Ask the Author: Katherine Addison
Answered Questions (19)
Katherine Addison
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Katherine Addison
No, I'm very lazy about research--by which I mean, I avoid it if at all possible. So as with the history and politics and philosophy, I made the architecture and couture up as I went along.
Katherine Addison
No, this book is a standalone. I may or may not ever write another book in this world, but there won't be any direct sequels.
Katherine Addison
It's certainly a scene I would love to write!
Katherine Addison
They're a domesticated species of mongoose. Literarily speaking, they're Teddy from Conan Doyle's "The Crooked Man." (Teddy is also one of the influences behind "Mongoose": http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/bear_... ) I don't know if it's early exposure to Rikki-tikki-tavi that makes me like Teddy so much, but really my fondness for him knows no bounds.
Katherine Addison
Amal-Athamareise Airship Company t-shirts. I don't even know why.
Of course, first someone would have to come up with a 3ACo. logo.
Of course, first someone would have to come up with a 3ACo. logo.
Katherine Addison
I'm so glad you asked that question!
My best and most honest answer is that I don't know. Clearly, they aren't real in the way gods in fantasy are often real, as characters who interact with the protagonist and have a direct effect on the plot. (This can be done well or badly, but either way, it's a common trope.) If Anmura and Osreian and the rest of the major pantheon are real, they must be Deist sorts of gods, clockmaker gods, who have set the universe in motion and stepped away. (This is particularly appropriate, of course, for a steampunk world, but that happy serendipity is much more about the *author* as god rather than the deities within the secondary world.) The characters don't EXPECT the gods to interfere directly in their lives; when Setheris asks the goddesses to grant him patience, he's not expecting it to happen. And even the more devout characters like Maia and Kiru are more devout in their practice and their faith, not in their attempt to see the hands of the gods in every happenstance.
The religion of the elves started, well back in their prehistory, as an animistic religion, with souls and godhead attributed to many different things. The god Akhalarna, who fell to earth in Valno, was clearly a meteorite. In northern Thu-Athamar and the badlands of Thu-Cethor, if people do not still *worship* the gods of the mountains, exactly, they are very uncomfortable about denying them. There are dozens of gods that are no longer worshipped; the pantheon that remains--Anmura, Ulis, Osreian, Orshan, Csaivo, Salezheio, and Cstheio--has survived by accreting meaning and especially by accreting metaphors. Ulis was originally the god of the moon; he became the god of the dark, of the night, of silence, of emptiness, of death.
But I don't know if Ulis exists as an entity or not.
My best and most honest answer is that I don't know. Clearly, they aren't real in the way gods in fantasy are often real, as characters who interact with the protagonist and have a direct effect on the plot. (This can be done well or badly, but either way, it's a common trope.) If Anmura and Osreian and the rest of the major pantheon are real, they must be Deist sorts of gods, clockmaker gods, who have set the universe in motion and stepped away. (This is particularly appropriate, of course, for a steampunk world, but that happy serendipity is much more about the *author* as god rather than the deities within the secondary world.) The characters don't EXPECT the gods to interfere directly in their lives; when Setheris asks the goddesses to grant him patience, he's not expecting it to happen. And even the more devout characters like Maia and Kiru are more devout in their practice and their faith, not in their attempt to see the hands of the gods in every happenstance.
The religion of the elves started, well back in their prehistory, as an animistic religion, with souls and godhead attributed to many different things. The god Akhalarna, who fell to earth in Valno, was clearly a meteorite. In northern Thu-Athamar and the badlands of Thu-Cethor, if people do not still *worship* the gods of the mountains, exactly, they are very uncomfortable about denying them. There are dozens of gods that are no longer worshipped; the pantheon that remains--Anmura, Ulis, Osreian, Orshan, Csaivo, Salezheio, and Cstheio--has survived by accreting meaning and especially by accreting metaphors. Ulis was originally the god of the moon; he became the god of the dark, of the night, of silence, of emptiness, of death.
But I don't know if Ulis exists as an entity or not.
Katherine Addison
I recommend the Language Construction Kit to people who want to make their own language: http://www.zompist.com/kit.html I didn't follow it step by step, but it lays out the things you need to think about.
I was influenced by the languages I know best: (inevitably) English, French, Latin, and Ancient Greek. Mostly the latter two in the serious language construction part (French got a workout in the Doctrine of Labyrinths series) because Ethuverazhin is an inflected language. I stuck in things I particularly like: the consonant combination "cs" is the Greek letter xi. And I did things that were deliberate reversals: having -o be the most common feminine ending was because in Ancient Greek, 'o is the masculine article and therefore is part of EVERY masculine noun..
I deliberately made it a very rational language (which most (all?) real-world languages are not): it has very clear rules and it follows them 100% of the time. That's cheating on the author's part.
Other than that, I spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the words all *sound* like they belong in the same language, and that the words in Barizhin sound like they belong in a related language. I'm not a Tolkien-style linguist; there's no full grammar and dictionary sitting behind me on my bookcase or anything. Mostly, words in Ethuverazhin and Barizhin are what they are because I like the way they sound.
I was influenced by the languages I know best: (inevitably) English, French, Latin, and Ancient Greek. Mostly the latter two in the serious language construction part (French got a workout in the Doctrine of Labyrinths series) because Ethuverazhin is an inflected language. I stuck in things I particularly like: the consonant combination "cs" is the Greek letter xi. And I did things that were deliberate reversals: having -o be the most common feminine ending was because in Ancient Greek, 'o is the masculine article and therefore is part of EVERY masculine noun..
I deliberately made it a very rational language (which most (all?) real-world languages are not): it has very clear rules and it follows them 100% of the time. That's cheating on the author's part.
Other than that, I spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the words all *sound* like they belong in the same language, and that the words in Barizhin sound like they belong in a related language. I'm not a Tolkien-style linguist; there's no full grammar and dictionary sitting behind me on my bookcase or anything. Mostly, words in Ethuverazhin and Barizhin are what they are because I like the way they sound.
Katherine Addison
Okay, twofer because that first answer was rotten to have to give.
Writing the narrators in the Doctrine of Labyrinths got progressively harder as it went along. Felix's speech patterns are more or less me; Mildmay is the dialect I grew up hearing (and, believe me, I can achieve that level of obscenity in my own voice without trying very hard ); it took me *forever* to hear Mehitabel (I should probably have *hear* in quotes, because I don't actually hear voices in my head, but it's the only word that comes close to explaining what it's like); and Kay was *dreadful.* Dreadful, dreadful, *dreadful.* (Even though I love writing with second person familiar and formal--it makes English so much more socially nuanced.) Although Corambis was just a hard book to write, start to finish.
It's certainly not a *different* process in third person than in first, and it's still a matter of "hearing" the cadence. (My other recidivist first person narrator, Booth, has a cadence quite different from any of the DoL cast.) And of hearing the characters. Knowing how they speak and who they are go hand in hand. Actually, for me, it's a trifecta: what their name is, how they speak, and who they are--all or none.
To answer your second question, my original plan, way back when I thought the Doctrine of Labryrinths was going to be a well-behaved trilogy rather than an inconvenient and sprawling quartet, was that the first book would have Felix and Mildmay as narrators, the second book would have Mildmay and Mehitabel as narrators, and the third book would have Felix and Kay as narrators (Kay wasn't Kay at that point, but I can't remember what I thought his name was, so let Kay stand as a place-holder for his eventual self). That plan self-evidently collapsed when the first book fell apart into two books, but I was still doggedly clinging to it, because I am nothing if not stubborn, until my beloved writing partner, Elizabeth Bear, read part of the first draft of The Mirador and said, You need Felix's point of view. And I wept and wailed and gnashed my teeth (no, really, ask anybody), and finally had to admit she was right. And if Book 3 needed Felix, it was self-evident again that Book 4 would need Mildmay.
Which is the long way of saying it wasn't so much a decision as a very slow accident.
Writing the narrators in the Doctrine of Labyrinths got progressively harder as it went along. Felix's speech patterns are more or less me; Mildmay is the dialect I grew up hearing (and, believe me, I can achieve that level of obscenity in my own voice without trying very hard ); it took me *forever* to hear Mehitabel (I should probably have *hear* in quotes, because I don't actually hear voices in my head, but it's the only word that comes close to explaining what it's like); and Kay was *dreadful.* Dreadful, dreadful, *dreadful.* (Even though I love writing with second person familiar and formal--it makes English so much more socially nuanced.) Although Corambis was just a hard book to write, start to finish.
It's certainly not a *different* process in third person than in first, and it's still a matter of "hearing" the cadence. (My other recidivist first person narrator, Booth, has a cadence quite different from any of the DoL cast.) And of hearing the characters. Knowing how they speak and who they are go hand in hand. Actually, for me, it's a trifecta: what their name is, how they speak, and who they are--all or none.
To answer your second question, my original plan, way back when I thought the Doctrine of Labryrinths was going to be a well-behaved trilogy rather than an inconvenient and sprawling quartet, was that the first book would have Felix and Mildmay as narrators, the second book would have Mildmay and Mehitabel as narrators, and the third book would have Felix and Kay as narrators (Kay wasn't Kay at that point, but I can't remember what I thought his name was, so let Kay stand as a place-holder for his eventual self). That plan self-evidently collapsed when the first book fell apart into two books, but I was still doggedly clinging to it, because I am nothing if not stubborn, until my beloved writing partner, Elizabeth Bear, read part of the first draft of The Mirador and said, You need Felix's point of view. And I wept and wailed and gnashed my teeth (no, really, ask anybody), and finally had to admit she was right. And if Book 3 needed Felix, it was self-evident again that Book 4 would need Mildmay.
Which is the long way of saying it wasn't so much a decision as a very slow accident.
Katherine Addison
Oh dear. At the moment, I don't have a good answer, since I haven't been to any conventions this year except C2E2, and I won't be going to any for the foreseeable future (see previous answer re: health problems). I'm really sorry.
Katherine Addison
That is a big hulking MAYBE. I'm struggling with a lot of health problems right now and actually haven't been able to write ANYTHING for a couple of years. So the first step is write a story, any story. The second step is worry about what world it's in.
I have a list of potential stories a lot longer than my arm, and, yes, one or two of them are about the elves and goblins. But they're not even vaporware at this point.
I have a list of potential stories a lot longer than my arm, and, yes, one or two of them are about the elves and goblins. But they're not even vaporware at this point.
Katherine Addison
Freebie, because this is easy. Habrobar is not an elf.
Katherine Addison
I won't say you nailed it *exactly*, but you came pretty damn close. I *was* trying to find a less sanguinary way out of the French Revolution (and, yes, that is one reason I will admit that this book is utopianist, though not a utopia), and in inventing Curnarism I *was* thinking about the late 19th-century Communists and Anarchists. And the rash of Anarchist assassinations. Also, and really even more so, the Chartists
Shulivar himself is not based on anyone in particular, just on trying to imagine what his subject position had to be to believe that what he did was right. He's one of those characters who wrote himself.
Shulivar himself is not based on anyone in particular, just on trying to imagine what his subject position had to be to believe that what he did was right. He's one of those characters who wrote himself.
Katherine Addison
"Dachen-" is a prefix meaning "greater." So the Dachen Mura are the Greater Jewels; dach'osmin is the honorific for an unmarried woman above a certain rank; and a dachenmaza is a maza who has gained the necessary qualifications. Think of it as a Ph.D. in magic.
Katherine Addison
Answering that question would betray a secret Csevet keeps as carefully as he keeps Maia's secrets. So all I can tell you is that there *is* an answer. :)
Katherine Addison
She and her wife are very happy together. Temperamentally, she's very like her father; if she and Maia ever meet, he will probably find her alarming. She wears gold rings in her ears and gold beads braided in her hair because it is the custom of her wife's people. Almost half the crew of the Glorious Dragon are women.
Katherine Addison
Yes! The imperial names are longer because they are archaisms. Also because they're proper names with the imperial prefix tacked on. So "Hasivar" is a perfectly good name even before you add the "Edre-" to make it an emperor's name.
I haven't had a chance to listen to the audio book myself, but Tantor's narrator emailed me ahead of time and asked me very careful questions about pronunciation.
I haven't had a chance to listen to the audio book myself, but Tantor's narrator emailed me ahead of time and asked me very careful questions about pronunciation.
Katherine Addison
I don't world-build separately from writing, so it took me as long to develop the world as it did to write the book. What with one thing and another, that was about five years--although I wasn't working on The Goblin Emperor the whole time.
Katherine Addison
No, that wasn't a conscious choice--although I can't always catch my subconscious when it does things like that.
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Dec 05, 2014 09:32AM · flag