Pratchett Attending Australian Con

Fantasy and sci-fi author Terry Pratchett has announced he’ll be attending the upcoming Australian Discworld Convention in April, 2011. (Or should that be XXXX?)

Pratchett at the Colour of Magic Premiere

It was revealed in an email by the organiser of the event that Pratchett would be attending, “barring any serious mishap”, on the condition that the fans come too. Pratchett will be accompanied by his personal assistant and a swarm of fans, who will probably descend upon Australia like a swarm of locusts. It was previously uncertain as to whether Pratchett would make the 10,000 mile journey, as his condition sometimes makes travel problematic. This announcement has cleared up such doubts and will no doubt herald the booking of a few dozen Outback holidays.

Discworld conventions have blossomed across the globe, as Pratchett is popular across Roundworld; Australia, America, England, Germany and Ireland have all played host to the conventions, and Holland has declared that it will be playing host to one soon as well.

The Harkin is a writer, blogger and Brit. You can read more of his self-indulgence here or try to endure his banal tweets.

£18,090 Raised At Discworld Convention

Terry Pratchett has been long associated with charitable giving. After revealing his tragic diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, he gave massively to research into the disease. But his love for the Orangutan of Borneo predates that and even to this day he leads fundraising efforts for the Orangutan Foundation. Pratchett, besides being a member of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, is actually a pretty famous author or something? Write books about magic librarian monkeys or whatever. He has a lot of fans to draw on. 

This Just In: Baby Oran's Adorable

 

 Another charity present at the 2010 Discworld convention is the Tall Ships Youth Trust, a group that aim to help young people learn discipline and self-confidence by learning to sail. Both charities had stalls in the convention Dealer’s Room, which is clearly fraud because they weren’t selling anything. But anyway.

 

On Sunday, the Discworld Convention raised nearly twenty thousand pounds for the two charities at auction. Up for sale were movie props donated by the Mob film company – including the Luggage and the Oscilloscope -, rare books, watercolor pictures and even shell casings from a gun Pratchett fired at an American shooting range. When the smoke cleared, the finally tally of money raised was eighteen thousand and ninety pounds. 

That’s a lot of bananas and rigging. 

The Harkin is a writer, blogger and Brit. You can read more of his self-indulgence here or try to endure his banal tweets.

You Didn’t Hear It From Me

I’m writing to you from the 2010 Discworld Convention and you can’t stop me ahahahahahaha. 

Ahem. 

Rob Wilkins is Terry Pratchett’s PA and no-one’s entirely what that actually means, but he seems to muddle along okay. Rod Brown is a former producer of UK film company The Mob, which means no-one’s entirely sure what he does either, besides making a lot of money. He has since left The Mob to set up as a freelance producer in Los Angeles. The two of them sat down yesterday with some fans in a little side-room of the Birmingham Hilton Metropole to talk about the movies and the general process of writing; a klatch. 

  When Rod arrived, he was burdened with a lot of bags, boxes and children. Over the course of the klatch, Rod produced props from Going Postal (out now on DVD and Blu-Ray, starring yours truly) and The Colour Of Magic (also yours truly, also out). We all had some fun passing them round to look at; trying on the Postmaster’s Hat, flicking through Lord Vetinari’s biography, reading Twoflower’s phrasebook. But the main thing that came out of the Klatch was definitely not any leaked information about the next Discworld movies. 

If anything was mentioned, it would be very wrong of me to mention it on the internet. That would be unethical, a breach of trust and just plain naughty. With that in mind, I should definitely relay what wasn’t said. Rod definitely didn’t say that he was working on Good Omens next year and certainly didn’t have a first draft screenplay. The Mob certainly aren’t working on adapting Unseen Academicals for the screen next and even if they were Rob Wilkins wasn’t hoping to get a few shots of himself playing football if he did. 

This Is Not Happening, understand?

 

 At no point was any of that said, by anyone, to anyone. And even if it was, I didn’t just tell you and you didn’t hear it here first. Right? Right. I’m glad we had this talk. 

The Harkin is a writer, blogger and Brit. You can read more of his self-indulgence here or try to endure his banal tweets.

Pratchett Announces Collaboration

Terry Pratchett recently declared his intent to write a series of sci-fi novels with fellow author Stephen Baxter. In a talk given today at the 2010 Discworld convention in Birmingham, the two bestsellers and award-winners got up on stage to discuss general ideas and outlines about the project. The current title for the series as a whole is Long Earth.

Stephen Baxter, pictured here, is definitely not a football manager.

Pratchett is best known for his fantasy work, especially the Discworld series, but does have roots in science fiction. In 1976 he wrote The Dark Side of the Sun, and his 1981 novel Strata features a flat world similar to the later Discworld. Both are generally considered parodic of Niven’s Ringworld. Stephen Baxter comes from a hard science background, in mathematics and engineering. As well as writing non-fiction, Baxter is notable for his award-winning novel The Time Ships.

Pratchett’s next novel, “I Shall Wear Midnight”, is released September 2nd

In their talk, Baxter and Pratchett revealed that the general principle of the series would be a world in which scarcity and territory were no longer a sparking-point for conflict following the discovery of seemingly-infinite parallel worlds. Nearly identical to Earth in every way, these worlds are so numerous that “everyone can have a galaxy of Earths, all to themselves”. Of course, Pratchett said, things aren’t necessarily so simple. Just because everyone has all this space doesn’t mean they’ll all suddenly become nice. Pratchett hinted at political conflict arising over the new worlds, but was generally coy about giving out specifics.

 

While it is definitely early days for this project, Pratchett and Baxter are both prolific writers; Pratchett in particular is notoriously fast at churning out his books, at one point producing a complete novel once every six months. Pratchett is currently also working on his next Discworld novel after I Shall Wear Midnight, a City Watch story entitled Snuff, which might delay the collaboration. A conservative estimate might expect us to see the first Long Earth book hitting shelves in early 2012.  

The Harkin is a writer, blogger and Brit. You can read more of his self-indulgence here or try to endure his banal tweets.

Hero With A Thousand Masks: Departure

Last week, I declared my foolhardy intent to go through Joseph Campbell’s monomyth with an eye to geek culture. I’ve never been one to back out of a bad idea, so here it goes. You can read the introduction of this series here, but if you already have – or just don’t fancy slogging through it – the short of it is this: we’ve been telling and re-telling the same story over and over again for millenia and that’s the monomyth. It’s alive today and the point of these articles is that you can see it across modern storytelling. The Hero is the same, just wearing a different mask. 

 This specific piece is going to be about the “Departure” phase of monomyth. In a nutshell, Departure deals with the events that lead up to the Hero setting out on their adventure and the early stages of the journey. This stage can be further broken up into the “Call To Adventure”, the “Refusal of the Call”, “Supernatural Aid”, “Crossing The First Threshold” and “The Belly of the Whale”. 

By the way, if you noticed that Departure is the name of the manuscript in Alan Wake, you’re not the only one. In a game so ridiculously referential, I doubt that’s a coincidence. 

 CALL TO ADVENTURE 

Luke receives the Call from Leia

 

The Call To Adventure is the event that exposes the Hero to a new, unknown world, drawing them into a relationship with ill-understood forces. The revelation often come about due to a blunder, a chance occurrence or a quirk of fate. Other times it is marked by the appearance of a herald, someone who beckons the Hero to set off on the journey towards life – or death. Perhaps the Hero’s love interest is held captive, or their home comes under threat. 

• Prince Siddharta, the Future Buddha, is exposed to death, disease and age despite his father’s machinations
• Odysseus ends the Trojan War and feels the call to return home, Ithaca
• Peter Parker receives superhuman powers from a radioactive spider’s bite
• Harry Potter receives a letter from Hogwarts
• Alan Wake comes to the mystical town of Bright Falls, unknowing of the forces it holds

THE REFUSAL OF THE CALL 

 

 Upon receiving the Call, whatever form that Call may take, the Hero might not necessarily take it. Sometimes, the pull of the known keeps the Hero from venturing forth to adventure; the life he leads holds him back. Of course, narrative necessity means that something has to happen to overcome this obstacle – otherwise there’d be no story! While initially hampered, the Hero must inevitably set off on his way. After this, the Journey begins proper. 

• Briar Rose is put to sleep by the Wicked Witch
• Prince Kamar al-Zaman (of the Arabian Nights) refuses to marry
• Daphne flees from the god Apollo, fearing for her virginity
• Luke Skywalker must help with the harvest, but the farm is destroyed by Stormtroopers later
• Harry Potter’s adoptive family stops him from exploring magic
• Peter Parker refuses to stop the robber who ends up murdering Uncle Ben
• Neo refuses to climb out the window
• Alan’s wife gives him a typewriter, but he refuses to write

SUPERNATURAL AID 

 

One of the first steps of the Hero’s Journey involves encountering an older, wiser figure – usually in the form of an old man or crone. This mentor figure usually provides some form of “amulet” – a plot device that later turns out to be of great importance to the journey. The amulet might be a literal magic object, such as a sword, or it may be a mundane object, but it is always vital. The amulet might even take the form of words rather than a thing. The old man or crone usually represents the benevolent power of the past, which stands in contrast to the figure of the Holdfast – but that’s for another time. 

• Ariadne provides Theseus with a magic length of string so that he can get through the Labyrinth
• The Navajo Spider-Woman gives the Twin War Gods the magic words that calm any foe
• Mephistopheles guides Faust, but is unpredictable and morally ambiguous.
• Uncle Ben tells Peter “with great power comes great responsibility”.
• Harry receives his wand
• Obi-Wan saves Luke from the Sand People and gives him his lightsaber
• Tom O’Bedlam schools Jack Frost in magic
• Alan Wake encounters Thomas Zane in a dream, and later Zane gives Alan manuscript pages

CROSSING THE FIRST THRESHOLD 

 

The Call to Adventure introduced the Hero to elements on a new, strange world but it is not until now that he truly enters it. The Hero leaves safety, striking out into the deep, dark unknown. He has left the familiar world of the campfire and enters the shadows outside the light. Here is where the adventure begins to pick up pace and the first real threats begin to show their teeth. The Hero has left the real world and now begins to encounter fantastical things on a regular basis, travelling through dream-like environments. 

• Odysseus is thrown off-course by the god Poseidon and must find his way home through unknown waters
• Prince Five-Weapons enters the dark forest to confront a terrible ogre
• Luke leaves his destroyed home and travels to Mos Eisley
• Harry leaves the muggle world behind to travel to Hogwarts
• Alan Wake enters the dark forest to find his missing wife

THE BELLY OF THE WHALE 

 

This is the final stage of Departure. Once the threshold is crossed, the Hero encounters danger and finds himself surrounded by darkness. While he might be brave and powerful, the Hero encounters something much larger than himself – physically, conceptually, mystically – and is overcome. He is swallowed in act which is symbolic of death – and in some cases literally is death – but reemerges in a symbolic rebirth. 

• Herakles is swallowed by a sea-monster sent to Troy but cuts his way out
• Zeus is swallowed by Kronos, but emerges unharmed
• Raven tricks a whale into swallowing him, kills it accidentally, and feasts on the corpse
• Red Riding Hood is swallowed by the Big Bad Wolf
• Luke falls into the trash compactor
• Dane encounters Barbelith and is enlightened
• Neo is tortured by the agents and later reborn into the “real” world
• Alan Wake dives into the Lake and wakes up in the Lodge

So, that’s Departure for you. As you can see from the course of these examples, the monomyth lives today across movies, comic books and video games. It is as resonant and relevant there as it is in mythology, literature and religion. Even if the medium changes, even as technology advances how we tell our stories, the stories themselves remain the same and are likely to remain the same for a long, long time to come.

The Hero With A Thousand Masks Part 1

Okay, pop quiz. What does this guy…   

Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)

 

…have in common with this guy?

 

Tom O'Bedlam (The Invisibles)

 

If you said “they both have beards”, you’re technically right but kind of missed the point.   

See, Tom O’Bedlam and Obi-Wan Kenobi are the same character. Actually, it would be more accurate to say they’re the same archetype, a repeated character type that crops up over and over, across fiction. Specifically, these two characters are both Wise Old Men. I’ll get more into what that means later.   

When you boil fiction down enough, you get the same themes and stories appearing wearing different faces. Christopher Booker wrote in The Seven Basic Plots that the movie “Jaws” and the ancient legend of Beowulf are, basically, the same story – a seaside town being menaced daily by a water-borne creature of supernatural power; a hero emerging from obscurity to do battle with the beast in the water and, eventually, triumphing. Joseph Campbell went so far as to identify one story recurring throughout myth, legend and religion – he called this the “monomyth”, the Hero’s Journey. His 1949 book The Hero With A Thousand Faces set out what the monomyth looked like and the common stages every hero went through.   

Why is this important on a blog ostensibly about geeky stuff like comic books and Star Wars? Because if it wasn’t for Campbell, Star Wars would have been very different. The original Star Wars movie was explicitly based off of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. So was the original Matrix. The monomyth that resonates throughout both films is what makes them so appealing to us. The imagery might be recycled, but that’s because it’s powerful and effective. We’ve learned, as storytellers, to use what works. And what works is the monomyth, the story we’ve been telling and retelling for thousands of years.   

So, in honour of Campbell’s unwitting contribution to the face of geek culture, I’m going to spend some time examining his Hero’s Journey and how it crops up not just across legend, but modern media.   

First off is a basic explanation of what the Hero’s Journey involves. It can be divided up into three stages. In Departure, the hero begins his journey, setting off from home and striking out into the unknown. Initiation details his adventures along his path, as he gradually learns and grows, gaining knowledge and power. In Return, he finds his way home with the power to grant boons to his fellow man, usually after having vanquishing evil.   

These three stages can be further divided into smaller sub-groups. For instance, Initiation contains common elements such as the Call To Adventure (Luke gets Leia’s distress message), Refusal of The Call (Having to help with the harvest) and Supernatural Aid (Obi-Wan saves Luke from the Sand People).   

Laid out in graph form, the monomyth looks a little something like this:   

The Heroic Journey.

 

That’s all I’m going to say for now on the topic. My next few posts will be a closer examination of certain elements of the Heroic Journey, filtered through the medium of the geek culture.   

Enjoy!