{"id":3424,"date":"2006-03-05T10:16:03","date_gmt":"2006-03-05T18:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2006\/03\/05\/3424.html"},"modified":"2006-03-05T10:16:03","modified_gmt":"2006-03-05T18:16:03","slug":"two-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2006\/03\/05\/two-hearts\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I haven't finished reading all the non-SH<\/cite> stories from 2005 that I plan to read before making my Hugo nominations, but I'm pretty sure what my favorite of those will be.<\/p>\n

I bought the October\/November 2005 issue of F&SF<\/cite> for several reasons. One was that I've liked a lot of stuff from that magazine lately; one was that that issue had stories by Paolo Bacigalupi and Dale Bailey, both of whom have written stuff I've liked a lot recently.<\/p>\n

But the main reason, the reason I would've bought that issue even if it had contained nothing else, was a novella titled \"Two Hearts,\" by Peter S. Beagle.<\/p>\n

As I've mentioned here before, Beagle's The Last Unicorn<\/cite> is among my favorite books ever--probably in my top five, certainly in my top ten.<\/p>\n

It was published in 1968, and until recently, as far as I know, Beagle had no plans to write a sequel.<\/p>\n

But now he's written a full-length sequel novel (or possibly is in the process of writing it; I'm not sure of its current status), due out in 2007. And to bridge the gap between the original and the sequel, he wrote a novella, \"Two Hearts.\" (Well, okay, maybe the idea for the novella came first. You can read about the genesis of \"Two Hearts\"<\/a> at Conlan Press; more about them in next entry.)<\/p>\n

The paper version of the issue of F&SF<\/cite> where it appeared sold out quickly, but you can still buy the electronic version<\/a> from Fictionwise. If you're a Last Unicorn<\/cite> fan (I'm talking about the book, not the animated movie, though maybe that too) then the issue is totally worth the price for this story alone; the fact that you also get stories by Bacigalupi, Friesner, Haldeman, Bailey, Bisson, Wolfe, Utley, Hand, and Ford is lagniappe.<\/p>\n

I went into the story with a great deal of trepidation. I've liked<\/em> everything else of Beagle's I've read, but I haven't loved<\/em> very much of it. The curse of writing a totally brilliant book that early in your career: everything else you write will be judged by comparison. And I very much wanted to love \"Two Hearts,\" but I'm usually dubious about sequels, and I figured there was a good chance that I would only like it, and that that would be disappointing. Which is why I waited several months before reading it.<\/p>\n

But last night, working on my Hugo nominations list, I decided it was time. So I sat down and read it, in PDF, on my computer screen.<\/p>\n

And loved it.<\/p>\n

As with my reaction to the Narnia movie<\/a>, it's hard to say how much of my reaction to \"Two Hearts\" is nostalgia and how much of it is relief at the lack of serious problems. But I think Beagle could have written a Last Unicorn<\/cite> sequel that I would've felt nostalgia and relief over without it having nearly as strong an effect on me as \"Two Hearts\" did.<\/p>\n

It felt right<\/em>. Partly like seeing old friends again after too long; but new, too, with an added measure of wisdom and experience, with a very likable and believable and strong-willed girl protagonist, with just the right amount of heartbreak and just the right amount of silliness.<\/p>\n

I haven't seen much discussion of the story; I don't know whether that's 'cause people didn't read it, or 'cause they didn't like it, or 'cause I've been pretty out of touch with the blogosphere for a while now. But in case it's due to not having read it: go read it.<\/p>\n

If you can't stand reading from a screen, you can always buy the PDF and print out the relevant pages, though it'll cost you a fair bit of paper.<\/p>\n

There's also a way you can get a printed and bound copy of the story, but I'll go into that in my next entry.<\/p>\n

I'm not quite certain what length category it goes in for the Hugos, but I'm assuming that the \"novella\" label in the magazine is accurate.<\/p>\n

Btw, it turns out Beagle is at the Bay Area filk convention, Consonance<\/a>, this weekend. I'm half-tempted to head over there for the day. But I've got too much else to do, and anyway I wouldn't manage to say anything to Beagle except the usual fanboy gushing, which I'm sure he hears all the time.<\/p>\n

More on Beagle in next entry.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t finished reading all the non-SH stories from 2005 that I plan to read before making my Hugo nominations,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories","category-speculative-fiction"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}