A writer has one responsibility: to tell her or his story.
I want you to keep that in mind as you read the rest of this post, because it’s going to be important to the rest of what I’m going to say. I want you to keep that mind open, however, as you read this: an editorial on Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing as written by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, author of The Worker Prince. And once that’s read, I want you to keep in mind the following: I’ve always been a very big supporter of Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing and Bryan is a pretty good friend of mine.
But this article is really, really bad.
It didn’t really resonate with me from the beginning, since it felt an awful lot like heroes of unapproachable morality and absolute black and whites were more of Bryan’s preference and he was recommending that this should just be followed suit without actually explaining why beyond his personal opinions. It wasn’t until I reached this particular part that the argument began to grate on me slightly:
In a world where nihilism seems to rule the day, where people question a government’s motives for going to war or whether war is moral, where people complain about people judging others, about inqualities, etc., how can it be wrong to write stories which show a clearer sense of morality? What kind of future are we positing for our children? What kind of heroes are we offering them as role models? Don’t we have a responsibility to do better?
It wasn’t enough to make me mad enough to spray piss, mind you (that’s usually reserved for when I watch old episodes of The Shield), but for reasons I’ll explain below, this notion that we, as writers, have a responsibility to do “better” is pretty much the summated flaw of Bryan’s argument.
That being…what is “better”? Who gets to decide that?
If you ask people this question, you can very rarely do so without Tolkien’s name coming up as an appeal to traditionalism. The idea that because Tolkien is as vast and as sweeping as he is means he was somehow more in the right when he wrote the book is fallacious, as is the idea that morality doesn’t evolve and become even more faceted throughout time. It suggests that we, as a genre, as writers and as readers, still hold the same mindset that Tolkien did and have a moral obligation not to move past it (hence the problem with moral absolutism: people who argue in favor of it tend to think they are the ones possessed of the “right” morality).
It’s absolutely fine to appreciate what Tolkien did. It’s great to still look to him for inspiration. But it’s not okay to tell his story, his morals, his values. Because that’s not your story and you are not fulfilling your sole obligation as a writer. And this is where I start having real problems with the idea of moral absolutism. By agreeing to the idea that there are certain morals that are “true,” we are agreeing that there is only one “true” story and all others are false. Fantasy.
Such a notion is treason to both humanity and to literature.
By suggesting we have only one set of morals, we deny ourselves the ability to see anything else. And when you combine the idea of a “true” set of morals with the appeal to tradition, you end up having a rather ominous notion that the only true tales are those told from the perspective of the same person (usually a white heterosexual male). I don’t at all think that Bryan is suggesting that the experiences of the white heterosexual male is the true experience, mind, but I do think the combination lends itself a little too easily to the idea.
Bryan brings up the topic of sex, specifically the idea of us being “bombarded” by it as an impurity. There is no topic more complex approached with more frustrating simplicity than sex. A colossal part of our life that shapes us all. I suspect (and only suspect) that people who claim it as a moral impurity tend to believe that not so much emphasis on it should be placed. How do we approach it, then, when we put the emphasis on it ourselves? What do we call a man who wants to keep his daughters safe from boys by placing strict curfews on them? What do we call a woman who has multiple partners? What do we call a teenage boy who, pressured by his friends, wants to get laid at any cost?
The answers:
A protective, judicial father with a stern, unwavering devotion to his family.
A sexually promiscuous woman who is obsessed with the carnal act.
The makings of a pretty hilarious high school movie.
Or:
A guy who catches his daughter kissing a boy and beats her senseless for doing so.
A woman who is trying to find someone she can spend the rest of her life with, physically and emotionally.
A date rapist in the making.
And what of the other people? What of the daughter who rebels against her abusive father to protect her other sisters? What of the guy who loved that girl who didn’t want that? What of the teenage boy’s companions? What do they say when we ask them the question? What does that daughter’s sister say? What does that rejected guy’s best friend say? What does that teenage boy’s father say?
It’s not that we choose to embrace moral complexity, it’s that humanity just isn’t that simple.
Our responsibility isn’t to “do better,” and even if it was, you can’t do that just by saying “think of the children.” One person’s story is going to mean a lot more to that girl or that father or that boy based not on a checklist, but whether that story resonates with them. Their experiences are different, their conflicts are different, their troubles are different and we just can’t touch them if we’re all abiding by the same definition of morality.
But our responsibility isn’t to “do better,” as I said. Writers are social pioneers, writers are inciters of change, writers are raisers of awareness, writers are powerful. But very few ever choose to be. Most writers choose to use their talent with words to express their own views. Most writers choose to tell their stories. Most writers choose, instead, to write. That’s how we touch people. That’s how we do better.
We can’t abide by moral checklists. We can’t keep looking to tradition. We can’t not be human. You can say that you can have moral absolutism without cardboard characters, but that won’t matter. Because if you can break down humanity to aspects of black and white, no matter how lively they are, they’ll still be living in a cardboard world.
Lest I be thought of as picking on Bryan, I agree that there’s danger of sliding into a point where we do just use nihilism and appalling acts as a means of shocking people in the name of moral ambiguity. And, to be honest, there are authors who practice it quite frequently and with great skill and I still find it a bit wearing. I like heroes, too. I write about them. I also happen to realize that heroes are human, too. It’s not that I don’t want to be surprised when I see who wins, it’s that I want to know what happened to them to make them heroes.
I want to know about the man who rose from rags to challenge authority and the moral checklist of his day to become the greatest hero of the people and led society to kindness and compassion for all.
Or I want to know how the man who rose from rags out of a need to survive never wanted to challenge authority and did it all for someone else he loved and ultimately sacrificed the war and utopia for someone else.
Or I want to know how he rose from rags to challenge authority and murdered, killed and destroyed in the name of his utopia.
I want to know that story.
Any of them.
So long as it’s your story, not someone else’s.
Great post. Couldn’t agree more and thought that you said much I often feel but did not properly know how to address.
Also wanted to mess with you by pointing out that in the 4th paragraph after the quoted section of Bryan’s article, you wrote “soul obligation” rather than “sole obligation.” Shouldn’t writers know their grammar 🙂
You’re right! How embarrassing! TIME TO DRINK MY OWN PISS.
This is simply awesome, Sam.
This is my favorite blog ever. I could go on and on with adjectives of praise but I’ll just leave it at that.
Schmidt’s first mistake is believing that writers embrace moral ambiguity for the sake of moral ambiguity. He, like so many others, fall prey to the Judeo-Christian traditions our culture is steeped in, instead of trying to challenge them. I think he honestly believes anyone who does challenge those traditions, which only embrace the back and white, right and wrong mentality, is a nihilist. That is his second mistake. Most of us are more than likely existentialists but not nihilists. If that were the case there would be no heroes. When we make the statement killing might not always be wrong we challenge absolute morality. And that scares people. It, however, forces us to take on a different perspective, look beyond our egocentric selves and maybe just maybe feel empathy for our fellow man. I, personally, do not want to know who the hero is at the end of chapter one. I enjoy the thrill of hating the character that might just save the day. Man, according to Thomas Hobbes is selfish, self-centered and self-serving, yet we struggle to over come those natural desires in the pursuit of meaning, pleasure and happiness (and as a romantic at heart I have to throw in love).
If Bryan was oversimplifying moral relativism, I think you’re doing the same with moral absolutism. Believing in something as morally right doesn’t mean that person believes they are perfect or that they believe they have all of the answers or that they believe they themselves are perfect. Saying that the world and humanity is not so simple as black and white is true, but not because there is no absolute right or wrong. It’s simply that everyone is varying degrees of wrong. We are all flawed in some way. There have certainly been people who used their set of morals to condemn others, but morals are more than a list of restrictions. They are also a set of attributes and qualities to be attained, or at least attempted.
It’s not surprising that most moral absolutists are religious people. Where do you think they base their morals? On something they believe does not change with time, whatever that may be. Moral relativists base their moral belief on specific things as well, just not anything immutable.
Lest this be seen as an effort to defend my “Judeo-Christian traditions”, let me say that in fiction it doesn’t matter what set of morals a character uses and we have no obligation to maintain those of the real world, because morals are just another kind of belief. However, characters without beliefs or standards are boring.
I think the first role of a writer is to entertain.
That said, there are writers out there who are trying to propagate a points of view. So long as they’re up front about that, I’m ok with that. I can decide if I want to read something like that or not. It’s the ones who claim not to be slanting their work but who are still trying to manipulate plot and dialog one way…those are the bastards.
It sounds like Bryan wants to write stories about heroes. That, for him, means characters who make moral decisions and sacrifices for other people’s sake. Selflessnes is, I argue, an essentail element of a hero. And that’s ok, good for him.
But I feel like he is taking exception with books where the honorable, honest and noble get bent over a barrel while the author and their world have their way with them. (Abercrombie, Martin, KJ Parker, et al) That isn’t the world he wants to dwell in, mentally. So he doesn’t want to read stories like that.
Stories can be an escape from a morally ambigious (dare I say ‘fallen’?) world. And that’s ok, too. People read for different reasons. I love David Gemmell’s books. Partly because you have heroes of unamgibious morality, like Druss. A big part of most of his stories have to do with a protagonist who is not the hero, learning from the examples of others. That is a moral dimension to his work, and Tolkien’s perhpas, that bugs some people but pleases others.
It seems to me, Bryan is writing the stories he wasn’t to read. So are you. So am I, for that matter. It’s up to us and to our readers to decide if we/they want read them, too.
Thanks for the post and the discussion, Sam.
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Pretty amazed how people are not only “reading my mind” and poorly but frankly missing the point of my post. To the degree that it’s my fault for not being more clear, I accept the blame. But I think you’re oversimplifying moral absolutism as has been pointed out. My point was all societies have mores, Sam. They have expected behaviors. And many societies agree that rape is bad, for example. Any character operating within the bounds of a society has to reconcile his or her actions and reasoning with the mores of the society whether they reject that society’s mores or not. I don’t think all fantasy or SF needs to line up with some Judeo Christian morality. I’ve spent a lot of time overseas operating in situations far outside that. I do, however, know for a fact that such mores always exist and by ignoring them and not addressing the larger questions they raise, I find much of this morally ambiguous fiction unrealistic and hard to believe. It’s also depressingly nihilistic at the same time. I do think we have a responsibility to think of the role models we put forth and write believable people with both admirable strengths and honest faults. I do think it’s not done enough. I do think it’s a failure to contribute to educating future generations. We don’t create art in a vacuum. It has a role to play. It has an influence. You can intend it not to and it still will. Don’t have to like it, but it remains a fact. And I think SFF has gone too far in the morally ambiguous, nihilistic direction and stopped asking those important, overarching questions which give it a framework and are so key. Even morally ambiguous characters do things for a reason. Fully understanding those reasons, even if we disagree with them, is invaluable to us as readers in thinking through our own decision making, etc. I don’t think it’s done well enough all too often. That was the point of the post that got missed here. It wasn’t a really bad post, you just disagreed and missed the point. Sorry you felt it worthy of saying that.
The thing about morality is that’s it’s about as subjective as something can be. I might write a character that I think is realistically flawed, complex and human–somebody else finding them ‘morally ambiguous’ does not make me a nihilist. It suggests a disparity in our world views, that’s about it.
I’d guess that most people writing character-driven fiction do not consciously choose to reject morally sound “heroes” in favor of “morally ambiguous” ones. We’re setting out to write complex characters, and morally ambiguous, as interpreted by some readers, is what gets churned out.
The other problem with your argument is that it suggests that art can only educate through illustration. I think that’s wrong. The absence of morality, if done well, is saying a hell of a lot more about what’s important to being a decent human being than a straight-up save-the-day 50’s style action hero.
Instead of ‘morally ambiguous’, I’d like to suggest a new moniker: morally complex. It allows a character to be approached from a variety of angles. You can love them for their heroic choices. Hate them for the villainous ones. Beat your chest and wail when they do something irreconcilable with your own morality, and in doing so resolve to never “be like that”. We’re getting a spectrum of humanity in one character, which, personally, seems way more reflective of your average joe then a character whose faults extend to: being fussy/arrogant/forgetful/etc. Moral amibiguity/complexity is not this calculated artistic statement you seem to think it is. It’s a reflection of the writer; it’s a reflection of their experiences.
Remember:One man’s insufferable nihilist is another dude’s drinking buddy.
Previous comment was meant to be a reply to Bryan’s post directly above it.
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