Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Friday, July 1, 2022

If Faith can Move Mountains

 I have heard tell that with great enough faith, trees can wilt at a word, men and women can walk upon the water as if dry land, and mountains can be moved at a word. 

I have granted enough faith to a future in the arts to move whatever mountain I may, but the books do not move like mountains. I have handed my early morning meditations to the work of writing, and what comes of it? A flood of work drowns a flood of other work, and there are not enough readers, not enough time, for all the faithful writers dreaming the future into life. Faith has done little to help the people who have long been cast aside in publishing. Even now, they nibble at the margins of the world’s mind, winning awards and answering the calls, but the books that move units like mountains remain attached to the white men whose dreams have too long counted for too much. 

Have faith and move mountains, and I try. I have faith and move a mountain of words, and send the mountain of words into the world, and hope that this mountain takes flight, and so far there hasn’t been much flying. Mostly a gentle leap into the air followed by a drop that is precipitous and swift. 

Obscurity is a great comfort. Before Shakespeare strode upon the stage of the world, a spirit greater than the man ever was, Boethius and Chaucer, perhaps, were the giants of literature. Every library of worth contained them. And, in the hundred or two hundred years since their great flowering, they drift into academic interest, an obscurity that is limited only by the students who study them, and study less and less of them as telhe years pass. Obscurity comes for us all, fast or slow. The shining tower of Shakespeare will fall, too, into the darkness. Eventually, everyone fades out.

I take comfort in knowing that we each have our moment, build our towers, build our dream worlds, and place these bricks upon the Tower of Babel that lifts us all up a little bit more, a little bit more, and the days will come when this world collapses, and all the bricks of it descend into the sand. The memory of the tower will transcend any individual stories, until it inspires some other tower, somewhere else, in some other place and time.


I have a story in Analog, now. In two months, it will be forgotten as of it never was, at all. No prizes have ever called for me to come and claim them. No great edifice of my short work has ever been deemed worthy of a year’s best anything. A couple of my novels did okay. But, the new ones come, get some positive reviews, and dissipate faster than they were ever written.


My faith will move mountains, perhaps, and I keep on, working as I’m able, stealing corners of the day for my little prayers, that so far, have amounted to very little.


5 comments:

Ryan said...

Good lord, I did not think this is who I'd find when I went searching for the author of Long Day Lake in a copy of Analog I thankfully didn't recycle because I hadn't read it all. When I wikipedia'd Mr. McDermott I was shocked at the brevity and the lack of hyperlinks to each one of his novels listed therein.

I assumed I'd find a rising giant in the world of science fiction, because that short story made me cry. It was the most beautiful, exciting, riveting work I've read in a long time. I planned on reading a few pages at 1:30am last night but had to read till the end, my body physically shaking.

What a writer! What a gift, that story! How can this author be even the least bit obscure?

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Ryan!

If you liked Wind’s story, she appears in “Salt Gator Girl” in 3-Lobed Burning Eye, and “We’re All in Trouble” in the latest Analog, for other pieces of the unpublished novel from with Long Day Lake is also from.

I bet you’d like Sorrow of the Cranes, maybe, and The Fortress at the End of Time? Reviews help. I always need more of those! -Joe M McD

Ryan said...

I bought Fortress at the End of Time last night. I'll ask my library to buy a copy, too, what the heck!

I hope you publish the Wind novel! Lake was such a perfect story! I'm out of exclamation points now but will definitely be picking up the latest Analog from my local magazine shop that I'm so thankful remains in my town.

Ryan said...

Ok - the first thing I read of yours was Long Day Lake in Analog. Then I read the gator one in the 3-eyed... zine. Then the latest Wind story in Analog.

I found all three to be excellent. Sort of clinics in what makes good science fiction. Relatable characters, a future for the reader to ponder and discover, good dialogue, some pathos.

On your recommendation I bought The Fortress at the End of Time and I finished it last night. It was like someone else wrote it. I'm so confused. I say this respectfully, as someone who's created next to nothing myself, just a lame consumer of the art of others - the book was terrible.

The characters were so flat and the dialogue - and there were unfortunately whole pages of it - was just unreal. Stuff like "Any exciting adventures in the stars this week?" "I have faith in my superiors. Hooray for the mission." "Bye!" "I am in charge of the maintenance crew. I have been there. I have checked their work. I have had my fill of the scouting vessel. I find the fascination with its fast weaponry tedious." Who tf talks like this? It's reads like the counterfeit Harry Potter books made in China or something written by early chatbot AI.

The ansible idea was great. But not much of the other hard sf stuff was. So much didn't add up. They're on a dessert planet with minimal resources. Why do they have vehicles that run on biodiesel? They're refining liquid fuels but can't figure out how to filter water so it doesn't taste like shit? There's barely enough food to eat and few or no trained doctors yet there are enough resources to a person to transition? They can create human body replicas from raw elements but they are relegated to shitting in buckets. They only have one old, marked deck of cards but one man can install lightspeed communication devices in spaceships in half an hour by himself? Nothing adds up in this book!

And then there was the time you referred to Amanda's eyes on page 139 "She was dark and beautiful, with PALE BLUE EYES." Then on 142 "Her sand-colored skin, her sand-blasted hair, and her BROWN EYES made me wonder...". Or the 93 year old admirals lunch: p219 "She was eating a sandwich of some sort, and drinking jujube tea." p222 "Her tea and sandwich untouched, she directed her chair..."

At first I thought this was some genius, unreliable narrator stuff but now I'm thinking more unreliable editor?

I am not going to write a review on Amazon but I had to vent. Because I think you are a better writer than I'll ever be and have written some moving stories reading this angered me. Like watching a Ussain Bolt decide to jog around the track at the Olympics or Gordan Ramsey serve me a TV dinner at his restaurant.

I dunno man, what where you THINKING?!?!?

Anonymous said...

I've heard every version of I don't like your work at this point in my career, but this is definitely not the most common.