Jedediah Berry is the author of a novel, The Manual of Detection, and a story in cards, "The Family Arcana," as well as numerous short stories and works of interactive fiction.

He lives in Western Massachusetts, where he serves as co-editor of Ninepin Press and teaches at the Solstice MFA Program of Pine Manor College.

from “Eggheads and Rejects in and Around Science Fiction Society” by Ish Klein
from “Eggheads and Rejects in and Around Science Fiction Society” by Ish Klein

from “Eggheads and Rejects in and Around Science Fiction Society” by Ish Klein

From one of my favorite films, The Saragossa Manuscript, directed by Wojciech Has and based on the 1815 novel by Jan Potocki (Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse).

To me the important thing is not to offer any specific hope of betterment but, by offering an imagined but persuasive alternative reality, to dislodge my mind, and so the reader’s mind, from the lazy, timorous habit of thinking that the way we live now is the only way people can live. It is that inertia that allows the institutions of injustice to continue unquestioned. The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller.
Loading... No More Posts Load More Posts