A Writer’s Life

5) If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. - George Eliot. (For the Light of the Stars)

4) To Romans I set no boundary in space or time. I have granted them dominion, and it has no end. Virgil, The Aeneid. (The Prophet)

3) If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts right through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. (Shards of Babylon)

2) Freedom is like life. You cannot be given life in installments. You cannot be given breath but no body, nor a heart but no blood vessels. Freedom is one thing — you have it all or you are not free. - Martin Luther King, Jr. (The Way of the Warrior)

1) Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. — John Donne. (Shards of Babylon)

Well, I’m still working on Shards of Babylon. Should be finished soon… or at least as “finished” as any story of mine ever is. In the meantime I’ve started planning a few short stories to work on later this year. One I’m looking forward to is The Last Giant. It’s going to be a bit of a departure for me, more of a modern fairy tale.

Over the last few years I’ve found myself drawing more heavily on different myths and motifs as inspiration for my stories, which is one reason for TLG; I want to try to create a mythic world, based in the real world. I guess that shouldn’t be a great surprise; mythology and history have always been great interests of mine. The reason I like the “classic” mythic structure, though, is that it’s a great template, allowing character and thematic development against an epic landscape. Myths reflect the times they were created in, the concerns of the people who created them, and right now that offers the chance to talk about the terror age in a way people can understand; that’s something that appeals to me too.

It’ll be a few months until I have TLG finished, but the reason I’m mentioning this is because I was talking to someone about it the other day and she asked me something interesting: why aren’t those kinds of myths still being written today? Stories like The Iliad, Isis and Osiris, Gilgamesh - why are they being retold, instead of new myths being invented? My initial reaction was that all myths are retold stories anyway, but there are new ones being written, in new forms. Where myths used to be handed down through generations, modern myth is now told through the media. But the same themes are there, if you know where to look.

So what is modern myth? I think one of the best examples lies in comic books. It’s no coincidence that the plethora of superhero films we’ve seen recently have achieved such success; the comics they’re based on verge on myth. Comics like Superman and Spider-Man have evolved over their decades in print, creating detailed back-stories and constantly exploring the conflict between good and evil. They’ve created their own mythologies, but while they have done that they’ve also stayed true to the classic themes of all myths: humanity, friendship, love, lust, betrayal. Think of the recent X-Men: The Last Stand. Near the end the X-Men stand united against Magneto and the Brotherhood of Mutants outside the walls of Alcatraz; is this so different than the Trojans and Achaeans clashing outside Troy? Indeed, the mutants are fighting over their “cure”, which you could see as a battle over their immortality and legend; at the heart of The Iliad is Achilles quest for immortality by slaying Hector, a theme that recurs again and again throughout mythology - from Heracles and Gilgamesh, to the quest for the Holy Grail.

Likewise, mythic themes are constantly reinvented in literature. The most obvious example is fantasy, where an entire genre has been derived from the tales and figures of our past; witches, dragons, goblins, fairies, all have their origins in one mythic tale or another (and in some dark fear of their time). Even Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, perhaps the most famous (and detailed) mythology to have been invented, has its origins in many Germanic and Norse myths. More recent works have taken the classic mythic structure in new directions; the Harry Potter stories in introducing children to classic fairy-tales in unorthodox ways, Garth Nix’s creating a world of the dead in his Abhorsen trilogy, James Morrow’s Towing Jehovah following a classic quest when God’s corpse is found floating in the Pacific. It extends well beyond fantasy, though. Before Shakespeare told Romeo and Juliet, the greatest of all love stories, there were the myths of Tristan and Isolde, Paris and Helen, and many others. In contemporary literature Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code draws heavily on a mythological structure; not least in its quest archtype or its speculations about Christ, but also in its re-imagining of the quest for the Holy Grail, a theme which again stretches back to the knights of King Arthur, and Achilles. In fact you could say that all stories originate from one mythic theme or another; tales of romance, conflict, revenge, lust, metamorphosis, were shared long before anyone knew how to write. No story is ever truly original, only re-imagined, put in a new context, with new ideas.

My point then is that myth isn’t dead; rather it’s everywhere, echoing in every part of our society, but not everyone recognises it. They expect the same stories to take the same form, but mythology evolves so that its form is different to each generation, while the themes remain. What were oral tales handed down through centuries are now told through the media; through books like The Lord of the Rings, movies like Edward Scissorhands and Pan’s Labyrinth, music like Wagner’s Rings opus. They tell the same stories, in different ways, and reach more people than they ever could before.

And that’s why I’m looking forward to The Last Giant; perhaps somewhat selfishly, because it’s something I’ve long wanted to try, but also because, based in myth, it allows me to reflect the concerns of our time. And that’s the fiction I want to write; stories as much concerned about character as the world it creates. I’m also planning a series later which will draw on those themes again, The Chosen… but we’ll see how TLG goes first!

So in the meantime, why not grab a book, watch a film? Maybe it’s something you’ve read or seen before, maybe not… but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Chances are you’re familiar with it anyway, aren’t you, in that way we all are: by remembering a time, long ago, when we sat around a campfire, the light flickering on our faces, as our elders told us a story about heroes, gods, and monsters, and we dared to dream.

HIV border control suggested to stop outbreak

Am I the only one who finds John Howard’s comments here difficult to understand? Or am I getting senile or something, because the reaction to these new guidelines has been very muted. The new system proposed by Tony Abbott would require visa applicants over the age of 15 to be tested for HIV/AIDS, where they could be denied entrance on an individual basis, and I find that troubling.

While it’s a good idea to have people declare/be tested to see if they are HIV-positive (as we often do anyway), it’s verging on discrimination for Australia to deny entry to immigrants and refugees purely because they are HIV-positive. It’s scaremongering; we need precautions, not to exclude an entire community of people who need help.

HIV is not like tuberculosis, SARS or other viruses which could pose an immediate danger to the population; if properly managed people can live with HIV for a decade or more before it becomes AIDS, and the vast majority of people with HIV are responsible about not infecting other people. You can’t blame the majority of infected patients for what others do maliciously, and to not allow someone to come to Australia purely because of a health condition is immoral.

In addition to that some AIDS activists have indicated that any rise in infection rates has more to do with people who don’t know they are infected practicing unsafe sex, than migrants and refugees. Perhaps the government should look at doing more to raise awareness and testing for HIV amongst all people, rather than trying to secure our borders against an imagined threat.

I saw Pan’s Labyrinth last week, the first film I’ve seen for a long while. What a beautiful film, one of the best I’ve seen. Sometimes I have trouble with subtitles, but I didn’t even notice with this.

Visually Pan’s Labyrinth is stunning; the look of it, the costumes, graphics, light and dark. The story underneath draws you in; it’s meaty, dark, set against the backdrop of war. You genuinely care for Ofelia. Is her belief in the other world real, or a way of escaping the terrors of her world? The last scene stayed with me a long time.

A lot of people have called Pan’s Labyrinth an adult fairy tale, and it is, but I think it’s a morality tale as well. It shows the power of a child’s imagination, but also how decisions aren’t black and white; everything has a consequence. At times it is brutally violent, but you can’t tell a story like this without violence. The violence has an honesty; it shows the darkness of the world Ofelia is trying to escape from, and like with the tales of The Brothers Grimm (before fairy tales were butchered to protect tender eyes and ears), the true strength of Pan’s Labyrinth is only revealed when it shocks and scares.

I can’t recommend Pan’s Labyrinth more highly. The music is beautiful and the film stays with you, as good movies should. It amazes me that something like 300 (glorifying violence, an allegory for modern America and its war) can get so much attention, while Pan’s Labyrinth remains relatively unknown, a film which depicts the best and worst of the human spirit, hope out of darkness. It’s what storytelling should be. Please, please see it.

5) A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller

4) Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood

3) On the Beach
Nevil Shute

2) Alas, Babylon!
Pat Frank

1) Earth Abides
George R. Stewart