"And in fact, Ali’s proposal was itself quite unemotional."

October 29, 2024 7:51 AM

"Something arcane is afoot at Queen’s College Cambridge! Possibly it’s the prestigious conference, with visitors from around the country. Or it could be the 450-year-old monarch, waiting in the dim chapel for someone to listen to her. A novella-length meander into Dark Academia." writes E. Saxey of their fantasy novella "On the English Approach to the Study of History", published last year. "I like the juxtaposition: on the top, petty academic squabbles and bad conference catering; underneath, ancient things, growing monstrous."

There's a moment in this story where a historian says, of another historian's work, "I'll keep it brief, and just draw out a few of the worst exaggerations, underestimates and misreadings." and I reacted out loud while reading.

And -- content note for the destruction of books and libraries -- Saxey's story includes John Dee, whom they also discuss (as "polymath colonialist wizard") in a 2016 blog post, "More great libraries, their downfalls".

posted by brainwane (9 comments total)

On Bluesky, Saxey writes,

The origin of this novella was probably a 'your mum' joke ('your mum's so old that in History class they just wrote down what they did').
I reasoned: what if Queen Elizabeth was being kept indefinitely alive, and History scholarship was just writing down what she did?
The muse is very fickle.

posted by brainwane at 7:58 AM on October 29 [2 favorites]

For those who bothered tracking down the story to buy it, it is actually the link in the description. I assumed it was some kind of critical review and only previewed the link. Bravo for including the actual story in the post!

I did find a short story collection which I purchased. It looks promising.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:19 AM on October 29

It’s usually “Queens’ College”, with the apostrophe at the end, supposedly in recognition of the fact that two queens were involved. But it’s not actually that simple…
posted by Phanx at 10:14 AM on October 29

Phanx: Oooh, interesting link, thanks.

For those who haven't yet read "On the English Approach to the Study of History": The fact that the alternate universe setting is Queen's (singular) College, rather than Queens', is in fact relevant to the plot of this story!
posted by brainwane at 10:29 AM on October 29

It's Cambridge so why are there quads?

Nit-pick aside, I enjoyed this!
posted by Tapioca at 11:15 AM on October 29 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed the way They are gradually introduced in the story, going from "terrible hidden secret" to "faintly embarrassing fact" and back to scary (but still embarrassing).

There must be other, safer ways to get eyewitness accounts, like consulting past lives. I hope they don't fall out of favor in academia just because of this dust-up.
posted by dustletter at 11:44 AM on October 29 [2 favorites]

This looks wonderful. Thank you.
posted by marxchivist at 12:11 PM on October 29 [1 favorite]

That was an awesome story! And, as an academic, a bit too real.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:32 AM on October 31 [1 favorite]

More of E.Saxey's take on the weird can be found in the short story collection mentioned above (physical, Kindle), and their first novel, Unquiet (Kindle edition, but other suppliers are available, and it was also published physically).

I'm not very up on the shifting trends of genre fiction, but I saw Saxey talking at WorldCon this year about dark academia and folk horror, and their work seems to move around and outside those genres... (for WorldCon members only AFAIK, there's a video of a Folk Horror panel featuring an ivy-covered Saxey and Nebula winning novella-writer Premee Mohamed, among others).
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:50 AM on November 3 [2 favorites]