The current story is now “Keeping Lalande Station,” which first appeared in Future Orbits #2, in 2001.
Monthly Archives: September 2011
Series Seriousness
Series short story characters have a long history in sf/f. And you’ll note that I do say series characters rather than just “series” as such. Almost all story cycles are built on one or two recurring characters, not a recurring setting. Yes, there are exceptions (HPL, anyone?). There always are. But they needn’t concern us here. In general, the character is the key. Sometimes more than one, but always at least one: The Traveler in Black. Cugel the Clever. Lord D’Arcy. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Readers like them for lots of reasons. Familiarity, the chance to plunge once more into another world and visit there. Sometimes they just wonder what the characters have been up to, the way you want to touch base with an old friend. Or maybe there’s a consistent tone and worldview within that the reader finds appealing. As I said, lots of reasons. Continue reading
Snippet Time – The Long Look
Sometimes excerpts are the sort of thing you put up when you can’t scrape a real post together, but I think there’s something to be said for them on their own merits. I don’t assume for a moment that everyone or even most people who happen across this site will have a clue as to the sort of thing I do or will have read any of it. Excerpts are a quick and easy way to remedy that. So this will be in addition to the “Story Time” link, but I promise not to do it too often.
Today’s snippet is from The Long Look, Chapter 1 – Fairy Tales:
Tymon the Black, demon of a thousand nightmares and master of none, came to a sudden understanding. “It’s raining,” he said. “And I’m cold.”
He sounded surprised.
The dwarf Seb was not surprised. The chilling rain had started the moment they reached the foothills of the White Mountains and continued all afternoon. Seb’s long fair hair hung limp about his face, and he peered out at the magician through a tangled mat like a runt wolf eyeing a lamb through a hedge. “At last he deigns to notice . . . I’ve been cold for hours! At the very least you could have been miserable with me.”
“Sorry,” Tymon said. “You know I have trouble with some things.”
Seb nodded. “‘Here’ and ‘now’ being two of them.” While day-to-day practical matters were Seb’s responsibility, there was some comfort in complaining. In his years with Tymon, Seb had learned to take comfort where he could.
Nothing else was said for a time, there being nothing to say. Seb, as usual, was the first to notice the failing light. “It’s getting late. We’d better find somewhere dry to camp, if there be such in this wretched place.”
It was beginning to look like a very wet night until Seb spotted a large overhang on a nearby ridge. It wasn’t a true cave, more a remnant of some long-ago earthquake, but it reached more than forty yards into the hillside and had a high ceiling and dry, level floor. It wasn’t the worst place they’d ever slept.
“I’ll build a fire,” the dwarf said, “if you will promise me not to look at it.”
Tymon didn’t promise, but Seb built the fire anyway after seeing to their mounts and the pack train. He found some almost-dry wood near the entrance and managed to collect enough rainwater for the horses and for a pot of tea. He unpacked the last of their dried beef and biscuit, studied the pitiful leavings and shook his head in disgust. Gold wasn’t a problem, but they hadn’t dared stop for supplies till well away from the scene of Tymon’s last escapade, and now what little food they’d had time to pack was almost gone.
Seb scrounged another pot and went to catch some more rain. When he had enough, he added the remnants of beef and started the pot simmering on the fire. The mixture might make a passable broth. If not, at least they could use it to soften the biscuit.
Tymon inched closer to the fire, glancing at Seb as he did so. The dwarf pretended not to notice. Tymon was soaked and neither of them had any dry clothing. Tymon catching cold or worse was the last thing Seb needed. As for the risk, well, when the inevitable happened it would happen, as it had so many times before.
“I never look for trouble, you know that,” Tymon said. It sounded like an apology.
“I know.” Seb handed him a bowl of the broth and a piece of hard biscuit, and that small gesture was as close to an acceptance of the apology as the occasion demanded. They ate in comfortable silence for a while, but as the silence went on and on and the meal didn’t, Seb began to feel definitely uncomfortable. He finally surrendered tact and leaned close.
“Bloody hell!”
It was the Long Look. Tymon’s eyes were glazed, almost like a blind man’s. They focused at once on the flames and on nothing. Tymon was seeing something far beyond the firelight, something hidden as much in time as distance. And there wasn’t a damn thing Seb could do about it. He thought of taking his horse and leaving his friend behind, saving himself. He swore silently that one day he would do just that. He had sworn before, and he meant it no less now. But not this time. Always, not this time. Seb dozed after a while, walking the edge of a dream of warmth and ease and just about to enter, when the sound of his name brought him back to the cold stone and firelight.
“Seb?”
Tymon was back, too, from whatever far place he’d gone, and he was shivering again. Seb poured the last of the tea into Tymon’s mug. “Well?”
“I’ve seen something,” Tymon said. He found a crust of biscuit in his lap and dipped it in his tea. He chewed thoughtfully.
“Tymon, is it your habit to inform me that the sun has risen? The obvious I can handle; I need help with the hidden things.”
“So do I,” Tymon said. “Or at least telling which is which. What do you think is hidden?”
“What you saw. What the Long Look has done to us this time.”
Tymon rubbed his eyes like the first hour of morning. “Oh, that. Tragedy, Seb. That’s what I saw in the fire. I didn’t mean to. I tried not to look.”
Seb threw the dregs of his own cup into the fire and it hissed in protest. “I rather doubt it matters. If it wasn’t the fire, it would be the pattern of sweat on your horse’s back, or the shine of a dewdrop.” The dwarf’s scowl suddenly cleared away, and he looked like a scholar who’d just solved a particularly vexing sum. “The Long Look is a curse, isn’t it? I should have realized that long ago. What did you do? Cut firewood in a sacred grove? Make water on the wrong patch of flowers? What?” Seb waited but Tymon didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to be listening. Seb shook his head sadly. “I’ll wager it was a goddess. Those capable of greatest kindness must also have the power for greatest cruelty. That’s balance.”
“That’s nonsense,” said Tymon, who was listening after all. “And a Hidden Thing, I see. So let me reveal it to you—there is one difference between the workings of a god and a goddess in our affairs. One only.”
“And that is?”
“Us. Being men, we take the disfavor of a female deity more personally.” Tymon yawned and reached for his saddle and blanket.
Seb seized the reference. “Disfavor. You admit it.”
Tymon shrugged. “If it gives you pleasure. The Powers know you’ve had precious little of that lately.” He moved his blanket away from a sharp rise in the stone and repositioned his saddle. “Where are we going?”
Seb tended the fire, looking sullen. “Morushe.”
“Good. I’m not known there—by sight, anyway.”
Seb nodded. “I was counting on that.”
“It will make things easier.”
Seb knew that Tymon was now speaking to himself, but he refused to be left out. “I know why we were heading toward Morushe—it was far away from Calyt. What business do we have there now?”
“We’re going to murder a prince.”
Seb closed his eyes. “Pity the fool who asked.”
“I never look for trouble. You know that.”
Shakespeare’s Planet
Clifford D. Simak was an earlier writer in the sf/f field that I’d heard about for years but somehow managed to avoid reading at a time when I was reading just about everything I could get my hands on. I didn’t plan it that way, but somehow it happened, so I made a conscious effort to correct this oversight, starting with Shakespeare’s Planet.
The consensus is that this is not one of Clifford D. Simak’s better works. Good thing I decided to read it before I found out what the consensus was. The premise may have been a little fresher when the book was written, but probably not by a lot: humans go into space in disembodied human brain controlled, slower-than-light ships, with the crews kept in coldsleep while the ships themselves look for earth-like planets for potential colonizing. Naturally, with that long a mission time it turns out that earth finds quicker and easier paths to the stars, and by the time one particular ship finds a habitable planet, a thousand years have gone by and humanity is already scattered across the galaxy and the original ships’ mission is only remembered as a legend. And yes, it turns out that humanity has already reached this particular planet.
Carter Horton, the only surviving crewmember of the ship (coldsleep accident, the usual), finds the mortal remains of a half-crazed old man who called himself Shakespeare after the only book he had, and his long-time companion, a creature who calls himself Carnivore, because that’s what he is. It turns out Carnivore, like Shakespeare, was marooned on this planet. Most intelligent species now use a series of interstellar “tunnels” built by an ancient, unknown race to travel around the galaxy, the problem is, no one knows where any particular tunnel leads. They all lead to habitable planets, but when you leave, you have no idea where you’re going, so the tunnels are mostly used by the desperate and those who simply don’t care where they’re going, so long as it’s “somewhere else.” The tunnel to this particular planet has a quirk: you can arrive safely, but you can never leave. Nor is this a breakdown in the system—the tunnel controls were deliberately removed. Shakespeare’s Planet was designed to be a one-way trip. Why?
Horton, Carnivore, and the ship’s robot crewmember, Nicodemus, attempt to repair the tunnel with no success, hampered by the fact that none of them know how it works in the first place. They are soon joined by Elayne, a woman from one of the human colonies now scattered through the galaxy who is one of many on a mission to travel the tunnels and attempt to map their destinations, a work that may take many generations and many millions of years. Only now she, too, is marooned on Shakespeare’s planet.
Spoiler(Sort of) Alert: All this, you have realized by now, is the setup and basic situation. It says nothing about the plot. So here’s what happens: the three minds that control ship are trying to meld into one great consciousness. They discuss this at length, wondering why it is so difficult. Horton contemplates the irony of his situation and does some exploring. Nicodemus works on self-inprovement through a series of extra brains for specialized tasks. Carnivore fusses at everyone to hurry and fix the tunnel so he can leave this boring place. Elayne does pretty much the same things Horton does. They (sort of) discover the reason that the planet had been quarantined. Carnivore discovers his destiny. Events are triggered, apparently by accident, or an accident of timing, and now everyone is free to leave the planet by the methods they choose.
Sounds awful, doesn’t it? It really isn’t. Now, I completely agree with those who say the cast never comes together. It’s true, but then you realize that Simak isn’t making characters, he’s making points of view that will be used to express those views. They’re not so much characters as walking, talking narrative vehicles, and some of their responses–Horton’s reaction on first meeting Elayne, for example–don’t make sense to me at any level. And I really didn’t mind. Simak was obviously a bright guy, and it’s not the story, the characters, or even the situation that made this book interesting to me. It was the contemplation of that situation, the nature of humanity, and yes, even Shakespeare’s insightful and yet completely wacko speculations recorded in the margins of his future edition of the complete works of his namesake.
Shakespeare’s Planet isn’t a page turner. It’s a page digester. A page savorer. It’s either a fun book or the most boring thing you’re likely to not finish, even at a mere 151 pages. That all depends on the reader. It worked for me. I also find it interesting to recall that a sf/f book that was really just a long novella could get published by a mainline publisher in Simak’s time. You want to do that now, and you’re going straight to the ebook edition. And you’re probably doing it on your own. The field has changed, sure, but a story worth reading is still a story worth reading. Glad there was a venue then, just as there is now.
Fantasy as Consolation – Not
“More people want to change the world than want to change themselves.” – Leo Tolstoy
Our subject for today is fantasy as the literature of reassurance and consolation. This is a fairly common view of fantasy, just not one I agree with. At all. Now, I’m perfectly willing to concede that fantasy often is generic, and reaffirming of the status quo, and all the other things that it is accused of, usually when the person doing the accusing is pointing out its inferiority to science fiction. The basic problem with that argument is that it’s just as true of a great deal of science fiction, and just as irrelevant, applying only when we confuse fantasy and sf as marketing categories with fantasy and sf the forms of storytelling. Fantasy and sf that are more market-driven often fit that description, but in neither case is it a limitation of the form. Anyone who argues otherwise has their work cut out for them so far as I’m concerned.
The other truism I keep hearing is that fantasy is “backward looking” while science fiction is “forward looking.” Ummm, no. Some science fiction is forward looking. A lot more isn’t. A lot more, rather, is more solidly rooted in the here and now than anything John Irving ever did, but no one’s saying that such stories shouldn’t be called science fiction. I think it’s truer and more useful to say that fantasy is “inward looking” while science fiction is “outward looking,” though even that view doesn’t fully describe either genre. I admit it’s a shaky platform, but we have to stand somewhere.
“Now wait a minute,” I hear my Mr. Strawman say, “isn’t it true that most fantasy is set in the past?” Actually, no. Very little fantasy is set in our actual historical past. Just as “urban fantasy” is not really set in our present. It may look like this world or some close variation, but that’s deceptive. Fantasy is almost all set in a place beyond time and history. Beyond the Fields We Know. Anyone ever heard of it? Some call it Fairyland. That has its own unfortunate associations, but it’s not wholly inaccurate. Then there’s Beyond Ultima Thule. To the West. To the East. Over the Rainbow. In the Underworld. On Mount Olympus. At Tir na Og. Avalon. Downtown Detroit. Call it what you want, it’s not what it seems, and it’s not here and it’s not now. It’s not a place any of us have been. It’s a place we’ve all been.
“You do realize that you’re speaking absolute nonsense, don’t you?” asks Mr. Strawman (and give the guy credit—he never misses a cue). Sure I am. I’m rather fond of Nonsense as a destination. Edward Lear was a master of it. That’s how I first found out about the Jumblies, and how they went to sea in a sieve. Fascinating creatures and fascinating place. Nonsense is a setting that I definitely should have mentioned.
Setting is important. The difference, at least in my opinion so feel free to have your own, is that, in science fiction, the setting is most often a representation, however crude, of the physical universe, and the story a look at our relationship with that universe. In fantasy, the setting is a metaphor for ourselves only. The settings in fantasy are the universal inner landscapes of the human psyche, beyond space and time. It’s what and who we are, and only really, truly accessible in the stories we tell each other about us. Per Jane Yolen, storytelling is “our first and best method of casting out demons and summoning angels.” All the rest is stagecraft.
So what do we see when we go there? Marvels. The clash of armies, the birth of the Gods, the fall of the Gods. Each other. We see anything we’re capable of seeing, for better or for worse. That’s not safe, nor should it should be. Ursula Le Guin in THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT likened certain writers’ and readers’ attitude toward Fairyland as being the same as obvlivious tourists in Yosemite, having a grand old time until, say, they try to get their picture taken with the cute bear and the cute bear eats them. Sure, there are cute bunnies and horsies in Fairyland. And some of the bunnies drink your blood and some of the horsies drag you off to the loch for drowning and devouring at leisure. There are also worse things lurking. Far worse.
Telling a fantasy story is the act of going to the place that we all live and taking a good hard look at what’s there. Like taking a look in the mirror. We often look in the mirror but only now and then we get a glimpse, maybe no more than that, but a true glimpse of what’s there to see. Do you find that reassuring when it happens? Consoling? I sure don’t. In fact, it scares the hell out of me every time I sit down to write. But sometimes the act of storytelling tells us something we didn’t know before. Or didn’t know that we knew. Which, despite the danger, is more than enough reason to keep making the journey.
At least, when we get it right.
Richard Parks 