The Punchline

 What is myth? Where does it come from?

 I don't mean stories like the fables of the Brothers Grimm, which are just warnings. Don't go into the woods alone, little girl; or don't be so strange that ordinary people get nervous. They're code for  'Do what society expects', and not much more. I mean the real myths,the ones that have come down from so far back in time that they were old beyond imagining when they were first written down.

 They're code too, of course. In pre-literate societies they were how knowledge was passed on. Embed it in a story, then spread the story so widely that the whole culture remembers it. People always change a story, though, even when it travels from village to village. We add a tweak here or there, change an oak into a willow because we happen to live near a stream where willows grow. Have you ever told a joke that wasn't quite the way you first heard it? Every repeat sees the story change.

 But I bet the punchline of that joke was still the same.

 Myths are encoded information. Our problem today is that we live in an empirical society, where we believe what we can touch and hold and not much else. We live in a world of science and objectivity, and the writers of those fables didn't. There's evidence that their brains were built differently, with a larger corpus callosum that meant greater exchange between the left and right halves of the brain. That meant the lines between reality and fantasy became blurred. They thought differently, in short. It means we have to understand what their myths meant to them, while not understanding how their minds worked.

 This is quite tricky.

 It's a little easier to work out where the myths came from. You find identical motifs, similar tales with the same numbers used in the same places, all over the world. I talked about this a little in my last blog, Memory and Myth. Because the stories are spread so widely, it means they must have originated in one place and then travelled with peoples as they migrated. So the creators of the stories must have lived during the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago or more. Sea levels were 400 feet lower then and humans might have flourished in the tropics, places like the Persian Gulf and Yellow Sea, and sailed east and west along shores which no longer exist. When the water rose the cultures were drowned, but the stories they'd sowed survived, in outposts on higher ground, or maybe among more savage peoples who began to look for better lands in the changing world.

 I think I could write at least three or four stories set in a world like that, without even trying. And there's one more interesting thing.

 Our world might be about to change just as radically, now mightn't it?

Parts and Pieces

 OK, so I have my new WIP pretty much blocked out now. There are some details to work out, especially concerning the traveller people who drift through the story a couple of times, but the gist is done. The world is defined and the characters are drawn in detail (two of them are very strong women, missing in most Fantasy). And I've noticed something.

 My first novel, The Risen King, had no magic at all except in how the story was set up. None in the actual events. My next two had hints of magic but not much more, and then Troy didn't have any - no gods, either. My idea there was to return the tale of Troy to what it was - a plain, straightforward story of love, heroes and betrayal, magnificent in scale but historically accurate. I hated the David Gemmell version which had cavalry galloping about, at a point in history when no horse was strong enough to be ridden. He might as well have included muskets, or aircraft. Anyway, little or no magic, is my point. Not many of the more common Fantasy tropes. Straightforward stories of mortal men and women trying to make their way.

 Not so much, now.

 My last work (unpublished, yet) includes prophecy, an alien species and a mad king, and journeys to magical lands. This one, tentatively called Tears of the Child, is just packed with Fantasy tropes. Elves, Dwarves and Orcs, mighty sorcerers, seers, eldritch creatures and so on and so forth. I seem to be moving more into mainstream Fantasy ground, though on my terms. I don't want to borrow races from other books lock, stock and barrel, so my Dwarves aren't much like Tolkien's, and he wouldn't recognise the Elves or Orcs at all. But still. There's a definite trend in my work to include magic and other species. Other ideas for future stories show the same tendency.

 Why? Don't know, don't much care. Nobody ever got anywhere trying to break down art into its parts and pieces. Sometimes we just don't know, and the only good answer is because. I'm heading in this direction because these are the stories that excite me, the ones I want to tell, and that brings me to the other emerging theme.

 My newer work are more reflective of our society today. Not greatly so - that might ruin the work. But some. How The Stars Shine deals with the danger of handing too much power to too few people. In Tears the society is very divided between rich and poor, privileged and downtrodden, so social cohesion becomes a theme. Hopefully I'll handle it well enough that the reader doesn't feel like I'm thumping him on the head with a morality stick. And that, mes amis, is the point. I don't think I could have handled this five years ago. Now I think I can. Nice to feel we're growing as people, isn't it?

 Five years ago is when I met my wife. I wonder how much of this new me is owed to her... but that's a question for another day.

 Pip pip.