Tag Archives: Ursula Le Guin

Review: Legends, Edited by Robert Silverberg

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WRITING 02Note and Disclaimer: This review originally appeared in SF AGE back around 1998, and I’m not changing a word of it. I think of these as much as time capsules as reviews. Speculations that panned out or didn’t, hopes dashed, whatever, are par for the course of time.

 

 

LEGENDS edited by Robert Silverberg, Tor Books, September 1998,
hc, 703 pp, $27.95, ISBN: 0-312-86787-5

In LEGENDS, Robert Silverberg has brought together eleven of
the most currently famous and best-selling authors in sf&f, each
telling a new story set in their own chosen milieu. It’s a great
idea in theory, and couldn’t have been easy to manage, yet manage
he has. Let’s see if the fox was worth the chase.
Stephen King leads with a new tale of Roland of Gilead and
his quest for the Dark Tower. In “Little Sisters of Eluria,”
Roland arrives at a dead town on a dying horse. Eluria is empty,
save for one dead body and an oddly marked dog. Or rather,
seemingly empty. After an attack my mutant monsters, Roland
awakens to find himself in the tender care of the Little Sisters
of Eluria, an order of hospitalers. Such care as would soon make
the tender mercies of the monsters look good by comparison.
King can always work the horror element, that’s a given, but
sometimes I don’t think he gets enough credit for the range he
shows, with more or less mainstream work like The Body or his
idiosyncratic take on a fantasy world with The Dark Tower
stories. Those tired of generic fantasy, who sometimes think
that’s all fantasy is, or can be, should really give this
series a try. Continue reading →

This is a Conversation, Not a Speech

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Rusalka by Ruth Sanderson

Notice the lovely painting to the left, “Rusalka,” by the amazing artist, Ruth Sanderson. I was reminded of it by a FB post by the writer Theodora Goss, said post being about a different matter altogether (we can discuss serendipity on another day). But I recognized the painting she’d referenced immediately. Partly because I’m fond of Sanderson’s work, but mostly because that very painting was the original illustration for “The Swan Troika,” (Realms of Fantasy, February 2011) my final story in that much missed magazine (Seriously. Show me a current fantasy magazine with the same ecumenical spirit toward the genre that ROF had).  If you’ll look in the left background, the guy in the funny-looking sleigh is Pyotr on his way to his fateful meeting with the rusalka in question.

Ahem. Yes, I’m getting off of the subject. Of which there is one, implied in the blog title. Ursula Le Guin once said something to the effect that a story is just marks on wood pulp (or pixels on a screen) until someone reads it. That reading is an act of creation itself and the story isn’t complete until it’s read. I have no argument with that. We want people to read our work, complete it, create their own inner vision to echo the one in our own heads. It won’t be the same vision, but that’s kind of the point. There aren’t just two sides to every story, there are as many sides as there are readers for that story, and the more the merrier.

Sometimes, though, it goes even beyond that. “Rusalka” exists because I wrote a story and the editors at ROF commissioned an illustration of it. You cannot fathom how pleased I was when I saw its original appearance in ROF. After all, I’m no artist. I could never have created my vision of that scene the way Sanderson did. Instead, she showed me hers. I was and am thrilled.

I will now contrast that with an incident from a writer’s group I was involved with. The Heavenly Fox had just been published and another writer in the group really liked it. So much so, that he announced that he was going to write a Springshadow story of his own, at which point I was forced to stand on his head until the impulse passed. Okay, not literally. But you get the idea. I was not thrilled. A little flattered, sure. But not thrilled.

So why the difference? Well, one is an act of re-creation. The other was copyright infringement. As in any conversation, you know when one party has crossed the line. Granted, it’s a fine line. Or rather a tightrope that we all walk when it comes to what happens to a story once it’s out in the world. In a sense, to send a story out into the world is to cede control of it. Legally it may belong to you, but practically? Things will happen that you didn’t count on. My own opinion goes beyond legalities though. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t care who has the right to continue the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. So far as I’m concerned, that series ended when Douglas Adams died. Sure, I know that’s unrealistic. Knowing that doesn’t change the way I feel.

Yes, reading is a creative act in itself, and stories were designed to be read. That’s kind of the point of them, but another thing they are is a conversation between the writer and reader. It’s an act of communication that, in the right context, creates something grander than the sum of its parts, witness that painting. Experience that a few times and you won’t wonder why we get cranky when someone tries to turn the conversation into a monologue.

“Is This the Five Minute Argument or the Full Half-hour?”

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The Ghost WarThe subject came up for me because I got briefly involved in an online discussion, which on the surface was about Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy. The instigator of the discussion readily admitted that the books were classics, but by implication wondered why they were classics. After all, there was very little overt action, the pacing was slow, and thus the books weren’t that entertaining. My first reaction was something along the lines of WTF??? After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I had to think about that for a bit.

I’m not going to get into a discussion of reading protocols. I’m not qualified, for one thing. However, there is something I have known for a long time, and the ancients knew long before I did—and so I shouldn’t have been at all surprised by that reader’s reaction to a series I did and still do think is brilliant. The proper response is not “What the hell is wrong with you?” The proper response is to shrug and remember “De gustibus non est disputandum.” More or less, “You can’t argue matters of taste.”

Of course, people can and do argue matters of taste. All the time. People like to argue, and for people who do like to argue, matters of taste are simply perfect. For as humanity has understood for a long time and the Romans expressed so succinctly, it’s a completely and utterly pointless exercise. There’s no logic to express, no preponderance of evidence to introduce, no real case to be made. Every such argument starts with one basic position by both (or all) disputants, and that is “Why don’t you like what I like?” The simple and obvious answer does nothing to derail the argument. It’s pointless, but only if you don’t realize that the argument itself is the point. Nothing is settled and no one is persuaded. Arguing in its purest and most honest form.

The thing is, we never read the same books, see the same plays, hear the same music, because we can’t. In order for me to do that, I would have to be you. And frankly, I have more than enough on my plate just trying to be me. My perspective and experience are not yours, and vice versa. If someone says the Earthsea books are slow paced, I would say they are thoughtful. If someone says that there’s no overt action, I would say that most of the conflict is internal but expressed beautifully in the text. If someone says that nothing really happens I’d say nothing but an entire world changing in front of our eyes. And whoever that theoretical someone was, we’d both be right.

Sometimes I think the real miracle is that we ever agree on anything.

Talking to Myself and Feeling Old

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Sometime back in the mid-nineties, just a year or two after I’d started publishing regularly, I was asked to write a profile. I don’t remember by whom. I don’t even remember what for. But I stumbled upon it a while back. Most of it is out of date, other parts are simply overblown and embarrassing, and show just how full of myself I was at the time(Which makes me wonder how much has really changed). But as a document of where I was and what was passing for reflection in my feeble excuse for a brain at the time, I found it interesting. I can’t see how anyone else would but, hey, tough noogies. This is my blog and I feel like sharing. Or in the words of past philosophers– “I’ve suffered for my art. Now it’s your turn.” Continue reading →

I Have a Theory….

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“Theory can be quite useful, and can even be fun, and can probably get you published, but sooner or later you have to read the damn books.” – Gary K. Wolfe

Change only one or two words and this, aimed at critics and academics, applies to writers just as well. Anyway, the subject of theory as applied to fiction was somewhat on my mind, mostly as a conscious consideration of a failure of mine.  Confession time–I’m rather weak on writing theory. I’m not proud of that–that’s just the way it is. I have only a vague idea of what “modern” and “post-modern” are and most discussions of “interstitial” fiction leave me either bemused or bewildered, depending on my mood. In neither case can I quite wrap my head around exactly what, if anything, these terms have to do with getting stories written.

Before you start thinking that this is going to turn into some sort of anti-intellectual screed, that’s not it. I’d like to understand the theory aspect of the craft better than I do. I have nothing against being opinionated–shocker, right?– but one thing that really ticks me off is an uninformed opinion. Especially when it’s my own. I mean, I even attempted Farah Mendelsohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy but had to give up after my eyes glazed over for the umpteenth time. My failing, I hasten to add, not hers. The truth is that I’ll never be an academic writer and I’m fine with that. I don’t teach writing, so explaining different traditions or taxonomic entities is never an issue. Good thing, too.

Even so, and allowing for that one regret, the reason I’m okay with this state of affairs is that  I’m still of the belief that qualifying what we do—aside from basic marketing–is not our job. Per the quote above, it can be fun as an intellectual exercise, and perhaps provide some insight into the process, which is always useful. Yet even Ursula Le Guin, no slouch in the theory department, once used the analogy that if you want to learn about an ocean, you go to sailors and oceanographers and chemists and marine biologists, etc. You don’t ask the ocean, because all the ocean says is “gurgle gurgle, whoosh whoosh.” As with the ocean, we just need to do what we do.

Explaining it is another department.