(no subject)

[skygiants]

Next up in Books I Read for Yuletide And Therefore Technically Could Not Talk About Until January: Diane Duane's super eighties fantasy series The Door Into Fire, The Door Into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset, which I read in order to beta genarti's excellent fic Outdwelling.

I think I should mention that all I knew about these books going in was that they are dearly beloved by many of my friends, and that the series as it currently stands culminates in an epic polyamorous marriage between five people, a dragon, a fire elemental, and possibly also a goddess, because WHY NOT.

I did not know in advance about the undead dragon mpreg, but that is also a thing that happens. SO NOW YOU KNOW.

Anyway, the first book follows Herewiss, a dude who is on a quest to tap into his latent magical powers and also rescue his prince-in-exile boyfriend from the various consequences of his own stupidity. Along the way he bumps into an amoral fire elemental who eventually falls in love with him and love triangle ensues, but not really, because polyamory; also he overcomes his backstory angst.

Then in the second book it turns out that this is actually an EPIC about how the prince-in-exile boyfriend really needs to retake the throne to stop the LONE POWER -- er, sorry, I mean THE DARK -- from destroying the world, in a vague and amorphously entropic fashion. I do not care much about this. But I do like the protagonist of this one, a lady sorceress who abruptly finds herself the unwilling mental host of a whole bunch of UNDEAD DRAGONS, after which culture clash ensues. (Warnings, though, for an unexpectedly graphic and disturbing sequence in Segnbora's backstory angst, and also for one of those no-longer-anything-but-hilarious-to-me scenes in which a character realizes their love for another person only to have that other person immediately plummet off a cliff to his doom.)

The third book is mostly epic battles and discussions of the responsibility of ruling. At the end of it I remain slightly confused about several things. First of all, I am puzzled by how the whole marriage-reproductive system works! (It's mentioned offhand in the first book that everyone is required by law to reproduce before they can get married? Possibly reproduce twice? But this is never brought up again, unless I missed something, and seems like . . . a strange rule . . .) Also: IS HASAI STILL PREGNANT AT THE END seriously I'm really confused by this I need to know!

But MOSTLY I am just full of fond nostalgia for super eighties fantasy epics set in sexually Utopian fantasy worlds where no one had homophobic hangups and all the plots featured some kind of cheerful pansexual polyamory. I kind of want to compile a master list, but for this I need assistance!

The ones that spring initially to mind:
- these books
- Tanya Huff's Quarter series

Which doesn't seem like much, but I know there are more! I know there are more that I've read! BRAIN.

Comments

[shati]

I did not know in advance about the undead dragon mpreg, but that is also a thing that happens. SO NOW YOU KNOW.

! These are the books yulechat kept talking about.



Unless ... there's more than one series ...

[cahn]

I don't suppose Mercedes Lackey's Arrows books count? I realize there's not much pan-polyamory going on (although I always thought Talia-Kris-Dirk would have been a big group marriage if he'd lived) but definitely those books were my first experience with no one having homophobic hangups...

[adiva_calandia]

I just. Am going to be over here shrieking with laughter. OH THESE BOOKS. OH '80S SEXUAL UTOPIAS.

I think Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake counts! There are definitely a couple polyamorous (and I think usually bisexual?) marriages, and a subplot about controlling one's own gamete production. Also alien snakes.

[dimestore_romeo]

The Wraeththu series pretty much fits the list. I mean, super 80s future hermaphrodite race of beautiful magic people and sex magic? FAVOURITE.

I feel like I know some more but I can't remember at this instant...I have borrowed so much weird shit from the library over my life.

[rushthatspeaks]

I will love these books until the END OF TIME. They are still genuinely my favorite way of handling dragons.

Do you know whether you have the original or the revised version of The Door into Fire? Usually I am completely against authors going back and revising their previously published works, and I am side-eying Duane for the things she wants to do in that direction at the moment, but in Fire's case it's a genuine instance of THE COPYEDITOR WAS A JERKASS and the revised version is way the fuck better than the original.

Still hoping for The Door into Starlight one of these... decades. Mind you, it's been so long it will probably suck.

[batyatoon]

I don't think "undead" is the right word for the mdeihei! It's ... kind of the opposite of undead, really.

[coffeeandink]

I see other people beat me to Dreamsnake! Also Laurie J. Marks' Elemental Logic series (not 80s, but whatever). Maybe Elizabeth Lynn's Chronicles of Tornor?

There must be more. I feel sure there were more. It was a whole Thing of my youth! Subgenre.

[vass]

Every Vonda N McIntyre novel or short story ever, including her Star Trek tie-in novels.

The Fifth Millennium shared universe novels by S.M. Stirling, Karen Wehrstein, and Shirley Meier. They're actually post-apocalyptic SF, but they read as fantasy.

Starhawk's pagan utopia novels, of course.

When I was a closeted teenager in the early nineties, I knew that being gay or bi was a real thing, but I thought that same-sex marriage and polyamory were fantasy/SF novel things. Then I came online in 1996, and there was Usenet right there, which was like telepathy anyway, and then there were real same-sex couples getting married (not legally yet) and people poly relationships, and it was like I'd walked into the alternate universe I'd always wanted to live in.

[luzula]

Third person reccing Dreamsnake here! I am fond of that book, both the main character and the worldbuilding. But I never really thought of it as pansexual poly utopia, even though there are elements like that--the main character is a healer, and there's a lot of discussion of the ethics of that world's medicine, and that's where the focus lies for me.

[elsane]

Oh man, I was head over heels about these in high school, and couldn't figure out why they weren't a Big Deal in the field. They don't age well, they really don't. I am always going to be in love with the cool bits, which are totally awesomely cool, and the world backstory has that shivery, wonderful feeling that's so hard to find, but I would just like to place them in a story that has a better sense of dramatic pacing and structure, and uh a lot less magic therapy conquering backstory trauma for self-realization. (The polyamory can stay because it is hysterically awesome.)