Guest Posts: The Power of Ideas

A Month of Rain and Reads Features6 months ago10 min readAdd comment

Welcome to A Month of Rain and Reads, a celebration of self-published and indie SFF throughout the entire month of November. To find out how you can take part and view the whole list of content, visit our introduction post.

Today, we have a guest post from B.S.H. Garcia of The Arcanists Guild who talks about fiction as a way of exploring real-world ideas, and about their Kickstarter project on the same theme.

*ETHOS cover art designed by Hannah Elizabeth Baker*

The Power of Ideas: How Stories Shape the Way We View the World

Alright, hold onto your reading beverages (my poison of choice today is an iced matcha latte) because we’re about to get into some big questions.

To start, let me ask you this: ever have one of those moments when an idea hits you out of nowhere, and you realize, holy crap, this is life changing? Or maybe it just snuck up on you all subtle like—IE, one day you look down and realize you’re spinning your carbonated beverage around in tight, intentional circles because Saul Goodman’s crazy brother on Better Call Saul said it reduces the fizz explosion. Just me? Okay, but you catch my drift. Ideas are often little sparks that start small, but before you know it, they’re taking over everything you thought you knew. I mean, seriously, what is this witchcraft?

The thing is, ideas come from everywhere and shape everything. Some of the most world-changing movements start as simple What Ifs. But others have more sinister origins. Take Chris Nolan’s Inception, where the concept of planting ideas has turned into a business venture—and a weaponized one at that. But here’s the kicker: that’s not just some far-out fiction. This kind of thing happens every single day. Ideas sneak in through a chat with a friend, a skillfully placed billboard, or that ad Meta blasted into your feed for the hundredth time. And sometimes they’re good ideas, or at least harmless ones. Maybe they help us innovate. Create or build. Simplify our lives. They drive us to do better; to dream bigger. But then… sometimes, they’re downright dangerous. They can eat away at our self-esteem. Or worse, our humanity. And we’re not always able to spot it until it’s too late.

So how do we even know which ideas are worth nurturing, and which ones need to be uprooted before they spread, especially when faced with moral complexities? While logic and education play a huge part in wise decision-making, allow me to introduce a favorite tool of mine:

Fiction.

Hear me out. Stories are a safe space to watch radical ideas unfold. They let us explore firsthand how dangerous beliefs can warp morality and shape our actions—hell, even destroy lives. It’s like having a front-row seat to all the ways these ideas can go wrong, without the actual risk of being caught up in it. We get to ask the What Ifs without actually having to live through them. And I, along with the rest of the Arcanist Guild, got to do just that in our brand new dark fantasy anthology, ETHOS. Its entire premise is exploring ideas and philosophies that might seem minuscule at first but end up leading to massive (see: tragic) consequences. And believe me when I say you’re going to see some seriously uncomfortable, almost demented, ideas play out. But they are the perfect opportunity to ask yourself questions like, “What would I have done?” Or, “Could I have spotted this idea before it spread?”

Because here’s the catch: not all bad ideas come from evil masterminds. So many of the worst ones spawn from regular people who think they’re doing the right thing. They start off believing that they’re acting in the best interest of others, or that their actions serve some higher cause. And next thing you know, they’re knee-deep in something they didn’t see coming. Or maybe they did and they simply justified it. Yikes.

Take One Matters Not by James Lloyd Dulin, one of the novelettes featured in our anthology. This story dives into what happens when a system teaches us that individuals don’t matter in the name of the “greater good.” Or that they do matter, and they matter so much that they need to play their role in society, or else. IE, we must sacrifice the few for the many. Remind you of a certain Jedi order? If you read this story, it might make you question if you’ve ever gone along with something just because you were told it was right, even when your gut was suggesting (see: screaming, raging, thrashing) otherwise. Or maybe you’ll start dissecting the point at which loyalty to a system starts harming the very people it was created to protect.

*EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF by EJ Doble, Illustrated by Ömer Tunç*

Or check out Every Man For Himself by E.J. Doble, which examines how far we’ll go when survival itself becomes a moral test. We’re talking life-or-death decisions here. The main character deals with plenty of monsters in this tale, but the scariest ones are the choices he must face, especially when every one comes at a cost. For example, is it morally acceptable to abandon others if it means saving yourself? Or, what matters more: loyalty or self-preservation? It got me thinking about my own survival instincts and how often we make decisions based on fear or self-interest, even when it’s at someone else’s expense.

And then there’s The Lies of Xendis by Jonathan Neves Mayers. This one asks us to zoom out and consider how ideas spread through communities. Because listen: people can be driven to immoral acts or willful ignorance when power, progress, or knowledge are on the line. Ever justified an action by telling yourself, “Everyone else is doing it,” or “It’s for the greater good”? This story doesn’t shy away from such moments, forcing you to consider times you’ve turned a blind eye to potentially wide-scale consequences because they don’t harm you directly. Spoiler: they always do. We’re all in this together.

Next up is Morgan Shank’s Ascension, which unpacks what happens when belief itself drives every decision. If your understanding of the truth is shaped by a higher power or deeply entrenched ideology, do you ever operate robotically within it? This story shows just how dangerous dogma can be—how truths that are accepted without question can undermine everything else in our lives. Even our own internal logic. Ascension challenges us to separate what’s truly ours from what’s been handed to us.

Benjamin Aeveryn’s Phantasm kicks that whole concept up a notch by exploring how ideology can infiltrate everything. And I mean everything. Like straight up stripping your identity and replacing it with a shell of someone else’s idea. And these self-imposed blinders can not only hurt our authentic selves, but can also extend that damage into other lives, sometimes ruining them forever. It’s a sobering reminder of how easy it is to get swept up in something that seems right within the context of previously accepted beliefs, even when it’s doing irreversible damage. How do we ensure our own beliefs never reach this point?

*FROM THE HEART OF THE SEA by B. S. H. Garcia, Illustrated by Ömer Tunç*

As for my own contribution, From the Heart of the Sea, I wanted to focus on the impact extreme dedication to tradition can have on family, especially when ideologies collide. I did this through the lens of two sisters, one who believes that tradition should be upheld at all costs, while the other is ready to risk everything she once believed if it means saving her people. I hope it raises questions for people like, “When do you harm loved ones because you’re upholding beliefs you’ve been taught are unconditionally ‘right’?” This story really got me reflecting on how much our personal beliefs influence our relationships (as well as the other way around), and how healthy relationships challenge us to think without forcing us to adopt harmful ideologies.

At the end of the day, fiction is only one of a myriad of ways we can get a better grasp on how ideas blossom and spread, and it won’t always give us neat little answers tied up in a bow. But I do think its value is without question, because it gives us a stage to wrestle with ideas and philosophies. To understand how they manifest, how they shape us, and what can happen when they go awry. It helps us step into other lives so we can approach nuanced situations with wisdom and find solutions that actually work. And perhaps, most importantly, it helps us ask those tough questions, like: “How do my beliefs shape the world around and within me?”

Keep reading. Keep asking questions. You’ll never regret it.

ETHOS Kickstarter

The Kickstarter for ETHOS: A Dark Fantasy Anthology was successfully funded on October 31, but is still open for late pledges until November 14. Find it here.

B.S.H. Garcia

B. S. H. Garcia writes speculative fiction for the morally gray: epic stakes, nobledark characters, and just enough grief to leave a hangover. After all, is a story any good if you aren’t questioning your own morality and whether you’d actually have the guts to unravel whatever power structure someone thought was a good idea?

As a child, she began dissecting such questions in her backyard with stick swords and library books, eventually earning an English Writing degree from the University of Colorado (which no one asked for, but she’s still proud of). She’s wandered from Oregon to New Zealand chasing stories, whispering plot twists to trees, drinking horn in hand, and pretending she’s not eavesdropping on the universe.

By day, she manages a household. By night, she invents worlds on fire. Occasionally, she sleeps.

Get your free prequel novelette, From the Ashes, at www.bshgarcia.com. All she asks in return is your soul (or maybe just your email).

The Arcanist’s Guild

We are a collective of indie authors who explore complex themes through the lens of speculative fiction. If you’d like to learn more about us and our other published works, please check out our websites below: