OOC: Next Novel (with poll)

[sythyry]

So, I'm poking at the next novel. Some particular goals:

1. A small story: about a manageable number of characters, keeping the world-shattering events down to a modest number. (Marriage of Insects and Sythyry's Vacation are small stories.)
2. Something that has some chance of being saleable. Specific desiderata:
   1. Recognizably fantasy instead of the fantasy/sf blend I seem to indulge in usually. At least, as much fantasy as World Tree is.
   2. Not so much emphasis on potentially-disturbing stuff.
   3. Minimal sex. (Yeah, I know that sex sells, but not the way I write it)
   4. Minimal war. (Yeah, I know that war sells too, but war isn't a small story.)
3. Totally in my style, and playing to my strengths.
4. Specific influences currently in mind: Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Man; Roger Zelazny's Amber (first series); Alan Dean Foster's The Tar-Aiym Krang. The first two are among my favorites. Krang is not; I read it once in the mid-70's, and found it adequate.

The backstory of the setting concerns two species from different worlds. The first is the couatl, winged feathered serpents, who learned how to slither delicately between worlds (which few species can do). They were clever and friendly and gentle, and were explorers and traders, and learned much in their travels and became very civilized. In time they came to the world of the lammasu, mighty winged lions. The lammasu were not gentle. They learned the power of throwing open the gates between worlds, and they went forth and conquered a thousand worlds. Including the coatls, of course.

I'm kind of thinking of the coatls as very loosely like classical Greece, and the lammasu as very loosely like classical Rome at its peak -- and like the Instrumentality of Man from Cordwainer Smith. The domain of the lammasu is run with ruthless benevolence. The lammasu try to make it a decent place to live, for nearly everyone. This is a strategic point: it cuts way down on rebellions and other troubles. And the lammasu intend their empire to last forever. (As of the start of the story, it has been around for centuries and is quite robust.)

So here's the fussing of the day: vocabulary.

I am thinking that the vocabulary of inter-world travel will come from the coatls, since they did it first, and the vocabulary of empire will come from the lammasu. I have a modest number of technical terms in mind. I could just use "gate" or "portal" as the way you leave one world and come to the next, but that's so overworked I dunno. Anyways, I am considering trying to abuse the Nahuatl language for couatl words and the Sumerian language for lammasu ones.

I'm making some attempt to pay attention to actual Nahuatl and Sumerian. I'm ultimately more concerned with literary use than linguistic purity.

"š" is pronounced "sh". There are a few other odd letters that scholars use for Sumerian (ģ for an ng sound); I might use some of them too.

So here's my core vocabulary.

Word	Language	Short	Definition
calac	couatl	gate	Portal between tlalli. A calac leads from one tlalli to the next.
coatl	coatl	winged serpent	One of the older, more powerful, and more civilized species
Ensi	lammasu	governor	Nešgeš-appointed governor of a tlalli
gi-nun	lammasu	slave	Subject of Nešgeš, but without the priveleges of a mašda. (About 5%)
lugal	lammasu	lord	One of the most important people of the Nešgeš. (80% of lugals are lammasu)
mašda	lammasu	commoner	Citizen of the Nešgeš. (About 95% of the subjects of the Nešgeš are mašda)
Nešgeš	lammasu	empire; instrumentality	The empire of the lammasu, controlling dozens of ohtli and thousands of tlalli
ohtli	couatl	road	A string of tlalli connected by calacs
tlalli	couatl	land; worldlet	The region readily reachable by a calac. Usually a populated country some 50-100 miles in diameter. Generally much smaller than a whole world.

And here're some specific questions. I'm doing this as a LJ-quiz because it's all scales.

[Poll #1487398]

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'd read this in a heartbeat. However, lammasu, and especially couatl are specifically D&D terms, and will set up all manner of gamey expectations in the minds of many readers. The issues the Becca raises about racism and cultural appropriation also seem important here. That said, a SF novel with winged serpents and flying lions traveling between the stars is one that I'd dearly love to read.

On a side note, I love Zelazny's work (and Smith's) and greatly enjoyed (as the enjoyable fluff that it is and was so clearly meant to be) Foster's Flinx books. However, I've always found the Amber novels as some of Zelazny's weakest work, do you like them better than most of his other work, or merely as a good part of a wonderful writer's many books (I'm still both amused and pleased at how long I managed to pattern my life after Doorways in the Sand, although sadly w/o the aliens.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The aliens are simply taking their time.

Amber features I'm also using: a very large transuniversal setting in which a very limited number of people can travel between worlds; heavily personal rulership concerns thereof. Maybe other things too. And, though I'm taking some inspiration from RL cultures with rich mythologies, I am not doing a Lord of Light sort of toccata and fugue on Sumerian or Nahuatl mythology.

And I'm kind of hoping for saleable fluff here.

Anyways, thanks!

[zeeth_kyrah]

When I think of "couatl" I think of winged serpents. When I think of "lammasu" I think of a D&D monster co-opted from a prior source.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

And oddly, that's backwards.

'coatl' = Nahuatl for 'snake', no wings, but D&D abbreviated 'quetzalcoatl' to just 'coatl'. As far as I know, there was only one Quetzalcoatl, not a whole species of winged serpents, but I'm not sure about that. I don't even know if Quetzalcoatl uniformly had wings, or just feathers. D&D mangled the word and concept nontrivially. I might follow D&D in this, if I use the word coatl (since I do intend winged serpents), but it's rather derived.

Lammasu (that's an Akkadian version of Sumerian 'lamma') were those big winged lions or bulls with human faces which served as protective spirits. At some level of abstraction, D&D is tolerably right about them, as far as I know. Actually, lamma are female, the male is 'alad', but I can't use that because it sounds to boyish.