Scott Bakker Answers Questions Five
Canadian author (R.) Scott Bakker hit the SFF world hard to critical acclaim a few years ago with his debut The Darkness That Comes Before (review), followed shortly by the next two volumes of the Prince of Nothing Trilogy (review), The Warrior Prophet (review) and The Thousandfold Thought (review). His epic trilogy delves deeper and more philosophically than typical and tackles some weighty issues surrounding the idea of certainty. A follow-up trilogy (?) is forthcoming with The Judging Eye kicking it off sometime in early-2009.
In Bakker’s newest book, Neuropath (review), he embraces the psycho-thriller and gets a bit closer to his passions as a philosopher. The basis for the book resides in the reality of cognitive science and just what recent findings say about human consciousness.
I’m very pleased that Scott as taken the time to answer Questions Five – apparently I caught him in one of his more strident, evangelical moods.
What type of protection do you recommend for genre promiscuity?
SB: KY. It protects against chaffing and the like. Use enough of it and even half-naked barbarians and farmboys-who-would-be-king can be quite pleasurable.
So I’m told, anyway. Ahem.
Fill in the blank: Kids today just don’t appreciate the value of ___. How does Neuropath reflect this?
SB: Self-knowledge. They are told, over and over and over, “to believe in themselves,” and yet nowhere—literally nowhere!—are they taught just what it is they are believing in. Being human isn’t easy. In so many ways, we are our own biggest obstacles, and yet we teach our children to close their eyes and just pretend otherwise. We set them up to fail in all the ways that we fail. We give them little gold stickers.
Neuropath takes this as a central theme.
If Neuropath were a fortune cookie, what would its fortune be?
SB: You are not what you think you are.
Neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science have been amassing evidence of this for decades now, and yet nary a peep makes it to mainstream culture. We send our kids to school, and instead of learning how to evaluate claims, or how to compensate for the myriad ways in which we all dupe ourselves, they are taught the precise opposite: to celebrate our stupidity, in fact.
Turn on the news. There isn’t a single crisis which does not turn on our cognitive shortcomings. Arguably, there’s no single greater cause of human misery, be it terrorist attacks or marital breakdowns, and yet we keep it hidden, and keep on pretending.
And I fear that our future will be far less forgiving than our past.
How would you interpret this fortune if were your own?
SB: That I’m not what I think I am. That despite all my hardwired tendencies to buy my own bullshit, I need to hold onto my doubt. Suspending judgment is the hard road. The high road—I hope.
Why should Neuropath be the next book that everyone reads?
SB: Because all the weaknesses I’ve referred to are factual–only our ignorance, vanity, and fraudulent culture allow us to think otherwise. The whole point of Neuropath is to suss those weaknesses out and to cut against them.
The reader is the real protagonist—or antagonist as the case might be.
Scott Bakker’s series, The Prince of Nothing (review), hit the SFF world with critical acclaim and a cerebral approach to epic fantasy. Bakker jumps genre in Neuropath to the realm of psychological and techno-thrillers and the same approach of intellectual depth without sacrificing the entertainment value of reading. Neuropath succeeds at both with its weighty implications of cognitive science and a suspenseful thriller plot.
Thomas Bible and Neil Cassidy have been arguing since college as only the closest of friends can – specifically The Argument that is founded in cognitive science about the root of consciousness and free will itself. Thomas, now a professor at Columbia University, has moved on to a family life complete with an ex-wife and 2 kids. In a drunken evening Neil reveals to Thomas that he has been covertly working for the NSA in neuroscience, making unimaginable leaps in neurosurgery and cognitive understanding without the hindrance of ethical constraints. Thomas is horrified when he realizes that the Neil is essentially a rogue agent elevating The Argument to a new level and now one of the FBI’s most wanted.
For a thriller, Neuropath takes a slower pace – the entire book occurs over the course of about two weeks with only a few bursts of action. The real action occurs internally and in verbal sparring as The Argument is laid out repeatedly and the horrors of Neil’s plan become more visible, if not more clear. The appropriate twists occur along the way, calling the anticipated conclusion into question – and the conclusion itself provides the perfect ending for Bakker’s Argument, if not for a reader’s sense of mind.
Thomas and Neil’s Argument is the point of the book and Bakker’s Argument as well – an Author’s Afterward lifts the veil of fiction to the reality of modern cognitive science. Simply said (and I’m sure not very accurately said), The Argument is that consciousness and all that goes with it (such as free will) is an illusion that our brains trick us into believing. This delusion drives the actions of humanity and its many short-comings. The real kicker is that our brains’ ability to rationalize almost insures that we will never allow ourselves to believe The Argument. Neuropath lays out The Argument, all of its disturbing implications and horrific potential.
Fans of philosophy and deep intellectual debate will eat up The Argument as it consumes them – I lost a bit of sleep and have brought its implications into many a conversation since reading Neuropath. But Bakker suffers some of the flaws of a fire and brimstone preacher relentlessly pounding his point into the reader’s head. This righteous repetition eventually becomes tiresome, further encouraging rationalization of The Argument – of course I think that Bakker in all his efforts to convert the reader to the truth of The Argument is as frightened of its implications as the rest of us.
If you read other reviews and commentary of Neuropath, words like disturbing and horrific abound. The physical act of arguing The Argument does in fact horrify. At no point can I actually say that the book is overtly graphic, but Bakker brings the reader to the brink and lets them imagine the rest – which, at least in my case, does lead to horrifically graphic scenes. The direct assault on common moral code and the human condition drives the reader’s reaction and the truly disturbing horror invoked. However, for those that have followed the building buzz, disappointment may be the result of repeatedly hearing how horrific and disturbing Neuropath is.
With Neuropath Bakker succeeds in having his cake and eating too in this intellectually stimulating techno-thriller. It’s not a book for everyone, but does work on multiple levels and will be a book to talk about. 8/10
Scott Bakker Answers Questions Five
