Ray Lacina's Blog

On Sunday afternoon, the second hand on the Doomsday Clock seems to have clicked a few milliseconds closer to midnight when the BBC announced that Jodi Whittaker would be next to take up the sonic screwdriver.

The 13th Doctor is going to be a woman.

To put it lightly, some fans have expressed concern. Others have pointed out that maybe regenerating as a woman isn’t the most unbelievable thing in a show about a time-traveling alien who has died and been reborn 12 times already.

The phrase “man baby” has been used to describe some of the more distraught of those who have protested the new Doctor. The gist of responses to their complaints has been something along the lines of: “it’s a fictional character. Get over it.”

I couldn’t disagree with the man babies more. And I couldn’t disagree with many of those who disagree with them more.

By all accounts Jodi Whittaker has the makings of an excellent Doctor and as long as that’s the case, I’m happy. Well, as long as that’s the case and the writing carries her – as long as her introduction fits the story.

Because Doctor Who isn’t “just fiction” – it’s story. And story is important.

And that’s the silver lining in this kerfuffle.

I’m not happy that so many people are unhappy with number 13. But I am happy that so many people care. While some might be responding as they are out of the sad misogyny that lurks in the hearts of some geeks and gamers, I choose to believe that the angst, dismay and rage arise from the simple fact that the character and the mythology that’s evolved around him – soon to be her – matters to them.

That I like – because story should matter. Fiction might not, by definition be true. But fiction can be the vehicle for great truths in a way that the murky jumble of real world events often can’t.

And now to raise my geek cred even further – let me summon the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien to help argue my case.

Scene: a slightly disheveled red-haired man in Star Wars pajamas stands in a deserted warehouse on the edge of town. It is dusk. Or twilight. Or something in between.

[Ray performs an arcane ritual of unspeakable horrors. The Ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien rises from the earth]

Ray: “Professor Tolkien – can I call you J.?”

Ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien: “I bring from the realm of Ancient Horrors the Secret Sublime – but know that it will drive you mad. Mad, I say! Ma – what? J.? No. No you can’t.”

Ray: “Jayster?”

Ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien: “No.”

Ray: “The J-man?”

Ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien: “No. Can we get back to the ancient mad-driving knowledge now?”

Ray: “Dr. J.? Wait, that one’s taken….”

[Exit the Ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien stage left]

Alright. So that’s not going to work.

Thankfully, Professor Tolkien has argued my point already, long before I sacrificed — er, no one, sacrificed no one — to summon him. I mean nothing! Sacrificed nothing! Not “no one.” Heh. Heh heh.

In his essay “On Fairy Stories” Tolkien has written what amounts to a defense of the fantasy genre. He begins by making the point that story – as embodied in mythology – is part and parcel of how the human being makes sense of the world, bound up in and arising from the power given us by language to become “sub-creators.”

“The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval,” Tolkien writes, illustrating this by pointing to the awesome power of the adjective to, yes, represent what the mind, through “its powers of generalization and abstraction” discerns, but also to empower the human mind to create something new. So the mind, perceiving green grass, is able to separate out the greenness from the grass – and graft it elsewhere to powerful effect:

We may put a deadly green upon a man’s face and produce a horror; we may make the rare and terrible blue moon to shine; or we may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into the belly of the cold worm. But in such “fantasy,” as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator (8).

What does this have to do with man babies and the 13th Doctor? Hold on. I’m getting there.

First, let me linger for a second on the idea of “sub-creation.” Maybe the best illustration of it is Tolkien’s own work – The Lord of the Rings isn’t just a story about a bunch of stuff that happens – it’s a bunch of stuff happening in a world that is leagues wide and fathoms deep, carefully crafted and coherent. The sub-creation struggles toward “’the inner consistency of reality’” (15). And it’s art that serves as the operative link “between imagining something new, and the final, coherent, complete “sub-creation” (15).

Did I mention I’m an English teacher? If I haven’t, you’ve probably guessed it by now.

So here’s where we’re at so far: stories arise from the same place as intellect, as language – they make stories possible. Yes, our sub-creations will never match the greater creation surrounding us (and don’t forget, Tolkien, like yours truly, was a person of faith) – but we owe it to them to apply what art we can to give them an “inner consistency” that comes as close to reality as possible.

OK, back to the man babies.

The character of the Doctor has evolved over decades in an increasingly sophisticated sub-creation. So far in that sub-creation each regeneration of the Doctor has been male. And, to be honest, white. And spoke in one of those funny U.K. accents.

Does that mean the Doctor must always be a white guy with a U.K. accent? No. Absolutely not.

It does mean that changing that needs to be done right if it is going to be a good thing.

So thank you, man babies, for reminding us that the sub-creation needs to be coherent. That the showrunners had better make sure the advent of a woman Doctor feels like it has arisen naturally from the mythos of the show.

And this matters why?

This matters because stories matter.

Joseph Campbell and Karen Armstrong are two of many who have dived into the mythologies of the world and discovered that those stories – many of which probably weren’t accepted as literal truth by the societies that shaped them and were shaped by them – were more than stories. They were roadmaps of experience, and their telling helped men and women live lives of meaning. In A Short History of Myth, Armstrong even makes the argument that in our contemporary world literature and art have begun to serve some of the functions of those ancient mythologies in a world that doesn’t believe in the way it once did. Of course, like Tolkien, many of us do still believe in the old ways – and we have our own stories that help us live lives that mean.

Stories are the training wheels of morality, of emotional intelligence, of our connection to each other and to things larger than all of us. What’s more, according to Professor Tolkien, fantasy in particular can not only serve as an escape, as a source of consolation, but can also restore to us the freshness of our perceptions, cleanse our palates after they’re dulled by the day-to-day. “Recovery,” he writes, “(which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining – regaining of a clear view…. We need…to clean our windows, so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity” (19). The Shire is rural England – but rural England re-imagined, and visiting it opens our eyes afresh when we stand in the original.

If any work of fantasy has challenged us to see the world through fresh eyes again and again and again, it’s Doctor Who, whether by showing us the faults and beauties of the world recast in some alien civilization, or posing a “what if?” about the history of our own world. Throughout, the Doctor’s fundamental humanity has infused the show with a very specific world view, a way of being a force of good in the world.

The very heat with which the folks who are up in arms about a female Doctor have upped their arms says something about the value of story – the impact this particular mythology has had on their lives. When George R.R. Martin (spoiler alert) kills everyone we’ve come to love or when Adam Driver brings a Napoleon Dynamite vibe to the Dark Side, we feel the pain because stories matter to us, and well told stories make us feel like we’re actually a part of them, of their world.

So they care, and they remind us to care. Thank you to the man babies for that.

But. But.

Is the casting of Jodi Whitakker in any way a threat to all of that? Has Doctor Who jumped the shark?

I seriously doubt it – for me, the Doctor Who universe offers sufficient flexibility to make this regeneration completely credible, as long as the writers do their job right. And even if I’ve not liked everything every writer has done, I do feel there’s so far been an effort at staying true to the mythology that’s evolved over the decades of the show’s run.

And now that the gender barrier has been broken, let’s break another one with number 14 when the time comes years (we hope) from now.

Does anyone have Irrfan Khan’s number?

You can find the full text of “On Fairy Stories” here: https://excellence-in-literature.com/...

Visle War does not have a moral. However, Visle War is a moral story. What exactly that means is really at the heart of what, for me, is the power of the genre – not just fantasy fiction, but speculative fiction as a whole, certainly of the novels I’ll be bringing to you over the coming months.

And the not-a-moral moral of Visle War is, sadly, a one that needs to be heard in the world in which we live today.

As I write this, MSNBC is covering the story of a van which has just driven into a crowd outside a mosque in London. A few hours ago, news came of a young Muslim girl who was attacked and beaten to death on her way home after eating suhoor – the pre-fasting meal of Ramadan – with her friends. And, of course, we’ve seen attack after attack by the fanatics of ISIS or by ISIS-inspired nihilists, clinging to faith to justify butchery.

The story told by these incidents could be one of a clash of civilizations — of ideologies in opposition, of hate born, inevitably, of fundamentally different worldviews.

Language alert.

That’s bullshit.

Visle War is set at a historical moment that looms large in the mythology of Muslim/Christian conflict – the time of the Crusades, a period of European invasion of the lands of Islam which followed a long expansion of the Muslim polity in the other direction.

Looking back, the easy narrative of that conflict is one of a clash of faiths, struggle for domination. Of course, then, as now, geopolitical realities played as important – if not a more important – role than faith. Europe was bursting at the seams with younger sons, unable to inherit under the system of primogeniture, and Rome had a long standing conflict with Constantinople. Though even that’s an oversimplification, it highlights the fact that the pressures that drove European armies into the Levant and Syria were not fundamentally religious in nature – though religion was certainly used to recruit the individual souls that made up those armies.

Nor was the response to the invading armies inspired by religion – in fact, it took many long years for jihaad to be declared against the Crusaders. The immediate reaction was local – individual Muslim polities responding according to how those armies impacted them. In fact, there were famous alliances between Crusader warlords and local princes against their co-religionists as everyone seized the opportunities presented by the chaos of war.

While those alliances feel hypocritical – and were certainly viewed with suspicion by Christians and Muslims alike – I think they teach an important lesson, one that the alliance between Gerard and Ibn Tariq in Visle War reinforces.

Whatever narratives try to govern the interaction between people, individual men and women can shrug them off, engage with each other at a very human level.

Now, the examples set by warlords and princes forming alliances to serve their own personal political interests does not offer a model I’d propose be adopted to solve the world’s problems. In fact, it’s a model that one could argue is responsible for much of the mess we’re in today.

But Gerard and Ibn Tariq offer another possibility. Gerard, the veteran Crusader, and Ibn Tariq, the young Syrian commander, are both people of faith – and neither embraces or even really understands the faith of the other by the end of the novel.

When faced with a greater evil, however, Gerard and Ibn Tariq engage with each other on the level of their fundamental humanity – and when the battle is won, that connection remains. Their alliance, initially founded on the very practical need to help each other survive, forces each to look past ideology, faith, to see the other as a human being, a comrade, a friend.

That is not the moral of Visle War, because Visle War does not have a moral.

It is, however, at the heart of the morality of Visle War.

Men and women who are working for the good, whatever belief system or ideology they serve, are brothers and sisters.

And the poisoned souls who murder in the name of those beliefs are the enemies of us all.

Picture it like this:

You’re sitting at a campfire. You’re leaning in, getting ready to tell that story about the escaped murderer with a hook for a hand — only in your version, he’s a she and she’s got machetes for hands. And she’s a werewolf. All around the fire, rapt faces wait for you to spin your tale….

When, suddenly, someone bursts from the dark along the forest’s edge, wild-eyed, frantically waving for you stop. Is it an escaped murderer with hooks for hands? No. No it is not.

It’s an agent. Or an editor. He charges the fire, hurls himself between you and your audience, puts his hand up and cries out: “Halt! Your story — it’s just, well, it’s just not what campfire audiences are looking for. No one’s going to buy a werewolf with machete hands. And the ending — the grandmother in the cellar with a blowtorch? Seriously?”

Most of those around the fire get up, shaking their heads, thankful to have been spared the epic battle you’d planned between Machete Hands Werewolf Lady and Acetylene Grandma.

But two or three hang back for a minute, then for two, only leaving when they realize you won’t be belting out your story over the stranger’s objections. As they finally skulk away, you’re pretty sure you hear one softly say to another, “I love werewolves with machete hands….”

On February 25th, I took a step I’d been mulling for years, come close to a few years ago, backed away from, mulled some more, pondered for a bit after that, and then not done. Until now.

I indie published one of my own novels, Visle War.

I wrote Visle War in the mid-90s, while living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I’ve revised it since, had it read, revised it again, submitted it a heap of places, read and re-read it. But publishing it on my own…well, that was something I’d balked at. Back when I started writing, self-publishing wasn’t the thing you did if you were at all serious about writing. The fact that places that would print up your masterpiece for you were called “vanity presses” sort of said it all. If you couldn’t sell your book to a publisher, any attempt to get it before an audience was mere vanity.

If you couldn’t find a mainstream publisher to publish your work, you put it on the digital shelf, filed away in the “old writing” folder on your computer, and moved on. If you were lucky you’d get the chance to dust it off someday to publish as a crumb tossed to fans waiting for you to finish up book eight in your best-selling series while you sit on your couch in your underwear playing video games and shouting at the news. And yes, my notions of what a bestselling Ray would look like are very specific. I also have a goatee, an eye patch and  robotic butterfly wings sprouting from my chest, so I can fly without actually looking down at the ground and seeing how high up I am.

On one level, that’s worked well for me. Not the robotic butterfly wings — those are still in prototype — but the writing, polishing, sucking up the rejections and then writing some more road of the writer whose sights are set only on traditional publishing. With each novel I’ve written I’ve learned more about the craft of writing, and each has been a foray into something very different from what came before.

Crossings, my first novel, written in the year of vagrancy between completing my Masters and starting my Ph.D., is a cross-over fantasy in the vein of Straub and King’s Talisman. Visle War is a historical fantasy set in the time of the Crusades, and Khepera at Dawn a space opera set in a far-future Caliphate. Five Reasons, my most recently completed project, which is still sitting with a few agents, is a middle grade novel about a young man wresting with his identity after his parents’ divorce, his father’s conversion to Islam and, now, his dad’s determination to remarry. The project I’ve begun and will return to once my indie marketing machine is up and running is a young adult urban fantasy which I will, when it is completed, send out to agents in hopes of breaking into mainstream publishing.

Each new project has had me moving on, experimenting, trying that next thing that might finally get me that publishing contract and the movie deal, the Lamborghinis, the Darth Vader shaped swimming pools I’ve no doubt would follow. As I said: published Ray fantasies, very specific.

But all that getting up and dusting myself off after rejection, for all the good it’s done me as a writer, has come at a price.

I write because I love stories. I’ve loved reading them since first cracking open Heinlein, Asimov and Tolkien as a kid. I’ve loved telling them for nearly as long.

Here’s the question: is telling a story to an empty room really storytelling? If a story is told in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? How many unpublished novels can dance on the head of a pin? If an unpublished novel leaves Detroit traveling at 90 m.p.h., and a novella leaves Chicago going 65, where in Indiana will they meet for breakfast?

All important questions. Here’s another: who gets to decide what stories get told?

Indie publishing has, of course, come a long way since the days of the vanity presses. eBooks and Publish-On-Demand services like Createspace and Lulu have made publishing one’s own work cost-effective – potentially free. And as stories proliferate of self-published authors being “discovered” by mainstream presses, indie publishing has gained a certain respectability. It’s also created a dedicated readership, folks who go looking for indie-published works first for all sorts of reasons.

That isn’t to say the field isn’t fraught with bad writing, poor production and, well, weirdness. Mainstream publishing houses and professional agents are effective bouncers, with all that role entails. They help make sure the club’s packed with beautiful people. But in doing so, they have to define beauty – they have to decide what exactly is going to be acceptable to the most people. Which, to be fair, makes sense. After all, agents and publishers won’t get paid unless that book sells.

But even when the bouncer is meeting the highest standards of professionalism and ethics in bouncerdom, it might just be that someone’s soulmate gets turned back at the door.

I get what agents and editors do. I value it. I still hope to land a novel with a publishing house, have a real editor work with me to polish my work, get it in front of the widest possible audience.

But for the oddballs looking for their soulmates, indie publishing lets me tell the stories the bouncers don’t think are quite right for the dance floor.  It might be the agents and publishers who decline to take on a Visle War are right — maybe it doesn’t have quite the mass market appeal to make it a salable property on the kind of scale they need to get a return on their investment.

But maybe there are two or three kids hanging back at the campfire, waiting to read it.

That’s what this indie thing is all about, at least for me. Letting me tell my stories to those who want to hear them. If ten, if twenty, if fifty or a hundred copies are picked up and read, and if those readers enjoy the time they spend with Ibin Tariq, Gerard, General Hasif and the Mistress of the Deep Fount, well, that sure beats leaving those characters buried in a folder on my hard drive, locked away with the Machete Hands Werewolf Lady and Acetylene Grandma.

Hey kids — come back to the campfire. Let me tell you a story….