Greetings, and welcome to our second discussion on The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman! Last week, Collum learned a very discouraging piece of news. How much worse can it get in Camelot and all of England? Let's don our plate armour, mount our chargers, and set off in search of adventure and hopefully some answers! A summary of this week's chapters will follow.

The discussion schedule can be found here, and the marginalia post is here.

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Chapter summaries

Chapter 7: The Last Battle

Dinadan tells the story of how King Arthur fell: Lancelot apparently slept with Queen Guinevere, and Arthur had no choice but to sentence her to death for treason. However, he knew Lancelot would come to her rescue, and he banked on that. What he didn't account for was Lancelot killing Gawain's brothers, Gareth and Gaheris. Gawain and Arthur chased Lancelot over the Channel, with Arthur leaving his son Mordred in charge. Mordred liked his temporary promotion so much that he tried to make it permanent. The clash culminated in the Battle of Camlann, where Arthur ran through Mordred with a spear before he himself is gravely wounded by his son. However, Constantine refuses to believe Lancelot would betray Arthur and thinks he's still alive somewhere. Bedivere says it's about time to split, until Nimue, who calls herself Arthur's advisor, shows up with the news that King Rience is rallying the Old North. She wants the remaining Knights of the Round Table to fight back to keep the kingdom from splitting apart. However, Arthur has no obvious heir aside from his grandson Melihan, and the Knights believe they need God to grant them a miracle before they can do anything. Collum suggests they take up King Arthur's oath not to touch any food until God shows them a miracle. When nothing happens, the Knights settle down for a nap, but are soon interrupted by Nimue throwing projectile dinner rolls: the back wall has vanished, and they have their miracle.

Chapter 8: The Tale of Sir Bedivere, Part III

Arthur and Bedivere chase the Red Knight they came across in Chapter 5 to a castle with four drawbridges, each guarded by a knight made of blue fire. Arthur persuades Bedivere to push on and challenges one of the flame knights, eventually defeating it by pushing it into the moat, where its fire is put out. When they enter the castle, they find the Red Knight, Elidir, and his sister Ystradel. Over dinner, the siblings tell the tale of how their father, King Bran, was wounded: the Holy Lance, a weapon that can only be wielded by a perfect king, ran through Bran's thighs when the monarch tried to grab hold of it. His wounds and his lands will never heal until a pure knight can fulfill the prophecy. The siblings lead Arthur and Bedivere to their father's room upstairs, where a curious and confusing inscription on the door warns that whoever fulfills this quest will also not fulfill it. Arthur gives it a go, but fails because it turns out sleeping with your half-sister and having a child out of wedlock with her doesn't make you a pure knight. Whodathunk? Bedivere tries, but also fails. The four of them leave, but Bran calls for Arthur again, and the rest return downstairs. After some time, Arthur returns, shaken: he fulfilled the quest by putting Bran out of his misery. Elidir and Ystradel do not take this news well, calling Arthur Christian scum and a wound upon the world. Arthur leaves, telling Elidir he is king, but under Arthur now, and the land will be healed if God so wills it. Arthur and Bedivere leave to return home, with the loyal knight dubbing their quest the Adventure of the Maimed King. Arthur is unsure he did the right thing and is afraid God will punish him, too. The curse on the land begins to lift, while knight and king ponder what it would feel like to be whole.

Chapter 9: The Green Knight

Back at Camelot, the Knights of the Round table are astounded by the miracle happening before their eyes. The back wall vanishes, revealing an eldritch forest and an oddly stiff figure on horseback, with moss and lichen covering its armour. The Green Knight, as Bedivere calls him, approaches and says he has a secret that he will tell only if one of them can defeat him in battle. Sir Villiars tries his luck, but is soon bested and killed. Collum, feeling guilty that his suggestion started this whole mess, is next to volunteer. At first Collum struggles to fight using the tactics Aucassin taught him, but quickly sets them aside and fights dirty, disarming the Green Knight and claiming victory. The Green Knight removes his helmet, revealing leafy twigs where the head should be, and a small animal scurrying outside his plate armour speaking with his voice. The big secret is that another Knight of the Round Table is alive and kicking somewhere, and the Green Knight can lead them to him.

Chapter 10: A New Sword

Collum is invited to have lunch with the Knights, and the back wall returns to normal. A pretty sad-looking jester entertains them with some knife juggling. The Knights discuss the succession issue again: the Grail Quest was supposed to reveal the answer, but nothing happened. Constantine believes Arthur has a secret heir and that Merlin would know who he is. Nimue does not seem to be comfortable when Merlin is mentioned: she used to be his apprentice until she buried him under a hill. We also learn that some of the Knights, such as Constantine and Lancelot, have royal blood themselves. The Knights argue again about whether Lancelot is a hero or a traitor. As they discuss their next idea of finding another sword and another stone, Collum gets up to catch some Zs and runs into the jester, also known as Sir Dagonet in the hallway. The jester knight says God abandoned them long ago, and the Knights of the Round Table need Collum as much as the youth needs them. Sir Dagonet leaves, and a servant guides Collum to his room. The next morning, the Green Knight leads them on their quest, and Collum is officially knighted.

Chapter 11: The Tale of Sir Palomides

Palomides first learns about Britain back home in Baghdad, with the booksellers he hangs out with coming up with these outlandish theories. Palomides, the fourth son of the caliph and nowhere near the line of succession, decides to find Britain for himself to see if there's any truth to these rumours. During his travels, he stops at Constantinople and is impressed by what he hears about King Arthur. On his sea voyage to Venice, he adopts the name Palomides, after a hero in the Trojan War who was brilliant but died, because he's tired of everyone mispronouncing his name. After two years, Palomides makes it to Britain and meets Arthur and Merlin, the latter of whom speaks to him in flawless Arabic. Though unimpressed with the place, Palomides stays in Camelot for a while, observing Bedivere's jealousy, Lancelot's dominance, Guinevere's intelligence and boredom, and Arthur's charisma and seemingly boundless energy. One day, Palomides is asked to chaperone a group of ladies on a picnic, who gossip about him to his face, thinking he doesn't understand them. One lady with an overbite seems to take his side, though. A group of three men appear and claim the field is theirs, threatening to rob and assault the ladies. Palomides steps in, kills two of them and spares the third. All of the ladies are frightened, except the one with the overbite, who introduces herself as Isolde. Palomides falls in love with her.

Chapter 12: The Novice

The Green Knight leads the group, minus Sir Dagonet and Nimue, out on roads less travelled. Collum and Dinadan chat, and Collum continues to lie about his past. On the second day, Bedivere leads them on a detour to Amesbury Abbey to visit Guinevere. Bedivere asks her if Arthur ever discussed his successor with her, to which she replies that no, and she's too bitter to care anymore. Being accused of adultery, almost executed, kidnapped, widowed, and sent to a nunnery will do that to a girl. She's about to leave when Dinadan asks for her blessing, which she gives before the Knights all exit stage left. The Green Knight continues to lead them on, until Dinadan spies two figures on horseback and a third tied to a horse, which he identifies as one Sir Scipio. The group approaches, and the two knights identify themselves as Sir Germaine and the Knight of the Borders. They claim Scipio was caught stealing and demand a 10-pound ransom for his freedom, which Bedivere refuses. Palomides jousts with Germaine and wins, wounding him pretty badly. Scipio speaks up and says the two came upon him while he was sleeping, and he was only retrieving a dagger he'd lent to a knight who had since died. Germaine and the Knight of the Borders continue to insist their version of the story is true before they give up, telling the Knights of the Round Table pathetic and that God doesn't care about them or Arthur anymore. While Scipio dresses, he casually admits he lied about lending that dagger. The next day, the Knights (minus Scipio, who left on some sort of errand), come across a burned village and a man hanging from a tree. They make camp and discuss the talents some of them received when they completed their initiation into the Round Table, such as Dinadan's telescopic vision. Bedivere believes Arthur may still be alive: after the battle with Mordred, Bedivere and his brother Lucan brought Arthur to a nearby chapel, where the king lay in agony. Arthur told Bedivere to toss Excalibur back into the Lake, but the knight threw it into the ocean instead. Eventually, a mysterious barge appeared to take Arthur to Avalon. Bedivere left the chapel and headed for Glastonbury, where the Archbishop says a group of ladies gave a corpse for him to bury and Arthur's gravestone. As the Knights of the Round Table discuss whether Arthur is alive or not, Scipio returns with two heads, one of which belongs to Sir Germaine.

Hello and welcome to our discussion on the movie version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Make some popcorn, put on your Velcro dancing shoes, and let's waltz on through the pod bay doors! Hal did open them for us, right?

If you'd like to check out previous discussions on the novel, you'll find the links in the complete schedule here. The marginalia can be found here.

Hello and welcome to the marginalia for 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. This is where you can enter your comments and items of interest, such as quotes, questions, musings, and other random thoughts as you read.

If you want to add a comment to the marginalia, remember to give a rough estimate of where you are in the book, mark your spoilers, and use the spoiler tags.

The discussion schedule can be found here.

Greetings, fellow Biblio-analysts! Welcome to our second discussion on The Currents of Space by Isaac Asimov. Last time, trouble was potentially brewing for our hapless hero and heroine. Will they manage to survive, or will their situation go from bad to worse? Let's find out!

The full discussion schedule can be found here, and the marginalia post is here.

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Chapter summaries

Chapter 7: Rik is slowly starting to remember more about his past, particularly about a ship. With Terens gone, Khorov tells the two that he had informed "proper authorities" about them and that they would need to move. He provides them with new clothes, fake names, and backstories as siblings from Wotex. Khorov is killed by a patroller's blaster soon after the three of them leave the bakery. Rik and Lona run and blend in the crowd, but eventually Rik decides he wants to use their cover stories. He finds what is eventually revealed to be a passport in his pocket and realizes Khorov wanted to get them off Florina entirely. Rik eventually convinces Lona to come with him, and he finds himself longing to be in space.

At the spaceport, the poor sap at the gate lets them through with little trouble and points them toward the ship they're supposed to take. Rik leads Lona instead to a ship with its airlocks open and explains to Lona why it's being aired out, though he's not sure how he knows this. They board the ship, stock up on food and water in the galley, then hole up in an emergency supply room. Rik can hardly wait to be out in space, and his memories start flooding back in. He tries to comfort Lona as the ship leaves Florina. He suddenly remembers he used to live on a spaceship for years at a time and hated landing on planets, but can't remember why, so he tries to ignore that memory gap. Rik explains to Lona that "Nothing" refers to the extremely small amounts of chemical elements in space, and the flow of these elements (called the "Currents of Space") is studied to learn how the universe was created. Rik trails off and realizes they've made a grave error in boarding the ship. He suddenly remembers that the patroller who shot Khorov was actually Terens.

Chapter 8: We join a couple of new characters, Samia of Fife and Captain Racety, in an argument over whether or not Samia should leave Florina. Samia, who is on the planet to research a book she wants to write on the history of kyrt, refuses to believe there's any danger just because a patroller was found dead. We learn what kyrt actually is: a crop that yields a variety of cellulose that can only be grown on Florina. Eventually the Captain convinces her to come along, though he's not impressed that a woman would want to write a book.

Some time later, on the ship, Captain Racety suggests that Samia stay in her room: not only has another patroller been murdered in the City, he suspects there are stowaways on board, judging from the unusual heat radiation coming from Emergency Stores. After Samia complies, the Captain orders his crew to capture their unwanted guests.

Back on Florina, we join Terens after he kills Khorov. Though he's tempted to follow Rik and Lona, he instead goes back to the bakery, reminiscing about how he'd walked into a patroller station and whacked the guy on duty upside the head before stealing his uniform. At the bakery, he threatens the Baker's assistant for information on Khorov's whereabouts and eventually finds out about the reservations on the ship to Wotex. Terens heads to the spaceport to see if he can't beat Rik and Lona there. The gatekeeper confirms he saw a man and a woman from Wotex, but says they never boarded the ship. In fact, the only ship that's left the spaceport is the Endeavour, which is the one taking Samia back to Sark.

Chapter 9: The action turns to Sark, where one year ago, the Squire of Fife called the other four Great Squires--Rune, Balle, Steen, and Bort--to a Zoom meeting to discuss an anonymous message Fife had received about Florina's impending doom and threats to announce that destruction to the entire Galaxy if the Squires didn't hand over the majority of their estates. When Rune objected to Fife's Florinian secretary being present, Fife revealed he'd been psycho-probed into obedience, a practice that is technically frowned upon but still performed to varying degrees of ick. Fife asked if the other Great Squires received a similar message; Bort said he did, but tossed it out with the rest of his junk mail. Fife reminded the others of the Spatio-analyst who foretold Florina's destruction and promptly went missing. Fife believed Trantor had sent the threatening message in an attempt to gain Florina and their precious kyrt crops for themselves without resorting to war. Fife determined to find the Spatio-analyst if possible and suppress all propaganda and rumours about Florina's destruction with extreme force. After almost a year with no progress, all of a sudden things on Florina are shaking up, and at this new Zoom meeting, Fife suspects one of the Great Squires of treason.

Chapter 10: Terens walks away from the spaceport and finds himself in the Lower City. He approaches one of the better-looking houses, enters, and demands to see every member of the household. The head of the house, Jacof, is better educated than most Florinians, and is able to give Terens a list of everyone on the block. Terens uses this time to calm his nerves. He realizes he can't use his patroller disguise for much longer and he's no longer safe on Florina. He leaves the house and makes his way to the City Park in the Upper City, where he finds a Squire waiting in a side cave, tazes him with a neuronic whip, switches clothes, then blasts him to smithereens before picking up some charred pieces of silver from the remains of the patroller's uniform. Terens walks back to the fountain and slips the silver pieces into the water. He rummages through the Squire's pockets, where he finds some ID, a photo of a young boy, some credit vouchers, and a yacht license. An older Squire gives him directions to Port 9, where he can find the dead Squire's yacht. Too bad Terens can't actually pilot it.

Chapter 11: Captain Racety and Samia are at loggerheads again, this time over her insistence on being present when the Captain interrogates Rik and Lona so she can use it for her research. They reach a compromise: the Captain will be the only officer present, and he won't be armed. They visit Rik and Lona in the brig. Lona shields Rik's eyes because they're not supposed to look at a Lady like Samia; however, this proves her identity as a Florinian, since they're the only ones who are subject to this stupid rule. Lona insists that Rik is not Florinian, though. Samia speaks to Rik directly, and he eventually remembers he's originally from Earth and that he used to be in space because Earth is radioactive. Captain Racety is at first sceptic, but he realizes Rik just might be telling the truth, as he's heard of a radioactive planet in the Sirius sector, though he doubts the existence of Earth itself and the claims that it's the home planet of humanity. He asks why Rik was psycho-probed, and our poor Spatio-analyst remembers that he'd come to Sark to warn the local IBP office about how the currents of space are putting Florina and the entire Galaxy in danger. He now believes his message was intercepted and remembers meeting someone from Sark before everything is blank again. Captain Racety receives a communication, and he and Samia leave the brig.

After dinner, Samia tries to visit the brig again, intrigued by all the mystery. However, she's denied access on the Captain's orders. Captain Racety wants Rik and Lona to be questioned by the proper authorities on Sark and still doesn't quite believe Rik's story. Samia wants to bring Rik to her father, the Squire of Fife, but the Captain is adamant. He informs her of a second murdered patroller and believes the killer was an accomplice who committed the crimes so our dynamic duo could escape Florina in the ensuing chaos. He believes Rik is an impostor and not the real missing Spatio-analyst, and that he could be a spy or assassin sent to kill the Squire of Fife. Captain Racety reveals that the message he'd received while they were in the brig told him not to take action and to deliver the stowaways to the Depsec (the Department of Security) under extreme secrecy.

Chapter 12: We return to our regularly scheduled Zoom meeting. The Squire of Fife speaks of recent disturbances on Florina, including the death of two patrollers and a newly discovered body of a Sarkite in the City Park. He connects the dots between these incidents and last year's missing Spatio-analyst, and he claims three people are now in the picture: the Townman Terens, Lona (whose parents were involved in a failed conspiracy), and the missing Spatio-analyst who was psycho-probed. Clearly relishing roleplaying as a detective, Fife turns the case around and examines it from the Spatio-analyst's point of view. He claims the Spatio-analyst's message was intercepted by a mysterious third party referred to as "X," who lured the Spatio-analyst to a secret meeting and sent those threatening letters to the Great Squires last year. X used the psycho-probe on the Spatio-analyst and dumped him on Florina. Steen wonders who this X could be, and Fife believes it's one of the other four Great Squires, which the others take about as well as you'd expect. Fife insists they can defeat X if the five of them present a united front and reveals he's taken control of the Sarkite Navy. He expects to learn X's identity within the next 24 hours. The Squires leave the Zoom meeting, with Steen staying a tad longer until Fife basically accuses him of being X. After the meeting, Fife's secretary reports that Samia's ship, which is also carrying Rik and Lona, has landed, and that Terens is also in custody and en route to Sark.