Tuesday 11 December 2001

Pic of the day: OK, so perhaps this picture from the Wrothgarian Mountains is not quite the same, but it's still kinda epic fantasy related. (Screenshot from Daggerfall.)

Caves of Tora Bora

Anyone else think that sounds like something out of a quick fantasy novel, a Tolkien clone or something? That was the thing that struck me when I heard about it on radio. The Prophet of Evil is making his last stand at the caves of Tora Bora? Just think it over. And there is more.

An evil cult takes over the country, and they outlaw music. Hello? There are limits to the suspension of disbelief. Now if this had been on of L.E. Modesitt's Liedwahr novels, where music and song are the instruments of magic, it would make sense. But prohibiting music because it is not pious enough? That's the kind of total over-the-top blackpainting that makes people lay a fantasy book aside and not pick it back up. Elves and wizards are acceptable, but there are limits! Next you'll tell me that they won't let men go outdoors until their beard is long enough ... yeah, right!

***

Osama bin Laden has not struck me as a total idiot. Mad, possibly. Evil, in so far as a mere human can be that, credibly. But not a fool. Yet, now he is presumably being chased up one hill and down another like a sheep before the wolves, and don't tell me this whole thing should have come as a surprise to him. Bush Jr talks about enemies making mistakes. I wonder if it isn't something more.

You may have heard about archetypes. The stuff of legend and dreams, archetypes like the Hero and the Good Brother & the Bad Brother and the Old Wise Man, they crop up in myths around the world. C.G. Jung found them again in dreams of ordinary people. And good fantasy novels are full of them. They seem to have an attraction that does not fade with time and use.

I wonder - when people walk far enough down the path of evil, perhaps the archetypes take over and "possess" them. They come to a point of no return, where they find themselves compelled to act out the drama of Good vs Evil all over again. Do they see before it is too late, what side they are on? Do they see what is ahead of them, and are yet unable to stop it? Or are they blinded, like most of us are, to the machinations of the subconscious, until it is too late?

***

Let us imagine a parallel world, a neighbor in the multiverse, so close to our reality but still slightly out of synch. A world in which September 11, 2001 is just another day. Except that your cosmic twin wakes up from a nap with a brain filled with horrible images. Crashing planes, burning towers, shock and outrage. Your twin sits down and writes it all down. In the weeks that follow, new pieces of the story continue to drift over, and now it is a whole novel. We have come to what seems to be one of the last chapters: "The caves of Tora Bora".

Would it meet critical acclaim? "An epic story of the war between good and evil"? Or would it be put down as "unrealistic, filled with stereotypes and one-dimensional characters"? "The main weakness of this book is the lack of a realistic adversary. The evil mastermind lacks any credible motive; and the dark genius shown in the first part of the book is completely absent toward the end, where he foolishly lets his whole 'terror network' chase like sheep all over the place. This book could have been so much better if the author had not suddenly lost his inspiration three quarters through the story."

Well, who knows. Evil overlords may go down, but the unwritten rules say that they must always have a way out. Who know what dark trickery is still brewing ... in the caves of Tora Bora.