The Big Idea: Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe

Posted on September 5, 2019    Posted by John Scalzi      3 Comments

Reboot, reimagine, reinvent — there is nothing new under the sun, as they say, and humans find ways of looking at old stories in new ways. This is an idea that acclaimed editors Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe have taken to heart in their new anthology The Mythic Dream. Here they are to go into the details.

DOMINIK PARISIEN and NAVAH WOLFE:

We’ve always known that old stories have power. And as editors and readers, we’ve always been drawn to retelling those old stories. There’s something uniquely compelling about seeing authors taking the bones of an old tale and giving it new life. There’s a certain kind of narrative truth that comes from reading a familiar story turned on its head.

Retellings are a pleasure for authors to write, and for audiences to read and fall into. They give that shiver of recognition, that thrill of having something familiar refocused in dramatic ways. They’re also a joy to work with as editors. On a commercial level, there is of course the benefit of working with stories that people recognize. But, more importantly, putting together these types of anthologies is an incredibly creative process for editors, much more than simply compiling narratives. We get to delve deep into the bones of those stories, work with our authors to help them determine which bits might be worth exploring, which might resonate in today’s world and how, to juxtapose familiar and unfamiliar tales and find the connective threads between them across time and cultures.

Our first anthology, The Starlit Wood, was born on our shared love of fairy tale retellings. It was an absolute joy to get to immerse ourselves in an editorial project that let us explore and play with the stories we grew up with, the stories that shaped our narrative, story-loving minds. For our second book together, Robots vs Fairies, we went in a very different direction, but retellings still slipped in as reimagined versions of Pinnochio, Peter Pan, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We couldn’t quite leave retellings in our rearview window.

And so for our third project together, we knew we wanted to return to that same familiar territory, but like a retelling, differently. We wanted to play some more in that liminal space that comes when you retell an old story in a new way. So it was immediately clear to us what our next anthology should be.

We’ve always been fascinated by myths. Not just the two of us—the human race. And how could we not be? Myths are stories with power. They resonate across ages and cultures and help us understand the world, as it was or might have been, as it could be. Our myths define us. They’re the stories we tell and retell that shape our past, that tell us where we come from, how we got here. They anchor us into a common history, and make us feel rooted, like we belong. If our stories have been told for generations, then we’ve been here at least that long. Where stories have history, so do we. But what happens when our origin myths fail us? When the stories that define us don’t leave space for marginalized voices and identities?

When we were figuring out what we wanted this book to be about, one quote from Madeleine L’Engle kept resonating with us: “When we lose our myths, we lose our place in the universe.” We knew we wanted The Mythic Dream to use myths to reclaim our place in the universe. And so we asked eighteen brilliant writers to take these classic stories and reimagine them, to explore our collective past, examine our present, and take hold of our future.

And we couldn’t be happier with the resulting stories. Alyssa Wong imagines an Artemis and Acteon, where the hunting ground is the internet rather than the woods. Seanan McGuire puts Persephone in a carnival. Amal El-Mohtar gives Bloddeuwedd back her voice, her agency, and her vengeance. Arkady Martine’s Inanna takes command of galaxies and starships. Carlos Hernandez’s Cuban bogeyman becomes a source of hope instead of terror. Indrapramit Das asks what happens when an Indian AI become a goddess. Carmen Maria Machado’s Erysichthon gets a powerful dose of consequences.

And that’s the big idea of The Mythic Dream. Taking the stories that shaped and defined us, and shaping them in turn, in order to create the world we want to see around us. So join us in The Mythic Dream, and reclaim your place in the universe, one myth at a time.

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The Mythic Dream: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s