I have been reading and writing sci fi for as long as I can remember.
I mean, as soon as I could write, and was given materials, I began a sci fi story that had been brewing in my mind.
It was not very interesting, suggesting that a previous period in human history had been more advanced in many ways than the present time.
Real life has never gotten very 'science fictiony'.
What I mean by that: events transpired in a predictable way, where the humans often seemed sane.
To put it another way, if the real events had been found in a novel, the reader would have had no trouble believing in them.
That is no longer true.
Many recent events seem like the plot of a bad science fiction novel.
Things happen, and I say to myself: 'self, that is not really believable!'
I imagine that I am reading the novel of a lazy writer or a writer that is just plain bad.
It is possible that I have gotten too old to accept new events.
Maybe that is what aging is, and each human eventually starts to think that they may be an actor in a lazily written novel.
a decade ago, if I had been shown this outline for a book, I would have rejected it as a stupid plot for a novel:
A new type of computer program is devised, where people visit with one another remotely. they quit visiting in person. This program gets so popular that it is used by an enemy country to help elect a decisively unqualified president.
This president restarts the American civil war, had simply been delayed for over for about a century and a half.
This president refuses to leave office at the end of his term, and leads a coup to remain in power.
The coup fails, but the United States is left with a supreme court packed with highly religious and conservative justices.
Even with a democratic president, a democratic house, and a democratic senate, this supreme court immediately begins to roll back the last 200 years of progress in human rights.
Women loose the right to abortion, and minorities take a step back toward enslavement.
With some irony, a civil war reignites in Russia. [A state that succeeded in leaving the Soviet Union is retaken by force].
It is clearly bad writing, because the war is symmetrical with the American civil war that has also reignited.
The only difference is that the American states were prevented from leaving the US, while this large soviet state did leave, and is being grabbed back.
More lazy writing... The US arms the soviet state that is being retaken.
At first, the US sends tank killing shoulder launched missiles.
But later, the US starts sending billions of dollars in long range missiles to the breakaway state, and positions troops along the soviet border.
It is the Cuban missile crisis in reverse, but, having had more time to forget ww2, folks have more taste for world war. It seems like it will be profitable. Well worth the human lives.
In a later blog, I would like to explore this idea of a taste for world war. Howe and Stowe talk about an 80 to 100 year cycle that brings us back to total war every 4 generations. It is their 'seasons' theory.
In the Seasons theory, a generation is embroiled in all out war, and they do not like it. The next gen has almost no taste for war, but the next has slightly more, and, after a cycle of 4 generations, the folks who were alive during the last world war are all gone. A big war once again seems profitable, and not so bad to live through.
I regret that I have no solution to present.
I mean, other than we cease to sell land mines and missiles to everyone. And, that we once again strive to reduce nuclear weapons before someone makes a second use of them in war.
