"Science fiction should be about the important problems of our time."

One of my problems with this: We don't KNOW what those problems are.
It might be decades before we realize what they were.

In the 1950s, a list of what were considered the major problems might
have included:

1) The inevitability of Soviet world rule. Communism was so much more
efficient than democracy/capitalism that the US and the rest of the
world were doomed, doomed, doomed.

2) American women were too uppity. Not like properly-submissive
European women.

In the mid-1960s, one issue was the inevitable depopulation of certain
states -- for example, Nevada.

--
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
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Dan Goodman wrote:
> "Science fiction should be about the important problems of our time."
>
> One of my problems with this: We don't KNOW what those problems are.
> It might be decades before we realize what they were.
>
> In the 1950s, a list of what were considered the major problems might
> have included:
>
> 1) The inevitability of Soviet world rule. Communism was so much more
> efficient than democracy/capitalism that the US and the rest of the
> world were doomed, doomed, doomed.
>
> 2) American women were too uppity. Not like properly-submissive
> European women.
>
> In the mid-1960s, one issue was the inevitable depopulation of certain
> states -- for example, Nevada.
>

Change the placeholders, and you seem to have a list which has
lasted well enough.

Some of my unreliable posers for the 2050s:

1) The inevitability of Gender World War, as Western men
increasingly escape the relentless onslaught of political
correctness by all subscribing to gene-therapy sex reassignment
and sinking into a reckless orgy of Hott Lesbian Babeness, whilst
Chinese and Indian women have become endangered species due to
the mass availability of illicit embryo-selection drugs. Will
nobody think of the children?!

2) Gaia is too capitalist. If the prices she demands for
continuing to supply us with system bioservices continue to
escalate at their present rate, then the global economy will
collapse inside 50 years! THEN where will the greedy monopolist
bitch get her enriched uranium feeds, eh? Inquiring minds want
to know!

3) How long can the pious countries of True Civilisation coexist
with the puritanically aggressive atheism of the post-jihadi
Anticaliphate? Darwinian Science itself tells us that faith
seems to be an essential component of human sapience, yet
ironically rationalistic thinking has cut the moral legs from
beneath its own only possible defenders! Is there any hope for
Human Mind, or are we all to follow _Homo habilis_ into the long
night?


You will be glad to hear that, enhanced by 2050s retro-geriatric
medicine, I will offer pleasing and optimistic solutions to all
of these dilemmas in my tales:


1) A heroic African biotechnologist, striving to rid the world of
the scourge of homosexuality, finds a way to weaponise his
vaccine and release it upon the degenerate North. The West
marries the Orient and everybody lives happily ever after. The
evil gay British villain with bad teeth escapes to Mars for the
sequel, hooting, "I shall return!" I am subsequently flattered
but annoyed by a vast number of propositions of my least
favourite kind, since he is by far the best character in the
book, and everybody assumes that he is my self, er, insert.

2) Hott Lesbian Babe Graeghama and her strangely Sandra
Bullock-alike lover have passionate sex; beat up corporate goons;
have langorous sex; stop the action for fifty pages in order to
explain to Bob the evils of monopoly capitalism and the
importance of the right to bare arms; have sex in tutti fruitti
hats, though not with Bob; and lead a heroic league of
all-American Trotskyite survivalists to overthrow the
bitch-Goddess and replace her with an impartially altruistic
People's Ecological Tribune -- an AI who manifests as a Decorous
Lesbian Babe called Kari. They have hott three-way sex and end
on a quip that would almost have done Roger Moore proud. Baen
Books buys out Tor, Fox, and other three-letter media
organisations with the proceeds.

3) Two-fisted Biplanetary Patrol operative Sammi 'Spud' Hardin
must link up with her arch-enemy Baruch ben Osama --
baccy-runner, space pirate, and by an ironic twist of fate the
last Muslim outside Luxembourg *and* the last Chief of Staff of
global-warming-submerged Israel! -- to save humankind from the
Great Anomie. Only the combination of these two brilliant,
diametrically opposed minds can understand that the War on Drugs
itself is the only religion left that the modern world can gladly
embrace. They become the Proud Parents of the Church of the Body
Immaculate, and Human Mind is saved for aye, though it is really
awfully bored, and wishes it was in the kind of novel where it
could distract itself with lots of Hott Gratuitous Sex instead.
The provisional wing of Action on Smoking and Health blows me up
with an exploding cigar for taking the piss.


All other contributions to the important project of mapping our
future will no doubt be gratefully received, even if they are
creative rather than financial...

--
Cheers,

Gray

---
To unmung address, lop off the 'be invalid' command.

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:25:58 +0100, Graham Woodland
<gray@graeghama.plus.comb.invalid> wrote in
<news:wZmdnVCM38tUyMDVnZ2dneKdnZydnZ2d@posted.plusn et> in
rec.arts.sf.misc:

[...]

> 2) Hott Lesbian Babe Graeghama [...]

Otherwise known as Mary Stu?

Brian

Brian M. Scott wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:25:58 +0100, Graham Woodland
> <gray@graeghama.plus.comb.invalid> wrote in
> <news:wZmdnVCM38tUyMDVnZ2dneKdnZydnZ2d@posted.plusn et> in
> rec.arts.sf.misc:
>
> [...]
>
>> 2) Hott Lesbian Babe Graeghama [...]
>
> Otherwise known as Mary Stu?
>

Perish the thought. It is a piece of subtle incluing that she is
in fact a lycanthrope, although the only plot purpose this serves
is to ensure that her desperate self-sacrificing charge against
the machine-gun in Chapter 27 does not in fact have unseemly
permanent effects. What in ten blazes would *I* want with a
situation where I had nothing to do but pontificate, save the
world to universal acclaim, and have crazy passionate sex from
prologue to epilogue with a Sandra Bullock-alike lover and a
charming AI whose resemblance to my beloved Muse exists solely in
the minds of everybody and her llama?

I ask you!

--
Cheers,

Gray

---
To unmung address, lop off the 'be invalid' command.