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    The Calpa & Notes Pertaining to a Panel in Salon D
    The Calpa & Notes Pertaining to a Panel in Salon D
    The Calpa & Notes Pertaining to a Panel in Salon D
    Ebook84 pages48 minutes

    The Calpa & Notes Pertaining to a Panel in Salon D

    By John Norman

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    About this ebook

    From the author of the Gor Series, two science fiction short stories exploring human relationships with verbal flair and philosophical complexity.

    “The Calpa” attempts to describe the indescribable and paints an image of a thing unseen and ancient along the beach of a tiny village.

    “Notes Pertaining to a Panel in Salon D” presents a lively Science Fiction convention panel exploring what life would be like if prehistory and evolution had skipped a beat. 

    Available for the first time as an e-book pairing, these stories were previously published in the collection Norman Invasions.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781497600119
    The Calpa & Notes Pertaining to a Panel in Salon D
    Author

    John Norman

    John Norman is the creator of the Gorean Saga, the longest-running series of adventure novels in science fiction history. He is also the author of the science fiction series the Telnarian Histories, as well as Ghost Dance, Time Slave, The Totems of Abydos, Imaginative Sex, and Norman Invasions. Norman is married and has three children.

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      Die Chroniken von Telnaria 2 - Der CaptainMan schreibt das Zeitalter der Telnarier. Ihr verderbtes Großreich vereint ganze Galaxien unter der Knute von Tyrannei und Sklaverei. Doch Verworfenheit und Brutalität könnten dem Sternenreich zum Verhängnis werden, denn die Seele wahrer Menschlichkeit - ob unterm Schwert vereint oder im Geist der Wissenschaft - ist unbeugsam und lässt sich nicht auf ewig knechten.Otto, Häuptling der Wolfungen, und Julian von den Aurelianii, ein junger Flottenoffizier, begeben sich auf die Sommerwelt des Imperiums, auf der der Imperator des telnarischen Reiches den Sommer verbringt. Julian, der ein naher Verwandter des Herrschers ist, möchte Otto zum Befehlshaber einer Prätorianergarde vorschlagen lassen, um die unsicheren Grenzlinien des Reiches besser zu schützen. Doch man stellt ihnen eine tödliche Falle.John Norman führt uns in eine tyrannische Welt voller Macht, Intrigen, politischer Ränkespiele und Versklavung.

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    The Calpa & Notes Pertaining to a Panel in Salon D - John Norman

    These stories appear in Norman Invasions, a collection of stories by John Norman. To purchase the complete collection visit ereads.com and enter Norman Invasions in the Search box, or visit John Norman's author page for a complete list of available titles.

    The Calpa

    I am spelling this the way it sounds, though I suppose, too, it might, in English, be spelled with a ‘K’.  The particular expression, above, which I have chosen to refer to the phenomenon, antedates English, at least as we know it.  It derives from some other language, I think a very old language, perhaps from some predecessor of Danish, or from Jutish, or Saxon, or, perhaps more likely, from one of the older Celtic tongues.  It seems clear that its original language is no longer spoken, but the word has lingered, or survived, threading its way toward us through various languages, most recently a Scottish Gaelic, until it nestles now in English, at least locally, almost as though hiding, a word never forgotten, occasionally recalled, and appearing now and again, though commonly only in whispers, as among my current neighbors, who are simple, ignorant, sea-faring village folk.  So, you see, we do not know where the word came from, that is, in the beginning.  It may have been coined hundreds of years ago, perhaps thousands of years ago, perhaps from a time when Stonehenge lay in the distant future, by shell peoples, or by the paddlers of round, leather boats, the latter gathering and fishing near the shores of what we now think of as the western North Atlantic, but it is heard, too, interestingly, but as one would suppose from linguistic affinities, in this case old Gaelic, to the west, at the edges of the Irish Sea, again, of course, among sea-faring village folk.  It seems to be known in various places elsewhere in northern Europe, in the Wirral in Wales, for example, and perhaps anywhere here in the north, anywhere where there are simple folk, ignorance, superstition, and dark caves, washed by tidal floods, narrow waterways, cold waters, unseen, treacherous currents, lonely pebbled beaches, extended rocky shores, cruel, shadowed inlets.  So it is an old word and seems to have been used, and is occasionally still used, though seldom before outsiders, to refer to the phenomenon.  There are some more modern equivalents, too, but it seems to me more appropriate to use the older word, as do the villagers.  The older word is more darkly reverent, I think; it is perhaps thus closer to the phenomenon.

    So that is the word we will use.  Calpa.

    In English I do not think we have another word as well suited to the phenomenon.  So we shall use it.

    Too, I think it may prefer that word.

    I find that I prefer it.

    It is the case, however, or so it seems to me, that there is another word, if one may use that expression, in some language, a language quite unlike those with which you are likely to be familiar, for the phenomenon, a word in its own tongue, so to speak.  In that language, in some sound, or something analogous to a sound, possibly even in some alphabet or syllabary, or in something analogous to such things, it occurs.

    I have heard it, so to speak.

    How might stars, or hurricanes, or stones, or tornadoes, or storms, or swift currents of water, lurking beneath a placid surface, speak?  Such things do not, of course, speak, but, if they could, how might they speak?  Could we hear them?  Not the fury, not the inert passivity, not the incandescent tumult, but the words, the meaning?  Could we hear it?  These are analogies, of course, and doubtless not all that helpful.  I am sorry.  There seems to be little help for that.  Still, suppose that there were things quite unlike ourselves, dark things, hard to touch, which could come and go, and were not much like things with which we were familiar, not like stones, and storms, and stars, but things distant from us, things alien to us, and that they could speak to one another, though we could not hear them.  Does the ant hear the declamations of the market, do the flies understand the noises of the abattoir, or merely dumbly rejoice in the welcome, red feasting?

    Who knows in what worlds we live?

    Sometimes it seems to me I have access to that language, but only in dreams.  To be sure, this could be madness.  Surely I remember the hoofprints on the beach.  They were real enough.  Surely I remember what happened to the room.  That was real enough, too.  Certainly, at best, these hints, or recollections, or songs, or cries, are remote.  More interestingly the sounds do not seem to be those natural to a human throat.  Too, which mostly puzzles me, is that they do not seem to resemble the sounds of birds, or animals, either, with which I might be familiar.

    Sometimes I think these things, the whispers, to be of the nature of the footfalls of spiders, but, of course, one cannot hear such things.  Though doubtless they make a sound.  Loud enough to the spider.  Loud enough doubtless to the entangled fly, its senses strained, listening.  At other times I think perhaps it sounds like darkness, but darkness makes no sound, not in any normal sense, not as we think of it.  But if it could make a sound, as it encroaches, as it comes closer and closer, perhaps it would be like that.  Sometimes it is easier to understand, like the tiny crackle of leaves in a forest, as though stirred by the movement of something near us, unseen, or like wind, as it moves about among cliffs, or prowls in caves, near the shore.

    Those things are easier to understand.

    I suppose I cannot make this clear.  I do not think there is any help for that.

    It is said that one cannot

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