syrimne's blog
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:05:53 GMT
Mar 07, 2010 01:05PM
I've decided to post this sucker, just because I like it and I don't have a lot of time with my full time job and working on nonfiction articles and trying to sell the novel to market short stories too.
Let me know what you think, if you read it! Many thanks!
Be warned - some adult content & at least one disturbing scene I can think of. No porn, just wrong & freakish.
“Karma”
by jc andrijeski
Death finds me softly...for once. I take time to witness. Spurting gasps of blood slow inside tiny threads without fanfare, a thick, obstinate pulse echoes a desire to remain. In the deepest of those caverns my sight explodes into silence. I am not like them.
Alone, I wait. I watch, knowing it is not finished.
Inside that light I wonder, why am I here?
No one answers.
****
Summer season, 1706 B.C.
Settlement of Yil-qeshek
Mesopotamia, Northwest corner of modern Iraq
“Sir? You are Ari-alahat, are you not?”
Yanked from one of my more pleasant daydreams, I was, I must say, unimpressed with the emaciated specimen of pre-manhood who faced me, looking as though he’d slept on camel dung for moon cycles, ratted robes decayed, lurid with not a small whiff of human urine. My eyes found a sore on his leg, and immediately I feared maggots; there had been mutters of a new, vicious breed that would eat living flesh as well as the dead.
Closing my eyes, I willed him away.
When I opened them however, he remained, scratching the side of his neck with fingernails black with dirt, head tilted sideways like a dog. His eyes ate mine, lingering on my face, dark with a hunger I wished I hadn't seen.
I lay on blanket-covered ground among the trees in the garden of my cousin, sucking at a sticky ice drink that one of the servant girls had been kind enough to make me, giggling and handing it to me so our fingers got entangled. Remembering that now, I slurped more of the drink, my tongue pleasantly numb. I tried to recall my mind’s last musings, prior to that. I had become involved with a female of not insignificant charms, whose husband had a habit of chasing the tribal wars, leaving her grateful of company. I was wary, of course, of her husband’s return. Even a modicum of perception can sniff out when one’s food has been tasted, especially with frequency; she insisted he was a boor and would never notice, but I had my doubts. I had, in fact, been musing as to whether I could have him permanently sent away, using some measure of my influence with the king, for I was his mouthpiece and primary connection to the temple…when I realized the small, foul-smelling boy had still not departed.
Fly wings flickered around his eyes and the hollows of his collarbone. I wondered where my infernal servant had gone, and then wondered what possessed me to repose outside at all, when there were far more cushions and slave girls indoors.
The boy’s face remained haunted.
“You will help me,” he said.
I frowned.
“You will help me,” he said again. “...I have heard you are a holy man, and I require teaching. I wish to be a great sage and seer, like you.”
It was no act; he had a longing in him, this one. Yet it irritated me that he wished me to share it. This life was for plucking beautiful women and rolling them around on my tongue, for using my gifts to please the king for baubles...not for starting a spiritual quest, whether mine or anyone else’s. I felt a vague warning. Images flitted at the corners of my eyes--an iron road that stretched off into mountains and desert, a sky filled with flames hotter than the palace furnaces. The fire I saw around this boy spread black clouds, thick as locusts chased by birds, darkening the land for further than a man can travel in a day, leaving it desolate and covered in ice. I thought the land I glimpsed must be a sort of hell. In it, people held sticks that belched flame, riding monsters with slug-like feet that tore up grass and mud and had one long eye that exploded death. For an instant…just one…I hesitated.
Then I decided it wasn’t my problem.
“No,” I told him. My voice changed with my sight, vibrating the air, causing the birds to rise and flap from the trees. “I am not your teacher.”
He hesitated, feeling the change, the power there. “But I feel certain--”
“No,” I said, more in my usual voice. “It is another you seek.”
My inner eye sought out a building of stone through the walls of the garden. There lived a man I knew to dabble in some of the lower arts. It might placate the boy, long enough for me to have him removed from the city at least. I told him of the house and how to reach it.
“...He will teach you what you need,” I said, using the faintly solemn tone I used with the king when he wished me to play court magician. It was not my real voice, the voice from that pool of light and stars, but it was unclear whether the boy noticed. His eyes grew eager. When I would not acknowledge his submissive bowing and bobbing, he wandered in the direction of my crooked finger. As he did, I told myself that I could not interfere, in a world not of my own.
Then it occurred to me that I already had.
****
In the beginning, silence held court.
Breath, ever lacking, overshadowed whatever wished me into existence. An expanse of molten dark reigned in its place, living night too deep to comprehend, even for the first beings. Words do it no justice; even pictures capture it not. Memories remain in most of us who were there, understandings that return at odd moments, frustrated by their lack of fulfillment, causing us to look at a person or thing differently, or simply remember that from which it came. Those who on occasion rediscover the fact of our smallness, citing figures comparing our physical coverings to that of the matter contained in a single galaxy in which we live--comparing that galaxy to the billions of galaxies that make up the charted worlds--speak of only one part.
There is so much dark, to make that light visible.
Even after all this time, that first dark is what I remember best. Fertile, it writhed. Then, apropos of nothing, it changed.
A vortex appeared, a cavernous cyclone ripping through the night. A beam exploded from its center, shocking all of us who witnessed. While I might be able to convey pieces of how it appears to my mind’s eye now, I could not possibly convey its impact, much less its meaning. Hot, liquid lava poured onto our eyes...into our skin, mouth and ears. Expanding white flames twisted complex clouds through black, a subtle dance of threads as narrow as a child’s hair, in more colors and shades than human eyes can perceive. A bird, which sees with two more cones of color than our human three, could not have seen this vision in its entirety.
It was, and remains, the most beautiful thing.
Following this, a great many other things occurred. Too many for even the larger parts of my being to make the faintest pretense to track. Things beyond number. Wondrous things. For many, many millennia I lived an existence distant and incomprehensible to me now...far, very far from the pain of physical incarnation or its absences. I lived with others like me, spread into stars packed so tight that the skies themselves shone white, bleeding the last of those first molten lights. Music sang. Beautiful music. Gods, if only I could hear it again! Like audio sex, the most amazing notes in the most talented orchestras in the world, mixed with the most lovely birdsong, yet ten times as beautiful as it breathed through everything…
Then one day, perplexedly, I was here.
I did not like it.
My deaths were simple back then, quick. My brain remained only partly formed, and somewhat unpredictable. Oops, I fell into a volcano. Ouch, a giant bird lizard ate me. Damn, I got stepped on...that sort of thing. Straightforward, clean, and rather innocent in their way. Suffice it to say, this period ended, too.
I suppose I could go into more explanation here, about how this happened, what it meant, how it affected all of us, but humankind’s mythology has already attempted to supply those and I do not presume to educate you here. Countless lessons, hard won, have taught me to keep silent on occasions where my understandings conflict with the stories of my time. I cannot count the number of reasonably promising incarnations cut short due to a few badly placed phrases. I would find myself hanging in an iron cage, carcass rotting in a sea water dungeon, or swinging on a rope tied to a thick branch, flesh body pounded, stabbed or twisted, bent and broken and leaking fluids of the most noxious kinds. And always, as my essence floated over the insect-infested remains, the same thought would come to mind from that wiser vantage.
Shit. This again.
So much in life depends on the student.
Urak and I shared one of those dances that seem to have no meaning, no possible purpose...yet repeat again and again and again. I call him Uruk, although I never learned his name, not in that first meeting at least. Yet that is how I will forever picture him, how my inner eye recalls his features despite the intervening years. My mind called him Uruk for his accent. He spoke as if he rose from the stone steps of that fair city, which I presumed the place of his birth, the city of Gilgamesh.
****
Winter, 1232 A.D.
Rumigny, held by the Archbishop of Reims
Northeast of Paris, west of the border to the Roman Empire in the reign of Louis IX of the House of Capet (St. Louis)
The European Continent, in what later became France
I stumbled through the door, already drunk. My men laughed loudly, drunker than I, but it remained my job to scout the hole, get a sense of the place, determine if it would take bloodshed to get the respect and supplies owed us as the lord’s men. I stank of blood and piss, neither mine, and more than anything I wanted food, a warm fire, and a local girl to lie on who might amuse me. Despite the protracted fight once we broke their hiding, I had passion still to expend after crushing those vermin in the cliffs.
The locals appeared nervous of us, as well they might, half being likely traitors, sympathizers at least. It made it easy to pick a few to kill, if the need arose.
Then I looked up. At the balcony above the dirt floor of the drinkery a pretty thing not yet fourteen with dark hair and eyes like a newborn deer stared down at me, small white hands gripping the wood banister. She looked afraid, but an odd hope gleamed in her look that brought me a flush of warmth. Drawn to power, she hoped for a kindness, too. Still, she was a fool to expect to beg her way into strength; I was just the man to teach that lesson.
My looks at that time were oft considered handsome, which meant little to me other than the opportunities such a thing afforded. I took great pleasure in the innocent; their eyes did interesting things when I revealed myself, and I did so love to reveal myself, now that there were few moral impediments to doing so. In this vessel, this life, I could expand parts of my nature outward into visibility, flex them a bit. I would cut the cord simply to watch the light leave, using my animal body to amuse myself with what remained, both afterwards and especially before that final parting of ways. Looking at this little girl, I saw the rest of my evening very clearly.
If any of the other men approached her at that point, I’d have cut into their organs. I almost hoped they would, so she would think it love that drove me. The longer I could keep her on that wish, the more interesting things would be later...
...An aside from your humble narrator in the retelling of this: I am not proud. Yet neither am I convulsed in the kind of shame and self-horror you might imagine. You see, these lives each contained a part to play, and little else. You might wonder whether, under all this, I still existed: the singer of time, the watcher of the first light,,,even the self-satisfied but relatively unaware young man of the desert who’d turned away this fresh-faced girl once before, when she’d been a young boy of far less amiable exterior. The truth is, yes, I was still there. But this guise, as all others, is primarily meant for learning. I wished to know the vagaries, rewards and punishments of every spectrum of existence, and I did not play my personages halfway. I justify this by reminding the reader that to do so, to “play act” within the play act, would be a complete waste of time. I wanted to understand why this behavior--that of the wanton boor for whom pleasures came so easily--was so very addicting to many in the human life stream. When a part of me got hard every morning, realizing I’d been blessed with the ability to not give a damn, for a short while at least, about the consequences of any action, whether through the usual emotional torments or simply from being hung from a tree...I soon did. It isn’t the bleeding bastards of the world who are generally hung from trees, set on fire or locked in watery cages. That honor was generally reserved for those who wished to aid and assist their fellow man.
Also, because I had few to no boundaries or restrictions, I won the physical lottery on all counts...although if it comforts you, I paid a stiff price later. During that time however, I killed creatively, deflowered children, cut new orifices in the wives of my companions just when they’d thought us to be friends...and consequences did not concern me a bit. That larger part of me even relished doing this properly, for I was a perfectionist in my own way, and liked exercising my ability in new areas of learning.
But as the girl’s doe-like eyes faded under my knife, her begging done for compassion or love or whatever childish dreams held thrall in her, my organ still throbbing in her tiny body, that other me, the one who remembered that first dawn and the expanding clouds of night, felt something else. It wasn’t fear, but was instead closer to the, “Shit. This again,” sentiment usually reserved for more morally-bound puppetries. For it wasn’t until that final moment when the light left her that I realized that I knew this being.
And I had impacted its journey...some might say ill-favorably...once again.
****
A few more times, this occurred.
I won’t bore you by recounting them all. Once I met him in China, where he took the body of a serf and I his landlord. I raped his wife and fed him to my hogs before I recognized him. The next meeting occurred in the Americas, where we both lived in proximity to a cult of sun worshippers who liked to cut out the hearts of their victims and pledge their blood to the star...you can likely guess on which side each of us located in that little cultural experiment. I saw him in the streets of Paris, both of us boys during the time after the revolution, when catacombs were built under the city and most of us relied on petty thievery to eat. I killed him for a dead bird.
Time goes backwards and forwards for beings like us, so that we lose track of order, of causality. But clearly, I meant to clash with this brother of mine again and again, and he seemed to always come off the worse in those meetings. I felt more than a twinge of guilt, seemingly destined as I was to best him horribly, no matter our differences in age and sex, no matter how hard he fought to acquire powers from meeting to meeting. For it became clear soon that he sought me out, that he held me accountable in some way. Yet I felt no hatred of him, personal or otherwise; no pleasure or vindictiveness caused me to do it. I can only think now that I had chosen him somehow, and he me, although the purpose of it all still eludes me.
****
May 10, 1941 A.D.
London, England
I stood on the roof of the Parliament building, hands clasped at the small of my back, gazing out over my city. Fire lit the darkness in patches; my aids stood anxiously behind, wringing hands and wishing me with occasional tugs and jabs to come back inside, to stop the spectacle of standing at the edge, looking down. But I found I could not look away. Experiments had ended; learning had ended. Now, I played for keeps, did that which whatever fool creature had sent me to do...but still felt like I groped in the darkness.
The shrouded outlines of already bomb-eaten buildings lit up in sharp bursts under the Luftwaffe’s descending cargo. The rain of cylinders fell in perfect symmetry, almost beautiful in their testament to the order behind the minds from which they were created. They fell like stones, somehow making the world quieter just prior to their landing. Everything that not on fire lay in perfect dark, so the periodic bursts punctuating the sky only added to the sense of silence...at first. Then the ground shook like a monster breaking through from below with his teeth; the sky filled with smoke and ash and debris. I gripped my cane’s end, feeling the building tremble underfoot. I became aware of the sound of planes again, the scream of more bombs falling--
“Sir.” A pup danced by my side, tugging my coat. “Sir, begging your pardon, sir...but you must come inside. Even the King had asked that you--”
I waved a thick hand. King? Bah, they must be desperate to get my sagging carcass indoors. But I smiled, exhaling smoke. My aide looked at me like I’d lost my mind. I tipped my hat to the burning buildings, even as another blast went off.
“Fireworks, my boy...just a few sparklers.” I waved the hand with the hat, smiling, cigar clenched between my teeth. They expected my bravado. Despite the complaints, I knew it cheered them. “We must have them worried, eh?”
“Prime Minister--”
But I waved him off, staring out over the flames erupting from craters.
Despite my smile, another part of my mind churned, clicking through thoughts. He’d found a way to plant one of his inside my ranks. I could smell it. For all I knew, the imposter was this child who gaped at me, all the while plotting to push me off the building’s edge. I’d caught one spy already. He’d been sent to me by old Joe, although I’d never be able to pin it on him, and needed the Americans too badly to accuse him without sufficient cause. Uruk had become quite clever at recruiting this time around. He had legions of the dogs sniffing around him, hoping for raw meat, getting closer to mine every second.
I suspected the diminutive little ranter knew I’d cracked his ridiculous code. Things worsened daily, the element of surprise commonly lost in the confusion of signals. Nightmares tore at me, threw my mind into the pits of those black dogs, but I refused to fall to his sorcerer’s games. Both of us had played back and forth over this fence for some time, yet the thought kept me awake at night, that he might this time, at last, beat me...and with so much at stake. He certainly had more on his side, in terms of numbers and toys; he’d run like an obsessed jackal, obtaining trinkets from around the world, even that accursed spear. I had only age over him, and a not insignificant amount of humor to carry me through the worst of those days. Yet, the war had made me gray...heavy as wet cement, dark as the clouds and ash that fell from the sky. If not for the sun rising over the horizon every morning, reminding me...if not for the birds that made me smile, the kitten by my foot, Clem’s smile in the morning...I would be lost. It is them to whom I owe, not the reverse. By the time war broke officially, I was indecently ready for it. Since I’d been made PM, I’d done everything in my power, even using my real voice in speeches in an attempt to carry the humans through, to bring hope and strength in the midst of this ugly war.
Yet despite my preparations and the fact that I showed myself more clearly in my true form than I had in millennia, my foe displayed himself in a much finer light when our battles hinged on the swaying of others to our whims. In every life, I’d always been a bit too much of a loner, too pompous, brusque and conceited to be good at exerting support in any but a time of crisis or war, when those attributes become most highly prized. War highlighted all of my worst faults and rewarded me for them. Even now, in the worst of the pounding, I am told I am a beast to tolerate...again, not leastwise by my own son, who I fear may have disowned my affections entirely. It credits him really, that he would see the ego behind my heroism, the selfishness behind my refusal to surrender.
But he, kind and dear soul that he is, does not know the depths of hatred that drive this most foul historical quarrel between my foe and me. Being aware in this life, moderately at least, and somewhat connected to those other threads of my being, I knew plenty about the twisted and embittered dwarf who single-handedly drove this conflict into our backyard. If little Adolph, as he is now known, were to defeat me at last, capture my people and raise his bloody swastikas over the bricks and mortar of my city, which I am quite sure remains the impetus for this ridiculous conquering war of his, I feel certain he would do his best to rape, pillage, cut out our hearts--in essence all the things that were done to his own bodies throughout the years. Whether one wanted to argue his vindication in this obsession or not, my people are not deserving of his wrath, even if I am. No, there would be no surrender.
No truce would be forthcoming, not from me. No hope for peaceful disposition remained between us. We would fight the bastards with our teeth if we had to; it was a message I had so far instilled with some success, despite the rancor of those like my son, who perhaps sensed on some level the utter purposelessness of this war once the surface indecencies had been stripped past. We were, after all, not of the same stuff...or even the same evolutionary stream.
The guilt of this plagued me.
Yet, having gotten them in this mess, I could not let my enemy destroy them. I did occasionally find myself wondering, had he followed me here, to this world? What was it that made us different from these others? And having started with so much purity, how was it that we were now filthy with past wrongdoing and fatigue, with the weight of so many lives and deaths and ill and good deeds failed upon us? I had no answer to these questions, nor time to contemplate them at any depth. All I knew was this: I would not let him win.
****
January, 2191 A.D.
T’ung Jen Territory
Formerly Seattle, in WA state
The former United States, North America
It is cold. I pull a vest tighter around my body, turning my face to the buildings. A flickering blanket of wet snow tunnels through them in silent clouds, reflecting on mirrored surfaces, the blank eyes of windows empty of movement. I imagine I hear flakes sizzle against the rare patch of bare skin in the crowd that waits outside the double doors to the underground hall. Skyscrapers stretch so high around me that they seem to meet overhead, leaving small spaces where clouds are visible through blackened girders. I exhale, and the steam from my lips and tongue joins that of my companions, just before it freezes.
“Weapons.”
I glance up at the man. As his yellow teeth peer out from between chapped lips, I shrug, reach smoothly to my back, flick the cracked leather strap with my thumb and slide the rifle from its holster. The gun is ancient, nearly as long as my torso, and I see his eyes widen a bit. With long black hair and almond eyes, I am invisible in this city. Most of us had come over in the first wave at the end of the ground wars, when the deep snows first arrived. Now we are all the same here, and the blotchy-skinned interlopers don’t notice us.
“You. Little Chinky. Give me the gun.”
I hand it to him, unsmiling. Something must show in my eyes, because his leering grin fades. I ignore his flushing red face, give him a nod and polite salute, brushing past to enter the underground hall. Forms must be obeyed, even here, in this pretense of civility.
In the cities, the military is king, a kind of quasi-feudalism that reminds me of past times that still sit in some recess of my mind. We who choose to live in the tundra become the zoo creatures once we venture inside the city’s crumbling walls, just like the military cows won’t come far into our territory without kneeling to us.
Some things do not change...much.
I know he is here. I have known for months, but before I see him in the flesh, I must slink past his security. I walk through the metal arch, sweating under my protective suit although it has often balanced for temperatures far warmer than this. Fear isn’t the primary emotion, although that exists, too. What I mostly feel is the nerve-stretching anticipation that comes when one knows they have only one chance to pull off a complex and high-risk task, that a million or more things could go wrong, a number that ratchets higher every moment that falls outside carefully planned training simulations. Yet no alarms sound as I pass.
In the last breaths of cold air from the glaciers outside, the water from my insides freezes to ice on my lips. Then heated air blasts my face and body suit. I begin to melt, leaving soggy black footprints, but so does everyone; mine disappear in the green carpet. Green, like grass had once been, like the stems of flowers in my gardens at Chartwell. But those dreams have melted long ago, and I had lamented the passing of the natural world back then as well. It seems the wont of the grumbling old man I have become, whatever my outside form may be, to lament the Earth of old. My comrades separate in the hall like deer scattered by wolves, each hoping not to be singled out, each looking to me until it raises my nerves to see their stares. Armor-clad soldiers ring the room; not a one wears leather holsters or carries a projectile gun. They line three walls, and the walls make both my people and theirs look out of place, both with one another and in the ancient hotel room that fits neither time period we represent.
The Leader came to this backwater place willingly. In this life, he calls himself Uruk openly, perhaps to taunt me. He comes promising us trinkets and redemption, to free us from the devastation wrought by the wars, by the screwed up weather and the dying animals and plants and snow-covered and pollution-choked lakes and rivers. He comes promising a way out, by fighting with him in the sky, like so many of our people have already done. They thought themselves the start of a new utopia. But I had heard these words before, in a different land, during a time when I could remember blue skies and small planes screaming overhead, dropping bombs that make me smile now, that appear like toy bombs dropped on toy cities.
I suppose he thinks he has already won. I am, after all, a grounder, one of those left behind.
I sit in the front row. All seven of mine came armed, but we all know I will take the first shot. It remains to them to finish the job, in case I fall first. We do not have long to wait.
The curtain rises. Scattered, falsely-enthusiastic applause rises and falls in hitching gasps throughout the long hall. A tiny smile forms at the corner of my lips--that has not changed much through the years either, yet my rancor vaporized sometime in the past two lives. My smile brings a few unsolicited stares, even in the confusion of the Leader’s entrance. My face was beautiful once, and remains so to many...until they notice the long scar that splits my countenance nearly in two, from my forehead down to my throat before it flicks off to one side, the last attempt of a claw to hold me before rendering up the ghost. A bear had done that to me. How many people could say that and still walk around, weighing 97 pounds soaking wet, 108 pounds with her gun? I am not above pride, even after all this time.
Like last time, Uruk has his humans and I, mine. He wouldn’t be allowed to kill my humans this time, either. I refused to allow him to create another world of smoldering buildings and fire-blackened bodies. We wouldn’t escape into space, like those who feared the carrion eaters. Instead of lying down, we fought to survive, to retain something of ourselves. I had accepted long ago that I represented once choice in that spectrum.
These were my people; those, his.
He enters and I see his face. I feel my heart flutter. It isn’t the first time I have seen him, or even the one hundred and first. I glimpse the hope his eyes held at our first meeting, transformed now to a frenetic glaze of frustrated wanting. That young boy I met in the gardens of Yil-qeshek stands in his eyes, the girl with the doe eyes and vacuous smile of Reim, the slave on the pyramids of lake Texcoco, the zeal of the frustrated painter of Austria...the ranting lunatic of Munich and Berlin and Prague. I sit poised on the edge of my chair, watching as he gazes out over the crowd, his eyes flickering, searching, still vaguely hopeful, and it occurs to me that he looks for me, too.
When it comes, I can feel nothing else. Compassion, remorse...feeling suffuses me, a warm wash of emotion that holds not a small glimmer of nostalgia for those early expanses of dark and light. I refused him my brotherhood all those years ago, when it was never me he wanted, not really. He saw those first bursts of light too.
We do not belong here, either of us. As I think this, I realize that this meeting is futile, as all the others have been. Neither of us will make it back to that incandescent place.
It is forever gone.
Even as I think it, his eyes light on mine. His lips lift in a slow smile. I feel his mind link with other minds, with the soldiers rimming the room’s walls. It is with a clenching in my chest and my first true understanding that I reach into my boot for the shard that I will use to defeat my brother once again. Perhaps it is, after all, the last time...
It is a silent wish, one I hope he hears.
end
Feb 03, 2010 03:32AM
Journey Into The Red Book: Liber Primus
Check out the essay here
And be sure and poke around the online magazine, Escape into Life - it's really great! Some lovely gems in art, writing and critique can be found there, ncluding the graphic novel posted there (written by the magazine's editor), "Lethe Bashar's Novel of Life: Las Vegas"
Nov 29, 2009 01:46PM
Marketing an Artistic Community
Yawn.
It's just not that interesting. Not even to me, apparently, and it's ostensibly my life, at least in part. Not to say it's not comforting for other writers to read some of this stuff, including myself...and to realize that pro writers suffer a lot of the same stresses and boredoms and blockages as newbies...but it's not likely to get non-writers all that jazzed.
So it goes back to being someone who is interested in things. Not just themselves (which, let's face it, those writerly blogs are really kind of a self-description), but about something else that intersects with the interests of other people. It's more like the community-building approach of most websites and web-networking strategists, but (hopefully) less overtly manipulative.
I think the problem is, with marketing, as with everything, most people are thinking of themselves. As in, how will I sell MY book, how do I get people interested in MY product so I can make more money for ME, etc., etc. Which isn't horrible or anything, but I think isn't going to interest anyone else very much. You almost have to start thinking of it as, "Look, I have this really cool world I want you to come live in with me," if that's your gig, and you're really into a particular world or book, or, you have to be into something else in the world, and be passionate about it, and passionate about other people who are into it too.
In other words - F*** marketing! Be into things! Want other people to be into things with you! Be an enthusiast, as Ray Bradbury would say...and care about bringing something cool into the world, not just about getting people to pay your bills for you. Restated yet again, have something to give.
I think when you look at a Stephanie Meyer or even a JRR Tolkien, they really sold people a world, not a book. When you look at people like Cory Doctorow, he cares about stuff, and is trying to make a difference. Neil Gaiman is a personality, not just a collection or work, and he gave the goths something to love in comic books, a whole aesthetic style that mirrored their own and gave it mythical import and very cool graphics. People give people a way to look at themselves or the world. Writers need to see themselves as idealism generators, and culture makers, not just as capitalists. People want to see themselves differently, and that's not something they do with their heads, at least not fully...it's also a bit of a responsibility, and why art is so important.
You could argue there is only a "market" (meaning a cultural and individual interest) in escapism right now, but again, that misunderstands the role and power of art. It's not a one-way street. The fact that accountants have done most of the art trading over the years, in movies and in books, make us start to think like them, but the reality is, art can't be purely reactionary to be successful, it needs to be leading the way, at least in part.
Anyway, I for one would love to see a very cool movement around art that's about making the world a better place...not for the sake of cleverness or money, but due to a real interest in the world and in crafting a new way of seeing it. There are books that go there - Cory Doctorow's Little Brother is a good example of this, and in my view, so is The Road by Cormac McCarthy (the book anyway, I haven't seen the movie). There need to be more voices added to this chorus...more visions on igniting that spark of rebellion and hope that make people want to wake up and do something different. Because really, we can talk about social systems and health care and economics all we want, the real problem to me seems to be the apathy that has taken over so much of the world, especially in the United States, the utter unwillingness to have hope that things could be different or better.
Anyway, that's my thought on "marketing".
Nov 18, 2009 09:57PM
Reserach on Religion in SF and Fantasy
cut for length -
My own random (and somewhat incoherent) notes:
- Despite the claim in numerous articles and blogs that religion is "absent" in science fiction and "highly prevalent" in fantasy, 90% of the articles and blogs I read cited SF examples and titles and little to none in fantasy
- The "Holy Grail" quest as a mainstay in fantasy and its roots in Christian mythology - might be worth discussing?
- Same with Tolkien, which has become a bit of a Christian/psuedo-Christian mythos of its own?
- Robert Jordan and Star Wars referenced as examples of elements of Buddhist mythology
- Connection between "the mystic" and "the magician"
- Elements of "light" versus "dark" critical to all stories, whether implied or overt, even if tropes are subverted. Subversion only works in a society that will react to that subversion
- Subset of horror - the religiously based horror/dark fantasy and elements in nearly all urban and gothic fantasy, if only in terms of symbolism (e.g., vampire myths, Seventh Sign, the Exorcist, The Omen, 2012, The Knowing, Stigmata, etc., etc.)
- Fantasy as the genre closest to mythology - religion as a purveyor of mythos, and relegated to "mythology" once dead in the culture. Mythology and fantasy share the epic quality of religions
- People's concepts of good and evil as inevitably framed by their explanations/internal stories about the meaning of their place in the world and the story of its creation
- Idea of "hope" and "skepticism" with hope being more of a true comfort than a dogmatic assertation of faith (again, the idea that you can't change someone's mind about a deeply held belief by supplying them with information - need an emotional impact/connection, no matter what the belief system).
- "myth, fantasy, religion" as inextricably entangled - the displacement of religious discourse onto fantasy
- "consolation of hope" (Tolkien)
- Four possible ways to discuss religion in fiction (in terms of discussion): 1) Gods really exist in the world as characters who act human-like (materialist view) and the related rules and powers of that god or being are "true" in the literal sense, 2) Belief systems of the character, 3) Belief systems of the author that come through in the story in terms of what behavior and/or belief systems are rewarded/punished in the course of the story, how sympathetically certain characters are portrayed, etc., 4) Books in which the main premise/conflict centers on the mythos of belief systems being literally true - often apocalyptic or horror fiction (e.g., Book of Revelations coming to pass, ouiji boards, etc.)
- Every world or species needs at least a basic cosmology - a theory of how the world came into being and what it means (that they can extend to themselves). I believe people need that story as a cushion to frame their reality, even if it is based purely on science/materialism
- People's fascination with evil (raised by Zoran in the panel itself - his students constantly wanting to talk about/write about Satan).
References:
From SFWA, an article on Worldbuilding that includes systems of magic and the creation of religions. More of an overall guide on worldbuilding, but there's a section entitled "People and Customs" that includes some great guidelines on creating religious systems.
"On Religion in SF and Fantasy, an Interview with Orson Scott Card" - a critical discussion of how religions and religious persons are normally addressed (or not addressed, as Scott argues) in speculative fiction, and fiction in general.
A website entitled "Great Science Fiction and Fantasy Works" has a whole section on religion in speculative fiction and a list of books the site authors consider to address religious themes in one way or another: http.
There was actually a wikipedia article that specifically addresses a list of religious ideas in science fiction. It's a good place to chase down a few references anyway.
This is a trippy site - includes the supposed religious affiliations of science fiction/fantasy writers along with links to interviews and/or other source for the categorization of said author. Cross-references books and even page numbers with religions, covering belief systems that are pretty danged diverse, (e.g., has articles on "Zorastian Science Fiction," "Amish Science Fiction," "Quaker Science Fiction" and numerous others, as well as a database listing a heck of a lot of different belief systems. Claims it has no agenda in doing this, other than the creation of a log for this information and is clear that it is NOT meant to be a source of information about said religions. Even has a whole section on the "Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters."
FARP: Fantasy Art Resource Project. "Creating Fantasy and Science Ficiton Worlds" "Day O = In the Beginning God: Theology" with a list of guidelines/tips on things to consider and places to start in creating a religious system, as well as a number of options of directions to take that are common in science fiction and fantasy already. Steps into magic systems and shows the connections with religions as well, but starts with cultural beliefs and does a good job showing how this is critical to decisionmaking and the world built.
A blog article by Tia Nevitt on her frustration as to how religion is normally portrayed in fantasy, from blog entitled "Fantasy Debut". She provides some great examples and discusses how easy it is to portray characters as overly dogmatic or overdone.
A Few Thoughts on the Fantasy Genre has a pretty comprehensive list of sub-genres, including religious sub-genres. Pretty high-level, but it has some interesting concepts on the building-blocs of fantasy in myth
"Skepticism and Hope in 20th Century Fantasy Literature" by Kath Filmer-Davis I didn't read this - a book that sounded interesting though, pertaining to the use of fantasy in some readers to fulfill the needs met by others through religion.
Gamegrene site had a great resource page on creating Fantasy Cosmogony. Written for creating gaming worlds, but really intelligently done and with a great list of references, aptly called: "Recommended Reading: Where to Steal"
Blog article - "How Science Fiction found Religion" - by Benjamin Plotinsky. Discusses the religious parallels with stories such as Star Wars, the Matrix, Superman Returns, etc.
Blog article, "Religion in Science Fiction - (1) Introduction" discussing in detail the relationship over time between religion and science fiction in particular. An interesting discussion of the evolution of the split. Will probably piss a number of people off in its discussion of dogmatism in science, but I found it really interesting, and well-written. There are a series of articles on this here (which I admit I haven't read all of yet), but that seem to explore these concepts and this history in more depth.
A list of Helium articles on the topic of religion's impact on science fiction - some are pretty lame, but there are a few good ones thrown into the mix.
A blog posting on a slight scuffle between a SF writer and his claim that Christians couldn't understand/enjoy SF
An article by Scalzi about his experiences on a similar panel, although it sounds like they got more into specific examples and talked about the overall impacts more than we did, and mostly focused on movies, not books.
sfSite.com forum discussions on science fiction and religion
Encyclopedia Mythica - a great resource that I've used before
Nov 15, 2009 03:51PM
random thoughts...like Jack Handy
More and more, I'm beginning to think no one is ever persuaded by fact. Even those who are persuaded by fact aren't persuaded by the facts themselves, but by the idea of facts, the notion that such a thing as "fact" can be pinned down and be determined to exist. The idea of fact reassures them, gives them some sense of place and constancy in the world...a sense of control in other words. I'm not saying that one should disbelieve those facts, but perhaps to think about the fact (!) that we are all prisoners of the stories we need to give our lives meaning. That's the power of fiction really, and why I honestly believe it has more inherent power to shape consciousness than any constellation of facts, no matter how well articulated or expressed.
Random thought #2:
The idea that a universal truth might exist strikes me as an interesting one. I think if it does, it's a moving target, and in no way able to be summed up by a liturgy of facts, no matter how extensive. Those facts would of necessity live in the world of the senses, which cannot encompass the entirety of reality, no matter how materialistic one's world view, in that we cannot perceive so many things that we know, at least in theory, must exist. Those we can extrapolate from circumstantial evidence will always remain theories to some extent, and also as a list must always be incomplete, because logic dictates that other phenomena must exist that don't leave trace evidence that our senses can perceive. I think truth will always end up being, even by the most well-meaning of seekers, like the story of the eight blind men and the elephant, where one describes it as a rope, one a tree, one a fan, one a wall.
Random thought #3:
One's milk should never be thicker than one's cereal. If it is, do yourself a favor, and desist.
I saw a dance performance the other night that really made me think differently about the whole East-West divide and how the evolution of self identification could be highly benefited by some time with China and the East in a position of cultural dominance (or at least equality) on the stage of world media. The dance producer, Shen Wei, is from Hunan province originally I believe, now lives in NYC, and seemed to me to be realizing some of the inherent tensions and complexities of these two worlds in the nature of his choreography and subject matter. He did a brilliant job of illustrating the beauty of both individualism and of the collectivist mentality...in fact, his entire piece on China seemed to be fascinated with and driven by the tension between those two human identification impulses. It really made me think about the positive marrying of these two identities, in that the individualism of the West can breed a separatist, lonely and self-centered identification that is often based (ironically) on a form of conformism that denies its own existence...whereas the collectivism of the East can both squash individual expression and difference, and lend itself much more easily to fascism. The marriage of the higher modalities of each (which I believe was Shen Wei's interest and concern as well), seems to me to be a quite inspirational goal, and a way of viewing the "changing of the guard", culturally-speaking, as quite a beautiful thing, providing it is managed with some openness to change and evolution on both sides. Of course, as human beings, we have trouble with viewing such intense, identity-oriented changes as anything other than the most serious threat to our very existence...so I fully expect it can only occur with some level of conflict, misunderstanding and even bloodshed. Still, the potential is there, and I find that very heartening, and a much more productive way to think of the shift in power across the globe!
Random thought #5:
We need to develop a love of the idea of space exploration again. That's one thing I really love about the new Star Trek movie...that love of exploration, of new places, of adventure, of fun. We need to stop basing on our idealism on the past. For one thing, it's just stupid - basing our model of the perfect world on the past will only breed frustration and escapism. We need to create a new idealism of the future, one based on the challenge of new frontiers...of the excitement of new vistas and challenging new problems that aren't just about luxury and gadgetry and distraction and scarcity, but have to do with exploring the very nature of our relation with the world and everything in it and entail partnership in the face of seemingly overwhelming challenges. We need to stop avoiding work as our pleasure and go back to the pleasure of real triumph from obstacles overcome...ultimately I think that's why sports are so popular again, but sports will never be a driving force for meaning that can fully satisfy, for ultimately it is the mock battle, not the battle itself. Nothing substantial can be effected through the mere avoidance of discomfort and the seeking of diversion and avoidance of boredom. The idea that this has become the driving force under capitalism weakens all of us as a species and takes away much of what makes life worth living.
