Warren Rochelle's Blog, page 23
February 25, 2014
Interviewed by Sylvia Kelso on her blog, February 24, 2014
I was interviewed by Australian fantasist, Sylvia Kelso the other day and I wanted to share a link to the interview. We talked about writing, fantasy, audience, the process, and fairy tales and various things:
http://www.sylviakelso.com
http://www.sylviakelso.com
February 17, 2014
Other Views: Guest Blogger Mark Allan Gunnells, Master of the Macabre
Other Voices: Mark Allan Gunnells, Master of the Macabre
by: Warren Rochell
I would like to introduce my friend, Mark Allan Gunnells, author of Tales from the Midnight Shift, The Summer of Winters, Asylum, among others which can be found via Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Allan-Gunn... . Mark lives with his partner, Craig Metcalf, in Greer, SC.
For a sample short story, click on this link: http://sideshowpressonline.com/?p=104
For more about Mark and his work, please visit his blog, at http://markgunnells.livejournal.com/
1. How would you characterize your fiction? Are you writing to/for a particular audience or audiences?
I tend to work mostly in the horror and fantasy genres. I do branch out from those from time to time, but I keep coming back to horror and fantasy. For whatever reason, those are the genres that call to me. As for the audience I’m writing to/for, hokey as it may sound, I think that would be me. I want my stories to be read and enjoyed by others, but when I’m actually in the process of creating a tale, I’m writing for myself. I’m writing the stories I’d want to read, stories that entertain and interest me.
2. What writers have been major influences in your work and why?
I think Stephen King is a master storyteller, creating believable characters you get invested in and grounding his tales, no matter how fantastical, in a realism that makes suspension of disbelief a snap. Joe R. Lansdale is another storyteller I admire greatly; he writes some of the most natural, authentic sounding dialogue around. I’m a huge fan of Clive Barker’s short story work. He creates tales that are bold and original, and as someone who loves the short form, I have to give props to any writer that initially came to prominence through short stories. Lastly, I’ll mention Robert McCammon, because I respect his choice to step away from Big House publishing and turn to the small press in order to keep true to the stories he wanted to tell.
3. You have had some/or have some forthcoming work. Tell us about those and what your readers can expect. Continuing stories? New territories?
I have two new books on the horizon for 2014. A short story collection titled Welcome to the Graveyard with Evil Jester Press that will offer 21 pieces of short fiction. I tried to choose tales that would show a range of tone, subject, and even genre. Also, I’ll have a novel out in the summer from JournalStone called Outcast. It will be part of their Double Down series, my novel and a novella from author John R. Little in one volume. We did something interesting here, we both started with an identical prologue, then without discussing it we both came up with stories based off that prologue. I’m also toying with self-publishing two previously published novellas, Whisonant and Creatures of the Light, in a digital edition.
4. What advice do you have for new and aspiring writers?
Just write, and write what you love. Don’t try to write like someone else, don’t try to write what is popular at the moment. In fact, for me personally, I find it’s best not to even think about publication during the creating process. That’s for later, after the work is done. Just find a story that excites you and tell it. That way, whether you publish or not, you will always have the joy of creating the tale, and that can’t be taken from you.
5. Is there a question you wish you would be asked and if so, what is the question and what might your answer?
I guess I wouldn’t mind being asked what my current writing projects might be. Why, I’m glad you asked. Ha ha. Right now I’m collaborating with James Newman on a coming-of-age horror novella titled Dog Days O’ Summer. I’m having a lot of fun with this one, and working with James is a pleasure. I admire him as a writer, and our minds seem to run along the same wavelength. Once that is complete I’m planning to do a zombie novella called Fort. It will be a semi-sequel to my earlier zombie novella Asylum and will be set at my alma mater, Limestone College, where I seem to set a lot of my stories. Call it my own Castle Rock.
6. Anything else you would like to say or comment on?
I just want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me, and I want to thank anyone out there who takes a shot on my work.
Also check out Mark on Goodreads:
Mark Allan Gunnells
Some of Mark's titles include:
Ghosts in the AtticThe Exchange StudentGhosts in the AtticAsylumDancing in the DarkThe Summer of WintersThe QuarryWhisonant / Creatures of the Light
by: Warren Rochell
I would like to introduce my friend, Mark Allan Gunnells, author of Tales from the Midnight Shift, The Summer of Winters, Asylum, among others which can be found via Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Allan-Gunn... . Mark lives with his partner, Craig Metcalf, in Greer, SC.
For a sample short story, click on this link: http://sideshowpressonline.com/?p=104
For more about Mark and his work, please visit his blog, at http://markgunnells.livejournal.com/
1. How would you characterize your fiction? Are you writing to/for a particular audience or audiences?
I tend to work mostly in the horror and fantasy genres. I do branch out from those from time to time, but I keep coming back to horror and fantasy. For whatever reason, those are the genres that call to me. As for the audience I’m writing to/for, hokey as it may sound, I think that would be me. I want my stories to be read and enjoyed by others, but when I’m actually in the process of creating a tale, I’m writing for myself. I’m writing the stories I’d want to read, stories that entertain and interest me.
2. What writers have been major influences in your work and why?
I think Stephen King is a master storyteller, creating believable characters you get invested in and grounding his tales, no matter how fantastical, in a realism that makes suspension of disbelief a snap. Joe R. Lansdale is another storyteller I admire greatly; he writes some of the most natural, authentic sounding dialogue around. I’m a huge fan of Clive Barker’s short story work. He creates tales that are bold and original, and as someone who loves the short form, I have to give props to any writer that initially came to prominence through short stories. Lastly, I’ll mention Robert McCammon, because I respect his choice to step away from Big House publishing and turn to the small press in order to keep true to the stories he wanted to tell.
3. You have had some/or have some forthcoming work. Tell us about those and what your readers can expect. Continuing stories? New territories?
I have two new books on the horizon for 2014. A short story collection titled Welcome to the Graveyard with Evil Jester Press that will offer 21 pieces of short fiction. I tried to choose tales that would show a range of tone, subject, and even genre. Also, I’ll have a novel out in the summer from JournalStone called Outcast. It will be part of their Double Down series, my novel and a novella from author John R. Little in one volume. We did something interesting here, we both started with an identical prologue, then without discussing it we both came up with stories based off that prologue. I’m also toying with self-publishing two previously published novellas, Whisonant and Creatures of the Light, in a digital edition.
4. What advice do you have for new and aspiring writers?
Just write, and write what you love. Don’t try to write like someone else, don’t try to write what is popular at the moment. In fact, for me personally, I find it’s best not to even think about publication during the creating process. That’s for later, after the work is done. Just find a story that excites you and tell it. That way, whether you publish or not, you will always have the joy of creating the tale, and that can’t be taken from you.
5. Is there a question you wish you would be asked and if so, what is the question and what might your answer?
I guess I wouldn’t mind being asked what my current writing projects might be. Why, I’m glad you asked. Ha ha. Right now I’m collaborating with James Newman on a coming-of-age horror novella titled Dog Days O’ Summer. I’m having a lot of fun with this one, and working with James is a pleasure. I admire him as a writer, and our minds seem to run along the same wavelength. Once that is complete I’m planning to do a zombie novella called Fort. It will be a semi-sequel to my earlier zombie novella Asylum and will be set at my alma mater, Limestone College, where I seem to set a lot of my stories. Call it my own Castle Rock.
6. Anything else you would like to say or comment on?
I just want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me, and I want to thank anyone out there who takes a shot on my work.
Also check out Mark on Goodreads:
Mark Allan Gunnells
Some of Mark's titles include:
Ghosts in the AtticThe Exchange StudentGhosts in the AtticAsylumDancing in the DarkThe Summer of WintersThe QuarryWhisonant / Creatures of the Light
February 13, 2014
A Review of The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey into the Feline Heart, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart by Jeffrey Moussaieff MassonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
If you are an ailurophile, then this is a book for you. Part memoir of life with his own pride (5 cats), part animal behavioral research, part love story, Masson draws upon literature and history and "the wonderful true stories of cat experts and cat lovers around the world, Jeffrey Masson vividly explores the delights and mysteries of the feline heart."
He explores nine emotional states of being or behaviors, ranging from narcissim to love to contentment to curiosity (which does not kill them) to anger and playfulness. Masson both confirms and debunks what people believe they know about cats. For example," are cats selfish?" Are they really narcissists? Self-centered? Reminding the reader that to think so is to interpret a non-human by human standards of behavior, the answer is, of course, no. "Cats may appear self-centered, but they watch us all the time, taking us in They see us; they notice us--a far cry from vanity."
As I write this, I have a cat in my lap. He wants to be there; he want to rub noses, and came in the room, fussing to get my attention (I know, that is my interpretation!) He wants to be petted. He wants to be be with me. As Masson points out, over and over, they want to be with us--just on their terms. In a while, Festus will want to get down and I will let him--until the next time he wants to be with me.
Does he need me, as Masson asks? I want to think so . Masson argues that as cats are happy to be themselves, maybe not. But they do love us and like being with us.
Catlovers, read this book for its "surprises and insights" that offer a new perspective on the deep connection between humans and their feline friends," written in clear and lucid and often beautiful prose.
Recommended.
View all my reviews
January 17, 2014
A Review of My Grandfather's Blessings, by Rachel Naomi Remen
My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging by Rachel Naomi RemenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am quite certain that the reviews of this beautifully written book have been copious and enthusiastic--so certain, in fact, that I almost decided that one more review would be superfluous. Maybe so. But these short true stories and accounts of Rachel Naomi Remen's work with cancer patients in all stages of the disease--remission to days from death, and of her work with doctors to help them remember they are humans working with humans moved me in a very profound way. They are stories of "strength, refuge, and belonging." She is indeed a "healer of the heart," and a master storyteller. She knows on a very deep level that we can and do "bless one another without knowing it," and that life is a blessing and a mystery and death is part of life. "We all matter and so do our blessings."
If that is corny, so be it. But why do we make light of our feelings? Perhaps we fear how naked and vulnerable it makes us to admit we have them. I wonder, as I write this, if my reaction comes, in part, from having gone through my mother's death back in 2006, being there as she took her last breath? And that my father's last end time is here. Yes, I think so.
Be that as it may, I urge you to read this book.
View all my reviews
A Review of Gossip from the Forest, by Sara Maitland
a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..." style="float: left; padding-right: 20px">
Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales by Sara Maitland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved this book. Beautifully written, well-researched, and an engaging and compelling voice kept me reading as Maitland travels through British forests through different seasons as she explores "the forest's role as the source of [Britain's] earliest and most vital cultural forms, the fairytale." Yes, these are British fairytales and these are British forests, yet, they are ours, too--these are universal stories and they are the stories many of our ancestors brought to American from Britain, with the memories of those forests. Her retellings of such stories as "Thubling," Hansel and Gretel," "Rumpelstiltskin," and others are magical. I wanted to walk these forest paths with her.
I stumbled upon this book whilst browsing in Blackwell's in Oxford, thinking I could read it on the plane home. What a fortunate stumble that was.
Highly recommended.
View all my reviews
Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales by Sara MaitlandMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved this book. Beautifully written, well-researched, and an engaging and compelling voice kept me reading as Maitland travels through British forests through different seasons as she explores "the forest's role as the source of [Britain's] earliest and most vital cultural forms, the fairytale." Yes, these are British fairytales and these are British forests, yet, they are ours, too--these are universal stories and they are the stories many of our ancestors brought to American from Britain, with the memories of those forests. Her retellings of such stories as "Thubling," Hansel and Gretel," "Rumpelstiltskin," and others are magical. I wanted to walk these forest paths with her.
I stumbled upon this book whilst browsing in Blackwell's in Oxford, thinking I could read it on the plane home. What a fortunate stumble that was.
Highly recommended.
View all my reviews
A Review of The Geomancer's Compass, by Melissa Hardy
The Geomancer's Compass by Melissa HardyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The year is 2021 and Miranda Liu has an internship at Canboard, that has involved her with the rapidly developing new technology of Augmented Reality: all high tech and cutting edge. Then she is called home to her grandmother's deathbed and receives a family heirloom, a geomancer's compass and a mission: with her annoying and dyslexic cousin, Brian, find a way to lift the old curse on their Chinese-Canadian family. If not: disaster. Can they lift the curse, using the compass and old Chinese magic and the new technology of Augmented and Virtual Reality in time to save their family? I liked this sometimes funny and clever YA adult mystery/adventure/coming of age novel.
View all my reviews
January 15, 2014
Other Voices: Interviews with Guest Bloggers: Sylvia Kelso
Other Voices: Interviews with Guest Bloggers: Sylvia Kelso
January 15, 2014 at 10:05am
I would like to introduce my friend, Sylvia Kelso, Aurealis Award nominee, and author of Everran's Bane, The Moving Water, The Red Country, The Seagull, Amberlight, Riversend, Source, the Blackston Gold series, and her latest novella, “Spring in Geneva,” all of which are available via Amazon.
See more including sample chapters on http://www.sylviakelso.com/
1. How would you characterize your fiction? Are you writing to/for a particular audience or audiences?
Once I could have said, I think of my work as moral swords-and-sorcery – more emphasis on the ethics of using magic and might than on the tin-clashing. But though that fits even the unpublished Everran novels, the Amberlight series is more of an sf/fantasy genre straddler, and its focus is gender politics. And the Blackston Gold books you’d could only call fantasy crossed with time romance, adding a streak of mystery and police procedural, while “Spring in Geneva” is unabashed swash-and-buckle, with a dash of steampunk. Though like its close ancestor Frankenstein, it is concerned with the morality of science. Similarly, I suppose Blackston Gold is concerned with ecological morality. So maybe a concern with morality is the overall attribute. In my eyes, at least.
Once I used to try to write to an ideal fantasy reader who would get all the allusions and follow all the smart bits. Now, after a bunch of books and some very kind work-in- progress readers, I find myself concerned less with the target audience and more with anticipating clarity. Is this or that going to give a reader the correct meaning at first and perhaps only glance?
2. What writers have been major influences in your work and why?
In fantasy, Tolkien above all others, for the world-building detail, and the way LotR in particular conveys not only a living and loved landscape, but a sense of its long history.
Overall, Mary Renault, who could make dialogue mean more, and leave out more superfluous explanation, than almost any other novelist I ever read. But of course, writers collect something from everyone they read. It’s like spores off plants and flowers on your clothes as you walk past.
3. You have had some/or have some forthcoming work. Tell us about those and what your readers can expect. Continuing stories? New territories?
For already-out, 2013 was a good year for me, in short fiction. Two longer short stories written in 2012 both came out in 2013, along with “Spring in Geneva.” I was very happy especially because, unusually for me, all three were written not only in another time, but in settings I’ve never personally seen. I dislike generic settings of any sort, urban OR rural, so when I write anything set in “our” world, I like to visit the place: see the colour ranges, get a sense of the light as well as the layout.
With “The Honour of the Ferrocarril,” however, the Black Gang, or Creative Crew, decided we would write a steampunk vampire story set in the land of real vampires, ie. South America, and I ended up doing big research on the astounding 19th century railways of Peru, a place I have still never been. With “The Price of Kush” the same thing happened, only this time the setting was Africa, around 1500 BC. I was quite happy with the even larger amount of research, but more uncomfortable with second hand sources for the light values and the landscape, alas.
And for “Spring in Geneva,” which is set in 1818 and has the swash-and-buckle’s suitable amount of street chases, duels, and horseback road-hunts, I found myself working out streets in the Old Town of Geneva on Google, and hunting up Net images of the town. Thank goodness FOR Google, but all the same, I wd. have preferred to use my own eyes.
In oncoming work, in December I signed a contract for the 4th Amberlight book, Dragonfly, with Jupiter Gardens Press, who published its forerunner, Source. I was delighted because Dragonfly is in many ways the Amberlight novel nearest to my heart. Firstly, it’s a daughter-of, second generation story, so it fulfills one of my favourite writing itches, finding out What Happened After the Ending.
In Dragonfly’s case, it was 4 years after Source before the Black Gang had an answer to that. And said answer pushes the envelope for romantic relationships in a way still not much mentioned or accepted, even in these days of race, gender and sexuality awareness. That is, a relationship, as in Lolita, possibly too far across the age barrier.
It proved almost so for at least three of my work-in-progress readers, and I did quite a bit of micro-revision to keep the age difference but make it palatable before I sent off the ms to anyone. So for both those reasons I was very happy to have a contract for this one!
In current works-in-progress, I have two stalled novellas on the blocks, and now an invite to contribute a story to an anthology on “Cranky Ladies in History;” which has led to revising an entire old historical novel, that I think I’d now like to get published in its own right, at least after tinkering. But I’m very little further forward with the short story, alas. It may well prove to be new territory, if I only knew where.
4. What advice do you have for new and aspiring writers?
As I’ve said before, don’t quit your day job till your advance offer tops $500,000, and never say about a requested revision, It can’t be done.
5. Is there a question you wish you would be asked and if so, what is the question and what might your answer?
One I’ve been asked elsewhere, always helpful to writers, is:
Give me one thing you want readers to remember after they finish this blog?
To which my answer would be:
The names of those latest works? “Spring in Geneva” now, and, I hope, sometime in 2014, Dragonfly.
Sylvia Kelso
January 15, 2014 at 10:05am
I would like to introduce my friend, Sylvia Kelso, Aurealis Award nominee, and author of Everran's Bane, The Moving Water, The Red Country, The Seagull, Amberlight, Riversend, Source, the Blackston Gold series, and her latest novella, “Spring in Geneva,” all of which are available via Amazon.
See more including sample chapters on http://www.sylviakelso.com/
1. How would you characterize your fiction? Are you writing to/for a particular audience or audiences?
Once I could have said, I think of my work as moral swords-and-sorcery – more emphasis on the ethics of using magic and might than on the tin-clashing. But though that fits even the unpublished Everran novels, the Amberlight series is more of an sf/fantasy genre straddler, and its focus is gender politics. And the Blackston Gold books you’d could only call fantasy crossed with time romance, adding a streak of mystery and police procedural, while “Spring in Geneva” is unabashed swash-and-buckle, with a dash of steampunk. Though like its close ancestor Frankenstein, it is concerned with the morality of science. Similarly, I suppose Blackston Gold is concerned with ecological morality. So maybe a concern with morality is the overall attribute. In my eyes, at least.
Once I used to try to write to an ideal fantasy reader who would get all the allusions and follow all the smart bits. Now, after a bunch of books and some very kind work-in- progress readers, I find myself concerned less with the target audience and more with anticipating clarity. Is this or that going to give a reader the correct meaning at first and perhaps only glance?
2. What writers have been major influences in your work and why?
In fantasy, Tolkien above all others, for the world-building detail, and the way LotR in particular conveys not only a living and loved landscape, but a sense of its long history.
Overall, Mary Renault, who could make dialogue mean more, and leave out more superfluous explanation, than almost any other novelist I ever read. But of course, writers collect something from everyone they read. It’s like spores off plants and flowers on your clothes as you walk past.
3. You have had some/or have some forthcoming work. Tell us about those and what your readers can expect. Continuing stories? New territories?
For already-out, 2013 was a good year for me, in short fiction. Two longer short stories written in 2012 both came out in 2013, along with “Spring in Geneva.” I was very happy especially because, unusually for me, all three were written not only in another time, but in settings I’ve never personally seen. I dislike generic settings of any sort, urban OR rural, so when I write anything set in “our” world, I like to visit the place: see the colour ranges, get a sense of the light as well as the layout.
With “The Honour of the Ferrocarril,” however, the Black Gang, or Creative Crew, decided we would write a steampunk vampire story set in the land of real vampires, ie. South America, and I ended up doing big research on the astounding 19th century railways of Peru, a place I have still never been. With “The Price of Kush” the same thing happened, only this time the setting was Africa, around 1500 BC. I was quite happy with the even larger amount of research, but more uncomfortable with second hand sources for the light values and the landscape, alas.
And for “Spring in Geneva,” which is set in 1818 and has the swash-and-buckle’s suitable amount of street chases, duels, and horseback road-hunts, I found myself working out streets in the Old Town of Geneva on Google, and hunting up Net images of the town. Thank goodness FOR Google, but all the same, I wd. have preferred to use my own eyes.
In oncoming work, in December I signed a contract for the 4th Amberlight book, Dragonfly, with Jupiter Gardens Press, who published its forerunner, Source. I was delighted because Dragonfly is in many ways the Amberlight novel nearest to my heart. Firstly, it’s a daughter-of, second generation story, so it fulfills one of my favourite writing itches, finding out What Happened After the Ending.
In Dragonfly’s case, it was 4 years after Source before the Black Gang had an answer to that. And said answer pushes the envelope for romantic relationships in a way still not much mentioned or accepted, even in these days of race, gender and sexuality awareness. That is, a relationship, as in Lolita, possibly too far across the age barrier.
It proved almost so for at least three of my work-in-progress readers, and I did quite a bit of micro-revision to keep the age difference but make it palatable before I sent off the ms to anyone. So for both those reasons I was very happy to have a contract for this one!
In current works-in-progress, I have two stalled novellas on the blocks, and now an invite to contribute a story to an anthology on “Cranky Ladies in History;” which has led to revising an entire old historical novel, that I think I’d now like to get published in its own right, at least after tinkering. But I’m very little further forward with the short story, alas. It may well prove to be new territory, if I only knew where.
4. What advice do you have for new and aspiring writers?
As I’ve said before, don’t quit your day job till your advance offer tops $500,000, and never say about a requested revision, It can’t be done.
5. Is there a question you wish you would be asked and if so, what is the question and what might your answer?
One I’ve been asked elsewhere, always helpful to writers, is:
Give me one thing you want readers to remember after they finish this blog?
To which my answer would be:
The names of those latest works? “Spring in Geneva” now, and, I hope, sometime in 2014, Dragonfly.
Sylvia Kelso
November 13, 2013
Tricks and Treats:Twenty Tales of Gay Terror and Romance, by Michael G. Cornelius
Tricks and Treats Twenty: Tales of Gay Terror and Romance by Michael G. CorneliusMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Yes, as Michael Cornelius reminds us in the introduction to this collection, we have all been afraid, and "we are going to be afraid again, at some point in our lives." For some of us, those fears will be "scary shadows, stormy nights, the creaking of a rusty iron gate. Loud voices. Sirens . . . Fear is perhaps the great universal experience" (1). As for romance in a crazy world--is he right, there are "few things scarier than falling in love" (3)? Think of how it felt to fall in love for the first time--and think of all the insane, crazy, things you did--and that you "happily [did] them--and would do them again . . . Love is, after all, greedy and beautiful and needy and all-encompassing. It makes us better than who we are, which for most humans, is truly a terrifying thing" (4).
And, when one adds in the complications of being gay in a society that taught so many of us for so long that we were other than human, and not worthy of love or loving, and that homophobia and bigotry are valid responses, well, that just ratchets up the terror, doesn't it? Yes, falling in love, loving, can be truly terrifying and this terror and this love is what Cornelius is exploring in these twenty well-written tales.
In "Clay," Cornelius explores these themes of terror and romance through the reimagining of the myth of the golem, this time told in a small Southern town that has no special festivals and apparently, no excitement--except Bulk Trash Pick-Up Day. Yes, that bad, and don't look for this date on your calendar. As Billy explains it, this is "just the day when folks in [his] town take all their big, hulking, useless pieces of kay-rap that they have been hanging on to for the past year or so--some cases, for decades ..." (20), and put them out on the curb. Billy is one of the town outcasts: abandoned by his dad, a drunk mother, and a screw-up. After "borrowing the principal's car and "bumping" into one of the town's only school buses, he was given the choice of juvie or the military. He chose the military--only to be caught there having sex with another soldier.
Now Billy is the "town faggot," and in the junk business, and to avoid competition, he picks up trash from the local synagogue--trash left out a day later than the Christians. This gets really interesting one year, when in the synagogue trash, Billy finds a "statue of a man, bigger than life-sized and an impressive sight to behold [and] brown the color of old clay and solidly built" (25). The golem. Things change for Billy after that. He has strange dreams, dreams of wild sex with his golem, and once he figures out the magic that animates this clay man, the dreams become real. Clay, aptly named, becomes Billy's lover, and his defender. The gay bashers who hurt Billy get bashed and the redneck bar gets trashed. Revenge is sweet. And Billy, he lives happily ever after, with his golem.
"Apocalypse. Now?" is both a dark and dangerous tale, and funny as well--and that Cornelius can combine these seemingly disparate elements in one story so successfully is an amazing gift. Jorge has been trapped in Bandleburg, Kentucky since he was twenty-seven. He is the town sissy. "Safe in the confines of the town's only beauty salon, Jorge was a dishy, swishy, sissy who could charm the old ladies" (43) and by being a predictable stereotype he could survive in a town where they liked the obvious and predictable. Jorge has humored the old ladies and survived, but he is lonely: he wants to find love. But now the zombies are out there and they know that live, edible people are inside the salon and they want in to feed.
Then, Evan, the UPS man shows up, "Manly, strong, handsome Evan, gentle Evan, who with his cocoa-colored skin was as much of an outcast as Jorge" (48). He had escaped the zombies but came back--for Jorge. Now he can confess his true love. And now Jorge has something to fight for.
Love is the theme of the collection's concluding tale (and one of my personal favorites), "Faeries in the Wood," a sweet coming out tale of college love, and faeries--a counterpoint to the darkness that is a continual thread in this collection. Four college boys are on a road trip, a quest as it were, to do field research for a folklore assignment exploring faerie legends in New England. For Ben, this is a dream come true: to be one of the guys, hanging out, doing guy things. He has always been the outsider: the skinny Chinese kid, "string bean, weirdo," or worse, "chink, gook." He is desperate to belong and when Scotty and Clark and Wally take him into their group, he is both dumbfounded and overjoyed, especially since Scotty is one of the campus golden boys. Ben doesn't quite believe that Scotty wants to be friends with him, hang out with him. Ben has "always wondered if it was all some colossal practical joke, and if someday soon, he'd just be the geeky gook stuffed back into yet another smelly, cramped locker" (324).
Now Ben is on a road trip, a quest, to find evidence of faeries. Faeries, it turns out, "are forever observers of human kind . . . They hate humans who act irresponsibly, or irreverently to them." Humans who have offended them will be "[bedeviled] . . . [with] loud knocks and noises, [stolen] possessions . . . spiders in their beds . . . Fairies also dislike humans . . . any human who is not true to himself" (324, 325). Ben is tested on this trip, especially when the boys pitch their tents out in the woods. Things happen. Loud knocks, noises, nettles, and spiders, which absolutely terrify Ben. "[H]is dream come true"--camping out with friends, hanging out, is a disaster . . . "everything sucked. Everything kept going wrong" (337). And he is also haunted by a constant mental refrain, even as he finds himself more and more drawn to Scotty: you don't fit in with them. You don't belong with them. When he finds out Wally and Clark are longtime lovers and that golden Scotty is gay as well, the refrain gets louder. Clearly the faeries were on his case. That golden Scotty is gay is unbelievable. All of which brings Ben to finally face his own truth: he's gay and he is in love with Scotty. This story has a happy ending. Ben achieves his quest: the grail of being true to his self, and the hand of the prince.
Not all of seventeen other tales in this collection do end with happily ever after, but then love, straight or gay, doesn't always work out or win. Sometimes the good guys lose. There are monsters out there, including giant flying squids and creatures that look like humans but aren't and eat bone marrow as a steady diet. Zombies, lots of zombies. Some of us want to be monsters; some of us are. We don't always get what we want; sometimes we do.
In this collection of gay tales of terror and romance, Cornelius explores the mysteries of the human heart in tales that are light and dark, tales of monsters and the all-too-human. You won't be disappointed.
Recommended.
View all my reviews
The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge
This summer I had the good fortune to spend 6 weeks in England--5 in Bath, where I was teaching summer school for the Advanced Studies in England program, which offers summer, semester, and year-long courses of studies to American students. I taught a course on Tolkien and Lewis and their influences on Anglo-American fantasy to a class of 15, 10 from my home school, the University of Mary Washington. The course included a study trip, which took us to both Tolkien and Lewis's graves, and Lewis's home, The Kilns, among other like places. In addition to teaching, I read, wrote, and explored. One time I found myself poking around St. Michael's, an Anglican church not far from the Royal Mail. Outside was a sign advertising their coffeehouse and their bookstore, Aslan's
Aslan's Bookstore: I HAD to go in and that's where I found The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, the author of a children's book I have long loved, Linnets & Valerians. On the cover: "I absolutely adored The Little White Horse," J.K.Rowling.
I bought a latte and the book: I had to.
I read the book on the flight home. In many ways The Little White Horse was quite similiar to Linnets & Valerians: a displaced child (or children), sent out to the country to eccentric relatives, odd occurrences and long, long-held secrets and mysteries, and the hint of magic. The displaced child becomes the agent of solving the mysteries, uncovering the secrets, reuniting long-separated lovers, and in the end she--Maria in The Little White Horse, and they--the four Linnets--help things become as they once were, as they should be, in a sweet rural England. She--and they--marry who they were meant to, and there is a happily ever after.
Predictable? Yes, but sweet, lovely, and magical, and just the book for an 8-hour plane ride.
Aslan's Bookstore: I HAD to go in and that's where I found The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, the author of a children's book I have long loved, Linnets & Valerians. On the cover: "I absolutely adored The Little White Horse," J.K.Rowling.
I bought a latte and the book: I had to.
I read the book on the flight home. In many ways The Little White Horse was quite similiar to Linnets & Valerians: a displaced child (or children), sent out to the country to eccentric relatives, odd occurrences and long, long-held secrets and mysteries, and the hint of magic. The displaced child becomes the agent of solving the mysteries, uncovering the secrets, reuniting long-separated lovers, and in the end she--Maria in The Little White Horse, and they--the four Linnets--help things become as they once were, as they should be, in a sweet rural England. She--and they--marry who they were meant to, and there is a happily ever after.
Predictable? Yes, but sweet, lovely, and magical, and just the book for an 8-hour plane ride.
November 4, 2013
October 2013: Grea Fantasy Roundtable Blog: What does it mean to be human?
October 2013: Great Traveling Fantasy Roundtable Blog: What does it mean to be human?
Being Human
Deborah Ross
I think we Homo sapiens have been discussing what being human is and means since we developed abstract language and probably before that. At first, the driving motivation was undoubtedly how to tell what is us and not-us. This is certainly a biological imperative at the cellular level; our immune systems must tackle the question every day, attacking foreign substances like viruses, bacteria, and allergenic proteins, and it’s also why cancer is so insidious (cells with the right molecular passwords that nonetheless behave like ravening barbarians). The same distinctions hold true at the level of the individual, family/clan, and larger, political units. Whether we’re talking about communities or nations, “us” = “human” = friendly, safe, cooperative, reliable, and “them” = “something else” = dangerous, untrustworthy, competitors for limited resources. In this way, “human” tends to be exclusionary and frictions tend to narrow the scope even further.
In science fiction and fantasy, however, we tend to use the term in a inclusionary way. Often the words “human” and “person” are interchangeable. Sf/f writers and readers pioneered the suggestions that all sapient races think of themselves as people and therefore, “human,” whatever the biological differences from Homo sapiens. I had a lot of fun with a race of giant slugs in Jaydium, who insisted that mammals were incapable of “personness.” The television series Star Trek often portrayed what Earth-humans and alien-humans have in common, rather than their unbridgeable differences. (The similarities were undoubtedly caused in part by the relatively primitive makeup and special effects, leading to the joke about aliens being actors with funny foreheads.) The creators of the series also exploited the romantic appeal of the exotic to generate love stories between members of different species, a phenomenon highly unlikely to occur in nature but one that had the effect of demonstrating the shared values of sapient beings. This is an example of broadening of the use of “human” as a term to include any beings of similar intelligence and culture that we can understand and sympathize with.
The inversion of the broadening effect comes up most commonly in horror: beings that look and sound human but which lack some trait or motivation we consider so important as to be a necessary part of the definition of human: empathy, for example, or the capacity for love. A prime example of this is the vampire, who “walks among us” as if human but differs in his essential nature. The horrific aspect arises in part from his blood thirst, but even more from the betrayal of the assumption of shared humanity.
None of this addresses the question of what it is it we feel defines human as opposed to intelligent-animal, a question not restricted to writers of speculative fiction. We can look at the biological characteristics of Homo sapiens, such as opposable thumbs or a greatly developed prefrontal cortex (the region responsible for complex moral judgments and control of social behavior, among other things). We can look at behavioral traits like language, prolonged rearing of young and care for the aged, the use of fire and cooking, tool-making, and the like. But in this larger universe we live in, is it wise to judge another entity as human or nonhuman based solely on what they look like or how they act? Is a child born with crippling, distorting defects or an adult with a deforming disease not still human? What about a person who has suffered a debilitating stroke and can no longer communicate? These and many other, similar questions highlight the difficulty of defining human by observable characteristics.
Instead, we can look to experiential qualities: the capacity for love, for wonder, for kindness; the awareness of personal mortality and the “binding” of time through personal and generational transmission of memory; abstract thought, and so forth. It may well be that animals have some of these abilities but lack the means (or perhaps the inclination!) to communicate them to us. We know, for example, that many species exhibit behavior we interpret as grief, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. Certainly, cooperation is not limited to Homo sapiens, and tool- making definitely is not. So instead of emphasizing how we are different from other creatures in our world, we can focus instead on how wonderful it is that the things we value in ourselves are not exclusive to our species. Or, contrariwise, that humanity is not limited to humans.
Fantasy and What It Means to Be Human
Andrea Hosth
One of the primary preoccupations of science fiction is said to be the question of what it means to be human. Seeing ourselves through alien eyes allows us to see ourselves anew. It’s a question which is less commonly associated with fantasy, and yet the sub-genre is equally ripe for examining the question of humanity through the use of non-humans.
One of the common positions taken when depicting humans in fantasy (particularly in fantasy which uses a roleplaying game basis, but also many less structured works) is that of humans as a middle ground, a kind of neutral party capable of achieving good, but all too ready to give in to baser impulses.
Other characteristics typically awarded humanity are versatility and creativity. Humans can be all things, while other races possess extremes – age/intelligence combined with sterility. Strength mixed with a lack of imagination. Humans are portrayed as young, vigorous, spontaneous, a little naïve, courageous, capable of great love and vivid passions. It is a very common trope to have the resolution of a dire battle revolve around a human’s ability to love, or innovate, believe, or be brave to the point of stupidity. It is equally common for other races to be failing, or to “Go into the West” and leave their territories to humans territories. Who took up residence in Rivendell, once Elrond moved on? Did they drift, dowdy and out of place, among the echoes of their splendid predecessors?
This frequent positioning of humanity as a versatile and rapidly improving ‘young’ race does not appear to be a deliberate examination of what it means to be human (as seen in those novels which attempt to make a point about humanity by viewing it through alien eyes), but instead a glorification of the traits humanity currently displays. Crude and ignorant – but just because of youth! Comparatively powerless, but able to think of new solutions to old problems. Vigorous, a bit chaotic, blundering occasionally, but heading inexorably upward, natural successors to the world’s bounty.
These are the stories we write about ourselves, the flip side of the grimdark/grittygrotty species of fantasy, where the narrative itself rhapsodises about human nature as something special and true and good.
I’ll end, without further comment, with a series of quotes from Doctor Who. The Doctor is not always so complimentary, but this has been the thrust of many of the rebooted series:
" Well, you could do that. Yeah, you could do that. Of course you could. But why? Look at these people, these human beings. Consider their potential! From the day they arrive on the planet, blinking, step into the sun, there is more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than — no, hold on. Sorry, that’s The Lion King. But the point still stands. Leave them alone!" – The Christmas Invasion.
" Oh, might have spent a million years evolving into clouds of gas… and another million as downloads, but you always revert to the same basic shape: the fundamental human. End of the universe and here you are. Indomitable, that’s the word! Indomitable! Ha!" – Utopia.
" The one thing you can’t do… is stop them thinking. [He begins rising upwards angelically] Tell me the human race is degenerate now…when they can do this." – Last of the Time Lords.
“And shards of gold flecked violet split the air with sound and fury! With laughter love and tears I pressed my lips to these spirits, freed them to walk across the page,”
First Breath, Valjeanne Jeffers
What is it that drives our characters? Their humanity. And this is more important than their preternatural powers. Their strength. Or what they look like. It even takes precedence over the wondrous plots we, as writers, devise. That our characters are human and driven by the same emotions and quests that drive us as writers, and which drive our readers– even if they are sociopaths or mad men. The need for love, shelter, money. The emotions of desire, rage, melancholy…
The same qualities that make us, the writers and our readers, identify with them and love them. Or hate them.
I have created characters so loathsome that I couldn’t wait to kill them off. And others that I loved so much I used all sorts of plot machinations to keep them alive. Our characters are spirits who walk across the page: women and men who mirror our struggles.
What it means to be human
Carole McDonnell
From the beginning of time (and perhaps before time began) the question has always existed: what does it mean to be human?
Humanity lives/exists within a prescribed setting which limits knowledge, age, joy, the body, sexuality, tribe, power, authority, dominion, physical movement, movement in time.
As a writer of Christian fiction I grew up with the story of Adam and Eve which is the first encounter most Christians have with the question of What does it mean to be human. In that story, man is created but not yet settled into a specific kind of being. (And in the Christian mythos, man will not find his true “self” and “being” until the end of time when time is no more.
Adam and Eve are beings who do not die. Yet they are not really immortal. They’re in a strange nexus of creation where they are like god with (some) dominion and some knowledge. But they lack something, something God apparently thinks is not particularly important. They do not understand right and wrong.
They have consciousness but are without law or conscience. They have a blissful ignorance of evil and cannot judge/blame either themselves, others, God, or the world. For them, it is a world which is neither immoral or moral.
Despite God’s desire that they remain outside of the realm of guilt or consciousness of evil, God did make them moral beings. Their one morality: the freedom to obey or not to obey. They are aware of one thing that they lack: they do not fully understand the ramifications of evil: disease, death, cruelty, hunger, toil, meaninglessness, and the thousand ills flesh is heir to. This knowledge of death is what separates them from God, what makes them less than God.
But third agency enters the picture and challenges them to be like God. The agency tempts them with knowledge of evil, law, conscience, guilt. The humans take a wager upon themselves. It is possible that humans can understand evil and not fall into guilt. Their first response to eyes opened to evil: shame. Shme about what? Shame in their comparison to perfect God. Thus humanity falls from its own perfection as it aimed for God’s perfection.
There is so much in this story, myth, history. And all fantasy stories echo it. All these elements are found in fantasy: Humans who wish to put side emotions and become, robots who wish to be humans, humans locked way from Eden, humans betrayed by a God, humans betraying their gods, humans casting off their gods, intrusive deceiving godlike figures, humans battling death, humans defying death, humans conquering time, humans failing a task, humans striving, humans ignorant of evil, humans being dominated by the world, humans dominating the world. All the echoes are found in fantasy stories and will apparently continue until the end of time.
Carole McDonnell is the author of the Fantasy Novel , The Constant Tower
http://www.amazon.com/The-Constant-To...
Spirit Fruit: Collected Speculative Fiction an eBook available as an eBook at kindle.
What Does It Mean to be Human: Answering in Fantasy
Warren Rochelle
What does it mean to be human? This is a question I pose when I teach my science fiction lit class, foregrounding it as one of the perennial themes of the genre. I have yet to pose this same question in fantasy lit. When I was thinking about what to write for this month’s post I found myself wondering why I don’t. After all, as Le Guin says in “Prophets and Mirrors: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing,” “the story—from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace—is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding” (quoted in Language of the Night 27). So, why shouldn’t I consider fantasy as a tool for “the purpose of gaining understanding”—for understanding something about meaning human?
Science fiction often answers this question with aliens of one kind or another; how then might fantasy do so with werewolves, dragons, and elves, fairies, and witches, and other assorted magical beings? As Vulcans and Martians become ways of seeing and understanding humanity, through juxtaposition, comparison, and contrast, through reflection, and in metaphor and symbol, so these denizens of Faerie. Science fiction also will sometimes posit answers to this question when humans are taken out of the familiar—the green hills of Earth to the deserts of the Moon and Mars, the metal worlds of spaceships and space stations, to planets only imagined. When the background noise is gone—the background itself—then we can often see ourselves as we really are. So it is when we enter Faerie—the Golden Wood, the haunted house, the gingerbread cottage, Lantern Waste, or sometimes, the house next door, or in our own house. Facing the dangerous and/or unfamiliar, confronting the evil and/or the strange, often demands we be most our selves—or began learning what being that self means.
All right, let’s start with werewolves, which are of particular interest to me at the moment as I am finishing up The Werewolf and His Boy. Are werewolves human? Sometimes. If you prick them, will they not bleed? Yes, sometimes wolf blood, sometimes human. Depending on the legend used, they are at least in human form most of the time, or twenty-odd days out of the average thirty. But what I find telling is when we look into our reflection and we can, if the light is right, see into the dark recesses of our souls, the hidden places in our hearts, and there find the wolf, the beast, even without fangs or fur. Humans are animals, occasionally, we are beasts. Wrestling with the feral parts of our nature, recognizing they exist—that is part of what it means to be human.
For my werewolf, Henry Thorn, he has to sort out both what it means to be wolf and to be boy: that he both needs to run, to hit raw meat, to howl, and to cry and miss his mother and to love another human being. For Henry, this means loving Jamey, another boy—but that’s another essay. Henry also finds out more about who he is as a boy when he finds himself in a den of werewolves, amongst the beasts. Jamey needs protection and caring for—and Henry learns something more about human love, and thus about being human. It is through fantasy that I can explore the answers Henry finds as he also asks and begins to answer the question of who he is—human boy, wolf—Henry Thorn.
In what might be an iconic werewolf tale, American Werewolf in London, the question of what it means to be human—or rather, can a werewolf be human—is answered, no, or not quite, as the beast, the wolf, is far too strong, the call of the wild, or rather the disease, overwhelms the unlucky American tourist. He dies a beast. But then, our humanity is fragile—and the beast is never as far as away as we might like to think. My werewolf knows the beast is always present—and that if he remains in beast-form too long, he risks a difficult return to being human. Perhaps this tension between beast and human, with the beast sometimes the one in control, is an attempt to explain humans in mobs, or at war. Surely the beasts were the ones at My Lai, at so many Native American villages, at Auschwitz.
Fantasy, with its transformations, its wishes, its dreams and magical beings who are so very much like us and yet so very different, does present ways to explore answers to the question of what it means to be human. This doesn’t seem all that surprising as I write this, but until presented with this month’s blog theme, I hadn’t thought about it this concretely in connection to fantasy lit. Yet, as Henry Thorn, the werewolf, is clearly telling me, I have been thinking about it for quite some time. So, the next time I teach fantasy …
***
Warren Rochelle has taught English at the University of Mary Washington since 2000. His short story, “The Golden Boy” (published in The Silver Gryphon) was a Finalist for the 2004 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Story and his novels include The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), and The Called (2010), all published by Golden Gryphon Press. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. His short fiction has been published in such journals and collections as Icarus, Collective Fallout. The Silver Gryphon, North Carolina Literary Review, Romance and Beyond, and Aboriginal Science Fiction. His short story, “The Boy on McGee Street,” was just published in Queer Fish 2. He is presently working on a novel about a gay werewolf and his godling boyfriend and a collection of gay-themed speculative fiction short stories.
Being Human
Deborah Ross
I think we Homo sapiens have been discussing what being human is and means since we developed abstract language and probably before that. At first, the driving motivation was undoubtedly how to tell what is us and not-us. This is certainly a biological imperative at the cellular level; our immune systems must tackle the question every day, attacking foreign substances like viruses, bacteria, and allergenic proteins, and it’s also why cancer is so insidious (cells with the right molecular passwords that nonetheless behave like ravening barbarians). The same distinctions hold true at the level of the individual, family/clan, and larger, political units. Whether we’re talking about communities or nations, “us” = “human” = friendly, safe, cooperative, reliable, and “them” = “something else” = dangerous, untrustworthy, competitors for limited resources. In this way, “human” tends to be exclusionary and frictions tend to narrow the scope even further.
In science fiction and fantasy, however, we tend to use the term in a inclusionary way. Often the words “human” and “person” are interchangeable. Sf/f writers and readers pioneered the suggestions that all sapient races think of themselves as people and therefore, “human,” whatever the biological differences from Homo sapiens. I had a lot of fun with a race of giant slugs in Jaydium, who insisted that mammals were incapable of “personness.” The television series Star Trek often portrayed what Earth-humans and alien-humans have in common, rather than their unbridgeable differences. (The similarities were undoubtedly caused in part by the relatively primitive makeup and special effects, leading to the joke about aliens being actors with funny foreheads.) The creators of the series also exploited the romantic appeal of the exotic to generate love stories between members of different species, a phenomenon highly unlikely to occur in nature but one that had the effect of demonstrating the shared values of sapient beings. This is an example of broadening of the use of “human” as a term to include any beings of similar intelligence and culture that we can understand and sympathize with.
The inversion of the broadening effect comes up most commonly in horror: beings that look and sound human but which lack some trait or motivation we consider so important as to be a necessary part of the definition of human: empathy, for example, or the capacity for love. A prime example of this is the vampire, who “walks among us” as if human but differs in his essential nature. The horrific aspect arises in part from his blood thirst, but even more from the betrayal of the assumption of shared humanity.
None of this addresses the question of what it is it we feel defines human as opposed to intelligent-animal, a question not restricted to writers of speculative fiction. We can look at the biological characteristics of Homo sapiens, such as opposable thumbs or a greatly developed prefrontal cortex (the region responsible for complex moral judgments and control of social behavior, among other things). We can look at behavioral traits like language, prolonged rearing of young and care for the aged, the use of fire and cooking, tool-making, and the like. But in this larger universe we live in, is it wise to judge another entity as human or nonhuman based solely on what they look like or how they act? Is a child born with crippling, distorting defects or an adult with a deforming disease not still human? What about a person who has suffered a debilitating stroke and can no longer communicate? These and many other, similar questions highlight the difficulty of defining human by observable characteristics.
Instead, we can look to experiential qualities: the capacity for love, for wonder, for kindness; the awareness of personal mortality and the “binding” of time through personal and generational transmission of memory; abstract thought, and so forth. It may well be that animals have some of these abilities but lack the means (or perhaps the inclination!) to communicate them to us. We know, for example, that many species exhibit behavior we interpret as grief, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. Certainly, cooperation is not limited to Homo sapiens, and tool- making definitely is not. So instead of emphasizing how we are different from other creatures in our world, we can focus instead on how wonderful it is that the things we value in ourselves are not exclusive to our species. Or, contrariwise, that humanity is not limited to humans.
Fantasy and What It Means to Be Human
Andrea Hosth
One of the primary preoccupations of science fiction is said to be the question of what it means to be human. Seeing ourselves through alien eyes allows us to see ourselves anew. It’s a question which is less commonly associated with fantasy, and yet the sub-genre is equally ripe for examining the question of humanity through the use of non-humans.
One of the common positions taken when depicting humans in fantasy (particularly in fantasy which uses a roleplaying game basis, but also many less structured works) is that of humans as a middle ground, a kind of neutral party capable of achieving good, but all too ready to give in to baser impulses.
Other characteristics typically awarded humanity are versatility and creativity. Humans can be all things, while other races possess extremes – age/intelligence combined with sterility. Strength mixed with a lack of imagination. Humans are portrayed as young, vigorous, spontaneous, a little naïve, courageous, capable of great love and vivid passions. It is a very common trope to have the resolution of a dire battle revolve around a human’s ability to love, or innovate, believe, or be brave to the point of stupidity. It is equally common for other races to be failing, or to “Go into the West” and leave their territories to humans territories. Who took up residence in Rivendell, once Elrond moved on? Did they drift, dowdy and out of place, among the echoes of their splendid predecessors?
This frequent positioning of humanity as a versatile and rapidly improving ‘young’ race does not appear to be a deliberate examination of what it means to be human (as seen in those novels which attempt to make a point about humanity by viewing it through alien eyes), but instead a glorification of the traits humanity currently displays. Crude and ignorant – but just because of youth! Comparatively powerless, but able to think of new solutions to old problems. Vigorous, a bit chaotic, blundering occasionally, but heading inexorably upward, natural successors to the world’s bounty.
These are the stories we write about ourselves, the flip side of the grimdark/grittygrotty species of fantasy, where the narrative itself rhapsodises about human nature as something special and true and good.
I’ll end, without further comment, with a series of quotes from Doctor Who. The Doctor is not always so complimentary, but this has been the thrust of many of the rebooted series:
" Well, you could do that. Yeah, you could do that. Of course you could. But why? Look at these people, these human beings. Consider their potential! From the day they arrive on the planet, blinking, step into the sun, there is more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than — no, hold on. Sorry, that’s The Lion King. But the point still stands. Leave them alone!" – The Christmas Invasion.
" Oh, might have spent a million years evolving into clouds of gas… and another million as downloads, but you always revert to the same basic shape: the fundamental human. End of the universe and here you are. Indomitable, that’s the word! Indomitable! Ha!" – Utopia.
" The one thing you can’t do… is stop them thinking. [He begins rising upwards angelically] Tell me the human race is degenerate now…when they can do this." – Last of the Time Lords.
“And shards of gold flecked violet split the air with sound and fury! With laughter love and tears I pressed my lips to these spirits, freed them to walk across the page,”
First Breath, Valjeanne Jeffers
What is it that drives our characters? Their humanity. And this is more important than their preternatural powers. Their strength. Or what they look like. It even takes precedence over the wondrous plots we, as writers, devise. That our characters are human and driven by the same emotions and quests that drive us as writers, and which drive our readers– even if they are sociopaths or mad men. The need for love, shelter, money. The emotions of desire, rage, melancholy…
The same qualities that make us, the writers and our readers, identify with them and love them. Or hate them.
I have created characters so loathsome that I couldn’t wait to kill them off. And others that I loved so much I used all sorts of plot machinations to keep them alive. Our characters are spirits who walk across the page: women and men who mirror our struggles.
What it means to be human
Carole McDonnell
From the beginning of time (and perhaps before time began) the question has always existed: what does it mean to be human?
Humanity lives/exists within a prescribed setting which limits knowledge, age, joy, the body, sexuality, tribe, power, authority, dominion, physical movement, movement in time.
As a writer of Christian fiction I grew up with the story of Adam and Eve which is the first encounter most Christians have with the question of What does it mean to be human. In that story, man is created but not yet settled into a specific kind of being. (And in the Christian mythos, man will not find his true “self” and “being” until the end of time when time is no more.
Adam and Eve are beings who do not die. Yet they are not really immortal. They’re in a strange nexus of creation where they are like god with (some) dominion and some knowledge. But they lack something, something God apparently thinks is not particularly important. They do not understand right and wrong.
They have consciousness but are without law or conscience. They have a blissful ignorance of evil and cannot judge/blame either themselves, others, God, or the world. For them, it is a world which is neither immoral or moral.
Despite God’s desire that they remain outside of the realm of guilt or consciousness of evil, God did make them moral beings. Their one morality: the freedom to obey or not to obey. They are aware of one thing that they lack: they do not fully understand the ramifications of evil: disease, death, cruelty, hunger, toil, meaninglessness, and the thousand ills flesh is heir to. This knowledge of death is what separates them from God, what makes them less than God.
But third agency enters the picture and challenges them to be like God. The agency tempts them with knowledge of evil, law, conscience, guilt. The humans take a wager upon themselves. It is possible that humans can understand evil and not fall into guilt. Their first response to eyes opened to evil: shame. Shme about what? Shame in their comparison to perfect God. Thus humanity falls from its own perfection as it aimed for God’s perfection.
There is so much in this story, myth, history. And all fantasy stories echo it. All these elements are found in fantasy: Humans who wish to put side emotions and become, robots who wish to be humans, humans locked way from Eden, humans betrayed by a God, humans betraying their gods, humans casting off their gods, intrusive deceiving godlike figures, humans battling death, humans defying death, humans conquering time, humans failing a task, humans striving, humans ignorant of evil, humans being dominated by the world, humans dominating the world. All the echoes are found in fantasy stories and will apparently continue until the end of time.
Carole McDonnell is the author of the Fantasy Novel , The Constant Tower
http://www.amazon.com/The-Constant-To...
Spirit Fruit: Collected Speculative Fiction an eBook available as an eBook at kindle.
What Does It Mean to be Human: Answering in Fantasy
Warren Rochelle
What does it mean to be human? This is a question I pose when I teach my science fiction lit class, foregrounding it as one of the perennial themes of the genre. I have yet to pose this same question in fantasy lit. When I was thinking about what to write for this month’s post I found myself wondering why I don’t. After all, as Le Guin says in “Prophets and Mirrors: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing,” “the story—from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace—is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding” (quoted in Language of the Night 27). So, why shouldn’t I consider fantasy as a tool for “the purpose of gaining understanding”—for understanding something about meaning human?
Science fiction often answers this question with aliens of one kind or another; how then might fantasy do so with werewolves, dragons, and elves, fairies, and witches, and other assorted magical beings? As Vulcans and Martians become ways of seeing and understanding humanity, through juxtaposition, comparison, and contrast, through reflection, and in metaphor and symbol, so these denizens of Faerie. Science fiction also will sometimes posit answers to this question when humans are taken out of the familiar—the green hills of Earth to the deserts of the Moon and Mars, the metal worlds of spaceships and space stations, to planets only imagined. When the background noise is gone—the background itself—then we can often see ourselves as we really are. So it is when we enter Faerie—the Golden Wood, the haunted house, the gingerbread cottage, Lantern Waste, or sometimes, the house next door, or in our own house. Facing the dangerous and/or unfamiliar, confronting the evil and/or the strange, often demands we be most our selves—or began learning what being that self means.
All right, let’s start with werewolves, which are of particular interest to me at the moment as I am finishing up The Werewolf and His Boy. Are werewolves human? Sometimes. If you prick them, will they not bleed? Yes, sometimes wolf blood, sometimes human. Depending on the legend used, they are at least in human form most of the time, or twenty-odd days out of the average thirty. But what I find telling is when we look into our reflection and we can, if the light is right, see into the dark recesses of our souls, the hidden places in our hearts, and there find the wolf, the beast, even without fangs or fur. Humans are animals, occasionally, we are beasts. Wrestling with the feral parts of our nature, recognizing they exist—that is part of what it means to be human.
For my werewolf, Henry Thorn, he has to sort out both what it means to be wolf and to be boy: that he both needs to run, to hit raw meat, to howl, and to cry and miss his mother and to love another human being. For Henry, this means loving Jamey, another boy—but that’s another essay. Henry also finds out more about who he is as a boy when he finds himself in a den of werewolves, amongst the beasts. Jamey needs protection and caring for—and Henry learns something more about human love, and thus about being human. It is through fantasy that I can explore the answers Henry finds as he also asks and begins to answer the question of who he is—human boy, wolf—Henry Thorn.
In what might be an iconic werewolf tale, American Werewolf in London, the question of what it means to be human—or rather, can a werewolf be human—is answered, no, or not quite, as the beast, the wolf, is far too strong, the call of the wild, or rather the disease, overwhelms the unlucky American tourist. He dies a beast. But then, our humanity is fragile—and the beast is never as far as away as we might like to think. My werewolf knows the beast is always present—and that if he remains in beast-form too long, he risks a difficult return to being human. Perhaps this tension between beast and human, with the beast sometimes the one in control, is an attempt to explain humans in mobs, or at war. Surely the beasts were the ones at My Lai, at so many Native American villages, at Auschwitz.
Fantasy, with its transformations, its wishes, its dreams and magical beings who are so very much like us and yet so very different, does present ways to explore answers to the question of what it means to be human. This doesn’t seem all that surprising as I write this, but until presented with this month’s blog theme, I hadn’t thought about it this concretely in connection to fantasy lit. Yet, as Henry Thorn, the werewolf, is clearly telling me, I have been thinking about it for quite some time. So, the next time I teach fantasy …
***
Warren Rochelle has taught English at the University of Mary Washington since 2000. His short story, “The Golden Boy” (published in The Silver Gryphon) was a Finalist for the 2004 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Story and his novels include The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), and The Called (2010), all published by Golden Gryphon Press. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. His short fiction has been published in such journals and collections as Icarus, Collective Fallout. The Silver Gryphon, North Carolina Literary Review, Romance and Beyond, and Aboriginal Science Fiction. His short story, “The Boy on McGee Street,” was just published in Queer Fish 2. He is presently working on a novel about a gay werewolf and his godling boyfriend and a collection of gay-themed speculative fiction short stories.
