Applied Ballardianism by Simon Sellars

Author:Simon Sellars [Sellars, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780995455092
Publisher: Urbanomic Media Ltd
Published: 2018-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

58

Connected to Machinery

From 1100 to 1628, Nan Madol was the capital of the Saudeleur Dynasty, a permanent home to royalty, political figures and priests. The ancient city, spanning a hundred artificial islets, was a complete world, a labyrinthine micronation divided into residential, food, construction and mortuary sectors. The latter, a ‘corpse city’ within the complex, covers fifty-eight islets, over half of Nan Madol’s territory. It is an area of occult resonance filled with burial tombs, including one that supposedly caused the death of a German governor in 1907 after he excavated its remains and fell foul of an ancient curse. The malodorous, sub-aquatic presence of this ancient charnel house bewitched Lovecraft, the mortuary’s powerful superreality informing R’lyeh’s baleful coordinates in time and space: ‘The nightmare corpse-city was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults.’

‘Nan Madol’ means ‘the spaces between’, referring to the canals that link the islets, and the translation signalled to me like a beacon, given that ever since my Ballardian reawakening in the Netherlands I had desired nothing more than to disappear into liminal space. When I arrived in Kolonia, the Pohnpeian capital, I hired a guide to take me to Nan Madol. His name was Arthur. He was gruff, bearded and wore filthy blue overalls, an expatriate Australian of all nationalities, originally from the outback town of Broome, and as we clambered aboard his boat he related a local legend: Nan Madol is the inverted mirror image of a long-submerged sister city, itself part of the lost continent of Lemuria.

‘Nan Madol is filled with secrets,’ he said.

A pause.

‘You’re Australian.’

‘Yes. From Melbourne.’

He glanced at my open bag. The Lovecraft anthology was visible.

‘Lovecraft is connected to Melbourne.’

‘How?’

‘In 1910, Harry Houdini flew the first powered flight in Australia. At Diggers Rest.’

‘Yes, I know. Just outside Melbourne.’

He stared at me, a nasty glint in his eyes, like a prison guard annoyed at an inmate speaking out of turn and plotting the appropriate punishment.

‘Fourteen years later, Lovecraft ghostwrites a story for Houdini called “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs”. You know it?’

‘No.’

‘Houdini’s the main character. He’s on holiday in Cairo, but he gets kidnapped and thrown into a huge pit.’

‘By who?’

‘Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. Look, don’t interrupt me again, you got that?’

I studied his face, trying to ascertain whether he was serious, but he stared me down, his features impenetrable.

‘Down below, in the pit, he gets lost in a maze of tunnels, which turn out to be under the Sphinx. He stumbles around the maze, falls into a ceremonial chamber, and in the chamber he sees a pack of freaky creatures—half-man, half-beast. The freaks are worshipping some kind of monster with hundreds of tentacles, and they’re being told what to do by two pharaohs. They’re in a trance so they don’t notice Houdini, but he’s not about to hang around and be invited in for tea, right? So Houdini does what Houdini does best: he escapes.

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