Category: Favorite Stories

Writing Tip — Favorite Story: The Time Machine

Time MachineI don’t remember when I first read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, but it has remained one of my favorite sci-fi novels. I’m sure I decided to read it after watching the 1960 movie based the book. That movie is still a favorite of mine.

Mr. Wells starts his novel with two intriguing chapters. In the first, the Time Traveller describes his theory of how people ignore Time as the fourth dimension. In the second the Time Traveller’s friends gather at his house for supper. When he doesn’t appear, they begin the meal. As they are eating, the Time Traveller bursts in on them, disheveled and limping. with a story of how he left in his time machine that morning and has just returned from the trip.

In the introduction in the version of the book I own. science fiction writer Greg Bear says that the invention of a machine that would allow people to travel through time was a completely new idea imagined by Mr. Wells. Before that, any story concerning time travel used magical means. Not only is this the first book Mr. Wells wrote and established his fame, but Mr. Bear also calls it “the first modern science fiction novel.”

What I learned from The Time Machine is the importance of world-building. Mr. Wells describes what the area that used to be London looks in the year 802, 701. Two settings have always stuck with me. The first are the golden sunsets. The Time Traveller overlooks the seemingly peaceful pastoral scene under the setting sun and likens it to what he thinks is the sunset of humanity. Many times when I’m out on a summer evening, I remember this setting.

The second setting is an abandoned museum. The Time Traveller explores this when he is trying to figure out what has happened to his time machine, which disappeared shortly after he arrived. There’s something poignant about this building designed to showcase wonders and educate people left to ruin. When I visit a museum, like the Field Museum in Chicago, I imagine what it would look like empty, with decades of dust weighing down everything. What would a person of that distant time learn about us?

What are some of you favorite sci-fi or fantasy novels?

 

 

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Writing Tip — Favorite Stories: Watership Down

watership downShortly after I was married, I finally got around to reading Watershed Down. My dad had always been a big fan of it, and I remember seeing an animated movie based on it when I was a kid. I distinctly remember how mean the bad guys were. I’m not sure why it took me so long to try it myself, but once I did I was hooked. Few novels held my attention from beginning to end, but this one not only held it but refused to let it go. I couldn’t wait to get back to it when I had to take a break.

You wouldn’t think a book about rabbits in Great Britain trying to establish a new warren would be so engrossing, but it is. Ten bucks set out from Sandleford Warren when Fiver, who is a seer, convinces them that something horrible is going to happen to their warren. The bucks, led by Fiver’s brother Hazel, endure many hardships, including “elil”, the rabbit word for animals who attack rabbits. They also encounter a warren that is really just a place for people to fatten up rabbits.

The buck survive to found a warren on Watership Down and turn their attention to getting does. This problem leads them to confront General Woundwort, the tyrannical chief rabbit of a warren run like a military dictatorship. This warren is overcrowded with does who are willing to leave, but the General, greedy for power, won’t let them.

Hazel, his second-in-command Bigwig, and the other bucks hatch a plot to help the does escape, which ultimately leads to General Woundwart launching an invasion of Watershed Down.

I chose this book for my month on writing about nature because Richard Adams so wonderfully combines the rabbits’ natural instincts with his world-building. Mr. Adams has invented a mythology, complete with well-known tales, and a language for his rabbits. He gives most of the rabbits distinct personalities. Hazel is the sure and steady leader. Fiver is the high-strung seer. Bigwig is bluff, big-hearted, and the best fighter. Blackberry is the smart one with the most ingenious ideas.

But he also has them act like rabbits. The bucks need does. The overcrowding in the General’s warren is so bad that pregnant does reabsorb their kits. Rabbits only swim if they must and dislike getting wet.

The bulk of the story takes place in May and June, and Mr. Adams’s descriptions of the countryside are so vivid, I can almost smell the dirt and budding plants. One way he does this is by being very specific in his descriptions.

“Only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog’s mercury and oak-tree roots.”

“A hundred yards away … ran the brook, no more then three feet wide, half choked with kingcups, watercress, and blue brookline.”

When Bigwig is sent to help the does escape from the General’s warren, a storm is brewing, making all the rabbits nervous. It breaks just as Bigwig and the does make a break for it.

What stories have you read that use nature in a way you love?

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Writing Tip — Favorite Stories — The Daughter of Time

daughter of timeAs a fan of mysteries, I had come across The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey on lists of the best mysteries ever written. When I finally settled down to read it, I found it to be one of the most engrossing stories I’ve ever had the pleasure to discover. It expertly combines two of my passions: history and mystery.

nypl-digitalcollections-99a6ed7e-0d3c-0e0d-e040-e00a18061e25-001-rWritten in England in the 1950’s, the novel features Inspector Alan Grant, laid up in the hospital with a broken leg and bored out of his mind. His actress girlfriend knows his fascination with faces and brings him copies of photos and portraits to study. When he find the portrait of Richard III, he can’t reconcile the face with the man’s reputation as the murderer of his tween age nephews. The girlfriend contacts Brent Carradine, young man doing historical research, and he and Grant begin to believe that the story handed down for 500 years about Richard III being a merrily murdering monster is false.

Although the characters and setting are fictitious, the mystery is not. Edward V and his younger brother Richard did disappear sometime after June 1483. Their uncle Richard, who became king when the boys were declared illegitimate, is the most likely culprit. But Henry Tudor, who killed Richard III in battle and took the throne, also had a motive.

Even more involving than this mystery is the one of how people interpret history. In the novel, Grant and Carradine stick to contemporary sources and must examine the motives of the authors. Was he a sympathizer of the York family, the branch of the royal house Richard III belonged to? Or did the author favor the Lancaster side, of which Henry Tudor was a member?

The two characters also discuss how people lie about events to further their own agenda. I found all this analysis of history so inspiring that I want to use the novel in my own murder mystery. My main character use the techniques of research outlined in the book to investigate a 70-year-old mystery in his rural West Virginia county.

If you want to learn more about Richard III and his nephews, click here for the Wikipedia article. Many books have been written about the mystery, and it’s difficult to find ones that are biased. As I stated in one of my earliest blog posts, the authors tend to be either ardent Richard III supporters or detractors. Very much like the people who wrote about Richard in 1483.

What other novels have you read that blend unsolved real-life mysteries with fiction?

 

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Writing Tip — Favorite Poem

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With the opening lines and a style of illustration unique in picture books, I was drawn into The Magic Wood, an adult poem by British writer Henry Treece. Barry Mozer uses only blue and black for the illustrations, sprinkling in sparks of gold to highlight certain elements in the picture, like eyes or a gold ring. This palette conveys the dread and danger the narrator ignores when he enters the wood at night. The sense of dire consequences is apparent in every picture.

But the poem has an upbeat ending. I read it as a Christian parable. The wood is temptation, and the narrator takes his first steps into giving in to it when he ventures inside. The strange creature he meets tries to entice him further. But when he senses danger, he says prays and rushes to the safety of his family’s land.

The poem is an example of stanzas written in rhymes or near rhymes. Although I usually don’t like that style, the poem does have a rhythm, which makes it fun to read out loud to kids.

Mr. Treece wrote five books of poetry. I’ve tried to read them. He has great skill in establishing a mood of loss and darkness, but a little of that goes a long way with me. If I read too much of it, I get depressed.

So test your taste for Mr. Treece’s poems with The Magic Wood. Maybe you will be captured by it like I was.

What are some of your favorite poems?

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Writing Tip — Favorite Stories

IMG_0238For my favorite story this month, I chose a book to suit St. Patrick’s Day. Cindy Thomson, my friend from my writer’s group, wrote The Roots of Irish Wisdom: Learning from Ancient Voices. She recounts the lives of Ireland’s most famous saints, Brigid, Patrick, and Columcille. She also has shorter biographies of “The Apostles of Erin.” Other chapters cover “Celtic Learning and Art” and “Celtic Prayer.”

It’s interesting to read her nonfiction account of Brigid since she also wrote a novel based on the saint. Her research showed her that some of the attributes of the Celtic goddess Brigid were assigned to the Irish nun.

Ancient Irish history fascinates me, perhaps because it developed differently from the rest of Europe. Since Rome never conquered and then abandoned the island, it entered the Dark Ages with a different tradition. In her chapter “Celtic Prayer”, Cindy writes  that “Christianity developed differently in Ireland … because the faith had a monastic base.” This “took root … because  ancient Ireland consisted of a system of tribes, groups of family members ruled by a king.” The Roman style of organization with a bishop in charge of a city “was unnatural to the Irish.”

I enjoyed the chapter on prayer because of the wonderful rhythm to some of the prayers and the images from the natural world.

At only 84 pages, this well-researched book is a quick read. So if you want to curl up with a book while you sip Irish breakfast tea (I hate coffee) and snack on Irish soda bread on March 17th, The Roots of Irish Wisdom will not let you down.

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