The topic of this week’s ‘Meet the Author’ posting is that of values, and I found it a challenge to define and approach. Everyone has a different worldview and a different way of living; who am I to say one is better than the other? What I’m really seeking to do is to give insight into my own belief system, explaining my outlook and how it influences my behavior, my relationships, and my work, including my writing. I think there’s a great benefit in looking at the world through a different set of eyes, especially if you are interested in a creative field such as art or literature.
I grew up in a normal, suburban household in the southwest. My father was an accountant, my mother a homemaker. Both my grandfathers worked hard in their lifetimes to that their children could benefit. Many of us have parents or grandparents we look up to, and that link is a valuable one. It gives us inspiration and guidance, and I feel I benefited greatly from the family that surrounded me as I grew up.
My childhood heroes were paragons of justice: Batman (of the Adam West variety), Andy Griffith, Optimus Prime, Luke Skywalker. The franchises and figures I followed all had larger than life qualities, standing tall above the masses with their sense of justice and pure worldview. Reality has a way of tempering such things, but I wholly believe I still carry those beliefs in me, that I do what I can to lift myself to a higher standard, doing what I can for others even if it means giving up something for myself. I remember The Magnificent Seven. I remember Davey Crockett. Growing up in Arizona, especially before it became so heavily urbanized, you become enamored with the legend of the American cowboy. I think it’s no coincidence that my love of spurs and six-shooters transformed into a passion for the samurai ethos as I became older and began to study martial arts.
In my time spent training in karate, I gained many things. Chief among them, though, was an extended family. My parents did their best to set a good example, to reason with me, and to make me understand right from wrong. Kids, however, have other ideas. My sensei, though, was someone I treated with the utmost respect and reverence. My mother knew that if there was a problem that I wasn’t treating (whether it be behavior with friends or performance in school), all she had to do was sit me down in my sensei’s office and relate the story to him. I didn’t need to hear his counsel. Simply knowing he had discovered my shameful behavior was enough to instantly transform me.
Enter high school, college, and then corporate America. I struggled greatly to balance my sense of honor with the desire that every young male has of fitting in with a crowd. In a time and place when everyone wanted to misbehave to gain attention, I swayed back and forth between periods of great difficulty, being ostracized by one group or another, unable to find a social circle that shared my viewpoint on simply doing the right thing, especially when nobody was watching. My support came from my karate family, with many of the same students attending my high school and laying the foundation for what I could carry into college. Once I transitioned into corporate America, though, things would become complicated on an entirely new level.
As a child, even up until college, your worldview is very narrow. I wouldn’t dare say I have a very wide perspective at my current age, but it grows brighter by the day as details slowly fill in with the acquisition of more knowledge. When I started learning real history at university, when I saw how people behaved in the corporate world, when I read the news outside of the spoon-fed major networks, I saw a terrifying amount of injustice, corruption, greed, and pettiness that I didn’t want to be a part of. I was frustrated to the point of wanting to just tear it all down. I think I still have this reaction at times, finding the best solution to a problem is to just burn it, consequences be damned. Of this, though, I have learned to temper myself, instead using knowledge and social media to spread awareness.
There’s a reason I chose to write cyberpunk novels. It’s key to note that my first book, “Jupiter Symphony,” is about a popular uprising against an elitist upper-class. It’s dystopian and dark, but at the same time it reflects the reality we are walking towards. I’ve had many readers tell me that they really enjoyed the book, but it scared them just a little too much because they could very easily see our country and our world developing in the way outlined in the novel. Science fiction, well executed, will take current events and magnify them until you either get the message, or else hide them in times when topics aren’t ready to be approached by the general populace.
That corruption and greed I had found in the world, the racism, the hatred, the pent up frustration, was all channeled into my novel. We have crooked cops killing in cold blood. We have judges that find these officers innocent despite overwhelming evidence. We have people forcing their worldviews on others under the guise of religious freedom, though nobody was knocking on their door and telling them they could or could not do something. We work for corporations that have no qualms with destroying the environment, with toppling countries, and with squeezing out every last drop of blood from employees. The rich are only getting richer, the poor lack any upward mobility, and the middle class is shrinking. Politicians sit around with their thumbs up their asses, earning far more in campaign donations than from their drawn salary. The media is controlled, and every day we are being watched to a greater and greater extent by the government agencies that are supposed to be protecting our freedoms.
It all sounds like something out of a crazy dystopian adventure, and it is. It’s also reality right now. My values, my sense of justice, my inner Luke Skywalker, cannot stand before this onslaught. Not alone, anyway. But with each day, with each new bit of revealing news, with each person that picks up a novel that makes them realize just what a world we live in, so grows the support to my left and to my right. We learn that we can change things. We can push forward, we can force others to take notice. It’s not something that will change overnight, and many will relent before the struggle is over, but it is winnable. We’ve done it in the past, and we can do it again in the future. Because Batman told me so.
A.C. Harrison
Like what you see here? Spread the word and support indie authors! Follow me on Facebook or Twitter. Find me on Smashwords and Kindlemojo.
I grew up in a normal, suburban household in the southwest. My father was an accountant, my mother a homemaker. Both my grandfathers worked hard in their lifetimes to that their children could benefit. Many of us have parents or grandparents we look up to, and that link is a valuable one. It gives us inspiration and guidance, and I feel I benefited greatly from the family that surrounded me as I grew up.
My childhood heroes were paragons of justice: Batman (of the Adam West variety), Andy Griffith, Optimus Prime, Luke Skywalker. The franchises and figures I followed all had larger than life qualities, standing tall above the masses with their sense of justice and pure worldview. Reality has a way of tempering such things, but I wholly believe I still carry those beliefs in me, that I do what I can to lift myself to a higher standard, doing what I can for others even if it means giving up something for myself. I remember The Magnificent Seven. I remember Davey Crockett. Growing up in Arizona, especially before it became so heavily urbanized, you become enamored with the legend of the American cowboy. I think it’s no coincidence that my love of spurs and six-shooters transformed into a passion for the samurai ethos as I became older and began to study martial arts.
In my time spent training in karate, I gained many things. Chief among them, though, was an extended family. My parents did their best to set a good example, to reason with me, and to make me understand right from wrong. Kids, however, have other ideas. My sensei, though, was someone I treated with the utmost respect and reverence. My mother knew that if there was a problem that I wasn’t treating (whether it be behavior with friends or performance in school), all she had to do was sit me down in my sensei’s office and relate the story to him. I didn’t need to hear his counsel. Simply knowing he had discovered my shameful behavior was enough to instantly transform me.
Enter high school, college, and then corporate America. I struggled greatly to balance my sense of honor with the desire that every young male has of fitting in with a crowd. In a time and place when everyone wanted to misbehave to gain attention, I swayed back and forth between periods of great difficulty, being ostracized by one group or another, unable to find a social circle that shared my viewpoint on simply doing the right thing, especially when nobody was watching. My support came from my karate family, with many of the same students attending my high school and laying the foundation for what I could carry into college. Once I transitioned into corporate America, though, things would become complicated on an entirely new level.
As a child, even up until college, your worldview is very narrow. I wouldn’t dare say I have a very wide perspective at my current age, but it grows brighter by the day as details slowly fill in with the acquisition of more knowledge. When I started learning real history at university, when I saw how people behaved in the corporate world, when I read the news outside of the spoon-fed major networks, I saw a terrifying amount of injustice, corruption, greed, and pettiness that I didn’t want to be a part of. I was frustrated to the point of wanting to just tear it all down. I think I still have this reaction at times, finding the best solution to a problem is to just burn it, consequences be damned. Of this, though, I have learned to temper myself, instead using knowledge and social media to spread awareness.
There’s a reason I chose to write cyberpunk novels. It’s key to note that my first book, “Jupiter Symphony,” is about a popular uprising against an elitist upper-class. It’s dystopian and dark, but at the same time it reflects the reality we are walking towards. I’ve had many readers tell me that they really enjoyed the book, but it scared them just a little too much because they could very easily see our country and our world developing in the way outlined in the novel. Science fiction, well executed, will take current events and magnify them until you either get the message, or else hide them in times when topics aren’t ready to be approached by the general populace.
That corruption and greed I had found in the world, the racism, the hatred, the pent up frustration, was all channeled into my novel. We have crooked cops killing in cold blood. We have judges that find these officers innocent despite overwhelming evidence. We have people forcing their worldviews on others under the guise of religious freedom, though nobody was knocking on their door and telling them they could or could not do something. We work for corporations that have no qualms with destroying the environment, with toppling countries, and with squeezing out every last drop of blood from employees. The rich are only getting richer, the poor lack any upward mobility, and the middle class is shrinking. Politicians sit around with their thumbs up their asses, earning far more in campaign donations than from their drawn salary. The media is controlled, and every day we are being watched to a greater and greater extent by the government agencies that are supposed to be protecting our freedoms.
It all sounds like something out of a crazy dystopian adventure, and it is. It’s also reality right now. My values, my sense of justice, my inner Luke Skywalker, cannot stand before this onslaught. Not alone, anyway. But with each day, with each new bit of revealing news, with each person that picks up a novel that makes them realize just what a world we live in, so grows the support to my left and to my right. We learn that we can change things. We can push forward, we can force others to take notice. It’s not something that will change overnight, and many will relent before the struggle is over, but it is winnable. We’ve done it in the past, and we can do it again in the future. Because Batman told me so.
A.C. Harrison
Like what you see here? Spread the word and support indie authors! Follow me on Facebook or Twitter. Find me on Smashwords and Kindlemojo.
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