Jun. 30th, 2011

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Via Martha Wells, who posted the link first, this Ursula LeGuin article at Book View Cafe speaks intelligently to the dismissiveness with which fantasy literature is often treated. I'm going to quote the same bit Martha did, too, cause it's so spot on:

Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that things are as they have to be. Fantasy not only asks "What if things didn't go on just as they do?" but demonstrates what they might be like if they went otherwise — thus gnawing at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are.

So here imagination and fundamentalism come into conflict.

A fully created imaginary world is a mental construct similar in many respects to a religious or other cosmology. This similarity, if noticed, can be deeply disturbing to the orthodox mind.


She also briefly addresses the fact that accusations of escapism are somewhat specious.

*
Had a few days of not much fiction time, thanks to dayjob and bodily ills, but we're still moving along. I do expect to have a finished, first-reader-ready draft of this novel by the end of the write-a-thon.

Shout out to Todd and Mary, and a big thank you for sponsorship pledges! If you feel so inclined, here's my pledge page.

Here's your snippet:
The chasm rumbled like a beast deep in its throat, rumbled and shook. Tiny bones spilled and shivered, the towering skeleton creaked and tottered, giant conch shells crashed over. More distant thunder as rock avalanched and giant stalactites crashed down from the distant, unseen chasm roof.

*
More Write-a-thon-age: Over at M.K. Hobson's, she has offered to plunk down Clarion West Write-a-thon moolah for each participant who posts a sentence from their wip.

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