My friend Mike texted me this morning that he had just finished reading The Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner, about an American woman living in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. She led a Nazi resistance group. Mike said he was so exhausted and depressed after finishing that book that he wanted to read a science fiction book. Mike has always disagreed with me when I said that science fiction was mostly escapist literature but admitted that that’s how he wanted to use it right now.

Growing up, my family moved around a lot, so I went to over a dozen schools in several states. Plus, my parents became alcoholic. My childhood should have been grim. However, I always found ways to be happy, and one of them was by reading science fiction.

I grew up expecting two things from science fiction. First, it was escapism. I preferred reading science fiction over watching television. But, since I was young, and growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I also used science fiction to think about the future. I wanted science fiction to speculate about real possibilities. Reading science fiction gave me certain expectations about the future.

Later, I used science fiction to socialize when I got into fandom. Science fiction gave me things to talk about with other people, and subjects to write about in fanzines, and on the internet. For a while I even wanted to write science fiction, so it gave me an artistic goal. I can also say, science fiction gave me hope for the future, because I wanted some of its speculation to come true. And nowadays the history of science fiction gives me something to study and to also write about.

Science fiction also provides a mental framework for speculating. It can be a mental tool like Einstein’s thought experiments.

However, something is changing in me. I assume it’s from getting older. But I also think it’s because reality intrudes more than ever. Life is never easy, and it feels like it’s getting harder. Politics and climate change are grabbing everyone by their shirtfront and slapping them around. A nicer image is to say politics and climate change are like a Zen master caning us about our head and shoulders demanding that we pay attention.

I still crave the escapes science fiction used to offer, but it’s getting harder to find.

I’m reading several books on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. That was another very real time. People realized they could throw off the church and monarchy and choose their own way of thinking and government. The revolution caused a lot of arguments, killing, and wars over all the speculated possibilities.

We’ve had over two hundred years of the kind of political freedom people back then wanted, but it hasn’t worked out. The same factions fighting for power are still fighting for power. We can’t configure a political system that isn’t corrupted by the strong and wealthy. Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, Jefferson, Locke, and others speculated about all kinds of ideals we could achieve.

We know we need capitalism to generate work and wealth for everyone, that we need democracy to create political equality, and we need universal education to solve our problems. But we can’t find the right combination that doesn’t lead to oligarchy and plutocracy. And neither the oligarchs, plutocrats, and voters will make the right decisions for the planet and each other. We always make our choices based on greed and self-interest. In other words, Darwinian evolution is what wins.

So, it’s become harder for me to find books about galloping about the galaxy that makes me forget about the problems on Earth. And if I only criticize science fiction for not dealing with real problems, I bum people out and they don’t want to talk or socialize with me. And if I can’t write about science fiction, I’ve lost that use too.

I should focus on the best science fiction that lets me forget, to read and write about the best kinds of science fiction escapism. My current crisis right now is finding that kind of science fiction. It can’t be stupid. It can’t be silly. It can’t be what’s already been done way too many times.

I am reminded of the film Sullivan’s Travels. It was made back in the depression and is about a movie director who wants to make serious movies about serious times. By accident, he ends up being on a chain gang in the south. It’s a miserable existence. One night they get to see a movie, a comedy, and all those tortured souls laugh their heads off. The director realizes that miserable people want movies that make them forget.

That’s a positive message that I’ve accepted for most of my life. However, the movie doesn’t point out, that when the comedy is over, the cons are still living in a rat infested swamp, with little to eat, and their existence is working on the chain gang

Would giving them a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus help them either?

Are our only choices escapism or existentialism?

SF writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, John Brunner, and Kim Stanley Robinson have explored other ideas, but don’t they all end up being dystopian? We’ve given up on utopia. Young people seem to love dystopian novels about plucky young individuals making mighty blows against the empire.

Damn, I’m being a downer again. I’m not depressed. I enjoy analyzing my problems, but that analysis tends to depress other people. Sorry about that. Let’s see if I can end this essay with something positive.

For some reason I can always fall back on the novels of Philip K. Dick. He accepts the world is insane. He focuses on little people struggling to cope and survive. And he sees the world in weird and entertaining ways. I might even say reading PKD can be therapeutic.

Oh, and I find reading long books about the French Revolution tremendously fascinating. Is that just another form of escapism? It feels like I’m learning about reality. Or is that an illusion? Damn, I’m getting into PKD territory.

Yeah, I know I’m weird. But it’s how I cope.

James Wallace Harris, 7/31/24