May 11, 2007

Spengler on the Children of Hurin (new Tolkien book)

In this review of the ''new'' Tolkien book titled "The Children of Hurin", he goes into some detail about the fundemental anti-pagan ideals of Tolkien. Compare and contrast Beowulf/Siegfried with Turin. Its an interesting comparison.

Full review in the extended section...

Tolkien's Christianity and the pagan tragedy

The Children of Hurin, by J R R Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

Reviewed by Spengler

J R R Tolkien was the most Christian of 20th-century writers, not because he produced Christian allegory and apologetics like his friend C S Lewis, but because he uniquely portrayed the tragic nature of what Christianity replaced. Thanks to the diligence of his son Christopher, who reconstructed the present volume from several manuscripts, we have before us a treasure that sheds light on the greater purpose of his The Lord of the Rings.

In The Children of Hurin, a tragedy set some 6,000 years before the tales recounted in The Lord of the Rings, we see clearly why it was that Tolkien sought to give the English-speaking peoples a new pre-Christian mythology. It is a commonplace of Tolkien scholarship that the writer, the leading Anglo-Saxon scholar of his generation, sought to restore to the English their lost mythology. In this respect the standard critical sources (for example Edmund Wainwright) mistake Tolkien's profoundly Christian motive. In place of the heroes Siegfried and Beowulf, the exemplars of German and Anglo-Saxon pagan myth, we have the accursed warrior Turin, whose pride of blood and loyalty to tribe leave him vulnerable to manipulation by the forces of evil.

Tolkien's popular Ring trilogy, I have attempted to show, sought to undermine and supplant Richard Wagner's operatic Ring cycle, which had offered so much inspiration for Nazism. [1] With the reconstruction of the young Tolkien's prehistory of Middle-earth, we discern a far broader purpose: to recast as tragedy the heroic myths of pre-Christian peoples, in which the tragic flaw is the pagan's tribal identity. Tolkien saw his generation decimated, and his circle of friends exterminated, by the nationalist compulsions of World War I; he saw the cult of Siegfried replace the cult of Christ during World War II. His life's work was to attack the pagan flaw at the foundation of the West.

It is too simple to consider Tolkien's protagonist Turin as a conflation of Siegfried and Beowulf, but the defining moments in Turin's bitter life refer clearly to the older myths, with a crucial difference: the same qualities that make Siegfried and Beowulf exemplars to the pagans instead make Turin a victim of dark forces, and a menace to all who love him. Tolkien was the anti-Wagner, and Turin is the anti-Siegfried, the anti-Beowulf. Tolkien reconstructed a mythology for the English not (as Wainwright and other suggest) because he thought it might make them proud of themselves, but rather because he believed that the actual pagan mythology was not good enough to be a predecessor to Christianity.

"Alone among 20th-century novelists, J R R Tolkien concerned himself with the mortality not of individuals but of peoples. The young soldier-scholar of World War I viewed the uncertain fate of European nations through the mirror of the Dark Ages, when the life of small peoples hung by a thread," I wrote in an earlier essay. [2] Christianity demands of the Gentile that he reject his sinful flesh and be reborn into Israel; only through a new birth can the Gentile escape the death of his own body as well as the death of his hopes in the inevitable extinction of his people.

Tolkien is a writer of greater theological depth than his Oxford colleague C S Lewis, in my judgment. Lewis is a felicitous writer and a diligent apologist, but mere allegory along the lines of the Narnia series can do no more than restate Christian doctrine; it cannot really expand our experience of it. Tolkien takes us to the dark frontier of a world that is not yet Christian, and therefore is tragic, but has the capacity to become Christian. It is the world of the Dark Ages, in which barbarians first encounter the light. It is not fantasy, but rather a distillation of the spiritual history of the West. Whereas C S Lewis tries to make us comfortable in what we already believe by dressing up the story as a children's masquerade, Tolkien makes us profoundly uncomfortable. Our people, our culture, our language, our toehold upon this shifting and uncertain Earth are no more secure than those of a thousand extinct tribes of the Dark Ages; and a greater hope than that of the work of our hands and the hone of our swords must avail us.

Tolkien set The Children of Hurin in a doomed world menaced by a fallen angel of sorts, the Lucifer-like Morgoth. An alliance of mortal men and immortal Elves attacks Morgoth's stronghold but is crushed and dispersed; only a few hidden Elvish strongholds remain free. Hurin is the lord of a small land and a leader of the failed alliance against Morgoth. He is taken prisoner and his country overrun and occupied, his people reduced to slavery. His young son Turin escapes and is adopted by the Elven-king of the secret city of Gondolin. Rather than remain with the Elves and await the divine intervention of Elvish prophecy that ultimately will destroy Morgoth, Turin grows to impetuous manhood and sets out to seek revenge or death.

Morgoth has cursed Turin's family, and the curse succeeds not by force of magic, but through Turin's own stubbornness and resentment. With the occupation of his homeland and the destruction of his clan, Turin would rather perish in a futile gesture of resistance than master his own hatred. Through his agents, Morgoth entraps Turin in a web of lies that prevent him from reuniting with his family except under sordid circumstances. It is Turin's own flaws, not Morgoth's magic, that make him susceptible to these traps.

In Tolkien's mythology the Valar are gods of whom Morgoth was a renegade. It is through their aid that Morgoth's fortress of Thangorodrim one day will be thrown down. An Elvish lord attempts to convince Turin that thoughtless pursuit of warfare will not succeed: "Petty victories will prove profitless at the last ... for thus Morgoth learns where the boldest of his enemies are to be found, and gathers strength great enough to destroy them ... Only in secrecy lies hope of survival. Until the Valar come."

To this Turin rejoins: "The Valar! They have forsaken you, and they hold Men in scorn. What use to look westward across the endless Sea to a dying sunset in the West? There is but one Vala with whom we have to do, and that is Morgoth; and if in the end we cannot overcome him, at least we can hurt him and hinder him ... Though mortal Men have little life beside the span of the Elves, they would rather spend it in battle than fly or submit." His lack of faith makes him desperate, and his acts of heroic desperation have terrible consequences.

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien returned to this theme of faith in a higher power rather than in one's own force of arms. It is not the valor of the small remnant of free peoples that overcomes Sauron (Morgoth's successor) but rather the improbable mission of the Ringbearer that will overcome the Darkness that threatens Middle-earth.

After the exchange cited above, Turin's arrogance causes the destruction of the Elvish stronghold of Nargothrond by the dragon Glaurung. Once again a fugitive, Turin becomes the leader of a band of woodmen. When Glaurung reappears to menace them, he sets out to kill the dragon and save his people, in precise emulation of Beowulf's single combat with the barrow-dwelling dragon. Like Beowulf, Turin slays the dragon, and like Siegfried, he is bathed in the dragon's blood when he stands upon the dying beast to gloat.

Siegfried's bath in dragon's blood, however, makes him invulnerable to weapons (except for the one spot on his back where a treacherous spear-thrust will kill him). Turin, by contrast, is immobilized by the venomous blood, long enough for a horrible event to occur; this will provoke him to kill himself with his own blade. Morgoth's vengeance is complete at the conclusion of this dark and sad tale.

What made Beowulf a great man to the anonymous Saxon bard who composed the only major Old English work of the 9th century was his willingness to defend his people against monsters. His death in single combat with the dragon might mean the destruction of his people, as the Old Woman's lament at his pyre makes clear. Turin saves his little band by destroying the dragon, but only after he has allowed the dragon to destroy a great Elven city. Gloating over his victim leads to his own destruction.

Siegfried's fearlessness before his dragon is rewarded in the form of invincibility; Turin's fearlessness is born of despair and therefore expresses self-destructiveness. It is punished by an awful chain of events that I will leave readers of the book to discover for themselves.

It is useful to contrast Tolkien's purpose to that of T S Eliot, too often held up as the exemplary Christian poet of the 20th century. Eliot sifted through the detritus of the pagan past in the cellars of Christianity. [3] As he wrote in his notes to The Waste Land (1922), "To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough" of James Frazer. Frazer attempts to show that all Christian imagery and ritual derive from pagan myth, for example, the commonplace idea of a sacrificed god. His conclusions have been rejected by later scholars, but the relevant point regarding Eliot is that he embraced the pagan antecedents of Christianity as he thought it was (even though it turned out to be something else than he thought).

Tolkien knew far more about the pagan past than Eliot; as the great philologist of his time, he produced the first readable translation of "Beowulf", as well as seminal editions of the most important Anglo-Saxon classics. He loved the material more than any man living, but unlike the dilettantish Eliot, the authority Tolkien sacrificed his love for the Anglo-Saxon sources, and chose to transform the modern memory of it by creating a variant of it more congenial to Christianity.

That is the miracle of The Children of Hurin. Not the least of Tolkien's legacy is a son with the devotion and craft to reconstruct the projects of his father's youth. We owe Christopher Tolkien a great debt of gratitude for putting this work before us. Readers who enjoyed The Lord of Rings as a work of fantasy (which it most surely is not) will find the present volume tough going, for it comes out of the world of Anglo-Saxon epic. As the editor reports, Tolkien originally cast it as poem in alliterative verse in the Anglo-Saxon fashion. But for readers who want to understand better what Tolkien was driving at, this work of the writer's youth will provide insight, as well as a few tranquil hours of respite from the noise and clutter of the world.

The Children of Hurin, by J R R Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2007. ISBN 10:0618894640. Price US$26, 320 pages.

Posted by rakhier at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)

Spengler on Tolkien #2

In this essay (writen early in 2004) Spengler goes into some detail about how Tolkien's work can be read as a critique of European society post 1870 (and especially post 1918).

Full essay again in the extended section for fear of the original being lost...

Tolkien's Ring: When immortality is not enough
By Spengler

Alone among 20th century novelists, J R R Tolkien concerned himself with the mortality not of individuals but of peoples. The young soldier-scholar of World War I viewed the uncertain fate of European nations through the mirror of the Dark Ages, when the life of small peoples hung by a thread. In the midst of today's Great Extinction of cultures, and at the onset of civilizational war, Tolkien evokes an uncanny resonance among today's readers. He did not write a fantasy, but rather a roman-a-clef.

I spoke too soon when I wrote a year ago that a "reasonably faithful cinematic version" of Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, was the "cultural event of the decade" (The Ring and the remnants of the West, Jan 11, '03). With the third installment in cinemas, it appears that director Peter Jackson has buried Tolkien's mythic tragedy under an avalanche of tricks. One wants to hiss along with Gollum: "Stupid hobbit! It ruins it!" We are left with a crackling good adventure, but have lost something precious.

Despite his huge readership, Tolkien during his lifetime never published The Silmarillion, the tragedy of immortals that underlies The Lord of the Rings. Instead he hit upon the genial device of leading the reader to the elements of his story through the eyes of the Little People who are entangled in it. It is as if Shakespeare had published something like Tom Stoppard's Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead rather than Hamlet.

The mortality of the peoples
Tolkien took by the horns the great ideological beast of his time. After the Great War, the newly-hatched Existentialist philosophers were shocked to discover that human beings fear for their mortality. In fact, it is quite a commonplace thing to die for one's country, provided that one believes that one's country still will be there. The pull of cultural identity is so strong that men will fling themselves into the jaws of death if they believe such actions will preserve their culture. But what if culture itself - the individual's connection to past as well as future - is in danger? Now, that is really being alone in the universe. Death to preserve one's people is quite a tolerable proposition. The prospective death of the entire people along with its culture is what creates a particularly nasty type of existential angst, the sort that produces a Hitler or an Osama bin Laden.

Small peoples of the Dark Ages, such as Beowulf's Geats, had to think about such things because extinction was the normal outcome. As it turned out, Tolkien's early medieval sources (he had translated Beowulf) mirrored the existentially-challenged world after the Great War, precisely because the subject of national extinction had forced its way back to the surface. The theme of national extinction permeates the entire work. "It is not your own shire," the High-Elf Gildor reproaches Frodo at the outset of his journey in the forests of the shire . "Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more."

A people vanishes from the earth when its language no longer is spoken. Tolkien did not simply invent languages, but recreated the linguistic maelstrom of the early Middle Ages, when the high speech of great civilizations faded from memory while the dialects of small peoples dissolved into larger language groups. Tolkien's great philological skills created a unique means of portraying the temporality of the nations.

As a foil to human mortality, Tolkien invented a deathless and noble race. His Elves suffer from saiety with immortal life. They no longer reproduce. We meet no Elf younger than a millennium. Tolkien's Fair Folk, endowed with marvelous powers of mind and body, possessors of a radiant high culture, merely mark the time before they must leave Middle Earth. Mercifully we are spared their private thoughts. Imagine what dinner-table dialogue would be like between Elrond and daughter Arwen, who will renounce immortality to marry the mortal Aragorn. "Why do you have to date Aragorn? What happend to that nice Elf boy you were going out with in Lothlorien?" "Daddy, I'm three thousand years old and I've dated all the Elf boys. They are so boring!" Minas Tirith, for that matter, houses only half the population it could comfortably hold, as its ancient race of men fails to bring children into the world. Gondor's military weakness stems from its declining population; the army Aragorn leads to the Black Gate in the last battle numbers fewer than the vanguard of the army of Gondor in its prime. Mordor encroaches because Gondor cannot man its borders.

Declining population and crumbling empire is a theme as old as Rome, of course. Nor is it only Latin. In Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon sources, the extinction of the nation lurks behind every setback. The old woman's lament at Beowulf's funeral pyre, for example, foresees the destruction of his Geats after the death of its hero and protector. From the vantage-point of the trenches of the Great War, though, this echo of the Dark Ages took on a new and terrible meaning. The peoples of Europe came out to fight for their predominance and nearly annihilated each other.

Today's Europeans are willing themselves out of existence (see Why Europe chooses extinction, Apr 8, '03). The two world wars of the 20th century destroyed the national illusions of the European peoples, their pretension to strut and swagger upon the world stage. France was the first nation to misidentify its national interests with the fate of Christendom (The sacred heart of darkness, Feb 11, '03), emulated in far more horrible form first by Russia ("the God-bearing nation" in Dostoyevsky's words) and then by Germany. Why is it that radical Islam yet may defeat the West? Migrants from North Africa and the Middle East may overwhelm the shrinking population of Western Europe, without ever assimilating into Western European culture. Collapsing birth rates in formerly Catholic strongholds (including Quebec) coincide with negligible church attendance, and demoralization within the Church itself.

When immortality is not enough
Here is a summary of the mythic tragedy behind The Lord of the Rings: Immortality was not enough for Tolkien's "Light-Elves" (Licht-Alben, precisely what Wagner calls his gods). Possessive love for their own works led them to tragic errors, first among which is Feanor's ill-advised quest for his stolen jewels, the Silmarils. That motivates the Elves' exile in Middle-Earth. Later, the Elvish Smiths of Middle-Earth accept the assistance of the evil Sauron in forging the Three Elven Rings of air, fire and water. In some way or other, the vague association with Sauron contaminates the Three Rings, such that when Sauron's One Ring is destroyed, the power of the three rings must fade as well. That means the end of the magical wood of Lothlorien, which Galadriel has preserved in a sort of perpetual spring, and the demise of Rivendell, which Elrond maintains as the last bastion of lore and art. Presumably Gandalf, who bears the ring of fire, will lose some of his power as well. Sauron furthermore corrupted the Numenoreans, a noble race of Men, by convincing them they could wrest immortality from the Valar (the gods) by invading their Blessed Realm, Valinor.

The Nine Rings granted to mortal Men produce a vampire-like caricature of immortality, as the bearers fade into wraiths. The One Ring bestows a perverse sort of immortality upon its owner, whose body ceases to age while his soul decays, like Dorian Gray's portrait. It is a warped version of the Elves' immortality within the mortal world of Middle-Earth. Once touched, it cannot easily be relinquished; Isildur, heir of the Numenorean "faithful", cannot bear to destroy it. The Hobbits' great virtue is the inner strength to part with the Ring. But all of the three Hobbits who have borne it, Bilbo, Frodo, and Samwise, ultimately must abandon Middle-Earth. Immortality, once tasted, poisons the joy of Middle-Earth even for Hobbits. Galadriel redeems herself by renouncing her works, although in consequence she and her people must leave the mortal realm, that is, Middle-Earth. She refuses the offer of the One Ring ("I will diminish, and remain Galadriel"). The "faithful" survivors of the ruin of Numenor, of whom Aragorn is the heir, accept mortality and thus are redeemed.

Tolkien clearly stated his intentions in his correspondence: "Anyway, all this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire ... It has various opportunities of 'Fall'. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as 'its own', the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator - especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, - and so to the Machine (or Magic)."

The Faustian bargain and its resort to Magic were themes long elaborated in Western literature, but Tolkien added a terrible new dimension. In Middle-Earth, as in Europe during the Great War, it was not the mortality of the individual, as in Goethe, but instead the mortality of nations. No serious critic will give Tolkien a place in the literary canon, because his characters generally are stick-figures speaking in stilted declamation. But that is beside the point. He has little time to waste on the petty concerns of the sort of character that populates modern fiction. His concern is the doom of peoples, or, to coin a phrase, the decline of the West.

Europe's decline
Immortality was not enough for the Europeans. That is, Christianity in the confessional, and universal Christian empire in politics, offered the Europeans a form of immortality beyond the existence of the nation. Europe fell from grace when its great constituent nations decided that this sort of immortality was not enough for them, and that they should instead fight for temporal dominance upon the earth. Exhausted from their wars, the peoples of Europe sank into a torpor that is destroying them slowly but with terrible certainty.

Jackson's portrayal of Denethor, the feckless Steward of Gondor, doubtless reminded Americans of European defeatism with respect to Iraq and other venues in the Middle East. Out of context, the character has little motivation. Perhaps Jackson will provide the missing background of Gondor's decline in a future extended version.

It is tricky, of course, to draw analogies between the pride and folly of Feanor or the Numenorians in Tolkien's fantasy, and the pride and folly of the European nations in World War I. But it was a commonplace observation after 1918 that the great European tragedy began with a misguided attempt to cheat mortality through the assertion of national supremacy. One cannot make sense of Hitler's rise to power without observing that many Germans believed with all their heart that the existence of the Volk was in jeopordy. Martin Heidegger gave (and never retracted) his wholehearted support to Hitler, believing that immersion in the Volk was a legitimate answer to the Existential crisis.

A tragic flaw was set in Europe's foundations, in the form of its Faustian bargain with paganism (Why Europe chooses extinction). Christianity offered salvation in another world; the Europeans wanted a taste of immortality in this one. By allowing the pagans to syncretically adopt their old gods into the new religion, Christianity left the Europeans forever torn between Jesus and Siegfried. Richard Wagner returned to the old pagan sources and found in them a foretaste of the Nihilism that would ravage Europe during its Second Thirty Years' War of 1914-1944. Repudiating Wagner, Tolkien hoped to link an ennobling pagan past and the Christian present. In this respect he failed utterly. He is reduced to elegaic yearning for a lost agrarian past. He is a reactionary looking backwards, for his vision is too clear to allow false hopes for the European future.

Tolkien kept faith with the original Christian message. Man must accept not only his own mortality, but the mortality of his nation, the extinction of his culture, the silencing of his mother-tongue, and look instead toward salvation beyond all mortal hope. That is what Christianity offered the pagans during the Great Extinction of Peoples after the collapse of Rome. Frodo knows that the entire race of Hobbits will become extinct. He begins his journey with Gildor's warning that one day others will dwell in the shire when hobbits are no more. Gildor is the first among the High-Elves he meets as he rides toward the Havens, in the company of Elrond and Galadriel, who, along with Gandalf, finally are revealed in their true capacity as the bearers of the Three Elven Rings.

But the European nations threw off the bonds of universal Christian empire and, through Wagnerian nationalism, sought immortality within the mortal realm - the tragic flaw of Feanor, Galadriel and the rebel Eldar. The Great Wars and the fall of Europe were the consequence. Except in the imagination, there was no going back.

The sea-passage to the West, in Peter Jackson's interpretation, represents death. It might just as well represent immigration to America. Unlike all other peoples, Americans need not fear the extinction of their cultural identity, because they have none to begin with. That is America's great weakness but also its abiding strength. It is the reason that America well may endure for all time while the Kulturnationen dissolve into the dust of the libraries. Americans bridle when told that they have no culture. But what can they name whose loss would destroy their sense of national identity? Erase the memory of Homer, and what becomes of the Greeks? Forget Herman Melville, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and even The Simpsons, and Americans still are Americans. If German or French no longer were spoken, the concept of "Germany" or "France" would become meaningless. At the time of their revolution, Americans considered German as a national language. A century from now they might adopt Spanish. America can withstand the loss of the English language itself. As long as America's political covenant remains intact, Americans can change their "culture" as often as convenient. America may fulfill the Christian project, as an assembly of individuals called out of the nations, cut loose from their heathen heritage - an outcome Tolkien could not have imagined.

(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

Posted by rakhier at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)

Spengler on Tolkien...

The mysterious commentator ''Spengler'' of the Asia Times has some brilliant essays on Tolkien. I include the whole thing here in the extended entry on the off chance that it goes away some day.

In this essay (published in 2003), Spengler compares Tolkien to Wagner and suggests Tolkien wrote an ''anti-Ring'' novel. Worth the read.

The 'Ring' and the remnants of the West

By Spengler

The most important cultural event of the past decade is the ongoing release of the film version of J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. No better guide exists to the mood and morals of the United States. The rapturous response among popular audiences to the first two installments of the trilogy should alert us that something important is at work. Richard Wagner's 19th-century tetralogy of music dramas, The Ring of the Nibelungs, gave resonance to National Socialism during the inter-war years of the last century. Tolkien does the same for Anglo-Saxon democracy.

Tolkien well may have written his epic as an "anti-Ring" to repair the damage that Wagner had inflicted upon Western culture. Consciously or not, the Oxford philologist who invented Hobbits has ruined Wagner before the popular audience. It recalls the terrible moment in Thomas Mann's great novel Doktor Faustus when the composer Adrian Leverkuhn, finishing his Faust cantata in the throes of syphilitic dementia, announces: "I want to take it back!" His amanuensis asks, "What do you want to take back?" "Beethoven's 9th Symphony!" cries Leverkuhn. Leverkuhn (on the strength of a bargain with the Devil) has written a work whose objective is to ruin the ability of musical audiences to hear Beethoven.

Tolkien has taken back Wagner's Ring. That may be his greatest accomplishment, and a literary accomplishment without clear precedent. To be sure, The Lord of the Rings is not a great work of literature to be compared to Cervantes or Dostoyevsky. But it is a great landmark of culture nonetheless. Its revival in a reasonably faithful cinematic version has far-reaching effects on the popular mind.

Wagner had done as much to Beethoven. "People don't like music; they just like the way it sounds," quipped the English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Beethoven's musical devices are stations along a journey which has a goal. Wagner turned these musical devices into the haunted caves and dells of a world in which the listener wanders capriciously, abandoning all sense of time and direction. Audiences never liked Wagner's music, but they loved the way it sounded. Musical effects in Beethoven, however eccentric, are subordinate to the long-range musical goal. In Wagner, musical effects are capricious events. That well suits the introduction of Wagner's Uebermensch, the hero Siegfried, for reasons I will make clear in a moment.

It is hard for us today to imagine what a cult raised itself around Wagner after the 1876 premiere of his Ring cycle. Compared to it the combined fervor for Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna and Michael Jackson seems like a band concert in the park. Perfectly sensible people attended a Wagner opera and declared that their lives had changed. Bavaria's eccentric King Ludwig II literally fell in love with the composer and built him the Bayreuth Festival, to which the elite of Europe repaired in homage. It was something like the mood that swept the youth of the West in the late 1960s, but an order of magnitude more powerful.

In 1848, Wagner was a disgruntled emulator of French grand opera who stockpiled hand grenades for revolutionaries, a fugitive from justice after that year's uprising. A quarter-century later he stood at the pinnacle of European culture. What precisely did he do?

Wagner announced the death of the old order of aristocracy and Church, of order and rules. Not only was the old order dying, but also it deserved to die, the victim of its inherent flaws. As the old order died a New Man would replace the servile creatures of the old laws, and a New Art would become the New Man's religion. The New Man would be fearless, sensual, unconstrained, and could make the world according to his will. Wagner's dictum that the sources of Western civilization had failed was not only entirely correct, but also numbingly obvious to anyone who lived through the upheavals of 1848. But how should one respond to this? Wagner had a seductive answer: become your own god!

Using elements of old Norse sagas and medieval epic, Wagner cobbled together a new myth. The Norse god Wotan personifies the old order: he rules by the laws engraved on his spear, by which he himself is bound. To build his fortress Valhalla he requires the labor of the giants, and to pay the giants, he steals the treasure of the Nibelung dwarf Alberich. Alberich won the treasure with a magic ring he fashioned from the stolen Gold of the Rhine River. Wotan covets this ring, which gives its bearer world mastery, but is compelled to give it to the giants.

Wagner's audience had no trouble recognizing in Wotan and the other immortal gods the ancient aristocracy of Empire and Church, who made a fatal compromise with capital (the Ring of world domination) and thus sealed their own doom. Siegfried (Wotan's grandson) takes the Ring back from the giant Fafner, and then shatters the god's spear and wins as his bride the immortal Valkyrie Brunnhilde. Through the rest of a silly plot full of love potions and magic disguises, Siegfried is betrayed and stabbed in the back. Brunnhilde immolates herself on Siegfried's funeral pyre and the flames burn down Valhalla as well, gods and all. A New World Order emerges on the basis of heroic will. It is not hard to see how appetizing this stew was for Hitler.

Tolkien himself despised Wagner (whom he knew thoroughly) and rejected comparisons between his Ring and Wagner's cycle ("Both rings are round," is the extent of his published comment). But the parallels between the two works are so extensive as to raise the question as to Tolkien's intent. The Ring of Power itself is Wagner's invention (probably derived from the German Romantic de la Motte Fouque). Also to be found in both works are an immortal woman who renounces immortality for the love of a human, a broken sword reforged, a life-and-death game of riddles, and other elements which one doesn't encounter every day. Here is a compilation derived from sundry websites, along with a few of my own observations. For those who don't know the details of the Tolkien Ring - well, you will before long, because it is a story that everyone will learn.

The details are far less important than the common starting point: the crisis of the immortals. Wagner's immortal gods must fall as a result of the corrupt bargain they have made with the giants who built Valhalla. Tolkien's immortal Elves must leave Middle-earth because of the fatal assistance they took from Sauron. The Elves' power to create a paradise on Middle-earth depends upon the power of the three Elven Rings which they forged with Sauron's help. Thus the virtue of the Elven Rings is inseparably bound up with the one Ring of Sauron. When it is destroyed, the power of the Elves must fade. More than anything else, The Lord of the Rings is the tragedy of the Elves and the story of their renunciation.

What Tolkien has in mind is nothing more than the familiar observation that the high culture of the West arose and fell with the aristocracy, which had the time and inclination to cultivate it. With the high culture came the abuse of power associated with the aristocracy; when this disappears, the great beauties of Western civilization and much of its best thought disappear with it. That is far too simple, and in some ways misleading, but it makes a grand premise for a roman-a-clef about Western civilization.

Tolkien enthusiasts emphasize his differences with Wagner, as if to ward off the disparagement that The Lord of the Rings is a derivative work. As Bradley Birzer, David Harvey, and other commentators observe, Tolkien detested Wagner's neo-paganism. He was a devout Roman Catholic, and explicitly philo-Semitic where Wagner was anti-Semitic. But this defense of Tolkien obscures a great accomplishment. He did not emulate Wagner's Ring, but he recast the materials into an entirely new form. "Recast" is an appropriate expression. A memorable scene in Wagner shows Siegfried filing the shards of his father's sword into dust, and casting a new sword out of the filings. That, more or less, is what Tolkien accomplished with the elements of Wagner's story. Wagner will still haunt the stages of opera houses, but audiences will see him through Tolkien's eyes.

What does one do when the immortals depart? One acts with simple English decency and tenacity, says Tolkien, and accepts one's fate. The Lord of the Rings is an anti-epic (as Norman Cantor puts it), whose protagonist is a weak, vulnerable and reluctant Hobbit, as opposed to the strong, wound-proof and fearless Siegfried. The Hobbit Frodo Baggins does his duty because he must. "I wish the Ring had never come to me! I wish none of this had happened!" he exclaims to the wizard Gandalf, who replies: "So do all that come to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." No utopian is Gandalf; what one must do is to muddle through.

"I will remain Galadriel, and I will diminish," decides the Elf-Queen of Lothlorien, rejecting the chance to take possession of the One Ring and preserve her powers. The Elves choose between vanishing and accepting a taint of evil, and choose the former.

Modesty, forbearance, and renunciation are the virtues that Tolkien sets against Wagner's existential act of despair. The high culture of the West is gone. The world that remains after the Elves board their gray ships and sail into the West is devoid of beauty and wonder. The kingdom of Men that emerges from The Lord of the Rings is a humdrum affair, in which the best men can do is to get on with their lives. Even the anti-heroes of this anti-epic, the Hobbits who bear the evil Ring to its ultimate destruction, cannot remain in Middle-earth; they sail off along with the Elves.

Those who hold America in contempt for its lack of refinement (this writer always has held the term "American culture" to be an oxymoron) should think carefully about this conclusion. From their founding on Christmas Day 800 AD, when Charlemagne accepted the crown of the revived Roman Empire, the institutions of the West have been formed in response to external threat. The Holy Roman Empire of the High Middle Ages, Tolkien's conscious model for the Kingdom of Gondor, arose in response to the incursions of Arabs in the south, Vikings in the north, and Magyars in the West. Boorish and gruff as the new American Empire might seem, it is an anti-empire populated by reluctant heroes who want nothing more than to till their fields and mind their homes, much like Tolkien's Hobbits. Under pressure, though, it will respond with a fierceness and cohesion that will surprise its adversaries.

Orcs of the world: Take note and beware.

(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact

Posted by rakhier at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2006

CrossGen - Science Fiction and Fantasy Don't Mix...

Part 2 : What was CrossGen Trying to do?
By Colin Glassey 12/11/2006

In most stories involving superheroes, the super-men lay waste to a few thousand ordinary mortals to prove their superiority over the normal humans then face real challenges from creatures like them (super villains, demi-gods, or the gods themselves). CrossGen tried to create a complex sliding scale of power so that differently powered heroes would face dramatic challenges suited to their capabilities. For much of the time the CrossGen writers concealed the ultimate purpose of the Sigils by simply not telling but now most everything has been revealed and the CrossGen grand scheme stands open to judgment.

Personally I believe that the CrossGen writers changed their minds about what was going on, just as the plot line shows the focus of Danik’s effort changed radically quite recently. I believe that early on, the Solus/Danik duo were supposed to be upsetting apple carts, unleashing creative energy, and stiring things up. Danik and his fragments were like the Shadows from Babylon 5, a force of Chaos whose goal was evolution through conflict. The ultimate goal for in the early days of CrossGen was to transform the Sigil-bearers into a force that could be used to go up against the other emotionless Atlantean gods.

However, after a year or more, this idea was abandoned and instead the writers (this would be Tony Bedard and perhaps Barbara Kessel) came up with the Negation as a big bad universal enemy. Once the Negation idea took hold, suddenly the goal was no longer evolution but survival from a gigantic science-fictional menace.

The problems with this transformation were profound and destructive. While gentle characters like Sephia (from Meridian) are quite obviously useful if your goal is to change the minds of cold but ultimately good gods, sweet little Sephia would be chewed up and killed by the Negation in a matter of seconds, thus making the time put into Sephia’s development pointless. Only by changing Sephia, making her into a powerful warrior like Sam Rey, could she be expected to contribute usefully to the war against the Negation. And this was not the point of the Meridian series. In fact it wasn’t the point of any of the series (with the exception of Sigil, maybe).

In fact, it could be that CrossGen died because they ran into the internal contradictions of trying to fit fantasy into the same world as science fiction. They don’t fit together because they are trying to do completely different things. Science fiction is the exploration of how changing technology effects mankind, Fantasy is the exploration of human archetypes in conflict. They are not the same and they can not be the same. Attempts to merge them are doomed to failure.

The point to the CrossGen comics was to explore basic aspects of the human condition, not to explain how scientific development changes human life. The point to the CrossGen comics was not to create super warriors who would be useful in a titanic fight to save the galaxy. So CrossGen, when they made the switch to Negation killed the fundamental rational for almost all their titles.

Sephia (Meridian) was the means to explore growing emotional maturity with a related theme of taking care of things bigger than yourself (like the world of Meridian which is in a ecological crisis). Sephia’s final goal is not to become a warrior princess and conquer all through violence. Sephia’s goal was healing and redemption. She was a strong female character designed to show that you can achieve your goals not through violence but through transformation and healing.

Prince Ethan (Scion) was designed to show readers how a person can resolve fundamental conflicts between worthy but incompatible ideals. Ethan is a highly principled person whose refused to do anything which did not fit his internal moral code, even at real cost to himself and his family. The story of Ethan allowed the readers to explore how you attempt to resolve problems that have no good answers. The way out for Ethan’s insoluble dilemmas is through love, the ultimate human emotion which resolves contradictions through the act of self-denial and creation. So Ethan loves a woman who is equally strong minded and dedicated to her own ideas which are sometimes in conflict with his own ideas. An alternate way of looking at Ethan’s story is to imagine that Ethan is a senior U.S General in the Civil War (like General Sherman) who comes bringing war to the South only to find the daughter of the Southern slave-owning leader is committed to the freedom for the slaves. The conflict between the General’s duty to the state vs. his moral duty as a man committed to justice is a powerful one.

Giselle (Mystic) was the story of how to come to terms with unexpected power (read wealth) after a life growing up a spoiled hedonist. Giselle’s real world analog is that of a 2nd son in an English noble family whose older brother suddenly dies leaving him the owner of vast estates and thousands of people’s jobs depending on his actions. Will the estate go bankrupt or will the new lord find the mental capacity to pull away a life of idleness and actually do some good? For all his life this person hasn’t had a mission, and was confident that other people were going to take care of the hard things in life (Giselle’s story is, to some degree, that of Lord Sebastian Flyte). This is a story which has a great deal of relevance to many Americans who are, sometimes unexpectedly, put in positions of great responsibility.

Sam Rey’s story (Sigil) is a conventional heroic story about a good hearted man who wants to do the right thing for as many people as possible. He doesn’t care about money, power, or fame. He just wants the love of his woman and to do the right thing. Sam Rey is not a very complex person but he does show determination in the face of nearly overwhelming obstacles. As the writers said, they copied the character from Bruce Willis (Die Hard) but there are many previous American actors which exemplify the same ideals (John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Humphrey Bogart in his later films).

The Negation series was the most dramatic series as here we had a classic story of a group of strangers thrown together by no choice of their own and forced to work together or die. This story has been repeated often in American life and it is in fact one of the central stories of American history. In this country we often had groups of people thrown together due to random decisions and suddenly they were going to live or die based on whether they could work together despite their differences (see the current TV series “Lost” for just the latest in a long line of stories like this, other examples: the pioneers on the wagon train heading west, the film “Stagecoach”, the passengers of a ship sunk at sea and having to survive on their own, etc.). In (nearly) all other versions of this story the random collection of people do join together and triumph over adversity, some of the group will die (or fall by the wayside) but the group will survive and win in the end because that myth is at the core of the experience of the United States. In the Negation story, the script writers broke the rules at the end and had the group break up into two factions and one of their group even betrays the rest. After all that she has gone through with the team her betrayal is truly shocking (and seems somewhat forced). The Negation writers at the end called into question the central myth of America, namely: shared hardship and shared desire results in a common bond which is stronger than any other emotion.

The Crux series was the most problematic as we are dealing with people who seem very lost and confused, beset on all sides by enemies they know nothing about. They are literally fish out of water and, worst of all, they are in the presence of a man/being and fellow Atlantean named Danik who knows everything! The reason why Danik does not simply explain to his friends what is going on is never explained. These are Danik’s people, some of them friends, all of them fellow Atlanteans. But they have been left on the sea floor of Earth for 100,000 years, why? Suddenly now six are released from the suspension chambers. Why now? Only six are freed but Danik clearly has the power to set everyone from Atlantis free and raise it from the sea. Danik is a god at least as powerful as Solusandra yet he does almost nothing with his power. Why? Danik clearly has the ability (like Solusandra) to give great power to any (or all) of them, yet he does not. Why? Danik knows what will happen when the Australians “transcend” - they will be destroyed in Negation space - yet he lets them go to their deaths and he lets Gammid go with them. Why?

Does Danik not trust his fellow Atlanteans? Is he worried they will revolt against him and seize power on their own? If he really seeks allies against the Negation, why doesn’t he give all Atlanteans Sigils like the ones Solusandra gave? To all these questions, Crux gives no answers. It is a most unsatisfying comic as, at its core, it was illogical.

Lastly we come to The First. These are gods. As gods they exemplify basic emotions. They express fundamental states of human existence on a grand scale. Like gods they wield great powers and they interfere with human affairs for the own purposes. The problem is, who are the enemies of the gods? What gives them drama? What do they want? The answer is: each other. They don’t see the Negation as a threat (they don’t know about it) so they fight with each other. The problem is: their conflict is half hearted. They spend more of their time undercutting each other and not defeating the other side. In fact four of the six top leaders of the gods are in love with each other (across the divide) Pyrem + Ingra, Ganish + Yala. Some of the lesser gods are happy to rule in far-off worlds (like Animora or Mai Shen). The rest seem to have no interest in the other worlds and only leave the world of the gods because they are sent (like Darrow, Bernd Rechts, etc.). The First were never able to achieve anything interesting because all their conflicts were with other members of the First. What is the good of having amazing cosmic power if you live in a world where everyone else has amazing cosmic power also?

In theory we were supposed to care about one (or both) of the main figures: Seahn or Persha. However Seahn was a nasty character with no redeeming attributes. He supposedly wanted to sit on the ruling council of House Dexter, but what for? The ruling council of House Dexter never did anything. So his initial goal was empty and aroused now sympathy from the reader. Then he schemed and murdered his way to rule over House Sinister, helped in large part by the power of Enson (Danik). But to what end? What did he do as the main figure in House Sinister? Was he really more powerful than Orium? Could he control Gannish in any sense? No. He was no leader and he had no vision for what to do with his power. Through all the issues of the First, all the talk, not one person ever had a vision of what they were going to do which mattered.

The only person who seems to have a clue about what to do is Ingra. She actually makes direct contact with a number of the Sigil-bearers and makes use of their powers for her own ends. At least Ingra has some idea of what to do with power, no one else does.

The writer of the First liked to compare her characters to High School students playing their petty games of social dominance in school. Well there are a host of reasons why this does not make for good drama. First, high school is a completely artificial environment. High school students are essentially prisoners of the state, forced to attend school whether they wish to or not. Forced to remain in contact with people they would otherwise never went to even see, much less talk to. Forced to adhere to state mandated rules of behavior which, as adults, they would never consent to. High school students are like adults, with adult bodies and passions, but without the legal rights. How is this comparable to the lives of gods who are (A) immortal, (B) can travel anywhere they like in an instant, and (C) can do whatever they like because there is no authority to stop them? High school students are not comparable to gods.

The gods of Greek mythology are kept in line by several factors. First Zeus is the ultimate ruler and he can (and does) settle disputes. Second, the gods know that if they step out of line too much they can be supplanted by new gods, just as they supplanted the Titans before them. Third, the gods play their games through men, examples of conflict between the gods are rare, and mostly confined to their initial emergence into the pantheon. The only example of a long-term conflict between the gods is between Hephastus and Ares over Venus. Otherwise, when the gods have disputes, they fight it out through men as their proxies.

This is for good reason. A conflict between the gods is either a) irresolvable or b) must result in wide spread change that alters the universe.

Some possibilities the First might have considered:
• Destroy all the Sigil bearers.
• Find out who gave them their power and then wage war on that entity (It would have taken the First about 10 minutes to locate the Danik “fragments” hovering around the Sigil-bearers. In fact Skink/Danik revealed his power directly to Mai Shen, an event that should have – but didn’t – send her back to Ingra with the juicy news.)
• Conquer all the worlds (impose a rule by The First on all the planets). After all, the First are immortal, can teleport instantly from location to location, and have access to fantastic amounts of power. No world could have stood up to the combined might of either of the houses.
• Breed “super-men” on all the planets. The Greek gods followed this tactic, and produced heroes on Earth by breeding with mortal females. We know of at least one example of this happening (Ires from Negation) but the authors made no effort to create plots out of such unions.
• Collect advanced technology from all the planets. The world of the First is devoid of artifacts or technology other than swords and armor. Given that the First can be damaged or even killed by the concentrated energy blasts of huge spaceships, one might have thought the First would express some interest in staying one or two steps ahead of the mortal races? But no, they couldn’t be bothered.
• Begin a plan for the conquest of the other half of the world of Elysia (in other words, end the division by force of conquest). This idea would make more sense if there was actually any conflict between the two sides, but there isn’t. The two sides get along fine.

Persha has the idea of unifying the two sides but she makes no efforts at convincing the members of her own side (House Sinister) and she leaves House Sinister to join House Dexter without any emotional difficulty. She doesn’t really fit with the House Sinister personality in the first place, she isn’t an egotistical Prima Donna and she doesn’t really seem to want to rule over other people. She doesn’t like the old rift between the two houses because she wants her parents to get back together. It’s a simple desire but it doesn’t have any larger significance.

So, the First series was ultimately meaningless. All these costumes, all the sound and fury, signifying – nothing at all. What lesson were we supposed to draw from the First? That ambition is attractive? (Seahn – I don’t think so) That love can last even across thousands of years of separation? (Pyrem and Ingra – highly unlikely) That opposites attract? (Gannish and Yala – what is the attraction exactly?) That even really beautiful and immortal people can lead empty vacuous lives devoid of meaning or excitement? (I think we knew that already thanks to 70 years of exposure to Hollywood movie stars).

Compare the First to Zelazny and what do you see? Sam (in Lord of Light) is fighting for something deeply important. He is fighting for freedom, for technological progress in the face of an entrenched and stultifying world order. This is an important fight and he is willing to die for his cause. He is willing to kill for his cause. His cause matters, it matters in the world we Americans live in. He isn’t fighting to control the world, he is fighting for others. Sam is a hero in every sense of the word. He is a hero god, fighting other gods on behalf of ordinary mankind. Although Sam loses everything to achieve his goal, he does not begrudge this lose because he is a hero.

Consider Zelazny’s other significant god-like hero: Corwin. At first Corwin wants to rule Amber because he feels he is the rightful heir to the throne of his father, but later he learns that ruling means caring about your subjects. To rule justly and well is to give of yourself for the betterment of the kingdom (he sees this acted out in both kingdoms he visits in The Guns of Avalon). Finally Corwin realizes that he wants to rule so that he can preserve order, life, and the chance for people everywhere to live their lives in peace. Corwin chooses order over chaos and creates his own pattern to save the multiverse. In the end, he does not rule and does not need to rule, it is enough that he has saved the many worlds from chaos and disorder. This is an important journey to take, to learn to value other people, lesser people, other things, above yourself.

Who among the First is on such a journey? No one. Not any of the First that we meet cares about anything important. None of them are on a heroic quest, none of them are seriously threatened. They aren’t fighting over anything important because they don’t care about anything important. Does it matter if Seahn is in charge of the House Sinister? No. Does it matter that Persha wants to unify the two houses? Again no, because Persha does not in fact represent a merger between the two ideals of the two houses: individuality vs. community effort. She has no larger plan, just a vague feeling that the two houses should be united again. But she has no vision, and Danik (in the form of Wyture) doesn’t offer one either.

(Copyright Colin Glassey 12/11/2006)

Posted by rakhier at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)

The overall CrossGen plot...

Thoughts on super-human characters and the CrossGen Comics
By Colin Glassey, December 11, 2006

Super-human characters have been a staple of stories since the very beginning. The earliest story out of Sumerian civilization is about the demi-god Gilgamesh and his wild demi-god friend Enkidu. The Greek myths are full of stories about super-men like Heracles, Jason, Beleraphon, Perseus, and more.

In the 1970s, Roger Zelazny wrote a number of classic stories (Lord of Light, Nine Princes in Amber) about demi-gods as realistic people with real problems and desires.

An attempt at something similar was made from 2001 to 2003 by a Miami based company called “CrossGen”. They published comic books and tried to tell a story of gods and power through the means of their comics.

Comic books have, from the very beginning, been the domain of super-men (starting pretty much with Superman) so the idea of comics dealing with super-men is nothing new. Still, the CrossGen story struck me as an interesting modern attempt to deal with the issues of super-men and what drives them.

Part 1 – The CrossGen Plot

The story (as can be surmised from various comics CrossGen published) is as follows.

In the Beginning was Atlantis – 100,000 B.C.E

A long time ago, a very human-like race existed on the island state of Atlantis on the planet Earth. Over time the Atlanteans figured out something important. They learned that they could escape their bodies and transcend, become one with the universe (essentially attain Nirvana). Following the Buddhist way of thinking, the majority concluded that transcending was only feasible/worthwhile if they gave up their emotions to be intellects only. However, not everyone in Atlantis agreed with the plan to transcend.

The first group, led by Capricia, did not wish to transcend because they felt an obligation to guide and protect the savage “true humans” who were living elsewhere on the planet. So this group agreed to “hide” during the transition (for reasons that make little sense). The second group, consisting really of only one individual named Solusandra, disagreed with the idea that emotions had to be given up in the transcended state. She insisted on transcending with her emotions intact.

The transcendence was a success. Those Atlanteans moved beyond mortal existence and gained access to vast powers. However, they did very little with such powers. They were content to observe and do nothing. They became idle gods. The one thing they did do was limit Solusandra, they removed her from the group mind and limited her to playing with just a small part of the galaxy.

Solusandra made use of her powers to create a group of demi-gods named “The First”. Danik, one of the leaders of the Atlanteans, was sent to watch Solusandra and over time he concluded that she was right and they were wrong. However, this conclusion came only after a long time.

In the mean time, the situation on Earth had developed rather oddly. Atlantis and all the people who stayed behind, was sunk under the ocean, those that stayed behind were locked in a state of suspended animation for 100,000 years. Oddly, the transcended Atlanteans did nothing, they made no move to fix the problem of their time-locked friends and they made no effort to help the “true humans” living and developing on Earth.

For reasons never explained, Solusandra grew bored of The First and left them. And for thousands of years (30,000? 50,000?) Solusandra disappears from the story. Danik apparently is interested in The First and so he creates two “fragments” of himself to monitor The First (two because The First have split into two warring factions). The First don’t do much from the time of this split till the start of the comic book series. Only Altwaal, the first creation of Solusandra has any vision for the development of the gods and so he leaves them to let them mature on their own. Altwaal’s strategy does not seem to work.

Earth in the Future – 3,000 C.E.?

Meanwhile humans on Earth eventually reached the 20th century and then passed it. They developed space flight. Somehow humans appeared on many planets in the galaxy, whether this was a matter of colonization from Earth or “creative work” by Solusandra was never explained.

Eventually, some thousand or two thousand years into the future (3000? 5000 CE?) two scientists (Charon and Appolyon) came up with an invention which would cause a technological type of transcendence. They used their machine and it had a curious effect. The population of the Earth largely “transcended” (but not the people living in Australia). However, they did not transcend like the Atlanteans had done 90,000 years earlier, instead they became semi-physical/semi-energy beings in an alternate dimension, a galaxy like our own but different. In this galaxy the two scientists, Charon and Appolyon, gained enormous power, allowing them to travel instantly from place to place, giving them immortality, and allowing them to channel vast energy at will.

Charon, driven somewhat mad by the transition, created new “fragments” of himself, each of which contained a part of his madness. These entities were creatures of chaos, murder, violence, and evil (they were called Lawbringers, for no good reason). Charon himself became rational but emotionally detached from such vital issues as life and death. He resolved to conquer this new galaxy, named “Negation Space”.

Negation Space

Over the next 10,000 years Charon succeeded in conquering the Negation galaxy. Early on he defeated and imprisoned Appolyon as well as one of his own Lawbringers who turned against him. His commanders were the people of Earth who had transcended with him. The rest of the Earth population had not gained nearly as much power as Charon but they had gained immortality. Over time they forgot all about Earth or about trying to return to their home world.

Note: it is not at all clear that time runs the same in the Negation dimension as in the “Bright” dimension. It could be that 10,000 years in Negation space is equal to much less time in the “Bright” space. This would logically give the Negation space an advantage if true. If it is not true then it is hard to explain what the Earth people have been doing for the 10,000 years that Charon spends consolidating control over his Negation galaxy. Given technological advancement and FTL ships, 10,000 years is enough to do all sorts of interesting things (colonize the galaxy; develop new ways of transcendence; harness the power of stars; etc.) For whatever reason, the technology on the Earth side seems static (and in fact not much advanced from 500 years from now).

People elsewhere in the “Bright galaxy” forgot about Charon and ignored his technology for transcendence (this is completely absurd and not the only absurdity). Similarly, this transcendence by much of the Earth’s population escaped the notice or interest of the Atlantean gods or The First (What do they do with their time? Play poker?).

The Creation of the Sigils – 13,000 C.E.?

Finally, less than 10 years before the start of the comics, Danik became convinced that Solusandra was right and his fellow Atlantean gods were wrong. He decides that he will change the power structure in the “Bright” galaxy by enlisting Solusandra’s help. Together they went through the “Bright” galaxy creating Sigil-Bearers who would have the power (eventually) to challenge the power of the Atlantean gods. After some 40 (or more) Sigil-bearers had been created, the other Atlantean gods figured out something was happening and they joined together to destroy Solusandra (not realizing the Danik was part of the plot?). However, their attempt to destroy Solusandra backfired and ALL the transcended Atlanteans were destroyed except Danik. Solusandra only partially survived, in a vastly weakened state with her memories gone.

At this point Danik has won, and the Sigil bearers no longer have a purpose. But immediately after this victory he discovers (through unknown means) that Charon’s forces have found (or will find) a way to cross the barrier to the “Bright” galaxy. The Negation galaxy, united under the immensely powerful Charon and his Lawbringers, is a threat which Danik can’t seem to fight (why not? As the only Atlantean god left can’t he close down “portals” from the Negation space as soon as they open? What sort of god is Danik?). The threat from the Negation is now the new purpose of the Sigil-bearers.

Apparently the new mission for the Sigil-bearers is to travel into Negation space and destroy Charon and end the Negation empire attacks into the “Bright” galaxy.

The comics now start and they cover a period of a few months or years.

1) In The First, none of the demi gods seem to have improved their powers over the years or learned anything. At the start of the comics, Danik’s fragment (named Enson) helps Seahn obtain one of the magic weapons of Atlwaal but Seahn soon loses it. The rest of the series is a complex power game which accomplishes little. Indeed while Solusandra brushes Ingra aside with a wave of her hand, she has to spend quite some time battling Giselle before she beats her, suggesting that Giselle has become more powerful than Ingra. Only Altwaal seems like he might be a challenge for Solusandra, and Altwaal was created by Solusandra so we know he wields just a portion of her power. {Earth: Seahn; Fire: Ingra; Air: Pyrem; Water: Orium}

2) In Sigil, Sam Rey learns to use his Sigil to perform god-like feats such as: carving up the planet Gaia into smaller, stable chunks; warping and destroying space ships from a distance. Sam Rey’s power is so immense that it calls into question the power of Danik and Solusandra as neither of them seems capable of such feats. Sam seems capable of destroying planets by himself. He is easily the most powerful Sigil-Bearer and he does things that are more dramatic than anything anyone else does in all the comics.

3) In Mystic, Giselle learns various forms of magic and becomes quite proficient at using her Sigil to power magic spells. This makes her very formidable in one-on-one battles. Her spells give her powers equal to (and perhaps superior to) anything any individual members of the First have, though there are indications that her powers are dependent on her location, unlike the First who are equally powerful everywhere.

4) In Scion, Prince Ethan transforms into a great warrior but his feats are on a small scale. He seems one of the less useful of the major Sigil-Bearers.

5) In Meridian, Sephia is like Ethan, only smaller and even less powerful. She is not much of a warrior and more of a healer. She seems the least capable of the major Sigil-Bearers.

6) In Crux, the initial team of Capricia, Tug, Gammid, and Galvin seem weak and ineffective. While they survive nearly constant assaults from Negation forces (the Negation seems to have remembered where to find Earth) they rarely win anything more than partial respites from the Negation attacks. Their powers (enhanced slightly by Danik) seem much less than the power of the First or Giselle or Sam Rey. Unlike the First they will die from old age, they can’t teleport, they can’t unleash death rays, they can’t wield magical spells, they can’t see distant events, and they can’t sense happenings on other worlds. Only when the Crux team manages to re-awaken the rest of the 1,000 Atlanteans who were in suspended animation, do they gain the ability to defeat a serious Negation military force. However, even massed together, the Atlanteans seem to be lacking the raw power of Sam Rey and they are internally conflicted and lacking a great deal of knowledge, because they have been asleep for the last 100,000 years.

7) In the Negation comic, the combination of the four Sigil-bearers, plus a member of the First, plus a partial First, are insufficient to beat even a single Lawbringer. Only the self destruction of a powerful magician from Giselle’s planet is able to kill a Lawbringer (suggesting that Giselle’s powers would be singularly effective against the other Lawbringers). While Kaine is a masterful commander and manages to keep his team alive despite incredible odds, the bottom line is they fail to make much of a dent in Negation power. At the end of the series they have three things in their favor and one against:

First they find and energize a resistance movement against Charon by rescuing a dissident Lawbringer from its prison.

Second they create a powerful version of Danik in the Negation space (this could have been done anytime but they lacked the knowledge to do it until the end).

Third, they rescue the demi-god Appolyon who is nearly as powerful as Charon and should prove a most useful ally in Negation Space, so long as he does not simply take over once Charon is defeated.

Against this must be set the fact that all the Sigil-bearers gave up the fight, the Atlaneans are either dead or exhausted, and the one member of the First who was on their side, joins Charon, bringing with her a great deal of knowledge and raw power to the Negation.

Several more things need to be mentioned. First, Solusandra is not dead and she suddenly wakes and sets out to regain her memories by visiting some of the Sigil-Bearers that she (and Danik) earlier created (this is described in the eight Solus comics). During this time the Sigil-Bearers have only been monitored by Danik, they have no clue where the sigils came from. Solusandra finally meets with Danik and regains her memories. She pledges to use her powers to fight against the Negation. This would seem to double Danik’s power. In fact, given that she created the First, it is hard to see how Solusandra can be defeated by anything the Negation and Charon can send against her.

Second, Altwaal chooses this time to return to the The First and reassert his control over all the gods. Altwaal seems to have a great deal of knowledge about the future and if the First were really united under his leadership, they would be a truly formidable force (though again, capable of breaking worlds apart like Sam Rey? It doesn’t seem like it).

(Copyright 2006 - Colin Glassey)

Posted by rakhier at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

CrossGen Comics - Review...

From Colin Glassey:

CrossGen comics went out of business more than two years ago but I recently collected a bunch of their books. I wrote up a big essay on what they did (and did not do). I'm publishing this essay because I think it is worth putting out on the web. Today: A Review

Of the CrossGen comics, Crux was a complete failure on just about every level. I kept hoping it would get better and it never did. The characters were weak, the logic was non-existent, and the enemy was too powerful. Only when Aristophanes appeared did Crux attain some narrative force as that character actually believed in his cause and was utterly convinced of the correctness of his course of action.

The First, despite lovely art, costumes, and character design, proved emotionally and intellectually empty. I guess I should have known it would not work out when they spent most of the fist six episodes narrating a back-story which, frankly, wasn’t that interesting. Bottom line for the First: if you are going to make gods, give them something important to do!

Meridian, while not my cup of tea, was actually a good idea and seems to have been carried out well.


Sojourn, seemed to be a very obvious heroic fantasy, well illustrated but nothing special.

Sigil, a plain, straight forward narrative about a super hero up against overwhelming odds was good clean fun. Sadly, Sam Ray became too powerful and really nothing could stand in his way (once you can take planets apart with your mind, everything else seems – just a bit trivial). However the art work was great, the science fiction was reasonably well thought out, and one or two of the characters were realistic.

Scion was a winner, though Prince Ethan was just a bit to darn good in his behavior. He made tough choices and he lived with them. He was always doing the right thing, even when it hurt him. Also, the artwork was just a little too simple for my tastes (the faces were under-drawn in my opinion). Still, nice job overall.

Mystic was also a winner. Beautiful illustrations, very well thought out magic system and political/social dynamics. The problem, once Giselle has defeated one of the First (sort of), there was no where else to go for big drama. Giselle isn’t going to take on the Negation, they don’t fit into her “individual magical solutions”. They are a science fiction threat and she is a fantasy character. Her later quests to master all the forms of magic, while interesting, wasn’t the same level of drama as we had earlier. So Mystic I think went too big, too early in the challenge department. Still, the first 24 issues remain an impressive achievement. The artwork especially up until issue #19 was spectacular.

Negation was the best of the group, perhaps too good as it distorted all the other titles starting in early 2003. Never-the-less, Negation featured intelligent, gut-wrenching action. It had choices that mattered (as characters could be, and were, killed off). It had a wonderful semi-random assembly of strange people who all had to work together in order to survive. The final end of Negation was a shocking and unpleasant turn of events which calls into question the whole American ethos. Still, up until Gammid’s death in episode 27, this is one of the great works of modern science fiction. Kaine, Evinlea, Lizard Lady, all of the escapes, made for a stunning adventure.

-- Colin Glassey, December, 2006

Posted by rakhier at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2005

Can Democratic Fantasy be Written?

Just finished The Golem's Eye (book 2 of the Bartimaeus series by Stroud). It is an interesting book which ends on a very disquieting note. The hero of the first book has turned into an evil character. I wonder if the author really knows what he is doing but we shall see.

My real question is: can one write fantasy in which the main characters either live in or fight for a democracy. So far, fantasy is the last bastion of the aristocracy what with princess and princesses and long-lost kings all forming the main characters of the stories (from Eddison's The Worm Ouroborus to Tad Williams series Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (the first book is The Dragonbone Chair, a title that really makes no sense within the context of the book).

I'm not the first to point this out. David Brin clearly talked about this in his commentary about his novel Glory Season (which is not really a fantasy though it comes close in feel).

Why might this be? I can think of some reasons.

1) Democracy (or rather Democratic-Republic) is hard to understand, messy in practice, and free of a great deal of trouble which causes plot in normal books (i.e. rightful kings displaced by grasping nobles).

2) Democracy is new. The first real democratic government in the modern world is the U.S. and its only been around since 1792 (with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution).

3) Common sense suggests that democracy can't work as most people think other people are stupid and make poor decisions. Most people think Mackay was right (The Madness of Crowds). The new, alternative theory that crowds are smart (pushed valiantly by Surowiecki) is not widely understood nor believed.

Clearly this is something that I could write, if I could write fantasy.

Posted by rakhier at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)