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Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

Strange Horizons, Inc.

www.strangehorizons.com

NOTICE: This ebook is licensed to the original purchaser

only. Duplication or distribution to any person via email,

floppy disk, network, print out, or any other means is a

violation of International copyright law and subjects the

violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. This notice

overrides the Adobe Reader permissions which are

erroneous. This book cannot be legally lent or given to

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Distributed by Fictionwise.com

Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

CONTENTS

Article: Elven Blades and Zero-G Ki, by Rachel Manija

Brown

Article: Interview: Maureen F. McHugh, by Pat Stansberry

Article: Spirits, Art, and the Fourth Dimension, by Bryan

Clair

Article: Interview: Brad Strickland, by James Palmer

Article: Guillotines and Body Transplants: the Severed

Head in Fact and Fiction, by Fred Bush

Fiction: Comrade Grandmother, by Naomi Kritzer,

illustration by Marge Simon

Fiction: Rhythm of the Tides, by Lisa A. Nichols

Fiction: Wantaviewer (part 1 of 2), by Michael J. Jasper

Fiction: Wantaviewer (part 2 of 2), by Michael J. Jasper

Fiction: Coyotes, Cats, and Other Creatures, by Karen L.

Abrahamson

Music: Interview: Blöödhag, by Victoria Garcia and John

Aegard

Poetry: All Those Bleached Bones ..., by Andy Miller

Poetry: The Children of the Moon, by Heather Shaw

Poetry: Mr Hyde's Daughter, by Mary Alexandra Agner

Poetry: The Garden of Time, by Lorraine Schein

Poetry: A Bestiary: Plate Spinning, by Tim Pratt

Review: John C. Wright's The Golden Age, reviewed by

David Soyka

Review: Alan Moore's Promethea, reviewed by Laura

Blackwell

Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

Review: Jeffrey Ford's The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and

Other Stories, reviewed by Amy O'Loughlin

Review: China Miéville's The Scar, reviewed by Sherryl Vint

Review: George Zebrowski's Swift Thoughts, reviewed by

Walter Chaw

Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

Elven Blades and Zero-G Ki: The Evolution of Martial

Arts in SF and Fantasy

By Rachel Manija Brown

9/2/02

Their new weapons they hung on their leather

belts under their jackets, feeling them very

awkward, and wondering if they would be of

any use. Fighting had not before occurred to

them as one of the adventures in which their

flight would land them.—The hobbits, upon

receiving blades from the Barrow-Downs, in J.

R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Lord of the Rings is a microcosm of the evolving role

of martial arts in SF and fantasy. In Tolkien's 1954 trilogy,

the hobbits are given weapons but are never taught how to

fight with them. The quote suggests that the hobbits have

never even worn a blade before. But when the time comes for

the hobbits to fight, they do so, apparently instinctively. In

Moria, even Sam the gardener manages to kill a spear-

wielding orc. I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept

that a tiny hobbit could kill a huge orc, but Tolkien stretches it

to the breaking point when he adds that the hobbit has never

even used a sword before. It's a curious omission from a

writer so focused on practical details that he never neglects to

say where his characters are getting their food and water.

Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

Both film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings add training

sequences. Ralph Bakshi's 1975 Lord of the Rings animated

film shows the hobbits being taught sword-fighting in

Rivendell, and Peter Jackson's 2001 The Fellowship of the

Ring has Boromir coach Merry and Pippin on the use of their

blades.

This is not just the usual variation between page and

screen—it marks a sea change in the attitude of fantasy

authors in writing about fighting and martial arts. (For this

article, I'm defining “martial arts” as coherent systems of

unarmed or armed [excluding firearms] combat, which may

or may not be Asian or “traditional.")

Lord of the Rings comes from an early period in the

development of the fantasy genre. At that time, the

convention was that the only thing necessary to make an

ordinary person into a warrior is a weapon. Similarly, in C. S.

Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, the gift of non-magical

swords and bows endows English schoolchildren not only with

battlefield competence, but with mastery.

Genre conventions have changed, and now the “training

sequence” is almost obligatory in novels in which previously

untrained characters end up fighting. Mirroring the evolution

of the wizard from ancient Merlins and Gandalfs of mysterious

origin to Ursula K. Le Guin and J. K. Rowling's youngsters in

wizardry schools, writers began paying attention to how

warriors, those other standbys of fantasy, learned to do what

they do.

A cluster of historical events made a very basic knowledge

of martial arts, and the necessity of having to study them

Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

before one can achieve competence at them, become part of

the collective Western consciousness. And once the

knowledge became widespread, writers began to write about

it.

The spread of martial arts knowledge

While Asian martial arts had been taught outside of Asia

for many years—a Kodokan judo school was established in

Seattle in 1904—the schools where they were taught were

few and not widely known. But after World War II Asian

martial arts schools began opening across America and

Europe. Soon anyone who was interested could find one. A

number of the people who were interested were or became SF

writers.

As martial arts are now and were then a voluntary study,

and one undertaken more for personal satisfaction than for

necessity, the people who pursued such training did so

because they loved it—and the things that writers love have a

way of appearing in their books.

While a handful of people were experiencing martial arts

first-hand, far more were getting a second-hand taste via

television and movies. “Kung Fu,” which debuted as a TV

movie in 1972 and continued as a TV series until 1975,

brought basic martial arts concepts into living rooms across

America. And in 1973, the kung fu movie Enter the Dragon

catapulted Bruce Lee to international stardom.

On a smaller scale, but of major significance to fantasy,

the Society for Creative Anachronism began with a medieval

party and tournament at Berkeley, CA, in 1966. The party

Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

was put on by a group of fans, including Diana Paxson and

Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The SCA is now an international organization which re-

enacts the Middle Ages “not as they were, but as they should

have been.” Its members often practice medieval (or

medieval-inspired) martial arts. Tournaments may include

archery, Elizabethan fencing, and single combat and group

melees in which participants wear armor and fight with rattan

swords.

A number of SF and fantasy writers, such as Poul

Anderson, Randall Garrett, Jerry Pournelle, Gordon Dickson,

and Fritz Leiber, joined the SCA in its early days. That gave

them the opportunity to practice or observe recreations of

medieval martial arts.

Media portrayals and the new availability of martial arts

training had a profound influence on writers and readers. By

the early 1970s, there was an entire generation of writers

who were also martial artists. They knew from experience

what it's like to be kicked in the head, or how hot armor gets

when you fight in the sun. Such details naturally began to

creep into their books. And they knew that their readers were

already familiar with martial arts, from the show “Kung Fu” if

nothing else, and would find it hard to believe that characters

could win a duel the first time they picked up a sword.

I don't mean to say that Tolkien and Lewis really believed

that sword-fighting was instinctive; but only that depictions of

martial arts training did not become a convention of modern

fiction until the knowledge of martial arts was widely

disseminated in the west.

Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

Western martial arts, like boxing and fencing, have always

been part of Western culture. But fantasy is the literature of

the outré rather than the ordinary, and generally of the past

rather than the present. It took the presence of “exotic” Asian

arts and the revival of past Western ones to inspire fantasy

writers to connect the fights in the stories they were writing

with the fighting styles they now knew. Boxing may seem

incongruous in a high fantasy novel and old-fashioned in SF;

but elegant sword forms and deadly Asian-inspired striking

arts fit right in.

Martial arts in SF and fantasy

Merriam-Webster dates the term “martial arts” to 1933.

The first use of the term I found in an SF story was in Roger

Zelazny's 1963 “A Rose For Ecclesiastes:”

If they had refined their martial arts as far as

they had their dances, or, worse yet, if their

fighting arts were a part of the dance, I was in

for big trouble.

Zelazny, an aikidoka (practitioner of aikido) who later

edited Warriors of Blood and Dream, an anthology of SF

martial arts stories, was, as usual, ahead of his time.

As the knowledge and availability of martial arts training

spread through the West, the depiction of martial arts

evolved. I would like to trace three stages of this evolution.

These stages are as much a matter of content as of copyright

date—at least one third stage novel was written when nearly

Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons, Inc.

everyone else was writing first stage novels, and first stage

novels are still being written today.

In the first stage, martial arts are limited to a brief

mention, or as a bit of extra color in a fight scene. The term

“martial arts” is rarely used, though individual styles may be

named. Most importantly, no one trains and, while there may

be fight scenes, there's no sense of a coherent system of

fighting in use.

When Asian martial arts appear, they are often used as a

spice of exoticism in the Western hero's background, as in

Sherlock Holmes’ use of “Baritsu, or the Japanese system of

wrestling” on Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls in the 1903 “The

Adventure of the Empty House.” (Baritsu, also known as

Bartitsu, was based on judo and invented by E. W. Barton

Wright.) Asian arts also appear as the alien skills of a

supporting character from the Far East. For instance:

Saburo, whose knowledge of ju-jitsu had

taught him everything there was to be known

about nerves and nerve-centres, touched a

spot in the scout's neck, and he went over as

though he had been poleaxed.—The House

with the Red Blinds, by Trevor Wignall, 1920.

Evidently the Japanese originated the Vulcan nerve pinch.

Early works of fantasy, from epics like Lord of the Rings, to

children's books like The Chronicles of Narnia, to sword and

sorcery like Robert E. Howard's Conan, belong to the first

stage. Sometiems the characters in these books are already

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