Ferren and the Doomsday Mission
by Richard Harland
The unique friendship between an angel and a human is the only hope for the future – but can they remain friends?
It’s one thousand years since medical scientists brought a dead brain back to consciousness. When they discovered the reality of life after death, they laid claim to Heaven and set off a war against the angels.
Now the Earth is a ruined wasteland. Descendants of the original scientists continue the war with their armies of artificially created Humen. When the greatest of Doctors, the all-knowing Doctor Saniette, takes control of the Bankstown Camp, the fighting moves to a terrible new phase.
Miriael is the angel who fell to Earth, ate mortal food and can no longer return to Heaven. Ferren is the young tribesman who has been her only friend since her own kind abandoned her. Together, they work to unite the tribes in an alliance independent of the Humen.
But suddenly Miriael has another friend. A beautiful, caring angel visits her in secret and offers her what she most desires: the chance to return to Heaven. The consequences will be extreme … for her, for Ferren, for the world.
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EXCERPT FROM RICHARD HARLAND’S FERREN AND THE DOOMSDAY MISSION
As they ran closer, Ferren could see tiny figures on the islands struggling to defend themselves. There were three main islands and four smaller chunks of rock, all linked by ropes. The gulls had pinned most of the Sea-folk on the largest of the island, where the tribespeople tried to fight back with sticks and stones.
Nonetheless, it was obvious that the birds were winning. They screamed as they circled, then swooped down and stabbed viciously with their beaks. The boldest defenders were red with blood from countless small wounds to their arms and legs.
Arriving at the headland, Ferren and Miriael sprang from the sand up onto the rock. They scrambled across seaweed, slime and shell-encrusted surfaces, and came at last to a low cliff edge at the tip of the promontory.
“What now?” cried Ferren, eyeing the twenty-foot rope that linked the headland to the first of the islands.
“Can you swim?” asked the angel.
“Don’t think so.”
“Nor me.”
The rope hung down in the middle until it was barely skimming the water. The waves rose and fell, guggled and slopped in the channel they would have to cross.
“We haul ourselves along the rope, then,” said Miriael. “Hand over hand.”
“Dangling in the water?”
“Yes.”
Ferren grimaced at the thought. “I’ll go first,” he said.
He shrugged the pack from his back, left it on the rocks and lowered himself over the edge. Then, seizing hold of the rope, he pushed off and swung out above the waves. Hand over hand, he worked his way across the channel. Miriael was already in position at the end of the rope and preparing to follow.
As the rope arced lower, his feet dangled down in the water, then his calves, then his thighs. Soon he was submerged up to the waist. The water seemed cold here, and floating seaweed slithered against his legs.
Cark!
A single seagull had flown down. It perched ahead of Ferren on the lowest part of the rope and fixed a beady eye upon him. It looked aggressive and malevolent, and clearly meant to block his way.
Ferren continued to advance.
Cark! Cark!
As the rope swayed with his approach, the bird gripped more fiercely with its red, webbed claws. It extended its wings and drew back its head ready to strike.
But Ferren struck first. Coming within arm’s length, he heaved himself up out of the water and swung with his balled fist. The blow connected and knocked the bird sharply sidewards. It tumbled into the sea with a squawk and a splash. In the next moment, it righted itself, paddled backwards and took off with a furious beating of wings.
“Keep going!” Miriael called out. She was hauling herself along the rope a few yards behind him.
Ferren kept going. He passed the lowest point of the rope and began the upwards arc to the first island. The first island was one of the small ones, a chunk of sheer-sided rock with brown seaweed hanging down all around.
All at once, the sky went dark with wings. Ferren looked up and groaned. This wasn’t a few gulls sent to block their progress; this was the entire flock. A thousand birds were now intent on their destruction.
Desperately, he lunged forward and hauled himself faster and faster towards the island. He touched the seaweed-draped wall of rock just as the first squadron hurtled down overhead. With the rope as his support, he went straight up the vertical rock and flung himself bodily onto the flat top of the island.
He expected to be pinned under a storm of beaks, claws and wings. But the birds didn’t attack—and when he twisted around and looked back, he saw they had focused their attack entirely upon Miriael.
She wasn’t far behind him, but the birds had struck before she could reach the island. Though she still clung to the rope, she was no longer moving forward. When the first squadron of gulls pulled away, he saw that her arms and the side of her face were bleeding.
He knelt on one knee and stretched out towards her. “Take my hand!”
It was hopeless. She tried to stretch out too, but the furthest reach of her hand was still far short of his hand.
In the next moment, a second squadron of birds dived down, and the angel disappeared under a snowstorm of wings. Ferren glimpsed pecking beaks and scrabbling claws; he saw Miriael swapping from one handhold to the other as she tried to keep her arms away from them.
He was frantic. How to reach her? Then he thought of the seaweed on which he was kneeling. Perhaps…
He jumped to his feet. The seaweed grew in long straps. He snatched up the end of the nearest strap and pulled it loose. When he drew up the other end from the water, he had a length of three yards to wield.
He lashed out with it like a whip. Crack! Crack! Crack!
The curling, flicking tip of the strap cut through the air all around the birds. Startled and disoriented by the sound, most drew off immediately. Ferren aimed at the few that remained and picked them off one by one.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
Screeching in alarm and frustration, the last of the squadron flew off too. In a moment, the attack was over. The flock circled high in the sky, still seemingly focused upon their new enemy rather than the Sea-folk.
Miriael came in hand over hand on the rope and climbed the sheer side of the island as Ferren had done. There was a look of huge relief in her eyes.
“How did you think of that?” she asked.
Ferren answered with a shake of the head. “Not finished yet.” He bent to pluck up a second strap of seaweed, which he handed to Miriael. “You’ll need this. I think they’re massing for another attack.”
The gulls’ next onslaught was more calculated. They flew in horizontally in successive waves, first from one direction, then another. Their beaks were their weapons, and they were going for the eyes.
Ferren and Miriael stood back-to-back on the island, which was only a few yards wide at the top. The angel, still dripping with water, soon learned how to use her strap of seaweed like a whip in the same way as Ferren. They lashed out and defended one another as the attacks came in from all points of the compass. Again and again, the birds veered aside and couldn’t break through.
Then one attack on Miriael’s side came closer than the rest. She stumbled and fell back a step before managing to deliver a second cut with her whip. But as she stepped back, she bumped into Ferren when he wasn’t expecting it. He lost his balance, slipped on seaweed underfoot and toppled right off the edge of the island.
“Yiiiee!”
He hit the water with a tremendous splash. Spluttering, floundering and beating with his arms, he was barely able to keep his mouth and nostrils above the surface. There was no rope on this side of the island.
“Ferren?” He heard Miriael’s cry of alarm. “Ferren! Watch out!”
As he beat up spray all around him, a stream of birds came arrowing in, aimed like projectiles straight at his head.
There was only one thing he could do. He took a deep breath of air, held his arms in at his sides and sank down below the surface.
Watery sounds filled his ears, and bubbles shot up in front of his face. Everything seemed strangely suspended and floating around him. If the gulls were still attacking, he couldn’t hear them and they couldn’t reach him. For the moment, he was invulnerable.
But the air in his lungs couldn’t last. Where would the gulls be when he resurfaced? A tightness locked in around his chest, he started to gag and a gush of salt seawater invaded his mouth. He kicked with his feet and rose to the surface.
Water streamed from his hair and over his eyes. He blinked it away—and saw that the birds were waiting. They flew in a spiralling column over the spot where he’d submerged. The moment he reappeared, they exploded out from the base of the column and returned to the attack.
He gasped for air and sank down a second time. His lungs were only half full, and he knew now that the birds would stay waiting for him. Clumsily, slowly, he swam underwater towards the side of the island. But he hadn’t yet touched rock when he ran out of air. As the brine found its way into his nostrils, he panicked and kicked back up to the surface.
The side of the island was no more than an arm’s length away. He tried to reach it… But his muscles were like lead, and he was almost blacking out from lack of oxygen. When the birds descended once more upon him, he was helpless.
They blitzed the surface of the water with their webbed claws, stabbed and slashed with their beaks. He raised his forearm to protect his eyes, but they pecked at his hands, his shoulders and the top of his head. Soon he was bleeding from a hundred small cuts.
The sight of blood seemed to drive the gulls into an even greater frenzy. They buffeted one another in their eagerness to get a shot at him. The sea all around was a welter of spume and white water.
Dimly, through the frenzy, he heard Miriael’s clear voice calling out to him. “Ferren! Grab onto this! I’ll pull you up!”
She was leaning out above him from the edge of the island, and something hung down from her hand. When she was sure he was looking, she cast it further towards him, so that the end landed on the water just inches in front of his face. It was her strap of seaweed!
He gave up trying to protect himself and seized hold with both hands. At once she began hauling him in. He prayed for a few moments before the gulls saw their chance to go for his eyes.
His feet made contact with hard rock under the surface. He pushed upwards and rose chest-high out of the water. Miriael was pulling with all her might—but she wasn’t strong. Could she support his weight as he tried to tried to climb six feet of vertical wall?
He pushed up again and rose hip-high out of the water. The birds were a seething, screaming whirlwind behind him, but at least they couldn’t fly straight at his eyes as long as he kept his face close to the rock.
Another upwards push, and this time he hauled himself up hand over hand. If Miriael could just maintain her position against his weight.…
Then the strap snapped.
As he fell back flailing into the water, the birds retreated with a flutter of wings. But only for a moment. In another moment, they would be back to finish him off.
“No-o-o!”’ Miriael let out a great wail of frustration.
She leaned forward, looked down at him floundering in the water, spread her arms wide in despair—and a miracle happened.
As Miriael spread her arms, she also spread her wings. She had once told Ferren that her wings were only for ceremonial purposes, not for flying; nonetheless, they extended five feet on either side of her body when she spread them. Ferren, staring up from below, gaped at the sudden glorious display of brilliant white plumage.
For the birds, it was as though they’d suddenly been confronted by another bird twenty times their own size. Instead of sweeping to attack Ferren, they drew off, squawking. They seemed to have lost their bloodlust.
For a while, they circled the island, always maintaining a wary distance from the angel. Then, gradually, their circles grew wider and higher. Miriael’s great wingspan had asserted superiority and intimidated them. Soon, the whole flock began wheeling away, a thousand flickers of grey and white against the blue of the sky. Their cries sounded raucous and bitter with disappointment.
Ferren worked his way around the walls of rock until he came to a rope where he could pull himself up. As he clambered onto the island’s flat top to join Miriael, the Sea-folk appeared on the next island along.
A Map of Ferren’s World
Lily: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview Richard, Ferren and the Doomsday Mission sounds like an interesting book, and we’d like to get to know more about it. Is there a playlist/soundtrack that you could share with us? Or music that gives the same vibe as the book?
Richard: There’s a great video trailer created by Liana Burrage for Ferren and the Doomsday Mission. There’s also the one she did for Ferren and the Angel, the previous Ferren book.
Lily: Those look aweseome! Can you tell us a little more about your story and the story world you’ve created, besides what’s in the blurb?
Richard: My story is the story of a dream come true – only it took a very long time to get there! I wanted to be a writer from really young, and always had plenty of imagination and stories to tell. But then I won a big national prize for schoolkids with a literary short story and developed the idea of being a literary writer – which ended up giving me writer’s block for 25 years. I still have a whole wardrobe-full of novel and short story MSS begun but never finished!
So I did other things with my life, including being a university professor for ten years. But when I finally finished a cult horror novel, which led to a contract for a science fantasy series, I resigned my lectureship – and I’ve never looked back since. I’m living the dream!
The story of the Ferren books is similar, I guess. The first inspiration came from a dream in the time when I was still stuck in my writer’s block – a dream of looking up at a battle going on in the sky between the armies of Heaven and the armies of Earth, then seeing a light shot down that I decided must be an angel. Great start! – and the scene is still there as the first dozen pages of the whole Ferren trilogy. But then I needed to research the fascinating lore of angelology – which took years – and then I blocked when I tried to write the story – that took years too.
The Ferren books aren’t my only novels that have had a very long gestation period, but I guess they’re the record holders. From before I became an actual writer all the way through until now – seems like a lifetime! The good part of that is that I’ve had plenty of time to grow a large-scale world that’s not only highly imaginative (something that every reviewer so far has agreed upon) but also fits together in every detail.
It’s a retro-future 1,000 years ahead of our time, with an ongoing war between Heaven and Earth. In the course of the war, our poor planet has become a ruined wasteland, and the original humans have been shunted aside by artificially created beings called Humen. But small isolated tribes of the original humans, called Residuals, still survive, living in degraded, backward conditions and exploited with monstrous cruelty by the Earth’s new rulers. They’ve lost connection their past, except for almost mythical memories of the ‘Ancestors’ or ‘Old Ones’ or ‘Lords of the Earth’.
Ferren belongs to one of these tribes, less fearful and more inquisitive than most. When he discovers the angel Miriael shot down and damaged, he tries to help her, even though ‘Celestials’ are supposed to be the enemy. In Ferren and the Doomsday Mission, he and Miriael are travelling from tribe to tribe and joining them up in a Residual Alliance. But Miriael still misses Heaven, and when she’s approached by an angel who tells her he’s one of the Grigori, she’s tempted.
The Grigori – here’s where the angelology comes in! – are a less famous class of fallen angel in the Bible and apocrypha. Set by God to watch over the children of Adam and Eve, they fell in love or lust with mortal women, and were condemned to their own special Hell. But – more angelology! – there’s an old belief of the early Church fathers that God would eventually forgive the fallen angels, and that’s what’s happened in the first centuries of this future war between Heaven and Earth. Still, it’ll take something very special to lift Miriael back up into Heaven – something involving all the souls of the human dead who’ve been locked out of Heaven since the start of the war!
That’s one angle to the story of Ferren and the Doomsday Mission; there’s another angle involving Doctor Saniette, who now leads the Humen army. An advance review of the book by Readers Views says of him, “I have NEVER before met a character of his make-up, nor am I likely to again. Seriously out of this world creative!” But I mustn’t give his secrets away …
Lily: I love how much depth you have to the world, and story. The long journey sounds like it was worth it! Do you identify with your main character at all, or did you create a character that is more your opposite? In what ways?
Richard: Ferren is like me, I have to admit. He’s dogged and stubborn, with a strong survival instinct. He’s also curious to learn about everything in his world, which he knows almost nothing about. But I’m sure he’s braver than me!
One new trait he develops in Ferren and the Doomsday Mission is when he discovers he has a talent for public speaking and holding the interest an audience. With Ferren, it happens when he goes round from tribe to tribe with Miriael, telling them the horrific truth about the artificially created ‘Humen’ and encouraging them to join the Residual Alliance. With me, it started when I was a university professor for some years, then really blossomed when I had the chance to do public readings from my novels.
Mirael, the second biggest character, is a spiritual being who feels ashamed and disgusted to be surviving on the Earth. She’s aloof and superior and haughty – she starts out nothing like me, but I can sympathise with her in the terrible situation she’s in. Then, when she begins to experience earthly love for the very first time …
Lily: I love that Ferren embodies some of your qualities. I don’t know if I could ever get used to public speaking, though. Which scene has stuck with you the most?
Richard: The scene that’s stuck most in my mind I can’t tell you about – because I couldn’t describe it without a major spoiler! But another one that keeps coming back is towards the end of Ferren and the Doomsday Mission, when Ferren and the rescue team enter the great dome of Doctor Saniette – and find themselves looking up at his eighty-foot-high figure through cables and scaffolding. A monstrous doctor in a white coat with something like steel hooves for feet. Then they see Miriael, who’s been captured, winched up on a stretcher towards his great head in the top of the dome.
The idea of looking up at a gigantic figure comes from a memory I’ve never forgotten – of a huge wooden statue of the Buddha I saw once in a temple in Chengde in China. The walls and beams of the temple were close to the statue all around, you had to tilt your head right back to see up to the massive dimly lit head so far above.
Lily: Oh wow, that sounds like an amazing experience, and an unforgettable scene. Now we’d like to talk about you as a writer. What warmups or rituals do you use to get your writing flowing?
Richard: Nothing very unusual – just an hour of reading the news on my iPad after waking, then feeding the dog and eating breakfast, then laying out my pens and trays of papers on the bed and bedside table. (I’m a horizontal author – I write on the bed! and I still write by hand until I type up a final version.)
I guess the most unusual thing is that I do it every single day of the year except Xmas Day and birthdays. That comes from all my years of writer’s block – it was routine and habit that saved me and dragged me out!
Lily: That’s great! I know many authors prefer to go digital for the first draft, but I use pen and paper quite a bit myself. If you had the chance to fly anywhere in the world to do research on an upcoming book, where would you most likely want to go?
Richard: Many places I’d love to go, but I don’t set out to do research on or from real places. I get unexpected experiences from places – when I think about it, they’re often unfamiliar experiences in foreign places (like Chengde) – and those experiences get into my novels. But it’s nothing as deliberate as research. The research for the Ferren books was done in musty, dusty university libraries, poring through old volumes on angelology that no one had opened up in ages. (A whole universe of forgotten lore just waiting to be rediscovered!)
Lily: It sounds like a lot of fun being able to dig into that forgotten lore. What time of day do you prefer to write?
Richard: I write in the mornings when my motivation is high. But I do something I call ‘pre-filming’ in the afternoons – I think about the episode I’m going to be writing the next day, and I imagine how it’s going to unfold, how it’s going to look and sound etc. Like watching a movie in my head! Then – and this is the big secret! – I go to bed at night with the scenes still in my mind, I sleep on them, and by the time I wake up, it’s as if they really happened. All I have to do is write them down.
I don’t know if any other writer works like that, or could work like that, or would want to work like that. I seem to have a very visual imagination, so I imagine in great detail before ever getting round to verbalization.
Lily: That’s a great process! I’d be so afraid I’d forget what I wanted to write if I slept on it, but it sounds like its helped amplify your creativity. Let’s finish up with some fun questions and get inside your mind. Would you rather be able to read minds or predict the future?
Richard: I’d love to be able to read minds! For every character I create, I have to imagine how the world looks to them, how they think and feel. It would help so much if I could just copy it down like taking a reading from reality. Though I suppose reading minds wouldn’t help much with a character like the angel Miriael, who’s totally outside our reality. When she falls to Earth at the start of the Ferren books, I loved imagining what it would be like to experience the taste of air, the grittiness of ground, the touch of grass for the first time ever. And Miriael’s reactions to the experience – she’s revolted!
The Ferren books are set in a far future and start off from an SF premise – what if scientists and doctors could bring back to consciousness a brain that had died? But the consequences aren’t SF, when the revived patient reports that they’ve been to Heaven and lived among angels! After the following thousand years of war between Heaven and Earth, the far future world is definitely not futuristic. Same with my other spec fic – unorthodox forms of fantasy, never a seriously projected future. So being able to predict the future wouldn’t help me much.
Lily: I can see how being able to read minds would help form various characters. How many all nighters have you pulled?
Richard: I used to pull all-nighters when I was a poet and a songwriter. Back when inspiration came in small chunks – and things in small chunks were the only things I could finish! I always felt I had my best ideas late at night.
But I learned (after 25 years) that writing whole novels is different. I don’t need to start off inspired, I just need to start off writing – and by and by the whole mass of world and story and characters comes flooding through me again. It’s kind of waiting for me at the back of my mind, it has its own momentum to push me along! I’m eager to get back to it every morning, so I’m a morning person now.
Lily: That’s awesome! I know I’ve always been a night owl, but all nighters aren’t as easy as they used to be. Is a hotdog a sandwich? Why or why not?
Richard: I lived in England for 20 years before migrating to Australia, so for me a sandwich has to be two flat slices of bread with filling between. Hot dog buns don’t cut it! I think it’s the same in Australia – I’ve never heard anyone call a hot dog a sandwich.
Lily: Perfectly sound reasoning, I think. How can readers discover more about you and your work?
Richard: There’s the entry on me in Wikipedia, which covers most of what I’ve done and written – only stopping just short before the publication of the Ferren books.
For an instant preview of a couple of my steampunk novels (my biggest international successes so far), there’s a video trailer for Worldshaker and a video trailer for Song of the Slums on YouTube
I spent part of my life messing around as a poet, musician/songwriter and postgrad student who couldn’t finish theses. Then another part my life as a lecturer with three published academic books. But my deepest dream was to be a writer – and I finally got my start with an indie cult horror novel, The Vicar of Morbing Vyle. That led to publication offers, and I’ve been a full-time writer ever since.
My most successful books internationally have been my steampunk fantasies, beginning with Worldshaker. I’ve won the Prix Tam Tam du Livre Jeunesse in France, the Reader Views Silver Seal (Teen) in the US, and six Aurealis Awards (Australia’s Nebulas).
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