Dave’s Anatomy: My History as a Writer, #73: Science Fiction and Religion: “The Priestesses of Light”

Deep Space Nine

Science fiction occupies several sub-genres. Hard Science Fiction deals with technology and contains quite a lot of “science”; this is what writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke used to do. Space Opera is Buck Rogers and Star Wars and the like. Cyberpunk centers around technology, artificial intelligence, and informational science. Military science fiction explores war and soldiering in future and interstellar settings—Elizabeth Moon’s Rules of Engagement comes to mind. My story, “The Priestesses of Light” is more on the sociological and cultural side of things.

Kai Winn, Bajoran Priestess

Think of Deep Space Nine, a Star Trek series that ran for several years and primarily deal with cultures, their interactions, conflicts, and natures. Deep Space Nine was a space station that orbited the planet Bajor. The Bajorans were a very religious race of beings. They had been conquered and occupied by the Cardassians, a ruthless, aggressive planet system who had cruelly oppressed the Bajorans, who are still recovering from the ill effects of the occupation and have allied themselves with the Federation. Deep Space Nine is a trading post and so attracted an endless variety of beings who represent different cultures and ways of life:  Klingon, Ferengi, Trill, Lurian, Vulcan, Romulan, and many more. They interact.

With the Bajorans, religion is important. This is an interesting development in science fiction. In the future worlds of Asimov and Clarke, religion has disappeared, and science fiction generally ignored the subject for years—then a funny thing happened on the way of Dagoba. Religion re-emerged very strongly in Star Wars. And it became a subject once more.

Re-enactor dressed as Roman Vestal Priestess

My story, “The Priestesses of Light,” deals with a planet strongly influenced by religion (the worship of a goddess). On this particular world, a parasitic creature that causes blindness infects children. The custom for female children so infected is to enroll them as priestesses of the Goddess Robinna, the deity worshipped on the planet. For centuries, the blind priestesses conducted worship. Until a physician named Lalayna, from the nearby planet Mervogia, discovers a cure. She is praised—but not by everyone.

Tradition is a strong element in most religions. A large faction on Planet Suva want to keep the tradition of blind priestesses. This creates an ethical dilemma. Will certain young women be denied the vaccine Lalayna has developed? Other planets that worship Robinna point out that there is nothing in the religion that demands priestesses be blind. Lalayna will attend and speak at a symposium where officials will announce that the serum preventing blindness will be offered to all children and the tradition of blind priestesses will end.

Lalayna, who has devoted herself to medicine has a revelation:  One winter noon, eating lunch and watching the snow fall outside the window of her office, she realized she was forty years old, unmarried, still a virgin, and without a single romantic prospect on this world or any other. Luck has it that she becomes engaged. In a few weeks, she will go to the altar as a virgin bride and become a wife.

She is disappointed that the chief priestesses cannot attend the session as promised. Lalayna gets up to speak, urges the people of Suva to accept change, and assures them that their religion will not be harmed by having sighted priestesses—after all, it so on the other planets in the area that worship their goddess. As she is speaking, an explosion shatters the windows of the building. Blaster fire erupts and she is seized and taken to a small room by partisans of the old traditions of the religion.

They tie her to a chair. One of their leaders holding white-hot iron rod tells her what he plans to do. “I can’t stop what you’ve set in motion, but I can ordain you as a priestess. We called them the Priestesses of Light because though they lived in darkness they give light.” As he lowers the glowing steel, Lalayna realizes, with horror, that when he blinds her, she will indeed be qualified to be a priestess of light in every way:  she is a woman, she is a virgin, and, now, she will be blind.

Lucine

A voice comes through the darkness: "Stop this at once.” Lalayna’s tormenter lowers the rod. It is Lucine, the chief priestess of the planet, She has learned of the plot to blind Lalayna and taken steps to prevent it. By this time, soldiers have secured the building and taken the rebels into custody. Asha, a colleague and friend of Lalayna, rushes to her and begins to care for her. She is shaken and sobbing but unharmed. The priestesses of light, though blind, have more insight than the traditionalists. The changes in religion will go on as planned. Lalayna will be married. The insurgency will come to an end.

The story appeared in a journal called Four-Cornered Universe, now defunct and with no archive. It was reprinted, however, in an issue of Startling Sci-Fi and is available for purchase. Get a copy here.

For additional titles, check out my Writer's Page.

How do lutes, vampires, Shakespeare, and Queen Elizabeth I figure in together? Find out:  Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute

I would love to hear your comments.

Creativity: Making Connections, Part I

 I’ve blogged about creativity a couple of times, and literature on the subject abounds. Still, after I wade through what’s been written on it, I’m left with only a vague, hazy image of what creativity is—and a hazier idea of how you obtain, bring about, and generate it. How do you “do” creativity? How can you write a fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal story that is truly creative?  These questions lead us into the swamp of uncertainty. But a swamp isn’t all bad if you’re an alligator or a hank of Spanish moss. The first step in writing creatively is to get outside of the usual paradigms.

I talked about Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere in another blog ( link to blog). Here is a link to one more blog on this (Trains of Trust ). You can read about it in detail there. I would only say that when he was given an assignment, he did not do the thing people usually do. He did something completely different. He wrote about homelessness by creating a fantasy world. How did he think of this? I can’t get in his head, of course, but I do notice that he perceived certain analogies and similarities and exploited these in his writing. These were the stuff of his creative approach to a discussion of the topic. And it became one of the most powerful and moving statements about homelessness I’ve read even though the world is not once used in the novel.

What did Gaiman notice? He noticed the link between magical creatures and the homeless. He worked with these points. I’ll attempt to illustrate.

 

Very often, supernatural creatures are marginalized. Elves, dwarves, orcs, leprechauns, angels, werewolves, vampires, lamia—such beings are not a part of society. Try going to a job interview at a corporate office and explaining that when the full moon comes out you transform, so you can’t work on such nights; or that your blue-green skin is not a genetic condition because you’re not human, you’re a naiad. Supernatural beings such as inhabit the “London Below” of Neverwhere are emblematic of the homeless, the marginalized—of society’s outcasts.

Very often, supernatural beings are exploited. Why do people want to capture leprechauns? To get their gold! Werewolves and vampires are hunted down and destroyed because they threaten human beings. Elves, dryads, satyrs, ancient gods and goddesses are driven out as humans develop land, cut down forests, and build houses. King Kong was made a show, “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” This happens to the homeless too. Exploitation is often their lot. Gaiman made the connection.

We could go on and on about this. My point, however, I think is clear. Neil Gaiman wrote the most creative book I’ve ever read by perceiving and working with analogies and similarities. If I want to write successful paranormal literature—successful because it opens up fantastical worlds—I’ve got to exploit such connections and shape them into stories. So do you. In calls for submissions I always read things like “startle us,” “take us somewhere we’ve never been before,” and similar phrases. A writer does this by creatively shaping the material of life—by seeing connections and creating something that is new but oddly recognizable.  

I’ll give an example from my own writing. I am a guitarist and a fan of sixties music. Cream, one of the great rock groups of all time, released a song called “Strange Brew.” It had the line in it, “She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue. / In her own mad mind, she’s in love with you. / With you! What are you gonna do?  Strange Brew:  kills what’s inside of you.” I—and most people, I think—interpret this as a song about a trouble-making girl who has latched on to a guy and is going to make lots of trouble for him through her clingy behavior. What is he going to do with this disruption? How is he going to handle it?

But I got an idea. I made a connection. What if the woman in the

Vintage 1970

song was, literally, a witch? What if she had gone mad? And what if she fell in love with a guy? What would you do in a case like this? Moreover, the witch is not just any witch. She is the Sorceress of the Northern Seas, the most powerful witch in England. And she is not above using her magic to make sure the man she love sticks around. What is he going to do? As for her “mad mind”—well, it’s the 1970s in my novel, and Lybecca the sorceress has become a part of the drug scene and deranged herself to an extent on LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, and all those wonderful hallucinogens people took back then. The plot thickens. What is he gonna do?

The creative move is to take the supernatural and connect it with pop culture, drug culture, rock culture, and music. The story develops from a funny, quirky one into a more serious one as Lybecca takes Andrew (the musician) back in time to seek a cure for her infirmity. They end up in the pre-civil rights south, meet blues icon Robert Johnson, and plunge into a harrying adventure that might or might not free Lybecca from her troubles.

The creative edge lies in making the connections:  take pop culture—drugs, the 1970s, the pop music scene, miniskirts, big hair on male rock singers—and connect it with magic, witches, and the supernatural. Irony, humor, and, in the end, a poignant story of love and healing come about.

So if I have a how, this is it. Notice the connections. Connect the dots that maybe aren’t visible, but

are there. Neil Gaiman did this with the supernatural and the homeless; I did it with early pop culture and the world of magic and sorcery; Kenneth Graham did it with proper Victorian society and animal behavior in The Wind in the Willows. The connections are there, waiting to be lashed together. Look for them. Read voraciously to notice how other paranormal writers, old and new (Shakespeare was great at doing this), have exploited connecting points between the mundane and the fantastical.

More on The Wind in the Willows in the next blog.

And by all means get a copy of Strange Brew

Check out my Writer’s Website:  David W. Landrum.

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