Visualizing Klepsis
Sometimes one caught sight, upon a bell tower, of an enormous head and a bundle of disordered limbs swinging furiously at the end of a rope; it was Quasimodo ringing vespers or the Angelus. Often at night a hideous form was seen wandering along the frail balustrade of carved lacework, which crowns the towers and borders the circumference of the apse; again it was the hunchback of Notre-Dame. Then, said the women of the neighborhood, the whole church took on something fantastic, supernatural, horrible; eyes and mouths were opened, here and there; one heard the dogs, the monsters, and the gargoyles of stone, which keep watch night and day, with outstretched neck and open jaws, around the monstrous cathedral, barking. — Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), Book IV, ch. 3, "Immanis Pecoris Custos, Immanior Ipse," trans. Isabel F. Hapgood
Klepsis is one of Lafferty’s most memorable worlds: a dazzling, treeless world of winding freshwater seas, with long, branching strips of land. Lafferty describes the Ninety-Nine Continents as tentacled islands whose peninsulas extend so far that land is visible almost wherever one sails on the ocean. As one travels by sea, there are the floating “cork islands,” which carry weirdly colored meadows grazed by animals with flaming pelts. Equally vivid bushes and low vegetation cover the shores. Klepsis is never really dark because of light from the moons and distant suns. There, the glare is just strong enough to make colored goggles customary. Most travel is by water, of course, aboard the metal ships. Approaching Ravel-Brannagan Castle, a passenger passes an ornate coast of mansions, castles, and formal gardens. The whole thing is a display of enormous wealth and cultivated decay. Then the royal castle itself rises beside the long slope of O’Grogan’s Mountain, its six watchtowers nearly level with the summit, and the mysterious En-Arche tower standing higher still.
