I used to be a theater person, sort of. I was in plays, I was on the stage crew, I ran around with the lovely young woman who designed and hung the lights, it was fun. There was an energy around the production as it was being put together, the sort of energy that I imagine the gods had as they drop islands here and there in the oceans(I mean the little 'g' ones of course, I can't imagine the Lord's feelings any more than I can guess the moon's favorite brand of coffee). Back when I played with theater, I had the good luck to sit in on a few improv classes. Now I never got into it as much as Michael Scott or anything, but I did learn at least one very important thing.
See, in improv, the trick to being funny, I'm told, it too allow things to happen. In our normal, everyday lives, we spend a great amount of energy trying to prevent things from happening. We try to prevent our cars from running out of gas, we try to keep people happy, we avoid conflict, struggle. In improv, though, it doesn't work. It's frighteningly boring. The trick, it turns out, it to let things spin out of control, to let things go as far as they might.
Now, in fiction writing, especially science fiction and comic books, the same thing holds true. It's a little bit counter intuitive, as the works often serve as vehicles for the fantastic, but think about it for a moment. How many comics, movies, tv shows, how many of them are about protecting the status quo, defending the world from change?
As a group,we're terrified of change, of possibility. Like the poet said, "the centre cannot hold" but most of want it to. How many folks are there out there that want nothing more of the apocalypse than the Second Coming to free them of the possibility, create a status quo for them that is incapable of being changed, a path that can't help but be taken. Many people dream of little but protecting normalcy
Take you average Superman comic. Whether he's fighting Lex Luthor or Brainiac, Sups is striving to keep Metropolis the way it is. In the show Heroes(which I've given up on, finally. It was like a bad boyfriend, one who started off smart and interesting, but then spend all his time trying to reenact our first few dates and begging for 'one more chance' after 'one more chance.' Awful piece of television) the great horror is that the general public will be able to get powers, and if the general public is so empowered, the whole world will spin out of control in dangerous ways. These sorts of stories aren't about protecting people as they might seem to be, but are rather about protecting normalcy
There are other sorts of stories, thank God. Battlestar Galactica is an example of a story that begins by destroying the status quo, creating a situation where that status quo can never come back. The story sets up it's rules, and within those rules there is what is possible and what is impossible. Certainly, it isn't mundane fiction, and the writers are free to make possible whatever they like, so long as it is bound by rules of what is also impossible. Once they've set up rules, they can let the situation spin away to any fantastic possible.
The fantastic possible of Battestar Galactica is amazing in its depth and feeling of veracity. The rules of the fiction are so well defined, the audience accepts wild situations because the rules are still followed within them. Sure the characters try to hold things together, but unlike so many other works of fiction, the writers understand that change must happen and allow it to. The characters' struggle is shown, but it is also shown to be essentially a loosing battle as a new normalcy, or a series of new normalicies come into existence.
Much of the drama in Battlestar Galactica comes from the characters figuring out how to survive, how to find food, water, ways of dealing with each other, in the drastically changed world that inhabit. The search for water, food, peace, things the pre-Cylon humans took for granted are now all desperately rare. The writers freely explore the new world, without giving the characters easy solutions. There is even pathos is characters who are unable to deal with the new world, the admiral obsessed with hunting down enemies as if she were still engaged in a conventional war, the reporters clinging to newly worthless money.
One writer who is something of a master at letting his writing spin away to the fantastic possible is Alan Moore(Now, I'll be honest with you dear reader. Though I love Moore's works, I am horrified at the idea of a Watchmen movie. The original is so wonderful, I can't help but feel like any adaptation decay would be like throwing battery acid into a beautiful face. A waste, waste.) Though, I love Watchmen, I feel like the best example of a story that sets up clearly defined rules, then within those rules absolutely refuses to prevent the fantastic and ridiculous from happening is Moore's early work Miracleman.
Now, Miracleman is a difficult comic to find. It hasn't been published since the early 80's, and due to legal ridiculousness, there's never been a trade paperback collection. The only reliable way to find a copy is to illegally download a digital bootleg.
What legal difficulties make it so difficult to find a copy? Well, Miracleman, the character, started out as nothing more than a British knock-off of Captain Marvel. Alan Moore didn't create the character, but he did some fantastic things with him. In the early 80's there wasn't much being done with either character, so no one really minded when Moore started putting out the book. A few years later, however, Captain Marvel was integrated into the regular comic book DC Universe, and DC went out for blood on the copy write infringements, and Miracleman faded into out-of-print nothingness.
But, oh, oh, it's a wonderful series. Far better than anything else ever written about Captain Marvel. The story follows a dumpy, deeply mundane man in his late 30's. He's a little over weight, he has a strained relationship with his wife, his newspaper career stalled out long ago. But friends, he has these dreams. Dreams that by saying a certain word, a magic word, he can transform into a god, a golden man with unlimited ability. It turns out, of course, that he can. During a terrorist attack at an atomic power plant, he realized that the word he's been trying to remember is "kitoma"(say it backwards) and in a flash of light he become Miracleman, the ultimate defender of goodness.
Now, I actually don't want to let loose with too many spoilers. I believe that Miraclemanwill come back into print soon. Let's face it, Alan Moore stock is selling high, and the amount of money there is to be made off Miracleman is large enough to convince even the most bitter of rivals to come to some sort of agreement. The story is very well paced, the twists are masterfully done. Dear reader, I want you to be able to experience Miracleman properly, so forgive being light on the details.
But I'm getting off topic. You see, the thing that sets Miracleman apart from the majority of comics is that MM is not simply content to save the occasional distressed citizen or the occasional super villain. No, MM actually sets out to change the world, and does no not by offering toothless aphorisms about treating each other kindly, but rather by sharing his superpowers and his access to super-technology.
Now, one near constant in superhero comics is the hoarding of super-technology by the main characters of the story. Take Fantastic Four, for instance. Reed Richards, one of the greatest minds on the planet, discovers all sorts of wild things, invents and builds teleportation devices, cloning rays, space ships, robots, all sorts of amazing stuff, but one thing he rarely if ever does is share his technology with the general public. And Richards isn't alone. Superman never shares Kryptonian tech from his fortress of solitude, Lex Luthor never puts his anti-Superman tech out on the general market, Tony Stark never sells civilian versions of his life support armor to allow the sick to live normal lives. No, no matter how much the technology of the main characters advances, it is never shared with the general public in such a way that it might change the status quo, than it might challenge normalcy Now, in the story there is usually some sort of hand-wave, something like "humanity isn't ready for this yet" or "oh, my hover car, it needs super-unobtainium or fuel, and I'm the only one who has any." Whatever the reason, is most fiction, no matter how fantastic the tech of the main characters gets, it just won't effect the normalcy of the fictional world.
But in Miracleman, it's different. Not only does MM share his tech, changing the world so much that it is almost unrecognizable, like a potted planet that has been left to grow out in a field, but he also shares his powers, allowing the hoi poli to get a chance to be gods as well.
Sure, it's a vastly different world, but the ways in which it is different, they show truths about the real world. It like those particle accelerators that physicists love, by smashing the world apart, you can see truths about the smaller bits that make it up. I challenge anyone to read the part in Miracleman about the support group for former world leaders and not feel like there's something fundamentally true there.
If a writer chooses to destroy the status quo is her or his story, he or she must know the specific trues about the remaining pieces if the story is going to work. It becomes impossible to talk about things generally if the context of normalcy is gone. To truthfully describe something once normalcy has been removed, the writer must know the true nature of the thing in and of itself, not just in its general context.
That, of course, is a great challenge, and probably has something to do with its rarity.