lkdnmlckdjslklkldf oh god my moooouth.

[memlu]

oh god why does my mouth hurt so bad it hurts so bad WHY IS THE OPIATE NOT WORKING

Time for some Larklight meta that I wrote at work last week and forgot to type up until now!



Thesis! Jonathon "Jack" Havock was not born on the given date of December 12, 1838.

Support! Consisting of five parts:

A) About.
B) Dates.
C) Examination.
D) Suggestions.
E) Conclusion.

A!

A: You're reading it!

B: A list of notable dates (given and conjectured). All dates are ordered chronologically.

C: A more thorough examination of each date and why they just don't jive with Jack's given year of birth.

D: A list of proposed corrections.

E: It's over!

B!

Bold dates are ones that were given in the book; italicized dates are those I conjectured based off Art's assumption that Jack is fifteen.

1838: Jonathon "Jack" Havock is born to Josiah and Maria Havock at New Scunthorpe, Venus (December 12).
1839: The Changeling Trees flower (spring). With the exception of Jack, every human on Venus (or who was on Venus and then evacuated) mutate into Changeling Trees themselves (summer). Jack is eventually shipped off-planet to a quarantine facility on the moon (fall).
1840 or 1844: Jack is brought to the Royal Xenological Institute.
1848: Amelia Mumby vanishes along with the rest of the passengers and crew aboard the Semele.
Late 1850 or early 1851: Dr Ptarmigan leaves aboard the H.M.S. Aeneas to lead the exploratory Saturn Expedition.
1851: Dr Laurence Sprigg becomes head of the Royal Xenological Institute. Jack breaks out of the Institute, freeing the other creatures held captive in the process, and (with the aid of her skeleton crew) steals the junkyard-bound Sophronia to embark on a career of piracy. The Aeneas is lost en route to Saturn. Sir Waverley Rain is replaced by a spider-controlled automaton.
1851: Mr Webster comes to visit (March/April 16). Larklight is freed from the spiders and London saved from the rampaging Crystal Palace (May 1).

C!

Relevant quotes from the book (and page numbers for reference) have been included with all the dates.

1838: Jonathon "Jack" Havock is born to Josiah and Maria Havock at New Scunthorpe, Venus (December 12).

Soon the couple were set up in a pleasant cottage behind the hospital at New Scunthorpe, Venus, and there, on December 12th, 1938, their second son, Jonathon, was born. (P. 134)

Jack's birthdate presents a sort of baseline from which other dates can be figured out, as one of the major events in the book (the launch of the Aeneas) is said to occur when Jack is twelve, with no actual date given. Unfortunately, this birthdate is at odds with the rest of the given dates in the book, and all the conjectured dates are thus also off with the given dates.

1839: The Changeling Trees flower (spring). With the exception of Jack, every human on Venus (or who was on Venus and then evacuated) mutate into Changeling Trees themselves (summer). Jack is eventually shipped off-planet to a quarantine facility on the moon (fall).

You will know all about Venus, of course. Everyone knows what befell the colonies there in '39 when the Changeling Trees came into flower. (P. 108)

This is the first significant indication that Jack's year of birth cannot be as given. Jack claims he was four when the tree sickness began changing the human population of Venus ("I was only four-and-something," p. 124), but if he was born in 1838, he wouldn't even be a year old. Certainly he wouldn't have any memories of his family, his childhood, or the sickness.

1840 or 1844: Jack is brought to the Royal Xenological Institute.

"Thought maybe he was a carrier of infection. Took him away to a quarantine place on the back of the Moon, and then, after a few months, to the Royal Xenological Institute in Russell Square, London." (P. 123)

The date for this one is a bit muddled, like all the conjectured dates: we have two given dates to work off of, and they each provide a different result. Jack was five when he was taken to the Royal Xenological Institute (Dr Sprigg is appointed director of the Institute shortly after Jack turns twelve, and he refers to Jack having "been here seven years," p. 137), so if he was born in 1838, it must have been 1844 when he was taken from quarantine to the Institute.

But the book holds he was quarantined in 1839 - in the fall, I presume, as Jack's family changed during high summer ("it was high summer, remember, and a bumper harvest in the fruit cages," p. 124) and he was left alone for some months before the rescue parties ventured down - then shuffled to the Institute "after a few months," likely in early 1840.

Both dates can't be true.

1848: Amelia Mumby vanishes along with the rest of the passengers and crew aboard the Semele.

But Mother was dead, lost aboard the packet Semele in 1848, while on her way to visit an aged relative in Cambridgeshire. (P. 7)

This date doesn't seem to be at odds with the other dates until you get a bit further along in the book, when (and you guys knew this post would have spoilers in it, right?) Ssillissa and Yarg wake the spiders's prisoners, including Amelia, who has this to say aboard the Sophronia:

"When the Aeneas expedition vanished I suspected the worst, and set off for England to warn the Government. Alas, the spiders seized the ship I was travelling on. They devoured my poor fellow passengers, and hid me away in their webs so that I could not interfere with the great plot they were weaving with that renegade Dr Ptarmigan." (P. 329)

All well and good, of course. But if Jack was born in 1838 and Dr Ptarmigan left on the Saturn Expedition when Jack was twelve - thus placing his voyage in late 1850 or early 1851 - then Arthur's mother was captured by the spiders perhaps two years before the expedition had even launched!

Late 1850 or early 1851: Dr Ptarmigan leaves aboard the H.M.S. Aeneas to lead the exploratory Saturn Expedition.

Around the time of Jack's twelfth birthday there were changes at the Institute. Dr Ptarmigan went away to Io, where he was to go aboard the aether-ship Aeneas and begin his historic voyage to Saturn. (P. 137)

But, as previously stated, this just doesn't jive: the conjectured date doesn't fit. The launch of the Aeneas is a pivotal point in time, as it heralds the beginning of the spiders's plot (led by Dr Ptarmigan, of course) to destroy not only the British Empire, but all the planets of the solar system as well. How, then, could Amelia Mumby have been captured nearly two years before the Aeneas launched, when Ptarmigan was still appealing to the Government for the opportunity to head an expedition to Saturn? And other assorted things I'll bring up next.

1851: Dr Laurence Sprigg becomes head of the Royal Xenological Institute. Jack breaks out of the Institute, freeing the other creatures held captive in the process, and (with the aid of her skeleton crew) steals the junkyard-bound Sophronia to embark on a career of piracy.

Please refer to pages 137-156 for specifics. I'll note here that Jack is twelve when Dr Laurence Sprigg is appointed the director of the Royal Xenological Institute: Around the time of Jack's twelfth birthday there were changes at the Institute. ...old Dr Allardyce retired, and in his place a new director was appointed; an outsider with friends in Government. His name was Sir Launcelot Sprigg... (P. 137)

Jack and his companions (and all the wildlife held in the Institute) make their escape shortly after.

1851 (cont.): The Aeneas is lost en route to Saturn. Sir Waverley Rain is replaced by a spider-controlled automaton.

References to the Aeneas's disappearance are made throughout the book, many of them in connection with the popular assumption that Jack (exaggerated by the press as being a large, violent buccaneer not unlike Blackbeard, instead of a rather slight teenage boy with a temper but no particular inclination for violence) was responsible for the ship's disappearance. Notables include pages 68, 137-138, and 329.

More interesting is Sir Waverley Rain's abduction, which is detailed by Dr Ptarmigan on pages 303 and 304:

"...I used [the spiders's ship] to travel in secret to Mars, where I tried to convince Sir Waverley Rain to join our cause. Alas, he lacked the vision to see our point of view, and we were forced to remove him. He is sleeping peacefully in the web-chamber above us, and his place in the great world was taken by a cunningly crafted automaton, controlled by one of Mr Webster's smaller colleagues."

But if Arthur's mother was captured in 1848 (the other problems with this having been discussed above), this doesn't work either. On page 312, Amelia claims Sir Waverley has been held captive longer than "any of us":

"Poor Sir Waverley!" cried Mother. "He has been here longer than any of us; no wonder he cannot shake off his sleep!"

If Amelia was captured in 1848 and Sir Waverley in 1851 (in accordance with Jack's birthdate), how could Sir Waverley have been captured before her?

1851: Mr Webster comes to visit (March/April 16).

"How intriguing. A Mr Webster, who is travelling in this quarter of the HEavens, wishes to call upon us. He will be arriving on the morning of the sixteenth..." (P. 15)

Neither March nor April are given as the month in which this particular sixteenth occurs, but the dates in the excerpts from Myrtle's diary (beginning with April 23 and continuing through May 1) support the idea that Art and Myrtle's adventure begins in either March or April.

1851 (cont.): Larklight is freed from the spiders and London saved from the rampaging Crystal Palace (May 1).

Ssillissa steered us swift and true across the leagues of space, and we slowed into the trans-lunar aether on the morning of the 1st of May, 1851. (P. 332)

This is the only other complete date given in the book (Jack's birthdate being the first), and it contradicts the first entirely. If Jack was born December 12th, 1938, he would be twelve on May 1st, 1851, which is a bit of a far cry from the fifteen years Arthur assumes earlier in the book ("The real Jack Havock was no boy of fifteen," p. 67).

Never mind that considering the given dates and the conjectured ones, 1851 is a remarkably busy year, containing a number of events that are said to have occurred years before the climactic happenings of May 1.

D!

As you could likely tell, the one date that throws everything else off is the year of Jack's birth. Ignoring it, you'll find that all the other given dates match up very neatly. It's just that pesky eight at the end of his 183 that mucks it all up. I assume Jack's birthdate was a simple oversight on the part of either Mr Reeve or the editor, a detail that was meant to be corrected, but for whatever reason managed to slip through the net. (Hey! It happens.)

Originally I was going to propose Jack's real birthdate as being December 12, 1835, in accordance with Art's assumption that he's fifteen, but that wouldn't match up with the Changeling Trees flowering in spring of 1839. Pushing his birthdate back to 1834 fixes this discrepancy with the Changeling Trees, but it also makes Jack sixteen during the events of the story. Fortunately, Art was making an assumption! Ha ha.

Anyway! The proposed corrections:

1834: Jonathon "Jack" Havock is born to Josiah and Maria Havock at New Scunthorpe, Venus (December 12).
1839: The Changeling Trees flower (spring). With the exception of Jack, every human on Venus (or who was on Venus and then evacuated) mutate into Changeling Trees themselves (summer). Jack is eventually shipped off-planet to a quarantine facility on the moon (fall).
1840: Jack is brought to the Royal Xenological Institute.
Late 1846 or early 1847: Dr Ptarmigan leaves aboard the H.M.S. Aeneas to lead the exploratory Saturn Expedition.
1847: Dr Laurence Sprigg becomes head of the Royal Xenological Institute. Jack breaks out of the Institute, freeing the other creatures held captive in the process, and (with the aid of her skeleton crew) steals the junkyard-bound Sophronia to embark on a career of piracy. The Aeneas is lost en route to Saturn. Sir Waverley Rain is replaced with a spider-controlled automaton.
1848: Amelia Mumby vanishes along with the rest of the passengers and crew aboard the Semele.
1851: Mr Webster comes to visit (March/April 16). Larklight is freed from the spiders and London saved from the rampaging Crystal Palace (May 1).

E!

Possibly somewhere out there exists one other person who actually gives a crap about this. POSSIBLE I AM NOT ALONE.

Probably I am.

The end!

(Shut up! I hate writing conclusions! CONCLUSION: JACK WAS BORN IN 1834 AND IS SIXTEEN AND SHOULD KISS MYRTLE LOTS AND I CAN'T BELIEVE I STILL HAVE A JOB. Now it's over! ARE YOU HAPPY?)

PS I will probably not be on LJ lots for the next few days! HINT: It is because I am bleeding and in a great deal of pain and trying to concentrate on something for more than five minutes is not unlike punching myself in the face.

With a knife.

Good times!