Campaign

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‘Forget? Well, why not? It's not like there's anything to remember, is there?’ He jerked, clockwork grief, broken. Without voice, his body screamed: The universe is dead! Time and space, murdered! Stars and moons, planets, comets, put to the sword! Physics and chemistry, mathematics, geography, sent to the stake! Mother and father, friend and stranger, snug bound in entropy's coffin! Love, dead! Fear, dead! Dogs and birds and cats and ants and books and pies and cars and lies, all dead and gone to less than dreams these long ten years! Everyone that ever lived, every thought that ever held meaning, every flower that ever cupped dew and every equation that ever brushed a portrait of truth- Hooves struck the ground: summer storm piling close as clouds. Somewhere inside Ian's mind a page turned. ‘All that we have is in here-’ he stamped the ground with a child's foot, ‘-now-’ he waved with a child's windmill arm at the universe the TARDIS had built for us to live out our lives in. ‘There's nothing else worth remembering anymore.’

Rejected by BBC books and self-published in 2000, Jim Mortimore's Campaign is now available for download as an eBook: Campaign PDF (13.9MB)

You can also discuss the book.

Author's Introduction

Here are the Facts from Rumour Control:

Well, you wanted it. In this universe six of you actually wrote to me and asked for it. So, Claudia, Stephen, Donald, Tigh, Paul and Gareth... here it is. Campaign v2.0.

This version of Campaign is ever so slightly different from the one you may already have read. This Campaign, in keeping with the theme of the book, exists in a parallel universe in which the author can spell.

Anyone familiar with the idea of weighing essays in order to determine their final mark will probably notice I have also taken the liberty of adding a rather large amount of additional material. A “Director's Commentary” if you like, for this new edition. I did this at the behest of Paul Scoones who wanted to publish the book electronically when its first print run expired last year. Paul spent a fair time last spring dismembering, scanning and retyping pages from a copy of the book in order to help me reconstruct it, since the original files were lost in a computer crash yonks ago. It is thanks to Paul that you are holding this version at all. Now I want you all to put your hands together and give him a GREAT BIG ROUND OF APPLAUSE.
OK, alright, that's-
OK, enough is-
WILLYA SHUT THE HELL UP GAWDAMMIT!
Sheesh.

If you have nothing better to do between Saturday afternoon footie and Saturday evening beer you might find yourself pondering the question of why Paul nearly didn't publish this work on his website. The answer is simple. Paul didn't want to lay himself open to legal wrangles arising from my quoting from email correspondence between myself and the books editors. A situation with which I absolutely one-hundred-percent sympathise. (In the event Jamas Enright performed a most bodacious precisectomy on the inappropriately necrotic bits of my essays. His surgery was excellent. The truncated patient,as hoisted out of bed and onto the web by Alden Bates, is living proof.)

Why then did I quote at all, I can hear you wondering (if there isn't something more interesting on at the movies or on TV). Well, as I have had pointed out to me on numerous occasions, and in true iterative form, the rumours surrounding this book and its many and varied cancellations are themselves many and varied. And also hereby cancelled. Because what you hold in your hands (if the kids aren't playing up or the family isn't in town for a visit or the bathroom doesn't need a good sweep) is the Word from the Horse's Mouth. The Facts from Rumour Control. (In this edition, summarised where necessary.) So here we are. Campaign v2.0.

A Chinese Proverb says, “Be Careful What You Wish For.”
In 1991 I made a wish. The wish came true.
I should've been more careful.

Jim Mortimore
Earth, March 2008

Late Breaking News: as of now, a version of this work with uncut essays is available as a limited edition hardback from publisher Pyrrhic Pressure. I'll even sign it if you post me a beer. Contact me at jimmortimore4bigfinish@fsmail.net for all the funky details.

JM - April 2008

Book discussion

• Campaign blog - Paul Scoones (02:06:04PM 22/08/2008)
• Ancient Coins - Kernos (08:27:06AM 15/05/2008)
• Great News - Tyler (01:40:42PM 29/04/2008)

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