Comments | ciaan: Where do ideas go to die?

ciaan

Where do ideas go to die?

Jun 11, 2008 17:11

This past weekend, cos and I were talking about kinds of fiction, and then the idea of belief and gods subsisting on belief, so that they have to do/be whatever people think they do/are, and if their worshippers stop believing in them they shrivel up and die (or have to sneak off and survive in a fragment of belief somewhere). We were trying to think ( Read more... )

religion, meta

Comments 12

jeanne_d_arc June 17 2008, 20:38:51 UTC

I believe some Irish authors have written about the Sidhe dying because no one believed in them.

ciaan July 3 2008, 14:55:20 UTC

Iiinteresting. "I do believe in fairies" indeed.

cos July 3 2008, 15:20:44 UTC

I'd love to see some of that. Do you remember when from?

God Stalk cos July 3 2008, 15:31:54 UTC

I've tentatively thought of God Stalk (and its sequels) as the source of that idea for American Gods and Small Gods, though I don't actually know if it's true, I just know that God Stalk came about a decade earlier and that the idea is treated very similarly. I think PC Hodgell did "the most" with that specific idea, in this subset of three books, though Gaiman did a lot of other things (for example, American Gods' exploration of American immigration and carrying culture from "the old country"). Hodgell played with other things, especially ideas of time & physical space, particularly in the sequels - making her series a sort of sci-fi-infused fantasy. I heartily recommend it. It's a surreal book, and excellent worldbuilding.