I’m still hung up on the idea of Golden Age fiction and what characterises or defines such work.
I’ve decided that my Caldryn Parliament novels promise that all will be well.
After all, what is a Golden Age but one where we find inspiration from earlier heroes that impossible dreams can be pursued? They won’t always be attained, but the journey will bless the world.
The other day I was listening, distractedly, to The Futurists podcast. Brett King and guest host Kevin J Anderson were interviewing Jeffrey Morris in an episode called, Filming the Future. Someone on the podcast said something about how the way aliens and monsters were imagined in 1960s movies was a product of the technology that existed to produce them as costumes or puppets or whatever. Now, with that physical limitation removed via CGI, AI, or insert-your-software-acronym-of-choice the possibilities are endless, and that it’s the same with the environment the aliens or monsters exist in.
But I have doubts about infinite options. I think humans always build cages, or at minimum, impose limits.
For something to be a commercial success you tend to have to trigger emotional arousal, whether by violence, fear, sex, or ambition. People like to see how they can triumph. Even the catharsis of tragedy can be a triumph (in the sense of achieving satisfaction).
So I don’t think just any type of alien or monster will appear. I think they’ll have to embody a key driver of our time (like fear linked to the necessity of responding to climate change) and be emotionally arousing with the temptation of triumph.
Think of Godzilla rampaging after the atomic bombs were dropped.
And once the movie studios see which monsters audiences respond to we’ll get more of the same.
As Sir Terry Pratchett once wrote, and I’m quoting from memory so forgive me if I get it a little wrong. “People don’t want news. They want olds.”
CGI might offer endless possibilities, but we prefer the familiar.
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I sometimes think how frustrated a newspaper or magazine editor would be if I submitted articles as short and incomplete as these posts. But I like sharing my ideas before I reach any conclusions. I like that I still have room to change my mind, add or subtract from my answers, and wander away down byways.
When you’re writing a novel (or a screenplay) everything your characters do has to serve a purpose. This is related to the idea of plants and payoffs in screenwriting. Readers (audiences) are investing their time and imaginative/emotional energy and they must be rewarded. If the writer shoves something in front of the reader to pay attention to, then that attention has to pay off.
In fiction clear lines are drawn between action and outcome in a way that real life can’t provide. Real life is like that biblical quotation, “For now, we see through a glass, darkly…”
Fiction takes the glass and polishes it clear (at least in spots) so that the reader can trace from action to outcome and be satisfied.
The reason I’ve belaboured the importance of plants and payoffs is because real life seldom rewards us with them.
We think that the kindnesses we do are seldom noticed, even more rarely rewarded, and what does it even matter?
But my life philosophy is that while kindness matters, our specific kind actions aren’t the point. We are butterfly wing flaps.
You know the old chaos theory of a butterfly flapping its wings and triggering a storm hundreds or thousands of miles away?
I believe that actions we aren’t even aware of taking are potential butterfly wing flaps. We never know what small thing we do may trigger a life-affirming outcome for a stranger.
Believing in chaotic kindness is a way to journey with hope and to feel connected even when we’re seeing through a glass, darkly. Those times pass. Our unrecognised, vital importance to others never does.
When you’re writing, one of the most effective things you can do is evoke something familiar, and then, compel people to question it; to confront it anew.
Light and darkness are common themes, dualities, in fiction.
Fiat lux! Let there be light!
But light as a metaphor loses its impact when it’s always accessible, available at the flick of the switch. Even if electricity goes out suddenly, most of us have our phones near us and they provide sufficient light for us to grope around and find a flashlight.
When I look at a candle I remember how, for most of human existence, darkness was implacable. Flickering flames were all we could summon to push back the darkness.
A well-crafted story uses what we take for granted and shakes it up.
Now, it is not darkness, but light, that threatens and intrudes. Satellites watch us from on high, security lights illuminate us, cameras track us. We are always visible, always on the record.
Fiat tenebris! Let there be darkness.
Frightened animals hide in the darkness, they sleep in their burrows. If all our lives are visible, where can we hide from ourselves?
Science fiction and fantasy both explore impossible worlds. With science fiction, elements of the world may one day come true (still waiting on my flying car), but fantasy is purely imaginary.
Some people argue that we should believe impossibilities (conceive of them) so that we can achieve them.
I am really tired of people turning entertainment into utility. We don’t have to be productive all the time. Neither do we have to pursue constant self-improvement.
Imagining the impossible—inhabiting the impossible—is about being free.
Is it impossible for us to have wings? Maybe. Should we still dream of flying? Absolutely.
(I can sew, but it drives me wild, so it’s one of the first hard-won skills I abandoned.)
Do you have any fashion resources you refer to?
On a related topic, if you ever get a chance to watch The Supersizers Go… grab it! This British TV show where Sue Perkins (comedian) and Giles Coren (food critic) dressed up and ate the food of an era is brilliant.
I haven’t done an official study, but I think fantasy is overpopulated by orphans.
The lone hero is a classic protagonist because they’re not tied down by familial commitments and are free to adventure. An orphan is also on a search (quest) for who they might be.
But for all the advantages offered by an orphan re plot development and character growth, I wonder if part of their appeal is due to our unacknowledged desire to escape intergenerational trauma. We’re all curious as to who we’d be if we weren’t shaped by the suffering of those who contributed to our genes.
In truth, genes are inescapable. However, in fantasy an orphan hero presents as a blank slate. Their experience, and their experience alone, shapes who they are.
And yet, hearing the stories of those who came before us could be the key to our own resilience.
I value fiction precisely because it offers an escape as well as a safe space to explore difficult issues. But life is challenging and as much as stories can be part of our healing, we all need help sometimes. Our stories are integral to us and should be shared carefully. In Australia you can find help from Lifeline and Beyond Blue. Wherever you are in the world, please be kind to yourself, respect your own needs, and choose wisely the people who will help you to tell your stories.
David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute, was a guest on StarTalk recently. He was talking about a lot of things, but the bit that caught my attention was the idea that language is just a thin layer over our evolutionarily ancient brains. So, when we sleep on a problem that vast part of us that isn’t defined or constrained by language gets to work.
What an intriguing idea.
If we don’t reason from language but from patterns I can imagine AI advocates arguing that AI is even better than us at pattern recognition, so woohoo! Go, AI!
BUT (yep, all capitals) we take in so much more information than an AI. It might be fed the internet, but we have bodies that are sensory hogs. We interrogate our environment constantly in ways we don’t understand, and hence, can’t replicate with AI.
Whatever “intelligence” emerges from AI it won’t be human because it doesn’t have our body, including our ancient brain.
I’m truly fascinated by the idea that so much of our self is unknowable. We are ancient, instinctive, communal yet forever locked into an individual bodily self. I’m currently asking my non-verbal brain, “who am I?” and it’s answering … “I am” by breathing and listening and being.
Was Descartes wrong to say, “I think, therefore I am”?
I grew up around horses, so to me they’re friendly creatures who’ll happily exchange slobber for apples. That familiarity—horses as pets—blunted the meaning behind the four horsemen of the apocalypse for me.
Historically, a horse and its rider were a terrifying war machine. Think of medieval knights or Mongol archers or the impact of mounted Spaniards invading South America.
To translate that terror into modern terms, substitute drones.
Pestilence.
Famine.
War.
Death.
All carried by drone.
But because they’re carried by drones, and our era is what it is (namely, connected via the internet) let’s add a fifth drone. Silence.
Silence is broken connection; a failure to communicate, a loss of trust, and the loss of bonds of community.
We have to keep talking and listening, creating and appreciating creativity, or we lose a fundamental aspect of human existence.
In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. She was warning of the loss of life, the silencing, resulting from the use of dangerous chemicals. Silent was a powerful word then; a word that warned of loss; of ending. Today it is just as powerful.
People sometimes ask why there is so much dystopian fiction and so very little utopian fiction. Often the answer given is that utopian fiction is harder to write because the conflict is less, or less obvious.
Hmm.
I’ve written a dystopian fantasy series, The Faerene Apocalypse, and I agree that it was never hard to find sources of conflict in that world.
Novels (all stories) need tension to progress and to keep the audience engaged.
But tension can be subtle. The conflict in a utopian novel mightn’t hit you in the face, but it exists. The questions of what next and why and who, how they’ll do what they choose to do, all of these questions boil down to a fundamental tension of existence—free will.
In a utopia the characters may have built a system where free will is a positive force both individually and socially, but it still exists. Harmony isn’t frozen perfection. Entropy must be countered by creation.
So, no, I don’t believe that lack of conflict is the reason utopian fiction is rare. I think the issue is authority.
In dystopian fiction authority collapses. Either the story is set in a lawless land or the authority is corrupt.
Look at the Wizard of Oz (book or movie). The authority for that world is literally named in the title, and yet, he’s merely smoke and mirrors, collapsing on revelation.
In a utopian story the authority mustn’t collapse. The instant it can be questioned, the utopian bubble bursts. Doubt is the death of utopia—of course, handled deftly, the questioning of authority in a utopian novel can become the source of conflict for the story, and be triumphantly asserted in the ending, but…
(and here’s the point this post has been building to)
To write a utopian novel the author has to be confident in the authority that legitimises the utopian community. Belief in that authority underpins the utopia both in the fictional world and for the reader.
And let me tell you that, as an author, it is very, very, very hard to summon the sort of confidence to be all-in with a single authority.
The modern world lives by Lord Acton’s maxim that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The authority that underpins a utopia has to be absolute. Anything less allows for cracks to form, beginning the fracturing of the utopia. Yet, absolute power itself corrupts. So, the authority of the utopia is the reason it will fail—unless the author presents an authority so compelling, so confident, that we can believe it transcends the limits of our lived experience of fallible humanity.
Imagining a utopia is, therefore, a political act. It requires the suspension of disbelief in pursuit of believing in a greater good, a cause. The author must convince the audience to sacrifice their doubt and embrace an authority that can deliver them from themselves.
It sounds a heck of a lot like a cult, doesn’t it?
