The Wasp Factory vs One Bright Star to Guide Them
Phil Sandifer debated Vox Day about two very different works of fiction by two very different authors on June 11, 2015. Since the interview is no longer available the now-defunct original site, I’ve posted the archived version here.
Below is a transcript of my interview with Vox Day, which you can listen to over at Pex Lives. I’ve lightly edited it to remove infelicities of language on both Day’s part and my own. I’ve also added a couple of footnotes clarifying aspects of the discussion. I am sure that Day would offer several clarifications of his own. Thanks again to Kevin and James for hosting this, and to Max Braden for preparing the transcript.
Phil Sandifer: Hi, I’m Phil Sandifer and I’ve got with me today the man at the center of the whole Hugo Awards controversy, Vox Day. Hello, Vox.
Vox Day: Hey, Phil. How are you?
Sandifer: I’m doing all right. So, the idea behind this interview is that Vox and I mutually agreed upon two works, one that he thinks is a great story and that I think is terrible, and one vice versa. The first is going to be John C. Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them, which is one of Vox’s Rabid Puppies, it’s up for a best novella Hugo this year, and the other is going to be the late great Iain Banks’s 1984 debut novel The Wasp Factory. We’re going to start with One Bright Star to Guide Them, by John C. Wright, who you’ve called a contender for the greatest living science fiction writer. The book’s promotional text describes it like so:
As children, long ago, Tommy Robertson and his three friends, Penny, Sally, and Richard, passed through a secret gate in a ruined garden and found themselves in an elfin land, where they aided a brave prince against the evil forces of the Winter King. Decades later, successful, stout, and settled in his ways, Tommy is long parted from his childhood friends, and their magical adventures are but a half-buried memory.
But on the very eve of his promotion to London, a silver key and a coal-black cat appear from the past, and Tommy finds himself summoned to serve as England’s champion against the invincible Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. The terror and wonder of Faerie has broken into the Green and Pleasant Land, and he alone has been given the eyes to see it, to gather his companions and their relics is his quest. But age and time have changed them too. Like Tommy, they are more worldly-wise, and more fearful. And evil things from childhood stories grow older and darker and more frightening with the passing of the years.
One Bright Star to Guide Them begins where other fairy tales end. Brilliant and bittersweet, the novella hearkens back to the greatest and best-loved classics of childhood fantasy. John C. Wright’s beautiful fairy tale is not a subversion of these classics, but a loving and nostalgic homage to them, and reminds the reader that although Ever After may not always be happy, the road of life goes ever on and evil must be defeated anew by each and every generation.”
Now, this is obviously the one of the two books that I think is awful, but I do want to say before we start, I really do love the premise. I really love the idea of going back to a sort of Narnia-esque children’s fiction world from the perspective of adulthood. There’s obviously a lot of stories in the “return to a children’s story in adulthood” style – I should point out for listeners who are coming to this through my work that the first two chapters are actually almost beat for beat the first two stories of Alan Moore’s Marvelman in terms of the plot – but I really can’t think of one in this sub-genre that’s played with Narnia in particular. There’s a very short story by Neil Gaiman called “The Problem of Susan,” but that’s about it. So I do want to admit up front, I do love the premise if nothing else. But you obviously love a lot more than just the premise here, so my first question is simple, Vox: why is this story great?
Day: Well, before I explain why I think it’s a great story, I think that it’s probably important for the purpose of full disclosure to point out that, number one, I was the editor who was responsible for publishing this story, and also I wrote that particular description that you just read.
Sandifer: Okay.
Day: So, it’s fair to point out that I am absolutely, utterly and completely biased in this regard, less because I have a pecuniary interest in the novella selling well – anyone who knows anything about publishing realizes that novellas are not the way that you make a lot of money in the publishing business – but I am very, very biased towards John Wright in particular as a writer, and One Bright Star to Guide Them is one of my three favorite things that he’s ever written. So I think very highly of him as a writer; the other writers that I think very highly of in the science fiction field are China Miéville and, until his most recent novel, Neal Stephenson.[1]
Now, what is particularly great about Wright, and something that a lot of people don’t necessarily realize, is that he’s not a writer who puts a lot of what I would call “craft” into it, by which I mean we’re not dealing with works that are written and re-written and re-written and re-written, for the most part. Now, in this particular case, he did write it as a short story, and then turned it into a novella later, but in general, what you see is what you get. It’s actually somewhat depressing to edit the man, because the stuff that he turns in just having dashed it off is much better than most of the stuff you see from other people.
Now, in the case of One Bright Star, like you said, the premise is fantastic. The idea that you’re beginning with these children who have been through this wonderful, incredible, fantastic experience, and then suddenly visiting, catching up with them thirty-some years later, is original in itself.
Sandifer: Right, I mean, there is, as I said, a large sub-genre of this. It’s hardly the only story, I think even from last year – I know a lot of people have compared it to Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which came out around the same time. [2]
Day: Sure, but there’s… You know, I’ve read The Ocean at the End of the Lane, it’s good, but what’s different about One Bright Star to Guide Them is that it is much more clearly written as an homage, not just to Narnia, but there’s actually elements of a great deal of other children’s fantasies that are much beloved.
Sandifer: Right, there’s a line that very closely hues to Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising that I noticed, for instance.
Day: Right. There’s also a fair amount of The Chronicles of Prydain. A lot of the fictional events that are referred to are much more out of Prydain than out of either The Dark is Rising or Narnia. And then there’s also a couple other ones, references to less well-known works. There’s certainly a call-out to George McDonald in there, the original fantasy writer, and so there’s a fair amount of depth there for those of us who were into that type of literature.
Sandifer: I think one of the reasons, though, people go for Narnia in particular – because, I mean, if you look at the reviews on Amazon, Narnia does seem to be the one that everyone goes to first when talking about the sort of influences on this, and I’m going to hazard a guess, no small part of that is because both Narnia and this are pretty explicitly Christian allegories. Do you think that’s a fair statement to say about this book?
Day: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that that’s both part of why One Bright Star to Guide Them generates such powerful reactions in people who love it and in the much smaller number of people who dislike it, because I think in many cases, people’s reactions are being colored by their own personal feelings about Christianity, both for better and for worse.
DISCUSS ON SG
Continue reading “Wallowing in Pseudo-Madness”
