Hello dear friends!
I have written a new piece of fan fiction called A Gift. It has been approved now, and is available through the links below.
As always, there is a Swedish original as well as an English translation.
The story is set in the mid 1970s, that is a few years before the events in the novel.
A Gift
A Gift
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist
Re: A Gift
Aha! So Eli told Oskar the truth after all. Nicely done. 
We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain. (Roberto Bolaño)
Re: A Gift
Thanks!
Yes, I have for a long time argued that Eli spoke the truth then.
Yes, I have for a long time argued that Eli spoke the truth then.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist
Re: A Gift
Fascinating. Thanks!
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”
Re: A Gift
Delightful that you provide a story on how Eli got his money. Yet more delightful, for me, is the backstory you give, which provides insight on Eli's character.
I suspect the time period for this is the late 1960s or anywhere in the 1970s. The clues are the age of train technology and Eli's use of plastic bags. I wonder when plastic bags entered our lives ~ does anyone know?
Given Eli's state of being a feral, wandering child across time, I can see how the arrival of trains, buses, cars, highways, airplanes plus little items such as plastic bags and battery torches would creep slowly into his life. There are few opportunities for him to experience most forms of change directly. Rather, changes become known to him and at yet a slower pace they begin have an impact on his life. For example, the new means of transportation matter little to his day to day existence. It is interesting to note how you have him react to headlights and the noise of the nearby highway. Highways, which bring a string of trucks and automobiles, all with bright headlights and the noise of the engines & tires, and the smell of the exhaust, are something he is shown to be avoiding yet has found a way to adapt to. In the setting you have provided, he is aware of a highway's proximity, is avoiding it directly, yet is using it as a means of navigation ("it would lead him right"). So, he's adapting to change and doing so in a way that works for who he is.
As for interactions with people, that's much more difficult issue. Eli was being raised in a agrarian environment. He likely feels most at home, when having to deal with people, when in that environment. I doubt he would have had much, if any, experience dealing with city folk, tradesmen, and so on. And as the years go by, the workings of men and women change. Their interests, businesses, and expressions change. Yet there's no good way for him to be able to keep up with this and to know of new behaviors until they are upon him. Likely he spends a fair amount of time during encounters at a loss over what the involved person's intentions might be. Take this story, for example. We -raised in this era and thereby more often than not fluent in understanding a situation- can infer what the reasons might have been for this man and this woman to meet at this barren gravel lot at night, including her bringing a large sum of money. But to Eli, I am not at all certain he has the capacity or background to gather much of anything beyond the immediate actions. This does put him at a considerable disadvantage!
I suspect the time period for this is the late 1960s or anywhere in the 1970s. The clues are the age of train technology and Eli's use of plastic bags. I wonder when plastic bags entered our lives ~ does anyone know?
Given Eli's state of being a feral, wandering child across time, I can see how the arrival of trains, buses, cars, highways, airplanes plus little items such as plastic bags and battery torches would creep slowly into his life. There are few opportunities for him to experience most forms of change directly. Rather, changes become known to him and at yet a slower pace they begin have an impact on his life. For example, the new means of transportation matter little to his day to day existence. It is interesting to note how you have him react to headlights and the noise of the nearby highway. Highways, which bring a string of trucks and automobiles, all with bright headlights and the noise of the engines & tires, and the smell of the exhaust, are something he is shown to be avoiding yet has found a way to adapt to. In the setting you have provided, he is aware of a highway's proximity, is avoiding it directly, yet is using it as a means of navigation ("it would lead him right"). So, he's adapting to change and doing so in a way that works for who he is.
As for interactions with people, that's much more difficult issue. Eli was being raised in a agrarian environment. He likely feels most at home, when having to deal with people, when in that environment. I doubt he would have had much, if any, experience dealing with city folk, tradesmen, and so on. And as the years go by, the workings of men and women change. Their interests, businesses, and expressions change. Yet there's no good way for him to be able to keep up with this and to know of new behaviors until they are upon him. Likely he spends a fair amount of time during encounters at a loss over what the involved person's intentions might be. Take this story, for example. We -raised in this era and thereby more often than not fluent in understanding a situation- can infer what the reasons might have been for this man and this woman to meet at this barren gravel lot at night, including her bringing a large sum of money. But to Eli, I am not at all certain he has the capacity or background to gather much of anything beyond the immediate actions. This does put him at a considerable disadvantage!
Re: A Gift
The story is set in the later half of the 1970s, after Swedish bank notes had been updated. Especially the 1000 kronor notes looked radically different before then (they were huge), and I think Oskar would have noticed had such money been in Eli’s box in 1981.
I envision Eli, and later Oskar as well, travelling a lot by foot. Like I mention in the story, Eli wouldn’t have had any other means of transportation for the first half of his life. Carriages and even more riding horses were for the wealthy, poor people went by foot. And people walked long distances in the days before affordable public transportation, such as trains, so Eli would have done a lot of walking in his life. Furthermore, travelling by foot would be the most inconspicuous way to move about. After Oskar ran away with Eli, avoiding detection would have been paramount, with Oskar’s spectacular disappearance in the news and his face on the front pages for everybody to learn to recognise. I therefore think they walked from Karlstad southern Sweden, where they crossed over to Denmark.
I think you are right in that Eli would always remain detached from society. He would learn of new ways only after they have become common, but may never fully understand them. For instance, in 1981 Eli would certainly know about television, but he would be completely unaware of its impact on daily life. To modern people TV provides a common experience that we use to bond with others. We talk about what we have seen and opine about it, but Eli would never have experienced this aspect of TV. For him, it would be only a gadget that can display moving pictures.
Now, coming to think about it, wouldn’t Oskar in 2019 be similarly unaware about the changes brought with the Internet and smart phones? I think so. He would have been able to read about those in the newspapers, but he wouldn’t understand what they mean to people’s lives.
I envision Eli, and later Oskar as well, travelling a lot by foot. Like I mention in the story, Eli wouldn’t have had any other means of transportation for the first half of his life. Carriages and even more riding horses were for the wealthy, poor people went by foot. And people walked long distances in the days before affordable public transportation, such as trains, so Eli would have done a lot of walking in his life. Furthermore, travelling by foot would be the most inconspicuous way to move about. After Oskar ran away with Eli, avoiding detection would have been paramount, with Oskar’s spectacular disappearance in the news and his face on the front pages for everybody to learn to recognise. I therefore think they walked from Karlstad southern Sweden, where they crossed over to Denmark.
I think you are right in that Eli would always remain detached from society. He would learn of new ways only after they have become common, but may never fully understand them. For instance, in 1981 Eli would certainly know about television, but he would be completely unaware of its impact on daily life. To modern people TV provides a common experience that we use to bond with others. We talk about what we have seen and opine about it, but Eli would never have experienced this aspect of TV. For him, it would be only a gadget that can display moving pictures.
Now, coming to think about it, wouldn’t Oskar in 2019 be similarly unaware about the changes brought with the Internet and smart phones? I think so. He would have been able to read about those in the newspapers, but he wouldn’t understand what they mean to people’s lives.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist
Re: A Gift
Thus, knowing how the current 1980s society works, Oskar surely spikes Eli's survival chances. Yet a couple decades on, as progress arrives a bit faster than before, either they keep up or their naivety could lead to their end. Not knowing that phones contain cameras, for example, or that location services on phones can lead authorities and others to a missing person's location almost immediately could be trouble. Not knowing of the extensive surveillance system of the UK subway system and even that across London could lead to they've being routed. The modern age is truly one for them where not knowing of advances is an ever encroaching danger.
Re: A Gift
Yes, not knowing about these things would be dangerous. However, O&E need not necessarily be completely unaware of technology. I have this idea that Oskar would read newspapers, primarily to learn about any signs that he and Eli might have been discovered. He would have started this habit the very first day when he was on the run, and he would have continued thereafter. This might keep him reasonably up-to-date regarding the technical aspects of cell phone cameras etc, so he might be aware of the dangers technology pose to him and Eli. Still, that would not necessarily make him understand what it really means to be continuously connected to one’s friends and foes, like kids are these days through their smart phones.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist
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sauvin
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Re: A Gift
Metoo, you are one VERY fine storyteller. I loved the story, and I loved how you wrote it. It's almost a model of minimalism: we don't know what the woman's story is, and we don't really care, and it's entirely appropriate to leave out what brought her to that place, who the man was, and what was the nature of their meeting. Large sums of money were involved, it happened at a lonely place after dark, she indicated it'd be "very bad" for the man to become a vampire, and that's all we really needed to know.
Well, except that maybe she was a good woman who'd just been providentially released from really bad circumstances.
With respect to the plight of a twelve year old from the out-and-beyond of rural Scandinavia from a time long before electric light bulbs, my own thinking wasn't markedly dissimilar when Elysse remarked on glowing orbs of glass or of long, slender tendrils of unnaturally smooth stone snaking about everywhere (these would be highways, roads and streets), but that was also while she hadn't yet fully emerged from some kind of fugue. I agree it must be true that anybody (or anything) who lives outside the human community during a time of rapid technological change is going to find it very hard to keep up, and pretty much for the same reason old people who live very much in the heart of modern society also have trouble keeping up. The older we get, the more we get set in our ways and the less we're able to adapt to anything our ways don't account for.
It's not strictly true, though. I'm 60, and my mother is... erm... a few months older than me. She certainly had no trouble latching onto cell phones, sending and receiving texts and pictures to and from everywhere. I presume either my sister or her daughters introduced her to this technology and how to use it, and I think it took Mom about five minutes flat to see the huge benefits a stupid little flip phone could bring.
That's not to say that Mom has become an avid consumer of state-of-the-art consumer electronics. Her television is still one of those 25" monsters it takes two strong men and a wheelbarrow to move, and she has no computer. She sometimes asks some of the most hilariously naive questions about computers, computer technology and suchlike, and she's smart enough to fear that she'd innocently do something scatterbrained and wind up giving away her life savings or something.
I'd almost be willing to make the same claim for Eli. It seems certainly true enough that she'd understand implicitly the observation that "any technology sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from magic". She isn't stupid, and will have figured out for herself that this "magic" could easily be a two-edged sword, sometimes working for her and sometimes working against her in potentially disastrous ways.
Still, she made short enough work of a Rubik's cube, didn't she? As time marches on, and more and more technological wonders can be found in people's pockets, purses and backpacks, she'd play with them, wouldn't she? She'd poke at them, and come to understand them at least at some level or other. Magic or not (and to most people today, computers are inherently magical), she'd eventually learn to use it, even if on her own. A "borrowed" cell phone might not be much use a device for communicating with other people via voice or text, but wouldn't she be fascinated by what she could explore on the Internet?
With Oskar, it's different. This is an urban guy born into a time when the technological explosion had already been underway for a while. He's literate, probably can't remember a time when he wasn't, and even at the age of 12 in the year 1982 (more or less) he's constantly pounded with new things to do, new ways to do old things, stories about newer things coming. He's conditioned to accepting new things, far more so than Eli ever could be. Even if he'd never been previously exposed to them in the year 1995 or so (at the age of 25), a cell phone in a happy meal's pocket wouldn't have mystified him for very long, even if he might tend to understand it in a fairly crude way: a telelphone that uses radio instead of wires.
Oh, wait, that's exactly what a cell phone IS!
Oskar, turned or not, would have always known that technology can have hidden dangers. Even in 1982, you can never tell when there's a camera hiding in the shadows, and even in 1982, it'd have been easy enough to find cameras you can hide in a clenched fist. Even in 1982, you can never tell when there's going to be a car with a radio and a driver who's on the lookout for a blonde kid who's wanted as a person of interest in an investigation into a recently burgeoned rash of unexplained murders. Oskar, more than Eli, would be almost monomaniacally devoted to perusing whatever Scandinavia has for Popular Science and Scientific American magazines, trying to understand or guess at what kinds of technological nightmares might be dogging their tails, nightmares that Eli may never have any hope of understanding well enough to evade.
Well, except that maybe she was a good woman who'd just been providentially released from really bad circumstances.
With respect to the plight of a twelve year old from the out-and-beyond of rural Scandinavia from a time long before electric light bulbs, my own thinking wasn't markedly dissimilar when Elysse remarked on glowing orbs of glass or of long, slender tendrils of unnaturally smooth stone snaking about everywhere (these would be highways, roads and streets), but that was also while she hadn't yet fully emerged from some kind of fugue. I agree it must be true that anybody (or anything) who lives outside the human community during a time of rapid technological change is going to find it very hard to keep up, and pretty much for the same reason old people who live very much in the heart of modern society also have trouble keeping up. The older we get, the more we get set in our ways and the less we're able to adapt to anything our ways don't account for.
It's not strictly true, though. I'm 60, and my mother is... erm... a few months older than me. She certainly had no trouble latching onto cell phones, sending and receiving texts and pictures to and from everywhere. I presume either my sister or her daughters introduced her to this technology and how to use it, and I think it took Mom about five minutes flat to see the huge benefits a stupid little flip phone could bring.
That's not to say that Mom has become an avid consumer of state-of-the-art consumer electronics. Her television is still one of those 25" monsters it takes two strong men and a wheelbarrow to move, and she has no computer. She sometimes asks some of the most hilariously naive questions about computers, computer technology and suchlike, and she's smart enough to fear that she'd innocently do something scatterbrained and wind up giving away her life savings or something.
I'd almost be willing to make the same claim for Eli. It seems certainly true enough that she'd understand implicitly the observation that "any technology sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from magic". She isn't stupid, and will have figured out for herself that this "magic" could easily be a two-edged sword, sometimes working for her and sometimes working against her in potentially disastrous ways.
Still, she made short enough work of a Rubik's cube, didn't she? As time marches on, and more and more technological wonders can be found in people's pockets, purses and backpacks, she'd play with them, wouldn't she? She'd poke at them, and come to understand them at least at some level or other. Magic or not (and to most people today, computers are inherently magical), she'd eventually learn to use it, even if on her own. A "borrowed" cell phone might not be much use a device for communicating with other people via voice or text, but wouldn't she be fascinated by what she could explore on the Internet?
With Oskar, it's different. This is an urban guy born into a time when the technological explosion had already been underway for a while. He's literate, probably can't remember a time when he wasn't, and even at the age of 12 in the year 1982 (more or less) he's constantly pounded with new things to do, new ways to do old things, stories about newer things coming. He's conditioned to accepting new things, far more so than Eli ever could be. Even if he'd never been previously exposed to them in the year 1995 or so (at the age of 25), a cell phone in a happy meal's pocket wouldn't have mystified him for very long, even if he might tend to understand it in a fairly crude way: a telelphone that uses radio instead of wires.
Oh, wait, that's exactly what a cell phone IS!
Oskar, turned or not, would have always known that technology can have hidden dangers. Even in 1982, you can never tell when there's a camera hiding in the shadows, and even in 1982, it'd have been easy enough to find cameras you can hide in a clenched fist. Even in 1982, you can never tell when there's going to be a car with a radio and a driver who's on the lookout for a blonde kid who's wanted as a person of interest in an investigation into a recently burgeoned rash of unexplained murders. Oskar, more than Eli, would be almost monomaniacally devoted to perusing whatever Scandinavia has for Popular Science and Scientific American magazines, trying to understand or guess at what kinds of technological nightmares might be dogging their tails, nightmares that Eli may never have any hope of understanding well enough to evade.
Fais tomber les barrières entre nous qui sommes tous des frères
Re: A Gift
Thanks for the nice words about my fan fic, sauvin!
Thus, I believe that Eli would have no problems staying à jour with technology, if only he wanted to. Neither wold he differ from Oskar in that respect. So the question rather is if any of the kids would take an interest in new technology. Would they? I'm not sure. Why would any of them want to learn about, let's say, personal computers when they never would be able to have one for themselves? This might create a blind spot for them. Even if information about new technology is readily available to them in e.g. newspapers, they might stay largely unaware of it because of a lack of interest.
I find this a most intriguing subject, but I haven't come to any conclusion. I cannot decide whether I think O&E live like total recluses, or if they keep their eyes open and interestedly watch society as it changes around them.
Now, in LtODD there is a hint of a clue to what JAL thinks: Oskar had in 2008 changed his hairstyle to a contemporary one...
What do you think?
This is probably true. Part of this is a consequence of our brains getting older, but part is too, I believe, that we are stuck in our social context. If old people don't learn about new technology is not because they are incapable of learning, but because none of their friends bother. A counterexample is a woman who is known as "Sweden's oldest blogger". At the time of writing she is 106 years old. Here's a brief wikipedia article about her. Now, her recipe for a long life is "good genes and curiosity", of which I think the last part is the crucial point. If old people see the world running past them probably is mostly due to their lack of interest.
Thus, I believe that Eli would have no problems staying à jour with technology, if only he wanted to. Neither wold he differ from Oskar in that respect. So the question rather is if any of the kids would take an interest in new technology. Would they? I'm not sure. Why would any of them want to learn about, let's say, personal computers when they never would be able to have one for themselves? This might create a blind spot for them. Even if information about new technology is readily available to them in e.g. newspapers, they might stay largely unaware of it because of a lack of interest.
I find this a most intriguing subject, but I haven't come to any conclusion. I cannot decide whether I think O&E live like total recluses, or if they keep their eyes open and interestedly watch society as it changes around them.
Now, in LtODD there is a hint of a clue to what JAL thinks: Oskar had in 2008 changed his hairstyle to a contemporary one...
What do you think?
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist