Anne Bishop's Guest of Honor Speech At Thylacon
Hobart, Tasmania
June 12, 2005

Copyright © 2005 Anne Bishop. All rights reserved.

Truth was a beggar. He wore rags the poorest man in town wouldn't wear. He begged for scraps of food. He slept wherever he could find shelter.

When Truth approached the people in the town to tell them the things he knew, they would turn their backs on him, or cross the street, or go into their houses and close the doors.

After a while, Truth noticed there was a woman in the town that everyone wanted to talk to. People greeted her on the street, and she was welcome in all of their homes, from the poorest shack to the finest mansion. Sometimes her clothes were simple, sometimes elegant, sometimes frivolous, and sometimes fantastic.

Truth didn't know who she was, but he knew she was very special.

One night, when Truth was wandering through the streets looking for something to eat, he passed one of the fine big mansions where there was a party going on. He peeked into the window and saw all the people laughing and talking, saw the banquet table loaded with all kinds of wonderful food. He knew if he knocked on the door, they wouldn't let him in, so he sat on the steps, in the cold, shivering in his rags.

After a while, the door did open. The woman came out, sat down beside him, and asked him why he was sitting out there in the cold.

So Truth told her about how people didn't want to listen to him, how he wasn't welcome in any of their homes.

The woman thought about this and then said, “Why don't we become partners? My name is Story.”

And so, from that day to this, Truth and Story have been partners—and they are welcome wherever they go.

Stories have a purpose. They explain and define the world. They give us the lessons we need to survive.

The pourquoi stories tell us why some things in the natural world are the way they are. Folk tales and fairy tales provide the moral lessons to guide us safely through the woods.

Stories give us a reason to laugh—or to cry. They give a shape to things that fear awakens in the deep hours of the night. And they give us people—human and otherwise—who stand against the shadow creatures. Sometimes those people are heroes who are larger than life, and sometimes they're the bumbling everyman we can recognize in ourselves. They face what is dark, what is dangerous, what is fearful. And most of the time, they win.

This is one of the reasons we tell and read stories: to watch characters overcome external difficulties and internal conflicts in order to triumph.

We're gathered here at Thylacon because we read and write speculative fiction—the stories about dragons, wizards, ghosts, demons, spaceships, alien races, futuristic visions of what our world might become. We are the creative descendants of those early storytellers who gave fear a name and made it tangible in order to make it something that could be conquered; who looked at the hills surrounding their villages and imagined who might live in the land beyond; who created flying carpets and magical talismans to represent the things that come to us and help us along the way.

But our castles and spaceships and futuristic cities are all the stage we, as writers, choose for one thing: to give us a place in which to explore the journey of the heart.

This is why we tell stories. This is why we read them. Through stories, we see our fears, our grief, our failings, and know those things are not ours alone. Through stories, we find a reason to laugh and put aside the real world's troubles for a little while. Through stories, we take journeys and face dangers we wouldn't want to face otherwise. Through stories, we learn to be more than what we believe we are—and we understand a little better what it means to be human.

So we tell our stories about other people and other places. We cloak them in magic or the speculation of what our world may become.

But if you listen carefully, underneath the fantastic you will always hear a whisper of the heart's truth.