The week is a project of SpecFicNZ, a group of passionate and wildly creative individuals I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside as we build an organisation for the support and promotion of Speculative Fiction writers in our little corner of the world.

Personally, I’ve always loved Speculative Fiction, well before I even knew of the concept. On the surface, Speculative Fiction is an umbrella term which spans across the genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror which just happen to be my 3 favourite genres.

To my mind, what the 3 genres have in common and what I love so much is that they are all stories of encounters with The Other, something that transcends the everyday, whether it’s Other worlds, Other species, Other times, or the Other hidden within us.

For me, Speculative Fiction is all about Tales of the Other.

There’s a concept in evolutionary biology called Hybrid Vigour (or Heterosis) which describes the phenomenon where a cross-breed is often a superior individual with the best qualities of both parents and novel adaptive features as well. It’s how new species are made and how Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life branches out and creates new forms to explore our planet and the Universe.

So one of the really cool things about SpecFic is that it breaks through the somewhat blurry and artificial distinctions between the 3 genres (which are partly a marketing convenience) and includes and encourages novel fusions and hybrids of those genres which includes some of my personal favourites like Steampunk and Science Noir. I think Star Wars is a Science Fantasy fusion which explains it’s wide appeal. Hybrid vigour indeed!

The link I’m making here between biology and story-telling is not an idle one.

Stories are examples of Memes, an informational parallel to genes – a way of looking at the spread and development of ideas through the eyes of evolutionary theory. In the last 150,000 years, what it means to be human has changed radically.

We discovered language.

With language has came civilisation, culture, mythology, religion, science – a veritable Tree of Narrative branching and filling our heads and our hearts. With language, ideas and experiences could now spread from mind to mind, outliving their originator and achieving a kind of immortality as different elaborations and combinations are created.

Now, this all brings me now to the New Zealand dimension.

For our size, we have an incredible diversity with multiple climates, multiple ecological niches, exotic flora and fauna which all stem from our geographic and genetic isolation.

For a lot of people outside NZ, it’s already kind of an otherworldly place. Part of what I think made NZ so right for the Lord of the Rings is that Middle Earth is like the Earth we know, but also different and mythical and the NZ landscape offered that variety and sense of the familiar yet also magical.

New Zealand also builds on our biological and ecological diversity as we’re also a memetic melting pot with multiple cultures, multiple languages, and multiple world views all rubbing shoulders. Our isolation has encouraged a kind of primal pioneering creativity, a willingness to try new things in new ways and find ways to make them work.

So I can think of no better place to be writing and supporting Speculative Fiction.

For we are truly the Land of The Other.

And we have Tales to tell.

In one of his recent posts, he talked about how he had seldom ventured into the topics of religion and evolution, despite the fact that he was quite passionate about them.

I commented that I personally wished he’d talk more about them, even though it can be rather controversial and could be a lot of work since they are topics dear to my heart and central in my thinking.

It then occurred to me that I would be being a little bit hypocritical if I didn’t do the same.

So here goes.

In a broad sense, the idea of evolution has been a constant part of my life from a very young age.

So I’ll start there.

When I was 6 or so, I was fascinated to discover the world of dinosaurs. Particularly, Tyrannosaurus Rex. They were huge, scaly, had claws and teeth for Africa, and made loud gutteral roars as they tore huge dripping chunks of flesh from their prey. As a boy, with those traits, you had me at ‘hello’.

OK, I made the last part up – no-one knows what dinosaurs really sounded like. But in my head, that’s the noise they made. As an aside, there are some recent strains of scientific thought that suggest that many dinosaurs may have had feathers, not scales. But I digress…

It wasn’t just Tyrannosaurus either. I loved all the dinosaurs I could find mention of, which was quite a few: Diplodocus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus … OK, OK, I admit I was somewhat obsessed with them.

Hey, I was a geeky kind of kid. So sue me.

Anyway, my family happened to travel down to Dunedin to see my great grandfather and grandmother. We called him ‘Granfa’ for short and he was an amazing old man. He’d lost a leg in the Great War but his mind was sharp as a tack. He used to happily play this game with me called ‘Tip It’ with 3 cups and a five cent piece. In fact, he’d play it with me all afternoon, interspersed with stories.

And I loved him for it.

My great grandmother and maiden great aunt Nath (short for Nathalie) who lived with them were a different story. They had joined the Exclusive Brethren, a fundamentalist and fairly isolationist sect of Christianity that had a community in Dunedin.

Severe and stern, I think they had decided by then that my mother and father were a lost cause. Likely because they were sure that I’d been conceived out of wedlock and had dim views of fornicators.

Anyway, they decided to focus their evangelical energies on me and my sister. They gave us our own bibles to keep and encouraged us to read them. My mother seemed to feel this was fairly harmless and didn’t intervene.

My sister was not that keen, being 4 years younger, whereas I loved books. Particularly ones without pictures that adults normally read. So I started reading it – from the beginning – I knew that was how proper books were read.

Genesis.

Aunt Nath was very pleased and encouraged by my sudden fervour for bible reading and started taking a close personal interest in me, thawing greatly and often hovering nearby, warmly offering to answer any questions I might have.

Well funnily enough, I had read Genesis by now and I did have a question. You can probably see where this is going.

Aunt Nath came in and sat down very close beside me on the bed, folding her hands over her lap and leaning forward with anticipation. This was obviously going so much better than she had hoped.

“Where is the bit about dinosaurs being created?” I asked.

Aunt Nath frowned.

“There is NO such thing as dinosaurs.” she replied, archly.

Sacrilege.

So being the helpful and enthusiastic young boy I was, I proceeded to tell her about all the dinosaurs I knew of – at great length and in great detail.  It was obvious she hadn’t had the benefit of reading all the wonderful books I had, being old and all, so I proceeded to make up for this deficit.

As she had sat so close to me, probably to secure my conversion, it was now rather hard for her to just get up and walk out without appearing extremely rude. I was rapt to have an audience so I was in full flight to her growing horror.

When I finally paused for a breath (probably about the mid Cretaceous), she leapt at this opening and offering mumbled excuses, beat a hasty retreat. I followed her out of the room, still talking and waving my arms animatedly and offering to continue my lecture later.

My mother was standing in the hallway, trying somewhat unsuccessfully to stifle a smile. She’d been keeping an ear on our conversation, probably to ensure I was safe from Aunt Nath.

Aunt Nath has never really spoken to me since.