Category: Fantasy Criticism

Dumb Culture, Dumb Schools, Dumb People REPRINT

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From February 26, 2015

If you can’t keep up the culture, you can’t keep anything. You can’t have a republic of dummies. Know-nothings are not able to maintain a modern economy.

But Scholastic Books seems intent on applying the art of bonsai to the human mind. The bonsai artist creates little tiny trees. The cultural bonsai artist creates little tiny minds.

You know you’re getting there when adult crossword puzzles have to be taken off the market because nobody out there is able to do them.

I’ve been reading the first two books in Scholastic’s Wings of Fire series. These fantasy novels, pitched to Young Readers, are all about dragons. Dragons are, we would think, very different from human beings. But the dragons in these books say things like:

“Ew, that’s gross!” “Awwwwww, how cute!” “You guys.” A sadistic monster character is described as “mean.” And here’s an immortal line of dialogue from Book #2, The Lost Heir: “Would you like me to spell out ‘DRAGONETS WUZ HERE’ in giant rocks?”

WUZ? In all caps? Say it ain’t so. Any moment now, I’m going to wake up and find out none of this has happened, it was just a bad dream… Nope, the book’s still there in front of me. Still packed to the brim with stupid, cliche-choked dialogue guaranteed to keep a child’s mind perpetually locked into its 11th year, unable to grow, unable to develop. A mind subjected to the art of cultural bonsai.

And it goes on for as long as its victims live. The dumbing-down of this generation never stops. Whether it’s high schools handing out diplomas to students who can barely sign their own names, or colleges sucking up five or six years’ worth of tuition to give poor, debt-saddled “graduates” degrees in thumb-sucking, Star Wars Studies, Women’s Studies, or Licking Chalk off the Blackboard, our pop culture and our schools never stop binding the roots, pruning back the branches, stunting the trunk–to produce adults who think like 11-year-olds, support Obama, and can’t do crossword puzzles because they’re just too hard.

People who watch the Kardashians.

God help us. Deliver us. Save us.

Murdering Fantasy REPRINT

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From April 27, 2016

Y’know, I’m beginning to think ill of publicists. They’ll take anybody’s money.

Today a publicist invited me to read a great new fantasy novel “about a female warrior with a kind heart.” When the Sarmatians went culturally extinct almost 2,000 years ago, that was the end of the only nation that actually produced female warriors on purpose. Look it up in Herodotus if you don’t believe me.

Since then, The Invincible Female Warrior has become the most commonplace–and the most annoying–cliche in half-baked fantasy literature. Along with crusty but benign old wizards and know-it-all elves: but really, Ms. Gorgeous with the unbeatable kung-fu moves is the worst of them all–except for maybe little kids with fantastic martial arts skills that enable them to wipe out full-grown male villains.

The book seems to be self-published. This is what gets me about self-publishing: no quality control. The publicist ought to be ashamed for taking this author’s money and trying to hoodwink people like me into reviewing it. I won’t give the author’s name because it just wouldn’t be humane. By the way, though, she wants a pretty hefty chunk of money for this book.

If you are an aspiring writer, this author commits a literary stumble that I’ve told you about before ( http://leeduigon.com/2015/10/21/a-silly-name-can-ruin-your-fantasy-novel/ ).

Do not name the principle characters in your story after familiar household products. Trust me, it doesn’t work. Here we have an Invincible Female Warrior named “Aleave.” Does that at all bring to mind the brand name of a popular headache medicine?

If you conscientiously avoid all the cliches that make fantasy so prone to low expectations on the readers’ part, and write a great story populated by memorable characters, and yet succumb to the temptation to give those characters names like Drano, Tylenol, Pennzoil, or Fancy Feast–well, you might as well not have written it at all.

My Fantasy Tool Kit (7): Dreams REPRINT

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From January 17, 2015

The other night, I dreamed I was in a Wagon Train episode–in black-and-white, no less. I always dream in color, so the B&W was a nice touch of authenticity.

In this episode, there were two women with the wagon train, twin sisters, who seemed to know much better and easier routes than the train had ever used before, and everyone was happy to go where the sisters directed. But then along came the scout, Flint McCullough (Robert Horton–same as in the TV show), with horrifying news: the sisters were leading us into a trap.

As he denounced them, they lost their temper–and lost the power to keep up a facade of being human. The illusion dissipated, and they stood revealed as non-human creatures with faces like the faces carved on totem poles. Their plan was to lead the train to a place where a mob of their kind waited to ambush the train and kill and eat the people.

At that point my wife said something and I jumped a foot into the air, and of course woke up.

Anyway, pilgrims, if you want to write fantasy, learn to use your dreams. Sometimes the sleeping mind comes up with much wilder stuff than the waking mind. I know I’m going to use this Wagon Train dream somewhere in my writing. I mean, it’s just gotta mean something when trusted guides turn out to be carnivorous monsters.

Famous fantasy writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Frank Belknap Long used their dreams in their writing. In fact, Long used one of Lovecraft’s dreams as the basis for his gloriously scary short novel, The Horror From the Hills. As for me, dreams gave me the opening scenes in Bell Mountain, when Jack hears the mountain singing, and The Last Banquet–that dream gave me Gurun as a character and showed me how she came to Obann.

You, too, can use this dynamic technique of fantasy-writing. Just send $5.50 to–uh, I mean, learn to pay attention to your dreams: especially the funky ones. Someday a dream might give you the start of a pretty good book.

Literary Crimes: Anachronisms REPRINT

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From January 13, 2016

Let’s say you’re writing an epic novel of the events leading up to Noah’s Flood, thousands of years ago.

Can you envision any circumstances which would induce you to employ the phrase, “strike zone”?

Well, yeah, if you want to remind the reader that he’s not really visiting the ancient world, but just reading a stupid book about it.

My friend “Abner,” in his amazingly successful novelizations of Biblical events, resorts to every anachronism he can think of. Here are a few that light up the second book in his series.

“It depends on what ‘is’ is.”

“Hope and change”

“Fundamental transformation of society”

God accused of “colonialism, imperialism, sexism, speciesism” and also described as “macho”

“I feel your pain”

“You didn’t build that”

“The 99 percent”

“We”–the speaker is an archangel–“saved your rear ends”

All right, let’s be fair: he has stopped short of equipping Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, with cell phones. Well, who would they call? And a cell phone might be a nuisance if pockets haven’t been invented yet.

Strike zone? Macho?

Please, whoever is out there thinking about writing a novel–if you’re writing fantasy or historical fiction, please do not riddle it with stupid and inane anachronisms that won’t make a lick of sense to a reader ten years from now but which surely will, for the time being, remind the current reader that all he’s doing is reading a mutton-headed comic book without pictures.

I must point out that I am paid to read these books. Otherwise I could not endure it.

‘Gritty is Good?’ (Nah) REPRINT

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From October 4, 2013

There’s a new movement in fantasy literature, summed up as “Gritty is good” by my fellow blogger, James, at “Fantasy in Motion” ( http://fantasyinmotion.wordpress.com/). James defines it: “[T]he current trend in fantasy is to practically brutalize your heroes before letting them win (or die).” And, “Our heroes now are almost anti-hero in nature. We’re meant to root for the thief, the assassin and the mercenary.”

Not me, pal.

James holds up Game of Thrones as the exemplar of “gritty” fantasy. I think Game of Thrones is dreary. I mean, the bad guys always win. That’s not fantasy. That’s New Jersey politics.

If I want “gritty,” I can just look out my window.

Gritty is the gavones next door cursing each other and pounding each other until the cops come to cart them off.

Gritty is your town, your state, and your country being “governed” by thieves, liars, perverts, and swine.

Why, as a fantasy writer, would I ever want to create a place like Camden, NJ? There already is a real Camden, and it’s horrible. Why, as a fantasy reader, would I ever want to collect ugliness, cruelty, treason, etc? I can read about it all I want to in the newspapers. Turn on the TV or the radio, and there it is.

Here’s something that I do like–gritty on the outside, but gold underneath. Toshiro Mifune was a genius when it came to playing characters like that. Remember Strider, in Lord of the Rings, who turns out to be Aragorn, the king?

In all too much of real life we get grit on the outside and not gold, but grot underneath: dirty on the outside, and even dirtier on the inside.

I don’t want it in my fantasy.

We Gonna Be Gods! REPRINT

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From June 1, 2017

One thing you can say for Satan: he’s never left the building.

I have stumbled over a highly-touted book, Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, said to be on every  globalist big shot’s required reading list. It’s all about how “Our inheritors will be godlike” and achieve all sorts of neat stuff, like abolishing war and poverty and disease and getting eternal happiness, immortality, and lots of nookie (  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/books/review-homo-deus-yuval-noah-harari.html ). Yeah, yeah… they always say that. Ever since the Serpent told Eve, “Ye shall be as gods.”

It’s full of really smart-sounding quotes like, “The free individual is just a fictional tale concocted by an assembly of biochemical algorithms.” Y’know, I’ve heard that before. Rutgers Biology, 1969. A lecture about how total government control of every aspect of our lives–the government advised by infallible scientists, of course–is necessary, inevitable, and totally great. Someone asked, “But what about our freedom and individuality?” Answered our classroom instructor (the lecture was on CCTV), “Those are obsolete concepts that must be engineered out of the system.” She was really good at sticking dissecting needles through the heads of live frogs, but seemed to have no other talents.

But! says Yuval. But we gotta  be careful, ’cause just when we’re really getting into being gods, Artificial Intelligence will evolve to become smarter than we are and it will exterminate us.

Some of these guys, I don’t think they actually have to work with real computers and therefor have no idea at all of how unreliable and erratic computers are. And they seem to be getting worse instead of better. And common sense seems to be in short supply, too. The idea that a lot of sinful, wishful-thinking, sophomoric, ignorant, incompetent bullshit artists can grant us eternal life and happiness–I mean, really! Find someplace where they’re selling brain cells, and buy a few.

I’m so glad so many important people read books like this. Knowing that helps me to understand why they behave like immoral and psychotic numbskulls. Even the former occupant of the White House, President *Batteries Not Included, once recommended Homo Deus on TV. As seen on TV! It just doesn’t get more authoritative than that.

Lord, anytime you’re ready…

Puddleglum’s Theology REPRINT

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From December 16, 2012

I’d like you to consider a brief theological statement from The Silver Chair, one of the Narnia novels of C.S. Lewis.

To set the stage: our heroes are prisoners of the Witch in her dark and dreary Underworld, and she’s trying to convince them that Narnia, the world on the surface, under the sun and sky, does not exist. To help her do this, she has cast a magic spell on them. (Magic is a wonderful short-cut. That’s why I don’t use it in my Bell Mountain novels.) But even with the magic in play, Puddleglum continues to resist her evil teaching. And this is what he says.

“…I won’t deny any of what you’ve said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars, and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. [For “Aslan” read “Jesus Christ”–editor.] I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia…”

I have always liked the sound of this, but lately–I guess in light of recent current events–I’m not sure what to make of it.

It’s hard to see Christ’s Kingdom in this fallen world; but can we even entertain the notion that Christ’s Kingdom isn’t real? No, we can’t–because God has said it’s real. Let God be true, but every man a liar. (Romans 3:4) This fallen world, this “real” world, where everything “is what it is,” where you can’t fight city hall–we have God’s word for it that this world shall pass away: but Christ’s Kingdom shall not pass away. Instead, as God promised Daniel, it will grow into a measureless mountain which “shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” (Daniel 2:44)

Knowing that C.S. Lewis believed God’s word, how do you interpret Puddleglum’s statement?

Serious Mainstream Bilgewater REPRINT

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From April 20, 2013

I know someone who doesn’t like my books because they aren’t in a class with those of J.D. Salinger, Tom Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, and Stephen King–and other giants of Serious Mainstream Literature. (Stephen King??? Well, he said it, not me.)

I would be seriously demoralized if anybody thought I wrote like any of those babblers. I have a neighbor, you see, who is obsessed with doing laundry. He likes to do it twice a day. His stepson has picked up the habit from him, and also does it twice a day. They both do laundry three or four items at a time. Three baseball caps. Two shirts and a pair of undies.

I think that’s what you do if you’re not writing Serious Mainstream Literature in which nothing bloody happens, nothing is revealed or resolved–the kind of books that make you run screaming back to Edgar Rice Burroughs. At least, if you’re obsessed with laundry, you get clean clothes.

Hemingway was a self-important ponce. Salinger was a dremmler. Stephen King hasn’t written anything worth a damn since the 1970s–and even that, when I revisit it, isn’t as good as it seemed at the time. If it weren’t for academic pinheads providing these writers with captive audiences of college students, no one would read them.

But what do you think, folks? Should I try to write more like J.D. Salinger? Does Helki the Rod need to spend more time worrying about teleological awareness? Or should he just go do some laundry?

A Wasted Opportunity REPRINT

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See the source image

From November 4, 2018

“Thomas Locke” is Bunn’s pseudonym .

So you’ve got an already-successful Christian author with a large fan base, writing in a popular genre with a wide readership, and a major publisher to produce and market the book–golden opportunity, right? An opportunity to win ground in the culture for Christ’s Kingdom.

Wrong. Instead, all these resources came together to make, well, a bunch of nothing.   (Click link below to read the full review  PD)

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/review-of-christian-novel-emissary

T. Davis Bunn had all this going for him when he set out to write his first fantasy novel, Emissary, three years ago. So he decided to write a “completely mainstream, totally secular” fantasy novel–that is, he cobbled together a thorough collection of fantasy cliches: and the big huge Christian publisher, Zondervan, published it.

Waste, waste, waste.

 

‘The Underlying Spiritual Theme’ REPRINT

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From June 14, 2015

The other day my fellow blogger, Ajoobacats–she has a whale of a blog, totally dwarfing mine: just tons and tons of readers; I recommend her book reviews to all–honored me with a review of my Bell Mountain, which I am happy to say she liked very much ( http://leeduigon.com/2015/06/12/book-review-bell-mountain-by-lee-duigon/). I don’t think I’ve ever seen her review a fantasy before: but she admits that my book was about as far off her beaten track as she’s ever gone.

I must draw attention to one remark she made: “The underlying spiritual theme may not be in fashion…”

Well, that’s putting it mildly!

In fact, I know I’m out of fashion: it’s what I intended. The whole point of the Bell Mountain series is to “renormalize religion” by showing it to be a basic and indispensable component of the characters’ daily life, culture, and psychology: and more, to proclaim that God is a Person, the Supreme Being, who interacts with individuals, families, and whole nations.

My books have struck a few readers as odd because they have come to expect no trace of religion in any work of fiction, be it a novel, a movie or TV script, or anything else. But the total absence of God or gods in our fiction depicts an extremely weird kind of civilization that has never actually existed except in faculty lounges and some of the least wholesome, darkest corners of politics and business.

But how, asks the ninny, do you manage to fit God or religion into Zombie Apocalypse or Superheroes vs. Climate Change Deniers?

That’s the wrong question. If God is in your life, you may not have a yen to spend much time in Zombie Apocalypse. Not that you can never just veg out and relax by watching some nonsense or other. I love silly old monster movies. It’s only a problem when the nonsense takes over your life.

I believe it has done us harm, as a nation, to spend such vast amounts of time consuming “entertainment” from which the very concept of God has been excluded.

Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.