Tales from The Magician's Skull #9

Contributor copies just arrived.

Philip is so delighted to have a story feature in this great magazine.

"Seven new sword-and-sorcery stories from some of the top talent in the industry," I note it says.

"Do you suppose they mean me, Pat?" Philip asks.

"They surely do, my boy. They surely do."

When writing historical fiction, how important is it to get the history exactly right? (Quora)

How far is history an assemblage of facts, and how far is it a product of more modern ways of thinking?

Often, what we think of as history is mostly legend, primarily viewed through the eyes of prejudice, either favourable or unfavourable.

The Romantic Movement of the early 19th Century seriously distorted modern perspectives on various historical people and events. Their legends turned outlaws into heroes and discovered hitherto well-concealed hearts of gold beating in the breasts of black villains. The real Richard the Lionheart was a bad king. Rob Roy ran a protection racket. Quite a lot of people nowadays think the jury should still be out on whether the Princes in the Tower were murdered at all, let alone who murdered them.

A very big mistake is to attach a modern grievance to an imagined and highly embroidered ‘historic wrong’. Not only are we not our ancestors, we scarcely even know who our ancestors were, even when we know their names.

After the rise of nationalism in the Middle Ages, it became almost impossible to view the events that gave birth to nationalism without erroneously inferring that the effects were somehow self-contradictorily part of the cause. All over Europe, aristocrats and heroes who were probably mostly interested in their own power and security are today looked upon as fathers of their nations.

We also have a natural tendency to isolate our own country from the wider context and inflate people and events of local significance into towering giants. Then we wonder why the rest of the world hasn’t heard of them, and view their ignorance as somehow disrespectful.

This same near-sightedness also causes us to identify with ancient peoples who lived where we now live, even though they may have been swept away by history, leaving little behind for us to look at with wonder, and having no connection with us today except an accident of geography.

I would urge caution when writing about historical events in a manner designed to stir modern passions. You don’t know the truth. Even if you are trying to get at the truth, you aren’t going to succeed. Modern people don’t know the truth either. That means they may take your word for it. To precipitate modern events on supposed historical grounds would be bad enough even if you were right. If you are wrong, and worse, in some cases, not even trying to be right, or deliberately falsifying events, is not a good thing.

So write about imaginary people in reasonably-accurate historic settings, by all means. If you write about real people, even as background, be scrupulous. And if you must write about real people the way you would have liked them to be, rather than as justified by the best evidence, don’t be surprised if someone doesn’t like your work.

How do I argue for something I don't believe in? (Quora)

I participated in the debating society when I was at school, and I ran a school debating society when I became a teacher. When I taught philosophy, one of my methods was to discover as quickly as possible which side of a question was favoured by the students, and then argue the opposite.

I cannot sufficiently stress how vital it is to be able to argue from your opponents’ position. To begin with, if you cannot anticipate their arguments, they will take you by surprise in the debate and embarrass you.If you cannot anticipate their arguments, you cannot prepare answers to their arguments in advance and have them ready when required.

And finally, how do you even know which side you are on, if you have never taken the trouble to learn why your opponents think differently? You will be incapable of rational decision because you have only ever heard one side of the case. You will have to resort to bluster and prejudice because you won’t be able to reason. This is not a good idea.

I draw your attention to the method by which Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of the UK, decided which side of the Brexit argument he would choose. He wrote two articles, one explaining why we should remain in the EU, and one explaining why we should leave, and then compared them in order to discover which was the more persuasive. Some people attacked him over this for having no convictions; I thought, here at least, he displayed a preference for reason over emotion.

You should try this approach. It will be of lasting benefit.