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ReReadable Books

January 2006

"Neptune: The Reality Factor"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 

 

 To send books for review in this column email Jacqueline Lichtenberg,jl@simegen.com  for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file.  
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Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King, Bantam HC, July 2005

Good Night, Mr. Holmes (June 1991);

The Adventuress (May 1992);

Irene At Large (Tor July 1992); retitled A Soul of Steel (Dec. 2005)

Femme Fatale (Sept 2003),

Spider Dance (Dec 2004) – all by Carole Nelson Douglas, Forge Mystery except as noted. All about 400 pages, reasonable size print.

The United States Natal chart set for 2:13 AM, July 4, 1776 has the country’s Moon (reigning need) in the 10th House (vocation, reputation) at 18 degrees of Aquarius and ruling the 2nd House (values, money).

At the end of February 2006, Neptune (Ruler of the country’s 11th House, (popularity) in the country’s 5th House (entertainment) will start its first transit pass over the country’s Natal Moon since about 1842.

Does 1842 ring any bells with you? Ramping up to the Civil War, vast numbers of slaves were imported. The sewing machine was patented. Anesthesia was used for the first time in surgery. Mexico invaded Texas and occupied San Antonio. A treaty with Canada established the US border through the west. 1843: The first minstrel show in the USA. The first wagon train to the Northwest. B'nai B'rith founded in New York.

This new transit is bound to have many profound effects this time around, too. This is not a column on astrology but on science fiction and fantasy and thus on the publishing world and the entertainment business (i.e. on Neptune). So we will focus on the effect of Neptune (entertainment, idealism, imagination, fantasy, blurring of sharp distinctions.) on the U.S. Group Mind’s taste in art.

In the December 2005 column, I pointed out the relationship between Stephen Spielberg’s recent work, Into The West (set in the 1800’s) and the results of a survey done by Newsweek Magazine on religious attitudes in the USA in 2005.

Neptune tends to dissolve rigid structures and distinctions. With the transit of Neptune over our 10th House cusp, our international reputation dissolved away. But Neptune’s energies shine forth gloriously when applied to the search behind the façade of "reality" for the higher reality, the direct experience of divine immanence. Indeed, the Newsweek survey revealed pervasive concern with this search but an aversion to the structure of religion. Spirituality reigns, Neptune style.

Underlying literary trends may corroborate this renewing of the pioneering idealism of the mid-1800’s if we know how to look for the effects of Neptune.

I have noticed a blurring of the public’s idea of the border between reality and fantasy. I expect this blurring to intensify throughout 2006 and 2007.

Prime Time News shows contain less information than ever. The Network News focuses on murder trials, disappearances, scandals and tragedies, which are dramatic stories, elevating events of real people’s real lives to the gripping and involving level of soap opera. To find an old fashioned news show with useful information, look to PBS and the McNeil Lehrer Hour or stick to the Internet.

"Reality Television" has become popular using the same technique news shows have developed – urban fantasy – telling a whopping good story in a "real" framework.

Apparently, people crave the feeling that their fantasies (Neptune) are in fact real (Saturn.

The new Battlestar Galactica rewrites the premise of the old Battlestar Galactica series. OK, it’s a vast improvement, but it weaves bits and pieces of Earth reality into a broad fantasy setting the same way the old Battlestar did – but in an "alternate universe" future-history.

The public tolerance for this kind of complexly re-imagined entertainment has increased markedly in the last fifty years. In the 1950’s, SF/F was scorned as kiddy-lit, and people who thought that one day a man would walk on the moon were considered a little cracked.

Today, top grossing films are about interstellar wars. SF/F has become mainstream, as much of what was the product of flighty imaginations has become everyday reality – Captain Kirk’s communicator is called a Blackberry.

Our fantasy has indeed become reality.

And so there is vast popular acceptance of some books that have a totally ridiculous premise that makes for a whopping good story.

Two major novel series present Sherlock Holmes, (an archetypical precursor of the Spock character from Star Trek) as a part of real history. He’s not a character in some good mystery stories – he is a person who really existed and really founded the profession of Private Investigator.

I have been reviewing Laurie R. King’s "Mary Russell" series with highest praise and greatest raves for years now. Her newest, Locked Rooms, lives up to her highest standard of Intimate Adventure. In this novel, Holmes and Mary Russell are happily married, and Holmes investigates Mary’s past as a child in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. Peeling away layers of repressed psychic trauma inflicted on Mary by the disaster, Holmes treats her as a responsible adult woman of the 21st century would expect to be treated by her lover/husband.

Unlocking repressed fears is a necessary step in the approach to divine immanence. Walking this journey with Mary Russell, hand in hand with a fictional character intruding into the "real" world, is reminiscent of walking the stations of a ritual initiation.

Carole Nelson Douglas, whom I have met several times at science fiction conventions because she was also writing (excellent) sf/f, was suggested to me on amazon while I was drooling over Locked Rooms.

I immediately wrote to Carole of how astonished and delighted I was to discover she has a hot series on Sherlock Holmes, and how crushed I felt at having missed out on it all these years. She had her publisher send me review copies of the 8 novels.

Wellll! I have now read 5 of the 8 novels. I read Spider Dance first even though it’s the latest in the chronology. Then, at Douglas’ advice, I read the immediate prequel, Femme Fatale, and then went to reading them in the chronology order. Here is the best order to read this series: Good Night, Mr. Holmes; The Adventuress; A Soul of Steel which will be a re-titling of Irene At Large due out in December 2005. Then comes Another Scandal in Bohemia; Chapel Noir and its direct sequel, Castle Rouge, then Femme Fatale and Spider Dance.

Each of the 5 I’ve read, Goodnight Mr. Holmes, The Adventuress, A Soul of Steel, Femme Fatale, and Spider Dance, is as tightly written, as strong and brilliant as anything I’ve ever read. No series-sag here!

Douglas takes a minor character in one of Doyle’s short stories, Irene Adler, the only woman to match wits with Holmes and win, and creates an entire series based on a rivalry relationship between her and Holmes.

As per Holmes canon, Adler marries early in the series, a very supportive barrister with a lot of 21st century ideas in the late 19th century context. Adler also acquires a woman friend who acts as her "Watson".

These are historical mysteries, written against a very real-world historical background except for the fantasy sexual politics and Holmes and Watson on stage as real characters. The events chronicled by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes’ "cases," are woven into and through the cases that Irene Adler investigates so that the border between Holmes’ world and "reality" blurs away entirely as they race each other to the solutions of intertwined mysteries.

It is brilliant, seamless, fantastic Fantasy – yet the series is published by Forge as a straight Mystery.

These two Sherlock Holmes fantasy series use similar anachronistic sexual politics and fictional characters around a core of erudite and flawless historical research, and both are published and accepted as straight mystery.

Are we actually looking at a state of "confusion" (Neptune) here? Are we looking at the melting (Neptune) away of what has been a sharp and solid border between fantasy and reality? Or are we actually looking at a development that bespeaks the public desire (Moon) for the deep, personal experience of what was hitherto considered "not real" – an ideal made real.

Remember, for many people, God is just a character in a book. Perhaps the Group Subconscious is yearning (Moon) to experience one kind of unreality as real in order to approach the notion that something even more far-fetched – like the existence of God – is actually real.

Perhaps this Neptune transit of the US Natal Moon is causing the U.S. Group Mind to seek God and other metaphysical realities in entertainment (5th House).

To send books for review in this column email Jacqueline Lichtenberg,  jl@simegen.com for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file.  

 

 

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