Hyperborean Home

[1]1,770 words

French translation here [2]

Farnham O’Reilly
Hyperborean Home [3]
Xlibris, 2011

Hyperborean Home pioneers a new and absolutely necessary genre: racial nationalist fantasy literature, specifically Traditionalist, deep ecological, esoteric “Nature’s Witnessist,” “Natural Selectionist” fantasy literature. (We will get to those terms later.) Its only real precursor might be some of the novels of Ernst Jünger, such as Visit to Godenholm (not yet translated into English), but even that is a stretch.

One of the common themes of many Counter-Currents writers is the insufficiency of backwards-looking conservatism and data-driven empiricism to preserve and elevate our race. History and natural science are, of course, necessary for understanding the world. But we want to do more than understand the world. We want to change it. We want to create a future for our people. And for that, facts are not enough.

Facts appeal only to a small number of intellectually inclined people. Furthermore, on their own, the facts about our present circumstances are more likely to produce despair than action. What we need is a myth, meaning a concrete vision, a story of who we are and who we wish to become. Since myths are stories, they can be understood and appreciated by virtually anyone. And myths, unlike science and policy studies, resonate deeply in the soul and reach the wellsprings of action. Myths can inspire collective action to change the world.

I will not soon be forgiven for claiming [4] that a group of Tolkien fanatics who decide to breed a super-race of elves has a greater chance of preserving the white race than the current White Nationalist movement with its mighty arsenal of bell curves, pie charts, darky stories, and nostalgic pining for Jim Crow, the Third Reich, the Confederacy, or still more distant times. I think I have found a kindred spirit in Farnham O’Reilly.

Hyperborean Home is set on earth 3,000 years in the future. The human population has been dramatically reduced. Those who remain live simple lives in harmony with Mother Nature. In the northern parts of North America, Europe, and Australia—and probably other areas, like southern South America and New Zealand—dwell the Fairest Ones. Other races dwell in other parts of the world: Orientals, Blacks, Amerindians, Middle Eastern Muslims, etc.

The different races occupy separate, homogeneous homelands. All races are concerned to preserve their genetic distinctness. The main cause of racial hatred—different races being forced together in the same living space—has been eliminated. The global capitalist system seems also to have been eliminated. Thus race relations are harmonious. For the most part, the races seem to have no contact with one another. But on the highest levels, there are cordial friendships between leaders that allow them to unite and fight for their common survival when an ancient evil returns.

Science Fiction is supposedly oriented toward a technological future, fantasy to an archaic past. But just as Star Wars is set “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” there is nothing to prevent us from locating a fantasy novel in the future. Indeed, if one goes far enough into the future, highly-evolved beings might appear to us as archaic and even primitive in their ways of life, and highly-evolved technology might seem like magic.

So the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy are fluid. Indeed, some of the best science fiction is archeofuturist: combining high technology with archaic values and social forms. The paradigm of archeofuturist fiction is Frank Herbert’s Dune.

 

Hyperborean Home is also archeofuturistic. The Fairest Ones can live without a lot of modern technology because they have focused on selective breeding—eugenics, combined with euthanasia for the culls—to improve the human body. The Fairest Ones, like Tolkien’s elves, live enormously long lives. They are extraordinary strong and beautiful. They are resistant to disease and even to radiation. They can communicate telepathically with one another and with animals. (Domestic animals have also been dramatically bred up over 3,000 years.)

Because of their biological improvements, the fairest ones can live without a lot of technology that we take for granted. But we also learn that they still prize scientific research as well as technological development to do things they still cannot do unaided. For one thing, the Fairest Ones are dedicated to erasing all traces of the technological Old Order and restoring all the things it destroyed, including countless species of animals and plants, which have been brought back with Jurassic Park technologies. The Fairest Ones also have flying machines for rapid transportation. They also did a great deal of research into space travel. But the most advanced among them are now beginning to experiment with teleportation, which will render even this technology irrelevant.

The Fairest Ones are ruled by Seers, 88 men and women of advanced age, refined wisdom, and unusual powers. They are basically wizards. Their policies are executed by a martial-religious order called the Seer Service—the SS for short.

The Fairest Ones live in extended families, and their dogs are integral parts of their families and inseparable companions. They live in agrarian communities. There are few cities, and they are small. They value education. They are vegetarians and apparently do not drink or smoke. They are monogamous and prize sexual modesty and discretion.

The Fairest Ones are intensely religious. They worship the Allfather and Mother Nature. They believe that from time to time, the divine takes on human form—an avatar—and enters into the world to set things right. They believe that at least some souls reincarnate. They believe that they descended from a race that spread across the world from a Hyperborean Homeland, settling for a while in a place called Atlantis.

What is the philosophy of the Fairest Ones? What led their distant ancestors to steer their posterity in such a direction, to create such a world? The Fairest Ones are followers of a figure known only as Nature’s Witness. According to the teaching of a figure known as the First Priestess, Nature’s Witness was a divine avatar who entered the world to do battle with the Old Order, also known as Six Sixty-Six, and create a New Order in which mankind lives in harmony with nature. The philosophy of Nature’s Witness is called Natural Selectionism—NS for short.

The principal enemies of Natural Selectionism are known as the Evil Ones and “Urban Men.” The Evil Ones believe that man is not part of nature. They also believe that they are the only real men. All the other two legged mammals are mere beasts of burden. They believe that their God, who is also not part of nature, gave them dominion over nature and other men. Accordingly, they instituted a way of life involving the exploitation of nature and other men, including the promotion of race-mixing, by which they hoped to render their two-legged beasts of burden docile and incapable of resisting them.

The Evil Ones based their religion on something known as the Black Book. Later, an avatar appeared among them, the One Who Came Before. He tried to civilize them, but they killed him. Then an Evil One known as the Great Deceiver twisted his teachings into an instrument by which the Evil Ones spiritually poisoned and enslaved the rest of mankind. The Evil Ones, however, apparently did not survive the fall of the Old Order. And the religion of the Great Deceiver has apparently died out among the Fairest Ones, replaced completely by Natural Selectionism.

The Evil Ones also martyred Nature’s Witness—driving him to suicide—but his spirit rose from his grave, and with the help of the First Priestess, the First Disciple (who was also martyred), and others, Natural Selectionism became a militant faith against time which eventually, by any means necessary, brought about the downfall of the Old Order before the Evil Ones could consummate their plan to completely destroy the Fairest Ones.

I will say little more about the plot of Hyperborean Home than can be gathered from the book jacket: an ancient evil has apparently reawakened, threatening the survival of the world. Thus the Fairest Ones and all the other races of the earth, as well as members of the animal kingdom—including some giant creatures previously thought to be mythical—must join together to defeat evil forever.

Come to think of it, that is pretty much the story of The Lord of the Rings, without necessarily being derivative of it. (At this level of generality, there are not that many stories anyway.) Trust me, if you love Tolkien, you will find it hard to resist this book.

Hyperborean Home is a remarkable achievement. It is imaginative and beautifully-written, with a captivating narrative. The book is also attractively designed and well-edited, and I am very picky about such things.

It is not, however, without flaws.

First, the didactic elements could be better integrated into the story. The lessons on the nature of the Old Order run on a little long, and pedagogically, they begin with a very odd topic: accounting practices! A far more dramatic and logical starting point would have been the lessons on the Black Book of the Evil Ones, which is ushered into the classroom with an SS guard and only touched with gloves, its pages turned with wooden paddles. Surely the accounting lessons could have been put in an appendix. (The novel itself is 317 pages, with 70 pages of appendices at the back—not unlike Tolkien either.)

Second, there is a stylistic imbalance. The early chapters, which I find quite captivating, have a leisurely pace and are filled with detailed descriptions. It often reminds me of Ernst Jünger at his best. (But, unfortunately, even at his best Jünger can be somewhat boring.) The middle chapters get bogged down in didactic lessons. The last chapters have a much faster-paced narrative, but the style becomes less like nuanced fantasy literature, more like pulp adventure fiction. A better model for such blow-by-blow writing would be the Iliad (the father of all sports-casting, among other things).

Finally, the Fairest Ones’ attitudes about sexuality, including their exaggerated horror of homosexuality, have much more to do with the Black Book of the Evil Ones than with our own authentic history and culture.

But these are minor quibbles when compared to the virtues of this remarkable book. One must also take into account that this is apparently the author’s first novel. I hope it is the first of many: not just other novels by Farnham O’Reilly, but of a whole new genre and literary school.

I wish that Counter-Currents had published this book, and as a publisher, that is one of the nicest things I can say about it. So what are you waiting for? Order your copy today [3].