By Mike Resnick.
Read by Chris Furst.
Once I knew all the secrets of the universe. With no more than a thought I could bring Time to a stop, reverse it in its course, twist it around my finger like a piece of string. By force of will alone I could pass among the stars and the galaxies. I could create life out of nothingness, and turn living, breathing worlds into dust.
Time passed—though not the way it passes for you—and I could no longer do these things. But I could isolate a DNA molecule and perform microsurgery on it, and I could produce the equations that allowed us to traverse the wormholes in space, and I could plot the orbit of an electron.
Still more time slipped away, and although these gifts deserted me, I could create penicillin out of bread mold, and comprehend both the General and Special Theories of Relativity, and I could fly between the continents.
But all that has gone, and I remember it as one remembers a dream, on those occasions I can remember it at all. There was—there someday will be, there may come to you—a disease of the aged, in which you lose portions of your mind, pieces of your past, thoughts you’ve thought and feelings you’ve felt, until all that’s left is the primal id, screaming silently for warmth and nourishment. You see parts of yourself vanishing, you try to pull them back from oblivion, you fail, and all the while you realize what is happening to you until even that perception, that realization, is lost. I will weep for you in another millennia, but now your lost faces fade from my memory, your desperation recedes from the stage of my mind, and soon I will remember nothing of you. Everything is drifting away on the wind, eluding my frantic efforts to clutch it and bring it back to me.
Rated PG. for possibly disturbing content. Contains winter, loss, and fading images of the present.
phignewton said,
December 2, 2008 @ 12:43 am
i was glad to see this story had very little to do with the winter solstice! Thank you podcastle, you had me worried there for a moment.
Vanamonde said,
December 2, 2008 @ 10:58 am
I wish writers could move away from Alzheimers just being about memory loss, as the condition progresses vision, motor control and even swallowing can be affected.
Jennifer said,
December 2, 2008 @ 12:43 pm
I dunno…I normally love first person voice, but this just felt like there was nothing there.
Old Man Parker said,
December 2, 2008 @ 6:50 pm
Whoa, that was depressing!
I take care of my father-in-law who has Alzheimers. I know exactly what Steve means about the blank smile. Every morning I go down stairs and clean up the night’s mess (yep, THAT kind of mess) and feed him, and talk to him, and he anwsers with one word sentences. And he smiles, and I know he’s often just trying to remember who I am.
Hey, THAT was really depressing too!
Okay, enough depressing fantasy, I have reality for that.
scatterbrain said,
December 2, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
Does the incursion of the phrase “worm-hole” make this science fantasy? This more or less the only thing stuck in my mind after listening…
Benjamin said,
December 3, 2008 @ 8:23 am
This story had an interesting premise and I wish it had been explored more. How comes Merlin is going backwards while everybody else is going forwards? Did he start life with tremendous knowledge and power and now he’s loosing it all? How’d he get to become this renowned and powerful wizard if he’s clueless now and getting worse the farther back in time he goes?
Maybe these are just gaping holes in the story.
Either way, to me the story just sounded like the same thing over and over again:
“Someone’s coming. Do they know me? Do I know them? I’ll drop some vague and mysterious statement to stall for time and get rid of them. Now I’ll try to remember… But I can’t remember! Someone’s coming. Do they know me?” and so on.
I kept waiting for this story to materialize into something, but no. It ended with Merlin still trying to remember and getting nowhere.
And that’s where this story got me - nowhere.
Anemone said,
December 3, 2008 @ 6:59 pm
Is anyone else having trouble with this? I can’t play it in the post, in the popup, on the download page, or if I download it. Nothing happens.
Hyperion said,
December 4, 2008 @ 5:34 am
The idea of Merlin living life backwards has fascinated me since reading T.H. White as a boy, and using it as an Alzheimer’s analogy is nothing less than inspired.
I too, had some trouble identifying with the first person “voice,” as the storytelling sounded much more third person. However, thinking about it, about how Merlin would see the world, and what someone that powerful and unbelievably smart might think about, it made more sense. Especially seeing as how (in frame of the story), Merlin is fast coming up on the end of a life that has spanned thousands of years.
I think this story would actually work fleshed out a little more, as a novella or whatever length the PodCastle Giant is. I would like to know more about what Merlin is thinking, and just how the backwards-time living is affecting him.
And, it might have been worth mentioning the Merlin Mythos a bit in the opening. I can see someone unaware of that connection being lost for awhile.
Overall, though, I have nothing but praise. I love it when an author takes a daring approach, and in this case, I think it was highly successful.
Bingorage said,
December 4, 2008 @ 5:45 am
I thought that the Arthur legend had been approached from every direction; Mr. Resnick gave me a new perspective on the story that I hadn’t expected, even with the intro.
Benjamin, the movement backward in time is an old attribute of the Merlin character.
Mike Resnck said,
December 4, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
Background: I had an assignment to write a story for some Arthurian anthology, and I was coming up to the deadline with no ideas. Then I learned that my mother-in-law had Alzheimer’s. To me, the most horrifying part of Alzheimer’s is that it doesn’t happen all at once, that you go to bed each night with the certainty that you will know a little less in the morning. Then I remembered that the Merlin of T. H. White’s THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, lived backward in time, and I had a story.
“Winter Solstace” was a Hugo nominee in 1992, and I’ve since sold it nine more times, here and abroad.
– Mike Resnick
Rachel said,
December 4, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
Because it’s good.
Bingorage said,
December 5, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
Minor spoiler:
Just to expand my “Wow!”…
having Merlin born in our future is mindblowing.
Carl said,
December 6, 2008 @ 2:04 am
An amazing story. Evocative. The concept was amazing. I have a feeling I’m going to listen to this one again and again, and each time I do, the ideas will wrap themselves around my noggin more and more. The Arthurian myth in a new light. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?
ynm1000 said,
December 6, 2008 @ 9:09 pm
Why are almost all your stories about death and dark things? I thought great fantasy was about quests and interesting places, with fairies, and wizards, and courageous journeys? So many are mean-spirited and not too upright. Why not about powerful beings who are good?
WriterDan said,
December 8, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
Hmm. As a struggling new writer of fantasy-fiction I am frequently told that my stories should be fantastical, that they should be about fantastical things. And so, it kind of bothers me that a story such as this (one that has nothing to do with things fantastical, but everything to do with a man losing his memories) could garner so much attention. It’s like having a story about a pizza delivery boy on a moon station–who delivers his pizzas and has troubles with his girlfriend–being sold as a science fiction story because the story takes place on the moon. I lost interest in Winter Solstice early on but held through to the bitter end, hoping that there would be something to prove me wrong. Alas. Why does it seem like so many fantasy stories these days just aren’t about the fantastical? And where are the editors who should be willing to tell an established author that what they’ve written just isn’t fantasy?
robear61 said,
December 10, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
Really dark and depressing - felt the confusion in Merlin’s mind. Maybe this is the reason the first person reading seemed almost third person, his mental abilities were in such a flux between reality, future (his past), and our past (his future). Sounds really pop-psych and all - but he was losing himself (and therefore the ability to stay in first person) - this to me added to the horror. Is this what alzheimers does? If so - wow! Kinda new to podcastle - but only the setting (Merlin, etc.) made it fantasy - felt more like a PG Psuedopod.
Mike Resnck said,
December 13, 2008 @ 11:58 am
Usually I don’t answer individual comments, but I’m up early, so what the hell…
>ynm1000 said,
>Why are almost all your stories about death and dark things? I >thought great fantasy was about quests and interesting places, with >fairies, and wizards, and courageous journeys? So many are mean->spirited and not too upright. Why not about powerful beings who are >good?
1. “Almost all” is a misstatement. I have sold more than 90 humorous stories in this field, more than any other writer, enough to fill five collections thus far. I am not responsible for the fact that podcast editors prefer and choose to buy my serious ones.
2. Great fantasy, like great any other kind of literature, is about the human heart in conflict with itself. Faeries, wizards, and courageous journeys are just the tools some writers choose to use (and some choose not to).
3. Powerful beings who are good are considerably less interesting than powerful beings who are flawed.
> WriterDan said
> And where are the editors who should be willing to tell an established > author that what they’ve written just isn’t fantasy?
This story sold to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, then and now the top fantasy magazine in the world. It sold to an original anthology. It has sold to sf/f magazines in Japan, Finland, Poland, Croatia, France, Russia and Israel (names and addresses available upon request, since you asked where they all were), and has been re-sold here on the printed page, electronically, and via podcast. It was nominated for a Hugo by the members of the 1992 Worldcon. It was optioned by Hollywood. You say it’s not fantasy story. Professional editors from 8 countries, a movie producer, and the people who vote for Hugos say it is. Honest answer, now: who should I believe — you or them?
I feel better already. Now I’ll go have my coffee.
– Mike Resnick
WriterDan said,
December 15, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
> Mike Resnick said
>Honest answer, now: who should I believe — you or them?
By all means them. They’re the ones that pay the bills after all. Never meant to insinuate that the story wasn’t good or that people wouldn’t like it, just that it wasn’t fantasy in my opinion. I guess mostly this comment applies to me, and shows me as more of a purist than most when it comes to fantasy stories. I think that I could have easily enjoyed Winter Solstice if I had read it in some other setting, but got turned off because of what I didn’t see in it, but so very much wanted. And then back to the premise of your argument, Mike. What do I know? I haven’t even had a single story of mine published yet. Hats off to you.
Blaine Boy said,
December 21, 2008 @ 4:22 am
To Benjamin: read more Merlin legends and stories and you’ll get it. I believe Mr. Resnick is assuming the audience already knows that Merlin lives in the reverse order of time. And the point was to go nowhere: he can’t go anywhere and that’s what’s so tragic about it.
To WriterDan: Not all fantasy puts the fantasy straight out there. Good fantasy (at least to me) doesn’t depend just on its fantastical elements. You make a good story and you add your fantasy elements that you have made or chosen to use to build that story as fantasy.
On robear61: you have it right except, I think it is better suited as a PG-13 Podcastle because I don’t think kids should listen to this sort of scary shit. (Please pardon my language.)
On that note my own personal rant:
While I was listening to this, I went back into that chamber of my mind. I hope you don’t mind if I use a little artistry here, and no I’m not crazy (I hope), I just have too much free time on my hands (especially on long car rides when I listen to these podcasts.)
So (and this is inside my mind as I’m listening remember) I’m walking through the Castle of Conscious (yes, my conscious mind is a castle) to the private section of my brain where I express thoughts without physically expressing them. Hollywood helped with this next part. So my private room is this bare room with a single hanging light that puts a single circle of light on the floor. Everything outside of the circle looks black and empty, so pretty much, there’s just that section of floor seen under the light. I walk into the middle of the circle, get down on my knees, cover my face with my hands… and I scream bloody murder. I am terrified, horrified, mystified, enraged, and just plain freaked out. At some point I get tired of screaming and I start crying. I’m scared for my grandparents, my parents, my friends, myself, my possible future children and grandchildren, and everyone else around me.
Needless to say, this story hit home. I could REALLY use a “fun” story about now guys.
Sincerely,
The Blaine Boy
P.S.
I want to hear if/ what parts of this go into the outro when you review these comments. That will be quite interesting/ ego-boosting. Hee! I feel like a terrible writer now. It’s fun!
The Fix | From the Podosphere: December 2008 said,
January 18, 2009 @ 12:22 pm
[...] first PodCastle story for December is “Winter Solstice” by Mike Resnick (read by Chris Furst). Merlin is a truly great magician with the gift of [...]