Something Strange on the Horizon, part II

[spqrblues]

Something to read while the comic is on this weird hiatus: Brownman concludes on Monday. Part I is here. If you feel moved to leave a comment on the Strange Horizons message board, that'd be a cool thing.

Comments

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Or at least I blogged about it here to let a few more people know about it. (grin) Or at least the half-dozen people who stop by my LJ from time to time. (double-grin)

Lovely, lovely story. Let's face it, wishes are jest plain trouble...

Dr. Phil

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the publicity campaign :D

19 hours on the road is not conducive to intelligent conversation, so I think I'll just go... uhm... get ready for today's business meetings.

[kyleen66.livejournal.com]

Ack!

Good god man! How is it that I haven't friended you yet? Here you are a fellow Michigander and EVERYTHING!

::runs off to fix that now.::

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Hey, maybe he can come down for MediaWest! *waves to Dr. Phil*

[cyanocorax.livejournal.com]

That comment board is pretty intimidating. At the very least, we should all go look at the thread so at least the views are respectable.

I don't have anything brilliant to say to start off discussion. But I looked at the threads for other stories and the standards are pretty low. Will probably copy some comments from here to there.

I could say the story is haunting but that would kind of be a given, right? Of course I love it, not the least because it is totally different (in some ways) from your SPQR Blues work.

There's so much going on here -- coming of age, the thin line between reality and fantasy, the richness of the source culture, family dynamics, racial equality. And of course the language and setting make it very tangible. I imagine it took a lot of time to research and write just for those. I'm still trying to understand the ending.

In fact, so much is packed into a two part story I wonder if it should have been a novella. Or maybe that's part of the appeal, that it is so dense it has more impact.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for jumping in and starting us off, cyanocorax! I tried to use your comments as a jumping-off point; I answered some of what you said and then tried to say a little more. Hope other folks join us!

Here's what I said:

>I could say the story is haunting but that would kind of be
>a given, right?

One of the coolest elements of the story IMHO is how NOT haunting it is, at least at first. The narrator inhabits a world in which the line between the living and nonliving, human and other, is quite blurry, and she's perfectly at home in that world. Little Charlie's matter-of-fact acceptance of the supernatural makes it the first section far less frightening than it would be otherwise - but in the second section, when Little Charlie does get scared, the reader is MORE scared, because for something to rattle this feisty little girl it must be REALLY scary!

>the thin line between reality and fantasy

In fact, I have a feeling that line-crossing and living with the other, as opposed to eliminating otherness, is going to turn out to be one of the biggest themes here.

>I'm still trying to understand the ending.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I want to go back and reread the whole thing; it has a richness that I'm sure will reward multiple readings.

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

(to reply quickly before my boss gets back and sees what I'm up to on company time...)

Thank you both for giving the story the benefit of the doubt about the ending. I'm curious to see various reactions to it, rather than going into Auteur Mode and discussing how Very Very Deep I Am :P

[kyleen66.livejournal.com]

Deep. Yes... ::nod nod::

You are very deep.

I, on the other hand, am just a piece of blond fluff.

But I know my place in the world.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

*nods* She is deep. Very, very deep.

I, on the other hand, am just a piece of blond fluff.

I don't know about that... :-)

OTOH, my martial arts instructor back in PA never tired of pointing out that red hair is a mixed-gene thing; when I tripped over my own feet he would say, "There's that blond gene again!"

[cyanocorax.livejournal.com]

I think we're already in deeper than most discussions on that forum. We should have just said, "Great story! Can't wait to read more by this author." And then wait for everyone else to say "Me too."

And what job is it where you are on company time at nearly 10pm?

[meritahut.livejournal.com]

Maybe I meant, "Company paying for the internet use" time. Or maybe I thought it was 10am. Could it have been 10am? I wonder what I meant.

Goodness. I am so car-lagged I barely know which end is up at the moment :)