I am Samhu Iyyam

On April Fools’ Day, it is customary to perpetrate some variety of practical joke. I suppose, then, I am leveraging the occasion but defying its convention- by ending, rather than initiating, a playful deception. I am the novelist, Samhu Iyyam. reVision, the first book in an epic trilogy, is my first work of fiction.

Why? Jessamyn West, as quoted in the book, says “Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.” I believe that to be true. Much that is most important to share with one another is also hardest. Deep thoughts about who we are, what truly matters, how we might be- in particular, how we might be better. Notions of how perceptions alter the realities that drive us apart, and how they might instead construct common ground, and bound our common causes.

I wrote reVision, and am writing the Lore of the Corners trilogy, because I have been compelled to do so. Because the story took over my mind, and the characters have come to populate my imagination as vividly as anyone I know in the “real” world. Because I have fallen into a world of other, and often better, possibilities- and feel no less than duty-bound to share it. Because the story flowed through me, seeking egress.

I am Samhu Iyyam, and proud of it.

reVision, which I have written about before while my camouflage was intact, is about everything that has ever mattered to me, provoked my contemplation, teased my imagination, or taunted my conscience. It is about men and women, love and honor, politics and religion, perception and reality, the cosmos and theology- even the Big Bang. It is about the constant struggle, both intimate and cosmic, between creativity, and control. It is where physics meets fantasy, and magic reveals its mechanism in science.

But above all, it is about people, and love. How could anything meant to matter not be mostly about what matters most in life?

All that has ever mattered to me rides the waves of an epic adventure, a romance, a fantasy saga. Those waves may be ridden in pure pleasure, or the depths probed- that is at the reader’s discretion. Mine was simply to let the story flow through me to its native depths and currents.

The inspirations for the Lore of the Corners are, to say the least, eclectic. They most ostensibly include the great works of Tolkien, and Asimov. But they run as well from Richard Dawkins, to Homer; Star Trek to Shakespeare. They include Colleen McCullough, Marguerite Yourcenar, Fancois Villon, and Lewis Carroll. But lest you begin thinking there is any literary snobbery here, they also include Avatar, Braveheart, Men in Black, and The Matrix. There’s more- as noted, almost everything that ever made my imagination, hope, or ambition catch it’s breath- but that will do. It’s a rather heady recipe as is.

Why Samhu? There was some mere playfulness in this subterfuge, through which I suspect at least some of you saw. But for the most part, there was much more to it than that- the proverbial carriage of genuine method in a semblance of madness.

First, I did not want ‘who I am’ to get in the way of what Samhu needed to do. Those who know, and love, me best in the world have suggested- despite the obvious and deep commitment to my ‘day job’- that this is the thing I was most meant to do. Perhaps, but if so, I needed to get out of my own way to find out.

Second, an author of a story is, inescapably, caught up in it- and it is germane to the many layers of reVision that I made this explicit rather than merely implicit. I am, in fact, part of the story that flowed through me- and Samhu represents that part of me

Third, Samhu has access to worlds I do not. There are intimations in reVision – as there are in the books to follow- that imagination and dreams are the readily accessible wormholes in space we find so evocative. What, after all, is a vivid dream or fantasy, but a conduit we may follow- across more than merely time and space- to an alternative universe? What, in fact, is a metaphor- but a conscious construction of much the same?

That is certainly true figuratively, but might it not be true literally? If not, it may at least be true literarily. I reside at one end of a conduit of imagination, or perception, and Samhu- myself, through the looking glass- resides at the other.

I can neither refute nor verify that the Lore of the Corners is the very thing I was most ‘meant’ to do, but I can concede that I am a writer, and that the story imposed itself on me and took me over. My options were reduced to: write it, or go quite mad by trying to resist. And so I wrote it.

In doing so, the linkages to my life-long and career-long priorities declared themselves to me at every turn, expressed themselves on every page. I will spare you a litany of those here, and invite you to find them for yourself within and between the lines of reVision. But one is worth particular emphasis. We receive, courtesy of lore, this adage: the light to banish last shadows from a corner must shine from without.

The Lore of the Corners is my attempt to wield just such a torch.

-fin

Dr. David L. Katz has authored or co-authored 14 other books of non-fiction, roughly 200 scientific papers and textbook chapters, and thousands of blogs and columns. He has previously published both essays and poems in literary journals and anthologies as well. His writing has received awards for excellence. reVision is his first novel.

https://www.loreofthecorners.com/

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