Insistence of Vision Read Free Page B

read Nineteen Eighty-Four vowed to fight Big Brother, and other millions who watched Soylent Green became fervent environmentalists.
    Violating a core tenet of Aristotle, sci fi contemplates the possibility – even just a slim one – of successfully defying Fate.
    The Rulers of Destiny
    In contrast, what is the implicit assumption in most fantasy tales, novels and films? Apparently, the form of governance that ruled most human societies since the discovery of grain must always govern us. Royalty and lordly families. Priestly castes and solitary, secretive mages… the roll call of standard characters going back at least four thousand years.
    Oh, in your typical fantasy kingly rulers may topple and shift, but the abiding assumptions and social castes generally do not.
    (I will set aside, for now, some of the hybrid sub-genres like “urban fantasy” whose top practitioners, like the great Tim Powers, weave magical elements into an attitude toward knowledge and problem-solving that seems far more like science fiction. I deem this a very hopeful trend… if we can do without faux aristocratic and over-used vampires, please?)
    Mind you, I’ll never deny that fantasy has immense attractions, some that I have drawn upon, myself. Feudalism resonates, deep inside us. We fantasize about being the king or wizard; it seems to be in our genes. We are all – after all - descended from the harems of tough and perseverant fellows who succeeded at one goal: achieving the number one spot in that kind of system.
    But for all the courage and heroism shown by fantasy characters across 4000 years of great, compelling dramas – including fine legends crafted by recent masters like Tolkien, Bradley, Martin, Rothfuss and Vance – what has happened by the end of these stories? Good may have triumphed over evil and the land’s people may be happier under Aragorn than they would have been, under Sauron. Fine. But “under” is their only choice.
    Ponder the palantir – a wondrous glassy object that lets Aragorn see faraway places, collect information and converse with viceroys across the realm. Does that sound at all familiar to you? In Gondor, palantirs are reserved for the elite. Mass-producedversionswon’t be appearing soon on every peasant’s tabletop from Rohan to the Shire. (The way our civilization plopped such a miracle on your desktop.) Nor will peasants see Gandalf producing libraries, running water, printing presses or the germ theory of disease. Only little Peregrin Took seems to grasp and demand a glimmer of alternatives, till he is bullied out of it.
    The trend toward feudal-romantic fantasy may seem harmless. But I have to wonder why so of our few fellow citizens are interested – nowadays – in humanity’s truest heroes. Heroes like Pericles, Franklin, Faraday, Lincoln, Pankhurst, Einstein and so on freed us from a horrid, feudal way of life that, ironically, seems so alluring to jaded modern eyes.
    Rejection of Optimism
    But let’s be fair now. The deep river of nostalgia flows not just through fantasy novels and films, with their feudal images, chosen-ones, prophecies, and kingly lineages that rule by right of blood. Ever-more often, we’ve been seeing chosen-ones and dour gloom more often in sci fi, too.
    Notions of human self-improvement… or ambition of any kind… are derided. Almost like an immunal rejection to the 1960s can-do spirit of Star Trek , wave after wave of authors and film directors seem to have “discovered” dark cynicism as a storytelling style, calling it fresh and original… as if they invented it. Tales about regret, navel-contemplation and disdain toward any semblance of optimism now seem to fill the sci fi magazines and awards nomination lists, with science fiction scholar Judith Berman diagnosing: “no more than a handful of stories... look forward to the future.”
    As critic Tom Shippey put it, in a Wall Street Journal review:
    As science fiction approached the millennium, it began to