Rhea Rose on smashwords

 Rhea Rose writes, "Continuing in my trial indie publishing vein, I’ve ‘freed’ up a story of mine over at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/172003

On the Pleasures of Antiquity

 
I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow -
Where below another sky
Parrot islands anchored lie…
…Where among the deserts sands
Some deserted city stands…
("Travel")

R.L. Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses was the first book I ever owned, and it inspired a life-long fascination with exotic, far-off places. My tattered copy has survived to this day, along with A. Merritt's The Ship of Ishtar and L.Sprague de Camp's Lost Continents. Long vanished are the hand-me-down copies of Weird Tales.. In those faded 1930's pulps, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard wrote about worlds where (to quote Sprague de Camp) "gleaming cities raise their shining spires against the stars; sorcerers cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs; baleful spirits stalk crumbled ruins; primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets; and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the bloody blades of broadswords…" Worlds of mystery, lost in the deepest reaches of antiquity.

The fall of the Indus valley civilization is one of the great unanswered questions of archaeology. Were the cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa destroyed by climactic change? A shift in the course of the Indus River? Invasion? Over-grazing? As far as I can tell, few writers of fiction have explored the subject. Many years ago, in a used bookstore, I stumbled across a small self-published monograph by John Newberry of Victoria BC. It turned out to be the first in an ongoing series: Newberry's exhaustive though little-known efforts to decode the Indus Valley seal inscriptions. I bought the pamphlet. Here was a world lost in antiquity, and an unsolved mystery. I had the subject for a novel.

Alternate histories ask "What if?" Those of us whose fantasies play out in real historic time like to explore the "how" and the "why" - always keeping in mind that if you travel far enough back in antiquity, you may find sorcerers, baleful spirits, magical kingdoms and spells that actually work.

Eileen Kernaghan  (reprinted from The Lonely Cry newsletter)

(Winter on the Plain of Ghosts: a Novel of Mohenjo-daro is available from amazon.com and amazon.ca)

Dave Duncan: "All Fiction is Impossible"

(Reprinted from The Lonely Cry newsletter)

Even today, in our data-choked world, people are impressed when they meet a writer."What do you write?" they ask.

"Fantasy. You know -- dragons and stuff." Nine times out of ten they look puzzled and embarrassed. People who don't read Fantasy simply cannot understand why any adult would write it, let alone read it.

The answer involves a curious paradox. All fiction is impossible. Real people don't speak in prose, let alone think in it. Real life is never so tidy, although we like to believe it may be, with lovers strong and true, and little old ladies outsmarting Scotland Yard. In most genres, if we try hard we can ignore the unreality and pretend that this could happen.

But Fantasy is fiction with the gloves off, set in a completely unbelievable world. The challenge for the writer is to keep the people believable. The paradox is that, as the setting becomes less credible, the characters matter more; the thread of "universality" that all good stories require becomes more evident. This, I am sure, is why J.R.R. Tolkien was repeatedly forced to deny that his Lord of the Rings was an allegory. It is obviously not true, and yet it feels true because the people are true. That is the test of good Fantasy.

For example, suppose an employee is instructed to do something that feels unethical. Not illegal, just shady. I have seen this happen, and probably you have -- it is not a rare occurrence. In the real world a refusal risks no more than a paycheck or future promotion, balanced against the loss of self-respect. But when I make the employee a swordsman and the employer a sometimes tyrannical king, then the stakes become liberty and life itself. Now the problem is more focussed. It matters.

Foxes don't really eat grapes, you know.

© Copyright Dave Duncan

Coming soon: Dave Duncan's " The Starfolk" is a light-hearted two-book fantasy to be published by 47North in 2013.

 

Nineteen of Dave's books are now available on audio. To see the list visit www.audible.com and search for Dave Duncan.