The Folly of Men (short story)
The Folly of Men was a Jenny Everywhere short story written by Scott Sanford in 2022. Instead of his usual Shifter, it featured Jenny Cornelius, a “very English” Jenny native to the 1960s.
It was not an avowed fanfic of anything, but contained thinly-veiled analogues of, or references to, elements of Doctor Who, Good Omens, and Godzilla, in addition to Jenny Cornelius herself being a mashup of Jenny Everywhere with Jerry Cornelius.
Contents
Plot
Jenny Cornelius is interrupted in her reading of a pulpy novel by an urgent phone call from Captain Stewart of the Intelligence Taskforce, a no-nonsense military man who seems vaguely irritated by having to deal with a wildcard like Jenny, despite her friendly and lightly flirtatious attitude. He explains that a group of British soldiers have accidentally become stranded in North Korea and ask for Jenny's help to extract them peacefully, as he is aware Jenny has a supernatural ability to appear in unexpected places. Jenny agrees to ponder a way to get them out.
When she calls him back, it is to announce that she hasn't thought of anything with “plausible deniability”, but does have a plan if he is willing to try “implausible deniability” — that is, creating a completely baffling distraction to create chaos and confusion amidst which the British soldiers will have a shot at making their escape. Stewart reluctantly takes her up on the offer, despite his uneasiness at being unable to get her to say precisely what she's planning.
Next, Jenny calls Miss Laura Drake, who works in the Intelligence Taskforce's public relations office. Laura, who's been dragged into trouble by Jenny on many occasions, is immediately suspicious, even as Jenny insists that nothing has happened — yet. After Jenny finishes explaining that she just wants to warn Laura ahead of time that she's going to need to deny all responsibility on something very big, very soon, Jenny somehow talks Laura into going on a date with her, also apparently not for the first time.
A short time later, Jenny appears in the secure office where a number of international military representatives are panicking together about the unfolding crisis: a giant sea monster has risen out of the Sea of Japan and is heading towards Pyongyang. It does not take long for the Captain to realise that this is Jenny's doing, especially when she walks up to him and casually asks whether the trapped soldiers have made their escape yet. Trying to stay inconspicuous, he advises her to lie low as long as possible if she really is behind this, to which Jenny replies: “I’ll try to be somewhere else for a few days. Lying low and being unnoticed isn’t really my best skill.”.
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- This story stars Jenny Cornelius, as previously seen in a cameo role in PROSE: Paying It Forward and PROSE: Morning After. She is here shown to live in 1960s London. When she drops in on the military meeting, she is described as “looking very sharp in a matching scarf and miniskirt combo”, though it's not clear whether this is her default outfit.
Laura Drake
- Miss Laura Drake works on the P.R. office of the Intelligence Taskforce. She is more level-headed and practical than Jenny, and finds the headaches Jenny creates for her tiresome, but Jenny has apparently talked Laura into going on multiple dates with her anyway. Presumably owing to the time period, Laura keeps the latter fact secret.
Universes
- The story takes place in the native universe of Jenny Cornelius, where versions of elements from Doctor Who, Good Omens, and Godzilla are all shown to exist.
Other
- Jenny Cornelius lives “a thousand feet from Carnaby Street”.
- Mr Fell, whose shop is located “on Greek Street just off Old Compton”, gave Jenny Biggles Goes to Mars, which she describes as very rare, in reward for having been “over half of creation and a few other places tracking down a copy of the Plasmanomicon for his personal collection”.
- Jenny describes Russian-occupied North Korea as “not really the Isle of Wight as a vacation destination”.
- Among other incidents where Jenny made her life more difficult, Laura Drake remembers “the weekend Jenny had shown up urgently needing to know if a submarine, somehow much too far up the Thames, could be hidden at the West India Docks”.
- Laura asks Jenny if she's heard of Lee Ho Fook, a Chinese restaurant “down in Chinatown”.
- Jenny muses that “in ten or twenty years” Captain Stewart will have “shot up the ranks”, becoming “a brigadier or something”.
- The giant sea monster “rose up out of the Sea of Japan, stormed through the outskirts of the harbor city of Munchon, and headed west into the mountains”. It is projected to reach Pyongyang within a day.
- French, Australian and American representatives are present at the emergency meeting.
- Jenny tells Captain Stewart “If anyone asks where I came from, you can tell them that one day I escaped from my pram in Kensington Gardens and ran for it. Never looked back”.
Continuity
- Jenny Cornelius previously appeared in passing in PROSE: Paying It Forward and PROSE: Morning After. She later features in PROSE: Watch the Skies and PROSE: Birds and Snakes.
- A different Jenny was previously shown having a good relationship with another universe's “Mr Fell” in PROSE: You've Been To Eden, I Perceive.
- The Plasmanomicon originated in the early Barbelith Story COMIC: My Bloody Valentine. It was also mentioned in PROSE: The Hermetic Garbage of Jenny Everywhere.
Behind the scenes
Background
This story contains multiple references to pop culture from the second half of the 20th century.
- Captain Stewart is implied to be a younger version of Doctor Who's Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, who has yet to be granted his iconic rank of “Brigadier” within UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce — here, simply “the Intelligence Taskforce”.
- Jenny suggests that Stewart will be a Brigadier in “ten or twenty years” — that is, either in the 1970s or 1980s, taking the setting of The Folly of Men to be the 1960s. Her uncertainty is a nod to the infamous “dating controversy” about the present-day of the original run of Doctor Who serials featuring the Doctor working with UNIT: these were originally broadcast in the 1970s but with a loose premise of being set in the near future. This intent was gradually lost and, during the actual 1980s, a story was broadcast which outright treated the UNIT stories as having taken place when they were broadcast, i.e. in the 1970s.
- Jenny is in contact with a “very special person in the book trade” calling himself Mr Fell, who owns a bookshop in Soho. This is transparently Aziraphale, the angel-turned-used-bookshop-owner, from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's 1990 novel Good Omens. Jenny describes him as “very polite, handsome, well dressed, and gay as a tree full of monkeys”, paraphrasing the first description of Aziraphale in the novel: “Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide”. Aziraphale made a personal collection of books of prophecy and other similar tomes, among which the Plasmanomicon presumably fits right in. The book Biggles Goes to Mars, not a part of the real-world Bigges series, was brought into Aziraphale's possession at the end of the novel by Adam Young when he recreated Aziraphale's bookshop with a few touches of his own. This latter plot point introduces a minor discrepancy in the 1960s setting of The Folly of Men, as Good Omens quite clearly took place around time of publication, some decades later, and Aziraphale makes it clear he did not have a copy of Biggles Goes to Mars beforehand, with the implication that no such book even existed.
- The “giant atomic monster” which rises out of the Sea of Japan, described as “something that at first glance could be mistaken for an actor in a silly rubber monster suit”, is evidently Godzilla, as featured in a long-running Japanese film series from 1958 onwards. One of the men at the emergency meeting mentions that, unlike the rest of the world, the Japanese already had a contingency plan in place for an event of this kind, nodding towards the character's Japanese origins, although this plot point does not fit the actual continuity of the film series, where Godzilla's first rampages were clearly known to the rest of the world, being too massive to conceal.
- Laura calls the restaurant "Lee Ho Fook's," making the same naming error Warren Zevon would in his 1978 song Werewolves of London.
- Jenny tells Captain Stewart “If anyone asks where I came from, you can tell them that one day I escaped from my pram in Kensington Gardens and ran for it. Never looked back”. This is an allusion to the backstory of Peter Pan.
Read online
The story is available on the author's Dreamwidth website.
