Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

November 2008

"Pluto: Melodrama Unleashed Part V"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Astrologically, Pluto’s keynote is dramatic change – no, MELOdramatic change. Exaggerated, theatrical, radical, even explosive change.

When it was first discovered, astrologers thought Pluto only timed change in whole nations or the world, not individuals. But Plutonian change was found hidden within individual subconscious. It rules of Scorpio, the Natural 8^th House of sex and other people’s resources, inheritance.

Ancient Wisdom and modern psychology show us how masses of individuals form a group mind and group minds can form nations. Humans are like quicksilver (Mercury). Isolated bits form spheres – spheres agglomerate into huge puddles. Humans form Tribes and Nations.

So to say Pluto rules Nations is to say Pluto rules individuals. We both generate and suffer from the actions of Government. The individual and government communicate via inspiration, aspiration, idealism and imagination. Government tries to imagine what most people want; people try to imagine what Government will do to them next. The basic product of imagination is fiction, poetry, song, art.

Among all the changes in the fiction delivery system we’ve discussed here the last few years, the most curious, odd, unexpected and perhaps melodramatic is a shift in the balance between science fiction and fantasy.

The SF field has backed away from making 50 year technological projections. I’ve reviewed a few novels like that because I like them, but it’s no longer the biggest trend. The Fantasy field has emerged from fairies being all nice and helpful to whole parallel universes full of faeries who can be vicious, tricky devils.

There seems to be a competition that started with a total redesign of the vampire myth from predators to misunderstood lonely lovers. Now the competition has shifted to redesigning underworlds, parallel universes and other dimensions of our Earth where magic rules and a veritable plethora of redesigned mythical beasts form tribes and nations – and hold wars that involve Earth.

Where SF ruled with creating improbable Aliens, now Fantasy rules with a cacophony of mismatched species with Powers and ruthless ambitions. And they’re always out to hide from us, to get us, to rule us.

One of my favorites, The Dresden Files, recommended last month, describes one of these Armageddon style wars with complex politics based on Greek-god style petty quarrels.

The galactic-war stories of the 1950’s and 1960’s have been replaced by magical-dimension-war stories of the 2000’s. The SF aliens carefully redesigned from creatures in the nooks and crannies of Earth’s biosphere endowed with intelligence and set loose in interstellar space have been replaced by redesigned mythical creatures from the dark nooks and crannies of the human psyche.

Pluto was in Scorpio, the sign it rules, from 1984 to 1995. From 1995 through today, it’s been in Sagittarius. A national, public dialogue has exposed hidden sexual practices (Scorpio) so we now accept (Sagittarius, honesty and inclusion) many attitudes that had been unsanctioned.

In 1950, there was no Adult Fantasy publishing category. Today Fantasy is burgeoning and includes Romance elements so we have mixed-genres like Paranormal Romance. In 1950, SF was called "neck up SF" because there was never a sexual or steamy romantic moment except for rescuing the damsel in distress. Marion Zimmer Bradley changed that in 1955 with her first published short story. Today we have Alien Romance.

In 1950 the Romance Novel never included a sex scene, sex happened only after the wedding which was never included in Romance and people never got divorced. Today Romance novels can be about divorced people each with kids living together and wondering if the Marriage Penalty on the taxes is worth the Health Insurance deal.

Each Romance line has its formula for the number and length of the sex scenes. Much fantasy-romance seems to be about nothing but the sex scenes, the adventure and its problems being a complication to satisfying sexual desires.

Government is pondering the definition of "marriage" and redesigning the conduct of a war which seems to be mostly about how women should dress and who gets to rape them.

It’s said the planets impel they don’t compel. But as I see it, they just time the cycles of change inherent in the structure of our reality. We live inside a giant clock, and it’s now chiming out a new hour; Pluto entering Capricorn.

So what will happen? Whatever we choose. What is the "right" choice? How would I know?

The puzzle I’m obsessed (Pluto) with is whether fiction (art) is leading or lagging reality this time. Just because fiction has always lagged changes in reality, art always reflecting reality, does not mean that’s how it will happen when the forces of subterranean change roil the structure of reality.

In the 1950’s, SF extrapolated what our future would be like (missed the internet). In the 2000’s, has Fantasy taken over that role and drawn us pictures of futures to choose from? As we refused George Orwell’s vision 1984, will we refuse the visions presented in modern Fantasy? Has the Mad Scientist been replaced by the Mad Magician?

In Over Hexed, Vicki Lewis Thompson gives us a couple of magicians with inaccurate spells and a sense of humor. Well meaning, Dorcas and Ambrose, Soulmate Match Makers, try to tone down the sex appeal of the town’s stud, but then he suddenly needs that appeal and they can’t lift their spell. Everyone in this book, even the dragon, is well meaning but clumsy. Beautiful plot slowed by long, graphic sex scenes.

Jim C. Hines takes us on a fun romp in Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero and Goblin War with a reluctant Hero trying to avoid living up to his reputation for bravery for killing a dragon. Ogres, goblins, hobgoblins, pixies, all redesigned, are at war across dimensions. The pixies kill or enslave almost all the ogres and then the Goblin Jig, a coward and peacemaker at heart, has to fight the pixies.

He’s responsible for the pixie invasion by an accident when he killed the dragon. As an award for further heroism, he gets political power. Then comes an invasion of humans

Barb and J. C. Hendee’s latest Nobel Dead novel, Child of a Dead God, is darker than some of the previous novels in the series. It’s filled with secret plots and dire manipulations challenging the great love of the vampire hunter Magiere and part-Elf Leesil. In this installment, they are on their way home from visiting Leesil’s childhood home and rescuing his mother. There, they became embroiled in politics, magic, and inheritance. They just want to go home. But it’s hard with vampires chasing them.

For an even darker vision of life in a multi-species world with magic twined among normality, read Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. It’s all about Plutonian sex – sex for power, sex for survival, sex for dominance, sex for transformation, all crowding out sex for love. Blood Noir, the latest Anita Blake novel, starts with a writhing sex scene, but actually goes on to mix in more plot between sex scenes than most of these novels.

Anita goes to the childhood home of one of her wereanimals, Jason, to try for a "Hallmark Moment" of making up with his dying father who thinks Jason’s gay and despises him. Jason is the spittin image of the son of the Governor who’s running for President. Vampire politics stirred by the oldest Vampire, Marmee Noir, send assassins after Jason by mistake – or maybe on purpose? Anita’s participation undermines the command of Jean Claude, Master Vampire, over his City. Anita is his Human Servant, and he’s seen as weak because he allows her freedom.

She has to play Servant. She doesn’t like it, but she’s gotten used to doing things she doesn’t like to save lives.

The Anita Blake series is one long Plutonian Melodrama of ethical choices in life or death, no-win situations. There are no defining borders left in Anita’s world. She’s trying not to get pregnant by a were animal. She raises the dead for a living – blurring the barrier between living and dead. And the series depicts her own inner ethical barriers constantly shifting, dissolving the inner boundaries that define her personality.

She puts her life on the line to defend those with less Power than herself. She lives to preserve life. But she is a product of a world that’s lost definition, contrast, distinction.

Pluto enters Aquarius in 2023. We have fifteen years to watch the consequences of our choices since 1984 unfold. Plutonian change is inevitable – but the direction and shape of that change is malleable. Shaping change is Art.