Hey, so here’s a cool thing: Montana Book Company, a truly excellent bookstore in the heart of every LGBT-centered fight in the state of Montana, is marking today’s Trans Day of Visibility by donating a portion of today’s profits into a pot to continue the fight against discrimination in their state.
To quote the store directly —
“…during these legislative tough times we’re going to do what we do best…GIVE MONEY AWAY!!! A portion of Friday’s entire day of sales will go into a kitty that we will dole out to the appropriate organizations who take these anti-trans bills to court here in Montana. So come down and help us help the amazing people who are going to take these terrible laws on.”
It befell in the days of Arthur Pendragon that there lived a thief and a lover of men called Tomas, the Red Rose Knight… When Tomas O’Lincoln, half-fairy and outlaw, learns that knights from Camelot hunt him in the forest, he fears he must pay for his crimes. Desperate for shelter, the Enchantress sends him on a reluctant quest to find his way to the Fortress Impenetrable, deep in the darkling heartwood. Only behind the high black walls of the Archimago’s castle will Tomas learn a Truth Most Vital and come face-to-face with his destiny… But is it a destiny he wants?
Bawdy, humorous and magical, ‘The Dust of the Red Rose Knight’ is a queer Arthurian romance from the acclaimed author of The Ben Garston Novels, in the finest tradition that never was.
‘A stylish Arthurian romp offering swords, sorcery and witches seen through a contemporary comic prism.’ — Juliet E McKenna
‘A joyous romp of a thing that will no doubt annoy all the right people. A most excellent addition to Arthurian legend.’ — James Oswald author of ‘The Inspector McLean’ novels
***
King Arthur never died. Oh, I know that the myths said he did, fallen to his bastard son at the Battle of Camlann and sleeping somewhere in a cave until a time when Britain needs him again. I explored as much in my post-Arthurian trilogy The Ben Garston Novels, published worldwide by Orbit Books. There is still so much to tell in that world, if not directly connected to those stories, and I thank kickass writer Chuck Wendig for letting me waffle about the subject here today.
As I prepared to release my sort-of-spinoff novelette The Dust of the Red Rose Knight, I considered the long history of Arthurian retellings and it was plain to see that, no, Arthur Pendragon, Dux Bellorum, the Bear, Subduer of Giants, Conqueror of Saxon and Pict, the King of All Logres, has been with us the whole time, one of our most abiding mythographies. These stories have always struck me as an example of the noblest heights of human endeavour, along with the peril of pursuing perfection, the poison of betrayal, and eventual downfall. All heady stuff!
Where did you first find Arthur? In the hills? Under a mountain? Travel in Britain and you’ll find Arthur everywhere, from old stones to pub signs to theme parks, each laying claim to our cherished national tradition. For me, I found Arthur in the pages of Susan Cooper’s seminal The Dark Is Rising sequence. Or perhaps in the tales of Roger Lancelyn Green. These tales themselves are retellings, of course, going back centuries to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859) and back again to Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) and again to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain (1136) and then spinning on into the mists of Welsh myth and who knows how many previous iterations? Arthur has paraded on screen, in music and in comic books throughout the modern era. Hell, you can buy tea towels that feature Arthur. Some historians even suppose that Arthur was a real person, a Romano-Celtic war leader who inspired all of these stories, which Monmouth greatly embellished to give the English nobility some form of numinous and indisputable source.
Yes, King Arthur has always been here, threaded in various shape and form through the famous works of Mark Twain, TH White, Mary Stewart, Rosemary Sutcliff and others. Innocent, martyr, tyrant, zombie (yes, I went there) and more… Visit any bookshop and you’ll find Arthur, most notably in recent times in Bernard Cornwell’s grounded outing The Winter King, Lavie Tidhar’s grimdark take in By Force Alone, the upcoming The Cleaving by Juliet McKenna and the magical gender-swapping of Nicola Griffth’s standout 2022 novel Spear. Fair to say that Arthur is hardly dozing under a rock somewhere. Nope. Our particularly British adaptation of the Bible myth (messiah, betrayal, reincarnation – it’s all there) has remained a central, vital and possibly immortal part of our collective cultural consciousness for age upon age.
We all know Arthur, don’t we? As a character, he’s impressive, a Chosen One from a backwater briar who pulled a sword from a stone and rose to a shimmering throne, but he’s perhaps too well-trodden to write about distinctly. Thankfully, there were offshoots from the central saga that have gone overlooked, forgotten, dusty and lingering on the fringes of classical literature. One such figure is Tom a Lincoln, that ‘ever renowned soldier’, the Red Rose Knight. The Most Pleasant History of Tom a Lincoln was an Arthurian oddity written in two parts in the late 16th and early 17th century by a (then) well-known Elizabethan writer called Richard Johnson. Johnson himself became more obscure than the character in question and not much is known about him these days. We know he lived in London, an apprentice and later freeman who was the author of chapbooks, almanacs and devotionals that featured the Nine Worthies and the Champions of Christendom, the fantastical adventures of the saints who served as the superheroes of the day. It seems that Johnson, popular at the time, is rather eclipsed by Shakespeare when it comes to our historical regard.
During the upheaval of the 17th century, the Arthurian tradition fell out of favour, with the notion of kings and queens itself coming under attack (and some overthrown and beheaded to boot). Back then, Arthur became more of a political device than a romantic one, the followers of James I heralding him as the ancestor and heir of the legendary king, a dubious claim at best. When James made a bid for absolute power, his fabled origin got trashed as a result with many insisting that Britain was in fact a Saxon nation, founded upon the ancient laws of those people, and thereby distancing themselves from a perceived Welsh and Celtic threat. As the dispute exploded into civil war, Arthur got ‘cancelled’ and all but vanished from the literary scene, sinking into the smoke and mists of history. Ironically, after 1634 saw the publication of Sir Thomas Malory’s weighty and tragic epic Le Morte d’Arthur, Arthur himself didn’t fully re-emerge from his cave for two whole centuries.
And Tom a Lincoln was politely forgotten. When you consider Johnson’s bastardisation of the original text, a winding yarn about a low-born hero, plus the non-canonical mash-up of mythical figures ranging from Prester John to Robin Hood (not to mention the themes of theft, adultery and cannibalism(!) in the tale), it isn’t hard to see why his prose was popular at the time, challenging as it does the divine right of kings and poking fun at the nobility. Nor why the prudish Victorians coughed behind their handkerchiefs and swept poor Tom under the rug. The grand revival of the myth in those times left the Red Rose Knight in the dust.
Today, scholars regard Tom in less than glowing terms. Seen through the lens of a modern perspective, The Most Pleasant History of Tom a Lincoln is admittedly critical of aristocracy, a misogynistic and staunchly anti-romantic outing that while reprinted several times in its own era was never going to make the cut in a more forward-thinking and inclusive world. But the figure of Tom himself remains fascinating nonetheless. If one were to draw on the essential threads of it, rework it into a modern retelling and naturally, queer it to kingdom come, then surely one might redeem the character – after a fashion – and present him afresh for today’s audiences.
Have to say, the idea appealed. When Alistair Sims of Books on the Hill contacted me about his ongoing ‘dyslexia-friendly books for adults’ campaign, I fired up my chaos engines and decided to have a crack at it. Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects reading and writing skills. The NHS estimates that up to 1 in every 10 people in the UK have some form of dyslexia, while other dyslexic organisations believe that more than 2 million people in the country are severely affected by the condition, from children to adults, and ostensibly many more worldwide. To call on major publishers to consider releasing dyslexia-friendly books struck me as an inclusive, progressive and noble cause, and the campaign has garnered much praise in the national press, attracting works from bestselling authors such as Peter James, Bernard Cornwell and Gareth Powell (Further information can be found here: https://www.booksonthehill.co.uk/dyslexic-friendly-books-for-adults-/)
And now it’s my turn with Tom a Lincoln. As a lifelong sufferer of dyscalculia, the numerical form of dyslexia, and with a love of all things Arthurian, I put my mind to writing something for the campaign. The result was The Dust of the Red Rose Knight, a fairy tale romp for adult readers in which I was able to retain Tom’s wayward, raunchy and fiercely independent character and send him forth on a brand new adventure. The historical resonance that Tom is doing so in a slender volume much like an Elizabethan chapbook isn’t lost on me. Our dubious hero gallops out of the past in red leather armour with a macaw feather stuck in his cap, mischief in his heart and an eye for the knights. At heart, this is a tale of gay emancipation, high adventure and derring-do, and it’s as gleefully anti-romantic as it gets in these terms. But what fun! And it’s such an honour to add, in my own small way, to the long, rich history of Arthurian retellings.
You see, Arthur isn’t dead. Far from it. Nor is Tom. Nor is any old story that finds a reader, brought back to life whenever we crack open a book.
I hope readers enjoy The Dust of the Red Rose Knight. Perhaps, if fortune is kind, then Tom a Lincoln will ride out again.
***
James Bennett is a British writer raised in Sussex and South Africa. His travels have furnished him with an abiding love of diverse cultures, history and mythology. His short fiction has appeared internationally and his debut novel ‘Chasing Embers’ was shortlisted for Best Newcomer at the British Fantasy Awards 2017. His latest fiction can be found in the well-received ‘The Book of Queer Saints’, BFS Horizons and The Dark magazine. Novella ‘The Dust of the Red Rose Knight’ comes out in March 2023 and a short story collection ‘Preaching to the Perverted’ is set to follow next year from esteemed publisher Lethe Press.
James lives in the South of Spain where he’s currently working on a new novel.
Psst. You wanna hang out with me and Kevin Hearne? Welp, we’re coming up to Saratoga Springs on April 28th to give a talk at Northshire Bookstore. (Details here.) We will chat, and then answer questions, and then sign some books, birds, babies, anything you bring that starts with the letter ‘b.’ It’ll be great. You should come by! We put on a whole show, and by “whole show,” I mean, we’ll probably talk about tacos and cocktails? Whatever, it’ll be great.
So, nab your tickets now. Five bucks goes toward the price of one of our books. They will have books for sale, and you can also bring books from home because, well, we know we’ve got a lot of them out there.
Given recent news, and given that any time such news tends to surface, it feels like it’s time for my semi-annual reminder that I have nothing to do with the lawsuit against the Internet Archive, which I said last year, and also, a whole bunch of times before that. To reiterate what I said then:
I am not leading the lawsuit.
I did not inspire the lawsuit.
I am not its ringleader or its kickstarter.
I did not influence the lawsuit.
I have never been a part of it. At all.
I do not support the lawsuit.
I recognize the convenience of having a single person to place at the bottom of the shit-funnel. But despite that convenience, I am not the person behind any of this, in any way. And as I’ve noted before, you’re helping publishers by making me the face of this. They skate. I catch hell. I recognize that it’s a lot easier to blame me, and that schadenfreude is a helluva drug. But I assure you, my Bad Tweet — which I posted during a very bad time, which is to say, at the start of pandemic lockdowns, when everybody felt like yellowjacket wasps at the end of summer — was not in any way a contributing factor to the publishing lawsuit. We were trapped in our houses. Things were weird. Everybody was nervous. Writers and artists and freelancers had no idea what was going to happen next. We were bleaching our broccoli and washing our hands bloody. It was fucked up. Sorry.
As such, there is this continued assertion that I somehow campaigned against the IA, or that I led this charge, and I assure you, I didn’t. I didn’t email my publishers. I didn’t “get the ball rolling.” Publishers don’t listen to me. My impact on their decisions is zero. I don’t control them, don’t influence them, don’t even factor into their plans (and if I was that powerful, I’d have a very different career right now). I joined a chorus and tweeted without thinking, because writers were upset and so I got upset, too. That’s sometimes how social media goes. I said it was a mistake a long time ago and I continue to say it was a mistake now.
Here, you’ll find Chris Freeland of the Internet Archive kindly noting that, again, I’m not involved.
I understand you want this invaluable resource to remain, and the good news is, there are ways to continue your support of the Internet Archive that don’t involve me. You can find the full text of the Fight for the Future letter here, and you can also go to where the Internet Archive lists ways to help. One of those ways is donating, as I have done before and have done again, today, to support them. (And while we’re at it, support your local libraries, who are under assault from conservative forces in this country, same as schools are, for supporting LGBT folks and other marginalized communities. Further, libraries are also often quite fucked by publishers, so they need that help as often as you can give it.)
Anyway, if you support this IA?
Then this is how you help them. Signal boost them, give them time and, when possible, give them money. Going after me is the opposite — as Jason Scott notes, it does not make you an ally to the IA. You’re doing work for the other side. Go and support the archive. They are appealing, and need your help.
Right now, the lovely Gibson’s Bookstore is running a pre-order sale on books — which means you can in fact get BLACK RIVER ORCHARD from them at 25% off. Which you should do. Because otherwise you will make the apples MAD.
BIG MAD.
Click here to pre-order. They will send directly to you! It’s like magic! BOOK MAGIC. And the goal too is to do an event at Gibson’s for this book in the fall, by the way. No dates or anything concrete as yet, so more as I know it.
SPEAKING OF COOL EVENTS
Hey, who’s going to be talking with Lucy Snyder at Doylestown Bookshop on Monday, March 13th? It’s-a-me. We’ll be talking her newest, Sister Maiden Monster, out from Tor. Event details here.
(Also, though it’s not confirmed, I maaaaayyyyy also be doing an event there with Clay McLeod Chapman in June. More as I know it.)
And did you see the cool panel I did with P. Djeli Clark, Delilah Dawson, CJ Leede, and Jonathan Sims? Moderated by our collective Horror Mother, Sadie Hartmann? Go watch!
Finally, hey, the Italian-language edition of Wanderers is out, cover here:
In writing and in dispensing my (very dubious, probably shady) writing advice, I am often keen to note that ideas are bullshit. Most writers treat them like precious gems when really, ideas are like costume jewelry: it’s all about how you wear them. It comes up because a lot of younger or untested writers I meet are all about The Idea. And they ascribe failures to finish with failing to have a Good Idea. They sometimes don’t even start to write because they cannot even summon a Good Idea. And the reverse can be true, too: sometimes, The Idea feels like enough. These writers have An Idea, and they’ll tell it to you, and then it’s like — well, they’re done. That’s it. They have ideated. The cool part is over. Lightning struck! They are complete.
But again, the idea is a seed, that’s it. Ideas are certainly useful, but only so far. A good idea will not be saved by poor execution, but a bad idea can be saved by excellent execution. Even simple, pedestrian ideas can be made sublime in the hands of a powerful craftsman or artist. Not every idea needs to be revolutionary. Every idea needn’t be that original — I don’t mean to suggest the plagiarism is the way to go, I only mean in the general sense, it’s very difficult (and potentially impossible) to think of a truly original story idea that hasn’t in some form been told before. The originality in a narrative comes from you, the author, the artist. The originality comes out in the execution.
It is there in the effort.
(And any writer or artist will surely experience the fact that the execution of an idea helps to spawn more new ideas within the seedbed of that singular garden. Put differently, driving across country is so much more than plugging the directions into Google Maps — when the rubber meets road, when you meet obstacles, when there are sights to see, you change the journey and the journey changes you, because choices must be made.)
And herein lies the problem with the sudden surge and interest in artificial intelligence. AI-generated creativity isn’t creativity. It is all hat, no cowboy: all idea, no execution. It in fact relies on the obsession with, and fetishization of, THE IDEA. It’s the core of every get-rich-quick scheme, the basis of every lazy entrepreneur who thinks he has the Next Big Thing, the core of every author or artist or creator who is a “visionary” who has all the vision but none of the ability to execute upon that vision. Hell, it’s the thing every writer has heard from some jabroni who tells you, “I got this great idea, you write it, we’ll split the money 50/50, boom.” It is the belief that The Idea is of equal or greater importance than the effort it takes to make That Idea a reality.
AI-generation relies on the idea, and executes upon it. (Often poorly — it can’t draw hands, it can’t help plagiarizing, it can’t not spit out the biases of its makers. Though note: it’ll get much, much better going forward. Its errors will become more invisible, and thus, more pernicious until it’s too late.) This sudden interest in AI has no interest in work. It has all the interest in doubling down on the fetishization of idea — like Tony Stark or Shuri in the MCU, all you have to do is — y’know, besides being rich — tell your free-roaming artificial intelligence friend to simulate a wormhole or design a new weapon, and it’ll do it. Who needs actual science? Who cares about effort? Just give Ultron the instructions and he’ll make it so. Who needs execution? Who needs institutional knowledge? Who needs hands-on experience? All you need is A GREAT IDEA and COOL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and you’re off to the races, baby.
When it comes to making art and telling stories, the working writer and the working artist know the idea is really just a phantom. It’s something under the floorboards or behind the drywall. Present, yes, maybe even foundational, but the idea isn’t the house. Further, it’s certainly not the home. It’s more than just the keystone, more even than the structure you build around it. It’s in the choices made, it’s in the people who live in that house, the stories they experience inside it, and though this metaphor is definitely running away with itself, hopefully my point is clear — storytelling isn’t just a structure. It isn’t just physics, or a spreadsheet to fill out, or a series of data points on a graph.
And this is where I point you to Lincoln Michel’s very very good “The Unnecessary Is The Only Thing Necessary In Art” — while not about artificial intelligence, I think it plugs in a bit in that there is this occasional and maybe even increasing view that somehow there are Essential Components to storytelling, that if you plug in the right Plot Variables that is how the Art Calculator makes narrative. But story is far deeper, far stranger than all that, and it is certainly more than just Canonical Information or a Sequence of Events. Artificial intelligence, though, would view storytelling through this lens: it would distill it down to wires and pipes. It wants very hard to generate a house, but has no idea how to make it a home.
Michel correctly notes: “But the best way to experience art is to experience it. Not to spend your time debating if every shot or sentence or lyric is necessary. What is the point of a flower in a painting? What is the necessary number of verses in a song? What is the utility of the archaic torso of Apollo?” And again, he’s talking about a whole different situation — this puritanical (and if I may note, fascist-adjacent) notion that sex in storytelling shouldn’t be present unless it’s necessary. (And how often do fascist-flavored critics also say this about LGBT content in books, or quote-unquote “woke” content in stories, where they say something like, Oh, I don’t mind seeing gay [or transgender, Black, etc.] characters in a story, but only when it’s necessary. As if there exists a plot equation that can be balanced and answered by the inclusion of certain diverse content and without that particular equation such content is now “unnecessary.”
As this is a post apparently in love with digression, I also make note of the great effort that is going into Book Banning across school districts nationwide, even in the blue-ish area in which I live, where the once-vaunted school district Central Bucks is now reviewing a number of sex- and LGBT- and POC-positive books to pull them out of school libraries so kids cannot access them. This shitty toxic pissypants Moms-For-Liberty-fed bullshit will harm students who need to see themselves represented and who need other kids to see them represented in books, and you’ll note that there is a similar puritanical vein shot through all of this, wherein it is believed that sex is not “necessary,” that LGBT content is not “necessary,” that reading about racism is not “necessary.” Or they use that most common of words — this material is (gasp) inappropriate. (I also note that Nazi efforts to ban and burn books began in part with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a Berlin-based institution of sexological studies that was LGBT-and-intersex-positive and that also offered access to contraceptives. The attacks on LGBT citizens, on their rights, on drag shows, on abortion, it’s the same fascist playbook run by the Nazis. Just so y’know.)
(And if you don’t think artificial intelligence couldn’t become very fascist, very fast, well, you’re not paying attention.)
To loop this all back around — because, oof, I didn’t necessarily expect to land on NAZIS in this post, though I suppose in our current climate I probably should’ve figured on landing there eventually — there exists this core notion that art and narrative are just numerical expressions, that they begin with an Idea and that storytelling is just stringing yarn along a series of thumbtacks on a board, and that there’s only value in having the idea and no value in learning how to tell the story you want to tell. We can cut out the unnecessary parts, we can let artificial intelligence handle the rest, and all we have to do is feed it our Very Good Idea. We don’t even have to split the profits with some stupid fucking “author” anymore! We can just have ideas and that is all that matters! We’ll burp them up into the world, and an AI will run with them, creating only Necessary Fiction that has the Proper Ratios in it. A perfect narrative gumbo, every time. (Admittedly, with too many fingers and too much plagiarism.)
WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY.
Except, of course, you and me, we know that’s all bullshit, right? We know that stories are more than just their inception. Stories are the author. Stories are the execution. Stories are in the human experiences, the unexpected parts, and as Michel notes, the unnecessary portions. They’re the most flavorful bits. Everything isn’t just pure protein. The flavor is in the fat, okay?
So, fuck off, AI.
Fuck off, AI storytellers.
Fuck off, AI generated images.
We must be shut of the obsession with Idea.
It’s just idea, small-i. You’re not done when you have an idea. You’ve barely even begun. The wonder is in what comes after. The wonder is in the work.
(Related: Clarkesworld post — “A Concerning Trend” — about how they’re suddenly deluged with AI-generated bullshit, which is, I fear, only going to get worse from here.)
(Also, read WANDERERS and WAYWARD, because hey, they’re both about artificial intelligence. Also, pandemics. But definitely AI, and what happens when you give AI a whole lot of power and rely on it to solve your problems! Oops!)
