Just read this post regarding Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and thought ‘this is me. This is us.’ I can’t think of a better case for perseverance on the part of brave new authors than Wrinkle in Time, since it took so many attempts and so much time in order to bring the story to life.
It’s no secret that science fiction is the community of the underloved, and underknown. Frequently, it’s also a community filled with hostility and suspicion, and I think the reason why is simple. When you take a bunch of people who have been marginalized their whole lives, who have through science fiction experienced this a-ha moment of ‘this is where I belong, this is my spot in the universe,’ you also get people who are afraid that by opening doors for others they will be shutting doors for themselves.
These are the people that Madeline L’Engle had to make peace with, and be accepted by, when she wrote ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ That’s our job, as authors, too. We must overcome, with love, the same small-minded arguments against the universes we create. We must persevere through what the movie ‘Angus’ called ‘The Bathune Theory.’
We must be different, we must deal with the outside pressure to conform, but we must remain true to ourselves. In that perseverance, we have faith that like Madeline L’Engle, our dreams will eventually be accepted by the community. It’s a scary exercise, looking down the dark tunnel and imagining there will eventually be a light, but that’s our journey. ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ made it out of the tunnel successfully, and we can, too.