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This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
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I had some thoughts about "The Broken Earth" by N. K. Jemisin, which frame the events, characters, and issues she brought to life in a larger metaphorical and mythic context, one whose ideas are purely speculative on my part. It is not my intention to stroll in to the universe she created, the set of ideas she explored, and say that any of my ideas have any more belonging to this universe than that: the set of ideas of a fan who enjoyed this trilogy of books so much.
The world she created in The Stillness, with the ideas of The Rifting and The Seasons, and even Corepoint, those are so full of meaning to me: meaning such as I'm sure has become more acute in the minds of many of Jemisin's readers as we now find ourselves in COVID-time, a Fifth Season of our own we could not have predicted, and one which we are struggling as human beings to handle. Jemisin's placing of issues of race and community into the very center of her saga mirror the way race, racism, and community are also acute concerns now, giving nasty shapes and implications to the simple task of trying to care for one another, even as leaders wrangle for power and "normalcy," the viral cloud spreading and worsening like an ash cloud over already struggling lands and bands of human beings.
The various fantastic races in The Stillness and the lands that preceded it (like those of Syl Anagist) have reached down into the Earth's heart, whether as a magical-orogenic-hybrid power grab initiated by Empire Builders who created peoples to use as tools, or as desperate measures by arguable/ambivalent/anti heroes to try to set some sort of healing in motion. These reflect our own Empire-building efforts in centuries past and even now, efforts that pierced our own selves to the very heart, that caused awful effects on the Earth, and that produced sometimes malignant attitudes about who are human, who are dispensable, and who are destined to rule over others. And now an awful disease here in the world of fact lays bare as plainly as any Season's struggles where virtue and villainy lie.
It is something interesting to contemplate. Who are the Alabasters in the COVID-19 era? Who are the orogenes? What is the magic of our day, the geomestry? What bad ideas have gotten implanted as deeply as iron shards in the backs of the brain stems of the true villains? How do we fight them? And how are our traditional ideals of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty used by those who want to manipulate us, when we thought those same people were supposed to safeguard those ideals for us?
And, finally, when all of our illusions are subject to The Shattering, what can we rebuild from what is left?
I struggle to hold on to a hope, a prayer, that when God reveals something of the/a Divine plan all along for us, for the world, for the tribes/countries/ideas we call America or Democrats or Republicans or Progressives or wherever/however we've staked out our comms in all of this, that God's explanation of our active, often destructive role in it all does not start out with, "Hello, little enemies."
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
This essay written for pleasure by a fan of a book series is full of spoilers.
...
...
...
...
...
...
I had some thoughts about "The Broken Earth" by N. K. Jemisin, which frame the events, characters, and issues she brought to life in a larger metaphorical and mythic context, one whose ideas are purely speculative on my part. It is not my intention to stroll in to the universe she created, the set of ideas she explored, and say that any of my ideas have any more belonging to this universe than that: the set of ideas of a fan who enjoyed this trilogy of books so much.
The world she created in The Stillness, with the ideas of The Rifting and The Seasons, and even Corepoint, those are so full of meaning to me: meaning such as I'm sure has become more acute in the minds of many of Jemisin's readers as we now find ourselves in COVID-time, a Fifth Season of our own we could not have predicted, and one which we are struggling as human beings to handle. Jemisin's placing of issues of race and community into the very center of her saga mirror the way race, racism, and community are also acute concerns now, giving nasty shapes and implications to the simple task of trying to care for one another, even as leaders wrangle for power and "normalcy," the viral cloud spreading and worsening like an ash cloud over already struggling lands and bands of human beings.
The various fantastic races in The Stillness and the lands that preceded it (like those of Syl Anagist) have reached down into the Earth's heart, whether as a magical-orogenic-hybrid power grab initiated by Empire Builders who created peoples to use as tools, or as desperate measures by arguable/ambivalent/anti heroes to try to set some sort of healing in motion. These reflect our own Empire-building efforts in centuries past and even now, efforts that pierced our own selves to the very heart, that caused awful effects on the Earth, and that produced sometimes malignant attitudes about who are human, who are dispensable, and who are destined to rule over others. And now an awful disease here in the world of fact lays bare as plainly as any Season's struggles where virtue and villainy lie.
It is something interesting to contemplate. Who are the Alabasters in the COVID-19 era? Who are the orogenes? What is the magic of our day, the geomestry? What bad ideas have gotten implanted as deeply as iron shards in the backs of the brain stems of the true villains? How do we fight them? And how are our traditional ideals of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty used by those who want to manipulate us, when we thought those same people were supposed to safeguard those ideals for us?
And, finally, when all of our illusions are subject to The Shattering, what can we rebuild from what is left?
I struggle to hold on to a hope, a prayer, that when God reveals something of the/a Divine plan all along for us, for the world, for the tribes/countries/ideas we call America or Democrats or Republicans or Progressives or wherever/however we've staked out our comms in all of this, that God's explanation of our active, often destructive role in it all does not start out with, "Hello, little enemies."
