ἀναγνώρισις — or, I don’t remember being an Amnesiac
The honorable Steve Wilson has made the mistake of asking an author to talk about himself.
Woe unto ye, O peoples! There are three things of which the Earth complaineth: a servant when he reigneth; a fool when he is full of meat; a D&D player talking about an old game he was in, where he was playing a half-halfing burglar with a plus-five dagger named Sting traveling with a rock-n-roll bard also named Sting; a man who cannot count to three; and a pompous author waxing philosophical about himself. Here goes:
So, despite not knowing the word ‘anagnorisis’, did you use the motif of characters discovering their true identities deliberately in your three series?
It depends on what you mean by “deliberately.” I write more by inspiration than by calculation (and I can only hope my readers do not see, or do not mind, the lack of tight discipline in the writing). So I put things in my books because I like them and think they are gee-gosh-wow nifty Way Cool.
This is the “FLASH GORDON” approach to writing. The reason why Ming the Merciless, Prince Barin of Arboria, and Azura Queen of Magic all live on the same planet is because Fu Manchu, Robin Hood, and Ayesha She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed are nifty. The reason why there are both swords and rayguns, rocketships, scantily-clad beauties and roaring dinosaurs on Mongo is because all those things are nifty.
So, yes, I decided to put in amnesia and self-discovery in my books because I like those themes. But I did not set about to decide what I would like and dislike.
My favorite books when I was young were WORLD OF NULL-A by A.E. van Vogt, NINE PRINCES IN AMBER by Roger Zealazny, DINOSAUR BEACH by Keith Laumer, DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH by HP Lovecraft. An astute reader will recognize what these books have in common: anagnorisis. Gilbert Gosseyn does not know why he has an extra brain; Carl Corey does not know he is Corwin of Amber; Igor Ravel does not know he is a time traveler; Randolph Carter does not know that the fabulous sunset city he seeks is his own native city of Boston, seen through the lens of his childhood memories.
Had I read him in my youth, I would also have enjoyed THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY by G.K. Chesterton. The true identity of the membership of the Supreme Council of Anarchists has that same delicious irony as one often sees in other British spy fiction: I am thinking of the television shows THE AVENGERS or THE PRISONER.
So, even if I had not deliberately put in any anagnorisis, they would have naturally cropped up anyway, since this is the kind of story I like.
But I wanted to have memory loss be the main problem for Phaethon, because the technology involved in editing and downloading human brain information automatically implies that a person in such a society cannot trust his own memories. I am actually a little surprised that other writers in so called post Singularity fiction do not make more of this: total human control of the environment, including all the information in the environment, would mean the trustworthiness of your senses, memory, personality, and identity would only be as trustworthy as the men (or machines) controlling your mental environment. Even in a libertarian utopia (such as I propose in my book) you would still have to decide if you trusted the judgment of the version of you that decided to redact your memory. From the other side of the Singularity, the posthumans will look back on us the way the elves might wistfully long for mortality: to them, we will seem to be living in the primitive Eden of “back in the days when a man could trust his senses.”
The memory loss in ORPHANS OF CHAOS was more due to storytelling technique than to a philosophical regard for anagnorisis: I could not have my teenagers start out the story by knowing who they were, and amnesia in a story is a elegant way to have the reader make discoveries about the character at the same time the character does. Otherwise, the reader has to play ‘catch-up’ to the character. If the character is from an alien dimension, it becomes far less awkward to try to describe things (especially in first person) if the character is born and raised on Earth and can relate things to the reader’s frame of reference and background.
The memory loss in LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS was a matter of mood: dreams are dreamlike because we forget them when we wake up. The idea of a ‘memory mansion’ is one I stole without a qualm of guilt from John Crowley, who got it from Giordano Bruno, who got it from the Greeks. I loved the idea that mnemonics, the Ancient Art of Memory, was the only ‘superpower’ my hero possessed: he recalled what other men forgot. Everness, of course, is my homage to Edgewood: a memory mansion built in the real world.
NULL-A CONTINUUM is a sequel to WORLD OF NULL-A. Gilbert Gosseyn still does not know who he really is.
The book I am writing now does not have a main character who is an amnesiac—so naturally, I am having trouble with it. Maybe I will have him hit over the head or something in chapter five.
(Anagnorisis (ἀναγνώρισις), recognition also known as discovery, it was the hero suddenly becoming aware of a real situation and his own true identity: e.g. Oepidus recognizing Jocasta as his mother. Aristotle discusses it at length in his Poetics. )
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
