Features/Wizards
From Sedes Draconis
In my life-long role as an audience to fantasy and science fiction writing and art, I've come across a few artists who work at a level head and shoulders above the crowd; true wizards of their craft. Here's a few of them:
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Peter Beagle
Perhaps I'll let Peter Beagle's prose speak for itself. Here's the opening of The Last Unicorn:
"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she ws no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.
"She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed, and possessed of that oldest, wildest grace that horses never had, that deer have only in shy, thin imitation, and goats in dancing mockery."
Wow, neh? So begins Beagle's great fairy tale. Like so many fairy tales, it is a telling, touching examination of death and immortality, in all their guises.
Incidentally that quote brings up some interesting information on unicorns. Everyone knows that unicorns have cloven hoofs. What few people realize, though, is that unicorns are therefore squarely in Order Artiodactyla, and thus they are more closely related to hippopotamuses, than to horses. Not that they're all that closely related to hippos. Of the cloven hoofed animals (deer, camels, bovids, etc.) the structure of their horn inclines me to place them with the bovids, possibly with their closest relatives among the caprine bovids: goats, ibexes, and the like.
Another line from The Last Unicorn, that I couldn't resist: "[The butterfly] strutted joyously in the air, and the first fireflies blinked around him in wonder and grave doubt." :D
Also check out The Innkeeper's Song. It's a mind-bender.
David Brin
Master of the Hard Sci-Fi Koan
kithrup.com
Brin has written some excellent novels, including Earth, Startide Rising, and Kiln People. But his real talent is for the short story. "Crystal Spheres", "Shhh", "What Continues and What Fails", and "An Ever-Reddening Glow" come immediately to mind from among his truly great stories.
With his PhD in astrophysics, and storyteller's touch, Brin has a unique ability to tell stories about the vastness of space and time, that are nonetheless brought to life in profoundly personal and/or mythic ways. No one else I know can take an abstract concept like the expansion of the universe, and tell a story about it that is at once funny, touching, thought-provoking, and intensely original . . .
. . . in two pages. ("An Ever-Reddeningly Glow")
Lois McMaster Bujold
Her Ladyship
Lois McMaster Bujold doesn't get the recognition she deserves. Admittedly, she's won 2 Nebulas and 4 Hugos, but still, she doesn't get the recognition she deserves.
The problem is first appearances. The cover art for her books mostly mediocre. On top of that her stories look like military space-opera, a sub-genre hardly known for its contributions to great literature. But, look harder. . . .
Or, as one of her characters phrases it, "Check your assumptions. In fact, check your assumptions at the door." If you do, you'll find for yourself a rare treat of an author.
Her writing sparkles with wit (not mere humor, certainly not farce, but true wit). It often takes me some time to read her books, because I am compelled to read much of it aloud, just to hear the sound of the words.
Her character development is unsurpassed in anything I've ever read: not only are her characters fascinating, endearing, exasperating, multi-dimensional creations; they grow. Reading Civil Campaign on its own would probably be a rather boring venture, but as the culmiation of 16 stories covering 32-odd years of Miles' life and times, knowing the characters as well you do by this point, it was truly a delight; in the words of one of the characters: "Heart-stopping . . . I think . . . is the word I should choose".
Not only that, Bujold is incredibly literate. She's one of the few authors who consistently challenges my (non-technical) vocabulary. Or, at least, she did the first time or two I read each book. And now, after re-readings beyond count, I'm still picking up obscure literary jokes and references. And yet her books are very accessible. The obscure references are just extra fun for those who catch them, uncaught, the stories still engage.
Not only that, embedded in her stories is razor-honed, astute commentary on sociology, gender politics, reproductive technology, and genetic engineering. But my brother says he'll write an essay on that sometime, I'll leave it to him.
Orson Scott Card
Of course nearly everyone knows of Ender's Game and it's related books. Ender is one of the most densely decorated character in all of science fiction. The original short story "Ender's Game" won Card the John Campbell award for best new author of the year in 1978. Six or so years later Card, while writing the novel that was to become Speaker for the Dead, realized that the main character was actually Ender. So he went back and produced a novel version of the story, and then the next year came out with his new story of Ender, Speaker for the Dead. The result was the one and only time a single author has won both the Hugo and the Nebula for best novel in two consecutive years. (Interestingly, the Hugos and Nebulas for the next two years afterward included Brin, Cherryh, and Bujold. I guess I'm of the mid to late 80's school of SF.)
But as I say, the Ender books are already famous. I would also like to draw your attention particularily to the less well known Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. It is one of the very best books of alternate history, and probably the greatest story of time-travel ever told. I reject nearly all time travel stories because they seem to me to fail to address the issues adequately. Card's Pastwatch is probably the only story of time travel I can fully get behind.
Besides which, it also a masterful story, and a convincing building of both an alternate history (or two), and undiscovered events and causes of our own history.
There is another masterful aspect to it which highlights Card's abilities as a builder of minds, which is what underlies the genius of the Ender stories as well. The story concerns itself closely with "how things got that way" and the search for the origins and turning points of history. At the same time every time a major character is introduced the story goes back and gives in brief their story and past, and how they came to path that lead them to their place in the story. A fascinating bit of resonance built into the structure of the story between the same issue at multiple scales.
C.J. Cherryh
C.J. Cherryh creates alien minds better than any other author I know. Especially check out Cyteen, The Chanur Saga (and sequel), and The Foreigner series. And perhaps Forty Thousand in Gehenna The Cuckoo's Egg and "Wave without a Shore". There are also a few outstanding ideas in Faded Sun and Serpent's Reach though, overall I found the main course of each of those stories to be somewhat weak.
One of Cherryh's modus operandi seems to be to take an idea, that is popular in SF, but only very shallowly explored, and work out where it would lead if fully considered. The hani, of The Chanur Saga are what intelligent big cats would really look like. The interesting ideas touched (unfortunately briefly) on by Serpent's Reach and Faded Sun are what the psychologies of immortal humans and aliens with eidetic memories, respectively, might really look like.
The atevi of Foreigner I thnk of as a sort of response to Vulcans and aliens of their ilk, or more extreme. No intelligent, social creature could lack emotions, but the atevi are an example of what might exist that would seem sort of like they did, because they have a fundamentally different suite of emotions.
Tony DiTerlizzi
DiTerlizzi is my tailor!
diterlizzi.com
Both winner of the Caldecott Award for his children's book The Spider and the Fly, and Guest of Honor at GenCon 2003. That sums it up fairly well.
I personally can't stand Magic: The Gathering. I think it fails in almost all its potentials. But I grant at least one virtue of it. Illustrating for the endless sets of cards jumpstarted the careers of what is possibly the largest ever generation of professional fantasy artists, including DiTerlizzi.
He then went on to play a critical role in designing the stylistics of Planescape, an AD&D campaign setting much beloved, and the most stylish of them all.
His playful, sketchy style and understated colors are the complete opposite of Michael Whelan (below), except in one regard, they are both true masters of fantasy art.
(I stole the title for this page from the title of one of DiTerlizzi's sketchbooks. The line, "DiTerlizzi is my tailor!" comes from an old quizlet on mimir.net, the legendary Planescape fan site, and refers to the great enthusiasm for the style he created for Planescape.)
Neil Gaiman
Myth-Maker
I have a concept in my head, which I term "mastery" (I think I got the label from Keith Devlin, IIRC). I use it to mean that point in learning a skill or field, where you no longer have to follow the rules, because you know better. You understand it all so well, that you can work intuitively, and create new rules.
Neil Gaiman has mastery over Myth. No-one knows myth like Neil Gaiman. Not only is he versed in the mythologies of countless cultures (in his stories a reader encounters Odin, Titania, Anansi, Bast, Richard Nixon, the Silver City, Tam Lin, and countless more besides); more, he can create mythologies. And they are mythologic, not merely myth-like. He can do by himself, what it takes entire cultures generations to accomplish.
WaRP (Wendy and Richard Pini)
The Elfquest graphic novels were incredible formative for me, since I started reading them back in '90. They are a strong story, with a host of well-developed characters. It's backed by good world-building.
It's quite good story-telling, but where they truly shine is Wendy's art. Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.
My nearly complete set of the original comic books, as bought by my elder cousin as they came out and believed lost for many years, all signed by the Pinis, are one of my most closely hoarded possessions.
See also my ElfQuest reading guide.
Michael Whelan
The Grandmaster of Fantasy Art
glassonion.com
His paintings have graced countless novels. His colors are unique, I can recognize a Michael Whelan cover at 30 paces. His style is near photo-realistic, but with a rare luminescence. And perhaps most astonishing of all, he reads the books he paints for, and creates true depictions of the creations of a writer's mind as no other artist does. Including some excellent depictions of the aliens of C.J. Cherryh, for whom he has painted many covers.
