The North West Passage

When my father turned 40 years old, I was 11. I remember the occasion quite vividly. We prepared a secret birthday party for him: we rented the local school gymnasium, invited about a hundred friends of his including some he had not seen since high school, hired a caterer and a DJ, and I gave my very first public speech before an audience of strangers. I told the story of the funny things he used to do to trick-or-treaters at Halowe’en. After the speeches, there was a dance, and a DJ. I didn’t want to dance, and there was no one I wanted to dance with anyway, so I danced with a balloon.

This year, on July 4th, it’s my ‘turn’ to turn 40. It feels like a milestone of a sort. A number of my friends had special events for their 40th, and a few friends of mine have already said that I should do something special for mine. Normally I celebrate my birthday by inviting a few people to join me in a local pub. Nothing bigger than that. But this time, I think I’d like to do something special.

I’d like to rent a hall somewhere. Ideally, I would rent the fireplace lounge in the Elora Mill Inn, but I think it might not be finished renovations by then. Alternatively I might rent a special-events room in a pub or small hotel; I might even host it at my parent’s house in Elora, which is certainly big enough, and we’ve had big parties and house concerts there in the past. I’d also like to book a band, and I’ve already spoken to Heather & Ben about it, and I want Frosty to perform too. And I’d like there to be a big feast, maybe with someone’s home-made beer and wine. I’ve already set aside a few thousand dollars for the purpose – money I probably should be saving for home-ownership or for retirement, but what the hell.

I’d love it if some of my far-flung friends from Ireland, UK, America, and distant Canadian provinces east and west, could attend. People often travel that far to attend weddings; my birthday is of course not a wedding, but a 40th birthday seems to me like an equally significant milestone. So, this is why I’m sending out this “invitation” of sorts six months in advance.

Details will be posted to my FB and Twitter as they are determined. But in the meanwhile I am open to suggestions about venues in southwestern Ontario (because that’s where I grew up, and where the majority of my friends and family still live), and catering, and entertainment. And, of course, let me know if you would like to attend!

A few people wrote to me today just now to ask if an internet “meme” I made this evening (see below) was about something else, something going on in my life perhaps.

Well, it’s this: despite blitzing my Facebook and Twitter followers (over 2000 of them in total) with the news that I published a new book two weeks ago, a lot of people still hadn’t heard about it.

And that’s not for lack of effort on my part. I’ve been doing as much promotion work as my time and resources allows (although, admittedly, it isn’t much; I do most of my promo work in the spring and summer, when I don’t have as many responsibilities at the college).

It’s also because Facebook deliberately suppresses things like my book announcements. When I post something on Facebook, only 16% of my followers will actually see it. For me to reach 100% of my followers (or others beyond), I’d have to pay them. This is called “The Promoted Posts policy“.

I get that Facebook is a business, not a charity. And so is Twitter. Really, I do. But I don’t have the kind of advertising budget that, say a big international corporation has. I’m just one person with a lower-middle-class income and not much spare time.

With the end of “net neutrality“, this kind of problem will not just be a Facebook problem. It will be an everybody and everything problem. The end of net neutrality means that that big internet companies will be allowed to suppress everybody’s internet content, unless they pay to have their web site prioritized (which other big companies can do, but independent individuals like myself cannot do). This will make it even harder for me to get the word out about my work, even on my own web site.

That’s how this sort of thing affects me personally. In fact I can measure how it affects me very precisely, by comparing the reach of my book promotion efforts five years ago, to the reach of those same efforts today. It’s a lot less.

And you can bet if affects every independent artist you know, as well. I’m somewhat lucky in that my ability to write is “protected” by the fact that I’ve a steady day job. But there’s quite a lot of artists out there who are working as artists full-time, and they make art (music, clothes, books, poetry, theatre, etc.) full time, for a living. They are going to be hurt by the end of net neutrality a lot worse than I am.

Here’s what you can do about it.

First of all, get active. Phone up your MP or Congressman, or a professional lobbyist. Write to local newspapers or magazines or any public organ where people will read what you write. Encourage others around you to do the same.

For those who, like me, are independent artists worried about how the new economics of the internet will make it harder for them to market themselves: do all of the above, and also keep doing awesome things anyway. Remember your Aristotle: excellence is its own reward.

For those interested in my books: sign up to my mailing list. (If that link doesn’t work, try the form on the bottom of my front page, here.) You’ll hear directly from me when I have a new project released or soon to be released. Sometimes you’ll hear about projects by friends of mine, too. And the suppression effect of the end of net neutrality won’t affect it. (At least, I hope not.)

And for those who are not themselves independent artists, please spread the word as often as you can about the work done by the independent artists who you admire. Talk about their stuff with your friends. Write reviews of their stuff on relevant web sites (Amazon, Goodreads, BandCamp, DeviantArt, etc.) Go to their concerts and gallery shows and readings, and bring all your friends with you. That sort of thing, more than anything else, is the kind of practical help that those independent artists actually need.

Also, feel free to use this image of mine here to give the artists in your life some encouragement. They need that, too.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the situation of young grad students or people who recently completed their graduate degrees. Many of them, perhaps nearly all of them, face ridiculous barriers to entry into good university jobs in their fields. Here’s some examples:

The Closing of Academic America

The Plight of Adjunct Faculty

9 reasons why being an adjunct faculty is terrible

And my favourite, “Thesis Hatement”.

Here’s my story.

I got my Ph.D in philosophy in 2006, and in a short length of time I was working as a sessional lecturer (that’s “adjunct faculty” to my American friends) at a very fine Canadian university, one with colleagues who I liked, and where I generally enjoyed working. However, within a few years I realized that the only job I would ever get at that university, or any other, was insecure, badly-paying, part-time teaching work, with no acknowledgement of any research I was doing.

When I applied for a regular faculty position at another nearby university, where I also briefly worked as a sessional, the head of the department told me that I hadn’t enough publications. I pointed out that I had published four books already, which was more than she herself had published. She replied that none of them were academic books (that was true of one, but only half-true of the others) and that therefore they didn’t count.

That short five-minute conversation left me almost completely disillusioned about the academic world.

So I quit.

And yes, quitting the academy was hard. I got other jobs, some of which I hated. I got help from friends and family, which often left me feeling demoralized. I had pegged my sense of identity and self-worth on the academic mortarboard, and that made it very was hard for me to imagine any other career for myself, or any other way of life. Quitting the university was one of the most stressful and unhappy decisions I’ve ever made.

But the outcome has been great. I teach at a small college now where they pay me only slightly less than what I’m worth, and I love my students there. I don’t give a shit about the fashion-driven rat race of “publish-or-perish”. And therefore I write and publish whatever I want, with trade-paperback publishers and self-publishing tools. And now I’ve published fourteen books, in only eleven years.

In that sense I’m not fully “quit” from the academy: I just changed my path to get to it. I see it now as having quit the “prestige” academy.

And yes, it took me a long time to get to this point. But the single most important thing I did to get here was stop caring about fitting into the “prestige” academic world and start caring more about what my discipline is supposed to be all about: the love of wisdom, the critical examination of answers to the highest and deepest questions in life.

I doubt that I will ever work for a university again. I’m certainly not applying for university jobs: and if a university was to actively recruit me (which isn’t likely) then they would have to offer me something really awesome. Because I refuse to work as a sessional, ever again.

Dear struggling recent graduate: I feel your pain. Not long ago, I was in the same place you are in now. But I assure you, there’s a way out of the trap that your university has probably put you in. It’s called quitting the world of “prestige” academia and doing whatever your academic discipline is supposed to be all about anyway. Just stop chasing the carrot that they’re dangling in front of you, and plant your own carrots in your own garden. Remember, it’s not the word “scientist” on your pay stub that makes you a scientist. It’s the doing of good science that makes you a scientist. And think of how many great minds in the canon of Western civilization were never professors: Jean-Paul Sartre, Baruch Spinoza, as examples. If they could do it, so can you.

So if you’re seeing too many obstacles in the academic world between you and your aim to become a good scholar in your field, then quit the academic world and be a scholar anyway. Use the public libraries or your alumni card or the internet to get your research materials. Work for companies that do work in your field, or work for government agencies that fit your interests, or get together with others in the same situation as yourself and start your own business. It’s a very scary move: there is a lot of risk, and a real chance of failure. But your alternative is to chase after a carrot that your university will almost certainly never give you, and to still be paid barely enough to rent a crappy apartment by the time you are old enough to retire.

I leave you with the words of renowned scientist James Lovelock:

I have had to become a radical scientist also because the scientific community is reluctant to accept new theories as fact, and rightly so. It was nearly 150 years before the notion tha theat is a measurue of the speed of molecules became a fact of science, and 40 years before plate tectonics was accepted by the scientific community. Now perhaps you see why I work at home supporting myself and my family by whatever means come to hand. It is no penance, rather a delightful way of life that painters and novelists have always known about. Fellow scientists join me, you have nothing to lose but your grants.

(Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia, 1990)

(Feel free to share this graphic around.)

I like to include a nonsense question on the front cover of my exams. The idea is that if there’s something on the exam that students can laugh at, then they might be a little bit less stressed about it. I’ve asked students to write their blood types or their height in cubits; I asked my science students what was the square root of their age multiplied by today’s date; I asked who was the most famous person they’ve ever met. (Several had actually met Prime Minster Stephen Harper.) In one of my exams this year, the front-cover nonsense question was: “What was the last book you read, not for school, but for fun?”

Out of 28 students in that class, many left the question blank. And one answered that he didn’t have time to read anything but the book that was required for my course (which was Plato’s The Republic). Those who did answer surprised me a little bit: for although many of them were reading popular books, they were not necessarily reading “easy” books. Here’s what they said they are reading:

Now, this is nothing like a scientific study of the reading habits of people in their late teens (that’s the age group of most of my students in that class.) But there’s some observations to be made here.

The first and obvious observation is that young people will read a book after it’s been turned into a TV series or a movie. George RR Martin’s “Game of Thrones” series was the obvious winner here: more students mentioned a book from that series than any other book (or series). The Hunger Games series was a *very* close second to Game of Thrones, and as you can see there was at least one person reading The Hobbit and at least one reading Ender’s Game. Same with Tennessee Williams stage play, if you include works that were made into films many years ago. One wrote that he is reading The Hobbit precisely because the second movie based on that book is coming out soon.

Another observation we can make here, which I find more interesting, is that many young people really are willing to read long, complex, and time-demanding books – and they’re willing to read them for fun.

For all my writer friends, this is good news.

I’ve been watching Doctor Who since I was small – Tom Baker was my Doctor. So the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who got me thinking: what is this complicated, wonderful, beautiful, and very very weird show all about? I’ve settled on four themes. There might be more, of course, but this blog post got to 2,700 words so I thought it best to stop at four. So here we go:

The doctor is always curious and excited to see new things, and discovering new life forms and new worlds always fills him with delight. Even when faced with great danger, the doctor sometimes still finds something to delight about. For instance, in one such situation, Doctor Baker* said,

That’s intensely interesting. Do you realize there’s nowhere to go? We’re on the edge of the cosmos, the frontiers of creation, the boundary between what is and isn’t. Or isn’t yet, anyway. Don’t you think that’s interesting? I feel just like a goldfish looking out on a new world.

Similarly, Doctor Pertwee told a companion “Before you start annihilating the thing, why don’t we just take a look at it?” And doctor Eccleston once chastizes a group of soldiers for shooting and killing an alien creature instead of looking at it properly: had they looked closer, they would see it was only frightened, and wasn’t threatening anyone.

This unrepressable curiosity sometimes appears as madness to his companions: and he has sometimes capitalized on this perception of him. For instance, Doctor Hartnell told his granddaughter: “You know, Susan, I think your old grandfather is going just a tiny little bit around the bend.” Similarly, Doctor Smith says to his companion Amy Pond: “there is something you need to understand, and someday your life may depend on it: I am definitely a madman with a box.” On another occasion, when someone tells him he’s basically crazy, Doctor Smith dons a sly grin and says, “I know.”

In the light of this, I find it very, very interesting that some of Doctor Hurt’s** lines seemed to deliberately subvert the childhood wonder theme. He chastizes both Smith and Tennant for their signature boyish battle-cries “Allonz-y!” and “Geronimo!” by saying in response, in a kind of condescending tone: “Oh for god’s sake!” He had chastized them both previously with his heavily judgmental question: “what is it that makes you so ashamed of being a grownup?” The question is interesting in two ways. One is that the grownup doctor in the scene is also contemplating committing a war crime of almost unimaginable proportions: the genocide of two entire races, one of which is his own. And the other two doctors know it. And they don’t want to do that terrible thing ever again.

The other interesting thing about Doctor Hurt’s cutting question is we, in the audience, are invited to answer it. Doctor Who is, among other things, a kind of fairy tale about a flamboyant mysterious man who takes us on fantastic adventures in faraway places, and solves whatever problems we might find there. And the story is often told in the mode of melodrama: with our heroes ever in extraordinary danger, an overall heightened sense of emotional intensity, a “stock character” (the Doctor himself, who is so ‘stock’ that he doesn’t even have a proper name, just a title) and sometimes “stock” antagonists (like the unambiguously evil Daleks). And, true to the melodrama style, there’s a musical score to accompany the story! Audiences love that sort of thing. But this is the dramatic model best suited to a children’s story. What is so terrible about an adult story? Why does Doctor Who rarely see morally ambiguous heroes, or morally sympathetic villains, or other not-melodramatic, definitely adult problems?

To which it might be replied: we sometimes do see villains who are motivated by something noble, even if their methods for attaining that goal are deeply evil. The Rani, for instance, is motivated by scientific inquiry, and so she is a kind of foil to the doctor himself. But this is an exception, not a rule. The most consistent villains, such as the Cybermen, the Master, the Great Intelligence, and of course the Daleks, are motivated by straightforward antisocial sentiments like total-conformity, revenge, power-madness, and hate.

Also, I understand that this is a question the show’s producers sometimes struggle with: the question of whether Doctor Who is a children’s show or whether it’s a drama series for adults, with adult themes. The show sometimes does address serious moral dilemmas and adult-world problems. We’ve seen the Doctor grapple with the question of genocide before: in the 1975 serial “Genesis of the Daleks” Doctor Baker is given the chance to wipe out all Daleks by going back in time and interfering with the events of their creation. But he doesn’t do it: he decides that no one has the right to wield that kind of power. That’s an adult story. Similarly, we have seen a few occasions when the doctor shows us the guilt and the loneliness that visited him after his decision to exterminate the Daleks (!) at the cost of doing the same to his own people. Guilt and loneliness are very adult themes for a drama. But these occasions were often quickly covered up by the character’s irrepressable cheerfulness, and the urgency of whatever problem he was facing at that time. And I think that’s too bad, really: morally ambiguous heroes and sympathetic villains are interesting, and audiences enjoy their stories as much, if not more, than they enjoy the simple pastel colours of the melodrama. (If I may be so bold: if I had a chance to write an episode of Doctor Who, I’d write a story that creates the right harmony of childhood wonder and adult moral complexity.)

But enough of my critical comments for now. Here’s another theme, curiously connected with the theme of childhood wonder, while at the same time being an ‘adult’ theme:

It’s in the nature of the show, especially since Moffatt took over as its director, to find ordinary things and makes them scary. Shadows. Mirrors. Cracks in the wall. Wifi networks. Storefront mannequins. Statues. Children wearing gas masks. The upstairs neighbour. Little black boxes. This enchantment of the ordinary, even in the mode of terror, is a major feature of fairy tales. And as mentioned, Doctor Who is a kind of fairy tale. So, we’re supposed to find those things scary. But the doctor always wants to figure out the solutions to problems, and he’s never satisfied to let mysteries remain mysteries. “To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained,” said Doctor Baker. And similarly, Doctor Hartnell said, “You wanted advice, you said. I never give it – never. But I might just say this: always search for truth.” And Doctor McCoy reminds us to find what’s interesting in everything: “Nothing’s just rubbish if you have an inquiring mind.” This commitment to science inspires his friends. This is why Leela, who originally came from a pre-industrial society, says: “I, too, used to believe in magic, but the Doctor has taught me to believe in science. It is better to believe in science.” This should inspire us too.

All the problems the doctor meets, including all the apparently supernatural forces, turn out to have scientific explanations. Of course, those explanations are often of the science fiction variety: aliens, time travel paradoxes, futuristic technology. Thus the explanation often turns out to be the kind of science which, in the thinking of Arthur C. Clarke, is advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic. And so our sense of childhood wonder is preserved. But the point is that these threatening forces have explanations. We do not have to just accept mysteries as mysteries. We get to pull the curtain back and see what’s behind it. I’d go so far as to say that the Whoniverse might be a “Republic of Heaven”, to borrow Philip Pullman’s terms.

In fact, the Doctor’s superior knowledge, his advanced quasi-magical technology, and so on, is enough to make him an almost godlike hero. Some of the other characters certainly see him that way: Tim Latimer says of him that “He’s like fire and ice and rage. He’s like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun… He’s ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and can see the turn of the universe… and he’s wonderful.” And Martha Jones described him as follows: “…his name is The Doctor. He has saved your lives so many times and you never even knew he was there. He never stops. He never stays. He never asks to be thanked. But I’ve seen him, I know him. I love him. And I know what he can do.”

Indeed, the doctor is so powerful that in several episodes he’s able to fend off alien threats like the Atraxis, the Vashta Nerada, the Cybermen, and even an entire fleet of alien battleships, by appealing to his reputation! That fleet of battleships had actually united their forces to imprison him in the Pandoricon: a fact the Doctor didn’t know at the time. So on second viewing, that scene has a certain irony. But their assembly in the first place was all about his reputation: they were imprisoning him because they thought he was the most dangerous being in the universe.

But back to the point about knowledge. Doctor Smith, in one of his best moments, reveals just how deep his knowledge goes:

I have lived a long life, and I have seen a few things. I walked away from the last Great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained- no time, no space, just me! I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man. And I’ve watched universes freeze, and creation burn — I have seen things you wouldn’t believe, and I have lost things you will never understand. And I know things. Secrets that must never be told. Knowledge that must never be spoken! Knowledge that will make parasite gods blaze!”

What’s interesting about this speech is the way it condemns a false god as a parasite, while at the same time the doctor describes himself in surprisingly godlike terms. It probably helps that the scene is filmed in a highly melodramatic style. We should hope that a man as powerful as the doctor is on our side. And fortunately, he is. And this is partly because the doctor’s companions frequently hold him back from assuming godlike rights and powers. Donna says to him that he needs companions because, as she tells him, “sometimes you need someone to stop you.” And she’s right.

Besides, Doctor Ecclestone warns us not to treat him as a god: “Don’t worship me. I’d make a very bad god. Wouldn’t get a day off, for starters.”

There’s two more themes that reassure us that he’s on our side:

Another aspect of the doctor’s commitment to rationality is the way he prefers to solve problems by persuasion instead of by violence. In any situation, the doctor is always the one with the most knowledge and the most cleverness: this is his advantage, not his capacity for violence. Doctor Troughton despaired for the prevalence of violence when he said how sad it was that “People spend all their time making nice things, and other people come along and break them.” Instead of threatening an enemy, he will try to show that enemy a new fact or a new possibility that he (or it) might not have considered, or might not have known about. He tries to find the solution that’s best for everyone. An example of this occurred in the 50th anniversary special when doctors Smith and Tennant say that the best negotiations happen when no one knows what side they’re on, and so the doctors manipulate the memories of two characters such that neither knows which of them is a shape-shifting alien trying to take over the other one’s planet. As an aside, that moment is the best depiction of John Rawls’ “Original Position / Veil of Ignorance” thought experiment that I’ve ever seen in pop culture.

Doctor Baker’s famous lines about guns expresses the character’s preference for persuasion and rationality over violence: he says, “Have you noticed that people’s intellectual curiosity declines sharply the moment they start waving guns about?” And Doctor Baker (the second) said of guns: “No thanks, I’ve given them up. Guns can seriously damage your health, you know.” (This line reminds me of the Goon Show, a BBC radio comedy and predecessor of Monty Python, but never mind that for now.) It’s also noteworthy that the doctor himself doesn’t usually show aggression unless someone interferes with his attempt to find the best solution for everyone. On such occasions, however, his anger and his means of punishment can be very, very severe. That’s where his godlike side comes out: and again, that’s why he needs his companions.

For me, the most outstanding theme in the whole series, right from the very beginning, is a kind of humanism – that is, optimism about humanity’s future, and confidence in humanity’s natural goodness. This theme has been repeated many times in the series. My favourite statement of this humanism is in Doctor Baker’s words in “The Ark in Space”:

Homo sapiens… What an inventive, invincible species. It’s only a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenseless bipeds. They’ve survived flood, famine, and plague. They’ve survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life, ready to out-sit eternity. They’re indomitable. Indomitable!”

And to reinforce this theme, Doctor Eccleston reaffirms it in the very first episode of the new (2006) series. While arguing with the Nestene Consciousness, who was trying to take over the earth, he appeals to humanity’s potential for greatness: “This planet is just starting. These stupid people have only just learned how to walk, but they’re capable of so much more.” Actually, the doctor’s interest in humanity is part of his larger interest in life in general, as we hear in Doctor Troughton’s words: “No, Mr. Terrall, I am not a student of human nature. I am a professor of a far wider academy of which human nature is only a part. All forms of life interest me.”

Doctor Eccleston is sometimes cynical and judgmental of people; he calls us “stupid apes” several times. But he loves us for all our faults, just the same: the overwhelming attitude is that of confidence in humanity. “It might be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favourite species,” said Doctor Baker. Similarly, Doctor Eccleston said that an ordinary man is the most important thing in the universe. This confidence in humanity is so important to the doctor, that River Song is moved to say of him: “Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever for one moment, accepts it.”

We live in a time when so many social, cultural, religious, political, and personal values are changing. Very few people believe that there’s such a thing as an absolute truth about anything: we trivialize good questions by saying things like “That depends,” or we dismiss good ideas by saying “That’s just your opinion”. Or if you’re an academic you might dismiss an argument by saying “That’s anthropocentrism”. In that sense, Doctor Who is a surprisingly modern rather than post-modern show. It stands for a number of definite values, foremost among them values like the one’s I’ve just described: childhood wonder, science and rationality, nonviolence, and humanism.

And now, Doctor Capaldi would seem to have a new mission: to find Gallifrey. These are the values that will shield and uphold him on his quest. I hope he succeeds: if Gallifrey is a place where those values are honoured, I’d like to find it, too.

Notes

* I’m naming the doctors by the actor’s names instead of by the usual convention of their numbers in order of broadcast. This is because there’s now some doubt among fans about whether John Hurt’s portrayal of the character is a “doctor” or not, and thus it’s hard to place him in the usual numbering scheme. But I also do this as a sign of respect to the actors. They are not numbers: they are men, actors, artists, human beings; and I think they deserve acknowledgement as such.

** I’m calling him “Doctor Hurt” because he’s played by John Hurt, and because he’s the incarnation of our hero who decided to give up the name of Doctor to become a warrior – ie. one who hurts people (!), instead of heals them, although presumably for the sake of a noble cause. I know that the character himself rejected the name. I’m calling him Doctor anyway because at the end of “Day of the Doctor”, he earned a kind of redemption, and doctors Tennant and Smith addressed him as Doctor. If their word isn’t good enough, I don’t know whose is.

If you post a review of my novel, Clan Fianna, to its Amazon page between now and 15th November, I’ll put your name in a draw for a $100 gift certificate at the online bookstore of your choice!

Christmas is coming, so you could use this gift certificate for your own gift-giving needs. Or, of course, you can also use it to catch up on your own wish list. 🙂

Furthermore, on 7th November, my next nonfiction title, “The Earth, The Gods, and The Soul“, will be published. And if you post a review of that title to its Amazon page between now and 7th December, I’ll put your name in the hat for another $100 gift certificate!

And There’s More: if either of these books get 25 reviews or more, then I’ll draw two names. And I’ll draw three names if we get 50 reviews. And so on, every 25 reviews. So you don’t reduce your chances of winning by spreading the word.

As always: a good review would be very welcome, but an honest review is all I truly ask for. In previous reviews on Amazon, my novels have been compared favourably to Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin, so I’m confident in the quality of my work. I hope you are, too.

And Finally: I’m offering a $10 gift certificate for the online bookstore of your choice to a randomly-selected person who SHARES (not just ‘likes’) or RETWEETS (not just ‘favourites’) this blog post, on Facebook and Twitter, between now and the end of October. Just be sure that your Share/Retweet links back to my Facebook page or my Twitter stream, so that I can track it, and include your name in the draw.

This is a promotion strategy which has worked successfully for me in the past, so I’m trying it again. Last year, for instance, I gave away a Kindle Fire HD. I’ve also given away a ticket to the festival of the contest winner’s choice.

Why am I doing this? Because, like most independent writers, I have to do most of the promotion work myself. Now, I try to keep my book promo stuff non-annoying. But still, I need your help. Aside from buying your favourite writer’s works, the most helpful way you can show support for a writer you like is by spreading the word about his or her books. And that means reviews, recommendations, reader’s clubs, sharing and lending copies of books, and talking it up on social media. It’s the same for poets, musicians, artists, and just about any creative person who doesn’t have the backing of a big publisher, a big record label, a big art gallery.

(Actually my real goal is to persuade Netflix or HBO to take on my novels as a television series. And to persuade a big video game studio to make one of my tabletop games into an immersive first-person RPG. But I’d need several million fans for that. So I’ll start with something manageable, and do something bigger next.)

I hope this new promo catches your interest, and I thank you for your support.

Since I started teaching at Heritage College, I’ve been encouraged to find new ways of getting students interested in learning philosophy and critical reasoning. So I invented four games that I regularly use in my classes: I published one of them last year, and I plan to publish a second eventually.

Not only that. Since 1996, I have been writing my own fantasy role-play game. I was inspired to do so when White Wolf discontinued their Changeling line, which I used to really enjoy (they have since re-imagined and re-started it). Feeling disenfranchised and left out, I decided to invent my own game, to replace it. That was almost twenty years ago. And since then, I re-open it every three or four months, write or edit a page or two, and then close it again for another few months.

The result of having done that for almost twenty years is that I now have an almost-complete game, 286 pages long, the majority of which is character-development and world-building information.

This summer, while writing Clan Fianna, it occurred to me that with a few small intelligent changes, the game could be presented as a spinoff product of my Fellwater series of novels. People who read and enjoyed the novels could use the game to create their own characters in the Hidden World and thus play in my back yard. I could also use the game to reveal more of that Hidden World. And those who enjoy role-play gaming could check out the novels to see what life is like for characters in my world.

As another feature that might interest gamers: as far as I know, my game would be the first and only RPG designed by a professional philosopher. And while the game still represents philosophical interests I had eighteen years ago, it also has lots of stuff in it from my more recent philosophical ruminations. It has become, in effect, a fantasy RPG which players may use to explore philosophical questions, and to train themselves to handle philosophical problems. And also, naturally, to have lots of fun!

You see, the interesting thing about having two graduate degrees in philosophy is that I understand logic, algorithms, conceptual analysis, political theory and strategy, and the principles of mathematical game theory – perfect for designing the rules and numbers aspect of an RPG, as well as the larger cosmology and world view and conflicts in which characters find themselves. For example, players in my game must choose a “Source”, which their characters draw from and which contributes a large part of who the characters are. It may look at first like a D&D-style alignment system. But they are not just four stations on a spectrum between good and evil. Rather, they are four different world views: really four different competing models of human nature, good and evil, justice and injustice, and what lies between them.

At the same time, from my BA in Drama, I also understand storytelling, narrative arcs, dramatic tension, imagination, performance, and free creative play – perfect for world building, character design, and the like. My fiction writing is inspired by the playwriting and directing work I did as a BA drama student: I even apprenticed for a short while under a playwright who won the Governor General’s award for literature twice. So I know about storytelling. On top of that, I’ve also undertaken a lifelong study of mythology and folklore – I’ve even published several books on the topic – which is helpful for all those things I already mentioned, and more.

To sum it all up: I’ve got the text of a fantasy RPG, which is perhaps 85% complete, and I’ve got a network of wonderful people who could help me illustrate, edit, design, promote, and play it. But I wouldn’t ask any of these people to work for me for free. Hence, I’m thinking of another fundraising campaign.

Well, you may ask, what is the game “about”? It’s about this:

What if the ancient gods and heroes of mythology were human beings like ourselves: but just a little stronger, more knowledgeable, quicker, more beautiful, and a little more full of energy, than the rest of us? What if the nymphs and satyrs of Greek imagination, the dwarves and giants of the north, the faeries of the Celtic lands, and the spirits of every people and nation, were actually just people like you and me—except that they could make some of their dreams come true? What if time and history exaggerated and expanded the stories of their lives, transforming them into myth and legend? What if even the gods themselves were fallible beings, having most of the same weaknesses we all have, the same hopes and fears, the same aspirations for power or happiness, the same unfulfilled dreams and unrequited loves—but they were elevated above the rest of humanity by being just a little bit more in touch with the mysteries of the universe than the rest of us?

What if you were one of them?

That’s the opening paragraph of the game, of course. I wrote that back in 1996. The world of my Fellwater Tales novels is very similar.

So here is the big question to which I’d like all of you to respond. If I were to launch a fundraising campaign to pay for the production of this game, would you support it? Might there be interest out there in an RPG designed by a professional philosopher (me) and crafted by multiple contributors into a work of art in its own right?

Please post your comments here and let me know.