Fantastika – Page 56 – Wis[s]e Words

Mort — Terry Pratchett

Published on October 28, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of Mort

Mort
Terry Pratchett
272 pages
published in 1987

If anybody can lay claim to being the first breakout star of the Discworld series, it has to be Death. Started off as a bog standard personification of an abstract concept, managed to work his way up through several cameos in the first three books to this, his first start turn in a novel. Four more would follow, though none in the past decade. He’s not quite his cuddly self here yet, still a bit on the evil side, not as human as in e.g. Hogfather.

Nevertheless Death is being humanised, or why else would he end up looking for an apprentice? Anthropomorphical personages don’t need successors, now do they? Yet still Death ends up on a dusty market square in a small village at the stroke of midnignt taking on a most unlikely apprentice: Mort. Mort is one of those boys who are all knees and legs, who think too much for what they’re doing. An apprentice with Death is literally his last opportunity, but as his father said, there may be opportunities for a good apprentice to eventually take over his master’s business, though Mort is not sure he wants to.

Equal Rites — Terry Pratchett

Published on October 25, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of Equal Rites

Equal Rites
Terry Pratchett
283 pages
published in 1987

With the third novel in the series, Equal Rites, it became clear that the Discworld was more than just the sum of its characters. Gone were Rincewind, Twoflower and the Luggage, as an entire new setting and cast turned up. This wasn’t something that had been done much — or ever — in fantasy before, not often done after either. It must’ve seemed a bit of a gamble at the time, but this freedom to change protagonists and settings is what made the Discworld series, what has been keeping it from going stale for so long. If you don’t like one particular subseries, there are several others that you can read. Of course it also helps that Pratchett has been such a good writer for so long…

Equal Rites is the first Witches story, though the Granny Weatherwax that shows up here isn’t quite the one we get to know better in the later novels, differing somewhat even from how she’s portrayed in Wyrd Sisters three books onwards. The plot of the story is all about how if you’re a wizard on the verge of dying and looking for an eight son of an eight son to hand your staff over to, it helps to not be too hasty and check that eight son of an eight son isn’t actually a daughter…

The Light Fantastic — Terry Pratchett

Published on October 24, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic
Terry Pratchett
285 pages
published in 1986

The Light Fantastic is of course the second Discworld novel and a direct sequel to The Colour of Magic starting in media res with Rincewind having fallen off the Disc. To his own amazement he does not actually fall to his death, but is saved by the Great Octavo Spell that had taken up residence in his head. It turns out that this hadn’t actually been an accident all those years ago that had gotten it in his head and all other magic spells afraid to stay near it, but had been in preparation for just this moment. The Discworld is heading towards a huge red star and unless the spell and its seven counterparts are said at exactly the right time, the world will be destroyed…

There’s three years between the publication of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic and it’s noticable in Pratchett’s writing, which has improved a lot between the two novels. It’s also much less parody orientated, but still nowhere near the Discworld we’ve gotten to know and love. We do get a first glimmer of some of the subjects that Pratchett would engage more fully in later novels, including his humanitarianism. For the moment however, the Discworld is still much closer to a standard fantasy world than to what it would later become.

The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett

Published on October 22, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of The Colour of Magic

The Colour of Magic
Terry Pratchett
285 pages
published in 1983

The days are getting shorter, the nights are longer and I got the desire to reread some old favourites. It’s the time of year for comfort reading, as you may notice in my reading patterns from year to year and this time I wanted to lose myself in something actually good, rather than going for something mindless. Which is why I decided to reread the Discworld series from the beginning, though I won’t guarantee I’ll finish the series.

Which brings me to The Colour of Magic, the very first Discworld novel. Over the years it has gotten somewhat of a bad reputation amongst Pratchett fans as not being up to the standards of the series, not being as funny or interesting, not a good place to start the series as a new reader. All of which has a kernel of truth, but at the same time it was the novel that kickstarted the whole series and if it really had no merit, it would’ve been the last book in the series. It is rough and ready, it doesn’t quite fit in with the Discworld as it would evolve over the course of the series, but it still has a certain charm.

When Tiptree was still a man

Published on October 17, 2012Leave a comment

I’m sort of reworking a MetaFilter comment into a post here, so bear with me, as I got a brainwave after some chance remarks about James Tiptree, Jr. As you know Bob, James Tiptree was in reality Alice B. Sheldon, who spent over a decade pretending to be a male writer and who during that time was feted as one of the few male science fiction writers actually able to grok women. Somebody asked why it was that so many people believed Tiptree for so long and whether this was all sexism, which somebody else said it was pure sexism and ignorance.

That too dismissive a response crystallised something for me, as I realised it wasn’t so much that these old time science fiction authors like Ellison or Robert Silverberg just couldn’t bring themselves to believe somebody who was that good a writer could be anything other than a male, but that they wanted to believe that it was possible for a male author to portray a female point of view and female characters so well as Tiptree did. Even in the early seventies there were female sf authors, even if they often had to hide between male sounding names (Andre Norton) or the careful use of initials (C. L. Moore), so that really couldn’t be the problem people had with Tiptree.

In fact, debate about his gender had been raging for years, with quite a few people convinced he was a pseudonym for a female writer, while others, like Silverberg, continuing to see something ineluctably masculine in him. What helped confirm the latter camp in their beliefs was that quite a few of them had had personal contact with Tiptree, writing lettres to each other, in which he presented the same as he did in public, so how could he be a woman?

But of course he was, which may have come as a disappointment to some people, who had hoped that it was possible for a writer with such an insight into, such empathy for women to be male, who saw Tiptree as a male counterpart to a Joanna Russ or Ursula LeGuin. Sadly, it wasn’t the case and somebody else had to prove that it was not impossible for a male science fiction writer to write about “womens issues”…