Next up I'm going to look at the C.J. Cherryh novel Hammerfall, a completely wild story that starts with someone whose point of view is incredibly limited but then expands it so the person discovers that the world is completely different from what they had always known.
This is such a mind-bending experience in a novel. I love it. Any time we get out of our tiny little worlds, we can replicate this, to an extent, but not the way people can in sci-fi.
Unless we start thinking about fungus or slime mold, I suppose. They are all around us but so alien to us that it can completely blow your mind. I always want to write a sentient fruiting body slime mold civilization. But then I read A Mote in God's Eye at a formative age, apparently.
The third mind-bending text in my mental list is Strange the Dreamer. If Laini Taylor ever gets over her frankly annoying obsession with rape, her books will get a lot better, but this one is excellent for taking a very limited point of view and expanding it tremendously. It has a lot in common with Hammerfall in certain important ways.
I might be leading up to my next novel. Please oh please let it be a straightforward draft instead of this tortured experience that Summerlands always ends up being. I think I've finally gotten free of it, though. Thanks, podcast!
Sorry for going on and on about it in episode 21. It's literally the only thing happening in my life besides work and injury recovery and not upholstering things. I need to put a sci-fi epic on the tv (LOTR does this same world-expanding thing to the hobbits, btw) and reupholster these things right out of my life and especially out of my living space OMG.
Sacred reupholstered cheese of life!
