Weaveworld

"Weaveworld" is a novel by Clive Barker. It was published in 1987 and could be categorized as dark fantasy. It deals with a parallel world, like many of Barker's novels, and contains many horror elements.

It was nominated in 1988 for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

Plot summary

The novel revolves around the world of the Fugue, a magical world which lies woven within a rug. Many decades ago, the Seerkind, creatures of magical abilities, decided to hide themselves, through some spell, in a safe haven, after being hunted down and eradicated by humans for centuries (with humans most commonly depicting them as demons and fairies in their mythological tales) as well as being decimated by a destructive being known as The Scourge, whose form is entirely unknown to the Seerkind, given that none of them assaulted by the Scourge survived to describe it. The Seerkind collect a number of beautiful places, hills, meadows and mountains, alongside their belongings and themselves and undergo a spell which encloses all of them in a rug. They also leave one of their race, a Seerkind woman named Mimi Lasenski, outside, in the human world (the Kingdom of Cuckoos, as they call it) with the purpose of keeping and guarding the rug and also unleashing the world of the Fugue someday, when the world will be a safe place for them. Eight decades later, a sudden interest emerges for the rug, at the time an elderly Mimi (having lost her immortality) expires: Cal Mooney, an ordinary young man, bumps into the rug and realises its magical nature; Suzanna Parish, Mimi's granddaughter wants to claim the property of her grandmother and access its secrets; Immacolata, once exiled by the Seerkind into the human world wants to find the rug and destroy her race. Cal and Suzanna join forces against Immacolata, her dead sisters and the greedy human known as Shadwell. The second part of the book develops within the world of Fugue, unleashed from within the rug, and deals with the struggle of characters for the control of this sensational world. The third part sees the Fugue destroyed, with the surviving Seerkind, Cal and Suzanna hiding in the forests of northern England and facing the ultimate battle against the resurrected Scourge.

Characters in "Weaveworld"

Calhoun "Cal" Mooney: A bored young man, whose life alternates between his job at an insurance company in Liverpool and his homing pigeons, until he encounters the mysterious rug that instantly strikes him as something peculiar. Cal gets entangled in a magical adventure he never dreamt of while also realising his feelings for his companion Suzanna Parish.

Suzanna Parish: A young woman who pays a visit to her dying grandmother, Mimi Lasenski, and finally discovers her secret. Suzanna is half-breed, carrying both Seerkind and Cuckoo blood in her veins. After accidentally obtaining the "menstruum" by Immacolata, she becomes almost as powerful as her and proves her battle skills later on in the book, trying to save the Fugue.

Immacolata: A cold, ruthless sorceress, who was exiled by her own race, the Seerkind, for practising evil magic and longing for too much power. A woman of tremendous power, she seeks the rug with the purpose of destroying it and ultimately unmaking her kind.

Shadwell aka the Salesman: A greedy man, whose specialty, as he often exclaims, is his talent to convince others to buy "whatever" he wants them to buy. After Shadwell is given a gift by his accomplice, Immacolata, a suit whose glint is able to hypnotise and persuade everybody, he gradually becomes more and more confident and finally decides to seize the power of the Fugue all by himself.

The Scourge: A catastrophic, ancient power of unknown origin, it slew the Seerkind by hundreds in the old times, until they decided to prevent this genocide by hiding their world within the rug. After decades of hibernation, the Scourge is awoken in the desert by an eager Shadwell, who wishes to see the Seerkind thoroughly slaughtered. Persuaded by Shadwell, the Scourge then views itself as a form of avenging angel, identifying itself with Uriel.

The Hag: One of Immacolata's triplet sisters, whom she strangled while all three were embryos in the uterus. The Hag survived as the ghostly presence of a gruesome old woman, always surrounding her sister and helping her when necessary.

The Magdalene: Immacolata's other triplet sister, who also survives after her prenatal death as an ectoplasm. A nymphomaniac, she frequently rapes defenceless men and gives birth to brutally deformed abominations within the matter of hours.

Jerichau St. Louis: One of the Seerkind who is among the first five to be unleashed from the rug. He later becomes Suzanna's lover.

Hobart: A cruel and rather deranged police inspector, whom Shadwell manipulates so as to capture Suzanna and Jerichau. He is later possessed by Uriel.

Nimrod: Another one of the first five Seerkind to be unleashed from the carpet after Cal tears a piece of it.

Mimi Lasenski: Suzanna's grandmother, she is the guardian of the rug. At the time Immacolata tracks her down, she is too old and weak to use an effective magical trick and willingly dies in order to prevent herself from disclosing any secrets, under Immacolata's pressure.

Barker on "Weaveworld"

Quotes by Clive Barker on the novel [ [http://www.clivebarker.info/weavebarker.html The Official Clive Barker Resources - Revelations - Barker on Weaveworld] ] :

On the nature of the novel

"...It's not a splatter book, it's not visceral. What it is is disturbing in places: I think Immacolata, the Magdalene and the Hag are very disturbing creatures. And let's also remember that fantasy fiction has its share of monsters - there are lots of monsters slavering and slobbering their way through "The Lord of the Rings", for instance: the Shelob, the giant spiders, the orcs and Sauron. When you set up battles between good and evil, monsters are bound to rear their heads. I don't think "Weaveworld" is in the same territory as "Rings" - from page 1 the latter is obviously set in another world; "Weaveworld" intends something which is closer to the kind of collision of the real and the fantastical which occurs in the pages of J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan" or in the prophetic pages of William Blake. Tolkien is completely uninspirational to me, which isn't to say that I don't enjoy his books. I didn't pick up "Lord of the Rings" and say, well I'd like to do a fantasy. In my work there's a really strong reality base even in the fantastical stuff. You do get the impression in "Weaveworld" that the Seerkind fornicate, fart - they're very far from pure. That makes them more entertaining and obscures the artificial division between the morally pure and the heroic on one side, and the completely damned, blasphemous and unholy on the other...""Clive Barker in the Flesh" "by Dave Hughes, Skeleton Crew, III/IV, 1988"

On the eroticism of the novel

"... [...] there are scenes of great depravity and darkness, and it's also a sexual world: a lot of fantasy is de-sexualised. It maybe part and parcel of the origins of fantasy, I don't know: there's a lot of romance but remarkably little sex. [...] And obviously the horror fiction is very sexual: I write highly eroticised horror fiction. [..] fantasy [...] is [...] a genre which is full of phallic swords and that kind of thing, it's important to establish female power and female potency, and the eroticism which comes with that. And it needn't all be 'goody-goody' stuff, I mean Immacolata particularly; she's kind of sexy, yet dangerous at the same time. And yet a virgin, which makes her all the more sexier of course. One of my favourite scenes in "Weaveworld" is when Jerichau makes love with Suzanna, in which his words become poems, which is a kind of image of eroticism which is potent I hope in part because it is anti-chauvinist. Because here is a man who is very vulnerable and very much in love. And of course Cal is very much in love with Suzanna, but it's a non-sexual love, under those circumstances... She has so much power in the book. She's the one who makes the plot turn 90 degrees in places…I love the Venus Mountain sequences because they are very sexual, and yet they are very erotic in a curious kind of way. But also they're absolutely such strange sequences."

Religious aspects

The novel contains several religious references, particularly in the form of character names:
* Immacolata's name is a reference to an epithet of Virgin Mary, in association to the Immaculate Conception, a central belief of Roman Catholic Church. Immacolata is often described by Barker as a perverse version of Virgin Mary. She persists on her "virtue" by keeping her virginity. She is also called in the novel by the alias Black Madonna.
* Immacolata's one ghost-sister is named "the Magdalene". The Magdalene is a lusty, nymphomaniac ectoplasm. Her namesake denotes a contrast to the "chastity" her sister's name declares, by having a vague association with Mary Magdalene, disciple of Christ. Mary Magdalene has often been erroneously identified with a nameless woman sinner (a prostitute) whom Christ saved from a maddening crowd, as chronicled in the Bible.
* The Scourge is a being of unknown origin, whose mission was to guard a garden, wherein the Seerkind were born and remained captives, until their escape. Immacolata mentions that different religions have called the garden different names, including Christianity which has acknowledged the fabled garden as the Garden of Eden.
* The Scourge presents itself to Shadwell as if it is the incarnation of the angel Uriel, with the mission to punish the Seerkind due to their escape from the Garden of Eden.

"The Scourge rose from its throne of sand, and in an instant it grew blindingly bright.Shadwell covered his eyes, but the light shone through flesh and bone, and into his head, where the Scourge was pronouncing its eternal name. I am called Uriel, it said. Uriel, of the principalities."

* Jerichau's name is a reference to Jericho, the city of Israel that is mentioned in the Bible.
* Nimrod's name is a reference to the evil Mesopotamian king, Nimrod, who built the city of Babel.

Comic book adaptation

"Weaveworld" was made into a three-issue comic series in 1991 by Epic Comics. The series were written by Erik Saltzgaber and pencilled by Mike Manley. Clive Barker served as consultant.

Mini-series adaptation

A possible film or television adaptation of the novel has often been deemed problematic, mainly due to the epic scope of the book which demands an extensive use of special effects, many costumes and scenery and a potentially huge script. It has frequently been rumoured that the novel would be adapted into a mini-series. Such rumours have spread throughout the years, since Showtime obtained the legal rights for a mini-series in 1996 but so far, despite the occasional rumours, no project has come into fruition. Novelist and screenwriter Michael Marshall Smith had completed a first draft of a script for an eight-hour mini series in 1995. Smith was later asked to write a complete script but after the project fell into hiatus, he is not involved anymore. [ [http://www.clivebarker.info/newtvb.html The Official Clive Barker Resource - Revelations - Uncompleted TV Projects] ] In 2001, Barker stated in an interview that a Showtime six-hour mini-series was about to enter a two-year preproduction stage, directed by "Queer as Folk" director Russell Mulcahy, probably shot in Australia [ [http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue204/news.html Science Fiction News of the Week - Weaveworld Near Production] ] . Barker had announced that shooting was slated to start in 2003 (with Stephen Molton as the screenwriter) but that never happened. In 2005, Barker stated that "finally, finally, finally!" the book is adapted into a mini-series [ [http://www.readersread.com/0805/ The Book Blog at ReadersRead.com] ] . As of 2006, Barker still insisted that the mini-series adaptation is about to enter production [ [http://www.newsarama.com/IDW/Barkerverse/BarkerInt.htm Talking Comics with Clive Barker] ] .

References

External links

* [http://www.clivebarker.info/wwtwentieth.html October 2007 is the 20th Anniversary of Weaveworld] Archived information and illustration from Revelations - The Official Clive Barker Resource.