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MAKER
October 31, 2000
Looking at the beginning
of "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 start thinking
Stories". of it as having an
astoundingly clumsy
What's the Sandman second sentence.
line? "The great
stories will
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 that I know
of, but there may be others.
Certainly, originality isn't
it's most obvious attribute.
And while we're at it
The story, in outline: compare 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 with A difference. Zelazny's
age, he's looking at buying "Corey" stays young, and
a house in some suburban lives well.
development.
His background is that he The main character
was an amnesiac, adopted by comes to his senses in
a family named Wolff when in a private hospital.
his early 20s. He was amnesiac for years,
and now he's also been
Looking over this house, he narcotized.
is by himself for a moment
down in the basement, and
hears a faint trumpet call
on the inside of an empty
closet door.
Opening the door, he finds a He encounters a strange
portal opened on a strange trickster figure, who seems
exotic scene, a strange to know him: "Random"
trickster figure ("Kickaha"),
beset by beasts. Kickaha Corwin bluffs him about his
calls out to him, claims to amnesia, and Random leads him
know him, and is glad to see through "Shadow", into strange
him. As the portal begins to exotic realms.
close, he tosses a peculiar
horn with seven valves
through the doorway.
He returns later to the
house, breaking in to use
the horn to open the portal,
and jumps through it to
evade the police
investigating the break in.
And there he grows young (No need for that break
and strong again... in the action with Amber,
but the theme of redemption
(Reminiscent of "Topper".) is also lost.)
THORNE
Eventually regains his
memory, and learns he is
one of the masters of
this strange realm.
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 Double-check. The original
progresses, through volume series of 9 becomes 5, and
after volume of the World of the last two are prefunctory.
Tiers series, but eventually The 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 Possibly the trouble is that
series alone since then. 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, 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.
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.
Except that when you
actually *get* there, 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
principles).
And isn't it peculiar that Farmer and Zelazny
*didn't* go that route? Whoever heard of
a pantheon without some division of labor?
(Zelazny might not have wanted to return
to territory he's covered before...)
Consider possible manuevers:
Memory manipulation can be achieved via
science fictional premises. Van Vogt, Dick, Egan.
(Van Vogt? Is Null-A the zero point?)
THE_SECRET_MASTERS_OF_DESTINY
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.
_Lord of Light_
===
Started thinking, wow, this is really Edgar Rice,
Then remembered: oh yeah, he 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: John Carter.
Also 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 amenisa, and saves the realization of his
identity for the very end of that first volume.
"The Imperial Messenger"
In contrast (as I remember it) Zelazny's "Nine Princes" has
him pretty much told what's going on, but not get his memory
back (get in tune with the pattern) until near the end...
(And Gaiman's Dream, of course, 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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