Babel Clash

Time for a bit of crass commercialization.  Sort of.

I’d like to talk about DIVINE MISFORTUNE, my new book.  It just dropped in stores a couple of weeks ago, and yes, I used the word “dropped” for my books because I figure if it’s good enough for hip hop, it’s good enough for me.

Divine Misfortune is about gods.  Gods that are a lot like people if you put aside the immortality and wrath.  I tend to write about monsters and weird characters, robots and vampires, etc., but rather than finding it becomes an obstacle toward writing about people, I find it frees me up to really explore what being human is all about.

The gods in Divine Misfortune are mythological in form and function.  They’re very human.  They’re also extremely powerful and completely immortal.  They can be hurt, sure, but nothing can kill them.  And they might like human followers for the prestige, but they don’t technically need humans.  Yet, in their perceptions and attitudes, these gods are human.  And so you take a human, make that human immortal, give that human great power, and then sit back and see what happens.

Personally, I don’t think limitations make us human.  Although these gods do have limits.  Still, compared to your ordinary, everyday human, they live by a different set of circumstances.  And what they do, how they live, is something I strive to make relatable.  Not just relatable, but even thoughtful.  If you think about it, we might not have the ability to smite our enemies, but we certainly have the ability to do great harm.  And great good.  Perhaps the biggest difference between the gods and humans is that gods don’t have the luxury of dodging the responsibilty.  Although they do.  Quite often.

The gods might be the most powerful of the strange characters I’ve explored, but they aren’t the most inhuman.  Not by a longshot.  Right now, I’d have to say that honor goes to Mack Megaton, the indestructible crushing machine protagonist of The Automatic Detective.

Mack is a robot, and I’ve always wondered just what that would be like.  If you think about it, most everything we do as a human would be pointless for a robot.  So many motivations are moot when you’re a robot.  Perhaps this is why so many robots in fiction want to be human.  It’s not because there’s anything great about being human.  It’s because a robot has to do something, and what are you going to do with him if he doesn’t want to be human.  Have him destroy humanity, of course.

It was very important to me that Mack be of neither philosophy.  I didn’t want him to envy humans, and I didn’t want to have him despise us.  Either motivation seems too one-dimensional, even for a robot.  Instead, I wanted to write a story where a robot wrestles with his purpose, his instincts, and his fellow citizens like we all do.  Mack is just a guy trying to find is way in the city, and while you’d think being nearly indestructible would make that easy, you might be surprised.

Also, I wanted to write a story where someone punches a giant, melting mutant in the face.  But that was just icing on the cake.

If there’s a central theme to what I try to do (and, yes, I am pretentious enough to suggest that there just might be), it’s that being human ain’t easy.  Even if you are a vampire, witch, or god.

And if I may be so bold as to suggest a secondary theme to my work, it’s that everyone likes watching giant, melting mutants getting punched in the face.

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