(scroll down for the English version)
Norcon-komiteen er omtrent fra seg av glede over å kunne annonsere Naomi Novik som vår amerikanske æresgjest!
Hun hadde sitt gjennombrudd med den glitrende fantasyserien Temeraire, som meget kort oppsummert kan sies å være alternativ historie – dersom Napoleon hadde hatt drager, og dermed luftvåpen. Den trekker veksler på klassiske sjøfartsromaner, for eksempel serien om Horatio Hornblower og bøkene til kaptein Marryat, men spenner opp et langt bredere lerret etter hvert som handlingen tar dragen Temeraire og hans dragefører William Laurence på eventyr over hele verden. Serien strekker seg over ti bøker inkludert en novellesamling, og har vunnet flere priser.
Etter Temeraire beveget Novik seg vekk fra det historiske og inn i folkloren, og ga ut to frittstående bøker basert på europeisk folklore, Uprooted og Spinning Silver. Disse bøkene er ganske annerledes i stilen enn de saltsprutende Temeraire-bøkene, og gjorde Novik kjent for et nytt publikum. De kan leses som YA-bøker og feministiske, kvinnesentrerte eventyrgjenfortellinger, og henter blant annet inspirasjon fra eventyret om Rumleskaft. Begge bøkene, igjen, vant en rekke priser.
Noviks nyeste serie er en trilogi som vel best kan plasseres innen Dark Academia, en relativt ny genre innen det fantastiske (se også Babel og The Atlas Six). The Scholomance handler om verdens farligste magiske skole – det eneste som faktisk er enda farligere er å ikke gå der. Vi følger El (Galadriel – ja, hun hater navnet sitt), som uheldigvis for henne selv er styrt med magiske evner som stort sett bare kan brukes til å gjøre skade. Hun tilhører ikke noen sammenslutning av magikere, og er dermed nederst på rangstigen i skolens hierarki, med små sjanser til å overleve det man med bokas tittel kaller A Deadly Education. Men hun er sta, og har fra sin mor, en helbreder som lever i pakt med naturen i skogen i Wales, en innbitt hang til å gjøre det rette selv når hun aldeles ikke har lyst. Serien er en original vri på magisk skole-tropen i fantastisk litteratur, og El er en underholdende forteller (selv om hun har noen forbløffende blindflekker – noe av moroa i serien er å se om man klarer å avdekke hva som egentlig er på ferde før El selv).
Sist, men aldeles ikke minst, kan vi nevne at Naomi Novik også er en sentral skikkelse innen fan fiction! Hun har sittet i styret for OTW (Organization for Transformative Works), som etablerte Archive of Our Own (AO3) i 2008. AO3 er en åpen, ikke-kommersiell plattform for deling av fanfiction, og en av de største og mest kjente av delingsplattformene. Den har hatt enorm betydning for rekruttering og deling av fankultur og kan knapt overvurderes – i skrivende stund huser den mer enn 16 millioner verk som spennere over 75 000 ulike fandoms. AO3 endte også opp med å vinne Hugoprisen i 2019 for “Best Related Work”,
en kategori som hyller verker innenfor fantasy og science fiction som ikke er fiksjon, og Naomi Novik var blant de som tok imot prisen på vegne av organisasjonen. Hennes lidenskap for fanfiction kan best uttrykkes med hennes egne ord:
“Fanfic writing isn’t work, it’s joyful play. The problem is that for most people, any kind of writing looks like work to them, so they get confused why anyone would want to write fanfic instead of original professional material, even though they don’t have any problem understanding why someone would want to mess around on a guitar playing Simon and Garfunkel.”
Vi gleder oss vilt til å snakke med Naomi Novik om – blant annet – drager, alternativ historie, folklore og fankultur!
The Norcon committee is beside itself with joy at being able to announce Naomi Novik as our American guest of honour!
She had her breakthrough with the sparkling fantasy series Temeraire, which can be very briefly summed up as alternate history – if Napoleon had had dragons, and thus an air force. It draws on classic naval novels, for example the Horatio Hornblower series and the books by Captain Marryat, but gradually spreads out on a much broader canvas as the plot takes the dragon Temeraire and his rider William Laurence on adventures across the world. The series spans ten books including a short story collection, and has won several awards.
After Temeraire, Novik moved away from the historical and into folklore, and published two standalone books based on European folktales, Uprooted and Spinning Silver. These books are quite different in style from the salt-sprayed Temeraire novels, and made Novik known to a new audience. They can be read as YA books and as feminist, women-centered fairy-tale retellings, drawing inspiration among other things from the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin. Both books once again won a number of awards.
Novik’s newest series is a trilogy that is probably best placed within Dark Academia, a relatively new genre within the fantastic (see also Babel and The Atlas Six). The Scholomance is about the world’s most dangerous magical school – the only thing that is actually even more dangerous is not attending it. We follow El (Galadriel – yes, she hates her name), who, unfortunately for her, is gifted with magical abilities that are mostly only good for causing harm. She does not belong to any alliance of magicians and is therefore at the very bottom of the school’s hierarchy, with slim chances of surviving what the title of the first book calls A Deadly Education. But she is stubborn, and from her mother, a healer who lives in harmony with nature in the forests of Wales, she has inherited an intense urge to do the right thing even when she absolutely doesn’t want to. The series is an original twist on the magical-school trope in fantasy literature, and El is an entertaining narrator (even though she has some astonishing blind spots – part of the fun of the series is seeing whether you can figure out what’s really going on before El does).
Last, but certainly not least, we should mention that Naomi Novik is also a central figure in fan fiction! She has served on the board of OTW (Organization for Transformative Works), which established Archive of Our Own (AO3) in 2008. AO3 is an open, non-commercial platform for sharing fan fiction, and one of the largest and best-known sharing platforms. It has had enormous significance for the recruitment and sharing of fan culture and can hardly be overstated – at the time of writing, it hosts more than 16 million works spanning over 75 000 different fandoms. AO3 also ended up winning the Hugo Award in 2019 for “Best Related Work”, a category that celebrates works within fantasy and science fiction that are not fiction, and Naomi Novik was among those who accepted the award on behalf of the organization. Her passion for fan fiction can best be expressed in her own words:
“Fanfic writing isn’t work, it’s joyful play. The problem is that for most people, any kind of writing looks like work to them, so they get confused why anyone would want to write fanfic instead of original professional material, even though they don’t have any problem understanding why someone would want to mess around on a guitar playing Simon and Garfunkel.”
We are wildly excited to talk to Naomi Novik about – among other things – dragons, alternate history, folklore, and fan culture!
