The Origins of the Yule Dreadful

I love history and find the history of popular media tells us much more about the daily lives of the people than historians have given credit. Popular media such as pulps and their predecessors, music styles, cheap ticket items like the sideshow, movie serials, comics, and newspapers of the less-than-journalistic styles.

The page is selling blank notebooks on an old Dime Novel format - of mixed value to me. But the little movie is outstanding and worth watching.

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A while back the concept of printing on the lost colony came to mind, particularly in how it would affect the distribution of scientific and historical information. It seemed clear that Thriddle would have produced multiple copies of some documents, probably by the same scriptorium process as used by monks and copyists of the middle to early industrial age. It was my thought that the record of printing processes would have come to light in the libraries found in cryo-bins, and given time for experimentation, would have evolved into a popular medium. A medium that would have been looked down upon by scholars and other arrogants.

Printing would be a problem because Jorune is a metal-poor world. The Gift would have delivered large quantities of iron and nickel, but primarily to a tiny part of the population. Exploration of crater beds might deliver metric tons of metal, but it would still be minor.

Jorune is rich in silica and a friend's obsession with pottery made some alternatives possible. Such as replaceable type from handset wooden letterforms, which could be assembled and then cast with a fine grain clay slurry for a ceramic master, which could then be used to make a number of duplicate plates from the masters to create press pieces to print on paper (or what passes for paper). It would be cheaper to ship these plates to presses around the planet for a local publication system, rather than ship thousands of copies of the printed final product. Probably shipping duplicate sets to allow for breakage in transit.

"Publishers" would by sets of plates from the central publications office and be free to print as many copies as their local industry would require. In a world where a hand-copied book would run into the thousands of dollars (seriously), a cheaply printed, a disposable medium would find many buyers at the cost of a week's wages, and even more, if it meant the price of a skipped meal here and there.

Thriddle would have found the rectangular paper sizes bizarre and started with a standard, Jorune-meter square page that folded down to a number of recognizable sizes, as did our early print history. Pages were sized as full folio (folded in half for 4 pages), quarto (folded into 4 panels, 8 pages),  Octavo (folded again to create 16 pages), and again for the standard 32 page "signature". In the transition between 19th and 20th Centuries, signatures were combined for early publication standards of 64- and 128-page familiar comics and pulps. As inflation set in in the mid 20th Century page counts were reduced to 52, 48, 36, 32, and fewer pages to keep the 10¢ price, but that eventually gave way to the 12¢, 25¢ and current $4 ($3.99) 24-page comic that cannot be found on newsstands, because we don't have newsstands.

I place the publishing industry on Jorune at US-depression era levels. The same standards are observed, with the dreadful "book" at the smallest standard size, and the Annal at the far end, for scholarly documentation, but a center spread that opens to a full sheet page, usually for detailed diagrams or illustrations.

The smaller sizes are ideal for shipping with large standardized libraries at "Thriddle Centers" around the planet and individual subscriptions to Annals and Journals available through private subscription, delivered. That opens the door for "Couriers" who deliver said subscriptions, however long it takes. A backpack with six volumes, for six subscribers, can become a standard "courier-pack" for delivery to up to six subscribers. For gameplay, it becomes an obvious ploy for adventurers to trade their tote-n-carry labors for passage, food, and shelter to visit other points on the planet and to possibly have an adventure. Or six. Their deliveries could be targeted to wealthy subscribers, or Thriddle centers, or eccentric readers with the means to buy a book.

Cheap literature through "books" would be written by hacks, drawn by second raters, and treasured by generations of boys and girls who grew up to share their childhood favorites with their own children. Within 30 years you have the beginnings of a fanatic following for the popular trash of their youth. Fans of Jorune. Or Sho-Caudal.

Just like we have done on Earth. Or Terra.

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This is how I do development for Jorune or any other world. I'm not one to say "oooh, it would so cool to have dog men and cat men..." I want to define the purpose of such genetic manipulations, how it was accomplished, and then follow it through, keeping the characteristics the originators intended. I have never been a fan of the multi-race worlds unless there was a reason for one race not eliminating the others. Most human-dwarf-elf worlders don't even think in those terms. It is why I don't like most fantasy rip-off worlds for gameplay. The idea there was a reason for multiple races, mutations within those races, and intentional manipulations, satisfied that desire to follow an internal logic.

I then like going further to explain why it was not just one human scientist doing genetic tinkering - the Shantha did their own tinkering to improve compatibility with Sho-Caudal. And they got it wrong in the beginning.

Other people don't like that. Then write and publish your own fan-based material. Until there is a license, we have no Orthodoxy and variance is not only allowed, it is encouraged.

That's why I'm no fun. Most people want the One Truth, to be RIGHT, and everyone else is WRONG!

I run with the heretics.

Hmm. I guess this will become an article in SEGMENT: SHO-CAUDAL. Maybe a whole issue dedicated to my background logic in Jorune development.

It would fill up some pages.