Okay.
So. The state of Modern Sci-Fi/Fantasy
is a wasteland of dreadfully dull Pink Slime. This is known, and a
huge part of why sales have slumped dramatically over the last 20-30
years.
And today I read a reminder why.
Multiverse: Exploring Poul
Anderson's Worlds is an
anthology book published in 2014 in tribute to the late, great Poul
Anderson (who passed away in 2001, thirteen years before the
anthology). Edited by prolific author Greg Bear and prolific
anthology editor Gardner Dozois.
The
second story of the anthology is ostensibly a tribute to Three Hearts and Three Lions by
veteran Alternate History author (and friend of Anderson's) Harry
Turtledove, titled The Man Who Came Late
(a title tribute/pun to a completely unrelated Poul Anderson story
called The Man Who Came Early).
In it, thirty years have passed since
the events of the novel. Alianora has settled down in a modest
village with her modest blacksmith husband, and had three modest
children (a fourth died in infancy). One day, while she spends
several pages getting a bucket from the town well and reminiscing
about the lost past, a muscular older man rides into town and
recognizes her.
It is Holger Carlsen, and after thirty
years of searching across the multiverse, he has finally returned to
her. They have an awkward reunion where he meets her family and then
they have dinner and discuss things and Holger works through his
realization that the woman he spent thirty years' wandering the
multiverse to return to has moved on, and then he walks into a
dimensional wandering tavern to speak with Morgan Le Fay (one of the
primary villains of the novel) and...that's it.
That's literally it.
The introduction to the story describes
it as “bittersweet” but there is no sweetness here. There is no
magic either. No Middle World. No Elfland. Oh sure, the magical white
tunic that allows a maiden to transform into a swan is passed down to
Alianora's daughter Alianna, and there is the Old Phoenix tavern that
appears and disappears, but there's no real
magic.
Alianora's
world is reduced to a mundane village. There are no monsters to slay.
No elves. No werewolves. No dragons. No dwarves. No nothing.
Everything
that made this alternate world unique has been stripped away piece by
piece.
Alianora's
accent disappearing is hand-waved as she changed it to accommodate
her village. Never mind that EVERYONE in this world spoke that way.
(I suspect its a way to excuse not putting in effort to write the
accent, which if so, why even bother to write the story in the first
place?)
Alianora
hasn't traveled far from her village since the novel, nevermind that
she was a child of the woods with no roots who wandered freely as a
friend of the Middle Worlders and beasts.
People
are surprised at Holger's Christianity, never mind that Christianity
was ubiquitous in the novel where a sword powered by literal Jesus
Magic saved the day. But no, we must be secular.
At
least Alianora gets a content ending, if not a happy one. Holger gets
it far, far worse.
He rides in as a Quixotic figure in
blue jeans and flannel. Despite having wandered the multiverse for 30
years. He gave up smoking because SMOKING IS BAD FOR YOU, KIDS DON'T
DO IT. Never mind that the pipe he had was a memento of the loyal
dwarf Hugi, who GAVE HIS LIFE for Holger's quest. He is cold and
prideful, where he was once a compassionate lunkhead, and quick to
think about using his sword when Alianora's husband gives him the
side-eye. He patronizingly calls Alianora “Babe” several times,
despite never once using that word in the novel. Then when he meets
her pretty daughter Alianna, he begins to fixate his attention on her
in a creepy old man way.
Then, after an evening of talking, he goes
into the wandering Old Phoenix Tavern (from another of Anderson's
stories, A Midsummer Tempest
where Holger had an appearance) to meet with Morgan Le Fay, one of
the primary villains of Three Hearts
and a woman Holger had a complete and total break with at the climax
of the novel, despite their previous relationship history. The nods
to other Anderson works are clever, but that's all they are, and are
the only flashes of magic in the story.
Holger
and Alianora's whole encounter is about her trying to let him down
gently, even though he spent the last 30 years adventuring across
worlds trying to find her again. 30 years moving forward through
peril because of her. And instead of love, Turtledove calls it
“pride.”
Holger isn't Holger
anymore. That character has been assassinated and replaced with a
miserable old fool.
And the point of the story is
apparently to show how the world treats a hero a generation after his
war and how the world moves on. The story lets you know this by
literally putting “Yes, that was the point,” in Alianora's mouth
when Holger comes to this conclusion.
In
short, everything about the world and characters that made them
unique and loveable, from the magic to the culture to the weirdness
to Holger's blockheaded goodness, are stripped away and replaced by
stewpots, housework, and boring people living boring lives.
Faerieland and the forces of Chaos have been replaced by something
far more sinister: “Realism.”
Its a
dozen or so pages of boring people talking. Then the next morning,
Alianora asks her daughter for the white tunic again. Alianna agrees.
And that's it.
THAT'S FUCKING IT. THIS STORY IS A
PIECE OF SHIT.
Read Three Hearts and Three Lions.
Read Anderson's other works. Hell, read Turtledove's other works.
Avoid this bitter piece of deconstructionist garbage.
3 comments:
Actually don't read Turtledove's other works.
There is that too.
I know I'm in no hurry to check his stuff out now.
Boy, that's depressing. Thanks for the warning.
I just remembered that its been 25 years since I've read anything by Harry Turtledove (since Guns of the South in 1993). This sort of thing is probably why.
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