Category: Fiction

I am not a fan of the Harry Potter novels. I know lots of people who are, including people who are serious Catholics, but I’m uncomfortable with them for a variety of reasons.

While they’re not going to turn every kid who reads them into a practitioner of Wicca, at least some kids will be influenced by the novels into exploring the occult. That’s a risk that is taken whenever magic is explored in fiction. Lord of the Rings did the same thing.

The thing about literature (fiction or non-fiction) is that somebody in the audience is always going to go off in some crazy direction based on what they read.

Want proof?

Let’s take a very well-known piece of literature . . . the best-selling book in human history, in fact: The Bible.

Has anybody gone off in a crazy direction after reading that?

Well, let’s see . . . Marcion, Sabellius, Montanus, Tertullian, Arius, . . . uh, the list might get a little long, so let’s move on.

Authors can’t let the fact that somebody in the audience is going to go nuts based on what they write stop them from writing. If they did, we wouldn’t have the Bible. But authors can craft their work in a way that tries to minimize potential harmful effects, and I have sympathy for those who think that J.K. Rowling didn’t do as good a job of this in writing the Harry Potter series as J.R.R. Tolkien did in the Lord of the Rings.

And the fact is that the vast majority of kids who read Harry Potter are not going to turn into neopagans, so I can’t tell people that it’s morally impermissible for any child to read them.

There is another reason I’m uncomfortable with them: I just don’t like the way they’re written.

Now, you know what they say about disputing about tastes, and if Harry Potter is something that you really enjoy and that doesn’t challenge your faith then good for you. But I think that Rowling did not do a good job in several respects literarily, and here’s why.

I read the first novel back when there was a huge controversy about it and whether it was healthy for children, and from the opening pages I found myself not liking it. The reason is that Rowling is just too ham fisted in how she sets the plot in motion.

Harry Potter–the character, not the book series–is the most important boy in the magical world, yet he doesn’t know it.

Until chapter two. (Or whatever.)

Then, as soon as he’s introduced into the magical world, he’s suddently the center of attention, people are fawning all over him, privilege is lavished upon him, and a glorious new future is handed to him on a silver platter.

Too. Much. Wish. Fulfillment.

This is bad plotting. Harry Potter is catapulted out of ordinary life to the apex of magical society virtually instantaneously. There may be lots of interesting concepts that Rowling uses as tinsel to sparkle up her world–and this is what I think people really find attractive about the books (the tinsel, not the substance)–but you don’t slather on the wish fulfillment in this way.

Not unless you’re writing fan fic.

If you really want to have somebody be the most important boy in the world, you let this fact emerge piecemeal, a bit at a time, with the character paying his dues as his true identity becomes clear.

If you want to see that plot done right,

CHECK OUT THIS BOOK.

BTW, I recently gave this book to Steve and Janet Ray and they loved it.

Others have also commented on the ham fisted way Rowling writes–in fact the piece I’m about to link even uses the term "ham fisted."

It’s a piece by an economics reporter who looks at the bad economics in the book–and she doesn’t mean money. She means the magical economy:

If magic is too powerful then the characters will be omnipotent gods, and there won’t be a plot. Magic must have rules and limits in order to leave the author enough room to tell a story. In economic terms, there must be scarcity: magical power must be a finite resource.

GET THE STORY.

CNS is reporting:

Curiosity about the New Testament figure of Judas and a feeling that his reputation as the worst sinner in history "isn’t fair, isn’t right" led British novelist Jeffrey Archer to attempt a new version of the story.

Archer, presenting "The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot" at a March 20 press conference in Rome, said he is a practicing Anglican who wanted his new book to be backed up by solid biblical scholarship.

So he convinced Father Francis J. Moloney, provincial of the Salesians in Australia and a former president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, to collaborate.

Now, I don’t have a problem with someone writing a book called "The Gospel According to Judas" or writing novels about Judas or about Judas’s perceptions of Christ. I don’t even have a problem with someone who wants to present Judas as something other than the worst sinner in history–something that the Church doesn’t teach that he was. One could hold that Judas had diminished culpability for his sins and that someone else in history had a higher degree of culpability.

But I do have a problem with this:

Archer’s main thesis is that Judas tried to prevent Jesus’ arrest and execution by enlisting the help of a scribe to get Jesus out of Jerusalem and back to Galilee where the Romans supposedly would ignore him.

In the end, the scribe betrays Judas, which means Judas unwittingly betrays Jesus.

Both Archer and Father Moloney doubt that Judas committed suicide, a story recounted only in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

The Benjamin Iscariot in Archer’s title is Judas’ fictitious son, who — years after the death of Jesus — finds his father living in an ascetic community near the Dead Sea. His father reluctantly gives his version of what happened to Jesus and the son writes it down.

I’m sorry, but this is unacceptable on two grounds. First, it flatly contradicts the biblical accounts of Judas’ death. It would be one thing if the author made it clear that he was not writing about our universe and that he was dealing with a parallel Judas and what happened to him, but that’s not the case. The author and Fr. Moloney both cast doubt on the inspired text as it applies to our universe. This is an unacceptable misrepresentation of the facts of history. It’s not a case of them proposing a novel or unexpected way to harmonize the accounts of Judas’s death; it’s them flatly rejecting the biblical accounts.

Second, the author has fallen into the perennial trap of trying to exonerate Judas. That’s not the same thing as portraying him in a way that nuances his character and motives. It’s not the same thing as just saying "He may not have been the worst sinner in history." It’s flatly rejecting the betrayal that Judas performed. On this account, Judas didn’t betray Jesus; he was himself betrayed.

Sorry, but that’s not going to cut it. Not if we’re being asked to entertain what might have been the case with the Judas in our universe.

I don’t know what it is with authors (and filmmakers) who want to rehabilitate Judas in this fashion.

But I suspect it’s this: They themselves have an uneasy conscience.

They themselves feel that they have betrayed Christ (as have we all by our sins), but rather than throw themselves on Christ’s mercy and accepting his grace, they want to rationalize or excuse their sins and so–using the character of Judas as a psychological surrogate for themselves–they rationalize and excuse his in fictional form.

The underlying psychological message they’re trying to give themselves is: Hey, if Judas didn’t really betray Christ–if he was a tragic victim of circumstance–then that’s what I am, too. I haven’t really betrayed him. I’m just a victim of fate, too, and I’m not really responsible for what I’ve done.

By their lives of Judas you shall know them.

GET THE STORY.

A reader writes:

Hey Jimmy, any thoughts on "Atlas Shrugged"? I’ve yet to read it, but I’m wondering if it makes any good points, and was also curious what the bad ones might be. A friend has forced me to read it, so I thought it’d be best to get your thoughts first. Thanks!

Well, I can’t generally offer thoughts on works of fiction like Atlas Shrugged, and most have both good and bad points, but in this case I do happen to know something about the work and its author, Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand was a 20th century immigrant to the US who advocated a particular philosophical system that she dubbed "Objectivism," because of its supposedly objective viewpoint.

This viewpoint has significant resonances with the Libertarian political movement, and advocates of Objectivism tend to be Libertarian politically (though not all Libertarians are Objectivists). This means that they tend to be economically liberal (in the historic sense–i.e., in favor of laissez-faire capitalism) while being socially liberal as well (e.g., not opposing abortion or homosexuality).

Objectivism tends to support a form of individualism that leaves open to the individual certain forms of freedom that Catholic theology would hold are immoral (e.g., it sometimes exalts selfishness as a virtue). It also tends to be strongly anti-religious.

While I have not read a great deal of Ayn Rand’s works (though I have read some), I can report that she uses her fiction–such as Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged–as vehicles for her philosophical thought.

I can also report that she is not taken seriously as a philosopher by real, academic philosophers.

I suggest looking into the following online articles from Wikipedia for more info:

* AYN RAND

* OBJECTIVISM

* OBJECTIVIST MOVEMENT

* ATLAS SHRUGGED

Back when JA.O published Three Days To Never: The Interview, one of the questions Tim Powers was asked was whether we’d have to wait another five years for his next novel.

He said, "I
hope not! No, no, definitely not."

And the man was as good as his word!

I just got his latest book, A Soul in a Bottle, and read it in one sitting!

Okay, if you want to be persnickety, it’s not a novel, it’s a novella, but that’s close enough for me, and it comes in a gorgeous hardbound edition with copious illustrations by well-known fantasy artist J. K. Potter (no relation to Harry Potter or J. K. Rowling–so far as I know!).

It’s a little hard to describe the book without giving away story elements that you’ll want to let unfold in front of you, but here’s how I described it in the entry for my aStore:

Powers’ latest. A mysterious woman. A secret sonnet. A dire warning. A
forbidden romance. A *big* decision.

Easy access to the Powersverse for
those who have never ventured into it.

It has all the elements you’d expect from Tim Powers’ work–a startling eye for realism and a real-world setting, mixed with elements of the fantastic. It has ghosts–or at least a ghost–a character whose death sets the plot in motion. And it has the usual thematic elements of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms (they have a whole government agency just to deal with Tim Powers novels!).

Despite what you might suspect, the title does not refer to a soul that is literally in a bottle. That’s a metaphor. What it refers to is something you’ll have to read the story to find out.

I don’t want to give too much away about the story–in fact, I’d advise you not to read the dust jacket or the publisher’s description–because the less you know going in, the more you’ll enjoy it as Powers starts weaving his spell.

I will say this, though: Like Powers’ works in general, it’s refreshingly free from the kind of crud that clutters up many novels. There’s no sex scenes or blood and gore in it, for example. Instead, he gives us a tale that does not preach but sets up and then pays off a profound moral issue, with a forceful (and interestingly theological) stinger at the end.

I suspect that if you sample Tim Powers’ Soul in a Bottle, you’ll want to taste his other works as well, so . . .

CHECK ‘EM OUT!

CHT to the reader down yonder who linked to a discussion in First Things in which Fr. NeuhausJoseph Bottum (CHT to readers for the correction) raises the question of science fiction as literature. Commening on a post at the Volokh Conspiracy, he writes:

There exists an intellectual defense of science fiction, but what’s interesting is that the query produced a hundred comments and, as near as I can tell, not one of them attempts the intellectual defense. What they pursue, instead, is a systematic assault on the notion of literature.

You can’t discount the American horror of appearing to be snob: Ordinary readers like science fiction, and we’re all just regular folk, after all. But what’s curious is the deployment of postmodern tropes: Some years ago, literature professors (of the MLA persuasion, anyway) turned against the whole idea of literature, the Volokh Conspiracy commenters note. So if even trained literary critics are unable to say what qualifies as literature, why can’t science fiction be literature?

There’s something a little odd in the use of this line by a group of lawyers and law professors who are known for their rejection of the postmodern turn in their own profession of law. Still, as an anti-intellectual argumentative strategy, it’s pretty smart: You get to deny that there is any specialized knowledge necessary for determining literature (“even the trained people don’t know what it is”), and at the same time you get to appeal to the authority of those specialists to promote your favorite reading.

But smart ain’t the same as intellectual. As I say, there is an intellectual defense of some genre writing. But—believing, as I did, that lawyers tend toward being natural intellectuals—I would have preferred to see the discussion begin with the acknowledgement that Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe produced literature. Now, does any science fiction stand near them?

As someone with pre-postmodern sympathies on a host of issues, I find myself sympathizing with Bottum when he looks askance at postmodern attempts to simply deconstruct the idea of literature. He’s quite right that Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe composed works that deserve unique commendation.

However, as a philosopher of the analytic tradition, I am also sensitive to the difficulties in defining what counts as literature, as well as the subjective difficulty of assessing what meets the criteria that could be proposed.

Unfortunately, Bottum plays his cards close to his vest and does not propose a definition for literature. He simply offers us a list of individuals he holds as having produced literature and asks us whether any works of science fiction "stand near them."

I can’t divine what standards our good divine might employ in assessing that question, but my initial inclination is to answer "Ask me again in five hundred years."

The list of luminaries Bottum cites is so stellar and so hallowed by centuries (except for Goethe) that one would have to display remarkable temerity to identify a recent science fiction author as a "new Homer" or a "new Virgil" or a "new Shakespeare" or even a "new Goethe."

By pointing to the cream of the literary crop–instead of literature of more modest means–Bottum has set the standard remarkably high, and diminished the ability of others to give him an answer. It would be easier if he identified 20th century figures who he regards as authors of literature, but by picking only authors whose works have stood the test of time, he makes it hard to offer comparisons with works that have not yet been subjected to the test of time.

We are thus without either a definition or a list of contemporary authors of literature, to which contemporary science fiction authors might be compared.

Having said that, I think that it is quite clear that science fiction–as well as genre fiction in general–can count as literature, however literature is defined. As evidence, I would offer the very list of literary luminaries that Bottum cites. Every one of them is known for producing works of literature that, if they were published today for the first time, would count as genre fiction.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey would both count as works of fantasy literature. So would Virgil’s Aeneid. So would the Divine Comedy. So would multiple plays by Shakespeare (Hamlet is a ghost story, Macbeth has witches,  The Tempest is built around a wizard, and let’s not even go into the fantasy elements in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Faust would also be classified as fantasy based on its subject matter.

So literature obviously does not exclude the fantastic, which is central to science fiction. Indeed, fantasy is often classed together with science fiction, but if one were to insist that the two categories must be distinguished such that science fiction must involve science or the future rather than the supernatural then it still seems there are works of science fiction that are clearly literature.

I won’t go so far as to proclaim a new Homer, but it strikes me that Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus and George Orwell’s 1984 both stand sufficiently near the works of the authors Bottum mentions to count as literature. Frankenstein, in particular, is well along in the process of standing the test of time and is likely to be with us five hundred years from now, quite possibly on an equal footing with Faust.

I’d also agree with the commenter who wrote:

Those who believe SF isn’t literature should read A Canticle for
Lebowitz or the work of Gene Wolfe or Tim Powers, not to mention
Tolkien.

 

It thus strikes me as possible to cite clear examples of science fiction that counts as literature, even given the vague guidance Bottum has offered us regarding what belongs in that class.

I am intrigued by Bottum’s statement that "There exists an intellectual defense of science fiction," which he later speaks of as if there is only one intellectual defense ("not one of them attempts the intellectual defense"). I am a bit perplexed by the fact that he does not seem willing to extend the same to genre fiction in general, saying that "there is an intellectual defense of some genre writing."

Unfortunately, Bottum is even more coy about what this defense might be than he is regarding what counts as literature.

Once again, I will not attempt to divine the mind of the divine, but I will offer the following thoughts:

1) If the inclusion of futuristic technology or situations is a sufficient condition for a work to count as science fiction, then it seems immediately apparent that science fiction can be literature for the simple reason that there will be literature in the future.

I don’t know that there will be another Homer or Shakespeare–their positions in the Western Canon have to do not only with the quality of their works but also with their place in the histories of the languages in which they wrote–but I suspect we will have future Goethes. In fact, I suspect we get several Goethes every century, it just takes time to recognize them.

If we then contemplate the first Goethe of the twenty-second century, writing in 2107, then even if he writes fiction that is purely realistic in terms of his own day, it will include elements that make it science fiction by our standards. This is true whether technology advances or not, whether we are living in a utopia or a dystopia or not, or whether we are living in a world that has slid back into barbarism.

This reveals to us the difference between subject matter (genre) and literary quality.

2) "Genre" and "literature" are two separate categories, just as "plot" and "literature" are two separate categories. There is no such thing as a literary plot; literature can use any plot. And there is no such thing as a literary genre; literature can be written in any genre.

Genre has to do with the subject matter that is found in a story. The Odyssey counts as fantasy because it has Odysseus going from island to island meeting fantastic beings and beset by gods. If you keep the exact same plot, with the same episodes and scenes, but change the details so that he’s going from planet to planet meeting fantastic beings and beset by aliens then the genre becomes science fiction.

Whether something counts as literature is not principally a judgment about subject matter. It is largely a judgment about quality. Nothing counts as literature if it is of poor quality. To be literature, it has to be good.

Some might want to stop there and say that the difference between literature and ordinary writing is simply the distinctive quality of literature. If it’s really, really good, it’s lit. Otherwise, not. But others might want to add other criteria.

Discerning what those criteria might be is difficult. One does not want to merely endorse the preferences or prejudices of a particular age, and so one must look across time–from Homer to Shakespeare to Goethe–and ask what indisputable works of literature have in common.

The differences between the works are vast. The Iliad does not read at all like The Sorrows of Young Werther, but a plausible criterion would be that works of literature engage the human condition in a particularly insightful way. This, indeed, may be the difference between literature and ordinary writing.

An ordinary comedy might be well-crafted and funny, and an ordinary romance might be well-crafted and entertaining, but Shakespeare’s comedies and romances go beyond that and allow us greater insight into the human condition.

That, incidentally, is what Frankenstein and 1984 do. Frankenstein isn’t just a creature story, and 1984 isn’t just a speculation on what life might be like thirty-six years after George Orwell wrote it.

If we accept the definition of literature as writing of high quality that is particularly insightful on the human condition (and I have no way of knowing if Bottum would accept this definition) the it seems clear that works of any genre can count as literature because there is no subject matter that of its nature prevents an author from writing well or displaying insight into the human condition.

It doesn’t matter whether the story is about a romance or the solving of a crime or the prosecution of a legal case or the efforts of a doctor to save lives or someone living in the Old West or someone living in the future. Unless you are prepared to say that there are no insights to be had on the condition of people in such situations then you must be prepared to say that such stories can tell us things about the human condition and thus potentially serve as literature.

Even something as "frivolous" as comedy can do that (note Shakespeare’s comedies), since humor is part of the human condition.

3) To apply the foregoing insight specifically to science fiction, it has often been pointed out that by using fantastic themes and situations, science fiction writers are able to hold up a unique mirror to the human condition and illuminate it from a different angle.

If you’ve got the ability to create life from non-living matter, as Dr. Frankenstein did, or if you can envision the playing out of social trends decades into the future, as George Orwell did, then you can throw light on aspects of the human condition that are hard to bring out in the confines of purely realistic literature.

The same applies if you put humans in a very different situation than the one they commonly find themselves in today. This can happen, for example, if you put them on another planet, or imagine them meeting another intelligent race. Or you might chuck the humans entirely and just think about what an alien race would be like and how it might be similar to and different from humanity.

In all of these ways, science fiction can hold up a mirror to mankind that let’s us look at its condition from a new angle.

4) Even more fundamentally, the senses of wonder and dread are themselves part of human nature, and science fiction allows us to express and explore these. It was wonder and dread that fired the ancient imagination and led to the creation of the gods and monsters of the classical age, as we find them in the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Aeneid. It was wonder and dread that led Shakespeare to put ghosts and witches and wizards in his stories. And it was wonder and dread that led Goethe to give literary form to a bargain with the devil.

What generates wonder and dread in us changes from age to age, and thus we find somewhat different elements of the fantastic in the writings of Homer and Shakespeare and Goethe. Today many find feelings of wonder and dread conjured in them by contemplating the science and technology that life thrusts upon us, or the thought of what the future will bring and how it will be different from today, or what other kinds of life may exist in God’s creation.

In contemplating all of these, we express a fundamental aspect of the human condition and exercise the gift of reason that God gave us, and despite the sniffing of those who are so in love with realistic fiction that they have lost the sense of preternatural wonder and dread, they can indeed find their place in human literature.

This is just wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!

I was horrified a while back when I was in a bookstore and saw on the shelf that there was an actual crossover novel between Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men.

UGH!!!

This is the literary equivalent of KFC’s Infamous Stomach-In-A-Bowls!

I have nothing against Next Gen.

I have nothing against X-Men.

But I don’t want them jumbled together like this!

Yes, I know, in fits of unmitigated geeky uncoolness, fans of various series have produced reams and reams of fanfic doing franchise mashups like this.

That’s why God created the Internet.

How else would young teenagers explore the question of whether Worf or Wolverine would win a fight?

(I’m guessing that’s a prominent scene early in the book . . . and I’m guessing that they manage to fight each other to a draw . . . big surprise.)

But to have one of these things escape from the wild and actually make it into print . . . WHAT WERE THE RIGHTS-HOLDERS THINKING???

Particularly the rights holders for the Star Trek franchise. It strikes me that this stands to cheapen their brand more than Marvel Comics’.

Perhaps it was to indulge Michael Jan Friedman, who apparently writes many of the Star Trek novels and may be an X-Men fan on the side.

I don’t mind commercial tie-in literature based on popular media franchises. The stories in these series are  usually non-canonical (though not in Babylon 5 or Firefly). People enjoy them, and I respect that.

I don’t mind fanfic. I don’t read it, but I don’t mind that it’s out there. In fact, a lot of the stories told in world history have been the equivalent of fanfic–non-professional storytellers doing their own take on popular stories. I don’t know how many folks sitting around the fire have spun their own tales about Gilgamesh or Ahikar or Odysseus or Jason or Aeneas any of the other heroes of literature. All that’s fine and part of the human experience–a testimony to human creativity.

I don’t even mind crossovers, as long as they’re well done. I would not mind, for example, reading a novel in which Dracula met some other 19th century literary character, like Sherlock Holmes or the Invisible Man. (In fact, Alan Moore did a whole comic book series based on that idea, though I haven’t read it.)

But there has to be a "fit" between the two things you’re crossing over–at least if you’re intending to play the story for something other than laughs. Sure, Bambi meets Godzilla can give you a chuckle, but I really wouldn’t want to read a serious detective story in which Sherlock Holmes solves crimes alongside characters from Beatrix Potter’s universe.

And that’s the problem here.

The X-Men inhabit a comic book universe that plays by comic book rules, where only the slightest gesture is made toward real-world science and physics and character development and Star Trek . . . uh . . . well . . . um . . . nevermind.

I just hope they don’t make a movie out of this thing.

How would you tell Captain Picard and Professor X apart?

Recently I had the great pleasure of reading Tim Powers’ latest novel,
Three Days To Never.

I also had the great pleasure of hosting an interview with the man himself, right here on JA.O.

But in looking around, I found a couple of additional interviews he did about the book, and I’d thought I’d pass them along for readers who are Tim Powers fans or who should be Tim Powers fans (which would be everybody).

Both of these interviews are conducted by people who know science fiction better than I.

THE FIRST IS WITH THE GOOD FOLKS AT SCIFI.COM

and

THE SECOND WAS CONDUCTED BY SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR JOHN SHIRLEY.

I was pleased to see how much different material is brought out by the three interviews. Tim got asked questions that were different enough that each gives him a chance to say new and interesting things about the book, and about his writing in general, so I hope y’all’ll check ’em out.

Oh, and don’t forget to

GET THE BOOK.

OR GET HIS OTHER BOOKS IF YOU’VE ALREADY GOT THIS ONE.

Tim Powers’ new novel,
Three Days To Never (3DTN), is a supernatural thriller about spies,
magic, science, religion, and the secret history of the 20^th
century. Set in 1987 during that year’s famed three-day New Age “Harmonic
Convergence,” the story involves Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin,
Israeli intelligence, remote viewers, the Qabbalah, the nature of time,
identity, and free will–and an unsuspecting English teacher from San
Bernardino and his young daughter.

The author has graciously consented
to give JimmyAkin.Org an exclusive interview about his new book.

* * *

JA.O: Authors usually dread the
question “Where do you get your ideas?” so I won’t ask that, but
I’d like to ask about the starting point for 3DTN. Where did the germ
of this novel come from? What was the first thing that you decided about
it? Did you want to write about a specific theme, a specific moment,
a specific character, a specific concept?

Tim Powers: Actually
it all started simply by me being curious about why Einstein’s hair
is white in all photographs after 1928. Biographies note that he had
something like a heart attack at that time, in the Swiss Alps, but I
was in my writer-paranoid mode, so I wasn’t buying the heart-attack
story.

      I
suppose anybody’s biography would yield the sort of clues I look for
to base a story on — I bet I could find them in a biography of Louisa
May Alcott, or Beatrix Potter! — but I was pleased to find that Einstein’s
life was particularly full of odd bits. He really did devote years to
working on some kind of "maschinchen," little machine, which
apparently in real life came to nothing, and he did go to a séance
with Charlie Chaplin, and he did leave California forever on the day
of the big Long Beach earthquake, for instance.

      I
always simply note lots of interesting bits and then try to figure out
what sort of story they appear to be part of — as opposed to having
a story in mind in advance and then looking for substantiation for it.
And so when I found that Einstein was devoted to the state of Israel,
for instance, and donated lots of his papers to a university there,
I just noted that Israel would probably figure in the story. That led
me to the Qabbalah and the Mossad, and then they led me on to lots of
other colorful stuff.

* * *

I know that your stories
are heavily researched. How did you go about researching this one?

      Well,
I read a good dozen biographies of Einstein! Underlining and cross-referencing
and making customized indexes on the flyleaves! (I always wind up wrecking
my research books.) And I read heaps too on Qabbalah, and the history
of Israel, and Charlie Chaplin, and old Hollywood, as the Einstein biographies
pointed toward these things.

      And
since the story’s action was mostly taking place within an hour’s drive
of where I live, my wife and I were able (as usually we’re not) to go
to the places I was writing about, and take pictures and wander around
and make notes. Since I usually can’t go to the places I set my stories
in, I insist that it’s not necessary — but just between you and me,
it is a help!

* * *

3DTN involves
the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad. How did you go about researching
them, and how close are the intelligence methods shown in the story
to the ones the Mossad used in the 1980s? Are you at liberty to tell
us or would you have to kill me and my blog readers if you said?

      The
actual Mossad is more efficient than the fictional agents I put in the
book — but moderately inefficient characters are more useful in fiction
and more interesting, I think, to read about. But the background and
methods I give them are accurate for the 1980s, assuming my research
books were accurate. I read Victor Ostrovsky’s By Way of Deception
, and Gordon Thomas’s Gideon’s Spies, and Israel’s Secret
Wars by Black and Morris, and several more. Taken altogether they
probably gave me a plausible picture of the Mossad in the ’80s, and
plausibility is more crucial than strict accuracy. (And as you note,
precise accuracy in espionage matters might be dangerous!)

* * *

When I read your stories,
I’m often surprised to find out that things I thought you made up
actually came from real history. For example, in 3DTN there is an occult
group with ties to the Nazi Regime that I thought you likely made up
(though we know the Nazis were interested in the occult). There is also
a long-lost Charlie Chaplin film that I suspected was an invention of
yours. Yet when I checked online, I found both of these were real. Are
there other things buried in the novel that the reader might be surprised
to find came from history?

      Actually
a whole lot of it is real stuff — Einstein’s maschinchen for measuring
faint voltages, his pal who assassinated the Austrian premier in 1916,
the mid-movie interruption of the first screening of Chaplin’s City
Lights, the "kidnap" and ransom of Chaplin’s dead body,
for instances. This is a result of me getting my story almost ready-made
by reading a whole lot of research stuff and noting the intriguing bits,
which I then only have to fit together into a plot. It’s much easier
to just find all this than to make it up!

* * *

One of the things that I
find fascinating about your work is the way that you mix real life with
fantasy. Like many of your novels, 3DTN is set in modern times. This
is different than many fantasy novels, which are set in either the Middle
Ages or an imaginary period that is meant to be like the Middle Ages.
Personally, except in the case of someone like Tolkien, I often find
those stories coming across as flat or artificial. Is there a specific
reason why you weave magic around modern settings instead of going with
the traditional "sword and sorcery" type of fantasy? Is it
just a personal preference or do you think there are advantages to writing
magical tales set in the present day?

      Well,
I want to trick my readers into believing, while they’re reading the
book at least,  that all this stuff is really happening, to real
people. If I set it in that default-medieval world, with wizards and
Dark Lords, readers would probably think, "Oh, an imaginary story!"
and I don’t want them noticing that it is, in fact, imaginary.
So I put the magical stuff in alongside TVs and freeways and Marlboros,
and hope that when the magical business starts up, it will seem to be
as genuine as … you know,  the internet and streetlights and
Big Macs.

      Ideally
my readers will develop a bit of reflexive mistrust of apparent, mundane
reality! You really don’t have to nudge readers very hard to elicit
this. People say things like, "I’m not scared of ghosts, I’m scared
of urban gangs and nuclear war," but if they’re all alone in a
house at night, and they hear a scraping sound down the hall, they don’t
think it’s an urban gang member; for at least a moment or two they
know it’s a ghost.

* * *

Elements of your own life
are often mixed into your stories. Your characters often live in the
same town that you do, and incidents in the stories are often modeled
on things that happened to you. For example, in your story
“The Bible Repairman,” you have a character who accidentally set
afire a Jehovah’s Witness Bible, just as you once did. Can you tell
us some elements of your own life that found their way into 3DTN?

      I
think most writers use their own lives as the basic kit for their protagonists,
to be altered as plot might require. It’s easier! You know the (ideally
mildly interesting) details of your own life pretty thoroughly, and
so a protagonist based on yourself is going to have a history, and tastes,
and even such flaws as you might be aware of having.

      I
don’t have a daughter, and my wife fortunately is still alive! But Marrity’s
house is our house, and his furniture and books and cats and pickup
truck are all ours. (Our pickup truck was a lot newer when he had it
in ’87 than it is now.) And I quit drinking some years ago, which I
think might be a wise course for Marrity.

* * *

Last year you visited Israel
for a science fiction convention. Visiting Israel was a very powerful
experience for me, and I wonder how it affected you. What did you think
about your trip and did getting to go there influence 3DTN in any way?

      Unfortunately
my wife and I went to Israel after I had finished the book! I
did manage to shove a few first-hand details about Tel Aviv into the
book, at least. And the real-life Israel didn’t contradict the Israel
I had imagined — I expected it to be a wonderful place, with admirable
people, and it was certainly that.

      And
we did get to Jerusalem, several times! As Catholics, we found that
was kind of comprehension overload — the realization that God walked
right here, and according to tradition touched this particular stone,
and died right here, is just disorienting. You only begin to appreciate
it later, in pieces.

      We
definitely want to go back. Ideally we’d go every year, with the tax
excuse of attending the convention!

* * *

Your previous novel,
Declare, had significant Catholic themes in it, while 3DTN has significant
Jewish themes. Specifically, it has a magical system related to the
Qabbalah of Jewish mysticism. Why did you decide to go that way this
time? It’s not just that you’re a huge Madonna fan or something is
it?

Well, no. What I generally do in my books, once I’ve got a situation
figured out, is look for the supernatural tradition most closely associated
with it — so that with pirates in the Caribbean I used voodoo [in the novel On Stranger Tides–ja], and
with Arabs I used genies [in the novel Declare–ja].   Declare was fun, in that one of the
historical characters’ uneasy fascination with Catholicism gave me an
excuse to present Catholicism as true. In this new book, I guess I present
Judaism as true! That Mossad character is a fairly orthodox Jew, and
isn’t comfortable using Qabbalah.

      And
Judaism isn’t alien to Catholics, of course — I always figure that
if Catholicism were somehow, per impossibile, proved wrong, I’d
jump straight into Judaism.

* * *

One of the ways that you
ground your stories in real life is by weaving science and magic closely
together. It’s not uncommon in your stories to have quantum mechanical
explanations for magic, or ghosts explained as a partly electrical phenomena,
or devices that are part technology and part enchantment. Depending
on how it’s handled, I could see this either helping or hurting a
story. What have you found to be the benefits and
risks of closely juxtaposing science and magic?

      One
way it helps — I hope! — in soliciting reader credulity is that it
shows magic impinging on, participating in, reality as we know it. After
all, if you can see a thing, then it’s reflecting light, and so it must
have some physical properties! And I like to give magical phenomena
a quantum or Newtonian or relativistic structure, just because those
have internal consistency and I hope my magical stuff will therefore
have a plausible consistency. I don’t want readers to think that I’m
free to make up any old magical effects at all.

      The
risk of this, of course, is that you’ll make magic into just another
technology — pentagrams are effective up to such-and-such amount of
stress, the effectiveness of magic spells diminishes as the square of
the distance — you risk losing the numinous, vertiginous qaulity which
is really the whole point of magic. Real magic should be as scary as
an earthquake, even if it’s "good" magic.

* * *

H. P. Lovecraft felt strongly
that a weird fiction story should be thoroughly grounded in reality
and contain only a single supernatural element—the
“wonder” at the heart of the story. Your approach is different:
You strongly ground your stories in the real world but you weave in
multiple supernatural elements. It’s like there is a whole magical
subtext bubbling just under the surface of daily life. Do you think
Lovecraft was too conservative about how much of the supernatural readers
can accept or are there special challenges to pulling off
the kind of thing that you do?

      Well
I suppose I’d claim that I’m only introducing one magical element, but
that it’s got lots of apparently-unconnected side effects! — but that
would probably be more glib than true.

      Yes,
I think Lovecraft was too conservative. The thing we want to show the
reader is that there’s a whole world of unsuspected stuff going on —
when Leeuwenhoek first looked into his microscope, he didn’t see just
one weird new creature, but dozens of them! The unsuspected world will
have its internal consistencies, its own possibilities and impossibilities,
but it’s gonna be intricate.

* * *

Albert Einstein figures
prominently in 3DTN and you go beyond the known facts of his life in
working him into the story’s background. Einstein is such an iconic
figure that many authors have felt the liberty to fictionalize his life
in books and movies, but just recently we’ve had a great deal of criticism
directed toward Dan Brown for his rewriting the facts of Jesus’ life
in The Da Vinci Code, and Jesus is
an even more iconic figure. A lot of people took offense at what Brown
did, but a lot don’t take offense at a fictional version of Einstein’s
life. How do you explain this and, in your view, how much liberty should
authors have when fictionalizing the lives of historical figures?

      I
think the main thing is to base your characterization on what’s known
of the real historical figure — don’t have him do things he never would
have done. You can invent lots of unrecorded motivations for him, but
he should react to those in character.

      I
like to think I presented Einstein as an admirable character, which
he appears mostly to have been. I’ve portrayed some historical bad guys
somewhat sympathetically — Bugsy Siegel, for example [in the novel Last Call–ja] — but I don’t
think readers mind that as much as going the other way, and portraying
revered figures as villains. Brown portrayed Jesus as a fairly vague
nonentity, but at least he didn’t make Him a bad guy!

* * *

Despite the emphasis on
reality, your stories often have striking elements of whimsy. For example,
some of your characters have joke names—and joke names based on ecclesiastical
Latin at that! In a couple of your novels there was a character named
“Neal Obstadt” (nihil obstat;
“nothing obstructs”) and in 3DTN there’s a woman going by the
name “Libra Nosamalo” (libera nos a malo;
“deliver us from evil”). Is there a risk of harming suspension of
disbelief here or do you think that the payoff in humor is enough for
those who’ll get the joke?

      Well,
I think there is a risk of harming suspension of disbelief, yes. I shouldn’t
do it! Anything that reminds the reader that he’s just sitting in a chair
holding a stack of papers all glued together at one edge, and not in
the presence of the book’s characters, is a mistake, even if it gets
a laugh.

      It
could be worse! After all, Neal Obstadt may have picked that name because
of its associations, and Libra Nosamalo explains that her parents had
an odd sense of humor.

      But
the best sort of humor in a book is things that arise naturally from
the action, things a reader can laugh at without stepping outside the
story!

* * *

Compared to many contemporary
novels, yours are fairly clean. While they’re meant for adults, they
aren’t loaded up with sex scenes and they don’t celebrate sin. There
are cuss words and your characters definitely have things they’d need
to talk about in confession, but on a deeper level your books presuppose
a moral structure to the universe. As a Catholic, how do you find the
balance between showing the reality of man’s fallen condition and
glorifying evil the way we commonly see in the media?

      Well,
while I show people doing bad things — even show the atractiveness
of doing bad things! — I like to think I show too that they work out
badly, and that the characters would have been way better off not having
done those things. Often a character wants to do the difficult right
thing but keep a couple of pet sins too — just little ones, they don’t
eat a lot or make much noise! And I hope I show that there’s bad consequences
of that. I always remember Lewis’s statement in The Great Divorce,
something like, "If we choose Heaven we will not be able to keep
even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."

      This
is really more craft than morality — given, I suppose, my own beliefs.
Sex-scenes, for example, I think are generally just bad craft. They
usually feel to me like clumsy gear-changes, jolting the reader abruptly
from one sort of fiction into another. Not smooth carpentry!

* * *

J. R. R. Tolkien’s works
envision a world that differs from ours in a number of respects. Some
things are “okay” in his world that would not be okay in ours (e.g.,
Gandalf’s use of magic). C. S. Lewis’s
Chronicles of Narnia are similar. When reading or watching science
fiction and fantasy, I often imagine that I’m peeking in on a universe
where God established different rules (which is certainly his right),
but many people feel that there are limits to what authors should portray
in this regard. A considerable number of Christians feel that J. K.
Rowling crossed the line in her
Harry Potter series and created a world that could tempt real-world
children toward the occult. In your novels I’ve noticed that the more
people chase after magic, the more they get burned by it. Where do you
come down on this topic? Are there limits to how different an author
should make the world he envisions? Does it depend on the audience?
What are the boundaries?

      I
make magic a damaging thing for characters to mess with just because
that feels logical and convincing to me. I’d be writing about a fake
magic — fake to me, anyway — if I made it benevolent or even neutral.

      But
I wouldn’t advise a writer who sees magic as a nice thing to
try to change the way he deals with it! I don’t think you can fake these
things. I’ve known writers who try in their stories to endorse moral
correctnesses they don’t actually care about, or which they even feel
to be invalid, just to make their work more palatable to perceived readers’
tastes, and it never works. Your fiction is going to reflect what you
actually believe and don’t believe, and it’d be a mistake for Rowling,
for example, to vilify magic just because people think it ought to be
vilified. They may be right and she may be wrong, but it’s her eyes
we’re looking through when we experience the story.

      Joan
Didion said that "art is hostile to ideology." Fiction
can be educational and beneficial and improving, but that’s not
one of its jobs!

* * *

Your stories often begin
after the death of an important character—frequently a female character whose
death sets the plot in motion. Is this a consequence of writing stories
that often involve ghosts, is it just a good place to begin stories,
or is it a personal trademark?

      I
guess it’s just a personal quirk! I really wasn’t aware of it till you
pointed it out. I guess it’s a natural way to get into a dramatic situation
— the reader learns about this deleted person from seeing how the other
characters react to her (generally her) sudden absence, and when a mystery
becomes evident she’s not there to explain it, and they’ve got to try
to reconstruct what she secretly knew or what she was actually up to.

      And
yes, in stories of mine her ghost is likely to show up and have some
comments!

* * *

Your stories often end with
the creation of new families by characters who aren’t initially part
of the same family. Is this a crypto pro-family statement that you’re
trying to get across, does it play a specific
dramatic function, or is it something that you just find interesting?

      I
suppose it plays a dramatic function, in that it’s putting together
a new orderliness, with optimistic promise, out of the ruins of what
had been there before the story’s catastrophes started. Like, "Things
won’t be the same, but they’ll be nice in a different way." And
I generally get fond of my characters, and I want them to have nice
lives after the book’s spotlight isn’t on them anymore!

* * *

Your previous novel,
Declare, came out in 2001 and 3DTN has come out in 2006. You’re
not going to make us wait until 2011 for another Tim Powers novel are
you?

      I
hope not! No, no, definitely not. This one was slowed down by me teaching
two high school classes and one or two college classes every semester,
and I’m going to cut back on that, I swear.

* * *

ORDER THREE DAYS TO NEVER–OR OTHER WORKS BY TIM POWERS–FROM JIMMY AKIN’S STORE.