#michael coney

[nemospecific]

Mirror Image by Michael G. Coney (1972)

Rrrggh... this is the third time I've tried to start this.

Look. I'm hoping this story goes somewhere and isn't just another nihilistic jerk off session. Pros: actually set in space, has shapeshifting aliens front and center. Cons: from the 70s. So, we'll see.

[all-action-all-picture]

Brontomek! by Michael Coney, Pan Books, 1977. Perhaps a visual inspiration for 2000AD/Starlord's Mek-Quake or the Terra-Meks from the Ro-Busters strip?

[oldschoolfrp]

"The Celestial Steam Locomotive,” Clyde Caldwell cover art for Michael Coney’s 1983 novel

[ominoushominid]

Well... this is going to be fun

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Byrds by Michael Coney

Late one afternoon on the hottest summer day in living memory, Gran stripped nude; painted herself red, black and white; put on a new antigravity belt and flapped her arms to perch in a oak tree.

She informed the family that she was now a Rufous-necked Hornbill of India and that was the last thing she said because obviously, hornbills are not talking birds.

The Water Department was restricting supply and the weatherman was predicting floods. The Energy Department was warning of depleted stocks, and the Department of Rest had announced that the population must fall by one-point-eight per cent by November or else, the Mailgift was spewing out a deluge of application forms and final reminders, the Tidy Mice were malfunctioning so that the house stank...

And now this.

The family argues about how to handle this, worried about Gran’s health or the public spectacle she might create. And a crowd does gather.

Gramps says he’ll go talk to her and paints himself up similar under the logic she’d be more likely to listen to her own kind.

The family calls the shrink, Dr. Pratt, but he sort of half-asses it. Seizing on the first explanation. But by the next day, Gramps had joined in on the bird thing and the media has shown up.

Dr. Pratt changes his tune now that there is coverage in it for him and he positions himself as the expert in Pratt’s Syndrome, or the manifestation of birdishness in the elderly, while decrying that it has been under-researched up until now. He posits that at the latest, they’ll come back to their senses by autumn because the winters are hard.

But then a group of teenagers painted as crows show up and look to Gran reverentially.

And more and more people take up the Byrd lifestyle, as it comes to be called.

“I view it as a protest against today’s moral code,” said Dr. Pratt, who spent most of his time on panels or giving interviews. “For more years than I care to remember, people have been repressed, their honest desires cloaked in conformity just as tightly as their bodies have been swathed in concealing garb. Now, suddenly, people are saying they’ve had enough. They’re pleasing themselves. It shouldn’t surprise us. It’s healthy. It’s good.”

Practically ever breed of bird was represented by some group of people or other. The Byrds go from curiosity to menace when a group takes after Pigeons and foul the rooftops. Stringing electrified wires on ridges to discourage this leads to an incident that can only be called the Great Deluge in retribution.

As autumn hit, Dr. Pratt is convinced that the Byrd thing has run its course and that there will be a Great Coming Down. Instead, Gran swooped down and stole her daughter’s scarf, nearly choking her in the process. She tears it up and begins to construct a nest.

“The nesting phenomenon has a twofold significance,” Dr. Pratt informed the media. “On one hand, we have the desire of the Byrds to emulate the instinctive behavioral patterns of their avian counterparts. On the other, there is undoubtedly a suggestion of - how can I say it? - aggression towards the earthbound folk. The Byrds are saying, in their own way: join us. Be natural. Take your clothes off. Otherwise, we’ll do it for you.”

“You don’t think they’re, uh, sexually warped?” asked the reporter.

“Sexually liberated,” insisted Dr. Pratt.

They Byrds proved his point the next day, when they began to copulate all over the sky.

Dr. Pratt is still convinced that this is just some populist Movement and will all end when winter comes but the family is finally fed up and tells him that Gran is crazy and that this isn’t even the first crazy or indecent exposure thing she’s done. And if she is crazy, Dr. Pratt will have the deaths of thousands on his hands for encouraging this nonsense.

Later that day, all the Byrds seem to congregate around the oak tree where it all started. Dr. Pratt decides to speech at them, try to make them see reason.

He calls them all fools without minds of their own blindly following a leader. He also Godwin’s the lot of them. He tells them that Gran is crazy and that he’s recommended her committed. He tells them to come down from the trees, wash the paint off and go home to their families.

Instead they all look to Gran and she looks to the sky. She smiles and takes off into the air, followed by all the Byrds.

Dr. Pratt wonders what the hell they’re doing and the POV character (the son? of the family. He hasn’t done much except observe all this going on and comment on it and his girlfriend becomes one of the Byrds) tells Dr. Pratt that they’re flying south.

“It’s warmer, south. We’re migrating.”

And he emerges from the shed painted and takes off after, joining the migration.

Actually, considering how messed up society seems to be (old people get regularly sent a form that asks Peace or Life and if they don’t fill it out or fill out Peace they get taken off to be euthanized), it does seem like ‘fuck it i’m a bird’ would be a very popular message.

[theyank]