The Holy Grail Press
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Word of the Every So Often
niello: (noun) (pronounced: nee-eh-low) Have you ever seen a silver engraving with black outlines? Those black outlines are niello, a substance made from stuff like copper or lead.
Everyday History
On September 15, 1890, Agatha Christie was born, or, more politically correct, Dame Christie. Or even better, Lady Mallowan (can you guess... she was British). But of course, she was just Agatha when she was a child. Agatha Christie pretty much was always a writer. She wrote her first poem when she was 10, and several shorts stories and even a a novel while a teenager. She published her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920, which she wrote while working as a nurse in WWI. Though it wasn’t terribly successful, it succeeded in introducing the world to Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective with the goofy mustache. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Christie’s sixth novel, published in 1926, was her first really big hit. It had a surprise ending (which I won’t spoil for you) that completely changed the whole “whodunit” formula.
In December 1927, Christie’s other famous character came along, Miss Marple. She first appeared in the short story “The Tuesday Night Club,” and then in 1930 had her own feature novel, The Murder at the Vicarage. In all, Christie wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, pretty much all of which has either been made into a movie or a TV series. Most more than once. Take her 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express. It’s appeared twice as a major film adaptation, in 1974 and 2017, and twice as a made for TV movie, in 2001 and 2010.
During her lifetime Agatha Christie sold 300 million books. Since she died, that number has increased to over 2 billion. That’s a whole lot of paper. And it’s a world record. Guiness lists her as the best selling fiction author of all time. Only the Bible and Shakespeare have sold more copies than Christie. So far. And her first book didn’t even do that well. Sometimes, though, all you need is a start. That start earned Christie around $20 million over the course of her lifetime. Even without adjusting that for inflation, that’s a bit more than OK. I’d be happy with it. But if you want to do the math, today that would be around $120 million. And she’s still making money. Well, she’s not. She passed out of circulation on January 12, 1976. But her estate is still raking it in.
So here’s to you Dame Christie! Who says you can’t get rich killing people?
Cartoon of the Week
After a lifetime of work, Martin had succeeded
in making a mountain into a molehill.
Stuff
History of the Future: The Last Really Good View
Following using the Grand Canyon as a landfill in 2060, and the collective nuking of Iguazu Falls in South America so the countries concerned would no longer have a reason to fight over it, the writers of Traveler magazine began to ponder just how many places were left on the earth that were truly worth going out of your way to see. After two years of intense scrutinization, they found only one. A hillside overlooking the James River just northeast of the small town of Hurley, Missouri, was determined to be the last picturesque place on the planet on August 11, 2063.
Real estate prices there immediately increased by 200,000%, and it instantly became a magnet for the super-rich, who had finally come to admit that the Moon was downright boring. Those who could afford to be on that hillside just outside Hurley immediately began figuring out how to make money off those who could not.
High rises soon appeared where people were willing to pay 1,000 U.S. adjusted dollars for a one minute (adjusted time) view. Whenever one high-rise would block the view, the one behind it would just make theirs higher.
Finally, in what has become known as the Great Collapse, on October 6, 2076, 100 square miles of high rise condos, hotels, and timeshares, spontaneously collapsed in on themselves and fell into the valley, obliterating everything that was once there to see.
Since so much of the world’s wealth was tied up in what simply became known as “That Place,” the world’s markets suffered a simultaneous collapse. Many of the 2.8 million wrongful death lawsuits are still making their way through the courts as of this writing. And it is estimated that there isn’t a chance in hell that anyone will ever figure out who is really responsible for reimbursing those people who had placed deposits so their grandchildren might someday be able to eventually go there.
The only person to profit off the whole affair was a man named Gweev Flood, who bought the whole place for a song (which he didn’t even have to sing). Gweev has since begun charging people a dollar apiece just so the could see what was once “That Place.” There are plans for condominiums.
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