Once upon a time, the animated film Shrek broke box office records as a clever fairy tale parody that cast William Steig’s rude and crude ogre as a reluctant hero who rescues a princess—who turns into an ogress herself. Though it riffs on the traditional quest narrative and the search for true love, the film never loses the romantic heart of fairy tales, right down to its happy ending. The 2004 sequel picks up where the first installment left off, continuing to subvert fairy tale conventions by showing that “and they lived happily ever after” is a lot more work than it sounds in the stories, and might not be strictly true.
When Shrek (Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz) return from their honeymoon montage, they receive an invitation from her parents to visit the kingdom of Far, Far Away. Fiona’s apprehensive about going home, since no one there has seen her since she got married and became a full-time ogress. Indeed, everyone is stunned at her striking appearance, most of all her parents, Harold (John Cleese) and Lillian (Julie Andrews). After a rather uncomfortable family dinner ends with Fiona in tears, the Fairy Godmother (Jennifer Saunders) shows up and offers to set things right.
Before we get started with The Return of the King (home stretch, everyone!), I have pretty awesome news. I’m going to be on several panels at Boskone this coming weekend, including
The Problem of Glorfindel—and Other Issues in Tolkien
Tolkien’s elves never re-used names (they were immortal, after all) yet a Glorfindel lived and died in the First Age of Middle-Earth and another was a character in Lord of the Rings six thousand years later—what happened? One of the joys of Tolkien’s world is that it is so well-realized that minor anomalies (which in a lesser writer would be assumed to be sloppiness) only make it seem more real, since the history of the real world also abounds in puzzles. Enjoy a walk through Middle-Earth’s lesser-known byways. Who was Eldest: Treebeard or Tom Bombadil? What were orcs, actually, since Morgoth could not create anything new? Why are the wood-elves such jerks in The Hobbit? Whatever happened to Ungoliant? Arwen became mortal, but what happened to the sons of Elrond when he took ship for Valinor? Where did Sauron hide the One Ring when he was taken captive to Númenor? Let’s take the time to explore these and other intriguing curiosities of Middle Earth.
Mary Kay Kare, Kate Nepveu, Mark L. Olson (moderator), Tom Shippey
Not to take anything away from Mary Kay or Mark, both of whom are very smart people, but: I’m going to be on a panel with Tom Shippey. As in, the scholar who wrote The Road to Middle-earth and J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. You know, that Tom Shippey. (Eee!)
And it’s almost entirely because of you guys: not only do you keep me going and make this project a lot of fun, but I’ll be able to bring your perspectives to this discussion—indeed, I really want to. So let’s hear it: what would you want to talk about, or hear other people (like Tom Shippey!) talk about, in relation to that description?
If you’re in the vicinity of Boston, the panel is on Friday February 12th at 9:00 p.m.; Friday-only memberships are just $15. Directions and more information at Boskone’s website. (And if you’re there for more than just Friday, feel free to say hi to me; here’s where I’ll be, and here’s what I look like, except less pale.)
And now for the usual discussion of the chapter, with spoilers for the entire book and comments after the jump.
Caltech researcher, author, and Cosmic Variance blogger Sean Carroll will be publishing “The Real Rules for Time Travelers” in the March issue of Discover. To glimpse the future (and watch fascinating videos of exploding clocks), click your mouse (or tap your finger) three times.
If however, as for me, time is in short supply and you just want the rules in your wallet or on your phone right now, here they are. (Truth in advertising, these rules are from the recent past and not in the online “real rules” article.)
Rules for Time Travelers
0. There are no paradoxes.
1. Traveling into the future is easy.
2. Traveling into the past is hard—but maybe not impossible.
3. Traveling through time is like traveling through space.
4. Things that travel together, age together.
Science fiction writer William Tenn, who was in private life Phil Klass, died yesterday of congestive heart failure. He was eighty-nine. He leaves his wife Fruma and daughter Adina, and much of science fiction fandom will also miss him.
He wrote one novel, Of Men and Monsters, and many wry and wonderful short stories, collected by NESFA as Immodest Proposals and Here Comes Civilization. He was Worldcon Guest of Honor in 2004. His stories were satire, and they were real science fiction. "The Liberation of Earth" in The Best Penguin SF was one of the first science fiction stories I ever read, and it blew me away. His stories generally worked by taking some science fiction ideas that nobody else would have thought of putting together, twisting them up with his typical wry humour, and hooking you into them with his way with words. They read aloud wonderfully—I’ll always remember hearing him read “On Venus, Do We Have a Rabbi” at the 2001 Worldcon.
At that same convention I was on a panel on his work, with Connie Willis and Robert Silverberg, and Phil sitting in the front row nodding soberly from time to time. He had an absolute straight face, in life as in his stories. After the panel when Robert Silverberg went up to him, he said how much he’d loved Dying Inside, and I got to see one of my science fiction writer heroes admiring another—and a great writer being taken aback by praise. A second later he was saying how we’d talked about stories he’d forgotten writing—but there was a twinkle in his eye. And that was Phil, generous, funny, and straight faced. Another time at a Boskone I introduced my son to him. Sasha was twelve or thirteen at the time and he’d recently loved Of Men and Monsters. “This is one of the new generation of your fans,” I said, and Sasha and Phil both synchronously rolled their eyes at the impossibility of mothers. He does have a new generation of fans, though. The last time I heard one of his stories read aloud was at a party here, when a fan in her twenties read “The Party of the Two Parts”, the amoeba sex story.
We’ll miss Phil Klass. William Tenn’s work will live on.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
In the awesome Barenaked Ladies tune “If I Had a Million Dollars,” the guys postulate on what luxuries they’d bring to their tree fort if they were rich, and then they have a great epiphany:
We wouldn’t have to eat Kraft dinner
But we would eat Kraft Dinner
Of course we would. We’d just eat more.
It’s a beautiful moment. Speaking as a person without a million dollars this gray Monday morning in February, I’d like to argue for the little experiences we wouldn’t trade away for any sum. I’m not talking about the big, obvious ones, like the birth of offspring or getting married or riding Space Mountain at Disneyland. I’m talking little.
I have a theory that the more unique we think a little memory is, the more universal it’s likely to be. It’s the small details that connect us as humans, just as mac ‘n’ cheese can sometimes be precisely what I want most for dinner and I can trust that’s true for someone else, too. So, at risk of publicly proving myself wrong, here’s a handful of my small-time favorite experiences.
In the pre-seatbelt era, one hot summer afternoon, I rode in the back seat of a station wagon piled in with bare-limbed siblings, and around my neck I sported a candy necklace just bought from the Marine General Store. I stretched the thin white elastic to fit into my mouth and bit off one candy at a time, savoring each sweet colored disk. That was bliss.
The Guns of the South (1992) was the first, or anyway the first I encountered, of the new kind of time-travel alternate histories, the kind where a group of people from the future, with their technology, turn up in a particular point in the past and change it. There were plenty of stories about organized groups of time travellers trying not to disturb the past, and also plenty about one person, without more than he could carry, changing things, starting from De Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall (1939) but what made The Guns of the South innovative was doing it with a whole group of people and their stuff. It was followed with Stirling’s Island in the Sea of Time (the island of Nantucket in the bronze age) and Flint’s 1632 (a US steel town transported to Europe of 1632) and at this point it’s pretty much a whole subgenre.
What makes the book so great is that it’s told entirely from the points of view of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee and Nate Caudwell, a sergeant in the Confederate army. The reader immediately recognises what an AK47 is, and knows where the white supremacists have come from to help the South, but the way Lee and Caudwell learn about them and their intentions, and the way the tide of history is turned, makes for a compelling story. Only about a third of the book is about the way the AK47s help the South win the Civil War; the rest is about what happens afterward, and the uneasy relationship with the men from the future.
Shpydah!
A spider landed on my shoulder this morning. A great gruesome Shelob tarantuloid terrorclump, prodding and full of schemes and dastardly encreepment. Legs like wicked celery stalks, body akin to a water balloon of malice. I could hear its ichorous mandibulae chittering clicky-wet. A panic filled me, a panic one generally reserves for massacres or George Hamilton films.
Adrenalin surged in my inner pipes, infusing me with the strength of three average men, or six toddlers and a mature Basset Hound, minimum. A mighty backhand, the sort you’d expect from Serena Williams, pow! Clocked the scrambling interloper but good and then some. His manifold appendages scrambled for purchase but my powerful John Henry strike gave him no purchase and off he went through the aether like propelled halitosis.
This week we interview Cherie Priest, author of Boneshaker, amateur theologian, and Steampunk aficionado. We explain what Steampunk is, why it’s cool, and where you can check it out.
[Crank up your analytical engine and click through for SHOW NOTES...]
We are saddened by the passing of our esteemed author and loyal friend, Kage Baker (1952-2010), at home in Pismo Beach, California, after a difficult battle with cancer. A fine career has been cut short, and we and all SF and fantasy readers are poorer for it.
She describes her background thusly: “graphic artist and mural painter, several lower clerical positions which could in no way be construed as a career, and (over a period of years for the Living History Centre) playwright, bit player, director, teacher of Elizabethan English for the stage, stage manager and educational program assistant coordinator. Presently reengaged in the above-listed capacities for the LHC's triumphant reincarnation, AS YOU LIKE IT PRODUCTIONS.” She was nominated for a number of awards for her writing, and in recent years was a weekly blogger for Tor.com, where her Ancient Rockets series on early fantasy and SF films has been a popular feature.
Knowing illustrator Dan Hanna is a big William Steig fan, I asked him to do a little fan-art for us—and he delivered with sketches that had me laughing out loud in my little corner of the Flatiron Building. Here are Dan’s homages to Bill’s books: Shrek!, CDB, Amos & Boris, Doctor de Soto, Pete's a Pizza, and The Amazing Bone.
Nuit Blanche: Just a glance between two strangers. (4:41 minutes)
Garuda: An Indian boy and a mythical bird. So much beautiful design crammed into a minute’s worth of film—I wish every frame was a wall-sized painting. (1:16 minutes)
The sun slid down the sky, leaving behind it a grand and flammable slickment of colour (or, to give the British spelling, coulououour) like unto that trailing a blood orange snail. Thence, scenting the breeze and finding an even-toed ungulate within it, the Canid of Enormous Malevolence decided to sup of its source. “Growl, indeed!” spake he. “Veritable threat, via glottal auditory!”
This week’s I Speak Fluent Giraffe is that cautionary tale with a hard, brick-like moral, Triage of Porks.
There are four good places to start reading Anthony Price’s Audley series. They are with the first written volume, The Labyrinth Makers (1970) a thriller about British intelligence and the KGB struggling over the lost gold of Troy. Or you could start with the first chronologically, The Hour of the Donkey (1980), which is a war story about the events leading up to Dunkirk. Or you could start with Soldier No More (1981), which is about a double-agent sent on a recruitment mission in 1956, and the Late Roman Empire. Or you could start with Other Paths to Glory (1974) which is another recruitment mission and the Great War. There are nineteen books in the series, but none of the others strikes me as a good way in. I started with Soldier No More when I was in university, when one of my tutors mentioned that it was a thriller featuring Galla Placida.
These books are not science fiction or fantasy, except for Tomorrow’s Ghost (1979), which is arguably fantasy. It’s from the point of view of a female agent who at least believes that the folk tale she has told will lead to somebody’s death—and it does, too. Fantasy. Which makes the whole series fantasy, in a way.
They all feature or at least mention David Audley and some kind of intelligence work, they happen in the same conceptual universe, they are told from an incredible range of points of view, and they almost all feature some historical mystery in addition to the contemporary one. They have an over-arching plot arc that was cut short by the Cold War ending unexpectedly before he was done with it, so the series isn’t finished and probably never will be. They are the books from outside of SF that I re-read most often.
As a fan of the Shrek books and movies, I was so excited when I heard that it was being made into a musical. Family friendly Broadway shows are one of the reasons that people return to the theatre again and again. A child’s first trip to see a show in Times Square is one that most will remember all of their lives.
As an adult, I was equally as happy to be able to see SHREK! The Musical on Broadway. It is a fun, high-energy show with a combination of laughs for kids and jokes for the rest of the audience. The fabulous cast (Brian D’Arcy James as Shrek and the Tony-Award winning Sutton Foster as Fiona) carried the story with amazing voices and hilarious musical comedy skills. An audience favorite was Lord Farquaad, played by Broadway veteran Chirstopher Sieber, who performed the entire show on his knees! Lord Farquaad is a short man who takes advantage of his power, and Mr. Seiber’s portrayal was so fun to watch. On knee pads with little fake legs attached to his own, he danced and hopped around the stage, even participating in a full-cast kick-line. The upbeat, catchy songs, along with the ambience of The Broadway Theatre, made for a magical evening!
The best part of the whole experience was going back to re-read the book and seeing just how far a great story can go!
Elizabeth Kerins studied at The Tisch School of Performing Arts in New York City. She is now a publicist for The Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group.
The SyFy Channel, not content with their disastrous reworking of The Wizard of Oz a few years back, produced an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland late last year. Alice was a little better than Tin Man (it was hard not to be), but fairy-tale fans weren’t exactly clamoring at the gates for more bizarre SyFy adaptations.
Luckily, the network’s plan to churn out unintentional comedy continues unabated, and fans of timeless artistry will rejoice knowing that SyFy will produce a series of fairy-tale adaptations as movies of the week.
Below the cut, we look ahead to what I am pretty sure will be some of the best movies ever released in the history of cinema.
Hello! Fancy meeting you here. Wheel of Time Re-read? Why, I thought you’d never ask. I live but to serve!
Today’s post covers Chapters 17 and 18 of A Crown of Swords, in which we spin complex psychological rationales, temporarily lose an old friend, and gain a dreaded frenemy.
Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, in which you can find links to news, reviews, and all manner of yummy tidbits regarding the newest release, The Gathering Storm, and for WOT-related stuff in general.
This re-read post contains spoilers for all currently published Wheel of Time novels, up to and including Book 12, The Gathering Storm. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.
And without further ado, dig in, old chap!
[see if you can guess why I’ve had Dolly Parton stuck in my head for two days]
While most people, children and adults, have seen the three Shrek films, very few have read the marvelous picture book, which William Steig published with an exclamation mark—Shrek!—in 1990. In keeping with the postmodern spirit of the last twenty-five years, Steig modestly produced one of the best examples of how the fairy tale has been fractured and continually transformed, indicating its radical potential in our digital age, especially with the production and success of the twenty-first century digitally animated films. Since very few reviewers of the film have paid attention to the book Shrek!—not to mention book reviewers—I would like to summarize the plot briefly and comment on the great wry morality and humanity of the tale.
Steig’s Shrek! is very different in tone and style from the film. The title is based on a Yiddish expression that means “horror” or “terror,” not “fear” as some reviewers have said. Schrecken in German and Yiddish means to scare, terrify, or horrify, and the ogre Shrek on the cover of Steig’s book is a scary figure. He has a green face with protruding ears and a bald head with a pointed top. His face is spotted with black stubbles; his eyes are red; his nose large and round; and his teeth, sharp and crooked. He is tall and barrel chested. His fingernails on his green hands are long. He wears a multi-colored violet tunic with a belt around his midriff and striped pants. The color combinations change at times throughout the book, but not his features and character:
His mother was ugly and his father was ugly, but Shrek was uglier than the two of them put together. By the time he toddled, Shrek could spit a flame of full ninety-nine yards and vent smoke from either ear. With just a look he cowed the reptiles in the swamp. Any snake dumb enough to bite him instantly got convulsions and died.
If the Golden Age of science fiction is twelve, it’s quite possible that the golden age of epic fantasy is fifteen. That’s the age when nobody understand you, the world is deeply unfair, and romantic angst proliferates.
Dragon Keeper (Eos, January 26, 2010 in the USA; the UK version has a definite article and a better cover, and came out last year) fits neatly into that sweet spot.
This book, the first in a new trilogy, marks a return to the setting of Hobb’s Liveship Traders books: the Rain Wilds, a vast swampy forest where anything that lives must live in the trees, because a caustic river runs through it. Dragons had all but died out in this world, as a result of a particularly nasty/clever worldbuilding twist that I won’t spoil, for those who have not yet read that first trilogy. But now they have returned to the world—and the first group to undergo metamorphosis into their adult forms are crippled due to privation and neglect.
Because of this, they constitute an economic drain on local humans, who have contracted with the lone surviving adult dragon to care for her kin. When that dragon vanishes amid rumors that disaster or love have befallen her, the young dragons gradually slip further and further down the ladder of civic commitments, until certain elements of the human establishment are strongly considering selling them off for parts.
Continuing with the William Steig-love, I wanted to share this brochure I unearthed from the FSG files, featuring fan mail from kids to Steig. It’s pretty much the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
[More behind the cut!]
This week we offer you a new story, a tale of weighing risks and taking stands: “Vilcabamba,” by Harry Turtledove.
Gadgets and/or Words That Are Fun to Say by Caragh O’Brien
Something that really bugs me about the recent Star Trek movie by Mitch Wagner
Moffat’s Women #3 - Sally by Teresa Jusino
