(S)pecial Delivery

A little while ago Mulholland Books announced that there were making a reading group kit available to help you and your friends discuss S.

We have heard of a few kits arriving, but now we have one of our own.

The first thing to note is a letter from J.W. Dominguez who is the mysterious author of the Eotvoswheel.com website which has a large amount of information on V M Straka and who the potential candidates of Straka's identity may be.

Speaking of the website, part of it is reproduced in a special dossier, the front page of which is a reproduction of the Ship of Theseus cover (first picture).

The letter goes on to say there are instructions for solving a playfair cipher, which slightly disappointingly is the same cipher used for the Mulholland Books competition around the time that S. was launched, but it is a good one for people that haven't seen it yet.

Thee are a couple of erasable coloured pencils so that you can add your own notes to Jen and Eric's

There is also, as is becoming "the tradition" with S., a postcard, of Brazil. The postcard has a custom 'S' stamp which is a very nice touch.

Interestingly other people who have received the kit have reported that they received different postcards, and the original image of the kit published to advertise it shows a different card again.

However all the different cards seem to be images of Rio de Janeiro, which in itself may be significant.

The letter from J.W. Dominguez says "we encourage you to write and mail a postcard to Straka's translator, F. X. Calderia." The letter also says they will collect the cards and post them online.

I don't think this will be restricted to just the cards sent out in the kits, so if you can send a postcard of your own to the address in the picture I think it would be a great idea.

The final part of the kit is a CD with the first Radio Straka transmission on it, we haven't listened yet to see if it is different to the broadcast version on NTS Radio, but if there are any differences we will let you know.

The last paragraph of the letter says "I've never got a straight answer about how Mullholland books got hold of Jen and Eric's annotated copy of Ship of Theseus, but I'm glad they did. It's been a tremendous boon to Straka scholarship. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I have"

Just want to finish up by saying what an excellent way of encouraging people to read S. with friends this is and it is great to see that S. has not been just published and forgotten, but is still actively being thought about.

Alternative Chapter 10 Uncovered

Singed and battered, but still legible, an anonymous source has delivered this alternative version of the end of V M Straka's Ship of Theseus.

For What It's worth - Jen Heyward

It seems Jen Heyward has found something special.

Twitter user @TK10815 tweeted a link to an i09 article that linked us to this Jen Heyward Tumblr blog.

The tumblr page has a few interesting items, the most significant of which is a translation of some manuscript pages written in the Czech language. Thankfully someone called I. Svobodová has translated it to English for Jen and each page appears as an image on the blog.

We are off to read the new words and see if / where they fit in S.

*** Update having examined the new pages, they appear to be part of chapter 10 and our current theory is that they start close to the top of page 451.

Underneath the new pages is this image, it appears to be part of a dossier about Straka, and has an obituary from the Baltimore Bugle-Dispatch. The re is a hand written note, (circled) which says "Bouchard Property)

In the background of the picture there is what appears to be some photograph contact strip images and a copy of Miracle at Braxenholm.

LONOE

I must admit to being slow to recognise the significance of this map, I saw it a few days ago from a comment by Tonzi in the Cipher Explanations page and didn't realise what it was.

If you haven't finished the book yet you may not want to read on.

Then last night @MyTheseus on Twitter pointed out a new blog post on WhoIsStraka.WordPress.com which had the same conclusion, although arrived at via a different thought process.

Firstly the map is quite important as it explains the relationship of the coordinate system to the codes used, they are linear as you can see and these aren't locations from the book, these are all coordinates that can be found when LONOE is in the wheels window.

When you look at the map you can see that Maraú in Brazil (blue pin) is close to this line, on the postcard dated the 20th of April (insert on page 201) Eric writes that he is near this place.



So the conclusion is that the missing letters L O N O E are actually a pointer to the location of FXC should Straka have ever picked up the message hidden in the footnote cipher.

Tonzi very kindly created this as a Google map for us all to use and see this linear relationship.

Who Is Straka .com

A new website has appeared !

Amanda has let us know via email that she found a website called WhoIsStraka.com

When you visit the site all you see is what you can see in the image a styalised S. symbol.

However that is not all there is, there is a hidden link to a PGP public key (Click here) and if you look at the website source code there is an email address and at set of Eotvos wheel coordinates.

The email address says - "Please direct all inquiries to whoisstraka@gmail.com" but it also says please use secure communications protocols and encryption.

There is some encrypted text following this, but I have thus far been unable to decrypt it.

At the end of the website source code there is this set of coordinates - 35° 46.865', -5° 48.797 - this appears to point to Tangier in Morocco and on the wheel it gives us C G E U Z.

Amanda also mentions there is a related Tumblr account which was set up today and the first post was today.

The web address was also only registered today (the 19th !) so it is unclear whether this is something official or not, but any suggestions are more than welcome in the comments.

If you send a PGP encrypted message to our new friend please let us know.

The Isla Files

Our old friend @JuriMoller mentioned this Tumblr Blog - The ISLA Files.

As we know Isla is a key figure in the story of Jen and Eric and almost Jen's nemesis in her story, she is also searching for Straka with Moody.

The blog is mostly just information we have seen before, but it does have this video from You Tube which is supposedly a confession from Summersby purporting to be V M Straka.

According to the Eotvos Wheel website list of candidates Victor Martin Summersby has odds of 15-1 of actually being Straka.

There is a comment on the video - "I cannot disclose where this recording was found, please do not contact me. The book that is coming out is missing some key details that some of us have known for many years. I needed this recording to be heard."

I do not know if this website is from the "Real" Isla Dirks, but it was seemingly set up in April this year and the post about the video was on the 20th of October, well before S. was released, however the video was only uploaded on the 28th of October so there is a discrepancy there.

This got me thinking about other Social Media accounts that may be out there for us to find.

There are a few twitter accounts that may be of interest, and even one for Straka himself !

@VMStraka

@FXCaldeira

@JenTheUndergrad

@EricHusch

Most of these accounts were set up very recently (5th Nov) so I am not convinced they are something we should be focusing on at the moment, but possibly worth keeping an eye on.

While looking for those I came across another blog looking at the Mysteries of S. which coincidentally I have just noticed Brandt Warsley had posted a comment mentioning the same blog.

Glad to know there are others searching for answers.

Eotvos Wheel Website Update

A few short hours of sleep between investigating the mysteries of S. and look what happens.

It seems that all our efforts have been noticed by J.W.Dominguez and he / she has decided to post some more updates on the Eotvos Wheel Website.

Apparently it has been a rough few years since the last post there, but the current level of interest has prompted a new post.

The information is split into two parts, first some information created a few years ago, but never published, but then the second half has some more recent information.

The information is all about the Santorini Man which we first learned about via Radio Straka, there were two waves of killings that fitted the same pattern, a man is washed up on shore with a page from one of V M Straka's books.

There is an evidence photograph of the first Santorini man and @0bFuSc8 on twitter has said the Greek words are - Ιούλιος = July Σαντορίνη = Santorini and we have another 19 reference - 19th of July 1936.

In fact the post mentions the appearance of 19 as some of the pages in the pockets of these men are 9-10.

@0bFuSc8 also mentions that "There's discrepancy b/n book & website. p74 SoT Eric says page found is from Miracle at Braxenholm" - Is this a deliberate mistake or a clue ?

@WorkroomB19 also reminds us that Radio Straka mentions the Braxenholm page in connection with the Santorini Man.

However the most recent update is that there may be a third wave of killings happening right now (that is underlined on the site !).

There is another evidence picture on the site and quite a large list of places and dates for us to look at.

If you have any theories as to the significance of this new information then please let us know in the comments.

Pinterested in S. ?

This note on page 14 was pointed out by Jojo in the comments of the S. Discussion

Jojo also points out that there is someone on Pinterest, called Juri Moller with a board that lists places where the S symbol has been seen throughout history.

I actually saw the board a few days ago when @MollerJuri replied to a tweet that @Tess315 sent about the book. I looked up Juri's Pinterest page and it looked interesting, but at the time I had no spare moment to look further and I filled it under interesting but not linked.

So when I read Jojo's comment about page 14 I decided to look further.

Juri's bio on Twitter says he is from "Frederiksberg, Danmark" so that fits with the book. The pictures on Pinterest look quite convincing, although some possibly a little too good to be true, the fact that the site mentions a pin from Nazca is the one thing that sells this as a potential to be a direct connection to the book. This pin was pinned on the 22nd of October so well before the book or the Radio Straka transmissions took place.

The accounts have all been set up recently and don't have much unrelated to S, apart from one retweet from the Rolling Stone magazine "50 musicians on Instagram". One tweet simply says "05 JUNE '46" which as we know is when V M Straka disappeared. This tweet was sent on the 28th of October, S. was released on the 29th and I don't believe the Radio Straka broadcasts mentioned this date before the book was released.

Please feel free to discuss this site in the comments, and let me know what you think, can you find any other occurrences of S out in the real world, and do the pictures on the board lead to other potential clues to Straka ?

Eotvos Wheel Website

If you were looking through S. and wondered what an Eotvos Wheel is then you are not alone.

In the general discussion comments Just Thinking mentioned that after performing a search for this term, which appears on page 3, a rather interesting website is listed - http://eotvoswheel.com/

This website is titled - "Dossier of V.M. Straka" so I'm fairly sure it is safe to say it is firmly within the world of S. and is something extra for us to look at.

S. Is Out There

So do you have the book yet ? From what I have read about it everyone is a little confused and delighted at the same time.

My copy has not arrived yet and I can't get one from a store so I will have to rely on all of you for information.

Before getting on to the book, you may wonder why there is a picture of a magpie or, as we learned from the Radio Straka broadcasts, a Straka, on this post.

Well today @RadioStraka was back and posted this picture. Then The Guardian website also posted a picture of the bird in question.

Does this mean that we will get other real world clues or signs ? To paraphrase Radio Staka, Who can say, yes who can say.

Back to the book we don't want to openly post solutions to every mystery right away, especially as we don't know the answers to a lot of them and I suspect we don't even know some of the questions yet. If you want to discuss the book and it's contents please head on over to the discussion post, by clicking the tab at the top of this site or clicking here.

First lets start off gently and list the items that come inserted into the book, not in detail, but just to give a flavor of what you will see. List courtesy of Tess315

Radio Straka - Transmission Five

The fifth transmission from Radio Straka has begun.

Today's broadcast is discussing terrorism and political activism.

@RadioStraka has today changed his name to Bullfinch, which as you may recall was a theme on Transmission 3 (Phyrrula Phyrrula)

Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, Libya 1911

Transcript of show 5 29.10.13 follows -

S. Discussion

We have created a new permanent page to the blog for general discussion of S.

If you have the book and want to talk to others then click the discussion page tab (above) or click here to go to the page.

Please note that as you are discussing the book, there may be spoilers !

Radio Straka - Transmission Four

The fourth broadcast from Radio Straka has begun.

The initial subject appears to be Hermes and this picture was tweeted by @RadioStraka shortly after the broadcast begun.

More updates when we can and a transcription of the broadcast as fast as we can type.

These second two pictures are of Theseus and Ariadne and then Theseus slaying the Minotaur.

Now there is talk of the African Anansi spider god, and we have had some spider music which is actually quite creepy.

The overriding theme of todays transmission seems to be mythology across cultures.

There appeared to be a glitch with the live show today, however the fourth broadcast is already up on Mixcloud.com

Radio Straka Show 4 28.10.13

Radio Straka - Transmission 3

Today's broadcast considers Sao Paulo in Brazil at the time when Straka was writing there.

We have had some contact with Radio Straka and this was their message to us at the start of the transmission.

We hear very early on a variation on a phrase that we have heard before "What begins at the water, ends there."

There is some information about Cacareco a a Rhino that was elected to office, and is now synonymous with a protest vote in an election.

One thing we did notice today is that @Radiostraka's given name on twitter has changed to "Phyrrula Phyrrula" which we think means Bullfinch, and given that "There is much comfort and strength to be found in birds - V.M. Straka (1949)" then it seems appropriate.

Radio Straka Show 3 27.10.13 - Transcript follows

Transmission Information

You can also visit the Mixcloud website to listen again to each transmission.

On that page is some synopsis information of the overall set of transmissions and a synopsis for each individual one -

Overall Description

Broadcast on NTS, shows from www.RadioStraka.com – an Homage to a towering figure of early 20th Century literature and culture.

Remote broadcasts on poignant themes from the 17th Century Atlantic trade between Bermuda and the Azores, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Labour strikes in the early 20th Century, the life and work of photographer Herbert List, the trickster gods of classical myths, legends, and folk tales from around the world, a random potted history of Sao Paolo in 1959, conspiracy theories about the World Cup, the plight of indigenous peoples, fashion trends in footwear, and the War on Terror.

A unique, informative, and often baffling sojourn filled with rare and peculiar insights into the alternate history of the early 20th century.

Drenched in music curated by Jonny Trunk and Sean McAuliffe, from the earliest wax cylinder recordings to modern times, from all corners of the globe, the sea, space and beyond....


Transmission 1

Dancing about architecture, and radio about a photograph. Today we use the music of Canteloube, Gurdieff and traditional sea shanties to discuss the photographic work of Herbert List and its relevance to the depths of the ocean and the heights of VM Straka’s prose.

What are the tides that pull on the soul of man? How do they sound?

Soon you will know.

Transmission 2

"An introduction to Propaganda of the Deed, followed by a history of the Labour Movement and stories of the 1912 strikes in Britain, America, Australia, and France.

Music related to and influenced by Industry, Labour Movement, Miner's strikes and struggle: featuring 1930s and 1940s field recordings, Worker's Song by Dick Gaughan, and a 1942 Gracie Fields recording of The Thing-ummy-bob (That’s Gonna Win The War), Vintage European Electronica, 80s Avant-Garde Pop Jazz, Traditional Aboriginal Music, Gonwanaland, and French Library Synthersizer compositions. "

Transmission 3

A journey into Brazil in the late 1950s. Including stories about Cacareco the rhinoceros, the Sao Paolo Bienale, and various theories on the Brazilian associations of V.M. Straka, including UFO abductions, the World Cup, plight of Indigenous Amerindian peoples, and trends in contemporary fashion.

Music related to and influenced by Brazil, Africa, Birds, Football, UFO's and Fashion: Bossa, Samba, Brazilian Soul, Tribal Drumming, Jazz, Funk, Country and Blues.

Transmission 4

Our presenter weaves a quixotic narrative from myths, legends, and folk tales of tricksters from around the world: Hermes, Theseus, Anansi, Brae Rabbit, Aesop’s Fables, Sun Wukong, and Hanuman.

A musical score including movements of classical Greek, Chinese, and Indian music, interspersed with African Electronic Jazz, Afro-Blues, German experimental, and Hawaiian Classics.

Transmission 5

A considered historical view of terrorism throughout the last century with questions about State Terrorism, life on board ships in the 17th Century, and a passionate closing homage to V.M. Straka.

Music related to and influenced by War, the struggle against the capital, the IRA, British military conflict and the Sea: 50 years of music, ranging from early wax cylinder recordings, sea shanties, classical compositions, Traditional Irish/Afgahan folk, contemporary British Folk, 40's Jazz, 60's Soundtracks, and Anti-oppression African and American Soul.




We will update this post when the other transmissions are completed, but listening live to Radio Straka is definitely an experience not to be missed !

Radio Straka - Second Transmission

The second transmission of Radio Straka started at 9am in the UK and is as before an eclectic mix of information and music.

This time the underlying theme is of workers rights and unions, but as before the theme weaves it's way through other related subjects.

@RadioStraka is on hand of course to add some extra detail, and I think any listen to the transmission should also include a read of the tweets that were happening at the same time. The first picture shown here was tweeted at around 25 minutes in and is entitled "An Idyll"

One thing that cropped up early on was alluded to after the first broadcast which said the second broadcast would be in 9 hours 19 minutes. One of the first things said in the second transmission was "This broadcast should be occurring 19 days and 19 hours after the last one" so 19 seems to be a significant number.

We also asked @RadioStraka about the eclectic music tastes and this is the reply we got back.

I am not sure if this means the answer to the songs will be on this page or whether this is another wider mystery, but I can't wait to find out.

We will get a transcript up as soon as we can, if you can help with this please get in touch, but in the meantime have a listen to the broadcast on RadioStraka.com or on NTSLive.com/radio-straka

If you need something else to convince you to listen to the broadcast then how about this picture.

The next transmission is scheduled for the 27th of October (Tomorrow) at 2pm and we are assuming that is GMT as the other broadcasts have been UK time.

Now follows a Transcript of Transmission 2 - 26/10/2013

While this is a useful resource the original transmission should be listened to for the intonation and cadence of the spoken word, plus some of the music is quite funky !

Radio Straka - Transmission 1

It started with a tweet from @Bad_Robot

Radio Straka is on the air !

The broadcasts have begun, Click here to listen to them

I am going to try and get a synopsis here of what is said in the broadcast and any additional reading so bear with me while I do that.

The small amount of text on the NTSLive site says - "A series of five remote broadcasts in homage to a towering figure of 20th century literature and culture. Featuring music from the earliest wax cylinder recordings to modern times, from all corners of the globe, the sea, space and beyond. "

In the meantime why not follow a new twitter account that has been set up - @RadioStraka They may have some more answers for us and they certainly have a new website for us - http://www.radiostraka.com/

On this site you can listen to the first broadcast, and if the markings on the compass are anything to go by there will be 4 more, the final one being on the 29th of October the date of the book launch.

If you scroll to the bottom of this new site you will see this helpful (?) hint

This has a HTML link associated with it and this takes you to the Soon You Will Know website.

(Update)

The transcript appears below and now includes a few photographs referenced in the transmission, and while it is a good resource to use the original transmission should be listened to for the intonation and cadence of what is being said.

List of Websites

This is a list of the websites associated with the book S.

Where we are not sure we will say so, but we won't put anything on here unless we are fairly certain there is a link to the book.

The websites are listed in order of appearance, so the most recent one to be discovered is at the top.

Straka Bibliography

This is a list of known V M Straka works, based on the list insode Ship of Theseus, if there are any inaccuracies please let us know.

Miracle at Braxenholm (1911)

Discussed by Radio Straka

Cover image source - http://eotvoswheel.com

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The Cordillera

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The Square

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The Painted Cave

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The Santana March

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Triptych of Mirrors

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The Spotted Cat (1924)

Discussed by Radio Straka

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The Black Nineteen (1925)

Discussed by Radio Straka

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A Hundred Aprils in Amritsar

Discussed by Radio Straka

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The Viper's Humor

Discussed by Radio Straka

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Washington & Greene (1929)

Discussed by Radio Straka

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Hanging the Dead

Discussed by Radio Straka

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Lopevi

Discussed by Radio Straka

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The Night Palisades (1934)

Discussed by Radio Straka

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The Brigade

Discussed by Radio Straka

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Wineblood's Mine (1939)

Discussed by Radio Straka

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The Winged Shoes of Emydio Alves (1942)

Discussed by Radio Straka

Cover image source - http://eotvoswheel.com

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Coriolis (1944)

Discussed by Radio Straka

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Ship Of Theseus (1949)

Discussed by Radio Straka

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