Konsk: The Patafiction.
A Fantasy of Imaginary Solutions
What is he on about?
Having now posted some 31 chapters of Konsk here on Substack, some words of explanation may help here, particularly for new subscribers (a warm welcome to you all!) but also for loyal readers, some of whom have been here from the very start- your patience and endurance is remarkable! At the foot of this piece you’ll find links to all the episodes on Substack so far, should anyone wish to catch up.
So, what is it then? The shortest and to me simplest answer is Konsk is a fantasy. In a sense, all fiction is fantasy, whatever it deals with. One subset of fantasy is science fiction, generally thought of as dealing with events in the future. For various reasons I did consider myself to be a science fiction writer (and reader) in my teens and twenties, though the first novel I had published (now out of print) was in fact a fantasy. However, I wasn't quite happy with the term science fiction to describe Konsk as it seemed to go beyond that somehow.
Way back in the early 1990s, I was looking at Lyn’s1 bookcase and one of the titles, “The Metaphysical Poets”, caught my eye. I wondered, for the first time, what the “meta” actually meant. Looking it up in a dictionary I found that meta suggested being above or beyond whatever it referred to and sort of looking back, or down on it. Intrigued I wondered if anyone had applied it to fiction as in “metafiction”.
I checked on the World Wide Web, as it was then known, using, If I remember correctly, the web browser Netscape Navigator and the search engine Yahoo. I was a bit disappointed as (obviously!) someone else had already thought of it…yes, all of nine results came up.
Somewhere around 2010 I did another search for metafiction, this time with the soon to be world-dominating search engine that-shall-not-be-named, (I use Duckduckgo now), and got over nine million results; metafiction had become a commonplace term. Oh well, never mind!
I intended to use the term metafiction as “above or beyond fiction” in the sense that the various actions, events, techniques and locations etc. in Konsk are based on actual actions, events, techniques and locations etc. in reality. My idea was that a web based version would provide links to those real examples throughout, thus the story might draw a reader in, kindle their interest in different methods for approaching current challenges and provide them with routes to explore these and other methods in reality, such as permaculture design.
Due to the prolific use of the term metafiction2 plus an increasing broadness in its definition that rendered it almost useless, while my intent remained largely unchanged I was no longer interested in the term. Instead I thought about the word pataphysics, coined by Alfred Jarry3 (1873-1907), a Frenchman who was so far ahead of his time as to be almost invisible.
One definition of pataphysics (from Wikipedia) is that it is:
“a branch of philosophy or science that examines imaginary phenomena that exist in a world beyond metaphysics; it is the science of imaginary solutions."
So applied to fiction, patafiction would be something like a fiction of imaginary solutions. For now, I am happy with this term though it could perhaps be extended to patafantasy.
The work that is appearing here on Substack is in fact a small sub-set of Konsk, the patafiction. The whole is made up of six sections, dealing with the deep past, the more recent past, the present and the future, most of which exist in draft form and each of which could be described as a book. Each book can be read independently but combine to create a longer narrative. Further, there is no prescribed order in which the books should be read. Whichever order is chosen, they will still make sense, just a different sort of sense4.
I thought Konsk might operate as a front end to lure a reader into a whole range of regenerative practices. To do so it would have to model some of the features of popular writing like interesting or unusual characters and some action etc.
Early on I realised that this ambitious project would benefit from the involvement of others, in terms of drawing in ideas for, and examples of, regenerative, future cultures, together with simple examples, such as what you would like to see in your ideal future. One of my reasons for revising and posting this section, the Great Takeover of the Place, on Substack was an attempt to encourage feedback and suggestions and I'm very grateful for those readers who have done so. Many thanks, please keep them coming.
Konsk in one sense is an unashamedly eco-socio-psycho utopian fantasy. However, given the very real challenge of continuing global warming with currently no visible end in sight, the future it envisions cannot hope to be completely utopian. One of the challenges we face as individuals and communities is that we simply do not know how things will turn out. So the fantasy has to deal with learning how to live and flourish given that permanent sense of uncertainty about the future.
So now you know. I'm aware that not everyone is interested in fiction and that is completely fine- as with all my work on Substack, just bin the stuff you are not interested in. There are various pieces on The Many Species of Coed Y Brenin, our Internet Energy Use, the Tyddynwyr and their Resilient, Low Carbon Society and how we might do something similar but even better today, still to come. So hopefully there will be something for everyone- a bold statement indeed!
As always, comments, suggestions, ideas, pointers or whatever you fancy are always welcome. Take care all. Hwyl! Chris.
Episodes on Substack so far. Notes follow below the chapter list.
The Great Takeover of the Place: vers. 6.6
31. Auto Destruct Mechanisms Unleashed.
Lyn and I got married 46 years ago. I’m often stuck as to how to refer to her; “my wife” sounds a bit possessive and similarly with “my” partner, soul mate, best friend, lover etc. etc. Lyn dismisses all the latter (stupid political correctness, hippy bullshit or just plain daft, even if they are all true) and says tell it how it is, so “my wife” is probably how it is. Oh well.
The adoption of the term as the stand-alone name for a sociopathic, expoitative virtual playground didn’t help either…
Incidentally, Alfred Jarry was a genius, usually described some time later as an Absurdist, who wrote and produced the remarkable drama Ubu Roi, dealing with, among other things, totalitarianism and murderous dictators; the first word of the first performance in Paris, 1896, “Merde”, sparked a riot.
I was privileged to be the stage manager for a student production of Ubu Roi in Aberystwyth in 1977, directed by Kevin Graal and starring Damian Hayward and Hilary Jones as Pa and Ma Ubu and another, now famous notable, Neil Brand, as both Captain Manure and The Bear, though not at the same time. The costume for the latter was so restrictive of Neil's vision that he fell off the stage. In an attempt to capture the shock of the first word, our director updated “Merde!” to “Fuck!”. Sadly this only prompted laughter rather than a riot. How times have changed!
Why it is called Konsk is revealed within the work, at some point. However, various alternative titles appear in the appendices, including
Konsk, The Hexology. (As there are six books).
A Fantasy for Gardeners.
Survival Guide for the Third Millenium
The Konsk Kosmolgy