SoD Chapter Four: Of Traditions Doubled
Laura remembered falling, but she couldn’t pinpoint when she had struck the water. It had all happened so fast, and yet so slow at the same time. Where she was at one moment seemed ages from where she was before and in that time she found herself even more confused, for instead of striking the violent waters of the Sea of Loe, she had struck light. The pattern-less light approached her from the water as a narrow beam. She hit it and found herself not in the water at all, but someplace else, somewhere bathed in an ethereal glow that was warm and cold at the same time, and featureless except for the strange walls and pillars that made up the landscape. No designs, no markings to tell her what sort of place she was in. In that moment she thought she had died.Then a new light flashed before her, brighter and strangely terrifying. When it faded she found herself face to face with a creature, or a man, or both—she couldn’t be sure. He stood taller than anyone she had ever met in her life and was clothed in nothing but light except where metallic bands surrounded his wrists. Two glorious white wings were extended, presenting a massive wingspan. In her peripheral vision she imagined he had an eagle’s head, but when she looked at this creature, the face seemed human, with prominent cheeks and eyes that shined gold.And now she really believed she had died and gone to heaven. The revelation brought her to tears and she collapsed. She sobbed and was overcome by loss. She would never see her friends or her family again; this was the end.It seemed like an eternity before the enormous man-creature approached her. He lifted her to her feet with massive arms and stared straight into her eyes. Warmth came over her and her tears subsided as if commanded to do so. Fear and sadness fell away and warmth enveloped her like a cocoon.“Shed no tears, child,” the creature said. “Do you know me?”She nodded. “You’re an angel,” she blurted.He laughed. “Close. I am no angel, child, though perhaps where you come from you would know me as such. I am Nessian, the Father.”She sat dumbfounded.“Child, I am one of the Great Fathers that rules this land, or used to rule. But that is for another meeting. Now, time is pressing.”“I don’t understand.”He let go over her arms and she stood for herself. “I don’t expect you to right now. I’ll let James explain when you are brought back to the Luu’tre. Now, however, is your trying time, you moment of exposure to a world you have only begun to see. The world that inhabits something your people have forgotten.”“Magic…”Nessian smiled and flexed his wings. “Yes.” He paused as if in thought, then continued, “Be careful. Carelessness cannot be afforded, for Luthien hunts you. Beware his eye. Beware those that would claim to be your friends who do not know you.” He turned and started to walk away, the bright light suddenly warping around him.“Wait!” she cried, but he was gone.For a while she just stood there, unable to comprehend exactly what was going on. The white light swirled like a cloud around her. She wondered who this Great Father was. Who was Nessian, or who had he been once? She shook that thought away. The Great Fathers didn’t interfere with the mortal world. They were gods, creatures of magic and power, rulers of a universe bound by order and law. Nessian couldn’t be one of them.Yet, no matter how hard she tried to convince herself, she realized that Nessian was someone of importance, someone she knew Triska, Pea, and the others would be interested in hearing about, and possibly divulging informationg about. Maybe he was one of the Great Fathers. And thinking that startled her into a type of fear that she had never felt before: fear of the world gone completely wrong. If the Great Fathers are getting involved, then something worse than we expected is happening here. Loe is only the beginning.The light swirled again and reared up like a snake. It struck down at her. The brightness blinded and she closed her eyes, burying her face into her arms. Laura woke just as an enormous wave struck her floating body and pummeled her into the pink reef nearby. The porous, living creature cut into her sides and she jerked into action, trying desperately to swim away. Light erupted in the dark blue and something coursed through her veins—an energy, pulsing as if the veins were constricted. The water around her bubbled, becoming steam and rising until it exploded from the surface and disappeared from her view. Then, the energy coursed around her, through and into her, and, to her surprise, she rose up like a balloon. She broke the surface and gasped for air. Waves struck all around and a strong current tugged at her legs. Sea sprayed against her face as she kicked with all her might to stay afloat.Looking up, she could only see the side of the Luu’tre, tilted to the side and gently rocking as waves pummeled the wooden sides. A loud boom sounded and something crashed nearby, sending bits of splintered wood all around her. She covered her face just as an undertow dragged her under. She fought it and managed to get back to the surface to find that a hole had been blown into hull of the Luu’tre. The Luut’re leaned precariously to one side, jarred by whatever had struck it.“Help!” she screamed, but there was no response.Another boom sounded and this time she saw and heard something shoot through the air and strike the ship on her side, sending more bits of wood raining down into the ocean.What’s going on, she thought and tried to look through the misty swaths of vapor and the now forming fog. Another boom sounded, slamming into the water nearby. Cannon fire. The realization
The Facebook Fiasco Has Ended: Terms of Service Back to Normal
Well, it looks like all our kicking and screaming has paid off. The Facebook folks have gone back to their original ToS. Additionally, discussions on the issue have caused the following bits to be written for clarification purposes: 1. You own your information. Facebook does not. This includes your photos and all other content. 2. Facebook doesn’t claim rights to any of your photos or other content. We need a license in order to help you share information with your friends, but we don’t claim to own your information. 3. We won’t use the information you share on Facebook for anything you haven’t asked us to. We realize our current terms are too broad here and they make it seem like we might share information in ways you don’t want, but this isn’t what we’re doing. 4. We will not share your information with anyone if you deactivate your account. If you’ve already sent a friend a message, they’ll still have that message. However, when you deactivate your account, all of your photos and other content are removed. 5. We apologize for the confusion around these issues. We never intended to claim ownership over people’s content even though that’s what it seems like to many people. This was a mistake and we apologize for the confusion. Looks like it’s all back to normal! Good work everyone!
Atwood Boycotts Dubai
Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai will now be down one world-class author after it banned a book containing a gay character. Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, was to be amongst over 60 prestigious authors attending the event, but since the organisers decided to ban Geraldine Bedell’s The Gulf Between Us. In a calm, to-the-point letter, she explained she cannot condone censorship and therefore had to decline involvement with the festival. I’m with Atwood on this one. Of the 5.6m inhabitants of Dubai, the majority are foreigners, and in recent years EU and US citizens have been arrested for having LGBT relationships. This book was banned under the same anti-gay laws. Whether you’re pro- or anti-gay rights, there’s an argument against censorship here. A book shouldn’t be banned just because you don’t like what it says.
Ten Things That Make Me Stop Reading
Hinging off Matt Staggs’ recent post on the same subject, I thought I would talk about what elements in a novel make me stop reading.I’m a notoriously picky reader, especially when it comes to novels. Some of my TAs at school have learned this, and others are probably oblivious, but when I’m not entertained by a book, it instantly becomes a chore and, thus, difficult for me to actually get through (sometimes I stop reading entirely, even though they are school books). Since I already have to read so many novels, I find myself largely becoming uninterested in books that don’t immediately grab me and, thus, I develop a more sophisticated (not necessarily better) taste in literature.Here are ten things that will almost always make me toss a book across the room: Unrealistic Sex ScenesI realize that the uber dork meeting an attractive woman and then having an all-night-romp of passionate, intense love making is appealing, but it’s also incredibly unrealistic and somewhat pathetic. What about nerves? What about guys who aren’t reincarnated sex machines? Most men aren’t super lovers who can go seven times in half a day (I’m looking at you, Greg Bear; that scene in Blood Music was absolutely absurd and seemed too much like a personal fantasy). Of course, most men won’t admit this, but that’s not the point. The point is that sex isn’t perfect. Not everyone who is inexperienced will magically be good at it. Most will suck. Let’s put some of that into our novels, please. The unrealistic inexperienced lanky guy who gives his partner five O-moments in one night is a bit, well, overused and easy to see as poorly disguised personal fantasy. Rape (Used Poorly)Any time when rape is used for shock value, I’m out. The same can be said for scenes following a rape in which the victim seems relatively un-phased. I don’t find rape entertaining; most people don’t. Rape should be put into a story to serve a purpose. This is why I couldn’t stand The Hills Have Eyes 2: the rape scene was there only to be shocking, not to develop a character in a certain way or drive the plot or anything (it was an opportunity to do something disgusting in order to make our skin crawl). I will drop books that do not address rape as an important and emotionally devastating thing. It’s no walk in the park and I want to see that in the writing. Violence For the Sake of Being ViolentI don’t mind blood and gore. But just as with rape, it has to have a purpose. If you’re just showing me limbs being chopped off because you like it, then I’m likely to drop the book. I want violence that takes itself seriously, that tries to convey a scene realistically and with logical consequences. If a character is involved in a war and manages to survive relatively unscathed after seeing all his friends get chopped to bits, how does he respond to that? If your answer is anything like “he goes off and dances to lively elven music while remarking how awesome the battle was,” then I’m out. Being Artistic For the Sake of Being ArtisticConsider this literary snobbery, if you like. I absolutely despise novels that try to do new things with language or story for the purpose of being artistic. The problem I have with a lot of literary fiction is that most of the people who write that stuff are so focused on the art form that they have forgotten how to tell a story. Literature is here to tell and show us stories. Novels that don’t give any attention to the story and all the attention to language and style are ones that eventually get dropped by me. Entertain me with your pretty language; don’t bore me to death. Laggy BeginningsIf it takes more than fifty pages for something to happen that is interesting, then I’m not likely to finish the book. In a 300-page novel, it’s not much to ask for a bit of action or something in the beginning, even if it’s something small. Set up a question or show me something crazy. Do something. You’ve got more space to get me interested in the rest of the book than you had with your editor. The ending shouldn’t be boring, period. Crappy WritingThis one is pretty obvious, right? I’m going to lob all forms of crappy writing in there: bad style, lots of spelling/grammar errors, poor plotting, etc. I don’t think I need to go beyond this except to say that how you tell a story is extremely important. If reading a work is like trying to decipher ancient hieroglyphics, then clearly whatever it is I’m reading doesn’t deserve to be published. Poor Science Played Off Like Legit ScienceI’m perfectly fine with letting slide things like faster-than-light travel, aliens that look human-ish, etc. What I don’t like is when a science fiction author writes a story filled with explanation about some “new” science that, in reality, is actually a load of absolute nonsense. If you want to write fantasy, then write fantasy. If you want to write hard SF, then stick with sciences we know. The one thing that non-hard SF writers do successfully is represent their “fantasy” tropes as just that: tropes. FTL for them is simply there, thus allowing them to focus on the story rather than trying to explain how their FTL works without violating the laws of the universe. Don’t explain to me how FTL works, just tell me it does and move on. Confusing Names and Other Bad Worldbuilding CrapNames need vowels. Fjfjcbvyx is not a name; it’s what happens when your cat runs over your keyboard. The thing that bothers me about some fantasy novels is the endless repetition of the unpronounceable name. This alone isn’t enough, though. There have to be a collection of worldbuilding-related things working together to get me to drop a novel. These include, but
Facebook: The ToS Adjustment That Violates Your Privacy
If you’re a Facebook user, you might be interested to know that they have recently changed their terms of service and didn’t tell you about it. This might not sound like a big deal, except it is. Why? Because Facebooks’ new ToS gives them full rights to all of your uploaded content, including, but not limited to, picture, notes, RSS feed information, and personal messages.The actually paragraph reads: You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses. Basically, they can use anything you put on Facebook for anything they want. And they no longer need your personal permission to do so. These are scary times…
Popular Literature: Will it die?
It’s interesting what you find on the Interwebs these days. Not too long ago Stephen King went on record saying some rather entertaining things about Stephanie Meyers and J. K. Rowling: King compared the Mormon author to JK Rowling, saying that both authors were “speaking directly to young people”. “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good,” he told an interviewer from USA Weekend. This is being likened to a virtual bitchslap and it created quite a response both in the news and in the blogosphere, including some interesting points about who has authority in determining what is good literature. Julia Weston says that all of us have authority in that (readers, writers, academics, etc.). But what’s more interesting about Weston’s blog post is this: I agree that as a population we’re too heavy on the “pop culture” right now, but I believe that – just like the economy – this type of thing runs in cycles. Eventually the majority of us will get tired of easy-reading pop fiction and long again for literary substance. The reality is that this will never happen. I know, I’m saying “never,” and you should never say never, right? But that’s just it, popular literature isn’t a form that arose because it was a get-rich-quick scheme. Popular literature arose because it had something to offer to a public that wasn’t necessarily educated, or perhaps didn’t enjoy reading because much of the “good” literature was too complicated or dull. These were folks that, while not simple, were looking for more simplistic prose styles to make the process of reading faster, smoother, and simply more entertaining. It’s not that folks who read popular literature don’t know what a good book is, it’s that they see literature for what it really is (entertainment) and have very specific opinions on what constitutes entertainment. There will always be a massive readership for popular literature (whether it be romance or mystery or science fiction or fantasy–in their “popular” formats, I mean). It’s not going to go away as Weston suggests. I think she places too much importance on “literary substance,” something nebulous and rather pointless as a descriptive term, and not enough importance on the power of a good read. Literary folks don’t have to like popular literary forms, but they do have to acknowledge that more people read it because it is less convoluted and more direct. It gets the job done without dragging the reader around on a leash. Because of that, it’s a form that will be with us for a while. There will always be people who read popular literary forms (and it will always be a large group). If it were just a fad, you would think that it would have died out a long time ago, but it has been going strong for almost a hundred years now and has only grown. It will continue to grow, too. Some readers may find their tastes changing, becoming more in tune with this “literary substance” thing; but they’ll be replaced by floods of other readers who are only interested in a fast, enjoyable read. We may not find the works they read of quality, but that’s based on our individual perspectives. Individuals only decide quality for themselves (and, in all honesty, there is no real way of determining quality beyond that). At most, we can expect certain factions of it to shrink. The Twilight and Harry Potter fans may find themselves unable to fill the void properly, resulting in some dropping off or being consumed by other popular novels. The only things that truly die in literature are isolated fads: urban fantasy will hit a ceiling and taper off (it will never go away); YA fantasy will likely remain a large entity, but will probably splinter into subgroups, some larger than others, some shifting in and out of the popular sphere; science fiction will shrink and expand as old genres are revitalized or lost. But popular literature isn’t going anywhere. We’re stuck with it, for better or for worse. If you enjoyed this post, please stumble it, digg it, tweet it, and leave a comment. Thanks for reading!