"The Spinner" by Martha Soukup

 

 First appeared in Jane Yolen's Xanadu 2.

Summary:

Rianna, "The Spinner," can spin anything into yarn--from wool to dog fur, from flax and seed pods to horse manes. 

Then one day, a woodcutter named Rowan comes into her place and asks for her to spin so that he can have gold to win the hand of his girl from her father.

Rianna agrees, and for awhile all parties are happy. However, the arrangement seems to change.

 

Discussion:

 Rowan suggests that he may or may not be engaged and so they make love. But he disappears until Rianna hears of his impending marriage. She decides to ruin it for bride and groom, using her magic to bind him only to Rianna.

This feels like a retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin story from the viewpoint of the Rump--the man who in exchange for gold attempts to ruin a family by taking the first born, as was promised. However, Rumpelstiltskin does give the couple a chance to win back the baby and restore the marriage.

Here, Rianna is wholly successful. It's hard to say what to feel. Surely, instead of one sad person, we have three (and those who are sad because these are). It's quite a bitter and pointless revenge since if she actually loved him, then she would be just as sad and miserable for the rest of her life, too. If she didn't love him, then why bother?

Or are we readers supposed to feel the revenge that the secondary character deserved rather than a man who happened to fall in love more than one person (at least for a moment)? Or is it simply wish-fulfillment revenge for every woman who felt wronged, without contemplating the consequences that will ruin everyone involved? It is strange that we go from seeing the protagonist as someone we care for to someone who appears bitter and vengeful, someone we hope we never meet.

This story requires a little context. "A Defense of Social Contracts" [link for discussion] is that necessary piece.

In her comments regarding "A Defense of Social Contracts," Soukup discusses how she wanted to write about how obsession feeds into revenge than loops back to obsession (a story with "fantasy" notion). Perhaps that describes this a bit if not a perfect fit. However, obsession and revenge do seem to factor into some of her stories. It suggests, too, that theme or perhaps certain observable human patterns may come first that she wants to illustrate within a narrative frame.

Like Rumpelstiltskin, Rianna disappears although in some versions, Rumpelstiltskin tears himself in two. Perhaps there was a reason for that revision.

How to Fracture a Fairy Tale 

Jane Yolen 

Tachyon Publications 

SF & Fantasy, Teens & YA

How I feel about Jane Yolen’s How to Fracture a Fairy Tale has a lot to do with the book’s title. It is what drew me to the book, as a reader and as a writer. I started at the beginning and was reading through. The first couple of essays and stories caught my attention, but my interest started to flag. Maybe because I’ve read so many fairy tales and rewritten fairy tales, they lose their shininess after a few. A writer really has to alter the fairy tale significantly or remove the traces of the fairy tale in an updated telling. It isn’t enough to wave politics to reflect today’s mores (unless this is your first book of revised fairy tales).

I skipped to the poetry to see how those fared and found what I was looking for in the title. The commentary and poems show the writer’s mind at work. The writer herself said the poems were written to go with the stories, so I wondered why they were so separated from their story pairings. Maybe some people don’t like commentary. Maybe some don’t like poems, but the design should at least stand the poems beside the stories if not the commentary as well. Let those who only like stories turn one page instead of making everyone else—who is intrigued by the interplay between works, the way a fairy tale can be reconstructed in different ways—flip to the end of the book to read together what was intended to go together.

To me, the ordering affects how I’d rate the book. As it stands, it’s fine with some interesting retellings. If it were ordered as it seemed intended from the title and from the commentary, I’d recommend readers mob the book. At least, my mind became more engaged when I reordered.

The highlights of the collection include “Snow in Summer” (a Snow White retelling with a down-home voice) and “The Bridge's Complaint” (a bridge tells his version of the troll and the billy goats, mostly for the surprising perspective), “Great-Grandfather Dragon's Tale” (this describes an unusual “man raised by wild animals” tale—dragons, no less—interesting for its frame structure and the emotion evoked by a simple symbol). In “Cinder Elephant” Cinderella is overweight and can speak in the language of birds.

Even if the stories aren’t stunning, they contain intriguing aspects such as “Happy Dens; or, A Day in the Old Wolves' Home” where wolves in a nursing home get to tell their side of the story (a curious and ambiguous ending). There’s a nice wish-fulfilment one where the prophet, Elijah, saves Jews from concentration camps while another tells of a mother who’s died to return as a vampire.

A few, like the thrilling novelette “One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King,” could have been improved by updating the fairy-tale-ness a little further, perhaps modernizing the language a little more or erasing more of the fairy-tale tracks.

The collection is definitely worth investigating. Maybe you agree with the present ordering, or maybe you can try it as the book seems to suggest it wants to be. Either way, turning the page isn’t too hard a chore to get the book that you want. I, for one, want How to Fracture a Fairy Tale.

"When the Clock Strikes" by Tanith Lee

First appeared in Lin Carter’s Weird Tales #1. Reprinted in various year’s best and major retrospectives by Marvin Kaye, Saralee Kaye, Jack Zipes, and Arthur W. Saha.

Summary:

A narrator introduces the reader to a story two hundred years old. As they await a carriage, the narrator and reader are also in our past. The city where they wait, was formerly prosperous, obtained by a Duke "treacherously." Except his thoroughness in destroying his rivals overlooked one person: a young woman.

The woman is a witch who poisons the Duke to suffer but not die. She wanted the Duke to observe the destruction of his son. However, the Duke catches her and her daughter in the act of witchcraft. So she kills herself and bids her daughter act as though her mother's witchery is a horrid surprise.

Everyone buys the daughter's mourning (supposed dismay over her mother). Though attractive, she dresses so dirtily that people gradually believe her ugly.

Discussion:

The narrator plays a little coy with the reader about which familiar fairy tale this is. I didn't figure it out until late in the tale:

"Possibly you have been told the story? No? Oh, but I am certain that you have heared it, in another form perhaps."

The tale is Cinderella. Like "Red as Blood," the young woman connives, but she is the protagonist in what has become a revenge tale. The source fairy tale treats this as a rags-to-riches: The unjustly abused are lifted up, the abusers abused. Lee's version mirrors the transformation of a Shakespearean into one of tragedy. She exacts revenge on the Duke and his son.

The clock is played up. The number 12 is Death and the narrator is death personified. And/or the protagonist. The facts that suggest this are that she is drawn to this place of destruction, and that she knows the old story so well, and that she says witches are long-lived. The reader presumably may be awaiting the carriage of death, to be hauled off to whichever destination.

Where we had Christian protagonist in "Red as Blood," here the protagonist serves Satanas. The tales counterpoint one another.

"Red as Blood" by Tanith Lee

First appeared in Edward L. Ferman's F&SF. It was up for the Nebula, British Fantasy and Locus Awards. Reprinted in various year’s best and major retrospectives by Lin Carter, Garyn G. Roberts, Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh, A. Susan Williams, Richard Glyn Jones, David Drake, and Stephen Jones.

Summary:

In this Snow White retelling, we center on the Witch Queen as protagonist. Bianca, the step-daughter, is a vampire like her mother before her. The new Witch Queen is trying to rid the kingdom of the child since she is draining their people. When the huntsman takes Bianca out, she cons him out of his religious accouterments to entice him.

Commentary:

 Instead, she kills him. The Witch Queen becomes a hag in order to trick Bianca. Bianca falls into suspended animation until a prince comes. The prince is Christ (or a Christ figure) who redeems the young woman's red-as-blood for a white-as-dove. The title plays double duty.

Those, irked to find Christ in their fiction, should take pleasure that some Christian will be irked to find a Christian witch. (And vice versa.) Tomorrow's tale, "When the Clock Strikes," serves as an intriguing contrast.

It's useful to see how the source fairy tale has been inverted. The original warns young women that aging beauties might hatch jealousy plots. Here, Bianca is a beauty who may believe beauty gives her carte blanche to drain those around her. Nothing but religion may do the trick. The illustration on the right captures the tale's spirit, adding a ghostly hag temptress, perhaps signifying more of a moral conscience (not that the text suggests this, but it's an interesting reinterpretation).

Although this fairy-tale plot has lost its savor, Lee's version is still quite tasty. Since it is one of her more reprinted and award-nominated tales, others must agree.

Review: The Otter, the Spotted Frog and The Great Flood by Gerald Hausman

The Otter, the Spotted Frog and The Great Flood
A Creek Indian Tale 

Gerald Hausman
Wisdom Tales

The Otter, the Spotted Frog and The Great Flood, according to the author's note, is a Creek Indian folktale, specifically, but universal Native American tale about a flood. Gerald Hausman states that they are intended as moral lesson about taking care of the Earth.

Otter listens to Spotted Frog who says there will be a great flood. Otter Woman and other animal people do not listen because their leader, Honors, says no flood will come. Otter is the only one prepared and all other animal people perish.

When the flood recedes, the animal people are now mosquitoes, and Otter agrees to take on Otter Woman in this form. She drains his blood and he becomes weak, so she fishes for him, but this doesn't help. When she fishes again, she is eaten, and Otter plans to eat the fish in revenge, but the Spotted Frog says that Otter Woman is now the fish. She transforms again into human form. Otter, too, transforms. They become the First People. They are happy.

I agree with Hausman that this first section (second paragraph above) may be a tale of early environmentalism,  but the story keeps going, so that interpretation may be dubious. Rather Nature may be more of a model. It changes, so too should we listen and adapt to changes. One day, little animal (a parent may have tried to convey to their child) you will be one thing, but as you age, you transform until you gradually become more human.

It is interesting to read and hear the wisdom that other cultures have passed on to their children. You might come up with something different, but it, nonetheless, might prove useful to talk with children about these unknown, even scary future changes. As a teacher, I too wonder how I will convey the good and the difficult that lie in wait for my students. This story may well be worth discussing with the future generations to come.

Movement Moves (Genres and subgenres)

Charles Stross on worldbuilding for posthumans

Jane Lindskold on books that change your perspective (the article's strength, the explanation of "why", sadly disappears)

500 "new" old fairy tales

Rattle on Speculative Poetry

Omni arises with new fiction by Rudy Rucker

Jeffrey Ford on Tradition

Michael Swanwick on the fantasy traditional and how his novels navigate this

Charlie Hugh Smith predicts The Next American Revolution

James Patrick Kelly on Cyberpunk

Octavia E. Butler on Predicting The Future

Humorous bookcover cliches (although it doesn't hamper my appreciation of a few designs)

On the Morality* of Fairy Tales

The fascinating aspect of fairy tales is that their morality may not agree with ours although it may follow reality more than most popular fiction.  For instance, good and bad alike weave webs of deceit.  While some bad people receive their comeuppance, many do not, and the reader is essentially told, "That's the way of life."

Although most parents likely teach their children that lying is wrong, deceit is everywhere in fairy tales, both for and against the protagonist.  Cinderella's step-sisters cut their feet to fit into the glass slipper.  The wolf dresses as grandmother to eat Little Red Riding Hood.  The Brave Little Tailor deceives evil giants and kings.  The animals Bremen town musicians deceive the thieves.  Hansel and Gretel deceive their parents and the witch.  In fact, it’s rare that someone isn’t deceiving someone else in fairy tales.

Evil isn’t necessarily rewarded with punishment.  In “Rumpelstiltskin,” the father lied to the king about his daughter’s abilities but nothing happens to him.  The cat who ate the fat not only deceives the hard-working mouse but also eats her (“Verily, that is the way of the world.”).  The miller aids and abets the wolf’s trickery to look like the goat kids’ mother (“Truly men are like that.”).   The king pretends to be a merchant and sails away with the queen to marry her.  The king, who planned to kill his twelve boys if he had a girl, is not repaid.

These instances of dubious morality surprise us because we assume we inherited morality from our ancestors.  In Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, Philip Pullman has harsh words for the father’s lack of ill fate in the "The Girl with No Hands."   Pullman is unlikely to be the first or the last, but the authors of fairy tales (see quotes) may prepare the young for the injustices of the adult world.

Pullman, Philip. Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm. New York: Viking Adult, 2012. Print. 

Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm. Household Tales by Brothers Grimm.  Duke Classics, 2013. Kindle edition.

Links (from writing to science)

Books & Writing

Richard Bausch on How-To writing books (Writing in 700 easy lessons)

Steve Vernon on ebook sales

Cat Rambo recommends this story

John Scalzi suspects new Star Wars director will be fine

Douglas Lain's Wave of Mutilation for 99 cents (reviewed here) (interview)

David Farland on Habit vs. Motivation

Bruce Holland Rogers on rejection

Re-writers of fairy tales respond to them

Science, Technology,  & assorted Silliness

Flying on Venus (Geoffrey A. Landis)

Virtual Middle Class?

If New York weren't lit up, what would its skies look like?

Killer mouse kills scorpions and howls in triumph

Quantum screens of future?

Deep-sea diving

Plant altruism?



Five survival skills movies mis-taught

Make your own pulp cover

NY Times on Robots

Today only tribute to Brother's Grimm

Google's beautiful pictorial tribute to Brothers Grimm

Hopefully, the pictorial strip will be saved somewhere.

NPR on Grimm's fairy tales

Salon on Edward Gorey

Damien Walter on SF being eager to please -- some good points (in general terms, not on authors named) but surely SF doesn't have any one role to fill.

On Fairy Tales

Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" (Wiki Summary, Tolkien professor, How to Read Tolkien, essay)

Wiki: Fantasy Fairy Tales

Terri Windling's World-Fantasy-winning Journal of Mythic Arts

Fairy Tale Review

Philip Pullman, at The Guardian, promoting his new book

Graham Joyce on fairy tales

At the Guardian, Graham Joyce discusses his ten top favorite uses of fairy tales (in fiction, largely).