Escape Artists
PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Talia on June 05, 2013, 01:23:11 PM
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PodCastle 263: Beyond the Shrinking World (http://podcastle.org/2013/06/05/podcastle-263-beyond-the-shrinking-world/)
by Nathaniel Katz (http://evilhat.blogspot.com/).
Read by Dominick Rabrun, of Dom’s Sketch Cast (http://www.youtube.com/user/generaldom). Check out his show that features this week's episode here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPf3ue5P93c)!
Originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/), Issue #102, August 23, 2012. Read the text there (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/beyond-the-shrinking-world/).
“Bring my prisoner,” I said and none dared question, not a knight and Scholar-Practitioner so august as I. They knew the glyph carved into the base of my tongue kept me from lying.
The guards brought the being that called himself Jani in his stolen flesh. Cuts ran down his flank, long and precise, a still-living carcass torn open reach at it soul. In his eyes, spirit blues cavorted round stuck-wide pupils. I can take you Outside, he’d said, at our first meeting. Can bring you to the Mapmaker. At the time, I’d responded with drawn sword and assault, my Out-blade slipping through his dark flesh but halting at the spirit, parasitic, within. His legs bore testament to those wounds; shallow but immeasurable.
“Dress him,” I said. “We need to be on our way.”
The Lord hesitated, and procedure won out. “I’ll need to see papers, Sir Rollus,” he said.
Make it bloody, the Lady Clarissa, ruler of this world and all men in it, had told me. Leave no doubts.
Rated R for violence.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s PodCastle! (http://media.rawvoice.com/podcastle/media.libsyn.com/media/podcastle/PC263_BeyondTheShrinkingWorld.mp3)
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Does the Godspeaker Series by Karen Miller count as Grim Dark. I have no idea.
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I generally liked the story, although I have to admit that I needed to listen to it twice to really get what was going on. I think I mixed up Clarissa and the Map-Maker the first time.
As a native speaker of German, the German in the story bugged me a bit. First of all, it made those people "German" and not "foreign" to me, secondly, of course there were grammar mistakes... argh. Why does German in specular fiction always have to be that bad? There are literally thousands of German fantasy fans out there who speak English and will be happy to translate for an author. Another example why the German bugged me is the strange food the protagonist had. An "Auster" he learned... well, that's just German for oyster. Don't call a rabbit a smeerp!
About the violence: well, there was a lot of offhand violence in there but as a veteran reader of "grimdark" fiction - in my early twenties I couldn't get enough of pseudo-"edgy" stuff just for its own sake - I think wasn't overdone and I'd rather call this story "dark fantasy".
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Just to be clear, I was being serious when I said I don't really consider this story GrimDark. (Though I realize I did say that thing about rainbows directly afterward.) I think dark fantasy is as accurate a description as any.
That said, I'm not entirely sure I've actually read a GrimDark novel. At least, not the fantasy version of it. What Abercrombie stuff I've read (very little) was brutal but fun. G.R.R.M. slaughters his characters like no one else can, and makes all of them so very flawed, but those books (thus far) are also laced with hope, kindness, and redemption - so much brighter for all the darkness? The only Richard K. Morgan books I've read are the SF ones (I should fix that). So...open to suggestions :)
Additional note: Dom's Sketch Cast for this story will probably go live at the end of the week - I'll make sure and post a link when it does :)
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This is what I got out of this Tale.
“Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.”
― Martha Moody
It was not as dark as I thought it would be. I also loved the Ending. I thought it was the best course of action. :)
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This one was a bit disappointing for me. For me, the problem seemed to be one of scope. The world was too big and complicated for a short story. If this had been just a slice of life piece, like a person fighting to live their life in a world being eaten away, but nothing more, I think I would've been able to actually appreciate the creative and stunningly dark world the author was crafting. Instead, I was distracted from the actual chaos of the world with the huge plot that was being unraveled; it was just too much in too little time. In addition, I was confused at time with the motivations of the hero. I liked his combination of naivety and decisiveness, but, again, his actions were lost amid the descriptions and politics of this new landscape, and I was just left feeling a little muddled.
On the other hand, I did think the descriptions in this story were quite good. The MapMaker especially was well fleshed out with her shifting colors and other-worldliness. There was one line where the author described someone looking as if they had honey instead of blood running through their veins. I loved that line, instantly put a picture in my head. Also, that last line was gold.
The narrator was a hit and miss. He was a bit monotonous in the beginning, although he certainly found his footing as the story got on, and his accents were not going over well for me. He seemed to mumble through that dialogue. Much kudos to the effect on the MapMaker's voice. Subtle, but packed quite a punch.
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On the call for "Grimdark" examples: I'm not sure if either of these writers would use the label, but anyway...
The Magekiller Stories (http://www.darkicon.com/Library/Magekiller/index.php) by "Dark Icon". I don't know if these have been published anywhere off the writer's site, but I think they're worth a look; decently written and imaginative dark fantasies set in a world of magic gone rottenly off.
Alec Austin's Blood Remembers (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/blood-remembers/) and Casualties (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/casualties/). Different worlds and scenarios, the first medieval-European type setting and the second rather dark-Harrypotterish, but both centering round a protagonist and friends resorting to ruthless extremes to stop the "Big Bad".
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This one left me entirely listless and drooling I'm afraid. I have to agree that it was a bit much to cram into a short piece. The lack of background or context put me off a bit as well. Not for me. On the subject of 'Grimdark', I can't say that much comes to mind. Although, I can think of nothing more grim or dark than the works of J.R. Hamentaschen. If you haven't read his story Wonder, that is DARK.
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I don't know if I would say that I've ever read a fantasy story that I'd call grimdark, even Abercrombie.
Although some of the things Robin Hobb does to her characters does make me want huddle under a blankie and cry myself to sleep.
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1) Re: the story - I enjoyed the first two thirds of it, in a (pardon the expression) grim, dark sort of way, but I thought the last part, where our "hero" transitions into the realm of the Mapmaker and does his thing to be a little muddled. Had to listen twice to get a solid understanding. Interesting setting, but I also agree that the amount of world(s) was hard to justice to in a short story. I really like the Out-blade, though.
2) On the subject of "grimdark" - guess I'm not plugged in enough to have heard about this, but I can see where it comes from (I can also see where Abercrombie would want to "own" it, even tongue-in-cheek, given his recent dust-up on the subject on the subject of the dark screwed up protagonist).
I think, firstly it's an argument as old as Plato, and secondly it strikes to the root of why people read fiction - realism vs. idealism. We know full well there are awful people in the world who rape, steal, murder and (if possible) worse, and we know it's happened throughout human history, certainly in times of swords and doublets. But as story readers and listeners, we WANT our happy ending, our noble hero, our good guy who's selfless, who achieves the quest and saves the girl (boy is perfectly fine too). This is an old tension. On an emotional level, we want our fairy-tale ending, and "serious" authors (oh, let's say Abercrombie, Woodring Stover, and Martin) want to remind us that the world just doesn't work that way. I think the best example is very simple - in the original novel Game of Thrones, one lowborn fighter bests and kills a noble knight, and is then criticized for not "fighting with honor", and (quite rightly, IMHO) says "no, but he did".
It reminds me of a remark of Elliot Smith about how "if you grow up with yelling in your house, the last thing you want to do is make records with yelling" and it makes me wonder if the practictioners of "grimdark" - if there are any or if it's even a "thing" - didn't come from nice safe wholesome households and writing against that... or the fans thereof.
And of course there's nothing peculiar to Fantasy about this conflict - this is true in Science Fiction, and Westerns for that matter.
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I listened to it twice, but still had to read the written story for myself before I was really confident of what was going on.*
Also, I didn't love the German accent - partly for the reasons other have expressed, and partly because I would have expected (for example) the word "Kriegsflotte" to be pronounced with three syllables [kreegz-flot-tuh]. I found the accent more distracting than helpful.
But it's an interesting world. Let's hope some of the surviving locations will work on improving the Placement Stone technology and learn to keep out the Out indefinitely.
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FN* There is actually one part of the text that I found a bit ambiguous:
“It is true,” Jani, now back at the Mapmaker’s side, said. “Every word of his tale is reality.”
Knights cannot lie; wisdom that all knew. But he could—he’d cut those truth-telling runes from his tongue with the Lady Clarissa’s blessing, and those wounds bled red invisible as he spoke his deception.
(Ultimately, I concluded that "he" refers to Rollus rather than Jani)
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So...open to suggestions :)
I'd say Matthew Woodring Stover's Acts of Caine series would qualify. Probably. They're also the best Sci-Fi - Fantasy meld I've read.
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Just wanted to let you all know - Dom Rabrun's show for this episode is now live (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPf3ue5P93c)!
I'll go ahead and adjust the top post as well :)
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was anyone else reminded of the Neverending story? The Out kind of felt like "the Nothing"...
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I didn't find myself drawn into this tale, unfortunately.
The reader sounds like he could've grown up on the same block as Patrick Bazile, which is a plus. His style tended to go down the scale toward the end of each sentence, which reminded me of a news anchor I used to know named Rod Johnson (yes, really).
I don't think I read a lot of grimdark (I keep typing "grimlock"), but, I mean, you don't get grimmer or more visceral/phantasmagoric than China Mieville's Bas-Lag series -- and "Embassytown" has some of that too.
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was anyone else reminded of the Neverending story? The Out kind of felt like "the Nothing"...
The story eluded to that with a touch of "Pirates of Darkwater". To those of you who missed that Hanna-Barbera gem from 1991, you're probably better off.
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was anyone else reminded of the Neverending story? The Out kind of felt like "the Nothing"...
Me too. Also the doomed eroding world-fragments of Marie Brennan's Driftwood, or the "thinnies" in Stephen King's Gunslinger cycle. It's an effective nightmare, the idea of finding your world or reality unravelling or rotting away, and I wouldn't be surprised to find quite a few writers running with it.
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was anyone else reminded of the Neverending story? The Out kind of felt like "the Nothing"...
The story eluded to that with a touch of "Pirates of Darkwater". To those of you who missed that Hanna-Barbera gem from 1991, you're probably better off.
Why? Because of the total lack of closure?
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BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
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I had a lot of difficulty listening to this.
I got lost in the words that had a plural s, words that had 's and words that had s' ("...the Outs advance"? Out's? Outs'?). And not being able to properly hear the proper nouns made it very difficult to distinguish between made up words for the story, and German/foreign words (The word is Kriegsflotte, I heard Creeps Float, or maybe Creep's Float, or perhaps Creeps' Float). Reading it in Beneath Ceaseless Skies I see now that the problem (with the s's) was not the reading, but some typos.
Cuts ran down his flank, long and precise, a still-living carcass torn open reach at it soul.
See what I mean?
I eventually got it that Out was a proper noun, but still wasn't sure whether it meant a person, a group of people, a state of being or something else entirely.
Anyway, I gave up listening 20 minutes in and read the rest.
Overall I thought the story was fine, if a little bit underdone. It could use some fleshing out and become a full fledged novel easily. Like others have said, the scope of this story is too big for a short story format.
That being said I was enthralled and entranced throughout, so that's a win. Although the characters were all a bit weak. I didn't feel that I had any emotional investment in an of them. Probably due to the lack of space in the short story.
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Did the shrinking world remind anyone else of Marie Brennan's Driftwood setting?
I generally enjoyed the story. There were some parts in the middle that I drifted in and out, but I liked the idea of the encroaching Out, the knight using this very decay to make himself a demigod of a fighter, the mapmaker who saves worlds by destroying the life on them.
I don't agree that it was too much for a short story. It's too much to explore FULLY in a short, sure. But a short that explores one character and a subset of a setting is totally fine with me. But there's no reason there can't be a novel, also.
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I don't agree that it was too much for a short story. It's too much to explore FULLY in a short, sure. But a short that explores one character and a subset of a setting is totally fine with me. But there's no reason there can't be a novel, also.
FWIW, I'm a big fan of stories where the world feels fully realized, and yet at the same time - also feels like we've only scratched the surface of what's there. When I get to the end of a story, I love to feel like there's much more waiting out there to be explored. (This is true of characters as well.) It's a difficult balance to maintain, but when an author can pull it off, I swoon :)
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Oh yeah, and on the subject of grimdark, I've never heard of the term before this episode. To me it sounds like the usage (based on the explanation here) is meant to be a perjorative adjective toward a specific subset of the genre, and so I suspect is one that writers generally wouldn't self-identify with. Kind of like "tortureporn" subgenre of horror--if I call something tortureporn, people know what I mean, but I've never heard an author claim to write it.
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Oh yeah, and on the subject of grimdark, I've never heard of the term before this episode. To me it sounds like the usage (based on the explanation here) is meant to be a perjorative adjective toward a specific subset of the genre, and so I suspect is one that writers generally wouldn't self-identify with. Kind of like "tortureporn" subgenre of horror--if I call something tortureporn, people know what I mean, but I've never heard an author claim to write it.
I usually heard "grimdark" - and it mostly referred to Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K universe - used in an affectionate ironic way. (erm... I mean in the sense of "I know it's bad but I still like it, maybe even because it's bad")
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The story eluded to that with a touch of "Pirates of Darkwater". To those of you who missed that Hanna-Barbera gem from 1991, you're probably better off.
Oh my dear god you are right... It took me a moment to recall that travesty.
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Not here to comment on the story, it was kinda interesting, but I didn't get the chilling eldritch vibe that I get when I read of the Cthulhu Mythos.
As to the grimdark having read a lot of warhammer 40K fiction I can venture an opinion, but I am by no means an expert. The Black Library has a lot of authors writing in that universe so its not easy to point at the universe and say this is grimdark, even with the tagline. In Ultramarines you see the heroism of the Space Marines, but Graham McNeill has a difficult time getting across the horror and corruption of Chaos, even when the main character is trapped on a demon world the descriptions are graphic, but there is no....substance to them.
In contrast is Sandy Mitchell's Ciahpas Cain which is a rollicking tale about a commissar of the Imperial Guard the epitome of the grimdark universe, except it turns out he is just a regular guy who likes his comforts and would be quite happy sitting out the whole war nursing a drink and an artillery regiment far behind the frontlines. Oh course he doesn't get to do that, because that wopuld be quite boring, instead he gets thrown into the thick of things despite his best efforts and we get a good taste of some fantastic wit and sarcasm.
Those are just two examples, but overall I don't think Warhammer is the real grimdark.
No grimdark is where the heroes are few and far between and the characters you fall in love with are the anti-heroes. Men like Sandor Clegane and Tyrion Lannister to whom life has dealt a shitty hand, but they make do with what they have. It is the horror and revulsion you feel towards Ramsey Snow, not for torturing Theon Greyjoy, but breaking him. So GRRM is a good example of grimdark, hell its literally his name :)
Another good author who I feel does the grimdark genre justice is Stephen Eriksson, his Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen is packed with anti-heroes who are reluctant heroes at best and quite happy to put a crossbow bolt between the villain's eyes in the middle of a monologue.
This is what grimdark is, not the shiny hero, but the career soldier with the trenching tool who knows winning is about fighting dirtier than your opponent.
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I've honestly never heard of grimdark before this episode.
I had a really hard time grasping this story, and unfortunately not enough time to go back for a second listen. I had some of the same difficulty with pronouns that Max described, and also simply had a hard time keeping the characters straight. I feel like the world described was rich and could easily support a much longer story, but for some reason it just never settled in for me. :-\
Can anyone explain the tattoos thing?
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Enjoyable, if a little dark for my tastes. I found it hard to sympathize with the protagonist too much because he kept slaughtering seemingly innocent people without an ounce of guilt. Made him not much better than a serial killer in my eyes.
I also had never heard the term 'GrimDark' before.
I've honestly never heard of grimdark before this episode.
I had a really hard time grasping this story, and unfortunately not enough time to go back for a second listen. I had some of the same difficulty with pronouns that Max described, and also simply had a hard time keeping the characters straight. I feel like the world described was rich and could easily support a much longer story, but for some reason it just never settled in for me. :-\
Can anyone explain the tattoos thing?
Which? The knight's anti-lying tattoos that he cut off, or the Mapmaker's, that sort of, as far as I could tell, synched the physical world with her body? That was the impression I got anyway. She gained total control over the land when she made it a part of herself.
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Can anyone explain the tattoos thing?
Which? The knight's anti-lying tattoos that he cut off, or the Mapmaker's, that sort of, as far as I could tell, synched the physical world with her body? That was the impression I got anyway. She gained total control over the land when she made it a part of herself.
I guess I meant the Knight's anti-lying tattoos, plus didn't his companion have some tattoos as well? I totally missed the part about the Mapmaker's tattoos... :-[
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Can anyone explain the tattoos thing?
Which? The knight's anti-lying tattoos that he cut off, or the Mapmaker's, that sort of, as far as I could tell, synched the physical world with her body? That was the impression I got anyway. She gained total control over the land when she made it a part of herself.
I guess I meant the Knight's anti-lying tattoos, plus didn't his companion have some tattoos as well? I totally missed the part about the Mapmaker's tattoos... :-[
I wasn't sure if what the Mapmaker had going on were tattoos or something else. Her flesh and the world were linked somehow, that's all I know.
But yeah, the Knight had these magic tattoos under his tongue that were required when he joined the order I guess, and he cut them off (OUCH) with his boss's permission so he could lie to the Mapmaker and kill her genocidal butt. :)
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Can anyone explain the tattoos thing?
Which? The knight's anti-lying tattoos that he cut off, or the Mapmaker's, that sort of, as far as I could tell, synched the physical world with her body? That was the impression I got anyway. She gained total control over the land when she made it a part of herself.
I guess I meant the Knight's anti-lying tattoos, plus didn't his companion have some tattoos as well? I totally missed the part about the Mapmaker's tattoos... :-[
I wasn't sure if what the Mapmaker had going on were tattoos or something else. Her flesh and the world were linked somehow, that's all I know.
But yeah, the Knight had these magic tattoos under his tongue that were required when he joined the order I guess, and he cut them off (OUCH) with his boss's permission so he could lie to the Mapmaker and kill her genocidal butt. :)
Ahh, okay. Thanks! :)
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You know how sometimes some smarmy-brilliant author takes some idea that you had back in - say - middle school and FREAKING WRITES IT INTO A BRILLIANT SHORT STORY?
Damnit. I hate when that happens.
It's actually not that bad. My idea is different enough, and it's not what you do so much as it's how you do it and blah blah blah blah blah. Long story short - I loved this one. I have a love-hate relationship with classic fantasy, and stories that send it up or take it apart, spinning out familiar elements in unfamiliar ways, remain some of my favorites. This one was particularly well done. The moral quandary and compromise at the heart of the story was very interesting; is it better to lose everything in the hope of a better future, or is it better to die as you are? I am personally inclined to chose the former - put me down as one of the mapmaker's supporters, please - but that doesn't mean I don't see the conflict.
My only tiny, tiny, tiny quibble is that the main character was so free of doubts, himself. As I read it, he was so completely devoted to his mistress that he had no qualms about what he was doing. If the main character had embodied the conflict, rather than simply being witness to it, I think the story would have been even stronger.
Regardless, it was an excellent story, and I will definitely seek out more work by the author, and in this setting.
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So, noticing a lot of people haven't heard of GrimDark. (Lucky bastards.)
Here are some of the articles I read about in preparation for this one, should the curious want to tumble down the rabbit's bloody, skull-filled hole:
Know Your Meme: Grimdark (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/grimdark)(the definition, etc.)
Joe Abercrombie: The Value of Grit
(http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2013/02/25/the-value-of-grit/)
Foz Meadows: On Grittiness and Grimdark (http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/on-grittiness-grimdark/).
A Dribble of Ink (featuring Elizabeth Bear): I Love a Good Tragedy as Much as the Next Guy (http://aidanmoher.com/blog/2013/03/articles/i-love-a-good-tragedy-as-much-as-the-next-guy-by-elizabeth-bear/)
There were more, as well as conversations on twitter, but those were the big ones. Hope it helps!
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I just realized I never commented on this story.
It was awesome, which is probably why. What can you say about an awesome story other than wooooooooooooo?
In particular, I enjoyed the contagious insanity of the demon and a weapon made of nothingness. High concept, top marks.
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I put off listening to this one for a bit – I usually listen to Podcastle before hitting the hay of an evening, and all the discussion of grimdark in the intro sent me off in search of lighter fare. When I finally decided to listen, I didn't really have high hopes. I was completely wrong, though; I loved this story! I was completely absorbed by the intricate setting (helped by some stellar narration), and I really liked the way it ended. The travelling-between-worlds theme reminded me a bit of Daniel Rabuzzi's The Choir Boats a little bit, which is a novel I can definitely recommend reading. Thanks, Podcastle!
(I was so pleasantly surprised by this one that I felt I had to register and sing its praises. Hello! :D )
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FWIW, I'm a big fan of stories where the world feels fully realized, and yet at the same time - also feels like we've only scratched the surface of what's there. When I get to the end of a story, I love to feel like there's much more waiting out there to be explored.
I feel this way as well - that's a big part of what I'm looking for when I read Fantasy or SF. Not to say character an plot aren't important, but those elements are universal to good storytelling. Getting a glimpse of a new world; Middle Earth, Ring World, etc. that's well realized, consistent, but beyond anything I could have imagined is something I can only find here.
I'm not familiar with "Grimdark", but this felt like dark fantasy, like an Elric story. The concept of the world, of the Out encroaching on lands, is the flip side of a concept that Moorcock used in at least one Elric story. In that world, the far edges of the known lands end in swirling chaos and human champions can create new lands by advancing step by step into that chaos. Is "Grimdark" more along the lines of the old Grimjack comic universe of Cynosure?
And speaking of comics, I think the Mapmaker trope might have been picked up in a recent Avengers run - different Earths across the multiverse were being destroyed but before that happened "mapmakers' appeared to chronicle that particular world before its destruction.