Tag Archives: Questionable Minds

“Simon Taggart’s plunge into the abyss happened in an instant.

Col. Moran, seated at the dining table on Simon’s left, had said something to the Duke of Falsworth about a fellow hunter Moran had known in India committing suicide. Falsworth snidely observed that given the man’s debts, hanging himself had been the only possible solution.

And suddenly Simon was standing in the drawing room again. Staring up at Agnes in her white nightgown, hanging from the ceiling with her tongue protruding, her face blackened. Rage consumed him at the memory, rage at the men who’d brought about his wife’s death. Pearson Bartlett, mesmerist. The Guvnor, who’d given Bartlett his orders. And behind them, the unknown man who’d paid to have Agnes slain.”

So Questionable Minds opens. As you can tell, Simon is not a happy man.

Up until Agnes’ death, Simon’s life was good. The Taggarts are baronets, which is very low-raked as aristocrats go, below even earls. The Taggart baronetcy is old, however, which gives Simon confidence. So does his wealth: the Taggarts are good at marrying rich and Simon’s American mother was a particularly wealthy heiress. Life peers (the title can’t be passed on to the next generation) are often insecure in their new status; a Taggart is never insecure.

Simon’s marriage to Agnes was to further the family fortune. Like so many aristocratic marriages in that era, it was understood that once Agnes provided a male heir “and a spare” she’d be free to take other lovers; he, of course, could take them a lot sooner. It never sunk in that Agnes was in love with him. Finally she took drastic steps to make him aware of it (no details, they involve a major spoiler). This didn’t change his feelings towards her but he did restrain himself from sleeping around. He was still a bit of a flirt, though, so when he came home one night and saw Agnes had apparently killed herself, Simon blamed himself. Clearly he’d given her the wrong idea; in despair she’d committed suicide.

Fortunately Inspector Hudnall of Scotland Yard spotted the signs that she hadn’t acted of her own free will. Bartlett had compelled her to do it. Why? He’d been paid a sizable sum, funneled through the Guv’nor, the mysterious overlord of London crime. Nobody besides the Guv’nor could say who’d put up the money.

From that moment on, Simon has had two goals. One is to find the Guv’nor and learn who had Agnes murdered. It’s not easy: the Guv’nor is Professor Moriarty and even Sherlock Holmes took years to learn that. In my world, Moriarty is ten times as cautious, setting up his organization so that even human telegraphs (i.e., mind readers) can’t learn who he is.

Simon’s second goal, although he doesn’t really think of it as such, is to be a better person. He gives generously to charity, helps investigate crimes even when they don’t involve the Guv’nor and if he ever marries, he intends to marry for love. Though as his mother reminds him, that may not be practical: the Taggart estate and title pass to sons only, and Agnes’ only child is young Ann. If Simon doesn’t beget an heir, his obnoxious, idiot cousin becomes the next baronet and probably spends Hollowcroft, the family estate, into bankruptcy.

Simon’s biggest asset in fighting crime — the reason Scotland Yard puts up with him — is that he has something unique: mental shields. Telegraphs can’t read his mind. Mesmerists can’t control him. Clairvoyants don’t see him. Vampires, mentalists who drain mental energy from other, can’t affect Simon. That’s how he discovered his strange gift: fighting the vampire Asquith Varney, he survived the latter’s attack, then eventually learned why.

The reaction to his gift is mixed. Scotland Yard respects it but many people think of it as a deformity. Mental power is clearly the next great step in human evolution; sure, not everyone has powers yet but to be completely cut off from the evolutionary advance? What did Simon do in his past life that he deserved this curse? He gets several letters a week from spiritualists and others offering to “cure” his condition. But from his point of view, it’s a blessing.

His biggest weakness is that his trauma over finding Agnes hanging manifests in extreme anger. He’s violently assaulted members of the Guv’nor’s organization in hopes of beating information out of them. When the bad guy threatens Ann in Questionable Minds, Simon’s response is not a rational one.

Simon’s biggest fear is that his anger and his urge for revenge are consuming him: if he had to choose between capturing the Guv’nor and saving Ann or his mother, he worries that he’d let them die to bring himself peace. Dealing with his trauma and his fear is the emotional arc of Questionable Minds, just as stopping Jack the Ripper is the plot arc.

Next week: the women of the book.

#SFWApro. Cover by Sam Collins.

The key development that turned the world of Questionable Minds into a steampunk setting happened about 17 years earlier, when Edward Bulwer-Lytton encountered the Vril-Ya.

In our world, Bulwer-Lytton is best known for inspiring the Bulwer-Lytton Contest for writing a terrible parodic opening line. He is not well thought of. Back in the Victorian age he was quite successful, with a string of popular novels including Last Days of Pompeii, Paul Clifford and a fictional account of the subterranean, psionic Vril-Ya, The Coming Race (I had to make a conscious effort to remember my novel’s characters will not sneer at him the way we do now). In the world of Questionable Minds he encountered the subterranean Vril-Ya for real and returned to the surface with knowledge of their psionic technology. He used this to create the first Lytton Rods, which enable people who have latent psi-energy — not everyone does — to tap their powers. He is now Viscount Claren.

Around 1880, Madame Blavatsky, the founder of theosophy, took things a step further. Guided by her cosmic masters (who didn’t exist in the real world), she showed it was possible to train and develop mental abilities without a Lytton Rod. This was a major game changer, obviously, getting her a baronetcy.I didn’t want things to sound too much like contemporary SF so I worked on the terminology. Psi power in general is known as mesmerism. The various types include levitation (TK), mesmerism (mind control), human telegraphy (mind probes and mind-to-mind communication), incendiary (pyrokinetic), electrician (casting small amounts of electrical power), healing and clairvoyance (what it sounds like). There are also multiple odd powers that have been recorded once or twice but no more.

As Bulwer-Lytton was English, he gave his research to the British crown. Blavatsky built on his work. As a result, England is the only nation with a significant population of mentalists though this hasn’t had a major impact on the world stage yet. For the English, this is just proof God is an Englishman; they can’t imagine their monopoly won’t last. Indeed, China has already developed its own forms of mental disciplines, which revolutionaries there are using to work against the British Empire.

The development of mentalism is widely seen as the next step up in human evolution. There’s no “kill the mutie” hatred here, but there is a lot of unease around class and gender issues. One aristocrat complains early on that marrying a mentalist if you’re not one is insane — how can a man be master in his own house if a woman can just levitate him out the window? And England has developed clear, arbitrary rules for relating class and mentalist power. Among the upper classes, physical power such as levitation is an embarrassment; telegraphy or mesmerism among the lower orders is a threat.

How this will affect society by, say, 1914 and the start of the Great War, I do not know. If the book sells, however, I’ll have an incentive to figure it out.

#SFWApro. Cover by Sam Collins

Questionable Minds draws heavily on fiction, as I mentioned in my last post about the book. But it’s set in a historical period and while mentalist powers will undoubtedly change that history by 1900, in 1888 things are still close to real history. And I’ve borrowed quite a bit from history.First, as my antagonist, I have Jack the Ripper. Perhaps the most infamous serial killer in history — though to a large extent that’s because he’s the first modern one — he’s the big bad in this story. There are many theories about who he really was but his identity here is entirely the product of my imagination. My resource for the details is Donald Rumbelow’s excellent Complete Jack the Ripper. Rumbelow isn’t pushing any particular theory of his own which makes the book that much more credible.

Madame Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, plays a supporting role. In our world she’s a huckster with a compelling line of mysticism; in my book she’s one of the primary teachers of psi-disciplines (I’ll get into that side of things in a later post), passing on the wisdom of her spirit guides. My main source for research was Peter Washington’s Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon.

Writing in a historical period requires getting the flavor of assorted little details: food, polite dining, clothes, how you address a duke, card games. Daniel Pool’s What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew is really the go-to source for all such information. Written primarily to explain Victorian society to people who still read Trollope, Austen or Dickens, it works well for writers to. Matthew Bunson’s Encyclopedia Sherlockiana, making similar explanations to Holmes fans, was another useful asset.

Sarah Wise’s The Italian Boy is set several decades earlier than Questionable Minds but it’s very good at showing the deep resistance England had to creating a big, professional police force and how strange much of modern policing seemed to the English at the time. The idea police were rather seedy thugs remained strong for a long time, and that plays a role in shaping the clairvoyant Miss Grey and her goals.

The British Empire was, of course, a huge deal for the Victorians, and would remain so on into the 20th century. Novelist George MacDonald Fraser (no relation) has written about how huge it loomed in British minds in the 1930s; one of my older teachers spoke of the colonies gaining independence with a great sadness. Not everyone was down with this Simon’s hated half-brother, Francis Duquesne, is devoted to undermining the Empire in the name of freedom worldwide (how? Well, read the book and see). There were real-world anti-colonial groups in England back in the day; while I don’t do much with them in Questionable Minds, if I ever write the sequel that will play a large part.

I’ll discuss class and gender in my next post on the book, along with the history of mentalist powers.

#SFWApro. Cover by Sam Collins.

Questionable Minds has been in the works a long time.

I started it in the late 1990s. I knew at the time I wanted it to include some characters from Victorian fiction along with my own creations. A part of me was annoyed when Alan Moore did it League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — would editors just assumed I’d ripped LXG off?

Probably note. Unlike Moore, most of my core cast are original characters. And plenty of other creators have borrowed from Victorian fiction since then, from TV’s The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne to Viola Carr’s Electric Empire books. The advantage of taking so long to sell QM (and ultimately, of course, accepting it hadn’t sold and moving on to self-publishing) is that if my use of fiction doesn’t stand out, it doesn’t scream Knock Off either.

Another plus: Sherlock Holmes is out of copyright. He doesn’t appear in the book, but plenty of his supporting cast do, and I no longer have to file serial number off.

Moriarty casts a large shadow over the setting. While Simon doesn’t know this, Prof. Moriarty is the Guv’nor, the mysterious overlord of London crime. Moriarty’s off-stage but his right hand Colonel Moran plays a large role — my protagonist, Sir Simon Taggart, knows him socially. Jonathan Clay, the schemer of “The Red-Headed League” also has a role.

Dr. Henry Jekyll plays another role. As far as anyone in my alt.timeline knows, Edward Hyde blackmailed the respectable medical researcher over some youthful indiscretion; Jekyll’s lawyer Poole found evidence of Hyde’s crimes and forced the man to flee to the continent. Since then Jekyll has devoted himself to good works, helping London sex workers start new lives. I assume most readers will realize this official history may not be entirely accurate …

Like Moriarty, Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu is very active behind the scenes. In the novels, his primary goal was to overthrow Western imperialism and restore China to independence and great-power status, so I’ve gone with that as his motivation. The Rohmer books are still racist and Fu Manchu is embodies the Yellow Peril villain but I hope my use of him won’t be offensive. If it is, I’ll accept the criticism.

Madam Sara, a creation of LT Meade and Robert Eustace plays one of Simon’s allies. Yes, she’s a murderer and a poisoner, but she has valuable connections in the underworld and the mentalist (as psychics are called) community. Nevertheless, Simon suspects that some day they’ll wind up working against each other — but not in this book. I do recommend the original stories.

Several other characters don’t play a role in the book, but I do mention them in passing. Inspector Lestrade. Anne Perry’s Inspector Pitt. Loveday Brooke, a professional woman PI created by Catherine Pirkis. Simon’s lover Janet mentions being trained in lockpicking by the Artful Dodger. There’s probably a couple of others I’m not thinking of right now.

Next week (probably), a history of psychic powers in Questionable Minds.

#SFWApro. Cover by Sam Collins.

At last! Courtesy of my friend, Samantha Collins, who’s both an artist and a writer, here it is:A Victorian world where psi-powers work. Dr. Jekyll, having escaped the shadow of Edward Hyde, works ceaselessly to help women of the streets. Professor Moriarty rules the London underworld. Jack the Ripper is at work in White Chapel. Baronet Simon Taggart is unique, gifted with shields that can withstand any psi-attack. When Red Jack’s true motive for the murders becomes clear, Simon may be the last line of defense.

The book will be out this fall. More details soon.

#SFWApro. Cover by Sam Collins, all rights remain with current holder.