you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

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Anyone who has read Ender's Game or anything else by Orson Scott Card should read this article. Creepy. Very creepy. But it's important to know, I think.

This article got me thinking about Fantasy in general. I was really troubled that I hadn't seen it before, what Card was up to. But what about other fantasy or Sci-Fi novels? Where is the line between thought experiment and belief?


There are lots of things that I enjoy reading, the opinions of which I don't hold. St. Augustine, to take an example off the top of my head. I don't agree with him: I'm an athiest, I'm a feminist, I'm a secular humanist, I oppose the death penalty, et cetera et cetera. But I really have come to respect Augustine. I can keep him in his time and place; I can separate him and what he believes, and the part of me that admires him, from reality.

Shakespeare is another. (Yes: all of my examples will probably be from things that I have read recently/am reading). How can I agree with Angelo's morality? I can't. How can I endorse Henry V's militarism? I can't. But within the confines of a play, and, more importantly, within a different time, I can accept them. I can like them within their proper time and place.

But the modern fantasy novel is a problem. It does not have a clearly defined time and place. It is clearly an other, but for what cause? A historical text was written in another time; a work of historical fiction tries to recreate another time. But what does a sword-and-sorcery fantasy novel do? It borrows elements of this other time and other worldview, true, but it also rings very closely to a modern one.

So what are we to make of a novel where the main characters are all in the military; where they are devoted to their country and their (hereditary, divinely appointed, absolute) king; where, to quote "the underlings are pleasant and happy and don't mind pulling their forelocks to the gentry;" where the good and the educated admit the death penalty to be a just and necessary punishment. I can accept this very easily in context. But a fantasy novel tends to pull it out of context. These things are juxtaposed with the equality of women, with concern for human rights, with open acceptance of homosexuality, with pluralistic, holistic religious beliefs, with separation of church and state: in short with what seem to me to be distinctly modern characteristics. The characters, too, in a fantasy novel, have modern sensibilities. (I may as well admit that I'm talking about Tamora Pierce, here.)

But can you have it both ways? I wonder if you can't. When you have modern, "enlightened" characters glorifying war and absolute power, what are you really saying? This is not the same thing as Henry V. Not at all. I can look at Henry and say: 'Here is a man of his times. Here is a man that I can't like unless I go into his time and his place and look at him on his terms.' When I do that, Henry is heroic, the consummate warrior-king. When I do that (and I do it constantly, whenever I think about Henry V, or any similar) I really and truly regret the fall of such a good man as Angelo was. But it isn't how we are expected or how I do look at a fantasy character. The double-focus is gone. Here is a person who is admirable by modern terms, but who espouses divine right and absolute authority. Yes, there's a conflict. But do you really notice it unless you think about it hard? You don't, I think. I know that I don't, generally. Because the fantasy novel smoothes over the conflict; the character is never conflicted.

So what is the message of such a novel. Isn't it really espousing militarism and nationalism? Isn't it really saying, "an absolute monarch is the way to go"? If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might say that this is all a plot by the extreme Right to insidiate Fascism into our approbation. Because that's what these things that are so admirable in Fantasyland are in the real world: Fascism

So, I was reading my excellent edition of City of God today, and the editor mentioned a brilliant extended pun that Augustine made in one of the sections that was cut for this translation. But I managed to track it down:



Unde non importune neque incongrue arbitror accidisse, etsi non humana industria, iudicio fortasse divino, ut hoc verbum, quod est moritur, in latina lingua nec grammatici declinare potuerint, ea regula qua cetera talia declinantur. Namque ab eo quod est oritur, fit verbum praeteriti temporis, ortus est; et si qua similia sunt, per temporis praeteriti participia declinantur. Ab eo vero, quod est moritur, si quaeramus praeteriti temporis verbum, responderi assolet, mortuus est, u littera geminata. Sic enim dicitur mortuus, quomodo fatuus, arduus, conspicuus et si qua similia, quae non sunt praeteriti temporis, sed quoniam nomina sunt, sine tempore declinantur. Illud autem, quasi ut declinetur, quod declinari non potest, pro participio praeteriti temporis ponitur nomen. Convenienter itaque factum est, ut, quemadmodum id quod significat non potest agendo, ita ipsum verbum non posset loquendo declinari. Agi tamen potest in adiutorio gratiae Redemptoris nostri, ut saltem secundam mortem declinare possimus.

I believe it not to happen inappropriately or unsuitably, and if not by human intent then perhaps by divine judgement, that grammaticians cannot decline this word 'moritur' [he dies] in Latin. For 'oritur' [he wakes] makes the perfect tense, 'ortus est;' and those verbs that are similar decline in the perfect tense through participles. But if we look for the perfect tense of 'moritur' it is common to find 'mortuus' est,' with the letter u doubled. For it is said thus: 'mortu-us', like 'fatuus' [foolish], 'arduus' [steep], 'conspicuus' [notable], and those that are similar, which are not perfect tense, but are adjectives, and decline without regard to time. Now, 'moritur,' if we were to decline that thing which cannot be declined, has an adjective in the place of a perfect participle. It is therefore done suitably, that, just as death cannot be declined, the word itself is indeclinable. But with the grace of our Redeemer, we can at least decline this second death.

Okay. So I thought it was kind of funny. Though I suppose all the explanation leading up to it kind of ruins the pun itself.