by Rod Rees
Portals: Places where Daemons can move into and out of the Demi-Monde.
Preferred Male: A Coven term for the nonFemme a Femme allows to accompany her and to provide her with physical services and comforts.
Pre-Folk: The semi-mythical race of godlings who ruled over the Demi-Monde before the Confinement and who were brought low by the sexual connivings of the Seidr-witch Lilith. The demise of the Pre-Folk is known in Demi-Mondian mythology as “the Fall.” UnFunDaMentalism teaches that the Pre-Folk were the purest expression of the Aryan race.
PreScience: A Venetian school of philosophy dedicated to the study of (and the making of) prophecies and 4Tellings, especially in the areas of economics and finance. The greatest of all PreScientists are Professeur Michel de Nostredame and Docteur Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff of the Future History Institute, Venice. A corrupted remembrance of the Real World word “prescience.”
PsyChick: A female assistant to a medium or other psychic.
RaTionalism: An avowedly and uncompromisingly atheistic creed developed by the renegade Rodina thinker and ardent Royalist Karl Marx, which strives by a process of Dialectic ImMaterialism to secure logical explanations regarding the Three Great Dilemmas. RaTionalism denies all supernatural interpretations with respect to the Three Great Dilemmas and does not acknowledge any input that cannot be verified by the five senses.
Ratties: The slang name for RaTionalists.
reBop: The argot prevalent within NoirVille, most widely used by enthusiasts of jad music.
Red Gold: A slang name for blood.
RightNix: The youth wing of the ForthRight.
Royalism: The belief that leaders of Sectors are chosen/anointed by ABBA through the principle of the Divine Right of Kings.
Seidr: The ancient magic of the Vanir and of Lilith.
Shades: The slang term for NoirVillians.
SisterHood: The women who dedicate themselves body and soul to the creed of UnFunDaMentalism.
Solidified Astral Ether: The substance which makes up the soft tissue of all Demi-Mondians.
Solution: A cocktail of vodka and soda with one or more shots of blood. Usually available in 5 percent, 10 percent and 20 percent strengths of blood.
SS: Soldiers of Spiritualism, the military wing of the Church of the Doctrine of UnFunDaMentalism.
steamers: Steam-powered vehicles popular in the Demi-Monde.
Suffer-O-Gettism: A contraction of Make-Men-Suffer-O-Gettism. The militant/terrorist wing of the HerEticalism movement, Suffer-O-Gettism is dedicated to the use of violence and intimidation to achieve Femme supremacy and the subjugation/extermination of nonFemmes and the ushering in of MostBien. The leader of the Suffer-O-Gette movement is Jeanne Dark.
Terror Incognita: The area extending in a radius of four miles around Mare Incognitum and bounded by the Wheel River. A totally unexplored region of the Demi-Monde. No explorer venturing into Terror Incognita has ever returned. A corrupted remembrance of the Real World phrase “terra incognita.”
ThawsDay: The 60th day of Spring when the nanoBites wake from their Winter hibernation. After ThawsDay only the most desperate or the most stupid of Demi-Mondians venture into the Hub.
Three Great Dilemmas, the: The philosophical and religious arguments relating to the Creation, the Confinement and the Purpose of the Demi-Monde.
Troubles, the: The two-year-long civil war in Rodina and the Rookeries during which Reinhard Heydrich (aided and abetted by Lavrentii Beria) overthrew Henry Tudor and Ivan Grozny. Heydrich subsequently merged the two Sectors as the ForthRight, uniting them under the single religion of UnFunDaMentalism.
UnderMentionables: A catchall term for all those considered by UnFunDaMentalism to be racially inferior and hence subhuman (including, inter alia, nuJus, Poles, Shades, HerEticals, Suffer-O-Gettes, HimPerialists, RaTionalists, those of a sexually deviant disposition and those deemed to be genetically flawed). A corrupted remembrance of the Real World word “Untermensch.”
UnFunDaMentalism: UnFunDaMentalism is an array of political, racial, metaPhysical, sexual and social ideas and philosophies relating to the purification of the Demi-Mondian race, the triumph of the Aryan people and the rehabilitation of the semi-mythological Pre-Folk. Adopted as the state religion of the ForthRight, the ultimate aim of UnFunDaMentalism is, by a process of selective breeding and measured culling, to eliminate the contamination of the UnderMentionable races from the Demi-Monde’s Aryan stock (Aryans are generally considered to be the Anglo-Slavic races) and by doing so to return the Aryan people to the racial perfection they possessed before their ancestors—the Pre-Folk—fell from ABBA’s Grace. UnFunDaMentalism preaches that its followers espouse Living&More, or life reform, which involves clean living, vegetarianism and homeopathy and an abstention from alcohol, excessive blood consumption, tobacco and recreational sex.
UnFunnies: The slang name for UnFunDaMentalists.
Valknut: The emblem of the ForthRight, comprising three interlocking triangles.
Vanir: The WhoDoo name for the Pre-Folk.
WhoDlum: The terrorist wing of the WhoDoo sect dedicated to the use of violence and intimidation to achieve the chaos and anarchy necessary for the WhoDoo devils—the baka—to thrive in the Demi-Monde.
WhoDoo: The cult religion of NoirVille based on a distorted remembrance of Seidr.
woeMen: The NoirVillian term for women.
zadnik: Demi-Mondian slang for a male homosexual and, more generally, for a NoirVillian male. The word is derived from the Russian “zad,” meaning “arse.”
About the Author
ROD REES has spent his life traveling throughout Africa, the Middle East, Bangladesh and Russia, and consequently found himself living in Qatar, Tehran and Moscow. He has built pharmaceutical factories in Dhaka, set up a satellite communication network in Moscow and conceived and designed a jazz-themed hotel in the U.K. Now a full-time writer, he lives near Derby, England, with his wife, Nelli, and their two children.
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Credits
COVER DESIGN BY JAMES IACOBELLI
MAPS DESIGNED BY NIGEL ROBINSON
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Quercus Books, London.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE DEMI-MONDE: WINTER. Copyright © 2010, 2012 by Rod Rees. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rees, Rod.
The demi-monde : winter / Rod Rees. — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-207034-0
1. Virtual reality—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6118.E57D46 2011
823'.92—dc22
2011005754
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12 13 14 15 16 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Epub Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062070357
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