Present Writers: Diane Duane

[mrissa]

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean,Gwyneth Jones , Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Nancy Kress.

I've been talking a lot about entropy in 2019, so I think it's inevitable that I would turn to the works of Diane Duane. Duane has written a gigantic and varied body of work--for adults and young people, original and media tie-ins, short and long, fantasy and science fiction of countless sub-genres, for prose and film, traditionally published and fan-funded, ranging over forty years. Name it and Duane has probably done it. She's worked alone and with others; she's written with Star Trek properties and Tom Clancy and even secretly been a John M. Ford character. (What, you thought Princess Deedee was purely an invention of Mike's?)

But in her longest and best-known series, the Young Wizards books, the antagonist is the Lone Power, which is Entropy. The Lone Power is the unraveler. And in a time when saving the whales was a cliche, Duane's characters stood with the whales to help them save themselves. What does Diane Duane's work mean to me. Friends, oh friends, this year, this horrible year, I am choking up trying to write this post about how lovely it is to have her here, still working side by side with us against the chaos of it all. Because we need this more than ever. We need the partnerships with other beings. We need to embrace other ways of thinking for what we all bring to the table. We need to keep turning over the assumption we made and letting it ramify. And that is what the Young Wizards books do and have always done, from the first time Nita and Kit went on errantry.

There are so many other things Duane's work has done--not always what it seems from the cover, she has some of the most oddly composed covers I have ever dealt with as a reader--but here and now, in the entropic vortex that is 2019, I find myself more appreciative than ever of the quiet, firm fierceness of these books, and of their author.

Comments

[themagdalen]

Yes, I love her so much and that series most of all.

[arkessian]

Yes, the Young Wizards series has always been there to sink into when times are hard. But.. but... there are Cat Wizards (the Little Monsters approve) and the Middle Kingdom and the **good** Star Trek novels.. and the Space Cops (for which I have a secret affection) and... where did she ever find the time?

If I ever get to Ireland (vanishingly unlikely these days) and make my way to her door, I will only be able to go "Uh Uh. No, really Uh. What I mean is, thank you. And now please, excuse me while I slink away."

[cjsmith]

Amen.

(For quiet, firm fierceness, I don't know that I could find anything to match "The Wizard's Dilemma.")

[pameladean]

I love her work so very much. And because of the qualities that you describe, it's very good comfort reading; and also because of those qualities, there are some whiny despairing moods that I get into for which her work might be a tonic but it is not a comfort. On the whole, this is a good thing, but it was a shock the first time I reached for one of her books in one of those moods. I had not perceived the book as having a kind of STOP THAT AT ONCE air about it before, but it did. I think it was one of the Trek novels.

P.

[rosefox]

I've never read the Young Wizards books, but the Tale of the Five absolutely changed my life. HAPPY QUEER PEOPLE. HAPPY POLYAMOROUS PEOPLE. BIG GLORIOUS IMPROBABLE GROUP MARRIAGES. Also a Goddess who has sex with everyone because why not. I yearn, I yearn, for Starlight. I need books like this so much right now.

[davidgoldfarb]

You do know that there are some recent books in that world, yes? As it happens I'm reading The Landlady right now.

[rosefox]

I do! But if I read them then I'll have read them, if that makes sense...

[davidgoldfarb]

It does. :-) You could tide yourself over by reading the Young Wizards books, which really are very good.