No, it’s not the setting for a new thriller or cozy mystery series. Or where the X-Men live. It’s a hypothesis in the field of robotics that deals with the aversion people can feel to robots that look and act almost like real people. If you follow the link you can see the chart showing the “valley” (also, you can snicker like I did over the fact that the reference points include “stuffed animal” and “industrial robot” and “zombie”).

It’s also something that pops up in animation, probably explaining why I get creeped out watching movies like this.

Maybe it even explains why I hate maple flavoring (enough like the real stuff I know what it’s trying to be, but just not close enough).

Reality is something I think about a lot when writing. Which sounds funny, considering what I write involves ancient magic curses and intergalactic circuses. But I think a lot about getting fiction right involves finding what is believable (if not real), even in the most fantastical worlds. As a reader I want my fictional characters and settings to make sense. I want the characters to be driven by who they are, not what the plot demands of them. Fiction, for me, is not an escape from reality. It’s a super-reality where I can learn more about the world, about life, about human nature, about myself.

Fictional worlds can provide a space to explore and deal with issues that we may face in our real lives. Books can help heal wounds we’ve experienced, and prepare us for challenges we may face. That’s why we need books that do dare to tackle tricky subjects, things that not everyone wants to talk about. And sadly, there are people who fear books like this, and try to ban them, or burn them.

Most recently, there’s been an attempt to ban Laurie Halse Anderson’s acclaimed YA novel Speak. I will say right up front I’ve read Speak myself, and it’s a brilliant, compelling, brutal novel that deals with a topic (rape) that is distressing and upsetting but cannot be ignored.

I’ve really appreciated reading the comments around the web this week in support of Speak and other books that have been challenged. I particularly appreciate some of the comments from people of faith — it can be so easy to see a faith as being defined by its loudest fringe.

Here are a few links for those interested in hearing more:

A post by author R. J. Anderson

A post by author Veronica Roth

And a post by Sassymonky Reads (with an especially moving anecdote about finding the pages at the back of her library copy filled with messages from other teen readers saying how it had happened to them too. Because the book was they place they felt safe talking about it.

Speak wasn’t the only book targeted in this particular incident. The book Twenty Boy Summer, by Sarah Ockler (one of my fellow 2009 Debs) is also being challenged. To show support for Sarah and her book, the Debs and Sarah’s publisher (Little, Brown), are banding together to give away 100 (!) copies of Twenty Boy Summer. You can find out more (and maybe win a copy yourself!) here.

And now I’m going to go order copies of Speak and Twenty Boy Summer for my own personal library.

Tags: changetheworld