Further updated the recommended reading list: Spirited Away and various stories growing out of Larry Niven's "Not Long Before the End."
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Sent a proposal to Joe Sanders this morning for “The Sandman Papers.” I’ve been wrestling with the question of just what my thesis is for five days, now, and I’m finally satisfied that I have one. Readers unfamiliar with the Sandman comic series may want to tune out – no, scratch that; readers unfamiliar with the comic should go out and get familiar with it, right now. It is time well-spent.
The big question that held me up was whether Morpheus actually wins his challenge for Nada. On one level, he fails, since he only gets the key to the gates of hell. On another, he succeeds, since the key then draws Nada’s soul, held hostage by Azazel, to him. But then, having freed Nada, Morpheus is still destroyed by events growing out of his challenge: he meets Nuala, who calls him from the Dreaming as the Furies attack; he learns something of Destruction, the search for whom also precipitates the final murder of Orpheus; he earns a debt from Loki, who therefore seeks to destroy him. And yet, if Morpheus is destroyed by his challenge, it may be just what he wants. Death suggests as much.
So does Morpheus win where Azazel loses, or do both lose their challenges? The complications of Morpheus’s death wish finally cleared up when I realized Sunday afternoon that he is determined to free Nada even at the cost of his own destruction or imprisonment. He explains as much to his servants before approaching Lucifer. Ta-da! Problem solved: Nada is free, so Morpheus wins, despite the price he pays.
Now to settle down to writing the paper.
Today I began work on a paper for submission to “The Sandman Papers,” a book of essays examining the Sandman, edited by Joe Sanders. I’m just going to take a baby step from my new area of expertise, to examine the parallel challenges from Season of Mists. Morpheus, goaded by his siblings, first challenges Lucifer for the soul of a mortal lover. Later, the demon Azazel challenges Morpheus in turn for the key to the gates of hell. There are numerous similarities between these challenges, but one glaring difference: Morpheus eventually gains satisfaction, and frees his Nada, his lover, while Azazel not only fails to get the key, but loses two prisoners and its freedom in the bargain.
Whether Gaiman intended so strong a parallel or not – and I feel he must have – the success of one and failure of the other make the two attempts read as a “do-and-don’t” list of how to go about confronting a deity.
Before I can really sit down to the keyboard, of course, I need to study the source material very, very carefully. Not just Season of Mists, but The Kindly Ones as well, since just how successful we judge Morpheus to be depends on how much importance we attach to his ultimate fate. So many events stemming directly from the key figure in Morpheus’s demise that we have to wonder how far Lucifer may have engineered it. If Lucifer did mastermind Morpheus’s destruction, then the lord of the Dreaming can only have won a partial victory.
It’s interesting how much more you see when you force yourself to read word by word. I have to be careful, or I'll start seeing things that aren't really there.
In researching Fariyland, I naturally read a great many books. Anyone wanting to learn more about Fairyland, or just to check my scholarship, might want to read what I found most helpful. This list is meant to highlight sources that particularly influenced me, and why. It is not currently presented in any particular order, but it will grow with time, and I may need to arrange things somehow later.
Readers may notice that classics like the brothers Grimm, A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, and the epic of Gilgamesh are (currently) absent. This is not because the classics are overrated, but simply because they are well known. Anyone deeply enough into folklore to be reading this page already has at least a dim awareness of King Arthur, and can easily find him on the shelves of any sizeable book store. For this list to be really helpful, it needs to point your attention towards less obvious treasures.
Despite the title of this page, not everything will be reading material. I drew from as broad a selection of stories as possible, and a few appeared originally outside of print. (Alas, only a few. Too many movies and radio or television shows of Fairyland are simply adaptations of books, or of even earlier oral traditions captured in books.)
Enjoy!
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Spells of Enchantment. Jack Zipes, ed. © Jack Zipes, 1991. Published by the Penguin Group. ISBN 0-670-83053-4
This volume takes fairy tales from many periods and presents them in chronological order, starting with Apuleius’s “Cupid and Psyche,” and progressing right through Philip K. Dick and Tanith Lee. This presentation gives the reader a great view of the evolution of the fairy tale. I was fortunate to find this book early in my readings; an outline of trends in fairy tales let me concentrate on periods that produced stories with a strong sense of (super)natural law, and avoid wasting too much time on meandering romances or fantasies with magical beasts lacking any cunning whatsoever. (I read some of these, too, of course, to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.)
The tone of the stories ranges from wistful fantasies to pity morality plays, from high art to low humor. It is outstanding as a sampler of fairy tales.
Ingeborg Bachmann’s “The Smile of the Sphinx” was a gift for A Survivor’s Guide to Fairyland, a beautiful demonstration of Rule 25: there are larger games than yours. In this parable on the dangers of science divorced from humanistic perspective, the Sphinx comes to a kingdom and asks three riddles of its king: what is in the earth, what is over the earth, and what is in the people you rule? Desperate to avert the monster’s wrath and save his subjects, the king commands his scholars to Herculean efforts to find the answers. They ultimately succeed, but only at the price of dissecting the people for exhaustive analysis. The king answers all three riddles, at which point, he and his kingdom, destroyed at his own command, are spared whatever ruination the Sphinx may have visited upon it herself. The Sphinx then merely smiles and leaves.
Until I came upon this story, the only arguments I had for larger games than yours were literally dozens of stories that all read the same: the devil spares a mortal soul in his thrall, knowing it works far more evil on the earth than it could suffering in hell. A good point, but somewhat obvious, and thoroughly hackneyed. The malicious subtlety of the Sphinx is far more menacing, and far more instructive. It also cheered me to find a concrete example proving Bill Willingham’s Thessaliad comic book series wrong: the Sphinx is not a paper tiger condemned to ask the same damn riddle forever. Don’t underestimate a monster just because you’ve heard of it being defeated once.
Also, don’t miss James Thurber’s “The Girl and the Wolf,” originally from Tales for Our Time. No, I’m not going to tell you. Go read it.
Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. Hayao Miyazaki, director. Studio Ghibli; distributed in the US by Walt Disney Studios as "Spirited Away".
As mentioned above, good movie sources are hard to come by. Movie monsters that do more than butcher teenagers or demolish Tokyo almost always first appear elsewhere. In this wonderful exception, Chihiro, unhappy about moving to a new town, loses her parents when they get lost and stop to look around. Ignoring Chihiro’s misgivings, they enter fairyland and offend the witch Yubaba by helping themselves to a banquet, and are transformed into pigs. Chihiro must sell herself into service to Yubaba to have any hope of winning them back.
The movie is noteworthy in its absence of direct antagonism. The magical creatures aren’t out to get Chihiro; they just have their own agenda to pursue. Witness the confiscation of Chihiro’s name to represent power over her, the importance of food as a bond, and the warning not to look back as she eventually exits fairyland.
"Not Long Before the End," and related stories by Larry Niven.
In the short story “Not Long Before the End” and several sequels – short stories and novels – Niven postulates that magic is fueled by a non-renewable natural resource, and examines what impact this natural (supernatural?) law would have. Although these stories do little to examine the social laws of fairyland, they are excellent explorations of the idea that magic should be governed by any laws at all. “The Three Wishes” was particularly inspiring in its treatment of a genie’s generosity as a ritualized game. Other titles to watch for are “What Good is a Glass Dagger,” The Burning City (with Jerry Pournelle),The Magic Goes Away, The Magic May Return (collection), and More Magic (collection).
Okay, we made it to Fiddler’s Green without significant mishap. The nerves are gone, helped by a hefty dose of exhaustion. Waking at 3:30 for an early flight can take a lot of steam out of anxiety. Now there only remains the difficult task of selling myself, without the panic.
My experience so far is that the attendees are very pleasant, chatty but subdued. Many wear black as a sort of membership badge. They compare favorably with the regulars at game conventions, which I more regularly attend. The Gaiman fans have more sophisticated social skills.
This is good, in a way. It’s easier to approach them. I’ve actually opened conversations with three strangers, rather than sinking into my usual habit of letting someone else – in this case, Eileene – do the talking, and interjecting only when I have something significant to add. On the other hand, anyone more socially aware than gamers require some small talk warmup, so I’m sort of out of my depth. There’s a decidedly liberal bent here, so I’m safe using the politics as an opener. We’re still stinging from the presidential race. Last night, Neil Gaiman read a short story to us in place of the scheduled Nancy’s Boys excerpt. He introduced it as a story written for his daughter’s eighteenth birthday, a year and a half late, fuelled by election frustration. (When down in the dumps, he feels, one should make good art.)
I’m setting my schedule around the mythological events as much as possible, missing comic book topics when necessary. People sitting around me are more likely to be interested in Fairyland that way.
The advertising has begun. We printed personal cards and pamphlets for distribution at the Fiddler’s Green convention this weekend. They are plain, but tidy, and nice to look at. At least, nice for me to look at. It’s hard to avoid a thrill at seeing your own name under a book title.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a bit less thrill. Eileene is delighted at the whole process. She’s the one with the skill to assemble graphics and text, and to manage a web site (amateur-friendly Moveable Type notwithstanding). She’s excited to be part of the process. I, on the other hand, have a bad case of nerves. It isn’t really fear, at least not at a conscious level, but an unfocused anxiety I get before performing. Stage fright. I’m going to be trying to sell my book, and to some degree myself, to people in the publishing community. When I put it out of my mind, I’m merely nervous. When I imagine you readers out there looking at even these harmless paragraphs, my hands…well, they don’t shake, exactly, but my typing gets awfully jerky.
I went with a public domain graphic of a sphinx for the pamphlet, a Greek urn version of the sphinx, not the Egyptian monument. It would never have occurred to me on my own, but when I saw it in a list of graphics, a sphinx made a lot of sense. It’s a readily recognizable figure of myth, and the most famous of riddlers. (Well, Bilbo and Gollum are better known these days, but they aren’t public domain. And Odin is a riddler who might be more famous, but not famous as a riddler. But I digress.) Though I enter the publishing phase with an open mind, prepared to take any suggestions an established professional may offer, I think I’d like to keep a sphinx on the cover of the real printing.
The inner two pages of the pamphlet contain a condensed version of the introductory chapter. I wanted to clip out cautions about sources, but found that what remained was still too large for a single sheet, so several paragraphs of flavor text had to go, too. A shame, but anyone interested can read the entire first chapter here at mdlake.net, since the address is on the brochure.
The back page is the Rules themselves. That isn’t giving away the store, is it?
