A View From Corona #10
Jeremy Lassen | September 27th 2002 at 12:13 pm
“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”
- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness
When did the world I live in become a dystopian SF novel from my youth? I’m not sure, but I’m scared as hell.
Do you remember when “smart drugs” were the stuff of SF, and not the stuff that you pick up at your local health food store? I can now find recipes on-line that stimulate my own pineal gland, causing it to secrete DMT. This may be a utopian or dystopian development, depending on your point of view, but it is definitely a sign of the times. An even bigger sign of the times is that rat - you know the one… with two buttons in its cage. One button gives it food and water - the other button stimulates the pleasure centers of its brain. How many times has SF warned us about the “rat” that keeps pushing the pleasure button until it is a desiccated corpse?
Do you remember back in 1984, when cyberpunk was the latest fad, and the idea of global corporate oligarchy controlling and displacing national governments was kind of out there. Now it seems to be a fact of life - so much so that said corporate oligarchy has convinced the public that “it’s always been this way,” and that somehow “corporate oligarchy” is the same as “freedom and democracy.”
Do you remember when the idea of a supreme-court-appointed president suspending the bill of rights while engaged in a never-ending war on something was the stuff of SF novels, and not the headlines? U.S. citizens are now being held without charges, without access to attorneys, secretly, and indefinitely. The president and the attorney generals office need only declare that a U.S. citizen is an “enemy combatant,” and that person looses all of his or her constitutional rights. With no judicial or congressional oversight. And this is O.K. because we are “at war?”
Do you remember when the idea of a right wing Christian theocracy subverting the U.S. Constitution and setting up detention camps for non-Christians and other undesirables was the basis for a good Howard Hendrix novel? Now a member of the Federal Civil Rights Commission says, in public, in his official capacity “to forget civil rights”, and that “internment camps are inevitable” in the United States if there is another act of terrorism. At the same time, the Attorney General has already started planning for these camps. And NOBODY in the media has called for either of these people’s resignation?!?! In a nationally televised interview, the Secretary of the Army tells the public that there two types of Jews in America “smart Jews” (who agree with him) and “stupid Jews” (who apparently disagree with him). Does this mean that if you are a “smart Jew”, and go along with the government, you won’t end up in the above internment camps?!
Do you remember the brilliant movie Network, which, along with hundreds of works of SF, warns us of the dangers of a media controlled by a few corporate interests (which by their nature have explicit political agendas)? These corporate interests have been so successful at changing the laws, and de-regulating and monopolizing the media that they have convinced the public that:
a) “It has always been this way” and
b) The news media has a “liberal” bias that balances the inevitable corporate bias these media outlets have.
Growing up reading SF, I was exposed to a LOT of ideas, lifestyles, and ways of thinking: Openly gay and bi-sexual characters; Free Love; Global corporate oligarchy; Fascist dictatorships; How to organize and plan a revolution using a three-cell structure.
And these are just the things I learned from reading Robert Heinlein in junior high school!
My bullshit detector, and my ability to recognize propaganda for what it is has been keenly honed by the thousands of SF writers that I have read both in my youth and as an adult. A lot of these SF writers either remembered, or were directly affected by things like The Red Scare, McCarthyism, The Blacklist, The Japanese Interment Camps, The Holocaust, Racism, Watergate, etc. These SF writers wrote Important Stories that emphasized how critical it is to remember history, and that we have to fight to never let these things happen again.
But instead of remembering history, most of America drives around in gas guzzling SUVs (which the automobile industry has brainwashed the public into buying because they are somehow “safer” and/or “cooler”) with tattered, ratty plastic flags taped to their antennas - flags made in china by people making less money in a day than what an American pays for a cup of Starbucks ™ coffee.
And these same flag waving, SUV driving people don’t see ANY connection between the cheap gas (which, when adjusted for inflation, is CHEAPER than it was in the 1950’s) that drives the U.S. economy/foreign policy, and the brewing worldwide resentment and hatred that those oil-driven foreign policies inevitably produce. Does it ever occur to any of these people that if they didn’t drive land-tanks that got less than 18mpg, we wouldn’t need to prop up corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East?
Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator who needs to go - not because he is an evil dictator, but because he is not on our side (i.e. isn’t in bed with the oil cartels). The Indonesian government - the same one that committed rapes and murders on a Cambodian Killing-Fields scale in East Timor just three years ago has now been taken off the “bad guy” list. Why? The official line is that they are now our new partner in the global war against terrorism. The real reason? They are a major oil-producing nation that is in bed with the oil cartels that financed the current president’s election campaign.
What do a few hundred thousand raped, murdered and tortured people matter when we need cheap oil for our SUV’s? And we wonder where radical Muslim terrorists come from? The Indonesian province of East Timor would seem to be prime recruiting ground to me. The CIA trained, U.S. financed cold warriors of Al-Quida know this. They also know that when we inevitably start killing Iraqi civilians with our “smart bombs,” and install a puppet regime to keep the oil flowing, their ranks will be filled with suicide bombers and revolutionaries. Doesn’t anybody remember Cuba or Iran!?
I’d like to think that the majority of people who read SF have learned the lessons of history and see warmongering, imperialism, jingoism, etc. for what it is. We all know the Roman concept of bread and circus, and using external wars to stir nationalism, in order to limit and stifle domestic dissent.
We know these things because they are “SF plotting 101.” We’ve been reading fictional accounts of these things all our lives. I’d like to think that, regardless of a person’s political stripe (conservative, liberal, libertarian, socialist, or whatever), your average SF reader is a little more politically aware than the non-reading public…
I’d like to think that no matter what your political/economic views, you the readers SF can see what is going on, and recognize SOMETHING that violates your personal, political, ethical, religious or moral code. Because if you are not outraged… If you are not upset… you simply haven’t been paying attention.
I’d like to think that the readers of SF can see beyond the finger pointing and name calling that passes for political debate in the media. Reality is FAR more complex than the producers of CNN’s crossfire imagine, who, in their endless quest for “good ratings” try to distill all of human thought and conflict down to a liberal/conservative dichotomy. You the readers of SF know this is bullshit better than anyone else! It’s what we’ve been reading and writing about for the last 100 years!!
At the very least… At the VERY least - I’d like to think that when you watch the nightly news a distressing thought floats through your head… This sort of reminds me of a Phillip K. Dick novel.
I’d like to think that the community of people raised on SF could rise up and write petitions, call on the powers that be, and start a popular movement demanding change. And some of them do. But do they do this because of ANY of the things I mention above? No. They do it because Farscape was cancelled.
We get what we deserve. The dystopian SF novels of our youth are NOT something to aspire to. They are something to fight against. It hasn’t “always been this way,” and things CAN get better. But it will take you, the people who have been reading about this stuff all your lives to do something about it. Call, email or fax your congressional representative. Get off your ass and VOTE… in EVERY election. Change your consumer lifestyle so that it reflects your political/moral/ethical codes - vote with your dollars! Give a copy of your favorite SF novel/political allegory to a non-political, non-SF reading person for their birthday or Christmas. Do this for EVERY birthday and Christmas present you give this year. Be SUBVERSIVE!
What is going on in this country, and throughout the world transcends political party affiliations and dogma. The freedoms that our parents and grandparents fought and died for… the ideals that we used to take for granted… they are under siege. They have been for some time. I keep hoping this scary-ass dystopian novel I’ve been living has a happy ending. But I’m scared.
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