SM Stirling's villains are a purer breed, variously cannibals, diabolists, slavers and sadists. Stirling makes an important distinction. In Shadowspawn Volumes I and II, the heroine enjoys consensual sadomasochistic role-play whereas the villainness enjoys inflicting nonconsensual agony: a big and important difference. Some of the villainness' actions verge on the unreadable.
It is to Stirling's credit that he makes this distinction very clear. The heroine's sexual preferences do not make her depraved whereas the villainness is as depraved as you can imagine. I accept that such people exist although there is a limit to how much I want to read about them.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, we seldom see really and totally BAD characters in the works of Anderson. Even when it was plain which side in a story was better or more preferable than the other, the people on the side which was less desirable are usually fairly decent sorts (even Brechdan Ironrede!). The Exaltationists are the the most "Stirlingian" of Anderson's villains.
I agree with the distinction you made between Ellen Tarnowski's consensusual sado-masochistic role playing and the monstrous Adrienne Breze's non-consensual and dead serious, for real, actually SADISTIC infliction of agony on others for "fun."
Sean
The type of villain changes with the type of book. If there's a 'supernatural' element, the tropes are different. Eg., there aren't any really capital-E Evil characters in "Black Chamber" though some of them do quite horrible things (offstage, mostly). Their motivations are humanly understandable -- nationalism, desperate fear of defeat, a belief that their enemies will destroy them if they don't strike first.
Mr Stirling,
While we are on the subject, BLACK CHAMBER has not arrived here yet. You did ask me to tell you if it did not arrive in about a week.
Paul.
Mr Stirling,
A while back, I lost access to my old gmail account and had to start a new one: paulshackley2017@gmail.com
One of the data lost with the old account was your email address. If you could email me on my new account, we would be able to discuss items like BLACK CHAMBER there rather than here.
Thank you for your time.
Paul.
Dear Mr. Stiring and Paul,
Mr. Stirling: Certainly, the TYPE of book you write will help shape the villains we see in your stories. Yes, human beings can do pretty horrible things for totally understandable reasons. And even feel regret and remorse for that. We see a striking example of that in "Delenda Est" when Manse Everard and Piet van Sarawak were kidnaped by agents of powers seeking their knowledge. The leaders were described as fairly decent persons acting as they did for totally understandable reasons.
Paul: I've tried to find BLACK CHAMBER at Barnes and Noble last night, but it was not there. I'm not really surprised because I think the book is not due to be pub. till July. And I would be interested in any comments you made about it!
Sean
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