Heroes Fall

Yesterday was a tough day for a lot of writers I know. We all knew our patron saint of oddness and quirky stories had fallen from grace, but yesterday's article at The Vulture (sadly behind a paywall, but there's an archive version here) wasn't the icing on the cake -- it was the cake itself. Everything up to that point might as well have been the printed recipe card. Yesterday we actually tasted the cake and wanted to spit it out to keep from gagging. 

Be warned, several of the articles contain descriptions of sexual assault and harassment. They can be difficult to read, so exercise caution if you can be triggered by such. 

The author in question has been seen as an ideal for literary weirdness, an icon that proved writers didn't have to sacrifice their souls on the altar of "accepted markets" to find success, a proof text that writers could be true to their visions no matter how warped or weird or whacked out and still make it on their own terms as creators. And he was loved for that. 

Sure, little stories popped up as warnings here and there, but even in the "during" and "after" parts of the #metoo realization, no one really wanted to believe it, not about HIM. Surely, just this one time, maybe, surely, pleasepleasepleaseplease, let it be some kind of conspiracy of hurt feelings lashing out. 

Alas no. 

And now we must swallow the cake, as bitter and vile as it is, evidenced in the following articles (not behind paywalls):

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn01dynqx7ro

https://variety.com/2025/tv/global/neil-gaiman-allegations-sexual-assault-1236272893/

https://www.avclub.com/neil-gaiman-sexual-assault-allegations-details-report

I've known writers who have shared stories about Neil, not #metoo level stuff, but icky enough to make me wonder. On the other hand, I've heard lots of tales about how wonderful he was to meet at conventions or book signings too. That's what made this whole thing so hard to process. 

But, in light of the consistent and growing number of allegations, it's time to side firmly and vocally with the victimized. 

For some, that may look like throwing away all your Gaiman books and stopping watching shows based on his work. 

For some, that may mean you keep what you've enjoyed and you refuse to support any new books or new television/movie projects.

For some, you may still have the freedom and distance to separate the man from his art and enjoy the stories. 

For some, it may simply look like a few more months or years of processing that some will no doubt see as you being overdramatic because they just can't understand how deeply this affects you. 

Now, some will compare this to JK Rowling's recent fall from grace regarding her transphobic hard-line rants (seemingly meant to intentionally alienate her previous fans and celebrity connections), but some will draw lines between them and seek to delineate how different they are. For me, no distinction matters. Not really. They both have been revealed to vile people. 

However, it's not my place to tell you how to react. I'm going to be busy enough with the mote in my own eye. If anything, both of these situations are warnings for me to keep an eye on my own life. Let's suppose one day the dream of being recognized as a world-renowned writer comes true. What kind of harmful words or actions can folks drum up against me (and rightfully so) at that point? If anything, this is another bell ringing to tell me to be true to the things I believe and to watch my words in interviews and conventions and to be on guard how I treat people both in my private and public life.

I mean, nobody's perfect, as the cliche goes. I can find something to revile in the lives of many of my favorite writers. Flannery O'Connor. Shirley Jackson. Ernest Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Racism. Sexism. Physical abuse. Homophobia. History is filled with writers who fail(ed) to live up to the ideals that fans foist upon them. And it's not just short story writers and novelists. So many of the comic book writers I grew up on have turned out in recent years to be MAGA redhats (or perhaps that should be asshats) who stand staunchly against most everything I stand for in terms of women's rights, racial equality and equity, LGBTQIA+ causes, humanitarian issues, etc. So, learning to reevaluate my support for and enjoyment of certain authors is nothing new. 

But, at least in my mind, that never excuses any kind of abuse or vileness. And make no mistake, what has transpired in this case is vileness, purely and utterly. 

What does it all mean for this blog?

Well, this blog has referenced writing advice and writing tips from Gaiman in the past, and there are several posts that show up with his name as a keyword. I will not be removing the previous posts but this blog will no longer reference Gaiman or his work, except in the interest of updating news about this story as it develops.

[Link] How Dystopian Fiction Became A Coping Mechanism For An Entire Generation

by Daisy Woodward

From zombie apocalypse dramas to totalitarian regimes of the future, dystopian stories have long captivated readers with their ability to entertain and terrify in equal measure; to fantastically speculate and ominously warn – and in recent years their popularity has reached unprecedented levels, spanning books, films, TV series and podcasts. One of our latest obsessions in this realm is the new BBC Sounds podcast, Forest 404, part sci-fi thriller, part ecological drama, which imagines a world in which nature no longer exists. Futuristic? Of course. But also worryingly plausible as our planet plunges ever deeper into a global warming crisis.

The addictive 9-part series, written by Timothy X Atack, takes place in the 24th century in the wake of a data crash known as The Cataclysm, and centres on a 28-year-old sound archivist named Pan (voiced by Doctor Who’s Pearl Mackie). From her dark office block, situated four hundred levels below available sky, Pan listens to the terabytes upon terabytes of sound files recovered from before the crash – an era dubbed The Slow Times. "Data costs, that’s what our ancestors didn’t get," our heroine tells us, and so it’s up to her to sift through "the total pits of history" and patiently assess the value of these ancient noises in the modern age (The Fast Times).

It’s a task at which she excels, tuning into everything from Obama’s speeches on global warming to Neil Armstrong’s moon landing and rendering most of them deletable in the blink of an eye. That is until she stumbles across a sound that pierces her very core. At first she thinks it’s a type of music but soon realises it’s something much more profound. It is, the listener is instantly aware, the hum of the rainforest, replete with the sounds of chirping birds, trickling water, the buzz of cicadas. But for Pan, who has never experienced nature in any form, it’s a strange reawakening to a past that feels somehow familiar, although she can’t begin to imagine why.

Soon we are following our determinedly curious heroine deep into the underworld, and down into the murky depths of what remains of the ancient past (our own present day), in search of answers. She, in turn, is being pursued by her interfering and conflicted boss Daria (Tanya Moodie) and the so-called Hands, sinister agents of the new world’s ruling powers who are determined to derail her quest to unearth the truth. The resulting story – told across three interweaving narratives and set to powerful theme music by Bonobo – is a spellbinding and eerie meditation on what the world would be like if all semblance of the natural environment were wiped out, and how our future might unravel if the artificial intelligence we create should achieve an autonomy of its own.

Dystopian fiction emerged in the late 19th century as a reaction to early utopian novels and the visions they conjured of paradisal societies. In modern terms, according to writer Jill Lepore in her 2017 essay "A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction", the genre can be defined as something "apocalyptic, or post-apocalyptic, or neither, but it has to be anti-utopian... a world in which people tried to build a republic of perfection only to find that they had created a republic of misery." So why has this gloomy genre tightened its grasp on modern audiences in recent years, with a wealth of new stories such as Forest 404 holding listeners in their grasp?

Read the full article: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/bbc-sounds-forest-404-dystopian-fiction

[Link] How stories have shaped the world

by Martin Puchner

From a young age, Alexander the Great was groomed to be the leader of Macedonia. The small kingdom in northern Greece was perpetually at war with its neighbours, above all Persia, which meant that Alexander had to learn how to lead armies into battle. When his father was assassinated and Alexander ascended the throne, he quickly exceeded all expectations. Not only did he secure the safety of his kingdom, but he also defeated the entire Persian Empire, conquering a vast realm that stretched from Egypt to northern India.

Alexander possessed an additional weapon: Homer’s Iliad. He had learned to read and write by studying this text as a young man, and thanks to his teacher, the philosopher Aristotle, he had done so with unusual intensity. When he embarked on his conquests, Homer’s story of an earlier Greek expedition to Asia Minor served as a blueprint, and he stopped at Troy, even though the city had no military significance, to re-enact scenes from the Iliad. For the entire duration of his conquest, he would sleep alongside his copy.

Despite its place in literature, Homer’s epic poem had repercussions far beyond the libraries and campfires of ancient Greece. It helped to shape an entire society, and its ethics. “Homer… paints, among many other things, the ‘thought forms’ of early Greek culture,” writes Howard Cannatella. “This story would indicate… how the community was to embody, live, and enact… [events] were designed to reveal to the audience in an acceptable manner the kind of effect moral choices in life, like being courageous, could have on the general public.”

The influence between the Iliad and Alexander went both ways. Having drawn inspiration from the epic, Alexander gave back to Homer by turning Greek into the common language of a large region, thus laying the infrastructure for turning the Iliad into world literature. Alexander’s successors built the great libraries of Alexandria and of Pergamum that would preserve Homer for the future.

It was proof that stories can have significance outside the pages of a book. The philosopher Plato challenged the arts “to show that it not only gives pleasure but is beneficial both to the constitutions and to human life” – as Cannatella argues, “Poetry, for Aristotle (much like Plato), could arouse not only intense emotional responses, but equally, could inspire people to become better persons.”

Read the full article: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180423-how-stories-have-shaped-the-world

[Link] Our fiction addiction: Why humans need stories

by David Robson

It sounds like the perfect summer blockbuster.

A handsome king is blessed with superhuman strength, but his insufferable arrogance means that he threatens to wreak havoc on his kingdom. Enter a down-to-earth wayfarer who challenges him to fight. The king ends the battle chastened, and the two heroes become fast friends and embark on a series of dangerous quests across the kingdom.

The fact that this tale is still being read today is itself remarkable. It is the Epic of Gilgamesh, engraved on ancient Babylonian tablets 4,000 years ago, making it the oldest surviving work of great literature. We can assume that the story was enormously popular at the time, given that later iterations of the poem can be found over the next millennium.

What is even more astonishing is the fact that it is read and enjoyed today, and that so many of its basic elements – including its heart-warming ‘bromance’ – can be found in so many of the popular stories that have come since.

Such common features are now a primary interest of scholars specialising in ‘literary Darwinism’, who are asking what exactly makes a good story, and the evolutionary reasons that certain narratives – from Homer’s Odyssey to Harry Potter – have such popular appeal.

Escapism?

Although we have no firm evidence of storytelling before the advent of writing, we can assume that narratives have been central to human life for thousands of years. The cave paintings in sites like Chauvet and Lascaux in France from 30,000 years ago appear to depict dramatic scenes that were probably accompanied by oral storytelling.

Read the full article: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180503-our-fiction-addiction-why-humans-need-stories

[Link] Every Story in the World Has One of These Six Basic Plots

by Miriam Quick

“My prettiest contribution to the culture” was how the novelist Kurt Vonnegut described his old master’s thesis in anthropology, “which was rejected because it was so simple and looked like too much fun”. The thesis sank without a trace, but Vonnegut continued throughout his life to promote the big idea behind it, which was: “stories have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper”.

In a 1995 lecture, Vonnegut chalked out various story arcs on a blackboard, plotting how the protagonist’s fortunes change over the course of the narrative on an axis stretching from ‘good’ to ‘ill’. The arcs include ‘man in hole’, in which the main character gets into trouble then gets out again (“people love that story, they never get sick of it!”) and ‘boy gets girl’, in which the protagonist finds something wonderful, loses it, then gets it back again at the end. “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers”, he remarked. “They are beautiful shapes.”

"Thanks to new text-mining techniques, this has now been done. Professor Matthew Jockers at the University of Nebraska, and later researchers at the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, analysed data from thousands of novels to reveal six basic story types – you could call them archetypes – that form the building blocks for more complex stories. The Vermont researchers describe the six story shapes behind more than 1700 English novels as...

Read the full article: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180525-every-story-in-the-world-has-one-of-these-six-basic-plots