Jason Nesmith: Mathesar, there's no such person as Captain Taggart. My name is Jason Nesmith. I'm an actor. We're all actors.
Sarris: He doesn't understand. Explain as you would a child.
Jason Nesmith: We, uh, we pretended.
[On Mathesar's blank look]
Jason Nesmith: We lied.I was watching a couple of episodes of Doctor Who with my friend Annie the fantasy author after dinner on Saturday night* - Annie has just discovered the Doctor, but so far has only watched the episodes from the first season of the 2005 reboot.
GalaxyQuest
To my mild surprise, I found myself constantly being requested to pause the playback in order to deal with questions about what was going on. In some questions, the plot point in question was about to be dealt with anyway, and in others, the issue was more one of terminology - does it matter what artron energy really is?
In the first case, it was interesting to have someone verbalize the process that we all go through during any sort of narrative more complex than the story of Jack and Jill, although I was surprised that Annie was so unwilling to give the writers a little more slack in terms of providing an immediate explanation of things like why someone's mind and soul were being expelled from their body.
The second part is related to something that I dealt with in one of my very first postings: the process of world creation in science fiction and fantasy, the range of great and small details that illuminate an author's vision of "the fields beyond our own", as early 20th century fantasy writer Lord Dunsany put it.
It may be because I started reading science fiction and fantasy when I was so young, but I have never suffered from the same issues that seemed to be bothering Annie during our Doctor Who mini-fest. Suspension of disbelief is the standard cliché when it comes to this sort of discussion, but I actually think that it's an inappropriate term. There should be a term which is more positive - acceptance of belief, perhaps, although that's a clumsy antonym.
And ultimately, it's not really a question of belief. I don't think that I believe or disbelieve that it's possible to walk into a wardrobe and come out in Narnia, or to ask Scotty to beam up the landing party - the process involved is more subtle than belief, and after all, it's not like you're being lied to.
Or are you?
What is the storytelling process, really?
At some point in our cultural development, we invented the idea of storytelling - of lying with style, to misquote Woody from Toy Story. It's fascinating to think back to that first primitive storyteller in our past, the person who somehow made the mental leap to say, "Listen, everyone - I will tell you a thing which is not true, a thing which I have invented, a thing which did not happen, a thing which is better than the truth."
Whatever the reason for their odd decision, it has proven popular over time - that original audience must have listened in awe and astonishment, and then demanded more. Has there ever been a society on Earth which lacked a tradition of storytelling? Look at how much of our cultural identity as a species has been dedicated to fiction in some form or another - plays, novels, comic books, movies, television programs - and we still tell stories from hundreds and thousands of years in our past: the Sumerian battles of Gilgamesh; the Odyssey and the Iliad; the bravery of Beowulf, and the tragedy of King Arthur.
For an outside look at how closely storytelling is connected to our identity as a species, I recommend China Miéville's 2011 novel Embassytown. Human colonists maintain an outpost on the homeworld of the alien Ariekei, who cannot speak anything but facts, and as such grapple unsuccessfully with the idea of metaphor and simile in their dialogue with humanity. Metaphor is a lie, after all - when a science fiction author says that a spaceship ascended on a pillar of flame, they're lying, obviously you can't build a column out of fire. How can a rational species say things that are not true?Ironically, I found Embassytown difficult to read - it took me three tries before I was able to sufficiently engage myself in the story and continue to the end. Embassytown is almost two stories, initially a somewhat dull tale of the narrator's early life, followed by the real story, the story of communication, of sentience, of language, of thought. The process by which the Ariekei make the leap to the world of lies is a fascinating one, but neither easy nor pleasant for the aliens. However, it seems to be worth it to them, it seems to expand their view of the world.
And the funny thing? When I take a step back, I wonder why it matters to me at all: a story told by an imaginary woman about aliens that don't exist on a planet that isn't real? After all, it's just a lie - although, at least it is a beautiful one.
- Sid
* Sigh...I had a dinner date with woman who is writing a fantasy series, who constantly thanks me for introducing her to so many fantastic science fiction and fantasy books, who respects, envies and appreciates my knowledge of the genre, and who has just discovered (and loves) Doctor Who. How sad that she's also a woman who just moved in with her boyfriend...
** Come to think of it, when I read the first draft of Annie's fantasy novel, we had a discussion about foreshadowing and things like Chekov's Gun, which refers to Russian playwright Anton Chekov's comment that "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." I'll have to re-read the manuscript to see if Annie experiences overt fail in the area of foreshadowing.
