eras. I am now writing a western starting right before the Civil War, but there is no AH involved.
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Dengue Fever's rising up...

Sf-like cross-over

Interview with the Dengue Fever

  • Halfways between Long Beach and Phnom Penh, the Dengue Fever releases a new album, Venus on Earth. The band confirms its roots, especially speaking about surf music, but with an eye on world music tradition. A mix that makes me think on sf. Just listen to them and say I'm wrong! That's why the Uchronicles has decided about this interview.



  • Hello DF and welcome on The Uchronicles. Where does your inspiration come out from?

    Wine, woman, and whiskey. That and all music that transcends space and time.

    It's been written that you focus on the music that was played in Vietnam during the war in the '60's. Is this true?

    Actually it's music that was written in Cambodia during the Viet Nam war. We used that as a template to start from but we have added our own influences into the mix over time.

    How did you decide to mix together pop-rock and Asian music or Asian atmospheres?

    It was a natural mix of what the band was listening to at the time.

    Myself, I find your music rather close to the style of bands just like B52's. Do you think to owe something to them?

    The link would be that both the B52's and the popular Cambodian song writers of the 60's were influenced by American surf music. I would say we all owe something to the Ventures, the Beach Boys etc...


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    The way of Weescoosa

    by Saurio

    Here comes back Saurio, the Argentinian author of Bach ha muerto This time The Uchronicles hosts an English translation of a short story of his: The way of Weescosa, translated from the Spanish by Daniel W. Koon. Saurio is born in Buenos Aires, in 1965; apart from his writing, he's journalist, graphic designer, painter, and many other things... From 2000 he co-directs, together with Leonardo Longhi, an ezine called La Idea Fija
    . He owns also a personal website, El maravilloso mundo de Saurio (or: www.sauriomundo.com.ar), and two blogs - Las Armas del Reino II and La sonriente cocina de Peloncha, and finally a photo-blog: Lo cartele de nosotros.


    THE WAY OF WEESCOOSA


    1. -- The Legacy of William Roderick Necken

    Mercifully, the mind has many mechanisms to prevent it from piecing together all the hair-raising contents that are locked within it. Ignorance is a blessing bestowed upon the human race, who lie bathed in the black waters of forgetfulness and ignorance of the arcane abysms beyond our imaginations, swirling in the infinite ether of a universe that has preceded us by many eons and that harbors terrors that have driven to death and madness those who have even dared to gaze upon its mysteries. The sciences, rapt in their egotistical, vain ways, serving middling governments and corrupt tyrants, have pushed the study of these cryptic arcana to the fringes, thus forestalling further injury. But lamentably the day will come when all the power and the horror that lies beyond human comprehension shall tempt the ambitious hearts of small and miserable men -- and woe betide us on that day ! -- cornering us into such a feeble position against such terrible odds that the threats of eternal punishment heaped upon us by the whore of Rome when we give free rein to the intrinsic passions of our dual nature will seem in comparison like a picnic on a tropical island where native beauties attend us with the servility appropriate to climes where no civilized being would dream of trying to survive on his own.
    Only theosophy has had any inkling, in this decadent new Dark Age, of the majestic grandeur of the cosmic cycle in which our world and our race are nothing more than fleeting incidents, mere eddies of existence in terrifying seas where lie forever those who are not dead, the hair-raising ancient races that would freeze our blood if we did not seek refuge in the bland optimism that the mundane charms of this world afford us. But it was not this esoteric discipline that offered me a fleeting glimpse of these prohibited sights, that made me shudder and that drove me mad, that tormented my dreams and stiffened my vigilance. No, it was misfortune that forced me to confront this terrible revelation that lies waiting behind the doorstep to the Infinite and Incommensurable.
    It all began several years ago, when I came to call at the deathbed of my uncle, Professor William Roderick Necken, Honorary Doctor of Sledic languages at the Polysemic University of Ffwagnell, Kismet, Horde Island. My uncle was an expert in ancient inscriptions of that mysterious and ubiquitous lost civilization, and the most prestigious archeological authorities of the world consulted him constantly. In his ninety-third year, a dark and unexpected illness had compromised his unbreakable iron health and finally sent him to an early grave. Officially it was declared that a negro sailor that my uncle had met in his walks through the docks of Oldhaven had infected him with the illness that made him abandon this vale of tears. It should come as no surprise, given the infinity of infections and plagues transported by members of this simian race, but the fact that the doctors could find no true physical cause for my uncle’s surprising death and that they found themselves rapt in the most absolute perplexity, as well as the startling glimpses I was later vouchsafed, led me to wonder whether it was truly a sickness, or something else entirely, that had so irrevocably truncated the career of the illustrious professor William Roderick Necken.
    When I learned that my uncle had fallen gravely ill and that he had asked after me, I ran posthaste to the clinic where he was lodged. I had not had any contact with him in years and it surprised me that he would request my presence. “Perhaps he wished to leave me his collection of rare Sumerian cherubim... or his hundreds of Horish ceremonial octahedra... or his exquisite Dothic capitals,” I thought ambitiously whilst I climbed the steps of the hospital.
    The tableau that awaited me could not have been more agonizing. The poor old man was a mere shadow of the William Roderick Necken that I had known during those summers that my mother brought me to the family farm in Highgrass, New Hempshire: skinny, pale, emaciated, with a feverish shine in his opaque, nearly blind eyes.
    “Ah, Howard, you’ve arrived,” came the barely audible wisp of a voice. “Come here, my son.... I mean... my nephew... because you are my nephew and not my son. Correct, Howard?”
    “Yes, uncle, I’m your sister Margaret’s son.”
    “And how does that guarantee that I’m not your father! You could be my son! You need to take a paternity test! Nurse! Nurse!”
    “Uncle, Uncle, calm down. There’s no need for any kind of paternity test...”
    “Ah, yes, of course!” he interrupts. “I’d forgotten that your religion forbids you from having your blood extracted.”
    “What religion, Uncle? I’m a scientist! I’m an atheist!”
    “What? Are you not a Dolphitic Orthodox?”
    “No, Uncle, that’s cousin Nathan. Harriet’s son.”
    “Oh, yes, of course, that’s right. That useless Nathan... I always said that that scatterbrain would end up like that, tangled up in sects. And his mother’s to blame, for dressing him like a girl till he was twelve and breastfeeding him till he was eighteen. No excuse for it! We are heading irreversibly toward a new Dark Age in which Superstition will once more vanquish Reason! Woe to us, living under the iron rule of Ignorance and the contempt toward everything that is Beautiful and Balanced! They should have never allowed immigration to this country! Harmony reigned before those dirty Italians came with their sinister glances and their shrill voices, filling the streets with their coloured posters written in an almost animal languages and incomprehensible signs and hurling themselves at us, the original colonists having arrived in this Promised Land from the Blessed Isles!”
    Exhausted by the effort that his righteous and stirring diatribe had summoned up, my uncle fell heavily onto his bed, his eyes glassy and dull.
    “No! Uncle! You’ve died! And without leaving a will!”
    A bony claw with a force unusual for a moribund old man grabbed me by the neck and pulled me over toward his toothless, liver-spotted mouth. “Silence, you fool, you albatross! My time has not yet come.”
    “I’m sorry. It’s just that I thought that...”


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