Noreen
Doyle
Egyptology
Nautical Archaeology
Fiction
| |
Noreen
Doyle
Egyptology
Nautical Archaeology
Fiction
|
| Home |
 Hyperpyrus (the blog) |
Scholarship Scholarly Publications |
Nonfiction Nonfiction for Kids |
Photography (coming soon!) |
| FICTION About My Fiction Stories in Print Anthologies |
Reviews &
Remarks Although she has written intriguingly about the pleasures of marine archeology, Noreen Doyle has published only two stories. But each one ("The Chapter of Bringing A Boat Into Heaven" and "The Dovecote" -- note that even the titles are inviting) has been so well-written, intelligent, and -- how do I put this? -- imaginatively fizzy that Noreen Doyle, before she has even qualified for active membership of SFWA, has made herself a Young Writer to Watch. (She's pretty good to read, too.) --
Gregory Feeley, 1997
|
||||||
 The Rope: a new tale of the Antique Lands Fantasy short story Realms of Fantasy April 2007 illustrated by Paul Lee Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008 Edition edited by Rich Horton Prime Books, 2008; Cosmos, 2008 Amazon (Prime) Amazon (Cosmos pre-order) Barnes & Noble (pre-order) A blind old man, a rope, a young woman in need of employment, and something more than these. The rope was braided out of common halfa-grass, as many ropes are in the Antique Lands. It trailed from a low and broad basket, made of doum-palm fibers but unworthy of further remark. Some length of the rope lay coiled beside this basket. The other end of the rope, which had to be thought of as the far end, stood at present some fifteen yards distant. And this, as will be seen, was worthy of remark indeed. The rope had been displayed in the Lower Ópetian port town of Noofr for five days now. Late each morning the blind old man who owned the basket set it in a broad sort of plaza that periodically filled up with tradesmen and merchants, forming near the ice manufactory an ephemeral sooq of goats, bitumen, fish, rice, and other regional produce. This place was more than broad enough for the rope to have been laid straight out in any direction without touching the wall of the native town, or that of the manufactory, had its owner chosen to do so. The old man, whom the people of Noofr came to call the little khedeev (that is, the little "ruler of Ópet"), chose not to do this. The effect of this location, likely unintended by the old man, was also to keep the rope some distance from any building whose roof or window might have facilitated a closer inspection of the far end. The residents and visitors to the sooq were much inclinded to attempt this, because from its coil beside the basket the rope rose straight into the air. And there was no yardarm or balloon tethered anywhere along its length. |
The
first--and not last--story in the milieu of the Antique Lands. Selected to appear in Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books) Honorable mention --Gardner
Dozois, The Year's
Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection Honorable mention & cited by Ellen Datlow as one of "the best darker stories" appearing in Realms of Fantasy in 2007 --Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link
& Gavin J. Grant, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008: 21st Annual Collection 2007 Recommended Reading List --Dave Trusedale, Black Gate, March 2008
"... very fine work. [...] Doyle unspools her story carefully, leading to a very neat and spooky revelation..." --Rich
Horton, Locus,
April 2007
"This will appeal to those looking for an erudite tale." "... this inward-revolving tale [...] shows the beauty, hope, and terror of reaching for one's dreams..." One of Jason Sanford's stories of the week for 22 February 2007 |
||||||
 Ankhtifi the Brave is dying. Historical fantasy novelette The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age edited by Harry Turtledove and Noreen Doyle Tor Books 2004 Amazon As his tomb nears completion and a long-lying mantle of drought drapes across the banks of the Nile, Ankhtifi, Lord of Nekhen and Edfu, reflects upon his faithful service to the king who has through the years regularly visited him in the form of a falcon. Yet he is not an old man. He can hold his back straight. He does not lean so very much upon his long staff. The two loaves of khenemet-bread and the foreleg of a calf he carries in a finely woven basket do not cramp his arms. It is, he supposes, the wounds of campaigns festering invisibly beneath his skin. They have violated his body, pierced his shadow, created windows through which his ba-soul would fly, as he has defended his King. Or perhaps it is the scarcity of bread, the thinness of cattle and fowl, the filth in the water. In time, he allows his fluttering ba, in time. Not yet. It is dawn, not dusk. The sun mounts the eastern horizon, over the steep cliffs toward which he walks on a path carefully beaten down and clean, on which oxen will someday drag a sledge and his coffin from the town of Hefat. Unlike other lords in other districts, he keeps no sunshade-bearer to follow him: now that man sits at the door of Idy's house, giving out grain to the needy, of which there are so many in these days. Ankhtifi himself shades Hefat. Does the mountain that shades the city need a fan of ostrich feathers held over its peak? Only falcon wings shade his head, great ones, perfumed. |
A
powerful provincial governor, the historical Ankhtifi lived and died
sometime during the First Intermediate Period, when Egypt's loyalties
were divided between rulers at Herakleopolis and at Thebes. His tomb,
near the modern town of el-Moalla (and which is being reexamined by a
team from the University of Liverpool), contains a single mention of a
Herakleopolitan king called Neferkare, of whom there were several
between the Old and Middle Kingdoms. (These pharaohs apparently named
themselves after Neferkare Pepy II of the Sixth Dynasty.) Ankhtifi's
remarkable autobiography serves as the skeleton for the plot. A number
of historical coincidences -- with more than a little fantasy and
speculative interpretation -- flesh out the tale of this warrior
approaching the end of his life. Visit the home page of
the critically-acclaimed anthology
THE FIRST HEROES New Tales of the Bronze Age "an extraordinary portrait of ambition and loss... It's rare to find the atmosphere of a past era evoked with such compulsive (and entirely apposite) perversity." One of the recommended stories for the month -- Nick
Gevers, Locus,
May 2004
"One of the best-written stories.... I don't think anyone who was not thoroughly immersed in Egyptian history could have written this story, with its stunning detail and easy handling of ancient Egyptian words, names, concepts, but it takes an exceptional talent to convey such knowledge with grace and clarity, resisting the impulse to deaden the story with far too much scholarship..." "The editors contribute personally to the overall quality [...], Doyle with 'Ankhtifi the Brave Is Dying....' [...] Kudos to a book to which lovers of historical fiction, fantastic and not, should be directed." "High points include... Doyle's" --Paula
Guran, DarkEcho
"You missed the best short story, Noreen Doyle's "Ankhfiti the Brave is Dying," FIRST HEROES. --Anonymous
comment posted
on the 2005 Locus Magazine
Poll, which did not include "Ankhtifi
the Brave is dying."
|
||||||
  
Tomorrow, this captain tells me, we will be in Thebes, at the Great Prison. The vizier himself will want to see me. The vizier! My lord, who sent me south to Djer-Setiu, on the order of the king. He will want to see me, but will he believe what I now have to say? I am bound and trussed like a liar and a rebel. There is a letter that I did not send him, now in possession of others, as is everything else that was mine: "Year 9, first month of the third season, day 21. It is the lector-priest and keeper of secrets Emsaf who says: 'By the order of His Person, the king, I, your humble servant, arrived at the island fortress of Djer-Setiu. The commandant, Senbi, has gone away for a time because Nubians are making trouble in the east near the gold mine, but before his departure he assigned everything necessary that you, my lord, did not dispatch with me. I, your humble servant, write that you may be informed that the execration was performed perfectly.'" "Did I lie?" I ask this captain. Nakht -- he is the captain -- seems reluctant to speak, and goes back to yelling at his rowers. He's afraid, you see, because I killed a man in full view of everybody. He does not yet know what that means for his children, if he has them, or for his wife, or for his mother and father or for the king. Or for himself. Or for the Rightful Order of the world. Neither, in fact, do I. Perhaps that is the result of my abomination. Perhaps this is why Senbi stood by the riverbank until Nakht's boat was out of sight. Perhaps this is why I killed this man. But perhaps not, and it happened like this: |
My
first sale beyond the boundaries of speculative fiction leaves me
ironically indebted to Robert Ritner's The Mechanics of Ancient
Egyptian Magical Practice (University of Chicago Press).
Among many
other topics, Ritner examines the evidence of officially-sanctioned
human sacrifice at the Egyptian fortress at Mirgissa in Lower Nubia. Stuart
Tyson Smith's work at Askut inspired other details of "The
Execration," which takes place a bit later in history and a bit deeper
into Nubia than the incident at Mirgissa. The unnamed king is Amenemhet
IV, penultimate ruler of the powerful Twelfth Dynasty. Small-press Top Ten bestseller in the United Kingdom during the months of September, October & November 2002 "The tales are educational, entertaining, witty and wonderfully exotic." "a meaty collection" --
Martin Edwards, Tangled Web
"entertaining volume" and one of Pierce's Picks for October, 2002 A Top Ten Paperback Pick for November, 2002 |
||||||
 Horizon Alternate history novelette Alternate Generals II edited by Harry Turtledove Baen Books 2002 Amazon Despite doubts about the ideology -- and methods -- of his superiors, General Horemheb leads the Egyptian army to conquer the Levant for the "heretic king" Akhenaten. . . . he granted the request of the Lady and concerned himself with the matter of a son. --Deeds of
Suppililiuma, King of Hatte,
recorded
by his son, Mursili
Nomads bring word of the Hittite prince's progress, nomads who not long ago laid themselves seven times on the belly and seven times on the back before the Great King of Egypt, whose widow has bade the Hittites come. "Through Kuzzuwadna we tracked them," they tell Horemheb, General of the Army. "Make ready, because the prince, he comes." Hearing this, soldiers put away their games of twenty-squares and lay aside letters written home. They have been at war with the Hittites for a very long time. "How soon?" they ask. "Tomorrow? The next day?" "Soon enough," Horemheb says, wondering if it can be soon enough, for he is afraid. Will the Queen betray Egypt, betray him who was her husband? He does not know. When he is certain of the Queen's will, then he will act. The Egyptian army, camped along the Syrian frontier, waits in eager anticipation. |
The
alleged pacifism of
Akhenaten, "the heretic king" and "world's first monotheist," has been
greatly exaggerated. When read carefully, the Amarna Letters -- a
collection of correspondence between the pharaoh, kings of other Great
Powers in Western Asia, and Egyptian vassals in the Levant -- reveal
another story. Perhaps not the story I tell, but the ancient texts in
"Horizon" are authentic and every one of its characters, from Akhenaten
himself to the messenger Ilumilku, are recorded in the historical
sources of the late Eighteenth Dynasty. Honorable mention --Gardner
Dozois, The Year's
Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection ". . . quietly chilling. . . . As pure historical speculation, 'Horizon' is easily the anthology's strongest, best-developed work. . . ." -- John
C. Bunnell,
Tangent Online |
||||||
 Callum's Feast Fantasy short story Weird Tales Summer 2000 (No. 320) Forced to play host at the Year-End Feast after the murder of his father, a ten-year-old boy struggles with the responsibilities of being a clan chief. "I won't have Redmane Mabryd coming onto Da's land! I won't!" Callum heard his own voice crack in the fierceness of the whisper. Shivering beneath a fox-skin cape which had belonged to his father, he crouched beside his cousin in the faded, prickly heather of the moor. Wind whipped off the sea with the cold promise of winter, though it was only Year End and winter lay two full months away. What Callum would give if it were only winter already. Were it any time of year but the End. He said, "Redmane brought nothing but misery upon poor Da. Now he comes walking onto Surry lands like some uncle of mine home for dinner, when Da's just a month 'neath the cairn. Do you hear me, Barric?" "I hear you," his cousin said and dug a calloused thumb into the fur of his boots."“But I'll listen to you only when you start talking sense." Barric waved to men dismounting ponies on the next hilltop. Each of the chieftains gathered here tonight, even Barric, was a big man, and each had broad shoulders from swinging axes into trees and laying stone boundary walls and punting into the Wetmeadow to cut peat. "It is sense I'm talking," Callum muttered. He shrugged his narrow shoulders and the fox-skin cape slid from his back. He marvelled at the big men greeting each other with hard claps to the arm, always first and always hardest from Redmane Mabryd. Try as he might, like a rabbit caught by a snake, Callum could not wrench his eyes from Redmane. |
#2 in the readers' poll for this issue | ||||||
 Shadow of the Pyramid Historical science fiction short story (middle grade) Bruce Coville's UFOs edited by Bruce Coville Avon/Camelot 2000 Amazon A brother of King Khufu who is overseeing the construction of the Great Pyramid observes UFOs -- and they observe him too, very closely and very, very personally. But what on earth are they looking for? During the reign of my brother the king, Khufu, Lord of the Two Lands, the Gray-Men came to Egypt. The Nile was about to flood as it does every year. In this season, while the high waters are laying rich new soil across the fields, farmers can neither sow nor plow. So the king called north to the marshes of the Delta and south to the hills of Nubia. "You cannot work your fields today for the Nile will flood them tomorrow," he said. "Come to me, for I have work for you. I will feed you and I will clothe you. Come labor for me and if you die here I will give you a burial finer than you would ever receive in your little villages. Come work for me!" His summons was heard, it was obeyed. The governors of the provinces assembled men of strength and skill and care and sent them forth. As the Nile inundated the fields, a flood of people came by boat and bare foot to the region of Memphis. We saw lights in the sky during those days. Our priests know the sky well and declared that these were not the lights that fall to earth from time to time in the form of black stones. No, these were like slender, bright fish that swam in the heavens, and never once did one fall. |
UFOs and
pyramids go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or horse and
carriage. Or monster and Loch Ness. (Don't take my word for it: plug
them into your favorite search engine and see for yourself.) I once
swore to never write a pyramids-and-UFO story, because certainly this
clichéd old notion could harbor nothing of value for serious
fiction. I was, not for the first time, wrong (see, for example, "The
Chapter of the Hawk of Gold"). So here is the "true story" of what
happened when aliens visited the Giza Plateau in the twenty-sixth
century BCE. Or rather what might
have happened, because we all know
that there are no such things as alien UFOs. Don't we? Recommended -- ALA
Booklist
"Middle grade readers, especially those who love to read about aliens, will race through this anthology." -- Sue
Reichard,
Children's Literature Listed for Accelerated Reader programs. |
||||||
 Trading Places Future science fiction short story (middle grade) Bruce Coville's Strange Worlds edited by Bruce Coville Avon/Camelot 2000 Amazon (out of print) Alace and her older sister Marzi, an anthropologist-in-training, watch their elders make mistakes with the local population on an alien world. Marzi knows she can do better. This doesn't surprise Alace at all because Marzi knows everything about the local people, or at least thinks she does. At about three hours past noon one summer day (local time, local season), we accidentally destroyed the Auds' begdim. When I say "we," I don't mean my sister Marzi and I. I mean "we" like Terrans means we. And when I say "accidentally," I mean like we didn't even know it was there. You can't see a begdim. Well, you can, but it doesn't look different from any other piece of land on Audor. An Aud has to tell you it's there, so we just didn't know. They didn't tell us. There is a lot of things the Auds didn't tell us. |
I had
a general idea for
a story featuring "silent barter," in which trading partners lay out
their goods and, without verbal negotiation, adjust what's offered
until both sides are satisfied with the exchange. It would be set on an
distant world and involve contact and misunderstanding between humans
and aliens. What to do with this idea, though? Bruce had an anthology
open and the deadline was looming. My good friend and fellow author Karen
Jordan Allen suggested the perfect hook. I'm happy to say
that
Karen's "Fun on Phrominium" can also be found in Strange Worlds. |
||||||
 The Chapter of Coming forth by Night with Lois Tilton Fantasy novelette Realms of Fantasy February 2000 illustrated by John Berkey A British archaeologist reluctantly joins an American business tycoon in the wholesale excavation of the desert hills near Naqada. Wordsley wants papyri and potsherds, Bigham wants treasure to stock his Philadelphia museum, and the ancient goddess whose attention they arouse wants nothing more than to free her divine husband from the prison to which the sun-god condemned him, millennia ago. The wake of the sun's golden barge washed over the limestone cliffs, flooding the desolate landscape with the lurid hues of the dying day. For a brief moment the fading brilliance illuminated a narrow fissure among the rocks, until it was lost in the shadows climbing up from the valley floor. The cooling desert exhaled; the lizards and scorpions crept from the crevasses and shallow dens where they had taken refuge from the searing heat of the day. Sand slid away, widening the fissure, from which stepped into the newborn night a figure draped in a hooded black cloak, as if shadows had wrapped themselves around her. The Oppressor had departed the sky and she was free, until his return. Raising her arms, she faced the west and her voice filled the evening silence: A hymn of damnation to thee at eventide, When thou shalt set as the living set, Forever and forever in the west, Never to traverse thy nightly passage, For the Fiend shall swallow thy prow, For the Fiend shall swallow thy midships, For the Fiend shall swallow thy stern, And the Fiend shall swallow thee and thy every crew. Here of all places on earth was the oppressive power of the sun most manifest, this barren land burned lifeless, a place where only the dead dwelled, they and their forgotten gods. She knew them all, the ancient dead: from the gnawed and scattered bones of beggars to the flesh of kings preserved in aromatic resins and cased in solid gold. Yet it was life she needed now, so she descended with a smooth gliding stride across the crumbling rocks and sand, toward those places where water flowed. |
In the
bygone days of
GEnie and its Science Fiction Roundtables, Gregory Feeley, an
insightful literary critic and very fine author, suggested that Lois
(another very fine author) and I should write a story with this title.
We did, entirely via e-mail, never having met but on GEnie's SFRTs. It
later transpired that Greg was only kidding about the title. Too late!
Given Lois's literary penchant for vampires and the darker side of life
and death, and my own for vengeance and order torn asunder, the outcome
was probably inevitable. Lois and Greg each contributed to The First Heroes. Honorable mention --Gardner
Dozois,
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection "my favorite story this issue. . . . [The] clash between these three forces makes for a story that's good in so many ways." --
Michael H. Payne,
Tangent Online "What else should be in a book like this? . . . There are even more recent stories -- "The Chapter of Coming Forth by Night' by Lois Tilton and Noreen Doyle. . . -- that might make the grade." |
||||||
  The Chapter of the Hawk of Gold Contemporary fantasy short story Realms of Fantasy August 1997 illustrated by Janet Aulisio Otherworldly Maine edited by Noreen Doyle Down East Books, 2008 An unhappy teenage girl, awarded the dubious honor of cleaning the curio museum in a small Maine town, takes solace in the silent company of a mummified hawk and an old translation of an ancient poem. Two hundred years have peeled paint, broken shingles and cracked the granite step of the shed that houses the Healy Tompkins Museum. The beams are sound, the floor solid, and most of the glass original. Everything in the museum is in this same state: whole inside, broken only outside. Periodically the Ladies of the Pithom Historical Society make these outsides someone's business. Jenny Alcock feared that it would happen to her someday. Her mother doesn't attend the Historical Society; her father drives for an out-of-town vending company owned by an old French family. Who else at Pithom Independent High School is better suited for the task? Everyone else has their excuses: camp, job, summer school, parents with influence. It is a long, solitary task, and she protests. But even her own mother insists. It will keep Jenny out of trouble. |
Although I've lived most of my life in the great State of Maine, this is my first, and thus far only, published story set there. Unfortunately, an over-zealous and careless copyeditor or typesetter meddled with the text after I had reviewed the magazine galleys. This individual introduced, among other things, typos not present in the manuscript. Let it be known that I am not pleased with what appeared in print and will be making corrections in an upcoming reprinting (details about that at a later date). With a little luck (and more effort), the fictional town of Pithom will be heard from again: a young adult contemporary fantasy novel set there is underway with Karen Jordan Allen. | ||||||
 The Dovecote Historical fantasy short story Century No. 2, May/June 1995 A deaf girl who can speak the language of birds helps her fellow Russian villagers to resist the attempts of the boyar, and then those of his widow, to extract more taxes. Onto the porch roof on which I sit my old Baba throws crumbs of bread, hoping perhaps that like the birds I will eat a bit of her poison and fall. No one can reach me here beside the dovecote, least of all my old Baba, though she wails through the house and threatens to set it afire. Ah, my old Baba is angry with me! "Don't listen to the songs of little birds, Pigeon! They tell only pretty little lies to us daughters of Eve. Go to the priests and read the Word of God. Anything else is the devil's trick, Pigeon!" Most often she calls me "Pigeon" rather than "Zorievna," particularly when she is angry. And most particularly when she catches me at the dovecote, where I am really not supposed to be. Though I have seen seventeen summers full and ripe and soon will wed a Boyar's son, Mother and Father fear that I will eat my Baba's poisoned bread as if I were a baby! Usually I am careful to sit here unseen so they will not scold me for writing about what I overhear at the dovecote. But while crawling out onto the roof today I dropped pages from my Annals, and she found them lying on the floor below the window. Ah! Now she picks up those pages around which she has been dancing all this time. Yes, she can read, my old Baba. "Volos! Svantovit! Pyerun!" she cries, shaking the pages in two fists. "Do you know who they are, Pigeon? Gods, heathen gods of war. War is a thing for heathen men" -- I should add that she, like Princess Olga of Kiev, is a Christian now -- "and for foolish heathen men at that! Pray that Stribog Grandfather of Wind will catch you when you fall! It's no coat of little birds you're wearing, Pigeon!" |
While
seeking escape from
my academic pursuits during my intense studies at Texas A&M
University, I picked up a collection of Russian historical sources. I
was graduate-student poor and desperate for the different, it was on
clearance for $3.00 and had nothing to do with boats or Egypt: a
perfect match. In it I stumbled across a mid-tenth-century episode from
the Primary Chronicle
that
inspired "The Dovecote." The story occurs a little earlier than the
historical event. Its characters and towns, and its war, are purely
fictional, although the gods are genuine and Khazars and Pechenegs were
real peoples making real trouble at the time. And as for white snakes
in the dovecotes, well. . . . "a complex sequence of events . . ." -- Mark
R. Kelly,
Locus, July, 1995 ". . . a sense of satisfying completeness." -- Mark
Rich, Tangent
11,
Summer, 1995 |
||||||
 The Chapter of Bringing a Boat into Heaven Historical fantasy novelette Realms of Fantasy No. 1.3, February 1995 illustrated by Ken Graning Having caught and then eaten a goose with the mark of the god Amen on its skin, thereby gaining divine power, the untalented son of a boatbuilder seeks to outdo his father. For the sake of my own immortality, which is by no means assured despite all that I am about to tell, I will write my name here in red hieroglyphs: Ankhesenast. It is a good name and was borne by two of my sisters, both of whom lived and died before me. Therefore I came to be called Ankhesenast-tashery, or Little Ankhesenast. I had a brother, born to our mother Nefert during the Intercalendrical Days when I was four years old. I hesitate to write his name, because immortality did not suit him very well the first time, and I do not believe that he would want it again. Nevertheless, as it would impede my tale to write again and again "my brother" and never his proper name, and as I did indeed love him, I shall set his name down here: Harkhuf. Harkhuf loved nothing better than shipyards. One day he said to me, "Tashery, I am going to build a ship. It will be more beautiful than the solar barque of Amon-Ra!" He pointed to the Sun God sailing on celestial currents high above our heads. "We'll sail up the Nile on the wind, and we'll drift down the Nile on the current, and then, someday, we will take it into heaven. More than anything, Tashery, this is what I want, my beautiful ship." For all his other faults, my brother Harkhuf was no liar. He kept his word, and I will tell you how he did so. |
This
story, my first sold
and first in print, remains in many ways first in my heart. Unlike "The
Dovecote," which was written a year or so earlier, this story sprang
directly from my studies in the Nautical Archaeology Program. The act
of eating a god to acquire his power occurs in the Pyramid Texts; this
story became one of several that, for reasons I myself don't
understand, feature a prominent motif of power associated with things
eaten. ("The Dovecote" is another, and there may be more.) "meticulously written and deeply affecting. . . vivid and powerful. . . unfolds to a surprising conclusion that is both inevitable and moving. . . . a work of great power and resonance. . . ." -- Mark
Kreighbaum,
Tangent 10, Spring 1995 "a wonderful story, much recommended for its exploration of Egyptian mythology and its engaging style." -- Bill
Allen,
Tangent 10, Spring 1995 Honorable Mention --
Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling,
The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 9 (St. Martin's Press, 1996) |
||||||