1000 Worlds - A Song for Lya

I've liked quite a few including your Miasma essay if i recall.I really dug "A Song for Lya" this would make a nice movie or a great episode of Outer Limits

Definitely themes familiar to ASOIAF in a few ways particularly the symbiotic relationships.I loved the element of psychic investigators.The interaction between Robb and Lya very complex.

Great story.

Thanks, voice! Although I read them when they were just posted in the reading club, this new format is better, with the stories separated.
So started by listening to "Song for Lya" last night. :-)

The man who reads Lya reminds me of my dad. I find myself tuning out, lol!

I'm at the part where Lya is upset that no-one can hear her thoughts, and so doesn't feel that she can be known. She of course can hear thoughts, but refuses to do so because it's rude.
Maybe she should listen to the rest of humanity being alone in their heads and misunderstood while drunk or stoned at age 19 or so. Or have a conversation with someone.
Grr. Grrm and his whiny teenage mean girls.
Not that empath-Robb is much help. "You know, Lya, everyone feels lonely. I should know, I'm an empath. Let's have sex!"
Grr. Grrm and his horny teenage emo-boys.
LOL, how am I doing, voice?

So voice, what makes this one stand out to you more: the Humans? Or the Grishka?

OOOH Nice one!!! I never made that connection!



Both! We have a religious conversion of Men to "gods" that are a part of the world itself, and that by so wedding (final union), they forego all individuality and purpose in the name of peace and trancendence. It's really a expertly done critique of all religious expriences, as well as trancendent drug use. Brilliant stuff. 

GRRM was a hippy, beyond a doubt, but was smart enough to see that it was only its own form of orthodoxy. It was just a neo-orthodoxy.

The Humans, two with the gift, are affected in vastly different ways by the Greeshka/Shkeen. Lya seems more like Bran (and who knows, maybe Lyanna... too trusting?), and Robb seems more like Jon Snow (hesitant, watchful, trusting, but not too much so). 

Best quote in the book, imo:


Rather than be every cotf, only "greenseers" wed the weirwoods in ASOIAF, so he's made it a bit less like brain-washing.

But for me, the message in A Song for Lya is clear:  the parasitic plants offer blissful euphoria in exchange for turning them into plantfood. 


prestonjacobs is brilliant, but I think he missed that point. As Lady Dyanna says below:



I too think that the Greeshka=Weirwoods. The cotf do not force men into the weirnet, the weirnet itself does. The cotf/Shkeen don't care about much and are not actively seeking men for any purpose, but they do have a communal reverence that seems to make them complacent in whatever schemes the Greeshka=Weirwood might have.

Cat can sense it:



People seem to glance right past the faculty of weirwoods and focus upon the humanoid race that dwells among them, but that is a mistake methinks. 



The sense of a godhead might be a side effect from Greeshka exposure, but I can't help but think GRRM wants us to ask these very questions on a personal level. He seems like a realist who wants to believe, and is trying to convince himself, and his readers, why they should... and shouldn't.