Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

October 2008

"Pluto: Melodrama Unleashed Part IV"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Oh, and now we really get melodramatic.

I checked the definition of melodrama in the free online dictionaries and in an antique dictionary, Funk and Wagnals, 1963.

In a living language, words evolve, and the differences in what people think words mean from generation to generation are a vital study for the writer or reader. No wonder we have generational warfare!

In the online dictionaries, I found one of the variants of "melodramatic" to be "false emotion." Thus, in modern usage, calling something "melodramatic" is an insult. The core meaning of the older usage though persists. "Melodrama" is a display of emotions that are violent or extravagantly sentimental and the incidents are sensational.

That older definition is pure Pluto.

Pluto transits magnify any ongoing affairs. If you have a nagging health problem, a Pluto transit reveals it to be something deadly and you wind up in a pitched battle for your life. Very often you win because Pluto supplies the necessary obsessive energy to solve the problem.

Pluto transits force reassessment of long past issues – such as the death of a parent when you were young; the reappearance of an ex-spouse; the discovery of a by-blow you didn’t know about; or the things the media are digging up about Presidential candidates.

In addition, Pluto connects to "falseness" because it’s main attribute is to reveal the hidden, subterranean, secret, underhanded, dishonest activities – the skeletons in the closet. The false face you’ve turned to the world is ripped away (melodramatically) and you stand naked, all your hidden truths hanging out.

Pluto is slow decay and sudden renewal. Pluto’s energies follow the pattern of an earthquake – building pressures nobody notices until suddenly the very fabric of the ground CRACKS in an explosive release of tension that destroys all that’s weak or ill-constructed.

It works the same way emotionally, within a person or a group mind of a community. Slow build beneath awareness – sudden release. The dictionary calls that sudden release an "exaggeration" – but in truth Pluto always delivers exactly what it has been promising.

A classic example is someone with an approaching Pluto transit who denies the need for change. One day he’s striding along the sidewalk and a car jumps the curb and hits him. He spends the rest of his life in a wheelchair fighting for spinal cord research.

Someone else denies need for change in how they live (or with whom) and one day gets mugged which leads to the required changes.

Deny Pluto’s call for change at peril of life and limb. But Pluto is like an earthquake. If the structures it shakes are solidly built, they don’t fall down. But like an earthquake, Pluto can make people run around melodramatically screaming that the sky is falling, and in a panic, throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We read SF and Fantasy to prepare for that real life moment when a Pluto transit shakes the foundation of our reality. We know the blow is coming and we want to avoid post-traumatic-stress syndrome by conditioning ourselves to take the blow in stride. We want to learn the solutions before we actually have the problem.

So most writers focus stories around that once-in-a-lifetime Plutonian change in a character’s life. Mostly, the solutions offered are matters of attitude. Adopt a heroic attitude and Pluto triggered change will be constructive.

In Jemma 7729, Phoebe Wray developes Jemma’s heroic attitude stepwise. Jemma lives in a domed megacity where authorities control the populace through ignorance of what’s outside the dome. Jemma defies authority (Saturn), reveals (Pluto) the truth and ends up wanted for rebellion (Uranus), female aggression (Pluto), and more.

Jemma becomes the leader of an underground revolution. This is old fashioned feminism beautifully packaged in a compelling plot and believable background. The writing is superb, overcoming the cliché premise. I want to see more from Wray without the feminist angle.

Forbidden: The Revolution by Samantha Sommersby is the latest in a steamy vampire multi-generation saga. A young vampire who hasn’t tasted human blood is sorely tested when his lust and love hit. Intrigue and the unwinding of past situations with raw magical power make for a hard hitting, well written Pluto driven tale.

Banner’s Bonus is an e-book which I believe has been a paperback. It reads like the earliest attempts to combine SF and Romance, as it is just an ordinary love story that happens in space. In the past, some humans encountered a substance that produced an empathic mutation (Pluto – sexually transmitted hidden change). The heroine is quarter-mutant but doesn’t know it because she’s a virgin and never bonded with a mate – until her father hires Banner (full human male) to take her to safety and guard her.

Many Bloody Returns is an anthology of original vampire stories in series I’ve been reviewing here by Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, P. N. Elrod, Tanya Huff and others. If you like short stories or are a completist, you’ll want this anthology in paperback. It does not have a Yarbro St. Germain story in it though. All the stories are about birthdays, in a way one of the most Plutonian events.

Remember my theory that Pluto rules vampires?

Darkling the 2008 entry in Yasmine Galenorn’s Sisters of the Moon series continues the story of 3 witches with unstable powers, one of whom, Menolly, is a sexy vampire, all of whom work for an agency dedicated to ridding the world of evil monsters – preventing "all hell" from breaking loose. This is another complex, multi-dimensional universe full of ravening evil creatures who have to be prevented from changing our world. The heroes stand against change but fall in love.

The psychology driving the plot of Darkling is excellent, the transformation of Menolly’s life by confronting her own demons and freeing herself describes a Pluto transit nicely, and the romance is wholly plausible.

Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews is set in a complex multi-dimensional fantasy world where Magic is pulsing over the world in destructive waves. When Magic rules, the laws of science don’t, and the lights go out. As a result our civilization has crumbled to almost nothing, and a few heroic people with extraordinary powers fight off the monsters in the dark until science comes back.

Against this backdrop, Andrews tells a political story involving shapeshifters, prophecy and gods who want to incarnate. Magical creatures and magic-users chase after a map, possession of which would let some god take over the world. Kate Daniels, a seasoned mercenary used to life-threatening confrontations, shows us how to survive emotionally in a war zone.

Jim Butcher’s series that has become a TV series, The Dresden Files, continues in novels. Small Favor advances Dresden’s life in a world where Vampire politics involves his half-brother. The once powerful White Council is stretched too thin to help him, even though he’s now a Warden of the White Council holding Chicago against the incursions from another dimension. As usual someone is trying to kill Dresden, this time faeries are involved, but Dresden doesn’t know who’s behind the attack or why.

He has an apprentice to protect who doesn’t have the power to become a war wizard like him. So when his cop friend, Murphy, calls to ask a little favor and suddenly he’s involved in an inter-dimensional battle to the death for power over ancient coins, talismans of fallen angels who possess humans, he has to involve his apprentice.

All these novels have one thing in common: a vision of reality that consists of a thin film of normality stretched over a seething cauldron of horrors. Ordinary people know nothing of what "lives beneath" our reality. Heroes are holding back the vicious creatures of the night. If their ethics, morals, loyalty and love fail, we all die horribly.

The entities out to change the world are depicted as evil or marginal at best. They all want to take over power, bleed us dry, make us live by their laws. Those striving to preserve and defend the world are battered, bloody survivors having all the heroism beaten out of them, book by book.

Oddly our heroes never suffer post traumatic stress syndrome, though Dresden accumulates some very slow healing debilities which makes him more realistic.

Why don’t we know any way to deal with change besides unleashing melodramatic destruction or preventing change entirely? Where are the novels about slow change?