Ivory, apes and peacocks…
Forget the gold and silver (or rather, don’t forget them, give them to me) the precious stones and sandalwood, it was always the ivory, apes and peacocks that fascinated me. In terms of real per pound value gold and silver may well have eclipsed that of noisy peacocks, troublesome apes and bulky ivory, and precious stones certainly did. The allure of the exotic, you might say. The mental images of ancient docks of hand-hewed stone, and the yard, masts and ropes of hoists, lifting corded bundles from the holds of worm eaten wooden ships, and lines of sweating porters carrying cages and great tusks – not to mention the image of maddened sailors (peacock cries will do that to even the most level headed folk) casting themselves into the sea in the windless calm, trying to swim to that distant barren shore, got to me straight off the first time I heard it.
We humans are a conflicted critter. We fear outsiders and the unfamiliar… and yet we are fascinated by these exotic things – especially by the unusual that carries a hint of a far wider, more complex and even more exotic world. It was, I think, one of the things that drew into sf and fantasy. Of course that is largely out of fashion now, and the purpose of genre is to tell how evul the standard model PC designated kicking scapegoat is for daring to venture into this wonderful place. Which, um, has done so well that sales are on a glorious downward spiral into nothing. Seriously, we had an era – not that long back, when ‘misery’ – books about poverty, abuse, a horrible time, that actually enjoyed no redemption did quite well – I think not to an audience that could identify with it, but the ‘tourists’ whose upper-middle class urban lives were far divorced from this. I seriously think times have changed and that market – never that large and supported by a coterie of traditional publishers who have lost much of their power – is vanishing. I do see a lot of folk trapped in an existence, drab and trammeled with tax and debt, will want to escape to the exotic and… bring back the apes and ivory and even peacocks to their city or office. The familiar is turning horrible.
Let us venture on Ophir. Let us dream big dreams and come home with rich rewards, and stuff how we have ruined the ecology of inner Ophir…
So tell me of the magic phrases that took you there? Think about what made them so magical, and where they came from.
Mad Genius Club 
42 responses to “Ophir”
I think one of the things that kills some of the sense of wonder in fantasy is that too often authors start with the image of the past as being as old and decayed as it is today. Those ships might have been new, not worm-eaten. Things were freshly painted and colors were bright. We have lost this with our museum pieces, much like how people see the turn of the last century as being all black and white. People were the same too. The culture might be a bit different, but the monkeys were just as sharp then as now – and just as evil and deceitful too.
(Oh, and I’d like to apologize for the real stinker I laid on your last thread, hopefully far enough back that nobody saw it….)
Heh. This is a case of the monkey’s obsession with fact. The ships of the time (Phoenecian vessels) were untreated. The journey to Ophir and back took 3 years (we still don’t know where Ophir was or if it was one place) Shipworm would be in danger of sinking the vessels after 3 years, even if they’d spent some time hauled up. Ships didn’t last a long time, but did make a lot of money.
No worries.
In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
Utterly familiar on an emotional level, but different enough to be entrancing. Robin McKinley does something like this a lot with her books– totally normal but with lots of off-handed comments…. it lets you slide right into the story.
You’re right about the peacock’s cry, too. *twitch*
Great example! Tolkien’s genius may come down to his skill in balancing our love for the exciting and exotic, with our love for the safe and familiar and comforting. Think about it- the two are so often set in close proximity.
Peacocks have gone feral on the island – and have picked on – in particular, a friend’s house to roost near. At 3 AM they aren’t popular.
I read off your story about the peacocks.
My mom looked up and said: “They’re good eating. [Guy down the valley] butchers his, and sells the feathers.”
Thought I’d offer the suggestion.
Gah – internet not working properly. Sorry, I have not been able to reply
I’ve been over to shoot them – it’s a 15 mile trip… and they just weren’t there… these are feral, and as clever as wild turkeys at not being shot (our Island turkeys -which are also feral – are rather stupid, which I gather the real thing is not)
As I understand it, the feral turkeys usually are dumb– it’s the wild ones that aren’t.
The Patrol ship _Starfire_, Vegan registry, came into her last port in the early morning. And she made a bad landing . . .
Been an Andre Norton ever since.
It was the Sargasso of Space that got me. And it was the TITLE – I have at least 3 books floating in my head based on the idea.
Oh, year. Great titles can do that “Off Armageddon Reef” has me scribbling what could so easily be a whole series.
You know I somehow read the title of this post as Opar, and was wondering how I could have forgotten peacocks being there.
I third the notion about the peacock’s cry.
Well… IIRC Opar may have been based on Ophir. Ah. Wikipedia – that source all accurate knowledge (not) says I am right…
La La La La La!
which has some interesting echoes of
Okay, I’ll get over blushing and feeling awkward in about 10 years. Both at the choice and the echoes.
Well fine. But I’ll note that I was tempted to change the name of the port to Ankh Morpork because the description is remarkably similar to certain discworld introductions too.
The thing is all these descriptions (and others that excite, inspire and are memorable, such as the Hobbit one) is that they throw you in – ‘in media res’ – to new situation in a relatively exotic location, but yet give you enough normality to let you get intrigued by the strangeness but not overwhelmed.
Something else I’ve noticed is that in a lot of cases the really memorable ones also tend to make it as if they are just ‘reminding you’ – as if you might have forgotten just where the slave market lies in relation to the Plaza of Liberty or that Hobbit holes have all mod cons or whatever.
Another example, IIRC in Friday the “Quito Skyhook” disaster is mentioned as a reason why the heroine hates riding the “Beanstalk” to Kenya in the first few lines. Because that way you get to understand that the heroine is well travelled lady and that as such she’s frequently been to places in near space even if you have no idea what exactly they are. Sort of like one might say “I was always nervous about air travel, even before those airlines were crashed into buildings on 9/11, so when I boarded the flight at LAX…”
Another example of a boy at the start of a story
Exotic locations, but “municipal orders” sounds quite ordinary. And these days almost everyone has seen a picture of corroded bronze cannon and so understands immediately that we have a boy playing where he shouldn’t.
And quite an insight into the character of Kim
Perhaps I was destined to read science fiction. Before I discovered it, I spent years reading of adventures in Africa and the Americas in the early nineteenth century. (I read this huge book called Nine years among the Bantus, the pigmies and the Zulus” to shreds.) Also, of course historical books. Done right — Dumas, Shakespeare, and yes, Austen (I know she wasn’t historical when she wrote it) — they have that same feel.
As for Science Fiction — Anything by Heinlein took me there instantly. Also, most Simaks.
A series I got into, moved into the world, lived there part time, and eventually got turned off by being sold as a novel a novella that had already been told in antoher book — then tried to get back into and couldn’t because the WORDS were too stilted and held me at bay — was Pern. I don’t know what about the language prevents my reading it now. It didn’t bother me in the eighties. Has our sense of language changed? Has MY sense of language changed? Did I really like it because I’d just come from a Latin language? Am I over sensitive now?
Oh, I should add that words are important to that sense of wonder and that, weirdly, more transparent (as though they weren’t even there) seems to be better. And I say that as someone who’s REALLY bad at making words unmemorable.
I think Pern loses something when you aren’t young. As a teenager I loved it and also lived there a lot. But as an adult, for whatever reason. I seem to have a problem suspending my disbelief the way I did then
When I was young, I liked Pern but I really loved Darkover. Then, one day, I couldn’t read them anymore. I don’t know why.
Dorothy Dunnet’s Lymond Chronicles evoke a sense of being in an alien place that you can see in your mind. She also painted, and she painted with words very well.
Dorothy Dunnet’s Lymond was head and shoulders above its peers. Wonderfully complex.
I was getting tired of same-old same-old as the later Darkover books came out, but fairly recently I rebought ALL of them on the cheap and read them in world-chronological order (which is not how them came out). What a difference that made!
My problem with Pern is that they refused to rise above the “troubled teen” level, and that got really old. I’d thought the same of the Darkover books reading them as they came out, but they lost a lot of that feel for me during the reread (and that’s a good thing).
Maybe I’ll put Darkover on my re-read list. I never got rid of my paperbacks. And, it was a Darkover ‘zine that led me to discover Dunnett. One of my great pleasures was that I got to have tea with her in a small group once.
I obviously hit Darkover too late. I started, I admit, with a lter book, but couldn’t wade through that, and when I tried the first book, the later one kept recurring.
I agree with Pern being for the young. I haven’t reread lately, but it seems that the last time I did read it I may have been reading the Dragon Singer/ Dragon Drums books out loud to my kids. I remember reading them for the first time and the experience was different. A big part of that was the things that I didn’t notice then… ie., I had no real idea about the rape-y implied sex. I *loved* that the people lived in caverns and hid away from the thread, and most of the books seemed to be coming-of-age and oppressed individuals being magically chosen by dragons and suddenly… well, like Rudolf the red nosed reindeer, getting to save the day and be the hero.
Now I’m old and all… crotchety.
(chuckle) Well I am old but my crochet skills are very limited.
I can still recite the beginning of “Dragonflight” from memory. 🙂
The world of Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising.” The first book was OK, but with the second book she pulled me so far into her world of the Ancient Thames Valley (and later the Wales of the Grey King) that I still spend part of the winter solstice there. As others said up-thread, it’s a normal world for a normal 11 year-old boy, except . . . the rooks. And Oldway Lane, and a thread of flute music that teases the memory like the faint scent of woodsmoke on a cold winter day. And a farmer, looking at the sky and at Will and saying, “Tonight will be wild, and tomorrow beyond imagining.”
“When the Dark comes rising/Six shall turn it back./ Three from the temple, three from the track./ Wood, bronze, iron/ Fire, water, stone;/ Six signs the circle and the grail gone before. . . Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of Gold/ Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of the old./ Power from the Greenwich, lost beneath the Sea/ All shall find the Light at last/ Silver on the Tree.” The hair on the back of my neck is up and I have goosebumps as I type. 🙂
Poetry and the raising of goosebumps seem to go hand in hand. Whether it is ‘O’Driscoll drove with a song the wild duck and the drake from the Tall and the tufted reeds of the drear heart lake,’
or
The eaters of other men’s bread, the exempted from hardship,
The excusers of impotence fled, abdicating their wardship,
For the hate they had taught through the State brought the State no defender,
And it passed from the roll of the Nations in headlong surrender!
Hmm. I have to think deeper on this…
You do raise another thing here, the way that our tastes change… and don’t change. Some books I’ve gone back to I just can’t read – and others – after 40 years absence are like old friends who just stepped out of the room for 10 seconds.
Yep, I loved ERB when I was younger. I still like him, but find that unlike when I was younger and would read the Tarzan, or John Carter of Mars, Carson of Venus, etc. series from beginning to end, I can now only read one or two at a time. The same goes for the Pern books, and many of McCaffery’s other books that I once enjoyed I can no longer read at all.
And I know exactly the novella turned novel you mention.
The beginning of Snow Crash remains my favorite opening ever. Something about the rhythm grabbed me when I first read it. Still does.
And oddly remains one of the much recommended books I just have not in several attempts managed to read more than a few pages 😦
Really, that first chapter is the best, hands down. I’m not sure exactly what it is that I find so captivating. No doubt I’ll be analysing and re-reading for years. Darn.
Something of an OT observation that all of this reminded me of…
Funny, none of my couple-of-dozen well-worn reread periodically favorites are SF&F (except for LOTR). What they have in common, I guess, are some solid emotional character moments that resonate with me, and I find most SF just isn’t (for me) all that emotional. Interesting, humorous, fun… but not grab-you emotional, as in hurt-the-main-character-and-watch-him-grow. Fantasy has more of that (and it’s the core of LOTR), but I find that too much of that is like Harry Potter — just not deep enough, not absorbing enough. Not sure why I think that…
But, for example, who in Fantasy, who suffers to become the epic King at the end, is nearly as moving as, say, Athos in his revenge, or Scaramouche in his parental dilemma, or Sarah Crewe in her abandonment, or Freckles in his determination?
Why is Frodo an exception, or the decline of the Elves in LOTR? I think it’s because their very success has the flavor of ultimate tragedy, It’s a fallen man, Christian, point of view. I like the more extreme Norse version, a Fimbulwinter of the soul, that the best a man can do (and it’s worth doing and suffering for) can only postpone the inevitable for a while, that a man must fight even if the universe is cold and all will eventually decay.
That reminds me, I should reread Freckles, it has been years since I read it last.
I have a sneaking (I can’t respect myself in the morning) fondness for Gene Stratton-Porter’s fiction, but she is definitely a product of her paranoid times. “Yellow peril” is a sub-theme in a couple of the books, so beware, along with a peculiar American disdain for “titles” from the old country which is clearly a popular meme.
My faves, in order, are: Freckles, The Beekeeper, Daughter of the Limberlost. At a lesser level, but still pretty good are: The Harvester (feels rather Ayn Randian to me, in an odd way), Her Father’s Daughter (special “yellow peril” alert), Michael O’Halloran. Several of these would make good movies (ignore the cinematic version of Freckles) of a certain period type — they’re full of amusing little scenes and dramatic gestures, and not so dense that you would have to cut them significantly for screenplays. Best of all, the teenagers aren’t alien beings removed from family and society.
If you have any fondness for the popular American fiction of the early part of the 20th century, you might enjoy these. These aren’t juveniles, though they’re treated like that now. They’re not “classics” (though Freckles comes closest). They don’t all have happy stories (c.f., A Daughter of the Land with a brutal marriage) but the more rural ones illuminate the world of their time, with their teachers’ degrees and Chautauqua references and the difficulty of making your own clothing and the transition from wilderness to settlement to urban life.
(chuckle) It’s probably one of things that resonated with me: the dislike of inherited titles. I’m not sure about your sf/fantasy emotional divide though.
I once saw a documentary type thing that made the claim that during bad times (WW2-ish) the entertainment that did so well was adventure and positive stories, I remember because it talked about Thor Heyerdahl and he was a childhood hero of mine. People were caught up with the idea of adventure. Sad stories were for better times.
Now all a person hears (or all that I notice) is that people supposedly want entertainment that reflects the reality of their lives. Bull. How stupid is that? Like I want to go see my own life for entertainment. It’s “slumming”, just like Dave said. People who are well off and bored want to watch people be miserable because it feels vital to them, because it’s not the reality of their life, which is well off and bored. OTOH, people who are weary want to visit a place where *they* feel vital. People who’s reality is strife or hunger or pain don’t want entertainment that reflects their reality. They want entertainment that *deflects* their reality.
I mean… my husband never gets up in the morning and says to me… wouldn’t it be just great if today was exactly like yesterday and I get to drive the same way to work and bang my head on the same walls and worry about the kids and wonder if the economy will improve? Someone who is unemployed may long for the grind, true enough, but what my husband says is… wouldn’t it be exciting if there were flying dragons and we had to take rocket launchers anytime we drove to town so we didn’t get eaten on the way to work? He’s not stupid so he knows that actual deadly danger would not be even a little bit fun… that’s not the point.
Ophir may have been the land of malaria and crotch rot… that’s not the point… the point is Ivory, apes and peacocks, adventure and treasure.
It’s finding out you’re a secret princess or have magical powers or that you are chosen for no reason or virtue whatsoever to ride a golden dragon.
🙂 Sing it from the rooftops. I’ve been saying this for a while.
“Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens…” It’s like a fever dream from the Arabian nights. H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which was directly inspired by Lord Dunsany whom I went on to read, and from there to Tolkien. I love the gorgeousness, but also the sense of age, the depth and weight of history.