You loved Torg week last year, so here’s some more Torg. Because man, Torg is pretty great.

Well, certain sections of Torg are pretty great, anyway. I do not recognize the Living Land. But the Cyberpapacy? That is some top shelf nonsense of the highest order. Based in CyberFrance, they’re an invading reality that was originally based on the idea of the line of French antipopes forging a dark feudalism in the modern era. On its way to imprint on Earth, though, it crashed into a cyberpunk reality and got…remixed? Fused? With the exception of the subplot involving a synthetic AIDS virus, the whole Cyberpapacy is a perfect exercise in slipstream camp. It is very difficult to take seriously, yet I remain fascinated.

The GodNet (1991) is an important sourcebook for the Cyberpapacy that explains how its virtual reality internet works. It's the equivalent of Shadowrun’s Matrix or the Net in Cyberpunk, but with a Catholic aesthetic. I find the mix of stereotypical netrunner types dealing with gothic and rococo environments endlessly entertaining. It is housed in a web of Holy Exchanges, Program Monasteries and Data Cathedrals. Inside the net is mostly the digital construct of the church data fortress and its outlying structures, but CyberHeaven, CyberPurgatory and CyberHell all exist there as well (along with the remains of the original cyberworld reality). As in Count Zero, there are cyber entities that are not accounted for by the CyberPope, like demons and the Great Beast.

Grant Goleash, Rick Harris and Allen Nunis are the interior artists. They all contribute to the vibe (though Nunis always reads as Star Wars-y to me). I think Goleash is my favorite, because he sort of apes the gritty look established by Tim Bradstreet in the main sourcebook. Alan Hashimoto did the cover; it could be more ridiculous.

The cough quit! My neighborhood is still full of snowcrete and another stretch of single-digit temperatures is incoming, but progress is being made. 

I still don't have much of interest to talk about though. Well, I have one thing, but I am not allowed to talk about that yet. Read The Undying Beast, one of two foundational werewolf novels (the other, The Werewolf of Paris, sounds dreadful and will not be in my to-read pile any time soon). Beast is pretty wild, as it is unmoored from our modern, standardized werewolf and also unconventionally written in general. It's one of, if not the, first instance of an occult detective who is a woman, which is an additional bit of notability. And there's a Hand of Glory, which is always welcome.

I'm now reading Cold Harbour, one of the novels I learned about in Mark Valentine's A Country Still All Mystery. I've no idea what's going on yet, but the dreamy atmosphere is delicious. There's a seemingly nefarious amateur archaeologist, a menacing house, Roman ruins, maybe some supernatural mind control? So far, so good.

Oh, and I started reading The Hobbit to the kiddo. It's very suited to reading aloud and I'm a bit surprised how delightful it is. I haven't read it since high school, and a good deal of Lord of the Rings lies between here and there and I must say I prefer Tolkien's energetic storyteller voice over his elegiac one.