Ashleigh
asked
Jo Walton:
I just finished reading "Among Others" and absolutely loved it! I was immediately struck by the industrial ruins that figure heavily. I was just wondering if you had a strict purpose with this symbolism (e.g. the decline of industry paralleling a national "loss of innocence") or it was more intended to simply evoke a mood? (Perhaps I'm overthinking it!)
Jo Walton
That's what it's really like where I grew up. I played among the ruins without really knowing what they were, just as Mor and Mori do. A ruined ironworks and a ruined castle are both just ruins to play in when you're a kid.
People don't usually put magic in post-industrial settings, and when they do it's a very flashy cyberpunky magic. The idea of putting fairies of a kind that are usually connected with Romantic Nature into the landscape of my childhood appealed to me because it was different. Similarly the way they don't use nouns is because I was sick of Names of Power. It seemed like an interesting thing to do. Also, people -- especially Americans -- write about Wales as an untouched pastoral fantasyland, and it isn't like that!
I definitely didn't mean it to be "loss of innocence" and etc as you suggest, and I am generally opposed to this kind of allegory. In the very first chapter I try to defuse this possible reading with the way the magic destroys the Phurnacite -- ooh, good magic gets rid of horrible polluting factory, and then "jobs lost".
But you're not totally wrong. There's a way in which magic haunting recent human ruins does evoke those kinds of things, and the vision of the balance of the world and what evil is at the end is trying to get to that. But I'm not opposed to technology and suggesting people go back to the trees the way that kind of thing often does. That's one of the reasons she reads SF and thinks about belonging to libraries on other planets. It's a hard balance to strike.
People don't usually put magic in post-industrial settings, and when they do it's a very flashy cyberpunky magic. The idea of putting fairies of a kind that are usually connected with Romantic Nature into the landscape of my childhood appealed to me because it was different. Similarly the way they don't use nouns is because I was sick of Names of Power. It seemed like an interesting thing to do. Also, people -- especially Americans -- write about Wales as an untouched pastoral fantasyland, and it isn't like that!
I definitely didn't mean it to be "loss of innocence" and etc as you suggest, and I am generally opposed to this kind of allegory. In the very first chapter I try to defuse this possible reading with the way the magic destroys the Phurnacite -- ooh, good magic gets rid of horrible polluting factory, and then "jobs lost".
But you're not totally wrong. There's a way in which magic haunting recent human ruins does evoke those kinds of things, and the vision of the balance of the world and what evil is at the end is trying to get to that. But I'm not opposed to technology and suggesting people go back to the trees the way that kind of thing often does. That's one of the reasons she reads SF and thinks about belonging to libraries on other planets. It's a hard balance to strike.
More Answered Questions
Sean
asked
Jo Walton:
How do you keep track of the books you want to read (beyond Goodreads)? Do you prefer physical or e- copies? Do you stock up on potential reads, put them in any order, wait to buy till you're ready to start them? Put them back on the shelf if you can't get into them or abandon them after one try? If you've already written about any this before, I'd love to know, please.
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