{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6723", "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": 6723, "subject": "Short Story 178*: Calamity Warps", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2015-04-22T14:00:40+00:00", "last": "2015-04-22T14:00:40+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2015-04-22T14:00:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 178*: Calamity Warps", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " CALAMITY WARPS\n\n\n “Calamity Warps” first appeared in *Realms of Fantasy* in 2003 and is\ncollected in *Starwater Strains.*\n\n\n SUMMARY\n\n\n The story begins, “Calamity Jane is our dog, and she warps through space.\nI suppose I should say space-time, though that implies a level of expertise\nI haven't actually got.” The neighbor, Bob Smith, agrees that she is a very\nfast dog.\n\nAfter the death of his previous dog, a cairn terrier, the narrator's wife\nwants a new one, to which the narrator reluctantly agrees if she gets it\nherself. Calamity Jane is procured through Save-A-Pet for the price of\nshots. Her breed is indeterminate, but “if you dropped her in a pack of\ncoyotes the coyotes would roll out the welcome mat, and brag afterward\nabout their new member.” She has wolf like ears and at times resembles a\nBelgian shepherd, and responds to the narrator with tolerant hostility.\n\nHe comments that at first he though her warping was just extreme speed, and\nthat she simply appears “without ever having gotten there”. Deer will not\neat the rosebushes when Calamity is near. He also describes her chase of a\nrabbit, which at first frustrates her with its superior agility and sharp\nturns. Eventually, Calamity catches the rabbit by simply running through a\nturn without actually turning and losing momentum, as if she had continued\nrunning in a straight line and poked a hole through space. The narrator\npraises the dog against his better judgment, and in an aside asks, “What\nwould you have done” Would you want a dog like Calamity mad at you?\n\nHe relates that the people at Save-A-Pet had named her Calamity Jane,\nsupposedly because of her tendency to get in things she shouldn't be in,\nbut the narrator suspects that she brings even greater calamity. After\nthis, he tries to chain her, but she warps out of it easily, then she\nbegins bringing strange things home, such as a Japanese ID and money, an\nodd polished bone stick with bark-like skin, and a wounded pink furry\ninvertebrate like nothing else the narrator had ever seen.\n\nSoon she even brings a giant four armed shadow and a weapon that seems at\ntimes like a sword, an axe, a bat with a nail in it, and even a machine\ngun. When he shows his neighbor, she responds that it is terrible, but is\nalso somehow beautiful. The narrator loses his own shadow, and the four\narmed, helmed one clings to him. He attempts to avoid notice, but when the\nlights go out at work one day, people scream at the shadow's stark\nappearance. When he holds the sword, he notes that the shadow holds it in\nthree hands and it feels “about like a broom handle” to him, though it is\n37 pounds.\n\nHe concludes by saying, “Now it's started talking to me at night. Is that\nwhat they call runes” It whispers late at night when I'm in bed, and that's\nwhy I'm telling you this now.\n\n\n COMMENTARY\n\nWolfe's love of dogs extends to his earliest childhood, and he has\nregularly had at least one dog throughout the majority of his adult life.\nWhile his own name has definitely led him to experiment with both lupine\nand canine symbols, this affection for them occasionally overcomes the need\nfor misdirection and subtlety and creates a tribute almost free of irony\n(which is something, alas, many of his human characters almost personify).\nOf this story, Gene has said:\n\n\n When I sent “Calamity Warps” to Kathe Koja, she said it seemed very\nautobiographical. Which in a way it was. Calamity Jane was really\nRosemary's dog, and I never liked her as much as I should have. She was a\nbetter dog than I deserved; let's leave it like that. And fast! Why, when\nshe was young -- well, you wouldn't believe me. For the first three or four\nyears she was determined to learn Human and used to practice her language\nlessons when she and I were alone in the house and I wasn't looking.\nCalamity could give you the creeps.\n\n\n Given that, despite Gene's affection for dogs, he is capable of preferring\nsome to others definitely shows us that his overall lack of affection for\nCalamity Jane and her general weirdness had an impact on him and his tone\nfor this story. (Calamity Jane was obviously named after the famous\nAmerican frontierswoman active in the wild west in the late 19th century,\nbut her name here is more important for its association with “calamity”).\nThis particular dog does not receive the same treatment as the noble\nTriskele, who becomes a symbol of selfless devotion in *The Book of the New\nSun.*\n\n\n More importantly for this story, it seems that there are definite Viking\nand Norse significations to the four armed shadow and the mysterious weapon\nwhich seems an ax, a sword, and a bat with a nail in it which is described\nas both “terrible” and “beautiful”. The shadow, with its horns, as well as\nthe runes, all resonate with Norse culture and myth. While the four armed\nshadow certainly echoes Burroughs Barsoom books and the warlike, four armed\nMartian cultures that John Carter finds there in his own astral jaunts\nthrough space, I think Calamity Jane is actually a harbinger of the final\nbattle so central to Norse myth. The Cerberus-like hound Garmr in the\nPoetic Eddas escapes his bonds to precipitate Ragnarok and the end of time\n(just as Calamity escapes her chains easily) and humanity is thus\ndescribed:\n\n\n\n Brothers will fight and kill each other, sisters' children will defile\nkinship. It is harsh in the world, whoredom rife “an axe age, a sword\nage ?shields\nare riven” a wind age, a wolf age? before the world goes headlong. No man\nwill have mercy on another (Dronke 19).\nThere are runes carved on Odin's spear, Gungnir, but the spear does not\nresemble the weapon Wolfe describes, though Odin usually has a horned helm.\nOther famous swords in Norse myth include Sigmund's Gram, but the weapon in\nWolfe's story seems to be more like an amalgamation of destructiveness\nrather than any specific weapon. Its terrible beauty and the way that it\nfeels light to him and has even begun to whisper to the narrator at night\nindicates that he is being changed by it, and Calamity has succeeded in\nsetting in motion a great and terrible force.\nThe idea of a bound dog is reiterated several times in Norse myth, most\nnotably in the Fenris Wolf, a child of Loki. He was bound by the duplicity\nof the gods, who offered him Tyr's hand as a gesture of their good faith\nuntil he could be bound in Gleipner. A sword was also used to prop open his\nmouth, to aid in binding him until Ragnarok could begin — and it is this\nwolf which shall at last slay Odin when the final battles are fought. While\nthe Norse gods are not normally portrayed with four arms, there is a lack\nof humanity in many of the jotnar, or giants, who hold a similar place in\nNorse myths to the Titans in Greek myth, being formed of primeval matter\nand at war with the younger gods or Aesir. The jotnar are monstrous at\ntimes, and the fire jotnar will also have a role in Ragnarok.\nOnce again, Wolfe's blending of science fiction, biographical information,\nand myth creates a story that also shows another aspect of his world view\nthat is really not commented upon in light of its absence from his larger\nseries. The pink fluffy invertebrate grounds the later mythic shadow in an\nostensibly science fictional tale, but the majority of the resonance strays\nfrom realistic mimesis and comes closer to fantasy. Underneath the veneer\nof ordinary appearances, there is a sinister shadow of mythic import. While\nthis doesn't make Wolfe's universe that of paranoid dread and sublime fear\n(as one might describe Lovecraft's horror), it also serves to highlight the\ndualism for which Wolfe is famous. Ordinary people doing ordinary things\ncast a shadow tempered by myth and spirituality, and there is a looming\nsignificance to this. Every day, in the mind and in the heart, something of\na high stakes battle between poorly understood forces comes into play, some\ngood, some evil, and some a complicated, hidden impulse — in this case, to\ndestruction and armageddon.\n UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n Are there any particular gods or science fiction characters that the\nshadow most resembles? While there are superficial similarities to\nBurroughs Barsoom books in the use of astral warping and four armed\nschematics, the runes and the whispering weapon (which seems somehow to be\nall weapons and is very light for our narrator) creates an effect of\nimpending calamity and battle in a particularly Norse vein.\n CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS\n The ordinary hiding a shadowy underbelly of mythic stature is nothing new\nin Wolfe, and is especially prominent in “real world” stories which\neventually violate the laws of reality such as “Houston, 1943”, the\nArimaspian tales, or “A Fish Story.” The heavy influence of Norse myth is\nquite clear in *The Wizard Knight,* and the use of dogs is especially\nprevalent in Wolfe's fiction, such as “Rattler” or “The Dog of the Drops.”\n RESOURCES\n\n Dronke, Ursula. *The Poetic Edda Volume II: Mythological Poems*. Oxford:\nClarendon/Oxford University, 1997." } ] } ] }