On strangeness: my guest post at Locus Online

[time_shark]

A whole lot of cool things happened last week, and thanks to that wonderful combination of too busy and too tired, I didn’t get to do much more about them then chirp enthusiastically on Twitter. Thus this week will bring a series of blog posts about events a week old or more. I ask y’all’s patience in bearing with me.

Comments

[sovay]

The magic of the first two books wasn't there for me.

I liked it a lot as a kid: the time travel, the patterns repeating, the history-changing, the science fantastic unicorns; Patrick's rune and Mrs. O'Keefe placing herself between the world and the powers of darkness. That last still resonates powerfully with me, and the chapter that is written from the perspective of her brother Chuck, brain-damaged, time-dislocated, opening his mouth to tell his sister he loves her and hearing himself blurt out instead one more crazy thing about Gedder and Bran and Zillah, is scarily poetic and more apocalyptic than anything else in the book, including the threat of nuclear war.

the world
it's tilting
it's going too fast
I'm going to fall

All the stuff about blue eyes for peace . . . not so much. I suspect there is also a lot of problematic characterization of Native Americans that I wouldn't have been able to parse in elementary school, but was starting to be able to sense in college or whenever I last read the book. And I did not care that Meg is pregnant and serving as Charles Wallace's anchor in time for this one story, but since it's more or less the last we see of her as a major character in the series, in retrospect I became a lot less all right with it.

A Wind in the Door, however, is still numinous and uncanny and mythic and horrific and just a very beautiful thing. In seventh grade I learned how mitochondria really work and it didn't blow the book for me. It's the one I've re-read most as an adult. I still haven't been disappointed.

[time_shark]

I am glad to know this about Wind in the Door.

Re: Planet, I remember getting fidgety during the historical scenes and longing for a cherubim or winged centaur to turn up and unbog the story. It's been a while (a looooooong while) so I don't think I can elaborate beyond that.