Virtual Mode

by Piers Anthony

  So what happened in the three months of this writing? A slew of things, professional, personal, and in between. I started in mid-Dismember and finished in Marsh—and in this period I learned that the 1990 Xanth Calendar from which these months are borrowed sold well enough to leave me with a probable fifty per cent loss of the money I invested in it. Apparently the publisher underprinted, so that many stores never got it, and many sold out and could not get new stock. I even received a letter from a reader with a wonderful idea: why didn't I do a Xanth Calendar? So much for getting the news spread! I did the Calendar for love rather than money, and feel the artists did a fine job, and there will be similar calendars following, but an ongoing losing proposition can not endure indefinitely. Sigh.

  We had an extremely mild winter—possibly the warmest Jamboree and FeBlueberry since American records began, which is a bad sign considering the question of the global warming trend. But just before Christmas Florida was hit by one of its worst cold waves. We live in the middle of a tree farm on a peninsula in Lake Tsoda Popka, and our climate is moderate compared to that of the region, which is mild enough. But our thermometer dropped to 16°F, and we had a light snow flurry—the first I've seen personally in thirty years in the state—and most of our decorative plants died. We had been given a set of poinsettias by this publisher the year before, and we planted them and they grew very nicely and were just starting to turn their top leaves from green to red in the style of that plant, when the freeze destroyed them. Sigh.

  And the mail. I answered 166 letters in Dismember, 160 in Jamboree, and 205 in FeBlueberry. I had tried using a secretary for a year and a half, but discovered that I wasn't cut out for dictating letters; I'm a lot less intelligent and literate when I speak than I am when I write, perhaps because I can revise what I write when I see it on the screen. I hated seeing the stupid words I spoke go out. So finally I returned to typing them myself, and my wife did the filing. I found that I could take two days off a week and do up to 50 letters that way, and that sufficed. The other five days I had to write my novels, trying for 3,000 words of novel text a day, in addition to perhaps 2,000 words of related and unrelated notes. I use my "Bracket" system, you see: whenever the going gets difficult in the novel, which may be every few minutes, I go to my notes file and enter a dialogue with myself, exploring the problem and possible solutions, until I work it out. Many a week I didn't make my target, because there is more to a writer's life than text and correspondence—phone calls to/from agents, business associates, relatives, and fans also take time—and sometimes I try to sneak in a little leisure with my family. I feel properly guilty when I do that, but it happens. In this period I received a package of letters from one publisher dating back as far as nine months. I answered them immediately, but some did come back for want of a current address. I hate that.

  I see a parallel between Darius' situation as Cyng of Hlah-tar and my own with respect to my readers: publishing my books multiplies the joy I bring to others, but fan mail depletes my resources. I can not keep answering indefinitely. One fan pointed out that I won't be able to cut down on letters as long as I keep writing Author's Notes, because the Notes make me seem like a person and a person can be written to.

  But somehow I don't want to feel less like a person. So I struggle along, my responses getting later and briefer, knowing that this, like the Xanth Calendar, is probably doomed to extinction in due course.

  There are limits, however. On FeBlueberry 26 I received three separate solicitations for fund-raising auctions. Each wanted me to contribute an autographed book of mine, or some other item they might sell to raise money for their worthy purposes. Now at first glance this seems reasonable, but I have been on the receiving end of so many such solicitations that my perception has shifted. My objection is based on two main factors. First, the cost to me, considering the value of my time expended in preparing, packaging, and mailing an item, is probably substantially more than it will sell for at the other end. Thus it is a losing game, overall; if I wanted to contribute, it would be cheaper for me to send a check. Second, while stocking libraries and such is good, I feel the cost ought to be bome by the community that library serves, rather than folk like me, who will never see it. Such solicitations in their essence boil down to transferring the cost to strangers. I once received a letter from a young man who had decided to become a millionaire by soliciting money from every address he could get; the principle is the same. So a library is a more worthy cause than a greedy person; that simply suggests that the end justifies the means. I feel the means is unjustified, and I oppose it on principle. At first I did contribute to such efforts, until I had a request for copies of every one of my titles, plus manuscripts and magazines, to be shipped overseas at my expense. Thereafter I wrote letters explaining why I did not. This day I decided to stop responding to them at all. Call me ungenerous if you will. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

  What kind of fan mail do I get? Mostly compliments on my novels (thanks), requests for pictures (I ran out long ago), and suggestions for future writing (but I have plenty of my own ideas). But some are different. One letter in Dismember was from a woman who had not read my books, but she informed me that I was ignorant and sarcastic. Why? Because her friend had asked me how I really felt about fan mail, and I replied that I'd rather be writing my novel. I responded to her politely, inquiring how she would feel if she had to answer up to 160 letters a month which squeezed out all her free time and some of her working time at her own expense, and someone asked how she felt about it, and she said candidly that she'd rather have more time to herself, and that person then called her ignorant and sarcastic. I received no response. Well, that's one way to cut down on mail. God preserve us from the self-righteous.

  Another was from a woman who had read the rape scene in Unicorn Point and declared herself an ex-Anthony reader. I replied that I was sorry to lose her, but that when a person does something another person deems unconscionable, the latter has little choice but to withdraw support. I mentioned that I had just done something similar myself. Oh, you want to hear about that? Well, hang on; this is a major discussion.

  More than a year back I heard from a prisoner who had murdered his girlfriend. It was a brutal and to my mind pointless crime for which he was condemned to death. He was politically conservative and believed in the death penalty. His quarrel with the system was that his lawyer kept making appeals on his behalf which he didn't want. He had committed the crime and deserved to die for it, and he was frustrated by the continual delays.

  Now, I am politically liberal, and I don't like the death penalty. That does not mean I like murder. I don't like killing, whether it is done by private enterprise or the state. I don't like killing animals either, which is why I am a vegetarian. No need to belabor my philosophy here; you are welcome to read all about me in my autobiography, Bio of an Ogre, and if your local bookstore doesn't carry it, don't kill the proprietor, just reason sweetly with him. As Ferrovius reasoned all night with a pagan, in G. B. Shaw's Androcles and the Lion, and in the morning not only was the man a Christian, his hair was as white as snow. The pacifistic approach can work wonders when practiced by ogres. I'm sure your store will agree to stock the book. But I try to answer my mail without regard to the nature of the letter writer (well, junk mail gets checked and thrown away), and so I answered the murderer's letters. I made no bones about my sympathy for the victim of his crime, and agreed that he had a right to insist that he pay the penalty in his fashion. You see, I believe in the right to life, and also in the right to death, so I support legislation to allow patients to say no to heroic measures used to prolong their lives in the face of terminal maladies. Note that I do not say that all killing is wrong, just that I don't like it. Absolutes are hard to come by, for those of liberal persuasion, and truth does generally seem to be a shade of gray.

  Well, the murderer wrote again, and I answered, and it continued. Sometimes I will cut off a too-persistent correspondent, because I really do
have other things to do than to engage in frivolous dialogue, but this person's letters were serious and well thought out. It turned out that I was the only one who did keep up with him; his friends and family did not. He assumed it was because I cared for him. No, I was simply being true to my standard. But as long as the correspondence continued, I thought I might as well learn something useful, such as why would a man murder a woman who by his own account was true to him and wanted nothing but good for him? Men murder women every day; is it just their way of proving how macho they are, or do they do it to prevent the women from moving on to other men? If we could only fathom a common underlying motive, and discover how to abate the situation before an innocent person gets killed, we might spare the world much grief. In this case there turned out to be no simple answer.

  The murderer expressed interest in science fiction and supernatural phenomena, such as flying saucers. That sparked a notion. I suggested that he write to a fanzine: that is, one of the amateur magazines of the genre where pros and fans exchange remarks in the letter columns. I gave him information on the best one I knew, considering its frequency of publication, the variety of interests of its contributors, and its open-forum philosophy. I had been writing to it for years, taking on its hard-core conservatives. I had addressed the feminists: "I am a man. I like looking at women. That does not make me a sexist." Indeed, I support much of the feminist agenda, and I value the company and input of women. I suspect I receive more fan letters from women than most writers of this genre, and I often have female protagonists who are sympathetically portrayed, as you may have seen in this novel. I also took on reviewers: I believe that a reviewer should indicate how well a book relates to the needs or desires of its readers, rather than pushing a private agenda. Gun control—I favor it, though the case is not clear-cut. Minimum wage—I favor raising it to keep pace with inflation. Affirmative action—I favor it, not as ideal, but the only practical way to redress a long-standing wrong. In fact, if you run your finger down the classic liberal agenda—or, if you are conservative, poke your finger up at it—you will find me there most of the time. One major exception is abortion; I don't like it because of my objection to killing. But I don't like the anti-abortionists either, because they seem to have little regard for the welfare of mother or baby and generally don't seem to support the obvious method of not having babies: contraception. I took on all comers in this fanzine, being one of two blatantly liberal writers to do so, and as I see it, we showed up the conservatives as ignorant and mean-spirited clods. But fairness requires that I admit that the conservatives didn't necessarily see it that way. One had a sense of humor about it: when I chided him for making sense on one issue, when I depended on him to be always wrong, he replied that it wasn't his intent to make sense. It is possible for folk to disagree and still respect each other. So I thought it would be interesting if the murderer stated his case here, and let the cynics and conservatives argue his case with him. Is the death penalty a deterrent to crime, when a murderer wants to be executed and the system won't oblige? Just why does a person commit murder? Maybe such a discussion would elicit truths which would enable society to deal more realistically with crime. Such a dialogue would also give the murderer some social interaction in a limited environment, which could be a positive thing. I'm generally interested in beating swords into plowshares, philosophically.

  He was hesitant, but he did write to the fanzine. The fanzine editors were hesitant, but did publish his letter. The dialogue began. He made it a point to respond to all challenges or questions directed at him, and he made no apologies for his crime; he wanted truth, not sympathy. But once he had honestly addressed the matter, he wanted to get into other subjects of mutual interest. He wrote a positive letter—and the editors refused to run it.

  They explained that they had gone to a convention, and several unnamed parties had approached them and expressed dismay at the murderer's presence in the fanzine. So they cut him out, not for anything he said, but because of essentially anonymous objections to his presence. They said they did this to be fair to those hidden folk, and that they had a right to choose who would appear in their fanzine.

  Well, they did have that right. But I also had the right to withdraw my support from what I deemed to be invidious editing. I sent one letter putting my position on the line, and when they did not change their policy, I did not write again. Naturally that left me open to charges that I was a bad sport, and there were a number of insults directed at me. Another pro writer wrote in my defense, protesting the "pre-emptive smear" and upholding the principle of free speech. In fact, the "make no sense" conservative also wrote a stirring objection to their censorship. I could almost get to like conservatives like that. But the editors were adamant about their policy and about my supposed bad nature, accusing me of attacking another contributor and of calling names. Their basis for this was my suggestion that needless cruelty to animals is an early sign of sociopathic behavior, in response to the other's seeming pride in squishing spiders. Readers may remember Jumper, the spider character in Castle Rooqna. You don't see the Disney folk sit on their hands when someone disparages the Mouse; well...

  I can't say I was happy to go. I had enjoyed slugging it out with those of differing opinion, and the interactions had been by no means predominantly negative. I had trouble sleeping several nights, upset about the business. But the principle of freedom of expression is fundamental, and I simply could not allow so egregious a violation to pass. It is in the extremes that our philosophies are tested, and those of us who are serious do not set aside our ethics merely because in some cases they become inconvenient or distasteful. Does a murderer have rights too? Yes, even the worst among us must be granted their right to speak. Imagine applying the editors' logic to other cases: anonymous folk approach a city councilman, saying they don't like the presence of blacks in their neighborhood, so in fairness to them he sets up apartheid. Anonymous businessmen approach a congressman, saying they don't like foreign competition, so in fairness to them he introduces a bill to ban all imports. Anonymous fundamentalists dislike certain elements of the Catholic Church, so they have the government ban Catholicism in the name of fairness. Does that seem farfetched? There are regions where exactly such things have happened. But in America most of us disapprove of them. We believe in freedom of expression, even for those we don't like. It is part of our Constitution.

  How did the murderer react to this exclusion? He apologized for causing the magazine this trouble and asked that his subscription money be used to purchase some tapes he liked, and the balance donated for useful purposes. To my mind he acquitted himself in a more honorable manner than those editors did. I continued the correspondence with him. I believe I did come to understand the rationale for what he did, though I disagree with it. Because he spoke in confidence, I shall not describe it here, except to say that I believe it vindicates the liberal case for socially responsible activity as a preventive for disaster.

  So yes, I do understand the principle of withdrawing support from an endeavor one has previously valued. Since I am as adamant about maintaining my freedom to incorporate any elements I choose in my fiction as those editors were about their prerogatives, I can only tell readers who object to such elements to go their own ways. The woman who objected to the rape scene was not abusive or anonymous; she stated her case politely and gave her address. So she received a polite response. I do not vilify those who stand on principle, and I tend to value those who do stand on an opposing principle more than those who agree with me while lacking principle. But lest there be any question: I do not approve of rape. I merely defend my right to show rape onstage, as one of the evils of society.

  So I departed that fanzine, disliking the smell. The editors are probably still wondering why professionals are so touchy. I had supported the publication with money, letters, and recommendations. I gave it one last item: my report on the convention where I had met Jenny, the girl paralyzed by a drunk driver, and that was it. I left no
t only because of what had been done, but because the editors were unwilling or unable to grasp why they were wrong. It marked the probable end of my active participation in fanzine fandom, because this had been one of the best fanzines. What are the worst like? Don't ask!

  Ah yes, that brings up Jenny. She has been discussed more fully in the Xanth series, where she has become a character, and you may have met her as Jenny Elf in the graphic edition of Isle of View. For those who haven't, a compressed recap: in FeBlueberry of 1989 I received a letter telling me how a twelve-year-old girl had been struck by a drunk driver and almost killed, and had remained almost three months in a coma. I wrote to her, and my first letter did bring her out of the coma. I continued to write, though she remained paralyzed and mute and could not respond. Later I attended a convention in her area, so I could meet her. She was treated well there, and I believe she enjoyed herself, though she remained so weak that most of her time was spent lying on her back. That was the report I sent to the fanzine. The significance for this novel is that during this period we passed the anniversary of my first letter to her: one year. I have an artificial rose from her corsage beside my computer screen as I type this, a memento. It resembles the roses on the clifflike structure as the novel ends; there will be more on them in the next novel. In this period Jenny resumed going to school, but not the one she had attended before; this one is for folk like her, whose needs are special. She seems to like it.

  And on to Ligeia. Ligeia is the name I gave to the first of a number of suicidal teenage girls I have heard from. All have the same name, to preserve their anonymity, because often their nature is a secret from their parents and I don't feel I have the right to betray their confidence. What have I to do with girls forty years my junior? The same as with prisoners: I answer my mail. But though I will not name them individually, I will do so collectively. This novel has considerable input from them, as you may have guessed. Colene represents a composite of these bright and tormented creatures. If you know a girl exactly like Colene, she is not any of my sources, because none is that close to her overall.