Challenge 90 response
by John Thiel
Here we see everything from Lovecraft to Hesse somewhat substantiating the outlook that Deep Bora's article does not define fantasy as being altogether separate from each other, and we survey the yearning to be elsewhere than where one is, finding in this a basis for all the interest there is in alternate realities.
Also notable are some parallels to William Hope Hodgson's story "The Night Land," in which alternate realities appear to play a role, which reminds me that there is now a "Night Land" site at which writers are invited to post stories in the mode of Hodgson's saga.
I do not think the characters in Lawler's story have earned a tragic fate, because, bearing in mind how common this sort of defeatism outlook is in sf, no one deserves a tragic fate, for such fates have in them the offensiveness which they appear to be punishing. So I would not wish to justify a tragic fate.
In "Gaia," I don't think the catastrophe needs to be justified, as it shouldn't occur at all. Much modern sf takes the existence of catastrophe for granted, and I'd ask, "How much of this attitude is based on science fiction traditions?"
Talking about SF being "escape literature," I think the term would have significance in all of these stories, for one reason or another, since some "change" or alternative is desirable — even, as you suggest, a change in the characters themselves.
That covers the waterfront about as good as I can manage; considering what the stories have as their themes, I find it hard to get very specific about them in terms of the points of the challenge.
John Thiel
Thank you for the Challenge reponse, John! Your letter is as thoughtful as ever. We appreciate the feedback, and I’m sure our authors do, too.
Challenge 90 was intended not as a “take-home exam” but as a kind of smorgasbord of questions that seemed pertinent to the stories. Everyone is free to pick and choose or suggest alternatives. But I can see how you might like to look at the issue as a whole in terms of a common theme.
And you may see things that no one else has thought of. In this issue, for example, the themes of friendship and health care seem to predominate. But so much is obvious, and those themes are not the only ones. This issue’s Challenge proposes a somewhat different way of reading the novels and short stories.
I have to agree with you about The Prophet of Dreams: the characters and the “City” take an awful beating. But in the outline of the story — which is all we have — what’s the point? Even the plagues that Moses called down upon Pharaoh were not merely forces of nature; they had a purpose. Rather, the City seems to be analogous to, say, Poland or China in 1939: like Job, they were stricken by a plague — an international moral catastrophe — that they had done nothing to deserve.
In Gaia, I meant that the eco-catastrophe might be “justified” in literary terms. The Prologue and the first two installments of chapter 1 state — but only in passing — that the earth is revolting against mistreatment at the hands of a reckless humanity.
Since the earth is acting like a human being, we have to ask: What has humanity done to deserve such severe punishment? If we’re talking about random mistakes and errors of judgment, then “Gaia” is overreacting big time. Retribution on such a cosmic scale — if it means anything — has to be payback for hubris, or in modern parlance, a “bad attitude.”
My question is, basically: Does the exposition tell us too little about the causes of the catastrophe? In terms of writing, might the story not gain substantially by the Prologue’s depicting some kind of ecological “last straw” that causes “Gaia” to unleash the equivalent — since we’ve been talking in Biblical terms here — of the Flood?
Thanks again for writing, John. You set a good example for all our readers!
Copyright © 2004 by John Thiel and Bewildering Stories
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