Thursday 13 January 2000

Book of the day: The Last Dragonlord by Joanne Bertin.

Sleep quality was somewhat reduced last night, because the burglary alarm would howl off and on from around 3 in the night onward till morning. At first, I dressed in a heavy jacket, took my gun and a sharp knife and went to look for any disturbance. However, there were no burglars or anything suspicious at all (except me). It seems the alarm malfunctioned. The landlord had no idea how to stop it. At least this is not the type that contacts the police.

I think today is a fine day to write about worry.

OK, I've written about worry. But it's such a serious topic that I think it needs to mature more. I guess it would do better in my series of Approximate Truths. Instead I can write about werecreatures, as I really wanted to do anyway. :)

In medieval mythology, werewolves were bad. It was a kind of curse, in which men were changed into wolves who then went on a killing spree. In some legends, they were stuck as something in between man and wolf. Because of their supernatural origin, werewolves were hard to kill. It was thought that they could only be killed by silver. (The same has been said about vampires.) Hence the concept of the "silver bullet", as the name for a solution to an otherwise unsolvable problem.

A fascinating trait in modern fantasy fiction is the tendency to "de-demonize" the evil species. Trolls are now well and truly integrated into the Norwegian society, where they used to be a source of fear for small children. Now they are ambassadors. In the same way, we've got good vampires, good werewolves, and even good demons.

In the fantasy roleplaying game Daggerfall, werewolves (and wereboars) show up as monsters. Then again, so do many others, like nymphs and bards. More interesting, there is a slight risk that the playing character may become a werewolf if scratched by such a beast. The more you tangle with them, the more likely to become one of them. (I guess there could be some deeper meaning to this. But knowing Bethesda Softworks, probably not...) Notice that you can practice your hand-to-hand skills on the nymphs for hours and not become a nymph. Oh well. Back to the werewolves.

Werewolves are faster, stronger, more agile. On the downside, they will at least once every month feel the need to hunt the innocent and are involuntarily transformed into a growling, scary beast. (This even applies to male characters. Ahem.)

In Daggerfall, it is possible to overcome the problems of the transformation and the need to hunt the innocent. It takes some work, but once done, you can be a good werewolf. This stands in marked contrast to the dark and tragic werewolves in original European mythology (or superstition).

Just when you think you have seen everything, there is no end to the writing of books. In Joanne Bertin's book The Last Dragonlord, we meet the sympathetic, superhuman and sexy weredragons. Yes, indeed. And they're not bloodthirsty dinosaurs either. Dragons, like many other evil creatures, have come over to the allied side during the last few decades. And the weredragons combine the best of the two species. Wow.

It was this book (which is, btw, overly romantic) which finally made my cup flow over and made me decide to write a story about a weregod. The story has been telling itself in my head for a while now. A strange tale indeed. But like almost all my fiction, it is really about the duality in modern man: On one hand, the weak and fragile individual, often feeling powerless. On the other hand, Mankind as a force to be reckoned with, changing climate, making the night side of Earth light up like a map of its cities, driving thousands of species extinct while at the same time dabbling with creating new ones or changing even our own genes.

In many ways, the classic superhero "Superman" is a tentative weregod, changing between his meek human form as Clark Kent and his modern Messiah form as Superman. Which of them is "real"? Can, in fact, any of them be? I must admit that I take a different and somewhat darker view than DC Comics on this matter. I'm still not likely to finish the story, mind you. I've never done so in the past.