Guest Post: Competing with Fanfiction

In my romantic-noir urban fantasy novella The Demons of Wall Street, magic and the existence of demons are secrets kept hidden from most people. Only a relatively small number of sorcerers, bankers, and their agents are in on the conspiracy, on the order of thousands of people worldwide.

The premise of magic-done-only-in-secret is not exactly an original conceit, and indeed it has become so familiar over not just years but generations of fantasy literature that it is hardly something to be questioned when it appears. It’s a convenient explanation for how magic can possibly exist in our familiar and ostensibly non-magical world.

Still, the idea of a very widely-kept secret to which thousands of people are privy may seem rather implausible. Surely someone would let the information slip? But as it happens, there are quite a few historical examples of widely-held secrets that were kept so well we aren’t sure what the truth of them was anymore.

I refer you first to the mystery cults of the classical world. In ancient Greece, and subsequently throughout the Hellenized and then the Romanized world, a great many people subscribed to the mystery cults of Eleusis, Samothrace, and (in Roman times) Mithras, among others. These cults required terrible binding oaths from their aspirants, and in many classical-period cities, substantial percentages of the middle and upper classes were members. But we don’t know, apart from a few scattered hints, what the cults believed, what their rituals were, or how members were expected to recognize and support one another outside of the ritual centers. It might be that the masonic phrase “I have seen the sun at midnight” was originally part of the Eleusinian mystery, which we know had something to do with the myth of Demeter and Persephone. But then again, that might be just wishful thinking on the part of the masons based on some modern invention. The names of the deities worshipped by cultists at Samothrace were forbidden to be uttered aloud, and while it’s believed they were mostly chthonic female members of the Greek pantheon, we really don’t know for sure. And even the cult of Mithras, to which millions of Roman legionaries and a great many other citizens belonged (including the emperor Julian the Apostate) is almost opaque to us now. There was probably the sacrifice of a bull involved at some point, but we know very little more than that of their beliefs and practices.

In any event, during this period of around 2,000 years (1600 BCE to 400 CE), everyone was well aware of the existence of the mystery cults, but the members kept their secrets quite effectively, as hardly a scrap of period writing survives that reveals any of their hidden knowledge; indeed, even elliptical references and allusions are rare.

And so, through folk culture, literary memory, and possibly even through the survival of cult remnants outlawed by the Catholic Church, the idea of secret organizations, hidden rituals, and underground magical practice was passed into medieval and then modern times. Early Christianity often assumed the form of a secret cult during the time in which it was forbidden, and splinter groups such as the various gnostic sects became hard-to-extirpate heresies that survived well into the 1400s. These heretic cults changed form from time to time as individual groups were scattered or forced underground, but eventually many of their beliefs were incorporated into the nonconformist branches of Protestantism, and thus into some present-day sects.

There’s no era of recent European history in which secret organizations didn’t thrive, and in many cases, we have only vague knowledge of their dissemination and indeed of their actual beliefs and purposes. Consider for example the 18th century Illuminati, made famous by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s gonzo novels starting with The Illuminatus! Trilogy published in 1975, and revived yet again on a more literary basis by Umberto Eco in Foucault’s Pendulum in 1988. It seems Adam Weisshaupt organized some quasi-masonic lodges in Bavaria and elsewhere that might have been political, might have been magical, or might just have been the Enlightenment equivalent of an old boys’ social club with a few secret forms and rituals thrown in for fun. Who knows, really? No one living. But even today we have quasi-secret organizations with wide membership like the various masonic groups, whose rituals are admittedly only officially secret. But there are also a great many more serious, smaller groups, including the various descendants of the Golden Dawn and the organizations founded by Aleister Crowley and his disciples, who include, at just one remove, L. Ron Hubbard. The bizarre pulp-science-fictional beliefs ascribed to Scientology’s elite, while no longer secret, are certainly consistent in style with their many predecessors.

Which brings us back to urban fantasy and its pervasive notion of magic performed in secret behind closed doors by organizations of oath-sworn initiates that any of us might trip over or better yet be invited to join.

Is this mere wish fulfillment? Escapism? Fantasies of power and transfiguration? Certainly. But these are fantasies with the most distinguished of heritages, wending their way back to ancient times, and given the imprimatur of the greatest writers and thinkers of antiquity one must concede there is a certain solemn majesty to the idea.

So if you read The Demons of Wall Street (first in a series, the sequel The Demons of the Square Mile will be out at the end of the year or early in 2021!), I do hope you’ll enjoy it; the novella’s purpose is entirely to entertain. But should the notion of a secret organization of sorcerers and financiers hiding in plain sight in the boardrooms of the great firms of Wall Street give you pause, consider this little essay as a preemptive justification of a grand conceit passed on from earliest antiquity all the way to the present day.

Buy the book here.

BIO: Laurence Raphael Brothers is a writer and technologist. He has worked in R&D at such firms as Bell Communications Research and Google, and he has five patents along with numerous industry publications. His areas of expertise include Internet and cloud-based applications, artificial intelligence, telecom applications, and online games.

He has published many science fiction and fantasy stories and is a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Find out more about Laurence Raphael Brothers on his website.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!

I joked recently that it seems like every story has to end with some gigantic battle. That’s how we know it’s the end, right?

Think about it. Which of the world’s great legends tell us that our problems should be addressed through something OTHER than violence?

Hercules, Beowulf and Gilgamesh all killed monsters. King Arthur’s knights in shining armor maintained the peace by fighting monsters. If no monster was about, they would fight each other to catch a lady’s eye. Lord of the Rings featured massive battles for the fate of the world. Military SF, of course, features more technologically advanced weaponry in exotic settings, but the role of the warriors remains the same. It seems the only way to “save” anything is through battle.

Then you get to other forms, like comic books. Superheroes level cities to bring in the bad guys. For this, we admire them. In gaming, the only way to get XP and level up is by killing things. Very few games award XP for clever solutions that avoid combat. Then there are movies, where we may move from combat to combat without time to think. The more explosions, the better!

It’s true that the world can be violent. Depicting violence in stories could be seen as mere honesty. Although, it’s hard to believe that most of us experience that much violence personally, in our daily lives. Not in proportion to the amount of violence we consume as entertainment.

Or perhaps the violence in storytelling is a form of wish fulfilment. As a teacher, I’m well aware of how much time we spend teaching kids NOT to solve their problems with their fists. Watching an animated fight could be viewed as a safe release for dark impulses.

Nevertheless, I was startled to realize how often I, myself, built in a gigantic battle to settle things at the ends of my stories. It wasn’t something I had really thought about. In the accepted frameworks, that’s the way it’s supposed to be done.

Still, it became my personal challenge to write stories where characters solve their problems in some other way than through battle.

For the past two years, I’ve been working on a novella series, Minstrels of Skaythe, where the protagonists try to live peacefully in a dark and dangerous world. In Skaythe, the evil mage Dar-Gothul is an absolute ruler who has twisted the world in his image. Mages are the ruling class, whose magical power gives them the right to do whatever they wish. Selfishness and betrayal are “good.” Showing concern for others is “bad.” My good mages quietly move through the land, disguised as minstrels. They share moments of peace and harmony through their arts. For this, they are branded as renegades.

In the first novella, The Tower in the Mist, one of the minstrels is arrested for the crime of singing a love song. Keilos doesn’t fight back, but instead reacts with basic courtesy. The hunter-guards, led by Sergeant Zathi, are genuinely freaked out by his strange behavior. Captors and captive have adventures that require them to work together, but not all of the hunter-guards can let go of their assumptions about what’s “good” and “bad.”

In the second novella, Dancer in the Grove of Ghosts, Tisha is a gifted healer. She’s decided to undo a curse cast by Dar-Gothull himself. On the way there, she encounters a gravely wounded guardsman. Common sense would say Cylass is her enemy. It’s sheer folly to help him, but Tisha follows her own moral code. Devoted to peace, she tries to show Cylass a different path “” and risks betrayal by the one she saved.

While writing it, I played with the idea that comrades on a quest always have a strong bond of friendship and are working for a common goal. Setting them so much at odds brought a deeper tension to the tale.

Currently I’m in revisions of a third novella, The Ice Witch of Fang Marsh. Here I directly countered the idea that the tale has to end in a gigantic battle. I built the story toward that typical climax, but then the two antagonists talked, instead.

I have to say, the ending as written feels… weird. Like the conflict isn’t really over. My beta readers both said the same. Not that the ending was bad, or felt forced, just that they hadn’t seen that approach before.

Unsettled as it is, this outcome is what’s true to the characters. They had a previous relationship that allowed them to talk things out. Or maybe it’s that they were two women, with an instinct toward collaboration rather than combat.

Will this ending satisfy anyone besides me? Good question! I’m having a great time with Minstrels of Skaythe, exploring alternatives to the nagging prevalence of violence in storytelling. If you’re up for the challenge of a slightly strange outcome, I hope you’ll check out my novellas, The Tower in the Mist and Dancer in the Grove of Ghosts.

BIO: Deby Fredericks has been a writer all her life, but thought of it as just a fun hobby until the late 1990s. She made her first sale, a children’s poem, in 2000.

Fredericks has six fantasy novels out through two small presses. More recently, she self-publishes her fantasy novellas and novelettes, bringing her to 13 books in all. Her latest is The Tower in the Mist. Her short work has been published in Andromeda Spaceways and selected anthologies.

In addition, she writes for children as Lucy D. Ford. Her children’s stories and poems have appeared in magazines such as Boys’ Life, Babybug, Ladybug, and a few anthologies. In the past, she served as Regional Advisor for the Inland Northwest Region of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, International (SCBWI).

You can find out more on her website or follow her on Twitter. Here’s a teaser for her novella Dancer in the Grove of Ghosts, available at Amazon and other retailers:

“He’s dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Mortally wounded, Cylass is abandoned on the battlefield by comrades who would just as soon have him out of the way. But as he waits for death, a strange savior appears. The dancer, Tisha, heals him with her forbidden magic, but also draws the wrath of his cruel former lord.

Soon guardsman and renegade mage are on the run. Will Cylass help Tisha, as she helped him? Or will he do the smart thing, and turn her over to the vicious Count Ar-Dayne?

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!