REGULARS FREESPEAK
Making a point with your writing is important, says Kieran Shea
Don’t just write something, says Kieran Shea – say something!
There’s a maxim often erroneously ascribed to the Chinese philosopher and teacher Confucius. The thing is, no one really knows who came up with the phrase. A blessing seasoned with irony or a flat out curse, it has been heard or used by most in passing: “May you live in interesting times.” Are we living in interesting times? Are you kidding? Frankly, each morning I struggle with whether I should absorb the psychic barrage of dismal news or up my milligrams before my first cup of coffee. Some weeks – jeez, some hours – are worse than others. Uploaded carnage on-demand, the wholesale obliteration of fact, emoji strings bip-bopping along behind the smartphone-recorded atrocities. With global tensions so high at present, how does one move forward in this ashy blizzard of terrifying chaos?
As a writer, I find there’s often a creative temptation to fashion easy relief and assure the reader that everything will be okay. For a science fiction writer, this is doubly so. Though empirical evidence is to the contrary, never fear, radical technology and human compassion will save the day! Sure, why not? Diets of cheap tropes have made artists a wee fortune along these avenues. Hell, it can even be argued that crafting such escapist, lightweight fare has significant anodyne merit. But seeing that science fiction is the most potent of literary genres ever developed, I think there’s a responsibility, particularly now, for authors to use it as a tool to beat back the rising tide of batshit crazy.
It’s no great surprise, but I’m a sucker for SF’s sweeping pedigree of fringe characters. Not select protagonists, mind you, but those authors who’ve composed transcendent and, in some cases, dangerously subversive narratives. To me these writers are the badass prophets, the ones who deserve the world’s reverence and awe. They are the writers who eschew the paralytic visions of our moment and roam the unsettlingly probable and improbable vales of the future; authors like Atwood, Rucker, Komatsu, Doctorow, Dick, Zamyatin, Moorcock, Heinlein, Le Guin, Bisson, Vonnegut, Lem, Bacigalupi, Gibson… cripes… I can go on all day.
What unnerves me today is when I encounter SF that wilfully pulls its punches. To be fortunate enough to get an idea or story out into the market by choosing to play it safe, I don’t know, it seems quite pathetic to me. Everyone has a viewpoint. Everyone has checked or unchecked rage. If a writer doesn’t have any views, one must wonder why they’re writing in the first place. Or if they have a pulse.
Quick story. I once published a story in a magazine that prompted the angriest letter the publication had ever received. The hate mail sender even went so far as to cancel her subscription. When I learned of the testy feedback I was thrown. Later, when I ran into the magazine’s editor at a convention, I found myself apologising. The editor, a sagacious and kind woman, told me not to worry. If what you write isn’t pissing somebody off, she said, you’re doing it wrong. I think of her words every single day. Given the state of the world, I take heart that some book vendors have seen a viable uptick in sales of visionaries. These cautionary yarns and prescient parables – recently I saw a middle-aged man reading a fresh copy of Orwell’s 1984. I stifled the impulse to ask why he hadn’t read it before, but no. What mattered was he was reading it. Let us be the ones to forge truth in the fires of our zany fictions for generations to come.
“IF A WRITER DOESN’T HAVE ANY VIEWS, ONE MUST WONDER IF THEY HAVE A PULSE”
Off Rock by Kieran Shea is published on 18 April by Titan Books.