Outside of a Dog: 2007 Hugo Award Nominees: Novelette

Niall

Niall wrote on July 23, 2007 at 4:24 AM:

And putting the two together�simple fable, difficult reality�gives me serious cognitive dissonance.

I wonder -- is it possible that that's the intended effect? To point out that the sort of solutions that fables/fantasies often offer would, if transferred to the real world, be deeply troubling? That would make it even more of a contrast with The King's Last Song, which comes close to offering such a solution, and I don't know that it would make the use of Sith/Sitha any more palatable, but it makes a certain amount of sense to me as something Ryman might try to do.

Kate

Kate wrote on July 23, 2007 at 6:41 AM:

Niall: if that was the author's intent, I think it failed, because I don't see any hint of that in the story's happy, tranquil ending (or anywhere else, indeed).

(Cross-referencing: question also asked here.)

Also, over on my LJ, you said, FWIW, I do not think the ending of "The Djinn's Wife" is meant to indicate that the daughter is going to follow in her mother's footsteps.

What do you read the ending as implying, then?

Niall

Niall wrote on July 23, 2007 at 8:09 AM:

I'd agree that if that was the intent then the story failed, too. It just makes sense to me as a possible intention. But I could be way off-base.

On "The Djinn's Wife": I read the ending as more evidence of the narrator's romanticism. She's clearly not a reliable narrator, and has embellished and/or altered parts of her mother's story (see, for instance, the numerous times she makes an appeal along the lines of "it had to be like this, because stories are like this, everyone knows"), but I don't see any reason to disbelieve her statement that all the high-level aeais left this dimension, because that's what happened in River of Gods. So I think "the warm sweet breath of djinns" in the last sentence is a return to the figurative djinns of pre-aeai India, and I think the whispers in her head are of her own imagining.

Kate

Kate wrote on July 23, 2007 at 8:40 AM:

Ah, you see, I read her comment, "it seems to emanate from everywhere and nowhere, from another world, another universe entirely", as a reference to the AIs in their other world. But I haven't read _River of Gods_.

Niall

Niall wrote on July 23, 2007 at 12:17 PM:

It's an entirely plausible reading, it just undercuts RoG somewhat -- the whole point of the aeais leaving is so that they can go somewhere humans can't get at them. (IIRC, somewhere time runs in the opposite direction, no less.) So I hope it's not what McDonald meant for reasons beyond the icky.

Kate

Kate wrote on July 23, 2007 at 12:47 PM:

Got it, thanks.