swan_tower (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
swan_tower) wrote2009-04-21 11:57 am
swan_tower) wrote2009-04-21 11:57 am
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Today's ponderable
I'd like to talk about portal fantasies. Or rather, I'd like you to talk about them.
By that term, I mean the stories where people from this world go into another, more fantastical world. Narnia, for example. Once upon a time, these seem to have been more popular; now, not so much. And if I had to guess, I'd say that's at least in part because of the way a lot of them were transparent wish-fulfillment: Protagonist (who is an emotional stand-in for the author, though only in egregious cases a Mary Sue) goes to Magical Land where things are more colorful and interesting than in the real world. And maybe they stay there, maybe they don't.
Talk to me about the portal fantasies you've read. Which ones stick in your mind? What was your response to them, both as a kid and now? Which ones did the wish-fulfillment thing extra transparently, and how so?
(Yes, I actually have a special interest in the bad examples of this genre. In fact, if you approach this entire question as an academic curiosity of the structural sort paired with a authorly eye toward writing a deconstruction -- not a parody -- of the tropes, you'll be on the right track.)
Portal fantasies. Talk to me about 'em. Good, bad, ugly, laughably naive. What's your take?
By that term, I mean the stories where people from this world go into another, more fantastical world. Narnia, for example. Once upon a time, these seem to have been more popular; now, not so much. And if I had to guess, I'd say that's at least in part because of the way a lot of them were transparent wish-fulfillment: Protagonist (who is an emotional stand-in for the author, though only in egregious cases a Mary Sue) goes to Magical Land where things are more colorful and interesting than in the real world. And maybe they stay there, maybe they don't.
Talk to me about the portal fantasies you've read. Which ones stick in your mind? What was your response to them, both as a kid and now? Which ones did the wish-fulfillment thing extra transparently, and how so?
(Yes, I actually have a special interest in the bad examples of this genre. In fact, if you approach this entire question as an academic curiosity of the structural sort paired with a authorly eye toward writing a deconstruction -- not a parody -- of the tropes, you'll be on the right track.)
Portal fantasies. Talk to me about 'em. Good, bad, ugly, laughably naive. What's your take?
no subject
The real example I just finished (really, 10 minutes ago) is LightLand, by H. L. McCutchen. The cover and the SignificantWords are ... uninspiring ... but I actually ended up liking it, even if it's mostly fluff: Lottie Cook finds her way to a land made of memories through a cherry box given to her by her father.
One of the "almosts" is Sean Russell's The River Into Darkness, where Earth is strongly implied to be a parallel world. I found the ending depressing but portals play a fairly significant role in the story: it appears wizards came through the portals originally, and it's likely that all but the one remaining returned to Earth (or other worlds) through them by the time the story begins. There's also a blatant reference to Hiroshima. Although the wizards have a better grasp of science than the world at large, there are definite magical elements.
The other "almost" is Timothy Zahn's The Green and the Gray. The aliens (plant parasites and troll-like creatures) escaped from their own world to Earth, and have apparently been hiding among humans for a while. Not a great book in my opinion, but there is a twist.
Two others that I read a while back are the Archives of Anthropos by John White (a much more obviously Christian version of Narnia) and the Spectrum Chronicles by Thomas Locke, mostly light sci fi (but the mechanism for traveling to the other universe is never explained, and I would call that part of it fantasy).
no subject
Catherine Fisher's Incarceron: The twist here is that the other world was created as a giant prison. (Note that my sci fi sensibilities were offended by the mechanics until I accepted that this book is really fantasy with a sugar coating of sci fi.) Also, the story follows characters on both sides, but no one really crosses over until near the end.
Jame Stoddard's The High House. Earth is barely touched in this one (it really only plays a role near the beginning) but the High House does connect it and other fantastic lands.
Between Two Worlds (http://www.between-two-worlds.net/). Fairly straightforward portal story, although the other world is mostly uninhabited and the wish fulfillment, if there is any, doesn't really go their way. Also one of the few webcomics that I've actually seen finish rather than merely stop.