L. Jagi Lamplighter's Blog, page 19

Superversive Blog: Art of Courage Repost

In honor of the first anniversary of the Superversive Literary Movement, I am reposting the article that started it all:

Where it All Began!

The Superversive Literary Movement

Good storytelling. Great ideas.

Greetings, and welcome to the first post of the new Superversive Literary Movement blog, which will appear here on Wednesdays (or occasionally Thursday, if life interferes.) 

Our very first post is an introduction to the concept of Superversiveness by Mr. Superversive himself, Tom Simon!

The Art of Courage

by Tom Simon

Behold the Underminer! I am always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me!

—The Incredibles

For about a hundred years now, ever since the First World War broke the confidence of Western civilization, it has been fashionable to praise subversion. Art, music, and literature, as many of the critics tell us, are not supposed to go chasing after obsolete values like truth or beauty; they are supposed to shock, to wound, to épater les bourgeois – to subvert the values of society. Here is a fairly typical example, from the literary critic, John Grant:

It must meddle with our thinking, it must delight in being controversial, it must hope to be condemned by authority (whatever authority one chooses to identify), it must be at the cutting edge of the imagination, it must flirt with madness, it must surprise.

Grant is prescribing goals for fantasy, but the same demand has been heard in every genre and every art form, much to the harm of the arts. Most people don’t share Grant’s ideological preoccupations; they see the arts not as vehicles of propaganda, but as entertainment. Trying to get yourself condemned by authority may be good sophomoric fun while you are doing it, but it makes a dull spectator sport. Considered as entertainment, it has no virtue except novelty; and it has not been novel since about the 1920s. This is one reason why the ‘serious’ arts see their audiences shrinking year after year, until they are only maintained in precarious existence by public subsidy.

Part of the trouble comes from that apparently blank cheque, ‘whatever authority one chooses to identify’. In practice, this always means the same authority: the ghost of Mrs. Grundy, the narrow-minded, puritanical, bourgeois authority that lost most of its power in 1914, and does not exist at all anymore. If you rebel against a different authority – the Chinese Communist Party, or the rulers of militant Islam – you will not find the critics so approving. They will call you reactionary or even neocon, and the hand of Buzzfeed will be raised against you.

For the world of art and literature is largely dominated by the Left, and the Left is dominated by people whose world-view is inherited from their great-grandfathers. In this view, we need labour unions to defend us against the peril of child labour, Big Government to defend us against Standard Oil. America is one false move away from theocracy and Jim Crow; Europe is one false move away from another World War. Nothing can save us except a wonderful new panacea called Socialism, which has never been tried before, and with which nothing can possibly go wrong. These, in the main, are the ideas of the Left even today; and the people who believe these things have the nerve to call themselves Progressives. They call for progress; but they are still trying to progress from 1914 into 1915. They call for subversion; but the thing they are trying to subvert no longer exists.

To subvert a thing literally means ‘to turn from below’: to undermine. In olden days, men built their forts and castles on high ground, because high ground is easier to defend. A hilltop fortress can be made almost impregnable. But only almost: for a fortress can be undermined. The attacking army digs tunnels underneath the fortifications, scooping out the earth and rock until the walls cave in from their own unsupported weight. This is the original kind of subversion.

Nobody uses the word subversion in that literal sense anymore, but it is helpful to keep it in mind, because it applies metaphorically to every other kind of subversion. Our brave Progressive rebels have been subverting the walls of nineteenth-century capitalism and imperialism for a hundred years, and the walls fell down long ago. All that remains now is a hole in the ground, under which armies of activists like crazed moles are busily undermining each other’s mines. One mole calls another mole’s mine sexist, and digs a tunnel to make it collapse; the second mole calls the first mole racist, and digs a tunnel under that. They have lost the power to create; all they have left is the mere reflex of criticism.

At this point, subversives can do nothing but dig the hole deeper, or at best, rearrange some of the rubble on the surface. Further subversion achieves nothing; it creates nothing; but they go on doing it from sheer force of habit – the habit of feeding the ego. If they fought effectively, they might win, and then they would not feel needed anymore. As long as they fight by useless methods, the war can continue, and they can take pride in being on the right side.

On the face of it, this is insane; but it is exactly the kind of insanity that you will always find among sane people. It is the insanity of the committee, where people who disagree about their destination have to agree which road to take. Those who want to go north reject the road that goes south, and those who want to go south reject the road that goes east; in the end they compromise and take a road that goes round in circles. Ritual subversion satisfies the craving for activity without ever risking achievement.

G. K. Chesterton described the process in Heretics:

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down…. But as things go on they do not work out so easily.  Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil.  Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes.

The subversives have pulled down their lamp-post, and they must go on pulling it down for ever, because they cannot agree on what to do next.

What, then, can we do, those of us who are not Progressives? We cannot fight subversion by its own methods; that only makes the hole deeper. But if subversion means ‘turning from below’, there can be such a thing as turning from above. We have nothing to gain by digging a bigger hole, but we can build right over it. It seems natural enough to me to invent a new word for this by changing part of the old one; so I call it superversion.

The job of the superversive is at once difficult and rewarding. We shall need to build on the high ground, as people used to do: not only for defence, but because the high ground is more solid. Before the subversives dug their mines under the churches, there was a parable that used to be widely known. The gist of it was that a house built on rock will stand firm, but a house built on sand will soon fall down. High ground is usually rocky ground, and from that perspective, ideal for us to build on.

For those of us who write stories, this chiefly means moral high ground. I am not speaking of sexual morality; that, nowadays, is a subject so difficult to approach, so fraught with ego and emotion, that we are liable to lose most of our readers if we begin there. Fortunately, there are other areas of morality where most people still have an instinctive preference for the good. Progressivism tells us that we are all pawns pushed about by socioeconomic forces (which only the great god Government can hope to alter). Our instincts and experience are all on the opposite side. We know, and feel that we know, that individuals can actually do things, and sometimes great and heroic things. And we know that the best things are often done against the odds; the socioeconomic forces do not inevitably win. Progressivism sneers at the idea of good and evil; but we persist in admiring qualities like honesty, unselfishness, and fair dealing, and most of us feel shame when we do the opposite things. Most people like the kind of story that can be called heroic, where the main character wants something and accomplishes it in spite of opposition. Very few people like stories where all the characters’ actions are doomed to futility, no matter how much they were taught to admire such stories at school.

It has been truly said that courage is not a virtue, but the form that every virtue takes at the testing point. In this sense, most good stories are about courage – the courage to make a sustained effort. It takes physical effort to climb a mountain or build a castle; it takes an effort of will to lift yourself above your worse impulses and climb up to the moral high ground. That is one reason why the metaphor refers to high ground. Temptation is as universal as gravity, and we spend most of our time and effort resisting them both. It is true that courage is not an unmixed blessing. It can take as much courage to commit a murder as to save a life. But it is fair to say that no good thing was ever accomplished without courage; that our whole civilization is built on the courage of men and women who would not surrender to their circumstances, but strove for something better.

I believe it follows, then, that courage is the essential quality of a superversive story: not the dumb, dull fortitude that passively endures in the face of suffering, but the courage that allows the character to take action – to risk becoming a hero. In a double sense, fiction is the art of courage. It is the art that teaches courage by example; it is also the art that is about courage. If the characters have no problem, there is no story; but if they do not have the courage to try and solve the problem, the story has no point, and the audience will not be entertained. There are plenty of non-stories and pointless stories already; plenty of literature, full of pretty language and therefore praised by the critics, in which nobody does anything, or even tries. I say we have had enough of those stories. Let us be superversive; let us build on mountains instead of making molehills. Let us make up stories about people with courage, and have the courage to tell them, as much as the critics and the Progressives wish us to be silent.

 

Tom Simon is an author and essayist. He has written many really fine and inspiring essays on a host of topics, including some excellent essays on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. To find out more about his work:

His blog:

http://bondwine.com

His author page:

http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Simon/e/B00AR3EN7G

His novel, Lord Talon's Revenge

Writing Down the Dragon ( and other Essays on the Tolkien Method and the Craft of Fantasy.)

 

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Superversive Blog: The SF Culture War Posts — Part Two

Part Two of our multi-part look at the psychology of Science Fiction, as explained by Ruth Johnston, author of Re-Modeling the Mind, a new book that takes a fresh look at Jung’s work on personalities.

Part One:  What Forces Drive the SciFi Culture Wars?

Part Two: Optimistic in the Night Land

Q: For Part Two and Three, we wanted to take a look at specific works and discuss how the ideas in your new book apply to these works. Let’s start with John C. Wright’s Awake in the Night Land. 

A: I read John's Night Land stories last year, and this year I've been trying to catch up on the original work they're based on. The original novel, The Night Land, is very, very early science fiction isn't it? 

 

Q: Yes. The Night Lands by William Hope Hodgson was written in 1912. This was after the very first science fiction authors, such as Wells and Verne, but before E.E. “Doc” Smith and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. John really liked the original book and had run a game based on it back in law school. So, when the chance to write stories in that background for Andy Robertson’s Night Lands website, John  jumped on it. The stories in Awake In The Night Lands were originally written for that website, back when John was an atheist.

A: I really like how John's four stories pick up the future history from Hodgson, gradually moving ahead into the most distant future, right to the collapse of the sun. I guess around the time that Hodgson was writing, there were early theories about the sun's age, based on Lord Kelvin's calculations. These theories, as well as the increasing pile of dinosaur bones and other fossils, were making people aware of time in a new way.

The Night Land (the original) gets described as a horror story, but I see a lot of optimism in it. Our relationship to technology changed during and after the World Wars, but in 1912 this process hadn't started yet. Scientific knowledge was exploding in unimaginable directions and, as yet, no real downside had been seen. The Chicago World's Fair was lit by electricity in 1893, and this made a powerful impression on people's minds. For the first time, an entire building, and more, could be outlined against the dark night sky by thousands of lights without any danger of fire or constant human tending. Electricity meant that people could control light and with it, knowledge and safety. 

Then in 1903, the Wright brothers managed the first powered flight. By 1912, there were small aircraft factories and various “firsts” had been achieved, like first crossing of the Channel, first passengers, first woman, and so on. Hodgson knew that flight would go in unimaginable directions in the future, so he included an airplane in his story only as an ancient artifact. 

People had always dreamed of flying, but the science of the early 20th century also brought things they had not imagined. Light had a measurable speed, which changed the nature of physics. It was literally unimaginable how far science might go in a million years. When Hodgson published his novel in 1912, there was good reason to believe that discovery and technology might keep going in a straight line upward until everything now impossible might become real. Later science fiction often explores how technology might go wrong for us; The Night Land is about how technology can help keep us alive in a changed, dangerous world. 

What's happened to the earth is terrible, of course: as the sun cooled, the earth cracked open, with the ocean pouring into the rift, gradually evaporating and contributing to more cooling. Life is only sustainable in the valley that eventually emerges from the crack, 100 miles below the current surface. The sun has gone out so the only source of power is the earth's core and magnetic charge. Survivors of humanity re-started history inside the valley and have mostly forgotten that the world is larger. They live in a thick metal pyramid sunk deep into the ground and standing 7 miles above the surface. But in this endless darkness, technology is optimistic and life-sustaining. Like the World's Fair, the pyramid creates its own daylight. The original novel's plot hinges on light: being able to make it, finding it in unexpected places, and how to cope when it's utterly gone. 

So in spite of the darkness of the fictional world, I see the stories as grounded in optimistic Extroverted Intuition.

Q. Before we continue with our main subject, could you remind our readers of the unusual use you make of the words Introverted and Extroverted. Most people use these words to mean “likes to be alone” and “fun with people”, but one of the real gems of your book is your entirely new take on what Jung might have meant by these terms. Can you remind us of how you are defining them?

 A: In the first article, I explained how both Intuition and Sensing can be Introverted: scanning for danger, idealistic, and a bit pessimistic, like a rabbit's instinctive way of scanning the sky for flight patterns that could be hawks. On the other hand, both of them can also be Extroverted: optimistic, flexible, and pragmatic. Balancing each other in personalities, they form two basic polarities that I called A and B. (These are just temporary names for this series of articles; A and B are not terms from my book.) A is the pairing of optimistic, exploring Intuition and more danger-oriented, idealistic Sensing. B is the other pairing, where Intuition is idealistic and danger-oriented, while Sensing is exploring, flexible and optimistic. 

 

 Q: Let’s talk about the ideas you share in your new book. What light can they shed either on the original Night Lands or on John and his version?

Science fiction fans are usually personalities in which Intuition is a very strong part, often the strongest and most dominant. When it's Extroverted, the universe seems full of possibilities waiting to be connected. Under every rock or behind every star could be a great invention or cure. When it's Introverted, the personality usually has an innate feeling of knowing the truth of the world, so that exploring ideas is a matter of looking inward, following an inborn map of meaning. It's also a bit more pessimistic and idealistic: under every rock there might be a rattlesnake, not a cure for cancer. But the rocks do need to be turned over, because it's terribly important to find truth and roll away anything that covers and hides.

William Hope Hodgson's original story seems full of Extroverted Intuition to me. Technology keeps mankind alive and there's no real downside. His dark world is filled with evil spirits and creatures, but mankind's ability to solve problems keeps one step ahead so that they can build a good way of life. The optimism of his Intuition feels so powerful in the story that I believe he probably had this kind of Intuition in his personality. It creates a sort of worldview. 

I think this is some of what charmed John when he read the 1912 novel, and because I know John from college, I can say without guessing that he has that kind of Intuition. In his mind, the world is full of dots to be connected, and we've barely begun to connect them all. 

Now the other half of the polarity I'm calling A is Introverted Sensing, which can show up as an intense idealism about human social roles. In fantasy and science fiction, it comes out in taking fairy-tale roles like king and knight very seriously. It also believes strongly in archetypal images like mother and father, male and female. When someone with A writes SFF stories, the setting and events can become wild and even chaotic, but the human roles never move much from archetypes. We see this clearly in both Night Land versions, the original and John's. Anyone walking in the Night Land is going to be surprised by whatever comes next, whether it's a fire pit, a dangerous creature, an oddly detached spirit, a living stone monument, or a cluster of blind worms. The stories depend strongly on human thought, activity, and roles to give them structure: like putting a snail into its shell. Human roles are stable, not flexible and random like the setting and ideas.

Q. Now we are getting to the crux of the issue, are we not? Can you tell us more about how your ideas apply to the human roles in The Night Lands.

First, just the concept of being human is crucially important. Hodgson has a “Master-Word” that only humans can know or say, though (wisely) he never tells us what it is. John's stories picked up this core meaning of being human and play with it: what if someone refrains from saying it, what if someone has been made into a non-human and can no longer say it, what if an evil creature develops the ability to say it? I think the Master-Word is an archetypal notion of the essence of being human, and its message is that being human is not a flexible category. It is a core attribute and as such it is rigidly unchanging.

Second, the archetypal contrast of Male and Female is of utmost important in the Great Redoubt. In the original story, Hodgson's narrator and his true love are depicted as having extreme attributes of male and female traits: the man's strength and the girl's daintiness are reiterated over and over. Further, there's an aristocracy in the pyramid, hinted at by Hodgson and developed by John. In John's first two stories, the leading ladies (narrator in one case) are princesses. In the first story, the princess rebels against the law of arranged marriages. The second story is a retelling of the Greek tragedy of Antigone, which requires a royal princess for the plot to work. Both princesses push back against their fates, but they can't divorce their personal identities from their social roles, and fate always wins. So the human roles in the stories are not flexible at all; I don't want to call them “stereotyped,” but quite appropriately we can call them “archetyped.”

Q. Are there archetypes in the story that do not have to do with humans?

A: There's another strong archetype: light. Light is never general, it always comes from a source. Maybe a volcano, maybe a natural gas flame, maybe electrical current in a tool or weapon. In John's first story, “Awake in the Night Land,” the narrator is saved from imminent death by the sudden appearance of a star, where stars are normally hidden by thick toxic clouds. In Hodgson's story, the narrator is saved once or twice by a sudden light from above, maybe a star, maybe something else. Light is always a force for goodness, though it brings danger too. In folk tales and stories around the world, stars have the same image of goodness and, in a way, eternal life. The stars go on while our lives end, so they seem to stand for a power above death. 

Q: What is the connection between someone's personality and a story's worldview? There isn't a simple one to one correspondence between readers' personalities and the type of stories or movies they like.

A: That's right, and we don't want to suggest that it's so direct. We can like a story for idiosyncratic reasons, or from technical admiration, and we may not even cotton to the structured beliefs of people who overlap in what I call personality worldview. However, the way we process the world may match the way a story presents it so that it just feels like home. I think John had that sense about Hodgson's stories. 

For a personality with the aesthetic taste of Introverted Sensing, the archetypal presentations of people and light make sense. They make the confusion of the shifting world seem tolerable, and there's little to no feeling of pushing back, going “whoa, maybe these traditional ideas need to be challenged.” It feels comfortable to adopt them unchallenged. This may not be true for personalities with Extroverted Sensing, as we'll talk about in the next article. 

I want to point out a significant difference between Hodgson's world and John's adaptation of it, one that I imagine is based in their personalities. Hodgson seems only secondarily interested in the science of his world, because he's really deeply interested in idealized love. Technologies are props to show us how even here, love conquers all. But John's mind is organized around idealized logic, not idealized relationships. His stories all move toward philosophical questions and moral tests of principles. Science ideas (obviously, fictional ones) are much better described and developed, of course especially in the last story when the universe is collapsing. Every story still has a central love, but it may be fraternal not romantic, and it may be pitted against logic and law in a more meaningful way.

In Jung's system we'd say John has a Thinking personality, while Hodgson may have had a Feeling one. But the world Hodgson laid out is easily adapted for John's idealized Thinking for one main reason: that Hodgson does not require us to mix good and bad. In the Night Land, everything is bad, because evil spirits from outer space made it that way. Idealized, Introverted Thinking tends to define “good” as the force for order and logic, and “evil” as a force for chaos and destruction of life. Good upholds life, like walls, roads and fences. Evil leaves unmarked cliffs, sinkholes and pockets of toxic gasses. Evil is the enemy of both logical order and life itself. That's the moral outlook of a mind that's strongly organized around Introverted Thinking, and it fits easily into the post-apocalyptic Night Land. 

I think John's Introverted Thinking works neatly into his fiction, but in non-fiction, in his essays, it moves toward very strongly-worded opinions that polarize readers. So one of his great strengths as a science fiction writer also draws him into polemical rhetoric. Knowing how strongly he defends traditional religion now, it's amazing to realize that he was writing the Night Land stories before he had any belief. There's no God in the pyramid, but the star as an archetype of Good Light comes close to faith. As a writer, he really lives in two worlds, one in which he can move through unreal places and write things he does not personally believe, and the other in which he makes enemies by calling out what he sees as good and evil. 

Q: Can you give us an example of how these personality categories we have been discussing apply to a story with a different world view, perhaps one from the most recent Hugos—in the hopes of finding one that is familiar to many of our readers. 

A: In preparing to write these articles, I read some of this year's nominees and winners. I found Heuveldt's “The Day the World Turned Upside-Down” utterly charming. I think I liked it so much because it matches my own personality worldview: I have that optimistic, what-if wondering Extroverted Intuition but it's combined with super idealism about love and relationships. So I understood immediately that when gravity flipped, this wasn't intended to be a scientific event, but in some ways it was just about how devastating it is to lose love. I talked to one sci-fi fan who said it felt like a cheat that the gravity-flip wasn't taken seriously as a natural disaster, and I can see how to a more Thinking personality this would be a problem. I also see the “A” polarity in the way characters were handled. The little girl hasn't much individuality, rather she's an archetype of a child, even called “Dawnie” which evokes the dawn of life. One house has three women spinning flax into rope, like the Three Fates. So this has significant overlap with “Awake in the Night Land,” in my terms, but at the same time an opposite focus. It's the “A” polarity organized around Feeling, not Thinking. 

Thank you again, Ruth, for your observations.

Next time: Ruth Johnston applies her mind-remodeling magic to: “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love.”

Available from Amazon in paper or on Kindle

Also, in paper at B&N

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Changes In The Offing

As of last week, I am the proud owner of the rights to all five of my books–both the Prospero series* and first two books of Unexpected Enlightenment.

This means that my new publisher, Chameleon, will be publishing all three of the books of Unexpected Enlightenment–The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel, and the new book: Rachel and the Man-Splendored Dreamland.

If this goes well with this, Chameleon will be publishing the Prospero books as well — with new covers, God willing, by Dan Lawlis!

Very exciting!

* In case anyone is curious, my asking to regain my rights from Tor has nothing to do with the recent Hugo-centric kerfluffles in the SFF field. I have been working on regaining these rights for over a year, due entirely to market issues.

 

 

New Kickstarter Card Game: Hero’s Journey!

Nathan McClellan, a delightful fellow and long time fan of John's, is involved in a Kickstarter for a really cool card game called Hero's Journey. I showed the Kickstarter video to my youngest and he cried out in awe, "How can I get that!" So, I asked Nathan and his partner-in-crime, James Wright (no relation), if they would concent to be interviewed.

 

Can Odysseus survive the Flying Monkeys? 

Willl the the starving Greeks be forced to eat Toto?

 

1) What led you to embark on the Hero's Journey, so to speak?

Well, there was an old game both of us loved to play a lot during our college years which has since gone the way of the dinosaur.  Several other games from that period were starting to make a comeback so we asked ourselves, "Why not this one?" 

Then we asked, "If we did bring it back, what would we want most?" 

And almost simultaneously said, "More crossovers." 

So we set about expanding the game's original engine to accommodate beyond its original, narrow focus.

 

2) Tell us about yourselves. Who are the folks who are making the Hero's Journey happen?

Just a couple of nerds that like games and books.

We had an older friend, Brad, who died in his thirties who also loved this game.  We like to imagine he would have been on board for this and enjoyed it too so the whole thing is dedicated to him and giving his boys one more legacy to remember their dad by.

 

Who will kill you first, Paris or the Wicked Witch?

 

3) There are many types of games out there. We might play Life if we want an group game, or Uno if we want something fast and easy or Chinese Checkers, if we are looking for a bit of strategy. What kind of experience might a person be looking for that would prompt them to reach for Hero's Journey.

This is more for the harder gaming crowd as the game has at least 2 layers of strategy to it.  First is the planning where you take the cards we've given you and build a deck with.  Second is when you play that deck against an opponent who has constructed their own deck.  But we've included at least 2 simple deck lists to help beginners get started and are planning to posts decklists as players invent them or if you want to do quick start plays or themed style evenings.  We've tried to keep the game pretty flexible.

 

4) How did you come to pick Oz and the Iliad?

 Since we're just getting started we decided the best bet was to start with public domain books.  That way we could take a property and develop parts of the game to simulate moments and characters from that property without having to worry about licensing fees or having the game tied up in legal battles. 

Then since the game naturally simulates trying to get from point A to B with constant challenges along the way, we thought "What's something in the public domain that everyone recognizes which has a hero & their companions get from a start to a finish?"  Oz (get home) and the Iliad (get to Troy) seemed the most obvious choices.

 

5) The art looks really good. Who is/are the artist and how did you get them involved.

A mix of asking for artists on the web and asking people we know for recommendations.  Since we're just getting started with the game (and know how frustrating it can be to look for that "big break") we especially looked for artists that are building their resumes.  If this launch is successful, I hope to keep it going by always looking for new talent whenever we start a new set of cards relating to a book.  As for who they are, we've done a week long focus on our artists along with examples here: https://epicusliterati.wordpress.com/category/artist-focus/

 

6) Is this a game about storytelling? Or is storytelling actually required to play the game?

No, it's a game first.  Though we won't complain if players want to combine it with a trivia night (i.e. "Name the pair of animals that attacked Dorothy & co while crossing a log.").  We also like to invent our own stories of how things might happen in a game (like the time Dorothy got to beat up on an old Trojan priest).

 

7) Do you have plans for additional expansions? Might there be other stories joining the Hero's Journey, should things go well? If so, do you have any in mind that you'd like to see?

Yes, we've got at least 2 more small sets rough-drafted and currently testing off and on.  And definitely yes as to more books.  If this game proves successful enough and we can move out of the public domain, we have a wishlist of stuff we'd love to license. (Though we've found more in the public domain than initially thought, we might do a whole series on "forgotten classics.")  We also aim to allow the players to help us pick and choose which books are adapted next.

 

8) How does this game differ from something like Smash-Up?

Well, Smash-Up (a game I usually enjoy – if you ban spies & geeks) is a much faster, pick-up & play, while our game will require a bit of prep before anybody comes to the table.  Smash-Up also has a very loose rules system to try and make it as flexible as possible, but that gets messy when players interact. 

Our rules are a bit more complex and structured to allow things like ranged & melee combat as well as multiple players to gang up on one (as that's what's happening to you every turn).  This also means that while Smash-Up isn't too bad for new players to grab & play, Heroes' Journey may take 1 play through before players really "get" it.

   

9) What age range to you foresee enjoying the Hero's Journey? Can ten year olds set out on this journey, as they might on a Pokemon journey, or does this require more

On average I'd say maybe 13 and up. 

Some cards and their resulting decks are much simpler then others, so might be a better fit for some players.  For example, "Wild Monkey Beatdown" (as we nickname it) is pretty easy and basic, while "Monkey Swarm" is much trickier to pull off. 

Though if a person can play, we say: Let them play.

 

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/294557164/the-heroes-journey-a-new-card-game

Website: http://epicusliterati.wordpress.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/epicusliterati

Twitter: https://twitter.com/picusLiterati

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Superversive Blog: What Stories Do!

Today we have a special treat, another post from the fantastic teen author, April Freeman.

Teen author extraordinaire: April Freeman

 

Not everyone loves reading, but who can resist a good story?

There is something about a good story. The way it pulls you in, the way it makes you want more, the way it makes you feel.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a very emotional person. I like to think rationally; I don’t like the idea of my emotions overriding my will very much. Yet I love to obsess over fictional characters and the way they make me cry, laugh, agonize, rejoice, and just feel.

There’s something about diving into a good story. Opening up our hearts and feelings to the direction of the author’s pen strokes. Even though it will take hours of our time, hours of our thoughts, and even wreck our emotions sometimes, we still gladly take the plunge.

Even when the stories are not fiction, people still like stories. Why do people like the news channels? Why do people like gossip? Why do people spend hours on Netflix?

Because they want stories. A source of entertainment, a way to take you out of yourself for a time, to make you imagine something new. 

And, to make you feel.

There’s something almost safe about fictional stories. Sure, you can have your emotions torn apart, tossed in a blender, thrown off a cliff, and you don’t know what awaits you at the bottom. But that’s the point, you live with the character, you go through it all, you feel. But then, after it’s over and you’ve had time to recover, life outside hasn’t changed. The bills still have to be paid, jobs are waiting, errands must be run, and “real” life goes on as usual. The story was a trill, and you can’t wait for the next one, but life goes on.

It’s like a roller coaster. You scream, you yell, your stomach flips, you’re falling, you’re flying, and you’ve never been so scared and exhilarated at the same time. You feel like you’re going to die, but in the back of your mind you know that the straps have you, and the likeliness of injury is very small. At the end, you get off and walk on to the next thing.

In a similar way, that is how it is with stories. Even though you don’t know how it will end, you know there will be an end. And at the end of the day, it’s all imaginary anyway.

You have that freedom—that safety in a way—to let yourself go, to live, and to feel. And it’s not just the hard or crazy emotions; you can feel happiness, suspense, hope, or wonder. If the story can provide it, you can feel it. Dive into it.

So fellow authors, what do we take from this? First thing is that our readers want to feel, but at the same time they don’t want their feelings abused. So we must write in a way as to get them connected and sympathize with the characters. But also, we are responsible for what we do with that connection. Because if all we do is bring them down and give them sad endings, they won’t want to come back for that. The readers want to feel, but by the end they want their feelings to be satisfied. And I, as a reader, know this do be true.

Secondly, what do we as Superversive writers take away from this? In other words, what is a way to make a story Superversive? Give that feeling of wonder. The feeling of being part of something bigger, away from yourself and not alone—the feeling of awe.

To be Superversive is to reach upward, to strive for those moments of joy, of revelation, and hope. Build your story so that you can deliverer those feelings to your readers. That even while everything may be in chaos and death, and fears are close, and you don’t know how everything will turn out, you give them hope. That awe and sense of something bigger and beyond. You stay holding onto the dreams, you give them a piece of calm in the storm, and you inspire.

Because when the story ends, though everything around you in the real world hasn’t changed, your feeling may very well be altered. Emotions can be powerful things.

These emotions can stay with you, and can remind you of something as you shift your focus to the world around you. They can even remind you of the awe and hope you saw in that story, the feelings you experienced. And it’s these feelings that can help carry you through your daily challenges and find that little bit of hope or enjoyment to keep you going.

 

You can find more charming words by April Freeman at her blog: Lost In La-La-Land

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Superversive Blog: Wherefore Art Thou, Culture War?

Hello, All! 

Welcome back, as Superversive Blog recovers from its summer hiatus. Today, we have an interesting treat, especially for those of you who appreciate psychology and personality tests!

The recent intrusion of the current culture war into the sphere of Science Fiction has drawn the attention of people beyond fandom. One such person is author Ruth Johnston. Known previously for her excellent scholarly works on Beowulf and the Middle Ages, she has more recently turned her efforts to a fascinating new book that takes a fresh look at the work of psychologist Carl Jung.

Ruth’s intriguing premise is that we have been misinterpreting how to apply Jung’s concepts for decades. In her book, Re-Modeling the Mind, she offers a remodeling of Jung’s ideas that produce self-help concepts that won’t exasperate smart and creative people.

Ruth has a theory about how personality types, as defined by her remodeling of Jung, explain the culture war, this years Hugos, and some other issues in fandom today. She has generously agreed to a three part series on the subject.

             Part One will give a brief explanation of her theory as applicable.

                          Part Two will apply her theory to characters in John’s Night Land stories. 

Part Three will tackle “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” as well as the larger Hugo/culture war picture.

 

Part One:

Q: In the Afterword to your new book, you suggest that ideas about personality might help us understand "culture wars" by showing how the sides just see the world differently.  What do you mean by "personality-based worldviews"? 

A: The thesis of Re-Modeling the Mind is that our brains can't process all of the information that comes at us constantly, so each brain organizes itself around more limited options, depending on the neural strengths it already has. When we talk about "personality" we mean these limitations and abilities, which are usually clearly visible when we watch each other. We know ourselves this way, too. We know there are things we simply can't take in, or if we can take in the facts, we can't manage them to make decisions. There are things we pay close attention to, and other things we just can't be bothered with. Personality is this very real neural patterning that filters the world so that it's manageable.

But this means that our personalities also limit and even blind us to things other people can perceive and manage. We're all in the same physical world, in the sense that we agree on where the objects are, so that we can avoid running into them. But at a more complex level, we really don't all live in the same world. Our personalities can have such root-level different views of the world that we can barely have conversations. This is what I'd call a personality-based worldview.

I'm not a science-fiction reader, and I'd never heard of the Hugos until this year. But watching the ferocity of the battles made me feel convinced that at least some of this culture war is provoked by a clash of personality-based worldviews. In other words, probably the leaders and many supporters of each faction share some personality traits so that they all "live" in a similar world. In each faction's "world," its values are not only sensible but the only possible ones. Or if not the only possible ones, the only morally right or safe ones. This is why it's so hard to have a conversation. It's self-evident to each faction that its values are right, and the arguments offered by the other faction hold no water in their worldview. A lot of people on both sides feel that if So and So wins a prize, moral right or wrong will be rewarded.

 

 Q: For the writers I know, the issue isn't winning a prize. Larry Correia and others involved with the "sad puppies" initiative specifically recused themselves from being considered for prizes. How do we get from personality differences, which we deal with every day, to an emotional war over culture?

A: I think the roots are in people's inborn, instinctive sense of danger and safety. It's astonishing to see how each faction in the Hugo controversy is not only indifferent to but grandly dismissive of the other faction's concern about danger. It's almost like interviewing both a wolf and a hare, and while the hare explains he doesn’t want to be torn into ligament shreds, the wolf says passionately that he's afraid of slow starvation and shouldn't we be concerned for him too? They both have a point, but they're both justifiably indifferent to the other's plight. I think that human minds have some of these animal-like survival fears, and that our personalities are organized around them.

The 20th century showed us something like Poe's Law: you can't come up with a philosophical disagreement so trivial that some government or militia won't kill over it. You can try, but it won't work; somewhere in the 20th century, someone died for a reason even stupider. Like wearing glasses or receiving a letter. So while most of us don't have real reasons to fear, those reasons do exist and we know it. You can hear the echoes in references to the KKK, Marx, hate-groups, and warriors, as well as in phrases like "burn it down." Both sides vow to deny each other's books the means to "live" by not buying anything written by the wrong person, and both sides feel like they're on the verge of defeat unless they can muster more supporters. The 20th century left us traumatized and unwilling to trust each other for kindness; we believe in striking hard and first. Even when it's just about buying books!

In my way of modeling personality, our deepest fears are centrally important. I believe that inborn, instinctive ideas are what Jung meant by his famous phrase "collective unconscious." People often think it means something like the Borg or some New Agey space-mind we're all part of, but I think Jung made it clear in a few places that he meant something like "the stuff that's inborn in all minds, like animal instinct." Horses know how to stand up and run, kangaroo joeys know how to crawl into the marsupial pouch, newly-hatched ducklings know how to paddle. If we look at what's important to a human baby's survival, it isn't anything like these, of course apart from the instinct to nurse. Human beings are the greatest protectors and, at the same time, antagonists and predators, of other humans. The survival instincts we need are about human society and emotions. Inborn personality draws some babies to study emotions and relationships, others to study behavior and rules, others appearances of the environment around them. So as adults, our personalities are still organized around the kind of inborn templates we have: what is the world supposed to look like? When this template is violated, we feel uncertain or even afraid.

 

Q: Science fiction has always been about exploring and asking questions, which is more about challenging fears than hiding from them. Why is all this happening in science fiction?

A: Well, the other pole of personality is the part of our minds that are open, exploring, questioning, and more: pragmatic, optimistic, flexible, and ready to take any opportunity. We're all a mix of mental functions that operate in this open, pragmatic way and others that operate by inborn templates and fears. Science fiction was invented by one particular mental function in the open, exploring, optimistic mode: Extroverted Intuition. Intuition is a common daily word, and my use of it isn't far different from the ordinary meaning. It means consulting our nonverbal, super-fast brains to find connections between things in the world. In its simplest form, Intuition comes out in superstitions, prejudices and hunches, but in about one-quarter of the population, it's a well-developed interest in abstract ideas. Personalities with very strong, highly-developed Intuition are interested in impractical questions of what-if.

I think there have always been two polarities in science fiction, though again I speak as an outsider, not a fan. In early sci-fi, a space ship goes to another planet, and what happens? Space travelers could discover amazing hidden civilizations or end up dying of a hideous disease; the story's outlook could be optimistic or pessimistic. The roots of this optimism or pessimism are in which way our Intuition views the world. Of course, you can't automatically match stories and authors saying "the story is this way, so the writer must be too," since writing is art. But at the same time, stories come from our hearts and usually refract part of our worldview. Intuition, as a facet of personality, can operate in an exploring, optimistic, pragmatic way (Extroverted Intuition) or in a way that's focused on uncovering hidden truths to save us from danger (Introverted Intuition). The two kinds of Intuition are interested in slightly different questions and outcomes.

Science fiction fans in the last 100 years have been split between personalities with Extroverted and Introverted Intuition. Nobody really noticed most of the time, because Intuitive personalities can enjoy reading the projected scenarios and questions of both kinds of Intuition. What sci-fi fans saw was the unity among them: they were all these people who felt alienated from concrete, practical culture, but they were unified in loving stories in which impossible things could happen and really outlandish questions could be explored. I think what's going on now is that the two Intuitive worldviews—Introverted and Extroverted—are drawing farther apart, for a lot of reasons both inside and outside of sci-fi culture. When people though they were all alike, and then they discover a huge difference, it feels like betrayal.

 

Q: Why does the debate focus so tightly on gender and race? That's not what science fiction used to be about. You suggested that Intuition is interested in abstract ideas and questions. Then why are people suddenly judging by message or frivolous things, such as the author's physical appearance?

A: This is what fascinates me about the controversy, because it dovetails neatly with the personality model I've developed. Balancing Intuition, there's Sensing, which is how we process the real world of objects, motion, and appearances. It, too, can come in a mode where it's outgoing, exploring, flexible, optimistic, and pragmatic, and again this is called Extroverted Sensing. Or it can come in a mode where it's the animal instinct telling us about danger, and then it's constantly comparing what it sees outside with the inner template of what the world should look like. That’s called Introverted Sensing. When the outside world matches the template, all is well, just like when a rabbit sees a blue sky with only birds who fly like songbirds, it keeps nibbling grass. That's what the sky is supposed to look like, in the rabbit's instinctual image. When the sky includes a hawk or something (like a RC airplane) that doesn't move like a songbird, the rabbit assumes that it's in danger, freezes, then runs.

Introverted Sensing looks at people's appearances as well as the appearances of other things. When it's really strong in a personality, it causes uneasiness when people don't look just right. There's an image for each kind of person: a cop, a teacher, a President, a grandmother, a father, an innocent child, and so on. If you want to see these appearances in pure form, look at photos of Duchess Kate and her babies. They never have a single color or detail out of place, so I assume that Kate has a strong sense of these image/role templates. Jung talked about archetypes, inborn ideas. The social role images are the most famous kind of archetypes, though I believe we also have archetypes of ideas (like same/different, many/one), beauty, and relationships (like love and hatred). Introverted Sensing likes it when people "look right," because things just feel safe.

Personalities organize these mental abilities and trends according to natural rules that use minimal brain energy. In by far most people, it works out where Sensing and Intuition are opposite, to balance each other. Let's set aside for the time being the question of whether Sensing or Intuition is particularly important in a personality, because there's a whole range of relative importance. Regardless of relative importance, they come in two polarized pairs: Extroverted, optimistic, flexible Intuition and Introverted, template-based Sensing; or Introverted, template-based Intuition and Extroverted, optimistic, flexible Sensing.

 Since science fiction started out with flexible, exploring Intuition asking questions, I'll call that combination A, and the other B. A's sci-fi is more likely to really push boundaries of reality. It's flexible on all ideas about place, time, space, and being. However, it's not so flexible about social role images, because its Sensing is Introverted. It's looking at templates to see if things appear "right." The most obvious representative of A's work is in comic books and space opera, where anything can happen, but over and over, the people doing it are more or less knights/heroes, villains, kings, and mothers or princesses. When Introverted Sensing is weaker than Intuition, which is generally the case with sci-fi writers, it isn't as concerned about dressing right in today's society, but it loves fairy-tale roles.

The B combination has flexible, Extroverted, exploring Sensing but with danger-scanning, template-based Introverted Intuition. It's open to the world, including people, looking like anything at all. Extroverted Sensing can be unconcerned with social role archetypes, or sometimes it's downright hostile to them. It may intentionally bust up archetypes by dressing "wrong" or associating with people who aren't carrying out their archetypal roles in society, like grandmas who go 4-wheeling or transgendered teenagers. But its opposite number, Introverted Intuition, goes further. It sees images as potentially very dangerous, because they can be used as disguises. B's Introverted Intuition is less interested in exploring every conceivable question, like A's optimistic, flexible Intuition. It's more interested in chasing down what it feels to be the truest truth. Like a detective, it dislikes masks. If a social role appears to be noble and authoritative, Introverted Intuition suspects that someone may be using this role to hide corruption or ignorance. B's science fiction is less likely to be about kings, queens and knights, but sometimes it does feature them while showing that some other character, who doesn't look right for the role at all, is actually the noble, true one. Kings and other roles are false fronts to be torn away.

So let's rephrase the question: why is science fiction suddenly focused on how social role archetypes are being used? There are several layers of answers. In the first layer, we look at the writers and their works. Science fiction was founded mainly by A-type writers, the ones who created far-flung stories questioning reality, but with predictable, stable human roles. The B-type writers have always been involved, using the settings created by A's Extroverted Intuition, but for slightly different Introverted Intuition purposes. Their characters were less predictable and often had a twist, and their story arcs were often less optimistic. They focused more on internal motivation issues, less on solving external problems. As decades passed and people tried to do new things, Introverted Intuition used the science-fiction settings and conventions to pose questions about society and human nature. They asked less "what if?" and more, "if?"

Every art form goes through stages of starting out, becoming more popular, creating sub-genres, setting up organizations and judging, growing more sophisticated, and finally deliberately parodying itself while distancing from the simpler original forms. You can see it in painting, dance, music, and poetry. Science fiction seems to be in this later sophisticated stage, where there's a struggle for what is "good" in the art form.

Is A's art too unsophisticated? It poses external problems like running out of air, fighting monsters, and overcoming laws of nature, while using characters who are either good and noble or bad and treacherous. It uses basic archetypes without shame: male and female, family, innocent children, brave knight, noble princess, wise king, old wizard, and so on. Its monsters are usually ugly, unless they are beautiful with a sinister aura. There's a time-honored archetype for evil beauty, after all.

B's art eschews these straightforward forms. It uses the settings and conventions of travel in time and space, or civilizations on other planets, but it's really querying how far we can strip away archetypal images to find truer truth. All kinds of appearances are possibly masks, therefore bad. Both the writers and their art are on guard against ways in which a character's race or gender might shape their meaning. For this reason, B's science fiction may feature a villain as the hero, or it may blur distinctions of male and female. Science fiction's purpose, to Introverted Intuition, is to use its conventions to question archetypes of roles. A's art may use fine language, but it's not asking questions that Introverted Intuition considers important. It's taking role archetypes for granted instead of questioning them.

 

Q: So what you're calling B sees itself as actually better, that is, more sophisticated.  Therefore more worthy to win awards.

A: Yes, I think so. As an outsider, I'd say there isn't a quality difference between them, but I don't think that's how people feel on the inside. Looking at the Hugo-related blog arguments, I see very clear claims about quality. The faction that made "No Award" happen believes strongly that the nominated outsider/overlooked works (promoted by the "Sad Puppies") are almost entirely without merit. The outsider, challenger faction, for its part, claims that the faction that has been controlling the awards cares more about a social-justice message than about classic science fiction elements. If you ask either side whether the other side's works have literary merit, you'll get a loud "No," though perhaps with some polite qualifications. I see them as art forms produced by opposite worldviews. The merit of each is invisible to the other.

 

This ends Part One. Next up (Two Weeks hence), Ruth applies her astute and impartial observations to particular SF works. First a Puppy work (though not from the ballot.) Then, in her third installment, a well-known work lauded by the Anti-Puppies.

Ruth’s book, Re-Modeling the Mind is available for purchase here.

Her excellent, excellent, posts on life in the Middle Ages are available at All Things Medieval.

Live podcast on Superversive SF

Come hear us talk about the Hugos and other completely unrelated things!

SuperversiveSF at 3:00pm EST

Post Hugo Post

We had a lovely time out in Spokane this weekend. Two dear friends who are fans of John’s decided that, in a just world, he would have been a guest of honor, so they decided to treat him like one.

They picked us up at the airport, arranged our hotel, provided meals, covered my plane ticket, even arranged for small gifts for our children, as we did not have time to hit the dealer’s room. They made everything easy and joyful.

And their company was the greatest treasure of all, as was the company of another friend who came some distance with two of her children to grace us with her presence.

The weekend was just delightful. The con committee had somehow misunderstood our intention to come, so they had not put us in the program. This meant that, while some folks who wanted to see us missed us, anyone who might have wanted to object missed us, too.

Everyone we spoke with was charming. We met many fans. A few even recognized John as we walked outside and cried with delight. We met some Sad and Rabid Pups, all of whom were gracious and charming.

The town was filled with smoke from local forest fires. Everyone kept joking that the Supreme Dark Lord Vox Day had opened a door to Hell and let the smoke out.

Quite a joyous time.

I don’t really want to comment on the award ceremony or the pre-Hugo reception, except to say: There is a scene in the movie DEVDAS where the main character’s mother is dancing for the family of the hero. She is dancing with such cheer and joy, clearly sharing her happiness with her audience. However, she does not realize that her audience is mocking her.

I find that scene very painful and have trouble watching it. I certainly did not realize, as I joyfully watched the Hugo show, that I was playing the part of the mother.

When I hear the word asterisk, for instance, I think of French comics. I had no notion it was used in sports to note awards that have been tampered with or tainted. So when the MC declared this the Year of the Asterisk, I didn’t realize that this was meant to be snide and insulting.

And that was only one of many slights I did not catch, as I sat that enjoying the show and being happy that everyone was getting along.

But enough about that.

There were a few high points to the convention, other than seeing dear friends and fans.

One was the moment during our kaffe klatch, when a fan of John’s cried out in joy, “Wait! You mean you’re the author of the Prospero series?”

 Another was when years of bitter estrangement between two friends ended with a long overdue hug.

Those things—and the wonderful time we had with friends—were certainly worth the trip!

There was one rather funny moment: I was waiting on the stairs during the Hugo ceremony rehearsal and chatting with the lady behind me. She started in on the speech she was going to give if she won. It became clear early on, it was going to be anti-puppy rant.

I leaned down from the stair above her and said, "Before you say anything you might later wish you had not, I think you should know that I am standing here because I am accepting for Vox Day."

She blurted out in shock, "I am so sorry for you."

I added, "I'm John Wright's wife."

Ken Lui, who was standing behind her, burst out into good natured laughter.

The artist lady and I parted on good terms, but the moment still amused me. It reminded me of the kind of scene you see in movies.

***

I guess I hadn’t mentioned above that I was accepting for Vox. Neither Vox nor I thought he had much of a chance of winning, but acting as his acceptor allowed John and I to get two guests into the Pre-Hugo Reception, for which I am most grateful. (Actually, I was just accepting for Best Editor, Short Form. Another fine fellow was the designated acceptor for Long Form.)

However, Vox had asked, on the far off chance that he should win, that I go onstage to accept the rocket wearing a single feather in my hair Indian-style (or Brando girl style). I found a handsome one that had once belonged to the local Canadian geese, cleaned it, and left it on the porch in the sun.

When I went to get it, when it was time to pack, I discovered that the Cherubim had thrown the feathers off the porch into the mud. I rescued it, but it was rather bedraggled. My friends who saw it thought it still looked quite nice.

But the feather had lost its former glory, rather of like the Hugos themselves.

Worldcon 2015, Here We Come!

Our Sasquan schedule:

 

L. Jagi Lamplighter       Autographing  Friday 13:00 Hall B

L. Jagi Lamplighter  Reading     Saturday noon 304

 

John. C. Wright            Autographing  Saturday 13:00  Hall B

John C. Wright   Reading    Saturday 15:30 303B

 

Joint Kaffe Klatche scheduled for Friday at 5 pm. 

Rachel Three blurb

Working on the blurb for Book Three. Kind of jumbled, but this is what I have so far.

Rachel Griffin and her friends have already saved the school from a fiery dragon and the world from an evil sorcerer. Finally, they get to be normal student and enjoy their freshman year at Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts.

Only, while exploring dreamland, a mishap caused Rachel and her friends to accidentally loosed Morax, a flesh-eating demon, upon the unsuspecting earth. Now they must discover how to stop the fiend before he can carry out his infernal purpose.

The stress of the recent violence, however, is finally catching up with the girl with the perfect memory, and her emotions are whirling out of control. To make things worse, the strict adherence to the rules of her best friend, Nastasia, Princess of Magical Australia, and Nastasia’s distrust of Rachel’s boyfriend is causing friction among the group.

Meanwhile, on the floating island of Roanoke, Halloween night means the Dead Men’s Ball, where the ghosts and spooks of the Hudson Highlands gather to dance. Secrets can be learned from speaking with the dead – so long as students are safely back at school before the clock strikes twelve. For at midnight, the Hudson Valley’s most famous phantom arrives, headlessly leading the Wild Hunt.

Can Rachel and Gaius Valiant dally with the dead and still make it home in time? 

And will the price of having freed Morax turn out to be greater than Rachel would ever have willingly pay?

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