SilverFlake of Celeste
Jan. 10th, 2022 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoToday we've been enjoying the euphoria of restoration to normal after an unexpected deprivation. The furnace quit working while it was 12 degrees out, and the temperature dropped rapidly into the 50s inside. It wasn't that bad, because the nice furnace people put us down as a No Heat situation, which pushes their emergency button, so they were here by noon and fixed the problem. It was the exhaust fan that seized up, but it was quick and easy to replace. Then we basked all day as the furnace valiantly re-warmed the house. I've been wearing my sweater all day, so I'm quite warm now. I'm also basking in NOT having the heartburn from hell. I was miserable yesterday, but today my tummy has taken a turn for the better.
In fairness to John M. Ford, he was clearly a very smart guy, and a pyrotechnician of words. And he was probably trying to develop a theme about how excessive devotion to a system or structure--such as magic, or the Empire--will corrupt and destroy human functioning. But then, personal greed and lust also seem to corrupt and destroy people in The Dragon Waiting, so what we get is an ensemble of characters who are all pretty much destroyed and broken. They have glimmers of humanity. Perhaps that would be enough to make other readers care about them, but it doesn't work for me. As one character says to another near the end of the book, "Why are we so terrible to each other?" And the answer is basically, we can't help it, it's the system. Sadly, in that case I just don't care. I wonder if when Ford talks about the Empire (in this case, Byzantium), he was thinking of Philip K. Dick and his cry of anguish after he had the vision/went mad: "Egypt! Egypt! The Black Iron Furnace! The Empire never ended!" I don't see how he could not have been referring to that, in a book where in fact the Empire never ended.
In fairness to John M. Ford, he was clearly a very smart guy, and a pyrotechnician of words. And he was probably trying to develop a theme about how excessive devotion to a system or structure--such as magic, or the Empire--will corrupt and destroy human functioning. But then, personal greed and lust also seem to corrupt and destroy people in The Dragon Waiting, so what we get is an ensemble of characters who are all pretty much destroyed and broken. They have glimmers of humanity. Perhaps that would be enough to make other readers care about them, but it doesn't work for me. As one character says to another near the end of the book, "Why are we so terrible to each other?" And the answer is basically, we can't help it, it's the system. Sadly, in that case I just don't care. I wonder if when Ford talks about the Empire (in this case, Byzantium), he was thinking of Philip K. Dick and his cry of anguish after he had the vision/went mad: "Egypt! Egypt! The Black Iron Furnace! The Empire never ended!" I don't see how he could not have been referring to that, in a book where in fact the Empire never ended.
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Date: 2022-01-11 02:19 pm (UTC)