Degeneracy of the fantastic

Video games and fantasy-fiction movies these days show an increasing propensity amongst producers to veer toward the technologically rich fantastic. Of course, that's nothing to complain about (I honestly can't wait for the release of Battleship). At the same time, these visually tech-abundant entertainment options are gradually homing in toward stuff that could actually be possible. This could be an indication of our advancement in real-life, too, but still, the credit goes to the visionaries and dreamers who thought up the future all those years ago when they first conceived these ideas.

Is the future here, then? The future is never here by definition, so that's ruled out. What, then, is the future? In the 1960s-1980s, a critical mass of fiction writers sat down in the Golden Age of science fiction and thought up a world in which the problems of their time didn't exist, a world in which the capacity for human goodness stood exacerbated by the development of technology immensely advanced but not yet radical. Where are such writers now? Going around the web looking for answers to these questions, it looks as if futurism has evolved into a less materialistic and more scientific school of thought.

Thinking about it, it'll quickly become evident that the Golden Age could actually have ended with the start of the digital revolution in the late 1980s. With the advent of channels dedicated simply to the distribution of knowledge, the enthralling unknowability that fascinated and invited the mid-late 20th century writers was being disintegrated bit by bit. Back then, it was much easier to be fantastic even though a lot of the science known today was known then as well: people were not connected as they are now, and were therefore more welcome to new ideas, perhaps some of which they could use to make better sense of the world.

Today, even as the price of being unique has gone up, so also has the ease with which uniqueness is to be found - original thinking has become really hard with the development of influences (which has always been happening) and their pervasiveness (which is a product of the revolution). There has been more and more to know about, to learn, and that learning eroded at the base of what was left to speculate about. This doesn't mean the solution is to limit learning: learning takes priority over writers inventing the future any day. This only means something unfortunate has happened that has quelled a once widely popular interest.

The shift toward more localized and less operatic fiction shows in the sci-fi books that have been hitting the shelves these days. Earlier, there was greater focus on alternative timelines, spaceflight, aliens and humanoids, teleportation, etc. These days, the focus seems to lie with the near-future, time travel and faster-than-light travel, telepathy, etc. There is a shrinkage of domains and it only seems like a natural conclusion given how the times have changed. However, with the dearth of such broad-domain thinking, who are the inventors of the future today? At least, inventive enough in comparison with Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein?

Breaking writers' block: Attempt #2

From atop the mountain, the world was a mangled wasteland, disfigured by invisible fumes rising out of the soil it trampled upon. Humankind was not to be seen, drowned as they had been as insignificant vermin under the weight of its own beating fists, and Terenthal seemed to be populated only by buildings, roads and prisons. Inflexible chains held down walls and fortresses, preventing them from swaying in the face of the fierce political winds now whipping their disinterested faces.

It was only unfortunate that the chains themselves surrendered their will not to wisdom or the promise of emancipation but simply to ignorance. One day, they would crumble under the weight of the simple but prodigious Terenthalian legacy, brought down from the inside as they sharpened iron blades to defend against enemies from beyond the southern and western borders.

All this Kaschan could see clearly. What he couldn’t was what no one else could, what no one else even bothered to look for: humanity. Along the eastern horizon, the first of the two stars was rising, its sharp glow throwing in sharp relief the Mayen Ridge that stretched along for thousands of miles from the east to the northern gates of the city, its orange depths silent but for the distant gushing of the Falls of Jacuruku.

The city of Terenthal, or Father’s Earth, seemed to emanate as a wide ellipse from beneath the mountain Kahg, concentric sections of the city slowly blossoming as her eyes widened from a milky white to an abject brown.

The flat-roofed villas were set on higher ground than the rest of the city, and perhaps it was the only way so: soil dug out from beyond the Mayen basin had been piled into large mounds and then flattened, ramps fashioned along the side for the carts of wealth and food to use. Beyond the villas, the ground quickly seemed to plummet a distance of more than sixty feet, the native black soil scorched by the blazing suns.

Lord of the Rings Day

Et Earello Endorenna utulien
Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta!
Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come,
And my heirs, unto the ending of the World!

Thus spoke Aragorn son of Arathorn, of House Telcontar, at the end of the War of the Ring. On this day, the 25th of March (3019, T.A.), the allied Host was surrounded by the forces of Sauron upon the Slagg-hills, even as Frodo and Sam destroyed the One Ring in Barad Dur and brought about the fall of the Dark Lord, one of the Maiar of Aule, and with him, the last of the kin of Morgoth Bauglir was gone. The War of the Ring, however, ended only with the Battle of Bywater, wherein Saruman was slain by Grima Wormtongue.



Celebrate today by reading any one of Tolkien's ambitious works, be it the three-volume Lord of the Rings epic fantasy novel, its prequel The Hobbit, or the all-encompassing sequel The Silmarillion. Many do complain about the vast numbers of characters in Tolkien's works, but give it some time. Read slowly, enjoy the descriptions of the fantasy realm of Tolkien's World, revel in the scenery, culture, myths and lore of the six races, and his characters will more than come to life.

Most of your superheroes are fail.

Superman is not a superhero. He's a normal-sized Kryptonian who, lucky for him, found the planet Earth whose inhabitants' physical powers were inferior to his, whose inhabitants' physical powers were proportionate to the problems they had caused on their home planet. Was Superman a superhero on Krypton? He couldn't have been because in order to have been, the difference between his physical powers and those of his Kryptonian peers would have had to be the same as the difference between his physical powers and that of his Earth-bound peers. And that's not the case.

As an extension of this argument, it can be said that everyone on Earth is a superhero - just that we haven't found a race of beings physically inferior to us.

Another thing about superheroism is a matter of intention. When Superman was forced to leave Krypton, did he chalk out a course for a planet where he knew he could be a superhero? No; he landed up on Earth accidentally. Assuming his story was real and happening in a parallel universe: Superman was lucky. And as far as I'm concerned, intention is important: the end result of all of a superhero's actions ought to have been intended because, otherwise, the uniqueness that comes with being 'super' vanishes. Even theists are unwilling to accept luck for how aimless it tends to be and instead attribute certain events to a supernatural being's intentions.

Just FYI.