Books 2009: Kalpa Imperial
Angelica Gorodischer. Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was. Translated by Ursula K. LeGuin.
I picked this up a few years ago, in the Small Beer Press printing. SBP is based in Northampton, MA and publishes the exquisitely odd, weird and lovely short story magazine "Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet," which anyone interested in sophisticated writing that crosses into the genre of fantasy should be reading. I took to it for three reasons: 1) it's translator is one of my favorite fantasy authors, who has only grown more wise with age; 2) at the time I was trying to expand my knowledge of writers in the genre and had never heard of Gorodischer and 3) it seemed like it would be my sort of thing. Anyone who has played RPGs with me knows that I favor the "big story" approach. Characters in games I have run have gone on to found empires, start families, kill dark lords and, unwittingly, bring them back. Regular characters doing extraordinary things. Add this to my love of history (and my hope that this would feel like some wonderful tome of stories about a place that might be, but wasn't) and the chronicle form of writing and I thought there would be no way this could go wrong. And it didn't.
Each of these stories is about something fundamentally human (dancing, etc.) and the ways in which the workaday ways of living in the world affect all of us, even the powerful. And this book is so much about the act of storytelling. "The Two Hands" is an especially good example of this, because of the way it tells a story from the points of view of a dozen participants.
I have often felt remiss, slackerish, lazy and wasteful that I have not made more of an effort to write and tell stories. A calling, perhaps, that I hope I haven't completely missed the boat on. Gorodischer's book was inspiring, magical, even.
I picked this up a few years ago, in the Small Beer Press printing. SBP is based in Northampton, MA and publishes the exquisitely odd, weird and lovely short story magazine "Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet," which anyone interested in sophisticated writing that crosses into the genre of fantasy should be reading. I took to it for three reasons: 1) it's translator is one of my favorite fantasy authors, who has only grown more wise with age; 2) at the time I was trying to expand my knowledge of writers in the genre and had never heard of Gorodischer and 3) it seemed like it would be my sort of thing. Anyone who has played RPGs with me knows that I favor the "big story" approach. Characters in games I have run have gone on to found empires, start families, kill dark lords and, unwittingly, bring them back. Regular characters doing extraordinary things. Add this to my love of history (and my hope that this would feel like some wonderful tome of stories about a place that might be, but wasn't) and the chronicle form of writing and I thought there would be no way this could go wrong. And it didn't.
Each of these stories is about something fundamentally human (dancing, etc.) and the ways in which the workaday ways of living in the world affect all of us, even the powerful. And this book is so much about the act of storytelling. "The Two Hands" is an especially good example of this, because of the way it tells a story from the points of view of a dozen participants.
I have often felt remiss, slackerish, lazy and wasteful that I have not made more of an effort to write and tell stories. A calling, perhaps, that I hope I haven't completely missed the boat on. Gorodischer's book was inspiring, magical, even.