Other Nations

OTHER NATIONS is brilliant. I found it compelling. The ideas are great, the characters are alive and real, and there is a lot of dignity in the tale.  You've blended the ideas, human qualities and relationships perfectly. Apart from loving it subjectively, I think it's an important, relevant work, important to the here and now.

--David Kelso-Mitchell, Oneiros Books

Bravo!.. There was some really weird stuff in there that could not have been anticipated.  The miracle is that it all works together.  I cannot see any reader not liking this novel.

--Edward P. Berglund, The Disciples of Cthulhu II

Turning the old Mythos tropes upside-down, OTHER NATIONS gives us a glimpse into a world that gave Lovecraft nightmares.

--Daniel Harms Encyclopedia Cthulhiana

OTHER NATIONS is my favorite mainstream novel.  It combines human drama that touches on very deep themes and offers glimpses of utterly alien beings and civilizations that walk unrecognized amidst humankind in modern society.  Elements of Romance, Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction are intertwined in an enchanting and intricate tale that is told from many perspectives.

--DC Chandler

One of the best mythos novels I've read in aeons.

-- Marc Zender, University of Calgary

T. MARSH is from New Jersey and now lives in Florida.

In the 1950's, as a child, she was fascinated by oceanic life and lore.  This was due to learning about the ocean's creatures, children's shows like Diver Dan, ancient mythology told as stories for children and hearing some of Matthew Arnold's sea poems shortened and put to song.  She wrote and played the music for a song, Unda, the Bride of the Sea before ever knowing who wrote the poem.

In the early 1960's, she read a key statement by Henry Beston in The Outermost House that set in stone the idea of "Other Nations."

In the Dark Shadows era 1960's, these ideas, combining fact and ancient oceanic lore, merged with folklore she was very familiar with involving Cthonic beings of mythology such as Medusa, and night-beings such as the Turko-Tatar Uber (sorcerer), the Slavic Upir (vampire) and the Italian Ubbia  (worm idolatry).  She was familiar with mythemes about pre-human and pre-historic human civilizations or "world ages" from her culture.

During the post-Star Trek early 1970's, she discovered Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Out of Time, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.  Later she read The Trail of Cthulhu by August Derleth.  These offered a tailor-made, ancient alien backdrop that fit in perfectly with her ideas.  It was alien and technological, not supernatural or magical.  It was also not value-laden.

From these ideas combined, she fashioned the broader Oceanic, Cthonic and Alien "Other Nations" concept for the creatures she invented, and for some of the creatures others wrote of that were present in standard mythology and folklore.  The idea that they share this world with us and were always here with us was now presentable in a more naturally alien manner, instead of in a supernatural or magical way.

She has written stories that appeared in fanzines under other names, among them, Mels T. Gonzalo, Malek Said Homien, Phyllis Rose, Melanie Shepherd, Shimmera Dankledeep, A. D'Fender, Eric Adrian Poe, Lasonya Nella Faccia, and Ada Marsh.  She has also authored and co-authored non-fictional essays.  She is the editor, distributor and principal illustrator of the chapbook fanzine Cthulhu Cultus.  She is also the artist and composer of most of the musical selections on the "Mythos Music" audiotape and CD. 

P. MARSH is from New Jersey and now lives in Florida.

He entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on a full science scholarship and graduated from Rutgers University a Phi Beta Kappa "with highest distinction in philosophy."  He has written a number of stories and scholarly articles including R'lyehian as a Toy Language, which presents a thesis that R'lyehian is a creolized (toy) language.  He is the only author to have compiled an analytical lexicon of R'lyehian words. 

He was thoroughly familiar with Classical Mythology and was introduced to the stories of H. P. Lovecraft in the 1970's.  He liked the science fiction aspect of these tales best. 

The couple has been together since 1974. 

Brian Hill had fifteen minutes left on his lunch break.  He continued to read from his old copy of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, "By the Ocean of Time," as he sipped the remainder of his coffee.

"...The schoolmen of the Middle Ages would have it that time is an illusion; that its flow in sequence and causality is only the result of a sensory device, and the real existence of things is in an abiding present..."

He thought of his abiding present, his dreary, monotonous present, and realized that there wasn't much worth thinking about.  He sighed and ran his hand through his light brown hair.  What was there for him?  What had there been?  The job?  Nightlife? 

All of it amounted to a blur of cold, gray shades in a dull life; gray like the color of his soulful eyes.  These weren't strongly thought-out conclusions; they were more a mood that hit him as he stared at the wall in hazy contemplation.  He read further. 

"...Was he walking by the sea, the philosopher to whom this thought first came, walking by the sea, with the faint bitterness of eternity upon his lips?..."

His thoughts drifted back in time to his mother.  She had given him this book as a gift when he was a child of seven.  They had walked by the sea that day, so long ago, and it was anything but bitter.  The memory filled his mind, clouding over all other thoughts.

"...The surf is seething; wave after wave, with high, hollow sound, rears up, rebounds, and runs with a silken rustle out over the flat strand: here one, there one, and more beyond, out on the bar.  The dull, pervasive, sonorous roar closes our ears against all the sounds of the world.  O deep content, O wilful bliss of sheer forgetfulness!  Let us shut our eyes, safe in eternity!..."

Vivid memories of that day continued to pour in, intruding on his ability to read the words before him.  She had taken him to see Virginia Beach. 

There, he had seen the ocean for the first time; the surf was seething and the waves were a wonder to behold.  The sound of it had, indeed, closed his ears to the rest of the world.  It had been a moment of bliss.

He thought, "This planet should be named 'Ocean,' not 'Earth.'" 

That day had been the first and last time he had gone to the beach, or into the ocean. 

He wondered, "What happened?  When did things go wrong?  Why did my mother..."  He purged the thought and continued reading for the few minutes remaining on his lunch break. 

"...O ocean, far from thee we sit and spin our tale; we turn toward thee our thoughts, our love, loud and expressly we call on thee, that thou mayest be present in the tale we spin, as in secret thou ever wast and shalt be!" 

He closed the book.  For a moment, he was lost in the strangeness of the words.  Mentally, he was no longer in the lunchroom but back at that spot on Virginia Beach where she had given him the book.  Things were in vibrant color then, and his young life was filled with joy and hope. 

He read these words before but still, their meaning remained deep and elusive.  The memory of the Eternal Ocean, for that had been his childhood view of it, made him feel a deep sadness.  What tale did Brian have to present?  All had gone gray and stagnant after his mother...

"Brian!  Brian!  Brian, you have a phone call; it's important."

The sound of the secretary's voice woke him from his reverie.