A Page from a Bestiary

Something quick and dirty from the upcoming novel (which, as I’m constantly reminding you, is entitled Silent Sorrow and is being published mid next year by IFWG). It’s a page from an illustrated bestiary one of my protagonists stole from a library.

What’s odd about it is that the animal being illustrated seems to have… faded. Remembering that all the maps and diagrams from this novel are artefacts of the world, and all carry part of the plot, I can’t say any more than that. Suffice it to say that this is not the only time scientists trying to describe this elusive beast have come up with a blank.

I wanted this to be hard to read, and I think I succeeded. The font is intended be forbidding, as this knowledge, according to the author, is not for everyone. Academics are by no means immune from playing these sorts of games. I’ve read plenty of academic articles where it seems the arguments have been couched in terms designed to admit only the worthy – and, by doing so, place their concepts out of reach of the uninitiated. Some will remember the Sokal controversy of the late 1990s, a rather unfair dig at deconstructivism. I’m trying to say something about what happens to science, and particularly the communication of science, in an inevitably politicised world. (It turns out we’ve met the author of this article earlier in the novel.)

I drew an earlier version of this with the beast visible, and it was much less effective. “Hide the monster as long as you can” is still good advice!