Why on Earth Would You Want to Write about Eugenics?

“So what is your next book about?”

“Eugenics.”

“Eugenics, what’s that?”

“Put simply the idea that if you breed good with good you get better.”

“Why on earth would you want to write about that?”

“Good question!”

Eugenics Congress Logo

That is a brief account of a conversation that I had very recently. The person I was talking to repeated a question that several others have already asked me so I thought I might expand upon my reasoning a little. It might be a topic that is going to keep on coming up.

I came across Eugenics as a subject at a young age, I don’t remember exactly when or where but I do remember it being on my mind while I was still at school. Those who follow my blog will know that I was born disabled, that is, I have two congenital conditions. For a eugenicists this situation would be abhorrent, proof that the human species was slipping into an abyss of deformed, weak and deplorable life forms. The great white race of the western world was being brought low by racial impurity and the intercession of compassion that allowed the unfit to survive.

Curiously that is not how Sir Francis Galton, the man who established Eugenics as a ‘science’ in the early 20^th Century saw it. He believed that humanity could be raised to higher level of perfection by a system of controlled human breeding. The logic was very simple, take a man and woman who are both physically fit and intelligent, let them make a baby and the resultant offspring would, in all probability, be superior to the parents.

In support of this principle Galton could turn to Charles Darwin’s new theory of evolution and how nature operated to ensure only the survival of the fittest. Gardeners and stock breeders had also known for a long time that there was an irrefutable logic to this principle of ‘good + good = better’, they had been enacting it for millennia to produce better crops and better cattle.

Although the logic of the eugenic principle seemed self-evident the science behind the transmission of human traits from one generation to the next was not. DNA would was confirmed 1956 by Watson and Crick although its existence was first promulgated in 1869. This presented a problem to the ardent eugenicist, they simply did not know how to proceed with their vision of creating a superior human race.

One of the themes of my new book Eugenica is the corruption of a simple idea into something more reprehensible. As Eugenics began to grow as an academic subject, spreading from Britain to America, Germany, and Scandinavia amongst other places, it did so against a social backdrop of a growing awareness of the population of existing disabled people. During World War One it was revealed that 2/5ths of the population that were eligible for conscription were found to be unfit for military service. It was estimated that there were some 16 million citizens of the United Kingdom who could be classes as disabled.

A Royal Commission into condition of the feeble minded reported in 1910 in an alarmist fashion suggesting a growing population such people that was in danger of swamping the healthier people of Britain. The commission’s report was taken seriously by politicians like Winston Churchill and Parliament enacted the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 that put into British Law the terms idiots and imbeciles.

Facing an impasse with the practical problem of implementing a eugenics based breeding plan for the human race, a problem identified by the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the author H. G. Wells as stemming from the social convention of marriage, eugenicists looked instead at what was seen as the menace of those feeble in mind and body.

Eugenics began to advocate for segregation and enforced sterilisation of the disabled. In the state of Indiana in America, and also in Sweden, they got their way. Very quickly the question of breeding a superior human race became one of dealing with the several million inferiors that already existed. This branch of Eugenics is termed ‘Dysgenics’. It is the version that most people today are familiar with because it is the one enacted by the Third Reich in Germany.

It is known but not always mentioned that the early Nazi government actively pursued dysgenic policies against the disabled in Germany. Adolf Hitler himself signed an order for a program called ‘Action T4’ that saw enforced euthanasia used to kill over 100,000 disabled German citizens. Many of the techniques used later at places like Auschwitz were originated and refined in the Action T4 program.

I doubt very much that Sir Francis Galton would have approved of dysgenics. He was not at heart an evil man, although some social commentators have since presented him as such. In fact Galton was a polymath, a genius, who made significant contributions in the fields of statistics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, geography, meteorology; he even devised a method of classifying finger-pints. Galton was a Victorian visionary who wanted to improve the world and his early theories on Eugenics were very much in that mould. The science of the time, however, fell very much short of that required to either support or refute his theory of Eugenics.

There is something appealing in the notion of a man and woman combining to produce a child who would be both physically and mentally superior to their parents. The notion that such a child would be free of illness of any kind is one that a parent can readily identify but we know now that genetics does not work that way. The capacity for genetic mutation is at the heart of evolution and adaptability. Every generation contains within it a countless number of mutations of the inherited DNA code. The vast majority of these mutations prove ineffective; they do not do anything. Some prove detrimental, giving rise to physical deformity and mental impairment. A few more prove very useful giving us singers, artists, geniuses. This is what early eugenicists did not know and lacking this information they could not defend their simple principle against the rise of the dysgenic interpretation.

Eugenics began with the best intentions but, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and so it was proved.

Writing About Disability isn’t Pretty is it?

Having just started submitting my manuscript for Eugenica to literary agents I received a comment that made me ponder the wisdom of having four main characters all of whom are disabled; disability is not attractive!

I agree, it is not. And the fact is that some people have a problem in dealing with disabled people. In fact I used to work with someone who told me that they had a problem with disabled people, I informed them that they were right; they did have a problem! I do not have such a problem but then I am a disabled person myself so that would be pretty counterproductive anyway.

Long John Silver

Curiously literature is not bereft of characters that have some form of disability; in fact there are legions of them. Captain Long John Silver was a rogue who never let having only one leg get in his way. He is the sort of character that I like, a bit of a good guy and a bit of a rascal. He is objectionable in many ways but he has his redeeming features, unlike Shakespeare’s Richard the Third who is just all bitter and twisted, his bile being occasioned by the fictional hump and limp the Bard inflicted upon him.

Of course Richard is not alone, there is Captain Ahab also. Here is a man so bitter about being left disabled by a creature that he was trying to kill, the temerity of the whale to fight back, that he committed everything to gaining his revenge on Moby Dick. I was quite glad that the white whale won that encounter actually.

Capt Ahab

Then there are the Tiny Tim type characters. I really do not like them. Simpering, pitiable and pathetic. They are no more convincing than Shakespeare’s King Richard. I know, there are such people in the real world but I do not find them interesting. Besides, the truth is that even disabled people are more complex than that.

Disability is not the issue it is just the first impression. Inevitably when a reader begins to read Eugenica they are going to come upon my characters as disabled young people. This is inevitable because that is what they are but it is not the sum total of everything that they are. As the story progresses more and more of the characters is revealed, their hopes, fears, outlooks on life, abilities and also how they cope with being what they are; both able and disabled.

Antony Sher as Richard III

Let me illustrate them for you briefly. Grace has a missing left hand and right leg due to suffering a form of limb reduction whilst developing as a foetus. She has lived largely in isolation and is self-reliant as a result. Thomas is blind and black, a double burden for living in 1930’s Britain. He is also kind, brave and a gifted musician. Mary has Turner Syndrome but colours every day with a love of life expressed through singing, dancing and acting. Hector is losing the use of his legs but is a voracious consumer of knowledge. Neither of them has an ability that balances out their disability, all of them have abilities, just like everyone else, and a pronounced disability as well, unlike most other people.

It is somewhat saddening to learn that there will be those people who will look at the synopsis of Eugenica and discount it immediately because it has disabled people in it. Yes, disappointing, but not surprising. People do not limit their prejudices just to their choice of reading material after all. I have been on the receiving end of such prejudice many times in my life and I accept that it is part of the human condition. It is not an enviable trait and it can be challenged but it is there all the same.

Tiny Tim

If I have been successful in writing Eugenica then the reader should finish it thinking of Grace, Tom, Mary and Hector not as disabled people first but rather as admirable people who have disabilities. That is definitely one of my objectives in writing the book. How successful I have been will only be known later and that will depend upon how many people get to the end of Chapter One and choose to keep on reading.

When the End is in Sight the Longest Part of the Journey has Begun!

The Ministry of Social Biology

Eugenica, my alternative history novel, is nearing completion and it is proving a very frustrating period in the creative process. The last two chapters, there may actually be three but I am not clear on that yet, are proving very difficult to get into shape. There are various reasons for this and I suppose it is somewhat encouraging that I am able to understand them, otherwise I would be lost in a creative vortex.

All of the problems are of my own creation. The plot is not particularly convoluted but it does have several threads running through it and they need to be brought together to help form the closing scenes. I am not one who needs every question answered or every thread tied off, in fact there may well prove to be a sequel to Eugenica so I think that it is in everyone’s interest that the ending is somewhat open.

This approach is not one of the problems, avoiding the obvious or predictable is. One of my beta-readers suggested a certain cataclysmic event at the end of the story, it was one that I had already flagged up myself – only with the intent of avoiding it. Yes, the obvious incident would be full of danger, death, and destruction and possibly I could make it into a thrilling ride for the reader but I can guarantee that it is also the first thought of the said reader when they encounter the particular object that suggests this violent end in the opening passages. It is just too obvious!

What I actually want to do is something a little bit more subversive and I am working to that end on this particular part of the story. The conclusion itself is going to be pretty violent anyway with two characters who represent the opposite ends of what eugenics believes it can create coming to blows. They are both physically powerful men but also very different to one another. Their battle should give me plenty of exciting action to write about. I am actually looking forward to working on this episode as by its very nature it tips its hat to a form of fiction that I very much enjoyed in my formative years; high adventure!

Again I want to avoid the obvious or the predictable. There’s a tangle enmeshing three characters in particular and I believe that making that tangle even more complicated will make their relationships towards one another rather fascinating.

On top of this there’s the need to reread all my notes to implement the many observations that I’ve made during the rewrite so as to maintain the coherence of the story, the plot, the character’s, and the chronology. As I approach the end of the writing phase getting the manuscript to a state fit to publish seems still like a long way off!

I suppose the reason for this lies in the fact that I no longer have a single goal to aim for. Originally it was to write the story, which I did in quite a short space of time, for me anyway. After that I realised that I had work to do on individual characters, develop themes, establish a credible landscape to set the story in, work in new ideas, correct errors in various forms and a hundred other tasks that only seem to become apparent when you decide to take the writing of the story seriously.

As with my two previous novels, The War Wolf and For Rapture of Ravens, this can all prove very frustrating and yet at the same time there’s an increasing element of excitement. It is always exciting when a creative project nears completion and that is what I am reminding myself of; the book is nearly finished. The book is going to be finished. Despite everything else that has to be done before I reach that day there is one thing that I am sure of, Eugenica is going to be completed and there is nothing else that compares to that moment of satisfaction when you hold a copy of your completed work in your hands!

A Cordial Invitation