Tribute

I discuss Heartwood, the forthcoming anthology in which I have a story, after a bit of tech-talk.

Dear word explorer,

When you receive this I’ll be away at a seaside location for a few days, and I’m looking forward to a change of scenery. Other than my unexpected trip to the USA earlier this year, I’m uncertain when I’ll next venture beyond Ireland’s shores.

But, who knows? It is a surprising world at times! For example: last Friday’s global computer outage.

When I lived in Dublin I was a full-time systems administrator for a number of years, and Martin served in that capacity also. Although technology has advanced rapidly since then, some aspects remain the same: the difficulty of maintaining distributed networks of machines, both servers and individual computers. So my old professional interest clicked in when I read about how systems across the world were crippled by a update pushed out by cyber security company CrowdStrike via their cloud-based software called Falcon Sensor.

Microsoft estimates that the error affected 8.5 million Windows devices across the world, and crazy as this may seem, they reckon that’s less than one percent of all machines running the Windows operating system. Yet that was enough to disrupt businesses running critical services for health providers, financial markets, and transport industries.

Earlier the same day, Microsoft experienced an outage on its cloud-computing platform, Azure. The two events were not linked, we are told, but they demonstrated the vulnerability of our cyber ecosystems and our dependency on interconnected global networks and ‘cloud solutions’.

This event should remind companies of the need for robust IT infrastructure and well-trained staff, along with the necessity of a solid disaster recovery plan. It also highlights the weakness of everyone using the same systems. The people who make the high-level decisions about what software to implement for their companies (a huge budgetary consideration) are rarely the ones who will have to roll-out and maintain the chosen software. I’d like to think that the qualified IT personnel are part of this discussion, but I know from experience that’s not how many international corporations work. You inherit decisions made by executives striking deals with pals or who are persuaded by shiny presentations by smooth-talking salespeople (who usually have little grasp of the intricacies of their product and always over promise its effectiveness).

While this situation was awful and it continues to have impacts, I like to think that it could be viewed as a valuable lesson in the need to build proper protections against a similar international systems collapse. Most systems administrators can become like the mythic Cassandra — making predictions of doom but no one pays heed to them. It’s hard to invest money in preventing ‘what if’ scenarios. Yet, a small disaster did happen, and via a code error within legitimate software, not invasive malware.

I live in a geeky household, with machines running a variety of operating systems — Linux, Windows and Mac OS — so I’m hardly a good example of the average person’s set up, yet like anyone else I’m dependent on our banks, health services and airlines keeping their businesses in good order.

Let’s hope the relevant people are paying attention and implementing changes.¹

‘View in the Woods’ by Jan van der Heyden, circa 1660 - 1690.

On Friday I received much happier news. It was finally announced that PS Publishing is releasing a tribute anthology for the Mythago Wood novels written by Robert Holdstock. It is called Heartwood and it’s edited by Dan Coxon.² My story ‘Raptor’ is in the book, and unusually for me, it is pushing into novelette length.³

I don’t expect all of you will be familiar with Rob’s work. He was an out-going, generous and talented Englishman who wrote and edited fantasy and science fiction, but that hardly evokes his great cheer and friendly presence. There was nothing he liked more than good company and cracking conversation, preferably over a long meal and many drinks.

Before I met Rob and we became friends I read the Night Hunter series written by a Robert Faulcon, which was a ripping yarn of a man going up against occult forces across locations in England to rescue his family. I later discovered it was one of the many novels Rob wrote under a pseudonym during his early writing career. I had believed the first Rob Holdstock book I read was The Fetch, his 1991 stand-alone novel about the dark difficulties experienced by a small family living in the English countryside.

But Rob is best remembered for his novel Mythago Wood, published forty years ago, which went on to win the World Fantasy Award, and to garner universal critical acclaim. Rob hit upon a fertile creative seam with the book, and he later wrote a series of somewhat connected volumes in that world which became known as the Mythago Wood Cycle.

Rob’s Mythago books could be termed ‘literary fantasy’, as they reflect the deep interconnectedness between humans and our landscapes, and in particular the ancient forests of the world. Our primal nature, our heroic structures, and our folklore, are stitched through with boughs and leaves and the animals that live and hunt in those primordial places. Rob referred to these spaces as the ‘repository of first consciousness,’⁴ and within them Mythagos roam. He envisioned a Mythago as a creature forged from of our chthonic collective desires and drives, which prowls the ancient tracks and sometimes erupts into view.

Writer Brian Aldiss summed it up very well in his preface to an edition of Mythago Wood:

Mythago Wood is neither fantasy nor science fiction. It is sui generis. There are other books in the cycle; Lavondyss comes next, to lead us deeper into the thickets of Holdstock’s imagination. We have here a powerful and profound work of creation which I believe will be read, not merely in the present, but in a hundred years’ time, and in the eternal entanglements and winters yet to come.

As a fellow lover of the woods and wild places, Rob’s Mythago Wood stories resonated with me, especially Lavondyss, which is a complex dream work of startling beauty and a mediation upon the genesis of the Arthurian story.

Sadly, Rob passed away suddenly in 2009, which was a dreadful blow to his partner, and now his literary executor, Sarah Biggs. Three acres of the Woodland Trust’s Victory Wood, along with an oak tree and a bench, are dedicated to Rob thanks to his family and friends. In 2012 the British Fantasy Society decided to recognise Rob’s legacy and influence by naming their annual award for ‘Best Fantasy Novel’ after him.

Since his passing, Rob’s work continues to be reprinted all over the world. In 2014 the thirtieth anniversary edition of Mythago Wood was published by Gollancz as part of its Fantasy Masterworks series.

I am honoured to have a story of mine in this tribute anthology to Rob’s Mythago novels. I only wish he could spring one of his sudden phone calls on me and I could discuss it with him.

Heartwood is available as a limited edition, slipcase jacketed, signed hardback edition (there are only 100 copies, which will sell out rapidly, so don’t wait) and a trade paperback edition which can be pre-ordered now. Kudos to Vince Haig for the beautiful cover.

Here is the Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Matter of Albion – Michael Moorcock

• Editor’s Note – Dan Coxon

• Transient in Green – RJ Barker

• Paved with Gold – Adrian Tchaikovsky

• Here there be Monsters – Tim Waggoner

• Raptor – Maura McHugh

• Horsey Horsey – James Brogden

• Et in Acadia – John Langan

• The Crossing Place – Paul Kane

• What Happened to the Green Boy? – Gary Budden

• The Dog on the Hookland Road – Justina Robson

• Voici les Neiges d’Antan – Chaz Brenchley

• Old Coal – Mark Morris

• The Myth of Grief – Steven Savile

• Into the Heart – Allen Stroud

• Lovely, Dark and Deep – Lisa Tuttle

• Prey – Matthew Ward

• Mad Pranks and Merry Jests – Jen Williams

• Hearts of Ice – Peter Haynes

• Calling the Tune – Lucy Holland

• The Known Song – Aliya Whiteley

• Knight of the Air – Gareth Hanrahan

• A Mythago Wood Glossary

I’ll leave you with a poem I wrote for Rob, after his passing. Rob was one of my few writer friends at the time with whom I discussed poetry. It was a form he loved, which you can notice in his work.

For Rob

Not Ryhope or England
but these ancient woods
record history.
They delve deep,
roots spearing ribs
of farmers, kings, and mystics
to absorb magic and folly.
Their weighty boughs
are Nature’s styluses;
sometimes they skip grooves
as the breeze shakes
the oak and rowan,
to carry…
the chant of old songs;
the sigh of lovers’ lies;
the bright clang of battle.

I struggle through
soaked foliage,
thick, soupy earth –
wet from winter’s deluge –
chasing a ghost.

A splash; a horse’s neigh.
A woman –
her face masked,
her eyes pitiless with mercy –
knees her horse toward me
through tendrils of ivy.

“Where is he?” I ask

Her tanned, calloused hand
chops to the gateway
between pillars of stone,
beyond a still, silvered pool.

The trees sway.
They fan the echo of a hearty laugh,
as familiar as breath.

I surge forward,
but she urges her horse
between me
and the way.
I glare threats;
she, implacable,
flicks mud from her thigh.

Above, a hawk shrieks,
and we both squint up
at its shadow crossing the sun,
ecstatic with prey.

The Rider salutes, turns,
crests through the gate,
and a mist gathers after.

When it thins out
from the promise of sunlight,
the passage is gone.

I sit and listen.
The branches sweep
and play the past.

In the woods
I will remember him,
until the Rider returns.

Maura McHugh
In memoriam: Rob Holdstock (1948 – 2009)

‘Forest Landscape in the Moonlight’ by Georg Eduard Otto Saal, 1861.

1. I am trying to curtail my cynicism on this subject!

2. I previously worked with Dan on his Writing the Future non-fiction anthology, for which I contributed an essay.

3. A short story is typically under 7,500 words, and when writing in this format I’m most happy in the ballpark of 4,000 - 5,000 words. A novelette is between 7,500 - 17,000 words, and a novella is typically between 17,000 - 40,000 words. ‘Raptor’ is not far into the novelette category, but it ended up being a more substantial piece than I was expecting when I sat down to write it. In fact, it might have worked as a novella if I’d set out with that intention.

4. ‘Avilion and Mythago Wood’ by Rob Holdstock.