Fantasy Trope What-Ifs

Peter S. Beagle, author of THE LAST UNICORN, has just released a fantasy novel titled I'M AFRAID YOU'VE GOT DRAGONS. What if dragons weren't huge, majestic, terrifying beasts, but household pests the size of small lizards (at least as far as the characters know to start with)? The protagonist doesn't hunt dragons with armor and sword; he cleans them out of walls by the dozens or hundreds like mice or cockroaches. Of course, what he and his friends know at the beginning of the story isn't the whole truth, and things soon get much more complicated.

Fairy tales, myths, and legends, having countless traditional variations anyway, lend themselves especially well to rewritings from different viewpoints, imaginative re-visionings, and "what ifs?"

Snow White returns to life from a deathlike state in a glass coffin. What if she were a vampire? In Tanith Lee's "Red as Blood" and Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples," she is. What if the allegedly wicked fairy in "Sleeping Beauty" had an excellent reason for keeping the princess in suspended animation? Read T. Kingfisher's novel THORNHEDGE to find out. There's also at least one pulp-era short story (I can't remember the title) that presents Sleeping Beauty as a vampire. What if Maleficent in the Disney SLEEPING BEAUTY animated film wasn't truly evil? They made a movie proposing that alternative themselves. The more we ponder the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, the less sense it makes. If he can create gold, why does he bother accepting bribes of jewelry from the heroine? Why does he want the baby? If he plans to eat it, couldn't he snatch random infants rather than going to all that trouble to get a queen's firstborn? How could he be careless enough to proclaim his secret name in song? The six stories in THE RUMPELSTILTSKIN PROBLEM, by Vivian Vande Velde, attempt to answer these questions in deviously inventive ways.

The characterization of the boy who doesn't grow up in James Barrie's original PETER PAN includes hints of darkness -- absent from the Disney adaptation, naturally -- that blatantly invite speculation and re-visioning. What if Peter had a complex agenda for bringing abandoned or abused children to Neverland? THE CHILD THIEF, by fantasy artist Brom, explores the shadowed forests of Neverland through the lens of such a motivation. What if Peter was outright evil, as in the TV series ONCE UPON A TIME, which deconstructs numerous other fairy tales as well? What if he returned to the mundane world, grew up, and forgot his magical past? In the movie HOOK, he does. What if he were transgender? In Austin Chant's heartrending YA novel PETER DARLING, Peter is Wendy or vice versa.

Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series, beginning with THE FAIRY GODMOTHER -- what if Cinderella became a Godmother instead of marrying a prince? -- rings a multitude of changes on familiar stories. Any fantasy author searching for plot ideas can find a bottomless treasure trove in traditional folk tales, as illustrated in the long-running anthology series edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, beginning with SNOW WHITE BLOOD RED, still available on Amazon.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Art Versus Life

A work of art (specifically, literature, including poetry such as song lyrics) does not necessarily reveal the life or personality of the artist. Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers didn't make a habit of committing murders. Stephen King has probably never met a vampire or an extradimensional shapeshifter, and although he incorporated his near-fatal traffic accident into the Dark Tower series, I doubt he actually encountered his gunslinger Roland in person. Robert Bloch, reputed to have said he had the heart of a small boy -- in a jar on his desk -- was one of the nicest people I ever met. As Mercedes Lackey has commented on Quora, she doesn't keep a herd of magical white horses in her yard. Despite the preface to THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, it seems very unlikely that C. S. Lewis actually intercepted a bundle of correspondence between two demons. And, as a vampire specialist, I could go on at length (but I won't) about the literary-critical tendency to analyze DRACULA as a source for secrets about Bram Stoker's alleged psychological hangups.

C. S. Lewis labeled the practice of trying to discover a writer's background, character, or beliefs from his or her work "the personal heresy." Elsewhere, writing about Milton, he cautioned against thinking we can find out how Milton "really" felt about his blindness by reading PARADISE LOST or any of his other poetry.

The Personal Heresy

An article by hip-hop musician Keven Liles cautions against analyzing songs in this way and condemning singers based on the contents of their music, with lyrics "being presented as literal confessions in courtrooms across America":

Art Is Not Evidence

Some musicians and other artists have been convicted of crimes on the basis of words or images in their works. Liles urges passage of a law to protect creators' First Amendment rights in this regard, with narrowly defined "common-sense" exceptions to be applied if there's concrete evidence of a direct, factual connection between a particular work and a specific criminal act.

This kind of confusion between art and life is why I'm deeply suspicious of child pornography laws that would criminalize the broad category of "depicting" children in sexual situations. A description or drawing/painting of an imaginary child in such a situation, however revolting it may be, does no direct real-world harm. Interpreted loosely or capriciously, that kind of law could be read to ban a novel such as LOLITA. Would you really trust a fanatical book-banner or over-zealous prosecutor or judge to discern that the repulsive first-person narrator is thoroughly unreliable and that his self-serving claims about his abusive relationship with a preteen girl are MEANT to be disbelieved?

Many moons ago, in the pre-internet era, a friend of mine who wasn't a regular consumer of speculative fiction read my chapbook of horror-themed verse, DAYMARES FROM THE CRYPT. To my suprise, she expressed sincere worry about me for having such images in my head. Not being a habitual reader of the genre, she didn't recognize that the majority of stuff in the poems consisted of very conventional, widely known horror tropes. Even the more personal pieces had been filtered through the "lens" of creativity (as Liles puts it in his essay) to transmute the raw material into artifacts, not autobiography.

In case you'd like to check out these supposedly disturbing verse effusions, DAYMARES FROM THE CRYPT -- updated with a few later poems -- is available in a Kindle edition for only 99 cents, with a cool cover by Karen Wiesner:

Daymares

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Dangerous Gifts

The solstice is upon us! There's hope that within a few weeks darkness will stop falling at 5 p.m. Happy winter holidays!

It might seem natural that if people with arcane psychic talents existed, they would dominate the ungifted majority, whether officially or not, overtly or subtly, gently or cruelly. They might constitute a ruling class like the laran-wielding aristocrats of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, an order of official problem-solvers like the Heralds of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar, or an autocratic clique like the sociopathic tyrants of the STAR TREK episode "Plato's Stepchildren." More often than not, however, far from holding exalted status, fictional possessors of such talents are regarded with ambiguity or hostility by their societies.

For example, the Slans in A. E. Van Vogt's classic 1946 novel face relentless persecution because of their powers. Fictional vampires surely inspire deeper horror than many other imaginary monsters because of the hypnotic mind control that renders their victims helpless and even unwilling to resist. Zenna Henderson's People, refugees from a distant planet living secretly on Earth, although benign, are often confronted with suspicion or fear when ordinary earthlings discover their powers. In the Sime-Gen series by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Jean Lorrah, Gens regard the much less numerous Simes with terror not only because they drain life-energy but because they're suspected of occult abilities such as mind-reading.

Historical romance author Mary Jo Putney recently published the first novel in a new series called "Dangerous Gifts." In this book's slightly altered version of Regency England, psychic powers are known to exist but often viewed negatively. The hero lives happily among a circle of people who share similar gifts, and he works for the Home Office using his abilities for the good of his country. As a child, though, he was brutally rejected by his father because of his wild talents. At the beginning of the story, the gifted heroine is being held prisoner by villains who keep her mind clouded as they plot to use her powers for their nefarious goals. Putney has also written a YA series about an alternate-world Britain where magic is considered a lower-class pursuit, a shameful defect if it shows up in a noble family. The magically endowed heroine's upper-class parents send her to an exclusive but very strict academy that exists to train gifted young people to suppress their powers.

In fiction, miracle workers in general often inspire fear and revulsion rather than awe. Consider Mike, the "Martian" in Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE land. In real life, too, such people sometimes meet violent ends.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Ideal Writing Day

The e-mail list for authors of one of my publishers had a fun discussion thread last week: What would your ideal writing day be like?

I envy the kind of writing day some of those apparently prolific, enthusiastic authors envision. I don't think I've ever experienced an ideal writing day. I'm a very slow, laborious writer, and when I have an uninterrupted day to myself, I'm the sort of person who will suddenly find a usually tedious household chore of compelling interest.

However, on a good day I typically plan two stretches of writing time, a short one in the morning and a longer period in the afternoon. On an ideal day, each of those would last longer than it does in real life. Also, I would start the afternoon writing session earlier instead of falling into the trap of waiting until late afternoon when everything else is done -- because everything never gets done. As a book on housekeeping I own points out, you will never "get it all done" because it is infinite (that is, unlike most "real jobs" one gets paid for, its limits are undefined). So writing time has to be defined and adhered to if one wants to produce words on a consistent basis. If I didn't have the distractions of a house to keep up, a dog to take care of, and a spouse to feed (simple breakfasts and dinners on weekdays), my ideal writing schedule would comprise a couple of hours each in the morning and the afternoon. Without dawdling, each of those time spans would produce at least 500 words.

Marion Zimmer Bradley used to say writing was the perfect job for a stay-at-home houseperson because it can be dropped and picked up for brief stretches of work anytime during the day. My reaction was "speak for yourself, bestselling author." :) In recent years, however, I've gotten better at using those fifteen-minute blocks. Several hundred words can be churned out in that amount of time, if one doesn't let one's mind wander. Preliminary outlining definitely helps in that respect.

Along that line, Mercedes Lackey has stated several times in her Quora posts that if a writer can dash off 500 words of a blog post in a few minutes, he or she should be able to produce a similar volume of words on a story or novel in the same amount of time. But, darn it, nonfiction is much easier to create than readable fiction. Or maybe I feel that way because I spent so many years mainly in academic writing.

Caffeine and/or alcohol (in moderation) can help the words flow. Of course, they'd need editing later, but so does everything to some extent. However, indulging in those substances as writing aids on a regular basis would eventually become routine and therefore undermine their effectiveness as a stimulus.

What does your ideal writing day look like?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Reviews 66 The Collegium Chronicles Novels of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

Reviews 66

The Collegium Chronicles

Novels of Valdemar

by

Mercedes Lackey

Reviews haven't (yet) been indexed.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B005V220K0

For staying power in publishing, Mercedes Lackey is to be admired. It is very hard to grab and audience and keep their attention as they grow up, and then have them present your novels to their teenage children.

That has happened with my novels, so I know what a thrill it is when a "next generation" (and even a next after that) reader turns up on Facebook recommending a series to their friends.

Lackey has not only pulled that generational trick off, but has also grabbed the fans of other writers. In fact, I was introduced to Lackey's work by fans of my books, and yes, there is a resonance.

I find Lackey's style and substance entirely luminous and easy to read - easy to sink into the story - easy to like (or dislike) the Characters, and I always pick them up again if I have to put them down.

So I can understand how our fans overlap. 

The Collegium Chronicles are focused on young people just deciding on a direction in life, and starting to implement it. They are taking inventory of their talents, adding skills, training, reaching to be the best they can be. And these particular young people are positioned at the center of government of a large, prosperous Kingdom.

That Kingdom has an heir-apparent getting married and starting life -- right next to the Collegium characters.

Most of the fans of the Valdemar novels are not so centrally placed in affairs of State, or the Economy, or the spy game.  I expect we, the readers, are mostly content not to be embroiled in the spy game, or life-threatening action.  Being the target of assassins is not how we really want to live.

However, I just took a walk around my neighborhood -- suburban, single family homes, quiet HOA style place. And there was a forensic unit parked outside a neighbor's house dusting their car for prints.  I'd never seen or heard of anything like that in this neighborhood but adjacent ones have had car break-ins.

Today all of us, everywhere, resonate to the symphony of emotions being a Target Of Assassins evokes.

Mercedes Lackey nails that pea-soup of conflicting feelings in Book Three and Book Four of the Collegium Chronicles.

Her main characters have just been through having a barn burned down, potential riots, and being kidnapped and rescued -- ending off Book Three, Changes, with potential assassins still on the loose and enemy countries brewing trouble.

Book Four, (of Four) Redoubt, starts with a Royal Wedding filling the Collegium and the adjacent Palace Grounds with people (hopefully trustworthy), and the main Talented characters who are still just students filling the roles of adults of their future professions.

The main viewpoint Character, Mags, a Herald Trainee is known as a Hero because he rescued the kidnap victim and he's the "Harry Potter" of the field ballgame popular at the Collegium (where magic is taught and disciplined.)  He is secretly being trained as a spy, and has scored some promotions there, too.  

By the middle of Redoubt, another couple who have been hot for each other get married -- to solve some family-politics problems as much as because they want to build a life together.

The main Character, Mags, likewise has a love-interest but hasn't gotten serious enough by the middle of Book 4.

So Lackey is telling the story of how Relationships, generation after generation, shape the macro-political landscape within which we live.  That is pretty much what Sime~Gen is about -- how us hapless, no-account, individuals just hammering away at our personal and problematic lives, do shape and direct the course of History -- often in ways we will not live to learn about.

The thematic question is, "Do your Talents, Powers, or just abilities, determine your place in the scheme of things?  Or does your place in the scheme of things evoke the Power within you, your "super-power" should you choose to use it?

Are Heroes born? Made? Or some combination of the two with other variables amidst circumstances?

How much of what we accomplish in life is a matter of our own, personal, choice?  Is there such a thing as Luck? Or do you make your own Luck?  If so, what rules do you follow to craft an amenable sort of Luck for yourself and your family?  

Lackey's main character in the Collegium Chronicles, Mags, is an orphan raised as a slave in a Mining operation.  He escaped (yes, you must read the earlier novels in the Collegium Chronicles) or was rescued (or both, depending how you look at it) and was discovered. He had an advantage (a Companion -- horse-like sentient telepath), but he has re-imagined himself.

In Redoubt, Mags is beginning to re-craft his identity by conquering his (wildly illiterate) accent, and taking some pride in his appearance.

Like Harry Potter, Mags goes from the bottom rung of the disregarded kid to "fame and glory" climbing up each rung of the ladder by dint of ever strengthening Will. 

Mags hones his problem solving ability and judgement in fluid situations filled with deadly enemies, and becomes a more formidable adult with each triumph.  

In Redoubt, Mags already knows the difference between Lust and Love -- and is aware he feels Lust that is not Love (yet).  I think the reader sees deeper into Mags than Mags, himself, does, and I think the girl has made up his mind for him. But that's just Lackey's smooth writing. 

He's not the King, so it doesn't seem the good of the Kingdom depends on his choice of bride -- but the master theme of the Chronicles seems to be that family matters, Relationships shape society, economy, and politics over many generations. Who you marry matters.

That's a theme dear to my heart. Love Conquers All.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Ownership of Ideas

Volume 31, Issue 1 of the JOURNAL OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE ARTS includes an article by Dennis Wilson Wise on the literary development of EPVIDS (evil, possessed, vampire, demonic swords). He begins with the trope's modern origins in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Poul Anderson, who borrowed motifs from Finnish and Norse legends, which in turn share common roots. Wise then analyzes the uses of sentient, demonic swords by Michael Moorcock and other more recent sword-and-sorcery authors. The article fascinatingly highlights how the different writers incorporated the same archetypal concept into their fictional worlds in their own individual ways.

Editor John Campbell is said to have sometimes proposed the same plot or theme to several different contributors at once. Each writer would come up with a unique story, unlike any of the others. There are no completely "original" fiction ideas. Robert Heinlein claimed that only three basic plots exist. Space for creative "originality" lies in the execution of the idea.

I know of at least two anthologies based on filk songs that illustrate this principle. The fantasy anthology LAMMAS NIGHT, edited by Josepha Sherman, comprises a variety of stories based on Mercedes Lackey's song of that title. The volume begins with the lyrics of the song, followed by Lackey's own conversion of the poem into a prose narrative. The rest of the stories develop the premise in many different directions. CARMEN MIRANDA'S GHOST IS HAUNTING SPACE STATION THREE, edited by Don Sakers, plays a similar game with a Leslie Fish song. Long ago, I read an anthology weaving variations on the plot of "The Highwayman," the classic poem by Alfred Noyes (unfortunately, I don't remember the book's title).

Vivian Vande Velde's single-author collection THE RUMPELSTILTSKIN PROBLEM explores six different angles on the traditional fairy tale, offering explanations for the details that don't seem to make sense. (For example, if the little man can spin straw into gold, why would he care about getting the heroine's ring and necklace as rewards?) And other authors have created their own versions of Rumpelstiltskin, such as Naomi Novik in SPINNING SILVER. Among countless re-imaginings of "Beauty and the Beast," Robin McKinley wrote two, and Mercedes Lackey has published three.

These works demonstrate a truth Lackey repeats over and over on Quora, in answer to questions from naive aspiring authors: "You cannot copyright an idea."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

RavenCon

Last weekend I attended RavenCon in Williamsburg, Virginia, with my husband and youngest son. This was our first experience of that convention:

RavenCon

Weather was excellent. The location gave us special pleasure because we graduated from the College of William and Mary (as a married couple with small children, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth). On Friday night we had dinner at the historic King's Arms Tavern, one of our favorite places.

The guests of honor were Mercedes Lackey and her husband, author/artist Larry Dixon. Since Lackey is one of my favorite authors, and I'd never seen her in person before, this was a great thrill for me. Unfortunately, she had a bad cold. Friday night she introduced herself with, "I will be your disease vector for this weekend." However, she seemed to have recovered a bit by Saturday. I watched her appearance on a panel about using mythology in fantasy fiction, her author reading session, and an interview of her and her husband. The latter event included, among other topics, much discussion of wild bird rehab, which I found fascinating, and car racing, which I must admit left me rather cold.

I participated in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading—ten authors with a four-minute slot each—in which I read an action sequence from the recently re-published fantasy romance LEGACY OF MAGIC by my husband (Leslie Roy Carter) and me. It wasn't a very big gathering, but chocolate was provided. For an hour I sat at the Horror Writers Association Virginia chapter's table and sold one copy of my Lovecraft-themed paranormal romance, SEALING THE DARK PORTAL.

Among other panels, I listened to discussions of world-building, "writing about horrible things," female heroes in contemporary media, the TV series SUPERGIRL, and looking "beyond the binary gaze" to consider people who don't fall into the typical masculine-feminine dichotomy, whether straight or gay. I also saw the second hour of a very detailed presentation, with slides, on what happens to dead bodies. The part I attended covered embalming, funeral, and cremation procedures. Saturday night featured a lively costume contest hosted by a stand-up-comedy pair of men. The half-time show (while waiting for the judges' verdicts) starred a singer of romantic-Gothic style music. Around twenty entrants appeared in the masquerade, I think. The youngest was a toddler dressed as a baby kraken on a leash held by his mother, costumed as a pirate. The winning multi-person presentation showcased the "Food Group Fairies," consisting of such personae as the bacon group and the cheese snack group. Best in show, a zombie nurse (from a series I'm not familiar with) brandishing a knife and garbed all in white aside from a blood spot over one eye on her white-shrouded face, was truly creepy. She moved in a weirdly jerky undead manner that produced a deeply uncanny effect.

We'll probably go to this con again, especially since it's only an easy half-day's drive from home (my approximate cut-off time for willingness to drive anywhere).

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt