There’s the wonder and magic of Christmas. Then there’s speculative. The revolution continues.
The shopkeeper was a sheep.
The novelist approached the counter with understandable trepidation.
The sheep looked up from her knitting. ‘What do you want to buy?’
‘Look here,’ said the novelist, ‘isn’t this rather the wrong story? I thought I was writing my own story.’
‘You would,’ said the sheep scornfully. ‘Is there anything you want to baa-uy?’
It was an odd sort of shop–close, dusty, cluttered with bewildering curiosities. Everything on the shelves seemed to lean scornfully toward the novelist, daring him to request an order, to demand an exchange, to ask directions. One discontented word, and they would fall on him.
The novelist remembered his quest. Find the Scriptwriter. Confront his absurd stereotyping. But first, buy tea.
‘I want to buy tea,’ said the novelist. ‘Er–what have you got on offer?’ read more…
Okay, where's the chimney?
We invent, or reinvent, so much in fantasy literature, it comes as no surprise that the holidays are included. To choose some examples at random, Tad Williams staged the major kingdom overthrown of Shadowmarch (New York: DAW, 2006) at a winter celebration–something resembling a German Christmas. J. K. Rowling wove the rhythm of the holidays most of us know and love into the Harry Potter saga.
The Doctor’s kept pretty busy the past few Christmases, as well.
One suspects Williams may have chosen the holiday just to have a battle in spectacular costumes. And Rowling’s holiday feasts decline in importance as her characters grow older–which is an understandable experience of childhood, really. And Christmas specials in Doctor Who are admittedly a clever marketing ploy.
Nevertheless, holidays form part of our lives, and they can, should, do, form part of our fiction.
In a way, the dwindling of childhood wonder appears manifestly at the holidays. Everyone remembers where they were when Kennedy got shot (I wasn’t born–I remember that), and where they were when the learned there’s allegedly no Santa Claus. (No, Virginia–I lied.) Or that Hanukkah Harry was really just a red-haired kid in a wig. read more…
(c) 2009 The Writer's Block
Both love and poetry, of course, are staples of fantasy literature. That’s not the main reason you see them boldly at the byline, though.
I’ve been following The Writer’s Block with some interest since its conception. A young, eclectic, international literary journal from Canada, they’re out to rediscover poetry, and human emotion, and many other things editor Ben Gehrels explains on the website better than I could.
Part of that rediscovery process is their forum, a scrum of ideas and questions that can’t fit into an issue. For a few months now, one of the topics there has been the love poem. The conversation has taken several unique turns, landing at last on that bizarre cohesion of theory, praxis, writing, and musicals that we here at the Paradoxes love .
I hadn’t but finished my latest reply when I realized you dear people would probably have thoughts of your own to contribute. So, courtesy the Writer’s Block Forum, welcome to the conversation.
