Regarding Blank Check Wizardries

fave reads of 2017: Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane

“And we will cause it to be well-made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved. Such a Song the Sea will never have seen.”

read if you like: middle grade fiction, male-female friendships, a blend of science fiction and fantasy, magic that has real and lasting consequences, and crying over large sea animals

from The Memory Palace, by Nate DiMeo

Space is so creepy and wonderful. Who the hell needs hell when there’s space.

Like there’s an old constellation called Eridanus that you can see in the southern sky, and its not a very interesting constellation. It’s a river. It’s actually the water that’s pouring out of Aquarius, so in the sky it’s kind of boring. It’s a path of stars.

But within Eridanus, in between the stars, there’s a place where the background radiation is unexplainably cold. Because after the Big Bang, there was all this light that scattered everywhere, and it’s the oldest light in the universe, but we can’t see it. It’s so dim that it only shows up as a glow of microwaves, so to us, it just looks like the blackness of the night.

But there’s this spot in Eridanus where that little glow of ancient microwaves isn’t what it should be. It’s cold and dark.

And it’s enormous. Like a billion light year across. Of mostly just emptiness. And we don’t know why. One theory is that it’s simply a huge void, like a place where there are no galaxies. Voids like that do exist. Most of them are smaller, but they’re a sort of predictable part of the structure of the universe. The cold spot in Eridanus, if it were a void, would be so enormous that it would change how we understand the universe. 

But another theory is that this cold spot is actually the place where a parallel universe is tangled with our own. 

IM NOT FLAILING ARE YOU FLAILING!?!?

DD's ten favorite lines from "Games Wizards Play"

10: “I’d prefer it to rain chocolate frosted donuts in my kitchen on Sunday mornings, but I don’t seem to be getting a lot of that.”

9: “Look, we’re all in The Sims.”

8: “But I’m on your side this time.”

7: “Wizardry is mean to me. I’m gonna tell.”

6: “Just don’t blame me if now she lives long enough to reproduce.”

5: “We’re using such different dictionaries.”

4: “It can probably be seen from space, but don’t let that bother you.”

3: “You may continue to stand in my presence.”

2: "That worked.”

1: "It made my day."

What is an Ocean but a Multitude of Drops?

I’ve been pondering the recurring notion in Young Wizards—introduced in the first book—that “even…unmagical-seeming actions” have importance in the fight against entropy. Whether it’s turning the lights off when one leaves a room, having a kind word for someone in need of encouragement, or just using the bus for transport to an alien mall crawl (“Wizards are supposed to use public transport—it’s ecologically sound!”), these little choices are no less important than galaxy-spanning fights with the Lone Power. And indeed, it’s often the little things—like Nita’s space pen or Ponch’s squirrels—that make the big victories possible.

It’s a concept that recurs in several of my other favorite works of fiction, as well. Rory’s father, Brian, from the most recent season of Doctor Who springs immediately to mind. A down-to-earth sort, Brian spends his screentime changing lightbulbs, carefully watching alien artifacts for days on end, and throwing golf balls for nearby dinosaurs to play fetch with. Unlike most of the Doctor’s associates, he doesn’t progress from these humble beginnings into something “remarkable”—he never becomes immortal or the Bad Wolf or anything like that. But instead, his very mundane habits are exactly what’s needed to save the world on multiple occasions. And when the Doctor offers to let him travel across time and space full-time, his response is simply, “Somebody’s got to water the plants.”

I bring this up because it’s a rather uncommon line of thought, on the whole. Far more common is the desire to change oneself, to journey forth from humble origins and grow into something great, to leave a mark on the world. But examples like the ones I mentioned above suggest that perhaps we’re not on the way to doing something remarkable—we already are, from one day to the next.

In the final lines of Cloud Atlas, both the book and the film (I heartily recommend either, incidentally), one of the protagonists ponders the notion that his efforts to change the world only amount to “a single drop in a limitless ocean.”

"But what is an ocean," he concludes, "but a multitude of drops?"

The same, I think, applies to all of us. We may not all be heroes or luminaries who command the destinies of millions, but within the smaller confines of our individual lives, every choice we embark upon makes a difference. And ultimately, the whole of human history is comprised of nothing else but people making decisions, many of them seemingly unimportant, one day at a time. Taken all together, though, it adds up to something remarkable. No man is an island, and every rock idly tossed into a pond produces ripples.

It’s both encouraging and terrifying to think about.

Are invisible things visible to invisible creatures? Are invisible creatures visible to each other, themselves? Discuss.

Meanwhile in the YW fandom…

(Subject of discussion: Nita and Kit’s hypothetical future wedding. Hat tip to the Slack chat for a lot of this. More to come.)

“How are they going to explain that one of the bridesmaids is a whale?”

S'reee, upon the mention of the hen do: “is it customary for one to bring their own fowl?”

“The Penn gating team can deal Grand Central for a day, we have lives too… sometimes? Oh, who am I kidding, Rhiow and I are so overdue for a vacation. Hurry up and make this ‘wedding’ thing happen, please.” –Urruah, probably

“I think we’re going to have a bit more luck sneaking an undisguised Sker'ret past the Rodriguez grandparents than we would getting Helena to stand on Kit’s side.”

“If only I could stay in whaleshape during the ceremony – I could be your ‘something blue!’”

“'Ree, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re almost as big as the venue….”

Opening Ceremonies

begins at 12 noon EST in Tír na nÓg digital.crossingscon.org

Sometimes I read stuff and I just wanna shake someone like "WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS"

by Aurelien Police