Infinity concerto

[Kalessin]

I've just finished Greg Bear's novel Songs of Earth and Power, comprising The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage. In it we have a young chap by name Michael Perrin, and he becomes a mage, a master of magic. In the process he crosses between world to world, initially from Earth to Sidhedark (the realm) where the Sidhe live. On the way beack, he finds that there are a wide variety of variations on the Earth (though he doesn't stop and chat) and also finds himself and his ladylove trapped in the bad guy the Isomage's failed world-building attempts.

 

I re-read it and thought, Sidhedark's got some similarities to Tel'aranrhiod; we've got the multiverse happening; and we've also got mage-made vacuoles. Along with a bad guy, the Isomage, who's been corrupting various individuals and stealing their self, throughout the prehistory of the novel's events.

 

I'm wondering if Robert Jordan ever read Greg Bear's Songs of Earth and Power, because if he did, he appears to have tipped the hat in acknowledgement to Greg Bear through borrowing certain formulations (if that's the right formulation) of fantasy, though in quite different form. (I mean, there's no way anybody could mistake Sidhedark for Tel'aranrhiod. both stand off from the common Earth; but you enter Sidhedark with difficulty, and exit it with even more difficulty, unlike Tel'aranrhiod with even casual dreamers enter - at their peril. And nobody could ever mistake the Isomage Clarkham for Baalzamon. Clarkham reeks of self-pity; Baalzamon doesn't.)

 

Any thoughts?

[Gypsum]

It's all kind of based on very old Celtic mythology. The Si/Sith/Sidhe (apologies, Irish/Gaelic speakers, for the lack of fadas... can't figure out how to do it on this keyboard) are a race of supernatural beings which, according to various tales, live in a parallel world that often touches our world. These beings in the unseen world provided meaning and explanations for good and bad events in the lives of Gaelic-speaking Scottish and Irish people, before Christianity took hold, but then they stuck around in rural, isolated areas well into the 19th century.

 

The full Irish name is Aos Si or Aes Sidhe. Yup. Sidhe means mound in Irish, and so Aes Sidhe means people of the mound.

 

The stories are pretty wild. Anyone wanting to write fantasy literature should read some Gaelic folklore. I am pretty sure that's what Tolkien, Jordan, and other fantasy writers have done.