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The relation between short story and novel, inside the writer’s head, is interesting. “Semley’s Necklace,” though a complete story in itself, was the germ of a novel. I had done with Semley when I finished it, but there was a minor character, a mere by-stander, who did not sink back obediently into obscurity when the story was done, but who kept nagging me. “Write my story,” he said. “I’m Rocannon. I want to explore my world. . . .” So I obeyed him. You really can’t argue with these people.
SEMLEY’S NECKLACE
I think it’s the most characteristic of my early science fiction and fantasy works, the most romantic of them all.
I am still a romantic, no doubt about that, and glad of it, but the candor and simplicity of “Semley’s Necklace” have gradually become something harder, stronger, and more complex.
Some of his lesser kinfolk of Hallan still possessed wardrobes of brocaded clothing, furniture of gilded wood, silver harness for their steeds, armor and silver mounted swords, jewels and jewelry—and on these last Durhal’s bride looked enviously, glancing back at a gemmed coronet or a golden brooch even when the wearer of the ornament stood aside to let her pass, deferent to her birth and marriage-rank.
Hope came hard to the Angyar of Hallan and all the Western Lands, since the Starlords had appeared with their houses that leaped about on pillars of fire and their awful weapons that could level hills.
Hallanlord’s face was bleak when he watched the fair-haired couple and heard their laughter as they drank bitter wine and joked together in the cold, ruinous, resplendent fortress of their race.
“I am Durhal’s wife. I came to get my dowry, father.” The drunkard growled in disgust; but she laughed at him so gently that he had to look at her again, wincing. “Is it true, father, that the Fiia stole the necklace Eye of the Sea?” “How do I know? Old tales. The thing was lost before I was born, I think. I wish I never had been. Ask the Fiia if you want to know. Go to them, go back to your husband. Leave me alone here. There’s no room at Kirien for girls and gold and all the rest of the story. The story’s over here; this is the fallen place, this is the empty hall. The sons of Leynen all are
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“In the mountains of the far land the Fiia and the Gdemiar parted. Long ago we parted,” said the slight, still man of the Fiia. “Longer ago we were one. What we are not, they are. What we are, they are not. Think of the sunlight and the grass and the trees that bear fruit, Semley; think that not all roads that lead down lead up as well.” “Mine leads neither down nor up, kind host, but only straight on to my inheritance. I will go to it where it is, and return with it.”
A mean wind had come up from the west, starting and gusting and veering, and her windsteed was weary fighting it. She let him glide down on the sand. At once he folded his wings and curled his thick, light limbs under him with a thrum of purring.
There was no mistaking them: they were the height of the Fiia and in all else a shadow, a black image of those laughing people. Naked, squat, stiff, with lank hair and grey-white skins, dampish-looking like the skins of grubs; eyes like rocks.
“Why do you seek it here, Angya? Here is only sand and salt and night.” “Because lost things are known of in deep places,” said Semley, quite ready for a play of wits, “and gold that came from earth has a way of going back to the earth. And sometimes the made, they say, returns to the maker.” This last was a guess; it hit the mark.
And know this: we, the Gdemiar, are the friends of those you call the Starlords! We came with them to Hallan, to Reohan, to Hul-Orren, to all your castles, to help them speak to you. The lords to whom you, the proud Angyar, pay tribute, are our friends.
“Wait; let me look it up in the catalogue. I’ve got it here. Here. It came from these trogs—trolls—whatever they are: Gdemiar. They have a bargain-obsession, it says; we had to let ’em buy the ship they came here on, an AD-4. This was part payment. It’s their own handiwork.” “And I’ll bet they can’t do this kind of work anymore, since they’ve been steered to Industrial.”
“Oh, yes. All the Exotica are technically on loan, not our property, since these claims come up now and then. We seldom argue. Peace above all, until the War comes. . . .” “Then I’d say give it to her.” Ketho smiled. “It’s a privilege,” he said. Unlocking the case, he lifted out the great golden chain; then, in his shyness, he held it out to Rocannon, saying, “You give it to her.”
“Take it, take it. It was for Durhal and Haldre that I brought it from the end of the long night!”
APRIL IN PARIS
This is the first story I ever got paid for; the second story I ever got published; and maybe the thirtieth or fortieth story I wrote. I had been writing poetry and fiction ever since my brother Ted, tired of having an illiterate five-year-old sister around, taught me to read.
“Professionalism” is no virtue; a professional is simply one who gets paid for doing what an amateur does for love. But in a money economy, the fact of being paid means your work is going to be circulated, is going to be read; it’s the means to communication, which is the artist’s goal.
Professor Barry Pennywither sat in a cold, shadowy garret and stared at the table in front of him, on which lay a book and a breadcrust. The bread had been his dinner, the book had been his lifework. Both were dry.
An unsocial, unmarried, underpaid pedant, sitting here alone in an unheated attic in an unrestored tenement trying to write another unreadable book.
Barry Pennywither was not a very brave man, but he was rational. He thought he had lost his mind, and so he said quite steadily, “Are you the Devil?”
“Then what goes on?” Barry roared. “Why does that stupid old spell work for Jehan, for us, that one spell, and here, nowhere else, for nobody else, in five—no, eight—no, fifteen thousand years of recorded history? Why? Why? And where did that damn puppy come from?”
THE MASTERS
“The Masters” was my first published genuine authentic real virgin-wool science fiction story, by which I mean a story in which or to which the existence and the accomplishments of science are, in some way, essential. At least that is what I mean by science fiction on Mondays. On Tuesdays sometimes I mean something else.
I seem to be rather bored by complex technology, but fascinated by biology, psychology, and the speculative ends of astronomy and physics, insofar as I can follow them.
“Yes, of course.” Ganil stared down at the circle, the sacred image of the Sun, the Hidden Light, the Face of God. “Is that priest-knowledge?” “No.” Mede drew an X-cross over the circle. “That is.” “Then what—whose knowledge is the—the figure for Nothing?” “No one’s. Anyone’s. It’s not a mystery.”
“Yes. You’re thirty, aren’t you, you’ve been a Master for four months now. Did you ever think, Ganil, that to be a Master means you have learned everything your trade can teach? From now on until your death you’ll learn nothing more. There is no more.” “But the Shopmasters—” “Shopmasters learn some secret signals and passwords,” Mede said in his soft, dry voice, “and of course they have power. But they know no more than you. . . . You thought perhaps they were allowed to compute, didn’t you? They aren’t.”
“This is Ganil,” Mede was saying. “He invented the duodecimal system last night. Get him working on the mathematics of curves for me, Master Yin.”
Mede stood accused of heresy. He had been seen out on the fields pointing an instrument at the Sun, a device, they said, for measuring distances. He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.
“Ganil Kalson of Edun, you are suspect as an acquaintance of Mede Fairman, accused of the heresies of Invention and Computation. You were this man’s friend?” “We were Co-Masters—” “Yes. Did he ever speak to you of measurements made without Comparing Sticks?” “No.” “Of black numbers?” “No.” “Of the black arts?” “No.”
DARKNESS BOX
When my daughter Caroline was three she came to me with a small wooden box in her small hands and said, “Guess fwat is in this bockus!” I guessed caterpillars, mice, elephants, etc. She shook her head, smiled an unspeakably eldritch smile, opened the box slightly so that I could just see in, and said: “Darkness.” Hence this story.
He turned to look at the clock on the mantle, an ornate square of gold and blue enamel. It was ten minutes of ten: time to rise and buckle on his sword, call up his men, and go to battle. The Exile was returning, determined to take the city and reclaim his right to the throne, his inheritance. His black ships must be driven back to sea. The brothers must fight, and one must die, and the city be saved.
THE WORD OF UNBINDING
“The Rule of Names” first explores an essential element of how magic works in Earthsea. “The Word of Unbinding” foreshadows the end of the last book of the trilogy, The Farthest Shore, in its imagery of the world of the dead.
He had heard first long ago of Voll the Fell, who was said to be more than wizard yet less than man; who passed from island to island of the Outer Reach, undoing the works of the Ancients, enslaving men, cutting forests and spoiling fields, and sealing in underground tombs any wizard or Mage who tried to combat him.
Festin stood still a while, then slowly sat down among the great rocks to rest. To rest, not sleep; for he must keep guard here until Voll’s body, sent back to its grave, had turned to dust, all evil power gone, scattered by the wind and washed seaward by the rain. He must keep watch over this place where once death had found a way back into the other land.
THE RULE OF NAMES
“It ain’t polite to ask anybody what his name is,” shouted a fat, quick boy, interrupted by a little girl shrieking, “You can’t never tell your own name to nobody my ma says!”
The children were silent. The sheep bleated gently. Mr. Underhill answered the question: “Because the name is the thing,” he said in his shy, soft, husky voice, “and the truename is the true thing. To speak the name is to control the thing. Am I right, Schoolmistress?”
Mr. Underhill had decided that since his truename was no longer a secret, he might as well drop his disguise. Walking was a lot harder than flying, and besides, it was a long, long time since he had had a real meal.
WINTER’S KING
When I wrote this story, a year before I began the novel The Left Hand of Darkness, I did not know that the inhabitants of the planet Winter or Gethen were androgynes. By the time the story came out in print, I did, but too late to emend such usages as “son,” “mother,” and so on.
It is hard: she remembers nothing. But what they did is plain. They broke her will and bent her mind all to one thing. She believes she must abdicate the throne.”
Axt smiled at the very Karhidish distinction. “Both, my lord. As far as we know, which is a tiny corner of dusty space under the rafters of the Universe, all the people we’ve run into are in fact human. But the kinship goes back a million years and more, to the Fore-Eras of Hain. The ancient Hainish settled a hundred worlds.”
“Well! That was the trigger. The signal to begin tripping off the other instructions and determine the course of your phobia. An induced paranoia.
“You did. Abdication, suicide, or escape were the only acts of consequence which you could have committed of your own volition, freely. They counted on your moral veto on suicide, and your Council’s vote on abdication. But being possessed by ambition themselves, they forgot the possibility of abnegation, and left one door open for you.
THE GOOD TRIP
But it’s not an anti-drug story either. My only strong opinion about drugs (pot, hallucinogens, alcohol) is anti-prohibition and pro-education. I have to admit that people who expand their consciousness by living instead of by taking chemicals usually come back with much more interesting reports of where they’ve been.
