Escape Artists
PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Ocicat on August 02, 2011, 04:26:09 PM
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PodCastle 168: Zauberschrift (http://podcastle.org/2011/08/02/podcastle-168-zauberschrift/)
by David D. Levine (http://www.spiritone.com/~dlevine/sf/)
Read by Wilson Fowlie (of the the Maple Leaf Singers (http://www.maple-leaf-singers.com/))
Originally published in the Apprentice Fantastic anthology.
Ulrich had barely recognized Agnes when she had first appeared at his shop in Auerberg. The ample, jolly woman he had called “foster mother” during the three years of his apprenticeship had become thin and stooped, her face lined and most of her teeth gone. Behind her, the young man she had introduced as Nikolaus the pastor clutched his hat to his chest; he was as thin as she, and his shaven cheeks were sunken. Ulrich was keenly aware of their worn and smelly clothes, and hoped they would leave before any of his more prosperous customers saw them.
“Why have you come all this way to ask my help? I am no wizard — I never even finished my apprenticeship. I am just a dyer.”
“I know,” said Agnes, “but Johannes always said you showed great promise.”
Rated PG: Contains some violence.
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First of all, I love your pronunciation of the story's title ;D Indeed, near the Black Forest lies the Upper Rhine Plain which has the hottest summers and mildest winters in all of Germany.
Now to the story itself: it had some dark fairy tale setting, but I was missing some more conflict, even the priest was accepting the role of wizards after the explanation. I had expected some more dramatic events like a burning of the wizard. I liked the similarities between computer programming and writing the magic 'software' for the daemons in Zauberschrift.
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I liked the similarities between computer programming and writing the magic 'software' for the daemons in Zauberschrift.
Indeed, its a very fun mix and basically the plot of "The Wiz", the story of geek stolen away to a magic realm to defeat evil wizards (its okay to groan). Nevertheless a fun romp where he literally invents a programming language for magic spells that are essentially so unique the evil wizards can't quite grasp how to stop it!
In other news, I quite enjoyed this story, I've always liked the idea of passive forms of magic like where it is written and then magic follows along. A wizard chanting and waving about a wand certainly fits but runes or writing a spell just clicks for me, I suspect its because I like writing and if you do it well that is a lot like magic!
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tNze8htiL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)
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As a maintenance programmer, I sympathized with the former apprentice wizard stuck with debugging another wizard's work, particularly when that other programmer... err... wizard was supposedly more experienced and should've known better. In typical programmer fashion, he first blames the hardware (i.e. the moldy book) before realizing that it was, in fact, more of a software problem.
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In typical programmer fashion, he first blames the hardware (i.e. the moldy book) before realizing that it was, in fact, more of a software problem.
;D That's one cool comment!
I enjoyed this story. True, it could have had a little more twist and conflict, but I liked the world and the take on magic and the flow of it. I kind of expected that there would be more to the motive with Ulrich's dead love, but well, it seems to be just a detail put in to set the mood for his homecoming...
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Yeah, I liked this one too. I kept wondering if Ulrich and Agnes were going to "hook up" though. I guess that's weird, because she must be much older than him, but stranger things have happened.
Anyway, there were a lot of plots that could have been developed more, and may still be for all I know, but I find that when a story leaves you wanting to know more about that world, it's not usually a bad thing.
Another fine reading by Wilson Fowlie as well ;D
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The moral to this story: When you ask someone to help you with arcane matters, let them work it out, don't interrupt.
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I got into fantasy via Tolkien and Lewis, in whose worlds the mechanism of magic is almost a misnomer: Gandalf and Narnia simply are magic and you don't worry about the "hows" or "whys" much less the limitations. However, one thing that I'm appreciating more and more is when a fantasy story has well thought out and consistent rules for its magic. This story took that to an awesome extreme and I loved every moment of it. Plus, a wizard who is just as worried about his textiles as he is about the daemons controlling the weather is a really amusing combination of the fantastic with the mundane. :)
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This one didn't do much for me, alas. The conflict and resolution both felt pretty contrived, and nothing really brought me into the characters' mindset. There was a pretty obvious villain from the first mention of Heinrich, and the chase through the woods seemed more like an Idiot Ball moment than a comprehensible decision by the villagers. Then, the resolution is basically, "And then he actually bothered to look at what he was doing and realized that the problem was blatant and easily repaired." It would be like if Star Wars ended with the Rebel Alliance checking the Galactic Internet and noticing that the Galactic Anonymous had leaked another copy of the Death Star plans a couple of weeks earlier. I dunno. It felt pretty unsatisfying, and I found my attention wandering off several times.
The magic system was pretty nice, though, and I admit I also thought immediately of the Wiz series.
(And how dare you not quote my five-thousand-word essays on Why You're All Terrible People in feedback, Dave! The world needs to know!) </hamburger>
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I also wanted to post to say I love it when authors come up with clever systems of magic, and explanations for how it works behind the scenes. It's a fun spin on the magic trope, and I think it can be a lot of fun for characters to explore and for readers to follow along. The works I think of in this vein are The Dragon and the George by Gordon Dickson, and the Dragons series by Patricia Wrede (all excellent books btw).
And I have to also mention that Wilson Fowlie nailed the narration on this one. He always does a great job with fairy-tale-esque stories!
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As a maintenance programmer, I sympathized with the former apprentice wizard stuck with debugging another wizard's work, particularly when that other programmer... err... wizard was supposedly more experienced and should've known better. In typical programmer fashion, he first blames the hardware (i.e. the moldy book) before realizing that it was, in fact, more of a software problem.
As a systems admin, I can also appreciate the parallel between software/ hardware problems and I have to admit that it made me smile--especially a few incidents where the problem was a tiny typo, but caused a system crash on a grand scale. I must admit that I also enjoyed the daemons/demons explanation. It made me chuckle as I remembered telling a colleague I would gather my host of daemons and smash his 'windows'.
The story was great and I doff my hat to Wilson for making this such an enjoyable listening experience. At first, when Agnes appealed to Ulrich via Becca, I said to myself 'bleh, here comes another love story where past regrets can be mended.' Finding out that Becca is not only dead, but had been married with a husband and a couple of kids was a great turn for the story. It's always a strange feeling to "come home" when you've been gone and see the huge changes that have been wrought in your absence and this story really brought that home for me. Maybe it's just a series of odd events taking place in my own life, but in the end I found this story was quite a playful romp and I thought it was absolutely wonderful.
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The magic system was pretty nice, though, and I admit I also thought immediately of the Wiz series.
I was intrigued when childoftyranny mentioned that and now my interest has been piqued again ... but my local library doesn't carry these. :(
(And how dare you not quote my five-thousand-word essays on Why You're All Terrible People in feedback, Dave! The world needs to know!) </hamburger>
hamburger?
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I was intrigued when childoftyranny mentioned that and now my interest has been piqued again ... but my local library doesn't carry these. :(
I offer magic words to betterworldbooks, for a copy of the mentioned series, it may prove worth your while since they are pleasently cheap and if you are in the US or Canada, I of course forgot to see if it noted where in your post, the shipping is free.
http://www.betterworldbooks.com/the-wiz-biz-id-0671878468.aspx (http://www.betterworldbooks.com/the-wiz-biz-id-0671878468.aspx)
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Thanks!
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I definitely liked this one quite a bit, and I thought there was good conflict and resolution in this story, but maybe not the one people were looking at primarily. I saw the conflict as "how to get the daemons to behave", and the resolution of "pay attention to the magic and what was really going on in the book rather than rote repetition" to both be satisfactory to my mind. I am a problem solver at heart, it is what I do best, and to see the MC puzzling over the problem then using problem solving techniques to resolve it scratched that itch for me.
My only complaint was the very end, where the villagers ask him to stay, it just seemed tacked on. I would have ended it with the villagers turning their faces up to the sun.
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In typical programmer fashion, he first blames the hardware (i.e. the moldy book) before realizing that it was, in fact, more of a software problem.
;D That's one cool comment!
Ditto. And ditto explaining part of the dynamics behind this scenario's magic system.
Also, David Levine might be interested to discover that there is an ancestral myth among the Melanesian peoples of the East coast of Kanaky (the island of New Caledonia, in the South West Pacific), in which a local sorcerer tempts some villagers into building a huge magical canoe, thereby also provoking a devastating rain -interpreted as the ancestral nature spirits getting back at humans and the sorcerer's overreach - which then lasts for almost an eternity. So long, in fact, that the sorcerer dies while the rain goes on and on; this is why several myths among these peoples take place during a continuous rainfall.
Like most myths, this one has multiple tellings, and there is no one specific ending for it, but eventually it requires another sorcerer coming in and mopping up after his predecessor's snafu.
Honest...I realise this is a totally nerdish factoid, but it was the first thing I thought of while listening to this story.
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I've got to say I'm with Scattercat on this one; the story didn't do it for me. I would have found the magic setup quite interesting if it had been a more central focus of the plot -- if the story had been more about Ulrich's "debugging" of code he barely understands in the first place. Instead he cleaned everything up without really looking at it, then solved his problem in the end by finally paying attention to the words (and risking himself with the seal, which seemed unrelated enough to the rest of the magic that I didn't get much impact from the moment), and in the meanwhile the story spent lots of time on the villagers coming after him with pitchforks. That stuff didn't hook me nearly as much, so my attention wandered far too often.
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I'm slightly 'meh' as well.
The system of magic is brilliant, and I really dug that, especially the diagnostic skills the MC has to call on (like others who appreciate this aspect, I do something similar in my day job). But the sense of tension fell down there at the end. There were a couple of brief mentions that the sealing of a spell was dangerous - it even risked the wizard's death if he'd done it wrong - and then it was just a couple of drops, which kind of undercut the whole thing; Heinrich's idiocy is something that he uncovers in a quick read while hiding from angry villagers, and therefore seems like something he should have caught the first time when he had two weeks and good light and space to work in.
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To play devil's advocate to my own argument for a bit, it's true that when you're just doing a humdrum task you might miss something that seems obvious when you look specifically for it. One might not notice a particularly damning clause in one's User Agreement when preparing to click "yes", but scanning the paragraphs looking for "first-born child" would turn up a surprising result.
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One might not notice a particularly damning clause in one's User Agreement when preparing to click "yes", but scanning the paragraphs looking for "first-born child" would turn up a surprising result.
Once again, keenly feeling the lack of a 'Like' or '+1' button in the forum software.
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To play devil's advocate to my own argument for a bit, it's true that when you're just doing a humdrum task you might miss something that seems obvious when you look specifically for it. One might not notice a particularly damning clause in one's User Agreement when preparing to click "yes", but scanning the paragraphs looking for "first-born child" would turn up a surprising result.
It's not that missing it the first time is unrealistic--but that paired with him being able to find it so quickly (and in less than ideal conditions--dark hiding place, after hours spent bolting through the woods and all that) does feel unrealistic, to me at least. It feels like an author leading a MC to a conclusion just a bit too obviously.
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Waaaaaaaaaait. Are you saying you think they should've wandered around in the forest and maybe gone camping? For like...hundreds of pages? ;)
(Sorry, couldn't help myself.)
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Gotta say this one didn't hold much of my interest. It was okay, and Wilson's reading was cool. But it felt like I've heard it before.
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I, too, am in the "not bad, but not terribly exciting either" camp. I never really felt that the whole antagonism of the villagers made any sense - I mean, if they were so easily riled into a mob, why was the wizard's hut untouched? And the fact that the bullying guy was defeated by a lucky bolt of lightning felt like a cop-out. As pointed out, the story wasn't really about the repair of the book - as most of that was done in about three sentences of storytelling - and because the reveal of what went wrong with the first repair was delayed until it was time to correct it, that didn't feel like the main conflict either.
I did like some things about the story - mostly the stuff Dave pointed out in his outro, regarding the emotional development of the protagonist - but I felt that the story itself didn't really gel that much.
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And the fact that the bullying guy was defeated by a lucky bolt of lightning felt like a cop-out.
My interpretation of this was different - the storm is, after all, the work of the confused/angry daemon(s?). There's a big buildup of energy just before the main character blacked out; this led me to the conclusion that the lightning strike was also daemon's doing, intended to protect the book (especially since the book itself wasn't harmed in the blast).
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One might not notice a particularly damning clause in one's User Agreement when preparing to click "yes", but scanning the paragraphs looking for "first-born child" would turn up a surprising result.
Once again, keenly feeling the lack of a 'Like' or '+1' button in the forum software.
There's a G+ extension that allows you to +1 any page. Just sayin'.
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I found this story enjoyable. Was it rather lacking in conflict? Somewhat, yes. Did I ever doubt that our protagonist would find the solution? Not really. But I still enjoyed it. Maybe it's because I am a software engineer, and his work felt very familiar. A few things that seemed particularly notable:
--The daemons were very much like computers in their behavior. Computers do what they're told, the problems arise when someone doesn't understand what they're telling it to do (that can be the user or the programmer). The difference here is the consequences in this story are much more far-reaching
--It sucks to try to debug and fix something written a long time ago by someone you can't ask about it, especially when it wasn't written in a way to allow it to be easily maintained.
--You can't assume that the previous programmers were infallible. This is a hard but necessary lesson to learn, especially if you're fresh out of college (or in this guy's case, not fully trained) and the original code was written by veteran experts. When I started at my first professional job I was tasked with altering parts of a big existing source code base. Some parts didn't make sense, but generally my response would be "Well, they knew what they were doing, I probably just don't understand it." Over the next couple of years I learned that was the wrong response, a better one being "Though the writer of this was a smart cookie, he was probably in a hurry, under pressure from management, and in those days we didn't do peer reviews of code. If it looks wrong, it probably is." This seemed similar in this story, from where he finally found the problem when he examined it more closely.
There were a couple of brief mentions that the sealing of a spell was dangerous - it even risked the wizard's death if he'd done it wrong - and then it was just a couple of drops, which kind of undercut the whole thing;
The impression I got was that the danger is not blood loss, the danger is that the blood links the bloodgiver to the daemons, and if he's messed something up, he could end up barbequed or some other unpleasant fate. So it doesn't matter that it's only a few drops, the danger is still there.
Waaaaaaaaaait. Are you saying you think they should've wandered around in the forest and maybe gone camping? For like...hundreds of pages? ;)
(Sorry, couldn't help myself.)
Haha! Yes, Also known as Deathly Hallows approach.