Jude: This is a blog that discusses famous science fiction and fantasy novels.
Thomas: I think we’re supposed to call it a newsletter.
Jude: Whatever this is, we’re calling it Story Symposium. The format is pretty unusual. Because we want to dive deep into books, we do a series of articles about a book, kind of like a “season” of television. But we don’t discuss a single book at a time. Instead, we discuss a pair of books, one science fiction and one fantasy, interleaving the posts. Also, instead of one person writing essays, it’s a dialogue between two different people with two different perspectives. That would be me, Jude, and Thomas here.
Thomas: There’s nothing innovative about two people talking. There’s a thousand podcasts that do that. And idea of pairing two subjects goes back nearly two thousand years.
Jude: It’s true that almost two thousand years ago, the Greek author Plutarch wrote a series of biographies commonly called Parallel Lives in which he wrote about the lives of famous figures of Greek and Roman history in a series of contrasting pairs. For example, Alexander the Great was paired with Julius Caesar.
Just as Plutarch was exploring the differences between Greek and Roman people, we thought it would be illuminating to use pairs to consider the different perspectives offered by science fiction and fantasy.
Thomas: It certainly illuminates us as being pretentious.
Jude: Plutarch just wrote one long essay about each, but to make things easier to read we’ll break our discussions up into a series of articles and alternate from one book to the other.
Now just as Plutarch wrote only about famous people, we’re confining ourselves to famous books. Like anyone who has read extensively, our personal favorite books aren’t necessarily the most famous. But we like talking to people about books, and in a fragmented culture, the best way to do that is to stick to the best known books. There’ll still be opportunities for us (and for you, the reader!) to bring up books from off the beaten path, though.
Thomas: Alas, it’s not just the culture that’s fragmented…
Jude: Right, well, as Thomas is alluding to, this is all written by a single person, Matt Hilliard. He’s been reviewing genre fiction for more than twenty years, mostly on his old Wordpress blog but also for the online magazine Strange Horizons. I’m afraid Thomas and I are just, uh…
Thomas: Fictitious? Fake? Voices in Matt’s head? Maybe he’s read so many terrible science fiction and fantasy books he’s having a psychotic break.
Jude: Let’s call us invented personas engaging in a platonic dialogue.
Thomas: Then which one of us is Socrates?
Jude: Neither. I represent the side of Matt’s thinking that loves the books we’re discussing and his desire to read them as charitably as possible. Whereas my associate Thomas here personifies a more cynical view.
Thomas: Jude is the fan, thinking emotionally, whereas I’m the disinterested observer who brings an objective eye to bear.
Jude: But a “symposium” really ought to have more than just two viewpoints, so we’d love to hear from you, the reader, as well. Matt’s read a lot of books and likes writing about them, but your perspective is just as valid, so jump into the comments on our posts and let us know what you think.
Thomas: Whatever the value of Matt’s perspective, he’s too cowardly to offer it himself and is instead hiding behind us. Any commenting reader’s perspective is clearly more valuable than ours, coming, as it does, from a real person.
Jude: Comment if you like, but definitely subscribe to get notified about new posts. For now we’re shooting for one post per week as we discuss Frank Herbert’s Dune in combination with J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I think you’ll find this a fun and interesting series, and there’ll be more pairs of books on the way once we’re done with this first set.
