That brought me here, that brings me back

[sovay]

Normally I dream about art of the kind I wish actually existed, like female-created pre-Code proto-noir or really inclusive '90's sci-fi TV. Last night I dreamed about reading a relatively famous fantasy trilogy from the '80's that I had just happened to miss during the period where I was reading anything with a genre-looking cover that wasn't nailed down. It was an entirely plausible '80's fantasy trilogy of a certain style; it was very Celticky and not very good. Everyone had flaming red or jet-black hair and lots of it. There was an important forest and frequent talk of the Goddess. The antagonists were not strictly speaking Roman, but they were an imperial power which had legions, so the audience didn't have to reach for the parallel; I want to say there was some component of science fantasy, or at least technology of the ancients that passed Clarke's Law, but I can't remember which direction it went. There was a love triangle. Everyone had hurt/comfort coming out of their ears. I was talking about it with a friend who doesn't exist in waking life at the equally dream-based sushi restaurant where he worked; his mother had named him after her favorite character, about which he felt embarrassedly ambivalent having read the series as an adult and realized that his namesake was the author's designated plucky comic relief. (Not that most people noticed, since the character's name was a permutation of "Seamus," but I understood the principle of the thing.) I didn't hate the experience of reading it, but it was definitely no longer my thing. I might have felt differently in elementary through high school. From outside the dream, I'm actually pretty sure I would have read it if I'd run across it on a library shelf and not noticed the problems for years. Anything that wasn't nailed down. I have piecemeal middle-school memories of Monica Hughes' The Isis Pedlar (1982) and that novel has a terrible case of the Space Irish. derspatchel and I are off to early dinner and the MFA.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love that everything about this dream is adjacent to reality. Not just the no-longer-quite-your-thing Celtic fantasy, but also the friend you were discussing it with, and the sushi restaurant. And now I'm thinking about multiple universes and, of all things, marketing success. Like, if you can't do well in this universe with your fantasy trilogy, how about you try selling it in the next universe over?

[sovay]

I love that everything about this dream is adjacent to reality. Not just the no-longer-quite-your-thing Celtic fantasy, but also the friend you were discussing it with, and the sushi restaurant.

I don't know if it's the same parallel reality the nonexistent movies come from, either.

And now I'm thinking about multiple universes and, of all things, marketing success. Like, if you can't do well in this universe with your fantasy trilogy, how about you try selling it in the next universe over?

That won't do any good with some of my favorite authors, though, unless ours is the parallel where their books got sold!