Myth, the Universe, and Everything

A few weeks ago, Bill Bodden, one of my fellow contributors to Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror, graciously hosted me as a guest post on his blog. Today, I'm delighted to return the favor! Bill is a fantastic writer and was a driving force behind getting Haunted attention online, and it's been a delight to work with him. So without further ado: here's Bill!

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Myths and Mysteries

I've been thinking about mythology quite a bit lately. Much of my more recent writing work has involved the Cthulhu Mythos; I've been doing quite a bit of work for Modiphius Entertainment at their Achtung! Cthulhu tabletop role-playing game line. This mythology, created by H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton SMith, August Derleth and many others, postulates that the universe is a vast place and that human beings are not the center of it, as we had supposed for centuries. This was a new concept in the 1930s, and as one can imagine, not a popular one with scholars, academics and the clergy. Regardless, it caught on with readers to some degree, and was rediscovered -- thanks in no small part to the tireless efforts of August Derleth to keep Lovecraft's writing alive -- in the late 1960s.

One of the more interesting aspects of this mythos is its inclusivity; anyone can add to it. There are no official high priests to declare what is and is not canon -- only self-appointed ones. That others could build on his work was Lovecraft's wish, stated explicitly in letters to friends who had also contributed stories and ideas. I believe it was the first shared-world concept in literature, and remains a successful one to this day. That inclusivity has brought new blood and new ideas to the fold -- not all of it good, of course, but the vast majority of the material is well worth reading, if you like reading that sort of thing to begin with.

I cut my teeth on classic mythology: the Greeks, the Norse, the Egyptians, the Aztecs, all had fascinating stories designed to explain why Things Are The Way They Are. In this day and age we have a greater understanding of science -- mostly -- and have a better grasp of which things are natural phenomena and which are not. Science itself has nearly become a religion, supplanting the hazy explanations of the past with facts and logic of today. As our knowledge increases, we will doubtless learn more about the supernatural and paranormal, and when we do we may find, like so many of the protagonists in Lovecraft's work, that the real story is both far more interesting and vastly more terrifying than we had imagined.

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Bill Bodden has been writing in the tabletop gaming industry for more than a decade. His latest works include material in the Achtung! Cthulhu Keeper's Guide, and is currently working on a project for White Wolf Publishing/CCP. His most recent fiction is the story "In The Shadow Of His Glory" in Sidekicks! from Alliteration, Ink. Visit Bill's website at www.billbodden.com

That's right, I'm under 30 messages in my inbox. That's a mark of success, and I'm sticking to it. I don't think it's been that way for months, and today, it happened by accident. How exciting!

In other, slightly less successful, news, I'm still in the middle of work on "Kidnapping at Willow Creek," the new Choice of Games adventure I'm writing, and I'm still at the beginning of edits on Into the Reach. We're already through June's halfway point, and I'd been hoping to finish both projects this month. Current outlook? Doubtful. I have gotten some other stuff done, though, like updating my website a little bit to reflect my new look. The old author photo's seven years old at this point, and I figured it'd be nice to actually have my headshot look like the modern me. (The photo was taken by the awesome Jason Neely, who was a coworker of mine in my days at JBML.)



In other news about moving forward, the Viking Saga group is gathering for the first time since, I think, February this weekend, so we can get back to clearing the automatons of an upwardly-mobile sorceress from Baba Yaga's hut. Because only good can come from helping Baba Yaga. Right?

Best news of the day isn't mine: it's that fellow Substrater Max Gladstone got a starred review of his upcoming novel, Two Serpents Rise, in Publishers Weekly. Go Max!

What's your good news?

A quick congrats to Stacia Kane for her most recent book birthday: Sacrificial Magic just released on the 27th. Here's to it doing well!

But the big congratulations go to Geoffrey Ashe, whom I've mentioned on the blog before as the Arthurian scholar I've had the privilege of studying under (and dining with) on my few trips to England. It's old news at this point, as the Guardian article was posted way back on December 31, 2011, but I just found out last week: Geoffrey has been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his service to Britain's heritage. His wife sent 'round a photo of the ceremony (which sadly belongs to the press agency, so I can't reprint it). Instead, I thought I'd post a photo of Geoffrey at Glastonbury Abbey, giving one of his lectures to our group back in 2009.



Congratulations, Geoffrey!

Rather than launching into industry news after a month of minding my own business (and neglecting to post here), I thought I'd write a little bit about some thoughts I've been having this holiday season in relation to my own personal mythology (i.e. religion).

Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend about the futility of the universe -- the idea that, eventually, it's likely to all draw back in on itself, thus erasing everything that has gone on before and reducing humanity to a footnote of the universe (if anything in the universe is taking notes). I don't remember it that's the current popular theory for the end of the universe -- there's another one that we'll expand indefinitely, as I recall, but I've long since stopped worrying about the end of everything, as I won't be around to see it. What the conversation ended up coming around to was whether or not anything humanity did mattered, in the grand scheme of things, and whether there was any hope. I said, "I know this sounds like a cop out, but I think it's just in my nature to hope."

There is power in hope -- something supported by science as well as by common/folk wisdom. My sister recently visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and a friend of Frank's said at one point that Frank thought all her family members were dead. The friend believed that if Frank had known her father was alive, she would have survived -- but she'd lost all hope. If she'd known that the concentration camp where she was located would be liberated in two days, might she have made it? I suspect so, because I think hope gives people a reason to hold on, even when they don't precisely know what they're hoping for.

I was a reader for our Christmas Eve church service out here, and one of the passages I read was from Luke 2 -- the story of the shepherds. I've sung it before from Handel's Messiah, and I had to focus on the translation I'd been instructed to read in order to avoid the "sore afraid"s and the "And lo!"s. Reading it aloud this year made me think about how a lot of my world-view ends up being rather like the way the shepherds react after they leave the manger scene: they are full of awe, wonder, and hope.



At the end of all things, will any of what we've experienced here have mattered? Will it have had any meaning bigger than just the components? I can't guarantee it, but I believe that, in some grand scheme of things, our experiences matter and our stories matter. And I can't help thinking that it's much nicer to be filled with hope that to not have any at all.

I don't watch a lot of TV. We don't actually have television service, and I watch my current TV shows from my computer screen. We do have a Roku for our Netflix service and find it incredibly useful, and we've rented movies from Amazon that way as well. Recently, I gave HuluPlus a look, but since it carries only one of the three television shows I'm currently committed to (yes, TV is a relationship: I have an ongoing friendship with Castle and Leverage, and sadly a limited remaining time of my dedication to Eureka), we won't be continuing to use that service. While I have it, though, I thought I'd try out two new television programs on the big screen to see if they'll be worth following on the computer later on. I speak, of course, of Grimm and Once Upon a Time, two fairy tale spin offs of very different flavors. The fairy tale hook clearly appealed to me, but whether or not I'll be staying to see how they go depends very much on the shows themselves.

Of course, I'm not the only one to pay attention to their very close release schedules. Teresa Jusino over at Tor.com posted her response to the pair, which I intentionally didn't read before writing this. (However, most everything over at Tor.com is worth reading, so I'll blindly recommend going and comparing her notes to mine.)



Here's my assessment: Grimm is actually an urban fantasy in the UF Noir style (ala the Dresden Files and others) that uses fairy tale elements for its paranormal component. As it's made by some of the writers who were on the teams of Angel and Buffy, the similarities don't entirely surprise me: in some ways, the series strikes me as Buffy if the core audience being targeted were mid-career adults rather than teens and twenties. It's also a cop show, and I suspect it may end up feeling like a cop show with paranormal elements rather than a fantasy with cop show elements. I think that may work in its favor.

Once Upon a Time, on the other hand, is a fairy tale writ long. In the tradition of fairy tale retellings like Bill Willingham's Fables comics, Sondheim's Broadway musical Into the Woods, and (most recently) jimhines's Princess Quartet, Once Upon a Time takes the familiar stories and twists them, just a bit, recasting real fairy tale characters as unknowing modern-day humans, for whom time has stopped. The only one to know about the Curse that has brought them out of their fairy tale reality and into the real world is Henry, a little boy, who is the biological son of the destined hero (the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming), and the adoptive son of the Evil Queen. The hero herself, Emma Swan, is a tough girl loner who doesn't really believe in Henry's story, but finds herself drawn to the child. The cuts between the fairy tale backstory and the modern break-the-curse plot honor the romantic atmosphere of fairy tales -- and, thus far, aside from some off-stage cutting out of hearts, are doing it in a pretty tame way. Sure there's swordfighting and sorcerous battles, but it's not the sort of gritty and dark flavor that Fables and Into the Woods brought us. The fairy tale versions of the characters don't have anywhere near the depth they do in Jim Hines's books.



But that may be part of the point: while Grimm is, from the get go, down in the brutal side of those beloved and scary German folk tales, Once Upon a Time is Disneyfied, right through the use of the name Melificent for the wicked fairy who cursed Sleeping Beauty. Because the team of Once Upon a Time, was also part of the team on Lost, there is some worry that the fairy tale elements may end up being a lie after all -- but from some quick research on what the creators wanted to bring to the show, it doesn't sound like that's their intention. But while I think Grimm starts by knowing what it is, as a show, right from the very beginning (and, by virtue of the Monster/Villain-of-the-Week potential, could go on for seasons), Once Upon a Time launches its major plot in episode one, and that full plot arc needs to be resolved in the first season to feel like the story is going anywhere. The quest structure could work in its favor if they can raise the stakes for Season 2 -- or it could mean that the show has a one season maximum until we all get back to happily ever after.

It may sound like I'm being hard on Once Upon a Time here; I am being pretty critical, because it's a subgenre I'm invested in. But I'll definitely say that after watching two episodes (I've only seen the pilot of Grimm), I'm drawn in enough to keep watching, at least until the end of the season -- or however long it survives this season! I have a feeling that in the current TV climate, Grimm with its gritty appeal and its ambiguous morality will find its audience with no trouble at all -- and unless things get too scary for my fluffy-bunny-horror self, I'll be sticking with it.

Sorry for the radio silence -- the hurricane had us off the air here for a few days, and I've been busy catching up from the lack of power. It's amazing how just a few days can set back your schedule!

With that out of the way, it's time for me to join the voices raised in celebration of the geek community. Writer/editor Monica Valentinelli posted over at Flames Rising about how the negative stereotypes of geekdom are continually perpetuated by the media. As Josh Jasper reported over at Genreville last year, the New York Times is one of the guilty outlets. So Monica suggested that we geeks unite a bit and share how proud we are of our various geeky hobbies.

My dear readers, you know a lot of the geek hobbies in which I indulge, just from reading bits and bobbins here at the blog. Here's a list of these things, in descending order from commonly known to possibly previously unknown online. If you partake -- or have partaken -- in any of these lesser known hobbies, I'd be glad to celebrate our mutual geekdom!

• Not only do I play RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, I'm a game writer. This makes me a professional geek in this sphere of geekdom.


• For a long time, I was also a card-carrying member of the RPGA. I really kept the card in my wallet.


• The same that went for RPGs goes for comics. I admit that I came to comics late in life -- after graduating college -- but I fell for them hard. And now I get to write and *review* comics! Best job ever.


• If geeks are pop culture related and nerds are academic (one of the breakdowns I've heard recently and have begun to use), I am both a geek and a nerd in general. I went to college after 10th grade and graduated at 20.


• More specifically, I'm a myth and history nerd. I have been known to geek out -- or even squee -- about archaeology news.


• I am not a serious videogamer, but I do drive a mean MarioKart. I grew up with a hand-me-down Nintendo (not even a Nintendo 64) and played computer games on our old Commedore 64. Currently, we have an Xbox at the Abbott house. Plants vs. Zombies lives on my desktop.


• I am completely tempted to play The Old Republic, not because I love Star Wars (even though I do), and not because I love MMORPGs (MMOs have the potential to eat my life), but because I am a huge BioWare fan. Love those guys!


• Speaking of Star Wars, I did used to read all the Extended Universe books. Being a lit major in college totally made me fall behind, but I do pick up a novel now and again if the continuity isn't too confusing. I also own several volumes of the Star Wars: Legacy comic.


• Clearly, you already knew I was a Browncoat. I also dig Star Trek and Eureka. I was super excited to find Earth2 and SeaQuest on Netflix.


• Before I was a gamer geek and a comic geek, I was a band and choir geek. I was in marching band and swing choir. After graduating college, I took my music geek self and performed with a semi-professional choir at Renaissance festivals across the state of Michigan. I have an awesome Italian Renaissance era costume which is, sadly, not as accurate as a member of the SCA would make it.


• Speaking of getting dressed up in costumes, I have LARPed and enjoyed it, and I have worked in True Dungeon at GenCon, playing a drow.

The list goes on, but while my geek side would love to put me back on a night-owl schedule, my mom side knows that Bug is going to be up at six, so I'd better get some rest between now and then. In the mean time, celebrate your geek! Check out the posts at Flames Rising and elsewhere around the internet, including Max Gladstone's over here. Join us on facebook or tweet whenever you see a geek post with the #speakgeek hash tag. Unite!

This is my last day to post about my experience reading the MFA nominees this year before the winners are announced, so I figured I'd better do a write up quickly!

I have to say that this year's finalist lists were a real joy for me. Usually, there's at least one book in the finalists that I detest, or appreciate but slog through. Sometimes there's one that I just don't get. This year, I'm happy to say that, whether or not I feel they're the best choice for the award, I enjoyed all of the books on the finalist lists for both the adult MFA and children's MFA.

Children's List

The awards finally got me to finish Megan Whelan Turner's "The Queen's Thief" series. I'd started The Thief some time ago and hadn't really enjoyed the style; when I got to the end of that book, however, I realized what all the fuss was about, and why it was an award winner. The rest of the series really won me over, and I'm very glad to have read them. Polly Schulman's The Grimm Legacy was a great discovery, and I thought Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson was a great recasting of a Grimm fairy tale in a non-Western setting.

Adult List

The best discovery on this list for me was, without a doubt, Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord. Based on a Senagalese folk story, this short novel grabbed me and didn't let go, and I was very pleased to see it make it from the long list to the finalists. I was also tremendously excited that Devon Monk's collection A Cup of Normal made the finalists; Devon's been a great inspiration for me a number of times, from both her blog and her fiction, and I'm tickled to see her recognized. Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven is another excellent contender, and definitely shows how the definition of mythopoeic can expand to include epics outside of a Western comfort zone. There's always a lot of conversation on the jury lists about what it means for a book to be mythopoeic; Kay's novel uses a different cultural language, by being set in China, than the usual candidates, and it's not directly tied to a folktale the way Lord's novel is. And yet, magic and the supernatural are always just on the other side of a boundary from Kay's characters -- sometimes crossing over it directly but other times only hinting at the presence of Other nearby. It worked for me not only on the fantasy fiction level, but also on a mythopoeic level, and I'd highly recommend it (lyster, this means you, although I'll be surprised if you hadn't discovered it already *g*).

That said, I'd recommend all of the finalists this year, even the ones I didn't directly point out here. I enjoyed all of them, some of them to my own surprise, and some of them just as I expected. (I can't think of the last time I didn't enjoy one of Terry Pratchett's novels, for example, and it's never a surprise to see him on the finalists list. Speaking of Pratchett, Genreville linked to a cool discussion about gender in Discworld this week, which is worth checking out.) So, if you're looking for something good to read, pop by the MythSoc Awards list and you'll have ten good things to put on your to-be-read pile. The winner will be announced at the Mythcon 42 banquet tonight!

How did it get to be Saturday again already?

First, some quick celebratory news: My very first Dragon magazine contribution is in the current issue! "Surely You Joust!" is available to D&D Insider subscribers, and it gets into how to customize a 4e character for jousting and, for DMs, how to integrate jousting into your game. (Lest the illustrious Shawn Merwin put me in the penalty box for punning again, the title was actually assigned that way. Not that I wouldn't have come around to the same pun on my own, of course!)

My very first solo-project as a game writer was Gallia, for DogSoul, back in the 3rd edition Open Game License days, so I drew on some of the same real-history research I'd done for that project about chivalric competitions. I also used jousting in a module I wrote for former LFR Regional director Andrew Schneider (who has an adventure up in this month's Dungeon), so it was great fun to be able to put all of that together in a new format.

It's also super exciting to be published in Dragon!

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But on to the thought that spurred me on to blogging: namely, Maryah Morvena. If you've not read her fairy tale (she's here as Maria, and she's in Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book in "The Death of Koschei the Deathless"). Max Gladstone mentioned this story to me awhile ago, but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until today. It's a very odd tale for a number of reasons:

1) Maryah is not at all a damsel in distress. When Prince Ivan, the hero, comes upon her, it's because she's just slaughtered a whole army. Possibly by herself.

2) The tale reads like you've come in at the middle. Prince Ivan, despite being a hero (and a weepy one at that), is the least powerful, and possibly the least important person in the tale. Before he enters in, Maryah has already captured Koschei the Deathless and held him captive. Koschei has already stolen a horse from Baba Yaga. All sorts of things that we never get the full story of have transpired before we step in -- which makes me think that Maryah is probably in a host of other tales that are less well known than this one, just like Koschei and Baba Yaga are.

3) This one is the most striking to me: there's this great synergy between Maryah and Baba Yaga herself in one important detail. They both ask Ivan if he's come of his own free will, or because someone else has compelled him to be there. This doesn't sound like your usual "are you friend or foe?" greeting -- no, something else very cool is going on here. It makes me think that Maryah has a relation to Baba Yaga that doesn't get mentioned in the story, either because they are both women of Power in some fashion, or in a more archetypal connection.

I don't have any thoughts beyond these musings at the moment, but I really wanted to point this story out. It's a great, weird little tale, and it's obvious why folks like Catherynne Valente have grabbed onto it for retelling. There's a lot of meat here, and I'd chew on it for a novel or two.

In an earlier entry, I mentioned being asked about sacred objects and passed along the questions for general consumption. I did not post my own answers, since I didn't want to pollute anyone else's brainstorm. However, Randy Hoyt from Journey to the Sea and others mentioned wanting to know what I'd come up with, so here's my original answer, in all its brainstormy glory.

1. An object given to a hero to see the future.

Persian king Jamshid was said to own a seven-ringed wine cup, which was filled with an elixir of immortality and allowed him to see the future.

A dangerous location in Welsh mythology is Cadair Idris in the Snowdon mountains. The location is said to look like the seat of a giant (Idris being the giant in question). Men who spend the night there are either given the gift of prophecy, blessed with the gift of poetry (which is sometimes the same thing), or go stark raving mad.

This one isn't given to a hero, sadly, but is interesting -- Tezcatlipoca, one of the four creator gods of the Aztecs, is also called "Smoking Mirror." He's related to obsidian (which is what the Aztecs used to make mirrors), but he's also often depicted with a mirror in place of the foot he lost during the creation of the world. There's an association between the mirror and seeing all of the world, or seeing the future, depending on the source.

2. An object given to a hero that allows him/her to step into a new world/realm.

I can mostly think of fairy tales that fulfill this sort of requirement, as far as objects go -- and even then, it's usually a boat or a horse or some other vehicle with the potential to cross between the world of men and the world of the fae/the dead/some particularly difficult to reach location. In "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," for example, the heroine is given a horse; in at least one of the stories in 1000 Nights and One Night, there's a flying horse that travels faster than any living creature (and may be mechanical, if I remember correctly); and one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain (from Welsh tradition) is the chariot of Morgan Mwynfawr, which could instantly transport the driver to the location of his desire. There's also the flying carpet, which does similar things, but doesn't really cross *realms* -- just makes travel to human-world locations much faster.

3. A structure/entrance that acted as a gateway to a new world.

There are three major categories I can think of for this -- it's a trope that appears pretty frequently. In the British Isles, particularly (and probably along parts of continental Europe), fairy hills are all over the place. They're typically sites where archaeologists have found ruins of hill forts, and such, but local tradition dictates that the hills are entrances into the Other world. One of my favorite of these is Glastonbury Tor, which is topped by St. Michael's Tower and is beautifully iconic.

The second category are caves, which can connect either to the Other world in that same fairy sort of tradition, or to the land of the dead. I believe Orpheus begins his journey to Hades in a cave, and I know there are cave entrances in Ireland that have a connection to the Other world. There are urban legend sites that mention associations between caves and the opening to the world of the dead in Latin America, as well, but I don't know how good the mythological basis is for that.

The third category is just the shoreline. At World's End, in Cornwall, for example, at certain times you're supposed to be able to look out and see the drowned land of Lyonesse, apparently accessible through the mist if one could just get there. Odysseus in the Odyssey communes with the spirits of the dead, consulting with Tiresias, after having beached his vessel. Shoreline is liminal space -- space where things aren't quite one thing or another -- so the idea of the shore as a crossing point from one world into the next is a pretty common theme. (To use Jungian analysis, it's also the place where the conscious meets the unconscious!)

For a stretch, you could say that a pok-ta-pok court (the Mayan ballgame playing ground) is an entrance into the underworld, as well, given the way that the gods of the underworld tend to summon people from one of those courts. Along those lines -- as far as a stretch goes -- there are lots of man made sites, such as tholoi or some pyramids, that are built with the intention of transporting a *spirit* to the other world. The Treasury of Atreus is a very cool looking one of these.

4. An object given to a hero to help him/her find his/her way out of the labyrinth (or a general state of confusion or blindness).

The easiest of these, is, of course, Ariadne's thread, which Theseus used to find his way back out of the Labyrinth of Crete. Fairy tales offer other options, as well -- the traditional marbles, bread crumbs, or pebbles that children or heroes leave behind them to find their way back. There are also stories about various liquids enabling a person who smeared them on his eyes to see the Other world -- dragon's blood, fairy spit, etc., etc., -- but a lot of those are literary conventions, I think.

5. An object used in storytelling ceremonies that gives the holder permission to speak to the group.

This seems to me to be most commonly a Native North American tradition, and, of course, the most common item is the "talking stick," which I'm sure you're familiar with! Some things I've read posit that the "peace pipe," feathers, or even wampum belts could be used for this same function.

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A few of the things that readers mentioned in comments that I hadn't: Orpheus's lyre, herms or hermae as crossing points between worlds, traditional fortune telling devices such as crystal balls and tarot cards, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (as an effective transport from Eden to the human realm), Coyote running toward a village with a firestick in his mouth and being chased by smoke spirits, pools of water and caves of prophecy, and literary examples like the AURYN amulet from The Neverending Story, the palantiri from The Lord of the Rings, and Adaon's brooch from The Black Cauldron.

I've asked to see the eventual logo that sparked these questions for the design team in the first place, and should I be allowed to, I'll share it here. In the mean time, what fun hunting for mythic objects!

My mom has said in the past, and I'm sure she'll say it again, that in order to be an expert, you have to get 50 miles away from home. In other words, people don't always appreciate your genius on a local scale: feel free to branch out into the world!

A long time ago, jeff_duntemann and I had a conversation about how writers are often not experts, but generalists. I tend to think of myself in those terms -- I know a lot of random stuff about several broad subjects, but I'm not expert in any singular area. However, it looks like here at Myth, the Universe, and Everything, someone thinks we know something about mythology. I got a great ego boost of an e-mail from a designer named Lee, who's working on a logo for a storytelling conference. The team would like to use an icon from mythology -- any culture, any age -- as a starting point, and they're short on the type of random knowledge that I (and many of you readers out there) have off the top of our heads (or with a little quick internet research to back us up). I had a ton of fun trying to come up with objects and ideas that fit the list of possibilities that Lee sent me, so I thought I'd share them here (with his permission). If you have brilliant suggestions for any of the topics, please chime in! I'll pass your answers along to Lee as well, and see what kind of juices get flowing on his design team.

Here they are:

1. An object given to a hero to see the future.
2. An object given to a hero that allows him/her to step into a new world/realm.
3. A structure/entrance that acted as a gateway to a new world.
4. An object given to a hero to help him/her find his/her way out of the labyrinth (or a general state of confusion or blindness).
5. An object used in storytelling ceremonies that gives the holder permission to speak to the group.

What do you think?