“To put it in words, to write it down,
That is walkin’ on hallowed ground,
But it’s my duty…I’m a missionary.”
Depeche Mode
(Look what you’ve done, Chet…)
I think everyone has moments when they look at life, the world, governments, religions, or the fabric of reality itself and think – what if? I’ve mentioned before that I’m a great proponent of what-if stories, and recently I’ve thought some about how writers fit into the bigger picture. Scientists create new paradigms by looking at universal “truths” and daring to say…what if? When they do this with seriousness, and some authority, they become targets of ridicule, enmity, adulation and – if they are brilliant, correct, and able to prove their new insight in a way that their peers can neither refute nor view with blind eyes and maintain their own integrity, the world shifts. Thomas Kuhn told us many years ago that this is how science, and society, advance, and I believe, though he mostly aimed his comments at the scientific community, that the phenomenon reaches much deeper into the human psyche.
Kuhn said, in short, that the normal pattern of the world is that things go along on a relatively even keel for a certain amount of time, and then someone disrupts this by pronouncing that something universally believed to be true, is in fact, not. The natural reaction of mankind to such pronouncements can be traced through the lives of Socrates, Galileo, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Charles Darwin, to name a few. It doesn’t matter that the opposition, in most cases, is arguing an already lost cause. It doesn’t matter that they are frantically scrabbling to prove to the world that the new truth is not true, and the old truth – the one they’ve staked lives, careers, and reputations on is fading under a more intense light. It’s even more intense when religious or philosophical truths are in question, but it doesn’t relieve us of a fundamental responsibility. If we see a truth, or a possible truth, or the great “what if” smacks us up side the head and says HEY! – we have a responsibility to respond. Anything less than this lessens us and our possible influence on the world around us.
For the scientist, this is a life-changing experience. He may succeed, he may fail, but once launched on the great what-if sea, he’s never coming back to shore. If he recants he’s an impetuous fool. If he succeeds, he’s brilliant. If he loses faith in his own theories and discoveries, the fire is gone.
For a writer, though, the words “what if” are magic. We can launch onto that sea with impunity, build a world around hypotheses or theories or flights of outright wish-fulfilling fantasy, and when we’re done, we can write something else. The science fiction authors of the fifties and sixties, many of whom were also scientists, predicted, and in many cases planted the seeds of many technological developments we might still be waiting for without their words.
I don’t remember which author it was that wrote a novel (or series of novels?) in which the stories we write always become new worlds. The act of writing brings the words, and the images behind them, into being, and once they exist, their reality is substantial and actual on some plane, in some dimension, or in some different state of existence.
“In the beginning was the word.”
I think, over the course of years, words have been a continuous source of beginnings. My world revolves around patterns of thought, painted in words and presented to the world. The patterns connect at the what-ifs and diverge. Each time a question catches my attention it’s a new adventure.
At work I was learning about a new program being used to monitor time and attendance that is designed to record each fifteen minute segment of time during a single day so that the hours being expended could be broken down and billed more accurately. Alarms went off in my head, and I saw Harrison Ford walking through a high-tech building, having a conversation with someone and – at the same time – conversing with a headpiece or a receiver in his ear, recording each direction shift and each new action, the company watching their investment down to the second and multi-tasked communication an absolute necessity to sanity.
Another day I was sitting and talking about the drug use of athletes, the need they feel to take things to modify themselves to succeed, and the what if bug bit me hard. What if – in the future – we had “stock” and “modified” Olympics? What if the athletes of the “stock” class were becoming dinosaurs, taunted by their “peers” in the modified class…and a champion arose from those old-school ranks.
It’s endless, and the best stories, for me, leave me with whole new what if roads to travel once I’ve shared the author’s vision.
I don’t know if we create new worlds with our words, but I know we have the power to contribute to changes in the one we live in, the vision to make our changes real, if only in the mind, and the potential, over time, to see the word of creation mirrored in our own humble efforts and the changes they can bring about in reality as we know it.
A very wise man, Richard Feynman, once said that it’s imprecise to talk about “the laws of nature,” and that what we really operate with is “the currently accepted habits of nature,” which is an entirely different, and much more appealing world-view. In a world of laws, the “what ifs” of writers would be impotent, but if we muck about with those currently accepted habits? The sky is the limit, and we really can be heroes – or prophets.
And so?
Onward!
David Niall Wilson
10 Comments, Comment or Ping
Charlie
For a writer, though, the words “what if” are magic.
So very true. I love what ifs. And there’s an endless supply of them–you just have to look at the world and think what it could be if a little part of it was slightly (or greatly) different.
Great essay.
Charlie.
Sep 1st, 2006
Elizabeth Massie
Great essay, Dave! Gotta love the “what if’s.” My mother used to tell me, “Enough! Quit what iffing.” Of course, as a kid I never let anything be as it was, but always projected what could be and what might be. “What if that little honey dog over there doesn’t have a home and when we open our car door he just jumps right in?” “What if that old woman on the porch of that house is really a witch and she has arms long enough to reach out and grab me off the sidewalk?” Yeah, the what if’s came in the ordinaries and the bizarres. Today, I’m sure you know which direction most of my what if’s go. At least, these days, if writers’ what iffing words offend, we aren’t forced to drink hemlock or leave the country. Are we?
Sep 1st, 2006
David Niall Wilson
Not so far as I can see (the Hemlock, I mean) but people will still try to silence you. I’m writing now abut “Free Energy” in the form of an ancient perpetual motion device. It’s eerie how the persecution the inventor, Johann Bessler, faced is paralleled in the reaction to that company in Dublin, Steorn, and their claim of a similar technology.
Dave
Sep 1st, 2006
Frank Wydra
Good essay, David. As luck would have it, you highlighted two of my heroes, Kuhn and Feynman.
Perhaps the master what-iffer in the world is Michael Crichton, and a number of his books were based on what-iffing he gleaned from the scientifically collaborative Santa Fe Institute.
What really intrigues is the story you posit about “’stock’ and ‘modified’ Olympics where a champion arose from those old-school ranks” Have you written that one or is it still on the board? Either way, it’s a story I’d love to read.
Frank
Sep 1st, 2006
Mark Rainey
I love playing what-if, as it sets in motion most of my own stories. Yet it sometimes becomes distressing to discover every what-if traveling down a negative road, despite an effort to the contrary. The nature of some beasts, I suppose…
–M
Sep 1st, 2006
Sully
On the money, David. Fiction writers are the verbal mutations of life and “What if…” is their DNA. Mutations face long odds, seldom find a sustaining environment, and are subject to slings and arrows for being different. The up side is that when they are celebrated, they often define a new order in the food chain and become the status quo until some fortuitous succeeding mutation sets a new trend.
To use a literal example (and keep the genetic metaphor going), the Olympic thing was something I wrote about in a story called “The Mickey Mouse Olympics” that appeared in one of the early issues of Omni Magazine in, I think, 1979. Genetic cheating, recombinant DNA, and the whole artificially-bred athletes shtick produced near universal cheating in my fictional Olympics. Told from the twin viewpoints of American and Soviet sport coaches, pretty much every country was disqualified after a circus maximus of protests, leaving Sri Lanka the winner. Mickey Mouse, indeed. Those Olympics were sponsored by Walt Disney because he was the only one who could afford to put them on, converting the facilities to a theme park thereafter, in which the second and fourth of the five Olympic rings became mouse ears. It was my best-selling story, appearing initially in Omni for a quarter a word, then in a couple editions of Best of Omni, and ultimtely picked up by Isaac Asimov for a collection called, I believe, The Science Fictional Olympics. The irony and the metaphor? If my little tale was just the kind of “What if…?” mutation described above, it became vestigial after the Soviet Union went out of business ruining the premise of the story. Until then it was a quadrennial favorite. So, when the fictional environment changed, my story was a dinosaur…
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Sep 1st, 2006
David Niall Wilson
Frank,
I haven’t. Obviously I knew about Sully’s story - he and I have batted the basics of the longer tale I mentioned around several times…it’s an example of what Skipp mentioned as well, I think…in his essay “These are Horror Times,” when he suggested we should contribute to fixing the problems around us…and another recent essay (Brian Knight?) where it was suggested that stories be ABOUT something.
I can understand an athlete’s desire to win…hell, if there were drugs people could take to make them write more commercial fiction, I’d probably be as tempted as the next guy…
And yet, as a kid (and as an adult) I’ve felt sports were something more noble than they really turn out to be…there’s a sort of ache from this. Boxing is where it hits me hardest…love the sport, hate most of what’s behind it these days…and now it leaks into the Olympics as the games themselves become more and more suspect, the athletes face more and more pressure…
The novel - then - would be a good one. Maybe one day.
D
Sep 1st, 2006
Janet Berliner
A wonderful essay, Dave. I hope a lot of people read it.
There’s an excellent book called WHAT IF? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Bernays/Painter. I recommend it highly. I especially recommend the short story selection at the end of the book.
Janet
Sep 1st, 2006
John B. Rosenman
WHAT IF . . . I think that’s the essence of a writer, whether it’s a Michael Crichton or a Nancy Drew. Unless the writer is a hack, it should be only the degree that differs.
My favorite title of SF magazines was also probably the shortest: IF. IF said it all.
Great essay, Dave. And Sully, your gift of prophecy may have almost converted your story into nonfiction.
As for athletes cheating, Dave, and doing anything they can to get an undeserved edge, I see it every time I go play tennis. With absolutely nothing at stake except their egos, players tend to call crucial shots of their opponents OUT.
Of course, I myself am exempt from this tendency and always do the right thing.
Sep 2nd, 2006
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