That’s right, our glorious, slowly dying space program is officially 50 years old today. I think it’s cause for some celebration. As such, I’m officially holding a “Yay, our SP is 50” party over Superbowl. Who’s with me? On a side note, here is a New Scientist article on this very subject, though they’re not offering to host a Superbowl party in Van Allen’s favor… (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
The acronym stands for: Getting Serious About Global Human Rights. The United States pays a lot of lip service to the idea of global human rights — and compared to much of the rest of the world, we’re willing to do something about it more of the time — but too often we back down from the ideals of democracy when it suits us. The way we’ve helped Israel shunt aside the results of free, democratic elections in Palestine is shameful, and the way we turn a blind eye to similar human rights abuses in our allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia is equally ludicrous. But compared to much of the rest of the world, we’re light-years ahead. We’ve ditched slavery, worked hard to put all races on an equal footing, and we’re in the long, slow process of recognizing alternative sexual orientations. Until the whole planet works the same way, we’re going to have a hard time moving forward as a species. I have one big problem with this argument: it implies that everyone has to think like us in order for the species to survive, or something similar to it. While he is very right that global human rights are a moral imperitive, a necessity for the advancement of our species, we also have to realize that we all don’t come from the same background. Arabic nations have very different views on the treatment of women and marriage than we do. They don’t adhere to typical Christian morals which are intertwined in our society, even if you’d like to deny it. We are a Christian nation and would still be one even if all the Christians disappeared. Given that, we have to understand that people of differing religious have different views of how things are supposed to be and as such have grown up living in a world where such beliefs are firmly placed. There is very little room in some parts of the world for ‘radical’ change. America and similar nations are flukes. There are more polygamists than there are monogamists, etc. The U.S. isn’t the end-all-be-all for all things societal. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t find workable solutions for human rights. Surely people of other major religions don’t condone the murdering of people? Buddhists can’t think this and, extremism aside, neither can Muslims. I don’t know a lot about many of the various religions (Buddhism isn’t actually a religion, but I used it here anyway), but there has to be a standard in each of them that all of us can agree on. The biggest, and I mean the BIGGEST, thing that has to be dealt with first is the violation of human rights by the U.S. and her allies. We cannot, logically, sit around and tell people they aren’t allowed to do something if we actually do it. This is the same logic we use against people having nuclear weapons and it’s not out of the question for someone to ask “well, if you have them, why can’t we?” The U.S. government cannot commit crimes against humanity, even against criminals. There are rules against it and we have to follow them just like anyone else. The U.K. and any other ally of the U.S. counts here too, though I can’t point out any specific examples. The only thing I agree with President Shrub on is that Palestine and Israel HAVE to work things out and live peacefully. The Israeli’s aren’t going anywhere and neither are the Palestinians, so why are they bothering to fight and subvert one another when neither is going away? Likewise, it is imperative that the Middle East simply accept that Israel exists and will exist for a long time to come, otherwise we can expect to see further injustices committed there. Once we find that middle ground, it’s a matter of increasingly complex politics that have to be navigated cautiously. Nobody is going to pay our current President much attention on the subject of human rights. Who would? Most of the world doesn’t give him much attention in the way he would like. Regardless, it’s delicate. The second we start telling people what to do they’ll clam up and shut us off. In some cases we may be met with violence. The U.N., the global failure, won’t do anything either unless someone grows some balls and starts taking action. How many nations have violated the rules on human rights that are members? Dozens? Tens of dozens? I don’t know. I know at least ten. Why aren’t such nations having economic sanctions placed on them? Why aren’t they enforcing the rules? Global human rights, essentially, starts at home, must move on to global organizations, and then fed through every avenue possibly to outlying nations. If we can manage that, then we can expect that there might be different treatment of people, or peoples, in the world. The problem is WILL we do it? I don’t know. I’d like to think that enough of us care to at least stomp our feet down and say “enough is enough” and stop trading with nations that hurt their own people, but history has shown that that doesn’t always work out. As Edelman said, we are allied with nations that commit the very crimes we’ve sworn not to uphold. The U.S. has come a long way, but she’s still got a long way to go. It’s up to the U.S. government and the U.S. people to act out the changes necessary to begin by fixing human rights at home. Perhaps one day it’ll happen. Perhaps.
More ‘SF is dying’ stuff, only this time it’s very specific to cyberpunk. For those that don’t know what Cyberpunk is the subgenre of SF in which Neuromancer by William Gibson, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, The Matrix (and sequels), and various other technocentric films and books fit into. A recent article over at io9 indicated that Cyberpunk has been slowly declining in the last few years. The problem is that I don’t really buy that assertion. While they likely did a fair bit of homework and from what they found they may be somewhat correct, I think they are forgetting a lot of things that should be addressed. Here is a chart they used to show the fluctuations from year to year between movies (blue line) and novels (red line): The chart shows a steady decline from the early 90s into the 2000s. Something is missing. There’s no way that cyberpunk is falling out of favor here. The article suggests that perhaps the fall occurred because we are living in a highly technological world now and much of what was once considered SF might not be so anymore. I think this is only the crux of the matter, but we’ll address that first. Our definitions of cyberpunk are changing, unfortunately, and as we become more and more technologically inclined it will continued to change its meaning. However, even if something ceases to be SF doesn’t mean it can’t be called cyberpunk. Many technothrillers could very well be cyberpunk novels, even if nothing necessarily ‘new’ is presented. Cyberpunk isn’t as restricted by a time frame as space operas. I would say that there is probably a lot more cyberpunk out there than we realize. We just don’t know it because it’s not labeled as such, and since we live in a society that is constantly advancing, our definition of what makes something cyberpunk is changing and the line between that and normal technothrillers becomes very fuzzy. However, another issue with the argument, which is nothing against the io9 folks, as they did do a hell of a lot of homework to have to find all the things they did find, which would have easily taken hours, is that it seems we’re paying attention to a primarily English language market. What about China? China is the home of the world’s largest circulation SF magazine and their market for SF works is exploding. They eat it up like crazy there and some authors actually make a living having works translated and sold there. There is Russian SF too, which, while focused a lot on the uses of governmental failure and dystopic themes, does deal with cyberpunk elements from time to time. There are dozens of countries out there contributing to the global market of SF. There has to be a myriad of cyberpunk books and movies in such countries. Technothrillers are a big deal, and so are cyberpunk novels, even if you don’t think of many of them as cyberpunk. If cyberpunk is, in fact, seeing a significant decline in the U.S., that doesn’t mean it’s seeing that decline elsewhere. Some countries are significantly behind us as far as SF goes, and so they may just now be exploding with new cyberpunk themes. We should be paying attention and translators should actively seek to bring these works to the American market. One more issue with the argument is that so many SF works have cyberpunk elements built into them. This should say something about cyberpunk as a genre. It is unavoidably important! It has built itself into the fabric of SF and as long as SF keeps it around it will never die. This goes along with the notion that just because something isn’t labeled cyberpunk doesn’t mean it isn’t cyberpunk. Cyberpunk isn’t really going to go anywhere. It’ll probably become full reality and then it won’t matter what we all think about it anyway.
Many of you know that I co-own a website with a friend for young writers called Young Writers Online. We recently had a hosting problem and were forced to switch hosts due to the current host suddenly changing how it dealt with its customers (which resulted in our website being down a lot). We’ve moved on, but the move meant we had to buy hosting far sooner than we were anticipating, which means we have to figure out ways to alleviate financial concerns for the website. So, I’m here asking for donations or sponsorship. If you think you can give us a few bucks please use the Paypal Donate button on the left sidebar (immediately left, you can’t miss it). If you’re interested in being a sponsor, which would probably involve having your name on the site or something could be worked out, please email me at arconna@(no spam)yahoo.com (remove the no spam part) so we can discuss it. Any help would be greatly appreciate. We’re taking steps to ensure that we won’t get into this situation again and that we’ll have hosting permanently. Hopefully, in the future, we can offer prizes to our members for writing competitions and the like. We have high ambitions for the site. Thanks for your time! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
For myself. In light of all the things going on ever since last quarter and the start of this quarter I feel as though I need to set up some ‘requirements’ for every single day starting tomorrow. These are going to be things I’m going to do no matter what as a way to not only increase my writing productivity, but to increase my reading productivity as well. I am far too behind in my reading and I’m not happy about it. I can’t read nearly as fast as some, who are reading a book every other day, but there shouldn’t be any reason why I can’t read a book a week, and so here are my new standards and requirements for every day of the week: Write 2,000 words. Period. Even crappy words. Doesn’t matter. I just have to write. Read 100 pages. Should be easy enough. I read 100 pages tonight and intend to continue that. I have five books from publishers/authors right now, and I should be done with at least three of them. I’m done with being behind. Time to catch up and get things done. I’ll also have a per month list. I need to do certain things to keep myself on top of my writing game, because that’s what you do if you want to get published right? Edit two short stories or two novel chapters. I need to start getting things in tiptop shape for publication. Submit at least one story a month, preferably two. Same as above, basically. I have three stories out there already, but I should really learn to keep on top so I can really get myself out there and possibly get published. I think those are easy enough to follow, don’t you? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
There’s something about the Golden Age of science fiction and the period I call “Post Golden Age” that still captures my imagination and keeps me interested in science fiction. Some might call it the ‘adventure’ and others might think of it as a sense of wonder. Perhaps it’s both. The thing is, science fiction is fighting a little battle right now. Technology has caught up with it, to some extent, and the more we learn about space travel the more we come to realize that we’re most likely never going to shoot off to the stars to land on Earth-like planets inhabited by intelligent aliens. Not long ago we lived in a society where cell phones were, for the most part, nonexistent. If you had a cell you looked like an idiot because it looked something like the picture to the right. Such bulky devices had practically no features–they couldn’t take pictures, record your voice, text message, play games, display information, surf the net, or do anything except call people. Not long ago there weren’t any computers like we have today. Any computers that existed were owned by the government and personal computers had barely even come into the market–those in the market could do little more than a standard scientific calculator can do today. We didn’t have electric cars or hybrids, at least not as an economic option. Space travel wasn’t being turned into a private enterprise by companies like Virgin Galactic, etc. and medical research was a long way off from growing a functioning ear on the back of a mouse. But today we have all these things. So much of what science fiction writers predicted would happen at some point in the future, even if their dates were wrong, has happened. To some it is as if we live in a science fictional world–I’m sure if we went back in time and showed Asimov what the world of today is like he would agree. This is a hurdle, a miniature battle for science fiction. What value does SF have in a world that is rapidly advancing to the point where many of the things that once were SF are now reality? Does science fiction still have something to say? You damn well better believe it! Science fiction has plenty to say about the future, the world, heck even the universe! So long as some people with crazy brains can think about things that haven’t happened yet, SF will exist. Certainly there might come a time when a lot of SF isn’t as impacting as it is today, but it will still have value. Science fiction doesn’t have to be loaded with technology or vast interstellar empires. It doesn’t require space ships or space travel. There don’t have to be vast networks of matrix-like worlds or super-humans with extraordinary powers due to evolution. Science fiction needs future. A powerful definition of SF might be that it is the future. Provided that a future of some sort exists there will be something for SF people to write about. Even in the event of the knowledge of our extinction there will be things to write about, and there is a TV program that takes on this very issue. What will science fiction have to say? Science fiction can talk about the environment, it can talk about what might be the future of a political decision, or the future of a new, advanced cell phone that has a built in AI, or a myriad of other things. Even if technology becomes dull because it’s ‘everywhere’, SF can still discuss societal changes and future issues of human rights, the evolution of ‘race’, the power of technology and its influence, etc. SF is a treasure trove, a giant metaphorical idea box where everyone can submit suggestions. Some of them will be heard and some of them will not. We might be living in a time where SF seems to be losing a little ground against the more escapist fantasy–I love fantasy too–but it still has value and importance because only science fiction can discuss the things that are more pressing in our future. Only science fiction can tell us what to expect. Science fiction is the future.
