Here’s a Voynich Manuscript short story to sustain you through those long dark Northern hemisphere summer months (you know, that time when you have lots of things to do outside that don’t involve endlessly surfing the ‘net).
It’s called “I Am Darknesse” by Jez Thorpe, and is a fairly enjoyable stab at a drug-tastic horror-trip take on the VMs’ dark secrets. Sure, his characters are a bit cartoony and thin: but it’s nicely written, and (apart from a “Frank Newbold” gaffe) manages to get the VMs side of things pretty much straight.
Just so you know, Jez is 36, married, lives near Cambridge, has taken at least one Creative Writing course, and recently found himself unemployed.
Hi, again, Nick.
Yes, William Newbold, William. Dammit! Sometimes, these things can slip your mind when you’re writing fast! Suffice to say, I’ll correct this, and thanks for pointing it out!
Jez Thorpe
Hi Jez,
Fixing it isn’t quite as simple as correcting a typo – poor old William Romaine Newbold may have suggested “michiton oladabas“, the “portas” link and the whole convoluted Baconian / micrographic cryptography / cabalistic “gate” thing, but to the best of my knowledge he was not in any real sense a code-breaker, let alone anything approaching a famous one.
The historical problem with the story is therefore that all the top-tier cryptologers who have grappled with the VMs (John Matthews Manly, William Friedman, John Tiltman, Jim Reeds, etc) for any length of time disagree with just about everything Newbold wrote. In fact, Manly publicly debunked Newbold’s theories as early as 1931.
All the same, you can see clearly why Newbold thought he could read “porta” on f116v (though “portas” may well be a bit of a stretch), so there’s still a little bit of novelistic leeway to be had there, whatever anyone happens to think about Newbold. 🙂
Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….