The Influence of White Ants on Literature

In his remarkable near-future saga The Logos Probe, science fiction author Jack Cross presents the 2080's in such a cold, pedestrian way that you're convinced you're there. In fact, in his 2080 dystopia, some things don't seem to have changed at all. For instance, Alexander Logos - the great innovator and tycoon - reads Maurice Maeterlinck whose "The Life of The White Ant" was first published in 1927. Jack, like Maeterlinck, sees these insects as a metaphor for us - and made the mistake of showing us some early drawings of his which we insisted he post on the blog. This he has reluctantly permitted.

Over to Jack:

Maeterlink is interesting. Let me quote him:

"In the terminary, the gods of of communism become insatiable Molochs. The more they are given, the more they require. And they persist in their demands until the individual is annihilated and his misery complete."

"...illness is not tolerated and feebleness carries with it its own sentence of death."

"They used to have wings. They have them no more. They had eyes which they surrendered. They had sex which they sacrificed...   ....They might almost serve as a caricature of ourselves, as a travesty of the earthly paradise to which most civilised people are tending."

The "communist" ideal has never worked. Nothing is more pernicious than good intentions. Those who want the best for all change nothing. The worst ants still end up sitting on top of the nest. Unfortunately, the cupidity called human nature is never accepted as a constant. Show me the practical socialist and I will show you a sham - motivated by  naivete, resentment or the cunning of "fortune's slave".

The "capitalist" ethos is no better. It believes in success for the selfish. Of course,  all are selfish. But not everyone is a jackal. The Logos Probe has equal scorn for left and right.

Is there any way out of this?

By now you will have observed how each parliament rapidly becomes a House of the Rising Scum. How each new government touts the same old promises without action. A politician know that, if he does anything he will be attacked from all sides. It's far smarter to merely promise because delivery is death.

"Always vote for the opposition."

You've probably heard that sage in injunction. The idea is to prevent any party becoming entrenched - because the dreary cavalcade of our leaders becomes more venal by the year. All that ever changes are the names on the brown paper bags.

So, in The Logos Probe, Alexander Logos, doyen of the age, remains  deeply cynical while promising the earth. As the powerful have always done, absorbing duplicity at the teat.

But back to the industrious white ants...

These insects, far older than humanity, coloured my early thoughts. I even attempted a cartoon series - using them to express what I felt. I'm no artist, so the drawings were crude but, at least, they expressed what I intended. Many years later, I rediscovered these primitive strips in an old trunk forgotten in a store-room. And made the mistake of showing them to Buzzword.

Should they be posted here?  Probably not. 

But some realist with a half-full cup may care to behold the crude and youthful genesis of The Logos Probe.

Reverse Culture Shock

We asked author, academic and South East Asian expert, Pam Scott, to describe the disorientation she experiences when switching between countries. Here are her comments:

‘Where are you from?’ the woman behind the counter asked me, speaking slowly and clearly but not unkindly. Puzzled at first, it slowly dawned on me that she thought I was a foreigner to Sydney.

I had been living in Vietnam for just eight years at that time and it seemed that I no longer fitted in as an obvious local back in Australia. I didn’t know how things worked any more. Before I went away there was just one telephone company, one electricity company, one gas company in Australia. Now we had competition. I didn’t know where to even start choosing a mobile phone plan. A trip to the supermarket could also bring me undone; I felt overwhelmed by the wall of different varieties of eggs on sale. In Vietnam you bought eggs individually from a street seller, carefully balancing her laden baskets on a shoulder pole. You could select brown ones or white ones, and from what I had seen of village life in Vietnam, everything was free-range.

As I tried to settle back into Sydney, it surprised me to find that living there didn’t feel nearly as convenient as living in a so-called developing country like Vietnam. In Vietnam everything is negotiable. ‘No’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘no’; it just means you have to find another way. Nor do you have to wait a month or two for customised curtains or blinds to be made and hung. They arrive the following day. If you need to move house, you ring a truck company 15 minutes before you want to go and they’ll be there. Buying a mattress? A three piece lounge suite? Chances are the seller will put them in a cyclo and put you on the back of his motorbike and escort you and your purchases home. At no extra cost. And instead of Sydney’s unreliable public transport, there are motorbike taxi drivers on every street corner in Hanoi ready to take you anywhere.

Small-talk in social situations back in Sydney was also a challenge. I wasn’t up-to-date on the latest political policies or scandals, TV shows, ‘celebrities’, the British Royal Family, or pop stars. The Vietnam News, the only English language daily newspaper in Hanoi, didn’t go in for much trivia and certainly not Australian trivia, and the Internet wasn’t available then.

Clothes also caused me some problems. As the years passed I found myself adopting a more Vietnamese sensibility in regard to what to wear. Even when I showed the tailor a photo of what I wanted her to make, it always turned out looking a little different, a little bit Asian. My Vietnamese friends always approved, but when I wore the same clothes back in Australia I started to feel slightly wrong. So I’d buy something in Sydney only to find it didn’t quite work when I tried to wear it in Hanoi.

All of this is part of reverse culture shock and it IS a shock to discover that while you’ve been away becoming socialised into a very different society, you’ve changed, and your own society has also changed so that you no longer fit together in quite the same way. It really shocked me to be not only mistaken for a foreigner in my own country, but to feel like a foreigner there.

These days I am better prepared if I go away for a year or two. I put on my Vietnamese wardrobe and my Vietnamese attitudes and persona when I get off the plane in Hanoi or HoChiMinh City. However, it can sometimes be a bit harder to take them off again when I come home to Australia.

You'll find Pam's three latest eBooks at Buzzword Books.

The Writing Scam

To kick off the vestigial Buzzword Blog, we asked commissioning editor D. S. Mills to pen us a some kind of rave. Here is the result:

Who knows what happens when you start an on-line publishing company? Possibly little or nothing. But, for authors, the advantage is freedom, often from creeping stupidity.

For instance, several of our writers have received rave reviews from major print publishers and further accolades from leading international literary agents. Did publishers shower them with roses? No.

It brings to mind the old saying: 'Enough of your compliments. More of your purse!' So what is happening in the land of cash and carry literature? The advent of the internet and building sales for eBooks, have seen the always impossibly difficult process of having a book accepted revert to snowflake-in-hell status, even for some established writers.

What is going on?

As we entered this post-literate age , publishers found their margins increasingly squeezed. Soon editorial staff were mortified to find the sales manager and accountants assuming editorial decisions based on promotional possibilities. With the bean counters and salesmen resurgent, the list narrowed to the usually unsuccessful 'sure things'.

Then the uneasy balance between art and commerce, that had remained half decent in the established houses, tipped completely toward the bottom line.

One casualty was the slush pile. The large trade houses got rid of it and even many of the independents refused to see unagented submissions. This meant that literary agents became the sifters, the quasi editorial staffers.

Then writers found agents even harder to acquire than publishers. But did this deter the industry that hangs off the ditsy lust for publication?