Remember that Michael Jackson song: Stranger in Moscow?
Forget the (unfortunately) sorry figure of Michael: focus on the feeling of being a stranger. Being in another country is always a weird experience. Even more so if you are a native to that country and suddenly discovers an entire country inside your territory that you´ve never heard of, a kind of parallel country, an underground land (conceptually, that is, not literally) - a country of the mind.
This displacement experience is always a mix of fear and wonder. The famous sense of wonder is also a sense of estrangement, as told as by one of the foremost Russian Formalists, Viktor Shklovsky. Maybe it comes as no surprise at all that on of the best Fantasy novels I´ve read these past few years is Ekaterina Sedia´s The Secret History of Moscow.
Life in Moscow in the 1990s was already hard for said normal people, let alone for Galina, a woman diagnosed with schizophrenia and living with her mother and her baby sister Masha, pregnant and almost due, but which suddenly gives birth and turns into a jackdaw. Galina can´t believe it, but all the same she knows that her sister is somehow missing, and she will do whatever it takes to get her back home safe. She goes to the police (and meets Yakov, a tired officer who would be ready to dismiss everything she said if he hadn´t see for himself a man in the street turn into a crow), but also gets help from a street artist, Fyodor, a superstitious and coward guy, who, among other things, has fallen in love with a gypsy girl but can´t bring himself to be with her just because of what his mother told him about gypsies when he was a child.
Together they will find an underground Moscow, a place where every lost soul (dead, as the rusalkas, girls dead by drowning, or living, like workers on the run from Stalin´s) live in a non-time, and where creatures of myth and legend also live - and maybe can even help them to find Galina´s sister and give her (and many other people) back her humanity.
I suppose Galina´s search could be called a quest, if we really want to follow the conventions of the genre, but what´s the point? Galina is not the Chosen One of many Fantasy books; she´s a kind of a misfit, and that´s what makes the story look so convincingly real, and so moving. This band of misfits, this Russian Brancaleone´s Army of reluctant losers (at least that´s what they think they are) is not the thread on which the balance of the world hangs - but it is a group of people, ordinary people that are searching for meaning in their lives. In the mythical but concrete enough Underground of Russian folk and creatures of myth and tales, this group is essential for giving each other strength to keep on living (and believing).
Reading The Secret History of Moscow, I can´t help but think that some points of contact exist between Russia and Brazil. Namely, the constant feeling that things almost never are what they seem to be, and the sensation that only a native (or a person who has lived a very long time in the country) can really understand the underlying essence of the people´s culture and ways. (Something that, for example, Ian McDonald´s Brasyl almost got, but I don´t really know for sure if he really did it - Please, don´t get me wrong, I´m definitely not a nationalist and I don´t think you should be a Brazilian to write a book about Brazil. in fact, it´s very refreshing when we read how others see and feel about our land - a very good example of this is the epic of the War of Canudos, a revolt in the Northeastern region of Brasil in the turn of the 19th to 20th Century, accurately written by the Brazilian journalist and writer Euclides da Cunha (who was an eye witness of that conflict for a São Paulo newspaper) in his epic account Os Sertões, but masterfully done in fiction by the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa in his classic A Guerra do Fim do Mundo (War of the End of the World). In Ekaterina Sedia´s case, however, we have a Russian woman writing about urban Moscow and Russian folklore, and that´s even more refreshing for me. The Secret History of Moscow was worth reading - every single page.
See? That´s what I was talking about in that post in Human 2.0. Ekaterina seems to have managed to talk not only about her place, but the things that make her russian. Why, oh why aren´t we able to do the same?
Anyway, nice review. Think I´m gonna get this one soon.
But, Jacques, we ARE able to do the same. I still don´t understand all that discussion going on in the SF community in Orkut. They´re all discussing EXACTLY the same stuff me, Octavio, Martinho and other guys discussed in 1990/91. And we figured out how to cope with some of those things in what we write. Maybe not brilliantly, but if you read Octavio´s and Martinho´s short stories, and my own Interface com o Vampiro, perhaps you´ll see some solutions we propose to end all this hullaballoo. ;-)
Just to end the discussion. Don't you think people are discussing the same things you did because they were not with you guys back e the 90s AND between then and today there's a huge gap in SF&F community, with close to no literary activity in this period. Also, some know-it-all older guys in the fandom (you know who) have the ultimate answer about it BUT they don't write a sigle word of fiction or, when they do, it's absolute crap.
So, it is only natural people start wondering (again) what is Brazilian SF&F? Or better, what it is to be a Brazilian SF&F writer? Because people have really few references. Because we are starting it all over again. Even you, don't you think?
Maybe it is time to stop wondering and just write or edit or shake the community off with conventions and other stuff. Anyway, I was just sharing some thoughts about it. And it really made some things more clear for me. ;)
I agree wholeheartedly with you, Jacques (that´s what I meant when I talked about the matter of discontinuity on your blog). But I also think that there´s some production (like the Intempol project and the Ano-Luz books) which are still available and can be read by everyone who is interested in discussing this. When I read all those posts, I got the serious impression that nobody read these books of the 1990´s, hence the feeling of discontinuity.
As for the know-it-all guys in the fandom, I just plainly ignore them. There´s nothing to do about it. Believe me: I spent more than TEN entire years of my life trying (and another TEN away from the fandom).
But you really don´t need to start it all over again (when I say "you" I mean all the interested people, of course) - otherwise, you may unwillingly "reinvent the wheel", so to speak. I agree again with you on other matter: it´s time to stop wondering and just read, write, and edit. I think you´re already doing a pretty god job at that.
fabio, thanks for the great review. It's on my "buy" list, as well as Ekaterina Sedia's anthology of urban fantasy, Paper Cities, and her next novel, which will be out in June from Prime. I really love when people from other cultures make it big in the US, writing about their own stuff. Maybe you should try Theodora Goss too, she's Hungarian. Another culture, another wonderful source of inspiration.
Ah! Este post em português, Fábio!
Era tudo o que eu queria ler!:)
abs
Thanks, Horia. Kudos to you, too: I just read your name on the acknowledgments´ page. It must have been good to talk with Jeff and Ann. And I´ll keep an eye on Theodora Goss as well. Please feel free to indicate me any author you deem worthy of reviewing, ok? I´d be more than glad to read and review all of them.
Salve, Flávio!
Pode deixar que vou providenciar! :-D
The VanderMeer's are a great team :)
Well, if you really want a good read... THE TERROR by Dan Simmons is the best I've read lately. A HUGE book, from all points of view. And right now I've started JM's LAST DRAGON. And so far it's great literature, Jeff and Larry and all the other reviewers were plain right.
And, speaking of books... Do you read French, by any chance? Have you seen this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigbadbears/1602134261/ ?
I´m great fan of Dan Simmons, and I´ve read very good reviews on The Terror so far - i´m glad you liked it. I´ll definitely read it now.
And yes, I can read French - and I just LOVED THE COVER of your book!!!
(BTW, I just sent you an e-mail - check you gmail ;-)
Horia, I´ve just ordered Last Dragon. Jeff´s review is quite uplifting. Seems to be great literature indeed.