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language: English
country: USA
year: 1975
form: novel
genre(s): science fiction,
dates read: 6.2.25-9.2.25
I acquired Andre Norton’s Merlin’s Mirror as part of my exploration of “Celtic” sci-fi — in this case, a science fantasy interpretation of the life of Merlin, the Arthurian character.
taken entirely in isolation from the real world, it’s an adequate novel. Norton’s prose is genuinely pretty good, and the narrative presents an interesting twist on ancient aliens narratives by positioning Earth as a site of conflict between two opposing philosophies, one that wants to intervene in human development in order to help humans “progress” and one that opposes intervention because humans aren’t “ready”. these two forces fought a war some millennia prior to the beginning of the novel and effectively eradicated each other on Earth, leaving behind only ruins (like Stonehenge). Merlin — and his rival Nimue (of course) — are both the latest and the last representatives of each of these forces, racing to either prepare humans for the return of the “Star Lords” (Merlin) or prevent Merlin from reactivating a beacon (Stonehenge) that will call the Star Lords back (Nimue) and, when that fails, to kill Arthur and so prevent the golden age of progress he was meant to usher in.
I particularly enjoyed its presentation of Merlin’s “magic”. the illusion stuff was whatever, but the scene of Merlin moving the “King Stone” from Ireland to Stonehenge and later the scene of Merlin reactivating the beacon are extremely cool in how awkward and ordinary they are. Merlin is able to raise up and move the stones with magic by tapping them rhythmically with a metal object (ideally fancy Star Lord metal, but any metal will do in a pinch) and chanting. if he stops chanting, stops tapping, or otherwise loses focus, they won’t move. this is representative of its treatment of its science fantasy elements: it’s clear that there is some “scientific” explanation for all of Merlin’s powers, but because he’s from approximately 5th-century Britain Merlin simply does not have the frame of reference or the vocabulary to understand these explanations, and the result is rituals, passwords that function as spells, and similar. it’s cool!
taken in conjunction with the real world, however, this book is a real mess.
world-building-wise, its setting — early medieval Britain, ostensibly — is an agglomeration of early bad 20th-century scholarship on pre-Christian Celtic religions (druids, Goddess-worship, …), the flattening of all Celtic-language cultures into a single whole (which is placed in Britain; Ireland, as the “Western Island”, appears only as a barbarian Other, and the Gaelic-named Lugaid is apparently British), and dubious historiography (it appears to be placed in the 5th century but positions Christians as a small, though growing, minority). throw it all out and start over. the onomastics in particular are a disaster — how is it we have Myrddin (later Merlin), Morgause (??), JULIA (not a Roman/post-Roman), Nyren (?????), and Guenevere (?) all at the same time? hello?
as an interpretation of Arthurian material, it suffers in particular from its wholesale importation of medieval sexism from Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory (there’s no indication other than a passing mention of Urien of Rheged that Norton was drawing on any actual Welsh material). every woman in the book is either, at best, the victim of technologically-mediated sexual violence — Merlin’s mother Brigitta and Arthur’s mother Igrene, both of whom are impregnated by the Star Lords’ technologies while they are in a kind of hypnotic trance — or, at worst, an Evil Slut whose role is to seduce and betray Good, Heroic men (Nimue, Morgause, Guenevere). at the very end of the novel (literally the last four pages) Nimue gets a tiny bit more nuance, but this needed to come way earlier.
it couldn’t, though, because that would have added some moral nuance to the conflict between Merlin and Nimue by suggesting that there is a genuine ethical dispute between the “Star Lords” that Merlin serves and the forces Nimue serves (referred to only as “the Dark”, which along with some things about the portrayal of Merlin leaves me pretty confident that the most proximate influence on this book is actually The Dark Is Rising). the “Dark”, it turns out, are not just comic book supervillains who are evil for no reason but rather don’t think humans are ready to encounter alien life yet (though someday they may be). as evidence, Nimue points to the fact that when the Star Lords initially contacted and began “uplifting” humans the result was a human-instigated planet-shattering war that almost destroyed all life on Earth.
ideologically, that Merlin’s visions of the bright future that Arthur will lead to are clearly American triumphalism, to the point where I half-expected the endpoint of the book to be Merlin waking up in time for the Apollo landings. in this way, it’s very much an American Science Fiction Novel From The 1970s, and tedious as a result. the one thing I will say in its defense is that it treats Merlin’s presence in Britain as essentially coincidental (this happened to be where a beacon remained active long enough to summon a shipment of Star Lord genetic material), rather than a sign of the inherent superiority of Britain. in this it avoids the tendency of ancient aliens narratives to erase the accomplishments of non-white cultures, and it evades (though it does not fully escape) the tendency of this kind of historical fantasy to privilege Europe as The Center Of Everything. within the frame of this particular narrative the child ultimately known as Merlin could as easily have been born in Tanzania or Mexico.
a smaller but nontrivial ideological problem is the obsession with the “blood” of the Star Lords, where genetic proximity to the Star Lords is treated as a proxy for morality, such that the half-Star Lord Arthur is inherently and genetically superior to his foster-brother Cei, who is many generations removed from the Star Lords. indeed, Cei’s father Ector is superior to Cei, too, because he’s closer to being “pure”, and Ector’s family as a whole is “better” than others in part because they have a “tradition” of cousin marriage in order to maintain the purity of their connection to the “old” blood. it’s eugenics through and through.
all in all, I do not think this book is “destined to become a fantasy classic”, as its blurb describes it.
moods: mysterious