Books, part x of n
Aug. 8th, 2004 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwI just finished _In the Hall of the Martian King_ by John Barnes. If you haven't read him, he's one of the more subtle writers to shoehorn massive amounts of philosophy into incredibly dense amounts of action. It's a bit like a conjurer's trick, really, that juggles babies and fire to distract you from the sermons on humanity and need. I like the way he does it, I really do.
Anyway, _In the Hall of the Martian King_ is the third part of an old-fashioned, bang up space opera, a la the Lensman books for those of you old enough to remember them. (Which oughtn't to be me, but that's another story.) And then you get to the end, and suddenly it pops you one, right in the nose, in a very unexpected way. I'm reminded of I think it's Pamela Dean referring to Jane Austen's _Northanger Abbey_ : that it was just like Austen to put a thought like that into the mouth of a character like Catherine, to whom nobody would pay attention.
For me, that's always been the marvelous, addictive quality of science fiction and fantasy: that for every thirty books that are dull rehashes of stale plots and cardboard characters, suddenly, unexpectedly, you'll find a writer who uses the genre to really think about the human condition in a place where no one will call him or her on it. It's one of the origins of the genre, really, going back to the classics of the 1800s and before, like Pantagruel and Thomas More's Utopia (which, to be fair, I've read neither of, but I've read their plots and I feel comfortable making the assertion).
So that's it, really. There are babies in the air, there are zingers aimed at the adrenal system, and then, quietly, there's a few quick salvoes to the part of the brain that lives closest to the heart.
Isn't that what all artists aim at?
Anyway, _In the Hall of the Martian King_ is the third part of an old-fashioned, bang up space opera, a la the Lensman books for those of you old enough to remember them. (Which oughtn't to be me, but that's another story.) And then you get to the end, and suddenly it pops you one, right in the nose, in a very unexpected way. I'm reminded of I think it's Pamela Dean referring to Jane Austen's _Northanger Abbey_ : that it was just like Austen to put a thought like that into the mouth of a character like Catherine, to whom nobody would pay attention.
For me, that's always been the marvelous, addictive quality of science fiction and fantasy: that for every thirty books that are dull rehashes of stale plots and cardboard characters, suddenly, unexpectedly, you'll find a writer who uses the genre to really think about the human condition in a place where no one will call him or her on it. It's one of the origins of the genre, really, going back to the classics of the 1800s and before, like Pantagruel and Thomas More's Utopia (which, to be fair, I've read neither of, but I've read their plots and I feel comfortable making the assertion).
So that's it, really. There are babies in the air, there are zingers aimed at the adrenal system, and then, quietly, there's a few quick salvoes to the part of the brain that lives closest to the heart.
Isn't that what all artists aim at?
