Canon Deleted

Doc Savage had his headquarters on the 86th floor. Few elements of the canon are more certain than that.

No, stop, that’s completely wrong. Doc Savage is not a real guy. Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny never existed. There is no Helldiver, no Hidalgo Trading Company, and no Fortress of Solitude. All of these are imaginary, less ephemeral than a puff of afternoon breeze across your fingertips. None the knowledge we draw from Savageological research can be said to be canonical.

We have a problem in that many people who are fans of this or that fantasy world– Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and the like– use this word “canon” to distinguish between informal fictional contributions and… and what? It is all fictional. They are drawing arbitrary distinctions between like and like. The word “canon” is meaningless when applied to a work of fiction.

I had to make up the word Savageological just now, because the scientific study of all things Doc Savage would be an empty pursuit; there is nothing to measure or investigate because there is no objective reality to be had. Every element of Doc Savage, from his 86th floor headquarters to his bronzy complexion, requires suspension of disbelief. That 86th floor headquarters is described as being in a New York skyscraper that purportedly has less than 100 floors, but in fact it was the late 1990s before any building anywhere in the world had 86 floors but not 100. Canonical and non-canonical Doc Savage stories require equal amounts of suspension of disbelief because all of them describe worlds that participate equally in non-existence.

Now, if we abandon this idea of canonicity, I think some new and really good opportunities open up. If we are not slaves to some meaningless canon, then we are free to riff on themes, characters, and plots, to great artistic effect. We could retell, say, The Empire Strikes Back in a manner that changes up the sequence of events a little; perhaps Darth Vader doesn’t kill Imperial officers left and right, but rather becomes a relentless psychological terror to one officer only. The basic story is still recognizably the same– indeed, the audience needs that familiar plot in order to properly frame what Vader is doing– but a skilled writer might make a change of this sort in order to say something provocative about tyranny and abusiveness. When we dump the stupid canon idea, then we become free to compose mythology.