#698 An Invocation of Incuriosity- Neil Gaiman

#698 An Invocation of Incuriosity- Neil Gaiman

Another fantastic, fantastical tale by Neil Gaiman. This world is coming to an end. The sun is burning out and all will soon be engulfed in nothingness. Farfal the unfortunate—so called because: “He had spent his life in a one-room cottage at the end of time, at the bottom of a small hill, surviving on the food his father could net in the air…”—witnesses the end of all things from his cottage he sometimes shares with his father.

Balthasar the Tardy lives two lives. One with his son Farfal and one in a world a million years in the past where he is known as Balthasar the Cunning because he brings amazing spells and technologies from the future. Farfal is unaware of his father’s second life because he is under a hex, an Invocation of Incuriosity. But when the world ends, he is whisked off to his father’s other life and loses his place at his father’s side.

“I have spared you from death, my boy…I have brought you back in time to a new life. What should it matter that is this life you are not son but servant? Life is life, and it is infinitely better than the alternative.”

In a fun mind experiment, if you could travel back in time and meet your brothers from this time, some of which have been alive less years than you, but who were born a million years in the past—who is older?

His father makes a mess of his duel dimension dealings and is lost to nothingness. No longer unfortunate, Farfal finds a way to a different time, our time, the reader’s time and is telling this story to a kind man he meets while selling ancient carvings at a flea market over a free Denny’s Breakfast. Only Neil Gaiman can make this stuff work.

Rating: 9-9-9-8 Total= 35

#284 The Thing About Cassandra- Neil Gaiman

#284 The Thing About Cassandra- Neil Gaiman

It’s funny how themes emerge from stories and books you read at the same time. You see a theme in one, and then, bam…the next book you read there it is again. Mostly it's that your eyes are open to that theme, the taste is still on your tongue, but sometimes its very cool coincidence.

A few days ago I read Kavita Through Glass, where we spent the whole story following along with a narrator’s perspective only to be shown at the end that the important view was through the other character’s eyes. This story is very much the same.

Stuart Innes is a model and an artist. He’s single and doesn’t seem to have the drive to find himself a woman. Suddenly he hears rumors that his first girlfriend, Cassandra has reappeared, and has been looking for him. She was perfect, the one all others were judged against…the only problem is that he made her up. So who is this woman then, well…that’s where the fun is.

We limit ourselves sometime by the fantasies we create, and we are defined by the lies we tell. That sounds like a good summary for this story, but really its just a good story, no need to over think it.

Notable Passage: “People think they’re buying the art, but really, they’re buying the story.”

Rating: 9-10-10-9 Total=38