Another Column at MyShelf.Com

Beyond The Words, Past
A Science Fiction / Fantasy Column
By Steven Shrewsbury


Opening doorways
by Steven Shrewsbury

       I come not to praise Harry Potter, nor to bury him. In fact, after this first paragraph, he won’t come up again. My take on the HP phenomenon is, well, if it creates interest in reading, it cannot be all bad. Seeing skids of the HP books at WAL MART or piles of them at BORDERS…yet, beholding a single shelf of new sci-fi & Fantasy releases standing alone is surreal.
That said, this got me to thinking what I read as an impressionable youth. Sure, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and JOHN CARTER books were great stuff, but I think it was Robert E. Howard that changed my life. My brother recently was worried about his twelve-year-old son reading Howard’s olden tales due to the violence or implied sexuality. Please. In a society where kids watch South Park and actually think Paris Hilton is amusing, ol’ battlin’ Bob Howard isn’t gonna hurt him none.

     “It will open the door to greater possibilities,” I told him. Indeed, my nephew has grown to love other forms of fantasy and sci fi, but he also has an uncle to funnel him the books. Not every uncle knows who Robert Bloch, Isaac Asimov or even Ben Bova is, to be sure.

    Once that gate is open a crack, the mind can really start to shifting. I think Harlan Ellison’s Strange Wine twisted me at that same age. When I met Ellison at the recent World Horror Convention, I told him that, “I never knew one was allowed to write like that, until I read Croatoan. Damn. It still holds up.” The usually abrasive Ellison smiled and told me stories of how realism and pushing the envelope often scares people…and that folks need a kick every so often. Nevertheless, the story is what matters.

   True words. Be it youthful, feckless fantasies or hard-core zombie cannibalism, the story is what matters. If Karl Edward Wagner just made his Kane into a caricature, it never would illicit strong emotion and feelings of adventure while reading the tales nowadays. Yet, it works. Lovecraft, for all of his gloom and complex prose, the atmosphere is thicker than frozen pea soup. Manly Wade Wellman’s Bok tales still are fun to read. While they are not obsessed with convincing the masses this stuff could happen, they tell great tales and entertain.

     Be it a doorway to your imagination, the door to the possibility of another realm opens, and fiction can be that opening in life. The early teen years, a time in life when the world can be a fragile place, many folks miss out on the experience of travel and escapism great fiction can employ. Aside from mental distraction or education in the reading, there just may be a youth out there who reads a great tale, a classic and says, “Yeah, but I’d do it this way…” and thus, another phoenix rises.

     Many doors are slamming via other distractions. These things channel the mind in other directions. Video games are fun, of course, but the visual stimuli are right there. It is painted out, another’s vision to the last detail. The written word, while another’s work as well, allows one to use the mind to create those images. It makes you see faces no one has drawn or can see but you. Sights, spells, vistas untold, are yours to create…whether you want to or not.

     Granted, reading just might make one confront things like sex, violence, and moral choices (aside from the fun and adventure). By trying different books, authors and genres, one can indeed learn a great deal about the world and about one’s self. Would you do that in a given situation? Dang, glad it wasn’t me in that situation. Man, never thought of it like that before…

     Back to my nephew, for one moment…someone said it may be better to gear a youth toward a “nicer” or “cleaner” form of fantasy than Howard, Leiber or Wagner. Bollocks, I’d say if I were British. True, the worlds of those authors are often harsh and bleak, but isn’t the real world? Denying reality, even in the fantasy world, really is unhealthy. I am sure regular life will teach lessons in this regard, not just the likes of these writers. However, perhaps he can see that it is better to stand and fight rather than slink away and run from a problem. Better to try an overcome an obstacle than to talk about the possibility of failure forever, I wager.

     Is a mind is a terrible thing to waste? Sure is. It can be salvaged, though. So our assignment, folks, is read. Read more than before. Read instead of watching television, surfing the ‘Net or making aliens die on video games. Mix it up, too. Go grab works by George R.R. Martin, Richard Matheson, David Drake, Clark Ashton Smith, or Tom Piccirilli. Open the pages, open your mind and go. The only thing limiting you, is you


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Opening doorways

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