Midlife Crisis Year One: Thoughts on 41

Birthdays are a time to stop and contemplate one’s life, to celebrate another revolution around the sun.  And of course to eat some cake.

Last year marked my 40^th birthday.  I wondered, “Which midlife crisis is right for me?”  My next birthday is nearly upon me, so it’s natural to reflect on how that midlife crisis has been going.  

Where Did Far-Future Science Fiction Go?

Many of the most beloved science fiction series of the 20th century are set thousands or even millions of years in the future: Frank Herbert's Dune series, Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle (which includes The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed), Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, and so on.

By comparison, relatively few science fiction stories written in the last 20 years take place more than a couple hundred years in the future and most take place in the 21st century.

Where did all the far-future science fiction go?

This is a question I've thought about a lot lately.  I recently re-read the last book in the Dune series and am working my way through the delightfully/impossibly difficult Book of the New Sun, which my Goodreads review describes as "like taking an acid trip through a thesaurus."

Adaptations: IT (2017)

IT is not just a scary clown, but that clown is scary.

Having read the book two years ago (see my review), having vaguely creepy memories of the 1990 TV miniseries, and having read some positive early reviews, I was excited to see the new film adaptation of Stephen King's IT.

Is IT a good adaptation?  Is IT a good movie?  The answer to both questions is, "Yes, but IT is not perfect."

What if Everyone Stopped Talking about “Political Correctness”?

I’m not going to tell people to stop talking about “political correctness”, because that would instantly cause some internet denizens to label me a member of the SJW thought Gestapo for daring to express an opinion about what people should do that can’t be reduced to “suck it up, snowflake!”  

Instead, I encourage us all to engage in something essential to both philosophy and science fiction: a thought experiment.  Imagine a world in which everyone woke up tomorrow and stopped talking about “political correctness.”   If you find that too far fetched, imagine you are a human, alien, or robotic historian in the year 2117 trying to understand the Culture Wars of the late 20^th and early 21^st century.