APB-SAL is a blog about education, science, science education, fiction, science fiction, literature, literary stories, poetry, and anything else that strikes the blogger's fancy. NOTE: This blog interrogates art. It rarely make moral proclamations. For that attend the church or politician of your choice. This blog concerns aesthetics, not propaganda. Consider this as interviews with books where the interviewer presents interviewees, so you get what you need to do your own thinking.
"In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find—if it’s a good novel—that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face."
--Ursula K. Le Guin, "Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness"
"Imaginative fiction trained people to be aware that there are other ways to do things and other ways to be, that there is not just one civilization, and it is good, and it is the way we have to be."
This is one of Ursula Le Guin's more cleverly plotted tales. Mr. Underhill, a fifty-ish bumbling wizard, serves a small village. His spells don't often work and he hides under his hill when strangers arrive, but he's the best they have. "Mr. Underhill came out from under his hill, smiling and breathing hard. Each breath shot out of his nostrils as a double puff of steam, snow-white in the morning sunshine...."and after he's revealed the controlling nature of truenames:
"Somehow the minute spent watching Palani and the children had made him very hungry."Mr. Underhill's a dragon. Readers might guess, but guessing doesn't rob the story of its pleasure since it is well constructed.
"When you children are through school and go through the Passage, you'll leave your child-names behind and keep only your truenames, which you must never ask for and never give away. Why is that the rule?"
"To speak the name is to control the thing."Where is this true? I didn't buy it the first time I read this, eons ago. As an idealistic youth, I thought we could understand and deal with each other better if we knew one another's true nature.
Festin, an unoffensive wizard who desires to learn patience, is knocked from behind by a rival wizard, left without his staff, guarded by magic and a troll. He escapes as a gas, liquid, an eagle, and fish, but only gets caught and more battered and bruised than before. His enemy is Voll, an undead wizard.Slow DownToo many posts consume time. I must slow down. I have stories to write and submit, so enjoy what's here.
Blog AssessmentThe last assessment was in December of 2012. I've been at this since Dec 2009--a little over four years (although I also blogged at s1ngularity:criticism and Mundane SF blogs before this). With nearly a thousand posts, that's about two posts for every three days. When I get bogged down at school, I post less frequently.
Writer InterviewsOn file are the following:
Posts You May Have Missed
"Did you lose an eye?" the coyote asked, interested.
"I don't know," the child said....
"I'll help you look for it.... I knew a trick once where I could throw my eyes way up into a tree and see everything from up there, and then whistle, and they'd come back into my head. But that goddam bluejay stole them, and wen I whistled nothing came. I had to stick lumps of pine pitch into my head so I could see anything. You could try that. But you've got one eye that's OK, what do you need two for? re you coming or are you dying there?"The child follows various animals-as-humans around (who behave much like native American gods). Since she has little background, probably she is our surrogate witness: Perhaps some of our "civilized" hang-ups, such as where we relieve ourselves, are unnecessary. The primary key, though, is our relationship with nature, in particular animals--the environment: how we impinge their world.
"[W]hen I finally began getting stories published, I was quite certain that reality is often best represented slantwise, backwards, or as if it were an imaginary country."
