This ‘n’ that

Yes, I know I’ve shamefully neglected this blog.

Although it’s very unlikely, it’s possible someone may notice I no longer allow comments to be added on certain old entries.  That’s because these entries seem to be particularly prone to getting spam; not allowing comments on them at all saves me the trouble of clicking the “spam” button on the moderation page every day or two.  Entries where I think actual further discussion might someday occur, or that have never been hit with comment spam, still allow comments and probably always will.

If you’ve never commented here before, your comment will be moderated.  If it’s not spam or obvious trollage it’ll be approved, usually within twenty-four hours.

I have a novel due on September 15.  I might actually make the deadline.  I’m hoping that once it’s turned in I’ll have more time to devote to stuff like blogs.

Is there anything anyone would particularly like me to post about?

8 thoughts on “This ‘n’ that

  1. I’d like to hear more about general goings-on and your personal writing process as you create new works.

    Can’t wait to read the new book, by the by. 🙂

  2. The new novel is called A Young Man Without Magic, and it’s the start of a new series.

    I really should say more about it.

    It originally had the working title Sorcerer’s Bane, and the series has the working title “The Fall of the Sorcerers”; I’ve posted about it here before, though not lately.

    Okay, I’ll try to come up with some details in a couple of days.

  3. I remember you writing about this series! Glad to hear it’s coming along.

    I wouldn’t mind hearing about your thoughts on economic growth in stories. Many stories seem to depict a static society, while others (ex. Summer Palace) depict growth and change. Just perhaps talking about this?

  4. Static societies don’t really exist above the hunter-gatherer level, and they aren’t very common even there. I mean, people talk about the Middle Ages as if Europe was static, or about China, and this mostly demonstrates that the people saying this don’t know much history.

    Some things stay pretty constant — I remember looking at 4,000-year-old artifacts in the Shanghai Museum and realizing you could still buy effectively the same designs in the Nanjing Donglu shopping district, not as collectibles but for everyday use — but not enough that you can excuse talking about “a static society.”

    Fantasy, all too often, ignores this. I made fun of this a little in some of my comments in The Turtle Moves!, pointing out that Aragorn was asserting his claim to the throne of Gondor nine hundred years after his ancestors gave it up — roughly equivalent to the rightful heir of Edward the Confessor showing up now and demanding that Queen Elizabeth II step aside in his favor.

    I’ve sometimes written about relatively static societies because hey, sometimes it makes for a better story, but I don’t really believe in them.

  5. Static may not be the right word but many people seem motivated by nostalgia for “the good old days” when everything was wonderful. The idea that there was a long ago Golden Age and that we have degenerated since then. Ideals become romanticized and people attempt to maintain those ideals for fear that the world will come to an end if we don’t abide by them. You see that in most aggressive religious and nationalist philosophies.

  6. I just thought of another thing: I’d like to hear the “long sad story” of how you came to write the Worlds of Shadow series.

  7. Oh, now that I could do.

    As for the sort of nostalgia Romeo mentions, that’s pejorism — the idea that things inevitably get worse.

    The opposite is meliorism, the idea that things are gradually improving.

    Me, I’m a meliorist. Yeah, there are times when we backslide (one of which we’ve been in since the 20th century), but the general trend is upward.

    (And there are plenty of folks in China and India who would disagree with me about the past decade.)

    A lot of fantasy does look back at a Golden Age that never was, certainly. Tolkien was undeniably a pejorist.

    Robert Howard was a hard case to figure; he argued that barbarism was the natural state of humanity, and that those periods when we’ve risen above it were temporary aberrations. So is that saying things are getting better, or worse?

    Anyway, when I have a few minutes I’ll tell the story of how I came to write “Worlds of Shadow.”

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