"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one" - why the cultural elite doesn't get Terry Pratchett

I did flick through a book by him in a shop, to see what the fuss is about, but the prose seemed very ordinary. 

Such is the basis for Guardian writer Jonathan Jones dismissing the entirety of Terry Pratchett's writing. For me this sums up the sheer ignorance of the self-appointed literary elite. It would seem that the sin Terry Pratchett committed was the sin of being accessible. Or as I would put it, actually readable.

The literary elite are conning you into trying to read those books they hold up as paragons of genius. Books like the witty but incredibly (and indulgently) overwritten Ulysses or the dull as ditchwater eighteenth and nineteenth century novels written by women - mostly about a world entirely foreign to us in which they describe the gossip, gold-digging and backbiting of fellow women in what might as well be a fairy tale environment for all that is relevant to today's reader.

These books are hard work. I've flicked through a few of them in shops and the prose is impenetrable, elaborate and complicated. Almost designed - in a showy way - to exclude anyone who prefers crunch, pace and intelligence. Us mere mortals who think the purpose of a novel is to take us into a story, release from the bounds of the mundane and, above all, entertain us. None of the novels pushed - in that ghastly English teacher manner - by the likes of Jonathan Jones achieves that aim. Instead - and let's use Jon's world since they will be so much better than mine - the novels are designed to exclude:

Actual literature may be harder to get to grips with than a Discworld novel, but it is more worth the effort. By dissolving the difference between serious and light reading, our culture is justifying mental laziness and robbing readers of the true delights of ambitious fiction.

The real problem with Terry Pratchett isn't that he's a bad writer for he was far from that, but that he committed a terrible sin - one beyond writing prose that the average 13 year old boy could access. Terry Pratchett wrote fantasy. Just as that other - now dead - target of Jonathan Jones' dismissal, Ray Bradbury, wrote science fiction. This is, of course, entirely unforgivable if you want the cultural elite to consider you a serious writer. You see, dear reader, science fiction is just (using Jon's word again) "ordinary potboilers" not proper writing.

It is my considered view that Pratchett and Bradbury are far better writers than Jane Austen. Or, to put it another way, they wrote prose that works for today's reader, set in contexts that reflect today's society and which tell a story that works as a story but where there's a message if we want to take it. Austen's books are no doubt pertinent if you want to study the social mores of Georgian England's elite but that society is so far removed from ours that it might as well be fantasy. And a boring fantasy too.

The word 'genius' is overused - I'm sure that like many professional writers Terry Pratchett considered himself a craftsman storyteller rather than an artist but there's no doubt that, in the position he adopted, Pratchett was close to the greatest. Writing comedy is hard - you have to be light (which is why Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake fail despite their undoubted humour) while maintaining the integrity of the story. It's no surprise that very few of the authors feted by the likes of Jonathan Jones wrote comedy - such gentleness of spirit is beyond the ken of someone planning on literary genius rather than good storytelling.

I still consider that the story is lost in so much of our literary fiction. Too much sweat is expended on getting the wonderful prose - all those well-turned phrases spilled onto the page - meaning there's little left for the dull old job of creating the wonder, excitement and escape of a great story. It's as if Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams had lost sight of their plot in the urge to tell a few more jokes. I'm just like Jonathan Jones - there's an awful lot of books I haven't read and a good lot (mostly written in the genre often called 'literary fiction') that I have no intention of ever reading. I may continue to flick through some of them in shops though. Just so I can write about them with knowledge and understanding!

Reading is, for most people, a way to leave the everyday world behind for a while. For some people this is about exploring history or philosophy, for others the pleasure comes from the joy of fine prose or livid poetry, but for most - the 'middlebrow' as Jon dismissively describes them - the joy is in a well-crafted story, a dash of adventure, a splash of humour and an escape into another brighter and sharper place. To dismiss literature that does this last job so wonderfully - and Terry Pratchett definitely does this - as something other than genius is to display selectivity. The sort of arrogant ignorance only our self-appointed cultural elite can muster.

And, since Jonathan Jones doesn't like Ray Bradbury (it's not clear whether he flicked through Bradbury's books or has actually read one) let's finish with a quotation from what I think is his greatest book, The October Country:

“And what, you ask, does writing teach us?

First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.

So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.”

I'm sure Jonathan Jones will have flicked to that page?

....

'Of Mycelium and Men' - thoughts on the evolution of fungi...

Steve Manthorp wanted me to call this 'Of Mycelium and Men' and it's such a good title I have shamelessly thieved the idea. The posting is prompted by two things - the announcement of a project to study the evolutionary history of fungi by the US National Science Foundation and my recent reading of Jeff Vandermeer's 'City of Saints and Madmen'.

The research project first - it looks at zygomycetes which are believed to be among the first terrestrial fungi forms and perhaps a critical factor in the development of land plants. Zygomycetes are filamentous molds similar to those we see sometimes on old bread or fruit that is starting to rot. Anyhow, we don't know much about them - Jason Stajich, an associate professor of plant pathology and microbiology at the University of California, Riverside, explains:

"Despite zygomycetes' critical ecological roles and importance to human civilization, they remain understudied and their evolutionary relationships are still not well understood," Stajich said. "This is likely a result of some of the difficulty in culturing many of the species, but also because, in general, too few researchers have been studying them."

The research will examine the symbiotic and parasitic relationships between these early forms of fungi and the plants and animals on which they host - and hosted. And it's here that the 'City of Saints and Madmen' came to mind. the book - a collection of short stories set in a fictional city called Ambergris - has at its heart the uneasy relationship between man and mushrooms. The city is a human settlement placed in the heart of an older, grander and more complex city built by super-evolved mushroom-like humanoids, the 'Grey Caps'.

Perhaps, by design or accident, Vandermeer hit on a strange truth - fungi are an overlooked essence in the development of sophisticated life but we see the myco-world as parasitic, feeding on death and decay rather than creating and enhancing. So our response to the mushroom is fear and repulsion:

Manzikert found the gray cap repellent, resembling as it did, he is quoted as saying, "both child and mushroom", and if not for his fear of retaliation from a presumed ruling body of unknown strength, the Cappan would have run the native through with his sword."

In a weird way Vandermeer's fantasy echoes the research Prof. Stajich and his colleagues are undertaking:

 resolving these earliest branches in the fungal genealogy scientists can study what the likely characteristics of ancestral fungi were, and determine what traits emerged first and were necessary as part of the transitions of life from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-evolutionary-history-fungi.html#jCp

...by resolving these earliest branches in the fungal genealogy scientists can study what the likely characteristics of ancestral fungi were, and determine what traits emerged first and were necessary as part of the transitions of life from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems.

Perhaps, from out of all this we get a glimpse of a future mushroom world!

....

"It's pretty much Game of Thones..." :SF, fantasy and English literature's Shakespearian creation myth

An entirely gratuitous picture of a dragon

For a very long time I played, along with other former members of Hull University Wargames Society, a postal game based on the Wars of the Roses. These days, I'm guessing that such a game would be conducted via email and social media but back them we only had post and telephone. For the game, each player controlled one noble family (I was, since you are curious, the de la Pole family led by the Duke of Suffolk - 'twas nice to keep the link to Hull) and issued instructions to the man running the game regarding alliances, marriages, battle orders and so forth. In the manner of these things, the game ended - not with a Tudor victory but with a new dynasty under the Bourchier Dukes of Essex.

So when you start reading A Song of Ice and Fire - or set out watching the marvellous TV adaptation, Game of Thrones - it is quickly clear that part of George R R Martin's inspiration came from that tangled and bloody period of history we call the Wars of the Roses. Indeed this is true and Martin has said as much -although he makes clear there's no direct 'character-to-character' correlation merely that the period cried out for reinterpretation.

So it is not a surprise that Dan Hannan finds a connection with Shakespeare in Game of Thrones - indeed that's where the quotation in my headline comes from:

During the interval of one of the performances, I overheard some Americans discussing the play in the bar. “It’s pretty much Game of Thrones,” was one man’s summary. Indeed it is.

 The chaos that comes after a usurpation, the dynastic ambitions, the moral ambiguity, the sudden betrayals, the unexpected turns of plot – all recall the drama of Westeros.

Hannan is describing the second tetralogy of history plays - Richard II, Henry IV (parts one and two), and Henry V - a period that sits right before those Wars of the Roses that inspired Game of Thrones. The problem is that Hannan, in his love for Shakespeare's matchless words, ascribes too great a power to the Bard's works. And falls into the trap that English Literature sets for us all.

What happens is that Shakespeare's characters become part of a creation myth for English Literature - Hannan says:

...he could hardly avoid echoing Shakespeare’s archetypal characters and plots. Shakespeare’s are, so to speak, the true forms. Everything else is a shadow on the cave wall. I realise that that’s a large claim but, if you’re familiar with the plays, you’ll know what I mean.

Shakespeare really isn't about the plots - he borrowed most of them, as we know - or indeed about the characters as characters. What Shakespeare did was put in the mouths of those characters wonderful, insightful, memorable and incisive words. Words that have not just changed our language but have changed the world too.

Like most SF and fantasy writers, Martin has an audience that wants to know everything. An audience that will fill on-line forums, attend conventions, write blogs and sit in serious huddles discussing the uttermost minutiae of Martin's work. And, as a result, Martin has been asked again and again what his influences are - he says stuff like:

Well, I've already named several in this chat. Jack Vance, JRR Tolkien, Maurice Druon... I think the authors who influence you most are probably the authors that you read and love when you're young, and in my case those would include Robert A Heinlein, HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber. In historical fiction, Thomas B Costaine, Frank Yerby...I love Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, but really I could go on listing names for an hour. There are a lot of great writers out there in all genres that I enjoy and appreciate.

The author who Martin doesn't mention is Shakespeare. And, while Martin has (thanks to a TV adaptation of his series of novels) stepped beyond his genre of fantasy and SF, that is the starting point to understanding his writing. Look at that list above and you'll see the characters that echo in Westeros - Aragorn, Conan the Barbarian, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Liane. These are characters that marry the comic book to ancient legend. Tolkein did not craft his characters from Shakespearian archetypes but from the Kalevala, the poetic and prose Edda and the old legends of England and Wales, from Beowulf and the legend of the Green Knight.

 In the end though, I always think a recommendation tells a lot about where something like Game of Thones starts - here's Martin giving one:

Jack Vance, The Dying Earth. It's not a series in the same sense that mine is. it's four books, largely made up of short stories, and share only a setting with each other, and a character in the case of the middle two; the wonderfully amoral and unscrupulous Kugel the Clever, whose schemes and plots always come back to bite him in the butt. But Vance is the great stylist of sci fi and fantasy, no one writes like him, and The Dying Earth is his finest work. With my friend, I edited a tribute anthology a couple of years ago, when writers wrote stories set in the world of The Dying Earth, including myself, Neil Gaiman, Melissa Shepherd, and on and on...

George R R Martin is a fantasy and SF writer and that is where we must look for the ideas, influences and origins of A Song of Ice and Fire.  Not that Shakespeare isn't important but Martin's nod to the bard isn't about character, plot or even language but is a justification for killing off leading characters!

However, in one important respect Dan Hannan is right. If we can cope with the complexity, depth of character and involvement of Game of Thrones then we can deal with Shakespeare's plays. And if someone's journey takes them from comics through to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett then to A Song of Ice and Fire before their eyes open to Shakespeare - then making the connection that Hannan makes is brilliant. But it's a two way street - people like me who hated English Literature yet read every SF and fantasy book going arrive at Shakespeare by working backwards.

What doesn't do is to suggest that Shakespeare is the acme of literature - as if everything else by comparison is but a pot-boiler, the doodlings of lesser men. When faced with that argument, us fans of fantasy are wont to throw 'On Fairy Stories' at you or to point at the ancient English story-telling tradition that was the basis for what Shakespeare was doing. And then to stomp off muttering - as Tolkien did - that 'English literature ended with Chaucer'.

....

....

What do you mean fairies aren't real, Professor Dawkins?

Fairy Sculptures, Cottingley

Richard Dawkins, High Priest of the New Atheists, has (or perhaps hasn't) been having a go a fairy tales:

Fairy tales are harmful to children because they “inculcate a view of the world which includes supernaturalism”, according to Professor Richard Dawkins.

Now part of me collapses in laughter at this statement since it is essentially the same as the desire by some over-enthusiastic Christians to ban Harry Potter because it has witches and bad stuff like that in the book. Or - and I wrote about this a bit ago - the campaign in the USA to ban Dungeons & Dragons. In the latter case, just as with Dawkins and his mates, with lurid tales of how D&D corrupted young people.

Now I'm sure that Dawkins didn't quite mean what he was saying (although this is very sloppy from a scientific literalist) - I'm sure he's not suggesting that Hans Christian Anderson's stories are torn from the shelves and burned or that age warnings should be attached to The Hobbit or to Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But what this does reveal is that some people - Dawkins being one - seem incapable of understanding a different sort of reality. For them, the only reality in the reality of St Thomas - proved by thrusting the atheist arm elbow deep into the spear wound.

A while ago I was talking with my son (who as far as I know is an atheist) about the latest fantasy series he was reading and one passing comment was along the lines of: "it has an interesting magic system". As ever with alternative realities in fiction (which is all fairy tales are really), we are able to suspend disbelief so as to explore what that alternative reality might mean were it, so to speak, real. However, one of the consistent themes in such tales - whether a twelve volume fantasy blockbuster or one of those Grimm stories - is that magic and the use of magic has consequences (oddly enough this isn't the case with Harry Potter where magic seems mostly effortless and free of downside).

Thus, what we get from fairy tales is a lesson about the use of power. Whether the debate is about the use of wishes or the application of power in pursuit of vanity, the tales have a moral depth that, perhaps, Dawkins is missing in framing his criticism.  Indeed Dawkins cannot get beyond his conception of 'supernatural' in discussing the role of magic in stories - perhaps he should remember the words of hard SF writer, Arthur C. Clarke: 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Once we have crossed the bridge, in the manner of Piers Anthony, from Mundania to Xanth (and children are much better as crossing from real to fantasy and back) then we can explore the world of magic safely. The idea that this exploration is without critical thinking is again to misunderstand - the same questions, fears, challenges and moral dilemmas exist in the land of faerie as do in our dull old world. It's just that the system of magic - whatever form it might take - allows for a different response.

To take a stark example of how this works. In David Brin's 'The Practice Effect' he creates a world where things improve with use - so to make a spade you make something that looks vaguely like a spade and start using it to dig. The more you dig the better it gets as a tool. After many years use it becomes the spade tool-lovers would die to own. But beware, if you neglect its use it will deteriorate eventually returning to the original vaguely spade-like thing.

So, while Brin constructs a story round this concept (where the hero is a physicist), he also explores how society would be different if this 'practice effect' applied. On one level it's a good bit of (slightly sciencey) fantasy but it also asks how environment shapes moral behaviour or forms society - Brin has peasants parading around in fine clothes because they're made to do so by aristocrats who want to stop their wardrobes going off.

In the apparent world of Dawkins, children who immerse themselves in these fantastic worlds are being harmed. The nature of the harm in question isn't specified - Dawkins, one presumes, is concerned that by reading stories about fairies, dragons or sorcerers, the child will be tempted by the atheist's demon - a thing called god. But Dawkins does this without any evidence of harm - he simply believes that because fairy tales have the "supernatural" in them they are harming the child. For a man so wedded to critical thinking and the skeptical scriptures, it seems odd that he should make such presumptive and unevidenced accusations about fairy tales.

And, as people in Cottingley know, fairies - or at least photographs of fairies - are definitely real!

....

Quote of the day: on Middle Earth government

****

From George R R Martin (who else) in Rolling Stone:

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren't gone – they're in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

Good eh!

Frankenstein, science fiction and missing the point - commenting on Mary Hoyland at The Spectator

Every now and then magazines that write most often about that tedious world of literary fiction stray into writing about science fiction. And they usually display either or both of complete ignorance and highfalutin' disdain. So seeing a reference to Frankenstein in the Spectator's blogs filled by with expectation - with the certainty that we'd see a load of nonsense. And I was right:

The story is well known. One wet summer by the shores of Lake Geneva, Mary Shelley — 18 years old, living out of wedlock with the poet Shelley — had a horrifying dream, one that she would later write as the novel Frankenstein. What is less well known is that another of the key pillars of modern horror fiction — the vampire myth — was born during that same extraordinary holiday.

Less well known? Not to either fans of Ken Russell or us science fiction readers - more to the point Shelley's book wasn't the consequence of a dream (such a literary fiction contrivance) but of a specific decision to fuse, in story form, scientific ideas and fantastic speculation. Frankenstein became one of the archetypes of science fiction - debating issues we'd see again in Olof Stapledon's 'Sirius', in Asimov's 'I, Robot', in Heinlein's 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and, in many other stories and series.

Yet Kate Hoyland - who's clearly not familiar with horror films let alone with fantasy literature - can only refer to one source:

Mary’s morality tale has also appeared in frequent guises, some obvious, and some less so: think of Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner, in which androids, indistinguishable from their human counterparts, agonise over the nature of their existence.

Oddly enough the androids in Blade Runner - drawn from (like so much of recent science fiction film) the writings of Philip K. Dick, in this case 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' - are more certain of their place in the scheme of things. It is human fear and uncertainty (we might see it as a metaphor of racial prejudice given when the book was written) that Dick explores rather than android angst.

"If I test out android," Phil Resch prattled, "you'll undergo renewed faith in the human race. But since it's not going to work out that way, I suggest you begin framing an ideology which will account for-"

 

The presence of androids is frightening for humans yet Dick's androids are quite self-assured. 

It is a shame that writers such as Kate Hoyland persist in their misreading of science fiction - assuming, one guesses, that they have read some of it. Frankenstein is a seminal book in the genre, for sure questions about the morality of science are there within it, but the essence is the wonder of man's ability to create -  mixed with a worry about that creation.

Which is why Brian Aldiss released Frankenstein giving him spirit and independence - celebrating rather than cursing science. It is why Iain Banks made computers citizens.

And it is why, when the Spectator writes about science fiction, it should employ some writers who've actually read some of that fiction rather than watched one film.

....

Fantasy politics - a world without the Party

I have been reading one of those substantial, detailed fantasy epics. You know the sort – sweeping vistas, warring kingdoms, dark lords and magic everywhere. This one – Wolfblade – is slightly unusual in that it’s written by a woman, which seems not to change the nature of the narrative style or the complicated array of lords, barons and knights so typical of the genre.

However, the description of politics in a fantasy world got me to thinking about how a polity without political parties founded in ideology might look. And how the politics might play out in such a place. Even – and I’ve restrained my fantastical urges here – where there are no mages, sorcerers or wizards.

We have got used to a land where political parties are the entire – or almost the entire – basis for political competition. Even down to the level of little town councils in small market towns, we find elections contested between the parties of left and right, liberal and conservative, authoritarian and free. The presentation of politics by the media, the analysis by academics and even the cynical public bar conversation – all these are formed round the assumption that politics needs the political party.

But let’s fantasise for a moment. Let’s consider a world without political parties. Where everyone is “independent”, where there are no whips, no ‘lines to follow’, no tribal politics. Rest assured my friends, I’m not getting like that dreadful fraud, John Lennon, and imagining some nonsensical utopia – indeed the world without political parties may be dystopian rather than utopian!

Which takes us back to Wolfblade and the world of fantasy. The book details a politics founded on competition between Warlords moderated by the need to retain national unity against the possible – even probable – external threat. The contest is driven by two factors – self-interest and strategic difference. And we should note that these factors are not separate but weave together in determining the factions, interests and politics of the realm. This is the world without political parties – at least as we know them. Different factions – parties if you must – exist but their contest is not ideological but practical, strategic – even tactical.

In the world without political parties, we focus more strongly on leadership, on character and – trumping all this – on our own self-interest. Our support – whether it be votes in an election or troops in a battle - is governed not by ideology or the political tribe but by which person best represents our interests. It becomes a true politics, one determined by consideration rather than habit and where we choose as out representative one who represents our interest not that of some distant party headquarters.

Or at least that might be so. But just as likely is the triumph of the courtier – the man whose sole purpose is to secure power. For sure, these men – and women – abound in our politics already. For every honest politician – for each Philip Davies or John McDonnell – there’s a dozen or more interested mostly in preferment and in power. In a world without parties – in my fantasy – we might find ourselves in a darker world of corruption, power-broking and destructive government.

And this is the theme of so much fantasy literature – the contest between a fearful, corrupt world under some dark lord and a brighter, chivalrous world under some shining king or queen. But what we should remember – and Tolkien knew this – is that even the best can be corrupted by power:

In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!

.....

Wednesday Whimsy: The Elections - introducing the characters (with apologies to Gary Gygax)

The suggestion has been made that the General Election should be conducted in the style of a role-playing game rather than in the rather old and stale format we currently have (or rather “real time strategy”). I thought that I would provide some pen portraits of the main protagonists.

Gordo the Brown. An aged, half-ogre Priest of Himmelfarb, Gordo has used his powers to overthrow Bliar the Great, the fallen paladin who used to rule. His prime weapons are Nokkya, a powerful throwing block that stuns on impact and Trak Tor Statt, a mighty iron-bound book. Assisting Gordo is Man del Sunny, a half-fairy, half goblin rogue (who many suspect of having designs on Gordo’s job for himself) and the apprentice, Ed who can also wield Trak Tor Statt.


David of the Cameroons. A paladin trained at the school of Eytone, David is protected by the Coat of Bullingdon and arms himself with the great sword of Tone (seized from the hands of Bliar himself) and the Mace of the Baroness. Beside David are Gideon, an apprentice mage of great promise but little charm and Boris the Magnificent, the greatest scholar and illusionist ever (according to his own story).

Clegg O’Hallam. Known as young Nick to most around him, this tyro Priest of Libdemfocus has little skill with weapons but the assistance of a strange yellow bird. His main strength is St Vince, a powerful and holy monk renowned for his doom-laden prophecies and surprising skills as a dancer. St Vince is armed with Ey-tol-uso and Iwuzreyet, paired clubs that may only be wielded by the righteous and holy (or possibly the smug and self-important – the tomes are unclear on this point).

These are the main players but watch out for others – for Gryphin, the evil half-orc streetfighter, for La Lucas, the overweening elven druidess and for Lawd Farage, the chippy old rogue. On the fringes of the battle we might see the barbarian shaman, Salmon and a strange old witch called Esther as well as various supporters of Gordo, David and Clegg. All is set for a great battle indeed!

....