The Abyss of Possibility

The Abyss of Possibility, Gordon Clarke’s second short story collection was published by Silverwood Books in the UK on 23 May 2024.

In this post is the Preface to the new book

Preface

My stories explore the distinction between what is true and what seems to be true – a struggle we all face every day. Life can be a bit like a bad movie sometimes, every small decision facing us with possibilities that seem like an abyss into which we could fall because of too little or too much information which may turn out to be fantasy, not reality. So film-making is a fascinating illustration of this theme, for what do movies do but challenge very directly the boundary between reality and fantasy. The early film makers[1], especially with silent movies, were weaving dreams to help ordinary people find a way to escape from the everyday, to be carried away out of their humdrum lives. So directors like Cecil B DeMille used hitherto unimaginable glamour, religious fervour, implied sex and enormous movie sets to create imaginary worlds.  It is no surprise that the outraged conservative forces who brought about prohibition also tried to undermine the film industry by spreading rumours about the brightest stars. No small pleasures could be permitted to the masses, lest chaos ensue.

There are immediate comparisons today with the vast trove of disinformation that spreads on the internet, such as the anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, encouraged by targeting algorithms spreading false witness, faked information and doctored photos. But ultimately, those silent stars were stabbed in the back by studio bosses more concerned with profit than truth – the super-rich ruled the roost even then. Now it is worse. We have news media and social media run by billionaires who have unimaginable power over our information input and drive the public perception of truth. One error of judgment by a social media mogul; and we can be derailed from the track of truth in an instant. Promulgating lies and disinformation masquerading as ‘free speech’ is presented as a right; but is it not a pre-eminent human right to know the truth ? To know what is really happening rather than what an algorithm wants us to believe.

So to my mind, the world is a far less comfortable place than it was a mere two years ago. First, the pandemic sliced through our pleasant existence, trailing divisive misinformation in its wake, and then, only a few days after the publication of my first short story collection ‘Someone Else’s Gods[2],’ a futile war based on historical fantasies broke out in Europe. No longer was the world a safe place and the post-war ‘long peace’ had suddenly been smashed to pieces around us.

All the more necessary therefore to explore alternative realities through fictional characters and situations and stimulate an appreciation of what truth is; because truth is important. So I hope you will enjoy in this new collection meeting again some reality-juggling characters with whom we made an acquaintance last time, as well as some new companions sharing our pilgrimage through the landscape of fact and fiction. ‘The Abyss of Possibility,’ contains some comedy which I hope will make you laugh out loud and cheer you up; some Sci Fi with the message that across the sum of all possible worlds things could actually be worse, with or without Artificial Intelligence; and some pieces that address the conspiratorial fantasies that social media has spread into the mainstream.

But there are bright spots that have kept me going through these dark times. Reading Richard Holmes’s wonderful biographies of the early 19^th Century romantic poets is one of them. That was an age in which we can all be delighted not to have lived – no ‘long peace’ in those times. Holmes describes[3] a pair of romantic European expatriates he met in Rome for whom “the borders between remote possibility and the immediate practicalities of life had become permanently blurred.” An experience with which we can all have some sympathy today. Holmes goes on to explain that:

“Much of what they said was to do with what might have happened to them, what they wanted to happen rather than what actually happened. …. but this world of possibilities was no less part of them, part of their truth as personalities, than the more normal grammar of reality and the everyday recorded fact.”

That kind of joyful escapism into the subjunctive is perhaps one solution that we can choose in a world where lobbing high explosives into someone’s living room or murdering children with automatic weapons becomes an acceptable response to the pain of existence rather than the plainly criminal act that it is.

So we live in a world of war but not of heroes. A world of intellectually barren leaders and massive cowardice. A world where truth is sacrificed for profit and sanity for atrocity. As a species, we need to think again. How do we prevent the immoral taking over our national lives and throwing us into the Abyss of Possibility. And so I present these tales to you in the hope that they will not only be a rollicking good read but will stimulate the grey matter enough to mount more than a silent protest against greed and violence. A protest that is best expressed as for Holmes’s two romantics, as what we “wanted to happen rather than what actually happened.”

If we focus enough on what we wanted to happen then maybe one day it will.

GRC Cha Am Thailand, and Rhodes Greece

November 2023

[1] I recommend Paul Merton’s series ‘The Birth of Hollywood.’ Note especially the persecution of Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, the popular colleague of Charlie Chaplin

[2] (https://www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk/someone-elses-gods-by-gordon-clarke)

[3] In ‘Footsteps – Adventures of a Romantic Biographer,’ Harper Perennial, 2005 p168