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Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

June 2008

"Changing the World: Guilt and Innocence"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 

 

 To send books for review in this column email Jacqueline Lichtenberg,jl@simegen.com  for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file.  
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Elf from New Line Cinema, Award Winning film 2003

Spiderman 2 from Sony Pictures, Award Winning film 2004

Stewards of the Flame by Sylvia Engdahl, 2007

As I write this, it is December 2007 and I’m thinking about 2008, and how I arrived at this far future time.

I set out at the age of 5 to change the world because I objected vociferously when radio stations pre-empted the middle of The Lone Ranger or Superman for WW II news and never told you what happened in the story. They just had no sense of proportion.

Well, I guess I succeeded. Now they put a crawl across the bottom of the TV screen. But they still haven’t got it right. I’ve seen good shows preempted for sports games. So I’m still trying to change the world.

To my astonishment, it turns out a lot of young people "go through a phase" of wanting to change the world to suit themselves or grow into an adult determined to change the world to suit some internalized model of "better."

Know what? I’m with them. I think there’s a huge amount of room for improvement in this world. And I think one of the reasons why we make so little obvious progress from generation to generation is that we fail to apply one of Theodore Sturgeon’s maxims, "Ask The Next Question."

Theodore Sturgeon was one of the founders of modern science fiction, a philosopher and thinker who examined the underbelly of the human psyche in his fiction. He was an immense influence on my writing and personally taught me to drink Compari,(one ice cube). Read my essay on his Q with the Arrow, "Ask The Next Question" at

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/welcommittee/TedSturg.html

So with delight, I found myself watching old films on television, seeing a remarkable connection between them, a new book I was reading, Stewards of the Flame by Sylvia Engdahl, and the first Hugo Award Winner, Mark Clifton’s They’d Rather Be Right (than healthy and long-lived).

What do all these have in common? They are about wanting to change the world by changing the values of the people who craft the world, but in ways that are well within the standard operating parameters of human beings. They are more about living up to the standard of being human than of beating on the world because it doesn’t suit you.

Look at the film, Elf. From IMDB.com: "After inadvertently wreaking havoc on the elf community due to his ungainly size, a man raised as an elf at the North Pole is sent to the U.S. in search of his true identity."

This is our basic SF story about aliens. It’s wanting to be picked up by a UFO, or Star Trek’s Spock’s life story, or Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Star of Danger which is a remake of Cinderella – where youth feels alienated and either ventures off to find a better place or gets kicked out and goes questing. It’s a "full circle" story where what they find by leaving home is home.

But Elf has a kicker buried in it for occultists. It turns out that Santa’s sleigh has traditionally been powered by belief, and this human raised as an Elf is the karmic key to rekindling belief among humans. In the process, he finds his own place in his world.

By changing himself, which affected the people around him, Buddy the Elf changed the world on the fundamental level that powers Santa’s sleigh. By confessing what he felt guilty for, Spiderman reclaimed his rapidly deteriorating powers. If this is merely a metaphor – what exactly is it a metaphor for?

Look more closely at Spiderman 2. Ostensibly about a guilt ridden Superhero fighting a monster created by pride, this movie discusses in depth the issue of what makes a human being a hero just as Elf discusses what property of the world creates the kindly generosity of Santa’s annual ride.

Where does the power come from? Where does magic come from? How does being the focus of the magic generated by public attention (Santa has his moment, but Spiderman is always expected to perform miracles) change a person? Where inside the ordinary human psyche does this magical power come from? And what can break it?

Are we all just broken superheroes or supernatural beings who could change the world if only we were fixed?

We all have our favorite answers. For Elf, the power comes from belief, which once restored let Buddy find his place in his world. For Spiderman, the power comes from a clear conscience purified by confession.

Power, which the world views as magical, or Star Wars dubs "The Force," is viewed as connected to the foundations of what many cultures call morality. But as Theodore Sturgeon advised, we must ask the next question, not just stop thinking at "Right Makes Might".

We all think we know what is moral, and what’s good for ourselves – for our neighbors, and perhaps the world. Sometimes some of us are probably right. How can you tell the difference? (Is there a difference?)

Sylvia Engdahl has picked up that line of questioning, age old as it is, and taken it one step further along the track suggested by Mark Clifton in They’d Rather Be Right.

Stewards of the Flame is ostensibly classifiable as SF because it takes place in the future on some world colonized from Earth where the local culture has adopted different standards of medical care than our Earth is using.

But those standards are rigorously extrapolated from where we are today. It’s a cautionary tale, asking how far public standards of medical treatment should intrude into personal freedom – and if we go that far, then is it a dead end, or can we get someplace higher on the morality spectrum from there? Does forced health produce morality?

The book is written like very old fashioned SF, with long arguments and lectures about theory and philosophy but somehow moves the story forward and grips the attention with the raw immediacy of the problems. In that, it reminds me of Edgar Pangborn’s Mirror For Observers as well as They’d Rather Be Right. I haven’t seen SF like that in years.

It’s not an action novel, but has action in it. It’s not a romance, but has a really fine love story complete with telepathy during sex. It’s a novel that asks some very hard questions, and like Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, it makes the reader search for her own answers.

Stewards of the Flame is about finding home, as is Elf, about confession and confronting fears as is Spiderman 2, about finding the full health and longevity potential of the human body as is They’d Rather Be Right. Like They’d Rather Be Right, Stewards is based on a scientific discovery about human brain waves and states of consciousness which can heal and strengthen the human body.

As Marion Zimmer Bradley said in her Darkover novels, "The mind writes in the body."

All of these are about finding the source of the magical power within human beings to use that power to heal, to release the best in human nature, to achieve harmony with our environment.

But Stewards is also an inquiry and commentary on the nature of what it is to be human, and where evolution can take us from here. It asks the sort of questions only SF can pose, and paints a vivid picture of where failing to answer those questions might lead.

Do we have to leave Earth and found an isolated colony where everyone believes the same way in order to nurture our psychic abilities?

Is the majority opinion able to stifle us, psychically, preventing us all from achieving our full potential?

What is the role of fear in commanding our brain waves, and what is the limit of what brain waves can do to affect the reality around us?

In magickal theory, human minds and souls generate our material reality by molding the shapeless material of the astral plane. Our nightmares project onto that malleable stuff and create actual monsters. Our wildest dreams likewise can create marvels beyond all logic.

Engdahl explores in depth what role altered states of consciousness may play in this molding process. She poses the idea that the mind exists separate from the actual, physical brain, and thus can affect the physical reality by altering consciousness of that reality.

The dramatic example she gives is of the firewalkers who can bring an entire congregation of people barefoot across glowing coals without burning their feet.

In Stewards, Engdahl shows an initiation of passing a hand through open flame without burning the flesh. In both firewalking and passing a hand through flame, she postulates that the result is affected by support given by the congregation or Circle – the group mind.

The values and beliefs, the conscience of the majority affects the minority. Change the beliefs of the majority and you change the world. The only way to do that is to change your own beliefs, confront your fears, clear your conscience and become the hero you really are.

Stewards is the kind of SF I’ve been craving!

To send books for review in this column email Jacqueline Lichtenberg,  jl@simegen.com for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file.  

 

 

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