Vol. VI · A non-science
Stories where the rules break, and the search keeps going.
I was asked to do a list of contested epistemology with selected academic readings. The truth is I don't have favourite academic readings. So I made a list of contested ontology, books that engage with hard questions without giving easy answers.
In my mind, every ontological contestation starts with a story about what exists and its rules and a moment when these rules break. So each of these stories has this, stories of expectations and stories of expectations breaking down and the fact that the search for meaning doesn't stop even then.
The list
Area X breaks the rule that the world around us can be surveyed, mapped, and contained. The biologist walks in expecting to do science and walks out as something else, with the world she came from no longer the world she returns to.
We assume intelligence and consciousness arrive together. The Rorschach aliens are smart without being aware. The vampire among the crew is aware in ways the humans aren't. The book asks whether consciousness is a feature or a bug, and refuses to tell you.
A scientist made of air opens his own skull to study what makes him think. What he finds is that thought runs on the same pressure differential that runs the universe, and the universe is slowly equalising. The story is the search for meaning conducted by something that knows it is dying but never ceases exploration.
Two widowers go fishing as a way to live with grief. The river turns out to have other tenants and other geographies. Grief opened the door, and once the door is open, the question of what is on the other side replaces every rule they brought with them.
A family moves into a house that turns out to be larger on the inside than the outside, by an amount that grows. The book is the documentary record of trying to measure this, layered through footnotes, missing pages, and the colour of the word "house." The form of the book is the same problem as the house.
A war between reality factions, with reality itself as the weapon. The rule that breaks here is the one that says the world we are in is the only one available. Morrison treats consensus reality as a fight someone is winning.
The gospel as told by Biff, who grew up with Jesus and knew him as a friend. The rule that breaks is the zero distance between divinity and embarrassment. The search for meaning continues, with a lot of laughing.
A man raised children and taught each of them one of the catalogues, war, death, languages, animals. When Father disappears, the children have to figure out what the world is, what they are, and what a god does. The rule that breaks is the one between caretaker and god.
Stories where the monster might be a monster, or it might be a marriage, or a job loss, or something the protagonist did. The rule that breaks is the one that says you can tell the difference between what is happening to you and what you are.