[Plura-list] Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy: When Rousseau comes to Hobbeswarts

Cory Doctorow doctorow at craphound.com
Wed Mar 29 10:53:05 EDT 2023 

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/29/hobbeswarts/


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Today's links

* Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy: When Rousseau comes to Hobbeswarts.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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🧈 Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy

The Scholomance trilogy is Naomi Novik's take on a "school for wizardry":

It.

Is.

*Superb*.

Novik takes a belt-sander to all the crumbling tropes left by lesser writers to reveal fresh wood beneath, fashioning something breathtakingly new:

https://www.naominovik.com/category/scholomance/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/29/hobbeswarts/#the-chosen-one

Here's the premise: the wizards of the world live in constant peril from malificaria - the magic monsters that prey on those born with magic, especially the children. In a state of nature, only one in ten wizard kids reaches adulthood.

So the wizarding world built the Scholomance, a fully automated magical secondary school that exists in the void - a dimension beyond our world. The Scholomance is *also* an extremely dangerous place - three quarters of the wizard children who attend will die before graduation - but it is much safer than life on the outside.

The Scholomance's builders all hail from "enclaves" - magical palaces that have also been built in the void - and the enclave kids are the elites of the school, just as their parents are the elites of the world. Outside the scholomance, every "indie" wizard dreams of a place in an enclave, where they and their children might find a modicum of safety.

Inside the school, the indie kids suck up to the enclavers for four solid years, in the dim hope that they and their family might earn a place as second-class citizens to the enclaves. Indeed, the only reason the enclaves allow indie kids to attend the Scholomance is so that they will be servants for their own children, and cannon-fodder to stand between them and the monstrous hordes.

The Scholomance is a cross between *Lord of the Flies* and *Harry Potter*: an adult-free, highly lethal environment with no adults, where interactions between kids are strictly transactional. There is no love, nor honor - only the brutal logic of how much each person can bargain for from the others around them.

By the time I'd read the first couple chapters, I was thinking of it as *Hobbeswarts*, a place where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Novik's school for wizards is a place where the supernatural is very definitely "red of tooth and claw."

Enter the protagonist, Galadriel "El" Higgins, whose mother is a legendary indie healer who raised her in a yurt in a Welsh forest commune after she graduated from the Scholomance already pregnant (El's father died in the final graduation battle for their year, sacrificing himself to save his pregnant teen girlfriend and their child).

El isn't just an indie, she's a "loser kid": one of those indies who is looked upon with contempt by the enclavers and unlikely to find a crew who will protect her through her years of schooling - let alone the lethal "graduation," where seniors battle their way through a dense cloud of malificaria, who devour fully half of the kids who survive that far.

But El isn't an outcast because she's a weakling with nothing to offer to her social betters. Far from it: El is, if anything, *too* powerful - so powerful that when she casts even minor workings, they cause major damage. While other young wizards are given low-powered defensive spells by the Scholomance, El is handed apocalyptic superweapons that can raze whole nations.

El does her best to hide all this, but something shines through. She gives off the kind of "evil sorceress" vibes that make her a social pariah. That sinister aura, combined with her prickly character, quick to anger and slow to forgive, leaves her isolated through her first two years of school.

And then, as the story starts, El has a run-in with Orion Lake, the golden boy of the ultra-powerful New York City enclave. Orion is one of the school's best fighters, and he alone among the student body seeks out malificaria to kill, leaping to the defense of weaker kids and demanding nothing in return.

After Orion defends her, repeatedly, from monsters she was prepared to deal with herself, she treats him to the kind of tongue-lashing that only an evil-sorceress-in-waiting who has spent years on the periphery, cordially loathing the popular kids, can dole out.

This is the meet-cute that begins El and Orion's journey to graduation and beyond, as they perform a kind of *social* magic trick that has no supernatural component, inadvertently and haltingly bringing *solidarity* to the Scholomance, in a kind of Rousseauvian revolution that could transform the lives of the entire student body - and perhaps the whole wizarding world.

I first read Novik's fiction last year, devouring her nine-volume Temeraire series, a retelling of the Napoleonic Wars in a world where dragons are real. The Temeraire books have it all: swashbuckling hand-to-hand combat; grand, sweeping battles; a huge cast of beautifully realized characters; a brilliantly wrought geopolitics, and a through-line that is fantastically *tight*, plotted to a fare-thee-well:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/08/temeraire/#but-i-am-napoleon

I had neglected the Temeraire books because I am generally not a fan of historical fiction, nor high fantasy, *nor* military stories, but Novik found depths in all three of these forms that I had never imagined, innovating fresh angles that transformed me into a true believer.

The Scholomance series performs the same trick. Novik's handling of the geopolitics and class warfare of the wizarding world - revealed through the subsequent two volumes as she progressively widens the tale's aperture - make JK Rowling's attempts look like they were scrawled in crayon. By a toddler.

This is true all the way down to the micro-level: Novik's thrilling innovations in high-stakes combat-school battle-tactics make Ender Wiggins look like a piker (and also makes me wonder if there's some intentional wordplay in the rhyming surnames).

And when it comes to complicating the "chosen one" trope, Novik leaves Rowling and Card so far behind in her dust, they basically disappear.

As for the cosmic horror of the void and the monsters that it spawns, Novik out-Lovecrafts Lovecraft, in a manner to rival such great post-Lovecraftian subverters as NK Jemisin:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/09/the-old-crow-is-getting-slow/#i-love-ny

Novik is part of a longstanding and brilliant tendency in genre that refuses to cede all the best, most engrossing tropes to racist pigs like Lovecraft, warmongers like Card, and bigots like Rowling. She wrestles these ideas out of their hands and *works* them, revealing the poverty of those reactionary writers' shriveled imaginations.

I read the Scholomance books as audiobooks, listening to Anisha Dadia's superb narration as I did my physiotherapy laps in the pool each day:

https://libro.fm/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=scholomance+novik

I was delighted to discover DRM-free editions on Libro.fm that would play on my cheapo underwater MP3 player:

https://sewobye.com/products/waterproof-mp3-player-for-swimming-underwater-sport-waterproof-headphones-clip-mp3-player-sewobye-8gb-shuffle

When I finished the final book yesterday, I literally gasped aloud. As with the Temeraire series, Novik's intricate plotting manages to sprout from a small personal tale to a world-shaking planetary-scale upheaval, and *nails* the landing in a way that is nothing less than dazzling.

What!

A!

Writer!

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🧈 Hey look at this

* The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q

* Help Save the Texas Observer & Fight Staff Layoffs https://www.gofundme.com/f/laid-off-texas-observer-journalists-and-staff

* 1988: Prologue: Porn, Feminism & the folly of NC-17 (Erotic 90s Part 1) https://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/1988-prologue-porn-feminism-the-folly-of-nc-17-erotic-90s-part-1

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🧈 This day in history

#20yrsago SARS: The Mystery Illness https://web.archive.org/web/20030408021713/http://www.cbc.ca/news/sars/

#20yrsago KPMG makes hysterical, self-serving wardriving report http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2885339.stm

#20yrsago Facts don’t violate trademarks https://web.archive.org/web/20030803080408/https://www.eff.org/IP/20030328_taxes-com_pr.php

#15yrsago British Airways loses 15-20,000 bags since Thursday at supremely b0rked Heathrow Terminal 5 https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7320771.stm

#15yrsago Cartoon explains the difference between causality and covariation https://appliedabstractions.com/2008/03/29/covariation-and-causality/

#10yrsago Toronto Mayor Rob Ford about to lose his job coaching high-school football? https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2013/03/29/rob_ford_mayor_cancels_meeting_with_toronto_catholic_board_to_discuss_his_coaching_future.html

#10yrsago When US money was nice to look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US-$10-LT-1901-Fr.114.jpg

#10yrsago ATM skimming comes to non-ATM payment terminals in train stations, etc https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/cash-claws-fake-fascias-tampered-tickets/

#10yrsago Lessons learned from YouTube’s $300M “Original Channel” fund https://web.archive.org/web/20130330055859/http://edwardspoonhands.com/post/46305605617/lessons-learned-from-youtubes-300m-hole

#10yrsago Florida polo tycoon has difficulty adopting his 42-year-old girlfriend in order to keep assets away from bio-kids, ex-wife, family of guy he killed in a hit-and-run https://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/03/whats-the-point-of-being-a-polo-tycoon-if-you-cant-adopt-your-girlfriend.html

#10yrsago Zombie houses: 300K+ in America https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0328/Zombie-foreclosures-300-000-undead-properties-stalk-ex-owners

#10yrsago Songwriting podcast with Richard Sherman of Disney’s Sherman Brothers https://www.sodajerker.com/episode-38-richard-m-sherman/

#5yrsago Paypal blocks payments for a World Socialists pamphlet about the Iranian opposition https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/29/payp-m29.html

#5yrsago Private equity killed big box retailers, leaving empty big boxes across America, and architects have plans https://www.popsci.com/repurposing-big-box-stores/

#5yrsago There’s a notorious Nazi concentration camp guard living in New York City and ICE won’t deport him https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-wont-deport-the-last-nazi-war-criminal-in-america

#5yrsago The idea behind Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook data-harvesting app came from a Palantir employee, with support from Eric Schmidt’s daughter https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/cambridge-analytica-palantir.html

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🧈 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. ON SUBMISSION

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. ON SUBMISSION

Latest podcast: Red Team Blues https://craphound.com/news/2023/03/26/red-team-blues/

Upcoming appearances:

* Antitrust and Competition Conference - Beyond the Consumer Welfare Standard (Chicago), Apr 20-21
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/stigler/events/2023-antitrust

* Red Team Blues at Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego), Apr 25
https://www.mystgalaxy.com/event/42523Doctorow

* Red Team Blues at Dark Delicacies (Burbank), Apr 26
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2873/Wed%2C_Apr_26th_6pm%3A_Red_Team_Blues%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#

* Bay Area Bookfest (Berkeley), May 6/7
https://www.baybookfest.org/session/cory-doctorow/

* Wordfest (Calgary), May 11
https://wordfest.com/2023/event/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow/

* Red Team Blues event with Tim Harford (Oxford), May 29
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-red-team-blues-with-tim-harford-tickets-574673793787

* Red Team Blues event with Ian Forrester (Manchester), May 31
https://www.waterstones.com/events/in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow/manchester-deansgate

* UCL Peter Kirstein Lecture, Jun 1 (London):
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirstein-lecture-2023-featuring-cory-doctorow-registration-539205788027

Recent appearances:

* Is Copyright Good For Authors? (This Week in Tech)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1sFi3LQQeQ

* Culture Journalist: What is chokepoint capitalism?
https://theculturejournalist.substack.com/p/chokepoint-capitalism-cory-doctorow-artists#details

*  Techtonic with Mark Hurst | WFMU
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cory-doctorow-author-chokepoint-capitalism-from-mar/id1285537944?i=1000605088345

Latest books:

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* Red Team Blues: "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books, April 2023

* The Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech, Verso, September 2023

* The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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