Three Hearts, Three Lions, Two Wizards

Recently I've been reading Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson, which is about a man fighting in World War II who discovers he has another life as a famous knight in a world that resembles the chivalric romances of King Arthur and similar tales.

It's an enjoyable read, and a fascinating work for any number of reasons - the both implicit and explicit Christianity, the clear antecedents for some elements of fantasy role-playing games (I believe Jeffro addressed this in Appendix N), the way the main character uses his modern knowledge to survive some of the more fantastic elements - although this last, I thought, was somewhat overused and undercut my belief in the setting, to an extent. The rationalization of the giant's cursed gold as being irradiated by the process of turning to stone was an especially bad example.

But the one element that really made me take notice was in Chapter 15, when the knight and his companions visit a wizard to see about getting the knight back to his home world. Said wizard has a sign on his house that reads:

MARTINUS TRISMEGISTUS

Master Magici

Spells, Charms, Prophecies, Healing, Love Potions

Blessings, Curses, Ever-Filled Purses

Special rates for parties

It's not, I think, intended to be entirely serious, and indeed the wizard in question admits that some of the services are for advertising only. However, it brought to mind another advertisement by a wizard some half a century later:

HARRY DRESDEN-WIZARD

Lost Items Found, Paranormal Investigations

Consulting, Advice, Reasonable Rates

No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other
Entertainment

Now, I've checked the Word of Jim website and have seen no definitive proof of this, but I cannot believe that Harry's ad isn't a response to Martinus'. Not just the format, but especially that last line seems to set up a deliberate dichotomy between the two.

 Whether this specific influence is intended, unconscious, or imagined, I would say that both The Dresden Files and Three Hearts and Three Lions are worth reading. Indeed, as a standalone work the latter is in some ways, despite being originally published in 1953, more accessible.

SF&F History Month - From Amber to Avalon

Well, we've had some schedule slippage, which I apologize for, but I have a semi - decent excuse in that some personal life changes meant I was without ready Internet access for some of the last month. On the plus side, I was able to finish both Nine Princes in Amber and its first sequel, The Guns of Avalon. Before I get to my thoughts on them, however, I wanted to highlight a bit of (less than hot-off-the-presses) relevant news - The Chronicles of Amber appears to be in production as a television series.

As neat as it would be to see, the most interesting thing about the press release is the many comparisons to Game of Thrones, especially the ones that claim the Amber was an inspiration for Westros. Now, I have yet to read any of the books and have only seen a little of the show, but I can definitely understand where such comparisons come from, given all that happens in Amber in these relatively short books.

(Spoilers Ahead:)

SF&F History Month - Amber Remembered

At the end of my musings on the first few chapters of Nine Princes in Amber last week, I opined that much of the setting, or at least enough to get a handle on, would soon be explained. As we shall see, I was more or less correct.

As I suspected, Corwin's memory was soon to be returned, but not without a good bit of effort. After meeting up with one of his many brothers and discreetly dealing with the pursuers thereof, the two decide to make the journey to Amber. In a situation not unlike the Pevensies hearing the word "Aslan" for the first time, the word "Amber" conjures up in Corwin a host of associations - he doesn't know what it means, only that he belongs there.

The journey itself is an interesting affair, consisting of what seems to be a number of jumps between alternate universes. Random, the brother, is controlling it somehow, and the travelers' effects change somewhat along with the surroundings (at one point Corwin pulls a bunch of paper currency labeled in Latin out of his wallet), although he isn't able to route them around all the obstacles, including a chase scene with another brother - this one a knight with a pack of especially ferocious hunting dogs.

Corwin takes all this in stride despite his lack of memory, which he eventually confesses to Random. Happily, a solution is offered - a powerful labyrinth called the Pattern that, when navigated by a member of their family, gives their various powers and should restore Corwin's memory. Of course his labyrinth is in Amber itself, but luckily there's a duplicate located at the bottom of a nearby ocean.

Of course it works and Corwin remembers not only his activities for the past several centuries, but the true nature of Amber - ". . . the greatest city that had ever existed or ever would exist. Amber had always been and would always be, and every other city everywhere, every other city that existed was but a reflection of a shadow of some phase of Amber." Heady stuff, and an interesting reversal of the usual assumption that our Earth is the "real" one. It's also, come to think of it, again not unlike the situation in Narnia, where the world the bulk of the stories take place in turns out to be a transient copy of somewhere more real.

Unfortunately for Corwin, however, now that he remembers what Amber is he also remembers that yet another brother - this one a particular rival - is poised to take control of it. Whether Corwin succeeds in stopping him, however, will have to wait for another week.

The Return of SF&F History Month - Zelazny Style!

So a few years back I tried to boost the idea of December as "Science Fiction and Fantasy History Month". It didn't take off, for various reasons - not the least of which is my own sporadic blogging schedule - but I've always sort of wanted to return to it. With the changes that have happened in the literary SF&F fan-world over the past couple years, this may be the perfect time to reboot it, so for today and the next few Saturdays, I'll be talking about what I hope turns out to be a few different classics.

2017 Fitness Goal: Be able to dress like this guy.

First off is Nine Princes in Amber, the first book in the "Chronicles of Amber" series by Roger Zelazny. I picked this one for a few reasons - I've seen it mentioned on a few lists of important and influential works (it is, for example, covered in Jeffro Johnson's seminal Appendix N series), I'm a big fan of Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October, and I suspect it's a big influence on one of my current favorite authors, John C. Wright. Perhaps most influentially, I recently came across a handsome two-volume omnibus collection of the series at my local library. This magnificent cover art by Boris Vallejo merely sealed the deal.

A few chapters in, I'm already thinking I made the right choice. It actually starts much like a contemporary thriller, with a first-person protagonist waking up with amnesia in what appears to be a private clinic. His escape from confinement and initial moves to discover his identity by tracking down the sister that had him confined there could come right out of a (70s-era) Bourne movie, with only a few hints - like his prodigious strength - that something weirder is going on. Even after he finds his sister's set of custom Tarot cards covered in pictures of what he recognizes as his family in archaic dress, it might just all be part of a weird but ultimately mundane conspiracy.

But of course, it's not - by next week, I suspect, both Corwin and I will have a somewhat clearer picture of what it actually is.

Science Fiction & Fantasy Month - Finale

That's "Finale", not "Finally".

Speaking of Jules Verne . . .

The Hunt For The Meteor

Apparently known originally as The Chase of the Golden Meteor, this is not one of Verne's more well known stories. And I must say, I can understand why.

Possibly this is not entirely Verne's fault - according to Wikipedia, the version I read is a 'condensed' version, and the most egregiously awful part of the book (what kind of name for anyone, much less a French mad scientist, is "Zephyrin Xirdal", anyway?) seems to have been an invention of his son Michel Verne, who edited Meteor extensively after Jules Verne's death.

Still, even the best authors don't write a huge hit every time, and with this story there's not a lot to work from. It's basically about two rival astronomers, who simultaneously discover a new meteor. Their rivalry, always prickly, becomes much more serious when the meteor is discovered to be made of gold (!), and downright hostile when the aforementioned Zephyrin Xirdal invents a device that can reach into space and disturb the meteor's orbit . . .

While the slightly off-putting switch in focus from the astronomers to Xirdal can be blamed on the younger Verne's meddling, that's not the only odd thing about the book. There's also the opening and closing, which involves the marriage of a young adventurer couple (and yes, they get married in both the opening and the close of the story). Their presence seems completely superfluous - besides the fact that they randomly chose the feuding astronomers' town to get married in, they are completely separate from the rest of the story and could just as easily have been left out. Well, almost - they do show up at the meteor's landing site, and even almost interact with the main cast for a line or two, but I still don't understand their purpose in the narrative. Perhaps if Verne had lived to finish the novel they would have been better integrated.

But even that wouldn't have saved the book from feeling overly satiric and preachy. Now, it's not that I can't handle satire in my speculative fiction - I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchet's Discworld books, after all - but here, it just seemed forced. Maybe it's due to the novel's unfinished status, maybe Verne just wasn't a good satirist, I'm not sure.

I suppose perhaps the main thing to be learned from this book is that not every author's works-in-progress should be published posthumously. They can't all be Tolkien, after all.

The House of Many Worlds

My apologies to everyone who was really excited about seeing I, Robot in this space, but I found something even more interesting to read, at least to my mind.

The House of Many Worlds and its sequel, The Three Faces of Time, were written in the 1950s by Sam Merwin, Jr. They are, broadly speaking, alternate-history novels of the "Multiversal" variety. In The House of Many Worlds, the viewpoint character, poet journalist Elspeth Marriner, along with her fellow journalist Mack Fraser, are recruited by a mysterious Frenchman into a nameless organization that has the capacity to travel between parallel universes. They use this capability mostly for observation, although they also arrange for mutually beneficial technology transfers between different worlds. It is for one of the latter sorts of missions that our two heroes are recruited, visiting "Columbia" - a United States more autocratic than ours currently undergoing a new revolution - and arranging for them to learn internal combustion and shielding for their disintegration-beam weapons (this was the 50s, remember) from another US that's almost, but not quite, our own, in exchange for some space-flight tech.

The second book introduces the idea that various galactic processes may advance or delay a given Earth's historical starting point, thus allowing Elspeth and Mack to help defend a world in it's First Century A.D*. from one far in the future that is running low on resources. There was one part of this I would have done differently - despite that Earth's history apparently starting later, the Mt. Vesuvius eruption still takes place on schedule (and is in fact part of the climax). Wouldn't it be interesting, though, if history was the same as it really was - except that it started at a different time? Imagine if Vesuvius had gone off, say, in the middle of World War II, or if Mt. St. Helens had erupted in 1880 instead of 1980?

Nevertheless, although written more than half a century ago, this is still a pretty unique idea. I am aware of a few other takes on the subject, but Merwin's two books are among the earliest, and overall quite well done, too.

There's one other thing about these stories that deserves mention, and that's the treatment of race. In the first book, our heroine develops an attraction to the Columbian Field Marshall (which is to say, the Columbian Army's chief of staff) John Henry, an enormously important figure - who happens to be black. In a remarkably progressive scene for the fifties, another character cautions Elspeth - not because she was any problems with an inter-racial romance, but because "there are a number of worlds were color doesn't matter, but this is not one of them." A particularly refreshing attitude, especially in a genre that is often accused of racial insensitivity.

* A few variations are mentioned between the world of "Antique" and our historical First Century, most notably that contact and trade with ancient China is slightly greater. Of course, contact between Rome and China has since been discovered to be greater than previously thought . . .

Science Fiction & Fantasy Month - Dune

OK, so originally I intended to spread these out throughout the month, but you all know as well as I how busy it gets this time of year - maybe in 2011 Science Fiction & Fantasy History Month should be in August.

Anyway, without further ado:

Dune

As I tried to subtly indicate, the first book I decided to read for the month was Dune, by Frank Herbert. Although it's a pretty famous piece of literature, I started out knowing very little about it - basically, that it took place on a Desert Planet inhabited by giant worms.

LEGO Sandworm by RebelRock.

As I read the book, it was easy to see how it has influenced later fiction, from Star Wars and Tremors to Order of the Stick. In itself I found it a pretty enjoyable read, although "Far-future Pseudo-Medieval Space Opera" isn't exactly my most favorite genre. Actually, I found that what I would have called the "Science-Fiction" elements of the novel were overshadowed by the "Fantasy" aspects. The young noble, betrayed by a decadent aristocracy, escapes to a vast wilderness and wins the trust and leadership of the barbarian inhabitants by taming the local mega-fauna. If Paul Atreides hadn't arrived on Arrakis via spaceship it would basically be a weird hybrid of Tolkien, Howard, and Burroughs*.

Part of this, I think, is that over the years genre divisions have become much more rigid and plentiful. My "Far-future Pseudo-Medieval Space Opera" label was mostly in jest, but like most good satire (if you'll excuse my presumptuousness), there's an element of truth to it - just look at what TvTropes calls the PunkPunk phenomenon.

On the other hand, back when some of the earliest writers in the genre were working, both fantasy and science fiction fell under the more general term, "Speculative Fiction"**. Writers of what we now call "Horror" fit in there, too - some of H. P. Lovecraft's stories are all three, simultaneously. For that matter, though today they're considered the fathers of Science Fiction, H.G.Wells and Jules Verne's works can also bee seen as more like the techno-thriller writers of today, people like Clive Cussler and Michael Crichton.

Amusingly enough, my copy of Dune has a blurb on the back cover, wherein Arthur C. Clarke - yes, he of the famous law about magic and highly advanced technology - says of the novel that "I know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings". High praise indeed, and surprisingly, I kind of agree with him. I think the key similarity is that both Tolkien and Herbert developed highly intricate and well-thought-out backgrounds for their novels, which they then drew on to create a detailed, very realistic world in which to place their stories.

In the end, it was easy for me to see why Dune has the cultural place that it has. I certainly enjoyed reading it, though not enough to make me actively seek out the sequels (which I understand are kind of on the weird side). Someday I'll give it a second read-through, too, and see what kind of a difference that makes.

Probably not this year though.

*Actually, that's not a bad description of the book as it is.

**There are also some interesting variances in terminology to be found from back then - one of my favorites was scientifiction, which I suspect fell out of favor because of its unpronounceablity the first time through.

Making December Science Fiction And Fantasy History Month

"My dear friends, I am calling on you to help me start a movement. This December, let us take another step in further promoting one of our great loves---Science Fiction and Fantasy. Let us declare December to be SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY HISTORY MONTH.

What? Why does it have to be promoted? you ask. Aren't we inundated with it? Isn't there more genre in film and on television than ever? Isn't the fiction market dominated by genre?

Perhaps, but as lovers of the genre, we owe it to ourselves to promote quality work and to invite the young into our fold ,giving them a perspective and understanding of the traditions and tropes of our literary world. Consider the political and cultural influence of science fiction and fantasy, and how it has helped us vent our angst, voice our identity, and celebrate our optimism."

(from The House of Sternberg, via The Blog That Time Forgot )

Apparently inspired by the "Twilight invented werewolves" uproar* some time ago, author and blogger Stewart Sternberg has started a movement "to promote the work of the past which we feels best represents that which made science fiction and fantasy such an important part of our culture and identity." Well, being somewhat interested in those topics, how could I stay away?

Therefore, I spent a little time digging through my entirely-too-huge "books to read" pile, and came up with three titles I think qualify as culturally significant: Frank Herbert's Dune; Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, and Jules Verne's The Hunt for the Meteor. I have never read any of these before (though I did see the Will Smith movie of the same title, and am familiar with some of Verne's more popular works), and will be putting down my thoughts on each one as I get through them, hopefully by the end of the month. I'm open to suggestions as to which to do first, though I'm leaning towards one candidate in particular. Either way, it should be fun.



*Short version: a historically ignorant Twilight fan accused Universal Pictures of, firstly, plagiarizing from Stephanie Meyer by putting werewolves in The Wolf Man, and, secondly, disrespectfully making the werewolf the villain. The Internet's reaction was somewhat indignant.