The story Fear Sun is published in [[Not A Speck Of Light (Book)]]. In Fear Sun, a group of people basically create a replica of [the fictional town Innsmouth from the works of writer H.P. Lovecraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_over_Innsmouth) in the hopes of appeasing and amusing an alien entity known as The [[Gray Eminence]]. --- ### __Main Stuff__ The story's protagonist is Skylark Tooms, from the infamous [[Tooms]] family. Skylark is the cousin of Zane Tooms. Skylark mentions the death of Zane, which is confirmed in other stories as well: "Anyway, he’s dead. The Mexican Army shot him full of holes and good riddance, says I." (Not A Speck Of Light, p. ) A character named Rembrandt Tallen plays a significant role in the story. Tallen shows Skylark footage of all kinds of disasters and atrocities that are kept hidden from the public eye. One of the scenes she sees is a village in a jungle and its inhabitants getting completely wrecked by a massive amount of beetles. Tallen explains: "Beetles of an Ur species unknown to our entomologists until 2006. Vicious bastards. Although they refer to themselves as preservationists." (Not A Speck Of Light, p. ) This is probably the [[Ur]] insect species that [[Toshi Ryoko]] and [[Howard Campbell]] discover in the story [[The Forest]]. A couple of sentences later, Tallen asks Skylark if she is familiar with Ryoko and Campbell, and calls them servants of their enemies. This implies that "our entomologists" in the above quote doesn't refer to the duo, which means that Ryoko and Campbell might have discovered the Ur beetles before or after tjhe entomologists employed by Tallen's organization. Tallen also asks Skylark of she is familiar with Project Tallhat. This is the government project described in the story [[Old Virginia]]. Tallen's organization established contact with an ancient, alien intelligence residing on Earth in 1975. They also work together with a confirmed extraterrestrial being disguised as a human named Amanda Bole. Amanda is probably (related to) [[Tom Mandibole]], right? Amanda Bole is a servitor of a recurring entity known as The [[Gray Eminence]]. --- ### __Some Smaller References__ When Skylark was a teenager, she used to own a [[Dogs|dog]] called Cheops, named after an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. After graduating high school, Skylark spent a weekend at a Catskill resort in [[Upstate New York]] that's popular with the Tooms family. A Dr. Shrike is briefly mentioned in the story. Probably not related to _the_ [[Mrs. Shrike]] from [[Don't Make Me Assume My Ultimate Form]], but who knows. One of Skylark's bodyguards is called Mantooth. Mantooth is also the name of an [[Ur]] dog in the [[Antiquity]] tale [[Oblivion Mode]], but I'm not quite sure we can call the dog his Antiquity [[Alter Ego]]. The story features a (probably not very meaningful) nod to the story [[Black Dog]]: "The Black Dog is loping closer." (Not A Speck Of Light, p. ) #Story #Speck