It’s sad and incredibly discouraging, but a lot of authors don’t achieve recognition until they’re cold stone dead. Take Jane Austen for example. She worked her ass off on her stuff to very little acclaim, but now that she’s dead, she’s highly respected…and I agree; her work is wonderful. It seems Emma Thompson does, too. I can’t wait to see how she interprets the next Austen novel they make into a movie. Maybe someday she’ll play Jane herself, but they’re going to have to jazz her life up a little to make it intesting.
Emily Dickinson is another one, but I can’t decide whether she saw through the bullshit from the start or was just being a New England lady who was proper for the time. Like Jane, her life was kind of dull, one of unrelenting sameness it seems, but there was fire inside, a soul screaming to escape. Her poetry smolders with it, even when she writes about the most mundane and commonplace things imaginable. Emily is one of my favorites, suffering in rhyme and beauty.
We writers are like ants at a picnic, uninvited, intrusive, often resented, and best squashed when discovered. People know ants don’t really matter all that much, and they seem to feel about the same when it comes to authors. They don’t usually kill them. They let them wither on the vine, relinquishing all judgment until history…or critics, those awful people…decide which ant was worthwhile and which was only an ant.
I’m not a patient soul like Jane and Emily…or even ants, but there is urgency in what I’ve been writing about…and endlessly talking and blogging about. It’s happening RIGHT NOW…and right here. I wonder how long it will take before people realize things are changing…in a lot of ways…and mostly for the worst. One cold winter does not erase the possibility of a dangerously warming world. Look at the average temperatures for the past few months and tell me honestly it hasn’t crossed your mind once or twice. Walk outside and tell me everything’s like it always has been…I dare you.
Jules Verne would tell you to pay attention. Attuned to what was going on in his world, like I try to be, he turned out to be prophetic. Like Jules, I don’t enjoy writing about the unimaginably distant future, even though I did that…a little…in Kukulkan, the sequel to Dawn on Earth. I had to; one guy lived a thousand years, but as a writer, I much prefer the dramatic possibilities imbedded in looking back from the near future to the recent past…to what’s happening now…with regret.
Old Jules knew the future was hopelessly vague, unpredictable, and not a little scary, but he dared to take a shot anyway. I know, I know…he made a couple of dumb guesses, but we writers forgive him. Maybe an agent was pressing him a little too much, or more likely, maybe he was frustrated and pushed a bit too hard trying to get attention. A writer, any writer, has to do everything he can to get his ideas out…even Jules. We ants understand that sort of thing all too well.
He will remain my guidestar, Jules…whatever happens. For me, things set too far in the future are impossibly unrealistic. Who knows what our world will be like millenia from now? Not me, for sure. When I try to go too far into the future, I usually find myself describing a beautiful watery planet, lush with vegetation and myriads of new creatures…but no people. I try to keep the vision of Earth as a dead, dry world like Venus away from my thoughts, but sometimes that creeps in, too.
How about that, Jules? Pretty heavy, huh? I know you lived in a different time, one we now consider naively simple, but you did your best to tell the future it wasn’t really like that. Deep down, I hope you understand what I’m trying to say…and maybe approve. I like to think you do, but we’ll never know, will we? You’re dead, too…like all those other important writers. Sometimes, it’s kind of hard to play the hand you’ve been dealt, but what else can a body do?
Jules, someday I hope to meet you, and I’ll show you all the respect and admiration I can muster…if that’s possible where you are. Maybe Jane and Emily will come by in the afternoon…if there are afternoons wherever you are. People from their era were like that….I expect they still are. I’d love it…and pay them the homage they’ve earned, too, but in the end, more than any of you could possibly imagine, I hope you’d be welcoming to the latest, tiredest, most frustrated ant you’ve ever met.

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