The Madness of Understanding (Plato's Cave and Cosmic Horror)

Most of us have heard of Plato's Allegory of The Cave, but if you haven't here's the simplified version. Imagine there are people chained in a cave, facing the far wall. Behind them is a fire. Objects are paraded in front of this fire, and their shadows cast on the wall. To the people chained in the cave, those shadows are all they know. It is their truth, and the totality of their understanding of the world.

Now imagine that someone gets free of their chains. They can walk backstage, so to speak, and they see that they haven't been looking at truth. They've just been seeing the shadows that presenters want them to see. Then they walk out of the cave, and into the light of day. There they see the world as it truly is, and their minds are filled with real understanding. Can they go back into the cave and explain what's happening to those who are still in chains? In one sense they can, but to those who have only known the cave, and who accept the cave as truth, they sound like raving madmen.

That's where the allegory usually stops, but imagine this final addition. If they stay in the cave long enough, surrounded by those shadows and the surety of the ignorant, they may even begin to lose their recollection. They might start to wonder if it was all a dream, or some wild imagining. They may regress back into the darkness, and ignorance.

And this is a perspective that I think can help a lot of us when it comes to writing cosmic horror.

Come with me, and I will show you the truth of the world.

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Of Ants and Smartphones

The idea that staring cosmic truths in the face can drive one mad by shattering their understanding of the universe is one of the central conceits of cosmic horror. However, too often we fall back on the age-old, "Gah, the monster was so hideous it has broken my mind!" trope. While that has its place in the foundation of the genre, a lot of writers have come and gone since the 1920s, and readers are a little more sophisticated than that.

Enter the ant, and the smartphone.

Social media... speaking of cosmic horror...

Ants are extremely intelligent creatures, in their own way. However, ants walking through our houses don't understand our technology. Now picture an ant stopped on your kitchen table, staring at your smartphone. In that moment, it recognizes that those shapes are letters, and that letters put together represent words, and meaning. That inputting those words can allow them to communicate with unfathomable beings across the world, to find information about any knowledge they desire, or to see images or moving pictures that depict nearly anything. That understanding is so crisp, so perfect, that it transcends everything the ant knew until that moment... but then it begins to fade. Soon the ant is just staring at this huge monolith with its bizarre symbols. The ant knows there's a deeper meaning, and a more important understanding, but it can no longer grasp it.

What would it do to recapture that knowledge?

This is an alternative way to look at the concept of cosmic horror, and the effects it can have on the minds of those exposed to it. The difficulty you face as a creator, of course, is that whatever truth it is the characters are faced with, it usually shatters the normal paradigms by which we understand the universe. Whether it's breaking the boundaries of linear time and experiencing everything all at once, seeing into dimensions our senses cannot perceive, existing eternally in a consciousness not meant to handle that experience, or something else entirely, it can sometimes feel difficult to express these massive concepts in a way that starts to crack one's sense of the world around them.

As the writer, that is your challenge. To conceive of something that would drive a person to madness, and then to ask how their obsession to understand it once more would push them outside of the Overton Window of reality. Then, at the end of it, ask how someone would look walking back into the cave, their eyes dazzled from the light, trying to explain to those who live in the dim, dreary reality of shadows and lies what really waits beyond the firelight.

Speaking of Cosmic Horror...

If you're interested in some of my own work that falls into this subgenre, consider checking out my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, since it walks a steady path into ancient gods and lost truths. If you enjoy the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG, and you've been looking for a little extra flavor to add to your map of Lovecraft Country, you might want to get a copy of 100 Businesses to Find in Arkham. I've even included a short audio drama of the introductory fiction, for those who enjoy such things!

If you enjoyed that little sample, and you'd like to check out other pieces to pass the time, consider subscribing to the Azukail Games YouTube channel. Or if you enjoy longer pieces, come check out my Dailymotion channel as well!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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Remember, Fantasy Can Be Anything You Want

What do you think of when you hear the word fantasy? Is it hobbits and elves? Dwarves and magic rings? Knights in shining armor fighting dragons? Wizards with long beards and big staffs alongside orcs drooling black ichor as they roar and rush into battle?

Tell me this, though... do you think of grim monster hunters with muskets? Battle-ax wielding barbarians hammering at the steel skin of lost alien guardians? An abandoned noble raised by the jungle venturing into a forgotten land to overthrow its saurian overlords?

I ask, because all of that stuff is fantasy, too.

For those looking for required reading.

There's So Much More Out There

I've railed against this before, and I think it bears repeating. Tolkien's contributions to the genre, and setting the mold for what people tend to think of as high fantasy (the sort of thing with huge timelines, epic, sweeping backstories, ancient wizards, secret princes, and that sort of thing), is all well and good... but it is not all there is out there.

Tell you about a thing that happened to me a while back. I was at a convention, and found an old, plastic-bagged copy of previously unpublished Conan short stories by Robert E. Howard that was printed several decades ago. In the introduction for the collection there was a line talking how the writer hoped to see interesting work from a new up-and-comer to the genre... that up-and-comer was J.R.R. Tolkien.

Hey, everyone! Make room for the new kid!

I bring this up because for me, fantasy was more about the Weird Tales days. Where you'd have dashing swordsmen and frenzied barbarians side-by-side with lost alien civilizations, shape-shifting lizard men, Puritan witch hunters, and all sorts of other nonsense. They were all strange stories that at the time defied genre labels, as many of them mish-mashed elements of what we now think of as traditional fantasy, horror, science fiction, and others into a single story. But the thing is, no one was interested in putting a label on what was and wasn't fantasy. It was allowed to be as strange, as weird, and as unusual as the writers could conceive of, and to go in all sorts of different directions.

My thoughts, to you out there reading this... embrace that.

Want to puts guns into your fantasy setting? Do it, I would love to see more dragon hunters using high-caliber weapons. You want aliens? Cool, Lovecraft wasn't the first to do it, and he sure as hell won't be the last. You want civilizations that bear no resemblance to the traditional half-dozen square miles of pseudo-English countryside that get dug out of the Middle Ages? Go nuts! You want magic that merges with alchemy and technology? Make it happen!

And if someone tries to tell you that's "not really fantasy" then you should ask them what they would call it instead. Because gatekeepers are going to keep doing their thing, but it can be amusing to watch them sputter as they try to tell you that a story about a fictional reality with all the hallmarks is somehow not allowed to wear the same label as a story about elves and dwarves.

Don't feel you have to limit yourself thematically, contextually, or even aesthetically when it comes to the fantasies you choose to write.. because we could all use a breath of fresh air.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing installment. Hopefully some folks found it interesting, and it sparked some new ideas. For some unique takes on fantasy, consider stopping by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio where I help out, or heading over to Vocal to look at some more of my work. If you'd like to stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support my work consider leaving me a little tip by Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular patron. In either case, there's free stuff and my thanks just waiting for you.