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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in S. M. Stirling

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
A Venery of Pagans

 Reader Alert: Contains material some may find offensive.

I was reading my favorite "non-pagan-but-regularly-writes-about-pagans" author, S. M. Stirling.

"[T]he Brannigans were a family as prominent as any in Sutterdown," he wrote, "and usually contributed the senior High Priestess and High Priest of the town's clutch of covens" (Stirling 352).

"'Clutch of covens,'" I thought, "that's good." Like “clutch of eggs,” presumably.

They call them "venereal terms" (from the hunting, rather than the amorous, form of venery): poetic miniatures of collective being. An exaltation of larks. A murder of crows. A parliament of owls.

So:

A clutch of covens.

A venery of pagans. (Some might say: "...venality....")

An argument of witches.

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  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    "A battery of drummers." This one's directly from Brazilian Portuguese (e.g. Candomble usage: bateria).
  • Anne Newkirk Niven
    Anne Newkirk Niven says #
    I just finished reading that book, too!

Marvin Kaye and Parke Godwin, Masters of Solitude (1978)

After an invasion from China destroys the US, the megalopolis that covers the East Coast walls itself off from the wilderness to the West, where deer-like witches breed for psychic skills and create a genuine American witchery. Part of the fun is seeing what witch vocabulary might turn into in a few hundred years or so. (I don't need lep or a thammy to wish you a happy Grannog.) But those nasty coal-digging Kriss just keep cooking up toxic bugs to kill off the evil devil-worshipers. What to do?

Favorite line: “Who you callin' 'cowan'?”

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Confession: pagan post-apocalyptic fiction is one of my guilty pleasures. You know: civilization as we know it falls apart and it's up to the witches to rebuild. There's a surprising amount of it (for a sub-genre of a sub-genre of a sub-genre), and it offers us as a community a way to reflect on what a pagan future might look like.

I'm currently reading the latest installment in what is surely the most successful of the entire franchise: S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire series. (Premise: on All Snakes' Day—March 17—1999 all the machines stop. Everything falls apart. The witches—among others—rebuild.) Ignore the title-by-Disney (The Golden Princess, wince. Not to mention the cover art: not just cheese, but stinky cheese. It's hard to be reading a book I'm ashamed to be seen with in public); as popular fiction goes, this is actually well-written, nicely-observed, and thoughtful stuff (on which, more in the future).

Our story so far: It's 2044. Our three principles have been having the same dream for the past three nights. One remarks, as if citing a quotation known to them all, “Once is coincidence, twice can be happenstance....” and her friend finishes, “The third time is either enemy action, or someone sending you a message” (245).

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  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I read "Too Much Magic" by James Kunstler in which he predicted that the oil bonanza from fracking would run out in 10 years. I t
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Why 2038?
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I just think of the Change happening in 2038 instead of 1998 and the story works as a fairly plausible view of the future. Plus I
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    You're got an enjoyable journey ahead of you, Anthony. Happy trails.
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    Thank you for mentioning this book. I just finished reading it today. It's the first book in the series that I've read and now I

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