Sunday, April 19, 2020

Truth, Justice and Whey



Truth, Justice and the American Way* (Superman)
*substitute your own nationality
 - this was WWII (1942) and Cold War (1952-58) propaganda
 - early versions lack this (1941), others had "Tolerance" (1940-1951)

Why do we read? And how does this relate to the complementary question,
Why do we write?

The traditional view of traditional literature is that it serves a moral purpose, and the traditional criticism of popular work is that it does not, but serves only to entertain.

Looking deeper, what distinguishes literature from propaganda is not so much having a moral agenda, but having a depth of character that helps the reader understand and define themselves. From the perspective of the writer, the deep character drives the story without the need for artifice, coincidence or MacGuffin.

There is no need to create heros or villains – in moral literature they are emergent. Superheros and supervillains belong to a world of paper thin cartoon characters. Real heros and villains are driven by their own motivation and act in ways that they see as best. We need to be able to understand the bully and the criminal, we need to understand their situation, what drives them into the villain role.

Similarly there is no need for a comic relief or idiot character, itself an oxymoron that takes us to the comic strip level - but leads us to malign unfairly the comic and cartoon as a medium. The abbreviated nature of the medium properly allows us to caricature life, in contrast to the novel roman as encompassing the totality of life as situated in history (fictional realism even when dealing with alternate, predictive or fantastic histories).

The medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964)
The medium is the massage (McLuhan & Flore, 1967)

The use of a novel medium to make a moral point goes back to the folk tales and fables of earliest times, the dreams of Joseph, the lives and parables of the Prophets and indeed the works and work of Jesus. We should not need a key to open up the meaning of a parable, or reveal the true intent or target of a romance – although the more we are removed from that setting it is increasingly likely. Conversely, literature has been destroyed for many a student by forcing them to look for interpretations that may or may not have been in the conscious or unconscious mind of the writer.

The inventiveness of the novel is not so much its fictitious nature, but the massage of the medium to mean the message. We can control the pace of a novel with length of sentence and degree of description. We can focus through the eye of beholder, or we can charactize the character of the character. We can hide truth in plain sight, by hiding it behind true detail. We can amplify tension by diverting to the player who has no idea of the lurking danger. 

Create a setting and a situation, create a panoply of characters, and allow them to play out in the way that best exploits the medium.

In fables for children, or propaganda for the masses, it may be necessary to to give the key and spell out the moral. But the medium of parable and satire works best when we get the reader to chew on the problem themselves, to figure our what the character in the story has to do with them, to realize that anger and sympathy they feel in relating to the story's characters is inconsistent with their own attitudes and behaviours. 

Nathan's parable of the poor man and the lamb is the classic example here - and David just needed to identify himself with that man, he himself was the key to the cipher. (2Sam12)

In stories for adults, especially young adults, curds and whey are no longer appropriate.

By now you should have been on solid food, but you're still on milk. (1Cor3:2;Heb5:12)
Little Miss Muffett sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey... (Traditional)


My Paradisi Lost stories

Encounters with wormholes and asteroids, exploited, benign and catastrophically dangerous feature in the Paradisi Chronicles stories, including my Casindra Lost subseries, which also feature genetic engineering, an emergent AI 'Al' and a captain who is reluctantly crewed with him on a rather long journey to another galaxy - just the two of them, and some cats... There's another AI, 'Alice' that emerges more gradually in the Moraturi arc. It is not space opera, stories that could be set anywhere, or space fantasy, stories that are more magic than science, but stories where the science drives the story, and engineering provides the solutions. 

The stories aim to present real science in a way that will help us to think about our own planet, and to develop science and engineering that will conserve rather than destroy.

The Paradisi colonization aims to preserve the pristine ecosystems of New Eden, restrict mining to the other planets and asteroids of the system, and genetically modify people to suit the ecosystem rather than overwhelm it with introduced species - this is the mutliauthor Paradisi Universe my Lost Mission stories are set in: https://paradisichronicles.wordpress.com/

Casindra Lost
Kindle ebook (mobi) edition ASIN: B07ZB3VCW9 — tiny.cc/AmazonCL
Kindle paperback edition ISBN-13: 978-1696380911 justified Iowan OS
Kindle enlarged print edn ISBN-13: 978-1708810108 justified Times NR 16
Kindle large print edition ISBN-13: 978-1708299453 ragged Trebuchet 18

Moraturi Lost
Kindle ebook (mobi) edition ASIN: B0834Z8PP8 – tiny.cc/AmazonML
Kindle paperback edition ISBN-13: 978-1679850080 justified Iowan OS 

Moraturi Ring
Kindle ebook (mobi) edition ASIN: B087PJY7G3 – tiny.cc/AmazonMR
Kindle paperback edition ISBN-13: 979-8640426106 justified Iowan OS 

Author/Series pages and Awards


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