Portal Fantasies

If you stepped through a portal into a magical realm and had to choose whether to stay there permanently or live permanently in this world with no chance of revisiting the other one, what would you do?

Doubtless the choice would depend on the nature of that other realm and your happiness or unhappiness in this one, plus the presence or absence of vital relationships in your current life. Seanan McGuire's "Wayward Children" series, so far comprising EVERY HEART A DOORWAY, DOWN AMONG THE STICKS AND BONES, BENEATH THE SUGAR SKY, and IN AN ABSENT DREAM, centers on a boarding school for children and teenagers (mostly the latter) who have returned to mundane reality after living in other worlds. EVERY HEART A DOORWAY takes place at the school, founded and run by a woman who visited such a realm in her own childhood, and the subsequent novels tell the stories of various individual students. Their parents think the facility is an institution for "troubled" youth, but in fact it's a refuge for those who no longer feel at home in this world and yearn to go back to their true "homes." Only in this place can they speak the truth of their experiences without being considered mentally ill. Whether wardrobe, looking glass, rabbit hole, cyclone, enchanted picture, or whatever, most portals open only once. Some travelers find their doors again, but that happens rarely. For those who make the transit multiple times, such as the protagonist of IN AN ABSENT DREAM, there's always a final trip. The heroine of that novel faces a deadline; by the time she turns eighteen, she must make an irrevocable choice.

Of course, this premise inevitably brings Narnia to mind. The characters in EVERY HEART A DOORWAY discuss that series at one point, remarking on how the children get to visit Narnia several times, through a different portal on each occasion. One of the characters says C. S. Lewis didn't know what he was talking about; he might have heard rumors about children traveling to other worlds and just decided to develop the concept for his own narrative purposes. "That's what authors do, they make [stuff] up." In THE LAST BATTLE, all the "Friends of Narnia" get to stay there at last—except for Susan, who has managed to convince herself that their adventures were only games they'd played in childhood. (In one of his letters, Lewis says Susan may have eventually gotten back to Narnia in her own way.) Visitors to Narnia, however, don't control when they go there and return to Earth; they cross between universes by the will of Aslan. Even in THE SILVER CHAIR, when Eustace and Jill ask to be taken to Narnia, Aslan says they wouldn't have called on him unless he'd first been calling them.

In THE LIGHT BETWEEN WORLDS, by Laura E. Weymouth, three children are transported from their backyard bomb shelter in World War II to an enchanted country ruled by a lordly stag. As in Lewis's stories (and unlike in most of the alternate worlds mentioned in McGuire's series), the characters return home at the moment they left, so their parents never know they were gone. Several years later, in the postwar period, one girl remains obsessed with getting back to the magical realm, while her sister simply wants to move on with her ordinary life.

Claire, the heroine of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, faces a similar dilemma, in her case dealing with time travel rather than cross-dimensional travel. When she finds herself pregnant just before the battle of Culloden, she chooses to return to the twentieth century and her first husband for the unborn baby's sake. Twenty years later, when her circumstances have changed, she ultimately decides to return permanently to the eighteenth century and the love of her life in that era. Her first trip through the stone circle happens by accident, while the other two result from her own choices.

If I had the chance to visit Narnia during one of its peaceful periods and meet Aslan, I would, but only for a visit, not to stay. On the other hand, if I'd been offered such an opportunity between the ages of about eight and sixteen, I would have joyfully leaped at it and remained in the magical realm permanently. From my own experience and what I've read, it's not uncommon for a young fan of fantasy and/or SF to have a strong feeling that "there must be a place where I belong, but it's not here." Indeed, that's probably an important factor in making us fans in the first place.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

An Author's Obligation to Readers?

With the TV series GAME OF THRONES having outrun the books on which it's based, there have been speculations that George R. R. Martin may never finish the "Song of Ice and Fire" multi-volume epic. On the other hand, in July 1917 Martin assured the public that he's actively working on WINDS OF WINTER, which might even be released sometime in 2018. (We've heard that sort of claim before, haven't we? :) ) I'm reminded of Neil Gaiman's well-known blog post admonishing fans that George Martin does not work for us:

Entitlement Issues

Gaiman maintains that writing the first book in a series does not constitute a "contract" on the part of the author to write sequels, much less finish the series. He justifiably points out that writers, even bestselling ones, aren't "machines" and have a right to private lives. And I have to concede that readers aren't "entitled" to any and all books they want to read. Still, I don't completely agree with Gaiman's position.

I'm not talking about open-ended series—for example, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover universe and most detective series. These could in theory go on forever, if the author were immortal or, as with Bradley, Tom Clancy, and many others, bequeathed his or her fictional universe to literary heirs. A series like this doesn't tell a single, unified narrative building toward a conclusion without which it would be incomplete. (It's worth mentioning, however, that in her prime Agatha Christie thoughtfully wrote "final case" novels for both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, to be published after Christie's death.) Works along the line of Stephen King's Dark Tower epic, Gabaldon's Outlander series, and, yes, "A Song of Ice and Fire" do fit the second pattern.

Not that I condone harassing an author about not writing fast enough. Some fans apparently complained when Diana Gabaldon published novellas and novels in the Outlander spinoff series featuring Lord John Grey, on the grounds that she should have been working on the next mainline Outlander book instead! Gabaldon patiently explained that her process doesn't function that way, and the Lord John stories had no effect on the progress of the "big novels." I do believe, however, that when an author starts a series that comprises a unified story, he or she makes an implicit promise to finish the story. A multi-volume narrative, in that sense, is no different in principle from the serialized novels popular in the nineteenth century. While public nagging and angry demands are unacceptable, there's nothing wrong with what we might call "reasonable expectations."

Speaking of which, while I don't begrudge J. K. Rowling THE CASUAL VACANCY and the mystery novels, what happened to that Harry Potter encyclopedia she as good as promised us? She even forced a fan project to shut down because she intended to produce such a guide. All we've gotten, so far, is Pottermore, a flashy website that delivers world and character background material in sporadic chunks and seems more geared to interactivity than information. No, writers don't work for readers, but we can legitimately feel disappointed when we get "teased" with promised books that never materialize. While Gabaldon (for example) goes a long time between release dates of her "big novels," she transparently keeps readers updated about the current work in progress to forestall cries of "when will it be out?"

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Changelings

I've just read THE HIDDEN PEOPLE, by Alison Littlewood, a richly textured and deeply disturbing novel about fairy changelings—maybe. We never quite find out for certain whether fairies exist, since the story is told in first person by a troubled, confused narrator. The protagonist, a young Victorian gentleman, travels to rural Yorkshire to investigate his cousin's murder by her husband on the grounds that she'd been stolen by the Hidden People and replaced by a duplicate. Although disdainful of the villagers' superstitious beliefs, the narrator gradually gets drawn in, until he begins to think his own wife might be inexplicably changing. This novel was inspired by the real-life case of Bridget Cleary, whose husband burned her to death as a suspected changeling in an Irish village in 1895. Angela Bourke's THE BURNING OF BRIDGET CLEARY tells the full story.

I've long been fascinated by the concept of changelings, probably because they embody one of my favorite themes, "fish out of water." Of course, we most often think of them as babies switched soon after birth, rather than adults. Folklore speculates that fairies take human infants because their own bloodlines have run thin so that they don't bear children very often or they give birth to sickly infants. A baby not yet christened faces particular danger and should be protected by charms and cold iron. If a child appears to have been replaced by a fairy doppelganger, a variety of "cures" can be used to force the "good folk" to take back the replacement and return the "real" child. If less drastic methods don't work, one last resort is to hold the changeling over the fire—the remedy inflicted on Bridget Cleary in real life and Lizzie in THE HIDDEN PEOPLE.

Some other recommended fiction on this topic: Maurice Sendak's haunting picture book OUTSIDE OVER THERE has the same plot premise as the movie LABYRINTH: A girl, impatient with taking care of her baby brother, wishes he would disappear. The fairies or goblins steal him, and she goes on a quest to save him. In Delia Sherman's YA novel CHANGELING (and sequels), the heroine, Neef, has grown up in "New York Between," a parallel version of the city inhabited by elves, mermaids, demons, and other mythological creatures. She knows she's a human changeling and is happy with her status—until she breaks fairy law and risks becoming a sacrifice to the Wild Hunt. Kaye, the protagonist of Holly Black's much darker TITHE (and sequels), is the opposite of Neef. Although Kaye has interacted with fairies all her life, she has no idea she's one herself, a changeling left in place of a human baby.

In pre-scientific eras, the changeling belief offered a potentially comforting explanation for babies who were born weak or deformed, looked healthy at birth but turned sickly soon afterward, refused to eat and failed to thrive, or suffered from then-unidentified conditions such as autism. If such a "changeling" reverted to "normal," the magical remedies must have worked. If the baby died, parents could cling to the belief that a changeling had died and their own child was living happily with the fairies. As for young women, who might be whisked away to the faerie realm to infuse fresh blood into the elven race, a wife who suddenly became "querulous," "unnatural," or "shrewish" could be accused of having been replaced by a changeling. An ingenious pretext for husbands intent on controlling their wives' speech and behavior!

Like witchcraft persecutions, changeling beliefs could have been used as a means of social control. Diana Gabaldon combines the two superstitions in OUTLANDER, when one of the charges in Claire's trial for witchcraft (resulting from a rival's scheme to get rid of her) accuses her of involvement in the death of an alleged changeling infant left out for the fairies to reclaim.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

SONGS OF LOVE & DEATH: Cover Art

The cover art is in for the much-anticipated anthology edited by the illustrious team of George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. This anthology represents a mixture of SFF and Romance authors, with contributions as follows:

"Love Hurts" by Jim Butcher
"The Marrying Maid" by Jo Beverly
"Rooftops" by Carrie Vaughn
"Hurt Me" by M.L.N. Hanover
"Demon Lover" by Cecelia Holland
"The Wayfarer's Advice" by Melinda M. Snodgrass
"Blue Boots" by Robin Hobb
"The Thing About Cassandra" by Neil Gaiman
"After the Blood" by Marjorie M. Liu
"You and You Alone" by Jacqueline Carey
"His Wolf" by Lisa Tuttle
"Courting Trouble" by Linnea Sinclair
"The Demon Dancer" by Mary Jo Putney
"Under/Above the Water" by Tanith Lee
"Kashkia" by Peter S. Beagle
"Man in the Mirror" by Yasmine Galenorn
"A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows" by Diana Gabaldon

Release date is November 16, 2010. The official Simon & Schuster page is here and you can pre-order from Borders here.

I had a terrific time writing for the project, which more than one site has noted as "ground-breaking." Those who know my writing will find "Courting Trouble" very much in the realm of my Finders Keepers in tone and tempo. I've not been able to read other offerings so I can't comment as to their storylines but the list of authors alone is fantastic. I feel blessed (and more than a tad intimidated) to be in such august company!

~Linnea

REBELS AND LOVERS, March 2010: Book 4 in the Dock Five Universe, from Bantam Books and Linnea Sinclair—www.linneasinclair.com

Her mind screamed no. Her body and heart considered what was right and rational, and pushed those all away. She held his gaze for a moment longer than was prudent. “Let me get a beer.”