John C. Wright ([info]johncwright) wrote,
@ 2007-01-03 01:15:00
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Jinn!
Well, well. It looks like there are still Genii terrifying the Faithful, and I do not mean the prettified version from Disney, but the pre-adamite kings created from smokeless fire. Where is Solomon when you need him?

http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8401289

They pointed out jinn settlements just below the snow-line on the mountain slopes. Inside, over plates of mutton and grey rice, tea, snuff and Korean cigarettes, they told the story of how the cook had been possessed by a jinn the week before. He was a devout man, they said, a non-smoker and illiterate. “He fell ill. When he recovered, he found he could speak and write in many languages. The jinn that was in him was well-travelled but also pushy. It demanded a cigarette, then another, and then it became impatient and swallowed lighted cigarettes whole.”

In Somalia, the port of Bossaso is famous for its sorcerers. Some of its ruling class claim to have intermarried with jinn long ago. On a recent visit your correspondent was taken to a metal shed at the edge of a slum where jinn were supposed to be banished from taking human form. The air inside the shed was thick with frankincense. There was a man cloaked in red cloth kneeling on the ground. A jinn was in him, a sorceress running the ceremony said, and indeed the man wore an eerie expression, as though a part of him was obscured. Young men jumped up and down around him, chanting and beating drums. The gunmen accompanying your correspondent were too scared to step into the shed. Later, walking away from the shed in hot sunshine, one of the gunmen insisted that he could see a jinn scavenging for bones in the dirt. There did not appear to be anything there.




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[info]jordan179
2007-01-03 07:44 am UTC (link)
They do a lot of drugs in Somalia, I'll wager.

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[info]johncwright
2007-01-03 03:32 pm UTC (link)
I notice in the article it says that education sets up a clamor which the Jinn cannot penetrate. Educated people cannot be possessed by Jinn!

Another reason to stay in school, kids!

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[info]gray_roger
2007-01-03 04:07 pm UTC (link)
I like Bombay Saphire, though Tanqueray is well thought of. Sorry, that was the djinn talking.

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[info]johncwright
2007-01-03 04:47 pm UTC (link)
Drugs, indeed! There is a perfectly logical, rational, scientific explanation for these Jinn sightings: the Mi-Go, fungi from outerspace, have a base nearby, from which they launch their aether-envelopes to the planet Yuggoth, and they are opening a dimensional portal to waken Zool from his primordial slumber, and Zool assumes the shape of whatever the locals fear.

I am confident this explanation will stand up under close skeptical scrutiny.

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[info]gray_roger
2007-01-03 05:02 pm UTC (link)
Really?

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[info]jordan179
2007-01-03 08:30 pm UTC (link)
Well, that's a relief. I was afraid it was the Jinn.

"Nothing to see here, move along, only the Mi-Go."

I wrote a fanfic once, which I wish I still had available for posting, called "Djinni Dreaming." It was a Mythos-based rewrite of what really happened in the first episode of I Dream of Jeannie, and among other things it had a fight between (on the one side) the two American astronuats and the Pink Djinna of the Spring Zephyr, and (on the other side) a combined force of Mi-Go, Greys, and a bear-like race related to the Voormis. On the Moon.

Oh, and I wrote the Djinna more like the Arabian Nights models. I made her one of the Faithful (i.e. a Muslim, in the peculiar way that any of the Djinnim were) mainly because those were the only ones of their race who were depicted as being interested in doing anything other than tearing your heads off if they could subvert the conditions of their binding.

I wish I could still find that fanfic.

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[info]dirigibletrance
2007-01-04 01:38 am UTC (link)
Mi-Go again? The Technocracy is really getting lax in policing Demensional Entities these days. Back in the day the Void Engineers would have been all over that like hair on an angry ape.

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[info]johncwright
2007-01-04 07:24 am UTC (link)
Reminds me of the old days: Don't tell anyone I am a gamer, but--- I ran a Mage game once where one of the deep dark secrets of the compain was that Sauron the Great was the mastermind in charge of the Technocracy. The Middle Earth of Tolkein, complete with elfish straight path to the West and the sinking of Atlantis/Numenor was bronze-age history, but it had been rewritten out of history by the Technocracy, all the clues covered up. Sauron, I thought, with his love of factories and volcanic smog was the perfect exemplar for the Technocrats.

I should have run my player characters in LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS: the background concepts fit together nicely. Azrael de Grey might be a member of the Order of Hermes. The Mists of Everness is what keeps the Sleepers asleep. I wonder if Anton Pendrake and his pulp-adventure style armored limousine would be considered a Son of Ether?

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[info]princejvstin
2007-01-05 01:39 am UTC (link)
Oh, I know you're a gamer. While I don't think I ever ran into either of you at ACUS, your wife posts on the AML, John ;)

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[info]johncwright
2007-01-05 04:23 pm UTC (link)
Don't let my readers know I game. They are convinced I pen literary works of great weight, scientific import, literary and philosophical depth, and acute insight into the human condition. At least, that is what it says on the blurb I wrote myself for my own ad copy of the dust jacket of my next masterwork, VAMPIRE VIXENS OF VENUS VERSUS SHINOBI SEXBOTS OF SATURN. I would hate people to think I was not a serious writer.

(Seriously, though, the Technocracy run by Sauron. Makes sense, don't it?)

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