Meditations on Middle-Earth (26 page)

The thing that I took away from this essay, imperfectly as I understood it then, was that fairy tales had once been so much more than Disney cartoons. So I went back to the-fairy tale book that had been my favorite as a young child:
The Golden Book of Fairy Tales
, translated from the French by Marie Ponsot, and exquisitely, deliciously illustrated by Adrienne Segur. And here it was that I found at last the country that I could wander in, the water that would quench my thirst, and the food that would quell the ache in my belly. For I had been very fortunate as a child—this was no bowdlerized collection. These tales, largely taken from the Russian and the French, had been shortened for young readers but not simplified. Tolkien himself had never enjoyed the French tales of D’Aulnoy and Perrault, but I found in their rococo imagery exactly what I’d been looking for: intimate stories that spoke, in a coded language, of personal transformation. These were tales of children abandoned in woods; of daughters poisoned by their mothers’ hands; of sons forced to betray their siblings; of men and women struck down by wolves, or imprisoned in windowless towers. I read of the girl who dared not speak if she wanted to save her swan-brothers from harm; I read, heart pounding, of Donkeyskin, whose own father desired to bed her. The tales that affected me the most were variations on one archetypal theme: a young person beset by grave difficulties sets off, alone, through the deep, dark woods, armed only with quick wits, clear sight, persistance, courage, and compassion. It is by these virtues we identify the heroes; it is with these tools that they make their way. Without these tools, no magic can save them. They are at the mercy of the wolf and wicked witch.

A year later, my own life reached the inevitable crisis of a classic fairy tale. I asked for a dress the color of the moon, the color of the sun, the color of the sky, but nothing I did kept evil at bay, and so I fled. Living on the streets of a distant city, my possessions fit into one small sack: two pairs of jeans; two flannel shirts; some letters from my first, lost love; a travel-stained sleeping bag; and
The Golden Book of Fairy Tales
. Like Frodo Baggins, I discovered I had the gift of making true friendships; and like the heroes of fairy tales, as I traveled onward through the woods, I learned that no kindness, however small, goes unrewarded. I learned how to tell friend from foe, and met helpers along the road, animal guides and fairies cloaked in the most unlikely disguises.

A year later, by magic as powerful as any enchanted ring, I found myself in the safe harbor of a small midwestern college. It was here that I discovered the legacy J. R. R. Tolkien had left behind: a whole new publishing genre called
fantasy
, rooted in myth and magic. It was deeply important to me that some of these books were written by women authors: Ursula Le Guin, Patricia A. McKillip, Joy Chant, Susan Cooper, C. L. Moore, and many others, blazing trails into the lands where I longed to make my home. I studied literature, folklore, and women’s studies, and satisfied my hunger with the scholarly works of Katherine Briggs, the fiction of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Angela Carter, the fairy-tale poetry of Anne Sexton, the fairy-tale art of Jessie M. King . . . all of which proved that Tolkien had been right: fairy-stories could rise to Art. And that even I, a working-class girl, could add to the soup of story.

College, for me, marked my emergence from the dark woods to a brighter place, the fertile lands where life could now be lived
happily ever after
. This does not mean, of course, a life free of difficulties and challenges, but one that partakes of the qualities that Tolkien required in a fairystory’s ending: the consolation of joy and what he called “a miraculous grace.” As fond as I am of this brighter land, there are times when I journey back into those woods, back into the dark, back
once upon a time
into the endless story. Now, however, I have a different part to play. I’m not the hero struggling through; I’m the one waiting by the side of the road, disguised, and ready to the light the way for those who come behind me.

Wherever I stand waiting on that road, Tolkien has usually been there before. If I ever come face to face with him in that forest, I shall shake his hand.

¹
. In
Essays Presented to Charles Williams
, Oxford University Press, 1947.

²
. Author of
The Owl Service, Elidor, Red Shift, Strandloper
, and other fine books.

³
. In his essay collection
The Voice That Thunders
, The Harvill Press, 1998.

⁴
. Some authors write in both modes, of course. Tolkien himself adopted the fairy-tale voice in his shorter fiction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Haber
is the author of eight novels including
Star Trek Voyager: Bless the Beasts
(Pocket Books) and a three-book series for Daw Books,
Woman Without a Shadow, The War Minstrels
, and
Sister Blood
. She is co-author of
Science of the X-Men
. Her short fiction has appeared in
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, and many anthologies, including
Sandman: Boofe of Dreams
and
Alien Pets
. She lives in Oakland, California.

George R. R. Martin
is the award-winning author of five novels, including
Fever Dream
and
The Armageddon Rag
. For the last ten years, he has been a screenwriter for feature films and television and was the producer of the TV series
Beauty and the Beast
as well as a story editor for
The Twilight Zone
. After a ten-year hiatus, he has now returned to writing novels full-time and is presently at work on
A Dance with Dragons
, the fourth book of his Song of Ice and Fire series.

Raymond E. Feist’s
latest book,
Krondor the Asssassins
, is the second book of his Riftwar Legacy series, following on the heels of
Krondor, the Betrayal
. His previous novels include
Magician, Silverthron, Faerie Tale, Prince of the Blood
, and
The King’s Buccanner
, as well as the four books of his
New York Times
bestselling Serpentwar Saga. He is the creator of the immensely popular computer game
Betrayal at Krondor
—which won
Computer Magazine’s
Best Game of the Year Award—and the follow-up game,
Return to Krondor
.

Paul Anderson
was born in the United States of Scandinavian parents, hence the spelling of his first name. He majored in physics at the University of Minnesota, then went into freelance writing. In 1953 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and married Karen Kruse, with whom he worked in close consultations and sometimes collaboration. Their daughter Astrid is married to their colleague Greg Bear and has given them two grandchildren. Anderson is best known in the science fiction and fantasy fields and had received numerous honors, including seven Hugos, four Nebulas, the J. R. R. Tolkien Memorial Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Among his fantasy works are
The Broken Sword, Three Hearts and Three Lions, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, The Merman’s Children, The King of Ys
(with Karen Anderson),
Operation Chaos
, and
Operation Luna
. Forthcoming is
Mother of Kings
. He passed away on July 31, 2001.

Michael Swanwick
has received the Hugo Award for best science fiction short story in both 1999 and 2000, in addition to previous Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. He is the author of five novels and sixty short stories, all science fiction or fantasy. His most recent novel,
Jack Faust
, was published by Avon. He had two short story collections published in 2000:
Moon Dogs
, and
Tales of Old Earth
. A new novel, tentatively titled
A Feast of Dinosaurs
, will be published by HarperCollins in 2002. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter, and their son, Sean.

Esther Friesner
is the author of twenty-nine novels and over one hundred short stories, in addition to being the editor of six popular anthologies. Her works have been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, and Italy. Her articles on fiction writing have appeared in
Writer’s Market
and
Writer’s Digest Books
. Besides winning two Nebula Awards in succession for Best Short Story (1995 and 1996, from the Science Fiction Writers of America), she was a Nebula finalist twice and a Hugo finalist once. She received the Skylark Award from NESFA and the award for Most Promising New Fantasy Writer of 1986 from
Romantic Times
. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two children, two rambunctious cats, and a fluctuating population of hamsters.

Harry Turtledove
was born in Los Angeles in 1949. After flunking out of Caltech, he earned a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA. He has taught ancient and medieval history at UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal State L.A., and has published a translation of a ninth-century Byzantine chronicle and several scholarly articles. He is also a full-time science fiction and fantasy writer; much of his work involves either alternate histories or historically based fantasy. Most recent releases include
Colonization: Down to Earth
, which continues the universe established in the Worldwar books, and
Darkness Descending
, a high-tech fantasy, also the second in a series. His alternate-history novella,
Down in the Bottomlands
, won the 1994 Hugo award in its category. An alternate-history novelette, “Must and Shall,” was a 1996 Hugo and 1997 Nebula finalist. “Forty, Counting Down” was a 2000 Hugo finalist. He is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos Turtledove. They have three daughters, Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.

Terry Pratchett’s
acclaimed Discworld novels have topped the bestseller lists in England for more than a decade, and sold more than twenty million copies worldwide. Pratchett’s unique brand of irreverent satirical humor has placed him in the pantheon of the most celebrated practitioners of literary parody around the globe.

Robin Hobb
is the author of the Farseer Trilogy
(Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin
, and
Assassin’s Quest
) and the Liveship Traders Trilogy
(Ship of Magic, Mad Ship
, and
Ship of Destiny)
. She is currently at work on The Tawny Man. Book one is titled
Fool’s Errand
, and will see print in January or February of 2002. She resides in Tacoma, Washington. For more information, see the Hobb website at
http://robinhobbonline.com
.

Ursula K. Le Guin
has published over eighty short stories, two collections of essays, ten books for children, several volumes of poetry, and sixteen novels, including the Earthsea Trilogy,
The Lathe of Heaven
, and
The Left Hand of Darkness
. Among the honors her writing has received are a National Book Award, five Hugo and four Nebula Awards, the Kafka Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Howard Vursell Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Diane Duane
is the author of over two dozen novels of science fiction and fantasy, among them the
New York Times
bestsellers
Spock’s World
and
Dark Mirror
, her popular Wizard fantasy series, and
Venom Factor
, a Spider-Man hardcover novel, plus other novels set in the
Star Trek
universe. She lives with her husband, Peter Morwood—with whom she has written five novels including
New York Times
bestseller
The Romulan Way
—in a valley in rural Ireland.

Douglas A. Anderson
published his first book,
The Annotated Hobbit
, in 1988. He corrected text in The Lord of the Rings in both the American and English editions, and both versions contain his introductory “Note on the Text” (U.S. edition, 1987; U.K. edition, 1994). He is also the coauthor (with Wayne G. Hammond) of
J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography
(1993). Other books he has edited include
The Dragon Path: Collected Tales of Kenneth Morris
(1995) and a reissue of E. A. Wyke-Smith’s
The Marvellous Land of Snergs
(1996), a children’s book originally published in 1927 that provided impetus for Tolkien’s
The Hobbit
.

Nobody had ever won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel two years in a row, until
Orson Scott Card
received them for
Ender’s Game
and its sequel,
Speaker for the Dead
, in 1986 and 1987.
Xenocide
(1991) and
Children of the Mind
(1996) continued the series, and a new novel in the Ender’s series, titled
Ender’s Shadow
, was published in August 1999 (Tor Books).
Ender’s Game
is currently in development as a film, with Card as screenwriter. Perhaps Card’s most innovative work is his American fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker, whose first five volumes,
Seventh Son, Red Prophet, Prentice Alvin, Alvin Journeyman, and Heartfire
, are set in a magical version of the American frontier. Card has written two books on writing:
Character and Viewpoint
and
How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
, the latter of which won a Hugo Award in 1991, and has taught writing courses at several universities and workshops. He lives with his family in Greensboro, North Carolina.