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Category: fundamentalism

Languorous times

Languorous times

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Apologies for just getting in under the wire, and finally blogging just as this miserable washout of a May breathes its last. 

The English Government (I say English because it doesn’t even pretend to govern in the interests of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) increasingly comes to resemble a comic opera, possibly some hitherto-undiscovered work by Gilbert and Sullivan, Trial by Tabloid, perhaps!  Or possibly Princess Carrie, maybe even The Pirates of PPE Procurement! 

Other commentators have compared Johnson’s administration to a Carry on film, Carry on lying would appear to be most apposite. 

The overall effect of this blizzard of misrepresentation, graft and incompetence, very much like a similar exercise on the other side of the Atlantic, has been to ensure that a weary electorate ceases to care, and will welcome any good news.                    

Opposition to the Tory Ascendancy is not helped by a colourless Labour leader, who always seems to have fear in his eyes when he faces the cameras, and an opposition that’s fatally divided, allowing the Conservatives to rack up huge majorities on minority votes. The time for Labour to press for proportional representation in General Elections is clearly now, but will they realise this?

I recently read an article (which I cannot now find) which argued that Languorousness, as opposed to Anxiety or outright Depression, is the default psychological state of our times. One of the online dictionaries that appeared when I searched listed sixteen different synonyms for languor, including lethargy, apathy and weariness, inertia, ennui, lassitude and listlessness. Any of these would appear appropriate descriptions of the public mood as we complete the fourteenth month of the pandemic.

My private literary universe has never appeared a more welcome refuge than now. However, in the world of Lights in the sky, divisions are emerging within the Camposetta movement, even as it consolidates its grip on most of Brazil. Splits between the hard-line Evangelical Christians that make up the majority of the movement’s foot soldiers, and the Environmentalists, Socialists, Trade Unionists and Libertarians who also opposed the Federal Government. Self-interest, graft and authoritarianism are also on the rise, leading many of the original idealists to try and get out while they still can.

The historically-aware amongst you will probably have spotted the parallels with the Spanish Civil War in my tale of a Revolution gone wrong. As has often been said, all revolutions have a tendency to eat their children. 

The Author   May 2021

The Rise of Unreason revisited

The Rise of Unreason revisited

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Back in less alarming times, I wrote a blog entry entitled The Rise of Unreason derived from a minor key blues song I wrote back in the eighties. The blog entry (and later versions of the song) referenced the rise of irrational belief systems in contemporary culture, arguing that this tendency, reflected in the popularity of fundamentalist religious views, had now been augmented by irrational behaviour not linked to specific belief systems, but based purely on rumour and conspiracy theories spread online.
There was a time when these were relatively harmless; refusing to accept that NASA landed astronauts on the Moon, or believing that the World is flat, are (in practical terms) harmless eccentricities, and not something that threatens the well-being of society as a whole.
However, the campaign against vaccination which claims, without evidence, that vaccines are linked to autism is a different matter. It constitutes a threat to public health, which has allowed diseases that were under control (such as measles) to become prevalent again. It is also anachronistic and risible to even see this as an issue given the number of highly-talented people who lie on the autism spectrum. Of course, the proponents of these wacky ideas never let facts get in the way of their irrational beliefs.
I was interested to read that the latest unhinged theory, spreading like a virtual plague through cyberspace, namely the belief that 5G phone masts are spreading (or causing, take your pick) COVID-19, is linked to ideas promulgated by the anti-vaccination brigade. The attacks on supposed 5G masts that have followed are reminiscent of the waves of mass hysteria that characterised the late-Middle Ages (which is apt given we have our very own version of plague), and with a side order of Don Quixote, phone masts now standing in for windmills.
With the sort of doublethink that is beyond satire, these people are presumably using their mobile phones to coordinate their attacks on the very infrastructure that makes this possible. Presumably, once a vaccine finally does become, these people will refuse to take it.
Words sometimes fail me

Life imitating art

Life imitating art

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The fourth episode of Neil Gaiman’s television adaptation of the novel he wrote with the late Terry Pratchett, Good Omens. is appropriate, if hardly welcome, given that Good Omens is about the events leading up to the End of Days. It’s important to point out that not having seen the remainder of the series, nor read the book, I have no idea of the fictional outcome.
The form that Armageddon would take is only to be guessed at, but given that we face a whole suite of potential threats; everything from runaway climate change, pandemics, potential asteroids strikes, to the re-awakening of dormant super volcanoes (plus the old standby of nuclear annihilation), there would appear to be a lot of potential candidates.
Gaiman and Pratchett’s decision to replace one of Four Horseman, Pestilence, with Pollution, now comes across as complacent in current circumstances, an unnecessary nod to currently fashionable preoccupations, and lacking apocalyptic poetry of the original. There is also an element of Hubris, infectious diseases never really go away, they bide their time, waiting for an opportunity. The ease of travel in our interconnected world provides them with the opportunity to spread with frightening rapidity, and any form of social breakdown weakens the capacity of a population to resist.
Now, it’s important to point out that (unsurprisingly) I do not believe in the literal truth of the Bible. However, I do regard it as an important work of literature which can be seen as a series of metaphors and parables.
Whether metaphor in this case is a form of prophecy, I leave it for you to decide…
The Author February 2020

Housekeeping

Housekeeping

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Housekeeping
Lights in the sky is many things: it’s a vast sprawling meta-novel of ideas and scientific, philosophical, societal, economic and theological speculations; its a series of picaresques; it’s a postmodernist tribute to my sources and influences; it’s a romance, an adventure story, a coming of age novel; it’s a mystery story with the author as detective; it’s all these things and more…
It’s also now finished…
Perhaps I should qualify this; the main narrative is complete, on both on Earth and on Alpha 5, we now know what happens to all of the protagonists, and have a fair idea of what comes next. We have followed our characters (for the most part) from birth to death, and the central enigma behind the world of the series has been laid bare.
However there are a number of other stories within this vast concept (six novels, 2314 pages, and nearly seven hundred thousand words) referenced or alluded to in passing, that I feel deserve to be told, either in short story form, or in additional novels. I’ve already started this process and written a number of short stories, which I intend to collect together at some point, perhaps under the title Tales from the Collapse.
But one or two of these stories would appear to merit a longer treatment. An obvious candidate is the story of the original Marta, Miss da Guia, from her strange conception as part of the breeding programme undertaken by the Alpha Mission, through her unusual childhood in Sao Paulo, her short-lived media stardom, and her brutal and untimely death…
I’ve just remembered that I have title for this putative novel, ‘When You Wish upon a Star’, which plays with various layers of meaning; The Journey to the Stars undertaken by the Alpha Mission carries the hopes of millions marooned on an apparently-dying world, Miss da Guia is a media star worshipped by those millions, and she is following her own star…
Given that the title I have arrived at neatly pitches the novel, I think it’s now highly likely that I will write it.
The other candidate a further volume is the fate of Clara and all the other automatons unlucky enough to have remained on Earth after the departure of the Probe in 2048. The leftover girl hints at the likely fate of such entities towards the end of the novel; Clara has been rejected by her creator Dr Helen Choi, who now sees the robot as the product of her pursuit of false scientific gods, of literally being in error, in Christian terms. By definition Clara is thus demonic, and shares the fate of the Creature rejected by his creator, Victor Frankenstein, in Mary Shelley’s famous novel.
We have also been given a glimpse of the forces of reaction ranged against the Alpha Mission and all its works in the person of the ‘Mayor of Ibara City’, the formidable Ester Almeida, and we know things aren’t going to end well.
I often think that the dichotomy within the series between ‘the scientific vision’ as exemplified by the Alpha Mission, and ‘the spiritual vision’ personified by the Camposettas and their adherents (including eventually Dr Choi), is essentially a dramatisation of a battle that I’ve fought within myself my whole life. A struggle between a belief in science (and its delinquent offspring, technology), and a countervailing attachment to the natural world, primitive socialism, and a non-specific form of spirituality, most akin to Buddhism.
Seen in these terms, Lights in the sky becomes an actualization of this inner debate…
The Author August 2019

Conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theory

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Blog entry supplemental twenty four: Conspiracy theory
The final part of Lights in the sky ( and hence of the whole series) centres around a conspiracy theory; the biggest conspiracy theory of all, in fact, that the world, and by extension the whole Universe may not be as we imagine it. That the whole world is actually much younger than we imagine it (in direct opposition to Rupert Giles’ theory that it is, in fact, much older!). That it was actually created by unknown beings for unknown purposes and that consequently we are all property and experimental subjects. If you are thinking so far, so Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it’s important to realise that Douglas Adams was drawing on an older tradition within SF. This is also a serious book rather than a lighthearted satirical comedy, and my intention is to explore the nature of faith (obviously I’m riffing on Creationism here!), and the psychology of believers.
To the vanishingly small number of people who have read the original Lights in the sky trilogy, this development comes as no surprise as it was already revealed to the Children on Alpha 5.
I started to think (dangerous, I know, in these times!) what if the old stories were actually in some sense true? Not literally, as they have been subject to imperfect transmission, distortion and reinterpretation over the centuries. But that they contain essential truths about the nature of existence that science has been missing.
Now I’m aware that there’s a danger that putative readers will also take what I have written literally, employing the same mindset that takes the Bible (essentially a series of creation myths, parables, and folk tales) literally.
If you think that’s unlikely you’re right, mainly because it’s unlikely that my stories will ever reach a wide enough audience. However the history of the twentieth century teaches us that the most bizarre and far-fetched of notions can become the subject and focus of fanatical belief.
So readers should remember that this is a work of fiction, set in an imaginary world, for the purposes of entertainment and to provoke philosophical debate.
The Author 5th March 2019

Irrational behaviour

Irrational behaviour

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Blog entry supplemental twenty three: Irrational behaviour
Apologies for not blogging last month, but I’ve been rather busy…
Maya, my seventh novel (the final part of the Lights in the sky sextet), is, amazingly, nearly half way through. Though an issue has arisen with the title of the previous volume. While doing the SEO on this website I found there were two very similar books; a Scandinavian novel whose title (when translated into English) is also After the Flood, plus a home-grown novel (also made into a film) called Flood, which has a very similar premise. How closely the two novels resemble mine I’m not sure, yet. However accidental plagiarism is an occupational hazard in creative writing as the zeitgeist tends to generate similar artistic responses to it.
What this has done is make me re-evaluate the title of my last novel, and I’m thinking I may return to the original title, The Great Flood, which would emphasis the historical echoes implicit in the work. Flood (on first glance) would appear to be a thriller set in very near future, and thus a different sort of animal. But more research is needed…
The SEO on my website is something I’ve been meaning to get around to for some time, and I’m enjoying the exercise, which fills in time between finishing chapter ten of my current book, and starting chapter eleven. Rob is currently in the process of revamping the website, which should soon boast a new landing page with a revolving gallery of images, and tabs giving easy access to my latest blog entries and excerpts from the books.
Out in the wider world things seem to go from bad to worse, as if the fates are determined to bring my fictional predictions to pass. The case of the man in India who is suing his parents for conceiving him without his permission is both completely barking, and an illustration of a philosophical tendency that I hadn’t previously been aware of, that of antinatalism.
Now, I’ll confess there are elements of this philosophy in the series, at least one of the protagonists characterises the human species as ‘a virus on the skin of the Planet!’ But these are individual points of view in what is essentially a pluralist work. Lights in the sky is at bottom both humanist and positive; humanity is tested and the biosphere threatened with extinction, as a result of our selfish actions. But both survive, and a better, more ethical (and non-Abrahamic) society emerges, with a little outside help, but then I’ve always been partial to a nice Deus ex machina!
Back in today’s grim reality it occurs to me that Trump may really be the Antichrist, and this probably accounts for all the support he receives from those US Fundamentalists, who see him (presumably) as a necessary precursor to the Last Days!
On that cheery apocalyptic note…
The Author February 2019