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After Magic
Could Madame Tutoni, toast of five continents including Lemuria, really talk with spirits? Will stage magician, Stephan Yarrow, ever discover real magic and ascend to the stars? Is Laslo Strand destined to end his career playing Hamlet to a monkey? How much borsch can one dwarf eat? And who is the Dutchess of Swindon, anyway?
After Magic is a quest, a love story, an adult fairy tale, an historical slapstick. Take your pick.
After Magic is a quest, a love story, an adult fairy tale, an historical slapstick. Take your pick.
56 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1990
7 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Boston
352 books117 followersI've published more than sixty books and chapbooks, including the novels Stained Glass Rain and the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams. My work ranges from broad humor to literary surrealism, with many stops along the way for science fiction, fantasy, and horror. My novel The Guardener's Tale (Sam's Dot, 2007) was a Bram Stoker Award Finailist and a Prometheus Award Nominee. My stories and poems have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase, and received a number of awards, most notably, a Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov's Readers' Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. For more information, please visit my website at http://www.bruceboston.com/
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 8, 2021
A story of quests launched by the idea of something more, leading to the question of what follows the ‘more’, while itself being precisely that ‘more’.
‘Magic’, the novelette seems to presume, is something more than what is allowed us according to our preconceived ideas of what limitations are inherent to our universe. We are born, taught to crawl and then walk, taught (often the hard way) that while walking is a practical way to get where one wants to be, walls present a blunt limit to this. Here magic would be what would enable us to ignore this limit and pass through the wall; this is what is sought by the agonists of the story, yet what they seek is more than a shortcut that saves us the hassle of taking the long and proper way to our destination, it is access outside of the cube, to know and be bound by no limits, and achieving it, to thus cast away their fetters, is the entire goal in itself –
From a still pool at the core of his being, alone with his own immensity beneath the stars, Sri Rhomboid watched the circling world, white yin and black yang spinning to an unvariegated gray.
Locked within the mantle of his godhood, his mind’s eye blinked and the visions began to flow...clouds blown to bells, fish, sheep, dahlias, flew across an orange horizon...voices laughed or wailed...pearl white crocuses lifted their heads in a field of heather...the darkly oiled bow of the saint’s body quivered to the point of release. (p. 7)
– but then what? When the potential of infinity has been reached, this is the question that begs to be asked and answered. The title of the story makes use of the term ‘after’ and so shows its awareness of this question, though it gives no hint towards its resolution. Has the hunger for more remained, perhaps even increased, or is it a satisfaction that is found? – widely perceived it would seem that these two options are the ones which the choice lies between: to continue the pursuit, or to rest on the laurels. What either choice entails beyond this fork in the road, is beholden to possibilities only as finite as the number of those who reach it, and is thus best studied with imagination rather than deduction. If After Magic makes any suggestions in this regard (and this reviewer does indeed believe that it does make a few), then it seems prudent to argue that they will yield the most to those who approach them with an unrestrained, reckless mindset, primed for adventures through and within the fantastical.
The fifty-six pages (including illustrations) of this booklet gives us insight into three seekers – Sri Rhomboid must not be forgotten! – who share this quest, though they approach it in idiomatic ways on paths entirely their own. But two paths cross and this is the focal point. An illusionist in a travelling circus and a lauded medium have lost touch with the enthralment of the mondial and now seek the ‘more.’ Separately they make their way towards where they believe they can find it, making such plans as seem productive to the endeavour along the way and obtaining the requirements they believe appropriate, meanwhile dismissing the world in those same steps. Then Stefphan Yarrow collides with Madame Tutoni, by the shock they are tied together and in the aftershock they are bound again, ‘romance’ is added to the genre description and perhaps the definition of magic is revised a little (does not love surpass our limits as we previously perceived them?); paths converge and quests parallel as well-laid plans are placed in the waste basket. Yet some kind of ‘more’ has been found, has it not? Which begs the question of what comes after it...
The third label which seems prudent to clip on to After Magic – the first two being the aforementioned ‘adventure’ and ‘romance’ – is ‘farce’. In the context of this novelette it should be viewed (at least partially) as a method: Through theatricality and excess it instils a lack of seriousness which in turn tries to point at something which the story does take seriously, or at least considers to be real or valid. In a farce it is a mirror of clowns and mimes that act as the tutor, though what is taught is up to the discernment of the reader. At the same time the story revels absolutely in its own exaggerated comedy, embracing it equally for its own sake. Every character and every one of their actions are slightly beyond what seems possible according to our life experiences, above-real if you will – again this ‘more’ – serving to imbue every scene with a lightness of heart. The quests, the romance: the characters blunder and bumble their way through them, virgins who fumble with buttons and words, eyeing that what is larger than life is before them without knowing any other way to get there than trial and error.
The fourth label can be quoted from the synopsis as ‘adult fairy tale’, which again raises the idea of a lesson, and again the idea of the ‘more’. Though the tale is perhaps more complex than what is normally associated with this genre, the label is still obvious enough on its own and so requires no further elaboration.
This review should by now (ideally) have imparted an idea of what a rich and unusual work of fiction this is, yet this idea would not be complete without mentioning its language: A grandmaster of poetry wrote this booklet and every sentence brims with craftsmanship, bridging an engineer’s precision and the avant-garde. But this description lacks the specificity required of it, it hardly leaves anyone wiser as to what impact the language has. An example is needed, so let his own introduction of Stefphan serve this function:
It was magic that Stefphan Yarrow was after. Lightning bolts, wings, a glimmering cauldron of lizard skins and birds’ claws. The circus traveled south through Surrey and Hampshire. Stefphan Yarrow was after magic, not sleight of hand, but the ripening universe at the touch of his fingers, the click of his tongue. The circus crossed the River Avon and swung north to Bath, it set new attendance records at Swindon. Somewhere on the world’s horizon, magic tolled like a cloud of bells. (p. 8)
Peel the text (or contemplate it, if you wish) then see that the repetition shows an overwhelming obsession, that the circus, despite its success, is much too humdrum to sate it, and that while he yearns for magic he has no clear idea of what it is beyond that it must be ‘more’ somehow, a grandiose and powerful ‘more’. This is symptomatic of the remaining story, every sentence is packed with information, be it blunt, covert, or faintly hinting; in other words, even here one finds the ‘more’. All this considered, perhaps this booklet is best recommended to the seekers amongst bibliophiles, those who have experienced what the commonplace fiction has to offer and are now questing? – because the low page count clearly lies: After Magic is more ‘more’ than most.
‘Magic’, the novelette seems to presume, is something more than what is allowed us according to our preconceived ideas of what limitations are inherent to our universe. We are born, taught to crawl and then walk, taught (often the hard way) that while walking is a practical way to get where one wants to be, walls present a blunt limit to this. Here magic would be what would enable us to ignore this limit and pass through the wall; this is what is sought by the agonists of the story, yet what they seek is more than a shortcut that saves us the hassle of taking the long and proper way to our destination, it is access outside of the cube, to know and be bound by no limits, and achieving it, to thus cast away their fetters, is the entire goal in itself –
From a still pool at the core of his being, alone with his own immensity beneath the stars, Sri Rhomboid watched the circling world, white yin and black yang spinning to an unvariegated gray.
Locked within the mantle of his godhood, his mind’s eye blinked and the visions began to flow...clouds blown to bells, fish, sheep, dahlias, flew across an orange horizon...voices laughed or wailed...pearl white crocuses lifted their heads in a field of heather...the darkly oiled bow of the saint’s body quivered to the point of release. (p. 7)
– but then what? When the potential of infinity has been reached, this is the question that begs to be asked and answered. The title of the story makes use of the term ‘after’ and so shows its awareness of this question, though it gives no hint towards its resolution. Has the hunger for more remained, perhaps even increased, or is it a satisfaction that is found? – widely perceived it would seem that these two options are the ones which the choice lies between: to continue the pursuit, or to rest on the laurels. What either choice entails beyond this fork in the road, is beholden to possibilities only as finite as the number of those who reach it, and is thus best studied with imagination rather than deduction. If After Magic makes any suggestions in this regard (and this reviewer does indeed believe that it does make a few), then it seems prudent to argue that they will yield the most to those who approach them with an unrestrained, reckless mindset, primed for adventures through and within the fantastical.
The fifty-six pages (including illustrations) of this booklet gives us insight into three seekers – Sri Rhomboid must not be forgotten! – who share this quest, though they approach it in idiomatic ways on paths entirely their own. But two paths cross and this is the focal point. An illusionist in a travelling circus and a lauded medium have lost touch with the enthralment of the mondial and now seek the ‘more.’ Separately they make their way towards where they believe they can find it, making such plans as seem productive to the endeavour along the way and obtaining the requirements they believe appropriate, meanwhile dismissing the world in those same steps. Then Stefphan Yarrow collides with Madame Tutoni, by the shock they are tied together and in the aftershock they are bound again, ‘romance’ is added to the genre description and perhaps the definition of magic is revised a little (does not love surpass our limits as we previously perceived them?); paths converge and quests parallel as well-laid plans are placed in the waste basket. Yet some kind of ‘more’ has been found, has it not? Which begs the question of what comes after it...
The third label which seems prudent to clip on to After Magic – the first two being the aforementioned ‘adventure’ and ‘romance’ – is ‘farce’. In the context of this novelette it should be viewed (at least partially) as a method: Through theatricality and excess it instils a lack of seriousness which in turn tries to point at something which the story does take seriously, or at least considers to be real or valid. In a farce it is a mirror of clowns and mimes that act as the tutor, though what is taught is up to the discernment of the reader. At the same time the story revels absolutely in its own exaggerated comedy, embracing it equally for its own sake. Every character and every one of their actions are slightly beyond what seems possible according to our life experiences, above-real if you will – again this ‘more’ – serving to imbue every scene with a lightness of heart. The quests, the romance: the characters blunder and bumble their way through them, virgins who fumble with buttons and words, eyeing that what is larger than life is before them without knowing any other way to get there than trial and error.
The fourth label can be quoted from the synopsis as ‘adult fairy tale’, which again raises the idea of a lesson, and again the idea of the ‘more’. Though the tale is perhaps more complex than what is normally associated with this genre, the label is still obvious enough on its own and so requires no further elaboration.
This review should by now (ideally) have imparted an idea of what a rich and unusual work of fiction this is, yet this idea would not be complete without mentioning its language: A grandmaster of poetry wrote this booklet and every sentence brims with craftsmanship, bridging an engineer’s precision and the avant-garde. But this description lacks the specificity required of it, it hardly leaves anyone wiser as to what impact the language has. An example is needed, so let his own introduction of Stefphan serve this function:
It was magic that Stefphan Yarrow was after. Lightning bolts, wings, a glimmering cauldron of lizard skins and birds’ claws. The circus traveled south through Surrey and Hampshire. Stefphan Yarrow was after magic, not sleight of hand, but the ripening universe at the touch of his fingers, the click of his tongue. The circus crossed the River Avon and swung north to Bath, it set new attendance records at Swindon. Somewhere on the world’s horizon, magic tolled like a cloud of bells. (p. 8)
Peel the text (or contemplate it, if you wish) then see that the repetition shows an overwhelming obsession, that the circus, despite its success, is much too humdrum to sate it, and that while he yearns for magic he has no clear idea of what it is beyond that it must be ‘more’ somehow, a grandiose and powerful ‘more’. This is symptomatic of the remaining story, every sentence is packed with information, be it blunt, covert, or faintly hinting; in other words, even here one finds the ‘more’. All this considered, perhaps this booklet is best recommended to the seekers amongst bibliophiles, those who have experienced what the commonplace fiction has to offer and are now questing? – because the low page count clearly lies: After Magic is more ‘more’ than most.
April 9, 2010
The story is about two people seeking to enhance their magic. One is a circus magician who longs for real magic and the other is a fake medium who has some real talent if only she could develope it. Their stories combine in a strange way. The characters are quirky, and some of the prose reads almost like poetry. The artwork is really interesting, too. It's been too long since I read a book with pictures ^_^.
I recommend it to anyone who likes Victorian England and fantasy. The story is both funny and thoughtful with interesting characters.
I recommend it to anyone who likes Victorian England and fantasy. The story is both funny and thoughtful with interesting characters.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews