foundation, inspiration

Cover art from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Hence the title.

Basically, the situation is this. Rather than sit around and watch video game walk-throughs on YouTube all day (damn you, Shadow of the Colossus), I decided to update this here blog. Since I have no worthwhile news to relate (well, I do, but that will come later), I'll bring you up to speed on some novel-ish things. This originates from my recent decision to whip my novel into working order and publish it for the Kindle™ before the year is out.

First, however, I'm making some changes to my manuscript. There's a major overhaul underway. (Yes, I paired those two words intentionally.) I'm incorporating elements of my second, third, fourth and fifth novels into the first one, to add more characters and spice up the plot. In addition to this, there are several minor changes I'm making, some of which have only occurred to me in the last few days.

I'd like to sit down with you and dissect every little change I'm making, and elicit an editorial, literary and thought-provoking critique from you. But that's not going to work. For starters, I'm paranoid about revealing any details about my baby on this Internet thingy. Some scurvy rotter might come along and steal my idea, and I'd have to commit suicide (after decorating my apartment with the miscreant's entrails). Second, you'd be bored to tears. This is a rather nonsensical, esoteric novel I'm working on: social commentary wrapped in epic adventure-filled action-packed speculative fiction, with a few metaphysical touches thrown in for good measure. It's kind of like a hot dog buried under layers of onion, tomatoes, sweet relish, cheese, chili, and all the other crap that Cthulhu knows should never be put on a hot dog.

Eldritch analogies aside, however, you wouldn't like hearing about what exactly I'm writing. It'd spoil the surprise, anyway. You can read it for yourselves when I publish this beast. What I'd like to talk to you about today, because it has special bearing on my writing (and rewriting), are the foundations for this work.

To put it bluntly, I'm mad as hell. And I'm not going to take it anymore.

I'm about to get political/pseudo-philosophical, so all of you intolerant or opinionated types (or just those who don't want their impressions of me ruined) should get the heck out of Dodge, right now.

The world is sick.

It's backed itself into a corner, run itself up a blind alley. And now it's got nothing to do, nowhere to go, and it's eating itself.

Like Cyrus says in The Warriors: "Now look what we have here before us." Look at the world today. Overpopulation. Cramped, smoky, grimy cities, soaked in sin and desperation. World trade, economies, businesses, the very definition of success—all built upon cramming people into stuffy cubicles in monstrous floodlit buildings, where they slave their lives away for peanuts, pushing papers and dozing through meetings.

It's a horrendous job, and somebody—a million somebodies—has to do it. I'm aware of that. I'm not castigating the white-collar worker. All of them, men and women alike, have my respect. They've built something amazing. Human civilization as we know it depends upon them.

No, my beef is with human civilization itself.

I'm not pleased with how it turned out. I don't like that our society depends on things like corporations, Wi-Fi networks, stocks, bonds, markets, trades, mergers, industry, commercialism, business, economy, commodities, digital technology, and all those other intangible things built on numbers and figures and data. I resent that Western civilization revolves around forcing its youngsters to educate themselves in the purgatory of public school and the political chop-shop of college, so they can graduate with a pile of debt and a host of half-formed ideas and forgotten facts, and thence obtain a soul-crushing, unfulfilling job in the private sector and work until they die.

I like things...simpler. Freer.

(I realize, as I sit here and rail against the modern age, that I am typing on my laptop computer and sitting in my ninth-floor apartment with Owl City playing in the background and an electric fan preventing me from succumbing to the sticky Korean heat. I am the world's biggest hypocrite; I admit it. I don't give a pair of dingo's kidneys. I am spreading the word, my fauxslophic ideas, with the only viable weapon at hand. Indulge me.)

I'll be the first to tell you that I was born in the wrong century. I often find myself wishing that I could have taken part in the great explorations of the past five centuries. Ah, those were the days. There wasn't a single piece of plastic anywhere in the world. Everything was made from romantic materials like wood, metal, and canvas. The map hadn't been completely filled in yet. Anything—literally anything—could happen. Anything was possible. The sky was the limit. No, there were no limits. Even the sky was up for grabs.

I want to tag along with the famous explorers—Marco Polo, Francisco de Orellana, David Livingstone, Sir Francis Drake, Lewis and Clarke...even the doomed ones like Captain Cook, Burke and Wills, Mungo Park, Robert Falcon Scott, and Roald Amundsen. Heaven only knows what these guys really saw, and what they felt as they did. It seems like there's no room for expeditions like theirs anymore. Today's intrepid souls (Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Mark Jenkins, and others) know what's waiting for them at the end of the trail. I long for the days of romance and mystery.

I guess I don't really hate human civilization as we know it. I just said that out of spite. I don't even hate technology. Technology saves lives, eases burdens, facilitates communication, bridges gaps, expands minds. And it lets Adam Young make music. I dislike the mindset behind technology on occasion. Progress for progress's sake, and whatnot. And I wish e-readers wouldn't replace my trusty paperbacks. That's all.

But most of all, I wish the world wasn't so small. My most cherished dreams are those in which the world has become vast, unexplored, and dangerous once again, and it's up to me and a few other intrepid souls to plumb its mysteries.

So that's what my book's about. The decks have been cleared. Human civilization as we know it is kaputt. Earth's surface has been rearranged, altered unrecognizably. It's awash in eldritch abominations, mysterious monuments, savage beasts, colossal monsters, alien technology, sentient inhuman races, ferocious weather patterns, cosmic anomalies, laboratory experiments, fractured space-time, a hodgepodge of familiar cities and nations...and, of course, the terrified and scanty remnants of humanity. Into this mess are thrust my two protagonists, office drones from the Earth we know, refugees from the chaotic, hopeless, stifling present day. It's the end of the world as they know it, and they feel fine. They were actually sort of waiting for it to happen. So they jump at the call. Off they boldly go, throwing away their old lives and seeking their fortunes in this new and barbaric world. "Going for howling adventures over in the territory," as Mark Twain put it. Fighting, exploring, befriending, rescuing, and just generally being heroic and badass.

That's something I think every human being should have the chance to do.

But the world is sick, remember? First, we're poisoning the crystal waters of pure human existence with the drug of digital immersion, an ersatz life lived in the virtual world. (When was the last time you had a conversation where somebody didn't quote a movie, mention a video game, reference a website, or whip out a cell phone? I catch myself doing this distressingly often, and feel like running up to my apartment and hurling my computer and my smartphone out of the window.) But second, our worldview as a species seems to be shifting. This is particularly notable in the United States, but it manifested first in Europe and other notable civilized nations.

I'm speaking of the distressing trend of liberalism.

lib·er·al·ism [lib-er-uh-liz-uhm, lib-ruh-]

noun

1. the quality or state of being liberal, as in behavior or attitude.
2. a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties.
3. (sometimes initial capital letter) the principles and practices of a liberal party in politics.
4. a movement in modern Protestantism that emphasizes freedom from tradition and authority, the adjustment of religious beliefs to scientific conceptions, and the development of spiritual capacities.

I've already talked your ear off about the state of human civilization, so I'll be brief. I disagree wholeheartedly with the liberal mindset. As innocuous as it sounds on paper, liberalism is a destructive cancer, a pernicious gangrene corrupting the world. I define myself (categorize myself, Smithy) as a conservative atheist. This means I have the advantage of looking at the world through the practical, no-nonsense lens of your garden-variety conservative, yet I don't have the obfuscating religious hangups that fundamentalist Christians do. I have a clearer view than most anybody.

I have observed, by monitoring the major news networks (most of them) and the general trend of American politics, that the liberals are taking over. Conservatism is passé. It's discredited as a system of thought. People (liberals) believe that conservatives are barbaric, violent, hidebound, intolerant, insensitive, cruel, racist, corrupt, money-grubbing Neanderthals. We're an unpopular lot right now, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

The popular consensus seems to be that we are moving toward a state of world peace. A utopia. Everybody gets along, the state oversees every aspect of the citizens' welfare (that's what they mean by "the government guarantees individual rights and civil liberties"), people pay sky-high taxes to support the bloated and all-powerful government, but don't mind because they're off their chumps on sex and drugs and other hallmarks of an indolent, cared-for lifestyle.

Hogwash, I say. That's not what humans were meant for. Humans strive. Humans overcome. Humans pioneer. Humans explore. Humans hunt. Humans kill.

[grunt, snort]

Sorry. As I was saying, humans don't fit the mold which the liberals seek to jam us into. We weren't mean for a utopia. We weren't mean for a civilized, caring society. I think pastoralism and minarchy are the ideal fit for humanity. Anything more threatens us with a total stagnation of the human condition, a decadent travesty of civilization, a sparkly balloon easily punctured by external or internal pressures. (If you think I'm wrong, ask Thomas Cole.)

I wondered why, as a boy, I loved watching movies and cartoons where governments and bureaucratic order had been overthrown, and the world had descended into lawless chaos. (Mad Max and Thundarr the Barbarian come to mind). There was no law to tell you what you could or couldn't do; you had to decide for yourself. You could be bad or good. I loved the idea, without really knowing why.

As I got older (and politically aware), I figured it out. We've got too much government right now. So much that it's stifling our very nature as living, breathing, entropic beings.

To be properly free, we need a minimum of government, a government which fulfills no further function than that of a night watchman. The government doesn't try to control the administration of things like health care and welfare and job creation and other social programs; those things aren't rights, they're privileges. They aren't guaranteed, they're earned. The people are on their own for those things. The government should merely ensure that the people's basic rights—speech, press, arms-bearing, assembly—are guaranteed. Then it can back the hell off.

So, naturally, in my novel, all the world's governments and governing bodies—particularly the United States—vanish in an instant. The world is now leaderless, anarchic. And of course, a host of baddies rise up to fill the void and impose their will upon a helpless population. Enter our two heroes. They save the day, move on, do it again. Live life as they want. Oppose oppression. Exercise independence, common sense, human decency. Explore, strive, create, inspire. If those aren't true American values, then I'm more idealistic than I dared to admit.

And then...well, I don't want to spoil the plot-lines of future works, but I will say this much. My two heroes, after kicking around for a while and saving the day here and there, decide to found a country of their own in the midst of this bellowing wilderness. It's a free country, a good country, a large and powerful country. It's filled with hardworking souls who don't feel entitled to anything, who know that the government isn't there to support them or care for them, but simply to protect their rights. It's a country where moral goodness and common sense are valued above political correctness, affirmative action, reparations and the crippling overabundance of tolerance. And it's a country unafraid to defend itself or its allies from threats. Actions, not words. Guns, not sanctions. Confrontation, not appeasement. That's the American way. 

Long story short...I'm writing a novel which is essentially American in its character, in which I create the ideal world as I see it. One that makes sense to me. One that feels right. A world where our fates aren't decided before we're born; where we're not dependent on technology or successful careers or upward mobility; where we decide who and what we want to be, every minute of every day; and we have the freedom to follow whatever path we choose. And those who challenge our way of life, those who seek to dominate or terrorize us, are dealt with, swiftly and permanently, at the point a sword blade or a six-shooter.

I hope this makes you want to read it.

And now kindly listen to this, a paean to unexplored worlds. This technology is allowed: