J R R Tolkien Archives - Andrew Knighton Writes

Fantasy of Overwhelming Power – The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay

Powerful.

If I was going to choose one word to describe The Wandering Fire, the second book in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry, ‘powerful’ is the word I would choose, not just for its style but for its story. It’s a power that lifts a good series into one that’s truly great.

Part Two: Better and Darker

The Wandering Fire picks up some months after The Summer Tree left off. The characters introduced in that book are once more transported from modern Canada to the magical world of Fionavar, where in true legendary style they are called upon to fight the forces of darkness.

At first glance, this book seems much like the first, taking a very Tolkien morality and mythological story-telling, and cranking it up with Kay’s excellent writing. But it feels like, having set up the series, Kay is now free to use his full literary prowess in expanding upon it. The big moments feel even more epic, the intimate ones more personal, the menace even more substantial.

The Revelation of the Overwhelming

Overwhelming power is a major theme of this story, and one that gives it much of its drama.

On the one hand there is the overwhelming threat of Rakoth Maugrim, and of the apparent inevitability of his triumph. By alluding in advance to events to come, as well as shifting the story around chronologically, Kay creates a sense of creeping inevitable disaster, much like the atmosphere of a horror film. Defeat feels almost unavoidable, both in the broad scheme and in individual battles.

But characters are also overwhelmed in a more positive way, through religious experiences. Incidents such as an encounter between Dave and the goddess Ceinwen have a real sense of awe and grandeur to them. The gods are present and yet not reduced to mere people. It’s a difficult balance to strike, and moving to read. This is religious experience at its most emotional.

The Intimate

This isn’t to say that Kay’s book is all about epic grandeur. It’s also rooted in more ordinary but no less wonderful relationships, which he uses to explore all kinds of emotional bonds. There are siblings; romances; parent-child pairings; leaders and followers; blood brothers bound together by combat; a man and his dog; gods and worshippers; mages and the extraordinary people from whom they draw their power. This last pairing, a creation of Kay’s world, helps to draw attention to the others and bring out this theme of the story.

I enjoyed The Summer Tree, but was not enjoying The Fionavar Tapestry as much as Kay’s later work. The Wandering Fire has turned this series into something extraordinary, and I look forward to the final book.

Is America the Afterlife?

J R R Tolkien seemed to think that we go to America when we die. After all, at the end of The Lord of the Rings Frodo and others sail off into the west to eternal life in a beautiful land. Two of the fundamental underpinnings of Tolkien’s work were his Christian beliefs, including heavenly rewards for good people, and the idea that Middle Earth is a sort of pre-historic Europe, from which our modern myths originate. That ship leaving the Grey Havens, it’s taking people to heaven across the Atlantic.

OK, so I’m crossing the streams of Tolkien’s layers of meaning here. But it’s an idea that Paul Cornell ran with much more literally in ‘Ramesses on the Frontier’, his contribution to the mummy anthology The Book of the Dead. Ramesses I awakes to find himself in a rather unexpected version of the Egyptian afterlife, crossing the United States in search of his eternal reward. It’s a fun idea, and a quirky story.

But would I want the USA as the afterlife? As a Brit, I find that idea troubling. Sure, the scenery’s fantastic, but what would my chances be of getting a decent cup of tea? Not to mention the bread – it’s so sweet. And that’s before we even get into the noise and the lack of proper queueing.

No, if the afterlife lies to the west then I’m hoping it’s Canada. I hear good things about their donuts.

European mythology and sailing away into death also feature in my collection of alternate history and historical fiction stories From a Foreign Shore, which is free today and all this weekend on Amazon. If you enjoy fiction that reinvents the past then please check it out.

Picture by davebloggs007 via Flickr Creative Commons

The Summer Tree and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Development as a Writer

I find it interesting to see how writers develop. I see it in my own writing every time I go back to edit an old story. And I saw it in spades reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Summer Tree.

I came to Kay through his more recent work, which is some of the richest and most brilliant in modern fantasy. The Summer Tree is a good read, but lacks the overwhelming beauty of Lions of Al-Rassan or The Sarantine Mosaic. But it helps in understanding where those books come from.

The Roots of the Tree

Most obvious is the Tolkien connection. Kay helped Christopher Tolkien edit his father Silmarillion, and boy does it show in The Summer Tree. There’s a world of culturally varied nations that will pull together in the face of external menace. There’s an epic mythology frequently alluded to. There’s a battle brewing between everyday good and epic evil. There are even ordinary people suddenly thrown into great destinies.

Christian Ethics, Pagan Trappings

Its underlying morality also shows Tolkien’s influence. I don’t know what Kay’s religious beliefs are, but Tolkien was a Christian, and his stories showed Christian morality beneath pagan trappings. The same can be seen here.

Throughout The Summer Tree, we see self-sacrifice. In some cases characters literally sacrifice their lives for others, but just as often they sacrifice their happiness or desires. Although the most prominent example of this, using the Summer Tree of the title, draws from northern European pagan mythology, the repeated theme is a very Christian one. Good comes not from people expressing their own interests and finding a way to further those together, but from subsuming themselves in service and sacrifice.

An Interest in Art

While the book shows Kay’s past, the shadow of Tolkien from which he would eventually emerge, it also shows his future, and in particular the importance of the arts in his books.

Art and its relationship to power is a repeated theme in Kay’s novels, including poetry in The Lions of Al-Rassan and mosaic in The Sarantine Mosaic. Like the Sarantine books The Fionavar Tapestry series wears that connection in its title.

But there are other links too. Music plays an important part in stirring emotions and signifying Paul’s past. Carefully crafted letters stir the heartstrings. Kevin solidifies friendships by playing guitar. Ivor’s tribe express themselves through dance.

Watching the Kay Tree Grow

The Summer Tree may not be as great a piece of writing as Kay’s more recent works. But seeing his development toward the writer he is today adds an extra pleasure to this already very good book.

The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay – Lets Get Mythical

Guy Gavriel Kay is, for me, one of the truly great and unusual voices in fantasy. His work has an incredible richness of character and description that keeps me exhilarated through slow paced stories. His use of fantasy to provide slight twists on historical settings, shining light on the roots of our world, is endlessly fascinating.

So it was with a certain trepidation that I started reading The Summer Tree, the first book in Kay’s The Fionavar Tapestry. On the one hand, at only 400 pages this would be a relatively quick Kay read, allowing me to enjoy his writing without investing as much time. On the other hand, from what I’d heard this early work did not live up to the standards of his current writing. I settled in with uncertain expectations.

Rich in Myth

The Summer Tree tells the story of five Canadians snatched away from our world and transported to the magical world of Fionavar. There they become involved in a struggle for the future. There is political turmoil in the court of Brennin, a bastion of light and civilisation. Meanwhile, dark forces are returning in the north.

Morally, it’s a less sophisticated narrative than Kay’s later works. There are clear forces of good and evil. We empathise with the good and not the bad. It’s very much a world of myth and legend.

In this regard, it shows the heavy influence of J R R Tolkien, whose Silmarillion Kay had recently helped to edit. Like The Lord of the Rings, there are hints at deeper legends, a large cast of characters both on and off the page, and divine forces lurking in the background.

Characters of Power

Like Tolkien, Kay in the The Summer Tree is concerned with people who have great destinies, however high or low their roots. From before the characters arrive in Fionavar it is clear that they are people of significance there. I’m not a fan of the use of destinies and chosen ones in fantasy, but it is in keeping with the mythical tone of the book.

In terms of empowering people, this book therefore featured two of my least favourite fantasy tropes – destiny and interventionist gods. Yet despite this, I found it engrossing.

A large part of the pleasure comes from the characters. They aren’t all as interesting as each other, and the women in particular feel less well developed, a sin I fall guilty of in some of my own writing. But characters such as Paul Schafer and Prince Diarmuid are rich and fascinating, their existence defined in relation to other people and their pasts, as our own lives are. I really enjoyed spending time with them.

Good by Any Standard

The Summer Tree is a good fantasy novel. The world is well developed, the characters interesting, and the mythical content, while not quite to my tastes, is well executed. Given developments in both fantasy and Kay’s writing since, I’d have trouble calling this great, but compared to the genre in general it is very good, and I look forward to seeing where the story goes.

If that’s got you intrigued, I’ll be discussing this book further later in the week.

Should Our Stories Ever Really End?

As readers we crave closure. When that is threatened, as when an ongoing series is cancelled or its author dies, we feel disappointed or even cheated. And as writers we work toward closure, using structures that will provide readers with a satisfying ending.

But is there another sense in which, with science fiction and fantasy in particular, one aim is to avoid closure and open up a never-ending imaginary world?

Tolkien and Openendedness

In his essay ‘The Interlaced Structure of The Lord of the Rings‘*, Richard C West argued that Tolkien’s novel created an effect “that might be called openendedness, whereby the reader has the impression that the story has an existence outside the confines of the book and that the author could have begun earlier or ended later, if he chose”.

I think West’s argument ignores some essential features of the book he’s discussing, but it still raises an interesting point. Part of the appeal of Tolkien’s work is that it implies a far larger world and history, one which readers could explore both through his appendices and through their imaginations.

In a sense, Tolkien provides firm closure, seeing a great threat ended and Frodo leaving Middle Earth. But in another sense, The Lord of the Rings leaves many questions unanswered in the reader’s mind.

A Tradition of Imagination

We can see this in many other works of fantasy and science fiction. They lead us to imagine a world far beyond the borders of their narratives. In a sense, their stories usually have clear, decisive beginnings and ends. But in another sense, the best leave their worlds open through the wealth of barely explored detail they provide.

Perhaps this is part of the appeal of science fiction and fantasy – that it invites us to imagine beyond its boundaries in a way not all fiction can.

What do you think? Do science fiction and fantasy somehow avoid closure? And is this distinctive to these genres?

* Published in A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell.

Everything you need to know about Britain, as taught by sf+f

Britain’s a funny old place. Lets face it, guidebooks can never quite capture the essence of a nation that gave us both Bilbo Baggins and the Rolling Stones. Fortunately our rich tradition of making stuff up, aka science fiction and fantasy, can help out.

Fellow writer Victoria Randall‘s daughter will be learning about Britain first hand later this year when she travels to Swansea, a town some of my readers are very familiar with. So to help her out here are a few valuable lessons on Britain, as shown by science fiction and fantasy.

Queueing matters

I know that in some other countries getting what you want is a mad scrum to get to the front. She who shouts loudest or pushes hardest gets her way.

Yes United States, I’m looking at you. Don’t try to hide behind Canada, even if they’re too polite to give you away.

No pushing, no shoving, no giggling at the back - these chaps know how to behave. — No pushing, no shoving, no giggling at the back – these chaps know how to behave.

In this country we are far too polite for that (sidenote: studies from the Centre for Made Up Statistics show that 63% of British politeness is just a cover for repression – more on that later). The cybermen may be brutal villains hell bent on destroying humanity, but at least they know how to wait their turn in line. Get out of line around cybermen and they will destroy you. Real Britains will politely dream about it, and then provide you with poor service and a look of disdain. Don’t take that chance.

Food = happiness

Is there any more British hero than Sam from Lord of the Rings? Diligent, home-loving, unsure of himself. And what does Sam do whenever he wants to cheer people up? He cooks.

The British love of a cuppa is well known, but it goes beyond that. Look at our traditional national cuisine – Yorkshire puddings, teacakes, milky tea, boiled potatoes and over-cooked vegetables. Some people might call it joyless and unexciting, but it’s really the opposite – it’s a sign of how much we love our food, that we can find comfort in it no matter what. That’s what makes Sam such a big damn hero – halfway up Mount Doom he’s still putting on the kettle and reaching for the breadknife.

Scepticism is not just healthy, it’s compulsory

How better to cope with an infestation than by having a nice cuppa?

We may be polite but that doesn’t mean we blankly accept whatever we’re told. Remember, we chopped our king’s head off long before other countries got in on the act.

That’s right revolutionary France, I see you jumping on our bandwagon.

Scepticism is the bedrock of the British mindset. It can be about authority, about ideas, even about whether this nice weather will last (it won’t, this is Britain). And it’s embodied in the works of one of finest fantasy authors, the amazing Terry Pratchett. Pratchett’s characters and the plots of his books challenge accepted ideas and authorities. They show that scepticism of which we’re so proud.

Though we do look askance at anyone who gets too proud.

Repression is so last century

All of this might leave you thinking that Britain is still the stiff upper lipped land of the Victorian age. But if you want to see modern Britain, and just how foul-mouthed and sneering that upper lip has become, then you should check out Misfits. The show about young people who develop super powers while on community service is full of imaginatively foul language and the worst sort of behaviour. Because after years of repression Britain is finally pulling out of the nineteenth century and the results are… lets call them messy.

Modern Britain has learned that it can get away with swearing in public, consuming drugs other than a nice cup of Assam, and loudly screaming its scepticism in the face of authority. We’re changing, which is not all good and not all bad, and as always science fiction and fantasy are there to show the world what it means to be British.

So anyway, that’s my guide to Britain, as shown by our science fiction and fantasy. Fellow Brits, add your opinions in the comments – what lessons have I missed? And those of you further afield, what have you learned about Britain from our national nerd culture? Or what would you like the rest of us to explain?

Immersion vs analysis – Tolkien and secondary worlds

There are as many different ways to read and understand a book as there are people reading it. But one of the big divisions, one that’s in the background of many discussions about teaching literature and enjoying books, is the difference between immersion and analysis.

Tolkien and secondary worlds – full immersion

J R R Tolkien was a huge advocate of immersion, and his attitude really helps us to understand what this is all about.

For Tolkien as a Christian and literary scholar, writing was an act of world building, a secondary creation that was a lesser reflection of God’s work in creating the world. The writer’s aim was to create secondary belief, an immersion in the story where you find yourself totally drawn in, almost believing in the words on the page.

We’ve all had that feeling at some time, that moment where you find yourself completely sucked in by a book, turning pages at an ever faster rate because you’re practically living the story. It’s an awesome feeling.

Studying literature – full analysis

Now think of the experience you got reading a book at high school, when you were studying it for a course. All that thinking about the text, looking for symbols and literary tricks, breaking away from the story to understand how it was presented. Despite his place as a literary scholar this wasn’t how Tolkien wanted people to experience his works. It disrupts that secondary belief, takes you out of the story.

But for me there’s a great pleasure in this sort of reading too. Feeling smart is enjoyable. I like the experience of picking something apart, of noticing how it fits together, of making new connections between the pieces. It’s a very different engagement with the text, but it is still engagement.

Stop spoiling my story

The problem is that you can’t really have both at once. You can’t immerse yourself completely in the story, attaining that prized secondary belief, if you’re paying attention to how it’s put together. It’s like seeing behind the scenes at the theatre or watching DVD extras – it destroys the illusion. I think it’s the problem with a lot of bad writing – the words intrude, preventing us from enjoying the story.

'That's for calling Brandon Sanderson a derivative hack!' — ‘That’s for calling Brandon Sanderson a derivative hack!’

I think that this is also the source of some of the bad-natured discussions we see about books. If someone prefers to just be immersed in the book then an analytical comment threatens to disrupt that immersion. It creates a feeling of discomfort, especially if they don’t agree with the analysis. So they snap back, accuse people of being wrong or over-thinking it. I’m sure it adds fuel to the fire of disputes around feminist analysis that I mentioned the other day – if an analysis disrupts your immersion in a text and threatens your world view then you’re going to be doubly edgy in your response.

Of course this cuts the other way too. When people who prefer immersion are dismissive or casually reject analytical responses they are rejecting what someone values, the intellectual endeavour they enjoy and the ideas that they have crafted. So this can create bad feeling on both sides.

This isn’t a problem to solve, it’s a part of human interactions to acknowledge. But if we notice it, openly discuss it, and are aware of it in the way that we discuss books, then I think we can have more enjoyable and productive discussions.

What do you think? Are you more immersive or analytical in your reading? How do they affect your experience? Share your thoughts below!

Photo by Paul Kitchener via Flickr creative commons

A story by any other name

Peter Jackson has changed the title of the third Hobbit film from There and Back Again to The Battle of the Five Armies. So what, many might say. After all, isn’t this just marketing?

No. The title of a story matters. It sets the tone. It prepares your expectations. It says something about what you’re about to see. It’s a part of how you tell the story.

'I was blond and clean shaven when I started watching this film.' — ‘I was blond and clean shaven when I started watching this film.’

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a story about the military, about cold war style spy shenanigans, about people frozen in time. The name sets the tone perfectly.

The Book With No Name is a story about wise-cracking criminals and chancers, with a supernatural element thrown in. The attempt of the title to evoke something mysterious mis-sells the book, sets false expectations and generally doesn’t work.

Jackson knows what he’s doing. You might not agree with his approach to the Hobbit movies, but there’s no doubting that he’s a very capable film-maker. The change of name shows a shift in focus to epic warfare, away from the whimsy that lay at the heart of the original book. Sure, the battle was part of that story, but it was the culmination of a journey towards grandeur, not the focus of the story.

Jackson’s gone big with these films, and he’s clearly setting out his stall in re-naming the film. Personally, I think that turning the Hobbit into a multi-film epic in the style of The Lord of the Rings is a mistake, but given what he’s doing the re-naming is clearly the right choice.

Anybody got any good examples of stories with perfect names, or terribly misleading ones? I’m sure there are better examples out there than the first two that popped into my head.

Nothing new under the sun

Today I was going to write about the commercialisation of art and the effect of economic markets on creativity. But I’m far too excited because I just booked tickets to see Postmodern Jukebox on the UK leg of their tour. So instead I’m going to enthuse about their music and then use it for a creative writing related lesson. Because, lets face it, drawing tenuous parallels to whatever’s drawn my attention is becoming my MO.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KzP4bC1Ypg?list=PLJZH8sevmMq6NvgD9_ucuptwBxaQnAGAw&w=560&h=315]

A painter’s pallet, but with notes

Postmodern Jukebox, like 2CELLOS, mostly perform covers of pop songs. But unlike 2CELLOS they don’t have a consistent musical style, instead playing around with different musical genres. The combination of styles is amusing, occasionally moving, and often better than the original version (depending on how you feel about the original, of course). I even enjoy their bluegrass version of Robin Thicke’s loathsome Blurred Lines (yes, I know it’s catchy, but that’s no excuse for misogyny).

Some people might argue that this isn’t really creativity – they aren’t writing new songs or creating new styles. But I totally disagree. Creativity is all about combining existing elements in new ways, like a painter mingling colours on her pallet.

Tolkien talks creativity

J R R Tolkien believed that the only acts of pure unadulterated creation came from God. In Tolkien’s view, what we humans do is a secondary act, using the elements that are already in place. As story tellers we create secondary worlds.

I don’t agree with a lot of Tolkien’s take on creativity,but I do think that he was onto something. In my view there is no pure, unadulterated creation, no bolt from the blue, flash of inspiration stuff, nothing completely novel and unprecedented. That’s a myth, a dream we’ve been sold that puts creativity beyond our reach, makes us feel like we can’t achieve it and so, in many cases, give up.

But creativity is about taking what’s already there and combining it in new ways. When you put together vampires and gangsters you get From Dusk Till Dawn. When you combine superpowers and food you get Chew. When you combine a pop song and a solemnly singing clown you get this:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBmCJEehYtU&w=560&h=315]

These are all acts of creation, as pure and wonderful as any others. They all give us something new. They are all great.

Get creating

Idealising some pure form of creativity, over-using terms like ‘derivative’ as criticisms, these behaviours disempower us. No-one mocked the second cavewoman to bang two stones together and make fire. Hell, she probably used better stones than the first one. That’s creativity, a constant act of building on what’s come before.

Re-mixing, re-writing, copying a sketch, these are all acts of creativity. And that means we can all be creative, not because some secondary form of creativity is OK, but because this is the only form of creativity.*

This afternoon I’m finally going to watch the new Captain America film. Will it be uncreative because so many elements in it have been used many times before? I doubt it. And I can’t wait to see it.

In the meantime, here’s one more Postmodern Jukebox song to play us out. This one has a fantasy theme, and it makes me laugh every time:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDvt5q6bt1s&w=560&h=315]

*OK, if you believe in God then you might believe that he has another form of creativity. But humans don’t, and that’s what I’m concerned with here.

The familiar and the strange

I’ve recently been listening to a lot of 2CELLOS. Their particularly charismatic brand of classical pop song covers makes for a hugely energetic sound, and as my friend John pointed out, there’s something about the cello that gets you right in the gut. But this morning, listening to their cover of Kings of Leon’s ‘Use Somebody’, I felt the penny drop.

These guys play music like Robert Kirkman writes zombies.

The Kirkman hypothesis

Robert Kirkman is the creator of The Walking Dead, the hugely successful Image comic that’s become a hugely successful TV show. As a comic, The Walking Dead doesn’t have the sales of the big X-men books or the latest take on Batman, but it does have something those comics don’t – sales growth. Most comic books see their biggest sales at the point of launch. Lots of curious readers pick up the first issue. Less of them bother with the second. Sales keep dropping off in a slow death slide, until the comic is cancelled or re-launched amid a blaze of publicity.

For years The Walking Dead was the only comic that defied this trend. Its sales kept growing as word of mouth spread about how great this book was. Its success was unprecedented.

I once read an analysis of The Walking Dead that argued that Kirkman’s success came not from creating something completely new, but from getting the right balance of the familiar and the novel.* Kirkman’s post-apocalyptic soap opera got readers because they saw something they knew they liked – zombies – and found within it something even more fascinating that they’d never have looked for. If he’d just given them the new thing no-one would have bought it. If he’d written just another zombie comic it would have suffered that familiar slow decline.

Kirkman’s comic kept growing because it found the perfect balance between the two.

Nothing is new

When I read that analysis my mind was blown. It made perfect sense, and it was something I could use as a writer – combine the familiar and the unfamiliar, draw readers in with something they know but keep them reading with something new.

I started seeing this pattern all around, in many of the best things I read, watched and listened to. Hence the 2CELLOS connection – songs I like (except Coldplay) played in a way I wouldn’t have looked for (including Coldplay, I never look for Coldplay).

But actually, what Kirkman achieved wasn’t all that new. Just take a look at The Lord of the Rings, a foundational text of the fantasy genre. Tolkien wanted to share his own wacky enthusiasm for detailed secondary worlds full of magic, mystery and invented languages. The familiar trappings of medieval Europe gave it an aura of familiarity that let people get drawn in and find enthusiasm for this new world.

Balancing acts

It’s an interesting exercise to consider as you’re reading. Think about what’s new in a book, what’s familiar, and what all of that is doing to your interest in the story. The right balance varies with the reader, and even their mood. Some days I want to watch Breaking Bad, some days I want to wrap myself in the comfortable tropes of Castle. Being aware of that balance has even helped me judge my own mental state.

As writers it’s a useful question to ask as we approach the page. What am I including that’s familiar, that will make people comfortable and draw them in? And what’s new, whether in content, style, or the way I mash elements together? Because that’s what will make the story interesting.

And in the meantime, here’s 2CELLOS doing unexpected things with a Greenday song. If you like this I recommend watching their Arena Pula gig on Youtube – an hour and a half of fantastic stuff.

* Apologies to whoever wrote that article, but it was years ago and I can’t even remember where I read it, never mind provide attribution. But hey, you probably aren’t reading this, so we should be OK.