McCaffrey takes us into the life of Lady Caissa, heir of the Ambassador of the Federated Sentient Planets whose father has just suggested that she marry to carry on the family line and protect her inheritance. However, Caissa realizes that if she does not want to marry her father’s choice for her that she must do some exploration of her options and his motives for this match. Will she manage to choose her own future and that of her planet or will she be sucked into the rigid world in which her parents live on their terms? This little book shares the story of a strong young woman on the cusp of adulthood whose parents are not the best role models and whose position can change the future.

Arranged is story of two young teachers, an Orthodox Jew and a Muslim, who meet and through their friendship find their own routes to happiness in their traditional families and their modern classrooms. Neither girl is completely aware of the realities of her situation until they are faced with having to explain and defend that reality in their professional lives. The friendship leads to exploration and decision making in their home lives.

I confess: I have read… at least a dozen, and almost certainly more, of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books. I have not, however, read any of them for quite some time now, as I’ve always felt that they are somewhat childish books (and because the last one I read rather disenchanted me). Recently, however, finding myself nostalgic and in need of a very quick and easy read, my hand fell to this book, the first of a trilogy of short novels focusing on Harper Hall, the series’ guild of musicians, teachers, advisors and occasional spies.

Dragonsong (indeed, the whole of this trilogy) is a children’s novel even by the standards of the setting – it is simplistic, predictable, centred around a child protagonist, and largely lacking in perspective. The whole trilogy should probably be seen as a child’s introduction to Pern, as indeed I suspect it may have been intendend. It was, however, rather better than I was expecting.

The heroine of the story is a young girl, Menolly, who is tall and awkward, and rather direct in manner, and who desperately longs to follow her talents, but who is prevented from doing so by virtue of being a girl. So far, so cliché. Unusually for the genre, however, Menolly’s tomboyishness does not express itself through a love of fighting, or similarly physical endeavour, but rather through a talent as a musician and composer – unfortunately for her, an exclusively male preserve.

This may be a twist, but the basic set-up will be painfully familiar to experienced readers: Menolly’s parents are foolish and stubborn and tyrannical, and do not attempt to seriously convince her, or to accommodate her desires in their needs; Menolly is desperate to escape, to the point of deciding to run away from home; Menolly falls into a number of difficulties, from which she escapes by virtue of being brilliant at everything and of having everybody on the planet, other than her parents, be desperate to help her; Menolly is eventually recognised as wonderful and is adored by all the planet’s parental figures.

Regarding the plot, there are three large problems. Firstly, the antagonism of her parents, and of her elder sister, never feels real: although there are vague gestures in the direction of a reason for their behaviour, their case is never argued (either in dialogue or by the author) with enough vigour to make them seem understandable, and in particular their emotional attitude seems to vary considerably between chapters as the plot demands – strict but concerned at one point, barely caring whether she lives or dies at another. Their behaviour is made even more troublesome by the fact that it is so out of line with that of the surrounding society, which is universally pro-Menolly;  this is to a degree necessary, as the plot is largely one of escape from a small town into a more liberal culture, but although it is mentioned that her Hold is quite conservative, there is never any serious explanation of why the gulf is so large. Indeed, the entire foundational conceit, that Harpercraft is an exclusively male expertise, is neither explained nor really in keeping with the rest of the series, where no such limitation seems to exist; it is retconned in the sequel that Petiron (the old Harper at her Hold) is conservative in that way, but in a later novel we see that he himself was married to a female Harper. There are hints that Menolly’s perspective may be flawed or partial, but given just how unsympathetic Mavi and Yanos are, these hints are only confusing – why, for instance, does the otherwise perfect Manora seem to have a great respect, even friendship, for Mavi, when we can all see how horrible she is? The book makes a lot more sense from the perspective of a child, where the unfairness of adults is simply taken for granted, rather than from that of an adult, who may wish to actually understand the actions of his peers.

Secondly, Menolly is so perfect that it grates. It is essential for the plot that she be a talented composer (though the elaboration of just how talented she is in this field is left for the sequel – here, she need only be talented enough to draw the attention of senior Harpers) – and so I do not object to this. I object somewhat more to her brilliance in related fields – singing, instrumental playing, and the making of instruments – although these are at least things she must have studied, and we do not really know how good she is (her singing is adored by everybody, for example, but we are also told that nobody else in the Hold can carry a tune at all, so her own talent need not be that great). It’s a little more vexing that she can, for instance, invent a particular oil with little effort, or create clay pots between paragraphs, but let’s just say that she was just well-trained in such useful skills by an very particular mother in self-reliant times. But there is surely no reason at all why Menolly must also be a truly outstanding runner! And to top it all off, she’s also got a natural talent for attracting and dealing with ‘fire lizards’, a small species of dragon – and though it may appear to be luck, the fact that it is actually talent is repeatedly hammered home by those who really do seem to know what they are talking about. [The fire lizard plot is rather superfluous in the book, and indeed the trilogy, and seems to be there only to make her seem cool; in the wider series, the sudden appearance of fire lizards is truly incongruous. In this book, we are told that they are almost legend, and that every boy grows up trying again and again to catch them, but nobody has ever succeeded; a few books later, and it seems that everyone on Pern has acquired one as a pet. While I actually quite like the concept of fire lizards, they represent an anomolous and off-putting dimension in Pern’s plotline]

Thirdly, Menolly never has to do anything. The book does not end with her struggling nobly to freedom; it does not end with her facing up to her parents; it does not end with her accepting their views and buckling down to the life they choose for her. Any of these could demonstrate character; instead, Menolly essentially has only to find her way to the world outside her hometown, and she is instantly loved universally and told how wonderful she is. Even getting to that world is more a matter of luck and outside assistance than of personal struggle. This makes it hard to really feel too strongly about the book. Nothing is really accomplished, and at no time does any threat feel really real. Everything is just too easy.

This may sound damning – and indeed it is. But Dragonsong does have redeeming features. For all her perfections, Menolly is, to me at least, quite likable as a protagonist, perhaps precisely because there is so little real struggle needed: her talents are therefore not often used to overcome obstacles, and can be treated as adjuncts to her character, rather than as central to her progress. I have, I must admit, weaknesses both for oppressed tomboys (see my review of Dark Heart) and for composers, so Menolly is, if not close to my heart, at least the object of general feelings of goodwill and affection. Although too much of the novel relies on the power of things looking cool, McCaffrey does do cool quite well – in both dragons and in music, she manages to bring forth charismatic elements. Her prose is not noteworthy, but is unobjectionable – straightforward, but not too clunky or repetitive – and is probably better than average for pulp fantasy. Her only problem in this regard is the dialogue, which is not strictly bad, but rather too bland – a great many characters sound far too similar to one another, and nearly everybody in the novel has their speech pervaded by an unrelentingly jovial flippancy. The setting, meanwhile, is easy to be blasé about, now that we have known it for forty years, but it remains appealing nonetheless, familiar in many elements, yet not afraid to be alien at times, and tinted with hints of a very different, futuristic, setting lying behind the medievalisms. The flatness of characters and tendency to inconsistency and superficiality in background plot elements prevents the author from living up to the potential of the setting, but that should not cause us to ignore what is good in it.

An interesting thing to note in this respect is the troubled relationship between this novel and others of the series, not only in terms of inconsistencies, but also in its dependence: although it feels like an introductory novel for younger readers, it also forms part of the overall patchwork of plot developments. For those who read this book without having read the previous books of the series, much confusion and frustration are likely, and similarly some events that occur are not explained, or do not have the importance they are allocated justified, until later novels not strictly part of this trilogy. Its worth as an introduction is therefore hindered – a good example being the amout of time devoted to the story of Brekke, which seems to require considerable foreknowledge if we are to care about it, and which does not feel resolved; the brief cameo of Jaxom, meanwhile, is likely to be baffling to many, with much importance attached to something seemingly trivial. At the same time, readers of the main sequence of novels are likely to be perplexed and disappointed by the radically different focus, and more child-oriented delivery, of this trilogy, damaging its worth as a full member of the series. It is thus not really clear what this book is meant to be.

Also, the author follows the old tradition of putting extracts of in-world fiction at the beginning of each chapter, and chooses to use poetry (/song lyrics). Once or twice, these are vaguely clever or pretty lines, but most of them vary from uninspired, to mawkish, to painfully bad. The author should not attempt to write poetry for each chapter unless the author happens to be a capable poet; this one is not. A snippet here and there would be no problem, but by the end of the book they were little pellets of pain waiting for me after each chapter number.

Numbers!

Adrenaline: 3/5. Not that much happens; what happens is predictable and involves little dramatic struggle. However, the book is executed well enough that I can’t mark it down on adrenaline: somehow, it manages to exploit the periods of inaction and waiting to increase a tension that has no rational reason for existing whatsoever. Really don’t know why, but it works – or at least, it fails to fail.

Emotion: 2/5. Execution delivers excitement, but in this case it couldn’t deliver engagement. I like Menolly, I really do (though I’m not sure why, as she’s annoyingly whimpery and short-sighted), but she’s not put into enough drama to make me care too much.

Thought: 2/5. It could be worse. There’s a little bit of interest in the behaviour of the adults and just how wrong they are, and there are also vignettes of thought, like the Brekke subplot. Overall, though, there’s nothing much to provoke reflection here.

Beauty: 2/5. The prose has some good bits, and the presence of dragons and music and the powerful image of Thread all buoy up the aesthetics, but the predictabilities, and the flatness and repetitiveness of many characters, are all a little repellent.

Craft: 3/5. Mostly unobjectionable. I observed some structural problems above, but these seem to me more decisions of the author than accidents of craft. The writing is generally sound, and the fact that she wrung tension out of something so devoid of it naturally demonstrates how well she is able to construct larger structures. However, I wouldn’t recommend the book on the basis of its craft.

Endearingness: 3/5. Dragons, composition, defiance of social expectations… I can hardly mark it down. On the other hand, Menolly is a little too perfect, the world a little too simple, to mark it up.

Originality: 2/5. Has the advantage of an interesting setting, and makes the interesting decision to focus on music as the chosen excellence. However, little else in this novel of teenageness is original or distinct.

Composite: 2.43.

Overall: 3/7: Bad, but with redeeming features. This sounds a bit harsh to me – there’s nothing really wrong with this book. I enjoyed reading it, and after the opening few chapters had no intention of stopping at any point. On the other hand, there’s nothing really good about it either – I can’t think of any reason to recommend this book, other than ones related to facts about the potential reader rather than facts about the book itself. So perhaps we should see it as bad, but with ‘too solid to be terrible in any way’ as its redeeming feature?

Vic Ghidalia and Roger Elwood (eds.) – The Venus Factor (Nel, 1976. Originally USA, McFadden, 1972: Manor, 1973, 1977)

Cynthia Asquith – “God Grante That She Lye Stille”
Gertrude Atherton – The Foghorn
Agatha Christie – The Last Séance (The Woman Who Stole a Ghost)
Miriam Allen deFord – Against Authority
Zenna Henderson – J-Line to Nowhere
Anne McCaffrey – The Ship Who Disappeared
Rose Sharon [Judith Merril] – The Lady Was a Tramp
C. L. Moore – The Dark Land

Blurb

A medium evokes a vision so real it threatens her very existence …

A dying woman is snatched into another time dimension ….

A long dead spirit fights to inhabit a living body ….

These are but a few of the chilling and gripping ideas contained in The Venus Factor, an anthology of science fiction stories written about women by some of the top women SF writers.

i’ve had enough arguments for one year, so i’ll leave you to decide for yourselves whether or not the Christie, Asquith and Atherton stories actually constitute “science fiction” ….

Have you ever thought to yourself that the one thing cat literature is missing is space cats?

Pilot, navigator, engineer, doctor, scientist—ship’s cat? All are essential to the well-staffed space vessel. Since the early days of interstellar travel, when Tuxedo Thomas, a Maine coon cat, showed what a cat could do for a ship and its crew, the so-called Barque Cats have become highly prized crew members. Thomas’s carefully bred progeny, ably assisted by humans—Cat Persons—with whom they share a deep and loving bond, now travel the galaxy, responsible for keeping spacecraft free of vermin, for alerting human crews to potential environmental hazards, and for acting as morale officers.

Even among Barque Cats, Chessie is something special. Her pedigree, skills, and intelligence, as well as the close rapport she has with her human, Janina, make her the most valuable crew member aboard the Molly Daise. And the litter of kittens in her belly only adds to her value.

Then the unthinkable happens. Chessie is kidnapped—er, catnapped—from Dr. Jared Vlast’s vet clinic at Hood Station by a grizzled spacer named Carl Poindexter. But Chessie’s newborn kittens turn out to be even more extraordinary than their mother. For while Chessie’s connection to Janina is close and intuitive, the bond that the kitten Chester forms with Carl’s son, Jubal, is downright telepathic. And when Chester is sent into space to learn his trade, neither he nor Jubal will rest until they’re reunited.

But the announcement of a widespread epidemic affecting livestock on numerous planets throws their future into doubt. Suddenly the galactic government announces a plan to impound and possibly destroy all exposed animals. Not even the Barque Cats will be spared.

With the clock racing against them, Janina, Jubal, Dr. Vlast, and a handful of very special kittens will join forces with the mysterious Pshaw-Ra—an alien-looking cat with a hidden agenda—to save the Barque Cats, other animals, and quite possibly the universe as they know it from total destruction.

Killashandra Ree The Crystal Singer trilogy Anne McCaffrey

The impetuous adventurous young woman with perfect pitch, but a burr in her voice which prevented her becoming an opera singer, Killashandra captured my young imagination from the opening pages. She ends up in a strange and mysterious life; one which offers great rewards but which also offers dangers and limitations, eventually to even one’’s own sense of self. As a member of the Heptite Guild on the strange planet of Ballybran, Killashandra becomes a crystal singer – someone who cuts crystal from the bare rock by attuning her cutting instrument to the resonance of the crystal. She has to work hard to succeed, and then becomes successful in the lonely role. I also loved the fact that she was passionate and attractive enough to have a man to follow her into the loneliness of the role.  She is an interesting character, not a perfect hero, one with faults and drawbacks – but a real person with whom a real person with her own flaws can identify, in a job which demands hard work, but also offer fabulous rewards.

You were the embodiment of the undeniable advantages of being a crystal singer. Your vibrant youth, charm, invulnerability, indefatigable energy, and resourcefulness.

Stephen Jones (ed.) – Dancing With The Dark: True Encounters With The Paranormal By Masters Of The Macabre (Vista, 1997)

Cover by Splash: Photography by Simon Marsden

Stephen Jones – Introduction: Dancing with the Dark

Joan Aiken – My Feeling about Ghosts
Sarah Ash – Timeswitch
Mike Ashley – The Rustle in the Grass
Peter Atkins – Take Care of Grandma
Clive Barker – Life After Death
Stephen Baxter – The Cartographer
Robert Bloch – Not Quite So Pragmatic .
Ramsey Campbell – The Nearest to a Ghost
Hugh B. Cave – Haitian Mystères
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – One-Way Trip
A. E. Coppard – The Shock of the Macabre
Basil Copper – The Haunted Hotel
Peter Crowther – Safe Arrival
Jack Dann – A Gift of Eagles
Charles de Lint – The House on Spadina
Terry Dowling – Sharing with Strangers
Lionel Fanthorpe – Hands on the Wheel
Esther M. Friesner – That Old School Spirit
Gregory Frost – Twice Encountered
Neil Gaiman – The Flints of Memory Lane
Stephen Gallagher – In There
Ray Garton – Haunted in the Head
John Gordon – The House on the Brink
Ed Gorman – Riding the Nightwinds
Elizabeth Goudge – ESP
Simon R. Green – Death is a Lady
Peter Haining – The Smoke Ghost
Joe Haldeman – Never Say Die
James Herbert – Not Very Psychic
Brian Hodge – Confessions of a Born-Again Heathen
Nancy Holder – To Pine with Fear and Sorrow
M. R. James – A Ghostly Cry
Peter James – One Extra for Dinner
Mike Jefferies – A Face in the Crowd
Nancy Kilpatrick – Raggedy Ann
Stephen King – Uncle Clayton
Hugh Lamb – Go On, Open Your Eyes…
Terry Lamsley – Moving Houses
John Landis – Inspiration
Stephen Laws – Norfolk Nightmare
Samantha Lee – Not Funny
Barry B. Longyear – The Gray Ghost
H. P. Lovecraft – Witch House
Brian Lumley – The Challenge
Arthur Machen – World of the Senses
Graham Masterton – My Grandfather’s House
Richard Matheson – More Than We Appear To Be
Richard Christian Matheson – Visit to a Psychic Surgeon
Paul J. McAuley – The Fall of the Wires
Anne McCaffrey – Unto the Third Generation
Thomas F. Monteleone – Talkin’ Them Marble Orchard Blues
Mark Morris – A Shadow of Tomorrow
Yvonne Navarro – The House on Chadwell Drive
William F. Nolan – The Floating Table and the Jumping Violet
Edgar Allan Poe – Mesmeric Revelation
Vincent Price – In the Clouds
Alan Rodgers – Clinic-Modern
Nicholas Royle – Magical Thinking
Jay Russell – De Cold, Cold Décolletage
Adam Simon – The Darkness Between the Frames
Guy N. Smith – The Mist People
Michael Marshall Smith – Mr Cat
S. P. Somtow – In the Realm of the Spirits
Brian Stableford – Chacun sa Goule
Laurence Staig – The Spirit of M. R. James
Peter Tremayne – The Family Curse
H. R. Wakefield – The Red Lodge
Lawrence Watt-Evans – My Haunted Home
Cherry Wilder – The Ghost Hunters
Chet Williamson – A Place Where a Head Would Rest
Paul F. Wilson – The Glowing Hand
Douglas E. Winter – Finding My Religion
Gene Wolfe – Kid Sister

A Spectral vision …. The sound of phantom footsteps … An experiment in astral projection ….. A childhood premonition of disaster …. Possession by a voodoo god ….
An Ouija board that predicted death … A body kept alive by force of will ….. A cursed family name …

Such tales as these are more usually associated with horror books and movies. However, these anecdotes are absolutely true! They are ,just a sample of the real-life experiences recounted by some of the world’s most famous frighteners, from such bestselling authors as Stephen King and James Herbert, to actor Vincent Price and director John Landis.

Collected together for the very first time, many or the most successful and well-known exponents, along with rising stars of the horror field, relate their fascinating encounters with the supernatural, revealing how such unique experiences have affected their lives and influenced their works.

Even for the experts, when it comes to Unexplained phenomena, fact can be much more frightening than fiction …

See also Dancing With the Dark thread on Vault Of Evil

Thanks to Nightreader!

I still have the paperback of Anne McCaffrey’s DRAGONSONG that I picked up from an elementary school book fair back in 1980.   The cover has  a wonderful drawing of a girl playing the pipes while surrounded by tiny dragons; it caught my eye while looking at the display tables at the fair.   This would be the first, but not the last, book I’d read by Anne McCaffrey.

Recently I pulled out DRAGONSONG to reread after many years, because I vividly recalled Menolly’s struggle to become a musician and songwriter on the planet of Pern, and I was curious to see how I would react to the story now.

For those who don’t already know, Pern is an imaginary world created by Anne McCaffrey where dragons were bred in order to destroy threads (an organism which falls from the sky from Pern’s moon that threatens all life on Pern).

Menolly is a teenager who lives in a traditional culture where female roles are strictly defined.  For her to become a Harper (musician & songwriter) is unthinkable to her parents.  Her gifts as an artist, which would be a source of pride if she were a boy, are instead a source of shame that drives her family to thwart her at every opportunity.   In the end her parents’ punishments become physical; her mother actually attempts to cripple her so she can’t play an instrument, driving Menolly to run away.

More adventures for Menolly then ensue, but I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone who may not have read it yet.

I found the treatment of Menolly by her family even harder to read about than before.   Knowing that there have been times in the past when being a professional writer or other artist was forbidden to women, I found it all to easy to imagine how our foremothers must have felt at being thwarted at every turn.

As the winter spun itself out, Menolly found that her sense of loss when she thought of Petiron deepened.  He had been the only person in the Sea Hold who had ever encouraged her in anything: and most especially in that one thing that she was now forbidden to do.   Melodies don’t stop growing in the mind, tapping at fingers, just because they’re forbidden.  And Menolly didn’t stop composing them–which, she felt, was not precisely disobeying.

There’s a sad, but deep truth, hidden in McCaffrey’s book.  If one’s family and friends (perhaps even culture) are determined to destroy one’s gifts as an artist, one has to leave if the opportunity presents itself.

Dragonsong and Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey tell the story of Menolly. Menolly of Half Circle Hold on the planet Pern loved music. While old Peteron, the hold harper, was alive she was allowed to assist him, especially as age made fulfilling his duties more and more difficult. After Peteron’s death, with no one else to teach the children Menolly is permitted to take the harper’s place until another harper can be sent for. Unfortunately Menolly’s father sea holder Yannis has little appreciation for music and believes it is not a girls place to become a harper so when Menolly accidentally disobeys his injuntion not to tune, make up her own songs, music is forbidden to her. The harper arrives soon after that anyway so Menolly is no longer needed to teach the children. Worse, Menolly injures her hand severely and ends up crippled. With music denied her, Menolly runs away to the fire lizards she found to have the freedom to have music again.

By the thime Dragonsinger begins, Menolly has impressed nine fire lizards and has been taken to the Harper Hall by Robinton, Master Harper of Pern. However, Menolly finds it difficult to settle in because even in the Harper Hall she must fight against the idea that girls can’t be harpers.

In David McCullough’s book John Adams, I learned that the future president constantly urged his son John Quincy Adams to practice his penwork for at least two hours a day.  While I don’t have the book any more, my memory recalls that he said journal entries should be part of it, and the rest should be letters and articles, and maybe a book.  The whole point was to practice legibility (a quill pen was not easy to write with), and to get your writing known and seriously quoted.

While still under eighteen, young John joined the first American delegation to Russia, largely because his skill with a pen was so excellent and his effective writing skills were so well known.

Will Richardson, in today’s blog on Digital Inclusion (at Weblogg-ed). quotes Ira Socol’s response to Dean Shareski’s reflection on NECC 2009 (how’s that for a chain of connection??).  To be clear, these are Ira Socol’s words:

So, it is not a question of whether these technologies add value somehow to education; but the reverse, can education add value to the communications and information technologies of our present day world, and its future?

And there’s the chiseled goose-quill point of it, right there.

Of course education adds to the communication and information technologies of our present-day world.  We know — know with 100% certainty — that the more people who read and review an idea, the more likely it is to be accepted and acted on, and be useful to someone.  Our current walled garden approach to teaching is that a student will produce nothing of lasting value between the ages of 12 and 20.

It just ain’t so.

There’s a nominal line between the agora or marketplace, and the academy which we as a culture need to address.  The notion is that school is a walled garden, and that content produced in that walled garden is not for sale: the minds of the children in it are not for sale; nor are the minds of the adults; nor is the curriculum; nor are the walls suitable for advertisements; nor are school video screens appropriate real estate for ads either.

Yet I think we shut out the agora at our peril.  Numerous private schools have been hammered and hampered by the sudden drop in the value of their endowments; public schools face massive cutbacks.  And child-labor laws actually hinder students in poor areas from reaching for education as a tool to to leverage their future potential.

In the Anne McCaffrey sci-fi book about life on Pern titled DragonSinger, one of the music-school-going characters makes a comment about how he would like to sell some pan-pipes he’s made; only the master instrument-maker hasn’t yet put his mark on them, to show that the item is made by a genuine apprentice instrument-maker.  They’ll sell for more, Piemur asserts, with the right mark on them — the right branding — than without, and he wants as much as he can get for them.  But the master — who takes pride in his craft — won’t stamp them unless they are made well.  Then he negotiates the best price for those items in the marketplace, revealing his origins in a trading family.

Piemur from the McCaffrey novels, and Quincy Adams from American history, are not alone in wanting to present their work to the world and to the market.  Maybe their work isn’t very good; Piemur’s best efforts only fetch four marks, which we’re given to understand is enough for some dessert treats and a bauble from a costume jewelry shop.  All kinds of leverage is possible, though: Adams’ penwork earns him a trip halfway around the world — an adventure!

I think teaching students (and teachers) about the immediate marketability of some skills, and attaching monetary reward for them, would instantly boost interest in creativity and collaboration.  It would also give business some incentive to invest in local educational efforts: this kid can write and interviews people well; let’s send him to the state capitol to report on the news for a few days, or a week.

Ira Socol’s question reminds us that Pythagoras and his followers were hounded city to city, and eventually tortured to death, because the Pythagorean theorem and the secret of pi (π) had military applications; it wasn’t just weird math.  The Romans sought out Archimedes during the siege of Syracuse, Sicily, for his mathematics as much as for his military engineering.  Leonardo daVinci got a job as a painter’s apprentice because he scribbled pictures on every writing surface he found.

All the folks saying, “we have to teach the eternal skills, for the whole of their lifetimes” are blowing smoke and selling snake oil.  It’s worth remembering that our ideas about eternal skills are always complicated by the realities of techne.  Early Sumerian tablets record that a student learning write might be beaten twenty times a day — for cutting his stylus wrong, for improperly shaping tablets, for misspelling a word — until he invited his teacher home to dine with his parents; and then the mysteries of the scribal art would open with ease.   Two hundred years ago, John Adams insisted that his son practice with a quill pen for two hours a day, so that his penmanship would be good enough to do the work of an elected official or diplomat. For both groups, the most important skill of the day: write well with the best instrument available, and to as many people as possible.

Yet I don’t hear anyone suggesting that we ask our students to write emails and blog for two hours a day.  Quite the contrary, I hear the reverse.

Let’s say it loud and proud: Students, write e-mails and blog, use your cellphone to snap and share photos,  comment on other people’s blogs, and Twitter for two hours every day.  Put your ideas out there for as many people as you know to read and comment on.  Be energetic in generating ideas and seek active commentary.  Show the best face you can to the world.

Who knows?  It might get you an official berth on a visit to Russia. and what could be cooler than that?

I have been avoiding getting swept up by the whole Twitter thing until today. I noticed it was Jody Lynn Nye’s birthday on the 5th July and decided she would be a really good person to write about. She’s been a co-author with a number of my favourite authors such as Anne McCaffrey and Robert Asprin as well as writing some Crossroads books. I know it doesn’t have much to do with Twitter, but I happened to come across her Twitter page and was promptly captivated into reading her latest Tweets. Fascinating stuff, well, some of it. She talks about EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman being made into a movie by JM Straczynski and Ron Howard in her latest which is problematic for me as I don’t actually like the Lensman series. But I scrolled further down and she talks about writing and baby raccoons amongst other stuff. I was fascinated by most of this and it’s making me seriously consider signing up for Twitter so I can follow her and also look up some of my favourite authors to see if I want to follow them as well.

Just so you think this is about Jody Lynn Nye and not about me Tweeting I’ll give you some more information and a link to her webpage. You need to click through and look at the Applied Mythology icon, it’s just gorgeous.

So let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Conventional wisdom always seems to think that two (or more) people cannot co-operate to produce a single coherent piece of writing. Supposedly, the professionalism that writers routinely bring to bear when they write on their own deserts them when they write in a team. This is an intensely annoying assumption. It completely ignores the reality that many writers do actively collaborate. Further, many more may actually assist a writer to produce a work. There are these teams of “helpers” who are thanked on acknowledgement pages of novels for reading and commenting on early drafts. Then there are the agents and those mysterious people called editors who also seem to get involved. Adding more people on to the byline (where journalists insist on their multiple acknowledgements) is neither here nor there.

So here is yet another example of a seamless piece of writing by two (youngish) writers. If you gave this text to anyone, they would never know that two (more more) people had been involved.

And the book itself? Well, we are back in the symbiotic relationship between “man” and “his” animals. One of the more detailed examples of this theme is the accumulated work of Anne McCaffrey in the Pern novels, but Monette and Bear avoid the somewhat saccharine approach and deal with pack animals rather than lone dragons. Both rely an early imprinting system where relatively newly born dragons/wolves are paired with young apprentices. After that, they diverge somewhat dramatically.

However, to be convincing, a culture must be reasonably coherent. Here we have an essentially human-based society living in small settlements that is threatened by trolls and (their familiars) the wyverns. The defence is to build fighting teams of men and wolves that, acting with intuitive or telepathic mutual understanding, produce co-ordinated attacks of fang, claw and axe usually accounting for their enemies. For this to work, there has to be a steady feed-through of young apprentices who fill out the ranks of these teams, bonding with newly born wolves as and when they are born.

The leader of one settlement, Lord Gunnar, is deeply prejudiced against the way in which the packs live their lives. This is a man who is dependent on the packs for the survival of his small community, yet is fundamentally opposed to their lifestyle. This does not ring true. This is a vertical pre-feudal society in which the military literally and metaphorically are the top dogs (sorry, couldn’t resist working that in). When the wolfless are always under the protection of the packs, their status would be high and nothing would be allowed to disturb the smooth flow of new recruits. Their “street cred” would be high and their reputations impeccable. For a leader with the power to shape opinion and potentially undermine public support for the packs to be so deeply prejudiced is not sustainable.

Every generation of every human community would be reared to venerate the packs and to long for the chance to be picked as an apprentice. Nothing would be allowed to interfere with this. The youngsters would play the local equivalent of “cowboys and indians” with all of them longing to feel some of the telepathic ability so critical to the success of the pack. It seems that every human has the potential for this telepathic linkage, but some are better at it than others. All leaders would always have to be seen to support the system. This whole element feels like a random plot device to allow the authors the chance to explore the theme of homophobia. It is too artificial and, in my view, actively detracts from the flow of the novel.

Now we come to the “controversial” part of the book. Socially, the packs are matriarchal, the svartalfar have gender equality, and the wolfless human communities are those scenarios much beloved of authors where the men are the figureheads and women have influence behind closed doors. The effect of the bonding between man and cub is to produce a form of telepathic link between the two. Thus, when the wolves get interested in sex, the linkage so convenient to co-ordinate battles, becomes inconvenient for the men paired with the rutting wolves. They find it difficult if not impossible to avoid sexual activity of their own. This is actually quite interesting but, again, all the punches are pulled. This is all written as a novel of discovery. The young Njall comes over as completely naive (in part explained by the homophobia of his father Lord Gunnar) and no-one really prepares him for what is to come. Then, it is so repetitive. None of it reads true as the men find themselves thrown into and out of relationships depending on the preferences of their wolves.

Then we have all this unexplained telepathy and other magical abilities in the novel. Njall turns out to be an ace telepathist and can transmit over major distances to warn the pack of danger. He also seems to have interspecies powers of communication as well. But here we come to yet another serious problem. The trolls are obviously intelligent and live in well-organised communities of their own. This is not a clash between humans and an unthinking enemy. It is the equivalent of prehistory’s supposed war for dominance between the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals. Yet no-one seems to try talking to them. Their immediate reaction upon meeting is to kill each other. Assuming that Njall’s ability is not uncommon, why is there no curiosity about the enemy? Why is there no attempt to negotiate some kind of truce? Why must everyone fight aiming for the extinction of the other all the time? It is all the more strange because there is the usual oral history tradition passed down through the songs/sagas. There are all kinds of interesting snippets of information about some things, but very convenient gaps about others.

I could go on but you’ve already realised my poor reaction. I grew really bored as this went on. Instead of developing the characters and exploring the cultures in a credible way, I was left with the feeling that these two ladies had decided to write a book to provoke and offend Americans (who generally seem less tolerant of sexual diversity than the rest of the world) and threw in lots of perverse sex and a few random battles as the sticks and carrots to get their readers to the end. It’s a real shame because, with more intelligence, this could have been a good book.

The real story is about gender not sexual roles. These are culturally defined. So young boys growing up in the settlements would want the glory of defending the community and be prepared to pay the price required. This would all be documented within the pack culture. There are too many men and wolves wounded or killed in these sessions as it is. Unless there was some form of training, management and accommodation between the species, this could never work over the longer term. It is only written this way because the writers want a shock quality to the narrative. They have subordinated the exploration of gender roles for the purposes of what — titillation, provocation?

Then we come to conventional human sexual politics. Njall finds an accommodating local girl in his own settlement and produces a daughter. The status of his partner within the community is never mentioned. One view would be that she gains in status because she beds a wolfman. If they produced a son, he could join the pack and both partners would gain status as adding to the defensive wall. That they produced a daughter is inconvenient because girls don’t do any of the fighting. What would the status of such female offspring be in the community? Would they be more desirable as adults because they carried the genes of a wolfman?

Presumably the telepathic linkage that is so strong wolf to human is less strong human to wolf because the wolves are only in heat (and so interested in sex) at certain times of the year. Whereas humans are fertile all year round. Interestingly, the village girl is not unhappy to give up her daughter to be raised as Njall directs (so much for the maternal bond). This is thematically mirrored by the reproductive cycle of the trolls which appears to be hivelike, and the lack of specific gender roles in the svartalfar. Motherhood is treated rather dispassionately in this book which is slightly odd because it is written by two women. The extent to which the wolves are jealous of the human partners is also not really explored. Or perhaps that explains why there are no women around the pack camps.

In our own culture, men only really talk about what it means to be a man when something goes wrong. There is a considerable volume of fiction and non-fiction dealing with erectile dysfunction and its consequences. Men, its seems, are poor fragile beings that collapse emotionally when their sexual abilities fail. They stop being proper men. This is the “macho” culture. In the wolfworld, men are required to swing in a number of different ways, so exploring their sexuality would be interesting. I found Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness” particularly illuminating. It’s a shame women with more modern sensibilities are not prepared to confront the same kind of issues today.

Discussion has recently come up on my writer’s list about fantasy stories. One of the members asked a range of questions, not because she needed advice but because I believe she’s had discussions with other writers on what constitutes fantasy. Most of the members had close to the same answers here so I’m listing her questions and how I view each of them.

1.     Should a writer write down to an audience, or just use their own conversational voice?

 I took this to mean, should a writer condescend to, take on an instructional tone in explaining to an audience that may not know as much. Or should the writer use the author’s voice. However, I believe she meant, use your regular writing voice, thought that wasn’t clear. I have elaborated on my original answers.

I’d think neither. You’re writing using characters so your characters should help reveal the world. A character has a personality and a unique voice and depending on the point of view, that will affect what voice is used. You could have a condescending narrator; in that case yes he/she would talk or write down to the audience.

To explain the particular setting/technology/society of a world requires deft revelation, some of which may be through a particular character. Albeit, some exposition is required in a novel, but it shouldn’t be talking/writing down so much as making sure your regular reader understands the functioning aspects of the world as needed to understand the story. Example: I recently edited a book for someone who had all sorts of words/slang about airforce planes but on a level most of us (unless we were pilots) wouldn’t understand. He needed a bit more info in context so that the reader could understand what was going on.

 Unless you (the author/narrator) are an integral part of your novel, the authorial voice should not be there. When author’s drop into their stories it’s disconcerting and pulls the reader out of the world. Terry Pratchett from time to time uses an authorial or omniscient narrator (as you suspected, dear reader). It takes skill to use it in a way that enhances a story as opposed to detracting from in and ruining the atmosphere.  

2.     Should a fantasy novel assume lack of science and technology?

No. Even a world of magic has some technology or science. Whether it interacts with the story is another matter. Cups, weapons, dyes, plows, walls, etc., are all a science when they’re discovered/invented. Pre-industrial societies had science and or technology. Stories that involve alchemists (as an example) often mix science with magical properties. Books have been written where magic and science blend equally.

If you mean the logic/science behind how magic works in a particular world, then yes it still has to make sense and work in the story. But science does not negate magic necessarily.

3.     Should a fantasy novel assume a pseudo-medieval milieu?

No. It can, as is evidenced by numerous novels, but some are of far earlier societies. Some are integrated in later worlds and some are just plain ole alien. I read Brandon Sanderson’s novel, Mistborn, which had a plantationesque era and established magic. There was science as well. I really liked it for being of a different milieu.

Often there is the accepted trope that in a world that is not industrialized, magics develop in different ways within people. But a world could have magical creatures, i.e., not found normally on planet Earth and still not be medieval. Many medieval fantasies fall into parallel world tropes, where it is the middle ages but some element of magic is real. Many take an Earth like world and values but create fictitious places. Everything from the myths of the ancients up to the modern urban fantasies, like Charles de Lint’s (his name came up often in this discussion) are fantasy but not medieval. And really, a fantasy story has a better chance of selling if it is different rather than the same as every other book on the shelf.

4.     Should a fantasy novel necessarily encompass magic?

Again, it doesn’t matter really. Yes or no, depending on your world. A world can just be “other” or different from the world and the past we know, yet have nothing magical about it. It will still fall into the fantasy category. The lines between science fiction and fantasy can be blurry. Anne McCaffrey’s famous dragonriders of Pernseries started out as a medieval fantasy where people in feudal style societies rode dragons that killed the invading threads. She argued that it was science fiction because it was a different world, where originally the humans came from someplace else.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover books were similar in that they started out in a medieval style world, where some people had special powers. But as she wrote more and more books, there was interaction with people from other planets and spaceports. Fantasy or science fiction? Yes.

5.     Should magic in a fantasy novel be hard or just part of the norm like breathing?

Depends on if everyone does it, or if it’s a gifted few. Are they born with it or like us, do they go through a crawling stage before walking and then flying? Many books have magical talents begin with puberty. In others, the person must study and earn the talent. It could be a world that has an inherent magic in the way it works such as creatures that change shape. It all depends on what is integral to the plot and how that affects the outcomes and solutions the protagonist must find.

Overall, I’d say almost all of these are not hard and fast. It depends on how the world is set up, what tale you’re trying to tell and how integral magic is to that story line. But questions like these are always goods to ask because as writers, it keeps us thinking and examining what we do. And sometimes it pushes us outside our comfort zones and we move beyond the box.

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I came across this on Happy Catholic and I just couldn’t resist. Here goes:

1. Most treasured childhood book (s)?
A tale of time city by Diana Wynne Jones,

2. Classic(s) you are embarrassed to admit you’ve never read?
Not really embarrassed to admit I haven’t read a book. I do sometimes think I should have read some Proust or Tolstoy by now.

3. Classics you read, but hated?
Great expectations – any Charles Dickens really. I find the descriptions of EVERYTHING a little too much.

4. Favourite genres?
Fantasy, Sci-fi and childrens

5. Favourite light reading?
Almost anything by Anne McCaffrey or Maeve Binchy

6. Favourite heavy reading?
I’m not sure what heavy reading is, but these were certainly challenging reading, at least the first time: Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation, Jane Austin

7. Last book(s) you finished?
New read: Just Henry by Michelle Magorian, Reread: Pegasus in flight by Anne McCaffrey

8. Last book you bailed on?
Theology of the Body by Christopher West – just because I had too much going on at the time to pay proper attention. It’s still in my ‘to read’ pile.

9. Three books on your nightstand?
Follow your dream by Peter Hannan, The inner voice of love by Henri Nouwen and Just Henry by Michelle Magorian

10. Books you’ve read more than once?
I reread books all the time, but some favourites… Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, Persuasion & Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin, Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton.

11. The books that meant the most to you when you were young?
The Chalet School Series by Eleanor M Brent-Dyer, The Lord of the Rings, Tim & Tobias books and the Buccanear (?) books by Sheila McCullagh.

12. Book(s) that changed the way you looked at life?
Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, the Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, The Chalet School Series, The Lord of the Rings, Evening Class by Maeve Binchy, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, The Johnny Series by Terry Pratchett

13. Favorite books
See previous question – the books that teach me something new and reach conclusions usually become favourites.

14. Favorite author(s)
Diana Wynne Jones, Thomas Merton, Michelle Magorian

15. Desert Island book
All of them? Probably Lord of the Rings as it would be long enough (with all the appendices) to keep me going for a while.

I think this has turned into a list of my favourite authors.

I was a highschooler when I read this. Unknowing, ignorant, and unaware of the jewel I held as I borrowed it from my friend. But I assure you, I am well aware, now, of my good fortune. Why? Because I still haven’t returned it. Lol. (Joke) I don’t do it on purpose. One of these days, I will return this gem of a book, preferably, with a copy of my own firmly in hand.

This was my first contact with the world of Pern, and my first encounter with Anne McCaffrey as an author. It’s very exciting really. Much similar to a human who has finally realized she has stepped on alien landscape but still needs a few minutes to get her bearings.

I was VERY lucky to have read Dragonsdawn first since it was the starting point of all other Anne McCaffrey Dragon books. “grins”

Dragonsdawn. “Laughs”, I actually though it was a fantasy book. I used to like fantasy more than science-fiction back then, but now, the two are on the same level in my choices.

Dragonsdawn tells the story of humans going from the original Earth to Pern. They were a group of scientists, gypsies, farmers, every kind of human you could think of. Every needed position was there, to ensure that this small colony would survive on a world alien to their own.  At first, they thought colonizing Pern would be an easy thing. They had all their technology and no huge predators were actually ever seen on the planet. Pern was also viewed more as an agricultural resource planet rather than a metal one due to the huge acres of soil and low counts on metals such as gold, iron, copper, etc.

First few days of settling in were going as scheduled until they noticed this red star that was getting nearer and nearer. They didn’t see it as a threat until strange rain-like things started falling on Pern. They were called Thread and they actually looked more like gray disgusting slugs at closer view.

The Thread ate through everything and the only material that could stop them was water or stone. Thread destroyed houses, livestock, farms, and many lives. The citizens of Pern almost gave up hope until they noticed that their small alien neighbors, which had the forms of tiny dragons, could combat the threat. They spewed fire from their mouths and incinerated the falling thread.

The citizens, with their scientist, decided to make even bigger versions of these thread, and the outcomes are what we now know as the Dragons of Pern.

This is the book where it all began. Anne McCaffrey captures the readers attention because she writes the struggles her characters face, so well and gives each  behaviors which are uniquely their own. She gives lives to the dragons and bonds them with humans to add a depth to the story that mixes sci-fi and fantasy both. You feel within your bones the urgency in which these small number of survivors need the dragons in order to survive. You read straight until the end and groan at each difficulty, each failure in the making of these powerful creatures, and at the end when you realize it is a success, you crave more.