Jasyn Jones regales us with a story from SFF history of an original paradise invaded by pinkos, pedos, and Men with Screwdrivers.
There was once an age, a Golden Age, an age of wonder and delight, of adventure and heroics, of creativity and imagination unbound… an age undreamt of by modern man, an age forgotten and buried, like hidden treasures beneath the sands of Ægypt.
And into this Golden Age came enemies, like ninjas in the night. (But not the awesome kind of ninjas, who totally kick ass, but the other kind. The bad kind. Ninjas who foreswear honor and kill for money. BOOO!) And these bad guy ninjas assassinated all the heroes and leaders of the Golden Age, and took their places, and had all their names and images erased. This they did, so that people would forget the awesomeosity of the Golden Age, would forget the great deeds done by the Golden Agers, and would be content with the sometimes-pretty-good-but-just-not-as-awesome deeds of the Silver Agers.
And we call these villains… THE FUTURIANS. And their reign was grim, indeed.
Now of the Futurians, there were three kinds: the sperglords, the scumbags, and the Socialists. (There were also some mostly-non-asshole Futurians, who don’t enter into this tale.) And each of these had reason to hate the awesomeness of the Pulps.
The sperglords sperged out because THE SCIENCE OF THE PULPS WAS WRONG AND THAT WAS NOT COOL HOLY CRAP MAN ITS CALLED SCIENCE FICTION IT’S RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME AND YOUR SCIENCE HAS TO BE CORRECT. IT’S THE MOST. IMPORTANT. THING. EVER. ALSO FANTASY IS FOR CHILDREN, I MEAN REALLY YOU GUYS WHO EVEN LET THEM IN THE BUILDING?!
I admit it. That part made me laugh.
So the sperglords, scumbags, and Socialists (who were very often the exact same people, all in one) ganged up together to subvert and undermine the awesome genre of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and to overthrow the Reign of the Masters of Pulp, and to denigrate and disparage the stories of the Golden Age, and to hide them from view. They declared themselves to be the TRUE Golden Age, and for FOUR GENERATIONS continued the lies, until the glorious past of F&SF was forgotten.
Here’s where hope enters the tale, and it’s because the Futurians were wrong. It isn’t called Science Fiction. It’s called Science Fiction, and the storytelling is the most important part. And there remained a small remnant who knew that.
Jasyn’s post has drawn criticism–not just from the usual suspects, but from respected quarters of the Superverse–as revisionist history. I leave it to you to read Appendix N and draw your own conclusions.
And if you’re hungry for SFF free from the influence of sperglords, scumbags, and socialists, I humbly direct you to my heroics, adventure, and imagination-filled Soul Cycle.
Too many people are incapable of engaging in the conversation.
They have no idea what just happened.
It's astonishing, really.
Indeed. The same can be said for more than the SFF field.
Socialism is the best way for societies to function but it cannot function properly if the socialistic agenda is not mandated by high-powered fallen humans and corporate elitists otherwise known as the Feds.
That reminds me of a comment I heard on the Venezuela crisis by someone there on the ground:
So your country implements socialism, and it fails. But that's OK because it wasn't real socialism.
So your country implements socialism, and it fails. But that's OK because it wasn't real socialism.
So your country implements socialism, and it fails. But that's OK because it wasn't real socialism.
So your country implements socialism, and it fails. But that's OK because it wasn't real socialism.
So your country implements socialism, and it fails. But that's OK because it wasn't real socialism.
So your country implements socialism, and it fails. But that's OK because it wasn't real socialism.
ad infinitum.
Exactly! What we haven't seen in this world is REAL socialism. But finally, we have a Nazi POTUS and Nazis are all about SOCIALISM!
And if anybody thinks I'm being serious, then they need a lesson in internet sarcasm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhNyd6slDbI
Socialism!
Even Asimov (who seemed to like the idea of socialism in theory) understood that the power it would take for it to "work" was not something you could trust humans with. That's why he created his perfect (until the story required them not to be) robots who eventually end up secretly (spoiler alert) running human society without humanity ever being aware of it. His robots were stand in's for the perfectly rational group of experts that all socialists worship.
Point taken, re: Asimov's view of socialism.
That "Your country secretly implements socialism, but that's OK because robots" story sounds like roughly as much fun as licking a frozen flagpole.
Socialist friend of mine told me that government was a necessary evil so we ought to trust government to create the absolute best rather than the saintly humans who utilise the free market to create better lives for the disenfranchised.
St Teresa of Calcutta has been heavily criticised that her welfare programs were never governmentally mandated. Why does charity need governmental mandates?
"Mandatory charity" is in the same category as "mandatory fun".