Prologue: The Lure of Vermilion
Zacks recounts her initial visit to Venera and her first taste of vermilion spice in the underground ruins of the city-state — the event that led to the study of Scheherazade becoming her life’s work.
Chapter 1: The Primordial Days and Nights of Scheherazade
The life of a female child in prehistoric Ethiopia.
Chapter 2: The Invention of Story
The young Scheherazade invents storytelling.
Chapter 3: Gods and Demons and Fantasy, Oh My!
Did Scheherazade create all the gods and demons and fantastical creatures of the world, or were they drawn to the magic of her storytelling?
Chapter 4: The Storyteller within the Story
Becoming herself a character in her own stories, Scheherazade tours the world, leaving in her wake a wealth of myths, legends, fantastical beasts, and sacred rituals. Her time in China and India provides glimpses into the early precursors of The Arabian Nights.
Chapter 5: The Epic of Scheherazade
Scheherazade spends centuries in the Near East and Asia Minor of antiquity, the so-called “cradle of civilization.” Her many contributions to that seminal time in history include creating the earliest version of The Epic of Gilgamesh; assuming the identity of the poet-priestess Enheduanna, the “ daughter” of King Sargon; being involved in the Tower of Babel incident; and planting more storytelling seeds that would eventually grow into The Arabian Nights.
Chapter 6: A Girl and Her Goddess
The early friendship of Scheherazade and the goddess Venera.
Chapter 7: The Lure of Vermilion
On an island in the Mediterranean, Scheherazade and the goddess Venera discover the properties of vermilion and found a city unlike any other.
Chapter 8: The Arabian Nights of Scheherazade
As the Goddess Venera becomes increasingly preoccupied with the city, religion, and archipelago that bear her name, she and Scheherazade grow apart. For centuries Scheherazade travels throughout the area from North Africa to China, further fuelling and cementing the literary tradition that will one day coalesce into The Arabian Nights.
Chapter 9: The Vermilion Eye
Scheherazade returns to Venera. During her absence, the city-state was twice invaded, first by the Romans, then, centuries later, by the Vikings. The goddess and the storyteller resume their alliance, founding the Vermilion Eye to protect the archipelago from further military incursions.
Chapter 10: Agent of the Vermilion Eye
Scheherazade’s covert involvement with world affairs and history as an agent of the Vermilion Eye.
Chapter 11: The Bondage of Scheherazade
The Vermilion Eye is betrayed by its agent Le Nomade des Étoiles, leading to the Fascist invasion of Venera and the capture and imprisonment of Scheherazade.
Chapter 12: Bram Jameson
As a child, the future author Bram Jameson ran free in occupied Venera, as chronicled in his 1987 book Empire of the Self, but there he fails to mention how he singlehandedly freed Scheherazade from Nazi bondage, leading to the liberation of Venera and to young Jameson’s recruitment as an agent of the Vermilion Eye.
Chapter 13: The Venera Church of Mother Earth
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a religion calling itself the Venera Church of Mother Earth seizes control of the city-state, redefining the identity of the goddess Venera and driving Scheherazade underground, among the labyrinthine ruins of subterranean Venera.
Postscript: Scheherazade as Cultural Icon
A look at the cultural impact of Scheherazade as a fictional character from her classic portrayal in The Arabian Nights to her depiction in fine arts, film, architecture, comics, television, music, and more.
THREE PHANTASMAGORICAL ODYSSEYS OF SCHEHERAZADE
[from the Vermilion Press catalogue]
Three Phantasmagorical Odysseys of Scheherazade is an anthology of novellas by some of the most notorious writers of the Venera arts scene. Each story bears the same title: “A Phantasmagorical Odyssey of Scheherazade.”
◉In a rare new text since his self-imposed exile to Venera, Magus Amore provides a surreal parade of erotic perversions, body modifications, exquisite torture, and disquieting rituals. Entirely devoid of plot, the novella follows Scheherazade’s escapades through a relentless orgy of shock, sex, and horror.
◉Bram Jameson probes the inner world of Scheherazade’s imagination. Using the language, tropes, and conventions of psychotherapy, he recounts the adventures of the archetypal storyteller trapped in her own mind, navigating the labyrinth of story that makes up her identity.
◉In the lyrical and poignant version of the story by Renata Austin (two-time recipient of the Venera Fantasy Award), Scheherazade wanders an infinite road, encountering the characters and settings of her own tales. One by one, she sheds and forgets these fabulations, until all that is left of her is a young Ethiopian girl in the world before civilization, before fiction.
THE DARKBRIGHT BOOK OF SCHEHERAZADE
edited by Sanderson Grecko & Bettina Easton
[from the VFC 50 promotional mailing to members of previous years of the Venera Fantasy Convention]
To coincide with their stint as Guests of Honour at the fiftieth Venera Fantasy Convention, Sanderson Grecko and Bettina Easton, publishers of Darkbright Books, which is also celebrating its fifth anniversary, have commissioned Scheherazade stories from their eclectic stable of authors. The anthology will be a free giveaway to all paid members and attendees of VFC 50.
◉“Duels with Scheherazade,” by Daniel Dimes. A political allegory in which the High Countess of the Venera Church of Mother Earth and Scheherazade engage in a series of ritualized and violent duels over the fate of the city-goddess Venera.
◉“New Vermilion World,” by Brad Blue. Scheherazade is an artificial intelligence plotting to overwrite the source code of reality with the virtual game universe of Venera.
◉“Space Whore Scheherazade,” by Chas Roberts. A philosophical space opera narrated by the star-travelling Scheherazade, courtesan-ambassador from the planet Venera.
◉“Sex with Monsters,” by Elaine Sherman. In the aftermath of an orgy with fantastical creatures from her own imagination, Scheherazade sits at her vanity table, staring at herself in the mirror, brushing her hair, and contemplating her tattoos.
◉“The Kiss of Scheherazade,” by Barbara Fitzpatrick. Scheherazade is a vampire who travels the Earth preying on writers and other artists, in order to populate the island utopia of Venera with immortal, undead bohemians.
◉“The Arabian Nights Plague,” by Anthony Meredith. Anyone who hears or reads Scheherazade’s stories is turned into a zombie.
◉“The Queer Hex of Kid Scheherazade,” by Jewel Gumm. In a Venera reimagined as a frontier town in the mode of spaghetti westerns, the ambiguously gendered gunslinging mystic Kid Scheherazade shoots bullets of pansexual lust and love at those who preach against the pleasures of the flesh.
◉“The Saga of Scheherazade,” by A.A. Miller. A young Scheherazade is taken prisoner on a slave ship; she escapes and becomes a stowaway on a pirate vessel — until she sets foot in Venera.
◉“The Lost Pages of Scheherazade,” by Lucas Rafael. A metafictional odyssey in which a young homeless Montreal girl nicknamed Scheherazade steals a book about the classical Scheherazade at a strange bookshop called Lost Pages; fantasy bleeds into mundane reality as her life begins to mirror that of the fictional Scheherazade … until the two merge into one character existing simultaneously across multiple realities.
◉“The Horror of Womanhood,” by Christian G.Q. Mitchell. In New York, a drag queen with the stage name of Heherazade and an Arabian Nights routine is inexplicably and irrevocably transformed into a biological woman in the middle of a performance.
◉“Talking to Doctor Scheherazade,” by Bobby Who. Scheherazade is a Veneran psychotherapist whose sessions with patients reveal more about her own self-obsession than about th
e problems of those she is ostensibly treating.
◉“The Star of Scheherazade Strange,” by Cat Watts. Teenage Torontonian Scheherazade Strange falls into the fantasy world of Venera, where she follows a sentient vermilion star that beckons her every night.
◉“The Case of the Really Mean Haunted House,” by Peter Ian Trembles. On one of the outer islands of the Veneran archipelago, supernatural detective Scheherazade Jones investigates the mystery of a haunted house with a peculiar grudge.
◉“Ghosts and Tall Tales,” by Kevin Angel. Scheherazade is visited by the ghosts of her alternate selves, who haunt her with stories of the life paths she failed to pursue.
THE ODYSSEY OF SCHEHERAZADE: A PHANTASMAGORICAL OPERA
[from the website of the Venera Fantasy Convention, vfc.venera.web]
The premiere of this opera for solo singer by Venera Fantasy Grandmaster Award winner Neal S. Palmer will be held at the concert hall of Tito Bronze’s Velvet Bronzemine. The music will be performed the Arabian Nights Orchestra, featuring singer Mandy Gay as Scheherazade. The sets, designed by Belinda Gerda and built by Hemero Volkanus, are a reproduction of the long-lost Esplendor Català, the legendary cruiseliner designed by Antoni Gaudí that from 1920 to 1936 — the heyday of Veneran tourism — travelled the Mediterranean between Barcelona and Venera. Neal S. Palmer wrote the music and the libretto and is the director of this first staging of his new opus.
The story: abandoning modern-day Venera, Scheherazade boards the Esplendor Català and travels through time, sailing the seas of the Mediterranean of antiquity, reliving and narrating the adventures that inspired The Arabian Nights.
The premiere of The Odyssey of Scheherazade: A Phantasmagorical Opera is an off-season special event sponsored by the Venera Fantasy Convention.
A SCHEHERAZADE PHANTASMAGORIA
[from the Tito Bronze website, velvetbronzemine.venera.web]
To promote the release of his new film, The Phantasmagorical Odyssey of Scheherazade, Tito Bronze has curated A Scheherazade Phantasmagoria, which will be on display for the entire month of June at Bronze’s opulent Veneran mansion, the Velvet Bronzemine. Admission is free, and the doors will remain open 24 hours a day for the duration of the exhibit.
The show includes:
◉A gallery of 99 new photographs of the city-state Venera by photographer Petra Maxim (author of 1001 Days and Nights in Venera). Hidden in every picture is the actress who portrays Scheherazade in Bronze’s new film — can you spot her?
◉Classic paintings and sketches of Scheherazade by Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí.
◉A gallery of framed and enlarged reproductions of the covers painted and designed by Obama Savage for the nine-issue run of the 1937-38 American pulp magazine Spicy Scheherazade Stories.
◉Original comics art by Jake Kurtz for the never-published thirteenth issue of Scheherazade, Agent of the Vermilion Eye, a story titled “The Shield of the Black Cat.”
◉Sketches by Edward Gorey for a never-produced Broadway production of The Arabian Nights.
◉The plans for Antoni Gaudí’s suppressed Arabian Nightsthemed apartment building, which would have been built near the port end of La Rambla in Barcelona.
◉A new series of seven paintings by Belinda Gerda, the notoriously disgraced former Painter Laureate of Venera, depicting Scheherazade in legendary scenes from Veneran folklore.
◉The Harem of Scheherazade: in the lush roof garden of the Velvet Bronzemine all the current sycophants and apprentices in residence, wearing masks of characters from The Arabian Nights, perform a month-long ongoing orgy of vermilion-fuelled sex and art. The public is invited to join in; consumption of vermilion is mandatory.
◉On continuous loop: a video of Jane Zacks (author of The Phantasmagorical Odyssey of Scheherazade: A Cryptomythological Biography) and Tito Bronze discussing the adaptation of the author’s classic scholarly work into a surreal adventure film.
◉Wandering throughout A Scheherazade Phantasmagoria at the Velvet Bronzemine are automata created by Hemero Volkanus; meet Dunyazad, Sindbad, Aladdin, Ali Baba, Prince Ahmed, the Barber of Baghdad, Princess Badroulbadour, and other favourites from The Arabian Nights as reimagined and brought to mechanical life by Venera’s most eccentric tinkerer.
SCHEHERAZADE, AGENT OF THE VERMILION EYE
by Jake Kurtz
[from the Shrugging Atlas Comics fan wiki, theworldsofshruggingatlascomics.web/wiki]
A short-lived American comics series about the adventures of Scheherazade as an agent of the Vermilion Eye was published by Shrugging Atlas Comics to very low sales in 1969-70. However, in the mid-1970s, the series was translated and repackaged in both Mexico and Italy and was a huge success in both those markets. From the date of the original English-language publication, the series was banned by the Venera Church of Mother Earth; nevertheless, throughout the 1970s contraband copies in both English and Italian flooded the city-state. The ban was never officially lifted; by the time of Jake Kurtz’s death in 1994 copies of the comics were so ubiquitous in Venera that the Church had stopped trying to enforce it.
#1: “The King of France”
Scheherazade races to discover the mythical King of France, an energy statue that gives whoever is in possession of it control over the destiny of France. Competing with secret agents from all the world’s major nations, will Scheherazade secure the King of France for Venera?
#2: “Six Million Years Past and Future”
A time-traveller from six millions years in the future travels back to twelve million years into his past — six million years before the present day — to prevent the birth of the goddess Venera. Scheherazade’s mission is to stop him before he succeeds, which would wipe the city-state of Venera from history.
#3: “Chaos of Time”
Scheherazade is trapped in the time stream. But the King of France comes to her rescue. What is the true nature of the energy statue?
#4: “Friends and/or Foes?”
Having been rescued from time, Scheherazade randomly flitters between alternate realities. Which alternate iterations of the goddess Venera, the King of France, and various agents of the Vermilion Eye are friends and which are foes?
#5: “Quest for the Cornucopia of Venera”
Who has stolen the Cornucopia of Venera, the goddess’s own sacred cask of vermilion wine? Scheherazade is on the case!
#6: “Who Will Drink from the Cornucopia of Venera?”
Scheherazade’s investigation into the disappearance of the Cornucopia of Venera takes her to the City of the Secret Samurai deep underground in the bowels of the island of Hokkaido in Japan.
#7: “The Drums of Doom!”
In Ethiopia, a percussionist is composing a song that will destroy the world … unless Scheherazade finds and stops him!
#8: “The Black Cats”
Scheherazade uncovers the secret agenda of Venera’s population of black cats.
#9: “The Black Mice”
Scheherazade and all of Venera are caught in the middle of a war between the city-state’s black cats and black mice.
#10: “The Death of the World”
Who has taken up the drums of doom? Scheherazade believed that she had prevented that menace from ever again threatening the world. Can she stop the lethal rhythms before the final beat?
#11: “The Cruelty of Nayadaga”
Can the city-state Venera survive a civil war between the merciless secret underground society of the fish goddess Nayadaga’s half-human followers and the insidiously oppressive regime of the Church of Mother Earth? Will Scheherazade and the Vermilion Eye side with either of these factions?
#12: “The Code”
It’s all-out war in Venera, with Nayadaga, the Church of Mother Earth, and the Vermilion Eye each moving against the other two … unless Scheherazade can decipher the code that will bring peace, or at least equilibrium, to the city-state.
THE PHANTASMAGORICAL ODYSSEY OF SCHEHERAZADE
a Tito Bronze film
[review by Jack Yeovil for The Fantastic Film Reader’s annual Cannes edition]
Tito Bronze is well known for keeping a tight lid on the production of his films; nevertheless, usually some advance details inevitably leak to the press. Not so with The Phantasmagorical Odyssey of Scheherazade. Between the announcement that Bronze had acquired the film rights to Jane Zacks’s controversial scholarly book on the secret history of Scheherazade and the scheduling of the premiere at Cannes no information about the film itself could be uncovered; not a word about the screenplay, the cast, the crew, the shoot, the music — nothing.
Even once the Festival de Cannes published its schedule, only very minimal information was made available to the press or the public: “The Phantasmagorical Odyssey of Scheherazade. Written and directed by Tito Bronze. Adapted from The Phantasmagorical Odyssey of Scheherazade: A Cryptomythological Biography, by Jane Zacks. Music and performance by Scheherazade. 218 minutes. All languages. (Country: Venera.)” The description only added to the questions of curious cinephiles. How could a film be in “All languages”? Who was the performer hiding under the pseudonym “Scheherazade”? Who were the rest of the cast?
The Phantasmagorical Odyssey of Scheherazade is deceptively minimalistic, yet also the lushest and most extravagant adventure story ever filmed. Even within Tito Bronze’s eclectic filmography, it stands as profoundly original. It is perhaps his greatest accomplishment.
The film opens with an animation of the film’s title cascading in multiple languages. A female voice gradually fades in, sublimely beautiful, chanting the name of the titular character, reiterating it in the different ways it is pronounced across the globe. The typographical animation gives way to a blank whiteness; the song stops. One moment, there is nothing to see or hear, and the next a woman we can only assume to be Scheherazade is on the screen. The camera zooms in on her, until a closeup of her face fills the image. It is then that she starts singing again.
Venera Dreams Page 18