I’m a Ray Bradbury fan. No, not just Fahrenheit 451 — though it’s a brilliant book and also (sadly) very topical right now — but also short story collections like The Golden Apples of the Sun.

I read it a long time ago, but still think about several of the stories, so I guess that counts as “influential.”

So I was very interested to spot this Bradbury quote on reading, oot thar in interwebs land. It was featured by a T’verse inhabitant, Boze The Library Owl, aka @SketchesByBoze. (You all get the Dickens reference, right? 😀 )

Waddya reckon? Are you game? It’s definitely an interesting idea…

It’s that time — and having slipped over April, I’ve landed on April 2 with another “Great Leaders in Speculative Fiction” on the Supernatural Underground.

This month’s leader is Pyanfar Chanur, from CJ Cherryh’s The Pride of Chanur and the subsequent Compact Space trilogy: Chanur’s Venture, The Kif Strike Back, and Chanur’s Homecoming.

To find out why I believe she rocks the great leadership stakes, just click on the link and enjoy. 😀

Pyanfar Chanur and The Pride of Chanur

As promised in post #1, this series is going to look at some of my personal favourites among book openings, starting with the classics. The word classic and Charles Dickens are, of course, synonymous, but when it comes to openings he definitely has some chops.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—“

I believe it mostly speaks for itself, but if you’re wondering what in particular speaks to me as a reader, look to the rhythm of the text, and the rolling flow of the words.

I also draw your attention to the use of repetition in creating that rhythm, which also creates a sense of breathlessness and buildup, anticipating the events to come in the book (the French Revolution) — and how Dickens reinforces the rhythm by breaking it, The passage has given us twinned times, ages, epochs, and seasons, before we come to the double opposites of “the spring of hope” and “winter of despair.”

The repetition is briefly resumed again, but has more power because of the prior break — before the emdash signals a more complete shift in focus. The resumption is not precisely the same, however, because the author now abandons the more distancing “it”, for “we”, cleverly reinforcing that this story is a journey the narrator and reader are embarking upon together.

1980 film version

The emdash also introduces the narrator’s voice, which is a literary mode we eschew now, but was near-universal in Dickens’ time.

So there you are, rather a lot going on in a few short lines. The most important thing about it though, is to enjoy — and if so inclined, find a copy of A Tale Of Two Cities and read on.

Not long now until my next “Great Leaders of SFF” post on Supernatural Underground — but in the meantime, here’s what up on the SU:

Currently, Kim Falconer is celebrating The Art Of Adaptation and this month her focus is KDramas (Korean TV shows and films), with a number of different takes on the adaptation theme. Overall, it’s another great read from the redoubtable Kim, so do check it out:

The Healing Magic Of KDramas

A KDrama I’ve seen & liked.

And there are, of course, some great backlist posts:

The great Tera Lynn Childs discusses why writers are crazy and writing requires fear in:

The Writers Paradox

While Merrie Destefano digs deep into the perennial question of categorization and ‘what genre is this book’ in:

Confused About What Genre You Are Writing?

Hint: You won’t (*may not*) be if you read this post and check out Merrie’s ‘genre cheat sheet’! 😀

Last Friday, 21 March, was World Poetry Day.

Tis a little belated, but here’s The Curve of the World for you today, to celebrate poetry and human creativity:

The Curve of the World

Summer breathes
through marram grass, salt-tough
where the southerly whips in
off the Pacific, light &
shadow all the way out
to the distant smudge
of albatross feeding—at night
you see lights dance,
squid boats fishing
the same spot.
The larger ships, too,
follow the albatross road,
tall towers disappearing
beneath the curve
of the world …

The wind sweeps in, recounts
tales of ships, albatross,
men with eyes bleached
to seams … tells
it all to the salt grass
and driftwood piled
into a beach fire—

smoke wavers upward
in a thin stream, dissipates
into the gulf
of sky.

(c) Helen Lowe
.

Published in JAAM 27: Wanderings, ed. Ingrid Horrocks,  2009

Victory Beach: Otago Peninsula

USA

Not all players, aka characters, in a story, need be human. They need only play their part — but also, I would maintain and aver, feel real in their role.

I believe that Peta, an Aralorni Hill horse that appears in Daughter of Blood, fulfils that function, albeit in a modest way, hence today’s post. 😀

For those who may not know the drill, the “Meet the Minor Players” features the minor (or sometimes—as today—“much more minor” 😉 ) characters in The Wall Of Night series because:

“I think it’s the presence of the smaller characters that “makes” a story, creating texture around the main points of view.”

~ Helen Lowe (from my Legend Award Finalist’s Interview, 2013)

Now, let’s meet Peta!

~*~

Peta: an Aralorni Hill horse, companion-in-adventure to Raven*, a Southern Realms hedge knight

Peta, Raven’s mare, tossed up her head, but he spoke a quiet word and she steadied. Hani pricked her ears forward, and then both horses followed Raven through the gate. Malian waited until the mares’ tails had swished clear before following, letting the opening close as soon as she stood on the foothill side. The imprint of the stable lingered briefly against the darkness, and then there was just the pine grove, with the wind sighing down from the high peaks, bringing the chill of snow.

~ from © Daughter of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three – Chapter 15, The Night Fair
.

* Raven is not a minor character. Or is that a definitely not? If ya know, then ya know...

As promised in post #1, this series is going to look at some of my personal favourites among book openings, starting with the classics.

And it’s hard to get more classic than Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina:

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Immediately upon reading this, I wanted to know more of the unhappy family — the Oblonskys. In other words, as a hook, it was extremely successful.

(I believe many others have found the same, i.e. I am not alone in my admiration and appreciation. :D)

Also, although Anna Karenina is a substantial novel (though nowhere near so substantial as War and Peace) I feel that the opening line really frames the story. This is a book about family’s and their dynamics, many unhappy, but with some achieving a perilous equilibrium, if not peace, and a fragile happiness.

It’s also a story about the factors that create happiness and unhappiness in relationships and marriage.

But hold on, you may cry, isn’t Anna Karenina about an affair, vengeance, and how that all turns out? Answer: yes, it is, but there’s so much more woven about that, including how the affair affects the families and friendships of the protagonists, Anna and Vronsky.

Arguably, too, Kitty and Levin* (*who I always suspect may be a Tolstoy analog, if not an outright ‘Mary Sue’ in modern parlance) are just as central to the story as Anna and Vronsky.

The magic and power, to my mind, is that the opening is a key which unlocks the rest of the book.

~*~

My edition is the 1977 hardback published by Heineman, translated in 1901 by Constance Garnett. It looks like this, and has an honoured place on my bookshelf:

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

~ from Great Expectations (1861)

—

I do love me some gorgeous words, and it’s hard to beat this snippet from the great Mr Dickens.

The other aspect that always strikes me is that Dickens will have been writing of the Northern Hemisphere’s early spring, while March is early autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere. And yet the March days here may be exactly that same mix of brightness and cloud, warmth and cold. 🙂

My Thursday 27 February post—in which I shared the inauspicious beginnings of Moby Dick, which is now regarded as a Great American Novel and classic literary work—has prompted a more personal reflection on the theme of “you never know.”

During the round of interviews that accompanied publication of The Gathering of the Lost, one of the interviewers questioned why I wrote fantasy fiction if I wanted my work to endure.

The “blue” UK cover

I didn’t know Moby Dick’s rags-to-riches history at the time, but my answer was still that we can’t know what will endure. All we can as authors is write what we love and do so to the very best of our ability. The rest is absolutely out of our hands.

Full jacket: the original US cover

On Monday, I shared my latest post on Supernatural Underground, which is #2 in a “Great Leaders of Speculative Fiction” series.

I’d also like to share some of the other great posts featured on Supernatural Underground:

Amanda Arista celebrated the month of February 14 and Valentines Day with a take on Why Romance?

While Kim Falconer continued her series on literary Adaptation — Authors’ Response To External Pressures

Meanwhile, in ‘From the Backlist’:

Merrie Destefano discusses Why People Like To Read Scary Stories

We also have Terri Garey on Why Weird Is the New Normal

Plenty of great content, and plenty to read — so click on through and enjoy. 🙂