The Parodies Collection
Page 59
And I will drive my allies mad!
It is so good, to be so very bad!
I’ll use it to bring blight and woe
From wizard’s peak to dwarfish toe.
To shift from seen into unseen,
To turn bread blue and hens-eggs green,
And generally make mortals glum.
Thank you!
Thank you!
Sam-old-chum.’
[Later that year, Nonwin persuaded my grand-uncle to write up some of his personal mythology in more populist form. The first fruit of this new resolution was the script of a situation comedy, which Roberts hoped to sell to the BBC. Filming was not completed on the pilot episode, and only this portion remains.]
Ent’s Army
Theme:
Who do you think you are kidding, Mister Sauron
If you think Old Forest’s done —
We are the trees that’ll hoomm hoooooooommm hmm.
Hmmm.
We are hmmmmmmmm.
[pause: 7 minutes]
Mr Elm goes off to the Haradvale on
The 821 -
year old drover’s path —
But he comes home each evening
And he’s ready with his gum (exuded-from-a-small-incision-in-his-bark)
So
Who do you think you are kidding, Mister Sauron
If you think Old Forest’s —
Hmmmmmmmmm.
Hom, hoom, hmmm.
Scene: The Old Forest. Many trees. Enter CAPTAIN MAINBEARDING, SERGEANT WISDEN, CORPORAL JUNIPER, PRIVATE POPLAR.
CAPTAIN MAINBEARDING: Pay attention trees. I’m afraid the Orks are – hooom, hoooomm, hoommmmm. [dozes for twenty minutes] Ah! Yes, the Orks are – hmmm – presently setting fire to my lower branches.
CORPORAL JUNIPER: [speaking very slowly in a deep bass-baritone] Do-oo-ooo-o-o-oo-oo—o—oo—on’t . . . pa—aa—a-aaa—
PRIVATE POPLAR: Mr Mainbearding! [pause: 3 minutes] Mr Mainbearding! [pause: 7 minutes]
CORPORAL JUNIPER: —aa—a-aaa—a-a-a—a—
PRIVATE POPLAR: Mr Mainbearding! An ork para-trooper has fallen – hoom – into my branches – hmmm hmmm – and is now dangling from them. Dangling, he is. What – hmm – what shall I do, Mr Mainbearding?
CAPTAIN MAINBEARDING: [shaking his head slowly] You stupid sapling.
CORPORAL JUNIPER: —aa-a-nn—nic! Do—oo-oo-o—o-o-oo—oo . . . [His roots settle into the soft loam and he goes to sleep]
SERGEANT WISDEN: [observing JUNIPER] Ah, the sweet rainwater-sodden earth, the life-giving water of the ground. He does like it up him.
The Adventures of Tommy Bythewho
[Editor’s Note: Very little remains of my grand-uncle’s abortive attempt to recast the material of Lowered Off the Rings as a rock opera, tentatively entitled Ring, Ring, Why Don’t You Give Me A Greatly-Lengthened-Though-Horribly-Attenuated-Life-of-Gnawing-Anxiety-and-Maniacal-Possessiveness.27 Of the original forty songs, only a dozen or so were ever recorded; the Earls Court Spectacular, performed with full band and backing orchestra on ice, closed after only three months, and the soundtrack album only reached number six in the album charts, selling a pitiful 600,000 copies]
Song: Tis balls, Wizard
Ever since I was a young lad I’ve been Aryan blonde and tall
From Mirkjaggawood down to Fanguverymuchhorn, I’m the prettiest elf of all,
But I’ve not seen anything like him in any elven hall,
That Tommy Bythewho-oh
He hardly fits this tale at all—
Duh-duh, duhh, duhh, d-duhh,
Duh-duh, duhh, duhh, d-duhh.28
He stands like a hippy, he’ll smoke almost anything,
Hardly ever speaks in prose, he much prefers to sing,
Doesn’t care for money, unmoved by its kerching,
That Tom Bonglemmehaveago
Sure isn’t affected by the Evil Ring—
Duh-duh, duhh, duhh, d-duhh,
Duh-duh, duhh, duhh, d-duhh.29
He’s an authorial symbol,
He isn’t like the rest
of the characters
He’s a strange anachronism
And he wears a velvet vest.
He lives in an oddly stylised version of the nineteen-sixties even though this tale is supposed to be timeless and was in fact written between the nineteen-teens and 1950s,
Apparently very important to the author, although few readers complain if these Scenes are cut clean out from the movie on account of the narratively thrifty s-
elections of the director,
That Tommy Bythewho-oh,
He don’t hardly fit this tale at all.
He’s a transparent allegory,
Of a rural English idyll
But in terms of characterisation
He’s a load of twaffling piddle.
Other songs composed by my grand-uncle for this Musical Interlude included:
• Tom Bythewho Prelude: Wap-dang-a-dingle-doh-a-derry-down-the-dongle-dung
• ‘I’m Free! And Freedom Tastes of Not Having To Spend Seven Years Filming in New Zealand’
• ‘See Me, Hear Me, Feel Me (Not in the Movie Version You Won’t)’
• ‘I’m your Wicked Uncle Ernie, Interfering with Young Children, and I’ll Make You Very Uncomfortable Indeed When, in Twenty Years’ Time, the Composer is Arrested for Internet Child Porn Offences and You Look Back on This Song And Think, Blimey, That Puts Things In An Unpleasant New Light, Doesn’t It?’
• ‘Talking ’Bout My Sellamillion’
• ‘Boromir, Boroyur (ah-haa)’
• ‘Moria – I’ve Just Seen a Mine Called Moria’
• ‘Gimli, Gimli, Gimli, A Dwarf After Midnight’
• ‘(She Told Me To) Ork This Way’
• Tom Bythewho Rousing Conclusive Chorus: Wap-dang-a-dingledoh-derry-down-the-dongle-dung (reprise)
Soundtrack available on ‘His Evil Master’s Voice’/Nonwin-recordings.
27 Later retitled Bing Sings ‘Rings’.
28 Elvish. Translation: ‘Yes, yes, oh very much so, yes, indeed,/Yes, yes, oh very much so, yes indeed; oh yes.’
29 Elvish. Translation: ‘No, No he’s not, certainly no, no,/nope, not in the slightest, oh no, what on earth gave you that idea, certainly not, no.’
Under Mirk Wood: a Play for Voices
By Bob Dylan Thomas Boombadillo
First Dwarf: To begin at the beginning: a small wood, under the starlight, look you, bach, though they go mad they shall go into that good night, dumb, and fuse the green under apple boughs, bach, la, dew.
Second Dwarf (Molly): [falsetto] That giant spider kissed me!
Third Dwarf (Gomer): [baritone] Kissed you?
Molly: [falsetto] Underneath the branches.
Gomer: [baritone] Underneath the branches?
Molly: [falsetto] He was trying to fill my veins with poison, wrap me up and lay eggs in me, and all for the sake of love.
Gomer: [baritone] All bite and no bark, some spiders. All bark and no bite, some trees.
Molly: [falsetto] O love! Spider love.
Gomer: [falsetto] Nothing sweeter.
Molly: [baritone] Afterwards back to his for flies and, er, more flies. One kiss for me, one kiss for him, and one for the teapot.
Gomer: [falsetto] Now you listen to me young Dwarf Molly –
Molly: [baritone] Hang on a minute . . . shouldn’t I be doing the falsetto?
Gomer: [falsetto] What do you mean . . . oh wait up, you’re right . . . [clears throat]
Molly: [falsetto] Chasing the giggling spider children down to spider farm . . .
Gomer: [baritone] Look you, la, bach, boyo, see, dew, bach, look you, leeks, Rugby football, sheep, curry, beer, male voice choirs, look you.
Ork Sonnet
I.
Shall I compare thee to an ugh! ugh! ugh!
Thou art more ugh!ular and more urrh! arrrrh! urh!
Gnaargh! shall Urghh! gnash-gnash-gnas
h—
MANFLESH!! uh! uh! uh!
Arrrgghhhh!
Aaaaaaarrrrghh!
Ugh!! UGH! hath all too short a UGH!
RAAAAAGGH! WAAAAAARRGH!
Thank you. Gestetnered copies of my selected poems
Are available in the lobby, price three groats.
II.
You’ve
got
to
Fight the power!
Fight the powers of Man!
You’ve got to hack the helmet,
Disembowel the man-warriors—
You’ve
Got
To
Feed your belly
Feed your belly on the carcasses of your enemies.
You’ve got to apply an emollient, perhaps a fat-based product like lard to the back of your head to stop your helmet chafing, also very important, that.
Appendices
Note on Pronunciation
The following note is a guide only, not a comprehensive account of pronunciation in the works of A. R. R. R. Roberts, or any other writer or document, except this document, obviously.
CONSONANTS
C
always has the value sea (as in ‘seabiscuit’), except when its value is kay (as in ‘kayleigh’), unless it is being pronounced as part of a word, in which case it is pronounced ‘c’ (as in ‘crunching celery’ or ‘haecceity’).
CH
pronounced as ‘c’ only with an ‘h’ after it, except when the ‘h’ part is sort of included in the ‘c’ part that precedes it, as if instead of two letters there is actually only one letter, that happens to have been written down as two letters, perhaps to use up space (as in ‘Why is it always me who has to write them a postcard? I’ve nothing to say to them! They’re your family after all. Jeesh, I suppose I can just talk about the weather but write in really large letters’).
DH
pronounced however you like. No, really. Whatever takes your fancy. Pronounce it ‘q’ or ‘x’ if you want. No skin off my nose. What do I care how you sound in the privacy of your own home?
TH
has it ever struck you how odd it is that the river Thames is spelt the way it is? I mean, I’m not a world expert on word-spell-ology or anything, but if a word is pronounced Temz, then shouldn’t we write it that way? Or would that make our capital’s river look too much like an Eastern European bottled lager? These are the sorts of things that batter into my head as I lie in my bed at night, you know. The phrase ‘keeps me awake at night’ is no mere expression in my case. It’s an actual state of affairs. You ask my wife.
VOWELS
IE
is always pronounced ‘eye-before-ee’ except when it is pronounced ‘except after sea’ (see ‘c’).
AI
has the value of somebody shot in the stomach anywhere east of Sri Lanka or west of the International Date Line.
ERG
has the value of somebody retrieving something that has rolled under a table, perhaps a bread roll or some coins, shuffling out backwards on all fours, not quite gauging the distance properly, and trying to stand up with their head still largely underneath the table.
OU
has the value of somebody with a mouthful of soft-crumb pastry who has inhaled a small crumb of the soft-crumb pastry inadvertently, but can’t quite cough properly because their mouth is packed with a sodden mix of flour, butter and saliva.
UW
has the value of somebody caught with a swift backhander that makes their face flip sharply to the left, and propels a tiny stream of dribble horizontally from the corner of their lip.
ACCENTS
`
means that the letter (but not the whole word) should be pronounced with a German accent.
means that the letter (but not the whole word) should be pronounced with a generic ‘Asia Minor’ or ‘Middle Eastern’ accent.
~
means that the whole sentence should be spoke in cod-Spanish, and ‘olé’ added at the end.
looks a bit testicular, don’t you think? Honestly, sometimes I think the people who invent typefaces just get a bit bored from time to time and slip a few in to see if we notice.
Ψ
candelabra
Ø
man with bowler hat on at rakish angle
þ
pregnant lampstand
Nonwin Press are proud to announce
An exciting new development in Fantasy fiction The upgrading of a Fantasy classic
Do you love A. R. R. R. Roberts’s Lowered Off the Rings?
Yeah? You do?
So do we.
But there’s one problem – isn’t there? You know what we’re talking about.
At a mere 1200 pages and three volumes it is simply too short. How can any true Fantasy fan enjoy a book that’s over as soon as it begins?
For this reason Nonwin Press has commissioned Fantasy author Roberts Jordan to recast this classic book, to bring it into line with the demands of modern fans of Fantasy fiction.
Roberts Jordan’s
The Lord of the Wheels of Time
A 144-volume rewriting of Lowered Off the Rings. Each volume guaranteed at least 1000 pages long, with at least three maps per volume, lists of characters, glossaries, and a full-colour hyperrealist painted cover art.
STAR WARPED
Machine-written from original screenplays by Gorgeous ‘Lukin’ Ass
Guaranteed body-harming hilarious!!! If you do not physically injure yourself and/or need hospitalisation through laughing at this book, then Victor Gollancz will not only give you your money back but also undertake to pay your children's way through university.1
Six parodies for the price of one point four!
1 This statement is true only for a given value of ‘you’. At present ‘you’ is ‘Fredric Gelman of Elm Tree Crescent, Egham’. This may change at any moment: check the website for further details. (Note: Forfurtherdetails.com is not owned by Victor Gollancz publishing, and the publishers are not responsible for anything that might be up there.)
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, A3R Roberts wasn’t A3R Roberts at all, but the Robertski Brothers: the illustrious and justly-famed duo responsible for The Mcatrix Derided. And before that, when soddits were real soddits, dwarves were real dwarves, and Smug the magic dragon was Really Smug the magic dragon, A3R Roberts was A.R.R.R. Roberts, who wrote The Soddit and The Sellamillion. (‘Neither of which form the first few minutes of prologue in A MAJOR NINE HOUR MOTION PICTURE EPIC!’). And in a galaxy not so far away or long ago, as Adam Roberts, he also found the time to write some proper books, like Salt, On, Stone, Park Polar, Jupiter Magnified, Polystom and The Snow, which are much better, though not as funny. Not intentionally, at any rate.
to Princess Lily
Contents
Title
Dedication
Episode Four: A Nude Hope
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Episode Five: The Empire Strides around in Black
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Ten
Episode Six: Return of the Son of Jobbi Rides Again
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Episode One: The Fans-of-Tron Menace
Chapter One
Chapter Two<
br />
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Episode Two: Attack of the Clichés
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Episode Three: Revenge of the Return of the Son of Psmyth Rides Again: the Next Generation – The Early Years
Chapter One
. . . A long time in the future, obviously (this being science fiction) . . .
. . . In a Galaxy – well, to be honest, in the Galaxy in which we all live now . . .
Episode Four
A NUDE HOPE
THE IMPERIAL EMPIRE OF THE IMPERIUM SEEMED TRIUMPHANT, EVERYWHERE CRUSHING OPPOSITION BENEATH THE IRON HEEL OF THEIR METAPHORICAL BUT NONETHELESS PAINFUL IRON JACK-BOOT, SMASHING ALL WHO OPPOSED THEM WITH AN IRON FIST SHEATHED INSIDE THE IRON GLOVE OF ‘IMP-EMP-IMP’ PROPAGANDA. ONLY A SMALL GROUP OF REBELS RESISTED THE UNSTOPPABLE, ONWARD-SLIDING MOVEMENT OF THIS IRON - THE ‘REBELEND’ (SO CALLED, IN FACT, BECAUSE THEY WERE ‘REBELLING’ TO BRING AN ‘END’ TO THE IMPERIAL EMPIRE, YOU SEE) FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM AGAINST TYRANNY, FOR CHAOS AGAINST ORDER, AND FOR ‘ROCK AND ROLL AND DOING WHATEVER YOU FEEL LIKE AND STUFF’ AGAINST RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY, KNOWING ONE’S PLACE IN THE HIERARCHY OF SOCIETY, DUTY AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. WITH ALL MODES OF INFORMATION DISSEMINATION UNDER THE TIGHT CONTROL OF THE IMP-EMP-IMP PROPAGANDA COHORTS, THE REBELEND WERE REDUCED TO ASSEMBLING GIANT FLEETS OF ALPHABETTI SPACECRAFT (FROM A- THROUGH TO Z-WINGS) IN SPACE, SPELLING OUT THEIR SIDE OF THE CASE, AND FLYING THE MESSAGE AWAY INTO THE GALACTIC DISTANCE BEFORE THE WONDERING EYES OF ORDINARY CITIZENS. MESSAGES, INDEED, RATHER LIKE THIS ONE . . .