Part 9 in the series, A Literary Search for Meaning by Dr Karen Hughes
Joseph Campbell argues that myths offer life models and such models “have to be appropriate to the time in which you are living”; modern life requires mythologies that change and grow with a society, while continuing to provide tradition, structure and spiritual sustenance (Power of Myth 16). Karen Armstrong expands on this, writing that we need myths that teach us empathy and compassion, myths that encourage us to “venerate the earth as sacred” instead of seeing it merely as a resource, and “this is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep us abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet” (136–37). Speculative fiction has long been concerned with mythmaking and the creation of new worlds, treading the fine line between the Enlightenment ideal of secular progress and the Romantic conviction that science, reason and technology are not enough to solve the problems of the world and that emotion, beauty, love and spiritual connection are necessary for human evolution. The potential of new mythologies to contribute to the modern spiritual milieu and the methods that contemporary mythopoeic writers employ to convey these mythologies are questions explored in my new novel, Gaba Gali.
In 1937, British philosopher and writer Olaf Stapledon published Star Maker, a work of philosophical science fiction in which the first-person human narrator embarks on a disembodied journey, beginning with his limited and “bitter” perception of the mundane world (12) and gradually expanding to culminate in a cosmic vision of the whole universe and the ineffable mind of the Star Maker, the eternal creator that “comprises all things and all times” (294). During this journey, Stapledon’s narrator inhabits the body and mind of all kinds of sentient beings, including planets, stars and galaxies. Every entity is imbued with some level of experiential consciousness or soul, and all are connected in a form of spiritual unity that cannot be described in human language. The total mythological structure underlying human existence on Stapledon’s earth is based on “two cosmical antagonists, two spirits” who are preparing for “the great struggle of our age” (301). One antagonist is “the will to dare for the new, the longed for, the reasonable and joyful, world, in which every man and woman may have the scope to live fully, and live in service of mankind”; the other is “the myopic fear of the unknown” or, even more sinister, “the cunning will for private mastery, which fomented for its own ends the archaic, reason-hating, and vindictive passion of the tribe” (301). The future is “[B]lack with the rising storm of this world’s madness” (299) and yet there is hope in “two lights for guidance”: “our little glowing atom of community” and the “hypercosmical reality” of the stars (303), a symbol that humanity is part of something larger and is thus cosmically significant in ways we cannot comprehend.
Stapledon bases his overall narrative on an apocalyptic mythology in which every particle of the universe is creative and evolutionary, leading to states of collective consciousness and communication between minds, and culminating in a cosmic utopia beyond all human understanding. Thus, reality is diverse and wondrous, populated by an impossible range of alien intelligences and forms, and each entity has the capacity to transcend its limitations and realise its divine nature as an aspect of the numinous other—the Star Maker. Stapledon communicates this expansive vision through the thoughts and perceptions of his human narrator, creating a work that is so light on plot and heavy on ideas that the author notes in his preface: “Judged by the standards of the Novel, it is remarkably bad. In fact, it is no novel at all” (9). Despite this harsh assessment, Stapledon’s mythology has had a huge influence on contemporary science fiction and is particularly apparent in the works of writers who explore similarly broad cosmological and philosophical themes (Clute 122; Aldiss and Wingrove 206–13).
American writer Neal Stephenson is one recent example. Stephenson’s Anathem, published in 2008, is a mythopoeic science-fiction novel featuring numerous passages devoted to the complex mathematical, scientific and philosophical ideas that support Stephenson’s imagined world. Anathem is set thousands of years in the future on the Earth-like planet Arbre, where scholars of mathematics, science and philosophy live as monks in isolated medieval “concents” so their potential misuse of technology cannot further damage the planet. Stephenson draws on Everett’s many-worlds interpretation, together with the work of leading cosmologists and physicists, including Max Tegmark, Julian Barbour and Roger Penrose (“Acknowledgements”), to create a narrative in which there are at least three parallel universes, each differing only slightly from the others. The novel follows the journey of the narrator Erasmus (“Raz”) from his cloistered existence on Arbre, through a series of adventures in alternative dimensions, to his eventual realisation that the answers to existence lie not in the rationalist and technological “sæcular world” but in the “mathic world” of pure mathematical knowledge.
Many ancient myths offer a holistic conception of the world, where the trees, rocks and earth are all living beings connected to humanity and each other through the vast web of life. The mythological structures underlying Star Maker and Anathem present human evolution as a natural process inseparable from the evolution of the universe. Life has always existed and will continue to exist in some form, even if that form is beyond our understanding. By conveying these mythologies through the personal journey and changing perspective of their first-person narrators, the authors of Star Maker and Anathem explore the subjective experience of the individual and examine how this experience might affect and aid the entire human collective. This is the same focus as that of the modern spiritual seeker. In Star Maker, Stapledon shows humanity in a wider and wider perspective, until it is revealed to be an integral part of the cosmos and its creator. In Anathem, Stephenson seems evangelical in his mission to show the reader that the world is far more wondrous than it might at first appear, filling the text with mathematical data, philosophical discussion and complex scientific theory.
Secular Western mythologies, including the myth of progress, emphasise the disconnection between man and his environment, relying instead on technology to effect human evolution. In Neuromancer, for example, humans are limited by their beliefs and their reliance on technology, and consequently they are unable to transcend their limitations. In recent dystopian and climate fiction, such as Dyschronia, humanity is trapped in a materialistic paradigm where there is no sign of spiritual evolution and the destruction of the planet is inevitable. By contrast, Stephenson remakes the myth of progress, expanding it into a quasi-religious mythology where human evolution occurs through deep mathematical thinking and a consequent understanding of, and metaphysical connection to, multidimensional alien life. Progress comes not through the use of external technologies, but through a deeper knowledge of the physics, cosmology and pure mathematics behind those technologies. Both Star Maker and Anathem introduce a total mythological structure in which the unlimited creativity and personal responsibility of the human are an integral part of the cosmos:
the more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos with which it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was to see it as a kind of miracle … And so he had an instinctive scepticism of any system of thought, religious or theoretical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing sought to draw limits around it. … We must all of us re-examine everything we know and believe … (Stephenson, Anathem 955–56)
I have taken a similar approach in Gaba Gali, using the genres of mythic fantasy and science fiction to explore and promote the new mythologies that arise from my interaction with the occulture of my society and with some version of the Star Maker, that ineffable cosmic source that inspires and shapes the human imagination. My narrative is based on an alternative conception of reality as fluid, timeless and solely dependent on the changing perceptions and personal experience of the characters. The introduction and exploration of this mythological structure, using the tools and tropes of speculative fiction, is my attempt to contribute to the occulture of popular Western culture and to participate in the re-enchantment of the world.
Aldiss, Brian, and David Wingrove. Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. House of Stratus, 1986.
Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Text Publishing, 2005.
Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. 1988, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group / Anchor Books, 1991.
Clute, John. Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia. Doarling Kindersley, 1995.
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. 1986. Penguin Putnam, 1997.
Mills, Jennifer. Dyschronia. Picador Australia, 2018.
Stapledon, Olaf. Star Maker. 1937. Dover Publications, 2008.
Stephenson, Neal. Anathem. 2008, eBook ed., Atlantic Books, 2009.
—. “Anathem Acknowledgements.” Neal Stephenson, website, https://nealstephenson.com/acknowledgments.html.