After I had finished my story Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, I realised an odd thing. The story was set on the distant moon of Europa, one of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, and yet I hadn’t really been influenced by any sci-fi in the writing of it. Despite the story’s literary aspirations, it was most definitely a piece of science-fiction.
I don’t tend to read much dedicated sci-fi, though I suppose I ought to. I read a lot of standard literary fiction and plenty of popular science, and the amalgam of those two when I’m writing becomes, well, science-fiction. I felt like an imposter, not only because I had self-published a piece of sci-fi without “paying my dues” to the genre, but because I was promoting the story in various sci-fi forums online.
To illustrate this curious “no sci-fi” situation, I’ve decided to compile a list of the 10 main influences on the writing of Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. This should give readers a taste of how an original story can sometimes be constructed from rather strange and disparate elements. If a writer has a truly open mind, they can find inspiration in all sorts of places.
For those who have already read Wanderer, the list should also provide some insight into the author’s intentions, and the various themes and techniques developed. (Those who haven’t read the story can find it here.) Hopefully this deeper dive will enhance the reward that comes from reading a piece of literary fiction. Such rich influences certainly enhanced the writing of it.
1. Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich (1818)
Let’s start with an obvious one. My story uses the same title as the 19th-century German painter’s most famous piece – a striking composition that I also used for my front cover. Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is perhaps the most well-known representation of philosophical contemplation and wanderlust in Western culture, and I tried to reflect some of the feelings it evokes in my own story of David Casper (the name is no coincidence), the freewalker wandering across Europa moon.
Friedrich was an extraordinarily vivid artist, and his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog was not the only painting to inspire my story. The Sea of Ice (1824), shown at the top of this article, served as a general mood piece for the icy landscape of Europa moon, which is known to astronomers as “chaos terrain”. Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (1824) inspired the flashback scene where David Casper and Lucy Ortega roam across the American landscape in spring. Cairn in Snow (1807) and Cabin in the Snow (1827) inspired the ‘Casper’s Cache’ shelter the two construct on Europa.
2. Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway (1925)
Hemingway, the master of the short story and an immaculate prose stylist, is perhaps the single biggest influence on my writing. This will no doubt prove to be folly on my part, for the path to literary glory is littered with many writers who have tried and failed to imitate this great artist.
Influence, however, is not the same as imitation. I believe many of those imitators are led astray by the masculine, adventurous “Hemingway myth”, and forget the man’s understated ‘iceberg’ writing style. ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ is a prime example of this style; it is, on the surface, a simple story of a young man interacting with nature on a fishing trip in the American hinterland. The key to appreciating it, however, comes in a letter Hemingway wrote to Gertrude Stein, saying that he was “trying to do the country like [Paul] Cézanne” did in his paintings. And, certainly, when you read the story you get that same rich, restful feeling you get from contemplating a fine landscape painting.
I attempted the same in my own story, with Friedrich’s Wanderer painting in place of Cézanne. A key motif of Friedrich’s painting is the “Rückenfigur”, or ‘figure seen from behind’. Consequently, the raison d’être of my story was the contemplation of David Casper, the Galilean, from the point of view of Mr. Reeve as he stands with his back to him among the water jets of Europa moon. It was what I wrote towards from the very start. That entire scene was my attempt to recreate the deluge of thoughts which emerge when contemplating Friedrich’s remarkable painting.
Some of my thoughts on Hemingway can be found in my various reviews of his books on my Goodreads profile. For my assessment of the writer and his legacy, my review of his Selected Letters is perhaps not to be overlooked.
3. The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku (2018)
Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist and, to my mind, one of the most potent science popularizers alive today. His 2008 book Physics of the Impossible was recommended to me by a friend and inspired a number of technologies in a science-fiction novel I wrote (which, unfortunately, remains unpublished at time of writing).
The Future of Humanity sees Professor Kaku write engagingly and accessibly about, well, the future of humanity in outer space. His speculations are fascinating and his discussion of transhumanism helped to scope out my Wanderer story in its earliest stages. In fact, in an early draft one of my characters was named Dr. Crisper, in light of Kaku’s discussion of the gene editing technology known as CRISPR. I ultimately decided this was too on-the-nose and he was renamed Dr. Verdmann.
4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin (1969)
I introduced this article by stating I hadn’t been influenced by any sci-fi in the writing of my Wanderer story. There was one exception, however, in the earliest genesis of the idea. Years before I put pen to paper on Wanderer, I read Ursula Le Guin’s classic sci-fi novel The Left Hand of Darkness.
One passage midway through the book led me towards a fruitful tangent. What would it be like, I thought, to have a technology that would allow you to walk around an alien planet and breathe the air without a spacesuit? This planted a seed which eventually became the sensory experience of the Galilean in Wanderer, as he allows the water jets of Europa moon to burst over his skin.
5. Give Your Heart to the Hawks by Win Blevins (1973)
Immediately after I read Kaku’s book, I read Win Blevins’ open-hearted tribute to the mountain men, those larger-than-life adventurers who were the first white men to roam the rawland of the American West. I began to conceive of the Galilean in my story as a legendary mountain man, only this new frontier is the surface of the ice moon Europa. This allowed me to ground my story in authentic character and setting, rather than the often-absurd flights of fancy that can sometimes characterise science-fiction.
The Western influence would perhaps become even stronger than the scientific element in creating Wanderer (see also number 9 on this list). A. B. Guthrie’s novels The Big Sky and The Way West were also influences on the direction of the story. I was inspired by Guthrie’s boldness in allowing his story to proceed at a leisurely pace, rather than pandering to those readers who are conditioned to a short attention span. You breathe his air and it fills your lungs as you read.
6. From Giotto to Cézanne: A Concise History of Painting by Michael Levey (1962)
I have already mentioned the influence of European art on my story. However, when writing Wanderer I realised that blind inspiration would not be enough. I needed to learn more about the techniques and principles behind some of the finest paintings ever created. Rather serendipitously, I soon came across Michael Levey’s book. It proved to be a fantastic introduction.
This lucid, illustrated art history not only helped me understand basic principles of visual art, but also introduced me to a number of other paintings, beyond those by Caspar David Friedrich already mentioned. These other paintings inspired certain scenes and ideas in Wanderer. Levey’s discussion of John Martin’s Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion gave me the name ‘Sadek Martin’ for the corporation that creates the Galilean’s bio-tech (a typo in Levey’s book names Sadak as ‘Sadek’). Pieter Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow served as a mood piece for the arrival at Emmaus Station in my story, as well as the final scene where the Galilean leaves again. Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus and Rembrandt’s painting of the same name inspired the journey to the Station, discussed further in number 7 below.
7. The King James Bible (1611)
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is not a religious story. I don’t know how far I can be considered an atheist (I have detailed this part of my intellectual journey in my review of the King James Bible here). I had a secular upbringing, but I became interested in the Christian stories due to a long-standing fascination with Greek mythology, and I saw similarities in how they could be used for allegory and allusion in literature. If my writing displays any Christian sensibility, it is only because I continue to explore and utilise these fascinating ideas.
My Wanderer story begins with a quote from the Book of Genesis: “There were giants in the earth in those days” (Genesis 6:4). I initially chose this out of a mysterious artistic hunch that it would set the tone, but it soon became apparent just how appropriate the quotation was. A large part of my story had begun to address the role of ‘giants’, not only the role of massive Jupiter with regards to the moon of Europa, but also the relationship between the Galilean freewalker and those under his charge, the ethics of scientific progress (with regards to the Isaac Newton line about “standing on the shoulders of giants”), and the giant redwood trees mentioned in number 9 below.
Another significant Biblical influence on my Wanderer story came from the New Testament story of the Road to Emmaus. Prompted by the paintings of Rembrandt and Caravaggio mentioned in number 6 on my list, I recognised the similarities between my plotline in Wanderer and the story tropes from the Gospel of Luke. In this story, Jesus travels with his disciples on the road to the town of Emmaus, but they do not recognise him (this is after his crucifixion and return). This theme of perception influenced Reeve’s path towards understanding the Galilean in my own story, and when the Galilean reflects on those individuals who move humanity forward, he is also commenting on the often-thankless role played by artists. Jesus, after all, was a storyteller, and the Galilean can be seen as a Christ-like figure: voluntarily wounded, an imitator of Christ – that is to say, a Christian.
8. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
This is the hardest influence on the list to explain. Unlike the others on this list, Dostoevsky’s masterpiece did not inspire any specific ideas for Wanderer. Instead, I happened to be reading the book during the most productive period of writing my story. The painting detailed above is The Contemplator by Ivan Kramskoy, and is discussed by Dostoevsky in chapter 6 of Book Three of The Brothers Karamazov.
The Brothers Karamazov not only saw my head swimming with various philosophical thoughts, but the writer’s cadences and sentence structure in these discussions began to supplant my more long-standing Hemingway influence (mentioned in number 2 on this list). In particular, Dostoevsky’s narrative voice was dominant in my head when I wrote what is perhaps the most important passage in Wanderer. Standing amidst the water jets of Europa moon, the Galilean ponders the nano-technology coursing through his blood:
“… the realisation, for those who carved the path, was the hell of knowing it would never satisfy. The nano could cure, but it made you aware of the great curse; that if all ailments were resolved, then all the distractions of the world were gone, and such a man was confronted more completely with the fragmentary horror of the mind, the thing that truly terrified and which men went out into the world to avoid. The wanderer, the outlier, the Galilean – he was unnatural, but not because of the nanotech which streamed in his blood and made a home for foreign air in his lungs. He was unnatural, he was shunned, because he had come to realise that one of the reasons man wandered was to seek his own destruction in the world. Man always needed a cross to bear, and did not always want to see the end of that road.”
9. Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck (1962)
Unlike some of the other books on this list, John Steinbeck’s late-career travelogue, in which he goes on a cross-continent road trip with his faithful dog Charley, is just plain fun. The author is astute and draws his characters well, utilising all the literary skill he had built up over a long and stellar career, but the joy in the book comes from its vivid, ambling romp across the American landscape.
Though I have not yet been to America, the American landscape has always fascinated me. As already mentioned, the Hemingway story ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ was a huge conceptual influence on Wanderer, as were the stories of the mountain men who roamed the unsettled West. Travels with Charley developed this love further, and after Steinbeck wrote of visiting the giant redwood trees of northern California (Charley pees on one), I decided to use the great sequoias for a flashback scene in Wanderer. In the initial draft of the story, David Casper and Lucy Ortega were found in a copse in New England during their field tests, but the giant redwoods of California made more poetic sense. Not only were they more iconic, but they tied into the ‘giant’ theme I had been developing (see number 7). They also allowed me to deploy a forest fire to further illustrate the characters’ imperviousness.
In the course of my research, I learned that these giant redwoods are replenished after forest fires by the wet fog coming in from the Pacific. This was perfect for my story’s theme – and its title – as the Galilean, the long-lived ‘giant’, finds himself restored in part by contemplation at the water geysers of Europa moon. Such moments of literary serendipity can only come about when a writer keeps an open mind, and recognises that stories can be constructed from very disparate elements.
10. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (1885)
This final influence on my Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog story sees the list come full circle, for Nietzsche’s work is often considered in the same tradition as the earlier paintings by Caspar David Friedrich.
I didn’t in fact read Thus Spoke Zarathustra until after I had written and published Wanderer, though I was familiar with many of Nietzsche’s ideas second-hand – most notably the cultural crisis caused by the “death of God”. I was acutely aware when writing Wanderer that my main character – a genetically-enhanced man – could be seen as one of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch”, or ‘supermen’.
Now, Nietzsche’s ideas were later intolerably corrupted by the Nazis, and he still unfairly carries the stigma of this unwelcome association (Nietzsche actually spoke against anti-Semitism in his time). But those who are bold enough to banish the stigma find that Nietzsche’s ideas are remarkably potent and prescient – and great to wrestle with. His ‘superman’ idea wasn’t an Aryan race-fetish but instead a response to the “death of God”, speculating that Man could resolve this crisis by transcending Christianity and creating his own morals.
I decided to read Zarathustra in part out of a sense of obligation, for my own story’s premise had evolved into a perspective on the Nietzschean ‘uber-man’. I felt I ought to have at least read the book which posited the idea – for my own self-respect, if nothing else. When I did, I was pleased to find that the conclusions I had reached in Wanderer survived the confrontation with Zarathustra.
In my story, David Casper, the Galilean ‘uber-man’, is redeemed by the part of himself that remains human (see also the Christ analogy in number 7 above). This conclusion proves to be in line with some of the contemporary criticism of Nietzsche. The popular psychologist Jordan Peterson, for example, is himself influenced by Nietzsche, but has recently written a partial refutation of this ‘superman’ idea. In Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, Peterson argues that, in light of discoveries in biology and science, “only a fool would now dare to claim that we have sufficient mastery of ourselves to create, rather than discover, what we value” (Peterson, pg. 164).
It is a subtle difference, but an important one. I created a story, but I could only discover what values it held.
These, then, are 10 of the most significant influences and inspirations for my Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog story, a 12,000-word science-fiction novelette available now on Amazon. Every writer, of course, is influenced by a wide range of art, media and personal experiences. There are far too many to count – or even recognise.
The 10 cited above helped ensure the story on the page was as close as possible to how it was in my head. Something is always lost in an idea in its journey from the brain and out through the fingers onto the keyboard, but a healthy stock of fine writing, artwork and philosophy as inspiration can ensure a story retains its qualities during the transition.
Newton (and Dr. Verdmann) remarked that “if I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. Anyone can see, by the calibre of the books and artwork I have detailed above, that I too have stood on the shoulders of giants.
But have I seen further, or have I only left a dirty and unwelcome footprint on those shoulders? You can read the story, and let me know.
The image used in number 3 of the above article is ‘Artist Concept of Europa Water Vapor Plume’. Credit: NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI. Original ID: PIA17659. All images have been used in accordance with relevant guidelines and their use in no way implies endorsement of this website or its content.
The other images used in this article are public domain paintings accessed via Wikimedia Commons.
Recent Comments