[Booklog] The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa
Sean O'Hara
pick some up and give them a try. First we have The Lord of the Sands
of Time.
Japan, AD 248
(A story set in Japan before the emergence of samurai? Oh, Issui
Ogawa. That explains it. No Westerner would ever write a novel set in
Japan prior to the 16th Century.)
Miyo, the oracular Princess Himiko, has left the palace to walk
through the countryside with her bodyguard Kan. They climb Mount
Shiki and spy the distant harbor of Suminoe. Kan wonders if any of
the ships they see might be from Wei, or Kentak, or Roma.
(Roma? Did the 3rd Century Japanese know about Rome?)
Miyo answers that the distance makes it unlikely -- the embassy she
sent to Roma had lost half its ships on the round trip voyage.
(Diplomatic contact between Japan and Rome? That doesn't sound right
at all.)
But sea trade has been improving, and it's only a matter of decades
before permanent trade routes can be established. Already Japan has
had contact with the red-skinned men of Kentak beyond the Eastern
Ocean.
(Wait what?)
The men of Kentak and Roma had been eager to exchange laws and
discover that Japan, like all lands they know, follow the Law of the
Messenger, an ancient commandment for all people to cooperate with
their neighbors to ward of the Disaster that must eventually come.
Suddenly a mononoke, a giant insect-like monster appears and tries to
kill Miyo. Kan defends her, but he's no match for the beast. Then a
mysterious figure appears and slays the mononoke. The man introduces
himself as O, a messenger from the future, and warns Miyo that this
mononoke was just the vanguard of an army that's gathering beyond her
borders.
O, we soon learn, is an android from the year 2598. The mononoke, or
ETs, have wiped out all life in the inner-solar system, and humanity
has retreated to the outer system and extra-solar colonies. The war
has stalemated, with what little momentum remains on the side of
humanity, so the ETs constructed time machines to take the war into
the past. Humans responded by dispatching an army of androids to the
past to defend the timeline.
All fairly standard stuff. But the book is much better thought-out
than most time-war stories I've read. For one thing, neither side
mucks about with subtlety -- no one bothers with covert-ops to kill
great leaders before they're born, or to wreck some important
historical event. In fact, the Messengers have totally written off
their original timeline and only wish to establish *a* victorious
future. When they emerge in a past era, they immediately contact the
powers that be, tell them the situation, and ask for help.
Unfortunately this doesn't always help, and many of the new timelines
fall to the ETs. And even if the Messengers do emerge victorious in
one era, the ETs can just travel downwhen a few more centuries and
start over.
As both sides move further into the past, they deplete their
supplies. The ETs have to rely upon what they can build in each time,
while the Messengers bootstrap local cultures to a level that can
stand against the enemy. By the time both sides reach the 3rd Century
... well, things are pretty grim for both sides.
However, no matter how bad the situation gets, the book itself
remains optimistic. Our Heroes may be fighting against a massive zerg
rush with their backs literally to the sea, but the tone never flips
to "Doomed, doomed, doomidy-doomed" mode. Just as in Tolkien, you
know there's a eucatastrophe waiting to happen. When it finally
comes, it borders on a deus ex machina, even though it follows
logically from the rules laid out for time travel.
One thing I dislike about much SF is the way protagonists always have
a post-Enlightenment mindset no matter what sort of culture they're
from. Ogawa avoids this nicely, having Miyo be more alien than O. At
one point, O describes the American Civil War to her and Kan, and
they both respond in horror at the cruelty of the North for wanting
to free slaves (they believe slaves would die without masters).
Although Miyo's a strong female character, she is in no way a
feminist like Robert Jordan's or George R. R. Martin's characters
are. She dislikes her position of mystic royalty, for which she was
selected Lama-like, but she doesn't whine about it the way most
Western heroes in the Campbellian style do. Instead of avoiding the
Call to Adventure, she shoulders the responsibility because it's her
responsibility.
O, for his part, is more than human without any of the pinocchioisms
usually found in such characters. He's not the sort to ask, "What is
this thing called "love" which you speak of?" He does have a quest
for meaning in his life, but it's an entirely human one, not much
different from what Mandella goes through in The Forever War.
The ETs, however, get no development whatsoever. They're nothing more
than your typical bug horde, with no signs of reasoning despite their
obvious technological prowess. We eventually discover that they were
created by an alien race to wipe out humanity for reasons that would
make the Minbari say, "Dude, that's screwed up."
The book is a mere 200 pages but packs more in than a thousand page
doorstopper. One subplot of the book involves a Messenger who's
composing a novel about caterpillars defending a tree from crabs that
want to prune it. This allegory of the war, even half finished, is
said to be longer than the Mahabharata. We're given ten pages about
timelines that Harry Turtledove could turn into a ten book series,
and glimpses of dozen more equally sprawling. But Ogawa restrains
himself to keep the story on track, proving that "concision" is not
the antonym of epic.
David Johnston
wrote:
>Given all of James' glowing reviews of Haikasoru novels, I decided to
>pick some up and give them a try. First we have The Lord of the Sands
>of Time.
>
>Japan, AD 248
>
>(A story set in Japan before the emergence of samurai? Oh, Issui
>Ogawa. That explains it. No Westerner would ever write a novel set in
>Japan prior to the 16th Century.)
>
>Miyo, the oracular Princess Himiko, has left the palace to walk
>through the countryside with her bodyguard Kan. They climb Mount
>Shiki and spy the distant harbor of Suminoe. Kan wonders if any of
>the ships they see might be from Wei, or Kentak, or Roma.
>
>(Roma? Did the 3rd Century Japanese know about Rome?)
The time of Himiko is a time of total mythology in Japanese memory.
Nobody has any idea what the real Japanese of the time knew. But the
Romans did have some contact with China and it's the same time frame
when the Japanese were picking up Chinese architecture.
William December Starr
Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> said:
> The ETs, however, get no development whatsoever. They're nothing
> more than your typical bug horde, with no signs of reasoning
> despite their obvious technological prowess. We eventually
> discover that they were created by an alien race to wipe out
> humanity for reasons that would make the Minbari say, "Dude,
> that's screwed up."
"It was a clerical error. They were supposed to be created to
wipe out the _bumans_. Little nine-legged things on Betel IV."
-- wds (we're really sorry about this)
James Nicoll
Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Given all of James' glowing reviews of Haikasoru novels, I decided to
>pick some up and give them a try. First we have The Lord of the Sands
>of Time.
>
>Japan, AD 248
>
>(A story set in Japan before the emergence of samurai? Oh, Issui
>Ogawa. That explains it. No Westerner would ever write a novel set in
>Japan prior to the 16th Century.)
While I understand the usefulness of hyperbole, I'd like to recommend
both Kara Dalkey's GENPEI and Kij Johnson's FOX WOMAN, both of which I liked
quite a bit and both of which are set in the Heian Period.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Robert A. Woodward
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> In article <MPG.27142a7ac...@news.individual.net>,
> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Given all of James' glowing reviews of Haikasoru novels, I decided to
> >pick some up and give them a try. First we have The Lord of the Sands
> >of Time.
> >
> >Japan, AD 248
> >
> >(A story set in Japan before the emergence of samurai? Oh, Issui
> >Ogawa. That explains it. No Westerner would ever write a novel set in
> >Japan prior to the 16th Century.)
>
> While I understand the usefulness of hyperbole, I'd like to recommend
> both Kara Dalkey's GENPEI and Kij Johnson's FOX WOMAN, both of which I liked
> quite a bit and both of which are set in the Heian Period.
Also, the _Tomoe Gozen_ trilogy by Jessica Amanda Salmonson is set
late 12 century Japan (a somewhat magical version of course).
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
Brian M. Scott
<robe...@drizzle.com> wrote in
<news:robertaw-2C7B11...@news.individual.net> in
rec.arts.sf.written:
> In article <i8e8q1$aee$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>> In article <MPG.27142a7ac...@news.individual.net>,
>> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
>>> (A story set in Japan before the emergence of samurai?
>>> Oh, Issui Ogawa. That explains it. No Westerner would
>>> ever write a novel set in Japan prior to the 16th
>>> Century.)
>> While I understand the usefulness of hyperbole, I'd like
>> to recommend both Kara Dalkey's GENPEI and Kij
>> Johnson's FOX WOMAN, both of which I liked quite a bit
>> and both of which are set in the Heian Period.
> Also, the _Tomoe Gozen_ trilogy by Jessica Amanda
> Salmonson is set late 12 century Japan (a somewhat
> magical version of course).
Stretching a little further, Sean Russell's _The Initiate
Brother_ and _Gatherer of Clouds_ are set in a land that has
roughly the geography of China but a culture that's at least
as much early Japanese as it is early Chinese. (He's said
that he was influenced by both Genji Monogatari and Tang
Dynasty poetry.)
Brian
Scott Lurndal
>Given all of James' glowing reviews of Haikasoru novels, I decided to
>pick some up and give them a try. First we have The Lord of the Sands
>of Time.
>
>Japan, AD 248
>
>(A story set in Japan before the emergence of samurai? Oh, Issui
>Ogawa. That explains it. No Westerner would ever write a novel set in
>Japan prior to the 16th Century.)
>
>Miyo, the oracular Princess Himiko, has left the palace to walk
>through the countryside with her bodyguard Kan. They climb Mount
>Shiki and spy the distant harbor of Suminoe. Kan wonders if any of
>the ships they see might be from Wei, or Kentak, or Roma.
>
>(Roma? Did the 3rd Century Japanese know about Rome?)
They must have, there is the old story about Jesus retiring to
a town in the north of Japan after he woke from his coma.
scott