The Dark Land by C. L. Moore

First appeared in Farnsworth Wright's Weird Tales. Reprinted by Roger Elwood and Vic Ghidalia for a feminist anthology.

Jirel, on her death bed after receiving a pike-wound to her side, cannot be healed. As she is about to enter death with a priest to deliver last rites, she is whisked away to a new world.  

Commentary (with Spoilers)

Jirel is miraculously healed in the new world. However, it is by Pav, King of Romne, a kingdom with strange borders and ways of moving through it. She is not grateful, and he seems full of himself. He allows her to seek a weapon to fight him. If he should win, he gains her. If not, she gains her freedom.

She encounters a witch, described not unlike Jirel was described on her deathbed--white and death-like ("the face of Death itself") yet somehow attractive (Jirel is near the mountains she claimed to throw herself off of if Pav should somehow win her). The witch claims that Jirel is her rival, so presumably she had been or at least desired to be Pav's companion, lover, or queen. 

Despite the announcement of their rivalry, Jirel accepts the witch's advice on how to defeat the king--to put out the flame around his head with the flame around her head which he'd given to her. Presumably, the act is a humbling or breaking down of his ego. He protects her despite this, presumably because he might not be able to stop the witch from killing Jirel, a rival on the loose. 

Does Jirel like him now? Well, he's watched and admired her from afar. He's saved her life twice. She may or may not have cottoned to him as a partner (her first "lover" had done far less to merit her love, though), but surely she understands him differently.

Father Gervase is an interesting figure--some sort of Christian priest, presumably. He appears in two tales. With good advice in the first, he warns against certain action, which we learn to be wisdom--at least to an extent. His appearance here is probably to lend credence to the belief that, when her bed is empty, she was snatched by the devil himself. 

That may be her own perspective when she arrives. It seems that she likely has another feeling when she leaves. 

Christian imagery runs through the opening. It doesn't appear to be meant to make her be a Christ figure, but just to recall similar scenarios. She has a spear in her side as Christ had. And she spends time in another realm before returning to her own. Perhaps this is meant to signal that she'd visited Paradise--or a kind of--and, rejecting it, was ejected.

This is the first story to challenge Jirel's perspective, that her judgment of others or perspective may be flawed. This actually goes a long way to explaining Jirel's actions in the first two stories. The story foreshadows this perspective with "[t]he great two-edged sword which she wielded so recklessly in the heat of combat." 

Moore takes the sword away and this forces a new kind of confrontation, which would likely have been useless in this situation, anyway.  The witch calls her a "presumptuous fool" whom she promises to kill:

"Blind, hot, earthly woman, with your little hates and vengeances, how could you have reigned queen over Romne that is Darkness itself"

Perhaps as stated near the beginning, Pav is a kind of devil, but he seems awfully kind to be a devil. Perhaps he is a middle ground, or perhaps it is a place run by heaven and hell. Whatever it is, it's never really clarified. But comparisons to the afterlife are plentiful. 

On second thought, it seems Jirel is just happy to be back, which no one can blame her for. She left home where she was in control in multiple ways. Whether the events of the tale impacted her may not be visible until a later story--in the same way this story illuminates the reading of the first two. Perhaps not, though.

It's unclear yet what the stories are addressing--perhaps other stories of love between men and women in the genre, or perhaps her own encounters (the men often manipulate reality, which might mean writers, and she did marry the writer Henry Kuttner). Or is she addressing women, addressing possible misunderstandings? Or perhaps she's addressing society with an upper-class barbarian--too civilized, or not civilized at all.

Black God's Shadow by C. L. Moore

 First appeared in Farnsworth Wright's Weird Tales. A direct sequel to "Black God's Kiss."

Jirel hears Guillaume's voice calling to her, both beckoning and calling her his "murderess." She returns to the underworld or the dark dimension beneath the dungeons of Joiry to find the lost, tormented soul, for whom she holds complicated feelings. 

Commentary (with Spoilers)

Jirel articulates her guilt. Perhaps Moore seems to be exploring Jirel's strange feelings toward the conqueror she realized too late that she'd come to love. After following the voice across the lands, she discovers the black stone god who'd been tormenting him with visions of Jirel.

Not only does Moore get a chance to explain Jirel, but also the writing improves.

Religion returns. The surface world might be governed by something akin to Christianity while beneath the dungeons (the subconscious?) lurks a darker, more primal religion (underworld? hell? or an existence beneath our conscious selves?). Verifying the subconscious interpretation is the way the underworld unfolds in a dream- or nightmare-like manner. Using a variant of Taoism, Jirel concludes that Guillaume must have had goodness to complement the evil.

When she frees his shadow, she is expunged of her guilt (eternally damning Guillaume due perhaps to her neglecting to allow him to repent).

At one point, she names Guillaume as a lover, which raises a host of questions. Does this suggest forced love? Or is this just a label for one who loves? The former seems unlikely given her attitude toward Guillaume, but perhaps her feelings are truly complicated.

If written today, these might have difficulty finding a publisher, or if published, they might have created a negative stir--despite their feminist attitudes--due to her complex feelings toward her conqueror, but perhaps later generations, more interested in art than politics, will see her more as a complex character than a mirror of or opposition to one's political ideals.

The terms "Shadow" and "Kiss" from the titles could equally belong to Guillaume and the Black God [not a reference to melanin, as far as I can tell ], perhaps conflating them, or playing with Guillaume's elevated stature in her world, and this journey is one within her own self, liberating her sense of love, liberty and guilt. 

It's not completely clear the final allusion to Philippians 4. Is it the self who brought the peace? Or is it another? Or has it come via the self's act through another because it was ordained by a supernatural other?

Black God's Kiss by C. L. Moore

First appeared in Farnsworth Wright's Weird Tales. Reprinted by L. Sprague de Camp, Martin H. Greenberg, Robert Silverberg, Jessica Yates, David G. Hartwell, Jacob Weisman, Lisa Yaszek, Mark Finn, Chris Gruber, Jeffrey Shanks.

Jirel of Joiry is the commander of Joiry's army--arms trussed and taken before Guillaume, the conquering enemy. He is surprised to find his fierce opponent is actually a wild, red-haired woman. Admiring her beauty, he steals a kiss but is rebuffed. He smacks her to the ground and has her taken to a cell.

Commentary (with Spoilers)

Jirel escapes and ventures into a dark land where she steals a kiss from a black stone god to deliver to Guillaume.

The darkness is either an escape from evocative writing, or a self-imposed limitation to force the narrative into interesting directions--just as "Shambleau" takes place in just one room. There are a few inspired moments--such as walking the bridge, and the opening and closing.

Speaking of Shambleau, this tale serves as a kind of parallel or opposite to that earlier (arguably stronger) tale. They seem to invite comparison.

What's fascinating here, though, is Jirel's regret. The opening does not necessarily suggest attraction, but the ending does, even as she delivers her death blow with a kiss. This complication makes it fascinating. Perhaps violence is, for this character, foreplay.

That is not the only complication. She carries a crucifix, yet she carries another god or demon within to kill the enemy she now has new feelings about.

Discussion of the sequel will appear here.

“The Goddess on the Street Corner” by Margaret St. Clair

First appeared in Beyond Fantasy Fiction, reprinted by David G. Hartwell

Summary:

Because a Greek goddess appears, you’d think the result would be humdrum. It isn’t. A man finds her on the street corner, takes her home and recognizes her as a goddess, feeling her transcendence in her touch. He treats with delicacy and brings color to her cheeks with liquor—liquor he won’t touch since she touched it. 

Commentary with Spoilers:

St. Clair holds off on the revelation of which goddess she is until the ending. This is something of a cheat if he’s known all along, but maybe she thought it might cheapen the theme had the reader known in advance that the mystery goddess is Aphrodite. His love for [worship of?] her leads to him spend all he has and sell his blood to keep her in expensive brandy he cannot afford. She rewards him with the gift of love, promising that women fall for him. He goes out and returns with amorous tales of his supposed conquests to please her of her power, but she still wanes, less and less substantial. She feigns the creation of flowers below his window and [he thinks?] he sees a single pink flower. He claims to see a whole street of them. She disappears. 

Is this story about gods? or about love? Possibly both. He despairs at her disappearance, worried who will take care of him, when plainly he was taking care of her. But in a psychological sense she had been taking care of him although the irony of his feeling remains palpable—simultaneously both true and untrue. My one complaint would be--if she is disappearing due to lack of believers--how did she live this long? If her meeting this gentleman makes him a strong adherent (and she's gone this long without adherents), why would she disappear now? 

Not a classic in terms of speculation, but a thought-provoking keeper to file among her best. Contrast this to her most famous tale, “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” (my first, briefer response to the story) which is the inverse: speculatively rich but not nearly so thought provoking.

Review: The Psychology of Twilight

The Psychology of Twilight Edited by E. David Klonsky, PhD, and Alexis Black 
BenBella Books, Inc.

 I love pop science books.  I snap up BenBella and other publishers' books, whether they examine the science, philosophy or psychology--even if I've never watched the show.  Sometimes I read the books, which intrigues me to watch the show.  This happened when I read Caitlin Flanagan's article in Atlantic Monthly.  Plus, my curiosity piqued when students wrote "I [heart] Jacob" or "I [heart] Edward" on their notebooks.

Anti-Twilight sentiment is prevalent due to anti-girliness (usually among adolescent boys) or to anti-anti-feminists who see the series as setting back the clocks.  Ashley Fetters smartly addresses the scenario (again in Atlantic Monthly):  different strokes for different folks."

The Psychology of Twilight also addresses these criticisms, and because they possess doctoral degrees in psychology, they do so, backing up their ideas with evidence, which is more interesting than popular reductionist theories which do not fully account for a book series.  The only way to critique the books is from the inside:  understanding them, then addressing shortcomings.  Antagonists tend to oversimplify.

On the other hand, that The Psychology of Twilight exists, may give the opposite false impression:  that Meyers wrote these books to present a treatise on adolescent psychology, but the authors almost never treat the book in this manner (occasionally, they take the series a little too seriously, but I suspect it's tongue-in-cheek or fan-girl geekiness shining through:  "Team Edward!" "Team Jacob!").

Here are the topics discussed:

1. "Bella and the Psychobiology of Love and Attraction" by David A. Frederick, et al. discusses the evolutionary causes of Bella's behavior and attraction to 
2. "Team Jacob" by Erica Berg discusses what advantages Jacob has a love candidate.
3. In "The Case for Edward Cullen" Susan Carnell tackles what Edward's psychological draw is.
4. "Prejudice" by Melissa Burkley examines human tendency to pre-judge and Twilight sometimes falls prey yet other times plays off our prejudice and others thwarts such expectations.
5. Similarly, Amanda M. Vicary and Jennifer L Rosner take the prejudice and show us different groups can get along in "Vampires and Werewolves Aren't So Different After All."
6. Mikhail Lyubansky discusses the shades of gray of Twilight in "The Gestalt of Twilight."  The unified whole cannot be understood by examining the parts.  Lyubansky says that Meyers understands that we create false dichotomies instead addressing full complexities.  Two sides may be equally correct.
7. Robin S. Rosenberg maps the vampiric urge to eat human blood on to our urge to eat unhealthily and suggests better methods in "Vegetarian Vamps."
8. Jeremy Clyman argues in "Self-Regulation: The Secret to Success in Twilight" that Edward Cullen is most attractive value is his ability to self-regulate, to withhold himself when he most wants to love or to kill. 
9. "Motorcycle, and Strangers, and Cliff Diving! Oh, My!" by Catherine R. Glenn was one of the more surprising of the articles, wherein she argues that Bella's risk-taking may actually be saving her life.
10. "It's All in the Family" by Lisa M. Dinella and Gary W. Lewandowski Jr., another surprising article, compares Bella's and Edward's family.  Edward's family of vampires wins out.  Bella is a parentified child while Edward's is a balanced hierarchy without becoming enmeshed.  This one occasionally loses sight of its target audience.
11. Tamara McClintock Greenberg's "Transcendence and Twilight" shows why immortality may be a draw for Bella.  Despite Meyer's often mentioned Mormonism, her characters do not have religion although some long for one.
12. In "The Emotional Pleasures of Reading Twilight," Peter G. Stromberg examines what is the romantic pull of such books?  The millions of copies sold testify to how it speaks to people's dreams and hopes.  Stories create feelings inside readers, especially in terms of the conclusion where the lovers finally meet.
13. Pamela Rutledge closes with "Twilight Convergence," discussing how readers have helped grow the Twilight series into a social phenomenon through new social media.  Meyer discussed and interacted with her fans, and fans didn't have to share age or race in order to feel connections.

While all are informative, the first nine articles are especially enlightening.  I feel smarter.

Why Alastair Reynolds Doesn’t Do Star Trek Physics (Wired)

Apparently, this blog (and others) sabotages itself according to this blogger (some now corrected)

On the mythic love poem at Salon.com

Chuck Wendig on the novel

"Ishmael in Love" by Robert Silverberg

• Print sources
• Audio

Synopsis: Ishmael, a dolphin who helps out humans on the island of St. Croix, falls in love with Lisabeth Caulkins. He saves the island for love of her, but she does not love in return.

Commentary (science): Despite its presence on a website called "Biology in Science Fiction," very little applies directly to the general study. Yet much is pertinent in its examination of love (unrequited): What is love? What makes a creature fall in love with its own kind (sexual characteristics, etc.)? Can it be enough to touch the mind of someone to kindle love? Can one fall in love with another who is almost wholly other, or are we not built that way?

Commentary (literary): Clearly, with Moby Dick's first line in the title, an allusion is here--however overt or subtle. How close is the connection? Can we find one? Perhaps summarize both in a way that teases out a relationship. In Moby Dick, a man loathes a "fish" so much that he risks himself and his entire crew to kill it. In "Call Me Ishmael," this time the "fish" saves the lives of all humans on an island for love of one woman. Are there other correlations?