Joe Hill: A Worthy Legacy

Well, I’ve talked about television for 2 of the past 3 weeks.  Let’s talk about literature for a bit.

For a while now, all the books I’ve consumed have been audiobooks.  I have a long drive to work, and it helps me keep up with all the reading I want to do.  So pretty much any newer author that I’ve been interested in checking out have been via audiobook.  One such author is Joe Hill.

Hill is actually Joseph Hillstrom King, middle child of the pinnacle of my pentagram of literary idols, Stephen King.  Although he is not the only one of the three to write novels, he is the only one to really carry forward his father’s style and traditions, and he writes large, sprawling, character-driven pieces with supernatural cores that seem to all take place in a shared universe.  While I’ll admit that I initially checked out Hill’s novels simply on the basis of his parentage, I was soon hooked on his talent.  He’s similar enough to his father that, if you’re a fan (as I am), you’ll almost certainly enjoy his writing, but not so similar that you feel like the work is a retread.  I just finished Strange Weather, which means I’ve read most of his work thus far, and I thought I’d share a bit of my perspective on them, both as novels and as audiobooks.

I’ve mostly listened to them in order of publication, which means I started with Heart-Shaped Box, which is where I first realized that here was a talent to rival my 5 literary idols.¹  HSB is about the washed-up ex-singer of a heavy metal band, and it was where I started to appreciate the depth of Hill’s worlds, as so many things that at first seemed casually tossed out just for background all came together at the end, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place at the last minute.  The audiobook is read by Stephen Lang, the gravelly-voiced actor who you may think of as the “bad guy” from Avatar, but I will probably always see him as the wheelchair-bound Waldo from Into the Badlands, or maybe as the terrifying blind man who is the “victim” in Don’t Breathe.  It’s a perfect voice for this whiskey-soaked tale.

Next up was Horns, which was read by Fred Berman (a voice actor mainly known for a bunch of videogames I’ve never played).  It was also later turned into a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, which I also highly recommend.  It lacks some of the depth of the novel, of course, but it’s not a bad adaption, and Radcliffe does a pretty damn good job playing Iggy Perrish, a character who spoke to me even more than those in Heart-Shaped Box.  Even better, Horns has one of those insane plots that sounds like it’s going to be completely ridiculous when you first hear it, but then becomes amazing as you start to delve into it.  I could easily see how Hill got his start in comics, because this is a comic book story if there ever was one, although still with the layers and layers of character development that you expect from a novel of this nature.  Plus it has some interesting things to say about human nature and the nature of secrets.

And then we come to NOS4A2.  See, Heart-Shaped Box was very good, and Horns was super-fun, but this book, beautifully rendered by Kate Mulgrew,² is finally the classic you knew had to be coming.  It’s sprawling, and bounces around in time and folds back in on itself, and deals with childhood and memory and the nature of evil.  The characters are amazing and so real you swear you’ve met them before.  The action is gripping and sucks you in completely—describing it as “edge of your seat” or a “thrillride” would be cliché ... but not entirely inaccurate.  It’s too rich and detailed to make a good movie out of, but perhaps the upcoming AMC series—starring a nearly-unrecognizable Zachary Quinto—will do it justice.

As I mentioned above, I just finished Strange Weather, which I suppose is Hill’s version of Different Seasons.³  As with his father’s work, this one is a set of 4 novellas loosely tied together thematically via weather, especially clouds.⁴  In the audibook version, each is read by a separate narrator, and they really have very little to do with each other, so let’s treat them as 4 separate books.

Snapshot is very good, and quite interesting; it’s read by Wil Wheaton, who I’ve gushed over before in the context of audiobook reader.  This was an excellent choice, and the novella is well worth it.

Loaded, on the other hand, is one of those dreary affairs where you know perfectly well what the author was going for, and why things had to happen as they did, but that doesn’t make you enjoy it any more.  The reader is once again Stephen Lang, and once again it’s an inspired choice, but it doesn’t really save the story in my opinion.  This is also the only one of Hill’s works, at least of the ones I’m familiar with, that has zero supernatural elements at all in it,⁵ so perhaps I’m biased.

Aloft is a bit of a weird one for me: while the characters felt very real to me, and the backstory was detailed and extensive, the plot itself felt a little light ... not much “there” there, if you catch my drift.  This alone of the novellas felt like it really should have been part of a larger work.  The reader is Dennis Boutsikaris, who you probably know from many things: ER, or *batteries not included, or, more recently, a recurring role on Better Call Saul.  He was fine, although I didn’t find him as perfect a choice as nearly all the other readers.

Finally, Rain is the clear winner.  Audiobook-wise, there’s another amazing performance from Kate Mulgrew, the characters are all insane and yet familiar, such as you might expect to find on a show like Twin Peaks or Northern Exposure, and the story is interesting, somehow inevitable and yet surprising at the same time, and the relevance to our current political situation is spot-on.  Highly recommended.

In fact, they’re all recommended, to one degree or another.  I also have The Fireman, the only other novel, already in my audiobook collection and ready to go.⁶  Which only leaves us with Locke & Key, his series of graphic novels,⁷ and 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of short stories, and I think that’s almost his entire output thus far.  But I have to say, I’m mightily impressed with Joe Hill at this point in his career, and I’m sure that’s only going to improve over time.  I’m not quite sure I’m ready to expand my pentagram of literary idols to a hexagram, but, who knows?  Maybe someday I will.  Maybe even someday soon.

__________

1 If you don’t recall, they are: Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, and Neil Gaiman (in order of my discovery of them).
2 Whom you may think of as either Captain Janeway from Voyager or Red from Orange Is the New Black: your choice.
3 Or perhaps Four Past Midnight, although I think stylistically/thematically Different Seasons is a closer analogue.
4 Although it’s closer to clouds of smoke in Loaded.
5 If we take “supernatural” to mean “beyond what we currently accept as reality.”  If you think science fiction is entirely separate from “supernatural,” then there’s a few that fall into that bucket.
6 Another Kate Mulgrew reading.  Apparently Hill really digs her.  Which I totally understand.
7 Also soon to be a series, this one on Netflix.

Gaming the Grey

A recent article on EN World got me pondering the contrast of black-and-white vs gray in modern fantasy.  Because the author (Lew Pulsipher) seems to me to be spot on in many ways ... but also slightly off in some ways.

Now, obviously my position is going to be highly influenced by my philosophy of balance and paradox: surely here is a custom-tailored debate for my outlook.  Obviously I must be on the side of gray, right?

But not so fast.  Recall what I said quite early in my inaugural Baladocian post:

But what I mean when I speak about “the Baladox” is that I believe in balance and paradox.  Not just that I believe that they exist, but that I believe everything in life is ruled by those two principles.  That the world is not black and white, but that sometimes it is gray, and sometimes it is both black and white and the same time.  And, recursively, sometimes it’s sort of halfway between gray and both black and white at the same time, and then sometimes it’s black and white and gray, all at once.

Now, that may sound sort of hand-wave-y, but it actually applies quite nicely in this situation.  What the author (and nearly all the commenters, for that matter) are trying to do is divide the world of fantasy (and/or fantasy roleplaying) up into either black-and-white—where the bad guys are inarguably evil and the good guys are purely good—or gray—where everyone is a little bit good and a little bit evil, and the “bad” guys are just those who lean more to one side than the other, or perhaps it’s even up for debate whether anyone is a bad guy at all.  But the problem with this is that entire argument is a stark dichotomy which doesn’t track with the actual reality.  Look at the simple examples that everyone there is using: the Lord of the Rings vs Game of Thrones.  Lord of the Rings is obviously black-and-white, with Sauron representing ultimate evil and the only good orc being a dead orc.  Whereas Game of Thrones is obviously gray, with the Kingslayer being both a oathbreaker and murderer, and also the savior of an entire city, and where it’s easy to root for “bad” people like Tyrion or the Hound, and far more difficult to get behind “good” people like Stannis or Robert Baratheon.  Except that there’s a big problem with this analysis: it completely ignores the Night King, who is no less purely evil than Sauron, and the political situations of Gondor (including the madness of Denethor) and Rohan (with the machinations of Wormtongue).  Hell, even Saruman, who does some pretty awful things in the Lord of the Rings, is not completely evil.  There is plenty of gray in the Lord of the Rings, and plenty of black-and-white in Game of Thrones.

Which is not to say that these two examples don’t lean pretty hard toward one extreme or the other.  There’s no denying that the the gray is pretty much background material in the Lord of the Rings, and the black-and-white is just there to shake up the gray and keep it interesting in Game of Thrones.  So on the one hand you could claim that I’m merely quibbling over matters of degree.  But I think it goes deeper than that.  I think that humans, with their inherent need to simplify things, wish that they were faced with a stark, either/or choice in this area.  But the fact is, we’re not.  Like everything else in life, the choice between black-and-white or gray is not between two poles, but rather a spectrum.  You can hew close to one end or the other, or you can stick closer to the middle.  It’s entirely up to you.

But I think this debate is oversimplified in another dimension.  Because we’re very specifically talking about fantasy here.  There are other types of literature out there, and we needn’t make the same choice for every genre.  Sometime I feel like people want fantasy (including some offshoots, such as horror or superhero stories) to conform to the level of gray shading that we’re seeing in modern dramas such as House of Cards or Breaking Bad or Sons of Anarchy.  There’s been a tendency in this area to take antiheroes to new heights.  And, personally, I like it—I’ve enjoyed all three of the examples I just gave.  But a drama set in modern times is very different from a fantasy.  For me, there’s nothing wrong with choosing shades of gray for one genre, but preferring a bit more black-and-white for others.

And fantasy (in addition to horror and superhero literature) is one area where there’s a distinct advantage to black-and-white.  A story in which good and evil are clearly delineated leaves no ambiguity about who to root for, and no question about whether the protagonists have “won” at the end.  If the evil was defeated, that’s a victory.  If not, then hopefully there’s a sequel in the works, because otherwise it’s a bit of a bummer.  And, again, there’s nothing wrong with a good tragedy, especially in a modern setting.  I shan’t give any direct spoilers for Breaking Bad, but let’s just say that the conclusion of that story was positively Shakespearean.  And I loved it.  But that’s just not what I want out of fantasy.  I want the good guys to win in the end: I’m willing to wait a while for that to happen—three movies or so is about right, but I’ll settle in for the long haul of seven books, if the story’s compelling enough—but, in the end, dammit, the good guys need to win.  Is that realistic?  No, of course it isn’t.  It’s FANTASY.  It’s not supposed to be realistic.  When I want realism, I’ll watch something realistic.  Or science fiction, perhaps: I’m way more tolerant for shades of gray and tragedic outcomes in sci-fi.  But fantasy needs to feed my need for a world where the bad guys are easy to identify and the good guys are destined to win.  Otherwise I could just stay in the real world.

Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy Game of Thrones, because I do.  I like the show more than the books (blasphemy, I know), because the books are even more tediously, drearily gray, but even the show can get on my nerves sometimes.  “Stop freaking fighting each other, you idiots,” I will often say to the screen.  “Listen to Jon Snow.  He’s the only one with any brains.  White walkers are coming to munch on your brains.  Morons.” I have a similar love/hate relationship with The Magicians (I’ve watched the first two seasons of the show, and am about three-quarters of the way through the first book).  It’s obvious that somebody read Harry Potter and said, man, these kids have way too little sex to be teenagers, and then promptly went off to write their own version.  And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing at all: by being a direct contrast to Rowling, Grossman not only provides a completely different take on the vagaries of a magical eduction, but is able to pose many really interesting and profound questions.  For instance, in the book especially (and to a lesser extent in the series), the characters wrestle quite often with boredom: if you can provide all your basic needs with the flick of a wand, then what do you actually do all day?  It is, in many ways, a meditation on the contrast between those who have to work hard just to feed themselves and those who are wealthy enough to afford leisure time, and then what happens if you have nothing but leisure time.  So there are definitely intriguing aspects.  But sometimes I find my mind wandering, or I simply throw up my hands, because there’s never any clear concept of who the real enemy is (or, rather, it’s more that, whenever you think you know who the enemy is, you later find out you were wrong ... mostly).  To me, this stumbling around, never able to figure out exactly who the bad guys are, is just not that entertaining in a fantasy setting.  In other settings, okay.  But, to me, fantasy is different.

So, whether we’re talking about books, or movies and television, or roleplaying games, I think the question of black-and-white vs gray is a false choice.  In reality, you will end up with both; it’s just a question of which one you will choose to emphasize more than the others.  Now, in a roleplaying context, I’ve already done an entire post on choosing a playstyle and, not surprisingly, two of the options were Lord-of-the-Rings-style and Game-of-Thrones-style.  (The third choice was Conan-style, which is sort of a variation on black-and-white, where the “good guys” are defined as “you,” and the “bad guys” are defined as “anyone who gets in your way.”)  As a GM, I pointed out that it’s important to get your players on the same page; personally, I prefer to let everyone vote on what style they prefer, preferably with lots of discussion.  But, as a player, I’m always going to vote for Lord-of-the-Rings-style.  I love the epic quest, with clear goals and crystal clarity on who the ultimate bad guys are.  A little bit of murkiness on the lower-level baddies can be fun—I love a chance to figure out how to turn the #2 “bad” guy and make them a good guy double-agent—but up at the top, I want Sauron, I want Voldemort, I want the White Witch, I want the Dark One, I want the Night King, I want Lord Foul, I want the Wicked Witch of the West and the Red Queen and Captain Hook.  You can tell me about the tortured childhoods of these fiends all you want, but I will only be listening with half an ear.  These are the Big Bads, the faces of ultimate evil, the pullers of strings and wielders of dark energies.  These are the people whose defeat is worthy of an epic quest, and that’s what I’m in it for.

So, whether as participant (as in fantasy roleplaying) or merely audience (as in fantasy literature or cinema), I like to see my good and evil clearly accentuated in a fantasy context.  Throw me a little gray here and there, but mostly black-and-white.  Fantasy is one of the few genres that can support that sort of dichotomy, divorced as it is from what we see in the real world, so I say: take advantage of that.  Keep the heroes valiant and the villains despicable and we’ll all get along just fine.

A Worthy Successor?

I’m currently listening to the third book in the Iron Druid Chronicles via audiobook.  While checking out what Wikipedia had to say about the book, I ran across this quote:

In their review of Hammered, SFFWorld said that “Hearne and Atticus could be the logical heir to Butcher and Dresden.”

Now, I’ve talked before about my enthusiasm for the Dresden Files (twice, even).  So obviously I’m keen to evaluate anything that might live up to that standard.  Does the Iron Druid fit the bill?  Well, the short answer is, it’s in the same vein, and it shows some promise, but (at least so far) it’s still a significant step behind.

First of all, of course, one must ask if Butcher and Dresden need an heir: the series is still ongoing.  I’m not exactly desperate for something to fill a void, seeing as the void doesn’t yet exist.  And secondly, we have to recognize that Dresden is pretty much the top of that game.  Something can fail to meet the excellence set by Butcher and still be pretty damn good.  It’s somewhat like comparing (say) Artemis Fowl to Harry Potter.  There’s no doubt that Colfer has written a damn fine set of books, and they’re interesting, engaging, and immersive.  I highly recommend them.  But, as good as Rowling’s masterpiece?  Let’s be reasonable here.

It’s also instructive to compare and contrast.  Dresden is classic urban fantasy, meaning that it’s like the best supernatural fantasy combined with the best detective noir.  The Iron Druid takes a small sidestep; it’s still urban fantasy, surely (although Tempe Arizona is never going to be mistaken for a major modern metropolis), but Atticus owes nothing to Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe.  While there are definite callbacks to Butcher, I actually see more similiarties to Gaiman—American Gods in particular.  And, since that’s Gaiman’s masterwork, that’s a pretty high compliment.  And, while there’s a strong comparison to be made, it isn’t just a cheesy rip-off either.  It’s an interesting take on the concept, exploring different avenues than Gaiman did.  (Although, to be fair, that’s a particularly large neighborhood, so Hearne and Gaiman and several other authors besides could all wander around in there for a few odd decades without needing to do more than cross each other’s paths occasionally.)

Iron Druid retains the general shape of urban fantasy—the vampires and werewolves are present, but slightly backgrounded, and the other legends and monsters are focused on for variety—but by mining the mythological vein that Gaiman struck with Gods (and, to a lesser extent, Anansi Boys), Hearne opens his story to epic quests such as those of Ulysses, Gilgamesh, or Bran.  The latter of whom is the most relevant, of course, since Celtic mythology is the source of the druids in the first place.  So it’s going in a slightly different direction than Dresden.

Additionally, Atticus is a very different man than Harry.  Atticus is over 2,000 years old, first of all, which puts him in a whole different category of wisdom and experience.  He remains surprisingly relatable (and modern) for all that, which sometimes works to the disadvantage of the story, as it can make him harder to swallow than Harry, who’s just an ordinary joe who happens to have some magical powers.  Atticus has very different goals than Harry as well, hiding from supernaturals as well as mortals, whereas Harry practices his magic openly.  And when Atticus goes into full-on diplomacy mode, mainly to deal with beings more powerful than himself, you definitely feel that Harry would be hard-pressed to match it.

On the other hand, both have a homebody streak, and seem constantly surprised and a bit annoyed that trouble keeps finding them, sort of reminiscent of Dante’s cry of “I’m not even supposed to be here today!”  And both have more than a dash of what I described previously as “insouciance,” although dictionary.com uses a definition that doesn’t capture all that I mean when I use the term.  What I mean is an irreverance—almost to the point of being ridiculous—in the face of serious, even life-threatening, situations.  Last time I talked about it, I specifically drew a parallel to Shawn from Psych (who completely removes the “almost” from that definition); if Shawn is at one end of a spectrum of what I’m calling “insouciance” and Harry is in the middle, Atticus is on the far side of Harry ... but not by that much.  So there are certainly parallels in characterization as well as genre.

And in overall story arc: in the first two Iron Druid books, just as in the first two (or so) Dresden Files books, there’s nothing much serious going on.  Just a typical sort of “monster-of-the-week” type plot.  Then, in the third book (pretty much the same time as in Dresden), things are starting to get more serious and world-shaking quest-y.  Although I have to say that the Iron Druid books feel more “fluffy” than the Dresden Files, and thus far I’m having a hard time taking the serious as seriously.  But perhaps that will improve if I stick with it.

I will give Hearne one leg-up over Butcher, though: as awesomely cool as Mouse is, Atticus’ Irish wolfhound Oberon is an amazing character.  Maybe it’s just the way Luke Daniels reads him in the audiobook versions, but I suspect Hearne’s writing deserves most of the credit.  Although I can’t recall if it’s specifically stated in the books, Oberon is most likely older and more experienced than a normal dog, and Atticus has taught him to speak English.  As a result, Oberon has a unique voice, a bizarre combination of canine wisdom and doggie innocence.  One moment he’s making insightful comments on the nature of mortality; the next, he’s begging for sausages.  Here’s a typical quote—in response to Atticus’ query about which movie Oberon would like to watch while he’s gone:

I think The Boondock Saints, because the Irish guys win.  Plus the cat ends badly.  It affirms my worldview and I feel validated.

So Oberon is damned entertaining whenever he shows up, and maybe even just a bit more fun than the conversations Harry has with Bob the skull.  But I would say that’s the only area where Atticus can edge out Harry, and even then it’s not by much.

Still, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some value to the Iron Druid Chronicles.  If you’ve caught up on all your Dresden and you’re looking for something else to fill some time, you could do far worse than this.  Particularly if you’re looking for an audiobook series—Luke Daniels is a great reader and does a fantastic job with bringing the books to life.  My only complaint is that they’re pretty short compared to a lot of the audiobooks I listen to, so I blast through them much too fast.  But they’re enjoyable, and I’m glad I discovered them.

The Sop of Originality

Quick, which band is the originator of grunge music?

I bet most of you—something on the order of 97 to 99% of you, in fact—replied “Nirvana.”  Which is a lovely answer: their radio anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is what introduced grunge music to the world.  I can remember the first time I heard it: it was Industrial Night at the Roxy, in downtown DC, in 1991.  I won’t go so far as to say it changed my life—I was already very much into alternative music, otherwise why would I have been attending Industrial Night?—but it certainly jolted my system.  I had no idea it was about to take the airwaves (and, shortly thereafter, the nation) by storm, but I knew this was something ... special.  Something profound.  It’s 22 years later now and I’m still listening to new songs from the Foo Fighters coming on the radio: that’s a decent run for any modern band and its descendants.  It doesn’t rival the Beatles or the Stones, but it’s a damn fine run, and it ain’t over yet.

But of course Nirvana didn’t invent grunge music.  The first incarnation of Nirvana came together in 1985 or ‘86.  Soundgarden had already been around for at least a year, as had Green River, who begat Mother Love Bone, who begat Perl Jam.  Green River’s roots, in fact, go back as far as 1980, and the roots of the Melvins go back to 1983, at least, and they together spawned Mudhoney, who is certainly the best Seattle grunge band you’ve never heard of, hands down.

And Seattle is the birthplace of grunge, right?  Here’s what Kurt Cobain said about writing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to Rolling Stone:

I was trying to write the ultimate pop song.  I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies.  I have to admit it.  When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band.  We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.

And the Pixies, you see, were from Boston, whose grunge scene is underrated nearly to the point of being unknown, even though it included great (but little-known) bands like the Pixies, Buffalo Tom, and of course Dinosaur Jr., who formed in 1983 and not only wrote what is arguably the best grunge quatrain ever:

I know I don’t thrill you
Sometimes I think I’ll kill you
Just don’t let me fuck up, will you
‘Cause when I need a friend it’s still you

but also what is surely the greatest remake ever.

But what is the point here?  (Other than to re-educate you on the finer points of grunge music, naturally.)  I think the point is that some Nirvana fans may be offended by my pointing out they didn’t invent grunge, they merely popularized it. As if that somehow takes away from their genius.  Am I saying that Nirvana is just a rip-off of the Pixies?  No, Kurt Cobain said that.  I think I’m saying that originality is overrated.  It’s held up as some sort of sacred cow, and, if a thing isn’t original, it’s therefore inferior.  But Nirvana is not inferior to the Pixies ... I’m not saying they’re better, merely that they’re not any worse.  Coming in second or third or fifth or tenth in the chronological list of grunge bands doesn’t make them any less insanely good than they truly are.  Everyone had done what they did before, but no one ever did it like they did, before or after.  Why do we care if they were first or not?

We can move into the wider world of music.  Can there be a Lady Gaga without Madonna?  No, not really.  Does that make Lady Gaga a “Madonna rip-off”?  Certainly not in the pejoritive way that the phrase is generally used.

We’ll expand to movies.  Can Dark City exist without Metropolis?  No, certainly not.  Hell, I’m not sure Dark City could exist without The City of Lost Children, but that doesn’t make Dark City any less brilliant.  Hell, I’ve heard it argued that The Matrix doesn’t exist without Dark City (although their releases are close enough together that it’s more likely a pair than a rip-off), but that doesn’t take anything away from The Matrix either.

Comic books: I’ve always loved Moon Knight.  Moon Knight is a rich guy who fights at night with a mysterious, scary costume and uses a lot of gadgets ... sound familiar?  Yeah, Moon Knight is pretty much a Batman rip-off.  So what?  How does that make him any less cool?

Literature: I’ve already talked about how I feel about the Wheel of Time series being accused of being a Lord of the Rings rip-off.  I’ve also heard it accused of being a Song of Ice and Fire (a.k.a. Game of Thrones) rip-off, which is amusing, since the first book of Wheel of Time was published before George R. R. Martin even started writing the first book of Song of Ice and Fire.  But let’s say you’re willing to flip it around and accuse Martin of ripping off Jordan instead: I still say, so what?  If it were true that Martin deliberately and consciously sat down and said “I’m going to rewrite Wheel of Time, only better” (and I truly don’t believe he did), who cares?  What Martin produced is still awesome.  You could argue whether it’s better than Jordan or not, but, in the end, it’s different, and they’re both very good.  They could have been ripping each other constantly throughout the respective series (which, although it’s true that Jordan started first, were being published simultaneously), and I would only be grateful for the cross-pollination.  It’s not like whoever got there first gets more points or something.

In my discussion about the Wheel of Time question, I made another analogy: Harry Potter being described as a rip-off of James and the Giant Peach.  I chose it for a number of deliberate reasons.  The most obvious being that James and the Giant Peach was published 4 years before J. K. Rowling was even born, so it completely eliminates any question of whose idea came first.  Also because I don’t think it’s a criticism that’s ever actually been made; rather it seems to be the case that any series which is even remotely like Harry Potter is proclaimed to be a rip-off of it: A Series of Unfortuante Events, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Artemis Fowl, the Bartimaeus trilogy, the Septimus Heap series, Children of the Red King, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, The Wednesday Tales, etc etc ad infinitum.  But of course the one that concerns me is the one that I’m currently engaged in writing (assuming I ever get back to it), Johnny Hellebore.

So this question of originality hits home for me, and I must admit I have an ulterior motive.  It only occurred to me after Johnny Hellebore was completely fleshed out as a character that he shares a lot of similarites to Harry Potter, especially physically.  He’s a white, English-speaking, male, teenaged boy, thin, with black hair and eyes that are some shade of green.  The differences, particularly at this level are so slight as to be laughable: American instead of British, a bit older, eyes more blue-green than Harry’s piercing green.  They’re both parentless, although Johnny isn’t an orphan, and one might even go so far as to make a comparison between Larissa and Hermione (although I feel that’s unflattering to Hermione, really).  The farther along you go, of course, the more you have to struggle for the similarites against the profound differences instead of the other way around, but by that point you’ve established your foundation, and your audience is more likely to grant you the benefit of the doubt.  And, while I’m telling you that all of this only occurred to me after the fact, you only have my word for that, no?

For that matter, while I can assure you that I was not consciously trying to “rip off” Harry Potter, how can I make any definitive statements about what my subconscious may or may not have been up to?  I certainly had read the Harry Potter books—several times—as well as listened to the audiobooks and watched all the movies.  And I respect the hell of out J. K. Rowling: she’s a dead brilliant author with an envy-inpsiring talent for both characterization and plotting that I certainly could do worse than to emulate.  So was Harry kicking around in the back of my brain, casting an influence on this idea?  I’m sure he must have been.

Still, Johnny Hellebore is an entirely different story than Harry Potter.  One is aimed at younger readers, though it’s good enough that older readers will appreciate it as well; the other is aimed at older readers, and, though younger readers may certainly appreciate it, it requires a much higher maturity level.  One focuses on a sense of wonder and a fierce joy that only slowly becomes eclipsed by the darker themes of the series; the other is dark from the very first page, and it’s the joy and wonder that serve as the counterpoint.  One is a story of a boy growing into a man; the other is a story of a boy who is in many ways a man already, but who exists in a state of being “stuck”—not necessarily stuck in childhood, but just in a deep a rut in his life, which is a state that all of us experience, at many different points in our lives.  One was very likely influenced by Roald Dahl; the other is more likely influenced by Stephen King.

Still, the comparisons will inevitably be made, and, on one level, I find it flattering.  As I say, Rowling is a brilliant author and even to be mentioned in the same sentence as her is quite nice.  Still, one doesn’t want to be thought of as a rip-off, right?  But then that got me wondering ... why not?

It seems to me that we’ve somehow elevated originality into some Holy Grail.  Everything has to be original.  Except ... nothing is original.  At this point in human history, everything can be said to be derived from, descended from, influenced by, or in the vein of, something else that we’ve seen or heard or read before.  There’s just so much out there ... how could you not sound familiar, even if only by accident?

So, I say, let’s set aside originality.  Can we not rather ask—should we not rather ask—it is good?  Who cares whether it’s original or not, as long as it’s valuable, inspirational, emotionally involving, socially relevant, philosophically touching, mentally engaging ... does it speak to you?  If it does, then doesn’t it deserve to be evaluated on its own merits?  I think it does.  I’ll take my Nevermind and my Doolittle, thank you very much.  They’re both pretty damn rockin’.

A Cento for a Sunday

When I was in college, I took a Shakespeare class where we had to do a group project.  For our group’s project, one of my fellow students suggested that we put on a short skit, talking about the plays, but using the Bard’s own words.  We carefully culled bits and pieces of dialogue from the plays, put it in the mouths of our characters, and, by putting exisitng things into new context, we created new meaning.  I was fascinated by this process and have occasionally found myself doing it for other occasions.  One of my best friends asked me to do a reading at his wedding, of anything I liked, and I cobbled together several different quotes on love and fashioned a complete speech out of it.  It was generally well-received.

I’ve also tried my hand at creating poems like this.  It turns out that poetry created thus actually has a name: it’s a cento.  I’ve done a few over the years (despite the fact that poetry isn’t truly my forté), but none of them were particularly good.  Today, I give you a new cento that I “composed,” which I think is better than my previous efforts, although perhaps still not great.  The lines (or in some cases half-lines) here are mostly quotes from other poems, books, songs, or movies, although some are old things other people have recycled before me.  Most are quotes that appealed to me and ended up in my quote file, but a few I had to hunt down specifically to fit parts of the “narrative.”  All I personally added were a few connecting words here and there, and the first half of the title, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything (contrast with the second half, which is rather deliberately chosen not only to offset the first half euphoniously, but for its meaning in its own source).

I thought of listing all the sources here, but I’ve decided against it, mostly because it’s more fun to let you discover them on your own.  I’m pretty sure that judicious Googling will turn them all up, so I don’t worry that the original authors will fail to be attributed.

Consider this a first draft and be kind to it.  It’s new, and doesn’t much know what it’s saying yet.

Cobblestone Fray, Cottleston Pie

Once upon a time, when we all lived in the woods,
on a dark and stormy night,
all of the animals are capably murderous—
still, you may get there by candle-light.

You got devils living in that head,
watching the whites of your eyes turn red
by the pricking of my thumbs.
Where’er we tread ‘tis haunted holy ground,
like someone trying not to make a sound.
At sunrise, there is the sound of drums ...

It’s all sex and death as far as I can tell,
drinking the blood-red wine.
Fear is the mind-killer; blood is compulsory.
And I’ve made an enemy of time.

No less liquid than their shadows, speaking with the speech of men,
Satan must be our cousin, and does his crossword with a pen.
What noisy cats are we,
with the perils of being in 3-D,
and why the sea is boiling hot?  He’s won a lot of friends ...

There’s no such thing as the real world, but
there’s a hell of a good universe next door.
Little things are infinitely the most important.
Respite and nepenthe: to die, to sleep no more.

We’re all alive for a reason.
People need good lies.
Thou wast not born for death, but
when you stop dreaming, it’s time to die.

I recommend pleasant, but we’re all mad here.
I am the king of the cats!
Dance like nobody’s watching,
cry, ain’t no shame in it,
and that is the end of that.

Grokking the Wheel of Time

I’ve talked before about my affection for Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series—even mentioning that I named one of my children after one of its characters.  There are 15 books in the series, which I’ve always felt break up into a quadralogy of trilogies (despite the fact that the math on that really doesn’t work, but we’ll get to that in a second).  So it’s a very long series, both in page count (nearly 12,000 pages), and in terms of years of waiting for the series to be completed (nearly 23 years).  I personally have been reading it (off and on, obviously) for about 40% of my life, rereading the older books when the newer ones come out, poring through the online encyclopedia, listening to the audiobooks on long commutes, even fashioning a role-playing campaign around it once.

So it’s been a pretty big part of my life.  And the series is finally finished: the final volume came out at the beginning of this year.  The Wheel of Time outlives Jordan himself, but thankfully his extensive notes were passed on for completion to a new author, Brandon Sanderson, who was hand-picked by Jordan’s widow.  For some reason, after Jordan’s death, I took a break, and I haven’t read any of the Sanderson books (i.e. the final three in the series).  But, now that they’re all complete and I can finally see how it all comes out, I’m anxious to get through them.  After some consideration, I decided to start at the beginning and read straight through until the end.  But not with the paperbacks, although I own nearly all of them.  Nope, I decided to go audiobook for all the Jordan books (they’d all be rereads anyway, and in many cases several-times-over-rereads), then switch to e-book for the Sanderson volumes (so I can pay closer attention to the ones I’ve not read before).  As of writing this sentence, I’m about 3 hours away from finishing Knife of Dreams, the last Jordan book.  I’ll be starting on the first Sanderson book, The Gathering Storm, within the week.

It should go without saying at this point that I’m a fan.  Although that’s not to say that I recommend the books unconditionally: they do have flaws, and I’m keenly aware of them.  I’ve already talked about Jodran’s tendency to stifle his characters.  Also, Jordan never met a subplot he didn’t like: when he started off book #10 (that is, page 7,382 of the series, not even considering the prequel) by introducing a new character perspective, someone we’d heard of before but never seen in the flesh, in a country which none of the characters which could possibly be considered main characters had likely ever even visited ... well, that’s when I knew he had a problem.  No, Mr. Jordan^* was not a perfect author ... but then who is?

There are also criticisms of Jordan that I disagree with.  One such persistent claim is that the series (or at the very least the first book, The Eye of the World) is a cheap imitation of The Lord of the Rings.  The typical defense of this is to bring up Jordan’s own words on the topic:

In the first chapters of The Eye of the World, I tried for a Tolkienesque feel without trying to copy Tolkien’s style, but that was by way of saying to the reader, okay, this is familiar, this is something you recognize, now let’s go where you haven’t been before. I like taking a familiar theme, something people think they know and know where it must be heading, then standing it on its ear or giving it a twist that subverts what you thought you knew.^**

See? (say Jordan’s defenders) he wasn’t deliberately trying to steal LotR’s plot; he was, rather, making a conscious choice to borrow elements from it in order to make the reader feel more comfortable.  Totally different.

I have a completely different response to this argument: I just reject it.  How are they similar again?  In both cases, a mysterious magical figure comes to a sleepy backwater village and tells some simple country folk that they are now caught up in the ultimate fight against the personification of evil in their world.  Well, when you describe the plot from 50,000 feet, sure, they do sound a bit similar.  But that’s sort of like saying that Harry Potter is a rip-off of James and the Giant Peach because they both involve orphans raised by unpleasant family members who discover a strange, magical world living in the grim, dreary cracks of the real one.  Does The Eye of the World share broad themes with The Fellowship of the Ring?  Well of course.  All modern fantasy shares broad themes with Tolkien.  He invented modern fantasy.  It’s sort of like wondering if some modern detective in crime fiction bears any resemblance to C. Auguste Dupin—how could they not?

So I never bought the Tolkien-rip-off theory.  It’s crap.  Anyone who has the patience to get through the first book knows that this ain’t your daddy’s Tolkien.  And anyone who doesn’t isn’t particuarly qualified to comment: they’ve read less than 7% of the total story (again, not even counting the prequel).  Even Jordan’s quote above doesn’t much phase me.  I much prefer this one:

Question: I have noticed some similarities to The Lord of the Rings. Was Tolkien an inspiration for for you?
Jordan: I suppose to the degree that he inspires any fantasy writer in the English language, certainly.^***

The other thing that Jordan is often criticized for is his pacing.  Yes, it’s true that he describes every little thing: the plants, the dresses, the architecture, the history, the shades of meaning of things translated from the Old Tongue, where the armies are getting their supplies from, how this servant used to serve that one’s mother many years ago, how much this character like his or her horse, etc etc ad infinitum.  Nothing wrong with that, per se.  Description immerses us more fully in the world.  It’s not Jordan’s fault if our minds being to wander while he’s painting us a perfect mental picture.  He built an entire world here, and he’s justifiably proud of it.  Besides, Tolkien was very fond of that too, as are many writers in the fantasy genre—not to mention sci-fi (e.g. Frank Herbert) and horror (e.g. Peter Straub).  He’s also accused of being verbose, which, again, is not a crime in and of itself: certainly Stephen King has been accused of that more than any other literary sin, and I’ve already mentioned that he’s my top literary idol.

No, all of these are just roundabout ways of saying that his pacing is too slow.  It takes forever for anything to happen in a Robert Jordan book.  Now, first of all, I don’t even consider that to be particularly problematic.  After all, Jordan’s pacing isn’t any worse than that of Ann Rice (who is fond of having the first ten and the last twenty-five pages happen in the present, while the thousand pages in between are one giant flashback, or the reading of someone’s diary, or somesuch).  And Ann Rice’s works are genius too (remember: another one of my children is named after one of her characers).  But, above and beyond that, I think the problem is just understandig the structure of the series.

Most fantasy series are trilogies, this being the pattern set by Tolkien.  Book 1: establish the characters and set up the action.  Book 2: create obstacles for the characters; allow the villains some victories, and end with the characters seemingly on the brink of defeat.  Book 3: the characters make a mighty comeback, mostly through sheer force of will, and the villains are defeated for once and for all.  This is a tried and true structure for trilogies—not only does the Lord of the Rings follow it, but so do many other fantasy series (e.g. His Dark Materials, the Riddle-Master trilogy, Drizzt Do’Urden, Bartimaeus, etc etc) as well as things as far flung as the first 3 Dune books, the original Star Wars movies, and the Millenium series.  Typically, if a series is longer than that, it’s either from adding prequels and side stories, or it’s from stretching out the various bits of the trilogy into multiple books.  For instance, if you tilt your head and squint just right, you could see Harry Potter as a triology: books 1 and 2 are Book 1, books 3 - 6 are Book 2, and book 7 is Book 3.

But there are series with more complex rhythms, and I’ve always felt that Wheel of Time was one such.  I think that you need to view WoT as a quadralogy of trilogies, with the addition of a prequel, and the fact that the final book in the final trilogy was so huge that it had to be split into 3 books (which gives you the total of 15).  The overall structure goes something like this:  Trilogy 1: introduction and establishment, and the characters begin to lose their innocence.  Trilogy 2: the characters make some strides, despite heavy opposition.  Trilogy 3: the villains get a lot more organized and dangerous, and the heroes start to discover their limitations.  Trilogy 4: well, I’m hopeful that this is where Good pulls it out in the end, but I haven’t actually finished reading yet, so I can’t say for sure.  But I’m pretty confident.

But within each trilogy, the structure is pretty much the same as a traditional trilogy: establish a situation, ratchet up the tension, and then an explosive finish.  However, what this means in the overall context of the series is that books 3, 6, and 9 (and presumbly the final book) are amazingly exciting, with each one being even more amazingly exciting than the previous one.  But that means that book 4 is a bit of a let-down.  And book 7 is a big let-down.  And book 10 is nearly unbearable.  But you have to pace yourself.  You have to remind yourself that Jordan couldn’t keep that level of excitement up for however many more books you have left to go: your head would just explode.  You need to come back down a bit, and then work at getting back up to those dizzying peaks slowly.  Book 3 makes you happy; book 4 makes you want to sigh.  Book 6 makes you want to laugh; book 7 makes you want to grumble.  Book 9 makes you want to cheer ... and book 10 makes you want to gnash your teeth and start tearing out your hair.  Yes, yes, all that info is important, and I’m sure I’ll need to know it as background for the future action, but, as Monty Python would say: GET ON WITH IT!

But my attitude is: forewarned is forearmed, and now that you understand how the rhythm and flow of the series is going to work, you can be prepared for it.  If you read this series, and you stick with it, you will be rewarded, I promise you.  The world is rich, and full of interesting cultures.  The politics is subtle, and intriguing, and full of factions (and sub-factions).  The magic is different, in both broad and fine ways.  The allusions (not just to Tolkien, but to Arthurian legend, Norse mythology, Samurai culture, and so forth) are rich and subtle.  The characters—even those you want to strangle for not waking up and seeing their own mistakes—are genuinely affecting, and you will come to care about them.  And, there are so many of them that, if there happen to be a few who rub you the wrong way, you won’t have to put up with them for very long before someone else’s point of view comes along.  The story is intricate, with seemingly throwaway minor characters popping back up, sometimes so subtly that you don’t even notice they’re the same person until you reread for the second or third time.  It’s the work of a master crafstman, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

And I’m really really excited to see how it all turns out.

* Yes, I know that’s not actually his real name.  But I shan’t refer to Mark Twain as Mr. Clemens, and I shan’t refer to Lews Carroll as Mr. Dodgson, and likewise I shan’t refer to Robert Jordan as Mr. Rigney.

** from a June 2002 interview, preserved at Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

*** from an online chat on October 21, 1994, preserved at Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Dresden Again

Allow me to preface today’s post with a caveat:  It was never my intention to turn this blog into a drooling Harry Dresden fanboy site.  Seriously.

But good God damn.

The last time I talked about the Dresden Files (an urban fantasy series by Jim Butcher), I mentioned that it had gone from being good to really, really good.  That was along about book 7 or 8.  I am now on book 13, and it is no longer really, really good.

It is fucking insanely awesome.

Now, last time I tried to express just why it was so awesome, I theorized it was because of its perfect balance between episodic adventures and an overarching story arc.  And, it’s true: there’s something indescribably delicious about the way it sucks you in with a monster-of-the-week premise until you’re almost surprised to realize you’re hip deep in mythic quest territory.  But I’ve recently realized there’s another element going on here.

I’m a lot like Harry Dresden.

I mean, Harry is generally relatable: he has an affable, everyman quality that makes him instantly likeable, and I’m sure a lot of people will see themselves (or at least bits of themselves) in Harry.  But, for me, it seems to go beyond that.

I first noticed it when Harry was dealing with the White Council in one of the later books.  The White Council, of course, is the organization of wizards to which Harry belongs.  Harry hates dealing with them, because it’s all politics.  Harry hates politics.  I do too.  Harry deals with politics much the same way I do: he’s blunt, he’s abrasive, he bulls his way through, knocking over with main force what he can’t deal with via subtlety.  Yet, as the series progresses, Harry actually gets better at politics, almost by accident.  He still hates it, and he’s still not particularly skilled at it, but he manages to get by, and even score a few points now and again.  I feel much the same way at work: I still avoid the politics, and bulldoze it where I can, but every now and again, just from having survived this long, I manage to score a point here or there.  Just like Harry.

And, once I started to see similarities between myself and Dresden, I couldn’t stop seeing them.  Harry is a wiseass: if you’re familiar with psychic detective Shawn Spencer, you’ll recognize Harry’s tendency towards inanity in the face of danger or authority.  (Harry’s not quite as off-putting as Shawn, but close.)  Harry has a wacky sense of humor, but he also has a lot of pent up anger.  He has an overblown sense of injustice, which is often the trigger for his anger.  He has an insouciant sense of fatalism which leads many of his friends to think of him as cynical, yet at heart he’s a hopeless romantic.  He’s passionate about certain things, and careless about others.  His friends think he’s stubborn, but he doesn’t view himself that way.  He’s desperately loyal to those friends, protective of them, would do anything for them.  Little things bug him; big things roll off his back.  When he says “Oh, come on!  How is that fair??” ... I hear myself.

Harry doesn’t always think of himself as a good man, and yet he always tries to do the right thing.  He knows he has faults, and mostly he’s comfortable with them.  He knows he can be loud, and that he can get on people’s nerves, but he’s pretty much a love-me-or-leave-me guy, so that doesn’t bother him.  He’s direct, and he’s honest, and he has a great deal of talent at one particular thing, which makes him respected by some and laughable to others.  I’m not a professional wizard, obviously, but, as a professional programmer for over half my life, I have experience with being a geek in both positive and negative senses of the word.

Of course, the coolest thing about reading the adventures of someone who’s a lot like you is the parts where he’s not like you.  I am not, as I mentioned, a professional wizard, nor a private investigator, nor do I hang out with vampires, werewolves, holy knights, and various stripes of wild fae.  Harry Dresden’s personality may be close to mine, but his life is far more exciting, which is good, because who would want to read about my boring-ass life?  Harry’s life is anything but boring.  Harry’s life is not always fun for Harry, but it will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Check it out.  You’ll be glad you did.

Recommended Reading Order

Hopefully I’ve convinced you to at least check out this great series.  If you really get into it, you may want to know what order to read things in, and I’m going to help you out.

For the most part, this is a no-brainer.  There are 13 novels in the series, and the 14th is due out later this month.  The publication order matches the chronological order within the fictional world, so you just read them in the order they came out and you’re golden.  The only monkey wrench is Side Jobs.

Side Jobs is a collection of short stories and novellas set in the Dresden Files universe.  Each one contains a short introduction and a blurb telling you where it fits, chronologically.  If you like, you can read it at the point where I read it:

Simple Reading Order:

Read Side Jobs between Changes and Ghost Story.  Do not read it earlier, because the last story in it (“Aftermath”) contains major spoilers for Changes, and don’t read it later, because I think “Aftermath” really gives an important context to Ghost Story (not to mention the useful background info you get from “A Restoration of Faith”).

Or, you could alternately try:

More Complex Reading Order:

It might make more sense to read the stories in the order in which they fall in between the books.  This works very well for almost all of them, in fact; the only problem is “A Restoration of Faith.”  Chronologically, it’s first (before Storm Front, even).  But I think it works much better as a flashback than as an introduction.  Reading it first would be like trying to read New Spring before the remainder of the Wheel of Time books, or trying to watch In the Beginning before the first season of Babylon 5 (both of which I’ve tried).  It just doesn’t work.  There’s too much going on that only makes sense when you’re looking back on it with some perspective.

On the other hand, the rest of the stories are just the opposite: they give context to the books that follow (or at least some of them do).  Certainly I know that if I’d read “Heorot” before reading Changes, a couple of things would have made a lot more sense (for just one example).

So, in the order below, I’ve chosen a good place to drop in “A Restoration of Faith,” and I’ve left the others where they naturally fall.  So this is mostly nothing you couldn’t have figured out for yourself, but hopefully this saves you the hassle of working it all out.  Enjoy.

• Storm Front
• Fool Moon
• Grave Peril
• Summer Knight
• “A Restoration of Faith” (from Side Jobs)
• Death Masks
• “Vignette” (from Side Jobs)
• Blood Rites
• Dead Beat
• “Something Borrowed” (from Side Jobs)
• Proven Guilty
• White Night
• “It’s My Birthday, Too” (from Side Jobs)
• “Heorot” (from Side Jobs)
• Small Favor
• “Day Off” (from Side Jobs)
• “Backup” (from Side Jobs)
• “The Warrior” (from Side Jobs)
• “Last Call” (from Side Jobs)
• Turn Coat
• “Love Hurts” (from Side Jobs)
• Changes
• “Aftermath” (from Side Jobs)
• Ghost Story
• Cold Days

A Random Guest Star

Well, tomorrow is my birthday,^* so you’ll get no blog post from me this week.  But, luckily for you, I’ve engaged a guest blogger to keep you amused until my return next week.  This is a story that my elder son wrote for school, and is reprinted here with his permission.  I’ve edited it only slightly; these words are all his, and convey a bit of genetic talent for the craft, if I do say so myself.  Whether he will pursue this or not, I can’t say.  But it seems a promising start.



The Bard’s Tale

There was once a man, many years ago, who was said to be a great bard, and also, the luckiest bard in all the world.  He would travel from kingdom to kingdom, country to country, singing songs and generally enjoying a carefree life.

It was one day that he was in a kingdom, having been requested to play a song for the king.  He played a happy, joyous song, but the king was sad, and simply sighed and motioned for the bard to leave.  The bard slung his lute around his shoulders once again, and before leaving, asked why the king was so sad.  The king said his daughter had been taken away, as a sacrifice to a group of trolls that would otherwise destroy the kingdom, were they not sated.  The bard, being a heroic sort, offered to save the princess.  The king sighed again, and said that he was certainly welcome to try.  The bard ignored the king’s pessimism, and set off for the trolls.

He asked around, and learned the road down which sacrifices were taken, and happily set off.  After a few days of travelling, he came across a forest, which he happily skipped into, singing a merry song.  A group of bandits heard him, and set off to find him.  They leapt out at him, baring knives and crossbows and swords.  The leader walked out and asked for everything the bard could offer.  He smiled and said although he had not much of material value, he had songs.  The bandit leader rolled his eyes.  “Another merry idiot,” he said.  “Open fire.”  The crossbows all fired at once, sending a hail of arrows at the happy bard.  He simply stood still as every arrow missed, the closest simply shooting his hat off his head.  “A fine shot!” he remarked.  “Now, may I have a turn?”  As everyone stood astonished, he took a bow from a pack on his back, drew it, and aimed it at a rock.  It hit the rock, ricocheted into an archer’s arm, preventing him from shooting any more, through the arm, into several more lined up in a row, hitting the chest armor of one, and bouncing into the leader’s shoulder.  The injured fell and held their wounds, while the uninjured stared in amazement.  They all ran, fearing the bard, who happily marched forward, through the forest, and up a rocky mountain path as night fell.

He saw a fire ahead, and the ugly warty trolls gathered around it.  They were lighting it, and intended to cook the princess.  The bard saw why they were a threat to the kingdom: each was as tall as fifty men!  The bard walked up to the colossal trolls, four in all, and introduced himself.  A troll swatted at him with his club, which the bard hopped back from, just in time.  “Well, that was rude!” he said.  The trolls grunted, clearly not conversational types, and another tried to hit him again, which he jumped back from, again.  He slung his lute from his back into his hands, and began to play a song, dancing and jumping, merrily dodging the giants.  He did this for two days (it is said), until the giants all began to tire, and collapsed onto one and another.  He smiled, and walked around the cluster of bodies, and untied the princess.

“My love, I have rescued you!” he shouted, smiling.  He moved his head sideways, expecting a kiss on the cheek.   “Thank you,” the princess said simply, walking down the rocky mountain path.  He followed, asking “aren’t you going to kiss me?”  The princess looked at him and shook her head.  “Just because you saved me doesn’t mean I love you,” she said, moving her hand to brush away branches from a tree.  “I appreciate the gesture, surely, but not enough to marry you, or whatever you intend.”  The bard looked shocked.  “But ... but ... I’m the luckiest bard in the world!  Courting is so simple for me!”  The princess shrugged, and walked off.

The bard sat, sad.  But, he had an idea.  All he had to do was serenade the princess!  Days later, the princess sat at her room in the palace, when she heard music.  Opening the door she saw the bard.  “Look, really, I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I do not love you!”  She shut the doors, but he was determined.  Every day for the next month he sang to her, becoming more and more unhappy with her determination not to love him.

Eventually, she married a prince, and the bard was devastated.  It is said he threw himself off a cliff, singing his song of love.





And there you have it.  I thought it was a bit of a downer personally, but its author says it’s just a story with a message.  And the moral of it is:

Don’t be so fucking cocky that you commit suicide at the first girl who doesn’t return your affections.

Sounds reasonable to me.





* Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you already knew I’m a Scorpio and a Horse, and I’ve dropped a few hints as to which decade of life I’m in, so at this point you should be able to work exactly when I was born ...

Arcing in Chicago: the Dresden Files

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been reading the Dresden Files, and it’s getting really, really good.  I’ve been trying to put my finger on exactly why it’s such a good series, and I think I’ve finally got it.

Now, don’t get me wrong: there are a lot of very obvious reasons why it’s very good.  First of all, it’s an example of a fairly new subgenre called ”urban fantasy,” which is a moderately cool thing in and of itself.  The standard definition includes the urban setting (natch), plus the supernatural elements, which are typically varied and often unusual.  Oh, sure: there are often your standard vampires and werewolves, but usually an urban fantasy goes far beyond those.  The central idea behind urban fantasy seems to be all the monsters that we’ve ever imagined are out there, somewhere, living amongst us in the modern world, and where better than the crowded, dirty cities, the sprawling metropolises (metropoles?) for the monsters to hide?  If you’ve ever seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and, if not, why not? it’s excellent early Whedon), you’ve probably already got the picture.

But a lot of urban fantasy is more about private investigator-type characters, which means it combines the best of horror fiction with detective stories, usually of the hard-bitten crime drama / film noir type.  Although Harry Dresden is not technically a PI, his status as Chicago’s only openly practicing wizard puts him in the position of finding lost people and items, and helping the Chicago police department on their weirder cases.  So he might as well be.  This is of course a great recipe, but let’s face it: it isn’t substantially different from any of the other urban fantasy series I’ve read.  Well, there’s only two of them, really—Greywalker and Kate Daniels—but they’re both pretty darn cool, at least in terms of concept.  In fact, strictly based on premise potential, Dresden isn’t the big dog in this pack.  And yet he leads it.

Part of that is because Jim Butcher is a stellar writer.  Now, Kat Richardson is no slouch either, although the husband-and-wife team known as Ilona Andrews is a definite step down (repeated consistency errors tell me that they need a better editor, at the very least).  But Butcher is a real cut above the rest: not only does he have a wry, witty style that endears him to the reader, and personally reminds me of first falling in love with horror, reading King and Koontz, but his pacing is insane.  You know how practically every paperback you pick up has, somewhere in amongst all the blurbs proclaiming it to be the best book ever, at least one which calls it a “roller coaster ride of thrills” or somesuch twaddle?  Yeah, well, they never are.  But the Dresden Files is the real deal: after tearing through seven books at breakneck speed, I’ve practically got whiplash.  As a would-be writer, I’ve of course analyzed this to see just how the hell he does it ... my personal pace is pretty deliberate, being acquired primarily from reading folks like King, Straub, and Barker, folks who like to take their time.  I think I’m a bit north of Rice and Jordan, certainly, but no one will ever accuse me of being fast-paced.  Butcher, on the other hand, is practically dizzying.  He does it by starting off the first few chapters—perhaps anywhere from a tenth to no more than a quarter of the book—as normal chapters, regular pacing, nothing special.  But then he picks it up, and he does it by ending every chapter on a little mini-cliffhanger.  I’ve literally taken to choosing my stopping points in the middles of his chapter, because I know if I get to the end, I won’t be able to stop.  It’s almost exhausting.  But exhilirating, too.

And of course the characters are interesting as well.  The central characters, Harry Dresden and head of Chicago “Special Investigations” Karrin Murphy, are well-drawn, with interesting backgrounds.  They have some of those plot-demanded misunderstandings towards the beginning of the series, which I find very frustrating, but those get resolved and then we can move on.  The other characters we meet—Michael Carpenter, Thomas Raith, Billy the werewolf, Warden Morgan, and many others—are likewise interesting, and only a few of them (notably Morgan) are one-note stereotypes.  But, again, that’s not particularly unusual: lots of series have very interesting characters.

No, I’ve finally figured out why this series is so damn good.  Allow me, if you will, a brief tangent.

Let’s think in terms of television series (it’s a bit easier than starting with books).  We can divide the world of television series into two basic camps: episodic, and story-arc.  An episodic series is a series of disconnected stories.  Each episode has little to do with the others.  In fact, you can watch them pretty much in any order and it wouldn’t make much difference.  Almost all sitcoms are like this.  Most of the Star Trek series are like this too, as are almost all crime dramas, and doctor shows (all the CSI’s, all the Law & Order’s, ER, House, etc etc).  In fact, once upon a time, nearly all shows were like this.

But lately there’s been a tendency to try to make the other type of shows: the story-arc shows.  These are the shows where every episode is just part of one giant story.  Now, if you have to worry about your show getting cancelled constantly, you can see why this is a dangerous road to start down.  For just two examples of the cruelty this can engender, we could mention the decent Invasion and the excellent Carnivàle.  But, then again, if your show survives the caprice of network executives, you can end up with a fantastic story.  Six Feet Under, Babylon 5, Twin Peaks ... these are all excellent story-arc shows.  Few other shows are, particularly in television history, but all soap operas are, including prime-time soaps such as Dallas.  The best way to identify a story-arc show is to miss an episode and then see if you’re completely lost.  If you are, that’s a story-arc show.  Of course, that’s a disadvantage too: especially for a long-running show, if it’s difficult for people to jump in in the middle, how are you supposed to attract new viewers?

Now, I say there are two kinds of shows, but you guys know me: I don’t actually believe in binary descriptions of anything.  This, like most everything in life, is a spectrum, and there are all kinds of attempts to blend the two or come up with something in the middle.  It could be something simple, like just trying to apply some basic continuity to an episodic show: actions should have consequences, after all, even in a fictional world.  One technique I see becoming popular these days is shows like True Blood or Dexter, where each season is a story-arc, but the seasons themselves are episodic: with perhaps the exception of the first season, you could pretty much watch the seasons out-of-order and not notice much in the way of oddities.  A slightly better technique is to let most of the shows be episodic, but weave in some story-arc episodes to tie things together.  Monk is a good example of this, as are early seasons of Fringe, before it devolved into the sort of insanity vortex that J.J. Abrams is seemingly inexorably sucked into.

Or, what you could do is make every episode like that.

The only example that springs to mind is the quite excellent Burn Notice.  The vast majority of episodes have a pretty simple basic structure:  The main plot is an episodic one, where Michael Weston helps out the victim-of-the-week with their problem-they-can’t-go-to-the-cops-with.  And then there’s the secondary plot, which advances the overall story-arc of the series, which is about Michael trying to find out who framed him.  So the subplots of the episodes are the main plot of the story-arc.  Every single episode advances the story-arc, but usually only a little, so if you were to miss one, you wouldn’t be lost.  And nearly every single episode is also a stand-alone story, so it’s fairly easy to jump in, even without knowing the whole history, and still enjoy the episode.  It’s quite brilliant, if you think about it.  Best of both worlds.

Now let’s hop back over to books.  Most book series, particularly fantasy series, are story-arc series.  They’re actually one giant book, just broken up for your convenience, so you won’t break your back carrying it around in your school backpack.  In fact, the Lord of the Rings, which is generally considered the original fantasy series, was actually written as a single book, but Tolkien’s publishers made him break it up.  Thus, the modern fantasy trilogy.  But, no matter how many volumes, most fantasy series are one giant story.  Narnia, Amber, the Wheel of Time, a Song of Ice and Fire, Harry Potter, the Dark Tower: all story-arc series.

But of course there are exceptions.  The Conan stories, for instance, are so episodic that they weren’t even published in the “right” order.  There are a few other notable fantasy series like that (the Vlad Taltos novels and I believe the Black Company books as well), and a few that are chronological but still basically episodic: the Xanth books, the MythAdventures series, and some others.  Also, the urban fantasy series that I’m familiar with tend to fall into this category as well.  For instance, at least as far as I’ve gotten in the Greywalker series, the stories are very self-contained; the Kate Daniels book has a little more of a story-arc, but it’s still moderately episodic.

Then there’s the Dresden Files.

It starts out with a very episodic feel to it.  Oh, sure, there’s some background info on Harry dropped in the first book, but it feels like just that: background info.  Filling out the backstory.  Just some interesting tidbits to keep us interested in our erstwhile hero.  Even the second book, which fills out a bit more of our understanding of Harry’s past and his family situation, still feels like just another episode in a show about a paranormal PI.

Then it starts to pick up.  More and more info about who Harry really is and what his past has been like comes out.  Then Harry starts to learn stuff about his past that even he didn’t know.  As I say, I’m only on book 8, and there are 14 (so far!), so for all I know it gets even better as you get even deeper in.  And it seems like Butcher intends to keep on going ... one of the advantages of an episodic series is that you can keep writing it forever, if you like.  Of course, you may not like, and then it can be difficult to stop, as luminaries such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have discovered.  But the Dresden Files feels to me like it has enough of a story-arc basis that there will probably be a natural end somewhere down the line.

I’m looking forward to seeing where this one is going.