BORDERTOWN: Where Elves met Rock'n'Roll

[ellenkushner]

Today's Question:

Have you ever read any books in the Terri Windling shared-world "Bordertown" series?

If you're a writer, do you think they influenced your work in any way?

If you're curious, here's Terri's Borderland page, the Wiki page with a list of all stories & authors, and the latest Borderland fan page, with links to lots, including an LJ community, "Bordertown's Journal."

It amazes me to realize that I had a story in every single one of the 4 volumes (while "Charis" has been reprinted most often, I think my favorite is "Hot Water," with "Mockery" a close second.) Will Shetterly & Emma Bull wrote entire Borderland novels. And there are even some who say that the current spate of Urban Fantasy (Division of Elves on the Streets) owes a lot to kids who read them at an impressionable age when they first came out. What say you?

Comments

[themaskmaker.livejournal.com]

Hee! I own them all. Some I have multiple copies of, so that I can give them away.

I belong to a Bordertown fan community that has been going strong for more than ten years. Several of us keep in daily touch through LJ. I know for certain that those of us who have become authors were encouraged by our Bordertown experiences.

And "Mockery" still remains one of my favorites, too.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

I'm in that same community. :) You guys created a tribe...

And yes, I devoured every Bordertown book, and still look for them in used bookstores so I can pass them on.

I'd definitely list them as one of my influences.

(Will you and Delia be at Boskone, btw?)

[jess-ka.livejournal.com]

Loved them (though I can't say I was a kid...).

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Well, I was a "kid" only by contrast to where I am now . . . !

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

yes indeed. i loved all those books.

(i don't know if i count as a writer or not in y'all's terms, but most of my recent fiction has been set in a not-entirely-unlike-bordertown place, if the borders had been erased and the town happened to be greater camberville :)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

One of the fun things about the series was that each of us made it like the city we knew best!

[jazzfish]

Ever read? Sort of. I've read Finder, and Elsewhere and Nevernever have been taunting me for, oh, years now, in that "you know you want to make time for us" kind of way. Haven't been able to find the first three anthologies, and for some reason I've got the idea in my head that I should read those before Essential.

And The Last Hot Time was wonderful as well, though it only sort of counts.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

You can really read the story collections in any order - there's no continuity that matters. ESSENTIAL is the fattest, and also has the delightful "Rough Guide to Bordertown" interstitial material, so in some ways it's actually the best to start with!

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

To the best of my knowledge I own every Bordertown collection and novel, atlhough I may be missing some stuff that wasn't collected into a specific Bordertown work. I really enjoy the series. I'm not a writer, so I can't say it has influenced my writing. :<(

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

This, word for word.

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

I loved what I could get my hands on, though I wasn't able to do so until long after they were first published.

Looking back over the years I absolutely think they were influential not only on the current mode of urban fantasy (though I wouldn't say they're responsible for it) but in other areas of current fantasy fiction as well.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

"in other areas of current fantasy fiction as well."

Now that's interesting. Such as...?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I noticed a material change in the writing of younger folks; this is hazy generalization like Donald Keller did in his manners of fantasy riff some years ago, about writers of my gen. The younger ones, I see influences of War for the Oaks and Moonheart, Bordertown, Buffy, among other things. Always a combination, some more some less, but those at the center.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Makes a lot of sense.

[erink.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not a fiction writer, but I have to say the Bordertown stories did a lot to redeem my opinion of modern fantasy! So thanks for that.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

High praise, indeed. Thank *you*

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Inarticulate Bordertown SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

If we've reduced you to Inarticulate, our work here is done.

[an-sceal.livejournal.com]

Those were the first urban fantasy I ever read, and I would have to say they are not only my favourites, but something I come back to frequently as an example of the best kind of shared world. I love Bordertown!

[usullusa.livejournal.com]

Are you kidding me? Those books were probably the single biggest influence on me as a writer [and later a scholar] as a young teen. A lot of what I'm doing today can be traced back directly or indirectly to discovering the Bordertown anthologies.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Now, why didn't I know that already....?;)

What scholarship of yours connects to the Border?

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

I read Elsewhere by Will Shetterly when I was 19, and liked it, but I didn't know anything about Bordertown at the time. I just enjoyed it as a specimen of urban fantasy, filed on the same shelf in my mental library between Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, and Holly Black. I remember thinking Bordertown had a similar vibe to the seedier bits of de Lint's Newford, which I read first.

[etakyma.livejournal.com]

I've read them all. In fact I own multiple copies of all the ones in paperback, because I kept giving them away. When I managed a bookstore about a decade ago they were books I tried to keep on hand to give the older teenagers looking for good fantasy. Every time I see one in a used bookshop I buy it, because I am *still* giving them away.

"Borderland" is sitting on my bedside table. The others are in the bookcase across the room.

Yes, very near and dear to my heart.

War for the Oaks

[(Anonymous)]

I read and reread and adored Emma Bull's War for the Oaks many years ago and have never forgotten it. I feel certain it had an influence on me.

Nancy Werlin

Re: War for the Oaks

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Cool! (Hey, girl - when are you going to break down and get an LJ page? You don't have to post anything if you don't want to . . . . honest . . . . . . )

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

Oh indeed; I've still got the much-battered copy of the first anthology I bought back in high school when it first came out (shush). Haven't looked at it in a while, which is probably why I'd forgotten you'd written "Mockery," which I end up filing mentally with Brust's The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars in their own little modern-fantasy-about-painting subgenre. For whatever reason.

But yes: it's Bordertown and White Wolf as two of the earliest wellsprings of the current crick. Y'all have a lot to answer for.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I loved them and I own them all, even though it was a challenge. I trolled ebay for months until I found copies I could afford.

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

To my knowledge, I have never read a Bordertown story. Don't know anything about it, really. Would have to read up on wikipedia.

[birdhousefrog.livejournal.com]

Go find them, they're great fun!

[sleepfighter.livejournal.com]

I've got the novels and the Essential collection and will probably snag the rest at some point this year. It's on my list of books I reread once a year, collectively. I think Shetterly's novels may have been some of the first urban fantasy I ever read.

[vcmw]

I don't have all the short story collections, but the ones I have I've read several times, and read some but not quite all of the novels that spun off in different directions.

I remember being really hypnotized by some of the stories. They certainly influenced a huge chunk of my life - the cover art in some ways as much as the stories - the painted-over-photo stuff Tom Canty did for the covers. I really liked the way beauty didn't always mean things were good or right, and the way different mythologies and personalities overlapped.

We read Elsewhere in my YA lit class for library school, so I think the series as a whole has hit lit-canon status for at least some people?

I have trouble separating the influence on my reading and life of Bordertown from the influence of the Scribblies, which is overlapping but separate, I suppose? The two together influenced my choice of college, post-college life, etc. And are responsible for hours spent wandering up and down Hennepin Avenue in a sort of fantasy-novel-overlaid daze.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's pretty big. Thanks.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the comments yet, but you just basically psychically quoted the syllabus for my upcoming fantasy course. I think that the Borderlands books represent an important shift in fantasy - whereas before it had been all about what was beyond these fields we know, or in SF occasionally an invasion by BEM's, suddenly it became about the integration of the fantastic with our everyday reality, the return of wonder. Alas, since they're out of print and my university bookstore blatantly lies to me whenever I try to order out of print books, only what I can photocopy under fair use is going on the syllabus ... but that doesn't mean that their influence isn't going to be emphasized.

P.S. - I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THE LJ COMMUNITY. I am now delighted.

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Also, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait a second! I don't think I've ever seen _Life on the Border_! (In my own defense, I read these before there was an internet, and I have vague memories of someone telling me that this was just a compilation of the first two, and, well, as a mumbleteen year old, I just took it as holy writ and sighed wistfully. THough I was fooled and disappointed by the terrible horror series that went under the same name.) I MUST HAVE IT.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Read them all. Own them all. Still buy extra copies when they show up at used bookstores so I can hand them out to friends. They were precious to me and influenced not only my writing but how I try to live my life. They absolutely influenced modern Urban Fantasy, I can see it in every magic meets music novel and story I read.

Was just doing a re-read of the first two about a month ago.

[kate_nepveu]

Yes, I've read them all, though I'm much more a novel than a short-story person and so remember the novels better.

(I don't write fiction.)

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Yep, read 'em, love 'em. And it was Will that helped kick me outt'a the closet.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Go, Will!

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

I've read them and the associated novels, and I miss this series so very much.

I think the series inspired my writing...it definitely makes my Muse dance around and quirks my world vision...but I've not written anything that would fit into this universe.

I believe the influence of those novels on the fantasy market to be powerful. And for me, it all kinda blurs together (which is sorta what I see in the other comments) - War for the Oaks, the Bordertown books, even the music of Boiled in Lead and Cats Laughing...it was all magic. I treasure the stories, I attended BiL concerts, and I miss those fragments of Faerie.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Me, too!

[yaoi-in-exile.livejournal.com]

My coauthor wishes I'd read that Magic for Beginners, which I know everyone says is good, but have never heard of Bordertown. Though heck, rock'n'roll elves *and* stories from you? Sold! *skedaddles*

Urban fantasy sounds fun. Funner than the urban American realism I'm wading through at the moment. Bleeghh. Hopefully I'm still impressionable.