I posted this originally a while back, but a few recent posts over in substack Notes brought it back to mind:
So yes, the first thing that popped into my head was Mortu and Kyrus. I referenced Solomon Kane as well, but Sky is a current and indie author, so more relevant going forward as a product and observer of our times.
The first thing I thought of in relation to newer/indie characters driven by a sense of honor and duty was Sky Hernstrom’s “Mortu and Kyrus” short stories, especially in the story “Mortu and Kyrus in the White City”. You can think of it as “What would happen if someone with the implacability and sense of right and wrong of Solomon Kane came across LeGuin’s Omelas?”
What follows is an expanded and revised version of my original post.
First, I have the pleasure of knowing Sky Hernstrom. I got to know Sky as a friend before I knew he was an author, and had not read any of his work until he had released The Law of Wolves, and Mortu and Kyrus in the White City.
over at the Deceneus Journal had written the following ON Mortu and Kyrus, and it’s as good a starting point as any:Hernstrom’s writing is the fantasy version of an underground death metal LP that you can only pick up at an invite-only exclusive show held in some cave in the middle of dark wood. Every story in his new collection is unbeatable but Mortu and Kyrus, while not my top favorite, is not only a fantastic ass-kicker but a direct assault on the moral degeneracy of mainstream science fiction and fantasy.
I don't think it's possible to do the story or the rest of the stories in the collection more justice in such a short passage, so instead I’ll try to do so in more words.
Many of Sky's stories are to greater and lesser degrees old-school fairy tales - by which I mean things are strange, not often explained, and horrible things happen to disobedient little children and wayward adults. These are not the nice Disney versions. The Law of Wolves is a straight fairy tale, and a dark one at that about a selfish and conceited girl who doesn’t want to believe predators exist. A number of the fantasy and most of the science fiction pieces in the Eye of Sonnou and Thune’s Vision have a Jack Vance vibe of the weird. Sometimes horrible things happen - often in a "serving as a bad example" way - and the endings are not always happy, but there is a rejection of pointlessness and nihilism found throughout. There is also humor, as amply demonstrated in a different tale about an acolyte’s search for an image of the goddess. They also to one degree or another would fit in perfectly in an issue of Heavy Metal.
So, yes, MaKitWC has that "underground death metal LP" that Alexandru describes. What could be more metal than a genetically engineered warrior riding a motorcycle across the wasteland, slaying with axe and sword, a priest transformed into a monkey riding his shoulder? Post-apocalyptic badlands and futuristic white cities, high technology and barbarism straight out of Taarna from the Heavy metal movie, but with less prurience. I could easily read this with "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" playing in the background.
It is also in the White City that we see him most explictly bring philosophy to the fore in the discussions between the pint-sized, educated, and arrogant Kyrus and the stoic and practical Mortu. Most of the discussions at first have little bearing on the main dilemma - instead, they paint the nature of this fallen world, and the character of the warrior and the priest. They may be very different, but they respect each other, and at the core will not betray each other for they are friends. From beginning to end, each major character, especially Mortu and Kyrus, have a distinctive voice that shines through. In many ways, the philosophical discussions and implications remind me of a shorthand Gene Wolfe in the Book of the New Sun - series, equally metal in its own way.
The main dilemma is a doozy evoking the setup of The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas, where the ongoing existence of an apparent utopia depends on the perpetual suffering of a single child. In this incarnation, the white city is relatively secure, has resources to spare, the denizens are immortal and "at peace", and all of this abundance is granted by feeding the soul of a child into the city over the years in a process of unbroken misery and suffering. Many acquiesce - either because of outright selfishness in the guise of pragmatism, or perhaps in some cases, genuinely believing that the good of the many outweighs the good of the occasional child.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion of Omelas. Some draw comparisons to society in general, and whatever exploitative horrors exist, which some do. This is complicated by the fact that suffering is indeed inevitable - some people are unlucky, but others consistently make poor choices, or would rather hurt or take advantage of people, and you’ll never be rid of them.
So Omelas, and in response, the White City are about choices. Suffering is inevitable, but here they choice is to deliberately or explicitly cause, or vampirically even if apathetically to feed from it.
The thing is that those who walk away from Omelas also effectively condone it. It can be broken down further, but the effective choices are:
Accept it, relish it even. However Omelas doesn’t allow for more direct pleasure in the suffering of another. It’s a utopia after all and somehow they’ve solved that. Maybe some enjoy the frisson of causing that pain by proxy?
Accept it, take advantage of it. This is a choice to actively participate, to be responsible for a share of the suffering.
Accept it, but be apathetic. I’m not sure this is better - you’re having fun, so you just don’t care?
Don’t accept it for yourself, but not do anything more than remove yourself. Those who walk away are nearly certainly judging others as they not only remove themselves from the utopia but from any association going forward.
Act to put a stop.
I already pointed out why the assumptions remove option 1, but 4 and 5 hold more interest to me. The fourth option is a mild condemnation, but it also condones the behavior. Effectively “I don’t like Bob murdering people so I won’t hang ‘round cause I don’t like him,” so you leave, Bob knows you don’t like him and shun him, but Bob also gets to keep murdering. You can see the story as in part a condemnation of those who walk away in not being willing to do more.
Of course, the worldview that there is no truth (except power) baked into postmodernism also comes with the slogan “Don’t judge.” We can and should judge. Mortu does.
He very stridently takes option #5.
Interestingly and more realistically, the White City, unlike Omelas, isn’t keen on letting those not happy with the setup go quietly. The one who spills the secret to Mortu and Kyrus is not afforded the chance to simply walk away as the denizens of the city cannot afford word to get out - this is already more realistic than LeGuin.
Look, I get that in real life the options, and our power to effect solutions and justice, are rarely as clear cut and total, but much like I’ve said that art is about choice, so is justice and mercy. You can still work to make someone’s life better, especially if you know them well and can find a way to do so that is not enablement or a crutch, make that conscious choice.
And sometimes, much like self defense, the choice very much requires doing something unpleasant. Mortu’s answer is very much so, very uncompromising, and very, very final. The answer our barbarian and monkey-priest come up with in dealing with this evil is not simply giving up and washing their hands of this evil, but to stand up to it, and to burn it out, root and branch.
Everything that happens was, in some ways, inevitable simply because of who each of the people were.
One other thing bothers me about Omelas is the critique of Christianity that many read into it. From the Wikipedia areticle on the story:
"The central idea of this psychomyth, the scapegoat", writes Le Guin, "turns up in Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, and several people have asked me, rather suspiciously, why I gave the credit to William James. The fact is, I haven't been able to re-read Dostoyevsky, much as I loved him, since I was twenty-five, and I'd simply forgotten he used the idea. But when I met it in James' 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life', it was with a shock of recognition."
The quote from William James is:
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a sceptical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?
As for the original Dostoyevsky quote, Charlie Jane Anders of Gizmodo notes that
"In Karamazov, Dovstoevsky [sic] poses the problem of the Tortured Child:
'Tell me yourself — I challenge you: let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it? Tell me and don’t lie!”
'No I would not,' Alyosha said softly."
Dostoyevsky's original description of the dilemma refers to the doctrine of salvation through the crucifixion of Jesus.
The problems in the above understanding require a lot of unpacking for any moderately knowledgeable believer. If nothing else, there is a vast qualitative and moral difference between someone willingly undertaking a sacrifice to improve another’s life, even if it is in the end lethal much as Jesus undertook the crucifixion to forgive us of our sins, and the beneficiaries choosing “Hey, if we keep torturing this poor kid we get heaven on earth.”
One is a gift and example freely offered by someone who knows full well what they do, who not only did not lose everything, but was explicitly showing us that there was far more to lose in our souls than in our material lives. The other is a choice to be a vampire going forward.
For what it’s worth, those who walk away at least understand it is an ongoing choice to take part, even if they effectively condone it.
But they are not willing to judge, or to enact justice.
Mortu and Kyrus are.
Where to Read It?
It’s not as easy to get a hold of some of these stories as it could be, so:
Mortu and Kyrus in the White City which I’ve discussed above is part of Sky’s collection of short stories titled The Eye of Sonnou from DMR books.
The second story - though there is no tight chronological order is in Pilum Press’s The Penultimate Men
The third of the Mortu and Kyrus stories, Servants of the War God, is in the Pilum Press edition of Thune’s Vision. I’ve reviewed it here.
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Please also join the Pilum Press Discord and/or the Autarch Discord. Pilum is the publisher of several books and short story collections including Shagduk and Thune’s Vision. Autarch is the home of the Adventurer Conquerer King RPG.
Here’s where you can find a list of the stories and where they are published. https://jeffro.wordpress.com/2022/03/31/how-to-get-all-the-mortu-kyrus-stories/
I enjoyed this article and it contributes to thoughts I have been having about Steven in the De re dordica saga. His discovery of and subsequent use of magic is leading him down a path he must come to terms with.