Mahound is in his paradise: religion in fantasy

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

--G.K. Chesterton, Lepanto, second stanza

1.

A tourist visits Gondor at the end of the Third Age, on the eve of the War of the Ring. What does he see in its capital? More or less what Pippin does before Sauron's armies cross the Anduin: the black outer wall of the city, the lesser walls of its upper circles, houses and arches of white stone, a tall tower atop the central stone keel of the city, and, around the dead, white tree before it, the soldiers of the Tower Guard in their sable uniforms.

Now, imagine being a tourist in Rome during the reign of Nero. What would you see? Again, buildings of marble, arches, perhaps not soldiers (forbidden, in theory, within the city's sacred boundary). And what else? Statues, aqueducts, columns, and, scattered throughout the city, one other kind of building that Pippin does not: temples. From the grand edifices of the forum to the little shrines on the street-corners, Rome was a city full of gods in "a world full of gods." Minas Tirith is not.

Adventures in Self-Publishing, Part I

Self-publishing is an easy choice if you tend to enjoy managing lots of fiddly details. That doesn't mean, however, that the process itself is easy. Here's a smattering of things I've had to research or consider so far.

Disclaimer: I am a housewife, not a lawyer, publisher, or other expert. Information in this post comes from my own experience and (possibly flawed) understanding; if you take any action based on it, I am not responsible for the results.

Thoughts on Alternate History VI: the limitations of a genre

1.

I've read some pretty good alternate-historical stories, rigorous, "soft," and more or less fantastic. I've often felt discontented with what I read, however, for reasons on which I've not quite been able to put my finger. I suppose I can only say that the fantastic settings and plot-devices reveal two key intellectual limitations of the genre: materialism and chronological snobbery. In what is, for now, the final post on the topic, I'll try to explain what I mean.

Thoughts on Alternate History V: Bats from Planet X

Unbeknownst to the Puritan pirate captain, the ring of power had fallen into the hands of the warlord of a distant planet whose name is made up entirely of phonemes in shaded areas on the International Phonetic Alphabet chart. The warlord bided his time, gathered his armies. Then one day, a cloud of fire-breathing bats descended from the sky, wreaking havoc and burning all the countryside. The warlord rubbed his hands together—or rather, the ends of his wings—as he looked down and saw the Earth burning like a little firecracker, and he sat back in his throne and laughed and laughed and laughed.

--Ella Hansen, In Enigmate, "False Ending" (revised)

Ahem. I'll let Ella explain where that little gem came from, and why, someday. Let's just say that Young Adult fantasy sometimes gets old, even for the authoress herself. What I mean to draw attention to is the paragraph's protagonist: our trusty alien warlord, whose presence in the story I apparently inspired. "Alien Space Bats" were--so the story goes--invented in a usenet discussion by a contributor who wanted to underscore just how impossible it would have been for Unternehmen Seelöwe ("Operation Sealion"), the planned German invasion of Britain in WW2, to succeed: only the intervention of extraterrestrials could have brought the Germans victory.

Thoughts on Alternate History, part IV: Writing "hard" and "soft" alternate history

If the observations I have made in the last two posts are accurate, there is an important practical consequence for the writing of alternate history: every "hard" alternate-historical narrative is in danger of going soft. Once the timeline has diverged sufficiently from the main narrative, only authorial fiat prevents it from diverging further. Once John F. Kennedy has given the order for an all-out response to Soviet aggression off Cuba and Thomas Powers has flattened everything under Moscow's sway with the full might of the Strategic Air Command, there is no telling what the world will look like even five years later, let alone fifty.

Your Loving Aunt

When looking through old files of my writing, I rediscovered this story, first published on a now-defunct collective blog in 2008.  My novels (however the early drafts start) always end up fairly serious; my short stories almost never do.

*****

To Miss Prunella Pig, 234 Penn St.
5 June

My dearest Prunella,

How delighted I am to hear that your new house is completed! You must tell me everything about it. Have you chosen curtains for the parlour yet? There is a lovely print in a shop not far from my house: yellow with small pink roses. It would match your couch perfectly. And of course you mustn’t forget the wallpaper. Perhaps a pale yellow or pink will do best. Oh, my dear, I am so anxious to see it all. I have more things to remind you than I can write.

Thoughts on Alternate History, part III: Chronology and the problem of genre

When does a story set in an imaginary past stop being alternate history? As I noted in part II, alternate history stories, at least those found on the internet, tend to take an explicitly chronological form. Even when they do not, there is an assumption that the plot derives from a particular alteration in the actual events. But what if it doesn't, or if the deviation lies so far in the past that any but the most tenuous sense of irony or comparison with reality is lost? Even chronology, the most rudimentary tool of historical analysis, eventually loses its meaning. Charting one's way through time is rather like charting one's way through space: without fixed points of reference, both the writer and the navigator find themselves directionless.

Thoughts on Alternate History, part II: "Hard" Alternate History

If alternate history has little to do with the writing of actual history, what makes it work? I've noticed a striking effect when reading alternate history scenarios online. As a rule, posters on the Alternate History Forum prefer timelines of varying elaborateness to traditionally organised novels or novellas. Their stories, except those that fit under the broad category of fantasy alternate history (more on this in another post), are usually organised not around the actions and psychological development of particular characters, but according to a sequential, chronological arrangement of events. Coupled with this structure is a tendency, not universal though sometimes hotly defended by purists, to make the events of the timeline deviate from a single "point of departure" (POD, in the parlance). Alternate history is thus presented, in form, as a fictitious analogue of the straightforwardly "factual" narratives of modernist historiography, albeit without the supporting structure of footnotes and sources.

When in Doubt, Add Villains

Plots are my weak spot.  Although I have problems developing at least one fairly major character per book, the other characters work out without much effort; the dialogue goes swimmingly; and describing things vividly and efficiently is my favourite part of editing.  But it takes me a long time to find out just where it's all going.

I wish I could report that I've discovered the key to easy plotting.  Alas, I had to get help outlining the novel I'm currently writing -- even though I knew more or less everything that was going to happen!  I have, however, stumbled upon one trick that helps move the story along: add more villains.

Thoughts on Alternate History, part I: introduction

Admiral Kimmel woke in a sweat. As he blinked, the buzz of the propellers of two hundred airplanes faded from his ears. A dream. That's all it had been. A dream. It was Sunday morning, a new day in Honolulu. But still-- "Lieutenant," he called. "Send the order: put the fleet on highest alert. And call General Short. His planes need to be ready for action, at once."  So began the Raid on Pearl Harbor, and the first American naval victory over Japan in the Pacific War of 1941-1944.

For the last several years, I've lurked (and occasionally posted) on the Alternate History Forum, one of the internet's premier sites for discussion of what could have, should have, would have happened, if Husband E. Kimmel really had alerted the Pacific Fleet on the morning of December 7, 1941, if Wellington had died of malaria after the Battle of Assaye, if Mustafa Kemal, the future Atatürk, had been hit by a stray shell at Gallipoli--if, well, you name it, and someone's probably thought of it, at least if it has to do with a famous general or politician dying before his time.

Fantasy Names

Adapted from a blog post published in 2013.

In a constructed world, characters' names should ideally come from the relevant conlangs (constructed languages).  This is especially helpful when there's a large cast of named characters from many different places: if the languages are different enough, the reader can start to feel where a character might come from, going only by his name.  (Compare the names Bilbo, Gimli, Legolas, Théoden, Ar-Pharazôn, Ghân-buri-Ghân:  One isn't going to forget quickly which one is the hobbit and which one is the elf.)