My Half-Year Reading List

Hard to believe the first six months of 2005 have come and gone and that we are now beginning the backstretch of the year! I know many of the readers here at OF are competing in the 50 book challenge. While I'm not aiming to read 50+ books this year per se (schoolwork and worky-work are combining with my need to devote hours to exercise each week to keep me from having much free reading time), I thought I'd list the books I've completed so far this year. Of course, I might be forgetting a few by accident, but I know I've read and completed these books in 2005:

Jorge Luis Borges, El Hacedor; Ficciónes (English); Ficciónes (Spanish); El libro de arena

Eduardo Gonzalez Viana, Los sueños de America

Julio Cortázar, El autopista del sur y otros cuentos

Carlos Fuentes, Inquieta Compañia

Harriet Beecher Stowe, La cabaña del tío Tom

Umberto Eco, On Literature

Xavier Velasco, El guardián diablo

Ciro Alegria, El mundo es ancho y ajeno

Caitlin Sweet, A Telling of Stars; The Silences of Home

Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño

Jon Stewart, et. al, America (the book)

Angélica Gorodischer, Kalpa Imperial (Spanish)

Alison Croggon, The Naming

Yuri Andrukhovych, Perverzion

So yeah, not that many books so far this year, 18 in total, but considering that 11 are in Spanish and only 7 in English, that's not too bad, is it? And after this week, I should have almost two free months to catch up on my reading and here are the planned reads for the next few weeks/months:

To Finish Reading:

Isabel Allende, Zorro (Spanish)

Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana


To Start Reading Soon:

Kevin Radthorne, The Road to Kotaishi (Parts I & II)

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Ian Cameron Esslemont, Night of Knives

Isabel Allende, La Casa de los Espiritus


Later, Possibly:

George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

Gene Wolfe, Starship Strains

R. Scott Bakker, The Thousandfold Thought (but that depends on a few things, such as whether or not I get an ARC copy before December 31st)

Dan Simmons, Olympos


Possible Re-reads:

Bakker's first two books

Erikson's Malazan series and the two Korbal Broach novellas

Dan Simmons, Ilium

And possibly a few dozen more books in Spanish, as I plan on focusing more on Spanish than I will on English-language books this year. Hey, gotta learn the language, written and spoken, as well as I can if I want to work the job that I'm aiming for when I finish school in the next year and a half or so, right?

So what books have you completed this past half-year and which do you think you'll finish in this second half of the year?

Have aliens really taken the place of angels?

Guardian Unlimited | Arts Friday Review | 'Aliens have taken the place of angels'

In Friday's issue of The Guardian, Margaret Atwood tackles issues pertaining to the importance of speculative/science fiction in contemporary society. It was an interesting read and I found much with which I could agree, even if I do still disagree with her definitions for speculative and science fiction, as I see speculative fiction as being much more than just writing fiction based on plausible technologies.

But there's an interesting point she makes in her article, that of meaning. In a world where it seems like each discovery alternately excites and confuses us, where fundamentalists of all stripes have come clamoring for their voices to be heard as a clarion call to something concrete and specific in a world where it seems such certainties are chimeras, there is something about speculative fiction (or if you prefer, science fiction, fantasy, etc.) that reaches out to us, something to which we could grasp and hold tight in a sea full of undefinables.

Recently, there was a post over at SFF World dealing with the issue of whether or not the Bible could be considered a Fantasy. While the purpose of this post is not to debate that point (and my own opinions can be found embedded in that huge thread), perhaps it does serve to illustrate certain deep connections between our cultural religious past and our current society that serves us good and evil in Star Wars cups sold at fast food restaurants. Maybe the aliens will be our angels, but will there be a shift in the meaning that these potential creatures might hold for us? Perhaps, all we can do is just speculate and wonder.

I Narrator

I might as well splash my first posting here, half a year late at the very least. Anway, I've been thinking over the past several weeks about the power of the narrated story, somewhat like Larry's post about the power of stage plays on the audience.

Over the recent weeks, I've been reading Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight, Caitlin Sweet's A Telling of Stars, Matt Stover's Heroes Die, and Dan Simmons' Olympos. These very different novels and authors have each added to my thoughts on the power of perspective storytelling. Many of us are familiar with the pull of stories told in the typical 3rd person format. Some people are truly drawn to 1st person narrative for the obvious reasons of the immediacy of the story and the main character's reactions. For me, I've realized that I enjoy types of "Telling", to borrow Caitlin's term, a narrative within the larger narrative. This "telling" can come out in different styles and forms in written works, but they all have in common the sense of a deeper sharing of the story, readers and the characters.

Much like a play unfolding before an audience, certain aspects of this "Telling" style draw the audience into plot, setting, development, suspense, more directly than many other forms. Gene Wolf's Sir Able, in Wizard Knight, is writing a letter to his brother, a letter that we are reading. Through the process, the character has to contextualize his experiences, his gained understandings of the events going on around him. He also happens to underexaggerate, smooth over, forget, avoid and lie about certain details. The telling here becomes a living thing. The entirety of the novels exist as this letter; however, Wolfe has managed to create a story that is somehow larger, more complex than the entirety of the written work... he managed to put his letter-styled novels into a larger context without even writting it.

Caitlin Sweet's A Telling of Stars is both a telling and a story about a series and intersection of many tellings. The novel is tied together in a weave of different characters stories, partially revealed for the most part, that bring a greater understanding and deeper feel to the overall story, which turns out to be a Telling of it's own. While the novel is not directly a first person account, it does force to reader into multiple and ever-changing understandings of characters, events and situations as each new element and telling brings in a new texture to the main chracter's world. The interesting thing is that these interconnected tellings seems to be the power behind the reader's connection with the characters and the story. There is a kind of power in the constructed words of the characters in this novel that allow us to sit next to the characters for the revealing.

Both Simmons and Stover use "Telling" in more conceptual ways in the noted novels. In Ilium and Olympos, Simmons is working with a multi-part story, one part revolving around a re-telling of the epic battle for Troy, Homer's Iliad, from the perspective of an on the field scholar. This part of the novel also happens to be in 1st person narrative. Thus, we get commentary on actions, characters and developments from an observer. This device allows the reader to enter into the novel in a different way... with specific context and conversation as much as a simple reading of the plot elements. Simmons explores the ideas of "Telling" in other ways as well... the events of the war of Troy enter into another arc of the story, but as a form of media entertainment... also as an intended means of education. This gives characters not involved with the Troy arc an odd connection and interplay with the other section of the novel. As events unfold, the reader finds themselves in much the same situation, holding "observed" information from the Troy arc as new characters and events unfold. Finally, Simmons' has created a society where history has been lost, for the most part, and the power of the story has been reintroduced. So in one book, you get a narrated story of a war, a complex interaction with that narrated story, and actual stories of events and developments that happen off the page. All in all, this creates the sense of a much more developed and complex world and story than simply spelled out on the pages.

Stover goes at this in even another way. In Heroes Die, Stover creates a world that watches actors transport to another world for the purpose of adventure. It is like reality tv and fantasy high adventure combined. The interesting aspect for the reader is that Stover places us on both sides of this "Telling". We are sometimes in the PoV of a watcher of events, the PoV is actually coming from a person virtually "living" the main character's events. At other times, we are getting a more standard style of story, though the character will break into monologue for the benefit of those watching his "adventure". In this way, the reader gets involved in several different levels of the story, from the main characters personal thoughts, his carefully crafted and contextualized telling of events, and a completely removed and almost secondary connection to the story. It is an interesting concept, and it was used to great results in the novel.

What captures you when reading? Are there times when you feel more connected to a story than at others? Is there a narrative style that makes novels more immediate to you when you're reading?

For me, an author's ability to involve me in the story by changing my typical relationship to the words on the page makes all the difference. "Telling" makes me feel involved in a novel in ways that are different... I can be further removed and seeing the story through the lens and context of a character, or I can be so far into the events and actions of a character that it's difficult to make out a larger story. The styles and techniques are different, but I enjoy the results.

Anyway, I'd love to hear any thoughts or comments.

Jake

A Postmodernist Bulgakov?

I just had the pleasure of finishing a novel recommended to me by Maciek/Vanin called Perverzion. The work of an Ukrainian novelist/poet/essayist/translator, Yuri Andrukhovych, Perverzion is a great many things all bundled up into one paperback volume of 326 pages. It is in turns a murder/suicide mystery, a exploration of morality and the interstices that take place in human lives. It is a farce, a prosy poem full of allusions to other allusions. It deals with religious matters of the soul; it is concerned with the postmodern decline and fall of the Carnival. It is also a love story, and a story of love misled. It is all of these things and many more.

The story revolves around the last days of one Stanislav Perfetsky - poet, gadfly, one-time stripper in a club catering to older women. He is a romantic and yet utterly beyond this. His travels across Europe, from Lviv in the Ukraine to his apparent end in the canals of Venice, are the stuff of legend. But just who is Perfetsky? Andrukhovych explores this with a series of chapters written apparently from the perspective of those who knew him, who were baffled by him, who were sleeping with him, and who were spying upon him. It is a fascinating mosaic quilted together with a deft comic touch.

Now I mentioned Bulgakov in my title, because the translator in his introduction refers to similar thematic elements present in both, combined with a mutual gift for the absurdly meaningful. While I need to re-read Bulgakov to ascertain just how accurate these claims are, I do recall a certain sense of devilish glee in both works, as the authors tweaked the noses of the pretentious (the chapter on the conference regarding post-Feminism is something to behold, intersplicing the "saintly" Perfetsky's making out with Ada with the speaker's Andrea Dworkinesque denunciation of almost all sex as rape) in their satirical ramage through their tomes.

While this book certainly contains elements of the supernatural (as does Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita), it is very difficult to classify Perverzion as belonging to any one school or genre of writing. It is simply sui generis, which certainly would be pleasing to Perfetsky himself to know. If you are a reader who likes challenging books that have a high reward potential, then I highly recommend that you buy Perverzion.

Life is but a dream?

To be, or not to be, - that is the question -
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? - To die, - to sleep, -
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and teh thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, - 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, - to sleep; -
To sleep! perchance to dream: - ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause...

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

Those who know me well will tell you that I am a huge lover of plays. For me, plays constitute the boundary between the Written and Spoken worlds. So much can happen in a play that cannot happen elsewhere. Unlike movies or television shows where the viewer is only a passive, non-essential part of the performance, the play often requires active audience participation. It is our applause, our interest, our own emotional baggage that the playwrights seek to attract, and in some cases, to deceive.

The actors are truly in action, moving about, morphing our perceptions with just a few well-placed words and a timely twinge of emotion that might flicker across a performer's face before it is replaced with another, possibly mysterious sign of feeling. A play is staged, but yet it conveys deep truths about ourselves when it is performed well. As Shakespeare had Hamlet's character say later in Act III, "The play's the thing."

What power in such lines as that or in Hamlet's soliloquy! I have found that good playwrights can create a world full of Feeling and Meaning just by allowing us audience members to do exactly that, to listen and to react to what is being said, and even more importantly, to how it is being said. One of the main weaknesses that I believe speculative fiction has as a whole is that this genre has failed to capitalize upon the power and beauty that is inherent in the play form.

In many ways, plays provide people with the avenues for emotional/personal escape that lovers of speculative fiction claim for that genre of literature. While watching Hamlet's dilemnia, or perhaps pondering the often-sad realities found in Thorton Wilder's Our Town, or even considering the notion that Life itself may be just only (and so much is this only!) a dream, as Segismundo does in Calderón de la Barca's La vida es sueño (Life is (a) Dream), the playwatcher can be caught up in such a way that is virtually impossible for any written work to perform unaided. For words to have true power, I believe they must resonate within the hearts of the recipiants, which means they must be spoken as well as read.

But yet plays are not as important as they used to be in everyday life. From television, movies, and video usurping some of the exciting visual moments, to radio and the above extracting the auditory elements, plays have been pushed into the background of posh theatre groups or rinky-dink high school performances. Where are the Georg Taboris daring to rewrite histories such as Hitler's youth into dreamscapes of the human psyche? Where are the Henrik Ibsens, reminding us of the often sad truths to be found within the doll's house? Where have they all gone? Is there any future left in the play format?

I believe that there might be. For as I tried to say above (and fear that I might have failed at my task), plays just offer something more meaningful for those people who "get it." There are more direct connections, as the actors and actresses may appear at the end and bow for our applause. We give immediate approval or disapproval to these performances. Seeing sometimes our hopes and fears presented in a play can just be so rewarding, that it is a wonder that we don't see more plays being written today, in this world of dislocation and alienation. Perhaps that is a field that someone with a keen interest in the speculative can explore to greater extent. Because I suspect that the play form can be paired quite well with the speculative. But maybe I'm just only dreaming. It wouldn't be the first time.

Well, time to get this blog active again, yes?

So it's been a long, strange trip since I last updated this Blog back around New Year's. Since then, I've returned to school full-time as a Social Work major and I just haven't had the time/energy/desire to immerse myself in speculative fiction like I did the year or so before. But now that summer is fast approaching, I should have some free time coming up to making at least occasional posts here.

Considering that this is basically a blog for some of the OF Admins to comment on whatever floats their boats, hopefully there will be more variety in the posts. After browsing through a few other blogs, I thought maybe we could better integrate this Blog of the Fallen with OF as a whole. So I'm going to try to do these things with my future posts here:

1) I'm going to provide more short reviews here, especially of works that might not fit exactly within the parameters of speculative fiction but which might be of interest to the reading public.

2) More comments about discussions, debates, etc. within and without the field that I encounter in my personal life or elsewhere on the Web as a means of provoking thoughtful discussion.

3) Less links to places like this.

In the coming weeks, I plan on kicking things off by reviewing books I recently received from publishers, such as Alison Croggon's The Naming, Kevin Radthorne's The Road to Kotaishi, Julie Czerneda's Migration. Also, expect reviews shortly over Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Yuri Andrukhovych's Perverzion, and Calderón de la Barca's La vida es sueño.

If there are other things you wish to see from this blog, please leave a suggestion here and I'll see what I can do. The more that reply, the better!

Caitlin Sweet Interview

Thanks for agreeing to do this interview, Caitlin. If you don't mind, could you give us a brief biographical sketch to give us a clearer image of the person behind the pen?

I was born in 1970 in Quebec, where my father was a university English professor. We moved to Lausanne, Switzerland when I was two and stayed there until I was four. After these four years of French living (apparently I was bilingual when we came back) we returned to Canada - this time to Toronto. My parents still live in the house where I grew up: lots of stability there!

I was not an active child. I willed myself to get nosebleeds every time we played baseball in gym class, and I generally attempted to be sick for swimming lessons. I read books while I walked to school - which was, luckily, very close to my house. I read books at family gatherings, in the car (Lord of the Rings on a summer trip to Maine), in my bed in almost total darkness. I burned my biology and math notes at the end of grades 10 and 11, respectively, when I officially finished with these courses. There was no resistance by my parents to this course-dropping. My father taught Latin and Greek mythology as well as English (my bedtime stories were Greek myths, with most of the gory parts removed or toned down). My mother had a degree in Library Science. (Incidentally, my six-years-younger sister is currently doing her PhD in English lit.) They never seemed to doubt that I'd have some sort of writing success someday. If they did doubt, they never let on. I was extraordinarily lucky to have such support, right from the beginning.

I did a BA in Humanistic Studies at McGill University in Montreal. Humanistic Studies was basically a liberal arts thing: I had to take a certain number of credits in English literature, literature in a language other than English, music and art history, geography...It was fantastic. It was because of this degree that I discovered Spanish literature. These books changed my life - seriously. Coming in contact with literature that was utterly surreal (Borges and Lorca) and magic realist (Márquez) was like discovering an entirely new form of fantasy. It's likely no coincidence that I started writing fantasy again, after a long hiatus, near the end of my degree.

I taught English in Mexico after graduating. I'd been accepted to a comparative literature MA program, but decided (along with my then-boyfriend, now-husband) that I wanted to go somewhere and actually use the Spanish I'd learned. Living in Mexico was a strange, wondrous, fraught experience. After we returned to Canada I kept teaching English, to mostly Korean and Japanese students. A few years went by; I needed a change; I applied to the University of Toronto and got a job as an administrative assistant at the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. I had this job for five years, during which I also had two children (meaning much of my time at U of T was spent on paid maternity leave!). After I returned from my first leave I decided I needed to haul my long-neglected A Telling of Stars manuscript out from my basement - which I did. I found a literary agent, thanks to the lovely Internet connection at work, and printed out several dozen versions of the manuscript - and then, after getting my second Penguin contract in 2003, I quit.

I'm now a full-time mother (my daughters are 5 and 3) who writes every afternoon from 1:45 to 3. This schedule will change next year, when I should have a bit more time every day in which to write - but it's worked so far.

You said that your father taught English and mythology. By any chance were you exposed to Irish mythology, at least in passing? Because when I was thumbing through my copy of A Telling of Stars, I couldn't help but notice how a few names (the Alilan in particular) seemed to have close parallels with Irish mythological heroes, such as Ailil (from the story of Deirdre of the Sorrows).

I was indeed exposed to Irish mythology, mostly thanks to my maternal grandparents, who made many trips to Ireland and always brought me back books (knowing me well, as they did!). But I'd definitely classify this influence as "in passing," since I haven't done any re-reading of the myths as an adult. I may have echoed the name unconsciously, or entirely randomly - but I'm very glad you noted it. I really enjoy the points readers make about my books - points I myself didn't know I was making. Deirdre of the Sorrows seems an entirely appropriate myth for Telling to evoke!

We were talking earlier in email about the character of the Keeper, found in A Telling of Stars. Without spoiling too much of the story, would you like to tell the readers here about how you came to construct that character and his role in the story?

I'd just finished my BA when I started on the Keeper section of the book. I was still reeling from the experience of reading the Latin American greats - and I was living in Mexico. I now think of that part of the book as an homage to the concept of time I'd encountered in Borges and García Márquez. "Remember the future and imagine the past" - Carlos Fuentes said this in a lecture he gave at McGill, and it stayed with me. Time loops as much as it flows; it circles back and leaps forward, and humans just don't understand it very well. Keeper is a character who does understand it. He, and the fortress and gardens he tends, are alive in moments of all time - moments Jaele, the protagonist, becomes entangled in. She considers him a prisoner - but she also begins to see that he has a sort of power, as he slips them both in and out of the present. I liked the ambiguity of his role, and of the setting.

Keeper's fortress and gardens were influenced by Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, too. I was deeply affected by Peake's depiction of Titus Groan's castle: a sprawling, vast, decrepit place where you could always stumble upon a room or indeed a wing you'd never seen before. This sense of a place that's not exactly fixed, that could never really be rendered on a map, was precisely what I wanted to capture in the Keeper section.

Very cool! I was wondering about the exact nature of Keeper's power and to learn that you were thinking in part of what Borges, García Márquez, and Fuentes were describing in their stories is an added touch. But I'm curious about your comments regarding Peake: Are there any other elements in your stories that you would attribute to a fond reading of the Gormenghast stories?

I mentioned the sprawling, labyrinthine, apparently chaotic nature of Gormenghast castle; these adjectives also apply to Peake's narrative. I frequently refer to the plot of Telling as "organic" - meaning I didn't set out the details of the story beforehand, but let characters and setting lead me. This was the feeling I had reading the Titus books. Peake knew his places and people intimately, but the plot in which they were involved didn't unfold in linear, strategic fashion. (The third book in his trilogy, Titus Alone, is a really, truly problematic book in which chaos overwhelms any vestiges of plot.)

I too have read Borges, Lorca, and García Márquez and have recommended them to the readers here. But if you had to sum up in a few words the direct influence that these three authors have had on your writing, what would you say that you've taken from them?

A passion for the tangible power of narrative. Words, written and spoken, are incredibly transformative (in both wonderful and horrible ways) in Latin American fiction. I've also been influenced by the power of place in these stories. Houses, rooms in houses, towns, trains, the pampas of Argentina - these locales are rendered with care and intensity; they're vivid, often surreal, always essential to the lives of the characters in them.

You say that you learned a passion for the tangible power of narrative; that words, both written and spoken, are transformative - how would you say that you've applied this to your stories and the characters within?

In both Telling and Silences, the most obvious embodiment of the transformation-through-narrative idea is the Alilan. They are the capital T "Tellers," whose spoken words conjure images that seem entirely real to their audience. The Alilan are aware of the dangerous potential of this gift: Tellers are forbidden to use their words to make changes in the world. Of course, rules are made to be broken...

In Telling, Jaele often uses stories and words to significant effect. She utters words in the Keeper section that provoke a devastating (if ambiguous) change; her conversations with Ilario allow him a measure of peace and acceptance he hasn't ever had. He, in turn, teaches her how to write and urges her to write of things that matter to her; this ends up being extremely liberating (though also very difficult) for her. Lastly, Jaele herself becomes a Teller of sorts, as she recounts her story to an audience desperate for words and change.

In Silences, the words that aren't spoken (or, more specifically, written) are frequently more powerful than the ones that are. This is the distortion side of the transformation coin: when the truth is altered or simply not recorded, the stories that remain will of course be false. There's power and peril in this kind of narrative, too - though there remains the possibility that even untrue stories can be a vehicle for positive change (as is the case with the legend of Queen Galha and its effect on Jaele).

What was it, if "it" can be defined, that led you into reading and later writing fantasy?

"It" was an imprinting thing - something that happened so early I can hardly pinpoint time or place. That it did happen is thanks to my parents, who read me fantasy before I could read it myself, and certainly before I realized it was "fantasy." (Everything was just "story" then.) And thanks to my childhood friend Debbie, who gave me a copy of Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron for my seventh birthday. That moment I remember, probably because I was so intrigued by the cover (the one with Taran, sword drawn, peering anxiously at the nasty cauldron and its three witchy keepers). As soon as I discovered that this was the second book in a series, I nagged my mother to buy me the first, which she did - and that was that. I devoured the Prydain Chronicles, and shortly after that, I started to write stories. Really, really long stories. Too long, in fact, for my grade two teacher (who was probably just plain tired of reading them, and of supplying me with more and more Hilroy notebooks!).

My reading of fantasy began early, before genre definitions apply - and so did my writing of it. I wrote "once upon a time" stories, and stories in which someone has all sorts of surreal adventures, only to discover they've been dreaming (I thought this a very sophistical literary trick when I was seven). By the time I was about 11, I had become aware that fantasy was its own genre. By the time I was 14, I was aware that fantasy had zealous detractors and zealous defenders. "Read Judy Blume," my friends demanded, and I tried, but I just didn't get it. "Read Dickens," my English prof father urged, and I tried, but again didn't get it (until several years later). Which isn't to say that I read and enjoyed only fantasy. But fantasy was most definitely where my heart was, as a young adult.

Something changed when I got older. I moved from y/a to adult fantasy, and started finding that the adult books just weren't satisfying me in the same way that the y/a ones had. It seemed there was less wonder, less care taken with language and characterization. I started understanding what fantasy detractors meant when they claimed all fantasy was "escapist." Lots of battles, lots of complicated lineages and magic systems - but, to me, very little real magic. I stopped reading fantasy, mostly. And I stopped writing it. I'd written my first novel-length work at 14, another at 15, another at (yes!) 16 - but after that I wrote only historical fiction for a few years, and after that (late high school, first two years of university) nothing at all. I didn't write again until my third year at McGill, in 1991 - not coincidentally, just after re-reading the Prydain Chronicles yet again. It was amazing, the rush I felt: the reinvigorating sense of wonder and possibility. I decided to begin something. A fantasy story I'd attempt to imbue with the sensibility of the y/a books I'd loved, but a story for me, at 21 years old. This story became, over the course of six long years, A Telling of Stars. It was difficult, slow going - but it was also such a joy. I'd returned to fantasy - the reading of it as well as the writing - and it felt good.

Does that answer your question?

Which authors have had the most influence on your decision to write fantasy?

I've already mentioned Lloyd Alexander. Early on there were also Eleanor Estes, E. Nesbitt, C.S. Lewis (the box set with the Pauline Baynes covers!), Susan Cooper, Ursula LeGuin, Alan Garner. Another huge influence on my early writing was Rosemary Sutcliff - not a fantasy writer, exactly, but her historical novels were as beautiful and awe-inspiring to me. As were Mary Renault's, which I read a bit later.

I've found through many conversations with other authors that they are as much readers within (and without) the genre as they are writers. As a reader, what sorts of things have you found in fantasy/science fiction writing that have appealed to you and which they would you wish to see more authors use in telling their tales?

I've always found a distinctive use of language very appealing. Obviously, there has to be a compelling plot to go along with the words - form over function definitely doesn't do it for me. But what I find so inspiring about the genre is that form can mirror function in a way it just can't in mainstream literature. Magical events can be described using magical language. (It's almost a kind of narrative-sized pathetic fallacy.) I certainly don't think that stylized prose is a requirement of fantasy story-telling - but I do think that the language of fantasy can and should be used with just as much polish and care as that of any other type of fiction.

When you state that the language of fantasy can and should be used with as much polish and care as any other genre of fiction, is this in reference to critical reviews of the genre and the styles (or possible lack thereof) that is perceived as being inherent in the genre?

I tend to attempt to defend fantasy against pejorative "critical reviews." Sometimes, though, I find myself straddling a tenuous line: I defend fantasy to its detractors, but I also understand some of the detractors' criticisms. One of these, as you've mentioned, is the low quality of genre writing. Now, there are certainly enough examples of badly written mainstream books to go around, and I'd extend my "polish and care" demand to them, too - but, frankly, it's the ghettoized genre stuff that gets blamed the most for sloppy writing. So I insist, "There's wonderful writing in that crazy section at the back of the store!", and also, "More fantasy should achieve narrative polish, panache and rigour!" It's a pretty bipolar existence.

In your first book, A Telling of Stars, you introduce a group of people, the Alilan, who seem to make the world come alive with their stories. Any insight as to the connection this might have with stars, or would that be spoiling the story too much?

The Alilan (who worship twin Goddesses of Earth and Fire) believe that stars are the fires of their dead ancestors. The connection between storytelling, memory, grief and redemption is extremely strong in the book - and that's all I'll say!

I recently read and really enjoyed your second book, The Silences of Home. I noticed it was markedly different from A Telling of Stars in both form and content. In which ways were these differences the result of the story being told and what other ways were more due to authorial development?

I started A Telling of Stars when I was 21, broken-hearted, mad at bad fantasy and desperate for all kinds of catharsis. The language I needed to use to tell this story was intensely poetic. The story itself was simple, plot-wise, but complex in emotional ways.

Fast-forward 12 years. Telling was finally done (i.e. edited, bound, on shelves!) and I was ready to write another book. I knew it would be connected to the first - but I also knew right away that its tone and content would be almost completely different. The story was not going to be related to my own cathartic needs. It would have to be complicated: lots of characters and shifting points of view, lots of tension and different kinds of resolution. I needed to plan this one. Minutely. I needed timelines and chapter synopses and point form lists of all sorts (hardcore fantasy readers who've read Silences may be thinking, "She thinks her plot's complex??" But it was. For me!). When I finally started writing, the language I used was different too. Less poetic description; more dialogue. The book ended up being longer than Telling, but it was also somehow less wordy.

So, as to your query: The kinds of stories Telling and Silences were determined the language I used to tell them. They were also written many years apart, meaning my "voice" was bound to have changed. I love that the two books are set in the same world, but so different; and I love the reasons for this.

Related to the above question: How do you respond to reviews and criticisms of your work? Have there been comments on your style and content that you've addressed in The Silences of Home?

Reader reaction to Telling was pretty polarized. Re: style: "What a joy to read such beautiful writing!" and "What a load of quasi-poetic twaddle!" Re: content: "How great that there are no wizards and battling armies!" and "Where's the plot?" I expected this polarity, and the negative responses didn't devastate me (too much!).

While I was writing Silences, I was aware that my different approach to content and style might make the book more accessible to more fantasy readers - but this wasn't what made me write it the way I did. I won't be disingenuous and claim that the prospect of reaching more readers didn't excite me - it did, and does. But the differences in approach were not the direct result of negative feedback to Telling.

Relatively simple question: What are some of the silences referred to in The Silences of Home?

The empty spaces left by absent friends and family, and by words that might (or should, or could) have been spoken. The sudden strangeness of a place that was once beloved and familiar.

You said above that reviews of your books have been rather polarized. I'm curious, what would you say to those readers who seem to have been very quick to dismiss your approaches toward telling your stories?

I'd say: If the kind of fantasy I write isn't the kind you like to read, don't trash it - try a "not my thing, but it's a big genre" approach and move on. Or at least be considered about your criticisms: give me something reasonable and respectful to react to.

More and more fantasy/science fiction authors these days appear to be depending upon internet sites such as wotmania to get the word out about their books. What are some of the good and bad things that you've noticed about sites such as these?

My first online writing experience was becoming a member of the Del Rey Online Writers' Workshop - something that galvanized me into starting the search for a literary agent. I "met" people on that workshop who are friends of mine today (Scott Bakker and Karin Lowachee, to name two). They gave me confidence, convinced me that the first three chapters of A Telling of Stars actually made them want to read more. Who knows how long it would have taken me to get my query letter written if I hadn't found this forum.

I've recently dipped my e-toe back into the vast genre pool that's out there/here on the Internet (via my forums at sffworld.com and caitlinsweet.com) - and again, I can say that I've felt welcomed, supported, encouraged. It's tempting to feel isolated as a writer - artistic, driven, misunderstood - whatever. But after a few minutes and days on a respectable online forum, you realize you're most definitely one of many. It's a comforting feeling.

And yet...for me, anyway, it's possible to feel too comfortable - and overwhelmed by all those other voices. About three months after I'd joined the Del Rey workshop, I left it. I was working on agent-requested revisions at that point; on a practical level I just couldn't keep up with the demands of the site (I was supposed to critique every writer who'd critiqued me). My head also felt like it was on the verge of exploding, all the time. I was getting so many different reactions to my writing, and I felt I had to navigate through them: choose the ones I wanted to act on, dismiss others. This became really, really confusing and time-consuming. Three months in I had to say, "Enough: now I have to get back into my own brain and just write." I'm feeling the same sort of semi-explosive sensation now. It's wonderful, talking and writing about my books, hearing about other writers' books - but I'm also feeling the need to burrow away somewhere and get on with the next one.

As usual, the Delphic oracle gives the best advice: "Know thyself" and "All things in moderation." (There's a bad "moderator" pun in there somewhere!)

Speaking of Scott Bakker, and because I know he will be reading this interview, are there are any funny/weird stories involving him?

Funny/weird and Scott Bakker in the same question…Hmm…

I can honestly say there’s been no weirdness of any sort. Except perhaps for that incident at TorCon involving him, five girls, and the “hey, chiquitinis!” comment. And the infamous “so hot, so smart; whaddya say?” encounter at the autograph signing at last year’s Ad Astra. And the time last summer when his sweet illusions/delusions about the essential goodness of the female mind were rudely shattered at the Fran's Diner on College Street in Toronto. And there’s been an awful lot of beer, and goofiness of the most erudite kind. So funny and weird, yeah – but mostly just cool, cool beans.

Other than that, my lips are sealed!

*whistles innocently*

And moving on now...

What questions, if any, would you like to have the readers here consider, whether it be about your works, your writing, fantasy in general, or even life, the universe, and everything?

(42's the answer, of course!)

Is "magic system" an oxymoron?

Who are/were your Fantasy Greats? Has your love of their work limited as well as inspired you, as either reader or writer?

What has surprised or intrigued you about the work of any new fantasy authors you might have come across recently? Do you like to be surprised by the books you read, or do you prefer familiarity?

What kind of escape do you look to fantasy to provide?

How does fantasy inform your "real" life?

And now for something completely different: The traditional wotmania "Monkey Question" (Aren't you just thrilled right now that this is the last question?):
If you were to own several monkeys and/or midgets, how many would you own, and what would you name them?

I'll go with the monkeys. I'd have three. (Three is a mystical number, especially when it comes to non-human primates.) Their names would be Gurgi, Chewbacca and Animal, in honour of my favourite childhood hirsute creatures. Or, going with the Star Wars theme, I might call them Sidious, Vader and Maul - because those are kick-ass monkey names.

Thanks, Larry. Not just for the monkey/midget question: for all of them. You've put a tremendous amount of thought and energy into crafting this interview, and you've made me think really, really hard about a lot of things. Gracias.

And thank you as well, Caitlin. Been a real pleasure working with you on this.