The Graveyard Game
Encyclopedia
The Graveyard Game is the fourth installment in the series of science fiction
time travel
novels by Kage Baker
concerning the exploits of The Company
.
s, specifically the botanist Mendoza, and the Facilitator Joseph. They were recruited as children to serve the Company in its ostensible mission to preserve artifacts from the past for a better future.
Like the second novel, Sky Coyote
, this is a volume which fills in background that is not apparent to Mendoza, the narrator of the first and third books. The principal characters are Joseph and his friend, the Literature Specialist Lewis. Action starts in 1996 and continues through the next 250 years. Over this period the world changes profoundly. Japan suffers violent earthquakes and sinks into the sea. Japanese society relocates to Mexico. The USA fragments into independent republics. Animal rights movements and other activists pass laws eliminating the consumption of meat, dairy products, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, tobacco and many other stimulants and foods. Los Angeles becomes an anarchic war-zone walled off from the rest of California. Terrorists use a nuclear weapon to destroy Belfast, Northern Ireland. Anti-gravity is "re-discovered", having been known to the ancient Egyptians.
festival. The repositories where cyborgs, mostly Enforcers, are held in suspended animation, are a kind of graveyard. One such has its entrance inside a tomb. Joseph has to disinter Budu from an urban park, as neat as any cemetery, and take him to a repository for revival.
Frame story
Segments titled "Joseph in the darkness" appear before and after each of the episodes described below. Joseph, apparently talking to his father-figure, Budu, fills in historical detail in the storyline and discusses his own motivations.
, the botanist Mendoza and her companion Einar were thrown forward in time from 1863 to 1996 in Laurel Canyon
, Los Angeles. This is supposed to be impossible, but Mendoza is a Crome generator, a psychic who cannot control her potential, and Laurel Canyon is a focus of Crome radiation (explaining its attraction for certain kinds of people over the years!).
As the action of this novel opens, Lewis is arriving at Company HQ in Laurel Canyon in 1996. Entering the building he is just in time to see Mendoza being sent back to her own time, and tries to warn her "Don't go with him!", meaning the English agent she encounters later. From his point of view, that encounter was the cause of her disappearance. She vanishes as the transfer takes place.
Lewis takes advantage of work in San Francisco to contact Joseph who is working in the hi-tech industry there. Joseph persuades him to try out a new virtual reality
helmet, which turns out to have a fault that disables cyborgs' implanted monitors for 24 hours. Joseph and Lewis can now talk freely, without Company eavesdropping. Initially reluctant, Joseph drives Lewis to Bodega Bay
to talk to Juan Bautista who was the last cyborg to see Mendoza. They give him a dose of VR and then pump him for information.
Juan Bautista is able to draw a picture of the man Mendoza met in 1863 and subsequently ran away with. To Joseph's shock, the man is a double for Nicholas Harpole, the religious fanatic with whom Mendoza fell in love in Tudor England, and who was subsequently burned at the stake. Joseph sees Nicholas as the main cause of Mendoza's troubles. He also hates religious fanatics of all stripes. Leaving Juan Bautista, Joseph and Lewis agree to meet from time to time as circumstances allow, and as they learn more.
" at a graveyard in Texas. The paterfamilias, actually an uncle, is Porfirio, Mendoza's Facilitator in 1863. Under cover of an electrical storm, Joseph contacts Porfirio and asks what he knows about Mendoza. Porfirio tells him Mendoza was sent back in time, Back Way Back, over 100,000 years. The Company operated resorts for rich clients back before the arrival of humans in the New World. She must have been sent there, but why? Porfirio sends Joseph on his way with one request: don't come back.
They spend time in the country of "The Innocents", an imagined novel combining elements of Animal Farm
and Watership Down
. This novel and its loony fans are among the catalysts for the growing animal-rights movement which will eventually ban meat consumption in many countries. They stay at a house run by two of the more extreme fans, but Joseph has other motives. He has finally decoded some information Budu forced on him, and he means to act on it.
Under cover of another storm, Joseph sneaks out of the house, with Lewis tailing him. They uncover a secret installation in a hillside, containing many cyborgs suspended in tanks of fluid. Are Mendoza and Budu in places like this? Lewis' Company conditioning, intended to keep cyborgs out of forbidden places, causes him to re-experience his suppressed memories of being disabled and kidnapped in medieval Ireland. He begins to understand why the Company left him in South America for 700 years, until the events recorded in Sky Coyote
.
Joseph and Lewis meet again in London. Joseph now has one of Suleyman's masking devices. Lewis tells him all he knows about Edward. Edward was working for people who wanted to gain possession of Santa Catalina
island, off the California coast. Joseph has a meeting with Victor, who reveals that he did bring Budu down, a few hours before the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and tells Joseph where to find him.
where Lewis believes the key to the mystery is hidden. It is a trap. Lewis is taken, and Joseph severely injured. Rolling off a cliff and into the sea, he eventually washes up onshore and is able to reach one of Suleyman's mosques, from where he is taken to Suleyman himself. When he recovers, his implant has been removed. He is a free agent, but also a fugitive. If the Company ever discovers he is still alive, there will be Hell to pay. Suleyman gives him the same message as Porfirio did: go, and don't come back.
and starts the process of revivification, with help from the cyborg Abdiel, whose entire life consists of journeying between these facilities, maintaining them.
, his first-person narrative concluded with him expressing a certain ill-defined unease at his life, which by then had moved from Spain to Old California to Hollywood. For the first time in his thousands of years of life he was questioning his own motives as a Company operative. Lewis's news of Mendoza's appearance in 1996, coupled with the discovery that her disappearance in 1863 had been connected with the identical twin of the man who ruined her in Elizabethan England, begins his estrangement from the organization he has served since prehistory. He finally decodes the information given to him by his own father, Budu, which reveals to him the hidden Company graveyards where damaged and inconvenient immortals sleep. The novel ends with him turned into a demon of sorts, a malevolent free spirit determined to bring doom on those who have abused him and his loved ones for so long.
Literature Specialist Lewis was introduced in Sky Coyote
as a mild mannered Company flunky with no skeletons in his closet. In this novel his tragic background, both as a victim of the mysterious little men and as a man doomed to love an unattainable woman, come to the fore. Unfortunately he is soon out of his depth. As a Preserver, his ability to carry out clandestine operations is practically nonexistent. Even Joseph, normally the lead man in any deception, cannot help him when the party being deceived is the all-knowing Dr. Zeus.
Security Tech Porfirio is, in some ways, a more extreme version of Joseph. Like Joseph, he has formed a deep attachment to others, in his case the descendants of his brother. His distaste for Company work is suppressed by his need to stay in touch with his family. It is a Devil's bargain that the Company is quite happy with.
Executive Facilitator Suleyman is, at the very least, a few thousand years old, and one of the major players in the Company itself. He has the power to help Joseph, but at the same time he is suspicious of the motives of anyone outside his own sphere of influence, but especially Joseph himself. Suleyman suspects that Joseph's father Budu is behind the plagues that appear from time to time, decimating the mortals.
Facilitator Victor is a cipher, a man who knows more than he is willing to admit, and who is deeply troubled by his work for the Company. His story is told in the shorter works in the Company stories. His connection with Lewis is more important than either suspects.
The Botanist Mendoza and her lover, in his different incarnations, are the offstage, unseen characters in the story. Joseph seeks Mendoza through the Company's secret vaults, while Lewis seeks her through his investigations of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, who may or may not be also Nicholas Harpole, the Elizabethan religious zealot so hated by Joseph.
Chapters throughout the book, all entitled "Joseph in the Darkness", seem to consist of Joseph addressing his father, relating events as decades pass between encounters with Lewis. At the end we discover where these conversations take place.
Lewis is simply in love with Mendoza. He initially contacts Joseph to try to find out why Mendoza disappeared in 1863. Through the following decades and centuries, he stumbles across clues to the Company's real origins, but in following them he may just be following a trail of breadcrumbs laid by the Company itself.
A major plot element throughout the book is that all the cyborgs have implants that transmit everything they see and hear to a central database. Much of the plot is driven by attempts to circumvent this.
Socially the book presents a dystopic view of the future. Not only does the U.S.A. fragment, California descending into anarchy, but the rise of extreme animal rights agitation and various prohibition movements means that in the future meat-eating, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, chocolate and all manner of other social and private stimulants are illegal.
In the future, Britain is somewhat resurgent as a country, despite being wracked by domestic terrorism. It also becomes clear that the Company's origins are there. People in general are not doing well, though. The population is declining in many countries, partly due to a rash of unexplained epidemics, partly due to disgust with the process of procreation itself.
is a real mansion by the Thames, opposite Kew
.
Bodega Bay
is well-known as the site for much of the filming of the movie The Birds
. It is also close to Drake's Bay
, once thought to be the site of Sir Francis Drake's landing on the American mainland. One of the main plot points of this series is the discovery of certain artifacts on Santa Catalina
by members of the Drake expedition.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
novels by Kage Baker
Kage Baker
Kage Baker was an American science fiction and fantasy writer.- Biography :Baker was born in Hollywood, California and lived there and in Pismo Beach most of her life. Before becoming a professional writer she spent many years in theater, including teaching Elizabethan English as a second language...
concerning the exploits of The Company
Dr. Zeus Inc.
Dr. Zeus Inc., also known simply as The Company, is a fictional entity in a series of time travel science fiction stories by Kage Baker....
.
Plot introduction
The protagonists of the series are mostly immortal cyborgCyborg
A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...
s, specifically the botanist Mendoza, and the Facilitator Joseph. They were recruited as children to serve the Company in its ostensible mission to preserve artifacts from the past for a better future.
Like the second novel, Sky Coyote
Sky Coyote
Sky Coyote is a science fiction novel of The Company by Kage Baker. It is the second in the series which began with In The Garden of Iden and continues with Mendoza in Hollywood.-Plot introduction:...
, this is a volume which fills in background that is not apparent to Mendoza, the narrator of the first and third books. The principal characters are Joseph and his friend, the Literature Specialist Lewis. Action starts in 1996 and continues through the next 250 years. Over this period the world changes profoundly. Japan suffers violent earthquakes and sinks into the sea. Japanese society relocates to Mexico. The USA fragments into independent republics. Animal rights movements and other activists pass laws eliminating the consumption of meat, dairy products, coffee, chocolate, alcohol, tobacco and many other stimulants and foods. Los Angeles becomes an anarchic war-zone walled off from the rest of California. Terrorists use a nuclear weapon to destroy Belfast, Northern Ireland. Anti-gravity is "re-discovered", having been known to the ancient Egyptians.
Explanation of the novel's title
Graveyards, both figurative and literal, recur as a motif in the narrative. Porfirio is introduced during a traditional visit to a cemetery on the Day of the DeadDay of the Dead
Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico and around the world in many cultures. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It is particularly celebrated in Mexico, where it attains the quality...
festival. The repositories where cyborgs, mostly Enforcers, are held in suspended animation, are a kind of graveyard. One such has its entrance inside a tomb. Joseph has to disinter Budu from an urban park, as neat as any cemetery, and take him to a repository for revival.
Frame storyFrame storyA frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
Segments titled "Joseph in the darkness" appear before and after each of the episodes described below. Joseph, apparently talking to his father-figure, Budu, fills in historical detail in the storyline and discusses his own motivations.1996: Hollywood
In Mendoza in HollywoodMendoza in Hollywood
Mendoza in Hollywood is the third novel in the science fiction and time travel series by Kage Baker, concerning the activities of The Company. In the UK it was published as At the Edge of the West.-Plot introduction:...
, the botanist Mendoza and her companion Einar were thrown forward in time from 1863 to 1996 in Laurel Canyon
Laurel Canyon
Laurel Canyon may refer to:*Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, California, an area in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles*Laurel Canyon Boulevard, a street that connects the San Fernando Valley to Hollywood that passes through Laurel Canyon...
, Los Angeles. This is supposed to be impossible, but Mendoza is a Crome generator, a psychic who cannot control her potential, and Laurel Canyon is a focus of Crome radiation (explaining its attraction for certain kinds of people over the years!).
As the action of this novel opens, Lewis is arriving at Company HQ in Laurel Canyon in 1996. Entering the building he is just in time to see Mendoza being sent back to her own time, and tries to warn her "Don't go with him!", meaning the English agent she encounters later. From his point of view, that encounter was the cause of her disappearance. She vanishes as the transfer takes place.
Lewis takes advantage of work in San Francisco to contact Joseph who is working in the hi-tech industry there. Joseph persuades him to try out a new virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
helmet, which turns out to have a fault that disables cyborgs' implanted monitors for 24 hours. Joseph and Lewis can now talk freely, without Company eavesdropping. Initially reluctant, Joseph drives Lewis to Bodega Bay
Bodega Bay
Bodega Bay is a shallow, rocky inlet of the Pacific Ocean on the coast of northern California in the United States. It is approximately across and is located approximately northwest of San Francisco and west of Santa Rosa...
to talk to Juan Bautista who was the last cyborg to see Mendoza. They give him a dose of VR and then pump him for information.
Juan Bautista is able to draw a picture of the man Mendoza met in 1863 and subsequently ran away with. To Joseph's shock, the man is a double for Nicholas Harpole, the religious fanatic with whom Mendoza fell in love in Tudor England, and who was subsequently burned at the stake. Joseph sees Nicholas as the main cause of Mendoza's troubles. He also hates religious fanatics of all stripes. Leaving Juan Bautista, Joseph and Lewis agree to meet from time to time as circumstances allow, and as they learn more.
2025: Austin, Texas
A family is celebrating the "Day of the DeadDay of the Dead
Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico and around the world in many cultures. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It is particularly celebrated in Mexico, where it attains the quality...
" at a graveyard in Texas. The paterfamilias, actually an uncle, is Porfirio, Mendoza's Facilitator in 1863. Under cover of an electrical storm, Joseph contacts Porfirio and asks what he knows about Mendoza. Porfirio tells him Mendoza was sent back in time, Back Way Back, over 100,000 years. The Company operated resorts for rich clients back before the arrival of humans in the New World. She must have been sent there, but why? Porfirio sends Joseph on his way with one request: don't come back.
2026: London, England
Lewis poses as an antiquarian, buying old papers and books, and comes into possession of a box which contains a picture of a man named Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, who he recognizes as the man in the picture drawn by Juan Bautista. Further research turns up a well-born man, apparently a natural son of someone in high places, with powerful friends who guide his life. He served as an agent of various shadowy entities. Lewis contacts Joseph and they meet in London. They make a junket to the north of England.They spend time in the country of "The Innocents", an imagined novel combining elements of Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...
and Watership Down
Watership Down
Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy novel, written by English author Richard Adams, about a small group of rabbits. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language , proverbs, poetry, and mythology...
. This novel and its loony fans are among the catalysts for the growing animal-rights movement which will eventually ban meat consumption in many countries. They stay at a house run by two of the more extreme fans, but Joseph has other motives. He has finally decoded some information Budu forced on him, and he means to act on it.
Under cover of another storm, Joseph sneaks out of the house, with Lewis tailing him. They uncover a secret installation in a hillside, containing many cyborgs suspended in tanks of fluid. Are Mendoza and Budu in places like this? Lewis' Company conditioning, intended to keep cyborgs out of forbidden places, causes him to re-experience his suppressed memories of being disabled and kidnapped in medieval Ireland. He begins to understand why the Company left him in South America for 700 years, until the events recorded in Sky Coyote
Sky Coyote
Sky Coyote is a science fiction novel of The Company by Kage Baker. It is the second in the series which began with In The Garden of Iden and continues with Mendoza in Hollywood.-Plot introduction:...
.
2142: London and Fez
Lewis is still researching Edward when he can. He learns that Nennius, another cyborg, was monitoring or guiding Edward, even being the headmaster of his school. Joseph seeks out Suleyman, a former Barbary Coast pirate who has built up an independent power base in Fez, Morocco. Suleyman has also found means of frustrating the Company monitoring. Suleyman reveals that he himself is working secretly against other factions, some of whom seem to be creating new diseases to wipe out humans. He implicates Budu in this, to Joseph's consternation.Joseph and Lewis meet again in London. Joseph now has one of Suleyman's masking devices. Lewis tells him all he knows about Edward. Edward was working for people who wanted to gain possession of Santa Catalina
Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...
island, off the California coast. Joseph has a meeting with Victor, who reveals that he did bring Budu down, a few hours before the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and tells Joseph where to find him.
2225: London; Irún del Mar, Spain
Lewis is working in a library. Finding his cover blown by a strange little man, Lewis drops out of sight and heads to Spain for another meeting with Joseph. On the way he encounters more of the strange men, and is injured with some kind of disrupter that partially disables his hand. This is not supposed to be possible, as the cyborgs have self-repair mechanisms. Told to take a vacation, he accompanies Joseph on a tour of the local archeological sites— the places where Joseph was raised, 20,000 years previously, before checking into a Company base for repairs.2275: Santa Catalina Island, California
Lewis has an "accidental" encounter with Nennius aboard a cruise ship, and Nennius feeds him a story about Edward. Lewis contacts Joseph, and they proceed to Santa CatalinaSanta Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...
where Lewis believes the key to the mystery is hidden. It is a trap. Lewis is taken, and Joseph severely injured. Rolling off a cliff and into the sea, he eventually washes up onshore and is able to reach one of Suleyman's mosques, from where he is taken to Suleyman himself. When he recovers, his implant has been removed. He is a free agent, but also a fugitive. If the Company ever discovers he is still alive, there will be Hell to pay. Suleyman gives him the same message as Porfirio did: go, and don't come back.
2275: San Francisco and Mount Tamalpais, California
Joseph follows Victor's instructions and locates Budu, buried by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He takes the remains to one of the Company's storage facilities under Mount TamalpaisMount Tamalpais
Mount Tamalpais is a peak in Marin County, California, United States, often considered symbolic of Marin County. Much of Mount Tamalpais is protected within public lands such as Mount Tamalpais State Park and the Mount Tamalpais Watershed.-Geography:...
and starts the process of revivification, with help from the cyborg Abdiel, whose entire life consists of journeying between these facilities, maintaining them.
Joseph in the darkness
Joseph settles down to wait for Budu to re-activate, and tells his recovering corpse his story. He likens himself to Hamlet, for delaying too long in taking action, resulting in the deaths of all around him. But he still has 74 years until 2355...Characters
Facilitator Joseph is a major character in this novel, as he is in most of the Company stories. At the end of the previous installment, Sky CoyoteSky Coyote
Sky Coyote is a science fiction novel of The Company by Kage Baker. It is the second in the series which began with In The Garden of Iden and continues with Mendoza in Hollywood.-Plot introduction:...
, his first-person narrative concluded with him expressing a certain ill-defined unease at his life, which by then had moved from Spain to Old California to Hollywood. For the first time in his thousands of years of life he was questioning his own motives as a Company operative. Lewis's news of Mendoza's appearance in 1996, coupled with the discovery that her disappearance in 1863 had been connected with the identical twin of the man who ruined her in Elizabethan England, begins his estrangement from the organization he has served since prehistory. He finally decodes the information given to him by his own father, Budu, which reveals to him the hidden Company graveyards where damaged and inconvenient immortals sleep. The novel ends with him turned into a demon of sorts, a malevolent free spirit determined to bring doom on those who have abused him and his loved ones for so long.
Literature Specialist Lewis was introduced in Sky Coyote
Sky Coyote
Sky Coyote is a science fiction novel of The Company by Kage Baker. It is the second in the series which began with In The Garden of Iden and continues with Mendoza in Hollywood.-Plot introduction:...
as a mild mannered Company flunky with no skeletons in his closet. In this novel his tragic background, both as a victim of the mysterious little men and as a man doomed to love an unattainable woman, come to the fore. Unfortunately he is soon out of his depth. As a Preserver, his ability to carry out clandestine operations is practically nonexistent. Even Joseph, normally the lead man in any deception, cannot help him when the party being deceived is the all-knowing Dr. Zeus.
Security Tech Porfirio is, in some ways, a more extreme version of Joseph. Like Joseph, he has formed a deep attachment to others, in his case the descendants of his brother. His distaste for Company work is suppressed by his need to stay in touch with his family. It is a Devil's bargain that the Company is quite happy with.
Executive Facilitator Suleyman is, at the very least, a few thousand years old, and one of the major players in the Company itself. He has the power to help Joseph, but at the same time he is suspicious of the motives of anyone outside his own sphere of influence, but especially Joseph himself. Suleyman suspects that Joseph's father Budu is behind the plagues that appear from time to time, decimating the mortals.
Facilitator Victor is a cipher, a man who knows more than he is willing to admit, and who is deeply troubled by his work for the Company. His story is told in the shorter works in the Company stories. His connection with Lewis is more important than either suspects.
The Botanist Mendoza and her lover, in his different incarnations, are the offstage, unseen characters in the story. Joseph seeks Mendoza through the Company's secret vaults, while Lewis seeks her through his investigations of Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, who may or may not be also Nicholas Harpole, the Elizabethan religious zealot so hated by Joseph.
Major themes
Joseph is concerned about Mendoza - he recruited her and more or less thinks of her as a daughter - but he is also trying to find out what happened to Budu, who recruited him and whom he regards as his father. Budu happened to have been an Enforcer, an 8-foot killing machine with mixed ancestry from humans, Neanderthals and God knows what else the Company used. Far from being monsters, Enforcers were gentle beings who only killed those who killed others.Chapters throughout the book, all entitled "Joseph in the Darkness", seem to consist of Joseph addressing his father, relating events as decades pass between encounters with Lewis. At the end we discover where these conversations take place.
Lewis is simply in love with Mendoza. He initially contacts Joseph to try to find out why Mendoza disappeared in 1863. Through the following decades and centuries, he stumbles across clues to the Company's real origins, but in following them he may just be following a trail of breadcrumbs laid by the Company itself.
A major plot element throughout the book is that all the cyborgs have implants that transmit everything they see and hear to a central database. Much of the plot is driven by attempts to circumvent this.
Socially the book presents a dystopic view of the future. Not only does the U.S.A. fragment, California descending into anarchy, but the rise of extreme animal rights agitation and various prohibition movements means that in the future meat-eating, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, chocolate and all manner of other social and private stimulants are illegal.
In the future, Britain is somewhat resurgent as a country, despite being wracked by domestic terrorism. It also becomes clear that the Company's origins are there. People in general are not doing well, though. The population is declining in many countries, partly due to a rash of unexplained epidemics, partly due to disgust with the process of procreation itself.
Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science
New Syon House in the story is a fictional building in London. Syon HouseSyon House
Syon House, with its 200-acre park, is situated in west London, England. It belongs to the Duke of Northumberland and is now his family's London residence...
is a real mansion by the Thames, opposite Kew
Kew
Kew is a place in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in South West London. Kew is best known for being the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens, now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace...
.
Bodega Bay
Bodega Bay
Bodega Bay is a shallow, rocky inlet of the Pacific Ocean on the coast of northern California in the United States. It is approximately across and is located approximately northwest of San Francisco and west of Santa Rosa...
is well-known as the site for much of the filming of the movie The Birds
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...
. It is also close to Drake's Bay
Drakes Bay
Drakes Bay is a small bay on the coast of northern California in the United States, approximately 30 miles northwest of San Francisco at approximately 38 degrees north latitude. The bay is approximately 8 miles wide...
, once thought to be the site of Sir Francis Drake's landing on the American mainland. One of the main plot points of this series is the discovery of certain artifacts on Santa Catalina
Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...
by members of the Drake expedition.
External links
- Kage Baker official site - About the novel
- Excerpt from the novel