Martin Re-Read: "With Morning Comes Mistfall"

Read the previous entry in this series here.
Read the next entry in this series here.

“With Morning Comes Mistfall”

Analog, 1973

In 2000, Martin gave an interview with Locus magazine (unfortunately not linkable) in which he discussed the value of “necessary lies,” or cultural myths that “allow us to live richer, happier lives.” He says losing the ability to believe in those myths is actively harmful both to the individual and society. In “Mistfall,” he puts this idea in fiction form. Even though it’s science fiction, “Mistfall” explores the necessity of belief, mystery, and mythology to the human psyche and society.

Wraithworld is covered in mist. In the morning, the sun burns off a good deal of it, but down in the valleys and forests, the mist lingers. At night, the mist rises again and blankets all but the highest mountains. It’s a world of beauty and charm, but its main draw is the rumor of ghosts that live in the mists. People come from other planets to traipse through the mists in search of the wraiths, which of course remain elusive. Now a team of scientists, accompanied by a reporter, have descended on the planet to prove once and for all whether the wraiths exist or whether there’s a perfectly normal explanation for the sightings, the missing people, and the strange ruins out in the forest.

Martin sets up three approaches to cultural mythology through three different characters. Sanders owns Castle Cloud, a resort at the top of a mountain that affords a gorgeous view of the mists. He is passionate about the beauty of Wraithworld and the necessity of the mystery of the wraiths (whether he believes they exist is another question). When the narrator asks him if he doesn’t just want to keep tourism going, he gets very angry and doesn’t speak to the (I assume) man for weeks.

Dubowski is empiricism personified. All he cares about is the science, proving that wraiths don’t exist. The planet has no charm for him at all; he never watches mistrise or mistfall, and even mixes up which one is which (morning = mistfall, evening = mistrise). He believes that finding out the facts of things is what humans are all about, claiming that “There’s no room in my universe for unanswered questions.” Sanders remarks that his universe is “very drab,” and Dubowski shoots back that Sanders lives “in the stink of [his] own ignorance.”

 ~*~

Knowledge is what man is all about. People like you have tried to hold back progress since the beginning of time. But they failed, and you failed. Man needs to know.

~*~

The narrator (again unnamed; I’m starting to sense a pattern here) is interested in the outcome of Dubowski’s research, but wants to believe (not as hard as Mulder) that there’s something special about Wraithworld. He spends lots of time out in the wilds, taking in the beauty and mystery of a planet constantly shrouded in mist. When Dubowski offers “proof” that the wraiths don’t exist (in the sense that they find absolutely zero evidence that they do exist), the narrator suggests several reasons that they might not have found anything rather than immediately accepting that they don’t exist.

Once Dubowski’s results get around, tourism drops off—precipitously. As the narrator puts it, “Scenery they can get closer to home, and cheaper. The wraiths were why they came.” The planet, he says, stays exactly as it is; “Only the wraiths are missing. Only the wraiths.” The sense of mystery, of something untouched, of adventure, is what brought people across the galaxy. People need to believe in something, or at least have questions about the world, and Wraithworld no longer offers that, so they stop coming.

Yet there’s a hint that going too far in the other direction is detrimental, as well. Sanders is adamant about the need for myth, to the point that if anyone disagrees with him at all, he flies into a rage. He nearly attacks Dubowski for mixing up mistfall and mistrise, and when everything’s over, his refusal to do the practical thing—buying in to Wraithworld’s new wine production—and the hotel goes out of business, falling in on itself from disrepair. So while I think we’re supposed to like Sanders more than Dubowski—because Dubowski, frankly, is a smug know-it-all—neither one of them ends up in a good place. Dubowski is completely closed off to the beauties of nature, and Sanders loses a business he put his whole soul into. Only the narrator comes out with any long-term happiness, having experienced the beauty of the planet, enjoying the odd wine that comes out of Wraithworld, and still being able to move on when the wraiths are “gone.”

~*~

But is that the only thing man needs? I don't think so. I think he also needs mystery, and poetry, and romance. I think he needs a few unanswered questions to make him brood and wonder.

~*~

In an earlier interview (also not linkable), Martin said that “someone who loves books too much, or lives too much in the world of imagination, is going to have this faint sense of disappointment about what life actually brings them.” While it seems, at first glance, that he holds two different views about fantasy and the imagination, I believe his views are somewhere in between; it’s important to have beliefs and mysteries, but not to lose yourself in them to the point that you can’t function in reality. This balance is clear in “Mistfall,” and it’s part of what gives it a melancholy, almost nostalgic air, especially right at the end.

Next week I’ll be skipping over a good chunk of Dreamsongs and heading to “Bitterblooms,” not because the stories in between—“A Song for Lya,” “This Tower of Ashes,” and “And Seven Times Never Kill Man”—are bad or not worth reading, but because they’re pretty solidly sci-fi and I’d like to get to more fantasy.

In case you want to look at those interviews (and have the library access necessary to get them), here’s the citations:

“George R.R. Martin: Necessary Lies.” Locus, vol. 45, no. 6, 2000, 6-7 & 80.

Levy, Michael. “George R.R. Martin: Dreamer of Fantastic Worlds.” Publishers Weekly, 26 August 1996, 70.