Nebula-nominated short story

[nancylebov]

A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies by Alix E. Harro.

I recommend this story.

Let's just say it's partly about the desperate desire to escape-- and if you don't escape all the way, there will still be politics.

Notion inspired by the story: If rogue librarians made illicit libraries, what would that be like?

Comments

[madfilkentist]

"There have only ever been two kinds of librarians in the history of the world: the prudish, bitter ones with lipstick running into the cracks around their lips who believe the books are their personal property and patrons are dangerous delinquents come to steal them; and witches."

I know a lot of librarians who would object to that. The ones who wouldn't probably are witches.

[rimrunner]

Among the witches I know (self included) more work in libraries than any other single profession.

But, yeah. That sentence overall hews to a stereotype we've been trying to fight.

[siderea]

It's rare that I react to a sympathetic and well-written work of fantasy with a frown and a factual correction.

God save me from the yearners. The insatiable, the inconsolable, the ones who chafe and claw against the edges of the world. No book can save them.

No book, perhaps, but there is a short story.

Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers". Originally in IASFM. The July 1987 issue. Hugo winner.

Yes, I am actually saying that if one is a supernatural librarian and one encounters a kid who is one of those howling mass of need yearners who is hell-bent on finding his portal out, "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers" is in fact the story they need, and you just have to hand him (or her or them) an old issue of Asimov's, instead of a priceless forbidden magical tome at the cost of being drummed out of your profession.

But I appreciate that ruins the nice story. Willing suspension of disbelief, the exigencies of entertaining plots, the necessity of struggle and sacrifice, and all that.

I'm just being a pedantic spoil-sport I know. But I felt compelled to note in the interests of accuracy, and in case it comes up for anyone.

[nancylebov]

One story can't do everything. This one pinged part of my personality that isn't exactly gone. When I was a kid, I wouldn't have gone world-hopping (I'm cautious), but I'd have been off to Shangri-La so fast-- I don't think I'd have looked back.

I wanted the Martian language in Stranger in a Strange Land to be real. I still do.

I've given up on getting out, and I'm somewhat more attached to this world than I used to be, and my solution to how bad it was (emotional abuse, possibly sexual abuse) is to go deeper by way of qi gong and such> There are some interesting things under the surface of this world.

Varley's "The Persistence of Vision" is about getting *out*, and I like that story.

We may assume that the witchcraft book includes getting to somewhere better and it may include navigation. It probably does.

I really think "Harry's All Night Diner" isn't his solution (it's about a different problem), though a practical guide for independently starting a new life for minors might be really valuable, and I bet there are adults who would hate that it existed.

There's a completely different thing to frown at in the story-- the idea (done twice) that horrible authoritarian women are bad at performing femininity. See also Dolores Umbridge. I don't *think* there's any reason to think the premise has any truth.