How can I learn more?

Further Reading and Watching

In trying to understand Hellsborough and The Dark Peak, I read and watch a lot of things: Books, articles, films, documentaries, blog posts, newsletters. Sometimes, you get an “Oh yeah!” moment, when things eventually, finally – fall into place.

Here are some links that have helped in my research. Where possible, I have provided links to freely available material. Where not, or where the format demands it, I’ve used affiliate links. Rather than group titles by genre, I have chosen to categorise them by topics relevant to Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.

Culture in Hellsborough

Motorman, David Ohle
Disturbing and unsettling glimpses into an improbable world, where omniscience, queer weather, synthetic jellyheads, bug eating and multiple organ implants are the everyday – a familiar tune to Hellsborough. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

1984, George Orwell
Winston Smith was a diary writer too. His insights into his circumstances have been insightful when considering dystopian aspects of The Dark Peak District Council (DPDC), exacids and The Nascenti. Available from Planet eBooks in PDF, ePUB, MOBI, or as a Paperback here, or on CD

Erewhon, Samuel Butler
A distant mountain range and an entirely new civilisation, where the author explores the culture, describing as best he can thoughts on birth, death, machines, food and money. Available from Standard eBooks in ePUB and for Kindle or Kobo, or as a Paperback here

The Violent Century, Lavie Tidhar
A slightly alternate world set during the cold war, full of The Murk and strange powers. Available from Amazon on Kindle.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning combine to bring about profound societal changes; similar to Hellsborough, and insightful. Available from Faded Page as an ePUB, Mobi or PDF, or as a Paperback here, or as an Audiobook

Fungal AI, the organic network, the hive mind, the humidity plant and psycmasks

How to Speak Machine, John Maeda
AI learns from past data, and can only perpetuate and amplify previous behaviour, or in other words, if AI’s masters are bad, AI will be too. Available from Amazon on Kindle (other versions are available, eg. Paperback, but they don’t feel like very good value)

Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake
Fungi allowed plants to colonise the Earth, and all life grew from these fascinating and intoxicating extremophiles: “The divine within”. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback, or as an Audiobook

Evolve, Patrick Aryee
A deep dive into the world of biomimicry – unique adaptations in the animal world that solve problems and help to explain some of the technological developments in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak. Available on Amazon Prime Video

Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
An amalgam of slogans, bits of conversation, advertising text, slices of songs, extracts from newspapers and general cultural detritus – an insight into the world of the hive mind and wearing a psycmask. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

Evolution, extinction and the Denizens of the Hex

Of Ants and Dinosaurs, Cixin Liu
Observations of ant technology developed during the Cretaceous has been fundamental of my understanding of the technology of vehicles in Hellsborough, and the evolution of the world and species equally so. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback, or as an Audiobook

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert
There have been five mass extinctions of life on earth over the last 500 million years. As well as predicting that we are currently in the sixth, this book explores some fascinating evolutionary topics. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

Ancient Aliens
Prepare to go down the rabbit hole. According to this series, aliens have been visiting the Earth for millions of years. It has certainly helped me understand Milting. Judge for yourself. Available on Amazon Prime Video

Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future, Olaf Stapledon
A far reaching account of the evolution of humakind over the millennia: Two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which we are the first and most primitive. Available from FeedBooks as an ePUB, or as a Paperback here

Environment of The Dark Peak

A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burrows
The Barsoom series has been instrumental in my understanding of the world of The Dark Peak – from an environmental point of view, as well as that of the denizens – there are certain similarities which have helped me enormously. Available from Project Gutenberg in various formats

Prospect
Analogue technology, poisonous spores in the atmosphere and a treasure trove of wealth known as The Queen’s Lair; this film breaths The Dark Peak. Available on Amazon Prime Video

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
Maybe Valentine Michael Smith was a little like me, I think maybe has was. Whatever, this book has always helped me to grok the environment. Note that this is the unabridged version, the original release cut about a third of the content. Try and pick up the original version from a charity shop, or available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
Rather than the story itself, it is realising that the geographical and technical detail of the red planet makes it the primary character – much like The Dark Peak is the primary character in this world. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The Hinge and the illimitable cleavage

Reality Is Not What It Seems The Journey to Quantum Gravity, Carlo Rovelli
I’ll have to admit that my knowledge of physics is woefully inadequate, quantum physics in particular – and quantum gravity, I hadn’t ever heard of, yet this book helped with explaining the mechanisms underlying the illimitable cleavage. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The City & The City, China Mieville
Neighbouring cities occupying the same geographical space, unseeable and reachable only via political visa, International airspace, or breach. Beszel and Ul Qoma, as different and related as Hillsborough and Hellsborough. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback, or as an Audiobook

Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson
The metaverse and a mind infecting neuro-linguistic virus could put this book in the fungal AI section above, but for me it was the realisation that the nam-shub of Enki was an ancient artefact not so dissimilar to the semagram of Milting. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback, or as an Audiobook

Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
The title short story of this anthology really helped me understand what the semagrams of Milting were, and indeed it is from that story that I purloined the name semagram – an ancient method of communication and linguistics. The story was also made into the film Arrival. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The Netherlands

A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
Substance D causes irreversible brain damage, which helped me understand the power and sway that rockcrust has in The Dark Peak. PKD has always been a favourite author of mine, and his story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was adapted to become the seminal classic film Bladerunner – both of which help me relate to the crosslands and the clowns. His story Second Variety (available as a free ebook from Project Gutenberg) is also something that always lurks at the back of my mind and helps inform me of some of the stranger things that happen here or hereabouts. A Scanner Darkly is available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Nadsat is not the language of the Netherlanders, but their language is different to yours (most of what your read from me is translated), but that aside, the general feel of the novel isn’t dissimilar to what you feel if you visit the crosslands. Like the film Propect, this book could appear in multiple categories, especially the culture of Hellsborough. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
In the crosslands, the leader of the Moors clan is a gnarly individual that goes by the name of Scarp Southey – When I read this novel, the protagonist Gully Foyle, pretty much a disgusting savage, made me think of Scarp. Available from Amazon on Kindle, or as a Paperback

The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The earth is covered with ash, it clogs the rivers and hides the sun. It is difficult to breathe and often impossible to see. Nights are dark beyond darkness and the days more gray then the one that came before. Available from Amazon on Kindle, as a Paperback, or as a film of the same name

The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, Bruce Sterling
Early cyberspace (as it’s now known) during one of the fastest technological transformations in human history, a peek into the parallel world of the crosslanders. Available from Project Gutenberg in various formats, or as a Paperback here

Prospect
I have already mentioned Prospect, but the analogue technology used in the film has very definite parallels devices I have seen out in the Nether lands, and the general feel of the film is almost like being there. Available on Amazon Prime Video

The Peripheral, William Gibson
Like the end of chapter 5 of this curated guide – Part 2 - the inconceivable – this final insight into my understanding of the world of Hellsborough and The Dark Peak is, indeed, inconceivable. The Nether lands are poor, desperate and struggling, yet advanced technology is evident – this title (both the book and the dramatisation) have helped me understand the relationship of the crosslands with the fungai. Available from Amazon on Kindle, as a Paperback, Audiobook, or as a dramatised serialisation on Amazon Prime