Tyree's Tuppence
by Tyree Campbell
The Truth Is Out There [In Photoshop]
I just finished reading most of the short stories in an alternate history anthology titled Hitler Victorious, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg [the latter formerly associated with Isaac Asimov and numerous anthologies], and highly recommended reading. One of the stories, "Moon Of Ice," treats of Joseph Goebbels, the excellent Nazi propagandameister, and his discovery that his words have been taken to logical and terrible extremes in the SS stronghold of Burgundy. Goebbels, like his idol Adolf Hitler, was the master of the Big Lie--more precisely, the master of developing and disseminating the Big Lie. Those who remember a bit of history might recall Goebbels' light shows at Nuremberg, with scads of uniformed troops moving precisely and irresistibly through the squares and along the avenues to the stadium, and the enormous draped flags infested with the black spider that was the swastika, and the great crowds of people standing in awe and adoration. Goebbels knew exactly what he was doing, and he did it well . . . too well.
Skip for a moment to Hypericon 2, a neat little sf/f convention held in Nashville this past April. Jason Sizemore, the amiable editor of Apex, stops by the Sam's Dot dealer table, and buys a copy of Aoife's Kiss [nice of him], and he's wearing a t-shirt on which is emblazoned an Ineffable and Immortal Truth. I feel a bit jealous. I'm wearing, in fact, a perfectly good t-shirt which bears the words "I write what the voices tell me to write," with a lightning bolt connecting the word "voices" above with the word "tell" below. Jason has gone one better. His reads: "I make up stuff."
Well, isn't that precisely what we do?
Nothing of the fiction we write is true--at least, we hope it is not. And we also hope that some of what we write does not become truth. It's fiction. We make up stuff. We present it so well [we hope] that the reader will become one with the story, will "be there" with the protagonist, but it's all fiction, it's not real.
One difference between us and Goebbles is that we do not represent our fiction as truth. At most, we say that "it could happen," or that "it might have been this way," or even "I wish this were true." And no matter how deeply we involve ourselves in reading a story, no matter how much I would like to be Kirth Gersen taking on the five Demon Princes in the Jack Vance novels, or riding Ars Longa with Oscar Gordon in Heinlein's "Glory Road," or living for a millennium like Lazarus Long . . . no matter how much I want, as I'm reading I know in some shadowy nook in the nether regions of the left occipital lobe that none of what I'm reading is real or true, it's all made up.
Goebbels took fiction--the Big Lie--and represented it as Truth. He did it so well that a nation of tens of millions of people was able to look at the pomp and circumstance and ignore the smell of bones burning in the death camps. [Ever singe your hair? Remember that smell? Multiply it by a billion, and you get the smell around death camps, even today]. These millions saw a righteous Germany revenging itself against those who had inflicted the unjust terms of the Versailles Treaty, a Gotterdaemerung Germany, with flocks of Valkyrie maidens eager to welcome the victorious solders into Valhalla, a Germany that would take its rightful place in the world as the dominant country, the master race, under the one true leader.
Great masses of people believed this. And lived their lives accordingly. And acted on those beliefs. Thanks to Joseph Goebbels.
But I've erred here. Yes, what we write is fiction. But it's fiction that represents the truth that we see. Frex, we see the ice caps melting, and we write stories of beachfront property in Keokuk. We see the possibility of microbes on Mars, and we write stories like J Alan Erwine's "The Lives Of Billions," in which the question is raised of whether it is immoral for humanity to eradicate microbes in order to live on the planet. We see senseless occupations of countries, and we write of cities turned to ashes. We write of belief in fairies, and introduce a momentary magic into someone's life.
We present our truths in fiction.
Goebbels presented his fictions as Truth.
One wonders whether now, in the year 2006, more than half a decade into the 21st Century, we are able or even willing to distinguish fiction from truth.
We're being pelted, you see, with propaganda.
If you watch television, you know that acid reflux disease is prevalent, that each SUV comes equipped with a woman who looks like Pamela Anderson, that all the Palestinians want is a homeland, and that the majority of men between the ages of 25-45 suffer from erectile dysfunction.
Until 2005 there was no such thing as "acid reflux disease." In the first place, it's not a disease, it's heartburn. In the second, the pharmaceutical company developed the [profitable] cure first, then created, through advertising, a disease for it to cure. [Got heartburn? Here's a hint: when necessary, TUMS works...][Cheap, too].
I've been to several showrooms and have yet to see Pamela Anderson sitting astride an SUV--or astride anything else, for that matter. I did see a couple of mousy . . . never mind. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the advertisements. . . maybe if I buy an SUV, Pamela will stop by for a . . . er, ride. Another good reason for not buying an SUV, I say . . .
The Palestinians have a homeland. It's called, at the moment, Jordan. It used to be called Transjordan, and before that, Palestine. One of those mandated territories, until the Hashemites snuck in and took it over. Check the history maps, you'll see.
And if you are a male between the ages of 25 and 45 and are suffering from erectile dysfunction [verrrrrry unlikely], stop eating at fast-food places. The preservatives they put in the hamburger and french fries to keep them fresh and viable have been known to cause . . . er, detumescence at . . . er, critical moments. ED phone home!
Propaganda.
All of which leads us to Reuters News Agency.
For those of you who haven't been following the news, Israel, tired of being used as target practice for Muslim rockets in Lebanon, invaded that country with the idea of neutralizing the threat from said rockets. Now, I'm not going to argue about whether the invasion was justified, and so forth. Yes, I have an opinion, but it doesn't belong here. What does belong here is the fact that a Muslim new photographer staged some horrific photographs that were accepted as accurate by Reuters News Agency, even though anyone with an IQ higher than biscuit dough could see that the photos had been "adjusted" in Photoshop. The purpose of the horrific photographs was, of course, propaganda, to show what monsters the Israelis were, targeting civilians and all [we won't go into the fact that the Muslim militants deliberately established military targets such as rocket-launching sites among the civilian populace so that if these targets were hit and destroyed, there would at least be some propaganda value from the resulting photographs].
In other words, the photographer made up stuff. And presented it as Truth.
Although he did a crude job of it [and, it seems, had a history of "adjusting" photographs for propaganda purposes], clearly the technology is available to do a better job. Next time, it might not be so easy to determine the truth. Clearly, based on television advertisements, we are open to accepting fiction as truth. Based on political announcements, we are open to accepting fiction as truth.
So how will we know, next time?
That's a good question.
Maybe one of us ought to write a story about that.
Past Tuppence:
June 2006
March 2006
December 2005
September 2005
June 2005
March 2005
December 2004
September 2004
June 2004
March 2004
December 2003
September 2003
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001
Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:
The Martian Women
by Tyree Campbell
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 4
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3
Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology
Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2