PWL: What do you think is the appeal of The Lord of the Rings as opposed to say Harry Potter? Especially in terms of composing music for the world of Tolkien?
MD: I love both works, actually. However, to me The Lord of the Rings seems much more sweeping in scope, more of an epic. Tolkien really has succeeded at creating an entirely new world, complete with new languages and alphabets, whereas the Harry Potter books seem to describe more of a magical dimension nestled within the real world. The appeal of Tolkien’s works is similar to that of myths, legends, or medieval romances (all of which I love as well), and therefore the music to a large extent should reflect that timeless, classic quality and the ability to utterly distance the reader/listener from everyday reality. I like to think that the best of the music we’ve written for the elven songs achieves this, although I must admit that the hobbit tunes come across more as relatively light folk music.
More About the Artists
Learn more about Margaret and Kristoph’s music at the home of Flowinglass Music, their label; and learn more about them at their own Web site.
Editor’s Note: Margaret and Kristoph’s latest recording project is “Sir Christèmas.” It’s a Broceliande CD featuring songs of the winter celebrations.
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Peggi Warner-Lalonde is Senior Music Editor for Strange Horizons.
A Crash Course in Lemon Physics
By Robert Frazier
11/5/01
for Katie
how does a lemon mean
now that I’ve painted them in class
imitating them in oily pigments
that themselves
are imitations of the fruit’s spectral physics
I see them more as subjects than objects
they achieve a mystic aura
become violent stabs
incantations of light
the primal utterances of yellow
shopping for lemons
before, I would paw them let them tumble rudely
like loose gravel
rejecting those stippled with the white powder
of internal softness and decay
before, they were a bitter necessity
or a perky accent on the perimeter of my drunk
before, I thought of them bleeding milky juices
that rivered along the flesh of sea bass
or just as something that leaves sticky pulp
down the squeezer’s glass-ribbed post
let’s face it
before, I barely thought of them at all
now I hold up shoppers
inspecting each one for pleasing shapes
deep hues
a lack of blemishes
a certain citricness
they’re thinking
gourmand
idiot
or maybe lemon snob
I’m proud to be all that
the motion of light on substance
a skin of a lemon embodies color
the yellow of dying suns
the yolk yellow of a farm-fresh egg
the shocking yellow of jaundice
the pungent yellow of sulfur
the yellow flash of finches
the yellow at the heart of Georgia O’Keeffe’s lilies
the yellow that ringed Monet’s failing eyesight
the amber yellow that entraps life
fantasia
in the darkness they hold to their richness
like tethered boat lanterns swinging in a blanketing fog
they haunt me larger than life
large as the skins over sports arenas
hanging like starships above me in the night
bleeding weather
and the acrid oils that bead from their pulp
my head floods with the purity of lemons
the trumpeted hues that grow more luminous
with exposure to the day
they are the fruity absolute whose essences
can dissolve the black residues
of life that ended millions of years ago
just as a truth when simplified and spoken plainly
can circumvent all the crud that accumulates
around the stem of our mortalities
the permanent value of lemons
now the thought of a good lemon can
cut like a solvent through any of my moods
Copyright © 2001 Robert Frazier
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Author of over fifty published SF stories and eight collections of poetry, and a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for SF poetry, Robert Frazier’s most recent book is The Daily Chernobyl, winner of the 1999 Anamnesis Press Chapbook Award, published in August 2000 from Anamnesis Press, Palo Alto, CA. Recent writings have appeared in Nebula Awards 32 (Harcourt Brace), the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan. 2001, and Nantucket: a Collection (White Fish Press).
On the K-T Boundary
By S. R. Compton
11/12/01
We have had many visions:
the world dried like a raisin,
cracked mudflats or windblown deserts
as far as a satellite’s eye could see;
or drowned liked a child in the bathtub,
sunken spires of skyscrapers
the substrate of coral reefs,
and on the liquid surface, silence;
or frozen like an ancient alpine traveler,
the rags of roads and cities
clawed to shreds by blizzards,
awakened glaciers grinding all to rubble.
But we have not had the vision
of dust-borne darkness, the world curtained
by meteors, volcanoes, or nuclear blast,
the cold, the asphyxiation, the extinction.
Copyright © 2001 Stephen R. Compton
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S. R. Compton is an occasional poet; in the last century, he appeared in Star*Line, Velocities, and Alba. He works as a senior copy editor at PC World magazine in San Francisco.
The Franks
By CAConrad
11/19/01
Frank hated the 9 miscarriages
kept in jars of formaldehyde
Mother burped each one
spooned peas against the glass
melon heads snapped open and close
she rocked them all at once in her arms
no room for Frank
“you are too big for a jar my child
you will betray me the rest of your life”
* * * *
Frank hammers
carrots
all day
it works
the earth
can’t
leave us
* * * *
Frank’s sister grew long blue feathers
she said it was worse than cutting teeth
she spent a month screaming in the cave
pushing them out
Frank would lie in bed at night
touching his own back
crying
praying it wouldn’t
come to him
but the day his sister flew to the house
he stood by the window in awe
giant blue spread coming in across the lake
he heard the hunter’s shot before she did
* * * *
Frank remembers
the shirts of buried generals
flying in formation
over schoolyards
blowing wasps from sleeves
* * * *
Frank grew crows for hands
it was a difficult childhood
at dinner during prayer
his crows flapped
excited in the name of the Lord
“FRANK! KEEP STILL!” Mother hollered
“did you wash your crows!?
did you wash your FILTHY STINKING CROWS!?”
* * * *
when Father died
Frank was found
straddling him
his crows picking the seven
gold fillings
Copyright © 2001 CAConrad
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CAConrad is a poetry stevedore living in Philadelphia. His forthcoming books included COMPLETELY FRANK (The Jargon Society), and advancedELVIScourse (Buck Downs Books). He is the editor of BANJO: poets talking and he co-edits FREQUENCY MAGAZINE with Magdalena Zurawski.
Historian’s Guide to the Galaxy
By Derek Adams
11/26/01
Brought into being
with a cosmic slap on the bottom.
Consigned to oblivion
by the blown fuse
of an imploding star.
In between,
nothing of consequence,
the weather was changeable,
the butterflies,
beautiful.
Copyright © 2001 Derek Adams
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Derek Adams was born in East London, England in 1957. He has worked as a professional photographer since leaving school and has been working as a photographer at the Natural History Museum, London, since 1984. Derek has previously had poems published in Apostrophe, Poetry Nottingham, Red Lamp, Sol, Southend Poetry, Tears in the Fence, The Whistle House, and Winedark Sea (Aust.); his short stories have appeared in Udolpho, House of Pain, and Writers Muse. For more about him, visit his Web site.
Revolutionary Nautical Fantasy: Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders Series
Reviewed by Stephanie Dray
11/5/01
Hearkening back to the political and environmental challenges faced by the founding fathers of the American Revolution, Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders series tells a story of family grit and emerging nationhood that would be compelling even if it were lifted out of its fantasy setting. That the story takes place within a magical world where ships come to life, sea-serpents terrorize the oceans, and enchanted trinkets of a lost Elderling race are regularly discovered, makes the story more than compelling—it makes it an extraordinary high fantasy saga.
The swashbuckling epic begins in Bingtown, where the oldest and most distinguished families were once hardy pioneers who braved the seas and settled the dangerous coast of Trader Bay to found a colony for the monarchy of Jamaillia. In exchange for their bravery and the risks they took in taming the land, they were awarded grants and trade monopolies that helped them to rise into the merchant nobility class. Sailing on ships, made of wizardwood, which ripen into sentient awareness, the Traders helped Bingtown become a thriving city featuring exotic trade and robust traditions. But a corrupt new ruler in Jamaillia is setting Bingtown’s grants and privileges aside. Pirating is becoming more prominent and more successful, sightings of the mysterious sea serpents are increasing, and slavery, though illegal in Bingtown, is flourishing.
Talk of revolution is in the air, and it is against the backdrop of this tumultuous political maelstrom that the story of the Vestrit family is told. Their changing fortunes reflect those of all the other old trader families in Bingtown. When the family patriarch dies upon the deck of the Vestrit liveship, the Vivacia, it quickens to life in the midst of a family power struggle. Althea Vestrit feels that the liveship is more than just a vessel; Althea considers the Vivacia to be a living member of her family that she has bonded with for life. So when the ship is given over to her brother-in-law to help bolster the family fortunes, Althea makes it her mission to get the ship back. While Althea would do just about anything just to serve aboard the Vivacia, her softhearted cousin Wintrow finds ship life to be a misery. Plucked from the monastery and plunged into a life for which he is innately unsuited, Wintrow’s misery is exacerbated when the family decides that it will use the liveship to engage in slave trading in order to pay off the family debts.