Pop Quiz
Which of the following myths is ultimately more harmful to realistic, honest human relationships?
- Sex is always dirty, shameful, and unpleasant, and should never be talked about at all.
- Sex is always fun, magical, and liberating, and should be talked about incessantly.
I’m calling it a toss-up.
Fantasy, gods, and power
(This is kind of a mess. Sorry.)
So there was a really great post about fantasy, power, and magic at the American Scene. This paragraph in particular resonated with me:
By contrast, Steven Erikson, as best I can tell from Gardens of the Moon, does not appear to be interested in anything other than the many varieties of power: physical, psychological, magical, political, spiritual. In his world there is no art, unless you consider as art certain varieties of magic — say, shifting a person’s soul from a human body to a wooden marionette. But this is really just the exertion of a (temporary) power over death. And once I decided that I wasn’t going to read any further in the series, I decided to cross the Rubicon — that is, check the Wikipedia pages of the next few volumes for plot summaries. I turned away from the computer with a great sigh of relief that I didn’t devote any more time to Malazan.
I haven’t read Erikson and so can’t comment on his books in particular, but this complaint is one that I’ve had, too. Furthermore, it puts me in mind of that thread at SF Signals about gods in fantasy. What’s intriguing is that almost all of the discussion of gods in fantasy assumed that the primary thing that gods to is be powerful. So the responses included the typical warning that having an omnipotent god would remove the tension (since s/he could just come in and fix everything) and a discussion of the ways that gods and their followers get or use power.
(Aside: Why do we assume that an omnipotent diety removes tension? I believe in an omnipotent God, but I experience plenty of tension thankyouverymuch.)
Really, is this all that gods are good for? In the actual religious lives of people around the world, I can think of three broad categories of experience that are related to the gods or divinity:
- Diety as powerful and influential over the world and human lives
- Diety as a moral judge and source of ethical judgements
- Diety as sacred, numinous, and beautiful
Now what’s up with this list? In discussions of diety in fantasy, #1 bestrides the discussion like a colossus far disproportionate to the amount of concern that actual worshippers have for power.
#2 is almost completely absent. The problem is that “God as a source of moral reasoning” has become so tightly identified with Christianity (and with a particular political platform) that any writing about it will be perceived as a commentary on that religious/political stance. The only writer that I can think of who seriously addresses this idea is Philip Pullman in His Dark Materials, and he has an explicit agenda to subvert the idea.
That leaves #3: diety as the numinous. My personal favorite! This is much rarer than treatments of diety as power, but at least it does have some serious treatments. I’d put Tolkein in this category, for example–though his dieties are certainly powerful, they’re associated with beauty and sublimity much more than ability. Raw exercise of power is the almost exclusive province of the baddies. Maybe it’s just me, but this approach seems to open up so many more possibilities than the exclusive focus on power. Art, love, majesty, sacrifice, wonder–these are the things of great literature, and they’re only tangentially related to power.
Evil Vaarsuvius for the win
I’m a big fan of Order of the Stick, but I really felt that the plot got derailed after the fall of Sapphire City. The party was split up in two or three places, there were too many subplots, and too many intrigues involving minor characters that I didn’t care about. And the big picture plot with Xykon seemed to get lost in all of the noise.
However, the recent Evil Vaarsuvius arc has been plain awesome. We’ve gotten major development of one of the central characters, tied up a multitude of loose ends that have been lying around since, well, since the fall of Sapphire City, and it’s actually been funny. See the linked strip for demonstration of awesomeness. (But note that this isn’t the beginning of the arc. You’ll need to go back 15 strips or so to catch it from the start.) I anxiously await the conclusion of the arc.
Gimme That Old Time Religion
Over at SF Signal their Mind Meld this week was about one of my favorite topics, Religion in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Most of the answers are very good, though I especially liked John C. Wright’s answer, which included this paragraph:
Dark Fantasy lends itself nicely to monotheism, because we all know Christians are creepy: either they look like spooky Puritans, dressed in all black, a la Solomon Kane, or they have spooky gothic Cathedrals, complete with gargoyles and graveyards and torture chambers, not to mention ritual cannibalism and what’s not to like about that?
The real gem, though, was from the comments, which included this stunning poem by CS Lewis:
Cliche Came Out of its Cage
1
You said ‘The world is going back to Paganism’.
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes,
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses
To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem.
Hestia’s fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands
Tended it By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat… at the hour
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush
Arose (it is the mark of freemen’s children) as they trooped,
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.
Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune
Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;
Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears …
You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.2
Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;
But the bond will break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs;
You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the event
Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).
Okay, so it’s not the best poem in the world, but it’s a reminder that actual paganism was more bracing and interesting than the misty-eyed cliches that dominate much modern thinking (both in the minds of defenders and detractors).
Can we please get over ourselves?
You know what my least favorite scifi trope is? Stories set in the future where the main character just happens to be really into “oldies” or “classics” from the present day.
Better – Eve Tushnet
Eve Tushnet, how I heart you! Today you bring me a terrifically creepy horror/sf story called Better. This isn’t obviously horror, but the revelation in the final third is so revolting and gut-wrenching that I think it deserves that name.
LeGuin and Always Coming Home
Of late I’ve been rereading Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin, in preparation for Potlatch 18. It’s my second time through the novel, and I have to say that it’s as good upon reread as it was the first time–maybe better.
LeGuin is my favorite author. That’s putting it badly, though, because I don’t just enjoy reading her books: her writing embodies everything that I would want to accomplish as a writer. Ursula LeGuin is who I want to be when I grow up. And Always Coming Home is my favorite of the books of hers that I’ve read (which is most, but not all, of everything she’s ever published). It is the perfect combination of those traits that make her admirable: a piercingly beautiful description of a place that doesn’t exist, painted with such realism that one can hardly believe she didn’t actually go there; a fierce and overwhelming critique of modern civilization, not at its margins but at its core; a story of a place so unlike this world that it seems impossible to achieve, but nonetheless not a utopia or a city of angels, but a place inhabited by people with dirty feet. The first time I read the book it changed the way that I looked at the world. The second time has changed me again.
LeGuin is often polemical but not political, didactic but not condescending–but her politics and her teaching conflict with mine in many places. This makes it a hard book to read. It cuts me to the quick. It bites against things I believe deeply to be true. It speaks honestly, and forces me to be honest. I come away from reading it exhausted, spent and sweaty and in love. Rereading it was exhilarating but tiring, and leaving me with the need to process and consider what I saw. Hopefully, over the next several days I’ll be able to post a few articles discussing this book and my reactions to it. If I’m not too lazy, and if my thoughts settle into a pattern that fits into words.
A Linguistic Kessel Run
Mark Liberman has a post up at Language Log discussing Ian M. Banks’ Culture novels, and in particular his “upper case phoneme”.
I’m a fan of Ian M. Banks’ Culture novels, but I’d like to suggest, respectfully, that they might be improved in their approach to matters linguistic. As an example, on p. 470 of his recently-released novel Matter, we learn that “Marain, the Culture’s language, had a phoneme to denote upper case”.
Linguists would usually call a unit that denotes something a morpheme (or perhaps a word), not a phoneme, even if it was only one phoneme long. (In fact, we sometimes find meaningful units whose effect on pronunciation is just a single feature.)
In addition, it’s odd to find a morpheme that signals something essentially in the realm of writing, like alphabetic case; and also to find that Marain still uses upper case in (some of) the same ways that English does.
I’d like to suggest, respectfully, that Liberman is being way too nice. The quoted passage from the book makes it pretty clear that what Banks means: the Marain language has the ability to indicate aurally that something is a proper name or otherwise an Important Word. But Banks calling this an “upper-case phoneme” is a basic mistake on two levels. First, he seems to have confused phonemes and morphemes, and second, he has confused a property of written language with spoken language. Liberman suggests a few interpretations of “upper-case phoneme” that would be linguistically defensible, but they’re increasingly implausible. No, what we have here is the linguistic equivalent of making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs: an absurdity brought on by the fact that the writer didn’t know what he was talking about.
Of course, none of this really matters, and my irritation is, I’m sure, tiny compared to the irritation of a physicist trying to watch Star Trek. But it would be nice if people using linguistic vocabulary would at least try to get it right.
Elizabeth Bear’s +2 Staff of Controversy
I find that I fully agree with David Levine’s analysis of the cultural appropriation imbroglio. Because it’s basically the same thing that I said when a similar brouhaha came up last year.
I heard about the supposed firestorm late, after the major participants had already had their say. The only thing that I want to add is that the original Elizabeth Bear post is actually a fantastic piece of advice for writing the Other.
His Dark Materials: Good Stuff
June 3, 2009 at 1:12 pm (commentary, reading) (commentary, his dark materials, philip pullman, reading)
I’m finally getting around to fleshing out my thoughts on Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, which I finished about a week ago. And to start things off on a positive note, I’m going to start by talking about the things that the serious does extremely well.
The first book (The Golden Compass) is great from cover to cover, and there’s almost nothing bad to say about it. The heroine is marvelous, the settings gorgeous, and the world-building intriguing and complete. My favorites have to be the panserbjørne, though: giant armored bears who “make their own souls”. Iorek Byrnison is one of the most memorable figures of of recent fantasy literature, and he rightfully sits next to Aslan in the pantheon of dangerous-talking-animals-who-help-little-girl-protagonists.
In fact, what I remember most about the first book is the colorful, intriguing cast of secondary characters: the witches, the gyptians, and especially the Texan Lee Scoresby. I wished the second and third books had more of that–but then, I wished a lot of things about the second and third books.
Also, it’s impossible for me to talk about this book without bringing up the controversy and hostility the book generated in Christian circles. Some of the criticism was justified: Pullman’s clearly has it out for the Church, and his polemics derail his plot, especially in book 3. (More on this later.) But there was some rather hysterical stuff, especially lines like this: “I pointed out that, in these books, everything we normally associate with safety and security—parents, priests, and even God himself—is evil, is indeed ‘the stuff of nightmares.’” That says too much. Lyra’s actual parents are pretty nasty, but her surrogate parents (the gyptians, and to some extent Iorek Byrnison) are loving and courageous. In fact, there’s quite a bit of Christian virtue to be found in the heroes of the books, and a great many valuable or wise lessons imparted by Lyra’s surrogate parents.
As for the priests and God, that will have to be a separate post.
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