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3.0 AVERAGE
3.0 AVERAGE
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Margaret is truly great. It’s all in here, from Gulliver’s Travels to Philip Pullman, but 100-300 years prior. It’s true tho: the first 1/3 - 1/2 of her fun stories are boring and normal seeming romances before they go NUTS, sending you through the multiverse. Idk if she thinks she’s tricking you or just gets bored and starts writing whatever midway through? Bless her regardless
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The Blazing World is dense and does not wait up for you, although its playfulness and occasional humor offer some reprieve. Nearly half the book is dedicated to a seemingly endless list of queries into the logic, social structure, and philosophy of a newly discovered hidden world. Though this passage is impressive in its scope, it was draining to read all at once. The Blazing World's big appeal for me is how its many fantastic elements are used to disarm the reader to illustrate how these questions and their answers could just as easily be applied to our own world, a core function of so much science fiction. While it's often tricky to get a handle on this 1666 book, it's easy to understand how it was so foundational to the genre.
After a delightful yet dull middle section, the interdimensional war plot that shows up toward the end was a blessing, even though it casually advocates for total monarchy through genocide. Different times! It's hard to properly judge this book on its actual merits and not just as a curious early entry in a vast genre, but the best I can say is I had a good time with this bonkers and scatterbrained tour of a parallel world.
After a delightful yet dull middle section, the interdimensional war plot that shows up toward the end was a blessing, even though it casually advocates for total monarchy through genocide. Different times! It's hard to properly judge this book on its actual merits and not just as a curious early entry in a vast genre, but the best I can say is I had a good time with this bonkers and scatterbrained tour of a parallel world.
A wonder of worldbuilding and a precursor to SF. Drawing comparison to Thomas More's Utopia, Margaret Cavendish's writing uses the setting of the discovery of another world to wax philosophical more than political. The Blazing World feels vastly ahead of its time, the English being often indistinguishable from writings of the mid 1800s as opposed to the 1600s.
The prose takes on an experimental (for the time) style, using both poetic and prose devices to explore religion, monarchy and the nature of spiritual and material matter and the balance between the two. The inhabitants of the Blazing World are hybrids of animal and man, each given professions based on their genetic presuppositions. This gives way for social commentary, including a lengthy discussion of the place of men and women in society. The description is incredibly rich, Cavendish creates vivid and original images of her created world, the geology is as imaginative as the characters. Here, in 1666, are the seeds which evolved over the centuries into staples of what is now known as classic SF. And not just SF but also meta fiction, for the Duchess herself is a character, referred to with humility (adverse to the wish fulfilment of other self-insert fiction) as being commissioned for a dialogue with the spirits of The Blazing World after the likes of ancient philosophers (Plato and Aristotle) and recent writers of the time (Descartes and Gallileo), highlighting where her self-proclaimed experimental philosophy differs from these writers.
This philosophy being that, when it comes to world building, one cannot rely too heavily on the theories of forerunners because these can just as often restrain ambition as lend to it through applying one's own philosophy.
Thus, Cavendish attempts building separate worlds, using Pythagoras' theorem, Epicuris' opinions and Descartes' rationalism respectively as their bases, but abandons them all in favour of her own invention (and humble admission of failure to fully grasp these ideas): a combination of sensitivity and rationalisation. Worlds must be made and dissolved, through experimentation, for a desired world to be arrived at.
It also serves as a cautionary tale, that if one's fidelity to one's own opinion, without pause to consider reason, is too high, this gives way to both a lack of moderation and unwillingness to better the world around oneself. Even if disagreement is reached at the end of a discussion, at least there has been a discussion and both sides can reach further understanding of each other, as embodied by the material and spiritual, the real world and the Blazing World. Through these metaphors, meta analogies and characters, Cavendish champions the ambition and achievements of the individual's own merit over group mentality.
The Blazing World is a pioneering piece of writing for many fields and genres and, overall, a trip that's well worth taking, it sets both the mind and imagination ablaze with wonderful imagery and complex ideas.
The prose takes on an experimental (for the time) style, using both poetic and prose devices to explore religion, monarchy and the nature of spiritual and material matter and the balance between the two. The inhabitants of the Blazing World are hybrids of animal and man, each given professions based on their genetic presuppositions. This gives way for social commentary, including a lengthy discussion of the place of men and women in society. The description is incredibly rich, Cavendish creates vivid and original images of her created world, the geology is as imaginative as the characters. Here, in 1666, are the seeds which evolved over the centuries into staples of what is now known as classic SF. And not just SF but also meta fiction, for the Duchess herself is a character, referred to with humility (adverse to the wish fulfilment of other self-insert fiction) as being commissioned for a dialogue with the spirits of The Blazing World after the likes of ancient philosophers (Plato and Aristotle) and recent writers of the time (Descartes and Gallileo), highlighting where her self-proclaimed experimental philosophy differs from these writers.
This philosophy being that, when it comes to world building, one cannot rely too heavily on the theories of forerunners because these can just as often restrain ambition as lend to it through applying one's own philosophy.
Thus, Cavendish attempts building separate worlds, using Pythagoras' theorem, Epicuris' opinions and Descartes' rationalism respectively as their bases, but abandons them all in favour of her own invention (and humble admission of failure to fully grasp these ideas): a combination of sensitivity and rationalisation. Worlds must be made and dissolved, through experimentation, for a desired world to be arrived at.
It also serves as a cautionary tale, that if one's fidelity to one's own opinion, without pause to consider reason, is too high, this gives way to both a lack of moderation and unwillingness to better the world around oneself. Even if disagreement is reached at the end of a discussion, at least there has been a discussion and both sides can reach further understanding of each other, as embodied by the material and spiritual, the real world and the Blazing World. Through these metaphors, meta analogies and characters, Cavendish champions the ambition and achievements of the individual's own merit over group mentality.
The Blazing World is a pioneering piece of writing for many fields and genres and, overall, a trip that's well worth taking, it sets both the mind and imagination ablaze with wonderful imagery and complex ideas.
Perhaps it is because of the novelty of the ideas, that a WOMAN has written them, or maybe because it is simply a wonderful take, but I love the way we are introduced to the world within the book. The Duchess of Newcastle is witty! It is charming. This is how reading Jane Austen for the first time should have felt, if it were not for my blindness and internal misogyny. (Pfft, a book about marriages, I've got enough of that drama in my own life no thanks! And colonial British-era ones? Why would I subject myself to that! - Which is fair. Ah well.) Cavendish is so smart, I say, since she introduces a character from a multi-dimensional other world. A questioning, inquisitive, curious, ruthless and childishly curious in turns, Empress. She holds scientific and philosophical court with her advisors, and then the commonplace figures in this story, spirits. Now this multi-dimensional world seems to be very much like our own, but with some alternate timeline. Then, as a scribe, the Duchess of Newcastle is whooshed in from our world (For the likes of Galileo would scoff at writing down the words of a woman) and promptly becomes A Favourite! Yus, a Favourite. I don't care what the modern interpretations say, or how platonic the religious author calls the friendship, this whole plot has bisexual dark academia energy. And yes there's a whole lot about her dear beloved husband and the ecstacy of their two souls with him in him? Now this Duchess (Cavendish, herself) has insatiable ambition. She wants to rule over a land and so they both start imagining up worlds. So wildly entertaining! They visit other worlds, hop around portals, philosophize everything they find interesting. They analyze and break down their worlds to be a part of their imaginations where in they keep building and breaking down castles in the air, at the spirits' behest. Stories are really the best medium for philosophy breakdowns and that's why moral stories work but here? This is a different level altogether. I am gushing unashamedly; can you imagine, if there were more women writers, more women philosophers, more women inventors, discoverers, creators of such treasure troves of knowledge and whimsical stories fro way back then and beyond before? What an absolute shame. I came across Cavendish's work because of a podcast on redesigning Philosophy Course curriculum to include Women Philosophers more prominently, called The New Narratives Philosophy podcast. I am extremely glad for it, but especially so for introducing to me this person, this writer, this storyteller.
Of course, the book isn't without it's racism and colonialism heavy undertones - The Duchess advises the Empress to keep her kingdom as one nation with one people of one religion. Secularism is too complicated and difficult she says. How this works in a world of animal-people, I can guess from history.
Of course, the book isn't without it's racism and colonialism heavy undertones - The Duchess advises the Empress to keep her kingdom as one nation with one people of one religion. Secularism is too complicated and difficult she says. How this works in a world of animal-people, I can guess from history.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
This is one of various works touted as “the first science fiction novel” (especially in contexts where people are pointing out the strong influence of female authors in the early development of science fictional concepts). The full title is The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, first published in 1666, but with an expanded version (as discussed below) published in 1668.
In brief: a young woman is abducted by a would-be suitor but the ship carrying them is blown off course to the North Pole and enters a passage into an alternate world, in the course of which everyone on the ship except for the young woman perishes of the cold. From the description of the transition and the destination, the world seems to be not so much located in the interior of the Earth, but accessed as a sort of Klein bottle concept where both worlds are “exterior” to each other. The text seems to alternate between treating the home world of the young woman (who is never identified by name -- first she is simply “the lady”, later referenced by another title) as our own world, but later on there is reference to three worlds, with the third being the one the author herself dwells in, which is not directly accessible to the other two. The “Blazing World,” as this destination is called, is clearly utopian, being united under a single emperor and a single religion where everyone lives in peace and harmony. The inhabitants are of a number of different races, partaking of the nature of various animals (bird-men, fish-men, bear-men, worm-men, in addition to unmarked humans) to each of which is attributed some inherent set of intellectual skills. Unsurprisingly given the era when it was written, there’s a lot of unexamined essentialism, colonialism, and “white savior” issues. “The lady,” by virtue of her inherent virtue and purity is instantly recognized as being worthy to be the spouse of the emperor and is thereafter referred to simply as “the empress.”
After this elevation in status, the text bogs down in a long philosophical treatise, presented as the empress’s inquiries of the various beast-scientists as to the nature of the world she has come to rule. The Wikipedia entry on the book suggests that this section had originally been a separate and purely factual treatise “Observations on Experimental Philosophy,” which was appended to the fictional tale in the 1668 edition. (If this is the case, I’d dearly love to get ahold of the simpler 1666 text to see if it holds up better.) If I’d been reading this as a text, I probably would never have gotten past the first few pages of this section, but I had quite wisely downloaded the LibriVox.org audiobook version in preparation for a long road trip. Even so I had to take a break to avoid being put entirely to sleep.
Eventually, the dramatized lecture on experimental philosophy shifts into a more complex story when the Empress turns her hand to introducing Christianity to the Blazing World (though she knowingly uses stage-magician’s tricks to convince her subjects of its truth) and then has her beast-philosophers summon up immaterial spirits to satisfy her curiosity about the condition of the world she left behind. They discourse for some time on theology and philosophy and in the end the Empress sets her heart on creating a Cabbala. The Empress asks the spirits to recommend to her a scribe who can write up the Cabbala for her and they recommend one Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. There’s only one problem: the Duchess lives in an entirely different world in accessible to the Blazing World, but they can procure her spirit to talk to the Empress by a sort of astral projection, “and truly their meeting did produce such an intimate friendship between them, that they became Platonick Lovers, although they were both Femals.” [swoon] The Empress expresses a desire that the Duchess should rule over a similar realm to her own, but the spirits point out that every person is capable of creating an infinity of worlds within their own imagination over which they could rule, so why be content with just one? Both women exercise this power for a while, creating and abandoning invented worlds at whim. Oh, and the Duchess introduces the Empress to several important English concepts including Theater, with which she is much taken. (There are also digressions where the Duchess laments her husband’s financial woes and how badly Fortune has treated him.) The Empress decides she wants to visit England for herself, so she and the Duchess to the astral projection thing again and somehow both end up sharing the Duke of Newcastle’s body with him and there’s this discussion of the awkwardness of three spirits sharing a single body and the jealousies that arise thereby.
The next section involves a court case against the personification of Fortune, who is being indicted for crimes against the Duke of Newcastle, during which the Duchess pleads his case most eloquently and successfully. After this, the two women’s souls take leave of each other, promising to visit regularly (by astral projection, of course). And that’s the end of Part 1.
Part 2 can be summarized as, “The Empress checks out how things are going back in her home world, discovers that her homeland is beleaguered and throws the scientific and natural resources of the Blazing World at the problem of how to smite her homeland’s enemies and make it the dominant political power of its world. This involves the invention of submarines and chemical warfare. A great deal of the world-building info-dump from the beginning of the novel now becomes relevant as the special physical resources of her new realm are weaponized against the unsuspecting folks back home. They are victorious and the Empress returns home considering it a job well done. There is a last episode where the Duchess visits her in spirit once more and is lavishly entertained. The story concludes with an epilogue to the reader from the Duchess, describing the supreme delights of world-building and encouraging others to do the same.
For me, it is this emphasis on the self-conscious creation of an inventive secondary world, and the exploration of its nature, properties, and consequences, that places The Blazing World solidly in the lineage of modern science fiction and fantasy. If the plot seems a bit sluggish to the modern reader, and the language overly florid, and the social politics more than a little cringe-worthy, this must be chalked up to being A Product of Its Times and, if not forgiven, at least understood. As an imaginative creation, the Blazing World ranks solidly up there with Middle Earth, Narnia, and Barsoom. For that matter, when stripped down to the essence of the plot, the story could hold its own against many a straight-forward quest adventure. But do yourself a favor and listen to the audio version while doing something tedious like housework or weeding. I doubt many modern readers would have the patience to slog through it otherwise.
In brief: a young woman is abducted by a would-be suitor but the ship carrying them is blown off course to the North Pole and enters a passage into an alternate world, in the course of which everyone on the ship except for the young woman perishes of the cold. From the description of the transition and the destination, the world seems to be not so much located in the interior of the Earth, but accessed as a sort of Klein bottle concept where both worlds are “exterior” to each other. The text seems to alternate between treating the home world of the young woman (who is never identified by name -- first she is simply “the lady”, later referenced by another title) as our own world, but later on there is reference to three worlds, with the third being the one the author herself dwells in, which is not directly accessible to the other two. The “Blazing World,” as this destination is called, is clearly utopian, being united under a single emperor and a single religion where everyone lives in peace and harmony. The inhabitants are of a number of different races, partaking of the nature of various animals (bird-men, fish-men, bear-men, worm-men, in addition to unmarked humans) to each of which is attributed some inherent set of intellectual skills. Unsurprisingly given the era when it was written, there’s a lot of unexamined essentialism, colonialism, and “white savior” issues. “The lady,” by virtue of her inherent virtue and purity is instantly recognized as being worthy to be the spouse of the emperor and is thereafter referred to simply as “the empress.”
After this elevation in status, the text bogs down in a long philosophical treatise, presented as the empress’s inquiries of the various beast-scientists as to the nature of the world she has come to rule. The Wikipedia entry on the book suggests that this section had originally been a separate and purely factual treatise “Observations on Experimental Philosophy,” which was appended to the fictional tale in the 1668 edition. (If this is the case, I’d dearly love to get ahold of the simpler 1666 text to see if it holds up better.) If I’d been reading this as a text, I probably would never have gotten past the first few pages of this section, but I had quite wisely downloaded the LibriVox.org audiobook version in preparation for a long road trip. Even so I had to take a break to avoid being put entirely to sleep.
Eventually, the dramatized lecture on experimental philosophy shifts into a more complex story when the Empress turns her hand to introducing Christianity to the Blazing World (though she knowingly uses stage-magician’s tricks to convince her subjects of its truth) and then has her beast-philosophers summon up immaterial spirits to satisfy her curiosity about the condition of the world she left behind. They discourse for some time on theology and philosophy and in the end the Empress sets her heart on creating a Cabbala. The Empress asks the spirits to recommend to her a scribe who can write up the Cabbala for her and they recommend one Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. There’s only one problem: the Duchess lives in an entirely different world in accessible to the Blazing World, but they can procure her spirit to talk to the Empress by a sort of astral projection, “and truly their meeting did produce such an intimate friendship between them, that they became Platonick Lovers, although they were both Femals.” [swoon] The Empress expresses a desire that the Duchess should rule over a similar realm to her own, but the spirits point out that every person is capable of creating an infinity of worlds within their own imagination over which they could rule, so why be content with just one? Both women exercise this power for a while, creating and abandoning invented worlds at whim. Oh, and the Duchess introduces the Empress to several important English concepts including Theater, with which she is much taken. (There are also digressions where the Duchess laments her husband’s financial woes and how badly Fortune has treated him.) The Empress decides she wants to visit England for herself, so she and the Duchess to the astral projection thing again and somehow both end up sharing the Duke of Newcastle’s body with him and there’s this discussion of the awkwardness of three spirits sharing a single body and the jealousies that arise thereby.
The next section involves a court case against the personification of Fortune, who is being indicted for crimes against the Duke of Newcastle, during which the Duchess pleads his case most eloquently and successfully. After this, the two women’s souls take leave of each other, promising to visit regularly (by astral projection, of course). And that’s the end of Part 1.
Part 2 can be summarized as, “The Empress checks out how things are going back in her home world, discovers that her homeland is beleaguered and throws the scientific and natural resources of the Blazing World at the problem of how to smite her homeland’s enemies and make it the dominant political power of its world. This involves the invention of submarines and chemical warfare. A great deal of the world-building info-dump from the beginning of the novel now becomes relevant as the special physical resources of her new realm are weaponized against the unsuspecting folks back home. They are victorious and the Empress returns home considering it a job well done. There is a last episode where the Duchess visits her in spirit once more and is lavishly entertained. The story concludes with an epilogue to the reader from the Duchess, describing the supreme delights of world-building and encouraging others to do the same.
For me, it is this emphasis on the self-conscious creation of an inventive secondary world, and the exploration of its nature, properties, and consequences, that places The Blazing World solidly in the lineage of modern science fiction and fantasy. If the plot seems a bit sluggish to the modern reader, and the language overly florid, and the social politics more than a little cringe-worthy, this must be chalked up to being A Product of Its Times and, if not forgiven, at least understood. As an imaginative creation, the Blazing World ranks solidly up there with Middle Earth, Narnia, and Barsoom. For that matter, when stripped down to the essence of the plot, the story could hold its own against many a straight-forward quest adventure. But do yourself a favor and listen to the audio version while doing something tedious like housework or weeding. I doubt many modern readers would have the patience to slog through it otherwise.
adventurous
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
what a wonderful story!
i am genuinely confused as to why everyone i have spoken to about this novel despises it. are you all taking this read at face value? even then it is an entertaining fantasy tale. are the long sentences off putting? after a stretch of reading any complex or different reading style the brain adapts to ease access. even then, the long sentences add to the fantastical ramblings of this beautiful piece of escapist fantasy.
naturally, with any good piece of literature, there are multiple interpretations. one may consider this a piece of pro-colonial fiction, yet i am confused as to this interpretation. is there not a lack of any racial hierarchies in this utopia? is it not explicitly stated that one race should not try to overthrow another in this peaceful world? naturally, the segregated idea of utopia is one to be criticised in modern interpretations, however, i would argue that this piece is not referencing colonialism at all (although if it was, it would most certainly be anti-colonial) and instead is simply a genius work of escapism from a woman shunned by her own society for her mental illness. nobody will read this, i am sure, but i would like to say fuck you guys in particular who do not take this piece seriously because of Cavendish's mental illnesses. This is a wonderful work from a woman trapped in stigmas of her own society, who yearns for a new lease at life in a world without judgement.
i am genuinely confused as to why everyone i have spoken to about this novel despises it. are you all taking this read at face value? even then it is an entertaining fantasy tale. are the long sentences off putting? after a stretch of reading any complex or different reading style the brain adapts to ease access. even then, the long sentences add to the fantastical ramblings of this beautiful piece of escapist fantasy.
naturally, with any good piece of literature, there are multiple interpretations. one may consider this a piece of pro-colonial fiction, yet i am confused as to this interpretation. is there not a lack of any racial hierarchies in this utopia? is it not explicitly stated that one race should not try to overthrow another in this peaceful world? naturally, the segregated idea of utopia is one to be criticised in modern interpretations, however, i would argue that this piece is not referencing colonialism at all (although if it was, it would most certainly be anti-colonial) and instead is simply a genius work of escapism from a woman shunned by her own society for her mental illness. nobody will read this, i am sure, but i would like to say fuck you guys in particular who do not take this piece seriously because of Cavendish's mental illnesses. This is a wonderful work from a woman trapped in stigmas of her own society, who yearns for a new lease at life in a world without judgement.
slow-paced