When Vanimen kills a watchman in order to steal his ship, the dying watchman calls on God to curse and St. Michael to avenge. When Vanimen and his people sail across the Atlantic, a freak storm batters the stolen ship. Might the curse have caused the storm? Vanimen thinks so and so should we because supernatural agencies are a premise of this fantasy novel.
We appreciate exotic settings in imaginative fiction. Thus, concurrently in my present reading:
the mid-Atlanic as explored by Poul Anderson's merfolk;
the version of Mars, called Malacandra, in CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy;
Larry Niven's Smoke Ring;
Neil Gaiman's continuation of Alan Moore's Miracleman series.
The Smoke Ring is an environment with a breathable atmosphere but no ground underfoot.
Lewis, like Ray Bradbury, presents an unscientific, humanly habitable, Mars. Anderson presents several races of Martians but always on versions of the planet that were scientifically accurate at the time of writing. What are we to make of unscientific Marses? We can only conclude that they exist in parallel universes. (Bradbury offends, in my opinion, by stating that his Mars is cold by night but hot by day! See Hard And Soft SF II.)
Gaiman's graphic novel makes us want to see visual adaptations of the other works mentioned here.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteI remember that, about the watchman and his curse! It reminded me, despite knowing you don't care much for Tolkien, of his posthumous novel, THE CHILDREN OF HURIN, featuring as it does how the curse of the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, that he placed on Hurin and his children affected them. I loved that book even if it was the grimmest, darkest, and fiercest of the stories Tolkien wrote. I think I read it four or five times, not counting mere browsing of favorite parts.
Finally, Stirling's LORDS OF CREATION came in the mail today!
Ad astra! Sean
"his Mars is cold by night but hot by day"
ReplyDeleteI suppose Bradbury might have been thinking about how there is a large day-night temperature swing in Earthly deserts, and Mars is (and was thought to be) a rather desert world. However, with the lesser amount of sunlight at Mars, to get daytime temperature consistently warm would require substantial greenhouse gas concentration, which would also raise the night time temperatures.
Kaor, Jim!
ReplyDeleteGood thinking. Unfortunately, Bradbury was not writing hard science fiction. The stories set on Earth were, scientifically speaking, better.
Ad astra! Sean