The Purpose of My Fiction

For reasons I explain on my science blog, I have decided to publish my fiction on Kindle. The advantages are numerous, and they follow an ecological and evolutionary pattern: for me, my cultural evolutionary fitness would be greater on Kindle than it would be if I continued to pursue traditional routes of publication.

What I want to write about here is the purposes of my fiction. I am not writing fiction that is merely entertainment or escapism. I want my fiction to be significant in the lives of readers. On the other hand, I don’t want it to be heavily scholarly or pedantic. My fiction is, and will continue forever to be, fun and funny. Laugh and learn. This is my philosophy as a retired educator, a scientist, and now as a writer of fiction.

I want my fiction to lift people up, to help them deal with their lives by watching my characters deal with, or fail to deal with, their lives. I will also confront numerous political, social, and environmental issues, without (I hope) being preachy. Readers should feel better, and more empowered, after reading my fiction than they were before. They should also learn a lot.

To take just one example, which I have released on Kindle: the novel Meet Me in Strasbourg. One of the two protagonists is a young woman who is painfully shy and gradually breaks out of her shell. Maybe some of my readers will identify with her. She is also trapped in poverty and medical debt. This is an important issue in America, one that seldom happens in European countries. And she, and her young male partner, discover how music can express the meaning of life. There is so much fiction that degrades and discourages people; I want all of my fiction to lift them up.

I also champion the people who are less than beautiful. The young woman in this novel can hardly be described as sexy. (Most of my other novels have beautiful women in them, however.) In most of my novels, the protagonists are not socially or politically powerful, even if they are beautiful. If you feel like everyone else is more powerful or more beautiful, read one of my novels and feel encouraged and uplifted. That is what I hope to accomplish.

This novel, and all my others, also defends the concept of True Love. Love is not just an excuse for lust. It is a reality that is so strong that it can totally transform the lives of lovers. The young man pursues the young woman halfway around the world. There is so much fiction that is cynical, and it almost gets the reader to distrust everyone, to not love anyone. In my novels, readers will see that love is worth taking a chance on.

And one other thing. Modern fiction almost never takes religion seriously, whether for good or bad. Most modern fiction considers religion to be irrelevant and stupid. But in my novels—almost all of them—religious issues are vitally important. The meaning of life—yeah, I’m serious about that stuff. Usually, the powerful religious leaders have it wrong; and they are not just silly but evil. In my novels, the reader is not left in comfortable atheism, but is forced to confront religion—even if they remain atheists.

As my novels become available, I will announce them, and target readers to whom questions about love, the meaning of life, and of religion are important.

Meet Me in Strasbourg: A Romance Novel that Faces the Big Religious Questions

Normally, to say that a novel, especially a romance novel, is about religion and the meaning of life is an invitation to failure. But if you dislike discussions about religion and the meaning of life, you wouldn’t be reading this blog. I want to tell you about a romance novel that is anything but formulaic: Meet Me in Strasbourg, a novel by Stan Rice.

Here is the author’s summary, taken from the Amazon site:

“When the university-bound Native American science student Tony encounters the brilliant and painfully shy French humanities student Aimée in California, he has no idea that their love would drag him halfway around the world.

Tony and Aimée discover their shared passion for music, particularly the love-lieder of Schubert, and then for one another. Tony quickly leaves the social circle that scorned Aimée for her plainness and quietness and becomes her defender and protector. And does she need protection—from the poverty and malnutrition of living alone with her unlucky father, and from her father’s unscrupulous associates in the shadowy world of smuggling. Aimée (French for beloved) finally discovers what it is like to be loved. Just when her joy seems inevitable, she and her father disappear. Tony alters the entire course of his life to go look for her in France.”

This novel includes a lot of experience with music, as I explain in the next essay. One of the pieces of music that is central to the plot is a band performance (both of the protagonists are musicians) of the medieval hymn Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, which you may know as a Christmas song. The climax line is, “And the powers of Hell shall vanish, as the darkness fades away.”

My question, which the author does not and cannot answer, is, is this true? Will it ever be true? Is it possible for the powers of Hell to vanish away? In an evolved world, bad things are not caused by an evil Satan but are the by-products of amoral natural selection. Unlike the fantasies of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, evolution has no Christ-centered goal. You could summarize evolution as, Shit happens, and then you die; if you are lucky, you become an ancestor.

Rather than to say more, I will simply tell you to read the novel and keep this question in mind.

Another example is that, from a sidewalk after a rain, Aimée rescues a dying earthworm. Tony points out that St. Francis of Assisi did the very same thing. But there is no point in it; the worm has no soul, or consciousness, and the death of one more worm will mean nothing to the overall pattern of evolution. Tony wonders if Aimée did it because of love for the worm. She explains that she did not do it for God, or for St. Francis, but for herself. She was the kind of person who would do something like that—to rescue a worm, not caring what anyone else might think.

If you think religious questions are important, whether you accept a religious answer or reject it, you will enjoy reading this novel. If you don’t think these questions are important, then why are you reading this blog?