Quel roman vous a plongé dans la fantasy ?
Posté : mer. oct. 07, 2009 8:07 am
Le site SF Signal a posé cette question à des auteurs anglo-saxons.
Parmi les réponses Karen Miller, David Anthony Durham, Hal Duncan ou Brandon Sanderson.
Je vous mets la réponse d'Hal Duncan :
"Easy one. The Borribles by Michael de Larrabeiti is the book that set my whole perception of fantasy, back when I was a mere nipper -- I couldn't tell you exactly how old, but I'd guess about eight or nine. It's possible that I read C.S. Lewis before, but Narnia is allegory, right? So fuck that Christian shit. Besides, everyone gets The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe foisted on them in school, so it doesn't count. No, The Borribles is the first fantasy book I discovered for myself, and it pretty much set the mould for the type of fantasy I've been interested in ever since. I'd call it urban fantasy, if that term hadn't been co-opted to something else. What it is, is one of those fantasies in which our world is permeated by the fantastic, more Neil Gaiman than Terry Brooks. You don't have to go through a portal to find a magic polder, a refuge from reality. The fantastic doesn't invade via some rift, as a terrible threat to be averted. No, it's just there already, in the seams, the interstices, the back-alleys and side-streets of our world.
See, the book sort of turns a savagely cynical eye on two cherished childhood fictions -- Peter Pan and The Wombles -- takes them round the back of the bike sheds and gives them a sound drubbing. The Borribles are what the Lost Boys would really be like, stripped of all the wistful sentimentality of Neverland. There's no fairytale island here; this is 70s London and Borribles are thieving little street oiks, runaways who've decided that growing up is a mug's game and they're just not going to bother. Instead these pointy-eared punks live in squats, stealing electricity, food, clothes, whatever they need to survive, always in danger of being caught by the fuzz, who'll clip their ears if they catch them -- causing them to grow up after all, the worst possible fate a Borrible can imagine. Meanwhile, their deadly foes, the "rumbles," are what the wombles would really be like -- giant rodents armed with "rumble sticks", lethal staff-weapons with a six-inch-nail embedded in the top, giant rats who live in a vast warren underneath "Rumbledon Common." With their lisping hatred for those "howwible bowwibles," and their somewhat poncy ways, there's more than a hint of class war here. There's as much Steerpike as Artful Dodger in your average Borrible, and you can't help but feel that, with the rumbles, the author is taking a pop at all the bourgeois bollocks of children's fiction for and by the middle-classes. This is what you'd get if Roald Dahl had been into the Clash.
The plot? Every Borrible has to earn his name in an adventure, see, so a Dirty Dozen style team of unnamed Borribles is brought together -- one from every borough -- on a mission of assassination. Each takes the name of their target, a member of the rumble High Command -- Napoleon, Torreycanyon, Vulgaria, and so on. And not only do you get the perils and shenanigans as the heroes cross London; when they finally get into the rumble base, the methods of killing are... brutally inventive, to say the least. All I'll say is that the sequel has a decapitation by shovel, in a Wandsworth sewer, with all manner of scabrous adventure leading up to it. The result is fun of the most vicious kind, a trilogy of tales with all the adventure, betrayal, slaughter, larceny, slavery, intrigue and redemption any blood-thirsty kid could hope for. The Borribles books piss on everything Enid Blyton ever wrote, and they're probably the reason I never could take Tolkien that seriously. Furry-footed little critters that live underground and fuss over high tea and tiffin? Sounds like effing rumbles to me, mate. Bollocks to 'em.
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Parmi les réponses Karen Miller, David Anthony Durham, Hal Duncan ou Brandon Sanderson.
Je vous mets la réponse d'Hal Duncan :
"Easy one. The Borribles by Michael de Larrabeiti is the book that set my whole perception of fantasy, back when I was a mere nipper -- I couldn't tell you exactly how old, but I'd guess about eight or nine. It's possible that I read C.S. Lewis before, but Narnia is allegory, right? So fuck that Christian shit. Besides, everyone gets The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe foisted on them in school, so it doesn't count. No, The Borribles is the first fantasy book I discovered for myself, and it pretty much set the mould for the type of fantasy I've been interested in ever since. I'd call it urban fantasy, if that term hadn't been co-opted to something else. What it is, is one of those fantasies in which our world is permeated by the fantastic, more Neil Gaiman than Terry Brooks. You don't have to go through a portal to find a magic polder, a refuge from reality. The fantastic doesn't invade via some rift, as a terrible threat to be averted. No, it's just there already, in the seams, the interstices, the back-alleys and side-streets of our world.
See, the book sort of turns a savagely cynical eye on two cherished childhood fictions -- Peter Pan and The Wombles -- takes them round the back of the bike sheds and gives them a sound drubbing. The Borribles are what the Lost Boys would really be like, stripped of all the wistful sentimentality of Neverland. There's no fairytale island here; this is 70s London and Borribles are thieving little street oiks, runaways who've decided that growing up is a mug's game and they're just not going to bother. Instead these pointy-eared punks live in squats, stealing electricity, food, clothes, whatever they need to survive, always in danger of being caught by the fuzz, who'll clip their ears if they catch them -- causing them to grow up after all, the worst possible fate a Borrible can imagine. Meanwhile, their deadly foes, the "rumbles," are what the wombles would really be like -- giant rodents armed with "rumble sticks", lethal staff-weapons with a six-inch-nail embedded in the top, giant rats who live in a vast warren underneath "Rumbledon Common." With their lisping hatred for those "howwible bowwibles," and their somewhat poncy ways, there's more than a hint of class war here. There's as much Steerpike as Artful Dodger in your average Borrible, and you can't help but feel that, with the rumbles, the author is taking a pop at all the bourgeois bollocks of children's fiction for and by the middle-classes. This is what you'd get if Roald Dahl had been into the Clash.
The plot? Every Borrible has to earn his name in an adventure, see, so a Dirty Dozen style team of unnamed Borribles is brought together -- one from every borough -- on a mission of assassination. Each takes the name of their target, a member of the rumble High Command -- Napoleon, Torreycanyon, Vulgaria, and so on. And not only do you get the perils and shenanigans as the heroes cross London; when they finally get into the rumble base, the methods of killing are... brutally inventive, to say the least. All I'll say is that the sequel has a decapitation by shovel, in a Wandsworth sewer, with all manner of scabrous adventure leading up to it. The result is fun of the most vicious kind, a trilogy of tales with all the adventure, betrayal, slaughter, larceny, slavery, intrigue and redemption any blood-thirsty kid could hope for. The Borribles books piss on everything Enid Blyton ever wrote, and they're probably the reason I never could take Tolkien that seriously. Furry-footed little critters that live underground and fuss over high tea and tiffin? Sounds like effing rumbles to me, mate. Bollocks to 'em.
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la cité et les astres d'Arthur C Clarke 