Hey y’all,
I thought I’d post some recommended reading as my science fiction writing class and I work our way through it. This semester I’m only assigning work that can be found online so y’all can follow along, if you like.
This week, I assigned stories that are basal to their genres — meaning that they work within genre expectations to tell a good story.
I think some of these stories are better than others. In this group, “Flat Diane” is the standout in my opinion, and “Two Hearts” is not really to my taste. However, all the stories are worth reading.
Science fiction — “Sergeant Chip by Bradley Denton
Fantasy – “Two Hearts” by Peter Beagle
Horror – “Flat Diane” by Daniel Abraham (audio only)
Wow. The first one was horrible. Note to self: the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award does not mean much. Of course, given who’s on the jury, I should not have expected to like it.
Yeah, that was pretty bad. It’s also a stretch to call it SF. What was it that you liked about it, Mandolin?
How is it a stretch to call it SF? It is military SF, but that’s usually considered pretty basal to the genre.
Anyway, you’re actually the first two people I’ve ever heard say something negative about that story. It’s affecting and accessible, and the students seem to like it (which is interesting since they can be very grumpy about almost everything else).
I first read it when it came out, which was when I was in college, although I have to admit that on reread (more like reskim) yesterday I was bored to death by it. Blah, blah, blah drones. But I was in an exceptionally bad mood.
Bjmartmarr, how is the first story not SF? You’ve got a dog who can think and that is able to empathetically/telepathically communicate with a human at least initially through the aid of technology, and the communications link is key to the action of the story. Looks like SF to me. What’s the stretch?
Hi there. I’m afraid I’m only a lurker, but I’m very fond of both The Last Unicorn and The Folk of the Air (Peter Beagle’s very under-rated late-seventies SCA novel).
What is it that you like about “Two Hearts”, Mandolin? [SPOILERS follow, yes they do!]
I get that it’s a response to Tolkien, which I like. But the plot seems very rudimentary to me, and relies a lot on the coincidence of meeting with Schmendrick and Molly. Or is it a children’s story?
Perhaps I’m reading waaaay too much into this, but isn’t Schmendrick’s little song and the whole “not til you’re seventeen” thing…well, doesn’t it boil down to new-young-woman-as-replacement-for-Molly? (Who will by then be dead, we assume?) That doesn’t give me the creeps as much as it might because I have a lot of faith in Beagle’s gender politics, but still!
Seriously, I’m troubled by the whole fated child thing even in its mildest form–the idea that someone else will pick you out and there’s your whole life. And of course the idea of fated love? Especially for young girls?
Now, I get that this story is a bit more open than that (Beagle does have decent gender politics)–there’s no guarantee that the girl will in fact go off with Schmendrick or be happy doing so. And I do see the theme of loyalty which sort of redeems the fated-connection aspect–Lir, Schmendrick, Soozli, Molly, Malta and the unicorn are all loyal to absent people and/or to people who have changed over time.
It’s just–why does it always have to be this way? Why is it that an author you like and trust gets older and suddenly has to guarantee his male characters new young (very young!) female companionship? One of the things I liked in The Last Unicorn was that Schmendrick and Molly were both middle aged. It seems as though male commitment to any kind of gender equality disappears once “women your own age” aren’t young anymore.
And what does it mean to be the seventeen-year-old companion of a former immortal, anyway? What are the power dynamics likely to be there?
Honestly, I find this story a bit depressing, and not in a productive way.
I am open to other readings, though; it may be that I’ve just picked the most depressing one by mistake.
It’s not that the story is not SF. You’ve got a dog that has near-human intelligence and is telepathic, who supposedly got that way through some sort of electronic signaling device. The device is mentioned in a few places in the story, but it’s actually sort of unnecessary to the plot — the story would be pretty much the same if it were about an army guy and his magic dog. But that would be clearly fantasy, so the author bolted on a signaling device in order to make it SF.
I also skimmed the last half of it because it was, as you noted, boring. I was looking for the point of the story, but never really found it. As a 1500-word short, it might have been better.
Well, you could take a great many SF stories, change the technology to magic and end up with a fantasy story. That doesn’t mean the original wouldn’t have been SF.
Some kind of communication was necessary to the plot. It’s not like the author started with a fantasy and adapted it. There’s a fork you can go down. The author chose one way and wrote SF, as opposed to going the other way and writing fantasy. To say that the author bolted on technology to change a fantasy to SF is misplaced, or at least not demonstrated. By that logic, if the story had been written with a magic dog you could have said “Oh, the author bolted on some magic spells and changed an SF story to fantasy.” Fantasy is not the default here; it’s one among more than one equal choice.
It’s overlong, yes, but the author writes the dog’s point of view very well, I thought; it’s distinctly not-human, but consistent.
As to “Two Hearts”, I saw absolutely no suggestion that the girl was to be a replacement for Molly, nor any suggestion that the girl had any interest in Schmendrick whatsoever except as a friend. Presumably, at seventeen, she will be of age and free to leave her parents.
Actually, it feels exactly like the author started with a fantasy and then adapted it. Not a wizards-and-dragons fantasy, but a hey-what-if-there-was-a-magic-dog fantasy. Yes, communication is crucial to the story, but hand signals would have fit the bill. They wouldn’t have explained the super-intelligence or the telepathy, but neither does the electronic gizmo.
Just because the magic is battery-powered, doesn’t make it science.
And yes, you are correct, you could take a great many SF stories, replace the rockets with dragons, and end up with fantasy. But the fantasy story would be vastly inferior to the SF story, which is not the case with this one.
Take Niven’s “The Smoke Ring” as an example (chosen because it was the first book I focused on on my bookshelf…though, having been previously accused of being fantasy, it makes an excellent example). The “gizmo” in this story is the Smoke Ring itself — the physics of which are all explored in the story. Switching Kendy for a wizard and the Smoke Ring for the Elemental Plane of Air leaves the author describing the physics of the Elemental Plane of Air (*yawn*). Leave that part out (probably a good idea) and you’re left with Extruded Fantasy Product.
As an example going in the other direction, look at Pern. McCaffrey bolted on some spaceships and genetic engineering sometime around Book 14 — does that make it SF? No — the feel of the series is fantasy, so the series is fantasy. (If the bolt-on had worked, and she had science-ified between and impression and time travel in a way that her readers could believe, would that have made the story SF? I guess so…but it also would have suckified it.)
8: Well, I found this rather extraordinary:
<iSoozli, Soozli,
speaking loozli,
you disturb my oozli-goozli.
Soozli, Soozli,
would you choozli
to become my squoozli-squoozli?
(as well as rather lamentable in its own right.)
and this, with which the story ends:
Soozli, Soozli,
speaking loozli,
you disturb my oozli-goozli.
Soozli, Soozli
would you choozli
to become my squoozli-squoozli…?
and the line in the third verse “we could wed next Tuesday”, etc.
Those verses indicate something, or they wouldn’t be in the story. And they’re certainly weird enough that their value isn’t purely ornamental. Schmendrick is asking something, repeatedly. Just what is up for debate, yeah, but any competent author doesn’t include three instances of an odd and ugly little jingle purely to indicate that one character is trying to amuse another.
And honestly, the sheer weirdness of “not until you’re seventeen”…I suppose the point of this story is that it gets substantially weirder the more you look at it.
Actually, it occurred to me what a calculated and planned story this is, with a lot of strong parallels. To me, the narrative voice is ugly and clumsy (and the opening lines are wretchedly coy). But there’s a lot going on in it–I can see why one would recommend or teach it.
I haven’t enjoyed any of Peter Beagle’s post Folk of the Air books. They’ve always seemed thin to me somehow, like something has gone out of them. I do wonder, though, now–I like L Timmel DuChamp very much indeed and yet one sure doesn’t read her stories for innovative plotting or even incredible subtlety of character. That’s not what she’s doing. I doubt that I could explain what she’s doing, but it’s very interesting. Her stories too get weirder the closer you look; they’re like the anti-Freudian narrative (or the anti-Patricia Highsmith, if you will). You don’t find a key that neatly divides everything into its constituent parts, all of which belong to an established system of thinking.
Beagle is too sentimental for me, and I dislike his narrative voice in general.
It is, however, difficult to find high fantasy in short form that isn’t fucking with genre. This piece — much as it’s not something I like, really — is one that people do tend to like. It won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in its category, and it’s a pretty good introduction to “this is what classic unicorn fantasy looks like.”
Last semester I used the much better (IMO) “‘I’ll Gnaw Your Bones,’ the Manticore Said,” by Cat Rambo for the purposes of introducing the students to high fantasy. The story is sophisticated and extremely well-written — however, it functions by illuminating and subverting certain genre tropes, and students who are unfamiliar with those tropes find it difficult to derive meaning from the story. It also plays with the history of racism and eugenics, which turned out to be over the students’ heads for the first week. Heck, they didn’t even know what a manticore was. (Yes, these are college students.) This semester I’m saving the more sophisticated material for later in the class.
IIRC, there were times during the story when the dog did not have eye contact with the human he was communicating with. Hand signals would not have sufficed. At any rate, the concept of whether it was a fantasy with technology bolted on is more a matter of taste and perception than something that can be proven one way or another.
I very much liked Sergeant Chip – but I agree that it would have been improved by drastic bloodletting – er, editing. The canine POV is well-done, and the story-line itself works very well, but there is too much meandering and fill material. I get that what is important to the dog is different from what is important to a human (I.e. the reader), and thus, to keep the dog’s POV clear, there’s going to be some meandering, but I think the effect could have been maintained without quite so much of it.
Jeez, Ron, I’m not trying to PROVE anything. I’m saying that it feels like a fantasy story. Relax just a teensy bit, will ya?
I can’t PROVE that it’s boring as hell, either. Want to challenge me on that too?
Ah, no, sorry; I was trying to say “We’ll just have to agree to disagree.” Didn’t mean to come on so heavy.