Book Review -- THE DYING EARTH, by Jack Vance

Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed, isolated system temperature, pressure, and chemical potential will eventually achieve equilibrium. All of the energy tends to even out throughout the system. Sometimes, this is referred to as entropy. When we think of entropy, we usually imagine loss of energy, not necessarily energy equalization. But something is lost when energy is equilibrated. What's lost is vitality, motion. The imbalance of energy permits action, transfer and conversion of energy convey motion and collision. When elements within a system bleed energy off to form that equilibrium, those elements seem to die.

It is this sort of energy death that Jack Vance explores in The Dying Earth. I recently reread my 1960s Lancer SF Library edition of this seminal work of its eponymous genre during school vacation. It's not very long, only 160 pages. Within are six stories set on an unnamed continent in a far, far distant future when the sun has grown dim and the inhabitants of the weary Earth imagine that it will one day gutter and flicker out like an exhausted flame.

Through these tales, Vance explores the theme of innocence--an ironic topic considering the setting is a far distant future where everything is slowly dying. However, through her old age, the Earth has regained a shred of her own innocence, as magic and myth have resurfaced, albeit mixed with science and technology. Vance's language invokes that same sense of the legendary and mythopoeic that Tolkien, Dunsany, and Howard possessed, although instead of dwelling in some mythic past when the world was young, he places his era of legend in a dreamlike future full of nostalgia and misty exoticism.

It was night in white-walled Kaiin, and festival time. Orange lanterns floated in the air, moving as the breeze took them. From the balconies dangled flower chains and cages of blue fireflies. The streets surged with the wine-flushed populace, costumed in a multitude of bizarre modes. Here was a Melantine bargeman, here a warrior of Valdaran's Green Legion, here another of ancient times wearing one of the old helmets. In a little cleared space a garlanded courtesan of the Kauchique littoral danced the Dance of the Fourteen Silken Movements to the music of flutes. In the shadow of a balcony a girl barbarian of East Almery embraced a man blackened and in leather harness as a Deodand of the forest. They were gay, these people of waning Earth, feverishly merry, for infinite night was close at hand, when the red sun should finally flicker and go black.

Countries have strange names, such as Kauchique, the Cape of Sad Remembrance, and the Land of the Falling Wall. We read of "orange-haired witches of the Cobalt Mountain; forest sorcerers of Ascolais, white-bearded wizards of the Forlorn Land," and silk-clad princes of "Cansaspara, the city of fallen pylons across the Melantine Gulf." Vance's prose infuses his perpetually twilit world with a sense of storied history.

The ground rose, the trees thinned, and T'sais came out on an illimitable dark expanse. This was Modavna Moor, a place of history, a tract which had borne the tread of many feet and absorbed much blood. At one famous slaughtering, Golickan Kodek the Conqueror had herded here the populations of two great cities, G'Vasan and Bautiku, constricted them in a circle three miles across, gradually pushed them tighter, tighter, tighter, panicked them toward the center within his flapping-armed subhuman cavalry, until at last he had achieved a gigantic squirming mound, half a thousand feet high, a pyramid of screaming flesh. It is said that Golickan Kodek mused ten minutes at his monument, then turned and rode his bounding mount back to the land of Laidenur from whence he had come.

We may only spend a few pages on the Modavna Moor, but that brief description of Golickan Kodek's ride from Laidenur gives the location weight and feeling, and makes it seem a real and actual place. Though Prince Datul Omaet is only mentioned in passing, the fact that he exists, is a sorcerer, and comes from a city of "fallen pylons" from across a sea makes Vance's world just a little bit richer and more fascinating. Vance doesn't flesh everything out with the thoroughness of a Tolkien, but rather keeps his world open and unmapped like Robert E. Howard or Clark Ashton Smith, enabling him to broaden and expand it at will.

Though the setting has great potential for nihilistic pessimism, Vance avoids that. In a sense, the decay and imminent death of the Earth is an opportunity to rediscover a romanticism. Though the Earth cannot be saved from its ultimate fate, maybe it could be spiritually redeemed through heroism, sacrifice, bravery, and intelligence. Indeed, there's a great strain of optimism that runs through the entirety of The Dying Earth and defies the sun's exhaustion. The mythic lyricism of Vance's prose is very much a return to an older form, and though he's not the master that Dunsany or Tolkien would be, he does a decent job of it nonetheless.

"Far in the past, far beyond thought, so the legend runs, a race of just people lived in a land east of the Maurenron Mountains, past the Land of the Falling Wall, by the shores of a great sea. They built a city of spires and low glass domes, and dwelt in great content. These people had no god, and presently they felt the need of one whom they might worship. So they built a lustrous temple of gold, glass, and granite, wide as the Scaum River where it flows through the Valley of Graven Tombs, as long again and higher than the trees of the north. And this race of honest men assembled in the temple, and all flung a mighty prayer, a worshipful invocation, and, so legend has it, a god molded by the will of this people was brought into being, and he was of their attributes, a divinity of utter justice.

"The city at last crumbled, the temple became shards and splinters, the people vanished. But the god still remains, rooted forever to the place where his people worshiped him."

Magic plays an enormous part of the setting--both in its romantic nostalgia and in its entropic decay.

At one time a thousand or more runes, spells, incantations, curses, and sorceries had been known. The reach of Grand Motholam--Ascolais, the Ide of Kauchique, Almery to the South, the Land of the Falling Wall to the East--swarmed with sorcerers of every description, of whom the chief was the Arch-Necromancer Phandaal. A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated--though rumor said that demons whispered at his ear when he wrought magic. Ponticella the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandaal to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed, and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city of Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man.

The spells are described as "so cogent" that characters can only fit a limited number of them into their brains at any given time. Upon casting of these spells, the release of magical energy wipes the formulas from the sorcerers' minds. This is exactly what role-playing-gamers describe when discussing "Vancian magic" in games like Dungeons & Dragons. Indeed, E. Gary Gygax and David Arneson were directly influenced by Jack Vance's setting when they were designing D&D, and elected to try to capture the feel of Vance's magical system in their game. This is obviously how Vance's The Dying Earth found its way into Gygax's heavily influential Appendix N.

This interesting mixture of innocence and romanticism amidst decay and entropy is combined with another major theme that runs through his books--justice and redemption. Characters either surrender to their base desires and lusts for power, or they can achieve a sort of moral epiphany and seek to do right. Such characters as T'sais, Turjan of Miir, Etarr, through love, sacrifice, bravery, and loss manage to achieve redemption and have their courage recognized. Other characters, like Liane the Wayfarer and Mazirian, get a satisfying comeuppance. Though Vance's world is dominated by decadence and dark forces, the just, good, and brave can definitely make a positive difference in the world, and Vance's stories are of those exceptional people who manage to overcome obstacles both internal and external.

One may say that all of these good deeds are for naught, since the sun is fading and eternal night is immanent, but the tenor and texture of the narratives do not suggest that this was Vance's aim. Rather, the author seems to feel that his protagonists really do matter and that their actions truly have a positive impact in spite of the looming heat-death of the world. Though cities crumble to dust and the sun continues to fade, magic and wonder still persists, and the world can still be enchanted, right up to the very end.

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Style B+
Substance B
Overall B+

Book Review -- A FEAST FOR CROWS, by George R.R. Martin

With all this talk about nihilism in fantasy, even Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation had something to say about it in a recent video game review. The inexhaustible banter between various sides has actually left me a bit in the lurch, torn between a rollicking good time reading gratuitous sex and violence on a medieval scale and the demands of decent taste. Well, instead of launching forward discussing the state of fantasy fiction any further, I'm taking a break from reading Takami Koushun's teenage slaughterfest Battle Royale to belatedly put down my thoughts on George R.R. Martin's fourth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Feast for Crows. (For my earlier reviews of the preceding volumes see A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords).

Understanding why and how this novel was written is key to understanding the novel as a whole. Martin claims to have never really intended to write this novel, nor the upcoming A Dance with Dragons, until he realized that he couldn't simply jam everything he felt needed to be conveyed through flashbacks in the upcoming novels. So, he originally intended to write a single novel to bridge the gap between A Storm of Swords and the fifth book. However, book four ended up becoming so large that he had to split it in half, and so A Feast for Crows is only half the bridge with the upcoming A Dance with Dragons covering all of the character perspectives that weren't covered by book four.

Thus, A Feast for Crows is interesting from the standpoint of character development, but in terms of plot development, we really don't get anything until the end, and that end is more of a setup for events that will take place in book six. Given the length of time between book releases lately, it will be a wonder if Martin will ever finish this series. However, I'm hoping that the sixth novel comes out much quicker, since the bridge part of the story was something that Martin wasn't as interested in telling, but he certainly felt it needed to be told.

And that's pretty much it. The entire book is a setup for the events that will take place either during or after the winter. By the novel's end, winter has begun, and it wouldn't be surprising if things basically slowed to a complete stop. Almost all of the characters have been placed in positions where Martin can easily pick them back up years later down the timeline. A number of very satisfying conclusions have occurred for several characters. But other characters seem to be hanging by a thread and their fates are uncertain. It's not a bad read as books go, and it isn't really filler in a Jordanesque sense, where characters simply sit around plotting and those plots never come to fruition until three 1,000+-page novels have been completed. There's storyline payoff, but those payoffs are weak compared to what Martin could have done.

I don't feel like Martin is stretching his story out on purpose. Instead, I get the impression that he's not certain how to cram everything in that he wants to. We get precious little of the Ironmen storyline, or of Arya Stark's development, with the lion's share of the book going to the Lannisters (Jaime and Cersei) and Brienne. Samwell's thread and the events in Dorne get a pretty fair shake. However, its the brevity with which Martin handles Arya's, Sansa's, and the Greyjoy's storylines that make them so strong and inspiring. It's easy to get sick of the constant plotting and scheming of Cersei Lannister throughout the novel, although Martin does give us a pretty satisfying conclusion to her storyline at the end of the novel.

When compared to previous volumes, this one is definitely a bridge, and it feels like it, too. The real situation was wrapped up in A Storm of Swords. In A Feast for Crows, Martin is simply prepping us for whatever happens after A Dance with Dragons. As ever, his characterizations are believable, his grasp of character psychology thorough. There's plenty here to keep a reader going. Seeing how Samwell Tarly, Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, and Arya Stark all evolve as characters, how they face their individual challenges and quandaries. Sam continues to find inner reserves of strength and bravery, Jaime is forced to deal with the realities of his sister's ambition and ceaseless plotting and struggles with his own ethical and moral compass that is often in conflict with what other men consider honor, Brienne struggles to fulfill the many (and sometimes contradictory) oaths she's made, and Arya begins to detach herself from her past and become something new. These threads are the best parts of the novel.

Martin has, perhaps, given hints as to where, finally, he intends to take this series of his at the end. But a lot remains to be seen. A large number of characters are not to be seen in this novel, but their shadows still loom heavily across the plot's landscape--especially Daenerys Targaryen. I wouldn't suggest that this book is nihilistic as others claim. Oaths and oathbreaking dominate this book, as does plotting and conspiracy. There most heroic characters--Jaime, Brienne, and yes, Sam--struggle with oaths and honor alike. The storylines of Cersei, the Dornish, and Sansa are all hotbeds of intrigue, and Petyr proves himself to be a master politician in contrast to Cersei or the naïve, quasi-heroic intrigues of the Dornish princesses. This book is nowhere near as sluggish and filler-laden as it is reputed to be. Its only in comparison to the previous volumes that A Feast for Crows really seems to be lacking anything.

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
Style B
Substance B
Overall B

Book Review -- THE BLACK COMPANY by Glen Cook

In May of 1984, The Black Company emerged on the fantasy scene, telling the story of a mercenary company with a long legacy from the perspective of that company's historian. The author, a certain Glen Cook, would go on two publish two more novels within the next year, to create a trilogy entitled The Book of the North, a record of the Black Company's exploits on the northern continent of Cook's fantasy world.

Cook's company is a fully realized unit of hardened veterans. His characterizations are accomplished through action and behavior, all of which is observed and relayed by Croaker, the company physician and keeper of the annals. They're a group of misfits, ne'er-do-wells, sellswords, and thugs that are united in a brotherhood of arms and a code of honor.

This sounds rather generic, but it is in Cook's description of the characters' actions and behaviors where the multi-faceted personalities really assume multiple dimensions. Some of the characters get short shrift, such as the Captain, but others are very-much realized, like One-Eye, Goblin, Elmo, and Raven. But the real protagonist of the story is the Black Company itself. The company is a sort of refuge and home for those who would otherwise have no place and belong nowhere. Each character that joins the company fits into the group and belongs there. By creating this company, Cook is creating a kind of brotherhood of soldiers and exploring the camaraderie that develops between the men.

This isn't necessarily unique, as a multitude of novels have been published outside of the fantasy genre that explore these sorts of themes. Where Cook is innovative, however, is with the nature of the Company's moral and ethical dilemma. The opening finds them trapped in a contract that they are bound to fulfill, and honor demands that they complete it. The populace of the city that they are garrisoning resents their occupation and violently take to the streets against them. In order to get out of their contract without breaking it, the Captain signs the proverbial pact with the Devil and commits the company to the service of the Lady--a resurrected sorceress from an earlier age who seeks to rebuild her Domination over the entire northern continent. The Company, apparently, has gotten more than they bargained for, since now they are not only caught within the web of political machinations and backstabbing among the Lady's powerful sorcerer-generals, they also realize that they are on the wrong side of a war--they are fighting for the bad guys.

In this manner, Cook peers into the hearts and souls of those forces whom the average fantasy reader finds him/herself cheering against, and makes us cheer for them. It's a pretty slick subversion of the genre. The characters aren't the wonderful heroes that we are used to in fantasy.

"You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest."

Later, the narrative continues.

"I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams. Not that they didn't deserve disturbing. They were foul. I was doing unspeakable things with a couple of girls that could not have been more than twelve, and making them love it. It's disgusting, the shadows that lurk in my mind."

The protagonist, Croaker, often puts himself up as an example of the sort of decadence and perversion that is common in the Black Company. Yet Croaker's honesty and his guilt are his redemption. He refuses to report on the sins and excesses of his brethren, although he's not afraid to convey his own misdeeds--even those in his dreams. Croaker, at heart, wants to do the right thing, and his own personal struggle--service to a dark sorceress, is inextricably linked with the Company's own ethical dilemma. Croaker is the quiet conscience of the Black Company, the small spark that redeems his fellows not only in the pages of the Annals, but also in his deeds and decisions throughout the book.

Croaker's own struggles embody the struggles of the Company as a whole, and as his connection to the Lady grows throughout the novel, so does the vital role that the Company will play in her plans. They become the focal point for everything, and Croaker becomes a focal point for the plot. When he is faced with the reality that evil is everywhere, it reflects the situation the Company has found itself in.

"'I know you, Annalist. I have opened your soul and peered inside. You fight for me because your company has undertaken a commission it will pursue to the bitter end--because its principal personalities feel its honor was stained in Beryl. And that though most of you think you're serving Evil.

"'Evil is relative, Annalist. You can't hang a sign on it. You can't touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger. Where you stand now, because of your oath, is opposite the Dominator. For you he is where your Evil lies.'"

Croaker, like the Company, is confronted with a few uncomfortable truths. The real struggle of the novel is whether Croaker can maintain his moral center or if he succumbs to relativism and/or nihilism and simply sides with the lesser evil. Croaker's struggle inside is a microcosm of the struggle of the entire Black Company.

This novel was obviously quite influential on Stephen Erikson's Gardens of the Moon. Indeed, the Bridgeburners of the Malazan Army seem to have been modeled on the Black Company. There's no direct analogy, but naming conventions (Mallet, Hedge, Fiddler, etc. of the Bridgeburners compared to Goblin, Three-fingers, Jolly, Silent, etc. of the Black Company) show definite similarities. These are obviously not birth-names, but names assumed upon enlistment--a kind of eschewing the past along with one's old name in order to begin a new life with the unit.

Cook successfully meditates upon the life of the rank-and-file soldiers of the fantasy antagonist without descending into grandiose levels of angst and pessimism. He handles the ethics of the Black Company and its dilemma with enough finesse and doesn't hammer us with long, winding passages of introspection, keeping Croaker's soliloquies elegantly brief and allowing us to internalize the Company's dilemma more effectively. The worldbuilding isn't incredible, and simply screams "generic medieval fantasy setting" at the top of its lungs. But it isn't worldbuilding we're here for. We're here for the Company--Croaker and his brethren--and their heroism in a war in which they're on the side of evil.

As a side-note, it should be mentioned that the Black Company's name originated with the racial composition of the unit during its formation--the first roster drew almost entirely from the black-skinned natives of the southern continent, and only One-Eye and Tom-Tom (who are wizard-brothers) remain from that levy. The remainder, it is implied are likely dusky or olive-skinned Mediterranean types with dark hair. This is very interesting, because fantasy has always been one of those genres that is extremely ossified when it comes to race. I personally believe that the racial makeup of most fantasy novels is a holdover from older European folk tales and stories, so it would figure that Caucasians would figure so prominently in the tales. But it is interesting to mention that black characters not only made it into this novel, but indeed are more than simply stereotypes (at least so far as One-Eye is concerned).

The Black Company by Glen Cook
Style B
Substance B
Overall B

"Realism" and Nihilism in Contemporary Fantasy

Leo Grin over at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood wrote an interesting piece about the decline of modern fantasy, entitled "The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists." By-and-large, the piece is quite reactionary (as is fitting a piece for anything Breitbart-related). Pat's Fantasy Hotlist said, "To me, it all sounds like someone caught in the past, refusing to see the genre we love evolve and grow." Roland's Codex dismissed it as pathetic, saying, "I found it extremely amusing in its fanboyish indignation and intellectual constipation, and would urge you to proceed with all due haste and read it. Hilarity and merriment are to be had!" But he had some very interesting points to make.

First, Grin yearns for a return to the mythopoeic stylings of J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. This is an odd coupling, because both authors are extreme opposites in a great many ways. Howard wrote for the pulps, and it shows. His protagonists are often scoundrels living on the wrong side of the law, mercenaries escaping from a lost battle, or ne'er-do-wells of any sort. His prose style is fast-paced, action-oriented, and particularly bloody and violent. Tolkien, on-the-other-hand, is erudite, educated, a loremaster weaving a grandiose mythic cycle about an apocalyptic struggle between Good and Evil writ large. Regardless, they do have things in common these days, since Grin seems to see their similarities more as a function of their distance from current fantasy offerings, and especially cites Joe Abercrombie's work.

Second, Grin decries the over-reliance on violence, scatology, sex, and overall shock in order to subvert the established literary tropes.

Endless scenes of torture, treachery and bloodshed drenched in scatology and profanity concluded with a resolution worthy of M. Night Shyamalan at his worst, one that did its best to hurt, disappoint, and dishearten any lover of myths and their timeless truths. Think of a Lord of the Rings where, after stringing you along for thousands of pages, all of the hobbits end up dying of cancer contracted by their proximity to the Ring, Aragorn is revealed to be a buffoonish puppet-king of no honor and false might, and Gandalf no sooner celebrates the defeat of Sauron than he executes a long-held plot to become the new Dark Lord of Middle-earth, and you have some idea of what to expect should you descend into Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer.

(Ironically, Abercrombie actually admitted that he found this scenario rather interesting, but also admitted that your mileage may vary.) If Mr. Abercrombie's aim was "to hurt, disappoint, and dishearten any lover of myths and their timeless truths," than I applaud his success. I've not read any of Joe Abercrombie's novels, I admit, but in the course of one week, through this article, Leo Grin has managed to polarize the entire fantasy community through his reference to Abercrombie specifically.

Now, for a week, the rebuttals have come pouring in. Adam at The Wertzone said in "Missing the Point" that "the problem is that the author bemusingly names J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard as his preferred flavours of fantasy. Which makes very little sense, as few fantasy authors are more nihilistic than Tolkien and Howard." Adam's argument is iconic of the rebuttals overall, but I'd argue that it is Adam and other respondents to Grin that are "missing the point." This is a straw man argument, especially with regards to Tolkien.

Sure, Beleriand is destroyed at the end of The Silmarillion, and the ending of The Lord of the Rings sees the passing of the Elves from Middle-Earth, the dwindling of the enchantment, a shell-shocked Frodo suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and unable to live comfortably in the Shire he struggled to save. However, what Adam and so many other critics of Leo Grin are missing is that this is not nihilistic, but should instead tug at a sort of pathos in our hearts. The Latin term "lacrimae rervm" or the Japanese term 物の哀れ (mono no aware) describe a kind of pathos, or sadness, for things mortal and temporary. This is not nihilism, it is the bittersweet nostalgia for things gone, and the idea that "you can never go home again." It's about change and how one deals with change. Indeed, when Grin's description of the hypothetical Abercrombiean Middle-Earth is rebutted with descriptions of everything that was lost as a consequence of the War of the Ring, I am tempted to rip my hair out in frustration and scream, "You're missing the point!"

Grin's right when he describes Tolkien's work as heroic. His characters are ostensibly Good. They show selflessness and self-sacrifice for a greater ideal at every turn. Their victory comes at a terrible cost, but it is a victory and more to the point, their victory is not hollow. Yes, the Elves leave Middle-Earth because the rich magic that permeated the world died with the Dark Lord, but without that loss, the victory would have been cheapened. The Elves had their chance, and Feanor's obsession with vengeance put them on a collision course with tragedy. Now it is Men's turn. Yes, it's sad, but it's sadness that has a point.

Similarly, Robert E. Howard's works are not all blood, gore, and violence. Solomon Kane is one of the most compelling of all Howard's characters and one of my personal favorites. The Puritan demon-hunter is driven by his faith in God and his unquenchable desire to right wrongs. He constantly faces horrors that would warp his mind, but he fights off (of all things) a Lovecraftian nihilism by relying on his faith and adherence to Good. Conan may be selfish and ultimately out for "number one" but he has a code of honor and, by-and-large, has little patience for tyrants and those who would slaughter innocents. He is not a morally ambiguous character--his morality is right there, up front. Yeah, he's an unscrupulous character, but that does not make him morally ambiguous. Nor does it make Howard's world nihilistic. Howard saw the barbaric characters of his stories as men walking a thin gray line between darkness and light, order and chaos, civilization and savagery, decadence and nature, and it was their will and their wits that brought them triumph, even against darknesses that were dredged up from the blackest pits of Lovecraftian nightmare. Yes, civilization would eventually be washed in the blood of Turanian, then Pictish, then Cimmerian invasion, and then cataclysm, but Howard didn't like civilization much anyway, and saw strength, honor, and will in the barbarian kingdoms of European yore. That is not nihilism.

I think that this over-adherence to nihilism on the part of so many commentators and bloggers is a desperate attempt to divert the main thrust of Grin's argument. It isn't so much nihilism, per se, but a matter of taste. Some say de gvstibvs non est dispvtandvm, but I'm not so sure.

The other side thinks that their stuff is, at long last, turning the genre into something more original, thoughtful, and ultimately palatable to intelligent, mature audiences. They and their fans are welcome to that opinion. For my part — and I think Tolkien and Howard would have heartily agreed — I think they’ve done little more than become cheap purveyors of civilizational graffiti.

Abercrombie himself responded to Grin's comment:

We’re on sides, now? No one told me about sides. What are the sides? Of what? And on which side am I? I love Tolkien, after all. I’d like to be on his side. Grew up with The Hobbit. Read Lord of the Rings every year. I’m a great admirer of his. Without Tolkien there’d be no fantasy as we know it, and certainly no First Law. When it comes to an epic tale with moral clarity set in a supremely realised fantasy world, he pretty much knocked it out of the park.

Abercrombie sets up another straw man here, and proceeds with it. Leo Grin is right--there are sides. Just because Abercrombie admires Tolkien doesn't mean he's not participating in a movement of literary degradation. If Leo Grin is to be believed, Joe Abercrombie's work utilizes "cynicism, profanity, scatology, dark humor, and nihilism" to put the tropes of the fantasy genre "back together into a Frankenstein's monster designed to shock, outrage, offend, and dishearten." His book, The Heroes has been cited as an utterly ironic piece in which the main characters are most certainly not, and partake in the slaughter of innocent civilians (including women and children), rape, and murder. So, in order to avoid just another umpteenth retelling of The Lord of the Rings, modern fantasy requires foul language, scatology, immoral anti-heroes, graphic sex, sickening and upsetting violence, and rape. In other words, it needs to realistically depict the graphic realities of medieval life, warfare, and death because Tolkien didn't do that (although Howard approached it).

As I go through earlier 20th century works of fantasy fiction, I find them chock-full of sex and violence. It's just not graphic. I have to ask why George R.R. Martin finds it necessary to describe, in detail, one character's sexual experience in A Feast of Crows, where Poul Anderson simply ended a chapter of Three Hearts and Three Lions as Holger carries an elf princess off to bed. What was the rationale behind it? Sex is a part of life and shouldn't be avoided in literature, but I don't need a pornographic description of what happens. Similarly, Robert E. Howard's warriors would wade through buckets of blood, but it was always described with a certain panache that is most definitely lacking in a lot of contemporary fantasy. They seemed less like men and more like forces of nature in combat, and the violence of the scene was woven into the tale like thread. This is different from reading about some young maiden trying to hold her intestines inside herself after a mercenary decided to gut her. I'm trying read an adventure tale, not watching a Rob Zombie flick.

Nevertheless, de gvstibvs non est dispvtandvm. There is no disputing taste. Your mileage may vary. However, I have to ask, is the reason so much graphic and cold-bloodedly disturbing sex and violence being included because the authors can't actually write well otherwise? Everybody's known since Shakespeare that sex and violence on gratuitous levels will sell, but that real art is something that isn't readily accessible, and difficult to produce. Shakespeare purposely made Titus Andronicus an over-the-top schlocky gore-fest, either to capitalize on the crude "sex and violence sell" reality or to subvert it and show how hollow and mind-numbingly unartistic buckets of blood truly are. It's just another kind of spectacle, and anyone who actively enjoys reading about innocents being slaughtered in a novel needs to read about the much more recent (and true) Rape of Nanking and see if they still enjoy that sort of stuff. As an historian, I've read my fair share of civilians getting massacred and really don't need to spend dozens of pages dwelling on it in a fantasy novel.

Brian Murphy compares the over-the-top tasteless (in my opinion) graphic horror of Richard Morgan's The Cold Commands with Tolkien's description of how Shelob captures, tortures, and finally drains her victims. Describing Tolkien's passage he had this to say:

That to me is a great piece of writing. It tells you plenty about the cruelty and maliciousness of Sauron and his relationship with the giant she-spider (which he half-hates and half-fears, but tolerates as a valuable guardian into Mordor).

As for the gory details, it allows my mind to fill in the rest. Tolkien goes on to explain that Shelob cares not for wealth or power, but spends all her time brooding on her next feast. "For all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness," he writes. That's about as nasty and explicit as Tolkien gets.

When compared to Richard Morgan's excerpt, Brian went on to say this:

As for that passage, man, it’s brutal. It’s effective, and horrifying, and well-done. But it’s not why I read fantasy. It jerked me back into reality with its clinical descriptions of flensing and tearing blood vessels. Perhaps Morgan intended this scene as a condemnation of torture. It vaguely reminded me of the real-life practice of waterboarding, albeit turned up to 11. I don’t know. I read it and it just felt — too much.

Brian Murphy pretty much sums it up. We're dragged out of a story and thrown into the real world where people are tortured in Gitmo and religious fanatics blow themselves up. Fantasy is many things, but it is most certainly a brand of escapist literature as much as anything else, and to rob the genre of its escapist facet ultimately cheapens it. In the excerpt of Morgan's book that Murphy quotes, we're presented with a torturous execution that is intensely described, with little omitted. We're drawn a picture of agony, blood, viscera, and being eaten alive. It has an impact, but lacks the elegance of the Tolkien passage that Murphy quoted before it. There was no real vibrancy or flair to the description. Just a cold, calculated explanation of how these characters were dying. What ever happened to Hemingway's Iceberg Principle, where what's not said carries more weight than what is said?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy nihilism in my literature, and graphic sex and violence--to a degree, and so long as there is a point to it all. I adore the works of James Ellroy because he grabs the hardboiled noir that Chandler and Hammett birthed and runs with it to it's logical conclusion. Noir is inherently nihilistic, but it's supposed to be. Ellroy's stuff is grim, gritty, shocking, upsetting, but that's because it is supposed to be. He's epitomized the genre. Reading a tragic and pessimistic novel like The Big Nowhere is an incredibly cathartic experience. It can be depressing, but my overall experience was actually cleansing. Fantasy wasn't designed to be nihilistically cathartic but instead nostalgic, perhaps a postmodern re-enchantment of an otherwise mundane world.

It's hard to feel nostalgic about a bunch of raiders lining women and children up in front of a fortress and burying axes into their heads until the garrison capitulates. That's not cathartic, either. It's simply disturbing and upsetting.

R. Scott Bakker has this to say to Leo Grin:

you might say that Grin thinks this is fantasy’s vocation, to endlessly eulogize, and that writing that strays into the baroque or revisionary are not only morally and imaginatively bankrupt, they are symptomatic of some great disease of the soul that is presently claiming the world and humanity.

Sound familiar? It should if you read fantasy. This particular salad of attitudes and concepts – moral certainty writ on a cosmic scale – is precisely what you find in almost all premodern works of fantastic fiction, everything from Upanishads to the Holy Bible. Consider the hyperbole. Consider the way he structures his oppositions in the above quote: on the one side you have the sacred, the treasured and the cruciform, while on the other side you have, well, shit and piss.

I'm tempted to break out Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, a landmark study in how "religious man" establishes the sacred by delegating it as "special" and "not profane"--that is, not mundane, mortal, or carnal. Indeed, fantasy often tapped into that throughout its growth and development in the early 20th century. The problem with Grin, apparently, is he sees fantasy itself as a sacred touchstone of our culture, and sees it's deconstruction and infusion with the profane to be blasphemous, a mark of Western civilization's self-loathing and willful self-destruction, and inherently political.

Soiling the building blocks and well-known tropes of our treasured modern myths is no different than other artists taking a crucifix and dipping it in urine, covering it in ants, or smearing it with feces. In the end, it’s just another small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing. It’s a well-worn road: bored middle-class creatives (almost all of them college-educated liberals) living lives devoid of any greater purpose inevitably reach out for anything deemed sacred by the conservatives populating any artistic field.

Well, Grin, if it is a sacred touchstone, then in this postmodern world where religion has become evil, the sacred has literally become a profane force in the eyes of many, then one must expect this sort of reaction.

The deconstructing and subverting of genre tropes is not always a bad thing. One of my favorite fantasy series is Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, a trilogy which preserves the rich sense of re-enchantment that Michal at One Last Sketch talks about, while simultaneously subverting a number of fantasy's tropes. Loads of characters die, medieval warfare is bloody and horrific, the realities of medieval life are not ideal in the least. And yet that makes the actions of the protagonist all the more heroic. No, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn does not simply churn out the same old tropes, but subverts almost all of them subtly, delicately. Overall, author Tad Williams wrote a fantasy series aimed at adults that doesn't require the graphic sex, violence, or scatology of other authors in order to get its points across.

Now, I have yet to read Joe Abercrombie's work. I'm not a big fan of historical fantasy, mostly because I am a historian and I can't help but nit-pick what's wrong half of the time, and from what I've gathered, that's primarily Abercrombie's oeuvre. Not to say that Abercrombie does a bad job or has inconsistencies--I just prefer not to read historical fantasy. I'm not bashing Abercrombie. But considering how his name has fueled a lot of this divide, I cannot help but ask why? What about his work, specifically, did Grin (and others) find so damn objectionable?

I am , however, insisting that Grin's argument not be dismissed out-of-hand, like Joe Abercrombie, R. Scott Bakker, the Wertzone, et. al. have. Once you scrape away the political hyperbole from Grin's argument, you can't help but realize that everybody missed the point and ended up shooting the messenger.

Theo at the blog for Black Gate actually made one of the best defenses for Grin's argument I've seen. In his piece, "The Decline and Fall of the Fantasy Novel," Theo argues that Grin is correct, the tragic heroism and mythic tenor of both Tolkien and Howard have given way to an ironic, barren landscape bereft of anything sacred or meaningful. There's nothing worth defending, and that's depressing and disheartening. For me, what I find depressing is the unnecessary gratuity of sex and violence making such literature more "adult" or more "literary." I find it quite depressing, and can't help but compare it to the gritty Dark Age of comic books during the early 1990s, when "adult" and "mature" wound up really being quite immature, adolescent at best, and unnecessarily graphic. Shock was not followed by awe, but by disinterest. (For more on this, see Michal's post on "Adult" Fantasy at One Last Sketch.)

I do not want to read a Tolkien knock-off. I've had enough of Terry Brooks' Shannara. I read fantasy to visit places that I wish were real and enjoy stories of heroism, adventure, and of individuals overcoming immense obstacles. I love books with strange monsters and magic. Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a magnificent subversion of fantasy that tragically flies under everyone's radar as "just another fairy tale," when it should actually be a model for postmodern deconstructive fantasy. Indeed, Williams' work inspired George R.R. Martin to start A Song of Ice and Fire in the first place!

There's plenty of heroism in Martin's books, too. Although he was, unfortunately, lumped into this, I see Martin's books as trying to bridge a gap between the real and the fantastic. Yeah, Martin's got a lot of gratuitous violence, but to his credit, he's not a fan of it himself. He's writing the story he wants, or perhaps needs, to tell. One of the reasons that A Storm of Swords took so long to come out was because he had such a difficult time writing the Red Wedding scene. Events such as that do not make his work nihilistic, and indeed the career of Daenerys Targaryen, if anything, is full of heroism--her character grows to develop a strong sense of justice and good. The use of perspectives makes the various characters much more real and human, and therefore understandable--their own inward struggles can make them heroes or villains in ways that a simple straightforward narrative could not. I honestly do not find Martin's work to be nihilistic in any way. Pessimistic, yes, but nihilistic, no.

There's a long list of great books to which I can point that subvert fantasy tropes and do so tastefully, without resorting to the sort of stuff that Leo Grin decries. I just finished reading Glen Cook's The Black Company, a novel about a mercenary company that works for the bad guys. The book is fraught with pessimism and darkness, but I'd not go so far as to say it was nihilistic. Similarly, I'm rereading Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, and it deals with nihilism while still maintaining a sense of fantastic wonder--the very nihilism itself of Vance's stories is part of the overall enchantment and sense of awe, which is achieved without gratuitously graphic sex, violence, or scatology. In Lord Foul's Bane, Thomas Covenant rapes a woman, but Stephen R. Donaldson doesn't give us a thick paragraph description of all her cries and his thrusts, nor are we ever treated to a phrase like "engorged member." Indeed, the guilt of this deed is something that torments Covenant's conscience for the rest of the series--something that seems to stand in direct opposition to the current "nihilistic" and "morally bereft" trends to which Grin objects.

This is where I respond to Matthew David Surridge's rebuttal to Theo's article (the one that defend's Leo Grin). When Surridge evokes a number of early-to-mid 20th century examples of rape, murder, moral ambiguity, etc., I have to shake my head and reiterate, "you're missing the point!" It's all about the presentation, otherwise, why would Grin have made such a fuss about language, scatology, and graphic description of sex and violence? Yeah, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were cut-throat thieves, ne'er-do-wells, and sex-crazed. However, there were levels to which even they wouldn't sink. The same is true for Conan. When Surridge cites Conan's pursuit of the ice-princess in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" as having "rape" as his intent, Surridge is being hyperbolic--Conan's intent is revenge because she tried to have him killed for sport and amusement. Again, it's about the description and the presentation of events, and someone seems to be missing the point.

Grin's point, I think, in reality, goes back to what Michal at One Last Sketch said about fantasy being "adult."

However, my problem with these “new takes” on the genre is that they don’t, actually, do anything new. Strip away the swears and the sex and you’re left with works not much different from their predecessors. Yes, there may be moral ambiguity, but Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith also wrote amoral worlds. Sara Douglass has much less depth than Morgan; ignore the strange creature sex and the novels don’t much reflect the lofty themes she urges writers to pursue. We are told to strive for realism in our fantasy, yet I don’t see much inherently realistic in the word “fuck.”

The only thing that makes these books adult is that we, adults, try to bar children from reading them. We often fail. Writing sex doesn’t make your book mature unless you do something with it. I used to sneak my mother’s romance novels when I was ten to skip to the dirty bits: it’s not, in itself, a particularly adult thing to write about, or even talk about. Head into any schoolyard and you’ll hear language that would make even, I warrant, Ms. Douglass blush.

It does, however, give a false sense of legitimacy to a work. Because we don’t want children reading them, we can automatically label such books “adult.” No longer need we piddle around in a sanitized Middle Earth where no orc would dare say “shit” even if he really wants to; we can be depraved as we like.

And there you have it. Strip away all of the sex and violence and I have to ask, do these works really mean anything? If Joe Abercrombie's books were bowdlerized, would their stories lose their impact? If so, why? I know R. Scott Bakker's work would suffer, not because his work is bereft of substance but because he is dealing with deeply psychological and philosophical subjects, attacking our assumptions through a gigantic thought-experiment of a fantasy series, and doing something that the genre honestly really hasn't done before. But can the same be said of Morgan, Douglass, and Abercrombie? Are they trying to be relevant by having their characters swear, smear feces on their swords before battle, and rape twelve-year-old girls while on chevauchée? Does this actually make them adult, sophisticated, literary? Do you need this stuff in order to be more realistic? What purpose does the inclusion of scatology, foul language, graphic violence, sex, and torture actually serve in the novel? Is this really going to prevent a writer from merely mimicking Tolkien?

Or perhaps somebody is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

The Monastery Megadungeon

A few days ago, A Paladin in Citadel posted a fantastic idea for a megadungeon entrance that really, really got my wheels turning. It's the abandoned monastery. The first thing that came to my mind was Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Mystery, betrayal, and treachery. Religion. Politics. Heresy and witch-hunting. All in one fabulous location.

So, I've decided in my spare time to start working out this megadungeon. But my first question is: where to set it? I can put it in either a fantasy version of Earth, kind of like Ars Magica's Mythic Europe, or create my own setting from scratch. And that's the difficulty.

See, a Mythic Europe setting comes almost ready-made. A little bit of Wikipedia research and I'll be able to come up with a medieval fiefdom, a simple map, and an imaginary monastery (perhaps on an island). The religion is already fleshed out and workable--Catholic Christianity, complete with different monastic orders, and perhaps a knightly order or two. Jewish characters and even Islamic characters are possibilities (depending on location). Wizards would likely be members of the Order of Hermes Trismegistus or perhaps pre-Kabbalistic mystics.

The difficulty would be with the demihuman races. I'd have to handle them carefully in order to really disrupt the feeling of a medieval European setting. By-and-large they'd belong to the Realm of Faerie, a sort of parallel universe that lies alongside or on top of ours. The Dwarves would likely be the most familiar to humans, who would have trucked with them for precious metals, iron, and gems, as well as perhaps even learned smithwork from them. The Gnomes and Halflings could easily be hidden forest peoples that the humans rarely encounter (if ever). But the Elves would be the most difficult to work in, because they could really ruin the tone of the setting entirely. I'd consider making Elves a sort of cross between the Sidhe from White Wolf's Changeling: the Dreaming, the Sithi from Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and the Noldor/Sindar/Silvan elves from Tolkien's works. They're innately magical, and the superstitious human peasantry fears and misunderstands them. I'd probably divide the Faerie races into Seelie and Unseelie branches, with creatures like goblins and bugbears related to the Unseelie branch.

This doesn't really require a lot of mechanical adaptation. Actually, what it would require is roleplaying adaptation--the players and the DM (me) would have to approach the different races from a much different angle than they're accustomed to.

If I were to create my own setting, those things wouldn't matter. However, I'd be obliged to create everything from scratch, including the magical orders, religious institutions, political factions, etc. It wouldn't necessarily clash with any sense of "right" or "wrong" with a setting drawn from real history. However, there are a great many elements that I'd want to draw whole-cloth from our world and plunk them down unchanged in the fantasy setting, such as the Hermetics, Rosicrucians, Church and Papal politics, and other outside elements that can complicate and enliven the campaign outside of the megadungeon.

Regardless, A Paladin in Citadel has given me a lot to think on, and for that, I'm kind of grateful. I've been looking for something to run when I get back to the U.S., and this has really sparked my interest. I have to decide if I want to run this old school (S&W, Labyrinth Lord, BECMI) or something more recent (likely 3.5 with tweaks).

Book Review -- 憂国 (PATRIOTISM) by 三島 由紀夫 (Mishima Yukio)

憂国 (Yuukoku) by 三島 由紀夫 (Mishima Yukio) is a very, very short work that can easily be read in an hour or two. The title translates, roughly, into Patriotism, although the characters have a slightly different implication. The character 憂 (yuu) can mean "concern" or "worry," and 国 (koku) is the character for "country," "land," or "nation." I'm not certain I understand why he chose that particular kanji as opposed to 愛国 (aikoku), in which 愛 means "love" and translates much more directly into the English term "patriotism." But that's part of what makes this story so compelling. Perhaps the title was deliberately chosen for that reason. Indeed, the original title, 憂國, utilized 國, the original, traditional kanji for "country," as opposed to the more recent, simplified 国.

When I put the story down, I sat for a few moments a bit bewildered, because I know a little bit about Mishima's life, and it is apparent that this work is semi-autobiographical in a sort of prophetic sense.

I might as well come out and say it--I don't know if I am really all that qualified to do something quite so gauche as to actually attempt and review something by Mishima. I've read his Sea of Fertility tetralogy, but his work is so dense and so culturally inundated with Japanese meaning that it is somewhat steep for an Occidental reader to grasp. Mishima was a very enigmatic person, difficult to understand and describe. His work is deeply suffused with his idealism and sense of justice--but it is a very different justice than most might be used to. Mishima was convinced that the Emperor of Japan was a divinity, and indeed denounced the Showa Emperor for renouncing his claim after the atomic bombings. The author felt that the Emperor's divinity wasn't personal, but was a sort of focus or expression of the spirit of the Japanese people.

Yuukoku is essentially the final evening a young army lieutenant and newlywed husband spends with his young wife before they both commit suicide. This young officer had recently been promoted and was looking forward to a bright and promising career. However, in the aftermath of the 二・二六事件 (Ni Ni-roku Jiken--"the 2-2-6 Incident") in 1936, this officer, who was not directly involved, was friend to many of the mutineers involved in the coup-d'état. Inheriting command of a unit destined to attack his friends, he instead chooses the way of the samurai--bushido demands loyalty, and death is an expression of that loyalty. Everything is described intensely, with a great focus on detail and intimacy, from their lovemaking to the husband's act of seppuku in graphic but meaningful detail. Some might find it all incredibly boring, but that is because the entire business obviously would have no meaning to them.

Patriotism and duty are tied inextricably with death. The story is much less about those elements, however, as it is about the moments themselves. The husband is a dutiful officer who chooses to commit ritual suicide rather than choose sides in a mutiny, and his wife follows him into death. This is no surprise, it is given away in the very first sentence of the story that they do this. But I'm profoundly interested in what Mishima didn't explain, perhaps because he didn't think it needed to be explained--how death is tied to patriotism is never elucidated. Mishima never even mentions patriotism in the story itself. Nor does he mention duty. Although something may have been lost in the translation, I feel that these things were left out purposely. Mishima isn't concerned with the why of the actions--they apparently don't need to be explained, but simply detailed, much like Hemingway's Iceberg Principle.

Knowing Mishima's own suicide and failed attempt at insurrection, I felt that he had harbored a profound sadness at the state of his country, which he loved. This love is reflected through the love Lieutenant Takeyama feels for the Imperial Army and for Japan itself as well, and the sadness at its perceived decline and his refusal to fight against his own forces. Mishima, writing after the Second World War, never seems to even consider the war or the loss very much in the works I've read, but everything that deals with the pre-war period (such as "Patriotism") appears to view the growth of military power with a somewhat jaundiced eye, and an awareness of loss of purpose.

This story is really about Mishima's desire for a death in service to his country. It is sad, because it is presented as perfection. He presents Lt. Takeyama and Reiko as the perfect husband and wife, and sees their conduct as moral and correct. What we are reading, in effect, is Mishima's own wish for himself--not literally, perhaps, but morally. And, indeed, Mishima would attempt to prove himself, with his own attempted coup in 1970--an even that would culminate in his ritual suicide.

I find that ultimately sad, but Mishima was someone I believe I can understand and comprehend to a small extent. This short story is far more about himself and his own wish for what he believed was perfection, than it is about patriotism alone. It is about a moral certainty and a sublime peacefulness with one's own decision. The lieutenant and his wife never question, they just do. The decision was made, and they lived their last moments as strongly as they possibly could.

憂国 (Yuukoku or "Patriotism") by 三島 由紀夫 (Mishima Yukio)
Style A
Substance A+
Overall A+

Gnosis, Increased Consciousness, Prometheanism, and Depression--A Follow-up to My Review of FRANKENSTEIN

Promethean knowledge is an interesting theme in Romantic literature, it seems, and one of the more profound revelations that it conveys is that the more consciousness one attains, the more despondent and unhappy one inevitably becomes. In his comments on Frankenstein, Harold Bloom invokes Kierkegaard's remark that Satan, being pure spirit and therefore pure consciousness, undiluted by mortal and material constraints and distractions, is perhaps the most depressed individual in existence.

This, strangely, coincides with my fascination with noir literature, especially of the hardboiled kind. The gnosis that the world is a bitter and unhappy place is a constant theme in noir, and revelation and increased awareness are not only vital to the survival of a noir protagionist, but also inevitably lead to moral quandary and misery of the individual. Nevertheless, there is that thirst and desire for gnosis, the obsessive desire to open Pandora's Box and the consequences be damned (though they are more often damning).

Again, I have stumbled across something of which I have long been acutely aware, but have struggled to put into words. Hardboiled noir fiction helped me isolate and describe some of the major characteristics of reality and society. Mary Shelley and my introductions to Romanticism have confirmed to me that knowledge, consciousness, gnosis are all reflections of a Promethean ascendancy, and that increase of esoteric wisdom and awareness will only serve to cause the ascendant pain and suffering.

However, we mustn't forget what Prometheus' name means, nor his ultimate fate. Προμηθεύς--"forethought"--was punished by Zeus for bequeathing the secret of fire upon mankind. This secret gave humans power and understanding, birthing civilization and threatening the ascendancy of the gods. For his crime, he was chained to a rock somewhere in the Caucasus Mountains, where every day an eagle would come and consume his liver from his living flesh, and every night it would grow back. The great irony of this is that Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley's husband, would write the epic romantic poem Prometheus Unbound, in which the gods are overthrown and the titan is released.

The unexamined life is still not worth living. In this, I believe, suffering makes stronger, wiser, but oftentimes more bitter and cynical. One has to wonder that, if one's liver is devoured every day, if gradually one shall discover oneself turning into the very stone to which one is chained. Wisdom and awareness always make one a superior individual, no matter what the cost in self-esteem or emotional happiness. Passionate poets and brilliant thinkers are rarely happy people, but are often disturbed and disturbing. They say the things other people try not to think about. But, ironically, these despondent individuals can find joy in things that engage them. Thus, escapism seems to be a powerful refuge for the intellectual. Yet, that escapism can become all to often a blanket beneath which the intellectual hides, and then he sinks to the level of the proles and even beneath in his refusal to peek out and accept the outside world for what it is. The proles may not accept that the world is bitter and evil in thought, but they certainly do in deed, and that makes all the difference. The intellectual, however, has to ensure that bitterness and cynicism doesn't prompt him/her to cold indifference, because that route leads to evil as well.