Monday, 13 September 2021

The End Of Faerie

In Another Tale, we quoted Poul Anderson as saying that what became of faery was another tale and Neil Gaiman's Auberon as saying that Gaia no longer welcomes fairies. In the combox, Sean commented that Anderson's The Merman's Children presented hints about the end of Faery. In Anti-Magic, we summarized this theme in The Merman's Children and also mentioned the same theme in a work by Neil Gaiman. In Gaimain's "Soft Places," the dream vicinity, Fiddler's Green, having taken the form of GK Chesterton, informs Marco Polo that, in the soft places, dreamed and real geographies overlap but that nowadays there are less such places because Marco and other explorers:

"...froze the world into rigid patterns." (p. 140, panel 6)

See also Marco Polo And Time Travelers.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I would object to this "form" of G.K. Chesterton that the world already "rigidly" existed before it was mapped and measured by explorers and scientists.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

But it is a fantasy premise that the world really was the way it was imagined.

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Oops! I forgot that.

Ad astra! Sean