“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt’s books and my own—that is, Ruburt’s psychic books—are considered nonfiction, clear and simple. The Seven books are considered novels, yet they are not science fiction. It is understood that the author is breaking new ground—but metaphysical ground. Some people who read our other books are afraid to read the Seven ones—for if Ruburt writes fiction, which means not fact, then they fear the line between fact and fiction blurs, and where is the Truth, in capital letters?

The mass reader is used to conventional science fiction. The metaphysical elements are actually quite at variance with the science fiction audience: the reincarnational aspects in particular. The book’s very originality, therefore, to some extent has limited its readership. This is no simple Star Wars, for example.

(10:27.) Give us a moment.... Now: Pocket Books did not know what to do with Seven. (See my question in session 842.) It was fiction, and yet they were aware of Ruburt’s psychic reputation. (Pause.) There were indeed problems within the firm, and the editor who liked the book was let go and unable to follow through as she would have liked.

The impact of the books is something else, again, and the steady sales and those steady sales will continue and accelerate. In terms of fiction, there are set categories, and Seven fits none of them. You are setting yourselves new categories. Enjoy the privilege, the ability, and the rewards, for the books do sell. People do listen.

[...] Yet she’d found this deep yearning snatched away with the advent of her psychic abilities—goodbye to all of those accepted reviews, the critical success, even the money, that would go along with the conventional acceptable public image of the successful writer of good quality poetry and/or fiction. I said that most “successful?” poetry and fiction might not penetrate very deeply into the human condition, compared with the understanding her own psychic gifts offered, but it would have been safe and accepted by her peers. [...]

[...] Later he tried straight novels, but when he let himself go his natural fiction fell into the form of fantasy, outside of the novel’s conventions into science fiction’s form—and at that time further away from the mainstream. [...]

(9:32.) Again, his natural abilities kept leading him, so it seemed, away from the straight novel framework into the science fiction format, where at that time he discovered that science fiction was not given any particular honor in the literary field. [...]

This is because his position is unique, in that he is dealing in areas that serve as thresholds, where ordinary creativity is accelerated and goes beyond itself, where fact turns into fiction, and fiction into fact. [...]

[...] Any strong intellectual explorations of counter-versions of reality have appeared in science fiction, for example. Here scientists, many being science-fiction buffs, can safely channel their own intellectual questioning into a safe form. [...]

[...] It is quite safe, therefore, to criticize them in that regard, to see how a story or a painting is constructed—or more importantly, to critically analyze the structure of ideas, themes, or beliefs, that appear behind, say, the poem or the work of fiction.

(9:36.) This is the reason why some scientists who either write or read science fiction, are the most incensed over any suggestion that some such ideas represent a quite valid alternate conception of reality. [...]

[...] He will be free, you see, to work in fiction, and will do so in the future, because fiction will be something different than it was.

[...] He recognized this, feeling that while he highly enjoyed science fiction it was a dead end, for the answers he sought could not be worked out even through philosophical fiction.

The ego would have chosen an easier road, through fiction. [...]

Instead Ruburt is involved in our endeavor, and his daily life entwined in the search that fiction cannot approach. [...]

In some worlds, your fictional characters are physically manifested as probabilities. [...]

[...] In some worlds certain events remain in a realm of art or fiction, while in other worlds those same events are fully activated. [...]

(Seth’s interesting remark that fictional characters may be manifested in some probabilities, may have been engendered by the In Search Of program we watched on TV from 2:30 to 3:00 this afternoon. [...]

Even later, as he began writing science fiction, that writing fell under the then less envious label of science fantasy (underlined), which was not considered as pure in science-fiction circles. [...]

(Long pause at 9:02.) The Sinful Self shows itself in a period of transition from its religious to scientific format in science fiction or fantasy in particular, where you can almost trace the translation of religion’s self, tainted by original sin, to the Darwinian and Freudian concepts of the flawed self, bound to destruction one way or another, propelled by the unbridled unconscious or evolutionary defect. [...]

[...] Facts are only accepted fiction, of course, but the ideas must make sense and fit into the accepted “story.”

(“Fiction” is the word Seth wanted here, he said when I interrupted the session to ask him.)

[...] Jane said she’d used the phrase given by Seth at 9:04, “Facts are only accepted fiction….” [...]

[...] A continuity that Ruburt overlooks, having to do with his continuing interest in religious matters from the time of childhood, echoed in the poetry and in the science fiction. [...]

[...] The workings of the personality led to the science fiction direction, and could have short circuited him, ending far before the inner goal was even glimpsed. [...]

[...] In the past any intuitive thoughts he felt but could not prove were put into his fiction. [...]

[...] The same material presented fictionally would not bother him at all. [...]

[...] This time the data concerned the reasons behind Jane’s years of training in writing poetry and fiction. [...]

(Her fiction, Seth added, was Jane’s “way of probing probabilities and of trying to understand other people. [...]

[...] Two years after we married, she published her first work of fiction, a short story about reincarnation called “The Red Wagon”: It appeared in the December, 1956, issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction [© 1956 by Fantasy House, Inc., New York, N.Y.]. [...] Within the next several years she sold a number of additional stories to the same magazine, as well as two short novels, and also published poetry and a little fiction in other markets.

Jane regarded all of these works as being science “fantasy” rather than “straight” science fiction. Her fictional themes especially were extensions of much of her earlier poetry, and contained the same kind of thinking that had led to her breaking with her church. [...]

[...] For example, the novel included many Sumari poems and portions of Speaker manuscripts; and when I sing Sumari I identify with Cyprus, who is supposed to be a fictional character. [...]

In the meantime all I can say is this: We live in a world of physical facts but these spring from a deeper realm of creativity, and in a real sense facts are fictions that spring alive in our experience. [...]

[...] In fiction and poetry he allowed himself this intuitive freedom, but he was afraid to apply it to the real physical universe. This is why his most effective and publishable fiction was in the form of fantasy.

[...] (With amusement:) It does not know if our work is fact or fiction, in the deepest of terms. [...]

[...] (Tam told Jane it’s putting disclaimers in all Parker books.) It knows how to deal with fiction. [...]

As a writer for example, alone, he does not feel a responsibility (underlined) to write every kind of book possible: gothics, mysteries, science fiction, poetry, essays, straight novels. [...]

[...] (Bach’s description of Jane for Time.) The middle-aged lady was mentioned as middle-aged, and as a psychic, poet and science fiction writer—a turning of the ways in that the psychic books were mentioned, but no books of poetry, which gave impetus to Dialogues.

[...] Ruburt will use his creative ability in fiction yet, in a way that he could not have otherwise, to bring home the reality and dimension of human personality.

[...] Our material on such points is not fiction. [...]

(On Wednesday, November 12, Jane sent a copy of the 44th session to A.J. Budrys, science fiction editor of Playboy Magazine. Jane and A.J. have met once, at a science fiction conference some eight years ago in Milford, PA.

(At this conference Jane, A.J. and three other science fiction writers formed a group they called “The Five.” [...]

[...] You reacted creatively, using the precognitive story as a basis for a fictional endeavor. [...]

[...] Your inclusion of the hospital mixup in the tale was, as, you suspected, connected with the medical ideas you have been dealing with of late (in extra notes for Mass Events, and the book by the physician) — and here was an excellent fictional idea, you see, that could, among other things, bring those ideas into prominence.

[...] I’ve never done anything but fiction and poetry in my life.”

[...] Rob and I were delighted, but somewhat appalled too, as we looked over the chapter headings I’d listed for the book: “A Do-It-Yourself Séance,” “Telepathy, Fact or Fiction?”, “How to Work the Ouija.”

[...] (It wasn’t until much later that I remembered that another of Rob’s suggestions had launched me into fiction in the first place.)

[...] Science fiction for a while offered science plus writing—a convenient platform. But the science fiction writers he met, and the field itself, he soon found as highly limiting.