The Plague Episode

Have you noticed in series that are longer than trilogies, the authors seemed stumped for that many sub-villains and minor conflicts and will throw in a plague, just to change things up?  Generally of a magical cause, and the hero traipses about the countryside some more until he finds the cure, and everything's fine by the time the next book rolls around.  Unless there has been a token death in the party.  Surprisingly, this is not a trope - there is a "Plague," a "Mystical Plague," and a "Find the Cure," but none are quite what I am talking about here in terms of the episode.

As anyone who has read Albert Camus' The Plague or has a decent knowledge of history (or even current events) is well aware, plagues...don't exactly work like that.  People get sick.  And they go to the resident witch-doctors, who are stumped, but do the best they can.  More people get sick.  The town goes into quarantine.  Fear.  Boredom.  More fear.  More boredom.  Unless you're actually a doctor, but even then finding treatments, cures, and vaccines is really tricky even with modern medical technology.

There is no magical cure, because there is no magical cause. That does not stop people from trying.  The Jews got blamed for the Black Death in Europe - partly because they were the only people washing their hands and so weren't getting sick right away.  This led to lynchings and hate crimes.  After all, what is a hate crime but fear+boredom?  Nothing like a crisis to fuel xenophobia.

The miracle cure is pure wish-fulfillment; sickness is an enemy we cannot fight, and we humans don't deal well with helplessness.  Even in modern western society, we have flus and cancers - we can take preventative measures, but sometimes not even that is enough.  Illness is something universal that has a profound impact on the human psyche - and yet much of modern fantasy literature boils it down to a cure-Macguffin.  This happens in part because the plague is a single episode, not the story in itself as Camus made it.  It lessens the impact.

Dear fantasy writers, if you are going to write a plague story, read Camus and not any of the following.  While Novik is a historian-goddess and has probably read Camus and more, I am still approaching the fourth Temeraire book with caution, as it seems to be that series' plague-episode, and this is usually what Plague Episodes look like:

Plague Episodes in Fantasy Literature:

Temple of the Winds (Sword of Truth book 4) by Terry Goodkind – a witch releases a magical plague from a box to mess with the hero.  The hero and his girlfriend are forced to marry other people in order to cure the plague.  It doesn’t really make sense in context.  The hero gets the plague in the end, but he gets better.  One of the token lesbians dies.

Briar’s Book (Circle of Magic book 4) by Tamora Pierce – a careless witch dumps some magical toxic waste in the sewers, starting a plague. Luckily, the plucky kids notice things that lead the cleverer adults to a cure.  They’re healer-mages, so it works.  A friend of the main character who only appears in that book dies.  The main character mentor gets sick, but he calls her back from the edge of death.  It’s a kid’s book.  Curiously, this breaks my aforementioned pattern by being the last book in the quartet, but the stories are self-contained and switch viewpoint character for each.  Also interesting that there seem to be a lot of book fours.  "Four" is a homonym with "Death" in Chinese.

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods (Underland Chronicles book 3) by Suzanne Collins – yes, that Suzanne Collins.  Gregor and his companions go on a quest to find a plague, then find out someone dropped a test tube in a lab where the “good guys” were designing a bioweapon.  Gregor’s bat and mother get sick, but neither die (it is Suzanne Collins though; it’s just that she saves the heartbreaking death for the last book).  No named characters die of the plague that I recall.

The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon book 2) by D.J. Machale – turns out to actually be a mass poisoning by the villain intending to start a war.  Only book two so plot is still formulaic.  Secondary character’s parents die, but he’s supposed to be an orphan because of his destiny, so they would have vanished somehow anyway.

The Keep of Fire (The Last Rune book 2) by Mark Anthony – a plague that causes people to burst into flames is affecting both worlds.  Hero and companions travel to title location and send the radioactive magical rock that is causing the plague into space, thus ending the plague.  It makes sense in context.  Main character’s bestie in our world dies, which is sad.  Other plot-relevant people get sick and die.

Lady Friday (Keys to the Kingdom book 6) by Garth Nix – embarassingly enough, I don’t really remember.  I think the title character was causing the Sleepy Plague, and once she was defeated…there was an extra step in there.  It didn’t just go away.  Main character’s friend got sick, but got better and rallied the defense in our world and took care of the plague victims.

Salamandastron (Redwall) by Brian Jacques – the inhabitants of Redwall abbey get sick with a mysterious illness, and Thrugg the otter journeys to a mythical mountain to find a mythical flower guarded by a mythical eagle which is the only cure.  He finds it of course, and the eagle is nice enough to fly it back for him.  It’s Redwall, so there is some token death, though the token death occurs in a different subplot.

Warriors by Erin Hunter – a recurring subplot where it is actually done well.  Cats get sick.  Sometimes a lot at the same time.  Sometimes they die.  Sometimes there are herbs.  Sometimes the herbs are not enough.  No questing for a special cure to a special illness.

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner – as a joke when people would ask her “What happened next?” she would say “Oh, the next year there was a diphtheria outbreak and they all died.”  Which, in a pre-industrial pseudo-medieval society, is not entirely unlikely.  Though she did eventually write a sequel that was devoid of a diphtheria outbreak.

Quoth the Rowling, Pottermore

Sorry about the title.  Couldn't resist.  Despite which, I still don't have a clue what Pottermore is.

I am the Harry Potter generation, defined here as someone who 1) waited for a letter from Hogwarts, 2) went to a midnight book release.  So I read it.  I liked it.

Then it became popular.

If HP had not become so popular, I can see two ways my life might be different.  1)  I would like it more than I do now, treasure it for its nostalgia purposes, immerse myself in the world.  Or 2)  I'd stick it in the back of the shelf and forget all about it.

As far as stories go, it is rather forgettable.  There's a kid who discovers he has special powers and has to stop some evil dude from doing evil stuff.  The characters are rather bland, rather stupid at times, and the magic stuff (wands and broomsticks etc.), which start out as delightfully whimsical, become more narmy as the series grows darker.

That last paragraph could get me burned at the stake.  Or at least accused of being a snob (why yes, I am still bitter).

Stop hating on Harry, he says.  It's just a kid's book.

Just a kid's book.

So too is Warriors.  So too is Artemis Fowl.  So too is almost...every...single...frickin'...thing...by DIANA WYNNE JONES.  And did I mention Narnia?

The problem of the matter is that Harry hits puberty.  Narnia is like a roller coaster; you must be less than this high to ride.  Rowling, with a book series that spanned seven years, had two choices: She could pretend puberty does not exist and keep her target demographic as 8-10 year olds.  Or she could anticipate her aging readers and transition her books to YA.

And that, I think, is why HP became so popular.  It aged with the readers.  Not well (see Potter Puppet Pals Wizard Angst), but it is the only series I can think of that started out with a child protagonist and ended with a teenager that was written to act like a teenager.  While most other books have to rely on new generations after the old one ages, the HP generation stuck with those books.

I can't think of many other reasons HP became so popular, though  I suppose I could hazard a few more guesses...

-The action took place in a school.  Everyone knows about schools.  But this was a magic school, so it was interesting.  Fantasy stories have a tendency to take the reader away from the familiar and recognizeable.  Lots of forests.  Castles.  Places most people don't live.

-The magic was very generic.  Nix had his light magic (or bells, but Sabriel isn't as nostalgic to me), Duane had her mystical Speech, Jones had...whatever Jones had.  But to the average layperson, the connotations that go with the word "magic" are still waving a wand and mumbling a few funny words.  So an ordinary person (for want of a better term) could pick up HP and recognize the magic.

And that's it.  I mean, does anyone really care about any of the characters' personalities?  Besides Sirius, that is?  No, because the characters simply play their roles as Designated Hero with a saving-people thing, Designated Sidekick who backs him up in everything, and Designated Smart One who dispenses plot-relevant information and gives advice for the hero to ignore.  Oh, and Designated Love Interest to...be fallen in love with.  Though in all fairness, Ginny seems to be able to do a better job getting Harry to listen to reason than Hermione does.

I did not realize I was quite this bitter.  I know that the world is not fair, and that Jones, who is the superior being, will never be as rich or famous as Rowling.  And I wouldn't want her too.  I would rather keep her private, personal, something I can form an instant connection over with a person.  And I have resigned myself to the fact that HP has altered the face of fantasy forever.  If I say I like fantasy, I usually hear a response like "Oh, like Harry Potter?  Like Lord of the Rings?  Like Terry Pratchett?"  And the answer is no; like Sarah Monette and Diana Wynne Jones and Galen Beckett and Meredith Ann Pierce.  Books by people who like magical stuff, but don't feel bound by genre constraints or the expectations of the readers. 

Dammit, I guess I am a snob.  I still remember those few years when fantasy was mine, and the choice was to feel like a freak for reading about magic, or to be proud of being different.  So when the public eye turned on my secret niche, the only choice was to seek deeper obscurity.  Or maybe I'm just irked that for most people, HP is the definition of fantasy, when it is so much more than that.

Magical Narnialand Venice

Just spent two days in Venice, which was AWESOME.

It was the weekend before Carnivale, so there were mask shops everywhere selling everything from cheap glitter-and-glue to elaborate artpieces of gold and feathers.  Not to mention the weather, which was warm and sunny, something that isn't going to happen in good old Deutschland for a while, and the gelato.  Need I say anything besides Italian gelato?

Bridges are to Venice what bakeries are to Marburg - you can't go a block without finding one.  Yet even with so much water, it is hard to remember that the city is sinking.  It looks so old, one can only imagine it will be there forever.  Narrow alleys are everywhere, so that not even the most cautious person can avoid them.  Luckily it is a big tourist town, so they try to keep the crime rate low. 

How bizarre must it be to live in a place where you have more tourists than neighbors? 

In any case, what struck me as most wondrous about being in Venice is that when you think of it, it is almost a mythical land.  Like Narnia, or Atlantis.  People write books about the place (see Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord, auf Deutsch, Herr der Diebe; also Mary Hoffman's City of Masks) and the magic that takes place within.  Of course, people write stories about magic in London and New York as well (neither of which I have been too), but those cities star so often only because that is what most writers are familiar with.  Still, it brings up an interesting point:  Nearly every single book that takes place in London - or any city - takes place in a different universe. 

I am not just talking about fantasy, for once.  I mean that the universe a book takes place in is necessarily different from the one we live in - we cannot meet the characters in ours.  Often, too, the characters do not meet each other.  Here, fantasy is a good medium to demonstrate this - the London from which the Pevensie children go to Narnia simply cannot possibly be the same London that housed Clive Barker's mystif (Imajica - like Abarat, but for grownups). 

Yet going to a place in the flesh makes it real.  To think that the Venice I went to is the same Venice that my relatives have gone to, that my friends have visited, where Cornelia Funke drew her inspiration for The Thief Lord.  No streets had been rearranged or buildings added to suit the plot or the author's memory.  It is the Venice that exists on its own, independent from the imagination of a writer or reader.

It is also worth saying that Venice is a magical city in its own right, without authorial additions.  Even when it is overrun by tourists, you can tell that it truly deserves to be a tourist destination, and that it is appreciated.  No one goes to Venice to drink and party - they go to Venice for the magic, to be able to say "I have been to Venice" the same way one would want to say "I have been to Narnia."

What is the magic of Venice, then?  Is it the architecture, the history, the age?  The canals and gondoliers and bridges?  Palaces and churches - but can those not be found all over Europe?  The glassmakers and mask-shops?  Is it something in the air, the water, the light, a mystical aura?  Is it simply the fact that I have read too many fantasy books about the place - though the same could be said for London?  Though it occurs to me that most fantasy stories that start in London end up going somewhere else, but the magic in Venice is actually in Venice.  Why was it that when I was aimlessly browsing Ryanair for cheap tickets, that as soon as I saw the name Venice I knew I had to go there?

In this life, Venice is the closest any of us can get to Narnia.