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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago

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Sandra Newman’s “Julia”

The first chapter of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has a fantastic joke that nearly everyone misses: when Julia, Winston Smith's love interest, is introduced, she has oily hands and a giant wrench, which she uses in her "mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines":

https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

That line just kills me every time I re-read the book – Orwell, a novelist, writing a dystopian future in which novels are written by giant, clanking mechanisms. Later on, when Winston and Julia begin their illicit affair, we get more detail:

She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.

I always assumed Orwell was subtweeting his publishers and editors here, and you can only imagine that the editor who asked Orwell to tweak the 1984 manuscript must have felt an uncomfortable parallel between their requests and the notional Planning Committee and Rewrite Squad at the Ministry of Truth.

I first read 1984 in the early winter of, well, 1984, when I was thirteen years old. I was on a family trip that included as visit to my relatives in Leningrad, and the novel made a significant impact on me. I immediately connected it to the canon of dystopian science fiction that I was already avidly consuming, and to the geopolitics of a world that seemed on the brink of nuclear devastation. I also connected it to my own hopes for the nascent field of personal computing, which I'd gotten an early start on, when my father – then a computer science student – started bringing home dumb terminals and acoustic couplers from his university in the mid-1970s. Orwell crystallized my nascent horror at the oppressive uses of technology (such as the automated Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear systems that haunted my nightmares) and my dreams of the better worlds we could have with computers.

It's not an overstatement to say that the rest of my life has been about this tension. It's no coincidence that I wrote a series of "Little Brother" novels whose protagonist calls himself w1n5t0n:

https://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.htm

I didn't stop with Orwell, of course. I wrote a whole series of widely read, award-winning stories with the same titles as famous sf tales, starting with "Anda's Game" ("Ender's Game"):

https://www.salon.com/2004/11/15/andas_game/

And "I, Robot":

https://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_I_Robot.html

"The Martian Chronicles":

https://escapepod.org/2019/10/03/escape-pod-700-martian-chronicles-part-1/

"True Names":

https://archive.org/details/TrueNames

"The Man Who Sold the Moon":

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

and "The Brave Little Toaster":

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212

Writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head is a very old and important literary tradition. As EL Doctorow (no relation) writes in his essay "Genesis," the Hebrews stole their Genesis story from the Babylonians, rewriting it to their specifications:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41520/creationists-by-e-l-doctorow/

As my "famous title" stories and Little Brother books show, this work needn't be confined to antiquity. Modern copyright may be draconian, but it contains exceptions ("fair use" in the US, "fair dealing" in many other places) that allow for this kind of creative reworking. One of the most important fair use cases concerns The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall's 2001 retelling of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind from the perspective of the enslaved characters, which was judged to be fair use after Mitchell's heirs tried to censor the book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suntrust_Bank_v._Houghton_Mifflin_Co.

In ruling for Randall, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals emphasized that she had "fully employed those conscripted elements from Gone With the Wind to make war against it." Randall used several of Mitchell's most famous lines, "but vest[ed] them with a completely new significance":

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/268/1257/608446/

The Wind Done Gone is an excellent book, and both its text and its legal controversy kept springing to mind as I read Sandra Newman's wonderful novel Julia, which retells 1984 from the perspective of Julia, she of the oily hands the novel-writing machine:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/julia-sandra-newman?variant=41467936636962

Julia is the kind of fanfic that I love, in the tradition of both Wind Done gone and Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, in which a follow-on author takes on the original author's throwaway world-building with deadly seriousness, elucidating the weird implications and buried subtexts of all the stuff and people moving around in the wings and background of the original.

For Newman, the starting point here is Julia, an enigmatic lover who comes to Winston with all kinds of rebellious secrets – tradecraft for planning and executing dirty little assignations and acquiring black market goods. Julia embodies a common contradiction in the depiction of young women (she is some twenty years younger than Winston): on the one hand, she is a "native" of the world, while Winston is a late arrival, carrying around all his "oldthink" baggage that leaves him perennially baffled, terrified and angry; on the other hand, she's a naive "girl," who "doesn't much care for reading," and lacks the intellectual curiosity that propels Winston through the text.

This contradiction is the cleavage line that Newman drives her chisel into, fracturing Orwell's world in useful, fascinating, engrossing ways. For Winston, the world of 1984 is totalitarian: the Party knows all, controls all and misses nothing. To merely think a disloyal thought is to be doomed, because the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnicompetent Party will sense the thought and mark you for torture and "vaporization."

Orwell's readers experience all of 1984 through Winston's eyes and are encouraged to trust his assessment of his situation. But Newman brings in a second point of view, that of Julia, who is indeed far more worldly than Winston. But that's not because she's younger than him – it's because she's more provincial. Julia, we learn, grew up outside of the Home Counties, where the revolution was incomplete and where dissidents – like her parents – were sent into exile. Julia has experienced the periphery of the Party's power, the places where it is frayed and incomplete. For Julia, the Party may be ruthless and powerful, but it's hardly omnicompetent. Indeed, it's rather fumbling.

Which makes sense. After all, if we take Winston at his word and assume that every disloyal citizen of Oceania is arrested, tortured and murdered, where would that leave Oceania? Even Kim Jong Un can't murder everyone who hates him, or he'd get awfully lonely, and then awfully hungry.

Through Julia's eyes, we experience Oceania as a paranoid autocracy, corrupt and twitchy. We witness the obvious corollary of a culture of denunciation and arrest: the ruling Party of such an institution must be riddled with internecine struggle and backstabbing, to the point of paralyzed dysfunction. The Orwellian trick of switching from being at war with Eastasia to Eurasia and back again is actually driven by real military setbacks – not just faked battles designed to stir up patriotic fervor. The Party doesn't merely claim to be under assault from internal and external enemies – it actually is.

Julia is also perfectly positioned to uncover the vast blank spots in Winston's supposed intellectual curiosity, all the questions he doesn't ask – about her, about the Party, and about the world. I love this trope and used it myself, in Attack Surface, the third "Little Brother" book, which is told from the point of view of Marcus's frenemy Masha:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531/attacksurface

Through Julia, we come to understand the seemingly omniscient, omnipotent Party as fumbling sadists. The Thought Police are like MI5, an Island of Misfit Toys where the paranoid, the stupid, the vicious and the thuggish come together to ruin the lives of thousands, in such a chaotic and pointless manner that their victims find themselves spinning devastatingly clever explanations for their behavior:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460

And, as with Nineteen Eighty-Four, Julia is a first-rate novel, expertly plotted, with fantastic, nail-biting suspense and many smart turns and clever phrases. Newman is doing Orwell, and, at times, outdoing him. In her hands, Orwell – like Winston – is revealed as a kind of overly credulous romantic who can't believe that anyone as obviously stupid and deranged as the state's representatives could be kicking his ass so very thoroughly.

This was, in many ways, the defining trauma and problem of Orwell's life, from his origin story, in which he is shot through the throat by a fascist: sniper during the Spanish Civil War:

https://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/soldiers/george-orwell-shot.html

To his final days, when he developed a foolish crush on a British state spy and tried to impress her by turning his erstwhile comrades in to her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list

Newman's feminist retelling of Orwell is as much about puncturing the myth of male competence as it is about revealing the inner life, agency, and personhood of swooning love-interests. As someone who loves Orwell – but not unconditionally – I was moved, impressed, and delighted by Julia.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/28/novel-writing-machines/#fanfic

#pluralistic #reviews #books #orwell #george orwell #nineteen eighty-four #1984 #little brother #fanfic #remix #gift guide #science fiction #sandra newman

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persevereforahappyending · 8 months ago

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Maybe in Another Life |9|

Pairing: Clarisse La Rue x Hunter of Artemis!Reader

Summary: You are a Hunter of Artemis, but you start to question what you truly want when you meet Clarisse and get to know her.

Warnings: Slight Titans Curse Spoilers

Word Count: 2.7k+

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

ch. 1 | ch. 2 | ch. 3 | ch. 4 | ch. 5 | ch. 6 | ch. 7 | ch. 8 | ch. 9 | ch. 10 | ch. 11 | ch. 12 | ch. 13 | ch. 14 | ch. 15 | ch. 16 | ch. 17

You and your sisters packed up camp, it had been about a week, and you had travelled all the way back to New York. You talked to Clarisse the night before she left on her scouting mission but hadn’t heard a word from her since. You and the Hunters got information about Luke or one of his lackeys in the area and made your way back to the city but came up with nothing, no trace of Luke, demigods, or monsters in general.

“You’re not coming with us,” Thalia said, as you finished packing up your bag.

“What?” You asked, furrowing your brow.

“We’re close to the city.” You followed her gaze; from the spot you made camp you could see the New York skyline. “We might as well do a supply run.”

You sighed but nodded, it made a sense, for all you knew you’d end up out in the middle of nowhere next. “Where should I meet you?”

Thalia gave you the area they’d most likely be making camp next. It would take you a couple hours to get the supplies you’d need but you shouldn’t have a problem catching up to them by the time they were all settling down for bed. If they made it further or if anything changed their plans in any way Thalia would send a message letting you know. With that you were off, making your way to the city.

It wasn’t a long trek to the city and luckily you blended in, the mist made your pack look like a normal backpack, which many of the commuters were carrying. You had been to the city many times, but you never got over all the lights and amount of people, you only ever came for errands, otherwise you spent most of your time on the outskirts of cities, away from civilization.

You entered a shop that stood out against all the skyscrapers and neon signs. To anyone who couldn’t see through the mist it looked like a normal antique shop but to a demigod or anyone else of your world, you knew what it really was. You approached the counter, smiling at the nymph behind the register.

“How can I help you?” The nymph asked, without looking up from the magazine. You sighed before dropping down a sack of gold drachmas. The nymph glanced at the sack before setting down her magazine and straightening her back. “Ooh a Hunter,” she smiled. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Nectar and ambrosia,” you said, smiling.

“Coming right up.”

You waited as the nymph disappeared into the back to gather what you asked for. Nectar and ambrosia were a rare commodity, but there were a few shops a wandering demigod could get it from if they knew where to look. You had been to this shop in particular many times, almost every trip to the city. You weren’t sure how they got what they did but given they were located in the city that had the door to Olympus you were sure they had connections of some sort. They never failed to have what you needed, whether it be celestial bronze weapons, nectar, ambrosia, or other various potions and items from your world.

You glanced out the window during your waiting, furrowing your brow when you saw a familiar head of hair walking down the street. You got closer, squinting through the window and across the street as best as you could, a small smirk appearing on your face when you confirmed what you thought you saw, Clarisse. She was on a secret mission no one was allowed to know about, you were gathering supplies and needed to get back to your sisters, but there was no reason you couldn’t pop over and say hi. You watched as she turned down an ally next to the hotel across the street.

“Here you are sweetly,” the nymph said, placing a lovely little box of ambrosia and a jar of nectar down on the counter.

You turned your attention back to the nymph, opening the box to look at the ambrosia. The ambrosia was cut into little squares, perfectly placed, and stacked in the box, not leaving an inch of empty space. “Thank you,” you said, offering the nymph a kind smile. You carefully slipped the items into your pack and made your way out the door.

You glanced both ways before darting across the street. You peered down the alley way you saw Clarisse disappear down, seeing her still in the alley, pacing back and forth and staring at a wall. You smirked as you slipped into the alley as well, silently laughing as you watched her feel around the brick wall as if she were looking for something.

“So, this is your super-secret mission,” you said when you were right behind her.

Clarisse whipped around, pointing her spear at your neck. You leaned your head back, looking down at the spear before raising an eyebrow at her. Clarisse sighed, then dropped the spear back at her side. “What are you doing here?” She asked.

“Wow, here I thought you’d be happy to see me,” you fake pouted. She only glared at you. “I was resupplying,” you sighed. “We were back over this way because we got word Luke was around but no sign of him anywhere.” Clarisse’s eyes widened at the mention of Luke. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Do you know something?” You tilted your head, crossing your arms. “Is that what your mission had to do with?”

“The less people that know the better,” she whispered. “We don’t know who to trust.”

“You don’t trust me?” You looked at her like a kicked puppy. You understood logically that they needed to be careful about who they shared information with, but you couldn’t ignore the pang you felt in your chest at the implication of Clarisse not trusting you.

“I do,” she sighed, running a hand down her face. “I can’t believe I’m doing this she mumbled.” You furrowed your brow but before you could question her, she stepped forward. “I’m looking for an entrance to the labyrinth,” she whispered in your ear.

Your eyes widened. “Are you insane?” You stepped back.

“Annabeth says there’s multiple entrances all over the world. She thinks one might be in Camp Half-Blood.”

“Why?” The labyrinth stretched all across the country, if you went in one door there was no guarantee what door you’d come out of, if you came out at all. It made perfect sense for an entrance to be at the camp though.

“We think Luke is trying to use the labyrinth to get around.” You sucked in a breath, which could explain why he disappeared so quickly in some places and now he left no trace. “We think he’s trying to learn how to navigate it so he can sneak into camp.”

You nodded; you were liking Clarisse’s secret mission even less now. If Clarisse happened to find an entrance and entered the labyrinth, there was not telling if or when she’d make it back out. You hadn’t ever been in it, you only heard the stories over the centuries, none of them ended well, people went mad, people ended up lost, or dead. The labyrinth constantly changed and shifted, redirecting you to your demise, time was rumored to move differently down there, five minutes could be five hours or even days on the outside. There were endless passageways and rooms, the majority of them led from one horror to another.

“You think ones here?” You asked, looking up at the side of the hotel, Clarisse had been poking around.

She shrugged. “Don’t know,” she sighed. “Based on Annabeth’s research one is supposed to be in the city, it’s heavily implied to be in a hotel. It just didn’t mention which hotel or where.”

“Did you check inside?” You already started walking around to the front of the hotel.

“What do you think you’re doing?” She ran after you.

“Helping.”

“I don’t need your help.” She continued to follow you through the fancy doors of the hotel. “This is my mission. I’m supposed to do it alone.”

“I’m not here to look over your shoulder,” you sighed, turning around to face her. “Or takeover your mission. I’m just…” you shrugged. “Here, and have some time before I have to head back. If you don’t want me around, I can leave.”

Clarisse looked down at the floor clearly having a serious debate with herself before she looked back up at you. “No,” she mumbled. “If this is the only way to spend time with you, I’m not passing it up.”

You smirked at her. Your smirk quickly turned into a frown when you noticed the concierge looking at you questioningly. “We have to go,” you grabbed Clarisse by the arm and quickly dragged her towards the elevators.

You pressed the button and quickly pulled her into the elevator when it arrived. You were grateful that no one else was in it or had been waiting. The doors closed right as the concierge approached, his mouth opening to question you.

“I know you’ve probably never been to a place like this,” Clarisse took a jab at you. You glared at her but didn’t deny it, it was true you had never been in a hotel before, you just knew of them from all your trips to the city. “But we need a key to use this.”

You look at the various buttons on the side panel, there were over fifteen floors in this building. “Not if we go down,” you said, pressing the button that said ground and had a little ‘associates only’ sticker next to it.

“Why are we going down?”

“Well, the labyrinth is an underground maze.” When the elevator doors opened you peeked your head out making sure the way was clear, then motioned for Clarisse to follow. “So, it makes sense that the entrance would be underground.”

You slowly made your way through the hallway, the two of you pressing yourself up against the wall when you heard someone pushing a cart of some sort. When it sounded like the cart was getting further away you peeked around the corner to see a maid pushing a basket of dirty towels in the opposite direction.

“And how would we know which way to go?” Clarisse asked as the two of you continued to move through the halls.

“The camp is protected, a boundary that doesn’t allow monsters to pass through,” you whispered. “The labyrinth was designed by a god; it radiates magic which monsters can’t help but navigate to.”

“We’re wandering around, hoping to spot a monster, to help point us in the direction of the door?” She raised an eyebrow. You shrugged, giving her a nod, you would admit it wasn’t the best plan in the world. “That’s a terrible plan!” She whisper shouted as if she could read your mind.

You started to roll your eyes as you rounded the corner only to stop dead in your tracks, making Clarisse bump into you. “What’s wrong with you?” she snapped, flicking you a glare. You pointed ahead, she turned to see the maid from earlier was standing in the middle of the hallway, staring daggers at the two of you.

“Sorry,” Clarisse said, forcing a smile. “We got lost, we were looking for the pool?”

The maid continued to stare at the two of you. You slid your foot back, bumping into Clarisse again. “Something isn’t right,” you mumbled, narrowing your eyes at the maid.

The next thing you knew the maids neck snapped to the side, then her legs twisted in an inhuman direction, her arms following soon after. You pushed Clarisse back, trying to get her to move. Your eyes widened as the skin began to melt away, steam rolling off the monster as the creature shed its disguise.

“Run!” You shouted. You pushed Clarisse back down the hall, grabbing the nearest cart and pushing it into the path of the monster.

“We can take that thing!” Clarisse shouted, trying to look back and face the monster.

“Not if that stinger hits us!” You glanced back seeing the monster looked like a giant scorpion, its stinger a glowing golden yellow as it was filled with venom. You might have had ambrosia and nectar on you, but it wouldn’t help for a wound from the stinger.

The scorpion quickly crawled over the cart you had shoved in its way. It was close enough that when it stabbed its stinger you had to duck, watching as the stinger got stuck in the wall, causing cracks throughout the concrete. It let out a high pitch squeal in anger as it ripped its stinger out of the wall, along with a few chunks of concrete.

You spun around, quickly whipping out your bow, and shooting an arrow into the monster’s eye. The creature squeezed again, then raised its pincer and snapped the arrow in half, leaving the tip still in its eye. It brought down its stinger towards you, causing you to jump back before you could get another arrow off. With its stinger impaled in the ground now you pushed Clarisse to continue forward.

After running for another moment down the hall you glanced back, seeing the scorpion nowhere in sight. You didn’t have to consider where it could have gone before taking the next turn down another hall. You and Clarisse took the turn at full speed, turning right into the scorpion.

You ducked just as it swung its pincer at you. You saw Clarisse holding up her spear, using it to keep the other pincer from getting her. You drew your bow again, your fingers brushing against your arrows before finding the one you wanted. You quickly notched the arrow and fired. It opened midair, releasing a net that latched around the stinger.

While it released Clarisse’s spear to cut itself free the two of you took off down the hall you had just come from. The two of you continued running, taking turn after turn, all the similar looking hallways starting to blur together. You had just made another turn, once again running into the scorpion. This time as it shot its stinger at you, Clarisse gripped your arm and pulled you into the nearest room. The two of you fell back into the storage closet, the door slamming behind your right as the stinger was impaled into the wood instead of your chest.

You held your breath as you stared at the crack in the door, waiting for the scorpion to mark its next move. When nothing came and you realized it was completely silent outside the door you finally released a shaky breath. You pushed yourself off the ground, holding out your hand to help Clarisse up. You kept your eye on the door, not trusting that the monster was truly gone.

“Where the hell are we?” Clarisse asked.

You turned around, your brow furrowed but your eyes quickly widened at the sight. “What the…” you started, unable to finish your sentence. You weren’t in a storage closet at all, or any room for that matter, you were in a dimly lit hallway. The hallway was all dirt and stone, a couple torches lining the walls were the only thing lighting the tunnel. You narrowed your eyes when you realized it wasn’t just normal fire on the torches but Greek fire.

“Oh gods,” you whispered before turning back around. You ran your hands up and down where the door had been, searching for a handle of some sort but only feeling the cold stone the rest of the hallway was made out of.

“What?” Clarisse asked. “What’s wrong?” She searched your concerned face.

You turned to her, your eyes wide and face pale. “We found the labyrinth.”

Clarisse’s face fell at your words, her eyes widening as she quickly spun around again. You watched the color drain from her face as she realized the situation the two of you were in. You sighed, you and Clarisse were in the labyrinth and the door you entered through had disappeared meaning the only way out was forward through the maze that was always changing, filled with monsters and traps that wanted to kill you at every turn. At least the two of you had each other, you couldn’t imagine having to navigate the maze on your own.

Taglist: @cxcilla @touchmyfracturedomens @luclue @manu-007s-world @death-in-love @nenas19 @mynameiskaci @danonered

#clarisse la rue #clarisse la rue x reader #clarisse la rue x you #clarisse x reader #pjo #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #maybe in another life

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