monsters, dystopias, and the uncanny, oh my!
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Brave New World
15 min read
The article opens with a quote from this dystopian novel and discusses dystopian fiction as a genre. Understanding Huxley's vision of a pleasure-driven totalitarian society provides essential context for the article's exploration of why we need dystopian stories.
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Uncanny
13 min read
Referenced directly in the article title, the uncanny is a psychological and aesthetic concept developed by Freud describing the strangely familiar. Understanding this concept illuminates why the 'strange' fiction discussed feels both unsettling and compelling.
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Absurdist fiction
17 min read
The article discusses Amelia Gray's absurdist story about men married to household objects and recommends using absurdist elements in writing. This literary movement's philosophy and techniques directly inform the craft advice being given.
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"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." ~from Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
“The artists were kept in cages. This was for their own good.” ~Allegra Hyde
Happy Thanksgiving week to my friends here in the U.S. This week’s paid subscriber post has us leaning in to the strange. First, my possibly annoying, umpteenth reminder that I’m teaching a FREE 90 minute workshop on December 13th from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time for all ANNUAL subscribers. Commit to a year’s subscription (if you’ve not already) to take advantage of this offer! Whether you can attend or not, all annual subscribers will receive a recording of the session. Scroll all the way to the bottom for further details…
The End of the World as We Know It
I considered dropping the prompt I had set up for today, wondering if our day-to-day lives are feeling dystopian enough. Maybe there are enough monsters to contend with right now. Who wants to recreate them in fiction?
Well, maybe we do. Here’s why:
We need the release creating art affords us.
We need to make sense of things even when nothing makes sense.
Creating art lends us a feeling, however delusional, that we are in control. At least we are in control of the worlds we bring to life out of our imaginations.
We need to say how we feel and sometimes that means telling it “slant.”
Dystopian / monster stories are damned compelling and are paradoxically weirdly comforting.
Some examples and a Prompt:
Museum of the Weird by Amelia Gray (FC2, 2010)
“Fish”
Dale was married to a paring knife and Howard was married to a bag of frozen tilapia. Each had fallen into their respective arrangements having decided independently that there was no greater match for them in life.
When anyone asked Dale if he had dated actual women before making the decision to marry a paring knife, he would look at that person with such incredulity that the stranger would feel as if they had been rude to inquire. Dale did love his paring knife. They had their problems, like any couple.
Obviously, Howard admitted, a bag of frozen tilapia was different in many ways from a woman, though many ways it was the same.
The
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