Forging an Art

I heard vague inklings about the coming release of this steampunk novel by Cherie Priest many months ago, then definite excitement from Tor editors along with Tiffany Trent (Hallowmere) during a panel on Victorian lit and steampunk at DragonCon.  And steampunk itself?  Does Alice in Wonderland qualify, and how about A Connecticut Yankee?  Is the historical nature of a story vital to the steampunk definition?  Leaving the beaten path . . .

A boneshaker was actually – IRL – an iron bicycle with a wooden seat, sans springs.  Ouch.  In Priest’s tale, it is a mining machine, doomed to create havoc and destroy life, as it were, in late nineteenth century Seattle, a Seattle not yet part of the States, and the States still in the midst of the Civil War, which has continued for nearly two decades.   This is really a story of a tough woman set on saving her teenage son, and the relationship between the two that has led up to his adventure and how it changes during and because of their discoveries.  Priest is all about a fast pace, which keeps the reader’s eye on the page and wanting more; her descriptions are detailed but not overdone; and the emotional drama is present but not mushy or overpowering. 

My only question – and perhaps not a question, at that – regards a statement by Yaozu, in answer to Zeke’s question about the power behind the lights:  “They are powered by the future.”  Nothing more is mentioned about this ‘future’ aspect, and I was left wondering through the rest of the novel what, if anything, the future had to do with the doctor or the technology.  I thought perhaps the doctor had appeared from the future – a la Connecticut Yankee – or the knowledge/machinery itself had been transported in some manner from the future.

Originally published thirty years ago, this collection of essays, speeches, and introductions by Ursula K. Le Guin is a must for any writer, student, teacher, or reader of science fiction and fantasy.  My political and religious views could not be more different than this great writer’s, but as one who falls into the four aforementioned categories, I agree with her in most every other way, and am grateful that she has been around to give words to so much that defines the craft.  I can do no better than to note those parts of the collection that speak to me the most closely:

Absolute freedom is absolute responsibility.  The writer’s job, as I see it, is to tell the truth.

Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts – only in the truth.  You get the facts from the outside.  The truth you get from inside.

If you want to strike out in any new direction – you go alone.  With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.

When the genuine myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message.  You must change your life.

Fantasy is the natural, the appropriate language for the recounting of the spiritual journey and the struggle of good and evil in the soul.

It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.

There are, however, two instances in which I do not quite understand Le Guin’s stance.  Why is poetry held separate from fiction in these situations?  Maybe someone out there can offer insight:

The lovable rogue, the romantic criminal, the revolutionary Satan are essentially literary creations, not met with in daily life.  They are embodiments of desire, types of the soul; thus their vitality is immense and lasting; but they are better suited to poetry and drama than to the novel  (141).

Always the book one imagines and the book one writes are different things.  The one exists objectively, a scribbled manuscript or so many thousand printed copies.  The other exists subjectively.  It is the other’s first cause and final cause.  Toward it the written book, during its writing, continually strives, like the image in a mirror approaching the person moving toward it.  But they do not merge.  Only in poetry, which breaks all barriers, do the two ever meet, each becoming the other (140).

Review over at Bookspotcentral.

June
DragonLight – Paul
Coffin County – Braunbeck
Cry Wolf: A Political Fable – Lake
Into the Storm – Anderson
Promise of the Wolves – Hearst
Steampunk – ed. VanderMeer
Bloodheir – Ruckley
Daemons Are Forever – Green
The Summer Palace – Watt-Evans
Hawkspar – Lisle
The Dead and the Gone – Pfeffer (YA)
The Demon Queen – Lewis (YA)
House of Many Ways – Wynne Jones (YA)
Frozen Fire – Bowler (YA)
Noman – Nicholson (YA)
The Last of the High Kings – Thompson (YA)
The Lost Art – Morden (YA) 

July

Victory of Eagles: A Novel of Temeraire – Novik
By Schism Rent Asunder – Weber
Mage-Guard of Hamor – Modesitt
Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy – ed. Schafer
The Word of God; or, Holy Writ Unwritten – Disch
The City in the Lake – Neumeier (YA) 

August

The Gypsy Morph – Brooks
The Last Theorem – Clarke/Pohl
Mars Life – Bova

 September

Faefever – Moning
The Stowaway: Stone of Tymora – Salvatore
A Dance With Dragons – Martin

 October

The Pirate King (Forgotten Realms) – Salvatore

 November

The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia – Sansweet/Hidalgo

Pretty Fly for a White Guy

Fan vid by Lesley, my coworker who is the sci fi queen and my compatriot in Stargate Atlantis adoration (at least until they ruined it with the casting changes).

The LC just finished the second in this series, Betrayal on Orbis 2.  When asked for an opinion, he characteristically stated “it was good” but also that he took a couple of days to finish it, when if something is “really, really good” he’ll read it in a day.  Normally he hovers in fantasy-land, preferably involving dragons, but the first title of this science fiction series by P.J. Haarsma left him asking if I could bring home the sequel, which was yet to be published at the time.  There will be more of these, he assured me, and asked if I could keep an eye out for them.

Writing the Lavinia review today, and should have it up by the end of the week.