No Persistence of Memory

Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs

Renowned city planning theorist Jane Jacobs (author of the classic study of urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities) looks at the state of the cultural infrastructure in North American and argues that unless more attention is paid to this crucial aspect of society, we risk falling into cultural amnesia.

Jacobs specifically focuses on signs of functional breakdown in the areas of community and family, higher education, science and technology, government representation and self-regulation of the professions, and suggests that if these systems for preserving, transmitting and expanding on the accumulated body of cultural history, tradition and knowledge cease to be effective, then we may be unable to avert a new Dark Age. I found Jacob’s arguments persuasive and thought-provoking.

Reading Russ

Demand My Writing: Joanna Russ, Feminism, Science Fiction, Jeanne Cortiel

A fascinating study of Joanna Russ’ fictional works (which also pays some attention to her critical and feminist non-fiction writing, but primarily as the themes she addresses inform a feminist and science fictional understanding of her creative oeuvre). Cortiel constructs her analysis around two distinct but interwoven frameworks: first, three major concerns - women's agency, female sexuality, and the indeterminacy of both these categories – that she sees as running throughout Russ’s work, and second, three generations in 20th century feminism (as described by Julia Kristeva) - the radical, materialist feminism of the late 60s and early 70s, the separatist, essentialist feminism of the late 70s and early 80s, and the post-structuralist feminism of the late 80s and 90s.

Reading this study has given me a much deeper appreciation of Russ, both as a writer and as a pioneer of modern feminism.

What Is Myth, Anyway?

A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong

Intended as an introductory volume to a planned series of short novels by Canongate Books in which modern novelists offer re-imaginings of ancient myths from a number of different cultures, this is the first of Armstrong’s books that I’ve not been fully satisfied with. Instead of taking a fresh look at the roles and functions of myth in many cultures Armstrong has here relied primarily on revisiting her previous works on the development of monotheistic religions, and the cultures of the Axial age. It’s a good introduction to Armstrong’s very important scholarship on the development and modern manifestations of monotheistic religions, but it does not, I think, give the reader much insight into the history and, more importantly, the purposes of myth. Myth and religion can work hand in hand, but they are different, and equally important and powerful, forces in human thought and culture.

By focusing on where and how myth and religions are connected, and by drawing so deeply on her work with specific kinds of religions, I think Armstrong has missed out on a great deal that could be useful to a student of myth in general, and a reader of a series based on reworkings of old myths for a new age in particular.

NASCAR Elves!

The SERRAted Edge series, Mercedes Lackey
Born to Run, with Larry Dixon
Chrome Circle, with Larry Dixon
When the Bough Breaks, with Holly Lisle
Wheels of Fire, with Mark Shepherd

Mages, elves, race cars, dragons and abused children. Possibly one of the stranger mixes to dominate a series of novels, but Lackey makes it work, at least if you like this particular blend of high fantasy with contemporary/urban fantasy, and don’t object to Lackey’s persistent use of the plot device of the abused child, often with some kind of great destiny or special power.

I’d read and enjoyed two of these books - Born to Run and Wheels of Fire - before, and enjoyed reading the other two for the first time. The four books have interlocking characters and settings, although not all have the same protagonists. Since the release of these four novels (and others written by other authors in this shared universe), Lackey has begun a prequel series with Roberta Gellis set in Elizabethan England which tells the backstories of many of the key elven characters in the SERRAted Edge books. The discerning reader will also note references to characters from the Diana Tregarde books and other of Lackey’s urban fantasy works.

Yet More of the Skolian empire

More Skolian space opera romance, by Catherine Asaro
Skyfall
Catch the Lightning

Two more volumes in the very long, and still interesting, saga of the Skolian empire and its powerful psion rulers, the Rhon telepaths of the Ruby Dynasty. Skyfall takes us back almost to the to the beginning of the time period in which the series to date, explaining just how the heir of the Ruby Dynasty, Roca Skolia, ends up marrying Elrinson Valdoria, a minor more-or-less feudal leader on an only recently re-discovered Raylicon colony, founded thousands of years ago during the first flowering of this interstellar empire.

Catch the Lightning, on the other hand, comes near the end of the series, and recounts the adventures of one of Roca and Elrinson’s grandchilden, Althor, as he becomes trapped by treachery in another dimension – where he too manages to find a Rhon telepath to fall in love with and marry, on an alternate Earth.

Formulaic by now, especially with respect to the romantic conventions, but still fun. Brain candy is a good thing to have during the holidays.

Vintage Heinlein

Tunnel in the Sky, Robert Heinlein

This was one of my favourite, if not the favourite, of the Heinlein juveniles I read when I was much younger, and upon re-reading, it still stands up in many ways. If you’re going to read Heinlein, you have to just accept the particularly American survivalist libertarian slant to so many of his books, and just relax and enjoy the story. This particular tale, about a high school survival training class’ final practical exam gone horribly wrong, appealed to me because of the strong female characters, without whom our putative hero would be long dead before the recall finally comes. Sure, all of Heinlein’s women thought having hundreds of babies was their dream goal, but they all managed to think straight, have identifiable sexual natures, haul their own weight or more, save the boys just as often as the boys saved them, and perform heroically without fainting like proper ladies or (for the most part) dying like sacrificial lambs. For books written in the 50s, that’s got to count for something.

The Marq'ssan Cycle: Books Two and Three

The Marqu’ssan Cycle, by L. Timmel Duchamp – Volumes 2 and 3
Renegade
Tsunami

I was blown away be the first volume of this series, Alanya to Alanya, which presented a detailed image of a profoundly fascist and anti-feminist state and began to explore both the ways in which such a state (and mindset) damages humans both individually and in community, and the ways in which such a state can be challenged without merely replacing one form of totalitarianism with another.

The second volume, Renegade, focuses more sharply on one of the themes of the first book, how fascist and oppressive structures pervert the human spirit and human relationships, while continuing to tell the broader story of the struggle of people raised in a culture dominated by such structures to resist their power and instead create non-oppressive societies and sociopolitical structures. The core of the book is a harrowing narrative of torture – both physical and psychological - and conditioning that is in its way even more devastating to read than the similar narrative written by Orwell in 1984. In Tsunami, the focus shifts more toward the process of resistance, both from within and from without, but continues to show how one philosophy of structuring and organising human society poisons and corrupts, and how new structures that can be developed that may promise better ways of co-ordinating society and living together as people without opression.

I continue to be profoundly affected and moved by this series, and am counting down the hours until the fourth volume, Blood in the Fruit, arrives. (It’s being published in January by Aqueduct Press, and yes, I have pre-ordered a copy.)