I’ve been seeing some interesting discussions around lately about realism in fiction — to wit, that positive portrayals of various human experiences and relationships were “unrealistic” and ought to be confined to the lowest forms of genre fiction.

Really? Is that what we really believe as a society?

In real life, all parents are evil, all relationships are dysfunctional, all faith is delusion and all trust is misplaced. All heroes are liars. All leaders are thieves. All love is codependent. All sex is hurtful. All beauty is illusion.

I feel very, very sorry for anyone whose life is so sad that this is their reality. It’s not my reality. I utterly and totally reject the idea that fiction must be dark and depressing to be realistic.

I have met many heroes, people who in real life do their absolute best to guard others, to make good decisions for the benefit of society, to be responsible for the world around them. Hero stories are not unrealistic. On the contrary, they are far more grounded in real-life experience to me than fatalistic gloom.

Of course there are people who are only motivated by self interest. There are liars and thieves and abusers and murderers. But I question whether or not we give them too much power in our society when we make them the standard by which everyone is measured, when we say that they are “normal” and people who are decent and selfless are the rare exception.

This is something I address in all of my writing. For example, there is the very pervasive argument that any positive portrayal of Alexander or his Companions is defacto pure romanticism — despite the fact that some of the incidents that show him in a positive light are as well documented as anything we know from that era. He spared the family of his enemy Darius and treated them well, rather than killing them as was customary with such prisoners in war. We know this as well as we know anything about him. And yet modern writers and historians feel that they must somehow “debunk” any positive portrayal as unrealistic. Because real leaders don’t behave that way.

Right. Real leaders just kill POWs. Real leaders would never hesitate to murder children.

It says a terribly sad thing about our society, not about Alexander’s, that we accept that argument so easily.