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MAKER
October 31, 2000
Rev: June 10, 2016
Looking at Farmer's
"Maker of Universes", I
once again start thinking
about it as one of the
"Great Stories", and also
as one of the "Cursed I also think it has an
Stories". astoundingly clumsy
second sentence.
The Sandman line
is "The great
stories will WORLDS_END
always return to
their true form". And as for the curse...
well, more later.
What is the true
form that this
story is seeking?
"Maker of Universes" is the
first occurrence I encountered, Oh, of course:
but there could easily be "Universe Maker" by
others. A.E. van Vogt...
Certainly, originality
isn't it's most obvious UNIVERSE_MAKER
attribute.
The story, in outline: Compared to Zelazny's "Amber":
The main character, a man
who goes by the name of
Wolff, is on the far side of
"middle aged". Getting old
and fat, married to a woman
who has turned shewish, he's A difference. Zelazny's
looking at buying a house in "Corey" stays young, and
some suburban development. lives well.
His background he was an Corwin comes to his
amnesiac, adopted by a senses in a private
family named Wolff when in hospital. He was
his early 20s. (Got that? amnesiac for years, and
"Raised by wolves.") now he's also been
narcotized.
Looking around this house,
he is alone in the
basement for a
moment... and he hears a
faint trumpet call on the
inside of a closet door.
Opening the door, he finds Corwin encounters a strange
within this closet a portal trickster figure, who seems
looking out on an exotic to know him: "Random"
scene: a man beset by
beasts, who calls out to him Corwin bluffs Random about his
in recognition. As the amnesia, and Random leads him
portal begins to close, the through "Shadow", into strange
man tosses a seven-valved exotic realms.
horn to him through the
doorway. We later learn the
man is a trickster figure
named Kickaha.
Wolff returns that night to the
house, breaks in, and blows the
horn to open the portal, as the
police are (somewhat unrealistically)
closing in on him, he jumps
through the portal.
And in this idyllic (No need for that break
land, he grows young and in the action with Amber,
strong again... but the theme of redemption
is also lost.)
(Reminiscent of "Topper".)
THORNE
Eventually this man
regains his memory, and
learns he is one of the
masters of this strange (Hell: Jadawin => Corwin,
realm, and his true name from Jade to Coral?)
is Jadawin.
He is a member of a family Check.
of some very contentious
siblings; in a war with
them he ended up a virtual
prisoner on earth.
They find his personality Check.
strangely effected by his long
stay amongst humanity: softened,
more ethical, less venal..
And for a while, this story Check! The originally planned
progresses, through volume series of 9 becomes 5, and the
after volume of the World of last two are prefunctory. The
Tiers series, but eventually later "Merlin" series, I will
it just stops, uncompleted. politely decline to comment upon.
A later volume about the
Lava lamp world or some such
damn thing was incredibly
lame, and to my knowledge,
Farmer has just left the
series alone afterwards.
This is The Curse:
the story can never
be finished, not in
an authentic form.
Possibly the trouble is that
the real point of the story is
over and done with so early.
The "happy ending" is at the beginning.
There is no where to go from there.
One possibility: take seriously
the issue that the character
change might not be an improvement.
Does "humanized" = "weak"?
Is it interesting that
Kickaha is vaugely native american,
and Random is vaugely beatnik?
Two different images of the exotic,
the outsider, the uncivilized.
And then there's the third incarnation
(that I know of) Gaiman's Sandman comic
book. AMBER_GRAINS
The parallels are less exact here, but no
less real. The god imprisioned on earth,
humanized by his imprisonment, escaping to
travel into a strange realm (originally in
a manner strikingly similar to "walking
through shadow"). The other members of the
pantheon are siblings engaged in something a
little heavier than sibling rivalry.
And the peculiarly unsatisfying,
long drawn out ending. In this case
a somewhat clumsy tragic end, the
hero brought down by his own flaws.
Groping toward the key elements...
The treatment of the absent father figure.
The inevitable fights -- over what?
The convoluted machinations needed to explain away
the imprisonment and escape.
The scene where memory is at last restored.
The nature of the exotic.
And the phenomena that I think I'll tag
"the disappointment of Galifrey":
Take the idea of Amber: the one true,
perfect realm. All that we are familiar
with here on earth is just a distored
shadow of Amber.
That plays...
Except that when you actually get to Amber, the
perfect realm ain't so perfect, is it? In fact, it
looks an awful lot like the usual paper mache
medievalism you run into in genre fantasy. The
supermen aren't very super, and it barely matters
who wins the conflict, except that our sympathies
are with the humanized main character.
The core learns from the periphery?
A related problem: All those princesses and princes!
Many many characters, and damn little
character to stretch between them all.
(Gaiman does best in this respect,
helped along by his decision to
make them embodiments of elemental Not to mention by
principles). the assitance of
artists rendering of In comics
the characters. you don't
And isn't it peculiar that need to
Farmer and Zelazny didn't describe
go that route? Whoever heard the funny
of a pantheon without some hats.
division of labor? (Zelazny
might not have wanted to FUNNY_HAT
return to territory he's
covered before...)
Consider possible alternate manuevers:
Memory manipulation can be achieved via
technological means, it's possible to use
a more science fictional premise, ala Van
Vogt, Dick, Egan.
(Van Vogt? Is Null-A the zero point?)
THE_SECRET_MASTERS_OF_DESTINY
So drop the fantasy crap. What happens if you
pretend that this could be real?
(Actually, Farmer's gods are supposed
to be using super-science, right?)
Ruling cliques hardly require
medieval power structures...
But: if your "gods" are using super-tech for
their "magic", one difference from a pure
fantasy scenario is that it gets hard to make
excuses for long term monopolies of power.
Technical secrets tend to
leak and spread out.
So the only workable
story you can tell is
the overthrow of the
Technological Gods,
the democraticization
of power.
Zelazny's
"Lord of Light" And Charles Stross,
"The Bloodline Feud"
from his Merchant
Princes series.
MERCHANT_PRINCES
Upon re-reading, "Maker of Universes" I started
thinking, wow, this is really Edgar Rice, Then
remembered: oh yeah, Farmer did a Tarzan
pastiche, right? And near the end, Kickaha comes
storming in wearing loin cloth, leading a bunch
of intelligent apes...
So, in Farmer's mind, he's
doing a re-telling of Burroughs?
Perhaps John Carter. There's the unusual physical
strength of the main character.
Might be worth following that
trail, though I have my doubts
it'll lead all that far.
Note the structure of "Maker": begins with
the character in a state of amnesia, and The long-lost heir
saves the realization of his identity for to the throne.
the very end of that first volume.
Kafka makes fun of
In contrast Zelazny's "Nine Princes" has such fantasies in
Corwin told what's going on, but still "The Imperial Messenger"
not get his memory back (get in tune with
the pattern) until near the end... The DOWN_WITH_ARISTOCRACY
mystery is dispensed with much earlier.
And Gaiman's Dream keeps what wits he has
about him throughout. Missed a trick there,
perhaps... though his "Death Takes a Holiday"
story uses that this trope.
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