The Spinning Plate Trick -- All Fall Down

     I have discovered why I dislike straight fiction, “popular” fiction, why I so prefer science fiction and speculative fiction (which are not always one and the same.)  It’s not that the “popular” fiction never has themes of science, or the future.  Quite to the contrary, there have been some very futuristic straight fiction books. 

     No, my problem, my issue with the straight or, more properly, “popular” fiction is the aim, the goal, the tone, the tenor.

     For, you see, while science fiction, like all good fiction, presents a problem, it also seeks ways to solve the problem.  From my experience with straight fiction, the goal is largely not to solve the problem so much as survive the problem, or merely to chronicle the collateral damage from the problem.  Science fiction has always been a genre about solving problems, not just for immediate use but for the future, for the long term. 

     So is this it?  Is this the difference between Fandom and Mundania, between the Rainbows and Babylon?  The search for, the willingness to find, solutions?

     And is this what has happened to Fandom as we once knew it?  To science fiction?  In our flurry, fury to be Accepted, to be a part of Society, the Status Quo, have we given up on solutions, on solving the World’s Great Problems?

     On Thinking?

     I was always proud of my particular subgroups, subcultures—not in a big, glaring way, but in a quiet way, acknowledging the good—for seeking solutions rather than dwelling in, wallowing in, the problems of the world.  Yes, those problems should be acknowledged, but they should be solved, not held as examples of…..of anything.

     “But” you say, “you can hold it up as a bad example!”  To which I reply, “That’s still an example, and the word ‘bad,’ or the implication of ‘bad,’ is easily ignored.” 

      We have plenty of bad examples in the world.  Darth Vader.  Darth Maul.  Natural Born Killers.  Storm Troopers.  The One Ring.  The Eye of Sauron.  Mr. Smith.  General Custer. 

     How many of these symbols of evil is either coveted or idolized?  What does “bad example” mean to a generation who all seem to want to be over six feet tall and menacing, and dependent on a respirator? 

     What has happened to our Fandom?

     Oh, I know, those Storm Troopers who come out in force—and yes, a lot of them have more impressive costumes than even Lucas did for Star Wars back in the 1970s—are not bad people; some of them even go out of their way to do good works.  To a certain extent, it doesn't matter.  That’s like saying, “Oh, those SS troopers weren't SO bad….that one group of them saved a kitten from a burning building,” or “Darth Vader spared his daughter, his son,”  It’s a good deed in a morass of death and destruction.  The evil they represent is still there, represented by these images.  There is still an undercurrent, even if it's not on the surface.

     I’m not an absolutist, a dualist.  However, there is so much evil in the world, in the media, in literature and movies and television, and there is no balance for it.  The News spouts evil; the television dramas spout evil, the straight/popular fiction novels spout evil, and none of those sources, not one of them, seeks to solve the problems presented.

     Damn it all, we need solutions!

Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi

     I started this blog six years ago with the purpose of making myself write in it on a daily basis.

     Yeah, that worked out well.

      In six years, I have posted 11 posts--this one will make 12--and they have gone from being writing practices to being writing practices and chronicles in the life of someone with an unusual outlook mixed with some political ant-hill-poking.  I know that political poking does not seem to fit with my chosen name, The City Druid, but, to the contrary, I feel that it is my duty as a protector and advocate of balance and the natural world to poke fun at and generally expose those things that throw the world out of balance.  That, and sometimes I just get a bee in my proverbial bonnet and have to gripe about it.

     It is my hope that some of this will make people think.  Of course, that only happens if they actually read what I have to say.  I consider that likelihood fairly low, but I have, on one or two occassions, gotten feedback from readers, so I know at least every once in a while someone does take a look.

     Typical years have seen no more than four posts per year, and those are generally done with gaps of about three years in between.  This has not been by design, but due to a simple fact of my life: I am, due to events and circumstances, extremely scattered.  In fact, this post alone has taken me weeks to complete.

     Assuming I actually complete it today.

     As I have said in previous posts, I have viewed writing as my ultimate vocation since I was eight.  Unfortunately, life does not always care what you want or how you feel.  In fact, John Lennon had something very pertinent to say on that subject: Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

     I have given up a lot because of "life happening."  Largely those things have been reading, writing, having free time, and spending time with my family.

     Interestingly, I just read a book that stares deep into the eyes of this subject.  The book is a relatively early Upton Sinclair book called "The Jungle" about the meat packing trust of Chicago around the turn of the last century.  It is an eye-opening book, and yet.....

      ...and yet, one can see the parallels between the early twentieth century labor force, between Jurgis' discovery of Socialism, and the modern disaffection with the work-a-day world of, as the Godfathers put it so succinctly in their song, "Birth, School, Work, Death."

     Granted, most of us, at least in the United States, have life much better than those poor meat packers and other immigrants in the book.  However, in basic form  things have changed relatively little.  Yes, we have a national minimum wage.  However, the things that haven't changed are perhaps somewhat disturbing.

     Immigrants who come here without going through due process (which process did not really exist in 1904, when this book was written) still will live a dozen or more to an apartment, with the adults working in shifts so that they can pay rent.  Now, though, much of that money goes back to the home country.  The extent of vermin I do not know, as my family came here centuries before immigration was viewed as an issue by anyone besides the Natives, and I have not spent a great deal of time among such recent arrivals.

     On a more consistent note, it is well-documented that a person who works a minimum wage job (which such undocumented immigrants frequently do not--they often make less) does not make enough money to support himself, much less an actual family.  The response to this, of course, is a push to raise the minimum wage but, rational or not (and it is not), businesses frequently use this as an excuse to raise prices to cover the increase in paid wages, and thus we have irrationally spiralling inflation. 

     Upton Sinclair did not just write a work of fiction, with dark and horrifying flights of fantasy.  No, he spent time in Packingtown in Chicago, and followed immigrant families to see how they managed.  This book has fictionalized what he saw, and describes it through the personage of a Lithuanian immigrant and his family. 

     It also paints a particularly vile picture of the meat packing industry, and in fact inspired Theodore Roosevelt to the passage of the Food and Drug Act because of the unsanitary conditions (as well as inspiring him to refer to books and journalism of this sort as "muck raking", thus coining a phrase that fallen from use in the last couple of years).  I am not so certain how much improvement there has been in the industry over the intervening century, though I do know that some of the same things go on now as then.

     Perhaps the most....ironic part of the book is the Ultimate Goal that Sinclair has in mind, which is to convert the People to Socialism as a clear solution to the Evils of Capitalism.  I find it ironic at least in part because of all the Science he brings forth, and how much of it is, in the long run, from the perspective of more than a century in his future, is hogwash.  Also, his understanding of people is naive.  However, he is somewhat prescient with regards to some of his technological predictions: we do, in fact, have automatic dishwashers now that wash, sanitize, and dry dishes for us, though we do have to put them away ourselves. 

     He paints the usual Utopian picture of a life wherein humans have minimal labor that they must do to maintain the world so that they can engage in intellectual and creative work.  This is a wonderful notion, but one that very few are actually prepared to see happen.

     OK, I've pontificated enough, and to relatively little purpose other than proving that, while I can write on demand, writing on demand does not necessarily equal quality on demand.

     I suppose that's enough for today and, given my history, probably means you'll see me again in 2016.