I recently came across this quote from Daryl Gregory on the difference between fantasy and science fiction:
Readers will read something as science fiction if the characters are engaged in the process of science. In fantasy there’s no fiddling with the rules. You pull a sword out of a stone, and that makes you King of England. There’s no, ‘But what if I put a sword into the stone?’ In a science fiction novel, everybody would be trying to figure out how to make more kings by inserting more sharp objects into rocks! A fantasy novel is almost distinguished by not asking those fundamental questions about what is going on. A science fiction novel, no matter what the rules, is always asking those questions.
Part of me likes this, but part of me disagrees completely — Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy novels, for example, ask those questions and have their characters engaged in what fundamentally is science, albeit focused on magic. And yet the books are clearly fantasy.
I just finished reading Life in a Medieval City, by Joseph and Frances Gies, and in the notes on page 236 I found this interesting list of occupations taken from the Paris tax list of 1292:
366 shoemakers
214 furriers
199 maidservants
197 tailors
151 barbers
131 jewelers
130 restaurateurs
121 old-clothes dealers
106 pastrycooks
104 masons
95 carpenters
86 weavers
71 chandlers
70 mercers
70 coopers
62 bakers
58 water carriers
58 scabbard makers
56 wine sellers
54 hatmakers
51 saddlers
51 chicken butchers
45 purse makers
43 laundresses
43 oil merchants
42 porters
42 meat butchers
41 fish merchants
37 beer sellers
36 buckle makers
36 plasterers
35 spice merchants
34 blacksmiths
33 painters
29 doctors
28 roofers
27 locksmiths
26 bathers
26 ropemakers
24 innkeepers
24 tanners
24 copyists
24 sculptors
24 rugmakers
24 harness makers
23 bleachers
22 hay merchants
22 cutlers
21 glovemakers
21 wood sellers
21 woodcarvers
The Society of Creative Anachronism has a more detailed page listing the French occupation names and a breakdown by gender. For example, there was one male hangman (bourriau), one female mole trapper (taupiere), four male pike-makers (piqueeur), one female tart seller (tartriere), one male log floater (atireeur de busche), etc. Fascinating stuff.
The tax list was published by Hercule Géraud in 1837 in Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, which is conveniently on Google Books (the list itself, “Le livre de la taille de Paris pour l’an 1292,” is a bit later in the book).
I recently came across a post about reading goals that got me itching to go and do likewise. I’ve had numeric goals in the past — read X books this year — but I’ve realized I’m less interested in the total number of books read and more interested in the types of books I read. (It’s also a grudging acknowledgement that this mortal life is finite and there’s no way I’ll be able to read all the books I want to. Such a sad thought. But there are massive libraries in heaven, right? I’m banking on that.)
Here, then, are my reading goals for 2015:
Read more books I wouldn’t ordinarily be interested in. Basically, expand my horizons, both in fiction and nonfiction.
Read more science fiction and fantasy classics. I did read the Foundation books in 2012–2013, but most of the time I tend to read newer stuff. (I guess I did also read The Stars My Destination earlier this year. I didn’t like it at all.)
Read more literary classics. Specifically, I want to read at least War and Peace and Dante’s Divine Comedy, and hopefully the Dostoevsky novels I haven’t yet read. Yes, I know, this isn’t the first time I’ve made a goal to read War and Peace. But this is the first year I’m going to actually do it, so help me. (I’ve read enough 1000-page epic fantasy novels by now that I can handle the length just fine.)
Read more nonfiction. Specifically, more history and biography. I’ve been reading more nonfiction this past year (Rubicon, Lies My Teacher Told Me, Food Rules, Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn, Stuff Matters, etc.) and it’s been quite enjoyable. Right now I’m reading and loving Edmund Morris’s Rise of Roosevelt, the first of a three-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and Blake Harris’s Console Wars, a history of Nintendo and Sega in the 1990s.
Any of you have reading goals or happen to be reading something particularly interesting?
I’m back to making ebooks, this time continuing the colored fairy book series with The Red Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, available in EPUB and Kindle editions.
Also, I’ve put the ebook source files on GitHub. (Mostly to allow for pull requests to fix typos, but also because I thought it would be nice to make the source files freely available as well.) I’ll eventually be posting sources for all my existing ebooks as well, though it’ll take some time to go through them.
Since August last year I’ve been keeping track of my reading via Bookkeeper, as I’ve mentioned before. It wasn’t till the other day, though, that I realized I could pull stats on how many pages I’m reading each day.
For curiosity’s sake, then, here are the charts. I wrote a Python script to get the data from Bookkeeper and then charted it all in Numbers. You can click on any month to get a bigger image. X axis is day of month, Y axis is number of pages.
Also: Those two crazy 600-page days in December and April were awesome, but man, they make everything else look small. Oh well.
Today’s ebook release: George MacDonald’s fairy tale The Light Princess, available as always in EPUB, Kindle, and web editions.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the book (or story, rather, since it’s actually very short) held up to a rereading. Mmm, I love George MacDonald’s work.
Today’s release: The Blue Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang, available in EPUB and Kindle editions.
While publishing Grimm in German and Perrault in French was great (and I’ll continue to publish original language editions like them), I’ve long wanted to start publishing fairy tale collections in English. I mean, reading to my kids in 1800s German is cool and all, and I’m certainly planning to do so (along with a delicious array of other old languages), but I have this unshakable feeling that every once in a while they’ll want their stories to be in English. Weird, I know.
So English it is, and Lang’s twelve colored fairy books (published 1889–1910) were the natural place to start. This is the first of the series. Enjoy.
Today’s release: David Lindsay’s novel A Voyage to Arcturus. It’s a rather odd book which I first heard of via C. S. Lewis. I’ll let him tell you about it (these are from his collected letters):
To Arthur Greeves on 26 Dec 1934:
I wish you had told me a little more about Voyage to Arcturus. Even if you can’t describe it, you could at least give me some idea what it is about: at least whether it is about a voyage to Arcturus or not. I haven’t come across the book yet, but will certainly read it if I do.
To Arthur Greeves on 7 Dec 1935:
I have tried in vain to buy Voyage to Arcturus but it is out of print.
To Roger Lancelyn Green on 28 Dec 1938:
You are obviously much better informed than I about this type of literature and the only one I can add to your list is Voyage to Arcturus by David Lyndsay (Methuen) wh. is out of print but a good bookseller will prob. get you a copy for about 5 to 6 shillings. It is entirely on the imaginative and not at all on the scientific wing.
To Eliza Marian Butler on 18 Aug 1940:
If you don’t know David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus (Methuen. Out of print, but not hard to get) you might find it very interesting. It is mere ‘popular’ fiction, but this kind of writing (like religion on the one hand and pornography on the other) cuts across the ordinary stratifications.
To E. R. Eddison on 19 Dec 1942 (apparently Lewis and Eddison wrote this way to each other, and yes, the macrons are supposed to look like that):
Mary, as for yo¯ hono¯s metaphysick mistresses, beatificall bona robas, hyper-uranian whoores, and transcendentall trulls, not oonlie my complexioun little delighteth in them but my ripe and more constant ivdgement reiecteth, esteeming them in truth no more but what Geo: Macdonald bringeth us in as Lilith in his nobly inuented but ill-languaged romans of the same name, or David Lyndesay of late, under the name Sullenbode, in his notable Voiage and Travell to Arctur¯.
To Charles A. Brady on 29 Oct 1944:
Space-and-time fiction: but oddly enough not Rice-Burroughs. But this is probably a mere chance and the guess was a sound one. The real father of my planet books is David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus, which you also will revel in if you don’t know it. I had grown up on Well’s stories of that kind: it was Lindsay who first gave me the idea that the ‘scientifiction’ appeal could be combined with the ‘supernatural’ appeal — suggested the ‘Cross’ (in biological sense). His own spiritual outlook is detestable, almost diabolist I think, and his style crude: but he showed me what a bang you cd. get from mixing these two elements.
To Ruth Pitter on 4 Jan 1947:
No, I have yet another humiliation to undergo. Can you bear the truth? — Voyage to Arcturus is not the parody of Perelandra but its father. It was published, a dead failure, about 25 years ago. Now that the author is dead it is suddenly leaping into fame: but I’m one of the old guard who had a treasured second hand copy before anyone had heard of it. From Lyndsay I first learned what other planets in fiction are really good for: for spiritual adventures. Only they can satisfy the craving which sends our imaginations off the earth. Or putting it another way, in him I first saw the terrific results produced by the union of two kinds of fiction hitherto kept apart: the Novalis, G. Macdonald, James Stephens sort and the H. G. Wells, Jules Verne sort. My debt to him is very great: tho’ I’m a little alarmed to find it so obvious that the affinity came through to you even from a talk about Lyndsay!
For the rest, Voyage to A is on the borderline of the diabolical: i.e. the philosophy expressed is so Manichaean as to be almost Satanic. Secondly, the style is often laughably crude. Thirdly, the proper names (Polecrab, Blodsombre, Wombflash, Tydomin, Sullenbode) are superb and perhaps Screwtape owes something to them. Fourthly, you must read it. You will have a disquieting but not-to-be-missed experience.
To William Kinter on 28 Mar 1953:
My real model was David Lyndsay’s Voyage to Arcturus wh. first suggested to me that the form of ‘science fiction’ cd. be filled by spiritual experiences.
To Joy Gresham on 22 Dec 1953:
As far as I can remember you were non-committal about Childhood’s End: I suppose you were afraid that you might raise my expectations too high and lead to disappointment. If that was your aim, it has succeeded, for I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over. It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers; away up near Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus and Wells’s First Men in the Moon. It is better than any of Stapleton’s. It hasn’t got Ray Bradbury’s delicacy, but then it has ten times his emotional power, and far more mythopoeia.
To Ruth Pitter on 9 Jul 1956:
Thank you for the Voyage returned. I felt pretty sure you couldn’t think it vulgar once you read it: diabolical, mad, childishly ill-written in places — almost anything you like rather than vulgar.
To Alan Hindle on 31 Jan 1960:
Voyage to Arcturus was reprinted by Messrs Faber and Faber within the last 20 years. The original edition (I forget who published it) is still sometimes obtainable. Rogers of Newcastle on Tyne is quite as good a bookseller for hunting out old books as any London or Oxford firm, and usually charges less. The author, David Lindsay, is dead. If you get the book, I shd. think twice before introducing it to the young. It is very strong meat indeed and the philosophy behind it is that of Schopenhauer or the Manichaeans. A youngster unless in perfect psychological health (and what youngster is?) cd. damage himself with it a good deal.
To Robin Anstey on 2 Nov 1960:
You probably know David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus (Faber)? If not, don’t overlook it. This is the fullest example of what I mean — tho’ the message he is putting over is a v. horrible one — Schopenhauer if not Manes himself.
To Joan Lancaster on 27 Mar 1963:
So you are, like me, in love with syllables? Good. Sheldar is a boss word. So are Tolkien’s Tinuviel and Silmaril. And David Lindsay’s Tormance in Voyage to Arcturus. And Northumberland is glorious; but best of all, if only it meant something more interesting, is silver salver.
To Father Peter Milward SJ on 27 Jun 1963:
My stories were not influenced by any of the authors you mention. The first impulse came, I believe, from H. G. Wells. More important was David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus.
To Joan Lancaster on 11 Jul 1963:
I think the poetry is developing alright. You’ll be enchanted with imaginary names for a bit and probably go too far, but that will do you no harm. Like having had measles. I don’t think Joyce is as good at them as David Lindsay (Voyage to Arcturus) or E. R. Eddison in The Worm Ouroboros.
A Voyage to Arcturus is available to download in EPUB or Kindle formats.
Three years after G. K. Chesterton published Heretics, he wrote Orthodoxy. It’s a great book, including one of my favorite Chesterton pieces, “The Ethics of Elfland.”
As for why he wrote a second book (it’s sort of a sequel to Heretics), he explains why in the preface:
This book is meant to be a companion to Heretics, and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of the book called Heretics because it merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably affirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical…. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer’s own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology.
As usual, it’s available to download in EPUB or Kindle formats.
Today’s release: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, available in EPUB and Kindle formats. It’s been a favorite of mine since the first time I read it years ago, and I’ve wanted to make a nice ebook edition of it for a while now. Enjoy.
(If you’re wondering why I make my own editions of books that already have plenty of ebook editions available, it’s mainly because bookmaking is fun. And I don’t really like the other freely available ebook editions of Jane Eyre.)
