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MAKER
October 31, 2000
Looking at Farmer's
"Maker of Universes", I
once again start thinking
about it as one of the
"Great Stories", and also
as one of the "Cursed I also think it has an
Stories". astoundingly clumsy
second sentence.
The Sandman line:
"The great
stories will
always return to
their true form"? And as for the curse...
well, more later.
What is the true
form that this
story is seeking?
"Maker of Universes" is the
first occurrence that I know Oh, of course:
of, but there may be others. "Universe Maker" by
A.E. van Vogt...
Certainly, originality
isn't it's most obvious
attribute.
The story, in outline: Compared to Zelazny's "Amber":
The main character, a man
who goes by the name of
Wolff, is on the far side of
"middle aged". Getting old
and fat, married to a woman
who has turned shewish, he's A difference. Zelazny's
looking at buying a house in "Corey" stays young, and
some suburban development. lives well.
His background he was an The main character
amnesiac, adopted by a comes to his senses in
family named Wolff when in a private hospital.
his early 20s. He was amnesiac for years,
and now he's also been
Looking over this house, narcotized.
for a moment he is by
himself down in the
basement: he hears a faint
trumpet call on the inside
of a closet door.
Opening the door, he finds He encounters a strange
within this closet a portal trickster figure, who seems
looking out on an exotic to know him: "Random"
scene: a man beset by
beasts. who calls out to him Corwin bluffs him about his
in recognition. As the amnesia, and Random leads him
portal begins to close, the through "Shadow", into strange
man tosses a seven-valved exotic realms.
horn to him through the
doorway. We later learn the
man is trickster figure
named Kickaha.
Wolff returns that night to the
house, breaks in, and blows the
horn horn to open the portal,
as the police are (somewhat
unrealistically) closing in on
him, he jumps through the portal.
And in this idyllic (No need for that break
land, he grows young and in the action with Amber,
strong again... but the theme of redemption
is also lost.)
(Reminiscent of "Topper".)
THORNE
Eventually he regains his
memory, and learns he is
one of the masters of
this strange realm.
He is a member of a family Check.
of some very contentious
siblings; in a war with
them he ended up a virtual
prisoner on earth.
They find his personality Check.
strangely effected by his long
stay amongst humanity: softened,
more ethical, less venal..
And for a while, this story Check! The originally planned
progresses, through volume series of 9 becomes 5, and the
after volume of the World of last two are prefunctory. The
Tiers series, but eventually later "Merlin" series, I will
it just stops, uncompleted. politely decline to comment upon.
A later volume about the
Lava lamp world or some such
damn thing was incredibly
lame, and to my knowledge,
Farmer has just left the
series alone afterwards.
This is The Curse:
the story can never
be finished, not in
an authentic form.
Possibly the trouble is that
the real point of the story is
over and done with so early.
The "happy ending" is at the beginning.
There is no where to go from there.
One possibility: take seriously
the issue that the character
change might not be an improvement.
Does "humanized" = "weak"?
Is it interesting that
Kickaha is vaugely native american,
and Random is vaugely beatnik?
Two different images of the exotic,
the outsider, the uncivilized.
And then there's the third incarnation
(that I know of) Gaiman's Sandman comic
book. AMBER_GRAINS
The parallels are less exact here, but no
less real. The god imprisioned on earth,
humanized by his imprisonment, escaping to
travel into a strange realm (originally in
a manner strikingly similar to "walking
through shadow"). The other members of the
pantheon are siblings engaged in something a
little heavier than sibling rivalry.
And the peculiarly unsatisfying,
long drawn out ending. In this case
a somewhat clumsy tragic end, the
hero brought down by his own flaws.
The treatment of the absent father figure.
The inevitable fights -- over what?
The convoluted machinations needed to explain away
the imprisonment and escape.
The scene where memory is at last restored.
The nature of the exotic.
And the phenomena that I think I'll tag
"the disappointment of Galifrey":
Take the idea of Amber: the
one true, perfect realm.
All that we are familiar
with here on earth is just a
distored shadow.
Except that when you
actually *get* to Amber,
the perfect realm ain't so
perfect, is it? In fact,
it looks an awful lot like
the usual paper mache
medievalism you run into in
genre fantasy. The
supermen aren't very super,
and it barely matters who
wins the conflict, *except*
that our sympathies are
with the humanized main
character.
The core learns from the periphery?
A related problem: All those princesses and princes!
Many many characters, and damn little
character to stretch between them all.
(Gaiman does best in this respect,
helped along by his decision to make
them embodiments of elemental
principles).
And isn't it peculiar that Farmer and Zelazny
*didn't* go that route? Whoever heard of
a pantheon without some division of labor?
(Zelazny might not have wanted to return
to territory he's covered before...)
Consider possible manuevers:
Memory manipulation can be achieved via
technological means, a more science
fictional premise, ala Van Vogt, Dick, Egan.
(Van Vogt? Is Null-A the zero point?)
THE_SECRET_MASTERS_OF_DESTINY
Drop the fantasy crap. What happens if you pretend
that this could be real?
(Actually, Farmer's gods are supposed
to be using super-science, right?)
Ruling cliques hardly require medieval
power structures...
But: if your "gods" are using super-tech
for their "magic", one difference from a
pure fantasy scenario is that it gets
hard to make excuses for long term
monopolies of power.
Technical secrets tend to
leak and spread out.
So the only workable
story you can tell is
the overthrow of the
Technological Gods,
the democraticization
of power.
Zelazny's
"Lord of Light"
===
Upon re-reading, I started thinking, wow, this is really Edgar
Rice, Then remembered: oh yeah, Farmer did a Tarzan pastiche,
right? And near the end, Kickaha comes storming in wearing loin
cloth, leading a bunch of intelligent apes...
So, in Farmer's mind, he's doing a re-telling of
Burroughs? Perhaps John Carter.
Also the unusual physical strength of the
main character.
Might be worth following that trail, though I have my
doubts it'll lead all that far.
Note the structure of "Maker": begins with
the character in a state of amenisa, and The long-lost heir
saves the realization of his identity for to the throne.
the very end of that first volume.
Kafka makes fun of
In contrast Zelazny's "Nine Princes" has such fantasies in
Corwin *told* what's going on, but still "The Imperial Messenger"
not get his memory back (get in tune with
the pattern) until near the end... The DOWN_WITH_ARISTOCRACY
mystery is dispensed with much earlier.
(And Gaiman's Dream, of course, keeps what wits
he has about him throughout. Missed a trick there,
perhaps... though his "Death Takes a Holiday" story
uses that this trope.)
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