Warren Rochelle's Blog, page 25
February 28, 2013
Great Fantasy Roundtable Traveling Guest Blog, February 2013: Technology and Fantasy
Great Fantasy Roundtable Traveling Guest Blog, February 2013: Technology and Fantasy
Welcome to Part 12 of the Travelling Fantasy Round Table, a roaming discussion on aspects of fantasy literature!
Today, Carole McDonnell, Valjeanne Jeffers, Theresa Crater, Sylvia Kelso and Warren Rochelle join me in discussing technology in fantasy.
Andrea K Höst
Have you ever played Civilization?
You start with a group of settlers, and you end up in space. Along the way you build an Empire, clawing your way up a hierarchical technology tree where Pottery leads to Masonry, and Bronze Working leads to Iron Working, and you don't get to skip a step. You also never go backwards, never have your Great Library burn down, never have barbarians banding together to crush your Empire, and you never lose half your clever construction techniques.
Nor do you ever discover anti-gravity stones which allow you to construct floating cities and give every person fast, inexpensive and wide-ranging travel abilities.
I've discussed previously in my Impacts of Magic series, that it's rare to see magic used to significantly alter this hierarchical development of technology, and through technology to significantly change social and cultural development. Often magic is depicted as inimical to technology, causing more advanced examples to fail when in its presence.
It is rare to the point of almost never to have a healing mage show up and start teaching non-mages that there's different blood types, the basics of immunology, and the importance of sterilisation.
One series which does seem to marry technology to magic is Terry Pratchett's Discworld - from the Hex computer to cameras - but this appears to be a parallel technology tree rather than advancements in practical science. Other worlds have magic assisting technology (see all of Final Fantasy), but the injection of magic into a world of technology, or technology into a world of magic, rarely seems to massively alter the technology tree. We simply get "the Industrial Age + Magic" or "Feudalism + Magic" or "Faerie + Computers" without the complete revolution which that injection of other should surely bring.
Instead magic is often depicted as stultifying and backward instead of an instrument of revelation and advancement.
Magic in our world belongs to the charlatan. Rational science disproves magic, reveals its smoke and mirrors. Instead of partners in advancement, they are foes. Thus, to the fantasy author, it is only natural to make magic an enemy of scientific advancement. Science, with its need for comprehension and proof, with its systematic testing and extrapolation, should hate "explanationless" magic. Would science want a magic which can shortcut scientific testing, point out the correct result, and leave science to merely test and prove it?
Even in the genre of 'modern magic', urban fantasy, we rarely see any significant shift of this world's technology tree. We might get a werewolf working for, say, customs, sniffing out drugs, but we rarely get technology which has undergone a paradigm shift because magic is real. The closest we seem to come is a 'steampunk sensibility' (which appears to use clockwork technology with more than an element of magic about it) or the kind of World Behind story found in Gaiman's Neverwhere or Rowling's Potter books – magic is present but separate.
But perhaps the reason for the rarity of magic altering the technology tree is simply the sheer difficulty in mapping the result. How big a change would that anti-gravity stone bring about? Think of the impact on the Age of Expansion. Trade. Wars. At what point would mapping all those changes start to distract from the story and become an exercise in overwhelming worldbuilding, leaving the reader struggling to understand the rules?
Andrea K Höst was born in Sweden but raised in Australia. She writes fantasy and science fantasy, and enjoys creating stories which give her female characters something more to do than wait for rescue.
Carole McDonnell
There are two fallacies often found in fantasies where technology is concerned.
The first is that magic is purely fantastical. Of course, some magic is. Demons, faes, and gods abound in much fantasy. But for the most part, magic is a kind of technology in its own right, an art and lore that can be learned from wizened teachers or from ancient books. For instance, in Shakespeare's Tempest, Prospero has his wonderfully researched and studied Book.
The second fallacy is that some fantasies show the same pattern of civilization as Earth's. The Bronze Age, then the Age of Steel, animal technology, the Industrial Revolution/Steam Age, the age of electricity/radio/telegraph, the computer age/DNA technology/laser technology, and the space age, etc. But this particular sequence seems wrong to me. One culture might be more knowledgable about one type of technology than another. Or, one culture might have a technology that is considered magical or superstitious or "impossible" or "godly" in another culture. Also, some aspects of a certain technology might be explored in one culture but not explored in another. In addition, certain technologies are lauded, then forgotten, then rediscovered.
For instance, the Chinese had "gun" powder for many years but the Europeans invented the gun before the Chinese did. Some western cultures used "leeches" medically in the past and have begun using them again. Some so-called "primitive" cultures understood the nature of homeopathy (like curing like) before the sophisticated Europeans discovered the cowpox/smallpox connection. Other so-called "tribal" cultures understood how to use flies and centipedes for crime detection before European civilization got the idea. (Flies are often used by some African tribes to determine whose murderous-but-newly-washed dagger still retained the victim's blood and centipedes were used in ancient Korea to check if the blood on a dagger was human or animal.)
Thus it is possible for the technology of a particular world to NOT fall into the western model.
In my novel, The Constant Tower, the characters are warriors. Some would say the setting is "Bronze Age/medieval." But one tribe has solar panels because they understand the nature of light, and the studiers of this world understand music and the effect of "unheard sounds" in ways that would be considered miraculous by some of Earth's less "civilized tribes" or might seem merely fantastical to those with a western mindset.
Carole McDonnell is a writer of ethnic fiction, speculative fiction, and Christian fiction. Her works have appeared in many anthologies and at various online sites. Her novel, Wind Follower, was published by Wildeside Books. Her forthcoming novel is called The Constant Tower. http://carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/
Valjeanne Jeffers
Technology and fantasy: put them together and you have a delicious synergy that's not quite SF, not quite fantasy. Some of my favorite authors have skirted the divider between fantasy and science fiction. Octavia Butler, for example, while she is almost always described as a science fiction author blended the two quite brilliantly in books like Wild Seed and Clay's Ark. Nalo Hopkinson also combined them with sheer genius in her novels Brown Girl in The Ring and Midnight Robber.
The existence of technology in fantasy often results in the co-existence of “science and sorcery,” as Charles Saunders (creator of Sword and Soul) has described my Immortal series. In my novels you have werewolves and vampires—totally in control of their preternatural abilities and using said abilities to protect their universe; but still such characters are most often found in fantasy or horror genres. Yet, the Immortal series also has time travel, aliens... and technology to support its futuristic setting. Such as in the excerpt from Immortal book 1:
Karla walked across the wooden floor of her living area into a kitchenette. A press of her fingers on the first sphere of a triangular pod started coffee brewing.
She filled a cup with chicory, walked back into the living area and pushed the second button on her remote, activating a blue panel beside the window. Jazz music filled the apartment. Like her bedroom console the unit kept time, transmitted holographic images and played tapes. Using the third button, she opened the curtains.
Thus, the Immortal novels have been described as both fantasy and science fiction novels. Use a little science and one still can be considered a Fantasy writer. Use a bit more and you've inched into the science fiction genre. An excerpt from Colony: A Space Opera (my novel in progress) illustrates this point:
She was born 20 years after Planet Earth's decline. The same year IST began building the probes: lightweight spacecrafts that humans could live in for years, if need be, and that moved fast enough to break the sound barrier—traveling millions of miles within weeks.
In 2065, global warning had accelerated. The final stage in Earth's destruction had begun. Temperatures of 150 degrees scorched the planet. Tidal waves, monsoons and cyclones tore it apart. Those who could afford it moved underground. Food became the world's most valued resource. The rest were herded under the domes.
Scientists scurried to genetically reproduce fruits and vegetables—with horrible side effects. Money still ruled the world. But money was gradually becoming worthless. That's when the government saw the writing on the wall and created IST and the probes: spacecrafts designed for one purpose, to seek out planets capable of sustaining human life.
When a writer uses technology in fantasy, the lines between the genres are even more gloriously buried. Thus, what may be described as science fiction by one reader/writer can just as easily be characterized as fantasy by the next. The only real rule here is to make one's technology believable; credible; plausible. Although it doesn’t yet exist—in a kind kind of literary sleight of hand.
Pulling this off, just gives me one more reason to absolutely love speculative fiction...even if no will ever be able to figure out whether I'm a science fiction or fantasy writer yet. In fact, I think I prefer it that way.
Valjeanne Jeffers is a graduate of Spelman College and the author of the SF/fantasy novels: Immortal, Immortal II: The Time of Legend, Immortal III: Stealer of Souls, the steampunk novels: Immortal IV: Collision of Worlds and The Switch II: Clockwork (includes books 1 and 2), and the space opera Colony.
Valjeanne's fiction has appeared in Steamfunk!, Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology, LuneWing, PurpleMag, Genesis Science Fiction Magazine, Pembroke Magazine, Possibilties, 31 Days of Steamy Mocha, and Griots II: Sisters of the Spear (in press). She works as an editor for Mocha Memoirs Press and is also co-owner of Q and V Affordable editing.
Preview or purchase her novels at: http://www.vjeffersandqveal.com
Theresa Crater
I recently reread Bram Stoker’s Dracula for my Speculative Fiction workshop. While my writing students bemoaned the fact that Stoker does all the things they are advised not to do in their writing, I noticed Stoker’s love of technology.
The vampire is deeply rooted in old ways. His castle sits on a precipice, difficult for attackers to penetrate—and for Harker to escape from. His house is lit by multiple candles and furnished with old and moldy brocades. He uses centuries-old methods of travel for the most part—carriages and boats—yet maintains an interest in the trains in London, in particular their schedules.
But our group of heroes out to kill the Count rely on new-fangled machinery. Mina practices her shorthand, which her fiancé Harker relies on to send her secret message—although Dracula intercepts the letter. She types manically to escape her fears, but this useful skill allows her to compile a complete history of all the group knows about vampires and the Count’s doings. Dr. Seward records his diary on the phonograph, a technology that still mystifies me.
Our intrepid group also relies on a new mental “technology”—they hypnotize Mina after she’s been bitten to gain access to the vampire’s consciousness. Mesmerism was a new-fangled idea created by Anton Mesmer in the early 19thcentury, but which gained popular fascination during the spiritualist phase of Victorian society. If not technology, it certainly is a new way of looking at human consciousness.
Stoker sprinkled his novel with the gadgets his readers were finding popping up in their world. I don’t think he intended this contrast, but it’s there.
Theresa Crater has published two contemporary fantasies, Beneath the Hallowed Hill & Under the Stone Paw and several short stories, most recently “White Moon” in Riding the Moon and “Bringing the Waters” in The Aether Age: Helios. She’s also published poetry and a baker’s dozen of literary criticism. Currently, she teaches writing and British lit in Denver. Born in North Carolina, she now lives in Colorado with her Egyptologist partner and their two cats. Visit her website at http://theresacrater.com.
Sylvia Kelso
Technically, you should excuse the pun,“technology” is any form of applied science/knowledge, from a hand-axe to a nuclear bomb. For a fantasy writer “technology” becomes a most pressing question in the planning or first-paragraph stages of a novel or a world-building. The level of “technology” you factor in, whether by planned outline or draft-impulse, will decide almost everything about your invented societies, and quite a lot about the actual world.
A classic if rather hypothetical example is Middle-earth. Whatever Tolkien pre-invented in The Silmarilion, the pre-Industrial nature of Middle-earth was decided at the moment early in the first chapter, that he made hobbits mighty hunters with hand-thrown stones. He might have let them “take a gun out” like a Heyer Regency hero, given that Bilbo was the picture of a wealthy early 20th Century middle-class English male. Whether conscious or unconscious, or possibly prompted by the equally spontaneous choice of a children’s story genre, denying Bilbo the weapons of his Real-Earth period affected every further page of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The nexus of Tolkien’s personal stand-points behind this choice does generate fascinating contradictions. While the Shire’s weapons are limited to stones, staves and bows, Minas Tirith has swords and spears, and magic defends Lorien. But evil, paradoxically but inevitably, introduces to Middle-earth the very technological level that Tolkien most loathed. Isengard and Mordor are copybook unregulated high industrial complexes, complete with waste, pollution, desolation, wheels and hammers, and “‘mind[s] of metal and wheels.’” (The Two Towers, Ch. 4)
But The Hobbit’s original gunpowder ban does not allow these fearsome lairs to spew out steam engines, aircraft, big guns, mechanical soldiers or machine-guns or mustard-gas, not even rifles and muskets. The Orcs seem to have been bio-engineered – which would not require all this mechanical paraphernalia –and they, like everybody else, fight with sword, bow and spear. Even the mighty Grond only uses muscle-power. The sole exception to this pre-industrial ban is the “blasting fire” by which the Orcs manage to infiltrate the stream-way at Helm’s Deep. Everywhere else, evil as industrialism can affect Middle-earth only through its environmental damage.
Other fantasies happily introduce later forms of real world “technology” in secondary worlds. Martha Wells’ Ile Rien series begins with a just-pre-Industrial society using pistol and arquebus, then moves to a faux Edwardian/Victorian period that still uses pistols, and in the second series, uses magic to present WWI and later technology like airships. Here, as with Naomi Novik’s Napoleonic War dragons, the tech. level is pre-set to industrial. But if less strikingly than with The Lord of the Rings, much of the available real-world technology, from cine cameras to machine guns, is again not admitted.
More dissonant cases exemplify what has been touted as “science fantasy” – where “science” – ie actually some form of very modern tech – is juxtaposed with an earlier technological level. A really striking example, and one of my favourites, is Barbara Hambly’s Windrose trilogy, whose second title epitomizes the type: The Silicon Mage. Though the cover appears pure fantasy, in fact, an impressive apparatus of spells, spell diagrams, sigils, and simple wizardly capabilities is connected to and through computers, to work in both primary and secondary worlds, with astonishing discrepancy and more amazing lack of fuss – now THAT is a real fantasy-tech.
There is, of course, an older wholly invented technology, the matrix science of Darkover, but though that otherwise pre-industrial world and its societies beg to be classified as fantasy, the origins of Darkovan “humanity” from a space diaspora make a strong claim that the whole world and series be called SF.
Which opens the other question about“Technology in Fantasy” – namely, if fantasy, apart from contemporary urban primary world stuff, starts to introduce really current tech. like gene-engineering, nanotech, and less realized forms such as cyborgs, even if the actual society is (apparently) pre-industrial, has the form then become SF?
SF is usually seen as the genre of the future, however often overtaken. Modern fantasy, to use a paradox, is usually seen as the genre of “the past.” How close can such a fictional “past” come to the “present,” or with imaginary tech, to a future, without sliding over the generic boundary? Whatever the writer’s intent, or the bookshelf label, if the savvy specfic reader perceives the conventions, icons and protocols in the text as SF, why isn’t it SF?
The generic SF/fantasy boundary concerned me deeply while I was struggling with the SF theory chapter of my PhD. Past/future-time, science/magic as unreality’s ennabling device, evidence of change, progress; I canvassed those and a number more of the abundant definitions. In the process I suddenly found myself, like Octavia Butler’s heroine in Exogenesis, conducting an experiment “in the field.” Once the opening paragraph of Amberlight arrived, the conscious project was to see how nearly I could make a text walk the tightrope, marked by Hambly’s Silicon Mage,between fantasy and SF.
Hence, the McGuffin in Amberlight, the “qherrique” which turned up as opening donnée, became the basis for a thought experiment in gender-role reversals, as well as the key to society’s shape. Only women could “work” the mysterious – substance, entity, animal, vegetable, mineral? The society became a matriarchy. Qherrique’s most crucial quality was its psychic effects, coveted by every other society, making Amberlight-the-city unthinkably rich. But qherrique had a bouquet of other attributes – pizo-electric, photo-synthetic, it could be worked like a mix of pearl and stone to drive machines, to power tools, to produce guns. Light-guns and horseless vehicles. Is this fantasy, or is it SF?
It charmed me immensely when I sent the novel in ms to Andrea (Hosth), asking outright, Do you read this as fantasy or as SF? And she responded that she couldn’t decide. The indecision reappeared among reviewers when I finally got the novel into print. It was political fantasy, it was high fantasy, it was a sub-genre of feminist SF: a whole grab-bag of answers turned up. Leading, perhaps, to the most interesting general conclusion – that the level and type of technology a writer consciously or haphazardly bestows on a specfic novel will not merely dictate the shape of that world and its societies, but even the genre in which the work will belong - or, if as with Amberlight, Loki or Coyote was around at the moment of inception, not.
Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia, and writes fantasy and SF set mostly in analogue or alternate Australian settings. She has published six fantasy novels, two of which were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards, and some stories in Australian and US anthologies. Her latest short story, “At Sunset” appears in Luna Station Quarterly for September 2012.
Warren Rochelle
Fairies don’t really need machines, do they? Not the ones in my novels Harvest of Changelings, and its sequel, The Called. Elemental beings—Fires, Airs, Waters, and Earths—they have magical powers to use and manipulate these elements, with extra abilities for their particular element. Fires, for example, are best suited for heating things, so there is no need for electrical stoves. Instead, Fires, heat up stones, and in war, create fireballs. Airs are the most gifted telepathically and the winds answer to their call. Waters can call the rain and raise waves. The garden of an Earth is fertile, verdant, and productive; Earths can awaken volcanoes, make earthquakes. Machinery as we know it Here never developed There.
But the magic of this Faerie uses machines—at least it does Here. When Hazel, one of my four main characters, and one of the changelings, is called to return to Faerie, her gateway is not a wardrobe or a door in the side of the hill, rather it is a computer. Hazel has on her computer, Worldmaker, a program that allows the user to construct his or her own world from the ground up, to its people and civilization, its climate, its history. And it is through this portal that Hazel, accompanied by her loyal Siamese, Alexander, enters Faerie. As the dragon she encounters explains, “It was your machine . . . and your game. The machine knocked at the door and the game opened the door to this place; the machine answered a call from this place. It can talk to other machines, yes? Create invisible links of energy, of electricity? Such a link was made to here, which is beyond dreams . . .” (Harvest of Changelings 69). The computer, as a pegasus tells Hazel later, is “a dream-gate” (154).
In The Golden Boy, a novel-in-progress, I explore this link between machine and magic. In this novel the world is dominated by the Columbian Empire and the New World and a rational, science-privileging super-church, which is in opposition to the Old World and those who would also embrace magic and those who use magic, and those who are, the fey. Fairies, who are again Elementals, are iron-sensitive. The only way they can touch a car without pain is to touch one sealed in a plastic coating. Magic and machine in this universe are ways for one to fight the other.
So what? Is this just another take on the famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke, one of his Three Laws, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”? On reflection, no; rather I find myself doing something perhaps connected, but still different. Machines give us the power of magic: they can enhance speed and allow us to travel over great distances in a short amount of time—seven-league boots and aircraft. The magical can call down the lightning; laser rifles and cannons harness light for war. Software such as Hazel’s Worldmaker and the software that creates virtual realities allow us to enter the hills, go through the wardrobe. Through television and film, through computer monitors, we enter, and for a time, live in any number of alternate worlds.
Technology, then, allows us to explore just the kind of world my changelings find in Faerie, the kind of world the heroes in The Golden Boy are trying to save.
Magic, in the literature of the fantastic, in counterpoint, allows the reader to contemplate a world without the mechanical. It reminds us that we can—really we can, despite what my students tell me—survive without the machine. It reminds us that the Morlocks and the Eloi are possible. Magic warns of the possibility of the Borg.
Technology is magical; it is fantastical. Technology allows us to create a magic of the mind, and magic reminds us that it is the mind that we can find real magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology really is indistinguishable from magic.
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. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. Most recently, his story, “The Boy on McGee Street,”was published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink Narcissus Press, 2012). http://warrenrochelle.com
That's it for this month's Travelling Round Table! Feel free to join in the discussion in the comments.
Welcome to Part 12 of the Travelling Fantasy Round Table, a roaming discussion on aspects of fantasy literature!
Today, Carole McDonnell, Valjeanne Jeffers, Theresa Crater, Sylvia Kelso and Warren Rochelle join me in discussing technology in fantasy.
Andrea K Höst
Have you ever played Civilization?
You start with a group of settlers, and you end up in space. Along the way you build an Empire, clawing your way up a hierarchical technology tree where Pottery leads to Masonry, and Bronze Working leads to Iron Working, and you don't get to skip a step. You also never go backwards, never have your Great Library burn down, never have barbarians banding together to crush your Empire, and you never lose half your clever construction techniques.
Nor do you ever discover anti-gravity stones which allow you to construct floating cities and give every person fast, inexpensive and wide-ranging travel abilities.
I've discussed previously in my Impacts of Magic series, that it's rare to see magic used to significantly alter this hierarchical development of technology, and through technology to significantly change social and cultural development. Often magic is depicted as inimical to technology, causing more advanced examples to fail when in its presence.
It is rare to the point of almost never to have a healing mage show up and start teaching non-mages that there's different blood types, the basics of immunology, and the importance of sterilisation.
One series which does seem to marry technology to magic is Terry Pratchett's Discworld - from the Hex computer to cameras - but this appears to be a parallel technology tree rather than advancements in practical science. Other worlds have magic assisting technology (see all of Final Fantasy), but the injection of magic into a world of technology, or technology into a world of magic, rarely seems to massively alter the technology tree. We simply get "the Industrial Age + Magic" or "Feudalism + Magic" or "Faerie + Computers" without the complete revolution which that injection of other should surely bring.
Instead magic is often depicted as stultifying and backward instead of an instrument of revelation and advancement.
Magic in our world belongs to the charlatan. Rational science disproves magic, reveals its smoke and mirrors. Instead of partners in advancement, they are foes. Thus, to the fantasy author, it is only natural to make magic an enemy of scientific advancement. Science, with its need for comprehension and proof, with its systematic testing and extrapolation, should hate "explanationless" magic. Would science want a magic which can shortcut scientific testing, point out the correct result, and leave science to merely test and prove it?
Even in the genre of 'modern magic', urban fantasy, we rarely see any significant shift of this world's technology tree. We might get a werewolf working for, say, customs, sniffing out drugs, but we rarely get technology which has undergone a paradigm shift because magic is real. The closest we seem to come is a 'steampunk sensibility' (which appears to use clockwork technology with more than an element of magic about it) or the kind of World Behind story found in Gaiman's Neverwhere or Rowling's Potter books – magic is present but separate.
But perhaps the reason for the rarity of magic altering the technology tree is simply the sheer difficulty in mapping the result. How big a change would that anti-gravity stone bring about? Think of the impact on the Age of Expansion. Trade. Wars. At what point would mapping all those changes start to distract from the story and become an exercise in overwhelming worldbuilding, leaving the reader struggling to understand the rules?
Andrea K Höst was born in Sweden but raised in Australia. She writes fantasy and science fantasy, and enjoys creating stories which give her female characters something more to do than wait for rescue.
Carole McDonnell
There are two fallacies often found in fantasies where technology is concerned.
The first is that magic is purely fantastical. Of course, some magic is. Demons, faes, and gods abound in much fantasy. But for the most part, magic is a kind of technology in its own right, an art and lore that can be learned from wizened teachers or from ancient books. For instance, in Shakespeare's Tempest, Prospero has his wonderfully researched and studied Book.
The second fallacy is that some fantasies show the same pattern of civilization as Earth's. The Bronze Age, then the Age of Steel, animal technology, the Industrial Revolution/Steam Age, the age of electricity/radio/telegraph, the computer age/DNA technology/laser technology, and the space age, etc. But this particular sequence seems wrong to me. One culture might be more knowledgable about one type of technology than another. Or, one culture might have a technology that is considered magical or superstitious or "impossible" or "godly" in another culture. Also, some aspects of a certain technology might be explored in one culture but not explored in another. In addition, certain technologies are lauded, then forgotten, then rediscovered.
For instance, the Chinese had "gun" powder for many years but the Europeans invented the gun before the Chinese did. Some western cultures used "leeches" medically in the past and have begun using them again. Some so-called "primitive" cultures understood the nature of homeopathy (like curing like) before the sophisticated Europeans discovered the cowpox/smallpox connection. Other so-called "tribal" cultures understood how to use flies and centipedes for crime detection before European civilization got the idea. (Flies are often used by some African tribes to determine whose murderous-but-newly-washed dagger still retained the victim's blood and centipedes were used in ancient Korea to check if the blood on a dagger was human or animal.)
Thus it is possible for the technology of a particular world to NOT fall into the western model.
In my novel, The Constant Tower, the characters are warriors. Some would say the setting is "Bronze Age/medieval." But one tribe has solar panels because they understand the nature of light, and the studiers of this world understand music and the effect of "unheard sounds" in ways that would be considered miraculous by some of Earth's less "civilized tribes" or might seem merely fantastical to those with a western mindset.
Carole McDonnell is a writer of ethnic fiction, speculative fiction, and Christian fiction. Her works have appeared in many anthologies and at various online sites. Her novel, Wind Follower, was published by Wildeside Books. Her forthcoming novel is called The Constant Tower. http://carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/
Valjeanne Jeffers
Technology and fantasy: put them together and you have a delicious synergy that's not quite SF, not quite fantasy. Some of my favorite authors have skirted the divider between fantasy and science fiction. Octavia Butler, for example, while she is almost always described as a science fiction author blended the two quite brilliantly in books like Wild Seed and Clay's Ark. Nalo Hopkinson also combined them with sheer genius in her novels Brown Girl in The Ring and Midnight Robber.
The existence of technology in fantasy often results in the co-existence of “science and sorcery,” as Charles Saunders (creator of Sword and Soul) has described my Immortal series. In my novels you have werewolves and vampires—totally in control of their preternatural abilities and using said abilities to protect their universe; but still such characters are most often found in fantasy or horror genres. Yet, the Immortal series also has time travel, aliens... and technology to support its futuristic setting. Such as in the excerpt from Immortal book 1:
Karla walked across the wooden floor of her living area into a kitchenette. A press of her fingers on the first sphere of a triangular pod started coffee brewing.
She filled a cup with chicory, walked back into the living area and pushed the second button on her remote, activating a blue panel beside the window. Jazz music filled the apartment. Like her bedroom console the unit kept time, transmitted holographic images and played tapes. Using the third button, she opened the curtains.
Thus, the Immortal novels have been described as both fantasy and science fiction novels. Use a little science and one still can be considered a Fantasy writer. Use a bit more and you've inched into the science fiction genre. An excerpt from Colony: A Space Opera (my novel in progress) illustrates this point:
She was born 20 years after Planet Earth's decline. The same year IST began building the probes: lightweight spacecrafts that humans could live in for years, if need be, and that moved fast enough to break the sound barrier—traveling millions of miles within weeks.
In 2065, global warning had accelerated. The final stage in Earth's destruction had begun. Temperatures of 150 degrees scorched the planet. Tidal waves, monsoons and cyclones tore it apart. Those who could afford it moved underground. Food became the world's most valued resource. The rest were herded under the domes.
Scientists scurried to genetically reproduce fruits and vegetables—with horrible side effects. Money still ruled the world. But money was gradually becoming worthless. That's when the government saw the writing on the wall and created IST and the probes: spacecrafts designed for one purpose, to seek out planets capable of sustaining human life.
When a writer uses technology in fantasy, the lines between the genres are even more gloriously buried. Thus, what may be described as science fiction by one reader/writer can just as easily be characterized as fantasy by the next. The only real rule here is to make one's technology believable; credible; plausible. Although it doesn’t yet exist—in a kind kind of literary sleight of hand.
Pulling this off, just gives me one more reason to absolutely love speculative fiction...even if no will ever be able to figure out whether I'm a science fiction or fantasy writer yet. In fact, I think I prefer it that way.
Valjeanne Jeffers is a graduate of Spelman College and the author of the SF/fantasy novels: Immortal, Immortal II: The Time of Legend, Immortal III: Stealer of Souls, the steampunk novels: Immortal IV: Collision of Worlds and The Switch II: Clockwork (includes books 1 and 2), and the space opera Colony.
Valjeanne's fiction has appeared in Steamfunk!, Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology, LuneWing, PurpleMag, Genesis Science Fiction Magazine, Pembroke Magazine, Possibilties, 31 Days of Steamy Mocha, and Griots II: Sisters of the Spear (in press). She works as an editor for Mocha Memoirs Press and is also co-owner of Q and V Affordable editing.
Preview or purchase her novels at: http://www.vjeffersandqveal.com
Theresa Crater
I recently reread Bram Stoker’s Dracula for my Speculative Fiction workshop. While my writing students bemoaned the fact that Stoker does all the things they are advised not to do in their writing, I noticed Stoker’s love of technology.
The vampire is deeply rooted in old ways. His castle sits on a precipice, difficult for attackers to penetrate—and for Harker to escape from. His house is lit by multiple candles and furnished with old and moldy brocades. He uses centuries-old methods of travel for the most part—carriages and boats—yet maintains an interest in the trains in London, in particular their schedules.
But our group of heroes out to kill the Count rely on new-fangled machinery. Mina practices her shorthand, which her fiancé Harker relies on to send her secret message—although Dracula intercepts the letter. She types manically to escape her fears, but this useful skill allows her to compile a complete history of all the group knows about vampires and the Count’s doings. Dr. Seward records his diary on the phonograph, a technology that still mystifies me.
Our intrepid group also relies on a new mental “technology”—they hypnotize Mina after she’s been bitten to gain access to the vampire’s consciousness. Mesmerism was a new-fangled idea created by Anton Mesmer in the early 19thcentury, but which gained popular fascination during the spiritualist phase of Victorian society. If not technology, it certainly is a new way of looking at human consciousness.
Stoker sprinkled his novel with the gadgets his readers were finding popping up in their world. I don’t think he intended this contrast, but it’s there.
Theresa Crater has published two contemporary fantasies, Beneath the Hallowed Hill & Under the Stone Paw and several short stories, most recently “White Moon” in Riding the Moon and “Bringing the Waters” in The Aether Age: Helios. She’s also published poetry and a baker’s dozen of literary criticism. Currently, she teaches writing and British lit in Denver. Born in North Carolina, she now lives in Colorado with her Egyptologist partner and their two cats. Visit her website at http://theresacrater.com.
Sylvia Kelso
Technically, you should excuse the pun,“technology” is any form of applied science/knowledge, from a hand-axe to a nuclear bomb. For a fantasy writer “technology” becomes a most pressing question in the planning or first-paragraph stages of a novel or a world-building. The level of “technology” you factor in, whether by planned outline or draft-impulse, will decide almost everything about your invented societies, and quite a lot about the actual world.
A classic if rather hypothetical example is Middle-earth. Whatever Tolkien pre-invented in The Silmarilion, the pre-Industrial nature of Middle-earth was decided at the moment early in the first chapter, that he made hobbits mighty hunters with hand-thrown stones. He might have let them “take a gun out” like a Heyer Regency hero, given that Bilbo was the picture of a wealthy early 20th Century middle-class English male. Whether conscious or unconscious, or possibly prompted by the equally spontaneous choice of a children’s story genre, denying Bilbo the weapons of his Real-Earth period affected every further page of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The nexus of Tolkien’s personal stand-points behind this choice does generate fascinating contradictions. While the Shire’s weapons are limited to stones, staves and bows, Minas Tirith has swords and spears, and magic defends Lorien. But evil, paradoxically but inevitably, introduces to Middle-earth the very technological level that Tolkien most loathed. Isengard and Mordor are copybook unregulated high industrial complexes, complete with waste, pollution, desolation, wheels and hammers, and “‘mind[s] of metal and wheels.’” (The Two Towers, Ch. 4)
But The Hobbit’s original gunpowder ban does not allow these fearsome lairs to spew out steam engines, aircraft, big guns, mechanical soldiers or machine-guns or mustard-gas, not even rifles and muskets. The Orcs seem to have been bio-engineered – which would not require all this mechanical paraphernalia –and they, like everybody else, fight with sword, bow and spear. Even the mighty Grond only uses muscle-power. The sole exception to this pre-industrial ban is the “blasting fire” by which the Orcs manage to infiltrate the stream-way at Helm’s Deep. Everywhere else, evil as industrialism can affect Middle-earth only through its environmental damage.
Other fantasies happily introduce later forms of real world “technology” in secondary worlds. Martha Wells’ Ile Rien series begins with a just-pre-Industrial society using pistol and arquebus, then moves to a faux Edwardian/Victorian period that still uses pistols, and in the second series, uses magic to present WWI and later technology like airships. Here, as with Naomi Novik’s Napoleonic War dragons, the tech. level is pre-set to industrial. But if less strikingly than with The Lord of the Rings, much of the available real-world technology, from cine cameras to machine guns, is again not admitted.
More dissonant cases exemplify what has been touted as “science fantasy” – where “science” – ie actually some form of very modern tech – is juxtaposed with an earlier technological level. A really striking example, and one of my favourites, is Barbara Hambly’s Windrose trilogy, whose second title epitomizes the type: The Silicon Mage. Though the cover appears pure fantasy, in fact, an impressive apparatus of spells, spell diagrams, sigils, and simple wizardly capabilities is connected to and through computers, to work in both primary and secondary worlds, with astonishing discrepancy and more amazing lack of fuss – now THAT is a real fantasy-tech.
There is, of course, an older wholly invented technology, the matrix science of Darkover, but though that otherwise pre-industrial world and its societies beg to be classified as fantasy, the origins of Darkovan “humanity” from a space diaspora make a strong claim that the whole world and series be called SF.
Which opens the other question about“Technology in Fantasy” – namely, if fantasy, apart from contemporary urban primary world stuff, starts to introduce really current tech. like gene-engineering, nanotech, and less realized forms such as cyborgs, even if the actual society is (apparently) pre-industrial, has the form then become SF?
SF is usually seen as the genre of the future, however often overtaken. Modern fantasy, to use a paradox, is usually seen as the genre of “the past.” How close can such a fictional “past” come to the “present,” or with imaginary tech, to a future, without sliding over the generic boundary? Whatever the writer’s intent, or the bookshelf label, if the savvy specfic reader perceives the conventions, icons and protocols in the text as SF, why isn’t it SF?
The generic SF/fantasy boundary concerned me deeply while I was struggling with the SF theory chapter of my PhD. Past/future-time, science/magic as unreality’s ennabling device, evidence of change, progress; I canvassed those and a number more of the abundant definitions. In the process I suddenly found myself, like Octavia Butler’s heroine in Exogenesis, conducting an experiment “in the field.” Once the opening paragraph of Amberlight arrived, the conscious project was to see how nearly I could make a text walk the tightrope, marked by Hambly’s Silicon Mage,between fantasy and SF.
Hence, the McGuffin in Amberlight, the “qherrique” which turned up as opening donnée, became the basis for a thought experiment in gender-role reversals, as well as the key to society’s shape. Only women could “work” the mysterious – substance, entity, animal, vegetable, mineral? The society became a matriarchy. Qherrique’s most crucial quality was its psychic effects, coveted by every other society, making Amberlight-the-city unthinkably rich. But qherrique had a bouquet of other attributes – pizo-electric, photo-synthetic, it could be worked like a mix of pearl and stone to drive machines, to power tools, to produce guns. Light-guns and horseless vehicles. Is this fantasy, or is it SF?
It charmed me immensely when I sent the novel in ms to Andrea (Hosth), asking outright, Do you read this as fantasy or as SF? And she responded that she couldn’t decide. The indecision reappeared among reviewers when I finally got the novel into print. It was political fantasy, it was high fantasy, it was a sub-genre of feminist SF: a whole grab-bag of answers turned up. Leading, perhaps, to the most interesting general conclusion – that the level and type of technology a writer consciously or haphazardly bestows on a specfic novel will not merely dictate the shape of that world and its societies, but even the genre in which the work will belong - or, if as with Amberlight, Loki or Coyote was around at the moment of inception, not.
Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia, and writes fantasy and SF set mostly in analogue or alternate Australian settings. She has published six fantasy novels, two of which were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards, and some stories in Australian and US anthologies. Her latest short story, “At Sunset” appears in Luna Station Quarterly for September 2012.
Warren Rochelle
Fairies don’t really need machines, do they? Not the ones in my novels Harvest of Changelings, and its sequel, The Called. Elemental beings—Fires, Airs, Waters, and Earths—they have magical powers to use and manipulate these elements, with extra abilities for their particular element. Fires, for example, are best suited for heating things, so there is no need for electrical stoves. Instead, Fires, heat up stones, and in war, create fireballs. Airs are the most gifted telepathically and the winds answer to their call. Waters can call the rain and raise waves. The garden of an Earth is fertile, verdant, and productive; Earths can awaken volcanoes, make earthquakes. Machinery as we know it Here never developed There.
But the magic of this Faerie uses machines—at least it does Here. When Hazel, one of my four main characters, and one of the changelings, is called to return to Faerie, her gateway is not a wardrobe or a door in the side of the hill, rather it is a computer. Hazel has on her computer, Worldmaker, a program that allows the user to construct his or her own world from the ground up, to its people and civilization, its climate, its history. And it is through this portal that Hazel, accompanied by her loyal Siamese, Alexander, enters Faerie. As the dragon she encounters explains, “It was your machine . . . and your game. The machine knocked at the door and the game opened the door to this place; the machine answered a call from this place. It can talk to other machines, yes? Create invisible links of energy, of electricity? Such a link was made to here, which is beyond dreams . . .” (Harvest of Changelings 69). The computer, as a pegasus tells Hazel later, is “a dream-gate” (154).
In The Golden Boy, a novel-in-progress, I explore this link between machine and magic. In this novel the world is dominated by the Columbian Empire and the New World and a rational, science-privileging super-church, which is in opposition to the Old World and those who would also embrace magic and those who use magic, and those who are, the fey. Fairies, who are again Elementals, are iron-sensitive. The only way they can touch a car without pain is to touch one sealed in a plastic coating. Magic and machine in this universe are ways for one to fight the other.
So what? Is this just another take on the famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke, one of his Three Laws, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”? On reflection, no; rather I find myself doing something perhaps connected, but still different. Machines give us the power of magic: they can enhance speed and allow us to travel over great distances in a short amount of time—seven-league boots and aircraft. The magical can call down the lightning; laser rifles and cannons harness light for war. Software such as Hazel’s Worldmaker and the software that creates virtual realities allow us to enter the hills, go through the wardrobe. Through television and film, through computer monitors, we enter, and for a time, live in any number of alternate worlds.
Technology, then, allows us to explore just the kind of world my changelings find in Faerie, the kind of world the heroes in The Golden Boy are trying to save.
Magic, in the literature of the fantastic, in counterpoint, allows the reader to contemplate a world without the mechanical. It reminds us that we can—really we can, despite what my students tell me—survive without the machine. It reminds us that the Morlocks and the Eloi are possible. Magic warns of the possibility of the Borg.
Technology is magical; it is fantastical. Technology allows us to create a magic of the mind, and magic reminds us that it is the mind that we can find real magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology really is indistinguishable from magic.
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. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. Most recently, his story, “The Boy on McGee Street,”was published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink Narcissus Press, 2012). http://warrenrochelle.com
That's it for this month's Travelling Round Table! Feel free to join in the discussion in the comments.
January 31, 2013
Great Fantasy Roundtable Traveling Guest Blog, January 2013: The Hero and the Quest
Welcome to the January 2013 edition of the Great Fantasy Traveling Roundtable Blog.
This month we are pondering that mainstay of fantasy literature, the Hero and the Quest, with thoughts on unlikely heroes, what a hero is and isn’t, how authors such as Frank Herbert have used this trope, and how we interpreted said Hero and said Quest in our own fiction. Enjoy and reactions and responses are always welcome!
Warren Rochelle
My Heroes
According to the online version of the American Heritage Dictionary, a hero is:
1. In mythology and legend, a man, often of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, and favored by the gods.
2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war.
3. A person noted for special achievement in a particular field: the heroes of medicine.
4. The principal male character in novel, poem, or dramatic presentation.
The word hero should no longer be regarded as restricted to men in the sense [of] “a person noted for courageous action,” though heroine is always restricted to women.
Two of my favorites heroes are Russell and Jeff, who happen to be two of the four protagonists in my novels, Harvest of Changelings (Golden Gryphon Press, 2007, paperback, 2008) and The Called (Golden Gryphon Press, 2010). They are rather unlikely heroes. Briefly, Russell and Jeff are the Fire and Water of their tetrad, their found family. Tetrads are the basic social unit of Faerie, and come in all kinds of gender combinations; their tetrad has three boys and one girl, Hazel, the Earth. Malachi, the other boy, is the Air.
Often there are couples within the tetrad with the couple as primary bond, the tetrad as secondary. Except for Malachi, who is half-fairy, these children are the descendants of changelings left in our universe centuries ago. In Harvest, their long-dormant fairy DNA is awakened and they became to change, and become more magical, acquiring such abilities as flight and glamour-casting. At first they are dealing with these changes alone, then they find each other, and of course, they find themselves fighting Evil, human and otherwise, and on a Quest.
When the reader first meets Russell Avery White he is 12 and in the 5th grade, having had to repeat two grades earlier. The school system has classified him as learning disabled. Red-haired, he has grass-green eyes and is living with his father and pregnant stepmother. His birthmother ran away years ago, taking with her his little brother, and leaving Russell to be verbally and physically abused by his dad. As he tells the other three: “I don’t remember him ever not doing it, now that I think about it” (Harvest 214). Russell’s body and soul are scarred and wounded. He is angry and thinks of himself as dark. He has learned to keep secrets, including his growing awareness of his attraction to boys. He dreams of centaurs—dreams sent by Faerie.
Jeffrey Arthur Gates is 10, a 5th grader and in Russell’s class. He has dark brown hair and sea-green eyes, and suffered “aggravated and protracted sexual abuse” from age 6 to 10. His father was the perpetrator; his mother abandoned him. Like Russell, he has been classified learning disabled. Like Russell he is scarred; Jeff’s are invisible. Now in foster care and fearing returning to his father, Jeff dreams of dragons.
With Malachi, Hazel, they will fight demons, monsters, evil people, as, with the help of Malachi’s father, they search for the gate to Faerie.
In The Called, the two boys, now lovers, are older, emotionally and mentally in their late teens, their physical aging slowed from their years in Faerie. They are called home to Earth to reunite their tetrad, to fight in another war against evil. And they are still haunted by their pasts: the abuse, the pain, and the anger. They are still Outsiders.
They carry no swords or spears. Their births seem ordinary, their rearing, with the abuse, less so. They are called to adventure, to the Quest—but it is more that adventure and the Quest finds them. Helpers, animal and wise souls, yes, and as they encounter evil and discover how to deal with it, they are tried and tested. There are monsters, yes, but the evil is often interior—the shadows of their pasts, and the damaged adults who sort of care for them. Russell’s anger is not easy for Jeff to deal with, no matter how much he comes to love him. Russell’s darkness, his disbelief in his own goodness, is not easy for anyone to deal with. For Jeff, the Somebody in the dark who came for him is still there, a ghost that is always present. They make awful mistakes again and again.
And Russell and Jeff are two of my favorite heroes.
Why?
From pain comes strength? Yes, sometimes, but not always. Pain and anger can break someone; it breaks Russell; Jeff surrenders to it. Perhaps part of the answer can be found in these words by Jane Bowles*: “Your first pain, you carry it with you like a lodestone in your breast because all tenderness will come from there. You must carry it through your whole life but you must not circle around it.” That pain can bring tenderness, is, I would argue, the real source of the strength of my problem children. If they had not suffered and survived and grown from this, Jeff and Russell would have found their
Quest-given tasks far more difficult. As Fred Chappell said in the blurb he wrote for Harvest: “Perhaps a new beatitude is discovered: the broken shall mend the earth.”
But aren’t heroes the characters with whom the reader is to identify? The Hero is the archetype of the Self, right? The Hero and the Quest is the archetypal journey of coming of age (yes, I know it is problematic in its privileging of the public and the masculine)? But are there people who have not been hurt? We all were children once. And surely Heroes are Outsiders. I do identify with these two boys who grow into young men: they are telling part of my own story; they represent parts of my Self.
The potential for heroism is present in all of us. The pain and hurt that comes to us can break us, but it also has the potential for ultimately bringing us greater strength of character and a truer sense of Self.
The Quest is an ongoing journey.
*Jane Bowles, 1917 – 1973, is an American writer and playwright considered by Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and John Ashbery to be “one of the finest and most underrated writers of American fiction.” She has “long had an underground reputation as one of the truly original writers of this century.”
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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. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. His short story, “The Boy on McGee Street,” was just published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink Narcissus Press, 2012).
http://warrenrochelle.com
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Deborah Ross
Hero on a Quest
Once upon a time, a hero represented a very particular character, an archetype if you will. He was invariably male, either a youth or in the prime of life, neither a child nor infirm with age; he was physically powerful and if not morally irreproachable, clearly a “good guy.” It was fine for him to have a flaw or two, so long as it did not interfere with his ability to accomplish great deeds and conquer mighty foes. Occasionally, the flaw would prove his downfall, as in the case of Achilles. The tradition that stretches from Odysseus, Beowulf, and Gilgamesh continued through King Arthur and his knights, to Tarzan, the superheroes of comic books, Doc Savage, and James Bond. True, there were occasional female-heroes in this mold, but mostly they imitated the men, only with brass bikinis, improbably high heels, and better fashion sense. What made them heroic, men and women alike, were physical prowess, lofty ideals, and larger-than-life goals. In other words, they were Worthy of The Noble Quest.
The Quest was always something beyond the reach of the ordinary person. No average plowman or shop-keeper could aspire to find the Grail or slay the dragon. The Quest usually involved what Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey,” meaning that the central character must leave behind the familiar, venture into unknown terrain fraught with danger, and then return home. Sometimes he is changed by his experience, sometimes he merely puts himself back on the shelf until the next plea for help.
The function of this kind of Hero is not only as a Campbellian agent – that is, to guide the reader through a transformative journey – but as an agen instrument of Order and of The Triumph of Good. (Notice how the topic lends itself to unnecessary capitalization?) The world has veered toward Chaos, if not actually toppled headlong into the abyss, and the task of the Hero is to set things right. (I suspect that one modern incarnation of the classical Hero is the detective, who restores right social order by solving puzzles that lead to the apprehension of wrong-doers.) One of the implications here is that only those of noble birth, etc., and who are favored by the gods have the capacity to do great deeds. Aforementioned nobles undoubtedly relished stories that demonstrated them how superior they were and didn’t mind the peasantry being reminded of it. This propagated a hierarchical power structure in the same way as did the notion of the divine right of kings. It reinforced the notion that those with political power were inherently better (stronger, luckier, sexier, purer of thought, beloved by the gods) than those who had none.
In an interesting twist, if one wants to praise someone in the People’s Republic of China (or the old Soviet Union), one says he or she is a Hero of the Revolution.
One of the most interesting changes to come about with the development of the novel was the notion that stories about people of ordinary stature and circumstances could be interesting, and that such characters, however humble, might behave in admirable ways. Of course, “ordinary” is in the eye of the beholder and people who were illiterate due to poverty had little opportunity to see themselves in novel characters. Jane Austen wrote about her own fairly comfortable social class, people whose circumstances were familiar to her. One might consider her a Hero of the Novelistic Revolution.
With the shift to non-Heroic characters came the concept of a protagonist – one who acts — rather than a hero, and the blurring of lines between a person who may do extraordinary deeds but is not of the aristocratic, chosen-by-God mode. We might encounter protagonists-of-noble-birth who are heroic in spite of rather than because of their dynastic sociopolitical standing. Eventually, we also had anti-heroes, reluctant heroes, villains-with-hearts-of-gold, and women heroes (to distinguish them from the typical wailing wilting damsel-in-distress heroines). We had central characters who represented ordinary people who rise to extraordinary heights, people that could be you or me. We stopped calling them heroes for a while, but now often do so again.
Sometimes ordinary-people heroes go on quests, sometimes they get dragged kicking and protesting into adventures, and sometimes they simply ache with dreams until they wake up one day and take a small step toward realizing those dreams. In some ways, they carry us with them on their quest more readily because they are more like us. But with the specificity of character comes a different sort of distance from the reader. Many of the old-style Heroes were pretty bland as characters; they didn’t need quirks and failings and insecurities because they were, after all, Heroes. We now appreciate that in the hands of a skillful storyteller, superficial similarities (gender, race, socioeconomic status, nationality) fade in importance compared to the common human experience and aspirations. A sympathetic character trumps one who is “like me.” Added to that is the value placed on diversity and “exoticism” (which is another way of saying, the romantic aspect of strange lands and people).
I wonder if the shift from superhuman/aristocratic Hero to ordinary person acting in heroic ways also reflects a shift in empowerment. Once upon a time, not only could the people who comprised the vast majority of the work force hope to achieve anything notable, they dared not draw attention to themselves. I think now of the people who jump into rivers to save children, or land disabled airplanes under near-impossible circumstances, or place themselves between gunmen and the students in their care (or talk those same gunmen into laying down their weapons). These are true heroes and what they accomplish – often without planning or forethought – may not fulfill the classical definition of a quest. But to the children who are still alive and to everyone who hears these stories and gets tears in their eyes, these spontaneous acts of courage shine all the brighter.
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Deborah J. Ross began writing professionally in 1982 as Deborah Wheeler with Jaydium and Northlight and short stories in Asimov’s, F & SF, Realms Of FantasyY and Star Wars: Tales From Jabba’s Palace. Now under her birth name, Ross, she is continuing the” Darkover” series of the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as original work, including the fantasy trilogy The Seven-Petaled Shield, forthcoming from DAW. She is a member of Book View Cafe. She’s lived in France, worked for a cardiologist, studied Hebrew, yoga and kung fu, plays classical piano, loves horses, and is active in the local Jewish and Quaker communities.
http://deborahjross.blogspot.com/
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Chris Howard
Frank Herbert and the Quest without a Hero
Like any writer I have many stylistic influences spanning classical, romantic, and contemporary authors from Homer, Hugo, and Dostoyevsky to Terry Pratchett, Richard Morgan, and Caitlín Kiernan. But if I had to pick an author whose work influenced me to the core–and at a young age–it would be Frank Herbert. For a particular work it would be Dune.
One of the things Dune taught me was that the protagonist of the story can go on the quest, suffer at the hands of an oppressor, struggle through and around the obstacles enemies lay out for him, and he can even complete the quest and emerge victorious. And he can do all of this without being a hero.
Or maybe Paul Atreides was just a different sort of hero, one I had never come across before. With Dune Frank Herbert made me look at heroes and their quests in a different way.
I think many fantasy writers would automatically stick Tolkien on the list, but although I have read the Lord of the Rings dozens of times—and The Silmarillion at least ten—I can’t say Tolkien affected me the same way—or as deeply. Certainly Tolkien showed me the wonder of maps, invented languages, an excitingly deep world, and how a big story—Lord of the Rings—can become just one insignificant fragment of a far longer and more complicated story. These are the things I still love about The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. I probably would have said Tolkien was my favorite author when I was a teenager, but when I hit twenty or so, after four or five readings about Paul Atreides and all the craziness he gets up to with the fremen, I sort of felt like I had graduated from The Lord of the Rings to Dune.
Dune was also exotic, non-traditional. It had European roots without being entirely European, and that drew me in. There was also a very familiar parallel with Paul’s move from Caladan with its broad oceans to the faraway and very different desert world of Arrakis. I had moved around a lot and I thought that gave me insight into Paul’s plight—typical teenager. I was living in Japan, going to high school, when I first read Dune, but I had also lived just outside Paris, and in Idar-Oberstein, Germany. I had been up and down South Korea, Italy, and through East Germany by train to Berlin. I had lived on both American coasts, and I was living in Silicon Valley. In my seventeen- or eighteen- year-old mind there was definitely something that connected the changes shaking up Paul’s life and the constant moving around when I was young.
If the unfamiliar and striking backdrop of Arrakis lured me in first, that was quickly followed by Herbert’s push and play with the concept of a hero. Paul Atreides wasn’t your typical innocent kid with a quest thrust on him, with everything he counted on pulled from under his feet. He wasn’t just a pawn struggling to find his way in a universe of space-folding guild navigators and galactic-scale trade and political manipulation. He was a significant piece in the Bene Gesserit breeding program. He took the terrible risk—basically gambling everything—to gain god-like powers, which he used to gather and train thousands of fanatical soldiers. He defeated the emperor’s forces, killing armies and princes, the whole time maneuvering himself onto the throne, marrying the emperor’s daughter purely for political gain. And he ends the last chapter with less control over his life than when the story started.
Paul was a man playing god,” said Herbert.
That idea hooked me at the first reading—that the hero could take on powers that he would not be able to control, that he could end up flawed so deeply he wasn’t a hero anymore.
None of the main characters in The Lord of the Rings had an evolution like Paul Atreides. Frodo, Aragorn, and the others were heroes in the traditional sense. Even if Frodo didn’t come home whole, he came back a true hero, having lost a finger and defeated the greatest evil of his age. Paul Atreides didn’t come home from his long journey a hero. He was a messiah at the head of a monster of religious ferocity he created. Anything that monster did would be done in his name, and he didn’t really control it.
Then he unleashed it on the universe.
In Herbert’s own words, “The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better to rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes.”
Paul had the quest. He made the journey. He was victorious. There’s a clear apotheosis stage—literally. Paul Atreides is deified. He passes through the stages of the hero’s journey. He just isn’t a hero. Not in the usual sense.
I haven’t read Dune in ten or fifteen years, but I can still feel the affect that book and the following two—Dune Messiah and Children of Dune —had on me. I loved the culture clashing in Dune, the court intrigue, the power and plans of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, the dinner parties with codes and signals and conversations being carried on at several levels at the same time—and only understood by a few. But it was the protagonist wielding power beyond his control that pulled me back into that universe again and again. It was Paul-Muad’Dib driving his followers, his family, the guilds, the Bene Gesserits, and the entire empire toward a doom he could not escape.
That is what has stuck with me to this day. Paul became a model for the kinds of heroes I love to write about. Heroes who barely have the will or personal strength to hold onto the reigns of some monstrous power that is part of them, or that they have created, and sometimes they end up being consumed by it.
In the introduction to his short story collection Eye, Frank Herbert elaborates on this theme. “Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader’s name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question. That’s how 900 people wound up in Guyana drinking poison Kool-Aid…”
I don’t know if it’s unusual but I love the idea of a protagonist who isn’t heroic in the traditional sense. I love an unsympathetic hero–or a hero who starts the story without a shared compassion or a strong connection with the reader, and grows to become sympathetic.
On the other hand I also love a good straightforward heroic quest, where the hero is good and right and fights evil. I know Herbert has been taken as being an active opponent of the hero’s journey, the monomyth, the whole Campbell thousand-faced hero, and in the Dune trilogy it looks that way–even with Paul’s progress through the story closely following many of the steps Campbell describes. It’s what Paul ends up becoming that disrupts the structure.
I don’t think Herbert’s in the same camp with David Brin, a confirmed and outspoken adversary of the hero’s journey and the Campbellian insistence that components of the myths are common among most cultures worldwide (Read Brin’s fun and interesting “Star Wars” despots vs. “Star Trek” populists: http://www.salon.com/1999/06/15/brin_...).
Herbert was more of an explorer of conflict and ideas, using his heroes to work through serious flaws in leadership, on the environment and very long range planning, the power of linguistics, and down to challenging what’s considered normal and abnormal. In the Dune books at least, he did not focus on science or future technology. His explorations frequently brought him up against traditional character structure and reader acceptance, but I don’t consider him an enemy of the popular heroic journey and story structure. I consider him a thoughtful science fiction writer who wanted to push the boundaries of the genre in ways that focused on awareness of important issues—ecology, flaws in perception—the infallible leader, and on the dangers of accepting without examination long-held beliefs and cultural fixtures—the hero who completes the quest and returns home a better or at least a more evolved person.
Herbert said, “We tend to tie ourselves down to limited choices. We say, ‘Well, the only answer is….’ or, ‘If you would just. . . .’ Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don’t see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don’t think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction.”
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Chris Howard is a creative guy with a pen and a paint brush, author of Seaborn (Juno Books) and half a shelf-full of other books. His short stories have appeared in a bunch of zines, latest is “Lost Dogs and Fireplace Archeology” in Fantasy Magazine. In 2007, his story “Hammers and Snails” was a Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Fiction Contest winner. He writes and illustrates the comic, Saltwater Witch. His ink work and digital illos have appeared in Shimmer, BuzzyMag, various RPGs, and on the pages of other books, blogs, and places. Last year he painted a 9 x 12 foot Steampunk Map of New York for a cafe in Brooklyn. Find out everything at http://www.SaltwaterWitch.com
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Carole McDonnell
The hero in stasis
Perhaps it’s the Judeo-Christian virtue of endurance. Perhaps it’s my own life. But my characters have never really wanted to go on a quest. Often they end up on one. Because the genre requires it, because the story requires it. But, for the most part, the quests of my heroes is the quest of a happy home. Home, as they have found it, is a burden to them and they generally want to leave home in order to find or create a better home — far from their own tribe or clan.
I haven’t read up on the hero’s quest in a while so I’m not sure why the hero generally leaves home. Maybe I’ve fallen into the requirements of the trope without knowing. After all, the hero’s quest is such a part of our culture. The prince must depart his land, fight dragons or ogres, marry a woman from another clan, then bring her happily back.
I will say, though, that my characters tend to be heroes of endurance. Whether women or men, they are mired in stasis — usually by well-meaning parents or clans. It is as if, my muses are not so much concerned with the quest but with exploring the brief imprisonment the hero endures. In most fantasy books, the hero has his little encounter with the jail/dungeon/dark prison then he moves on. In my books, the enduring of the dungeon is the entire novel. The hero or heroine is mired in waiting. This waiting involves hope, remorse, existential questions to God, deadly routine, and the determination to hold on to their personality, character, and/or will.
Thus, the quest is to leave the state of being mired and to return to a normalcy the typical hero takes for granted. To merely have a happy home. Perhaps that is why many of my characters are princesses or wives in unhappy marriages or damaged children of kings and warriors. Men and the healthy have a certain freedom that women, the sickly, and young children do not.
There are moments when they seem to have an apparent chance to leave their dungeon —whether by suicide, flight, or concession to the powers that be— but their love for another character, hope in Divine Intervention or a possible change of mind of their prisoner, or a holding on to their will prevents them from leaving. I suspect this kind of hero stasis can only be understand by those readers who, like The Godfather’s Don Corleone, are constantly being reeled back in —-in spite of every attempt to flee the clan.
So my new soon-to-be published novel, The Constant Tower, is not for happy middle class kids who want an adventure in order to grow, but for kids in bad neighborhoods, poor kids who wish to run away from home, kids who don’t want to be in clans, women married into hateful clans. Folks who just want to be happy with the normal. The Christian worldview of battling for a regular life in the face of suffering, sickness, and the fact of others controlling our lives changes the Hero Quest trope a bit — because of that Christian virtue of Endurance.
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Carole McDonnell is a writer of ethnic fiction, speculative fiction, and Christian fiction. Her works have appeared in many anthologies and at various online sites. Her first novel, Wind Follower, was published by Wildside Books. Her forthcoming novel is called The Constant Tower. http://carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/
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Sylvia Kelso
When is a Quest Not a Quest?
“Quest: a journey towards a goal,” quoth the ubiquitous Wikipedia. “Hero” – one of the few words that descends but doesn’t translate from Classical Greek or Latin. “Heros” in Greek means exactly the same as “hero” in English. Whatever that may be.
The usefully succinct Wikipedia once again:
hero (male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice—that is, heroism—for some greater good of all humanity.
Key-words, courage, philanthropism, self-sacrifice. Says something about the general run of homo sap. sap. that these last two qualities should be the benchmark for heroism, doesn’t it?
Outside literature, heroes don’t need a quest. They can fulfill the Wikipedia criteria without warning or training, on a surf beach, at a bushfire, beside a stormdrain. Inside littracha, everybody from Joseph Campbell up or down has produced endless lists of quest and hero variations. “’Bilbo went to find a treasure, there and back again, but I go to lose one, and not return’” (FOTR, 3 75), says Frodo to Gandalf, in That Book, citing just two possibilities. And every type of hero or quest studs modern fantasy, with the exception of one. The true anti-hero doesn’t appear.
An anti-hero usually loosely means, a hero who doesn’t look heroic: he’s unwilling, or ugly, or cowardly, or immoral. But in fact, a real anti-hero wd. be the opposite of a hero: when the crunch came, instead of fronting up like all the unlikely heroes, from Sam to Beau Mains, the anti-hero would turn and run. And without a hero who can meet the Wikipedia criteria, the whole “heroic” storyline would collapse.
But suppose that even if the hero/es behave/s in good heroic fashion, the Quest turns out not to be a Quest? Does that violate the spirit of both terms?
Quests are trickier than heroes. In littracha, you need them because without a goal, the hero/es’ wanderings wd. degenerate into a picaresque novel, a train of adventures with no coherent end. With a goal, there’s motivation for the story arc. There’s a visible reason to keep going somewhere.
I have done my share of starting-a-book-with-a-Quest, but for some reason the Black Gang, aka the creative part of the writing crew, chose to end my second Amberlight book at the start of a Quest. It was complete with dream omens, the gathering of a company, and an unknown but apparently desperately urgent goal. Deprived of their magic McGuffin at the end of Book 1, the main cast has been struggling to maintain their small Utopian community of Iskarda in the turbulent vacuum left by the fall of the city of Amberlight. At the end of book two, the McGuffin is suddenly restored – but now it’s no longer the basis of their former power, it’s a literal “seed,” powerless to protect even itself.
Only one solution, says their chief strategist. Get it out of here: the River knows it exists, the power-wolves will be after it. So make a public, heavily visible departure in hopes this small indefensible community will be ignored. Take it where? The answer is already supplied, perhaps by the McGuffin itself: the dreams’ goal, the image of a place their own lore identifies as the River’s source.
The novel turned out a two-fold story, told in letters between the chief Quester and her community’s newest foreign member, back in Iskarda. The Quest section proceeded in the proper mode: obstacles, traumas, self-discoveries and harrowing interpersonal conflicts, moments of wrenching loss, exotic new environments, uncovered secrets, and a tail of cataclysmic events, as the McGuffin’s presence disrupted or outright overthrew River states. All kosher by Quest list-rules. The “heroes” also met helpers as well as enemies, they transcended their ordinary selves, their actions were meant to benefit many others. Eventually, they reached the place that had been their goal.
The Questers had come to assume they would find not merely the River’s Source, but a solution to all the problems of a world by then convulsed in war, threatening to destroy Iskarda along with the precious new states founded in the McGuffin’s wake. Whatever it was, the goal would give them the means to save everything.
And it didn’t happen.
The Questers dealt, in some sort, with the shock. They picked themselves up, realized that their world was still dissolving behind them and set off, empty-handed, to fight and if necessary fall with their friends. As they very nearly did. In a sense, the return journey was far more heroic, in the general sense, than the one toward the goal, because unlike Frodo with his treasure lost, the return journey offered only probable immolation for its end.
Of course, this being a fantasy novel, the eucatastrophe that Tolkien first articulated eventually intervened. But the question remains: if the hero goes through the motions of the Quest, heroic and otherwise, but reaches his goal to find it – well, not what he expected – can that journey still be called a quest?
And if it isn’t a quest, though the journey remains motivated, is the goal-seeker a hero, in the most rigid and basic sense? That is, can you have a quest without a hero, even if you do have heroes without a quest?
The Black Gang consider the whole Q and A a critical trivium. Who cares, they say, if it’s “really” a quest or the heroes were “really” heroes? if it looks like a hero, and talks like a hero, and acts like a hero, it’s a hero, isn’t it? And if it looks like a Quest, and sounds like a Quest, and produces a story like a Quest, who cares? Nobody said the goal had to be more than a purpose or an aim. If you want a list-maker’s version, they sniff, then puff out your chest and claim it as the ultimate variation – the Quest that looked like a Quest and sounded like a Quest, and wasn’t technically a Quest at all.
And on this one, I think I’ll let the Black Gang have the final word.
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Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia, and writes fantasy and SF set mostly in analogue or alternate Australian settings. She has published six fantasy novels, two of which were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards, and some stories in Australian and US anthologies. Her latest short story, “At Sunset” appears in Luna Station Quarterly for September 2012.
This month we are pondering that mainstay of fantasy literature, the Hero and the Quest, with thoughts on unlikely heroes, what a hero is and isn’t, how authors such as Frank Herbert have used this trope, and how we interpreted said Hero and said Quest in our own fiction. Enjoy and reactions and responses are always welcome!
Warren Rochelle
My Heroes
According to the online version of the American Heritage Dictionary, a hero is:
1. In mythology and legend, a man, often of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, and favored by the gods.
2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war.
3. A person noted for special achievement in a particular field: the heroes of medicine.
4. The principal male character in novel, poem, or dramatic presentation.
The word hero should no longer be regarded as restricted to men in the sense [of] “a person noted for courageous action,” though heroine is always restricted to women.
Two of my favorites heroes are Russell and Jeff, who happen to be two of the four protagonists in my novels, Harvest of Changelings (Golden Gryphon Press, 2007, paperback, 2008) and The Called (Golden Gryphon Press, 2010). They are rather unlikely heroes. Briefly, Russell and Jeff are the Fire and Water of their tetrad, their found family. Tetrads are the basic social unit of Faerie, and come in all kinds of gender combinations; their tetrad has three boys and one girl, Hazel, the Earth. Malachi, the other boy, is the Air.
Often there are couples within the tetrad with the couple as primary bond, the tetrad as secondary. Except for Malachi, who is half-fairy, these children are the descendants of changelings left in our universe centuries ago. In Harvest, their long-dormant fairy DNA is awakened and they became to change, and become more magical, acquiring such abilities as flight and glamour-casting. At first they are dealing with these changes alone, then they find each other, and of course, they find themselves fighting Evil, human and otherwise, and on a Quest.
When the reader first meets Russell Avery White he is 12 and in the 5th grade, having had to repeat two grades earlier. The school system has classified him as learning disabled. Red-haired, he has grass-green eyes and is living with his father and pregnant stepmother. His birthmother ran away years ago, taking with her his little brother, and leaving Russell to be verbally and physically abused by his dad. As he tells the other three: “I don’t remember him ever not doing it, now that I think about it” (Harvest 214). Russell’s body and soul are scarred and wounded. He is angry and thinks of himself as dark. He has learned to keep secrets, including his growing awareness of his attraction to boys. He dreams of centaurs—dreams sent by Faerie.
Jeffrey Arthur Gates is 10, a 5th grader and in Russell’s class. He has dark brown hair and sea-green eyes, and suffered “aggravated and protracted sexual abuse” from age 6 to 10. His father was the perpetrator; his mother abandoned him. Like Russell, he has been classified learning disabled. Like Russell he is scarred; Jeff’s are invisible. Now in foster care and fearing returning to his father, Jeff dreams of dragons.
With Malachi, Hazel, they will fight demons, monsters, evil people, as, with the help of Malachi’s father, they search for the gate to Faerie.
In The Called, the two boys, now lovers, are older, emotionally and mentally in their late teens, their physical aging slowed from their years in Faerie. They are called home to Earth to reunite their tetrad, to fight in another war against evil. And they are still haunted by their pasts: the abuse, the pain, and the anger. They are still Outsiders.
They carry no swords or spears. Their births seem ordinary, their rearing, with the abuse, less so. They are called to adventure, to the Quest—but it is more that adventure and the Quest finds them. Helpers, animal and wise souls, yes, and as they encounter evil and discover how to deal with it, they are tried and tested. There are monsters, yes, but the evil is often interior—the shadows of their pasts, and the damaged adults who sort of care for them. Russell’s anger is not easy for Jeff to deal with, no matter how much he comes to love him. Russell’s darkness, his disbelief in his own goodness, is not easy for anyone to deal with. For Jeff, the Somebody in the dark who came for him is still there, a ghost that is always present. They make awful mistakes again and again.
And Russell and Jeff are two of my favorite heroes.
Why?
From pain comes strength? Yes, sometimes, but not always. Pain and anger can break someone; it breaks Russell; Jeff surrenders to it. Perhaps part of the answer can be found in these words by Jane Bowles*: “Your first pain, you carry it with you like a lodestone in your breast because all tenderness will come from there. You must carry it through your whole life but you must not circle around it.” That pain can bring tenderness, is, I would argue, the real source of the strength of my problem children. If they had not suffered and survived and grown from this, Jeff and Russell would have found their
Quest-given tasks far more difficult. As Fred Chappell said in the blurb he wrote for Harvest: “Perhaps a new beatitude is discovered: the broken shall mend the earth.”
But aren’t heroes the characters with whom the reader is to identify? The Hero is the archetype of the Self, right? The Hero and the Quest is the archetypal journey of coming of age (yes, I know it is problematic in its privileging of the public and the masculine)? But are there people who have not been hurt? We all were children once. And surely Heroes are Outsiders. I do identify with these two boys who grow into young men: they are telling part of my own story; they represent parts of my Self.
The potential for heroism is present in all of us. The pain and hurt that comes to us can break us, but it also has the potential for ultimately bringing us greater strength of character and a truer sense of Self.
The Quest is an ongoing journey.
*Jane Bowles, 1917 – 1973, is an American writer and playwright considered by Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and John Ashbery to be “one of the finest and most underrated writers of American fiction.” She has “long had an underground reputation as one of the truly original writers of this century.”
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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. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. His short story, “The Boy on McGee Street,” was just published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink Narcissus Press, 2012).
http://warrenrochelle.com
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Deborah Ross
Hero on a Quest
Once upon a time, a hero represented a very particular character, an archetype if you will. He was invariably male, either a youth or in the prime of life, neither a child nor infirm with age; he was physically powerful and if not morally irreproachable, clearly a “good guy.” It was fine for him to have a flaw or two, so long as it did not interfere with his ability to accomplish great deeds and conquer mighty foes. Occasionally, the flaw would prove his downfall, as in the case of Achilles. The tradition that stretches from Odysseus, Beowulf, and Gilgamesh continued through King Arthur and his knights, to Tarzan, the superheroes of comic books, Doc Savage, and James Bond. True, there were occasional female-heroes in this mold, but mostly they imitated the men, only with brass bikinis, improbably high heels, and better fashion sense. What made them heroic, men and women alike, were physical prowess, lofty ideals, and larger-than-life goals. In other words, they were Worthy of The Noble Quest.
The Quest was always something beyond the reach of the ordinary person. No average plowman or shop-keeper could aspire to find the Grail or slay the dragon. The Quest usually involved what Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey,” meaning that the central character must leave behind the familiar, venture into unknown terrain fraught with danger, and then return home. Sometimes he is changed by his experience, sometimes he merely puts himself back on the shelf until the next plea for help.
The function of this kind of Hero is not only as a Campbellian agent – that is, to guide the reader through a transformative journey – but as an agen instrument of Order and of The Triumph of Good. (Notice how the topic lends itself to unnecessary capitalization?) The world has veered toward Chaos, if not actually toppled headlong into the abyss, and the task of the Hero is to set things right. (I suspect that one modern incarnation of the classical Hero is the detective, who restores right social order by solving puzzles that lead to the apprehension of wrong-doers.) One of the implications here is that only those of noble birth, etc., and who are favored by the gods have the capacity to do great deeds. Aforementioned nobles undoubtedly relished stories that demonstrated them how superior they were and didn’t mind the peasantry being reminded of it. This propagated a hierarchical power structure in the same way as did the notion of the divine right of kings. It reinforced the notion that those with political power were inherently better (stronger, luckier, sexier, purer of thought, beloved by the gods) than those who had none.
In an interesting twist, if one wants to praise someone in the People’s Republic of China (or the old Soviet Union), one says he or she is a Hero of the Revolution.
One of the most interesting changes to come about with the development of the novel was the notion that stories about people of ordinary stature and circumstances could be interesting, and that such characters, however humble, might behave in admirable ways. Of course, “ordinary” is in the eye of the beholder and people who were illiterate due to poverty had little opportunity to see themselves in novel characters. Jane Austen wrote about her own fairly comfortable social class, people whose circumstances were familiar to her. One might consider her a Hero of the Novelistic Revolution.
With the shift to non-Heroic characters came the concept of a protagonist – one who acts — rather than a hero, and the blurring of lines between a person who may do extraordinary deeds but is not of the aristocratic, chosen-by-God mode. We might encounter protagonists-of-noble-birth who are heroic in spite of rather than because of their dynastic sociopolitical standing. Eventually, we also had anti-heroes, reluctant heroes, villains-with-hearts-of-gold, and women heroes (to distinguish them from the typical wailing wilting damsel-in-distress heroines). We had central characters who represented ordinary people who rise to extraordinary heights, people that could be you or me. We stopped calling them heroes for a while, but now often do so again.
Sometimes ordinary-people heroes go on quests, sometimes they get dragged kicking and protesting into adventures, and sometimes they simply ache with dreams until they wake up one day and take a small step toward realizing those dreams. In some ways, they carry us with them on their quest more readily because they are more like us. But with the specificity of character comes a different sort of distance from the reader. Many of the old-style Heroes were pretty bland as characters; they didn’t need quirks and failings and insecurities because they were, after all, Heroes. We now appreciate that in the hands of a skillful storyteller, superficial similarities (gender, race, socioeconomic status, nationality) fade in importance compared to the common human experience and aspirations. A sympathetic character trumps one who is “like me.” Added to that is the value placed on diversity and “exoticism” (which is another way of saying, the romantic aspect of strange lands and people).
I wonder if the shift from superhuman/aristocratic Hero to ordinary person acting in heroic ways also reflects a shift in empowerment. Once upon a time, not only could the people who comprised the vast majority of the work force hope to achieve anything notable, they dared not draw attention to themselves. I think now of the people who jump into rivers to save children, or land disabled airplanes under near-impossible circumstances, or place themselves between gunmen and the students in their care (or talk those same gunmen into laying down their weapons). These are true heroes and what they accomplish – often without planning or forethought – may not fulfill the classical definition of a quest. But to the children who are still alive and to everyone who hears these stories and gets tears in their eyes, these spontaneous acts of courage shine all the brighter.
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Deborah J. Ross began writing professionally in 1982 as Deborah Wheeler with Jaydium and Northlight and short stories in Asimov’s, F & SF, Realms Of FantasyY and Star Wars: Tales From Jabba’s Palace. Now under her birth name, Ross, she is continuing the” Darkover” series of the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as original work, including the fantasy trilogy The Seven-Petaled Shield, forthcoming from DAW. She is a member of Book View Cafe. She’s lived in France, worked for a cardiologist, studied Hebrew, yoga and kung fu, plays classical piano, loves horses, and is active in the local Jewish and Quaker communities.
http://deborahjross.blogspot.com/
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Chris Howard
Frank Herbert and the Quest without a Hero
Like any writer I have many stylistic influences spanning classical, romantic, and contemporary authors from Homer, Hugo, and Dostoyevsky to Terry Pratchett, Richard Morgan, and Caitlín Kiernan. But if I had to pick an author whose work influenced me to the core–and at a young age–it would be Frank Herbert. For a particular work it would be Dune.
One of the things Dune taught me was that the protagonist of the story can go on the quest, suffer at the hands of an oppressor, struggle through and around the obstacles enemies lay out for him, and he can even complete the quest and emerge victorious. And he can do all of this without being a hero.
Or maybe Paul Atreides was just a different sort of hero, one I had never come across before. With Dune Frank Herbert made me look at heroes and their quests in a different way.
I think many fantasy writers would automatically stick Tolkien on the list, but although I have read the Lord of the Rings dozens of times—and The Silmarillion at least ten—I can’t say Tolkien affected me the same way—or as deeply. Certainly Tolkien showed me the wonder of maps, invented languages, an excitingly deep world, and how a big story—Lord of the Rings—can become just one insignificant fragment of a far longer and more complicated story. These are the things I still love about The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. I probably would have said Tolkien was my favorite author when I was a teenager, but when I hit twenty or so, after four or five readings about Paul Atreides and all the craziness he gets up to with the fremen, I sort of felt like I had graduated from The Lord of the Rings to Dune.
Dune was also exotic, non-traditional. It had European roots without being entirely European, and that drew me in. There was also a very familiar parallel with Paul’s move from Caladan with its broad oceans to the faraway and very different desert world of Arrakis. I had moved around a lot and I thought that gave me insight into Paul’s plight—typical teenager. I was living in Japan, going to high school, when I first read Dune, but I had also lived just outside Paris, and in Idar-Oberstein, Germany. I had been up and down South Korea, Italy, and through East Germany by train to Berlin. I had lived on both American coasts, and I was living in Silicon Valley. In my seventeen- or eighteen- year-old mind there was definitely something that connected the changes shaking up Paul’s life and the constant moving around when I was young.
If the unfamiliar and striking backdrop of Arrakis lured me in first, that was quickly followed by Herbert’s push and play with the concept of a hero. Paul Atreides wasn’t your typical innocent kid with a quest thrust on him, with everything he counted on pulled from under his feet. He wasn’t just a pawn struggling to find his way in a universe of space-folding guild navigators and galactic-scale trade and political manipulation. He was a significant piece in the Bene Gesserit breeding program. He took the terrible risk—basically gambling everything—to gain god-like powers, which he used to gather and train thousands of fanatical soldiers. He defeated the emperor’s forces, killing armies and princes, the whole time maneuvering himself onto the throne, marrying the emperor’s daughter purely for political gain. And he ends the last chapter with less control over his life than when the story started.
Paul was a man playing god,” said Herbert.
That idea hooked me at the first reading—that the hero could take on powers that he would not be able to control, that he could end up flawed so deeply he wasn’t a hero anymore.
None of the main characters in The Lord of the Rings had an evolution like Paul Atreides. Frodo, Aragorn, and the others were heroes in the traditional sense. Even if Frodo didn’t come home whole, he came back a true hero, having lost a finger and defeated the greatest evil of his age. Paul Atreides didn’t come home from his long journey a hero. He was a messiah at the head of a monster of religious ferocity he created. Anything that monster did would be done in his name, and he didn’t really control it.
Then he unleashed it on the universe.
In Herbert’s own words, “The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better to rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes.”
Paul had the quest. He made the journey. He was victorious. There’s a clear apotheosis stage—literally. Paul Atreides is deified. He passes through the stages of the hero’s journey. He just isn’t a hero. Not in the usual sense.
I haven’t read Dune in ten or fifteen years, but I can still feel the affect that book and the following two—Dune Messiah and Children of Dune —had on me. I loved the culture clashing in Dune, the court intrigue, the power and plans of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, the dinner parties with codes and signals and conversations being carried on at several levels at the same time—and only understood by a few. But it was the protagonist wielding power beyond his control that pulled me back into that universe again and again. It was Paul-Muad’Dib driving his followers, his family, the guilds, the Bene Gesserits, and the entire empire toward a doom he could not escape.
That is what has stuck with me to this day. Paul became a model for the kinds of heroes I love to write about. Heroes who barely have the will or personal strength to hold onto the reigns of some monstrous power that is part of them, or that they have created, and sometimes they end up being consumed by it.
In the introduction to his short story collection Eye, Frank Herbert elaborates on this theme. “Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader’s name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question. That’s how 900 people wound up in Guyana drinking poison Kool-Aid…”
I don’t know if it’s unusual but I love the idea of a protagonist who isn’t heroic in the traditional sense. I love an unsympathetic hero–or a hero who starts the story without a shared compassion or a strong connection with the reader, and grows to become sympathetic.
On the other hand I also love a good straightforward heroic quest, where the hero is good and right and fights evil. I know Herbert has been taken as being an active opponent of the hero’s journey, the monomyth, the whole Campbell thousand-faced hero, and in the Dune trilogy it looks that way–even with Paul’s progress through the story closely following many of the steps Campbell describes. It’s what Paul ends up becoming that disrupts the structure.
I don’t think Herbert’s in the same camp with David Brin, a confirmed and outspoken adversary of the hero’s journey and the Campbellian insistence that components of the myths are common among most cultures worldwide (Read Brin’s fun and interesting “Star Wars” despots vs. “Star Trek” populists: http://www.salon.com/1999/06/15/brin_...).
Herbert was more of an explorer of conflict and ideas, using his heroes to work through serious flaws in leadership, on the environment and very long range planning, the power of linguistics, and down to challenging what’s considered normal and abnormal. In the Dune books at least, he did not focus on science or future technology. His explorations frequently brought him up against traditional character structure and reader acceptance, but I don’t consider him an enemy of the popular heroic journey and story structure. I consider him a thoughtful science fiction writer who wanted to push the boundaries of the genre in ways that focused on awareness of important issues—ecology, flaws in perception—the infallible leader, and on the dangers of accepting without examination long-held beliefs and cultural fixtures—the hero who completes the quest and returns home a better or at least a more evolved person.
Herbert said, “We tend to tie ourselves down to limited choices. We say, ‘Well, the only answer is….’ or, ‘If you would just. . . .’ Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don’t see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don’t think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction.”
***
Chris Howard is a creative guy with a pen and a paint brush, author of Seaborn (Juno Books) and half a shelf-full of other books. His short stories have appeared in a bunch of zines, latest is “Lost Dogs and Fireplace Archeology” in Fantasy Magazine. In 2007, his story “Hammers and Snails” was a Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Fiction Contest winner. He writes and illustrates the comic, Saltwater Witch. His ink work and digital illos have appeared in Shimmer, BuzzyMag, various RPGs, and on the pages of other books, blogs, and places. Last year he painted a 9 x 12 foot Steampunk Map of New York for a cafe in Brooklyn. Find out everything at http://www.SaltwaterWitch.com
***
Carole McDonnell
The hero in stasis
Perhaps it’s the Judeo-Christian virtue of endurance. Perhaps it’s my own life. But my characters have never really wanted to go on a quest. Often they end up on one. Because the genre requires it, because the story requires it. But, for the most part, the quests of my heroes is the quest of a happy home. Home, as they have found it, is a burden to them and they generally want to leave home in order to find or create a better home — far from their own tribe or clan.
I haven’t read up on the hero’s quest in a while so I’m not sure why the hero generally leaves home. Maybe I’ve fallen into the requirements of the trope without knowing. After all, the hero’s quest is such a part of our culture. The prince must depart his land, fight dragons or ogres, marry a woman from another clan, then bring her happily back.
I will say, though, that my characters tend to be heroes of endurance. Whether women or men, they are mired in stasis — usually by well-meaning parents or clans. It is as if, my muses are not so much concerned with the quest but with exploring the brief imprisonment the hero endures. In most fantasy books, the hero has his little encounter with the jail/dungeon/dark prison then he moves on. In my books, the enduring of the dungeon is the entire novel. The hero or heroine is mired in waiting. This waiting involves hope, remorse, existential questions to God, deadly routine, and the determination to hold on to their personality, character, and/or will.
Thus, the quest is to leave the state of being mired and to return to a normalcy the typical hero takes for granted. To merely have a happy home. Perhaps that is why many of my characters are princesses or wives in unhappy marriages or damaged children of kings and warriors. Men and the healthy have a certain freedom that women, the sickly, and young children do not.
There are moments when they seem to have an apparent chance to leave their dungeon —whether by suicide, flight, or concession to the powers that be— but their love for another character, hope in Divine Intervention or a possible change of mind of their prisoner, or a holding on to their will prevents them from leaving. I suspect this kind of hero stasis can only be understand by those readers who, like The Godfather’s Don Corleone, are constantly being reeled back in —-in spite of every attempt to flee the clan.
So my new soon-to-be published novel, The Constant Tower, is not for happy middle class kids who want an adventure in order to grow, but for kids in bad neighborhoods, poor kids who wish to run away from home, kids who don’t want to be in clans, women married into hateful clans. Folks who just want to be happy with the normal. The Christian worldview of battling for a regular life in the face of suffering, sickness, and the fact of others controlling our lives changes the Hero Quest trope a bit — because of that Christian virtue of Endurance.
***
Carole McDonnell is a writer of ethnic fiction, speculative fiction, and Christian fiction. Her works have appeared in many anthologies and at various online sites. Her first novel, Wind Follower, was published by Wildside Books. Her forthcoming novel is called The Constant Tower. http://carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/
***
Sylvia Kelso
When is a Quest Not a Quest?
“Quest: a journey towards a goal,” quoth the ubiquitous Wikipedia. “Hero” – one of the few words that descends but doesn’t translate from Classical Greek or Latin. “Heros” in Greek means exactly the same as “hero” in English. Whatever that may be.
The usefully succinct Wikipedia once again:
hero (male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice—that is, heroism—for some greater good of all humanity.
Key-words, courage, philanthropism, self-sacrifice. Says something about the general run of homo sap. sap. that these last two qualities should be the benchmark for heroism, doesn’t it?
Outside literature, heroes don’t need a quest. They can fulfill the Wikipedia criteria without warning or training, on a surf beach, at a bushfire, beside a stormdrain. Inside littracha, everybody from Joseph Campbell up or down has produced endless lists of quest and hero variations. “’Bilbo went to find a treasure, there and back again, but I go to lose one, and not return’” (FOTR, 3 75), says Frodo to Gandalf, in That Book, citing just two possibilities. And every type of hero or quest studs modern fantasy, with the exception of one. The true anti-hero doesn’t appear.
An anti-hero usually loosely means, a hero who doesn’t look heroic: he’s unwilling, or ugly, or cowardly, or immoral. But in fact, a real anti-hero wd. be the opposite of a hero: when the crunch came, instead of fronting up like all the unlikely heroes, from Sam to Beau Mains, the anti-hero would turn and run. And without a hero who can meet the Wikipedia criteria, the whole “heroic” storyline would collapse.
But suppose that even if the hero/es behave/s in good heroic fashion, the Quest turns out not to be a Quest? Does that violate the spirit of both terms?
Quests are trickier than heroes. In littracha, you need them because without a goal, the hero/es’ wanderings wd. degenerate into a picaresque novel, a train of adventures with no coherent end. With a goal, there’s motivation for the story arc. There’s a visible reason to keep going somewhere.
I have done my share of starting-a-book-with-a-Quest, but for some reason the Black Gang, aka the creative part of the writing crew, chose to end my second Amberlight book at the start of a Quest. It was complete with dream omens, the gathering of a company, and an unknown but apparently desperately urgent goal. Deprived of their magic McGuffin at the end of Book 1, the main cast has been struggling to maintain their small Utopian community of Iskarda in the turbulent vacuum left by the fall of the city of Amberlight. At the end of book two, the McGuffin is suddenly restored – but now it’s no longer the basis of their former power, it’s a literal “seed,” powerless to protect even itself.
Only one solution, says their chief strategist. Get it out of here: the River knows it exists, the power-wolves will be after it. So make a public, heavily visible departure in hopes this small indefensible community will be ignored. Take it where? The answer is already supplied, perhaps by the McGuffin itself: the dreams’ goal, the image of a place their own lore identifies as the River’s source.
The novel turned out a two-fold story, told in letters between the chief Quester and her community’s newest foreign member, back in Iskarda. The Quest section proceeded in the proper mode: obstacles, traumas, self-discoveries and harrowing interpersonal conflicts, moments of wrenching loss, exotic new environments, uncovered secrets, and a tail of cataclysmic events, as the McGuffin’s presence disrupted or outright overthrew River states. All kosher by Quest list-rules. The “heroes” also met helpers as well as enemies, they transcended their ordinary selves, their actions were meant to benefit many others. Eventually, they reached the place that had been their goal.
The Questers had come to assume they would find not merely the River’s Source, but a solution to all the problems of a world by then convulsed in war, threatening to destroy Iskarda along with the precious new states founded in the McGuffin’s wake. Whatever it was, the goal would give them the means to save everything.
And it didn’t happen.
The Questers dealt, in some sort, with the shock. They picked themselves up, realized that their world was still dissolving behind them and set off, empty-handed, to fight and if necessary fall with their friends. As they very nearly did. In a sense, the return journey was far more heroic, in the general sense, than the one toward the goal, because unlike Frodo with his treasure lost, the return journey offered only probable immolation for its end.
Of course, this being a fantasy novel, the eucatastrophe that Tolkien first articulated eventually intervened. But the question remains: if the hero goes through the motions of the Quest, heroic and otherwise, but reaches his goal to find it – well, not what he expected – can that journey still be called a quest?
And if it isn’t a quest, though the journey remains motivated, is the goal-seeker a hero, in the most rigid and basic sense? That is, can you have a quest without a hero, even if you do have heroes without a quest?
The Black Gang consider the whole Q and A a critical trivium. Who cares, they say, if it’s “really” a quest or the heroes were “really” heroes? if it looks like a hero, and talks like a hero, and acts like a hero, it’s a hero, isn’t it? And if it looks like a Quest, and sounds like a Quest, and produces a story like a Quest, who cares? Nobody said the goal had to be more than a purpose or an aim. If you want a list-maker’s version, they sniff, then puff out your chest and claim it as the ultimate variation – the Quest that looked like a Quest and sounded like a Quest, and wasn’t technically a Quest at all.
And on this one, I think I’ll let the Black Gang have the final word.
* * * * *
Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia, and writes fantasy and SF set mostly in analogue or alternate Australian settings. She has published six fantasy novels, two of which were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards, and some stories in Australian and US anthologies. Her latest short story, “At Sunset” appears in Luna Station Quarterly for September 2012.
December 31, 2012
The Silver Apples of Narnia
The Silver Apples of Narnia
by
Warren Rochelle
This month's theme for The Great Fantasy Traveling Roundtable is food in fantasy literature. I chose to write about the silver apples of Narnia. The entire blog post, which includes pieces by:
Sylvia Kelso, Deborah J. Ross, and Andrea Host, can be found at:
http://www.sylviakelso.com
and
also on this blog
and at:
http://www.facebook.com/notes/warren-...
*****
Apples, apples and more apples, appear again and again in The Chronicles of Narnia. They are the first food eaten by the Pevensies when they return to Narnia in Prince Caspian—apples grown in an orchard they had planted centuries before, an orchard blessed by Pomona, the greatest of the wood goddesses. Perhaps the most potent, symbolically at least, are the silver apples. According to the WikiNarnia, “In all of existence, there are only “four known individual silver apple trees.”
The first one appears in The Magician’s Nephew. Digory and Polly are sent by Aslan to find the Garden of Youth and there take a silver apple from the Tree of Youth. There he meets the Witch, who was “just throwing the core of an apple . . . The juice was darker than you would expect and made a horrid stain around her mouth” (142-143). She has attained her heart’s desire, immortality, but already is experiencing what will many long years of despair of an evil life. She was warned: Come in by the gold gates or not all/Take of my fruit for others or forbear. /For those who steal or those who climb my wall/Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair (141).
Digory plants the second silver apple tree, the Tree of Protection, on the banks of the Great River of Narnia, with the apple he brings to Aslan. The tree grew quickly. “Its spreading branches seem to cast a light rather than a shade, and silver apples peeped out like stairs from under every leaf. But it was the smell which came from it, even more than the sight, that had everyone draw in their breath.” This breathtaking scent will keep Narnia safe from all enemies. As Aslan explains, the Witch “dare not come within a hundred miles of the Tree, for its smell, which is joy and life and health to you, is death and horror and despair to her” (155). For 898 years this Tree protects Narnia from all enemies. Presumably it dies and only then does evil come into Narnia: the Witch, having outlived the Tree thanks to the apple she ate, returns and the hundred years of winter begins.
It is an apple from this Tree that Aslan gives to Digory that cures his mother. And from this apple grows the third silver apple tree, in the garden behind a row house in London. The magic is lessened in our world, although it “did bear apples more beautiful than any other in England and they were extremely good for you, though not fully magical.” This otherworldly tree is magically connected to its parent in Narnia: “Sometime it would move mysteriously when there was no wind blowing . . . when this happened there were high winds in Narnia.” When a storm brings down the English silver apple tree (whether or not the apples are silvery here is not mentioned), Digory, by then an adult, has “part of the timber made into a wardrobe, which he put in his big house in the country” (166).
We all know what happens with this wardrobe.
The fourth silver apple tree is only hinted at in The Last Battle. The world of Narnia has ended; the Pevensies and their friends are in Aslan’s country and are being called to “Come further up and further in” (167) and to pass through the golden gates into a walled garden, “into the delicious smell that blew towards them” (169)—presumably the same delicious smell of the silver apple tree in Digory’s garden. At the centre of this garden is an orchard, “where the Phoenix sat in a tree and looked down upon them all and at the foot of that tree were two thrones, a King and Queen so great and beautiful that everyone bowed down before them” (170). These two are King Frank and Queen Helen, the first King and Queen, crowned hours after Aslan sang Narnia into existence. That they are compared to Adam and Eve suggests this tree is the Tree of Knowledge, a silver apple tree.
Clearly Lewis is drawing upon a variety of sources for these silver apples, and not just Genesis and the Garden of Eden—the forbidden fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is never identified in the Bible as an apple, silver or otherwise. That fruit—and the silver apple tree Digory finds, are both forbidden and are both symbols of temptation, of the fall, of sin, of knowledge and immortality. For Digory this knowledge comes in a flash: the Witch is wrong; he must do the right thing, follow the rules, and do as Aslan has commanded. It takes Adam and Eve a little longer to figure things out.
According to the Myths Encyclopedia, “Apples are brimming with symbolic meanings and mythic associations. In China they represent peace, and apple blossoms are a symbol of women's beauty. In other traditions, they can signify wisdom, joy, fertility, and youthfulness.” In Norse mythology, the apples of the goddess Iðunn are necessary for the gods to keep their eternal youth—otherwise, they will grow old, grey, bent. One of the tasks of Heracles is to bring back the golden apples from the Tree of Life that grows in the Garden of the Hesperides. When Eris tosses out her golden apple, meant for the fairest, momentous and cataclysmic events are set in motion. Apples are sacred to Aphrodite: throwing an apple at someone was to symbolically declare one’s love (even though the fruit Eve picks is never identified).
Avalon is apple-island; Snow White is tempted by a poisoned one. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples, apples, apples: food as myth, as metaphor, as icon, as a way to the truth—to greater knowledge of self, of what is real. Aslan’s Country is the truly real; we live in the shadowlands. God gave us bodies that must be sustained, must be fed—and he gave us souls that also must be sustained and fed. But why apples, what makes them so special? Originating in Western Asia, today apples are grown world-wide. Originally they were among the earliest trees to be cultivated, now, they are ubiquitous and we eat them raw, cooked, baked, fried, and stewed. They were (supposedly) with us in the beginning in Eden. Silver apples frame Narnian existence, from the beginning to the end. They are a fruit given by God, weighted with meaning.
I believe I will go get an apple . . . a Pink Lady, they taste so sweet …
* * * * *
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. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. He is currently at work on a novel about a gay werewolf and a collection of gay-themed fantasy short stories. One of the collection's stories, "The Boy on McGee Street," was published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink Narcissus Press) in October 2012.
Website: http://warrenrochelle.com
by
Warren Rochelle
This month's theme for The Great Fantasy Traveling Roundtable is food in fantasy literature. I chose to write about the silver apples of Narnia. The entire blog post, which includes pieces by:
Sylvia Kelso, Deborah J. Ross, and Andrea Host, can be found at:
http://www.sylviakelso.com
and
also on this blog
and at:
http://www.facebook.com/notes/warren-...
*****
Apples, apples and more apples, appear again and again in The Chronicles of Narnia. They are the first food eaten by the Pevensies when they return to Narnia in Prince Caspian—apples grown in an orchard they had planted centuries before, an orchard blessed by Pomona, the greatest of the wood goddesses. Perhaps the most potent, symbolically at least, are the silver apples. According to the WikiNarnia, “In all of existence, there are only “four known individual silver apple trees.”
The first one appears in The Magician’s Nephew. Digory and Polly are sent by Aslan to find the Garden of Youth and there take a silver apple from the Tree of Youth. There he meets the Witch, who was “just throwing the core of an apple . . . The juice was darker than you would expect and made a horrid stain around her mouth” (142-143). She has attained her heart’s desire, immortality, but already is experiencing what will many long years of despair of an evil life. She was warned: Come in by the gold gates or not all/Take of my fruit for others or forbear. /For those who steal or those who climb my wall/Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair (141).
Digory plants the second silver apple tree, the Tree of Protection, on the banks of the Great River of Narnia, with the apple he brings to Aslan. The tree grew quickly. “Its spreading branches seem to cast a light rather than a shade, and silver apples peeped out like stairs from under every leaf. But it was the smell which came from it, even more than the sight, that had everyone draw in their breath.” This breathtaking scent will keep Narnia safe from all enemies. As Aslan explains, the Witch “dare not come within a hundred miles of the Tree, for its smell, which is joy and life and health to you, is death and horror and despair to her” (155). For 898 years this Tree protects Narnia from all enemies. Presumably it dies and only then does evil come into Narnia: the Witch, having outlived the Tree thanks to the apple she ate, returns and the hundred years of winter begins.
It is an apple from this Tree that Aslan gives to Digory that cures his mother. And from this apple grows the third silver apple tree, in the garden behind a row house in London. The magic is lessened in our world, although it “did bear apples more beautiful than any other in England and they were extremely good for you, though not fully magical.” This otherworldly tree is magically connected to its parent in Narnia: “Sometime it would move mysteriously when there was no wind blowing . . . when this happened there were high winds in Narnia.” When a storm brings down the English silver apple tree (whether or not the apples are silvery here is not mentioned), Digory, by then an adult, has “part of the timber made into a wardrobe, which he put in his big house in the country” (166).
We all know what happens with this wardrobe.
The fourth silver apple tree is only hinted at in The Last Battle. The world of Narnia has ended; the Pevensies and their friends are in Aslan’s country and are being called to “Come further up and further in” (167) and to pass through the golden gates into a walled garden, “into the delicious smell that blew towards them” (169)—presumably the same delicious smell of the silver apple tree in Digory’s garden. At the centre of this garden is an orchard, “where the Phoenix sat in a tree and looked down upon them all and at the foot of that tree were two thrones, a King and Queen so great and beautiful that everyone bowed down before them” (170). These two are King Frank and Queen Helen, the first King and Queen, crowned hours after Aslan sang Narnia into existence. That they are compared to Adam and Eve suggests this tree is the Tree of Knowledge, a silver apple tree.
Clearly Lewis is drawing upon a variety of sources for these silver apples, and not just Genesis and the Garden of Eden—the forbidden fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is never identified in the Bible as an apple, silver or otherwise. That fruit—and the silver apple tree Digory finds, are both forbidden and are both symbols of temptation, of the fall, of sin, of knowledge and immortality. For Digory this knowledge comes in a flash: the Witch is wrong; he must do the right thing, follow the rules, and do as Aslan has commanded. It takes Adam and Eve a little longer to figure things out.
According to the Myths Encyclopedia, “Apples are brimming with symbolic meanings and mythic associations. In China they represent peace, and apple blossoms are a symbol of women's beauty. In other traditions, they can signify wisdom, joy, fertility, and youthfulness.” In Norse mythology, the apples of the goddess Iðunn are necessary for the gods to keep their eternal youth—otherwise, they will grow old, grey, bent. One of the tasks of Heracles is to bring back the golden apples from the Tree of Life that grows in the Garden of the Hesperides. When Eris tosses out her golden apple, meant for the fairest, momentous and cataclysmic events are set in motion. Apples are sacred to Aphrodite: throwing an apple at someone was to symbolically declare one’s love (even though the fruit Eve picks is never identified).
Avalon is apple-island; Snow White is tempted by a poisoned one. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples, apples, apples: food as myth, as metaphor, as icon, as a way to the truth—to greater knowledge of self, of what is real. Aslan’s Country is the truly real; we live in the shadowlands. God gave us bodies that must be sustained, must be fed—and he gave us souls that also must be sustained and fed. But why apples, what makes them so special? Originating in Western Asia, today apples are grown world-wide. Originally they were among the earliest trees to be cultivated, now, they are ubiquitous and we eat them raw, cooked, baked, fried, and stewed. They were (supposedly) with us in the beginning in Eden. Silver apples frame Narnian existence, from the beginning to the end. They are a fruit given by God, weighted with meaning.
I believe I will go get an apple . . . a Pink Lady, they taste so sweet …
* * * * *
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. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. He is currently at work on a novel about a gay werewolf and a collection of gay-themed fantasy short stories. One of the collection's stories, "The Boy on McGee Street," was published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink Narcissus Press) in October 2012.
Website: http://warrenrochelle.com
Food on the Traveling Round Table (Fantasy Guest Blog) December 2012
Food on the Traveling Round Table (Fantasy Guest Blog) December 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
This month's topic is Food in Fantasy, and since I proposed that, it's my turn to host. Welcome one and all!
Sylvia Kelso
Stay Me With Apples, Comfort Me With Flagons
Once upon a time, food must have been the most important thing in everyone's lives. Millions of Australopithecoid generations didn’t need shelter, expected seasonal sex, and maybe drew moisture from food, as gorillas still do. But food? If the food ran out, and you couldn't find more, you fell off the human family tree for good.
Lacking food storage, the now idealized Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers were little safer. As for Neolithic farmers, those enormous stoneworks speak as much fear as reverence: they were at famine's mercy, and they knew it. When the climate changed in Orkney, they opened the top of the Tomb of the Eagles and filled in the centuries-old community temple, a mute testament to the despair of people who felt themselves abandoned, literally, to death.
Before the Industrial Revolution, very little changed. William Langland’s great medieval poem, “Piers Plowman”, is vague if dour about vanity and lust, but to the sin of gluttony it speaks with passionate and specific detail, invoking a society where spring doesn’t mean admiring the pear blossom but hunting desperately for the first green vegetable shoots.
Nowadays, at least in the First World enclave, our food fetish has gone negative: for most of us, food is far too available, far too tempting, far too dangerous. Our bookshops swarm with delectably illustrated cook-books, opposite shelves of diet-books. Our TVs bristle with celebrity chefs and celebrity dieticians attacking red meat, dairy products, processed food. Yet every December, Australians, having largely excised religion, and often present-giving, from their major food-based festival, embark on an orgy of food-buying, preparation and consumption calculated to send their nearest and dearest to an early grave.
Ironically, this Desire-Taboo attitude brings us right back beside the oldest (Western) fantasy stories, of the Judeao-Christian apple and Persephone’s six pomegranate seeds. Unsurprisingly, if from our differing angles, Elsewhere’s food has always been the easiest and most tempting way to get lost precisely where you DON’T want to be.
The pattern lasts through later folk and fairytales. Fairy feasts, from those of the Irish Sidhe to the story of Thomas the Rhymer and the Wood King’s revels in The Hobbit, promise eternal pleasure but also eternal loss and death. And the lure of Elsewhere food endures, from Patricia McKillip’s Solstice Wood back to the magnificently Overfat Feast in The Once and Future King, the fruit in “Goblin Market,” and of course, Jadis’ Evil Turkish Delight in Narnia.
But safe or wholesome food? As Ursula Le Guin remarked ruefully elsewhere, “It is hard to make a really gripping tale of how I wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another…” (“The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”). It seems equally hard for myth, romance or fantasy to invent desirable food that isn’t taboo.
Most often, good food in modern fantasy marks a temporary safe halt: the desert inn in Diane Duane’s The Door into Fire, the old woman’s farmhouse in Diana Wynne Jones’ The Spell Coats, Beorn’s house in The Hobbit. But overall, earthly fantasy food should aid the verisimilitude, hence prohibiting chips and hamburgers in Pre-Industrial secondary worlds. And also hence, the scathing entry for “Food” in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland reads: “See STEW, SCURVY, STEW, WAYBREAD … and STEW” (79) A ruling that covers most noble and courtly menus too.
There is a standout exception: once again, Patricia McKillip’s The Book of Atrix Wolfe, where food plays a subtle but vital role. The lost heroine is spell-hidden in the castle kitchen. While the story bangs about upstairs through wizardry, succession worries, prince-abductions and scorched-earth hunts, its progress is recorded below through a series of hasty improvisations and unenchanted but inspired food.
As openers, for hall lunch “a proud flock of liveried servants” carry “trays of cold beef, whole poached salmon, loaves of braided bread, salad, fruit dipped in chocolate, cakes of cream and walnut chopped as fine as flour” (27. Supper, in contrast, is “a prolonged drama of great pies of hare and venison with hunting scenes baked in dough on their crusts, vegetables sculpted into gardens, huge platters layered with roast geese, woodcocks and pigeons, and crowned with hummingbirds made of egg white and sugar” (28).
As the narrative cogs engage Prince Talis, summoned home from mage school, nearly kills the King with a misspelled thunderbolt. In counterpoint, “Servants bearing trays of spiced wine and hot brandy had flung them into the air, splashing themselves; goblets rolled among the hounds” (48). Ruffled if coping, the kitchen dispatches the scullion heroine with a tray for the prince, now sequestered as a dangerous magician in the old keep. When she drops the tray, the prince reassembles, “’Salmon swimming in gravy, roast beef on a bed of broken meringue ... The bread is only slightly damp …’”(61). The bearer goes unnoticed.
Next time, the kitchen is coping with a punitive hunt. “’Twenty-six quail,” the fowl cook said… ‘Eighteen woodcock, thirty grouse, eleven lark, thirteen wild duck.’
‘Pluck them,’ the head cook said. ‘Spit the grouse and woodcocks, braise the lark and quail in butter, stuff the duck with sliced oranges before they are spitted. They will be served with an orange-and-brandy sauce.” (77). The kitchen offers the prince a tray of “game hens seasoned with rosemary, tiny potatoes stuffed with mushroom, soup of leeks and cream, a braided loaf of dark sweet bread, a compote of cherries in brandy” (86) and this time he remembers the bearer. But our next kitchen-view is of crisis. The fanfare for supper fails to sound.
Hall-mistress and servants wait beside “steaming silver bowls of soup with tiny saffron biscuits shaped like fish floating in it” while, “Haunches of ham crackled and split on the spits” (97). The soup threatens to spoil, the head cook begins to throw things, and dire news comes from the hall. The prince has been lost in the magic wood. Beans scorch, meringue swans burn, the undercooks open a brandy bottle. But the King plans a night hunt, and the kitchen jerks back to work.
“‘Reheat the soup,’ [the head cook]commanded, “Remove the fish. Chop green onions to float in the bowls with a pinch of paprika ‘… [His] eye fell on the brandy bottle. ‘Take hot brandy and spiced wine to the hunters in the yard, and thin slices of apple and game pie – quickly!’” (101)
When the hunt returns in the small hours for a “cold supper,” “[h]ams were sliced, and cold roast fowl, and long loaves of bread; a simmering soup of shredded beets was ladled out … to cool. Lettuces and boiled potatoes and scallions were chopped and mixed with vinegar, pepper, rosemary and dill. Dark, dense cakes heavy with nuts and dried cherries, redolent with brandy ... Whipped cream and flaked, toasted hazelnuts frosted the cakes… Undercooks funneled rosettes of minced pear onto the soup” (119).
But the prince stays lost. When Atrix the mage arrives, breakfast includes “pale wine scented with spices .. a plate [of] pastries stuffed with nuts and cream, cold salmon, a swan carved out of melon with its wings full of strawberries “(150). But soon both king and kitchen feel the brunt. “The king had retired in fury and despair to his chamber … Supper – roast, peppered venison, tiny potatoes roasted crisp, hollowed and filled with cheese and onions and chive, cherries marinated in brandy and folded into beaten cream – sailed over the bearer’s head and splashed … a hundred-year-old tapestry” (155).
Next day, “’Hunt,’ the head cook said tersely… ‘Again. Take up bread and cheese, smoked fish and cold, sliced venison. Mince the rest of the venison for pie. Also onions, mushrooms, leeks. Take up spiced wine’” (155).
The hunt’s next return “filled the kitchen with feathers, as grouse and pheasant and wild duck … were plucked, beheaded, stuffed and spitted. Hare, squirrel and deer were skinned, gutted and left in the cold-meat pantry,” and the head cook improvises again: “‘The venison can be smoked, the small game will do for cold pies for the hunters.” (155-56).
A normal (castle) breakfast, “silver urns of chocolate, trays of butter pastries, hams glazed with honey and sliced thin as paper, eggs poached in sherry, birds carved out of melons and filled with fruit” (156) segues into disaster: tray bearers come back “white as cream”, and then with ultimate calamity, trays of uneaten food. The head cook’s “face is tight” as he copes:
“’Cook the eggs until they harden, and roll them in minced sausage. The ham will keep for when the King hunts again. Mash the melon in sweet wine and strain it for cold soup –‘“ (160) Later things worsen. Wine is all drunk, but food ignored, and “’what is this dent in the bronze tray?'
‘The King kicked it,’ a servant said morosely. ‘He’s boiling and about to froth’” (161).
The head cook carries on more composedly than the King. “’Nonsense. Cold ham, herb bread, mince pies, red wine. The King may throw it to the dogs. At least it will get eaten’” (161). And when the hunt returns with even more kills, he sends up “stew and game pies ... salads of spinach and radish and bacon, hot black bread, simple heavy fare” (161). The only time this culinary tour de force ever mentions stew.
Meanwhile the heroine rediscovers magic, the prince meets the Queen of the Wood, and hall-servants bring back “cold broken fragments of salmon wrapped in pie crust, roast venison seared over flames and simmered in wine, garlic and rosemary, carrots and onions fried in butter and ale, baked apples stuffed with cabbage and cream, baskets of fruit woven out of egg-white and drizzled with chocolate flavoured with brandy” (176).
For a last time the heroine takes up the prince’s tray: “onion soup with a melting crust of cheese, a loaf of dark bread, a flagon of wine, a tart of oranges sliced into thin bright circles glistening under a glaze that smelled of ginger” (206). This time, meticulous, imaginative culinary detail dovetails with war and magic’s culmination: the prince remembers the scullion heroine, enters the kitchen to discover her, and the narrative’s eclaircissement begins.
Later, with the magic over, the mysteries folded away, the heroine, restored to her Wood princess status, brings the prince another tray, and this time the food goes undescribed. But the story ends as she re-enters the kitchen where she knows “the tray–mistress would be counting scratches, and the plate-washers would still be at the sinks, and the head-cook debating tomorrow’s meals, and everyone picking at leftovers” and says “’Tell me all your names’” (247).
It is uncommon, even in modern fantasy, for a secondary world novel to end belowstairs. It is a fitting finale that the focus should here move from the amazing food to its makers. The food itself is not particularly Elsewhere, in terms of high-end modern cuisine, but that this parade of lushly detailed dishes is never shown as magic, evil, or a temptation, justifies its makers’ place in the final spotlight. Unlike the mages or kings or Faery folk, their power has never produced anything but good.
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Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia, and writes fantasy and SF set mostly in analogue or alternate Australian settings. She has published six fantasy novels, two of which were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards, and some stories in Australian and US anthologies. Her latest short story, “At Sunset” appears in Luna Station Quarterly for September 2012.
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Warren Rochelle
The Silver Apples of Narnia
This month the theme for the Great Fantasy Traveling Roundtable Blog is food—appropriate for December, given the various holiday feasts and parties on many of our calendars. So, food—food and fantasy, food in fantasy literature—and what popped out of my mental toaster were apples and Narnia, in particular the silver apples.
Apples, apples and more apples, appear again and again in The Chronicles of Narnia. They are the first food eaten by the Pevensies when they return to Narnia in Prince Caspian—apples grown in an orchard they had planted centuries before, an orchard blessed by Pomona, the greatest of the wood goddesses. Perhaps the most potent, symbolically at least, are the silver apples. According to the WikiNarnia, “In all of existence, there are only “four known individual silver apple trees.”
The first one appears in The Magician’s Nephew. Digory and Polly are sent by Aslan to find the Garden of Youth and there take a silver apple from the Tree of Youth. There he meets the Witch, who was “just throwing the core of an apple . . . The juice was darker than you would expect and made a horrid stain around her mouth” (142-143). She has attained her heart’s desire, immortality, but already is experiencing what will many long years of despair of an evil life. She was warned: Come in by the gold gates or not all/Take of my fruit for others or forbear. /For those who steal or those who climb my wall/Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair (141).
Digory plants the second silver apple tree, the Tree of Protection, on the banks of the Great River of Narnia, with the apple he brings to Aslan. The tree grew quickly. “Its spreading branches seem to cast a light rather than a shade, and silver apples peeped out like stairs from under every leaf. But it was the smell which came from it, even more than the sight, that had everyone draw in their breath.” This breathtaking scent will keep Narnia safe from all enemies. As Aslan explains, the Witch “dare not come within a hundred miles of the Tree, for its smell, which is joy and life and health to you, is death and horror and despair to her” (155). For 898 years this Tree protects Narnia from all enemies. Presumably it dies and only then does evil come into Narnia: the Witch, having outlived the Tree thanks to the apple she ate, returns and the hundred years of winter begins.
It is an apple from this Tree that Aslan gives to Digory that cures his mother. And from this apple grows the third silver apple tree, in the garden behind a row house in London. The magic is lessened in our world, although it “did bear apples more beautiful than any other in England and they were extremely good for you, though not fully magical.” This otherworldly tree is magically connected to its parent in Narnia: “Sometime it would move mysteriously when there was no wind blowing . . . when this happened there were high winds in Narnia.” When a storm brings down the English silver apple tree (whether or not the apples are silvery here is not mentioned), Digory, by then an adult, has “part of the timber made into a wardrobe, which he put in his big house in the country” (166).
We all know what happens with this wardrobe.
The fourth silver apple tree is only hinted at in The Last Battle. The world of Narnia has ended; the Pevensies and their friends are in Aslan’s country and are being called to “Come further up and further in” (167) and to pass through the golden gates into a walled garden, “into the delicious smell that blew towards them” (169)—presumably the same delicious smell of the silver apple tree in Digory’s garden. At the centre of this garden is an orchard, “where the Phoenix sat in a tree and looked down upon them all and at the foot of that tree were two thrones, a King and Queen so great and beautiful that everyone bowed down before them” (170). These two are King Frank and Queen Helen, the first King and Queen, crowned hours after Aslan sang Narnia into existence. That they are compared to Adam and Eve suggests this tree is the Tree of Knowledge, a silver apple tree.
Clearly Lewis is drawing upon a variety of sources for these silver apples, and not just Genesis and the Garden of Eden—the forbidden fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is never identified in the Bible as an apple, silver or otherwise. That fruit—and the silver apple tree Digory finds, are both forbidden and are both symbols of temptation, of the fall, of sin, of knowledge and immortality. For Digory this knowledge comes in a flash: the Witch is wrong; he must do the right thing, follow the rules, and do as Aslan has commanded. It takes Adam and Eve a little longer to figure things out.
According to the Myths Encyclopedia, “Apples are brimming with symbolic meanings and mythic associations. In China they represent peace, and apple blossoms are a symbol of women's beauty. In other traditions, they can signify wisdom, joy, fertility, and youthfulness.” In Norse mythology, the apples of the goddess Iðunn are necessary for the gods to keep their eternal youth—otherwise, they will grow old, grey, bent. One of the tasks of Heracles is to bring back the golden apples from the Tree of Life that grows in the Garden of the Hesperides. When Eris tosses out her golden apple, meant for the fairest, momentous and cataclysmic events are set in motion. Apples are sacred to Aphrodite: throwing an apple at someone was to symbolically declare one’s love (even though the fruit Eve picks is never identified).
Avalon is apple-island; Snow White is tempted by a poisoned one. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples, apples, apples: food as myth, as metaphor, as icon, as a way to the truth—to greater knowledge of self, of what is real. Aslan’s Country is the truly real; we live in the shadowlands. God gave us bodies that must be sustained, must be fed—and he gave us souls that also must be sustained and fed. But why apples, what makes them so special? Originating in Western Asia, today apples are grown world-wide. Originally they were among the earliest trees to be cultivated, now, they are ubiquitous and we eat them raw, cooked, baked, fried, and stewed. They were (supposedly) with us in the beginning in Eden. Silver apples frame Narnian existence, from the beginning to the end. They are a fruit given by God, weighted with meaning.
I believe I will go get an apple . . . a Pink Lady, they taste so sweet …
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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. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. He is currently at work on a novel about a gay werewolf and a collection of gay-themed fantasy short stories. One of the collection's stories, "The Boy on McGee Street," was published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink Narcissus Press) in October 2012.
Website: http://warrenrochelle.com
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Deborah J. Ross
Food: A Fantasy Writer’s Secret World-Building Weapon
Food is an integral part of world-building, whether it plays a direct role in the plot or not. Its availability and quality affect every human endeavor, and scarcity – or fear of scarcity – is a powerful motivation for conflict. What we eat (and what we don’t eat), when and with whom, all these tell a story “off the page” about ourselves and our culture. So it’s important to depict both food and its setting in a way that deepens the world we are creating.
I live in a small town, and on our 1/3 acre plot, my husband and I grow a significant portion of our produce, which I then harvest, preserve, and cook. Even without the digging and planting, weeding and pruning, this is hard work. It also takes planning, not to mention a knowledge of climate and soil, compost/fertilizer management, pest/predator control, and techniques for “putting food by.” I notice when food is taken for granted in fiction, just the way an experienced equestrian will notice when horses are treated like motorcycles.
Throughout most of human history, food has been a limited and therefore precious commodity. The availability of nutritious foods that can be stored has shaped the course of civilization. Far too many writers seem to be taking their own experience of food (it’s what you buy in a can or a frozen package at the supermarket) and extrapolate that into their fantasy worlds. Then it’s all too easy to bounce the reader out of the story.
Projecting modern technological methods of food production, preservation, transportation, and preparation into a lower-technology fantasy world runs the risk of booting a knowledgeable reader out of the story. (Come to think of it, the same holds true for a higher technology world as well.) For example, to stew means to simmer for a long time over low heat, and is an excellent way of preparing tough cuts of meat, but it takes hours, and that means plenty of fuel and a cooking vessel of a material like metal – which is heavy -- that can withstand long cooking times. I’m sorry, Peter Jackson, but Eowyn could not have served Aragorn a stew while on the road to Helm’s Deep. She might have heated water and cobbled together some rather unappetizing dumplings, but that’s not a stew.
More significantly, food presents an excellent vehicle for world-building. Each aspect of its production and handling conveys a tremendous amount of information about the society, ecosystem, and cultural attitudes. So if all your characters breakfast on bread and cheese, and every inn serves stew, you’re missing a great opportunity to make your world and characters more interesting.
A few thoughts on agriculture: Food has to come from somewhere, and unless you have a magical system that transports it from another dimension or creates it out of thin air, someone has to grow or gather it. We can challenge the “primitive-society” stereotypes of men-as-mighty-hunters and women-as-lowly-gatherers by looking at the limitations of game and the central importance of food that is gathered or grown in small gardens. The difficulty for us as writers is, I suspect, that gathering/gardening requires so many hours every day. It’s hard to go off and have adventures when most of your time is spent on feeding your family. Adventures generally rely on the ability to “leave home” with the disposable time to do other things besides obtain and prepare food. Besides, hunting is so much more heroic; all kinds of dramatic things can happen.
The shift from hunting-gathering – where everyone participated in the activities of food production – to agriculture fueled the development of cities. Grain could then be transported and stored for long periods of time, although this is an engraved invitation for rodents (and the diseases they carry) to come have a snack. A wheat-based diet (“daily bread”), like any other diet dependent on one type of food, means a vulnerable food supply. Drought, flooding, or crop disease then easily results in famine, such as the Irish potato famine in the mid-19th Century.
Human beings are omnivores, capable of eating a wide variety of plants and animals. For example, historical records indicate Roman soldiers supplemented their diet of grain (wheat, barley, rye, spelt), vinegar, and legumes, with hares, deer, foxes, badgers, beavers, voles, wild oxen, and moles, not to mention wild mussels, chicken, duck, petrels, cormorants, herons, spoonbills, mallards, teals, geese, cranes, and crows.
We develop attitudes about what foods are “better,” which are forbidden, and which are essential to life or status. One of the most powerful ways of maintaining cultural identity is by the exclusion (or necessity) of certain foods (abstaining from pork in Islam and Judaism). Other aspects of the specialness of certain foods include holiday or celebratory foods, and which foods are suitable for which groups of people (different diets for babies, for example, or pregnant women). Food can be used to elevate individuals or demean them; likewise, different culture may vary widely in how they view the production, preparation, and serving of food. Some foods may be taboo to handle by everyone, or only by certain people.
For me, the creation and depiction of regional cuisines is one of the delights of world-building. People in India, Africa, Finland, and Venezuela don’t eat the same foods, so why should all the food in a fantasy world be the same? Different cooking styles and condiments, spices and garnishes, not to mention basic materials (wheat-based vs rice vs corn vs yams vs manioc vs whale blubber…) can result in a tapestry of sensory detail. And not a few jokes or even insults as well.
Armed with a few questions, we can look at the many roles food plays in world-building. Much of this background will be off-stage (unless your protagonist is a chef), but the decisions you make about food will color every aspect of the lives of your characters.
Who produces the food, and how are they regarded by other portions of their society? Despised, ignored, exploited, revered? Do they use magic in the sowing, reeping, weeding(!), hunting, slaughtering, harvesting, preserving…? Do they have special powers arising from their intimate relationship with the natural world, the animals they hunt, the plants they nurture? What are the traditions of sharing, communal living, and hospitality, and are they the same for other occupational groups? What happens to surplus?
What is the balance of locally grown versus imported foods? What is the seasonal or weather cycle and how does it affect food production? Are all the nutrients necessary for life present in the local diet? And are they available all year round, or are there season in which only preserved food is available? Or does the local diet provide subsistence only and robust health depends on traded/imported foods? What is the major source of calories in the diet (think outside the “grain box” to starchy vegetables, tree nuts, seeds, oily foods…)
What’s involved in moving food from the producers to consumers who then exchange money or other goods for what they cannot grow? How is perishable food handled? How are the merchants and carriers regarded? What are the penalties for theft (is it considered a grave crime like murder to steal food?) What is the response to hungry people and is it different for children versus active adults versus the elderly? How do various characters react to strange foods? What is the role or significance of poisoned food in this culture? What about psychotropic edibles? What are the intoxicants in this society and do all groups participate in them or are some reserved only for special classes? What qualities are attributed to certain foods (courage from eating a lion’s heart, cunning from snake meat)?
Are certain foods appropriate for only certain occasions (think holiday foods, funeral foods, foods given only to sick people or warriors about to go into battle)?
Who prepares the food and are they also the ones who purchase it? What are the customs of the marketplace? Is carrying food a mark of privilege, an advertisement of culinary skill, or a badge of servitude? Is a cook a priest, a skilled professional, a menial, the head of a household, or an object such as “spoils of war”? What are the superstitions surrounding the preparation of food? How is spoilage managed and when is food considered inedible? Who eats food that has gone bad? What are the attitudes towards food-borne illness and who or what gets either the blame or the credit?
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Deborah J. Ross began writing professionally in 1982 as Deborah Wheeler with JAYDIUM and NORTHLIGHT, and short stories in ASIMOV’S, F & SF, REALMS OF FANTASY and STAR WARS: TALES FROM JABBA’S PALACE. Now under her birth name, Ross, she is continuing the” Darkover” series of the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as original work, including the fantasy trilogy THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD. She is a member of Book View Cafe. She has lived in France, worked for a cardiologist, studied Hebrew, yoga and kung fu, and is active in the local Jewish and Quaker communities.
http://deborahjross.blogspot.com/
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Andrea Hosth
Food in Fantasy
Chocolate and tomatoes are from South America. Macadamias are Australian. Spice traders so closely guarded the origin of cinnamon that all manner of wild speculation grew up about its origins: fished up in nets at the source of the Nile, or taken from the nests of giant cinnamon birds. It was most definitely "not from here", where "here" equals what readers have been trained to see as the default fantasy setting, a "pseudo-medieval" Europe.
Food has origins. Food also has expiry dates. Seasons of availability. Limits to technology in preparation. So what are your characters eating?
Stew, according to Diana Wynne Jones. Invariably, unceasingly, stew. Perhaps this isn't due to a lack of imagination on the part of authors, but for fear a pedant will note that x ingredient didn't show up in y country until z. Even if the world you're writing in has no America, no Sri Lanka, no Australia. No feudal society, no pseudo-medieval Europe.
How to write around these expectations?
Neologisms have their limits. When your characters sits down to braised gaddy with shimshimar seasoning, it will only take a few meals before the reader starts skimming – and with no idea whether 'gaddy' is a herbivore, a feline, or a particularly tasty elf.
Vagueness is another approach. A supper of bread, cheese and cold meat. No mention of whether it's naan, fetta or kangaroo. Food is a necessity, a pleasure, to many a passion. To be vague about something so central is to take the flavour out of your world.
Anchoring those 'exotic' foods in your new world seems the simplest way. Cook up whatever you like, taking note of seasons, and whatever transport and preservation limits of your world. Mention the chocolate is from Zeverland. The macadamias from the Isles of Carray.
But keep the giant cinnamon birds. Those sound epic.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
This month's topic is Food in Fantasy, and since I proposed that, it's my turn to host. Welcome one and all!
Sylvia Kelso
Stay Me With Apples, Comfort Me With Flagons
Once upon a time, food must have been the most important thing in everyone's lives. Millions of Australopithecoid generations didn’t need shelter, expected seasonal sex, and maybe drew moisture from food, as gorillas still do. But food? If the food ran out, and you couldn't find more, you fell off the human family tree for good.
Lacking food storage, the now idealized Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers were little safer. As for Neolithic farmers, those enormous stoneworks speak as much fear as reverence: they were at famine's mercy, and they knew it. When the climate changed in Orkney, they opened the top of the Tomb of the Eagles and filled in the centuries-old community temple, a mute testament to the despair of people who felt themselves abandoned, literally, to death.
Before the Industrial Revolution, very little changed. William Langland’s great medieval poem, “Piers Plowman”, is vague if dour about vanity and lust, but to the sin of gluttony it speaks with passionate and specific detail, invoking a society where spring doesn’t mean admiring the pear blossom but hunting desperately for the first green vegetable shoots.
Nowadays, at least in the First World enclave, our food fetish has gone negative: for most of us, food is far too available, far too tempting, far too dangerous. Our bookshops swarm with delectably illustrated cook-books, opposite shelves of diet-books. Our TVs bristle with celebrity chefs and celebrity dieticians attacking red meat, dairy products, processed food. Yet every December, Australians, having largely excised religion, and often present-giving, from their major food-based festival, embark on an orgy of food-buying, preparation and consumption calculated to send their nearest and dearest to an early grave.
Ironically, this Desire-Taboo attitude brings us right back beside the oldest (Western) fantasy stories, of the Judeao-Christian apple and Persephone’s six pomegranate seeds. Unsurprisingly, if from our differing angles, Elsewhere’s food has always been the easiest and most tempting way to get lost precisely where you DON’T want to be.
The pattern lasts through later folk and fairytales. Fairy feasts, from those of the Irish Sidhe to the story of Thomas the Rhymer and the Wood King’s revels in The Hobbit, promise eternal pleasure but also eternal loss and death. And the lure of Elsewhere food endures, from Patricia McKillip’s Solstice Wood back to the magnificently Overfat Feast in The Once and Future King, the fruit in “Goblin Market,” and of course, Jadis’ Evil Turkish Delight in Narnia.
But safe or wholesome food? As Ursula Le Guin remarked ruefully elsewhere, “It is hard to make a really gripping tale of how I wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another…” (“The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”). It seems equally hard for myth, romance or fantasy to invent desirable food that isn’t taboo.
Most often, good food in modern fantasy marks a temporary safe halt: the desert inn in Diane Duane’s The Door into Fire, the old woman’s farmhouse in Diana Wynne Jones’ The Spell Coats, Beorn’s house in The Hobbit. But overall, earthly fantasy food should aid the verisimilitude, hence prohibiting chips and hamburgers in Pre-Industrial secondary worlds. And also hence, the scathing entry for “Food” in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland reads: “See STEW, SCURVY, STEW, WAYBREAD … and STEW” (79) A ruling that covers most noble and courtly menus too.
There is a standout exception: once again, Patricia McKillip’s The Book of Atrix Wolfe, where food plays a subtle but vital role. The lost heroine is spell-hidden in the castle kitchen. While the story bangs about upstairs through wizardry, succession worries, prince-abductions and scorched-earth hunts, its progress is recorded below through a series of hasty improvisations and unenchanted but inspired food.
As openers, for hall lunch “a proud flock of liveried servants” carry “trays of cold beef, whole poached salmon, loaves of braided bread, salad, fruit dipped in chocolate, cakes of cream and walnut chopped as fine as flour” (27. Supper, in contrast, is “a prolonged drama of great pies of hare and venison with hunting scenes baked in dough on their crusts, vegetables sculpted into gardens, huge platters layered with roast geese, woodcocks and pigeons, and crowned with hummingbirds made of egg white and sugar” (28).
As the narrative cogs engage Prince Talis, summoned home from mage school, nearly kills the King with a misspelled thunderbolt. In counterpoint, “Servants bearing trays of spiced wine and hot brandy had flung them into the air, splashing themselves; goblets rolled among the hounds” (48). Ruffled if coping, the kitchen dispatches the scullion heroine with a tray for the prince, now sequestered as a dangerous magician in the old keep. When she drops the tray, the prince reassembles, “’Salmon swimming in gravy, roast beef on a bed of broken meringue ... The bread is only slightly damp …’”(61). The bearer goes unnoticed.
Next time, the kitchen is coping with a punitive hunt. “’Twenty-six quail,” the fowl cook said… ‘Eighteen woodcock, thirty grouse, eleven lark, thirteen wild duck.’
‘Pluck them,’ the head cook said. ‘Spit the grouse and woodcocks, braise the lark and quail in butter, stuff the duck with sliced oranges before they are spitted. They will be served with an orange-and-brandy sauce.” (77). The kitchen offers the prince a tray of “game hens seasoned with rosemary, tiny potatoes stuffed with mushroom, soup of leeks and cream, a braided loaf of dark sweet bread, a compote of cherries in brandy” (86) and this time he remembers the bearer. But our next kitchen-view is of crisis. The fanfare for supper fails to sound.
Hall-mistress and servants wait beside “steaming silver bowls of soup with tiny saffron biscuits shaped like fish floating in it” while, “Haunches of ham crackled and split on the spits” (97). The soup threatens to spoil, the head cook begins to throw things, and dire news comes from the hall. The prince has been lost in the magic wood. Beans scorch, meringue swans burn, the undercooks open a brandy bottle. But the King plans a night hunt, and the kitchen jerks back to work.
“‘Reheat the soup,’ [the head cook]commanded, “Remove the fish. Chop green onions to float in the bowls with a pinch of paprika ‘… [His] eye fell on the brandy bottle. ‘Take hot brandy and spiced wine to the hunters in the yard, and thin slices of apple and game pie – quickly!’” (101)
When the hunt returns in the small hours for a “cold supper,” “[h]ams were sliced, and cold roast fowl, and long loaves of bread; a simmering soup of shredded beets was ladled out … to cool. Lettuces and boiled potatoes and scallions were chopped and mixed with vinegar, pepper, rosemary and dill. Dark, dense cakes heavy with nuts and dried cherries, redolent with brandy ... Whipped cream and flaked, toasted hazelnuts frosted the cakes… Undercooks funneled rosettes of minced pear onto the soup” (119).
But the prince stays lost. When Atrix the mage arrives, breakfast includes “pale wine scented with spices .. a plate [of] pastries stuffed with nuts and cream, cold salmon, a swan carved out of melon with its wings full of strawberries “(150). But soon both king and kitchen feel the brunt. “The king had retired in fury and despair to his chamber … Supper – roast, peppered venison, tiny potatoes roasted crisp, hollowed and filled with cheese and onions and chive, cherries marinated in brandy and folded into beaten cream – sailed over the bearer’s head and splashed … a hundred-year-old tapestry” (155).
Next day, “’Hunt,’ the head cook said tersely… ‘Again. Take up bread and cheese, smoked fish and cold, sliced venison. Mince the rest of the venison for pie. Also onions, mushrooms, leeks. Take up spiced wine’” (155).
The hunt’s next return “filled the kitchen with feathers, as grouse and pheasant and wild duck … were plucked, beheaded, stuffed and spitted. Hare, squirrel and deer were skinned, gutted and left in the cold-meat pantry,” and the head cook improvises again: “‘The venison can be smoked, the small game will do for cold pies for the hunters.” (155-56).
A normal (castle) breakfast, “silver urns of chocolate, trays of butter pastries, hams glazed with honey and sliced thin as paper, eggs poached in sherry, birds carved out of melons and filled with fruit” (156) segues into disaster: tray bearers come back “white as cream”, and then with ultimate calamity, trays of uneaten food. The head cook’s “face is tight” as he copes:
“’Cook the eggs until they harden, and roll them in minced sausage. The ham will keep for when the King hunts again. Mash the melon in sweet wine and strain it for cold soup –‘“ (160) Later things worsen. Wine is all drunk, but food ignored, and “’what is this dent in the bronze tray?'
‘The King kicked it,’ a servant said morosely. ‘He’s boiling and about to froth’” (161).
The head cook carries on more composedly than the King. “’Nonsense. Cold ham, herb bread, mince pies, red wine. The King may throw it to the dogs. At least it will get eaten’” (161). And when the hunt returns with even more kills, he sends up “stew and game pies ... salads of spinach and radish and bacon, hot black bread, simple heavy fare” (161). The only time this culinary tour de force ever mentions stew.
Meanwhile the heroine rediscovers magic, the prince meets the Queen of the Wood, and hall-servants bring back “cold broken fragments of salmon wrapped in pie crust, roast venison seared over flames and simmered in wine, garlic and rosemary, carrots and onions fried in butter and ale, baked apples stuffed with cabbage and cream, baskets of fruit woven out of egg-white and drizzled with chocolate flavoured with brandy” (176).
For a last time the heroine takes up the prince’s tray: “onion soup with a melting crust of cheese, a loaf of dark bread, a flagon of wine, a tart of oranges sliced into thin bright circles glistening under a glaze that smelled of ginger” (206). This time, meticulous, imaginative culinary detail dovetails with war and magic’s culmination: the prince remembers the scullion heroine, enters the kitchen to discover her, and the narrative’s eclaircissement begins.
Later, with the magic over, the mysteries folded away, the heroine, restored to her Wood princess status, brings the prince another tray, and this time the food goes undescribed. But the story ends as she re-enters the kitchen where she knows “the tray–mistress would be counting scratches, and the plate-washers would still be at the sinks, and the head-cook debating tomorrow’s meals, and everyone picking at leftovers” and says “’Tell me all your names’” (247).
It is uncommon, even in modern fantasy, for a secondary world novel to end belowstairs. It is a fitting finale that the focus should here move from the amazing food to its makers. The food itself is not particularly Elsewhere, in terms of high-end modern cuisine, but that this parade of lushly detailed dishes is never shown as magic, evil, or a temptation, justifies its makers’ place in the final spotlight. Unlike the mages or kings or Faery folk, their power has never produced anything but good.
* * * * *
Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia, and writes fantasy and SF set mostly in analogue or alternate Australian settings. She has published six fantasy novels, two of which were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards, and some stories in Australian and US anthologies. Her latest short story, “At Sunset” appears in Luna Station Quarterly for September 2012.
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Warren Rochelle
The Silver Apples of Narnia
This month the theme for the Great Fantasy Traveling Roundtable Blog is food—appropriate for December, given the various holiday feasts and parties on many of our calendars. So, food—food and fantasy, food in fantasy literature—and what popped out of my mental toaster were apples and Narnia, in particular the silver apples.
Apples, apples and more apples, appear again and again in The Chronicles of Narnia. They are the first food eaten by the Pevensies when they return to Narnia in Prince Caspian—apples grown in an orchard they had planted centuries before, an orchard blessed by Pomona, the greatest of the wood goddesses. Perhaps the most potent, symbolically at least, are the silver apples. According to the WikiNarnia, “In all of existence, there are only “four known individual silver apple trees.”
The first one appears in The Magician’s Nephew. Digory and Polly are sent by Aslan to find the Garden of Youth and there take a silver apple from the Tree of Youth. There he meets the Witch, who was “just throwing the core of an apple . . . The juice was darker than you would expect and made a horrid stain around her mouth” (142-143). She has attained her heart’s desire, immortality, but already is experiencing what will many long years of despair of an evil life. She was warned: Come in by the gold gates or not all/Take of my fruit for others or forbear. /For those who steal or those who climb my wall/Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair (141).
Digory plants the second silver apple tree, the Tree of Protection, on the banks of the Great River of Narnia, with the apple he brings to Aslan. The tree grew quickly. “Its spreading branches seem to cast a light rather than a shade, and silver apples peeped out like stairs from under every leaf. But it was the smell which came from it, even more than the sight, that had everyone draw in their breath.” This breathtaking scent will keep Narnia safe from all enemies. As Aslan explains, the Witch “dare not come within a hundred miles of the Tree, for its smell, which is joy and life and health to you, is death and horror and despair to her” (155). For 898 years this Tree protects Narnia from all enemies. Presumably it dies and only then does evil come into Narnia: the Witch, having outlived the Tree thanks to the apple she ate, returns and the hundred years of winter begins.
It is an apple from this Tree that Aslan gives to Digory that cures his mother. And from this apple grows the third silver apple tree, in the garden behind a row house in London. The magic is lessened in our world, although it “did bear apples more beautiful than any other in England and they were extremely good for you, though not fully magical.” This otherworldly tree is magically connected to its parent in Narnia: “Sometime it would move mysteriously when there was no wind blowing . . . when this happened there were high winds in Narnia.” When a storm brings down the English silver apple tree (whether or not the apples are silvery here is not mentioned), Digory, by then an adult, has “part of the timber made into a wardrobe, which he put in his big house in the country” (166).
We all know what happens with this wardrobe.
The fourth silver apple tree is only hinted at in The Last Battle. The world of Narnia has ended; the Pevensies and their friends are in Aslan’s country and are being called to “Come further up and further in” (167) and to pass through the golden gates into a walled garden, “into the delicious smell that blew towards them” (169)—presumably the same delicious smell of the silver apple tree in Digory’s garden. At the centre of this garden is an orchard, “where the Phoenix sat in a tree and looked down upon them all and at the foot of that tree were two thrones, a King and Queen so great and beautiful that everyone bowed down before them” (170). These two are King Frank and Queen Helen, the first King and Queen, crowned hours after Aslan sang Narnia into existence. That they are compared to Adam and Eve suggests this tree is the Tree of Knowledge, a silver apple tree.
Clearly Lewis is drawing upon a variety of sources for these silver apples, and not just Genesis and the Garden of Eden—the forbidden fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is never identified in the Bible as an apple, silver or otherwise. That fruit—and the silver apple tree Digory finds, are both forbidden and are both symbols of temptation, of the fall, of sin, of knowledge and immortality. For Digory this knowledge comes in a flash: the Witch is wrong; he must do the right thing, follow the rules, and do as Aslan has commanded. It takes Adam and Eve a little longer to figure things out.
According to the Myths Encyclopedia, “Apples are brimming with symbolic meanings and mythic associations. In China they represent peace, and apple blossoms are a symbol of women's beauty. In other traditions, they can signify wisdom, joy, fertility, and youthfulness.” In Norse mythology, the apples of the goddess Iðunn are necessary for the gods to keep their eternal youth—otherwise, they will grow old, grey, bent. One of the tasks of Heracles is to bring back the golden apples from the Tree of Life that grows in the Garden of the Hesperides. When Eris tosses out her golden apple, meant for the fairest, momentous and cataclysmic events are set in motion. Apples are sacred to Aphrodite: throwing an apple at someone was to symbolically declare one’s love (even though the fruit Eve picks is never identified).
Avalon is apple-island; Snow White is tempted by a poisoned one. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples, apples, apples: food as myth, as metaphor, as icon, as a way to the truth—to greater knowledge of self, of what is real. Aslan’s Country is the truly real; we live in the shadowlands. God gave us bodies that must be sustained, must be fed—and he gave us souls that also must be sustained and fed. But why apples, what makes them so special? Originating in Western Asia, today apples are grown world-wide. Originally they were among the earliest trees to be cultivated, now, they are ubiquitous and we eat them raw, cooked, baked, fried, and stewed. They were (supposedly) with us in the beginning in Eden. Silver apples frame Narnian existence, from the beginning to the end. They are a fruit given by God, weighted with meaning.
I believe I will go get an apple . . . a Pink Lady, they taste so sweet …
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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. He also published a critical work on Le Guin and has academic articles in various journals and essay collections. He is currently at work on a novel about a gay werewolf and a collection of gay-themed fantasy short stories. One of the collection's stories, "The Boy on McGee Street," was published in Queer Fish 2 (Pink Narcissus Press) in October 2012.
Website: http://warrenrochelle.com
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Deborah J. Ross
Food: A Fantasy Writer’s Secret World-Building Weapon
Food is an integral part of world-building, whether it plays a direct role in the plot or not. Its availability and quality affect every human endeavor, and scarcity – or fear of scarcity – is a powerful motivation for conflict. What we eat (and what we don’t eat), when and with whom, all these tell a story “off the page” about ourselves and our culture. So it’s important to depict both food and its setting in a way that deepens the world we are creating.
I live in a small town, and on our 1/3 acre plot, my husband and I grow a significant portion of our produce, which I then harvest, preserve, and cook. Even without the digging and planting, weeding and pruning, this is hard work. It also takes planning, not to mention a knowledge of climate and soil, compost/fertilizer management, pest/predator control, and techniques for “putting food by.” I notice when food is taken for granted in fiction, just the way an experienced equestrian will notice when horses are treated like motorcycles.
Throughout most of human history, food has been a limited and therefore precious commodity. The availability of nutritious foods that can be stored has shaped the course of civilization. Far too many writers seem to be taking their own experience of food (it’s what you buy in a can or a frozen package at the supermarket) and extrapolate that into their fantasy worlds. Then it’s all too easy to bounce the reader out of the story.
Projecting modern technological methods of food production, preservation, transportation, and preparation into a lower-technology fantasy world runs the risk of booting a knowledgeable reader out of the story. (Come to think of it, the same holds true for a higher technology world as well.) For example, to stew means to simmer for a long time over low heat, and is an excellent way of preparing tough cuts of meat, but it takes hours, and that means plenty of fuel and a cooking vessel of a material like metal – which is heavy -- that can withstand long cooking times. I’m sorry, Peter Jackson, but Eowyn could not have served Aragorn a stew while on the road to Helm’s Deep. She might have heated water and cobbled together some rather unappetizing dumplings, but that’s not a stew.
More significantly, food presents an excellent vehicle for world-building. Each aspect of its production and handling conveys a tremendous amount of information about the society, ecosystem, and cultural attitudes. So if all your characters breakfast on bread and cheese, and every inn serves stew, you’re missing a great opportunity to make your world and characters more interesting.
A few thoughts on agriculture: Food has to come from somewhere, and unless you have a magical system that transports it from another dimension or creates it out of thin air, someone has to grow or gather it. We can challenge the “primitive-society” stereotypes of men-as-mighty-hunters and women-as-lowly-gatherers by looking at the limitations of game and the central importance of food that is gathered or grown in small gardens. The difficulty for us as writers is, I suspect, that gathering/gardening requires so many hours every day. It’s hard to go off and have adventures when most of your time is spent on feeding your family. Adventures generally rely on the ability to “leave home” with the disposable time to do other things besides obtain and prepare food. Besides, hunting is so much more heroic; all kinds of dramatic things can happen.
The shift from hunting-gathering – where everyone participated in the activities of food production – to agriculture fueled the development of cities. Grain could then be transported and stored for long periods of time, although this is an engraved invitation for rodents (and the diseases they carry) to come have a snack. A wheat-based diet (“daily bread”), like any other diet dependent on one type of food, means a vulnerable food supply. Drought, flooding, or crop disease then easily results in famine, such as the Irish potato famine in the mid-19th Century.
Human beings are omnivores, capable of eating a wide variety of plants and animals. For example, historical records indicate Roman soldiers supplemented their diet of grain (wheat, barley, rye, spelt), vinegar, and legumes, with hares, deer, foxes, badgers, beavers, voles, wild oxen, and moles, not to mention wild mussels, chicken, duck, petrels, cormorants, herons, spoonbills, mallards, teals, geese, cranes, and crows.
We develop attitudes about what foods are “better,” which are forbidden, and which are essential to life or status. One of the most powerful ways of maintaining cultural identity is by the exclusion (or necessity) of certain foods (abstaining from pork in Islam and Judaism). Other aspects of the specialness of certain foods include holiday or celebratory foods, and which foods are suitable for which groups of people (different diets for babies, for example, or pregnant women). Food can be used to elevate individuals or demean them; likewise, different culture may vary widely in how they view the production, preparation, and serving of food. Some foods may be taboo to handle by everyone, or only by certain people.
For me, the creation and depiction of regional cuisines is one of the delights of world-building. People in India, Africa, Finland, and Venezuela don’t eat the same foods, so why should all the food in a fantasy world be the same? Different cooking styles and condiments, spices and garnishes, not to mention basic materials (wheat-based vs rice vs corn vs yams vs manioc vs whale blubber…) can result in a tapestry of sensory detail. And not a few jokes or even insults as well.
Armed with a few questions, we can look at the many roles food plays in world-building. Much of this background will be off-stage (unless your protagonist is a chef), but the decisions you make about food will color every aspect of the lives of your characters.
Who produces the food, and how are they regarded by other portions of their society? Despised, ignored, exploited, revered? Do they use magic in the sowing, reeping, weeding(!), hunting, slaughtering, harvesting, preserving…? Do they have special powers arising from their intimate relationship with the natural world, the animals they hunt, the plants they nurture? What are the traditions of sharing, communal living, and hospitality, and are they the same for other occupational groups? What happens to surplus?
What is the balance of locally grown versus imported foods? What is the seasonal or weather cycle and how does it affect food production? Are all the nutrients necessary for life present in the local diet? And are they available all year round, or are there season in which only preserved food is available? Or does the local diet provide subsistence only and robust health depends on traded/imported foods? What is the major source of calories in the diet (think outside the “grain box” to starchy vegetables, tree nuts, seeds, oily foods…)
What’s involved in moving food from the producers to consumers who then exchange money or other goods for what they cannot grow? How is perishable food handled? How are the merchants and carriers regarded? What are the penalties for theft (is it considered a grave crime like murder to steal food?) What is the response to hungry people and is it different for children versus active adults versus the elderly? How do various characters react to strange foods? What is the role or significance of poisoned food in this culture? What about psychotropic edibles? What are the intoxicants in this society and do all groups participate in them or are some reserved only for special classes? What qualities are attributed to certain foods (courage from eating a lion’s heart, cunning from snake meat)?
Are certain foods appropriate for only certain occasions (think holiday foods, funeral foods, foods given only to sick people or warriors about to go into battle)?
Who prepares the food and are they also the ones who purchase it? What are the customs of the marketplace? Is carrying food a mark of privilege, an advertisement of culinary skill, or a badge of servitude? Is a cook a priest, a skilled professional, a menial, the head of a household, or an object such as “spoils of war”? What are the superstitions surrounding the preparation of food? How is spoilage managed and when is food considered inedible? Who eats food that has gone bad? What are the attitudes towards food-borne illness and who or what gets either the blame or the credit?
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Deborah J. Ross began writing professionally in 1982 as Deborah Wheeler with JAYDIUM and NORTHLIGHT, and short stories in ASIMOV’S, F & SF, REALMS OF FANTASY and STAR WARS: TALES FROM JABBA’S PALACE. Now under her birth name, Ross, she is continuing the” Darkover” series of the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as original work, including the fantasy trilogy THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD. She is a member of Book View Cafe. She has lived in France, worked for a cardiologist, studied Hebrew, yoga and kung fu, and is active in the local Jewish and Quaker communities.
http://deborahjross.blogspot.com/
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Andrea Hosth
Food in Fantasy
Chocolate and tomatoes are from South America. Macadamias are Australian. Spice traders so closely guarded the origin of cinnamon that all manner of wild speculation grew up about its origins: fished up in nets at the source of the Nile, or taken from the nests of giant cinnamon birds. It was most definitely "not from here", where "here" equals what readers have been trained to see as the default fantasy setting, a "pseudo-medieval" Europe.
Food has origins. Food also has expiry dates. Seasons of availability. Limits to technology in preparation. So what are your characters eating?
Stew, according to Diana Wynne Jones. Invariably, unceasingly, stew. Perhaps this isn't due to a lack of imagination on the part of authors, but for fear a pedant will note that x ingredient didn't show up in y country until z. Even if the world you're writing in has no America, no Sri Lanka, no Australia. No feudal society, no pseudo-medieval Europe.
How to write around these expectations?
Neologisms have their limits. When your characters sits down to braised gaddy with shimshimar seasoning, it will only take a few meals before the reader starts skimming – and with no idea whether 'gaddy' is a herbivore, a feline, or a particularly tasty elf.
Vagueness is another approach. A supper of bread, cheese and cold meat. No mention of whether it's naan, fetta or kangaroo. Food is a necessity, a pleasure, to many a passion. To be vague about something so central is to take the flavour out of your world.
Anchoring those 'exotic' foods in your new world seems the simplest way. Cook up whatever you like, taking note of seasons, and whatever transport and preservation limits of your world. Mention the chocolate is from Zeverland. The macadamias from the Isles of Carray.
But keep the giant cinnamon birds. Those sound epic.
December 27, 2012
The Next Big Thing Blog Meme
This one was passed on to me by the energetic and talented Sylvia Kelso, who's done the meme on her own blog. We all know The Next Big Thing is just over the horizon, so I'm joining the ranks of writers like Sylvia who are describing our own new and just-beginning projects, in answer to the Ten Questions for the Meme. And here are mine:
What is the working title of your next book?
*Hmm. I have a completed novel, The Golden Boy, which is currently being edited by Nancy Berman, a free-lance editor friend of mine. I am working on a story collection, with the working title, Happily Ever After and Other Stories. I have a novel-in-progress, The Werewolf and His Boy, almost finished but I have put it on hold to finish the story collection.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
*I don’t have an agent, alas. Self-publishing is an option, but before I try that, I am planning on sending the manuscripts to various small presses that have published similar books.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
*The Golden Boy:
The original idea came from the notion that all fairy tales are true, and that the magical and mundane coexist, although the latter is not always aware of the former, or rather doesn’t believe in the former—at first.
Happily Ever After:
Homophobia persists, lingers, and is girding its loins to fight to the death. And as a result, stories are still being published and films are still being made in which the gay characters do not have happy endings, usually with one dying, leaving the survivor to mourn. I was determined to write a collection of stories in which my gay protagonists have happily ever afters—more or less.
The Werewolf and His Boy:
*The story that inspired this novel, “Lowe’s Wolf” (published in the Spring 2010 issue of Icarus) was inspired from a dream my partner had about a wolf hiding in Lowe’s.
What genre does your book fall under?
*Genres for all three: Fantasy, speculative fiction, gay fiction, alternate history.
How long does it take to write the first draft of your manuscript?
*Good question. Maybe a year or so?
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I’m not sure. There are several gay werewolf stories out there—novels and short stories. My friend, Catherine Lundoff, just published Silver Moon (Lethe Press, 2012) about a lesbian werewolf of “a certain age.” Queer Wolf (QueeredFiction, 2009) is an anthology of gay werewolf stories.
As The Golden Boy is an alternate history/fantasy/gay novel, there are just too many out there for me to pick one. But Time Well Bent (Lethe Press, 2009), a collection of queer alternative history tales, comes to mind.
Peter Cashorali wrote Fairy Tales: Traditional Stories Retold For Gay Men (HarperCollins, 1997) and these stories, this collection, inspired me to write my own.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
*Hmm—which characters? Which actors? I’m not good at this sort of question!
The Golden Boy: Well, maybe Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for the title character, the golden boy, and Gavin, who is the protagonist. As adults, anyway. The boys grow up in the story, so their ages range from 6 to 40-something.
The Werewolf and His Boy: The werewolf, Henry Thorn: Agiris Karras, who played Riley Stavros on DeGrassi.
Happily Ever After: 10 stories—too many characters!
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
*Like I said, for The Werewolf and His Boy, the original inspiration came from a dream my partner had.
I think I have already answered this question for each book in the idea question. In general, I find myself inspired by such things as:
Dreams, fairy tales, myths, the people I love, love …
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
*The Golden Boy: It is set in an alternate universe, in which there is no United States, rather the Columbian Empire. Magic is real, albeit restricted and the magical are persecuted in the Empire.
The Werewolf and His Boy: For the people around here, the novel’s setting: Richmond and Fredericksburg, VA, with a foray to England.
Happily Ever After: The stories we know so well—the fairy tales, the myths—are still as powerful as ever, even as we reinterpret and reimagined them. That these stories have gay heroes might pique the interest of gay SF and fantasy fans.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
*I hate these kinds of questions! Here are some possible sentences:
The Golden Boy: Can Gavin, part-fairy and gay, keep his true self secret, be true to himself, and survive in a country that wants to kill people like him?
The Werewolf and His Boy: Henry, a werewolf, and Jamey, a godling, must find the key left by Loki before it is too late and magic explodes in the world, and at the same time, sort out their love for each other.
Happily Ever After: Everyone deserves the chance to have a happy ending.
The great story teller and weaver of tales, Debra Killeen: http://myrridia.net/
Debra Killeen is the award-winning author of "The Myrridian" Cycle.
http://warrenrochelle.com/2012/12/27/...
What is the working title of your next book?
*Hmm. I have a completed novel, The Golden Boy, which is currently being edited by Nancy Berman, a free-lance editor friend of mine. I am working on a story collection, with the working title, Happily Ever After and Other Stories. I have a novel-in-progress, The Werewolf and His Boy, almost finished but I have put it on hold to finish the story collection.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
*I don’t have an agent, alas. Self-publishing is an option, but before I try that, I am planning on sending the manuscripts to various small presses that have published similar books.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
*The Golden Boy:
The original idea came from the notion that all fairy tales are true, and that the magical and mundane coexist, although the latter is not always aware of the former, or rather doesn’t believe in the former—at first.
Happily Ever After:
Homophobia persists, lingers, and is girding its loins to fight to the death. And as a result, stories are still being published and films are still being made in which the gay characters do not have happy endings, usually with one dying, leaving the survivor to mourn. I was determined to write a collection of stories in which my gay protagonists have happily ever afters—more or less.
The Werewolf and His Boy:
*The story that inspired this novel, “Lowe’s Wolf” (published in the Spring 2010 issue of Icarus) was inspired from a dream my partner had about a wolf hiding in Lowe’s.
What genre does your book fall under?
*Genres for all three: Fantasy, speculative fiction, gay fiction, alternate history.
How long does it take to write the first draft of your manuscript?
*Good question. Maybe a year or so?
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I’m not sure. There are several gay werewolf stories out there—novels and short stories. My friend, Catherine Lundoff, just published Silver Moon (Lethe Press, 2012) about a lesbian werewolf of “a certain age.” Queer Wolf (QueeredFiction, 2009) is an anthology of gay werewolf stories.
As The Golden Boy is an alternate history/fantasy/gay novel, there are just too many out there for me to pick one. But Time Well Bent (Lethe Press, 2009), a collection of queer alternative history tales, comes to mind.
Peter Cashorali wrote Fairy Tales: Traditional Stories Retold For Gay Men (HarperCollins, 1997) and these stories, this collection, inspired me to write my own.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
*Hmm—which characters? Which actors? I’m not good at this sort of question!
The Golden Boy: Well, maybe Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for the title character, the golden boy, and Gavin, who is the protagonist. As adults, anyway. The boys grow up in the story, so their ages range from 6 to 40-something.
The Werewolf and His Boy: The werewolf, Henry Thorn: Agiris Karras, who played Riley Stavros on DeGrassi.
Happily Ever After: 10 stories—too many characters!
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
*Like I said, for The Werewolf and His Boy, the original inspiration came from a dream my partner had.
I think I have already answered this question for each book in the idea question. In general, I find myself inspired by such things as:
Dreams, fairy tales, myths, the people I love, love …
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
*The Golden Boy: It is set in an alternate universe, in which there is no United States, rather the Columbian Empire. Magic is real, albeit restricted and the magical are persecuted in the Empire.
The Werewolf and His Boy: For the people around here, the novel’s setting: Richmond and Fredericksburg, VA, with a foray to England.
Happily Ever After: The stories we know so well—the fairy tales, the myths—are still as powerful as ever, even as we reinterpret and reimagined them. That these stories have gay heroes might pique the interest of gay SF and fantasy fans.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
*I hate these kinds of questions! Here are some possible sentences:
The Golden Boy: Can Gavin, part-fairy and gay, keep his true self secret, be true to himself, and survive in a country that wants to kill people like him?
The Werewolf and His Boy: Henry, a werewolf, and Jamey, a godling, must find the key left by Loki before it is too late and magic explodes in the world, and at the same time, sort out their love for each other.
Happily Ever After: Everyone deserves the chance to have a happy ending.
The great story teller and weaver of tales, Debra Killeen: http://myrridia.net/
Debra Killeen is the award-winning author of "The Myrridian" Cycle.
http://warrenrochelle.com/2012/12/27/...
December 21, 2012
Review of The Song of Achilles, by Madeleine Miller
The Song of Achilles by Madeline MillerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow, damn good book. A beautifully written, well-crafted retelling of an old myth--or would a reimagining be a better word. I found using the POV of Patroclus to be particularly engaging. I felt sorry for Patroclus as he grew up: the son who always seems to disappoint his father, no matter what he says or does, always hearing from his father, "That is what a son should be" (3). Menoitius was a piece of work, to say the least.
I thought she did an especially good job presenting the evolution of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, the attraction growing as they grew up together. Their love--their relationship-- is the heart of the book, I think, which is as it should be.
The mythic-as-real--the Centaur, the goddess--felt very natural to me. Thetis was not a likeable goddess.
That the ending was so moving, even though I knew, of course, from the beginning, their fates--attests to how well Miller writes:
"In the darkness, two shadows, reaching througb the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood of a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun" (369).
View all my reviews
December 6, 2012
Part 3: The Great Traveling Fantasy Round Table: Great Fantasy Writers
Part 3 of The Greats of Fantasy is up:
Sylvia Kelso writes on Patricia McKillip--one of my favs--and Deborah Carter writes on 2 of her favorite children's fantasists.
The third installment of the greats of fantasy is now up. http://theresacrater.com/978/3-the-gr...
Sylvia Kelso writes on Patricia McKillip--one of my favs--and Deborah Carter writes on 2 of her favorite children's fantasists.
The third installment of the greats of fantasy is now up. http://theresacrater.com/978/3-the-gr...
December 4, 2012
A Review of Tricks and Treats: Twenty Tales of Gay Terror and Romance
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.
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December 3, 2012
A Review of The Cold Commands, by Richard Morgan
The Cold Commands by Richard K. MorganMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This sequel to The Steel Remains, 2010 Spectrum Award for Best Novel, is an action-packed, hard-edged and gritty heroic fantasy. Events set in motion in the previous novel in this series continue, as does the saga of Ringil Eskiath—Gil—a soldier and warrior and mercenary without equal, and a lover of men in a homophobic society. He's not polite, he has little finesse, but he is tough and capable and you do learn to love him--or at least respect him, baggage and all.
This time, the stakes are higher. The Kiriath, a nonhuman race who once saved humans from the dark magic of the Aldrain (a very dark version of the fey), left behind machine intelligences in orbit around the planet. One has fallen with a dire message: a creature called the Illwrack Changelings, who grew to manhood in the Grey Places of the Aldrain—a lover of one of their warriors—is stirring from a deep magical sleep. When he wakes, the Aldrain will answer his call, and return. Humanity will have to face them alone.
The Emperor orders an expedition to find this being, but first, the heroes must be gathered. This means that Gil, with his tough, fuck-you attitude, is called to the quest, as is one of Gil’s few friends, Lady kir-Archeth, lesbian, half-breed Imperial, half-Kiriath. Like Gil—although certainly not as brusque and as uncompromising as Gil—she doesn’t suffer gladly. Neither hides their sexual orientation. The third hero called is Egar, the Dragonbane, a Majak warrior, who respects Gil and has his back.
The gathering of the heroes is the story here, and the personal and public fights and ordeals and obstacles encountered along the way. That Gil and Archeth can find moments of love and occasional tenderness in this brutal world is a testimony to the brilliance of the writing, and the compelling nature of the characters and their lives.
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A Review of Grail, by Elizabeth Bear
Grail by Elizabeth BearMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Grail is the conclusion to Bear’s Jacob’s Ladder trilogy, begun in Dust and continued in Chill. Jacob’s Ladder, an ancient generational ship, finally comes to the end of its thousand-year journey when it reaches the habitable world the crew, led by the Conns, has named Grail. They have come to the end of their quest. Unfortunately other humans beat them to it—they call the planet Fortune. Conflict is inevitable. The people of Fortune are “right-minded,” genetically altered to achieve emotional balance. The Conns, and the other inhabitants of this ship, are also altered, to the point one wonders if they are still human. Not everyone is happy about settling down planetside, either. Sabotage and murder on both sides, betrayals, assassinations, intrigue, secrets—Bear has created a heady mix to conclude her trilogy. This universe, with its Arthurian motifs, is a queer-friendly one: Captain Perceval is a lesbian; Tristan, once married, a father, falls in love with Mallory, who uses no gendered pronouns. That human sexuality is fluid is integral to the novel, which could be said to be a celebration, albeit a dark one, of cultural diversity.
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