[nesfa-reading-group] Fwd: suggestions to vote on for ?October?

[David G. Grubbs]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: cjhi newcastle2.com <cjhi at newcastle2.com>
Date: Sat, May 4, 2024 at 9:31 AM
Subject: [nesfa-reading-group] suggestions to vote on for ?October?
To: NESFA Reading Group <reading-group at lists.nesfa.org>


I decided to get this done since I'd come up with a theme and three
examples when I wasn't thinking about it.

We seem to be doing a lot of science fiction, so I'm going to suggest 3
fantasies from different periods:


   - Relatively modern: Patricia McKillip, *The Forgotten Beasts of
Eld* (1974).
   This is her first adult book after a couple of juveniles (and was called a
   juvenile in her obit (by someone who should have known better), possibly
   because that was the original publisher's focus); it won her the first
   World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, much to the surprise of the oldpharts
   who organized the awards. It's also one of the first modern fantasies to
   completely ignore the heroic model of everyone from Tolkien to Terry
   Brooks, without the grunge that some writers think is obligatory these
   days; the main character is a 3rd-generation wizard who lives quietly on a
   mountaintop, occasionally using her research to call another unusual
   sentient animal to her as her predecessors did. Then someone comes panting
   up the mountain in the midst of lowland chaos to hand her a baby; some
   years later (when the child is mostly-grown) she gets caught up in the
   results of that chaos (whose kid is it really?) and has to make difficult
   choices. McKillip was a brilliant, moderate-speed writer (a book every
   couple of years for ~50 years); this is a bit more accessible than some of
   her later work, so it's a good intro for anyone who hasn't read her. (IMO
   everyone should read at least something of hers.)
   - middle period: Fletcher Pratt, *The Blue Star* (1952). Very unlike the
   comic fantasies he wrote alone and with de Camp. Magic passes from mother
   to daughter when the daughter loses her virginity; the man responsible
   inherits the eponymous jewel, which keeps her in touch with him and enables
   him to tell when someone is untruthful. (This is a bald description of
   mechanics, which the book isn't about.) The main character is on the
   fringes of a revolutionary cabal, assigned to get one of these jewels; he
   finds that both carrying the jewel and seeing the revolution through are
   not at all what he expected. (The revolution has aspects of Orwell about
   it, and of the French revolution, but isn't nearly as bleak, violent, or
   foregrounded).  *The Well of the Unicorn* is the only other work in this
   line; both were selections when Lin Carter was reprinting older fantasy
   works for Ballantine.
   - countering Lord Dunsany: Hope Mirrlees, *Lud-in-the-Mist* (1926). The
   titular town is also near Faery, and is occasionally aware of danger (the
   narcotic Faery fruit that comes down the river occasionally), but the lead
   is a middle-class mayor who is trying to cope rather than a prince with his
   head full of nonsense. The prose is not dull but it is more matter-of-fact
   than pompous/overblown/repetitive/.... This is Mirrlees's only fantasy.


/CHip
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