The Future is Not Guaranteed

You can be in a Christopher Nolan film and in your most laidback cool style say, “What’s happened happened,” and thus believe that what will happen will always happen, but according to Martin Cahill‘s book Audition For the Fox, the future is not guaranteed.  

One of the Youtubers I follow mentioned this book in a recent video, and I had to read it.  It’s a bit under 200 pages, feels fantastic to hold, and incorporates tales of gods or Pillars in the form of folktales as backstory for the titular Fox that our protagonist Nesi is trying to impress via demonstration of cunning and perseverence.  What does the future have anything to do with this fantasy?  The Fox transports Nesi five decades into the past when Zemin Wolfhounds were oppressing her fellow Oranoyans.  To pass the test of serving the Fox, Nesi must find a way to ensure her people would one day summon the determination and courage to defy and defeat those in ruthless power.

The Fox explains to Nesi, “And who says the future is a given?  What makes you think because it is how it’s always happened that it’s going to be how it’s always happened?  You take causality for granted, young one.  The future happens because we make it happen, because we choose for our best tomorrow to come.  That is what I meant all those months ago in your cell on the first night here.  The future is not a given.  You must seize it or someone else will write it for you.” (100).

There are so many insightful and clever bits of prose.  Here’s just a sample: 

~ “Just remember. Life is a story. Stories are answers to questions you learn by living” (47).

~ “Subjugation would always try to be explained away by those in power as something done for reasons that made sense in their twisted minds. And such excuses come quick to the tyrant’s tongue” (56).

~ ‘He’s said, “A child of Oranoya, on a single cup of cold coffee and an hour of restless sleep, if given proper incentive, can argue for the length and breadth of a sun’s passage, stopping only once their opponent has changed their mind or until they physically cannot speak or stand anymore. The most terrifying Oranoyan is not one armed with a blade, but an idea, worse if it has been tempered by belief” (57).

~ “Tyrants don’t draw lines around clan or class; there is no one and no thing they will not take and use for their own ends.  Especially their own.  Especially those they feel should be grateful for the chance to be led blindly…My sibling never has to work very hard to convince mortals to conquer or hurt in his name.  Often, the Wolf doesn’t have to work at all.  And when he does, the result is … brutal” (99).

~ “The Wolf was adamant in his pain.  And a wolf in pain will snap at whatever is nearest.  No matter how small.  No matter how helpless.  Or innocent” (137).

I started reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein recently, the 1818 text from Penguin Classics, but I’m going to resume some non-fiction reading first.  Specifically, Quantum Physics for Poets by Leon M. Lederman (Nobel Laureate) and Christopher T. Hill.  I came across this paragraph earlier today and audibly “oh my gawd” at a coffee shop.  Is such information regarding the escapades of Victorian era scientists equally “scandalous” or was it an occupational privilege?

 

 

Original pic creds: Prometheus Books, Amazon.