“The Heir of Night” Guest Author Series: Anne Hamilton
Anne Hamilton and I have been corresponding via email for a number of years, and I was delighted when, shortly after my first novel Thornspell (Knopf) was published in 2008, Anne’s book Many Coloured Realm was accepted for publication by Wombat Books. Anne and I both attended Worldcon in Melbourne last month and so got to meet up in person, which was definitely an added bonus in attending the event. It is with great pleasure that I introduce Anne to you today, as an FSF Author Series guest, with her particular take on the theme of “Why Fantasy SciFi Rocks My World.”
F-SF Guest Author Post: Anne Hamilton—‘We are myth.’
And where else but SFF do we get to explore myth and press its boundaries until it yields its secrets?
The first time I heard it said that we are myth, I felt it was one of those profound statements that spoke an almost-inexpressible truth. My scientific rationalist side, however, was far from satisfied. It kept up a relentless mental circuit of the words, asking, ‘But what does that mean?’
Over time, I’ve had the chance to discover its inner depths for myself. For thirty years, I taught high school mathematics while trying to find a publisher for my book, Many-Coloured Realm. For 27 years, the manuscript ‘almost’ made it to publication several times. I had the unique opportunity to re-visit the manuscript over long periods of time – decades in which the teaching of algebra changed from imparting a symbolic language to the showing of patterns in number, decades in which I began to wonder about the very nature of inspiration.
What is the difference between ‘inspiration’ and just a very good idea? There is a difference.
Michael Morpurgo once said: ‘It sounds pathetic but until I get the right name for my characters, I can hardly write a thing.’ I know that feeling. I’ve spent months in books of names trying to find exactly the right name for a character. Sometimes I’ve resorted to making up a name – only to find years later that the multiple meaning I ‘made up’ fits perfectly. Too perfectly.
As Alan Garner wrote: ‘The more I learn, the more I am convinced that there are no original stories. On several occasions I have ‘invented’ an incident, and then come across it in an obscure fragment of Hebridean lore, orally collected, and privately printed, a hundred years ago.’
I remember Isabel Carmody saying that fantasy as a genre had an undeserved reputation for being the same when, in fact, different authors simply picked very similar incidents from Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’.
I disagree. I’ve never believed in the collective unconscious: we’re far too individual for that. However, in the struggle to convert my mindset over to teaching algebra as pattern rather than symbol, I began to notice symbolic patterns in all sorts of unusual places, including story-telling.
And because I’d spent so long in those golden books of names, I realised that these symbols and patterns weren’t random. Many stories appeared to be equations for a name. And not just any name. The author seemed to wrestle with who she is and engage in a fight to the death with the myth behind her own name.
This is why SFF rocks my world: more of these types of stories are found there than in any other genre. Besides, what more cosmic struggle is possible than the search to define identity and meaning?
When I was growing up, SFF was generally derided as ‘escapist’. I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘realistic’ fiction is far more deserving of that title. It’s ephemeral and transient, rarely lasting to the end of a decade. It doesn’t transcend its own culture or time or deal with anything beyond the superficial. However the best of SFF – fantasy, in particular – engages in a struggle with name and thus with identity and destiny. That’s why I distinguish between ‘inspiration’ and a ‘very good idea’ by looking at how much an author has poured his true self into the work.
I love reading SFF for this very reason. You never know which of them is going to turn out to be the scroll which holds a major secret of identity. You never know when an already-engrossing story is going to embody itself as a stranger reality than the author ever intended.
About Anne Hamilton
I used to love going to creative writing classes and scaring people. As soon as they realised I was a teacher, they’d ask: ‘Primary or English?’ The moment I said, ‘Maths,’ people would produce a wan smile and back away.
Perhaps that’s the reason my stories incorporate numerical literary style, a fusion of word and number last used extensively in renaissance and medieval poetry (although there’s evidence DH Lawrence and AD Hope dusted it off occasionally). Actually, it’s because a reviewer of a book about numerical design in some medieval poems sneered at the very idea that anyone would or could ever be stupid enough to create an arithmetic framework for their writing.
What a challenge! I love mathematical metaphor. My recent novel Many-Coloured Realm is 111111 words long with a careful underlying design which reflects the theme. And, of course, I’ve written this entry in numerical literary style too. Can’t you tell?
To find out more about Anne and Many Coloured Realm you can visit her website, here.
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Just for fun: I’ll give away a copy of Thornspell to the first person who correctly identifies the numerical literary style in which Anne has written this entry. (And no, I don’t know the answer already!)
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Hello Anne,
I so enjoyed reading your post, and also appreciating the connection you have with words, meaning and identity. My fav point: ‘You never know when an already-engrossing story is going to embody itself as a stranger reality than the author ever intended.’ Touche!
And you’re a maths teacher! I remember Jung saying ‘it will all lead back to numbers . . .’
🙂
Hello Anne,
I love your take. Sounds like you and Plato would get along just fine. 🙂
I also do not believe there is any such thing as an original story. The seeking of patterns appears to be a human trait (one some scientists argue has given rise to the religious or superstitious impulse) and I’d hazard a guess that our love of myth is connected to that… certain universal story-patterns resonate with us.
It’s fun to muse on, anyway.
Far too technical and abstruse for me. Something for the code crackers late of Betchley Park, but not I (more correctly, me).
Oh Lord, I’ll leave it to the math-geeks like Tracey O’Hara to try and work out the pattern – I suck at that sorta stuff.
Having said that, I’m intrigued by that symbolic pattern you found in F/SF Anne – authors dealing with the myth behind their own name. Thinking about it in my case, I think you’re absolutely right – I was whingeing on Twitter the other day about the fact that politics has AGAIN found its way into one of my novels. Maybe I should consider what my writing is trying to tell me about me 🙂
And even though I know enormous amounts about my own name, I am continually surprised by the patterns I find in my own work.
Great post. I’ve read Many-Coloured Realm.So if you want to read a review of it
http://www.livejournal.com/users/orangedale/
I love the thoughtfulness of this post. I know from my own experience how completely the name we give a character can end up defining that character and the way that the character experiences the world.
Thank you Anne!
Numerical literary style – pass!
Not only writing a book, but writing it in a ‘code’ – wow!
I need closure! Please, someone identify that numerical literary style. I’m not sure I even understand what numerical literary means! Also, your post has inspired me to write a blog post of my own exploring the idea that “SFF was generally derided as ‘escapist’. I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘realistic’ fiction is far more deserving of that title.” I’ve been meaning to write about that for a long time.
Great post.
I think if no one does then we may have to ask Anne for a reprise post … send me through the link to your site when you’ve finished the ‘escapist’ blog post and I’ll highlight it here (if you want me to, of course!) 🙂
Hi Helen
Here’s the blog post in question – http://www.alanbaxteronline.com/2010/10/21/fantasy-escapism.html
It’s a rambling process of thought on the subject, so I’m interested in people’s comments!
Hi Alan
Just to clarify – for most of the last three millennia, writers who were in any way serious about their craft devised it according to mathematical proportions. If you wanted to be taken seriously as a writer between at least the tenth century BC to the seventeenth century AD you had to have an overall external and internal architecture for your writing based on mathematical proportions. The Greeks, for instance, had a canon of beauty (which was Platonic in nature)and based around the classical ideal for the human body: this involved the golden ratio. Beauty, truth and a golden ratio structure was seen as such a perfect package that some poets felt the need to apologise for going outside the ideal just to finish the story! The Hebrews on the other hand, while using the golden ratio, had more of an affinity for the ratio 1:9 which over an enormous period of time they related to peace and justice and by the Middle Ages had been appropriated for literature about the ‘kiss of heaven and earth’.
Some commentators think that, in its most extreme form, where the number of words, letters and syllables were all interconnected, it was used to ensure, in the days before photocopiers, that there would be a way of automatically checking if a scribe copied something correctly. Very important for edicts, proclamations and even some letters.
It had practical as well as poetic implications.
Fascinating – Thanks!
Can someone post a description of what “numerical literary style” is, along with the answer please ?
I suspect I have a loose idea of what it is, but I would like to be sure. Thanks.
Anne–one for you, I think …
Hi June
If you need any more info than I’ve written above, just let me know.
Congratulations Anne on your publication. This is a very interesting post. Iwas a big maths and science geek in high school. It’s very interesting about the numerical patterns.
Thanks, Tracey! I never considered doing this until I got fired up by the sneering critic. I then discovered it’s quite easy and almost comes naturally. I can believe that, if you’d been brought up from childhood to do it as Greek scholars are said to have been, it’d be so simple to create even the most complex patterns.
I’ve read Many Coloured Realm and bought copies for my granddaughter and seven of her friends-no, there is nothing special about buying nine copies…at least I don’t think there is 🙂
I know the answer to the question, but as I already have a copy of Thornspell, I won’t give it away. Sorry,Helen, I haven’t read it yet. It sits in a pile of 35 books I’m currently plowing through.
No need to apologise, Lyn–I too have a very long “to read” list–but I hope you enjoy the ‘Spell once you get to it. 🙂
Anne, do you count hyphenated words as one word or two?
One word, Ben. (That’s because I use the word count in my document.) If I was a purist and did it the medieval way, it would be two.
777 words?
Hi Andrew
I hadn’t included the “intro” but I love the amount of serendipity that comes into play when you start to work with numbers. The main text is 618 words which many people will recognise as the significant digits of the golden ratio – indeed, the 382nd word is at the golden ratio and is “golden”, just to give the game away. And although the Platonists would have loved it, I’m using it in the medieval sense of “trawthe” (troth) meaning faith and truth. 777 adds “armour” and “kiss of heaven and earth” to the metaphor – which is pretty much the metaphor I plan to tackle next!
Andrew: Annie tells me that this is a “no” to 777, but I would be happy to send you an intro sampler and cover flat for “The Heir of Night” for ‘having a go’, if you send me your postal address through my webmail — contact@helenlowe.info