A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Dagobah . . . or, How Science Fiction Got Religion.

If you read early science fiction, religion is hardly to be found. Many authors did not mention it simply because it was irrelevant to the plots of their stories; others, however, saw it as a relic from the unenlightened past and depicted its well-deserved demise. In Arthur C. Clark's novella, Childhood's End, part of leaving human "childhood" and evolving to a higher level of being is shucking religion. The aliens who visit earth are able to show the past and demonstrate that the founders of the world's great religions were not what people believed them to be so that, according to Clark's narrator, religion all but disappeared overnight. The most vivid statement relating to the demise of religion was Lester Del Ray's "Evensong." In this short story, a fugitive is fleeing and finds a planet of refuge.

Soon, however, he is captured and taken into custody. His benevolent captor tells him he will be taken to a planet where he will be well-treated and have a nice home. The creature whimpers pathetically, "But I'm God!" His captor returns, "Yes, but I am Man."

Sci-Fi pretty much continued on this trajectory through the fifties and sixties. There were exceptions. In The Day the Earth Stood Still Klaatu believes in a higher power. One saw oblique references to belief in the supernatural here and there, but still religion barely raised its head in sci-fi--
until we got to Dagobah.

Dagobah was the swampy planet where Yoda lived in exile. We had already heard about the Force; on Dagobah we found that the Jedi Knights were a lot like Shaolin Monks. Obeying, following, and bowing to a higher power (the Force) was an absolute necessity to attaining power as a Jedi.

Once that door opened, religion was back in style--or at least it had a foot in the door. In the Star Trek franchise, where I can only remember one reference to "the maker of all things" in the Original Series, and where Picard once lambasted God (who was really a satellite) and told him his shortcomings, the Borg eventually had a yantra-like geometrical image they worshiped; Chakoty on Voyager described himself as a "spiritual man," had a spirit guide totem animal, and once helped Captain Janeway get her own spirit guide; the Bajoran race from Deep Space Nine were highly religious. While the prevailing mood is science fiction is not religious, we still might call it "religion-friendly." This is in contrast to what the literature was like fifty years ago.

Early sci-fi's negative stance toward religion was partly literary and partly ideological. The human race, however, has always had religions. To assume religion will simply go away because people can fly into space seems a bit specious. The more likely scenario is that religion will survive in a future society just as it has survived the history of the human race on earth. It may change, alter--or not change. At any rate, it will certainly be around.

In my sci-fi worlds the old religions of Earth thrive:  Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, the others are all there. Some non-human races have been converted to Earth religions. Some races of beings have religions unique to their cultures--or more than one religion exists on their planets. It was fun to invent these. The worship of Goddess Robinna on the Barzalian planets, the Mervogian worship of the Holy Light of the Besrid Nebula . . . my creations. Their interaction with other religious configurations makes for interesting plot twists and complications.

Over the month of April I'll be talking about how speculative fiction deals with religion, what I think writers should avoid in dealing with the matter, and some suggestions for presenting, representing, and inventing (yes, inventing) religions.

More to come . . .

I'll Show You A World

Authors of fantasy and science fiction (sometimes horror) engage in world-building. It is one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing speculative fiction. You get to be God, create a universe, populate it with people, and supervise the course of its history and the evolution of its populace. There are no limits to what you can do. Anything from talking trees to beings who can transport themselves from place to place can inhabit your world--vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, highly advanced or primitive peoples, or a combination, can live there. It can be utopian like the clean, gleaming worlds of Star Trek; or dirty and dystopian like the worlds Ripley navigates in the Alien films or the oppressive, poverty-stricken states of Hunger Games.

Many speculative writers have read Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel Brave New World. He takes the title from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Miranda has been raised on a desert island. The only human being she has ever seen is her father (or, if you've watched Helen Mirren's version of the play, her mother). There are two spirits there, but they don't rate as people. Then suddenly she sees some human beings--among them, a really good-looking guy. "O brave, new world that hath such people in it!" she exclaims. "Tis new to thee," is her father's dry observation. Our worlds should be just as exciting and extraordinary to our readers.

Rather than pontificating about how to create a good world, let me do two things:  1) invite people to tell about how they create worlds in their speculative writing; and 2) talk a little bit about a couple of my creations. Since #1 needs no elaboration, here are just a couple of notes from the worlds I've made.

In the universe I created for my story "Mother Hulda," which is based on one of Grimm's fairy tales, the Terran Alliance has spread out from Earth and gained power and influence in much of the galaxy. But the Terran Alliance does not look like what you see in most of contemporary sci-fi worlds. For one, its demographic isn't like that of the United States, with a majority of white people and a smattering of black, native, Asian, Latino characters. In my universe, the majority race in the Terran Alliance comes out of of India. The planets are named things like Rama, Lotus Eyes of Lord Shiva, Planet Agni; the spaceships have names like the Durga and the Gandhi. There is a substantial European minority, so some influence is present there (there is a Space Station Alan Shepherd), but India dominates and the space culture is shaped by the culture of the subcontinent back on earth.

This is a way of "showing a world"--using elements of the present but altering history just a bit in a way that (at least I think) is innovative and challenging. In my sci-world, too, there are still nation-states on earth. Italy, which encompasses modern-day Italy and large sections of France, Southern Europe, and Argentina, is one such nation state. It has its own space fleet and colony planets. The same is true of China. Once more, it seemed fun to upset an existing sci-fi norm (that all planets are single political entities) and have characters say, "The Alliance rules that planet. The Golorians and Mervogians are fighting over this one. The third planet in the system is part of the Italian League."

My fantasy novel The Sorceress of the Northern Seas uses conventional history, taking place in the days of Roman Britain. But there are differences and they impel the story.

Yours? If anyone wishes to describe their worlds, please make a comment.

The Sorceress of the Northern Seas

Writing About Vampires

It used to be okay for writers of speculative fiction to write about vampires. They belonged in the same camp as ghosts, demons, wraiths, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. They were proper subject matter for horrific tales and represented a speculative tradition that went back to The Vampyre written in 1819 by John William Polidori, Lord Byron's personal physican. The genre took off after that.  Elizabeth Caroline Grey wrote The Vampire Mistress in 1828 (first vampire novel by a woman). Carmilla, by Sheridan le Fanu, featured a female and lesbian vampire. Later would come Dracula and subsequent tales.

But then Twilight ruined it for everyone.

Now, when I check listings for horror, the submissions pages say things like "No vampire stories." "Horror (no vampires)"; or at best, "Vampire stories if they're really good, but no sparkly vampires." Horror magazines are putting up crosses and hanging out garlic. They don't want vampire stories. Why not?

Several reasons, of course. The success of the Twilight series spawned a tsunami of vampire tales. Editors got sick of them and took drastic measures to stem the flood. Vampire stories meant the things that people disliked about the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer: sappy romance, bad writing, melodrama, unrealistic scenarios, cliches . . . whether these assessments are accurate or not, they stuck. So anything resembling  Twilight became taboo. And, of course, Twilight contained vampires, so forget any story whatsoever that talks about them.

Too bad, since the vampire tale has a venerable past and has long been a staple of horror writing. When I create vampire stories there are certain givens (just as there are in any sort of horror or sci-fi story). It is the variations on the tradition that make the stories fascinating. Those who write about the undead create unique worlds. They have wide parameters to work within. I will go out a limb here to say that Meyer's vampire world is unique and innovative.

But even those of us who don't write about sparkly vampires create variations. In my world, for example, vampires cannot go out in the sun, but much of the time they are more or less "human"--they eat, breath, excrete, get drunk, have sex, visit with mortal friends, and hold down night-time jobs. It is only when they hunt or when they are threatened that their vampire "soul" kicks in and they grow fangs, have impermeable skin, and can turn into bats and wolves. And during their many human-like hours, they consort with each other, love and hate one
another, amass wealth, and wonder about such questions as (one of my vampire characters asks this), "How can God let something like this [becoming a vampire] happen to us and then hold us responsible for it?" They have laws, rules, and local government. Some of them don't like being vampires and search for ways out.

Let's hope the editors who publish speculative fiction can get over their aversion to the fallout from Twilight. Vampire stories have long been an important aspect of the horror genre, both in print and in film. May the tradition awaken and walk the earth again.

Check out my author page.

Characters

The other night at a seminar on writing someone talked about characters. She said, which is something I have heard many times, that characters are the center of any work of fiction--not plot, setting or any of the other elements of narrative discourse (though they are all important). Characters make or break a book. Or a television show. TV shows that continue on do so because people get to know and love the characters.

To the side is the cast of Magnum PI, a show I watched regularly in
the 1980s when I was in graduate school. The shows had a successful run due to many elements:  exciting action, intrigue, the setting in Hawaii. But the characters--Thomas Magnum, Rick, TC, and Higgins--featured in peoples' imaginations. You got to know them, love them, and, more importantly, understand them and know how they acted in different situations. When a plot unfolded you wanted to know what they would do. When they behaved in an unusual manner, you knew you would learn something about them
that would be a revelation. When you talked with your friends about the last episode, you would say things like, "I can't believe Rick would do something like that," or, "I didn't know that about Thomas."

So it is with long-running shows like M*A*S*H*, Frazier, Friends, E.R., House, Hill Street Blues--and, of course, with soap operas that run on and on for years. People know, love, and identify with the characters. Writing good characters is essential to writing good stories and novels.

We all have our favorites. Mine is
Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (which I think is the greatest novel ever written). Why do I like him? Because he is extreme--or, we should say, X-treme. He wants the love of Kathy and will do anything to get it. He is all but demonically possessed to get it. When she dies, he is equally driven to have revenge on her family for spoiling their love. He says things like "By hell," "I'm damnably fond of Hareton," and "I am in Hell till you do." "Is Heathcliff a man or a Devil?" one of the characters asks. He is a dark, driven, demonic man who has been spurned and hurt and now is in the rage of Satan himself to see his vision of justice done. Kind of like me.

It is these extreme characters who win over readers' hearts--who become famous due to their raging desire for something. And a good character has got to be driven this way. Does Romeo just sort of love Juliet and if he can't get her--hey, no big deal? Does Captain Ahab think it would be really nice to kill Moby-Dick, but if not . . . well, there are lots of other whales in the ocean? Does Ebenezer Scrooge just sort of like money? The answer is No on all of these. They are driven, obsessed, unbending in their quest for what they want. So talking about characters (and I will be doing that for a while), I would say the first thing is this. Create a character who doesn't just sort of want something. Create a character who shall, as Hamlet said, "move heaven and earth" to get what he or she wants.

One book I read on writing (alas, forgot the title and can't remember the author's name) gave a formula for writing. Formula are dangerous, but this is generally useful. It was WOA. In a good story there is a Want; a character goes after this want and encounters an Obstacle; he or she will then engage in some Action to get the desired thing. The action they engage in will reveal character. We will learn what they are like by what they do.

And if they really, really, really, really want the object, so much the better.

In my novel The Sorceress of the Northern Seas the character of Lybecca wants to avenge the wrongs done to her grandmother, Devonna; and, to complete the matter, she wants to gain the title Devonna was prevented from achieving, The Sorceress of the Northern Seas. Lybecca will stop at nothing to get the title and she will do whatever is necessary to get it. But--like Romeo, Healthcliff, Ahab, Scrooge--she is in danger of being destroyed, since the evil forces claiming the title can only be overcome by good. Good, however, seems weak--unless you really come to understand it. How does one come to understand the nature of benevolence, and its power? Well, you can learn from other people. Get a copy of the book through Amazon and find the full story.

More to come on character.

What Is Love, What is Moral, What Is Writing?

A rap group once remarked in a song, "You know where it is--yo, that usually depends on where you start." Morality always begins with assumptions and presuppositions. What you believe about the nature of the universe will affect what you believe is right and wrong. And, of course, a writer's world view, a writer's notion, his of her idea of what is behind things, will affect what happens in a novel, poem, or short story.

 I've found that morality can have lots of sources. You might see religious morality, which is what most people think of when they hear the term "morality." Religions have sets of rules--the Ten Commandments, the teachings of Jesus, the precepts set down in the Koran, the Eightfold Path. And yet there is morality that derives from a society. C. S. Lewis talked about the Tao--a Chinese term he used to argue that the human race has an innate sense of what is wrong and what is right. It transcends religion.

One can find morality, for example, in a rather un-religious novel such as The Sound and the Fury  by William Faulkner. While nothing in the novel suggests belief in the supernatural, yet one gets a sense of right and wrong. The Compson family has done wrong in their refusal to join the modern world. The attempt by their cook Dilsey to bring them out of their unrealistic torpor is an act of morality (though she does not succeed and cannot communicate her insight to them). Morality is on display in this work even if it isn't religious morality.

Stephen King is a highly moralistic writer. The horror in his stories is born when someone does something immoral. The indifference of the townspeople in It enables a monster to feed off the inhabitants; pollution breeds monsters in "Night Shift"; in his classic horror tale, "Children of the Corn," the narrator notes that somewhere something had gone very wrong with religion, with children, and with corn. The story is about the Vietnam era and the general dissolution of American society and of the things that were pillars of American morality before that time.

My own stories explore the conundrum of morality. My novel Strange Brew examines the intricacies of love, magic, and desire.  The Gallery explores the relationship of right and wrong and art. And my longer novel, The Sorceress of the Northern Seas chronicles the quest of Lybecca of Dunwood to become the most powerful sorceress in the world. Do you get to that point through doing good or doing evil? And what's the difference? These are questions the novel asks. All writers write about morality, even if we may not call it that. Our actions have weight. Our stories as well.