I Read Books: The Blazing World

The Blazing World

A woman travels to the Arctic; at the North Pole where you can see two suns, there is a way to travel to another world (the Blazing World) as the two suns each come from a separate world. There she is discovered by intelligent bears who send her south; eventually she meets the Emperor of the world who is so taken by her he marries her and makes her the Empress. Having learned the language she then attempts to learn about the world.

Each type of animal has a different field of expertise. The Empress questions them, attempting to learn the nature of the universe. Some are comically useless, some profound, some baffling. She learns from them the possibility of envisioning other worlds and does so, discovering a Duchess who she considers her soul mate, possibly lover. Learning that the Duchess’s country is at war she has her various scientists devise weapons and goes to conquer all the other countries for her, with fish men having submarines and bird men flying ships.

Published in 1666 by Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess Of Newcastle, the novel has up to date opinions on the scientific, philosophical and also political questions of the day, some mainstream, others heterodox. Cavendish was a fervent monarchist, this being the Restoration period, a time of tranquility after the Civil Wars, she considered a single monarch the best type of government, unless, perhaps said king had an exceptional queen.

Read This: An extraordinary look at 17^th century thought through the medium of fiction
Don’t Read This: The eighth or nineth time in a row the Empress puts questions to a new set of animals and they come back with some nonsense that’s supposed to be profound it gets a bit wearing
I Read: This illustrated version