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One of the memorable books I remember reading from my childhood, David R. Palmer's Threshold, arrived yesterday in used form, Thank You Amazon.com. I had a copy when I was an early teenager (published in 1985, but I don't think I got it brand new even then), and remember being fascinated with the premise; sort of a Kwisatz Haderach meets Green Lantern's Guardians, in the form of a Elfquest-type pixie with shapechanger abilities. It also foreshadows my fascination with Robert Jordan, as he uses some of the same spelling conventions for "alien" words (wWyh'j, mMj'q, Däa'mn... 'oosquai', anyone??). It's as silly as it sounds, and as enjoyable as I remembered (I ended up late for work this morning, reading through the first few chapters).
What I wasn't expecting, however, was the sense of nostalgia and familiarity. Reading as the protagonist speaks and acts felt like spying on a looking-glass version of myself. Probably not uncommon (and certainly not something I'm unfamiliar with in reading works of fiction), but the *level* of familiarity was startling. Patterns of speech and reactions to stimuli could have come from something I wrote. And the parts about 16-hour days, 7 days a week, full to the point of bursting with both work and play, is surely *more* true now than it was then.
So despite not having held a copy of this out-of-print book in at least a dozen years (I foolishly sold it to a used book store, not realizing it would be out of print *and* much in demand), I wonder how much of my "mythic reality" is reflected in these 274 pages. It'll be an interesting ride.
As a side note, there's a certain amount of meta-familiarity, since despite the book not being the same as the one I previously owned (it lacks a certain bookshop stamp, for one thing, which is why I know it was used then, too), it provokes certain memories of Florida and my paternal grandfather.
What I wasn't expecting, however, was the sense of nostalgia and familiarity. Reading as the protagonist speaks and acts felt like spying on a looking-glass version of myself. Probably not uncommon (and certainly not something I'm unfamiliar with in reading works of fiction), but the *level* of familiarity was startling. Patterns of speech and reactions to stimuli could have come from something I wrote. And the parts about 16-hour days, 7 days a week, full to the point of bursting with both work and play, is surely *more* true now than it was then.
So despite not having held a copy of this out-of-print book in at least a dozen years (I foolishly sold it to a used book store, not realizing it would be out of print *and* much in demand), I wonder how much of my "mythic reality" is reflected in these 274 pages. It'll be an interesting ride.
As a side note, there's a certain amount of meta-familiarity, since despite the book not being the same as the one I previously owned (it lacks a certain bookshop stamp, for one thing, which is why I know it was used then, too), it provokes certain memories of Florida and my paternal grandfather.
