The New York Times best-selling author Jeannette Walls was quoted in the Times this past weekend as saying, “I’m not a huge fan of experimental fiction, fantasy or so-called escapist literature. Reality is just so interesting, why would you want to escape it?”  This kind of statement represents the kind of blindness that is all too typical of all too many “mainstream” writers and critics.

In fact, the best science fiction, fantasy, and other “escapist” literature puts a reader, in a real sense, “outside” the framework of current society and reality in a way that allows a perceptive individual to see beyond the confines of accepted views and cultural norms. Some readers will see this, and some will not.  As a simple, but valid example of this, take my own book, The Magic of Recluce, in which the “good guys” are ostensibly and initially portrayed as the “blacks.”  In western European derived cultures, as demonstrated by all too many westerns, where the good guys wear white Stetsons, and the bad guys crumpled black hats, in the United States, in particular, there is an equation of the color white with purity and goodness.  But this is far from a universal norm.  In many cultures, white is the color of death, and other cultures use other colors for purity.  My very deliberate inversion of this western color “norm” was designed to get readers to think a bit about that… and then, when they’d thought a while, I started writing other Recluce books from the “white” perspective, in an attempt to show the semi-idiocy of arbitrarily ascribing “color-values” to people or societies, or values to colors themselves.

I’m far from the only F&SF writer to use the genres to explore such themes or to question values or concepts, and I could list a number of writers who do.  So could most perceptive readers of F&SF.  This fact tends to get lost because fiction is for entertainment, and if we as writers fail to entertain, we don’t remain successful professional writers for very long, and, frankly, if we’re extremely successful at entertaining, we tend not to be taken seriously on other levels. Stephen King, for example, is technically a far, far better writer than is recognized, largely because of the subjects about which he writes, and not because he writes poorly – which he does not.  Only recently has there been much recognition of this fact.

Even with critics within the F&SF genre, there’s a certain dismissal of writers who are “commercially” successful as writers of “mere” popular escapism, as though anything that is popular cannot be good.  Under those criteria, Shakespeare cannot possibly be good or have any depth.  For heaven’s sake, the man wrote about sprites and monsters, faery queens, sorcerers and witches, along with battles, kings, ghosts, and ungrateful children.

Good is good;  popular is popular; and popular can be anything from technically awful to outstanding, although I’d be among the first to admit that works that are both good and popular are far rarer than those that are popular and technically weak or flawed.  And the same holds for so-called escapist fiction, no matter what the mainstream “purists” assert.

Then too, the fact is that all fiction, genre or mainstream, is “escapist.”  The only question is how far the author is taking you… and for what reasons.

Over the years, both my wife and I have encountered quite a number of individuals who had the ability and skills to succeed, and who then proceeded to commit self-sabotage, often when they were on the brink of accomplishing something they said was important to them. Another instance just occurred, and without going into details, the individual in question suddenly stopped going to two required senior level classes, while attending other classes… and getting good grades in those.  Despite promises to do better, that individual ended up flunking both courses… and being unable to graduate for at least another semester.

It’s easier to understand why people fail if their reach exceeds their abilities, or if accidents or family tragedies occur, or if they become addicted to drugs, or suffer PTSD from combat or violent abuse, or if they suffer from depression or bipolarity, but it’s hard to understand why seemingly well-adjusted people literally throw their future, or even a meaningful life, away.  Some of that may be, of course, that they’re not so well-adjusted as their façade indicates, but I have a nagging suspicion that in at least a few instances, there’s another factor in play.

What might that be?  The realization that what they mistakenly thought was the end of something was just the beginning.  For example, far too many college students have the idea that college is an ordeal to be endured before getting a “real” job that has little to do with what was required in college.  In my wife’s field, and in many others, however, what is required in college is indeed only the beginning, and the demands of the profession increase the longer you’re in it… and some students suddenly realize that what is being asked of them is only the beginning… and they’re overwhelmed.

The same can be true of a promotion. The next step up in any organization usually involves more pay, but today, often the pay increase is minimal compared to the increased workload and responsibilities… and, again, some people don’t want to admit, either to themselves or to others, that they don’t want to work that hard or handle that much responsibility.  So the “easy” way out is self-sabotage… and often blaming others for what happens.

This certainly isn’t the only explanation for self-sabotage, but it does fit the pattern of too many cases I’ve observed over the years… and it also seems to me that cases of self-sabotage are increasing, but then, maybe I’ve just become more aware of them…or maybe the “rewards” for advancement, degrees, etc., just aren’t what they used to be… at least in the perception of some people.

In past blogs, I’ve discussed the insidious and potentially deadly long-terns effects of the “now” mentality, particularly on American business, and how the emphasis on immediate profits, immediate dividends, or immediate increases in stock prices, if not all three, have had a devastating effect not only on the economy, but all across the society of the United States.  There is another area of American society where the “now” culture has had an even more negative and more immediate effect – and that’s on American politics and government.

Years and years ago, one of my political mentors made the observation that, in running a campaign, you had to give the voters a good reason to vote for a candidate.  Back then, that reason was tacitly assumed to be, except in certain parts of the south, positive.  Today, if one surveys political ads, campaign promises, and the like, that reason is overwhelmingly negative.  Vote for [Your Candidate] because he or she will oppose more federal government, more spending, more gun controls.  Or conversely, vote for [Your Candidate] because he or she will oppose cutting programs necessary for children, the poor, the disadvantaged, the farmer, the environment, etc. 

The synergy between the “now” culture and the ever more predominant tendency of American voters to vote negative preferences is an overlooked and very strong contribution to the deadlock in American politics. People want what they want, and they want it now… and they don’t want to pay for it now, despite the fact that anything that government does has to be paid for in some fashion, either by taxes, deficits, inflation, or decreases in existing programs in order to maintain other existing programs.

 In addition, as a number of U.S. Representatives and Senators have discovered over the past few elections, voters no longer reward members of Congress for positive achievements.  They primarily [pun intended] vote to punish incumbents for anything they dislike.  So a member of Congress, such as former Senator Bob Bennett of Utah, can vote for 95% or more of what the Republicans in Utah want and make two or three votes they don’t like, and be denied renomination. At a time when federal programs are vastly underfunded, the combination of voter desires not to lose any federal benefits/programs, not to pay in taxes what is necessary to support those programs, and to punish any member of Congress who attempts to resolve those problems in a politically feasible way, such as working out a compromise, results in continual deadlock.

Then, add to that the fact that politicians want to be re-elected, that over 90% of all Congressional districts are essentially dominated by one political party, and that thirty-one of the states have both Senators from the same political party, and that means that the overwhelming majority of members of Congress cannot vote against the dictates of their local party activists on almost any major issue without risking not being renominated or re-elected. 

Yet everyone decries Congress, when Congress is in fact more representative of American culture than ever before.  We, as a society, want, right now, more than we’re willing to pay for.  Likewise, our representatives don’t want to pay for trying to fix things because they want to keep their jobs, right now, regardless of the future consequences.  But it’s so much easier to blame that guy or gal in Washington than the face in the mirror.

Taken together, the drop in the various market indices on Wednesday and Thursday appear to be the largest two-day decline in almost a year and a half.  And what supposedly triggered the sell-off and decline?  The fact that the Federal Reserve indicated that it just might stop buying something like $85 billion in bonds every month.  Duh!

Believing that the continuing purchase of such bonds, otherwise known by the euphemism of “quantitative easing” (or QE), would or could go on forever makes the belief in the tooth fairy, the Wizard of Oz, and moderation by the Taliban look sensible by comparison. The financial “wizards” of  Wall Street, including high-paid hedge fund managers, program traders, and various other supposed financial icons had to know that such a program had to end or be throttled back.  So why, if they knew this, did they go into a panic?

Because they were using the stimulus of QE to run up stocks in the short run to bolster their own bottom lines – and bonuses – and didn’t believe that Chairman Bernanke would signal an end to the artificial bull market so quickly.  Ah yes, and these are the geniuses who are among the most high-paid executives/professionals in the United States.  They’re also the ones who created the mess of the Great Recession… and they’re at it again.

Despite Dodd-Frank, there still is little oversight of these self-proclaimed experts, and no real significant reform of either banking or investment banking. And Congress continues to tie itself in knots over anything requiring real oversight or reform, as witness the scuttling of the legislation that made a very modest attempt at reforming farm subsidies… or the continued hassles over fixing a broken and essential non-functional immigration system… and we won’t mention, except in passing, the fact that despite overwhelming public support for requiring background checks of firearms’ purchasers, that, too, never happened.

Just how bad will things have to get before Americans start electing politicians who are more interested in solving problems than getting elected?  I don’t know… but I’m definitely not holding my breath.

There’s a scene in the movie Citizen Kane where Jedediah Leland tells Charles Foster Kane that Kane only wants “love on your own terms.”  It’s a great scene, and true as well as prophetic in a far larger context

There’s no doubt that, throughout history, human beings have always wanted love, and pretty much everything else, on our own terms.  In most of human history, however, almost everyone couldn’t get much of anything on their own terms, and this is still true in many parts of the world. If it didn’t rain, people were lucky to get anything to eat, let alone a Big Mac or Chateaubriand with béarnaise.  Even in the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” of France, the most powerful ruler in Europe, there were times when beverages froze on the table at Versailles.

But, with the rise of more advanced technology we’ve become more and more able to get things previously unobtainable, from fresh fruits and vegetables out of season where we live to instant communications pretty much anywhere on earth.  Particularly in the United States, as a society we want everything on our own terms.  We want cheap and abundant electricity.  We want inexpensive clothing.  We want easily affordable personal transportation at our beck and call.  We want the best health care possible, and we’re getting angry that its cost is rising.  The list of what we want and can get on our own terms – or close to them – is large and growing… for the moment.

The problem with all this is that, over time, we don’t dictate the terms:  the physical condition of the world and the underlying laws of the universe do.

The current “we can have it all” of so-called responsible environmentalists is natural gas, because it emits roughly half the greenhouse gases of coal as well as far fewer other pollutants.  There are more than a few problems with this “solution,” the first of which is that the numbers backing the “replacement” of coal with natural gas don’t take into account the additional and far higher than publicized environmental costs. A number of recent studies show that from 3% to 15% of existing natural gas wells are leaking methane gas.  A NOAA study of one gas field in eastern Utah found that leaks amounted to 9% of the amount of gas produced.  Another study by Cornell University also found leakage rates at nine percent on a national basis. Studies of gas drilling have shown leakage rates of up to 17% in some basins.  One Canadian study indicated that the more typical horizontal gas fracking wells had leakage after of several years in more than half the wells.   While high pressure fracking wells are still in the minority in numbers, they have high initial production rates, and even a small percentage volume of leakage can result in a significant quantity of methane emissions. Given that there are some 500,000 natural gas wells in the United States alone, if even 3% are leaking that’s 15,000 wells oozing or spewing methane into the atmosphere, and, given that methane is a greenhouse gas 100 times more potent than CO2, when initially released and 25 times more potent even measured over a hundred years, after that’s a serious problem. And that doesn’t include the tens of thousands of Canadian wells. Even EPA studies show that leakage rates above eight percent negate any benefits from converting from coal and in fact may even accelerate global warming.  Natural gas just doesn’t leak from wells, either.  Testimony before the Massachusetts state legislature this year cited 20,000 known natural gas leaks in the state, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that more than 8 billion cubic meters of natural gas are lost each year in leakage.

I’m not against natural gas.  In fact, I’d much rather have natural gas generating my power and heating my home than any of the conventional alternatives.  BUT… unless the drilling companies and the gas power industry are willing to spend a lot more money and other resources in cleaning up production and transmission systems, there’s not going to be any environmental improvement.  In fact, present practices could make matters worse.  Of course, coal is still cheaper – unless coal-burning power plants are cleaned up to the standards of natural gas plants, in which case, the electricity won’t be any cheaper, but more expensive.  And if we don’t clean up our energy production and usage pollution, we’ll end up frying the planet that much sooner. In short, we can’t keep having cheap energy on our terms.

I could have cited different examples in different areas, but the facts and the conclusions would be similar. Over time, the universe is going to limit what we can have on our own terms… and for how long.

That’s not even a question.  The question is how long it will take us as a society to understand that point.