Writer’s Block

Ronald O’Brien sat staring at the screen of his computer, elbows on the desk, his cheeks propped in his hands, the very image of a blocked writer.

He sighed, and stretched with relief when his son entered. Unlike some, he had no rules about not being disturbed during working hours.

His son John recognised the attitude. He came over and placed a hand on his father’s shoulder. “Not coming?” he asked sympathetically.

“No.”

“What is it? Talking about it might help.”

“It’s a counter-factual, beginning just after Columbus’s first voyage.”

“Yes?”

“Columbus has returned, and reported to the Spanish Court. He has found what he thinks are a chain of islands. But he hasn’t brought back enough gold to fill an egg-cup, and there are, he says, no great, jewelled cities; only a few half-naked savages.

“The Royal Council meets. Opinions are divided, but with the ever-present threat of the Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean, there is a strong argument to spend no more ships or money on an adventure westward.

“Finally King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella persuade the council to send one more ship. It returns to report much the same as the first.

“Still, they don’t give up. There is one more ship sent after that. It runs into a North Atlantic storm, is dismasted and nearly sinks. It creeps back to Spain under jury-rig. That’s the end of the European exploring effort westward.

“But meanwhile, two things are happening. Rumours of these new lands travel eastwards, and eventually reach the court of the Chinese Emperor. He has the great ‘treasure ships’, which were wont to sail around the Indian Ocean collecting tribute, and sends a fleet of them, and their escorting food-ships, etc, into the Pacific. They reach the West Coast of America and soon part of China’s surplus population moves there, digging for the plentiful gold, trapping the ‘soft gold’—that’s animal fur—felling the great redwood timbers, and so forth. Detachments of the Imperial troops escort them, and soon put the local Indians to flight. Strange animals are sent back to the Emperor’s zoo in Peking, where scholars write poems about them, and astronomers have new observatories

“But meanwhile, in Europe, things have developed along completely different lines. Without the New World there is none of the bold venturing which led to the rise of modern joint stock companies; none of the advances in ship-building which revolutionised trade. There is a widespread but unspoken and almost unexpressed stagnation of the spirit.

“Then a poet—a contemporary of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Cervantes—writes a great epic about the New World, based on Columbus’s accounts plus his own imagination.

“He is a great writer—a genius—and his epic, and the characters he creates to people it, become wildly popular. Songs are written about them, the ‘New World’ clothes he invents for them are copied and sold. There are plays. Models of the futuristic ships of his stories are mass-produced. There are copies and spin-off stories. People even designate pieces of ground ‘The New World’, with ‘New World’ buildings, and enact the characters. He makes an enormous fortune. He writes sequels, of course, set in the same fictional ‘New World’, following the adventures of the characters through succeeding generations. He becomes a company, and grows so rich he is ennobled.”

“But why are they so popular?” asked his son.

“That’s what I’ve got to explain, subtly. The difficult part to put across. It’s frustration and escapism. Western civilisation, deep in its collective sub-conscious, knows it was offered a great, real challenge, and turned away from it. Oh, he’s a genuine artist, of course, with a genuine artist’s power to weave spells, but it’s compensation: an escape into fantasy for having baulked at facing the real thing. That’s the challenge for me—to make it somehow plausible that such a thing would really happen.”

“How does it end?”

“Not well for us. While the West has been consoling itself with fantasy, the Chinese have been settling America, building up great mines and bases and shipyards, and as a by-product of this, improving all their technology. Winning these vast spaces, conquering mighty rivers and mountains, gives then a thrusting, ‘can-do’ attitude. Even a poor peasant can easily become the owner of a great spread of land. The ancient Chinese pattern of social immobility—always more apparent than real, by the way—is broken. Eventually they move on Europe from West and East, simultaneously.”

“With a big fight for the climax?”

“I suppose so, but I can easily imagine a scenario in which a fight is unnecessary. The Chinese Empire controls Asia and America. Resistance is useless. They might just move in quite peacefully and inevitably. What can the population of Europe do but come to terms with the New World Order? They have given up the difficult and expensive challenge of reality for fantasy. Absorbed in that fantasy, they don’t see what’s happening under their noses until too late. The thing, as I said, is to make it plausible.”

“You should be able to do that, Dad. Read me what you’ve done when I get home.”

“You won’t be late, then?”

“I don’t think so. But I’ll hear it tomorrow otherwise. You’ve had writer’s block before, Dad, you’ll get over it.”

“There’s just some fiddling to be done, but it has to be done right. I’m finding the words difficult.”

“Don’t forget what you always say: ‘Writer’s block is a luxury for amateurs’.”

“Am I allowed to ask where you’re going?”

“The Star Wars convention. I’m helping Tom Malone at his stand. He’s got a new consignment of multi-coloured light-sabres and Luke Skywalker dolls.”

“Well, you did want to be an astronaut once.”

Their eyes met. It was as if each had suddenly been struck a blow. “An astronaut, once …” John breathed. He turned and left, quickly, before any more could be said. The door closed behind him.

Ronald O’Brien reached for his coffee. He found his hands were trembling.