Fabulous Fantasy.

The fantastic, for me, is this beautiful straight road to wonder.

Steven Price (J. M. Miro)

It's not our usual date night routine, but tonight Karli and I attended an event at this year's Vancouver Writer's Fest, a conversation regarding historical fantasy featuring Canadian authors Guy Gavriel Kay and Steven Price (writing as J. M. Miro) and moderated by critic and and fellow author Rob Wiersema.   

If you're a reader, I strongly recommend that you try an event like this, regardless of your genre of interest.  It's a unique opportunity to hear authors talk about their work in their own voices, to speak to their inspirations and how their lives have informed their writing.

Guy Gavriel Kay has impeccable credentials in the world of fantasy writing.  At the age of 20, a family connection gained him an invitation from the J. R. R. Tolkien estate to travel to England and assist Christopher Tolkien in editing his father's unpublished writings in the world of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with the results published as The Silmarillion.  His high fantasy trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, was published ten years later to universal acclaim.

Kay has a thoughtful, artistic style which has stood the test of time over his nearly 40 year writing career.  All the Seas of the World, his latest novel, continues his exploration of fantasy set in slightly altered historical settings, in which magic and the supernatural are part of the story.

Ordinary Monsters, set in Victorian England at the turn of the century, is Steven Price's first fantasy novel, and the first in what will be the Talents series.  He is better known for his poetry and his mainstream historical novels, By Gaslight and Lampedusa.

The two authors were well paired.  Kay's speaking style is almost professorial, measured and deliberate in the presentation of ideas based on almost four decades of writing.  By contrast, Price offered a more frank and immediate commentary on his first foray into the world of fantasy after a life-long love for the genre. 

Over the course of the evening, they shared a fascinating dialogue on the topic of writing and their personal approaches to it - albeit, in Guy Gavriel Kay's case, accompanied by the observations that "The research phase is by far my favourite part of writing. Actual writing is hell. Those who tell you they love it shouldn't be allowed to live, I feel very strongly about this."

When asked about his shift from the classic high fantasy of his first trilogy to historical settings, Kay explained that there were specific personal reasons that he wanted to make a statement in that style, after his experience with the Silmarillion. He had strong thoughts about "what was wrong, what was missing in fantasy at the time", specifically in North America, and The Fionavar Tapestry was his response.

After finishing his statement, he was ready to move on.  He acknowledged that there was pressure to repeat his previous success - “If something is successful, people want you to do it again," - but he was unwilling to repeat himself, or, as he succinctly put it, “I don’t believe in four volume trilogies.”

In his writing since then, he's found that his core interest in history and the past has provided him with a different tool, a different weapon in the arsenal to “keep you reading until three in the morning.”

“And it's worked!”

The fantasy elements that he weaves into his novels offer an alternative perspective on history, one which helps him to avoid what he refers to as the smugness of most historical fiction, the tendency to look down on the less advanced beliefs of the past.

Whereas for Steven Price, it’s not so much a question of genre, he sits down to tell the story he wants to tell, which may require a fantasy element as easily as a historical setting.  As he simply put it, "The fantastic, for me, is this beautiful straight road to wonder."

To end the evening, Wiersema asked the two authors for reading recommendations. Guy Gavriel Kay recommended Mary Renault's novels set in classical Greece, such as The King Must Die, or The Mask of Apollo, which he considered to be "beautifully written, transgressively written", and which he had first read when he was 12.

Steven Price suggested the book which had changed his life when he was 12, the fantasy classic The Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Leguin, which he described as "profound, timeless and beautiful".  For a more contemporary choice, he recommended Spear, a queer retelling of the Arthurian legend by Nicola Griffith.

For me, the most significant part of the evening came near the beginning, when Wiersema asked Price why, given the success of his more traditional fiction, he had turned to fantasy:

"I grew up reading fantasy novels - they're my home, it's where I come from.

I was a very lonely boy, I did not fit in - like so many writers and readers who have that experience – I didn’t fit in, I didn’t have a lot of friends, and I found my refuge in books.

This was in the 1980s before there was an internet, where you could find like minded kids – find your tribe, find your people.

And I took refuge in the fantasy novels of the 80s that I could find at the mall bookstore - Robert Jordan, Anne McCaffrey, Guy Gavriel Kay books, the blockbuster fantasy novels that were available at the time.

I was 12 years old - I decided a lot of things when I was 12 years old - most of them have never come to pass, but one of the things that I stuck with was that I wanted to write fantasy novels. That dream stayed with me all through my adolescence and I never told anybody."

He registered for a writing course in university, switched to poetry, and stopped reading fiction for a few years. Following the publication of his first collection of poems, he was exhausted, and needed something to read that was different from what he had been working on.

I went to the bookstore, went to the Fantasy section, and pulled down a book, I remember clearly that it was a Brandon Sanderson novel. 

I found this refuge again, this refuge that I had found as a boy.

At this point, he seemed to become self-conscious, muttered, "This is a really long answer", and quickly explained how reading fantasy stories to his children at night had provided the impetus for his novel before falling silent.

I wanted to stand up and shout, "Steven, it's okay, it's safe, you've found us! We're the tribe you couldn't find when you were 12, and that's why we're here tonight!"

So, Mr. Price, my warm congratulations to you, both on fulfilling the dream of a twelve-year old, and on finding your people. Here's hoping that your book will provide the same refuge that you found to a 12 year old who needs one, and that it helps them to find their home.

- Sid

Flyboy.

X Wing Pilot – A pilot, sometimes called a flyboy, directly controlled the operation of a vehicle while located within the same craft. A pilot was often assisted by a copilot, navigator, astromech droid, weapons officer, or other crew members. The term “pilot” was applied across vehicles used on land or in water, air, and/or space. The military designation for a pilot was PL-1. Whether this applied to all pilots or only starfighter pilots is unknown. On smaller ships, the word pilot and captain were interchangeable, but on larger vessels, the pilots were rarely the commanders of the vessels. 

Rebel Legion web site

When I bought my X-Wing Pilot's Helmet at Disneyland, Karli suggested that it would be a great start to a costume, a sentiment that I cautiously agreed with after giving it a bit of thought. However, she immediately raised the ante by commenting that Hallowe'en was only a couple of weeks away, which added a degree of deadline pressure that I hadn't originally had in mind.

But, maybe it's more practical than I think. What's actually involved in creating a Star Wars Rebel pilot costume? How hard can it be?

The basics are easy to find through Google™ as per the reference shot above: an orange flight suit, black boots and gauntlets, the white flak vest, that Darth-Vader style chest box, and those weird belts/straps on the legs* - and the helmet, of course, which I don't have to worry about.

It would cost a bit of money, but most of it would be simple enough: orange coveralls are common, boots are boots, I'd probably make the flak vest out of foam and glue on white nylon material (I can't sew), and strapping material is easy to get at Home Depot. The little chest box would involve some construction, but nothing insurmountable, or I could buy either an Etsy duplicate or a 3D printing template if I decided to invest money rather than time.

But, as always, the devil is in the details, and if you want to pass muster with the Rebellion, there are actually a LOT of details involved in producing a flight-ready uniform that will get you admission to an X-Wing cockpit.

In this case, it's not actually the Rebellion, it's the Rebel Legion, an international organization of Star Wars Rebel, Resistance and Jedi cosplayers (as opposed - literally - to the 501st Legion, which is made up of Imperial, First Order, Sith and bounty hunter cosplayers).  In order to join the Rebel Legion, you need a professional quality film-accurate costume - and they do mean accurate.

The Rebel Legion is very specific regarding the criteria for an acceptable flight suit costume.  VERY specific.  For example, here are the specifications for the white flak vest:

The entire list of requirements can be read here.  Apparently I was wrong, boots are not just boots.

There's some variation from movie to movie: Luke's pilot's uniform from the encounter on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back is a two-piece combo, and the belts and other accessories are very different from his uniform from A New Hope. In Rogue One, General Antoc Merrick's flight suit is dark blue with ribbed white sleeve appliques, and has a modified flak vest. Regardless, the standards are equally strict.

However, to quote Terry Pratchett, what an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of human experience!**  Surely there must have been some individuality in the Rebel pilot corps - coveralls that were permanently stained by coolant leaks and singed by cockpit fires, someone refusing to give up the battered but functional life support unit that saved their life during the Battle of Yavin, Biggs always forgetting to wear his leg emergency flares, and all the other little real-world quirks that would vary from the strict specifications set out by the Legion.

The final resolution to all of this is that I'm unlikely to pull together an X-Wing pilot's costume for Hallowe'en, regardless of canon accuracy, although the resources to enable such a costume are certainly in existence.  And, ultimately, I'm somewhat inclined to agree with a comment that I read in one of the user's groups that I visited while doing the research for this posting:

"If you show up with the helmet and orange coveralls, you're 70% there."

- Sid

P.S. If anyone reading this is aware of a good source for affordable near-canon orange flight suits, please leave a comment with a link, it would be greatly appreciated.

* These are apparently ejection straps.

** Feat of Clay

Disney 2022: "I am one with the Force"

"Does that thing get smaller?"

TSA officer, LAX

It's Friday morning. We're packing up for our post-Disney flight back to Canada, and I'm facing the consequences of my actions: I have to get a light saber and an X-Wing flight helmet past airport security, onto an airplane, and through Canadian customs.

Fortunately, the flight helmet fits in my carry on bag, although it's a tight fit.  (I considered wearing it if it didn't fit in my bag - I can only wonder how that would have been received by the good people of the TSA.)  I'm more concerned about the light saber, which I have to carry loose. Logically, I should be fine.  People travel with canes all the time, it's about the same scale, it really shouldn't matter that it lights up and makes whooshing noises*, but somehow, somehow, I'm just not as confident as I'd like to be. 

The TSA agent at the airport doesn't love the fact that I want to run this thing through her scanner, but I wedge it into my bag at an angle that satisfies her concerns, and away it goes.  

It comes out the other side, and nothing happens.  I'm more than surprised - I expected that someone would at least want to look at the helmet just to see what the hell that thing was that they were just looking at.

Ironically, Karli’s bag is hand checked and run through the scanner twice - is Disney popcorn is more suspicious than a flight helmet and a light saber? It turns out that she's left her iPad in her shoulder bag, which you don’t have to pull out at YVR security.  No blood no foul, they scan her bag again and we're both through.

The next hurdle is boarding - as with so many flights, Westjet is cracking down on oversized carry-on luggage, and I’m extremely aware that my flight helmet makes my bag too wide to fit in the bag measuring device - and I can’t check it, I’m completely certain that the massed weight of the other luggage would crack the helmet like an egg. Again, I suppose I could wear it if I had to, but there would probably be some questions.  That sort of thing is charming if you’re ten, less so at 61.

To my astonished relief, the gate crew never even glances at my bag in their rush to board the flight, which is only about ten minutes behind schedule (it may help that we’re in the exit row, hard to say.) Regardless, there are times when you take the money and run, no need to question good luck.

The flight attendant waiting at our seats for the emergency exit orientation cheerfully comments, “Ah, a light saber!” To which I reply, “I hope the Force is with me and it doesn’t get broken up here!” as I put the hilt on top on Karli’s bag, with the blade over my bag. That still leaves about eight inches exposed, but the flight attendant promises to keep an eye on it, lord knows how. Fingers crossed, I settle into my seat and buckle up. At this point, I’ve done well - security and boarding are out of the way, all we need is a bit of luck and no serious turbulence on the flight.

195 uneventful minutes later, we touch down on the tarmac at YVR. The landing is a bit rough, which worrries me. The seat belt light goes off, I stand up, carefully open the bin, and all appears good. I can’t test functionality just yet, but at least nothing has shifted and broken the plastic blade. I’m actually a bit relieved that this isn’t a full length creation from Savi's Workshop at Galaxy's Edge, it must be nerve-racking to consign a $249 USD light saber to the whims of the luggage bin gods.

Canadian Customs shows no interest in our luggage - NEXUS was probably one of our best purchasing decisions in recent years. Karli's mother and stepfather pick us up and drop us off, we unlock the front door, Jaq the Cat suggests that it is dinnertime NOW, and we're home.  I release the light saber from the improvised elastic bindings on my shoulder bag, switch it on, and success, everything is in working order, and the helmet is also undamaged by its experience - apparently the Force is with me after all.

- Sid

* I used to know someone who used the word "VON" to emulate the sound of the light saber swinging through the air.  Try this at home if you'd like.