She knew her skill and she knew it well. She could speak more than one language. She spoke their language, and she spoke hew own, which they could not speak.What: Poetry and meditative essay mingle in Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin. I found this book in grad school when I was first learning to look into metaphors to find out what they contained.
Who: Read this if you’re a woman, whether or not you call yourself a feminist. Read it if you’re a man trying to write realistic women, because the structures Griffin talks about are ones that affect all of this, but particularly women. Read it if you don’t mind some poetry mixed in with your thinking.
Why: Read this to reexamine the words and metaphors we use to describe both nature and women, to understand the attitudes behind the language.
He says that woman speaks with nature. That she hears voices from under the earth. that wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her. That the dead sing through her mouth and the cries of infants are clear to her. But dfor him this dialogue is over. He says he is not part of this world, that he was set on this world as a stranger. He sets himself apart from woman and nature.
And so it is Goldilocks who goes to the home of the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood who converses with the wolf, Dorothy who befriends a lion, Snow White who talks to the birds, Cinderella with mice as her allies, the Mermaid who is half fish, Thumbelina courted by a mole.
When: Read this when you want to be lulled by words out of your own body and into the material forms of tree and earth and shell.
Where and how: Read this near a window, where you can look out at trees or sky or mountains or water.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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You Should Read This: An Appreciation of Andre Norton
My high school years were steeped in reading from several F&SF authors. Among them, the most influential was quite probably Andre Norton. In arranging my book collection in those early days, Norton was always satisfying, because she wrote a gazillion books and I had most of them. In fact, I know three fantasy landscapes well because I wandered them so often as a young reader: Narnia, Middle Earth, and Norton’s Witch World.
The book I’m working on right now, (working title CIRCUS IN THE BLOODWARM RAIN) tries to get at the feel of some of those books: a protagonist moving across a mysterious landscape laden with both treasures and perils from the past, along the lines of Breed to Come, Forerunner Foray, or Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D.
Norton, the first female SFWA Grand Master, wrote both fantasy and science fiction, both awesome, but I have a particular fondness for her science fiction, like Moon of Three Rings, Judgement on Janus, and Sargasso of Space. Her Free Traders have a gritty feel that predates many other works with a similar feel, like Star Wars or C.J. Cherryh’s Chanur series.
The problem with talking about Norton is that she’s both prolific and consistent, making it hard to find stand-out books to recommend. So here, rather than a single book out of her 314 titles, are several possible entrances into her work.
The Witch World series: Like a lot of Norton’s works, this hovers somewhere between science fiction and fantasy, but ends up sliding pretty firmly into fantasy. There are predecessors, long gone, who have left behind objects of great peril and power, and rival factions with differing degrees of what is either magic or technology that amplifies psychic powers. Technically, the series should start with Witch World, where Simon Tregarth of Earth finds himself transported to that world, but my own suggestion would be to back into the series the way I did, starting with Year of the Unicorn and its sequel, The Jargoon Pard, (the overall series is made up of a number of sub-ones) which will give you the flavor of the world before explanations begin.
The Solar Queen series: The Solar Queen is the name of a Free Trader spaceship. these are early Norton, many originally written as Andrew North. Look to the earliest ones — Sargasso of Space, Plague Ship, Voodoo Planet, and Postmarked the Stars — later cowritten ones lack some of the energy of the early books.
The Beast Master series: Norton often uses animals in her writing, sometimes as protagonists, but also as helpmates, as with the genetically altered animals that companion and assist telepathic ex-soldier Hosteen Storm. Like the Solar Queen series, the earlier ones written by Norton solo are stronger.
In an earlier post, I mentioned Robert A. Heinlein as someone to read not just because so many of his works are classics in the field but because he’s problematic at times. Norton, on the other hand, never is (at least to my memory). Many of her protagonists are strong females, while others are representative of minorities not found elsewhere in YA F&SF of the time, such as The Sioux Spaceman.
So…I salute you, Alice Mary Norton, and deeply regret never meeting you. You’re one of the people that shaped my writing, and you did that to a significant degree. Here’s to your stories, and all the readers who will find them in the centuries (or so I hope) to come.
Jeff VanderMeer's Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction
It's a gorgeous book, and I've skimmed through some tasty tantalizations in it so far.I’ve been following Jeff’s posts about this book, which is a very VanderMeerian approach to writing theory, for a while, and so I danced around a bit when this arrived in yesterday’s mail.
If you haven’t heard of it, here is the description from the Amazon listing:
This all-new definitive guide to writing imaginative fiction takes a completely novel approach and fully exploits the visual nature of fantasy through original drawings, maps, renderings, and exercises to create a spectacularly beautiful and inspiring object. Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few.
It’s a freaking GORGEOUS book (to the point where I’m surprised by the relatively low price, given how glossy it is). I spent some of last night flipping through and being delighted. I’m looking forward to a more careful read. Highly recommended.
