I’m Taking My Books And Going Home

I have snapped. I have flipped. I am swan-diving into the abyss. Whyzat, Matt?

Because you guys are bringing me down.

This isn’t just about the blog comments, e-mails and forum posts of the last week. This is about the blog posts and comments, emails and forum posts, editorials and everything else from the last few years. The genre-bashing has reached felonious levels. I have read (and yes, partaken in) so much sub-genre and author clobbering that I’m starting to feel nauseous. And I can taste the blood and bile burning up my esophagus.

The field is in decline, we say, and what’s more, it’s the fault of the writers. The jargon’s too thick, the gateways aren’t there, no one is writing real Hard SF anymore, Mundane is a stupid idea, Fantasy is taking over, where’s the sensawunda, no one has any new ideas.

The Golden Age of science fiction is twelve, yes, we all know that. I’m not sure what age you haters have reached. Whatever age it is, I’d say it’s the Raw Sewage Age of science fiction. Apparently, it has all turned to shit.

Consider the towel thrown in.

Guys and Gals, I love you all and I know that not a one of our hates weighs that much. You still enjoy the field. But the accumulated crush of the pig-piled lot of our snipes has finally squashed me.

I no longer care if the Big Three mags are in decline. I no longer care if there is a dearth of gateway books for young science fiction readers or our mainstream friends. I don’t care that no one is reading and video is overtaking us and Harry Potter has doomed us all. I don’t give a shit about Hard or Soft or F vs. SF, analysis, book sales or the state of the field.

I’m taking my books and I’m going inside. I’m going to go to my room, sit on my bed, spread out the tales before me and enjoy my stuff. I’m going to savor the evocative prose of the masters and delight in their mad ideas. I still have untold Bradbury to explore. I still have Clarke that I haven’t read. I still have untouched Simmons and Lovecraft and Brin and Haldeman. Today I delved once more into the thick, art deco glories of Saint Gibson’s fantastic, psychological, anything but science fictional, “The Gernsback Continuum” and I gleefully anticipate his next novel, again likely to be rooted in the near past. There are a few Howards and Herberts I haven’t gotten to. There are rich, untapped veins of Ellison, Lem, Wilhelm and Delany! And there are countless other names I haven’t even picked up yet. Watts, Reynolds, Banks -- I salivate as I type this.

Yes, I’ve been disappointed. I’ve read crap. But I’ve also read so much good stuff and I’m looking forward to reading so much more that I’m still excited! I can’t wait to pick up the next book or mag or computer screen and dive into some past or future award winner or overlooked treasure.

You folks read fast, much faster than I, that’s a fact. You’ve already devoured everything that is good. Your crops are gone and your fields lay barren. I can’t imagine having tackled all that’s worth tackling, but you’ve done it and they don’t write ‘em like they used to. Your future is dystopian bleak.

I’m done arguing or recommending. Your time in the field has passed and I mourn your loss of summer days when ink met paper and stars were born of galactic furnaces. The full-on pressure of our years of e-bitching together has popped me. If only I had spent that time reading more stories.

Gaaa!

How moronic can this administration get? How dumb do they think we are?

Chertoff downplays terrorist nuclear threat
From the story:
LONDON - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is downplaying the idea of a nuclear attack by terrorists after recent postings on al-Qaida-affiliated Web sites exhorted militants to pursue weapons of mass destruction for use against the U.S.

So if Iran and Iraq swear up and down that they're not developing WMDs and not threatening us, then we'd better attack them. But if someone actively encourages others to attack us using WMDs, then that's nothing to worry about.

Do you see the politics yet?

Let's stop allowing these government fucks to manipulate us in the incredibly stupid ways that they do. I'm not a flag waver, but it's embarrassing as a country to have lived in fear for the last seven years. The Israelis deal with terrorist attacks all the time. The English dealt with them for decades. We get one good bloody nose and we throw America away for the agenda of an administration that has done more damage to this country than any terrorist could have.

We're less safe then we were on 9/11. Nobody checks shipping containers coming into the country. Our actions have greatly increased the amount of terrorists in the world. Our government not only gave the bin Laden family a ride home on one of the only jets allowed to fly after the towers went down, but they've fixed it so that the Saudis who bankroll the terrorists are getting the money from us. The list goes on and on. And yet we haven't been attacked again.

We're going to look back on the dawning of the millennium in shame for what we allowed to happen. Now is the time to put fear behind us and to act like we're not the most mentally deficient country on the block. Let's do the right things to move forward through education, peacemaking and compassion for our fellow human beings. Let's take back our freedom and do everything we can to prevent our people from acting so humiliatingly stupid again.

How The Republicans Are Keeping Us Safe

Here are two consecutive articles posted on BoingBoing today that illustrate how our leaders are protecting us from terrorists. Make what you will of them:

Van driven onto Sea-Tac runway. Nobody notices, cares. http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/21/van-driven-onto-seat.html

FBI looking for vegan potluck terrorists http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/21/fbi-looking-for-vega.html

Again With The Future Is Here!

I've kept my trap slammed long enough. I just read this article: http://ourfuturethoughts.blogspot.com/2008/02/where-has-all-sci-fi-gone.html
or about the seventeenth one like it and it's time to spout. The following is my comment to that post, although the blog is moderated so I don't know that it will show up there:

This conversation starter runs amok all across the science fiction blogiverse. It's not the job of science fiction to predict the future. Science fiction's obligation is to fiction, not science.

Fiction consists of millions of simulations (stories) which help humankind understand itself. "What would I do in a situation like that?" "If I did that, what would happen to me?" "That guy acted like a complete ass, I hope he gets his comeuppance!" It serves one of the most basic needs of human beings, the exploration of themselves and others as they interact with one another. Fiction is a brother to gossip, but throws the net of possibilities much more widely.

Science Fiction goes wider still, exploring human actions, interactions and reactions in situations that cannot happen in the current reality due to technological limitations. The speculation is fun. It isn't meant to predict.

Occasionally, from the tens of thousands of science fiction stories that have been written, a speculated technology might come to pass in reality and we gasp and assign "genius" labels to the writer. This is how astrology works too.

We are not running out of ideas in science fiction. The future is not closing in to clamp shut upon us and create a nightmare of forever present. What is happening is the fruition of extremely tired science fiction tropes, beaten to death in literature and film. Films dominate American popular culture and the studios won't bank on ideas that are too outlandish. We've strapped ourselves to the wrecking ball weight of our past good ideas and we don't want to be set free because the unknown is too uncomfortable. Then we marvel at how science-fictiony our lives have become when capitalism catches up with ideas that were new decades ago. "Hey look, I've got a PC and a cellphone! I'm living Star Trek!"

There are thousands of ideas out there in science fiction literature that have not yet popped into existence. More are being created every day. The human imagination is unlimited. There are even ideas that might confuse a television audience. But don't worry, they'll catch up when today's ideas are adapted for the mass media audiences twenty years hence. They'll seem new to the public then.

I'm astounded that science fictional folk like ourselves get drawn into these conversations when we're the people that are reading about the fresh ideas on an almost daily basis. We know the score. We know the reality. Why are we feeding the Big Media Bimbos?

And one last thing: If the future is here, then where the fuck is my flying car?