A New Set of Wax Wings
Reimagining a Familiar Myth
Introduction
At any given time, I am working on four or five different essays for this blog. That may be a lifelong tendency of mine, but it was–admittedly–very difficult to strike a sense of balance in the beginning. Hopefully a steady stream of content on this blog will prove that I have managed it. And on that note, while writing and editing the last piece on this blog, I was outlining an essay on A Ninth World Journal from showrunner David S. Dear. This audio fiction show comes with a rather robust setting, drawing from the world of Numenera, a tabletop roleplaying game created and published by Monte Cook Games, LLC. Numenera, itself, has a pretty intense lore to it, and presenting that to the audience likely posed some difficulties, unbeknownst to the listener who may be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to keep up. In A Ninth World Journal, revelations about the world established by Monte Cook Games, LLC are careful, methodical, and done as needed so that the audience knows enough to stay engaged but not too much as to feel bogged down. With episodes running from 10 to 20 minutes, this is even a more difficult balance to strike, and that aspect of this show is fascinating. This balance was the sort of thing I needed to better understand before I could really push ahead on the essay I was planning. While–yes–Dear is a strong writer and this is the sort of thing a strong writer should be able to accomplish, I wanted to get more into specifics. Frankly, at this juncture, I think it’s the plot and protagonist that carries the listener through such unfamiliar terrain.
In terms of plot, A Ninth World Journal is set one billion years in the future, which gives it free reign with the possible technologies that could be utilized. As for the title, the society we find ourselves immersed in is effectively the ninth major civilization existing on this planet, and these eight prior civilizations and the transitions between can be blamed for a sort of breaking of our reality and a transformation into the world we hear about in this podcast (Dear, Bonus - A Ninth World Primer). This resulting world has humans at a bit of a disadvantage relative to the rest of the beings that inhabit this planet; other groups have mastered various technologies or magics while humans flounder (Dear, Bonus - A Ninth World Primer), which leaves humanity with a profound sense of insecurity. Survival for them means adapting or conquering this technology/magic that is now around them, challenges of such aside.
Januae, our main character, knows the dangers of this reality all too well. In an attempt to develop teleportation technology at the behest of the religious officials who direct his life (Dear, Journal Entry 12: Missing), he instead inflicts himself with a teleportation ability he can not control. In my notes for this other proposed essay, I referred to Januae as an Icarus-type figure, which I thought was a somewhat intriguing point I made in passing but is worth exploring. Is Januae really an Icarus-figure? Yes, he figuratively flew too close to the sun; he played with technology that was above his ability and suffered consequences for it. This is a reflection of how we understand Icarus, but Januae’s story is far more complex than that. And yet, the same could be said of Icarus’s, when you dive into the details. Consequently, a comparison might depend on how accurate one’s understanding of Icarus is. But even beyond that, Januae presents an opportunity to reconsider a myth we all take for granted and the moral that might not quite work anymore.
The Icarus story is presented as a cautionary tale against being too ambitious, about daring to go too figuratively high, but as deeply embedded in the popular consciousness the Icarus myth is, part of the point is lost. Icarus flew too close to the sun and died for it, but that’s not the only threat he was facing. Ultimately, I think A Ninth World Journal’s Januae shows us the other layers involved and asks us–subtly–to reconsider. Sometimes, a flight like this is what may need to be done. Ambition can prove fatal, but a lack of it may be just as dangerous, if not more so depending on what one’s mission is.
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The Full Story of Icarus
We all think we know the Greek myth of Icarus: the boy who took his wax wings too close to the sun and fell to his death in the turbulent waves below as a result of his unchecked ambition. While this part is well known, it’s just a fraction of the whole tale. I must ask: how many people who know of Icarus’s mistake know how it was he got those wings in the first place? Hardly any, I would venture. Consequently, allow me to retell what you think is a familiar tale.
Icarus’s story actually begins with his father Daedalus, a legendary inventor and craftsman. Daedalus’s skills were immensely valuable and highly sought after. His most famous invention was the Minatour’s labyrinth built beneath the kingdom of King Minos of Crete. The labyrinth was supposedly inescapable without assistance and came to house the Minotaur to which King Minos would sacrifice seven Athenian boys and seven Athenian girls every nine years. That is, until the hero Theseus managed to defeat the Minotaur and escape the maze. That adventure aside, King Minos valued Daedalus’s work greatly and imprisoned him in a tower on Crete to ensure that Daedalus worked for him and him alone. As an added measure of control, his son Icarus was locked away with him. Perhaps Daedalus could orchestrate a way to escape, King Minos thought, but he cannot easily take the boy nor would his paternal love ever allow him to leave his child behind. The rest of the king’s security was pre-designed, effectively. Crete was an island state, and King Minos controlled the seas around his domain. So unless Daedalus could carry him and his son over the sea, they were trapped. Fortunately or not, that was the sort of thing Daedalus was willing to try.
This is where the wax wings come in. Daedalus gradually gathered up enough feathers from the birds living around his tower to fashion two sets of such wings, but those feathers were held together with wax. Hence the warning about flying too close to the sun, lest the heat melt them. But there was another side to that warning that is hardly ever mentioned: never fly very low. Over the years, I’ve seen two reasons for this admonishment. Either, the earth’s fogs or air would push him into the water or an errant wave would rise up and pluck him from the sky.
We know how the story ends. Icarus gets carried away in his excitement and flies too high, only to have the sun melt his wings. He then falls to the water and dies. And to wonder what might have happened had Icarus stayed too close to the water, overcorrecting for this error, is to play the what-if game: maybe you find it fun, but it’s a game no one wins. And yet, let me remind you that Icarus and his father were both prisoners of a king who loved cruelty but little else consistently. Consequently, they needed to escape, and perhaps, the same thing could be said about avoiding the water. There is an unspoken necessity there, that–admittedly–can be hard to fully conceptualize when one knows how the story ends.
However, I think A Ninth World Journal gives this musing some sort of flesh. For one, it is a more complicated story with more players on the board. As a result, any failures on Januae’s part may more easily be attributed to other’s actions than his own hubris. But on the other hand, Januae’s actions aren’t just about his own life, and the audience knows it.
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Januae’s Challenge
I briefly covered the premise of the podcast in an earlier section, but at this juncture, I need to go a bit deeper. To start, I will remind you that humans in the Ninth World are at a technological disadvantage. Consequently, they are either hoping or outright desperate to tame forces that are currently out of reach. Januae has been assigned to the teleportation task force, and perhaps this latest round of experimentation can be thought of as Januae’s ‘flying too high’ moment. He sought after an ability or technology that wasn’t entirely within his grasp and not something he could handle, and for his over-extension or over-ambition, he found himself cursed with an uncontrollable version of the thing he was pursuing. To be more crude about it, he and Icarus both ‘fucked around and found out’ by not heeding their own limitations.
However, much like Icarus, there was an underlying point to his mission. Icarus took on the wings to escape a tyrant, and Januae took on this challenge at the behest of his superiors in the Order of Truth. This technology was something of a necessity, or that’s how it was presented to him, for a crusade the Amber Pope was preparing to launch. Now, trying to explain the full geo-political situation of this world is a bit beyond me at this time. It is something I will likely have to attempt in a later piece when I actually want to unpack the conflict Januae finds himself a part of. But for the moment, take this at face value. Pope Durranet wants to launch his crusade almost as a preemptive strike. Details aside, this other group–the Gaians–allegedly pose a serious threat to the territories Pope Durranet has assumed some sense of responsibility for. Consequently, there is a moral imperative to engage in this all out war. However, there was simply no easy way to invade or attack given that this group resided on the other side of a difficult to traverse terrain. Hence teleportation. It would be a means of waging a necessary war much easier and safer for the invading forces. And the tactical advantage of a surprise attack would be a nice bonus.
This is the narrative Januae was told, came to believe, and led him to the fateful teleportation mishap. However, early on in his travels, Januae found himself among the very same Gaians that he had been told to see as enemies, only to find that the Gaians were not of “some cultural of aggression bent on espousing of ignorance and the destruction of reason” (Dear, Journal Entry 3) but a “peaceful people with no knowledge of the Papacy or even of the Steadfast” (Dear, Journal Entry 22). In other words, the Gaians are not a current threat or capable of becoming one in the immediate future. Consequently, there is no need for a crusade. Armed with this knowledge, Januae’s return home is undertaken with a renewed fervor. After all, he has to prevent a crusade and all the loss that could come with it.
Considering the stakes of the situation–an actual Crusade–this is an important moment for the characters of this story. It is a perspective-shattering revelation, and it is also a moment that would have been impossible had Januae’s experimentation not gone wrong. He might have fallen from some sort of height, but it clearly yielded something, the exact details of which are yet to be determined.
Whether or not Januae is or can be successful is a topic for a different essay. At this point, I only want to point out the part of both stories that are easy to overlook: the unfortunate consequences of over ambition did not happen in a bubble. Choices do not happen in isolation but as part of a larger narrative.
We can almost think of ambition as a way in which one relates to the world around them. Ambition is the drive for more or betterment, and when thought of in those terms, the value of ambition is made more clear. And perhaps that is not news to you. I grew up in circles that certainly valued ambition. Despite my family’s troubled financial situation connected to my father’s death, the public school I went to was in an affluent area, and considering the unlimited resources the other students had as a result of parental wealth, there was no reason to think its students couldn’t become expert doctors, big shot lawyers, or hedge fund managers. I was just there, but the effects were the same. At the same time, however, there are circles that push or insist that individuals want or strive for lower goals whether it be a way to convey the virtue of modesty or gratitude for what they already have. Beneath that dialogue is this unspoken ‘humility for thee but not for me’ mantra, that I hear and worry I’m the only one.
As of writing this essay, we find ourselves in the midst of the Great Resignation, an economic trend that sees workers quitting their jobs en masse now that the pandemic has shifted their priorities or presented new options. Whether it be to pursue a new career, interest, or higher salary, workers see it in their best interest to leave their current job or industry in favor of greener pastures. While the pushback hasn’t necessarily invoked Icarus–from what I’ve seen–there is an insistence that workers should set aside some of their personal desires or ambitions simply to keep the wheels on the proverbial cart: a request these people would never make of Jeff Bezos and his space hijinks. Personally, I hold the reserve view, but latent in this inconsistency is the sort of thing I’m talking about. Ambition itself, this strong desire to achieve or acquire something, is a neutral drive. In and of itself, it has no value. However, it draws meaning from the larger story around it.
In the case of Icarus, we forget this. We forget that he and his father were prisoners trying to escape, and that every step of their journey was driven by a desire for what they did not have. There is purpose in the set up. And from that set up, the virtue of distance was established. Icarus just took it in the wrong direction. We may also forget that Icarus was–to modern sensibilities–a child who was only getting his first taste of freedom. His failing comes from not utilizing this information properly. Had he flown further forward in his ambitions, he likely would have been fine. It’s not the action of overambition itself that makes this flight a mistake but the consequence of its manifestation. It’s a consequence he cannot control or hedge against and becomes a victim too.
On the other hand, there is Januae. Granted, Januae is in a slightly different position. He is not a child fleeing a tyrant. Rather, he is an adult charged with an order by his superiors, and the moment he developed such a technology, he loses control of it–and of himself, technically. The consequence in his situation is a bit unclear. At this point in the story, he may or may not be an outright casualty to the winds around him (pun unintended), but these same winds keep him from fully settling his adventure. He correctly feels a sense of urgency to act, effectively to prevent the numerous deaths that would be a result of an unjustified war. How far he is actually able to go on this mission is yet to be determined, but there’s reason to be pessimistic in the episode “Journal Entry 22: Homecoming.” That reason for pessimism will be the subject of a later piece on this blog. For now, I will point out that not only would we not fault him for trying; we, as the audience, may even demand that he did so. These demands, however, are somewhat removed from the reality of Januae’s situation, specifically his ability to act. There are numerous instances when he is derailed and sent on some other mission. Random teleportation makes travel almost impossible, as an example. Consequently, the audience is not necessarily inclined to blame Januae for his failure, if that’s how the story ultimately comes to pass.
Because of circumstance, Januae’s ambitions and effects have effectively been divorced from one another in his narrative, and if you were uncomfortable with my Icarus comparison in the beginning, that may be why. Januae can’t fly too close to the sun as he’s not in full control of his actions or the outcomes of said actions, but he still has earnest desires for honor or justice. Honor, in particular, is a good we associate with ambition. And we don’t fault him for it because, in part, we understand what exactly Januae is after in this specific instance. We also understand that he is not going to be the sole author of the Gaians’ fate regardless of what he does. His ambitions are thoroughly and brutally held in check, much like ours.
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Conclusion
It feels inappropriate to pull together a conclusion when I know for a fact that this won’t be the only piece I write on this podcast. A Ninth World Journal is an incredibly philosophically dense podcast, whether it was intended or not, and a great deal of this philosophy is timely. But starting with Januae as an Icarus-type-hero had tactical advantages. Icarus has become a type of warning, a cautionary tale, but I don’t think the right moral lesson is attached. Or, rather, I think we’ve possibly outgrown the utility of this warning. We live in a time that needs ambition, but that is a tale for another time.
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Works Cited
Dear, D.. (2021, December 1). A Ninth World Journal. https://ninthworldjournal.com/.
Peabody, J. P. (1910). Icarus and Daedalus. In Old greek folk stories told anew (pp. 36–39).