Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
You can find them in almost every culture around the world; stories about the little people. Creatures from a different realm but who happen to share the world with us. Sometimes they are portrayed as evil, other times as good and sometimes simply indifferent to the wishes and wants of humans. They are described as either being inhumanly beautiful or unspeakably horrific, but either way we’ve always been in their thrall. Among people of European descent they are known as the Fae, or Fairy, and they’ve appeared in everything from nursery rhymes to the plays of Shakespeare.
It was in the Victorian era, the 1800s, that we first started to turn them into the cartoon figures they’ve become today. Instead of the wild folk who lurked in the woods they became darling little creatures with gossamer wings who lived in flower gardens or who sprinkled fairy dust on you to make you fly. This set the stage for the fairies that most of us know today thanks to Tinkerbell and her ilk. Creatures who have as little to do with the Fae, the Unseelie Court and all the other beings who live under the hill, in the deepest parts of the forest or on abandoned moors shrouded in mist. Fortunately the tide is starting to turn again and beginning in the late twentieth century fantasy writers have been mining the older tales for their inspiration. As a result we’re beginning to see stories depicting the Fae as they appeared for thousands of years.
Not content with merely resurrecting old tales, this is especially true of the relatively new genre of urban fantasy, authors are bringing the Fae into modern times. While this has resulted in some interesting and fascinating stories, it has also posed the question of how have these creatures of magic and imagination managed to adopt to life in the twenty-first century. So many of the wild places they used to live have disappeared and you can barely move without running into something made from iron. Well, a new anthology of stories, The Modern Fae’s Guide To Surviving Humanity from Penguin Canada and edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray being published on March 6 2012, shows just how inventive the Fae have been in dealing with the modern world.
The premise the editors gave those they approached about contributing to the anthology was a simple one. What if the Fae still existed in the modern world? The answers they received from fourteen authors were as diverse as the mythical creatures the stories were about. However, the stories can be broken down into three distinct categories. Those in which the Fae try to “pass” or blend in with the human world, ones where the two worlds share an uneasy co-existence and ones where the Fae are still living as they used to and trying to carry on as they did in simpler, less technological times. However, no matter which approach the authors have chosen to take, they have all taken remarkable pains to make the stories as true to the original tales of the beings described in their versions as possible.
As a result all of the stories, from the comic to the dark, not only capture the magic and mystery of the Fae but very realistically describe how they could overcome the challenges facing them in order to survive in the twenty-first century. Whether it’s running Undermart, a WallMart type discount store, in an attempt to increase the proliferation of plastic products to and keep the Tuatha de Danann in M&Ms in “We Will Not Be Undersold” by Seanan McGuire (a fairy glamour sure explains why store greeters are able to smile all the time without killing customers), working as motivational speakers convincing people that meaningless platitudes will change their lives in “How To Be Human TM” by Barbara Ashford , or using an off the beaten track MBA program to head hunt for humans looking to change their lives in “Continuing Education” by Kristine Smith, we see those Fae who put their minds to it can assimilate quite nicely. Oh sure, they occasionally get caught out, but all in all if you had to work as a greeter in chain discount store wouldn’t you prefer the option of having your brain shut off for the duration of your shift?
Those who try to carry on as they did in the old days have a slightly harder time of it. Although they might be able to get away with some stuff, like scooping up changelings in “Changeling” by Susan Jett and “A People Who Always Know” by Shannon Page and Jay Lake because most people don’t believe in fairies anymore, it’s not always easy for the more traditionally minded. Take poor Green Jenny who used to lure hapless humans into swamps where she would feed on their life force. As we find out in “Water Called” by Kari Sperring, if the draining of marshes and building of canals to confine waters hasn’t reduced her source of food badly enough, people carrying out experiments on the drunks and down and outers who normally fall into her embrace, are making it extremely difficult for her to get by. Or as the dryads in “The Roots Of Aston Quercus” by Juliet E. McKenna discover, they have to adapt somewhat in order to save their grove of trees from being cut down for a new bypass.
However if you think they’ve got it hard, imagine being a transgendered werewolf like Edie in “The Slaughtered Lamb” by Elizabeth Bear. With the human and Fae worlds coexisting peacefully she chose to live among humans because of the Pack’s rigid rules on sexual identity. Anyway shapeshifting is hard on a girl — shaving your legs is a nightmare after you’ve taken on wolf form. It also loses some of its impact on others when you require a the help of a dresser before you can make the shift — you try removing a gaff by yourself. Still, anybody who tries to get rough with this girl is in for a nasty surprise.
Sometimes the quality of stories in these types of anthologies is quite frankly uneven. Far too many of them seem to rely on one or two stories by a name writer and then fill in the rest with what is quite frankly padding. However, in this case I had only vaguely heard of one or two of the contributing authors and all of the stories were equally captivating. The editors have also done a good job in selecting stories that represent a cross section of the various types of fantasy story on offer today. Fae of all shapes, sizes and character are represented from those just seeking to get by, those interested in making a little mischief and those whose intentions are not what anybody would call friendly. The Fae have always had an uneasy relationship with mortals. Whether it’s our use of iron which is poison to them or how the more callous of them look upon us as playthings to be discarded when we grow too tedious. However, as this collection makes clear, the world would be a lot less interesting a place if they didn’t exist, and it’s good to see they’ve found so many ways of getting by even in these complicated times.
