Great Story Dumb Philosophy

One of my favorite books is Alexander Key's Forgotten Door.

I've liked it since I was a kid and reread it every few years. The story is fairly basic: a young man from another planet falls through an ancient door that takes him to Earth. There, he suffers amnesia. However, he quickly figures out he doesn't belong. He likes the animals yet they aren't entirely familiar. Nor is the landscape. The people he initially encounters are unpleasant and do things like hunt and eat meat. 

He eventually encounters a pleasant family, the Beans. They take him in and protect him, even though he is accused of theft, which naturally he didn't commit, and are eventually hounded from the community. His family from the other planet calls for him and he escapes the fallen world with the Beans--and their dog. 

As another reviewer points out--referring now to the work that made Key famous, Escape to Witch Mountain--Key often used the entirely non-Catholic-influenced (as far as I can tell from his biography) trope of nearly saint-like characters moving through a sinful, fallen, and evil world helped by a few fellow saints. His saints are rarely government or social figures, by the way. In The Forgotten Door, Child Welfare is ranged on the side of the bad guys. Human institutions are no better than the humans. The saints are very saintly and almost always immediately believe the protagonists. 

Let's just say: the trope is a little lacking in complex character development. 

In addition, in The Forgotten Door, Key uses an argument spoofed on Red Dwarf, namely that aliens are inherently more advanced than us humans, precisely because they don't use things like "money."

I loathe this argument. Jon, the protagonist in The Forgotten Door, wears sturdy, well-made, elegant and useful clothes and boots. He carries a dagger with gems, not for hunting but presumably for things like cutting vines. He is well-fed and well-groomed, despite his longer than usual hair (the book was published in 1965). 

All those things equal money. Even if there is no bartering system. Even if there are no coins. Even if there is no debit card. Goods = wealth. That's a fact. The kid isn't swinging from vines and wearing a loincloth--and now, I'm being unfair to monkeys because monkeys in fact collect objects. 

All sentient beings (and a lot of animals) do this, no matter how advanced. One could argue that in a utopia, people would no longer covet each other's goods. Or they would self-sufficiently create their own goods (though Jon is somewhere between nine and fourteen and is likely cared for by others). Those goods allow them to stay alive and warm and free of wounds.

That's money. What do people think money is for? So they can sit in the middle of their living rooms gloating over a pile of greenbacks? I work so I can be inside when it rains and snows, so I can feed my cats, so I can feed myself, so I can travel from one location to another, so I can wash off dirt, so I can sleep without being eaten by bears. 

I also own a Kindle and TV and a computer and lots of books. But even if I didn't "indulge" in such items, I would still need to figure out some way to obtain the stuff that keeps me alive. And food, bed, and board are goods. 

The argument about "no money" drives me crazy!

Another good, unknown Key book.

Yet I love Key's book. 

I think one reason is that The Forgotten Door is a good story. Another is that it is told entirely from the characters' perspectives. I don't have time to roll my eyes at Mary Bean's confidence that Jon comes from another planet since the entire dialog unwinds quickly and naturally within the family home. I worry about Jon getting in trouble when I know it isn't his fault. I become enthralled by the investigation--Thomas Bean and Jon searching to find the "door" Jon came through. I fret about the unfairness of the people around him and worry throughout the final chase scene.

In addition, the outcome that he is trying to achieve, "re-entry," is powerful, way less maudlin and candy-strewn than in ET. And the book tackles liminality: Jon's adventure places him inside a fairly ordinary community (despite all the evilness) yet outside it at the same time. 

In sum, a good story transcends its philosophy. It's a powerful reminder of why we humans love story to begin with.