Author: admin

30 November 2019

One of Ray Bradbury’s greatest motives in writing speculative fiction was not so much to predict the future, he said, but to prevent it.  I flatter myself, and I declare that I am trying to follow in that tradition.  Not every future, of course, but some, and especially this one. There are better futures that I can imagine, but I’m not about to write about any of those.  Happy stories are boring.

One of the great benefits of reading spec-fic, according to Isaac Asimov, is that it trains the mind to appreciate unfamiliar circumstances.  Because we immerse ourselves in these strange worlds regularly, we can relate to all manner of unusual lifestyles, technologies, physiologies, and cultural norms.  Habitually relating to scuttling arthropods living on a neutron star, their majesties’ bucketeers, or the cyclical transsexuals of LeGuin’s left hand, we have rather less trouble adjusting to the new neighbors from strange lands abroad or who practice unusual rituals.

It makes us better neighbors, and it also makes us better historians.  “Presentism” tends to not color our judgment as much as it does most.  We judge different cultures and communities less from our own personal biases (“The way it’s s’posed ta be”), but from a broader view of ideological coherence (or its more likely absence).  Rather than condemning Jefferson or Lee outright on the sole basis of “owning slaves” we are able to place their behavior into a context that demanded behaviors from them that today’s society would not.  It’s easy to condemn Washington’s physicians who bled him to death, but like the cop who witnessed a “furtive gesture” towards the waistband, they were just following established procedure.  Today’s physicians might have saved many of the limbs that were amputated by Union and Rebel surgeons. 

And, conditioned as we are, we can see that today’s sensible statists who prefer central regulation to market discipline (or taxation to freedom, or protecting global democracy to non-intervention) can be easily substituted for the 1840’s main-stream anti-abolitionist who favored a more gradual approach to emancipation, rather than sabotaging the foundations of civilization. 

Slavery, and taxation, and conscription, and prohibition, and murder, all worked to the advantage of the established social order.  Prudent conservatives are loathe to tear down things that work.  And when it comes to the state and its prerogatives, most “liberals” are conservative, even as most “conservatives” are collectivist.  Readers of spec-fic, due in part to our peculiar conditioning, are generally both liberal and conservative, and rarely democratic.

8 March 2022

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations is a Trekkie credo.

We use it poetically, of course. As an engineer and a scientist, I know that human beings cannot exhibit infinite diversity, because there are only a finite number of us. And frankly, some combinations just can’t work. But as an artist, and more importantly, as a fanboy, I understand that “infinite” means “beyond my immediate comprehension” or “vast, unlimited, or unrestrained.”

It’s partly why we dig science fiction, and one of the main reasons I love Star Trek® and The Legion of Super-Heroes® both. In addition to their generally optimistic view of the future and of civilization, they were early in putting women into positions of authority. Captain Pike’s First Officer, Number One, and The Legion’s second Leader, Saturn Girl, were both unmistakably female. Years before “Women’s Lib” entered common cultural parlance.

And a year before the Virginia v Loving decision striking down anti-miscegenation laws, and two years before “Plato’s Stepchildren” wherein Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura engage in some (unfortunately involuntary) on-screen lip wrasslin’ the Legion managed to stealthily showcase inter-racial romance (albeit between a Coluan and a Kryptonian), while such real-world trysts were still outlawed in some States by lingering Jim-Crow-mocratic legislation.

Long Live the Legion’s Star Trekkian philosophy of IDIC! Probably why I did, and still, love both continuities.

correspondents JT, PK, & SK point to the Legion’s other cultural firsts in mainstream comics, notably Element Lad, the first gay super-hero (introduced in 1963), Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet as the first gay couple (circa mid ’80s), and of course, yet another inter-racial couple, Mon-El of Daxam and Shadow Lass of Talok VIII. Also not mentioned were Colossal Boy (Earthman native to Mars) and Chameleon Girl of Durla. While Light Lass’ and Shrinking Violet’s romance was deftly and subtly, yet unmistakably (The Levitz Himself IS that good!) introduced in a Code Approved book, Element Lad’s alleged first is arguable, insofar as his present sexuality was not asserted until 1992. But there’s no necessary contradiction in continuo. He may well be bisexual for all we know. Or he may have been confused or frightened. He did squire many a young lady, but he never seemed to have a steady. Nevertheless, the Legion’s many fans can take enormous pride in our team’s relentless pressure on the frontier of cultural evolution. As well we should, it’s taken the rest of you decades to catch up.

Supergirl® and Brainiac 5® are the creations of Otto Binder,
Al Plastino, Jerry Siegel, & Jim Mooney,
and are held de jure by DC Comics & WarnerCom. 
Used without permission.

(Thanks to correspondent Golpoyez Jpexynt for push-starting this essay.)