"...Dude, at least it's an ethos."

...as Walter so eloquently stated in The Big Lebowski. National Socialists aside, I was recently viewing some interview material from William Gibson, and I was intrigued by the fact that as a writer, the godfather of cyberpunk does seem to carry in him an ethos, a sense of purpose and direction. More than just a survivor of the business of writing, Gibson was the spear point of the cyberpunk movement, which I daily see reflected in the world around me, despite the claims of others that dirty tech has worn out its welcome. As such, I respect Gibson's opinions and thoughts, and the fact that he seems to know his place in literature piqued my interest.

Do writers, myself included, need an ethos? Do we need a pillar around which we wrap our thoughts and motives, a foundation on which our stories base their morals and movements?

Up until this point, I hadn't really considered the question. When I sat down to write "Jupiter Symphony," my only goal was to finish the manuscript. I told myself that I would not write the great American novel, nor would I revolutionize a genre. I wasn't after classical prose or witty banter. Why? Because I wanted to be true to myself, and as a writer I knew that I was not ready to approach those things, and that I didn't have a passion to explore them yet. I promised myself, "write what you know," and so I did. Slowly, over time, the story began to form, taking shape out of clay (or more likely in my case, spilling out of the primordial ooze). The whole process was very organic, a form of natural selection that guided the prose to completion.

Even so, there were morals to be found, points I wanted to raise, questions I wanted to pose, all of which were woven into the text. I make no apologies that the prose can be extremely didactic, and that's okay. In a sense, I wanted my feelings to come out in a raw form, to have that ragged first novel that has an urgency and a hunger to it.

Circling back to the matter of an ethos, however, are the points raised in "Jupiter Symphony" the core artifacts of my outlook on writing? Is there a distillation of morals and themes that will carry forward? I can already see patterns emerging, reflected in "Unto Persephone," and there's a good possibility of the same themes showing up again in "The Long Night." In a way it seems an ethos has found me, and I am only now beginning to recognize it as such.

So now the question may be: what is my ethos? If I had to look at the stories I have written, the novels I have read, the music I listen to, the things I observe, it comes to light that my focus as a writer, as an observer of humanity and humans, is on the next step that we will take as a species. Not in some grand leap into space, but inside ourselves, in how we treat one another, in how we interact with each other, in how we govern ourselves or allow ourselves to be governed. In my world view, for us to survive as humans, we must address heavy, deep seated conflicts that have haunted us since our days as hunter gatherers, that remain a part of us despite our attempts at a rational, lawful society. I believe we have a sense of denial about us, an ugliness we do not wish to face, though we recognize it when we chastise other nations for "human rights violations."

With all that being said, I make it a point in my novels to recognize this struggle we face inside each of us, and to then offer a way forward. I never claim to hold the answers, either personally or through my characters, but I make every attempt to present the open door, to spark internal thought and external discussion, in the hopes that collectively, we can coalesce in an intelligent way, looking forward into the future, whatever it may hold.

And then I add stereotypical Russians who fly bizarre aircraft. It's a thing.