Do we have a villain in this story?
How do we frame the villains? Do we even have villains? If we have villains, who are they?
My science fiction story is set in a universe of my own design.
This universe is a vision of a planetary future where global society is in harmony with the Earth. It most certainly has elements of science fiction; at its core, however, the story is more generally social fiction, a vision of a healthy direction our global human society can take.
This universe contains characters from all over the world, because this story is placed in the context of how our world actually operates. The story is an allegory for Planet Earth as we know it.
The team of characters represents all of humanity. The story facing these characters is a metaphor for humanity’s development around the world.
Today, the question before me is this: How do I frame the villains? Do I even have villains? If I use villains, who are they?
Humanity has serious challenges in the form of a broken economic system, overpopulation, and the mismanagement of our impact here on this planet. How to personify those challenges.
Investigating other story models like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Men In Black, Total Recall, and even James Bond reveals that, although true villains and even arch-villains certainly exist in today’s world, they are a symptom rather a cause of what ails us.
The deeper problem is humanity’s failure to act as a team in cooperation with the Earth. At this stage in its development, the story model already addresses that point by bringing together a team of characters.
Bill Gates was on 60 Minutes yesterday evening. His heart is in the right place, but hard as he is working, it appears he may be just another part of the problem rather than being part of the solution. Humanity doesn’t need more construction, more man-made objects and materials and devices and technology: humanity needs less impact in the world. Humanity needs to dial the human activity down, not dial it up. It’s human activity that is ruining nature and the natural world, like the weather.
Really, if you get right down to it, the villains in the world are us. We are our own worst enemy. We need to correct our behavior. We need an economic system that discourages destruction of nature rather than encouraging it. We need happiness, because a happy person is not constantly striving to fill an empty hole with material goods and status symbols.
We need an end to greed. We need an end to hunger. We need an end to emptiness inside.
Prosperity, as a building block of happiness, begins at home. It begins inside. If you are feeling rich and full, you are at peace with yourself. A person at peace with herself, a person at peace with himself, has no need to control others or accumulate grand holdings to fill a gaping hole.
Happiness, and therefore prosperity, is an essentially internal condition that any single person can achieve on their own. If you have filled the emptiness within and quelled your own personal hungers, you have found peace. As our sisters and brothers say, “Salaam e aleikum, aleikum e salaam.” “Shalom aleichem, aleichem shalom.”
Peace be with you. May you find peace. May you experience peace and satisfaction, contentment and fulfillment, in your inner world, in yourself. May your life be free of complications, worries, hazards, and dangers.
Salaam
The word Jerusalem contains -salem, which is the same word as salaam, peace. If you say out loud “as-al-aam” notice the resemblance to “-salem” in Jerusalem.
As-Al-aam means The Ame or The Love or The Heart. May you find your Soul, may you find Love and the Feeling of Love, may you find your Heart. Ame is the root of Amiga and Amigo, amistad, amnesty, amen. In French, L’Ame is the soul.
May you find Salaam-Shalom-Salem. May you find peace, harmony, wholeness, completeness, prosperity.
E
E is the et in French and in Latin. It means and.
Aleikhem
Still working on this one. Al Khem is the name for ancient Egypt, a Golden Age of Civilization from a bygone era.
Salaam e aleikum = Peace and ???
Peace within means all is well. That is probably the definition of happiness.
The enemy is us. More precisely, the enemy is inside of us.
The villain of this story, the story of a civilization gone crazy, a civilization out of control, is the empty heart, the empty soul, the missing spirit. The villain of the story is unhappiness, dissatisfaction, feeling incomplete, feeling like something is missing, feeling empty.
Every villain is unhappy. Every villain just wants to be happy.
So who to pick as a villain of the story, if there be a villain?
Star Wars uses a strange fictional concept, the Evil Empire, with Emperor and Darth Vader, the Dictator and the Enforcer. Putin and Trump, Dictator Boss and Enforcer.
Indiana Jones uses Belloq and Nazis. Nazis are, of course, my specialty.
Pluto Nash and Total Recall uses a criminal boss and criminal syndicate.
We have an Evil Character in Galaxy Quest. A similar enemy appears in Star Trek 2009: a vengeful Romulan with overpowering firepower.
James Bond fights arch-villains, usually some political or corporate megalomaniac.
The Last Starfighter employs an enemy fighting force like in Star Wars, a space force with their leader: Zur and the Konan Armada.
The villains in Avatar are a malicious partnership of corporation and for-hire ex-military bad guys.
Is there any benefit to using Nazis? Arch-villains? Global domination? I don’t know.
The “vengeful Romulan” or arch-villain would only qualify for this story if he or she were a personification of humanity’s reckless disregard for the Earth. That device might be too much of a stretch. The link between the villainous character and humanity’s behavior would have to be obvious.
Alternatively, we could still go the route of Back To The Future and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which employ no villains at all. Apparent villains, personal challenges, technical challenges, but no real evil to speak of. Biff even turns into an obsequious clown, the family car detailer, by the end of one Marty McFly and Doc Brown sequel. The terrifying space probe in Star Trek IV turns out to be harmless once the people in authority finally figure out how to communicate with it.
I like the idea of a villain who can be both evil and a clown (Biff Tannen), or a powerful force that turns out to be essentially good or neutral (the oblong Alien Probe from the distant Whale Civilization, cue the sound it makes).
The hunt is on.
I welcome commentary and suggestions.
An image that was etched in my mind was on the front page of The NY Times several years ago. A gaunt African man sat on his boat mending his fishing net. The caption was that so and so was mending the net (which was given to him by The B & M Gates Foundation for draping over the bed as an anti-malaria measure) so that he could catch fish to feed his seven hungry children.
I wrote The Legend in 1984, the theme being survivors of an atomic war, which was still how we thot the world would end with a bang.
Two decades later I changed the them to how the world will end with a whimper.
The Legend
by Rob Boyte
Revised 1996
Come lad, let me tell you a tale of Ancient Tymes, of Men and Gods, of Peasants and Kings, Empires and Warriors. You know nothing of that tyme, for you were not yet born, and I, Merlin the Ancient One, was just a babe.
This was the tyme of my Parents, of which we have little knowledge, for so much was lost in the Dark Ages, when men lived as animals and knew nothing of the Civilized Arts, but only how to kill and survive.
But lad, before I grow older than my 90 years, let me tell you the tale as told me by my Father, when I was but a dozen years like you. Know you that it is true, though you may not fathom its meaning, for there are few records of the Great Civilization before the Dark Ages, gathered from the moldy books, carved stones and objects that we keep in the Archives.
My father once lived in one of the Empires that ruled half the World after a great war, but saw ruin and corruption in the way men there lived, and moved us to a lesser Kingdom in the wilderness. There he pursued life's natural course, studied the Seasons, the Flora and Fauna, the Elementals and Arcana, the Ancient Truths forgotten by the Great Civilization.
Mind you I said this tale was of Gods and Men, and lo, those were wondrous tymes, when some Men lived as Gods. There were Great Cities in the heart of the Empires, where dwelt Wizards whose knowledge of the Hidden Powers even I cannot fathom, but my Father was there and saw them with his own eyes. Listen carefully lad, for what I tell you is Truth, and not legend or the ramblings of an old man as so many would have you believe.
Their Physicians used not only the Herbs and Roots but the very Earth and Ethers to heal all disease, and their Surgeons could remove the viscera, yea even the Heart from a corpse and make it live in another person. They controlled the power of Lightning and made it move machines and give light and make heat or cold as they desired. The lightning was also made to carry their voice and image to others around the world and even helped them think, to create more wondrous devices than they already had.
There were mechanical carriages that moved five tymes the speed of a horse at full gallop, and ships of steel so large they could sail the Seas through the worst of storms, or move quickly without a breeze. Some of these I've heard can be seen today, sunken in shallow water off the coast. There were machines that flew, and could carry hundreds of people from one part of the world to the other side, and moved so fast that their own sound could not catch them. There were even such flying machines as could leave the Earth and go to the Moon.
Alas, it were these very devices which destroyed the Empires and most all life on Earth, for their Sorcerers did not see that the Elements consumed by these machines were changed to noxious gas that changed not only the Air and Ethers but the very Weather itself.
Verily, these changes destroyed the crops and livestock of the great civilization. The light of the Sun first burnt all things by day. Then the drought withered all that survived the burning light, before the clouds blocked out the day. In the ensuing years most men and beasts in the world succumbed to sickness or the Great Famine.
Only a very few survived those dreadful tymes, those Dark Ages. My Father was one. He named me Merlin after a Wizard more ancient than his own tyme, for I too refused to die, as if protected by the Hidden Powers. There were those who prepared for such a tyme, but they could not see the breadth or length of the destruction, and the hand of Death touched them with the same ease as those who were unprepared. Who lived and who died was by the Grace of God and there were many who did not wait for that Grace, for only the very strong of spirit could endure those tymes when the dead were envied by the living. My own Mother succumbed to the Great Famine, but I had been weaned and somehow lived on, eating bugs and lizards and worms that dwelt beneath the ground.
We survived, as Chronicled in the New Archives, and fell in with others, each helping in our struggle for life. We built walls and fought the Marauders, found weeds and rats and grew them for food, and scavenged through the Great Famine, and survived.
Now we are secure in our fine City with its stout walls. Those terrible Dark Ages have passed and we are building anew from the ruin, a New Civilization. Each day brings new Knowledge from old books for those of us who read, and with the Wisdom of all my years I can now see the Larger Scheme.
This tale I have told you to pass on to others, for mark my words lad, this World I give to you will pass into change, and again and again with your children's children it will change, until someday it be, as it was in Ancient Tymes, a Great Civilization with the power of its own demise.