How to write science fiction & fantasy - part seven

1. Introduction to workshop 7: Hello and welcome to advanced science fiction and fantasy writing, the 21st century MF, My name is Daniel Walter. This is our seventh workshop and we are looking at none other than the classic work of science fiction by Frank Herbert Dune. And we'll be looking at how the technique of Savior stories we used by Frank Herbert to write such an amazing science fiction novel and how you can use the Savior story technique as well. 2. The 7 levels of meaning in DUNE: Do you often dream things that happened just as Eugene them? Yes. Franco bots June is a story that has grown over the decades. On its initial publication is a two-part series. It gained a substantial audience, all science fiction fans, but nobody beyond that elite college Roy would hear of June for many years to come it one to Hugo Award for best science fiction. But it was a novel that grew by word of mouth. That was an infamous 1990s cinema or adaptation by David Lynch. And move it, which I personally think is quite fantastic, but more as a David Lynch movie, then there's a Jew adaptation that was a quite mediocre television adaptation. And we're now waiting for Danny. They'll nubs quite possibly seminal cinema or adaptation of Frank terabits. June, what is it about? This story, about this novel kept it alive when thousands, tens of thousands of other science fiction stories fell away were forgotten over the years. There was something quite unique about June, about its conceptual grandeur. It's imaginative power, and it's a rock strangeness. There is no other story. So Popper in our contemporary culture that is also so weird, strange, and deeply meaningful. To understand the appeal of June, we need to think about the seven levels of meaning. In Frank Herbert, it's science fiction masterpiece. On the first and most apparent level. June is a medieval fantasy played out across a galaxy spanning cosmos. It has nights in the forms of the noble sons of the great houses and the foramen warriors and the emperors saw the car territory that has Wizards, the men tat half human, half computer who can process information at super-human speeds, which is Order of the Benny Jiang Azara, who can use that high levels of training to mentally control their opponents. Castles, the great strongholds on the planet. A racket, you name it, deposits of the medieval fantasy story. There. This was one of the things that made June so appealing to his early readers. It's an idea that was adopted by franchises like war hammer, 40 thousand, and of course, Star Wars, which played out many of the elements of the medieval fantasy, including fighting with swords made of light. Many of the things that are most fascinating about June, for instance, the way that the technology, the computer has been suppressed for the butler area and j-hat, a ways of making this medieval space fantasy work in the imagination of its audience. The second level of meeting and June is the trope of the disinherited prints. You will be familiar with this without doubt because you're familiar with the story of Robinhood. You have watched all seven seasons of Game of Thrones and read Georgia or maltenes novels, you know, and remember Prince Valiant. This is an incredibly common trope in the medieval fantasy. And it is the young man or woman who loses their inheritance, usually because of familial Scrabble with an opposing great family in June. This is a courthouse Atradius that full to house hawk Conan, which sets in course, pull the trading quest to regain his inheritance in the disinherited prints trunk. We have the ideas of the good ruler and the bad rollout. You may remember this from Disney's The Lion King as well. The disinherited Tango has been destroyed, represents the bad ruler. And the young prince has to choose between the values of his father or the values of the apparently more powerful attacking forces and pull a trade policies torn between these, the honor that his father represented, all the powers that he can unleash by fulfilling his quest. Beyond these genre elements of June is a deeper and more sophisticated story being told on the third level of meaning in June, the story of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. This was biography of TE Lawrence was an archaeologist and an officer in the English army in the First World War and end the war against the Ottoman Empire that was fought by the Arabs of the Middle East. And TE Lawrence literally went and lead large parts of this army. I told them ideas of gorilla skull mushing and was in large part responsible for the fall of the empire. But the Ottomans in this story greatly influenced Frank Herbert thinking and the aesthetic of June. I, you see the ideas of the religious wars are being fought. The foramen people did Jia had the poll, a trade is pull more D leads the foramen people into these core ideas from Islamic culture and much of the philosophy of June Islam, the word means surrender or submission to God. And some of the core of the philosophy that is expressed in June comes from a mash up of Islam and Catholicism. And these deep religious ideas from human culture and history. From the story of TE Lawrence and the trope of the disparity in the context of the medieval fantasy in space grows the four levels of meaning. In Frank curve, that's June. This is the hero's journey that would be made archetypal by George Lucas in Star Wars. That was the discovery of Joseph Campbell, the great morphologist. It's not clear whether Frank Herbert was actively aware of those ideas about the hero's journey. But nonetheless, all of the stages of the Hero's Journey clearly illustrated in June, the encounter with the mother and the father, the old my age entering the belly of the whale. They're all here. But I don't need to be taken from Joseph Campbell's model because these heroic journey ideas are implicit and storytelling of our culture and Frank cub, It was clearly able to deduce them for himself from first principles. He was also able to undermine them. June's hero's journey as a self-aware Hero's Journey is the journey of a hero who is also going to become the tyrant. A reflection on the way that everyone who commits great atrocities in the weld been these themselves to be the heroine of some great cause and pull the tray days is certainly fulfilling this model. He believes he has a great destiny to fulfill. But as we find out, especially in the later books of Jue, that desks and they will destroy the lives of millions of people. And when left uncertain by Frank curve, that's very soft and storytelling. Whether we supposed to think of pole as a heroine, no. Perhaps the greatest inspiration for June. Which guy? Frank Herbert story. It's fifth level of meaning was the sociopolitical modelling achieved within the space opera genre. Space opera, often known for derring-do and adventure and overblown tales of heroism had been used by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in Hayes Foundation series to tell more intellectually stimulating story, a story about. Full of a human empire. The establishment of a scientific foundation to save the empire, and then the growth of the other stages of human consciousness. The influence of Asimov's storytelling on June is very clear. The extracts from imaginary tags mirror the encyclopedia Galactic, which is extracted in Asimov's Foundation, the idea of an emperor of the galaxy, so on and so forth. Friend cub, that's political thinking is darker and more complex. He doesn't see future for humankind stretching out into a glorious next stage of humanity. Habits, vision is that humankind will continue to repeat the power struggles of our history, even as we colonize new planets. New empires. Perhaps the most unique, but the many complex ideas woven into frank curb is students, is that of ecological consciousness. Frank Herbert had been involved with the study of deserts, other ecological environments on the planet. I didn't become aware of the way the environment and our ecology exist in cycles. And in the story of June charts, there are cycles of development of the planet. A racket starting as a desert planet, having its waters on loft, moving into becoming the green and abundant paradise and then declining again back to its origin. And this idea of the cycle of life, these coal to ecological consciousness. Herbert was aware of things like gaia theory and the idea of that our planet is not simply a set of interacting mechanisms. It is one complete organic whole, a whole that humankind is only a part of. And in many ways, it's our psychological separation from the understanding of that organic wholeness. The force is the same to the political and social structures of imperialism and colonialization that Frank curb, that's novel is an all too powerful morning. Again. The seventh level of meaning in Franco, but it's June, is arguably the idea that made it so popular and fascinating to audiences in the mid 1960s, along with Stanley Kubrick, 2001, a Space Odyssey. June is a powerful and subversive exploration of the psychedelic experience. At a time when our culture was fascinated, not just wave psychedelic drugs like LSD, but the entire culture and experience of psychedelia on the counterculture, Frank car, but smuggled these ideas into the family entertainment of science fiction literature. And one over a huge audience of young people, teenagers, and members of the counterculture fascinated with psychedelia. At the heart of June is the spice melange range. None other than a psychedelic drug, which allows it because not only to develop psychic powers and insights into space and time, but also to navigate space ships from one side of the galaxy to the other. The navigates a class in Franca of its storytelling which solve his struggle with the problems of faster than light travel. The more deeply than that. The spice man launch represents some parts of human experience which we feel otherwise unable to explore. Taken as a whole, the seven levels of meaning have made Franco bits June, one of the most perpetually fascinating stories, one of the biggest cult followings in our culture. But it's something that emerges from the seven levels of meaning. Something more than any one of them could communicate that make the story a timeless, great work of June is a profound story of balance, transcendence, transcendence from our own structures of identity and ego that poll finds himself bound up in fighting against in his hero's journey, transcendence from the palette struggles of our society, the ways in which we need the political structures of society, but are always trying to escape them. Transcendence from the trap of ecological and environmental destruction, the way we are bound to our planet, but perpetually trying to escape it. And perhaps most of all, transcendence from ourselves. Transcendence from the structures, a mind, transcendence from the boundaries of space and time. The appear to hold us through the psychedelic experience. Whether Danielle nerves, cinema adaptation of Frank Colbert's Jew is a classic or not. The original novel and Frank curb its storytelling remain a classic of science fiction and fantasy and of contemporary myth-making skill relevant. Here. 60 is after its first publication. In the 21st century. 3. Review of techniques in DUNE: Franco bits June is one of the all-time classic works of science fiction. The seventh workshop leads on from the torque on the seven layers of meaning. And Frank Herbert, SS June. So please make sure you've seen that first. And we'll be digging deeper. This classic work of science fiction and looking at the savior story. At the heart of that novel, watts is a savior story. You may ask, we will be getting further into that. To get into this workshop though, we only want to go back to this question, why? Why is this work of science fiction June by Frank Herbert some 60 years after its creation, still remembered, still loved, and still one of the classics of the science fiction genre. Why? As I talk in 2021, has it just been adapted again to the cinema? Why does it have a classic, if controversial adaptation in 1984? And this kind of question that leads us to some of the advanced skills of science fiction writing because it's in these works of science fiction that have lasted over time that we find some of the answers. Let's do a quick review of some of the ideas and techniques of science fiction writing that we have covered so far in the course because they are all present. Frank Herbert, it's June. This is one of the conundrums I faced on the course that many of the great stories of science fiction actually feature all of the techniques or many of the techniques that we're looking at in the course. And that's no more true than in the case of Frank herb, It's June. So why have we discussed so far in advanced science fiction and fantasy? We have looked at the nature of myth-making and how science fiction writers and great science fiction storytellers are engaged in producing modern myths. And we're looking for the 21st Century myth. And this is no more true than in the case of Frank Herbert, it's June. And he draws on one of the greatest myths in human history. We'll get to that when we look at saviors stories, we have looked at eternal questions. And how every great work of science fiction and fantasy, modern myth-making has as its heart the kinds of eternal questions that human myths are always answering. In the case of June, it's one of the great questions that faces humanity. How do we, as human beings, transcend our limitations and become almost like a god that might sound grandiose, but it's true. At the heart of June is the story of polar trainees pull more deep and how he becomes more than human, how he becomes a superhuman, how he becomes god-like. And of course, we have fought a little bit about this question in previous workshops on Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, on the Marvel matter, narrative storytelling and how all of the superhero characters are God-like. A marvel is recreating this pantheon of gods. What was the second technique that we looked at? The Novum from dark OSU vendor new idea, the heart of the story that makes it science fiction. Why did we have at the heart of Frank hub, it's doom. What is the Novum? It's the spice Milan change that every character is using and the planet or Racket's that the spice comes from one of the all-time great, no VMS, the planet, a racket itself, the lifecycle of the worms who live on the planet and the spice Milan spoiler alert that the ones produce because that is one of the great revelations at the heart of June. For technique, the hero's journey, the well-known storytelling technique defined by Joseph Campbell, reduced from the great history of human mythology by Joseph Campbell and the heart of Franco bits June is the hero's journey, the 17 stages, the hero's journey. That poll Atradius goes through the archetypes. The fourth technique that we looked at specifically in relation to Blade Runner 2049. Interestingly, the same great movie director, Danny Vilna, love making Blade Runner 2049 and the new Jew and adaptation. And I'm curious, I haven't seen the adaptation at the time of making this whale. He drew on the same archetypes is defined by Carl Young because they're all there. In June. Let's think through the archetypes. We have the mother, Jessica or Atradius pulls mother, the father. Leto, or trade is Paul's father, the anima. These great internal archetypes that we looked at. The anima shall knee, pulls lover who he sees in prophetic visions before he ever meet, say, encounters the anima archetype, the shadow. The opposite of Paul, who is the hero, the shadow to pull, fade. Har Conan, who is a similar kind of being to Paul, but represents all of the dark aspects. He's violent, He's aggressive. He's a murderer many times over he is poles shadowed a god, archetype, the emperor of mankind, who is controlling all of the forces that pull has to meet. The fifth technique that we looked at, metanarrative. Not only is there one great novel, there is an arc of six novels that are pretty calls and C-Cl written by Frank COBIT son. Many myself included would question the quality of many of those later novels. But I form this great matter narrative from polar trainees. We then go into his son and then his various descendants. We follow other characters from the story and much like the Marvel universe, there is an entire mythos built around June that gives us a great metanarrative. Following archetypal character paths. Go back and look at the fifth workshop for more detail on that. The sixth technique, political modelling, the way that science fiction through world-building, build models of human society, human politics. And of course, anyone who knows June knows that there is incredible political modelling. The spice man launch is a kind of weirded version of oil. This rare resource here controls the spice, controls the universe, he controls the oil, controls 20th century politics on the CHO, cooperation as a kind of metaphor for the military industrial complex or rattling through these a bit. But it's to make the point that all of these techniques we have been looking at an advanced sci-fi and fantasy are present in the great works of science fiction. And we're going to move on to a seventh, an absolutely central technique, the Savior story. That many of the greatest works of science fiction, the ones that have lasted for a time, the ones that have made billions of dollars at the box office, the ones that have millions of faithful fans across generations have a savior story at the heart. In June. If you're familiar with the David Lynch version for he is the quiz hats, Hadar, hack, pull a TRE. These is more The Injustice simple, human. We follow his journey, his hero's journey in a way, not simply to becoming a hero, but to transforming. Transformation is the core of this technique or the Savior store. And the idea is we're going to be looking at in the workshop pull a trade is Paul moldy transforms into a kind of godlike being. You might call them a superhero. He has psychic powers. He is essentially becomes the emperor of the universe and a demi god of some kind. And we follow his transformation to that through the course of his savior story because he is the Savior of humankind. And particularly at the foramen p pull, the desert warriors who pull the young hero joins. This is really relevant to science fiction. I put a question to the science fiction community that surrounds this course. It's been growing very fast. You have a full thousand active members in the community. And this point and the question was, it was a bit of an incitement because I wanted to get people thinking. And the question was, does science fiction struggle to present real human experience? Because so many of the characters that we can think of in science fiction who are legendary sci-fi or fantasy characters. They are in some way more than human. Pull the tray. These does not live a normal life and have children and a job and a mortgage and deal with the sufferings and frustrations of ordinary, mortal, human existence. He does something much more. And many science fiction stories about the mundanity of life. That's not what we turn to sci-fi and fantasy for. Instead, we want to heightened experience. In fact, we want to go on a transformative journey. We not only want to follow a hero, we want to go inside, inside the consciousness of a human being that is being transformed to some kind of higher level of consciousness. And this is such an important part of so many science fiction stories that I think it's actually at the core of what science fiction is. This workshop is bringing together, as you can tell already, many of the big ideas that we have been exploring so far, because I think that they culminate in this idea of the transformation that we follow. The great characters of science fiction's, the transformations of consciousness and of themselves. 4. Stages of transformation: And the kind of story that talks about these transformations is a savior story. We're going to get on to the most famous savior story of all. But first I want to look at what is this transformation. Dipolar treaties goes through. There's a famous line from June. I must not fair, Fear is the mind killer. It's a whole poem. I won't recite it all to you now, but I'm sure many of you are June fans and many of you probably are reciting it right now. And you can correct me and my, my usage of it. But at the heart of this transformation is fair. Paul begins as somebody who is subject to fair and he ends as somebody who has overcome his fears. And on some level, it is the human ability to overcome fair, or our desire to no longer be limited by fair. That is at the heart of the transformation that we're talking about here. But let's go for it stage by stage. What is Paul's transformation? So let's think about poor more dB as a character. When we first meet him. We know that he's a prince. He's a high born individual. And this gives them access to lots of things that prints is often have access to. Really great education, great mentors, a great expectation of what he's going to become. He's going to inherit an entire planet. Actually the, the planet Kayla Dan, the ocean world, the opposite of the planet Gracchus. We also know that he has potentially this soup of being cold, the quiz that's had a rack and this is an outcome of genetic breeding. It's interesting that in so many Savior stories, there's an element of genetic breeding. Luke Skywalker is the son of the great Jedi. Robin Hood is the son of a great Lord who has been deposed. You can go on looking at that. And in fact, there's a conversation in our modern storytelling about do we want our heroes to be genetically predisposed for their role, their role as a savior. And in contemporary culture we're, we're kind of moving away from that genetic disposition, but it's there, it's there in polls. History. He is the outcome of a genetic breeding program. He has also. And this is a fascinating idea. He has been trained as a mentor that a human computer. And this is a kind of peak of education. What do we do when we educate humans today? We train their skills of logic and have calculation and the idea of being a mentor or human-computer. Because in the Jew mythos, they don't have computers. They have rebelled. There has been a war that Larry and jihad against some kind of artificial intelligence that arose. So it's a crying now to create a machine in the image of a mind. So Paul has both of these elements. He's genetically disposed. Annie has been advocated the highest level, and this brings together two different aspects of human personality. And these are talked about more than in the gum job Bar Test. Paul is tested at a young age to bring him into manhood by the high priestess who appears in June. And she says that the test is crisis. Pull us to put his hand into the box and he experienced his great pain. But the pain itself is not the test, It's the encounter with crisis and county prove himself human. So we have this idea here of a stage and the transformation encountering pain and being proven human, not animal. Then. And this just gets more and more fascinating. Poll is exposed to the spice Melania and this gives him visions, prophetic visions. And this is a stage in his transformation. He is now becoming something more than human. Old, new humans don't experience prophetic visions. We aren't exposed to these kind of psychedelic drugs some of us these days. So this is like a stage of insight that pull enters into. Let's continue looking at the stages of this transformation. He then makes this transition from Taliban, the ocean well to a racket. The desert weld opposite environments. And he's told by his father, we need new experiences. So there's something experiential in this transition. The sleeper must awaken. We need new experiences. This kind to awaken the parts were Venice the unnecessary for our transformation? The loss of the father. A classic part of many Savior stories, pulls folder. Leto is killed in the hall Conan invasion and the emperors invasion of Iraq IS. And there's a stage of maturation. Him we call grow truly into becoming adults until we've lost our fathers stage of maturation. That then we have the Fall of the House or Trey days. So pull is within a structure that has given him and his status, his prints like status in this has to be taken away. His identity has to be destroyed as the young prince to then be reincarnated as the savior of the foramen people. This new identity, we build even further upon this. The water of life that comes from the ones of Iraqiness. When pole faces the gum Jabbar test, he is told by the benny jazz, her mother, that there is a place terrifying to women. And then when he needs her later he says, look into that place, you will find me staring right back at you. So this is an element of transubstantiation, of drinking the fluid of a creature that turns you into something else. And in that transubstantiation, you take on elements of both male and female. This is just, just fascinating, you know, just going through what Frank Herbert was playing with and his storytelling. And then finally, let's think about the conflict with the emperor. The final stage of poles journey. He has to defeat the powers of the world or the universe, the hall codons and the sod contrary truths and the Emperor, and then a final battle, he defeats them all to become the emperor himself. And this isn't just a political role is symbolic. It's the poles transformation of self and consciousness, a taking him to become a king of some kind. So this is all fascinating, incredibly interesting. Franca is playing of all of these elements in the creation of June and more pulls transformation as a character is also embedded within shell like structures of transformation that Frank Herbert is also talking about. We have the social transformation, the Fall of an Empire and in its place, kind of the rising up of the GIA had ADA frame and warriors. We have the planetary transformation of June itself That's illustrated in the first story with the foal of rain onto the planet Earth, Gracchus and then Frank cover extends this and he thinks about the way the planet Iraqis over thousands and tens of thousands of years is transformed to a garden well, and then ultimately back to a desert world. And so it's hard to Frank Herbert storytelling up all of these layers of transformation. And the key transformation of polar trade is pull more deep from an ordinary human into something greater. Something god-like, Deming, god-like, super heroic. And that this is a savior story. And the Savior stories are at the heart of so much all Biola, most powerful science fiction or fantasy storytelling. And what is the most famous savior story of the mall? 5. Savior stories: Let's think about a few of the Savior characters that have been made famous by science fiction and fantasy storytelling. Maybe the most famous, Luke Skywalker. Skywalker in many ways actually a reference to coming down from heaven, walking the sky. And Luke, of course, is a savior. He, he saves the galactic republic from the evil empire which has taken over. Neo. In the Matrix. As I record this we just been told is going to be a new matrix movie. And neo is actually kind of a rough translation for a few languages. All of the world's savior. And in the matrix, of course, he saves what remains of humanity from the evil artificial intelligence that has traps them. Harry Potter, from Harry Potter. And whichever book you like, written by JK Rowling. And Harry Potter saves the magic king community from the evil wizard whose name I forgot and I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan. But of course I do know that story catalysts Aberdeen from The Hunger Games, who saves the people of which ever dystopian world that is set in from the kind of evil government that is oppressing them. Okay, and the list goes on because of course, we have heroes at the heart of these stories, but these ones that I've mentioned are also saviors. Because there is more to the savior story than saving the characters within the story. Something very significantly more, um, what, what, or who is the most famous savior of them all? It is, of course, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus Christ, sometimes called. Although Jesus isn't name Christ is more of a role. We'll talk a little bit more about the word Christ in this as well. A note aside that I have been waiting for a little while to make this seventh workshop in the course. Because of talking about such a potent religious myth, the myth that is at the heart of the beliefs of many Christians and also the, the beliefs of many atheists who objects story. So this is a quick side note that I am talking about the story of Jesus as a story which some people who believe in the story will object to. And when I talk about it more, some people who don't believe in the story may object to as well. So if you have personal objections, please put them aside so that we can learn from this savior story of Jesus of Nazareth. Because there's something very important about this story. It's not a unique story at all. Around 2000 years ago, when the story originates. There were many, many documented stories that were called Christos stories. And the Christos was a figure of light, heroic savior who came to the people who are oppressed at the time and liberated them from that oppression. And there was a particular understanding of how these crystal Smith's worked. The Savior in them didn't just save the characters in the story. You were saved by following the story, by reading a story, or probably more likely having it read to your performed to you. Christophe Smith's. Well, often performed in the public spaces around the Mediterranean where this was a popular form of storytelling. And it was understood that by watching the crest Al Smith, by joining Jesus, you might say, following the stages of the transformation of the crystal ofs would also help you to make the same transformation. And this is a common misunderstanding of the MEF, of Jesus Christ. That when we say things like follow Jesus or even that Jesus is the Son of God. These are ways of talking not about the literal figure of Jesus, but about Jesus as a mythic character. The idea or the concept of Jesus can lead you to salvation. And the same way that following a character like Luke Skywalker or Neo in the Matrix or pull the treaties in June. Can help you to actually experience the transformation of the character. And this is why we love Savior stories so much. It's not so much that Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker saving the galaxy or saving the magic kingdom community. It's that they're helping to save us, to guide us through the kind of transformation of consciousness that they're going through as characters. And we as human beings, are fascinated by this potential for our own transformation. Let's look at the stages of the story of Jesus of Nazareth. If it begins with birth, Jesus is born. Here's the line of David, the great king of the Israelites. He's born or an auspicious time, but he's not a prince. Unlike another Savior character of myth. To Buddha. Gautama siddhartha, who had become the Buddha. Buddha and Christos basically mean the same thing. Buddha is enlightened one being of light, Christos. The Christ being crystal space clean means light as well. Very similar characters, both manifestations of the Christos, MF. But butter is born a prince. Jesus very significantly born into poverty. We then have some, in some tellings that the young Jesus was of exceptional intellect. He was able to speak to the Pharisees, the priestly class, and join them with that conversations at a young age. But we don't know much more about Jesus until we encounter his baptism. And this begins the five main stages of the transformation of Christ. He has baptized by John the Baptist. Where do we see baptisms? In our modern Christ figures on modern Savior stories, Neo in the Matrix. The clip that we've used earlier in the course, when he bursts from the pod that he's been kept in by the creators and the matrix. This is a baptism. And the character Morpheus is a John the Baptist figure who has awakened Neo as Jesus was awaken to the true nature of reality in his baptism. Then we have the Transfiguration of Christ. He goes up onto a mountain. This again very reminiscent of Buddha and also Mohammed, another Christos figure, now the savior figure, the Transfiguration of Christ. And he has kind of taken up, he has blessed by the angels. And this is part of his transformation. And then of course, CO1 and the main parts of the Christ MF, the crucifixion of Christ. The Christ is accused of a crime, a trumped up crime by the Roman authorities. And then he's condemned by his own people and He is crucified. Now this major stage of the transformation has many steps within it. These are traditionally called the passion within the Christiane mythos. And they include things like being whipped through the streets of Bethlehem. They include having to construct the crossing himself, being nailed to the cross, some raised up with the two thieves on either side of him being stabbed in the side by the Roman centurion. Apologies for people who know to bash him better than I do if I've slightly butchered it in that rendition. But this is to illustrate the idea that as we think symbolically about the transformation of Christ, Christos figure the heart of this story. There are stages in this transformation. And they mean something. They have symbolic meaning. When Christ has the carry the cross. This is understood by the audience, watching or listening to the story or reading the Bible. As symbolically picking up the suffering of the world that you as a being to have your transformation, have to carry some great cross, some great suffering. And the stages all have these symbolic meanings. The crucifixion is then followed by the resurrection. So Christ is not just, he's not just killed. He comes back. And that His sufferings have brought him back in some kind of higher form into the world. And after His resurrection, he goes back and he preaches to or teaches many of his followers. He seen by many of his followers. This is important. Again, it's symbolic. You can try to understand it laterally. Or you can believe that in our own transformations are great. Suffering destroys something within us. Where did we see the ice? In the story of polar treaties? His transformation from the young prince, the Silence of house Atradius, house to try these has to be destroyed. And then he can be reborn for the water of life, the transfiguration and other great Christiane symbol. I, he can be withdraw with, he can be reborn as a new identity. Paul treaties is in his way resurrected into a new identity. And then the final of the five stages of the Christian myth, the essential and the ascension to heaven. Where Jesus then awaits his followers who will be called to heaven, that there is a higher form of human consciousness that Jesus then in habits. Again, this is not the literal understanding. This is the mythic understanding of the story of Jesus. And we do the same thing in all of us Savior stories that has such a powerful part of science fiction and fantasy storytelling. Luke goes from his own transition. He has to go into the caves on the weld where Yoda is teaching him, counter the shadow of his father, his father who then has to fight Neo in the Matrix read Born from the pod. But then he has to fight ancient Agent Smith, the shadow archetypical figure, just one stage of his transformation. Catenary 17 has to compete in the Hunger Games. A spectacle almost like a crucifixion, the public sacrifice of these young people, Harry Potter has to play quidditch. That's a strange symbolic figure for you. Okay, just to drive home the point that we've been talking about, the telling of modern myths in this course. And this is one of the great archetype or myth it structures the Savior story. The hero, the young hero are usually who goes through stages of transformation in the process of saving that P poles saving the world, saving the republic, saving the wisdom community. But these stages, the story actually about our transformation. And the reason we love these stories is because as the crystal Smith, as the story of Jesus Christ was used by these audiences to 1000 years ago to experience a kind of transformation their own. We go inside these characters. We go inside Luke Skywalker, we go inside Neil. And we experienced the transformation within those of you who watched the interview with the great cognitive scientist, Java leaky and the course, we spoke about the idea of bleed. The way that in science fiction stories that we really get absorbed into when we cause play a character, when we do role-playing games or live role-playing games, and we're playing through a character. There is some bleed into our real psychological state and there is some transformation that can be achieved. And that through these Savior stories, we experienced this kind of bleed. If the stages are true to our idea of transformation, Let's think about this a little bit further. 6. Psychological models: The stages of transformation we're faced with a question as human beings, Let's take it on head on. How far can we transform. Does a human being have the potential to become god-like? Could any of us become like pull moldy but have psychic powers? Could we have this superpowers of Marvel superheroes? Within the structures of our culture. We say no to this, the good reasons, but we long nonetheless for a kind of transformation. So we think about it today in psychological tons and we think about psychological transformation. And there's many maps of the kind of transformation that we believe we might be able to achieve as human beings. One of these we have looked at in a little detail, the map of Carl Young that we've looked at a number of times, where he spoke about Individuation and self actualization. The way through the process of individualization. Encountering the archetypes of the shadow and the anima, we can discover our true self. And this is a form of psychological transformation that's used in many kinds of therapies today. Let's have a think about John Piaget. You don't have to know about John Piaget to follow this, but you may be interested to look him up. John Piaget's work on the development of children, of child psychology. The way except the idea. Today, only because of the work of Piaget and other child psychologists, that there are substantial changes that children go through to become adults. And we then think about the psychological transformations that adults go through to develop further through that lines, one of these models. But I give to you for curiosity because he might be interested in looking at it. One of the most established is from Richard Keegan. Then now emerita us, that means we're tired, basically Professor of Psychology from Harvard University. So a tremendous reputation in the field. And he talks about five stages of adult psychological development. I'm just gonna go through these quickly because you may find them useful as a storyteller. If we're telling stories, Savior stories. And we want to map out how a human being might psychologically grow and develop. We can draw on some of these maps we could draw. And Young's map colleagues, Matt, we could draw and John Piaget's map. Or we could draw on this map, which I will put on the screen somewhere. At the five stages of adult psychological development. Let's say we began and we have an impulsive mind. Think about how impulsive children are. And it's because we really just think about our self. We are the single point at the center of our model of the weld, second-order, the instrumental mind, slightly older child, we want to get things that we want. So we understand that there are other people. But we just want to get things from them and we impulsively try to get what we want. We scream or we cry, we are emotionally blackmail our parents, but food or for toys. The third order, The socialized mind that we take children, we send them to school so they experience being around other people and they realized they can't just get what they want. They have to negotiate the interpersonal relationships to get what we need for order of the psychological development from child now into adult. Enrich a Keegan's fairy, most adults stop at the socialized mind. Some though, become self offering minds. We see that we are socialized with a norm, certain rules of society that we're going to comply to. We're going to go and get a job. We are going to have a family, a mortgage, that kind of way of living. We've been socialized as mind, but in the full folder, we become the self-fulfilling mind. We don't want simply to fit into the rules that we are given. If society and we develop our own identity, our own ideologies. The fifth order, the self-transforming mind. That we can understand that everybody now is built around ideology. And we can transform a step further and beyond that. I give you this model. As writers with the suggestion that you could use the model of young, the model appears j, the model of Richard Keegan to tell a story of the scope and scale and success and popularity and long enduring power as Frank curb bits June. Because at the core of June where Frank hub, it's ideas about the Savior story, a polar treaties. And how is consciousness transforms? And that we could, as writers use any of these great models of psychological transformation to construct our own savior stories with our own models and maps of human transformation, psychological transformation. That within the morphology of a story where writing would give our character the heroic superpowers that Demi Gods status that we saw often want from characters in sci-fi and fantasy. This is the topic of our workshop exercise to close off this seventh workshop, you have two options. And they both a belt around the same idea. Take a model of transformation and your options are, you can use a Richard Keegan's model to build your story around. Or you can use the model of Jesus of Nazareth off the baptism and Transfiguration, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth. Or Keegan's model. With the impulsive minds, the instrumental minds, the socialized mind, the self-authoring mind, and the self-transforming mind. We're not going to use all of the stages. Write a short story that shows the transformation of a character from one stage in your model, the other. For instance, what would a baptism look like and how would they transform that your character? We've said already that Neo in the Matrix in his awakening, that is a baptism. That's how you do a baptism in a Cyberpunk story. What would a baptism look like? Let's take an example of a science fiction genre. What would a baptism look like in a zombie story? Well, I feel character was bathed in blood and came back from out of the blood as a living zombie. Just as an example, what would that kind of transformation mean? If we look at Keegan's model of the socialized mind into the cell phone offering mind a short story where the character is embedded within society is a socialized mind. And they break away from that. And self author. Instead. Something to think about. Something to think about. An important point to finish on is that in science fiction and fantasy storytelling, we take the elements that are happening internally and we externalize them. This is something that I will talk more about in a future workshop. Example. The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy has sucked into the portal hurricane into a world. And she is trying to come to terms with the loss of her dog, Toto. She has this internal transformation she's going through. But we are showing this for external symbols. The Tin Man, The Lion, the scarecrow, who are the heart, the brain, and the soul of courage that she is collecting. Okay? So in fantasy and sci-fi storytelling, we have a psychological transformation that is shown x Donnelly. For symbols like the force, like drinking the water at life like a planet, a Racket's, there's much more to be said about that. It's something to think about. And you can use that in this exercise. A short story that takes your character through a stage of transformation. Either from the crisis mf, or from Keegan's model, which will be available in the notes. Thank you very much for following the seventh workshop. This is the advanced course. These are advanced ideas. You may not get them straight away. They are to be worked with. There's a tremendous amount of richness and depth in the savior story, how they'd been told in sci-fi and fantasy, and how you can use them as a creator. Thank you very much for your participation. Again, I look.