Here Be Dragons

by Stefan Ekman

  17. See, e.g., Turner, “American Garden,” 48. Reflections on this subject derived from hands-on experience can be found in Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (New York: Grove Press, 1991).

  18. Andersson clarifies the distinction between nature (which I refer to as wild nature) and wilderness: the former is “all (biotic) entities and processes that are unaffected by human beings” while the latter is “natural landscapes”; see Andersson, Humanity and Nature, 81.

  19. Verlyn Flieger similarly defines nature tamed as “nature cultivated according to human standards”; see Flieger, “Taking the Part of Trees,” 154.

  20. For a comprehensive discussion of this conundrum, see Andersson, Humanity and Nature, ch. 5.

  21. White, “Historical Roots”; White, “Continuing”; Manes, “Nature”; Dubos, “Theology.” For an alternative view, see, e.g., Lewis W. Moncrief, “The Cultural Basis of Our Environmental Crisis” (1970), Western Man and Environmental Ethics.

  22. Gen 1:28 (KJV).

  23. Manes, “Nature,” 21; Michael T. Ghiselin, “Poetic Biology: A Defense and Manifesto,” New Literary History 7, no. 3 (1976): 497. Cf. Aristotle, History of Animals, 8.1.

  24. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 18.

  25. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1961), 19, 124.

  26. John Clute, “Urban Fantasy,” in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 975–76.

  27. John Clute, “City,” in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 204.

  28. References to Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, are given parenthetically in the text. The following abbreviations are used in the references: FR—The Fellowship of the Ring, TT—The Two Towers, RK—The Return of the King, Appx—appendices to The Lord of the Rings. Book and chapter are given in Roman numerals before the page reference.

  29. See Gimli’s comments on this: FR, II, iv, 307.

  30. Tolkien to Rayner Unwin, January 22, 1954, in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 173. Interestingly enough, after some hesitation, Tolkien decided that the title of the second volume, The Two Towers, could not refer to either of those towers but must “if there is any real reference in it to Vol II refer to Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol.” Tolkien’s original design for the jacket of this volume, however, shows Orthanc and Minas Morgul (see note in Letters 444).

  31. Kocher, Master of Middle-earth, 125. He refers to TT, IV, v, 663.

  32. Presumably, this is the same substance that the Númenoreans used for the Stone of Erech, which has also remained unchanged, smooth and black, over the millennia (RK, V, ii, 771–72).

  33. Flieger, “Taking,” 152.

  34. Ibid., 155.

  35. Dickerson and Evans, Ents, 66–67.

  36. The discussion in this section is based on Charles de Lint’s Newford novels and short fiction published until 2006.

  37. Charles de Lint, Moonlight and Vines (New York: Tor, 1999), blurb; Charles de Lint, “Charles de Lint: Frequently Asked Questions,” SF Site, http://www.sfsite.com/charlesdelint/faq01.htm. Accessed December 28, 2011.

  38. Charles de Lint, From a Whisper to a Scream (1992; New York: Orb–Tom Doherty, 2003), 125.

  39. Charles de Lint, The Onion Girl (2002; London: Gollancz-Orion, 2004), 244.

  40. Charles de Lint, Forests of the Heart (2000; London: Gollancz-Orion, 2002). Further references to Forests are given parenthetically in the text.

  41. Charles de Lint, Widdershins (New York: Tor, 2006), 77. Further references to Widdershins are given parenthetically in the text.

  42. The Otherworld (also called dreamlands) provides a setting for numerous stories. The following de Lint novels deal with journeys to the Otherworld in one way or another: The Dreaming Place (1990), Trader (1997), Onion Girl (2002), Forests of the Heart, Spirits in the Wires (2003), Widdershins, and, to some extent, Medicine Road (2004). The dreamland city of Mabon created by Sophie in her dreams but visitable by others in theirs (in, e.g., “Mr. Truepenny’s Book Emporium and Gallery” [1992]) is similar to the Otherworld created by the author Cat Midhir’s dreams in de Lint’s early novel Yarrow (1986).

  43. Charles de Lint, “Ghosts of Wind and Shadow,” Dreams Underfoot (1990; New York: Tor, 1994). Further references to “Ghosts” are given parenthetically in the text.

  44. Charles de Lint, “The Stone Drum” (1989), Dreams Underfoot, 57–59; see also Charles de Lint, “Winter Was Hard” (1991), Dreams Underfoot, 160–61. Further references to “Winter” are given parenthetically in the text.

  45. See, e.g., Charles de Lint, Spirits in the Wires (New York: Tor, 2003), esp. 413–16. Further references to Spirits are given parenthetically in the text.

  46. Charles de Lint, Trader (1997; New York: Orb–Tom Doherty, 2005), 44; Charles de Lint, “Tallulah” (1991), Dreams Underfoot, 444–45; Charles de Lint, “Pal o’ Mine,” The Ivory and the Horn (1993; New York: Tor, 1995), 222. Further references to Trader are given parenthetically in the text.

  47. Charles de Lint, “But for the Grace Go I” (1991), Dreams Underfoot, 326.

  48. For instance, Megan Lindholm’s Wizard of the Pigeons (1986) and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (1996). For further discussion on invisibility and homelessness in these two works, see Stefan Ekman, “Down, Out and Invisible in London and Seattle,” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 94 (2005).

  49. Charles de Lint, “The Invisibles” (1997), Moonlight and Vines, 217.

  50. Charles de Lint, “Waifs and Strays” (1993), The Ivory and the Horn, 34. Further references to “Waifs” are given parenthetically in the text.

  51. Charles de Lint, “The Forest Is Crying” (1994), The Ivory and the Horn, 53. Further references to “Forest” are given parenthetically in the text. The quotation is from Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990).

  52. Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 261.

  53. Charles de Lint, Someplace to Be Flying (1998; London: Pan, 1999), 85. Further references to Someplace are given parenthetically in the text.

  54. According to, e.g., “The Buffalo Man” and Spirits in the Wires. The earlier stories “The Stone Drum” and “Ghosts of Wind and Shadow,” on the other hand, place their house a few blocks to the north, on McKennitt Street. See Charles de Lint, “The Buffalo Man,” Tapping the Dream Tree (1999; New York: Tor, 2002), 104, and de Lint, Spirits, 151; and cf. de Lint, “Stone Drum,” 45, and de Lint, “Ghosts,” 197. Further references to “Buffalo Man” are given parenthetically in the text.

  55. Charles de Lint, “Pixel Pixies” (1999), Tapping the Dream Tree, 276.

  56. Charles de Lint, Memory and Dream (New York: Tor, 1994), 32 et passim. Further references to Memory are given parenthetically in the text.

  57. Charles de Lint, The Blue Girl (2004; New York: Firebird-Penguin, 2006), 251. Further references to Blue Girl are given parenthetically in the text.

  58. Charles de Lint, “Held Safe by Moonlight and Vines,” Moonlight and Vines, 117. Further references to “Held Safe” are given parenthetically in the text.

  59. Charles de Lint, “In This Soul of a Woman” (1994), Moonlight and Vines, 51.

  60. Charles de Lint, The Dreaming Place (1990; New York: Firebird-Penguin, 2002), 23. Further references to Dreaming Place are given parenthetically in the text.

  61. Charles de Lint, “That Explains Poland” (1988), Dreams Underfoot, 108. Further references to “That Explains” are given parenthetically in the text.

  62. Charles de Lint, “The Sacred Fire” (1989), Dreams Underfoot, 139.

  63. The story of the tree that grows on stories is told mainly in “The Conjure Man” (1992) but is also referred to in “A Tempest in Her Eyes” (1994) and Onion Girl.

  64. In this respect, Kellygnow is similar to Tamson House, which acts as a genius loci, for instance by magically k
eeping a severely wounded man alive. See Charles de Lint, Moonheart (1990; London: Pan, 1991), esp. 20–22, 24, 256.

  65. References to China Miéville, Perdido Street Station (2000; New York: Del Rey–Ballantine, 2001); China Miéville, The Scar (New York: Del Rey–Ballantine, 2002); China Miéville, Iron Council (2004; New York: Del Rey–Ballantine, 2005); and China Miéville, “Jack,” Looking for Jake: Stories (New York: Del Rey–Ballantine, 2005), are given parenthetically in the text.

  66. Joan Gordon, “Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Miéville,” Science Fiction Studies 30, no. 3 (2003): 362.

  67. Joan Gordon, “Hybridity, Heterotopia, and Mateship in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station,” Science Fiction Studies 30, no. 3 (2003): 456, and Mendlesohn, Rhetorics, xx. Even the later Bas-Lag novels have been considered to blur the genre boundaries; see, for instance, the review of Iron Council by Andrew Hedgecock, Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 94 (2005): 123. Miéville also claims that he writes fiction located at the intersection of science fiction and fantasy; see Gordon, “Reveling in Genre,” 359, and China Miéville, “Messing with Fantasy,” Locus (March 2002): 5. Jeff VanderMeer refers to Perdido Street Station as the “flash point” for “the New Weird,” fiction in which the setting “may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy”; see Jeff VanderMeer, “The New Weird: ‘It’s Alive?’,” The New Weird, eds. Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer (San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2008), xi, xvi. For further discussion on genre-blurring and the New Weird, see also Darja Malcolm-Clarke, “Tracking Phantoms,” The New Weird, 341, and Jukka Halme, “Blurring the Lines,” The New Weird, 355.

  68. Rich Paul Cooper, “Building Worlds: Dialectical Materialism as Method in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag,” Extrapolation 50, no. 2 (2009): 220–21.

  69. Christopher Palmer, “Saving the City in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Novels,” Extrapolation 50, no. 2 (2009): 225–26.

  70. Gordon, “Hybridity,” 456–63.

  71. Yagharek’s prologue, epilogue, and interludes are printed in italics but are quoted in roman type here.

  72. The city’s size is inferred from figures given in Perdido Street Station (146).

  73. Pratchett repeatedly makes a similar point about the river through Ankh-Morpork, which is, owing to silt and refuse, almost viscous enough to walk on.

  74. Mendlesohn, Rhetorics, 64. The constructs are so greatly feared that they are eventually wiped out in a conflict called the Construct Wars (Iron 87–88).

  75. Gordon, “Hybridity,” 461.

  76. References to Patricia A. McKillip, Ombria in Shadow (New York: Ace Books, 2002), are given parenthetically in the text.

  77. For a discussion on loyalty in Ombria in Shadow, see Christine Mains, “For Love or for Money: The Concept of Loyalty in the Works of Patricia McKillip,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 16, no. 3 (2006).

  78. Christine Mains, “Bridging World and Story: Patricia McKillip’s Reluctant Heroes,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 16, no. 1 (2005): 43.

  79. John Clute, “Edifice,” The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 309–10.

  80. Clute, “Water Margins,” 997.

  81. Mains, “Bridging,” 44.

  82. Meeker suggests that we limit our choices by establishing “artificial polarities” such as good/evil, true/false, and pain/pleasure. Nature/culture would make another such set. See Joseph W. Meeker, The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972), 32.

  83. Don. D. Elgin sees the transition from hunting and gathering to farming as one of the roots to our ecological crisis. The other two roots are Western religion and the ideas that came out of the French and Industrial Revolutions; see Elgin, Comedy, 4–9. It should be noted that, for instance, Breivik and (more recently) Hilbert find that the Old Testament advocates humanity’s stewardship—rather than ownership—of the world; see Gunnar Breivik, “Religion, livsform og natur [Religion, way of life, and nature],” Økologi, økofilosofi[Ecology, Ecophilosophy], eds. Paul Hofseth and Arne Vinje (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1975), and Betsy S. Hilbert, “Beyond ‘Thou Shalt Not’: An Ecocritic Reads Deuteronomy,” Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism, eds. Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001).

  84. The latter position has been forcefully argued, e.g., by Patrick Curry, “Nature Post-nature,” New Formations 64 (2008): 53–54.

  85. In their anthology of critical texts aimed at developing the field of ecocriticism, Armbruster and Wallace go so far as to claim that “understanding nature and culture as interwoven rather than as separate sides of a dualistic construct” is one of ecocriticism’s “central conceptual challenges”; see Armbruster and Wallace, Beyond Nature Writing, 4.

  86. Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories,” The Tolkien Reader, 57.

  87. The evil landscape in Tolkien is discussed in detail in chapter 5.

  5. REALMS AND RULERS

  1. Moorcock, Wizardry, 64.

  2. References to Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, are given parenthetically in the text. The following abbreviations are used in the references: FR—The Fellowship of the Ring, TT—The Two Towers, RK—The Return of the King, Appx—appendices to The Lord of the Rings. Book and chapter are given in Roman numerals before the page reference.

  3. A handful of Dark Ladies can be found in the genre, such as the White Witch in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), but the overwhelming majority of these personifications of evil are male, so I therefore refer to a Dark Lord as he.

  4. Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories,” 68. Clute briefly notes that tragic fantasy exists but is uncommon; see Clute, “Fantasy,” 339.

  5. The model is presented by Clute in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy and described in somewhat more detail in his Guest Scholar Speech at the Twentieth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (Fort Lauderdale, 1999; later published in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts); see Clute, “Fantasy,” 338–39, and John Clute, “Grail, Groundhog, Godgame: Or, Doing Fantasy,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 10, no. 4 (2000). Clute’s model is effectively used by Farah Mendlesohn in her fantasy taxonomy; see Mendlesohn, Rhetorics, xv et passim. The quotation is from a review of Mendlesohn’s book; see Clute, Canary Fever, 369, originally published as “Drawn and Quartered” in Strange Horizons, June 2008.

  6. Attebery, Fantasy Tradition, 12–13.

  7. Ibid., 13–14. Elsewhere, Attebery observes that The Lord of the Rings conforms to Propp’s morphology; see Attebery, Strategies of Fantasy, 15.

  8. V[ladímir] Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (1928; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 63–64.

  9. Clute, “Fantasy,” 338–39.

  10. John Clute, “Healing,” in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 458.

  11. Don D. Elgin notes that even Aragorn’s line will fail, however, and that Sam and his children are the future of Middle-earth; see Elgin, Comedy, 50. Elgin’s point suggests a telling comparison between the two characters: it is possible to argue that whereas Aragorn is the monarch who ascends the throne, marries, and heals the land, Sam heals the land, marries, and becomes a successful, democratic representative of his people (he is elected Mayor seven times; see Appx B 1071–72). Rather than the pro-monarchy tract it has often been accused of being, Tolkien’s text leaves it to the reader to decide who is the “proper” ruler.

  12. Mendlesohn, Rhetorics, 3.

  13. Jones, Tough Guide, 108.

  14. The association between Aragorn’s ascending the throne and the introduction of nature in Minas Tirith (discussed in chapter 4) is a result of his policy (such as allowing the elves to plant trees in the City) and Gandalf’s help in finding the scion of the dead Tree; there is no direct link.

  15. Ursula Le Guin, The Farthest Shore. The Earthsea Quartet (1973; London: Puffin-Penguin, 1993).

  16. Michael Ende, The Neverending Story, trans. Ralph Manheim (Harmondsworth, U
K: Penguin, 1984), 31–32. Original: “Die Kindliche Kaiserin galt zwar—wie ihr Titel ja schon sagt—als die Herrscherin über all die unzähligen Länder des grenzenlosen phantásischen Reiches, aber sie war in Wirklichkeit viel mehr als eine Herrscherin, oder besser gesagt, sie war etwas ganz anderes. […] Sie war nur da, aber sie war auf eine besondere Art da: Sie war der Mittelpunkt allen Lebens in Phantásien.” Michael Ende, Die unendliche Geschichte (Stuttgart: K. Thienemanns Verlag, 1979), 33–34.

  17. Patricia A. McKillip, The Riddlemaster of Hed (1976; New York: Del Rey–Ballantine, 1978), 85.

  18. Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters (1988; London: Corgi, 1989), 127.

  19. Ibid., 90–92.

  20. Ibid., 92.

  21. In the Discworld novels, the legitimate heir often does not ascend the throne. See, e.g., Pyramids (discussed in chapter 3), in which Teppic renounces the throne in favor of his (maybe) half-sister; and Guards! Guards! (1989) and Men at Arms (1993), in which Carrot has all the signs marking him an heir to the throne but these signs are quite emphatically ignored, and he remains an officer of the Ankh-Morpork Watch. Carrot’s superior in the Watch is even explicitly against the idea of kings in, e.g., Feet of Clay (1996).

  22. Brooks, Magic Kingdom.

  23. Tad Williams, The War of the Flowers (New York: Daw Books, 2003).

  24. William’s Oberon and Titania recall the fairy rulers in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who are also directly linked to the land. Cf. Titania’s description of how their quarrel has caused a large number of ills to befall the land and its people: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.1.81–117.

  25. References to Tim Powers, Last Call (1992; New York: Avon-HarperCollins, 1993), are given parenthetically in the text.

  26. Fiona Kelleghan and Tim Powers, “Interview with Tim Powers,” Science Fiction Studies 25, no. 1 (1998): 7. The second book, Expiration Date (1996), focuses on ghosts and people who ingest them, and the two sets of protagonists are brought together in Earthquake Weather (1997), when another bid is made for the kingship. The books are also referred to as the Fault Lines series.