“And so, what first promised immortality, ultimately delivers ghosts”

Science Fiction has never been about the future, it has always been about interpreting the present.

Because at a certain point, with the exception of Jack Kirby and Jules Verne, it can be argued that nobody has ever predicted shit.

And the predictions – Star Trek leads to cellphones, right? Does anyone really believe that? Thats not actually how anything happens. The concept of “Utopia” is actually an idea to promote Socialism and Eugenics by writers who couldn’t even predict World War I. William Gibson created the word cyberspace as a metaphor which people took literally. The actual internet was built to prevent a communications blackout in the event of nuclear disaster. What’s the point? So you thought of fiber optics first, want a cookie?

Fuck Star Trek.

Science Fiction at its heart is profoundly personal. It represents the creator far more than any legitimate approximation of the future. It’s an extrapolation, how the author sees the world around him progressing. Like horror, which scifi shares a a lot of characteristics with, the genre often turns out to be a look at the dreams and nightmares of the creator.

The opening quote is taken from a horror documentary called The American Nightmare (the whole thing is posted up on youtube, and it’s pretty good). It’s a look at how the political environment of the 60s and 70s was processed by horror filmmakers, and also a backhanded indictment of the entire generation’s failure to take their revolutions further. The line is spoken about the nature of film as an artform, and generally leans toward it being predicated towards horror. But the line works just as well concerning scifi.

Science Fiction wants so badly to be the language of dreams, of the shining Gernsback future. The so-called “literature of ideas”. But in reality sf has become the place where we watch our anxieties bloom. Science Fiction can work fantastically as escapism – but it always seems to fail when it putting forth a positiveand perfect future. A good reason for this is, well, it’s fiction. Without conflict it’s just wankery. And another reason is without some kind of psychological real world ground to spring from, it becomes fantasy. Might as well have faeries and shit (that should tell you how I’m feeling about Star Wars these days).

And science fiction has it’s foundation in horror – the first and best sf novel is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Anxiety for the future has always been sf’s modus operandi. But it’s also inherently personal. Ultimately, sf exposes it’s creators. Mechanization. Moral ambiguity. Cloning. Organ harvesting. Genocide. Oligarchy. Existential isolation. Societal collapse. Bird flu. Whatever you’re afraid of comes out. No matter how much you want to write about rayguns and cyborgs. The most philosophical questions get reasoned out in surreal and bizarre fashions. Even in the most superficial works, we see a lot of the creator’s head.

I think you can see it best when the artist isn’t exclusive to sf – to take a wide stance – Clockwork Orange and Deltron 3030 are the most idiosyncratic and personal entries in Kubrick and Del’s bodies of work. Finally allowed to let loose in an insane context, Del is shown to be a humanist. Kubrick makes a film thats all surface, and we see just how much disdain and muted glee he sees when he looks at humanity.

I think, simply by attempting to create a future that makes sense to you, you immediately expose yourself. You acknowledge all your prejudices from square one.

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This essay was kind of written in fragments, so I’m sorry if it doesn’t quite make sense.

Posting this up now, while I’ve got the chance and the access to my sister’s computer. Best Buy has a tracking number for my laptop. It has been fixed, but apparently it won’t be returned to the store until at least tomorrow, and I “might have to wait until Monday”, they don’t know. Apparently the term “tracking number” is a misnomer, as they can’t track the damn package with it.

The new thing I’m writing is pretty well structured in my head, and I’ve written a good chunk of the first draft of the first issue.

Jared is drawing the first pages of FD#1 this week. We nearly killed each other laying them out a little while back. Likely because of this, they will be fucking awesome.

I haven’t gotten the new Batman yet. I can’t wait. And apparently I missed an issue of Powers.