P.C. Hodgell's Blog, page 14

Worldcon

Many thanks for everyone's suggestions and ideas. Obviously, I can only read a few of these novels in the next two weeks, but the rest will make a nice book list. Plus I should read some works by fellow panelists. One (Diana Rowland) is writing a "White Trash Zombie" series that should be fun. The mind boggles, then runs for cover.

Making good progress at the moment with the next novel. I've just developed a shabby, would-be assassins' guild -- basically thugs in pillow case masks dyed black with delusions of grandeur. What to do if the gods refuse to assign you a grandmaster and your patron saint is a healer? Ah, fun.

Worldcon

Yow. Talk about getting more than you asked for. I'm signed up for four panels at worldcon and am chairwoman on two.

The first of the latter is "Strong Female Characters in SF&F": How is the female character changing in current SF&F and why? What are the positive and negative influences on such characters in books, TV, and film? How do writers handle the treatment of strong female characters, and what are the popular and effective traits and devices? When do writers go too far, providing we can define "too far."?

The second is "Getting it Right: Religions": Your universes and societies may include religions, but it's hard to do it right... not just the assumed theology, but the way the structure works internally and how it fits into the society. How do you avoid the clutches of the Evil Cardinal or the too-pious guru? Which authors have done it right, and what did they do?

Of course, both of these speak to personal strengths. Where I fall down is knowing what else is out there in modern SF&F. Any suggestions of what I should read to prepare before the convention?

More Gods

The following is mostly the work of Clockworkchild and Tiel. I like their idea of gods local to a place, in this case the Wastes. While they seem primordial, they can only have come into being since sand swallowed the sea, some 3000 years ago. Still, that's a long time. This section also repeats a line that, to my amazement, has been quoted (out of context) on at least a 100 different websites. Can you guess what it is?

That night Jame walked among the tents to stretch her legs after a day of riding. Most traders had settled in the lee of dunes with a haze of sand whistling off the crests over them, but not so close as to be in danger of avalanches. The dunes, after all, were always in subtle motion, and drummed as they shifted slowly forward under the wind’s whip. A storm was building. The lambas’ tufted tails sparked and crackled with electricity. Emos crouched down, hiding their heads under their rudimentary wings. Neither stars nor moon shone, and in the distance thunder rumbled.
She came to a fire leaping high into the troubled night. Around it sat Kothifirans, listening to an old desert woman. Like her sisters in Sashwar, she wore a veil, but made no attempt to anchor it as the rising wind whipped it about her wizened face. When she saw Jame, she broke off her current story and gestured to her with a gap-toothed grin.
“Welcome, my friend, you who seek the truth! Sit with us and I will tell you of the desert gods.”
The others readily made way. Jame sank cross-legged onto the ribbed sand and gazed across the dancing campfire at her ragged hostess.
“Once everything for days in all directions belonged to the Sea, whose name was lost with Its life. When the Sea died, so did Its attendants and all that lived in It. But Something that large and powerful does not fade all at once. Desert sledge still calls to the memory of water, as you have learned, have you not?”
Most of the carters murmured agreement. Those without sledges looked glum.
“Beneath the Nameless Sea is Stone. Stone remembers and endures. He seldom speaks but always tells the truth, because silence is never a lie. If you can get His attention you will learn much. Take care, however, that you can bear the force of the answer.”
Someone offered her a goatskin of wine. She paused to drink, wrinkled throat bobbing. The fire flared sideways in a gust of wind, then leaped up again.
“On top of Stone creeps Dune. The cry of the jackal and the laugh of the hyena, the singing sand, the crash of ghostly wave on vanished shores and the rasp of Sandstorm are Its voice. Dune reveals with one hand and covers with the other. It may lure you to your doom or tell you Truths. Dune knows, but says both no and yes.
“And then there is Salt, the Eternal, that Spiritless, the Soulless. When the Sea died, that which could not be purified became Salt. It is a mystery even to the other Gods. It is not Earth or Air or Fire or Water. It is not That Which Creates or Preserves or Destroys – yes, girl, I know the attributes of your god and of the Four. The Gods of which I speak came after them but may well outlast them. Hah’rum! Salt is That Which Remains, the Sea Within Us. That is why to this day salt merchants smuggle their wares throughout Rathillien and take their time at it. They know Salt will remain no matter what King Krothen will or won't.
“Where Stone is honest and Dune equivocates, Mirage always lies and lies without purpose. If you are not careful, Mirage can kill you or steal your soul. She is a dancer and a shape-shifter. Do I worship Mirage? Certainly not! My lies carry truths that Fact's spindly legs cannot.
“Ah, but Sandstorm is the raging place of wind and Dune. It is destruction, but It is not always bad. It clears away and scours clean. Sometimes it buries things which should not walk on the Earth. And It smashes through Mirage’s illusions in an instant.”
Jame stirred. Had she thought before of That-Which-Destroys as a positive force? Well, yes, in her more defiant moments. That which can be destroyed by the truth should be, she had said. Always? Sometimes she wondered.
The old woman went on to describe River, Oasis, and their child, the Pathless Tracker, who spoke to Stone and knew the rites to propitiate Sandstorm.
“When we die,” she added, “He leads us across the Desert and through the Sea into the Story of Things That Were. You would not have gotten this far if your guide were not His initiates. You Kennies don't have to believe in Tracker, but you show Him good manners if you know what's best for you.”
“And who are you?” Jame asked.
“Me?” The old woman laughed and showed her few remaining teeth. The lower half of her face seemed to have become more skeletal as the night progressed, giving her a skull’s lop-sided, bony grin. “I am Storyteller, Granny Sit-By-the-Fire. Every hearth and every campfire is My shrine. I tell truth you'll remember, even if I have to lie to do it. Without Me to tell you what you are, you would just be clever animals, no better than that overgrown wombat lying there farting by the sledge.”
Her listeners laughed, but laughter died suddenly. Something dark stumbled toward them out of the night, whimpering. In a moment, they had scattered, and the old woman withdrew into shadows, leaving the impression of bones.
Jame thought at first that the advancing figure was a wounded animal, but then she recognized one of the drivers who had whistled at Mint. The man dragged a leg and cried as he lurched forward. Damson walked behind him, cold-eyed.
“I was on guard duty,” she told Jame. “He said his friends might like a pretty face, but he preferred ‘em plump and wanted to be friends. Then he grabbed me.”
“You have the training to deal with him without this.”
“Oh, I did that first. He’s got a broken leg, when he has time to notice.”
“Damson, let him go.”
The cadet grimaced and did. The man collapsed.
By now people were gathering, including Jame’s ten-command.
“You should have broken his neck,” said Dar, furious. He and Damson might play tricks on each other all day long, but they were teammates and this was an outsider.
A wagon master approached, throwing on his clothes. “What’s all this?”
“She led me on!” cried the man, groveling away from Damson. “She’s a witch!”
He collapsed again and writhed at the girl’s feet, frothing at the mouth.
“Stop that!” Jame grabbed Damson to shake her …
… and found herself abruptly in the soulscape, grappling with something dark and dire. Ivory armor slid over her limbs, shielding her. She lashed out.
… and Damson sprawled at her feet in the sand with a split lip.
“I said if you ever struck me, I would strike you back,” Jame said, shaken. “I couldn’t help it.”
Damson spat blood. “Neither could I.”
“They’re both witches!” cried the driver, beginning to wax hysterical.

Chicon

A note in passing: someone on the list mentioned that they were involved in Chicon 7 programming. Have panel assignments etc. been given out yet? Not having heard anything, I'm a bit concerned.

Was Equality

Okay, I think I've finally got it. There's an initial panic with mob rule and all laws in abeyance. Traces of this linger, but in general the Change lasts so long that the city starts to pull itself together. Leaders arise, committees are formed, neighborhood watches organize. No one sees this as the new permanent form, however; they're still waiting for the Change to end and things to go back to normal with new, god-chosen leaders. There's some evidence that the people in whom others have faith are more likely to be chosen, so folk start to rally their supporters. Recent social upsets have made the guild lords and the king the most vulnerable to being replaced. In short, I've come around to thinking of absolute equality as chaos, with the average person seeking either to become a leader or a follower, at least in this fictional society. Maybe in the real world as well?

Health wise, I finally saw a doctor about my fainting fit and she's going to put me on some sort of a 24 hour blood pressure monitor starting Monday. My pressure has always been on the low end of normal, which I thought was healthy. Too much of a good thing, maybe.

Equality continued

Some very good ideas. Thank you, all. The consensus seems to be that a society in motion tends to stay in motion, unless it's already badly damaged. Kothifir has taken some hits that I haven't told you about, but not enough to cause the sort of social upheaval I've been envisioning in a real world setting. That suggests to me that I need to apply more fantasy elements. For example, if the Guild Lords, grandmasters, and king are the equivalent of New Pantheon gods, losing them could be like losing one's faith, profoundly unsettling. Some natural leaders might maintain their followers. Others less adept might find their people drifting off in search of someone more potent to follow. Despair, confusion, and anger could be rampant. The meaning would go out of many peoples' lives. I'm thinking a bit about a social bond similar to but weaker than the one that holds the Kencyrath together, a bit about the reaction of some end-timers when the prophesized end didn't come (some of my ancestors were Millerites; we ended up in WI because they were too embarrassed to face the folks back in NY after the Great Disillusionment). But I still don't quite have the right answer. Will have to think some more about all of this.

Equality

Many thanks for all your expressions of sympathy. In general I feel washed out and limp, but that could also be a result of the pneumonia.

Meanwhile, I have a question for consideration. I'm writing about Kothifir during one of its Changes, when the Kencyr temple goes off-line and suddenly not only the king but the ruling guild structure loses all authority. In essence, everyone becomes equal and answerable to no one, although some like the king are still richer than others and so can pay supporters. I'm guessing that in general there will be chaos. People with wealth will try to rise to power, and so will natural leaders. I suppose it might be like the early days of the French Revolution. For that matter, what would the Kencyrath be like if the Kendar suddenly were free of the Highborn? Any thoughts or ideas on the subject?

Heat and Other Misfortunes

As many of you know all too well, we've been undergoing a heat wave. I hate it. Can't think, can't work, even with A/C. Makes me long for the Pacific NW, even if I did come home via the ER with pneumonia.

Traveling with five-year-old twins is ... interesting. Everything adapts to their schedule: when they eat, when they sleep, when they have to go potty. And they have to be kept entertained. Luckily these two are addicted to 1950's musicals and Fred Astaire. Put one of those on the DVD player and they're spell-bound. Weird. When they're a little older I may finally get a sense of what Jame and Tori were like at that age.

Home again, I found a citation from the city waiting for me. My terrace is host to a handsome sumach forest and that, apparently, is against the law. I'm trying to save a volunteer burr oak and a crab-apple, but probably will lose them too.

Then I celebrated the 4th by pitching head-first down the hall stairs. One minute I was standing at the top feeling light-headed, the next (or so it seemed) I was sprawled half way down on my face with blood dripping in my eye. Nothing broke, thank goodness, but I spent the next hour on the floor wondering if I should call 911. Didn't: ambulances and ERs are expensive even with insurance. I now have assorted bruises, a scraped forehead, and a spectacular black eye but oh, it could have been so much worse.

Old Pantheon Revisited

I think this is better, although not necessarily the final version. I'm still thinking about the animism aspect. Note that LJ doesn't allow me to italicize. Note also that this scene is preceded and followed by action sequences.

Faint music sounded from the back of the cavern and the crowd stilled. It drew nearer, echoing – pipes, flutes, drums, something eldritch that might have been the wind whistling between the worlds. Figures advanced carrying torches. Their shadows preceded them, casting fantastic shapes on the cavern’s fissured walls. The crowd drew back as the procession entered the body of the cave.
Jame was reminded of Mother Vedia’s approach on her feast day. There, in fact, she was, again seated like a living statue on an upraised litter, again surrounded by her dancing, snake-wreathed attendants, but this time without bats or followers.
Before her went a gross figure looking like a younger version of the Earth Wife but also hugely pregnant, attended by a host of waddling women in a similar state.
After them, unaccompanied, came a skinny crone carrying a box. While people cheered the other two, they turned away from this last figure, shielding their children’s eyes.
“The Great Mother in her aspects of life-bearer, healer, and hungry tomb,” said Kroaky, raising his voice over the renewed clamor of the crowd as the next god emerged from the shadows.
“What’s in the box?”
“Death, of course.”
Jame regarded the diverse figures and remembered her conversation with Gran Cyd, queen of the Merikit. Showing her a fertility figure and an imu, both representing the Earth Wife, she had said, “These images were ancient long before Mother Ragga was even born.”
Jame had wondered at the time if the Earth Wife and the other three of Rathillien’s elemental Four, while each a distinct individual, wore different, older aspects in different cultures and were subject to older stories. Here, perhaps, was the answer.
It raised a further question, however: how had the deification of the Four effected the Old Pantheon, which preceded them?
There was the Earth Wife, in three of her native aspects.
Next came a cauldron seething with river fish. Fingerling trout crept over the edge of the pot and pulled up a figure glittering with scales. Cold round eyes regarded the crowd through a net of green hair and pouting lips parted over needle teeth in a smile meant to entice.
The Eaten One, thought Jame, or some variation of her, probably linked to the Amar. Did she also take a human lover? Where was Drie now, still blissfully in his beloved’s arms or deep within her digestive tract?
The goddess of love and lost causes walked behind her, backward, gazing into a mirror whose surface rippled like water. Around her feet, threatening to trip her, swarmed a host of green and yellow frogs.
“Geep!” they chorused. “Geep, geep, GEEP!”
Rain pattered in their wake.
Gorgo, thought Jame, happy to see an almost familiar face, or faces. She wondered how he and his priest Loogan were doing in Tai-tastigon. Sooner or later, she would have to find out.
More followed. Those clearly aligned with the Four seemed to fare the best. Others passed as phantoms of their former selves, and received little recognition from the crowd. Who now worshipped that dog-faced being or that drifting tatter of silk, that musky orange glow or that thing of clattering bones?
A dazzling light entered the cavern.
“Ooh!” breathed the crowd, and covered their eyes.
Jame peered through her fingers at the Sun in all his glory. She could almost make out a figure at the heart of the blaze, a man stumbling forward supporting a giant, swollen phallus with both hands.
The moon circled him, her face alternately that of the maiden, the matron, and the hag, just like the pommel of the Ivory Knife. She looked up with shifting features and saluted Jame.
“Sister, join us!”
Was this also a mortal who had undergone at least a temporary apotheosis – Like the Guild Lords above? Like Dalis-sar in Tai-tastigon? Like she herself, eventually, if she became That-Which-Destroys?
Heat washed through the cavern, worse than when the sun had come among them but without his dazzling light. An old woman carrying a heath-side firepot, a martial figure clanking in the red hot armor of war, and then a stillness. Heat gave way to a sudden, mortal chill. Jame felt the sweat on her brow turn cold.
“I won’t look,” said Fang, and hide her face against Kroaky’s shoulder.
A cloaked and hooded figure had entered the cavern. He made his way forward slowly, feeling ahead of him with an iron-shod staff. Why should he cause such dread? Perhaps it was the smoke seeping from within his garments. Perhaps it was the stench of burned flesh. Perhaps it was because he came alone, without attendants, and all turned their backs on him.
“Nemesis,” said Kroaky, glaring down defiantly although his voice shook. “I had nothing to do with the old man’s death. Ask Tori. He was there.”
“Wha …” Jame started to ask him, but memory caught her by the throat.
My father, nailed to the keep door with three arrows through his chest, cursing my brother and me as he died ….
“It wasn’t our fault,” she said out-loud. “D’you hear me, Burnt Man? Neither one of us was there!”
Wind frisked into the cavern. It swirled around the dark figure, teasing apart his robe, releasing streamers of smoke until with a flick it twitched away the garment altogether. For a moment, a black form stood there, exposed. His charred skin was laced with glowing cracks; his eyes and gaping mouth were pits into nothing. Then the wind blew again, harder, and he crumbled from the head down into a shower of cinders. The crowd cheered.
“They think he’s gone,” said Kroaky in an oddly husky voice, “but he always comes back. Like guilt. Like sorrow.”
The wind remained, now tumbling about the onlookers, snatching off this man’s hat, flinging up that woman’s skirt. Laughter followed its antics, all the louder with relief. A figure appeared whirling like a dervish in a storm of black feathers.
“Who …?” asked Jame.
“The Old Man,” said Kroaky, almost reverently, holding down his ginger hair with both hands. “The Tishooo. The East Wind.”
“In the Riverland, we call him the south wind.”
“Well, he would come at you from that direction. In fact, he moves about pretty much as he pleases, the tricky old devil. Some say that he governs the flow of time itself in the Wastes, don’t ask me how. Here we most often get him direct from Nekrien. He keeps away the Shuu and the Ahack from the south and west, from the Barrier across the Wastes and from Urakarn. We don’t honor those here.”
“What about the north wind?”
“The Anooo? That blows us the Kencyr Host and occasional weirding. Blessing or curse? You tell me. Without the east wind and the mountains, though, Kothifir, Gemma, and the other rim cities would be buried in sand like the other ancient ruins of the Wastes.”
The procession wound around the cavern until it reached its center. Here torches were set in holes drilled in the limestone floor and the avatars of the Four joined hands within the circle. They began to rotate slowly sun-wise. Their worshippers formed a withershin ring around them, then another going the opposite way, and so on and on, alternating, to the edges of the cave. Jame grew dizzy watching their gyrations. Everyone was chanting, but not the same thing:
“There was an old woman …”
“There was an old man …”
“There was a maid …”
“There was a young man ….”
The circle next to the gods slowed, swayed, and reversed itself. One by one, the rest corrected themselves until all were revolving the same way, those innermost going slowly, those outermost running, panting, to keep up. The world seemed to shift on its axis. Torches flared blue, casting shadows across an open space grown impossibly wide, split by fiery sigils.
They had opened Sacred Space.

Mediawestcon

I've just learned of my first panel at a sf&f convention, Mediawestcon and, wouldn't you know it, the topic is "The Kencyrath: Why Doesn't Anyone Know about This Series?" Still, I'm glad of the mention. Maybe it will get me some new readers. I feel like a "best kept secret" but that, at least, is better than being completely invisible.

Excitement at the stable this morning: I took Countess outside for the first time this season and she tried to buck me off. I lost a stirrup just as we left the grass and hit the hard gravel drive. My fault, though: I locked up on her reins due to nervousness. Still, how can a horse spend most of her time outside and still freak when asked to carry a rider there? We'll try again next time. I really do want to trail ride.

Next month I'll be out in Portland again, but very briefly before we head out for the Olympic Peninsula. This will be my first road trip with Melinda and her five-year-old twins. Lord knows how it's going to go.

PS. My next major convention is Chicon in Chicago at the end of the summer. I hope to see some of you there.