The Sword and Laser discussion

The Shining Girls has some discussion questions in the back of the book. I want to get into one of them:

7. Could Kirby have used the House to go back and fix the past and stop Harper before he killed all the women?
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To this I say no. The house itself is evil. It uses Harper, first as killer and second (or zeroth, perhaps) as guiding force. Neither explains why the house exists or why it has the time traveling power. That is not explained in the book, and is left open as an essential mystery. The house would not have allowed the killings to be undone.

There are plenty of other questions and as a public service I'll copy them out. Feel free to jump in on these as well.

1. Harper tells his second victim, Zora, “You shine. I need you.” What does shining mean to Harper and what makes each of these very different women a shining girl?

2. Kirby Mazrachi is the only person to survive Harper’s attack. Is she already a shining girl, or does her survival make her one?

3. The Shining Girls takes place in Chicago. What role does the city play in the story? How would another setting have changed The Shining Girls?

4. When Harper enters the House—before committing any of his future murders—he finds the names of his victims scratched into the wall, in his own handwriting. What is the House and why does it have a hold on him?

5. What is the significance of the objects Harper takes from his victims? Why does he feel the need to connect them?

6. Harper is obsessed with signs and portents and feels like he is fulfilling a destiny. What role do free will and fatalism play in The Shining Girls?

7. Could Kirby have used the House to go back and fix the past and stop Harper before he killed all the women?

8. What is Kirby and Dan’s relationship? How does it develop and change them?

9. What is the role of Bartek and how does he fit into the loops of the House?

10. How does The Shining Girls illustrate the ways that women’s roles and social issues have changed (or not) throughout the twentieth century?

Someone said in another thread the time travelling is powered by a (view spoiler)[ghost (hide spoiler)].

Pretty sure at the end (view spoiler)[when Harper dies, the author says that he becomes the spirit animating the house. And presumably the one behind all of the timey-wimey shenanigans thereof. Which I guess counts as a ghost. (hide spoiler)]

Oh I thought it might have been the other guy that dies at the beginning. He seemed important somehow.

Tamahome wrote: "Someone said in another thread the time travelling is powered by a [spoilers removed]."

That is both true, and to my mind, incomplete.

(view spoiler)[Harper does die and go back in time to become the spirit of the house. So in that sense he's guiding himself.

But where did the house itself and its time traveling abilities come from? Not answered. By way of analogy, Harper has been a passenger in a car. When he dies his spirit turns into the driver. The source of the car is not disclosed. (hide spoiler)]

I'm not entirely sure I agree with the premise of "the House is evil." Because the house itself doesn't actually do anything to encourage or discourage certain behaviors.

Yes, Harper uses the House to commit these murders, but he only does that because he finds the room full of the trophies that he has/will have collected. Harper does it to "close the circle", but the House itself doesn't do anything to encourage or discourage his actions.

In contrast, there's the previous/next owner (timey-wimey fun times!), who uses the House's time traveling powers to make money gambling. As far as we know, he never hurts anyone.

Harper uses the House's ability to allow him to kill people because he was already a psychotic killer, as shown by his actions before he ever entered the House.

Basically, the House allows people to indulge in their worst behaviors, with little to no consequences. Some use it to pull the Sports Almanac scheme from Back to the Future, some use it to be a serial killer. But the House itself only facilitates this.

This is a job for one of those youtube "ending explained" videos.

Yeah, I was doing the audiobook and got a little distracted towards the end so I might have missed a subtlety in the conclusion. My feeling throughout the book was that the house itself was only special in that it was somehow a vortex for time travel. All the extra stuff about the house wanting him to do things was just a projection of Harper's twisted mind. Ditto for the "Shining".

I already returned my library copy but check the last chapter. I'm pretty sure I read (view spoiler)[Harper becomes the spirit of The House. (hide spoiler)] So there is something behind the house wanting him to do bad things.

Oaken wrote: "I already returned my library copy but check the last chapter. I'm pretty sure I read [spoilers removed] So there is something behind the house wanting him to do bad things."

(view spoiler)[Yes, Harper becomes the spirit of the house. (hide spoiler)]

Beukes is like the Elmore Leonard of scifi, with very succinct prose. Leonard's 10 rules: https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbo...

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

Tolkien would like a word with Elmore.

Also, the Henry Miller ones are a little contradictory.

7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
...and...
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Unless he means, "See people but not friends - go see complete strangers and people you don't like! Go places like bars and drink with those people you don't like but don't go to the cinema with them!"

Some morsels from Stephen King's On Writing:

"In medias res necessitates flashbacks, which strike me as boring and sort of corny. They always make me think of those movies from the forties and fifties where the picture gets all swimmy, the voices get all echoey, and suddenly it's sixteen months ago... but I like to start at square one... I'm an A-to-Z man; serve me the appetizer first and give me dessert if I eat my veggies."

"...(I find wardrobe inventory particularly irritating; if I want to read descriptions of clothes, I can always get a J. Crew catalogue).

"I think locale and texture are much more important to the reader's sense of actually being in the story than any physical description of the players. Nor do I think that physical description should be a shortcut to character. So spare me, if you please, the hero's sharply intelligent blue eyes and outthrust determined chin; likewise the heroine's arrogant cheekbones."

"For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else. In most cases, these details will be the first ones that come to mind."

"I should close this little sermonette with a word of warning—starting with the questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story...But once your basic story is on paper, you need to think about what it means and enrich your following drafts with your conclusions. To do less is to rob your work (and eventually your readers) of the vision that makes each tale you write uniquely your own."

As I was implying in the other thread, it’s a pretty nihilistic plot: (view spoiler)[Kirby kills Harper, whose ghost then gives the house purpose, which enables Harper to go on his killing spree, which allow Harper to unsuccessfully attack Kirby, which causes Kirby to hunt him down, which inspires Harper to hunt her down again, which leads to Kirby killing Harper, whose ghost then gives the house purpose, which enables Harper to go on his killing spree...repeat ad infinitum... (hide spoiler)]

If there is a lesson from the book, it appears to be "violence begets violence".

I guess an interesting, paradox-creating question is: what would have happened if (view spoiler)[Kirby had not killed Harper (hide spoiler)]?

Complete destruction of the universe.

I don't remember the title but I remember another book with a plot along the lines of this:

(view spoiler)[
Man travels back in time to save the Titanic. Fails but he does change things - specifically John Astor lived (one of the richest people in the world at the time) while his new wife died (in our timeline she lived.)

WWI breaks out. Astor, seething at the British for the Titanic disaster, uses his influence to keep America out of the war. Germany wins, changing history.

Because of this, the time machine does not get built. Ergo, the Titanic history is not changed. Astor dies. So America joins the war. Germany loses, changing history back.

The time machine is therefore built, allowing this fellow to alter the history of the Titanic. Keeping America out of the war...

Eventually the universe starts to come apart at the seams from being bounced back and forth like a ping pong ball. (hide spoiler)]