All posts by Mike

Adventures and mishaps in science fiction, fantasy, and mystery
Fiction

Who needs realism?

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Occasionally I’m asked, “Why would a nice, conservative naturalist like you write stories about ghosts, demons, and space aliens?”

Good question. I usually refer to a famous quote from Flannery O’Connor:

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”

After all, two of my favorite authors, Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, wrote about magic, monsters, and ghosts. Neither author believed in such things, but crafted gripping tales with captivating and evocative characters.

Recently, I happened upon an article by novelist Cai Emmons titled, “Why I Turned Away From Realism and Began to Write Surreal Fiction.” Emmons explains why analytical types find the fantastic both alluring and useful:

“I have come to think of surrealism/fantasy/the supernatural/magical realism as a kind of steroid, bulking things up and bringing certain perceptions into clearer relief. The distortions I create in a narrative can be thought of as tools that amplify the material, much as an astronomer employs a telescope, or a biologist uses a microscope.”

Lovely. And insightful. Reading and writing are ways of playing with the world, of experimenting with reality to test and clarify one’s beliefs. That’s the challenge and joy of literature.

Ambrose Bierce, Reading

The “Wrong” Kind of Reading?

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What to do about growing illiteracy in America? It’s a problem behind a host of other social ills, including unemployment, crime, and mental illness. Frederick Hess, a former teacher, has a suggestion:

One reason that boys read less than girls may be that we’re not introducing them to the kinds of books they may like. There was a time when schools really did devote too much time to generals and famous battles, but we’ve massively overcorrected. Indeed, I find that too many “diverse, inclusive” reading lists feature authors who may vary by race and gender but overwhelmingly tend to write introspective, therapeutic tales that read like an adaptation of an especially heavy-handed afterschool special.

Sadly, our schools are not helping this problem. In some ways, they’re making things worse. Reading is often shoved at students as a burden, if not punishment. Plus, the approved reading list often fails to snag interest. Too many of the folks running public education believe “real” literature is, as Hess writes above, introspective and therapeutic. In a word, dull. This highbrow view of literature is the legacy of William Dean Howells, the influential author and editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Here’s Howells’ view of what literature should be:

Yet every now and then I read a book with perfect comfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman would gasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole course of the story…. Yet it is all alive with the keenest interest for those who enjoy the study of individual traits and general conditions as they make themselves known to American experience.

The Realist literary movement Howells pushed decreed that instead of action and heroism, literature should focus on interior tension and the experience of ordinary people. To impart the real life of real people, Realist authors focused on gritty detail. However, devotion to the mundane often produced boring and sordid tales. Ambrose Bierce defined “Realism” in his Devil’s Dictionary as “The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.”

Of course, the antidote is to read and promote tales of adventure, intrigue, and heroism, stories that illustrate a virile and heartening sense of life. That’s what both young and old need today. There’s plenty available, but first we have to unburden ourselves of the notion that self-appointed highbrows get to tell us what real literature is.

Edgar Allan Poe, Horror, Science fiction, Southern Fiction

Happy 216th Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!

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Edgar Allan Poe

Poe’s influence on world literature is profound and far reaching. He inspired many writers, including H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury, and also defined modern horror, science fiction, and crime fiction.

Here’s my birthday tribute to a great teller of tales, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial.”

Robert E. Howard, Science, Weapons

The Barbarian and the Playwright

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Fans of Robert E. Howard know the timeless appeal of his greatest creation, Conan the Barbarian. As David Smith puts it, Conan is “the natural man, ourselves begun again, reborn in a world as we secretly know our own world to be beneath its layers of hypocrisy and pretense.”

In my latest guest post at the DMR Books blog, I examine the parallels between recurring themes in the Conan stories and the works of dramatist and science writer Robert Ardrey.

In African Genesis and subsequent books, Ardrey examines the anthropological evidence for what “the natural man” actually is, as opposed to the myths we are told, or worse, tell ourselves. Ardrey’s works provide a deeper understanding of Howard’s tales celebrating the heroic, enduring qualities that make us human.

Southern Fiction

Ron Rash named to North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame

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Ron Rash, the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University (my alma mater), has been recognized once again for his outstanding contributions to Southern fiction. From Western Carolina Stories:

“We are thrilled that Ron Rash is being inducted in the NC Literary Hall of Fame, a well-deserved honor,” said David Kinner, dean of WCU’s College of Arts and Sciences. “Like WCU, Ron’s work is tied to our region, its history and its people, and through his writing, he has entertained us, moved us and made us think. Ron is a prolific author, an integral part of our community and our students benefit from being able to learn from him.”

Rash said he was grateful to be placed among authors who impacted his journey as a writer.

“What makes this honor so meaningful is that previous inductees, especially Thomas Wolfe, Fred Chappell, Lee Smith and Robert Morgan, are writers who have inspired and influenced my own work,” Rash said.

The books I’ve read by Rash include The Cove and Serena, haunting, lyrical works that will certainly contribute to the legacy of Southern fiction.

Modern life, Writing

Can AI replace writers?

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I’m happy to see that more publishers won’t accept works created by AI. For the life of me, I can’t understand why someone would stick their name in the byline of something created by a computer program, but after all, plagiarism is nothing new. If people will take credit for something somebody else wrote, why not claim an AI product?

This issue isn’t going away. In Ray Kurzweil’s latest book, The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI, he claims AI will match and even surpass the writing of the best authors. These programs, he argues, will be “familiar with virtually every kind of human writing. Users could prompt it to answer questions about any given subject in a huge variety of styles — from scientific writing to children’s books, poetry, or sitcom scripts. It could even imitate specific writers, living or dead.”

Can it? I don’t think so. Ray Kurzweil is a transhumanist who advocates merging humans with AI as well as enhancing human ability with genetic engineering. Kurzweil believes we can upload our minds to a computer and live forever. Transhumanism despises the body, traditional culture, and humanity in general. Worse, it doesn’t understand any of the things it wants to replace.

First of all, human beings are not ghosts in a machine. The notion that our minds ride around in a meat robot that can be ditched without changing who we are is hopelessly simplistic. What we call the mind is the sum of the functions of the brain, which is a physical organ. And the brain interacts with the rest of the body. In fact, the field of Embodied Cognition tells us the body is central to our thought processes.

There’s solid research to back this view. Mirror neurons fire when we perform an action or when we observe someone else performing that action. Embodied Cognition also tells us that language is metaphor, and the building blocks of metaphor are physical sensations. Magnetic resonance imaging scanners reveal that when we read about a physical action, we activate the same areas of our brains as when we actually perform those actions. That’s the mirror neurons at work.

The bottom line is that disembodied machines cannot think, feel, or write the way humans do.  And never will.

Science fiction, Southern Fiction

The Baptism of Time

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There’s a powerful and alluring line in Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood I’ve always loved: “I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time.”

The character meant that in a limited sense; he felt only old books that had endured for generations were worth reading. But I would add that works that acknowledge and explore the deep and often inscrutable influence of the past are also “baptized of time” and make the most moving and inspirational reading. William Faulkner captured that insight perfectly in Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”

I’ve long believed the healing power of literature rises from its ability to let us see our deep connections to others, the world around us, and the cosmos. Rachel Carson once wrote that “To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.”

Growing up around Civil War and American Indian sites, I absorbed a deep appreciation of the past, and that is reflected in the stories I write. My latest is “Making a Ton,” featured in the Minstrels in the Galaxy anthology, The protagonist, a pilot in the Asteroid Belt, reflects on his connections to the trailblazers who led humanity into space:

Ray stepped towards the window. “We got to this moon on the shoulders of giants,” he announced. “Pioneers, heroes, every one of them. Giving up would be an insult to their memory. They were men and women who roared into space in ships powered by chemical fuel that could’ve exploded and turned them to space dust. But they did it anyway. They were people with backbones, muscles, and scars, and courage. That’s what space travel is about, not technology. I feel like I’m with them when I’m piloting.”

Riveting adventures, echoes of lives lived well, and guideposts for discovering what makes us what we are — that’s the goal of all good stories.