{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3179", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3179, "subject": "Star vampires ate my hamster!", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-04-19T23:08:15+00:00", "last": "2002-04-20T15:31:04+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nigel Price", "address": "nigel.a.price at virgin.net" }, "date": "2002-04-19T23:08:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Star vampires ate my hamster!", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I too followed Jerry's link to the Google discussion group earlier this\nweek, though the main source of my surprise when I got there was that I\nactually recognised the names of one or two of the contributors to the\ndiscussion as members of our very own dear Urth list. Goodness, it was\nalmost as if they were real people, with independent lives outside the\nconfines of these virtual pages! Surely not?\n\nAnyway, despite the superurthly presence of these various lupine literary\nluminaries, I couldn't see myself wanting to join such a disjointed and\nvariegated discussion. It seemed to go all over the place. Quite unlike our\nown purposeful and focused deliberations.\n\nAhem.\n\nConcerning the vehemently adverse response expressed by some of the\ncontributors to the Google discussion: it's a sobering reminder of some of\nthe reasons why Wolfe remains a minority taste. He is difficult and\ndemanding, and most people want easy and diverting. (I think that someone\naround here recently wrote very cogently about this topic in some sort of\nAmerican newspaper.) But the question of Wolfe's choice of subject matter\nshould not be overlooked. We all agree that he is a brilliant author, but I\ndistinctly remember being put off by the title of \"The Shadow of the\nTorturer\" when someone first recommended it to me. I expected something\nviolent and sordid (though I suppose, actually, that Severian is somewhat\nviolent and certainly sworded), and was astonished by the beauty of the\nnarrative when I did, finally, consent to give it a try. Some readers,\nthough, will not get as far as I did, and will just be put off - full stop.\n\nBut it will be a problem for many of those who do go on to read him that\nWolfe deliberately, perversely and persistently fills his narratives with\nwhat are, in their rawest and most basic forms, the cliched plots and tropes\nof the cheesiest of pulp SF and tawdry, trashy fantasy.\n\nYou want space vampires? Go to the Short Sun series! You want bondage love\naffair with imprisoned girl in torture chamber? Go to the New Sun books! You\nwant BIG sublight spaceship, going wrong like they all do because it has\nbeen in space so long? Go to the Long Sun series! Lowly orphan boy ends up\nbeing king? Yep! Hero goes on big spaceship to strange alien world and has\nexciting sex with beautiful alien girl? Hero goes off in boat and makes\nfriends with intelligent animal and has exciting sex with beautiful\none-armed mermaid? Handsome young priest meets buxom hooker with a heart of\ngold? (Well, meets buxom hooker, anyway.) Yes, yes, yes!\n\nPut like that, Wolfe might be supposed to have written some of the trashiest\nstories of the last 40 years, and perhaps that is all that some readers can\nsee.\n\nNow, I would argue, of course, that Wolfe turns all this basest metal into\nthe purest gold but it's worth considering why he is so prone to using this\nraw material in the first place.\n\nI don't really know the full answer, because he can and does come up with a\nvariety of splendidly original ideas at times, but here are some possible -\npartial - explanations.\n\nFirst, then, there is an element of nostalgia. Wolfe has spoken of his\nboyhood love of pulp SF and of surreptitiously reading the SF magazines\nwhile hidden behind a counter or a display in the drug store. He transfers\nthis aspect of his own character and experience to Tackie (Tackman Babcock),\nthe boy at the centre of \"The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories\". He\nlikes this stuff, and regards it as central and perhaps canonical to what\nscience fiction is all about.\n\nSecond, perhaps, though, is the element of challenge. The sheer difficulty\nof transforming this dross into literature seems to appeal to Wolfe. He\nwrites, or rewrites, cod SF but makes it fresh and new, vibrant and\ninfinitely subtle. He takes what he liked in childhood, and while staying\ntrue to himself and loyal to his favourite literature, reworks it so that it\ntoo becomes mature and fully adult. Yes, there are sex and violence in\nWolfe's stories, but his characters also experience remorse, regret, sorrow,\nkindness, wonder, love, loss and a whole spectrum of other emotions\nconsequent on their actions.\n\nA third explanation may lie somewhere in Tackie's strange experiences, as he\nseeks escape in lurid adventure fantasy only to find the substance of his\nfantasy insinuating itself into the everyday reality of his life. Partly\nit's day-dreaming, partly it's interpreting reality through the symbolic\nlanguage learned from SF and fantasy (something we perhaps see again in the\nOz-derived visions experienced by Little Tib, the juvenile lead in \"The\nEyeflash Miracles\"). But could it be too that, for Wolfe, the cliches of\npopular literature disguise or contain underlying, archetypal experiences?\nLife can, after all, be lurid. Life can be frightening. It can imitate art\nin all sorts of unexpected ways, and in telling what are essentially tales\nof wonder, it is hardly surprising that Wolfe will draw on sensational\nmotifs to weave into his stories.\n\nIn the case of the books in the Urth Cycle (or whatever it is we're going to\nend up calling the New-Long-Short Sun series), there is also some sort of\ndeliberate typology going on. I've banged on about this too often before, I\nknow (see \"Reverse Typology and the Inverse Alchemy of Time\" in Urth 26 for\nexample), but when we suddenly find ourselves on the set of the Universal\nStudios' production of \"Frankenstein\" at the end of TSotL, complete with mad\nscientist in castle, monstrous experiments in practical anatomy, and irate\nvillagers with torches, Wolfe has Dr Talos claim that it's not a cliche\ninherited from the past at all. No, on the contrary, the horrors of Urth's\ndying days are the real thing, and all the horror film cliches of previous\nages merely the premonitions.\n\n\t\"The castle? The monster? The man of learning?\n\tI only just thought of it. Surely you know that\n\tjust as the momentous events of the past cast\n\ttheir shadows down the ages, so now, when the\n\tsun is drawing toward the dark, our own shadows\n\trace into the past to trouble mankind's dreams.\"\n\t\t(The Sword of the Lictor, Chapter XXXV,\n\t\t\"The Signal\", p277 in the Arrow paperback\n\t\tedition)\n\nAh, shadows yet again!\n\nHave ever tired cliches sounded so fresh as when refashioned by the lupine\nmaster? Or lurid motifs achieved greater resonance and significance?\n\nI don't claim to answered all the problems surrounding, for example, Wolfe's\nportrayal of women or his recurrent depiction of sexual violence, but here\nare some thoughts anyway!\n\nNigel" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-04-20T15:31:04+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Star vampires ate my hamster!", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nigel,\n I think you have 1/2 of the reason Wolfe uses this old SF tropes \n(that he grew up with it and has some nostalgia for it). The other is what \nhe himself has said: that these are also the old tropes of traditional \npre-modern literature. All premodern literature, he insists, is fantasy \nliterature. The lurid stuff you mentioned is also in the Odyssey, the \nKalevala, Bulfinch's *Mythology,* etc.; though of course not in the SF form.\n\nNutria" } ] } ] }