Comic Books and Science Fiction

My parents were never entirely satisfied with me. Among many other reasons, I had this penchant for comic books and science fiction. I was on the cutting edge in buying the early Marvel comics before they became cool, and my science fiction tastes ran predominantly to the (subsequently determined) masters of the genre: Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury. But these early indications of an innate sense of good taste and selection did not impress my parents.

They considered these things childish, silly, trivial and otherwise a waste of time. They wanted me to put away childish things and grow up, to give up my fantastical worlds and begin engaging the real world. However, I resisted them well into my late teens, because to me the comics and science fiction were such marvelous imaginative works by truly creative people who all attempted in their own ways to answer the question "What if?"

Pick a scenario, grant a new assumption, invent a possibility, and what might happen? How would people be affected? What would the world and life look like? And my favorites all had interesting, educational, and often profound (but always entertaining) answers to these questions. Moreover, in engaging these authors, I felt my own imagination thriving, as I learned more and more to try thinking outside the box, no matter what medium or discipline I might thereafter engage.

But never, in all my fantastical musings, did I ever let go of the fact that these were all imaginative creations. They were not real prophesy (although hubris made some think they might be prophets, and Mr. Heinlein certainly had a nice run of prophesy in the mid to late 1950's). They were attempts to stretch the mind, while entertaining the reader.

Now, however, I have a better appreciation for what concerned my parents. This is because of the insanity exhibited by supposed grown-ups over the issue of Global Warming aka Climate Change aka Gaia Hysteria.

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I read the intense speeches by world leaders, I see the alarming reports of near catastrophe, I watch the terse statements on TV news shows, and my head spins. I am listening, in real time, to a science fiction story, a riveting scenario of world-wide apocalypse, but one where all the "writers" do not understand that it's merely a "What if?" scenario. They think it's real! And apparently so do most of the "readers."

It's Orson Welles all over again and we are being attacked by Martians, but the producers of the story do not intend it to be a hoax. It's as if NBC News suddenly broke into my regularly scheduled program to report in all seriousness that Dr. Octopus has taken over a water-front warehouse and threatens New York City with holocaust. Or that Dr. Doom has stolen the Silver Surfer's powers and was at this very moment surfing through the clouds over the Atlantic to wreak vengeance on Reed Richards. Or that a Star Child has been spotted above our communications satellites and is preparing to ignite all of our nuclear bombs to eradicate the human race and start everything over.

I want to shout, "Look! If you want to read good science fiction about man-made Climate Change and the end of the world, spend a few dollars on Gregory Benford's Timescape. There is a book to take you out of your milieu, and make you think and wonder about 'What if?' There is a book to expand your mind, and put you on the road to really and truly thinking independently from the crowd, not only about climate change, but also about time itself, and the sheer aloofness of time to the small destinies contained within its webs."

And then I want to go on and urge people that when they are finished with Timescape to take their lessons learned and enjoyment of a story well told, and file them both away. Get back into the real world, where real people have real problems. And one of those problems is most decidedly NOT how to satisfy the utopian desire to change the climate of this world we live on. We are too small; we are too powerless; and all we can do is what our ancestors have always done: accept what Nature gives us or withholds, adjust our plans accordingly, and pray to the God we believe in to sustain us through the day and help us tomorrow.

Amen.

Posted by: Whitman, via email.