Very Poor Introductions

FOREWORD

excerpted from Izanagi Aoi, Moorish History: A Very Poor Introduction. Honolulu: Daiwakoku Press, 1988.

Far out in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy lies an utterly representative G-series star.

Orbiting this, at a distance of 1 4900 0000 kilometers is a dense-cored world whose inhabitants are so mind-shatteringly uncouth that many of the local cretins still believe that sacred monarchy is a good idea.

This planet has (and always had) a problem: most of its multitudes were immiserated most of the time. Many solutions were proposed for this problem, most of which involved redrawing lines on maps and killing people, which was great fun but still left the multitudes immiserated, even the ones with sacred monarchs.

And then, one fine night (I believe it was a Thursday), the archangel Gabriel was compelled to descend from heaven, approach a trader out in the desertified armpit of the world, and share the very definitely final revelation of God Himself, setting forth a record clear and without error, because God Himself wanted to make sure the local cretins got it right this time.

So of course they promptly set about redrawing lines on maps and killing people, which was great fun and still left the multitudes immiserated, and soon the empire had stretched to a peninsula on the edge of the known world. When they had finished redrawing the lines on its maps and killing people, they introduced dhimmitude and toothpaste and the very definitely final revelation of God Himself to the region, making sure the local cretins got it right this time, and created a kingdom that was one of the more impressive things the world had ever seen.

This is not the story of that kingdom.

But it is the story of a small city's depraved dictator, and a wandering warlord, and their rocky relationship in the ashes of that kingdom.

It is also the story of how the one paid the other to redraw lines on maps and kill people, having great fun and immiserating the multitudes.

And it is the story of how, by doing this, they accidentally created one of the most impressive nations the world will ever see. (Even if most of the local cretins still believe sacred monarchy is a good idea.)

This is going to be a long story. Let's take it from the top.

Here ends the reading.

In my first year in college, I discovered something that I have been partial to ever since: Very Short Introductions. There was a lot of stuff that I needed introducing to; I really didn't know anything about anything, and the reading that I wanted to do didn't exactly coincide with the reading that I needed to do for classes. (Being totally unrelated seems to result in things like that.)

When I started writing Andalusada last year, it was called Ixbiliada - and, because I wanted to find a voice for myself, I decided to seize on the VSI format that I had loved so much. In my hands, and with a bit of tinkering - obviously stealing from Douglas Adams - it was transmuted into at once similar and wildly different: Very Poor Introductions.

It's a historiographical device that I mean to use when I reboot this TL.

Very Poor Introductions: a very poor introduction

Very Poor Introductions are, by design and definition, introductory. As a general rule, they focus more on breadth than depth, covering a lot of time and material in a small number of small pages. (Where they go into greater detail, it's usually because they're block-quoting other, more scholarly sources.)

What sets them apart from other introductory works is the writing style. The Very Short Introductions of IRL are stylistically sober and impartial (even if the author of, say, Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction is the late, great Colin Ward.) The Very Poor Introductions are nothing if not cavalier and irreverent - and they're quite willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to achieve that. In all likelihood, the Very Poor Introductions aren't even a single series so much as a standardized format, printed in a number of separate locales specifically to circumvent censorship.

A partial list of VPIs

The following is a very incomplete list of books in the Very Poor Introduction series:

• Moorish History: a Very Poor Introduction, by Aoi Izanagi.
• "Aoi Izanagi" is a very loose interpretation of Douglas Adams, whose style I blatantly copied for the first installment of the work.
• Published in Honolulu, specifically to avoid any issue with blasphemy laws in the UCNA.
• Güntheritism: a Very Poor Introduction, by a yet-unnamed author [who?].
• Güntheritism: a VPI has a blockquoted page about a recurring legend.
• The House of Sansinger: a Very Poor Introduction, by Marianne von Sansinger.
• It bears noting that Marianne actually is a member of the House of Sansinger (related to HPH of Cabralia, specifically); the royal blood was necessary for the book to be publishable at all, without violating lese-majesty laws. (As it is, printing it is still illegal in Mexico; the Moorish translation is published across the border.)
• Taiping China: a Very Poor Introduction, author TBD. [who?]

This is, of course, a very partial list, which will be expanded upon as I go. But given that it was, in a very real sense, the first words of the entire published series, I suppose it bears posting about.