Wakulla Spings and the Borders of the Fantastic

I read the novella Wakulla Springs by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages because I have enjoyed the work of Andy Duncan in the past.  And this is a good story too, well-written, covering four generations of an African-American family and their ties to the Wakulla Springs jungle in northern Florida, where some films were made like Creature from the Black Lagoon, and some of the Johnny Wiessmueller Tarzan films. This novella was nominated for a Nebula Award, and a Hugo Award, and won a World Fantasy Award. The question is not whether this story is award-worthy, but why was it deemed eligible for such awards when there is no fantasy elements at all in the story?  Probably the answer is that the authors are known for fantasy and science fiction, and the making of a fantasy/science fiction film (Creature from the Black Lagoon) is at the heart of the story. Still, that shouldn't be enough for eligibility even given the fact that mainstream award-givers would pay no attention to it.  A good story,  but a frustrating scenario surrounding it. 

Another boy wizard

A young boy is sent to a wizard’s school where, with his select friends, he must save the school and its masters from an evil renegade who wants to take over everything.  In the years since the first publication of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which began with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997), this would seem to be the plot of one of the innumerable rip-offs, but it is not.  There were books about young wizards at school before Rowling, the best of which is Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea (1968).  Jane Yolen’s Wizard’s Hall was one of these too, having been published in 1991, six years before the first Harry Potter book. Yet for all its similarities Yolen’s book stands in the shadows of Rowling’s better-known works.  Why is this so?  I think it’s quite simply because Rowling took her characters and their stories very seriously, whereas Yolen treats them whimsically and from a distance. Yolen has written a children’s story, with the problems that go with such a distinction. Rowling, on the other hand, wrote a more serious fantasy novel whose main characters are children.  A big difference, and perhaps the main reason why Rowling’s stories have reached such heights of popularity. 

Mysterium

I’ve intended to read something by Robert Charles Wilson for a long time.  For no particular reason I selected Mysterium (1994), his seventh novel, which won the Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel, 1994.  A blurb on the back for Wilson’s previous book notes that it “reads like a combination of Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen King.” This also applies to Mysterium, though I’d say this book reflects Stephen King more than Arthur C. Clarke. 

It starts with an artifact being found at an archeological dig in Turkey, and its radioactive nature kills people. It is taken to a secret lab in northern Michigan, where some kind of accident causes the laboratory and the nearby town to disappear into an alternate dimension, which is slightly behind our dimension technology-wise, but it has developed theologically on very different lines. The characters in the novel all seem to be ciphers to which plot must happen, as in King’s novels, with a dash of Clarke-styled theological explorations.  It makes for a page-turner, but nothing more. Wilson writes well, but the plot of this book seems contrived and the whole superficial. 

Solstice Wood

Patricia A. McKillip wrote some of the best fantasy novels of the 1970s, including The Forgotten Beast of Eld (1974), and the three volumes of the Riddle-Master trilogy, The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), and Harpist in the Wind (1979). Beginning in the 1980s, she began writing novels with smaller scopes and smaller plots.  They are well-written, and they hold a reader’s interest and attention, but something is missing. The books are so gossamer-like and ephemeral that a day or so after reading one the memory holds very little of what it was about. There remains only a half-lingering aura of modest enjoyment. I haven’t read all of McKillip’s novels, but this is true for most of the post-1980 ones I’ve read.  Solstice Wood (2006) is one of these, telling of a small town in upstate New York where some families protect their locale from incursions from the fairy world. Or so they believe. Long-standing beliefs are challenged after the death of one of the elders brings back to the town a woman who had fled years ago, fearing the secrets that are now all unraveling. Again, it’s an enjoyable read, but one really hopes for something more from a book like this.