1. Seeds of the
Novel: Apocalypse Where? ...and Garbage
"Science fiction is
not predictive; it is descriptive."
Ursula
LeGuin
Introduction
to The
Left Hand of Darkness
Looking back, I can
see that the first seed of the novel was listening to a panel discussion called
something like “writing the apocalypse in a time of apocalypse” at Wiscon (the world’s leading feminist science-fiction
convention), back in 2004. I don’t remember specifics from the discussion (we’d
been driving all day and I was pretty tired), but the question stuck with me.
How go about writing
the apocalypse in these apocalyptic times?
When I scan the news,
I find that, for the most part, it’s mostly a technological, biological, and
political freak show. Think about it: The US Congress is being held captive by
men and women who believe that a white-bearded god created the earth about 6000
years ago; meanwhile, they lavishly
fund projects like DARPA’s surveillance
insects, created from the science they repudiate. Then there’s the horror
of Transgenic Pigs and Web-Spinning Goats;
Robot Jellyfish powered by a rat’s heart cells; Smart Billboards; “safe” memory erasure, and, of course, the great and powerful NSA
data-suck programs, to name only a very few of the ‘sci-fi’ things currently
out there.
How keep up? And is that
even the point?
The best speculative fiction
(Sci-fi, Fantasy, both together, and with various blends of other genres) is
about what’s happening right now. As
Ursula Le Guin once said: “Science
fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.” Speculative fiction is a way of
talking about THIS world, the
one we’re living in right now. And I would say that because the world right now
is so amazingly, tragically, and horrifically weird, speculative fiction may be one of the most useful ways of
approaching it, of trying to make sense of it.
(Working in medical
records was a bit like living inside a Kafka novel – The Trial or The
Castle – but instead of being the desperate protagonist trying to find a
way into or out of the labyrinth, I was one of the faceless bureaucrats working
deep in the bowels of the system. I would like to believe that I did not act like a faceless bureaucrat, but the
health care system is a vast, clanking, somewhat chaotic machine, dominated by
insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and once you enter its domain as a
worker-drone, it’s hard not to become assimilated...).
On that particular afternoon, the talk-show host was interviewing a journalist promoting a book about garbage (I’m pretty sure it was Heather Rogers’ Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage; but it may have been Elizabeth Roylte’s Garbage Land…I can’t be certain.). During the interview, the host kept trying to get her to talk about what individuals can do to cut down on waste. It seemed that he was coming from the point of view that all the troubles of the world could be solved if each and every individual, on their own – but still participating in the economy – simply recycled.
On that particular afternoon, the talk-show host was interviewing a journalist promoting a book about garbage (I’m pretty sure it was Heather Rogers’ Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage; but it may have been Elizabeth Roylte’s Garbage Land…I can’t be certain.). During the interview, the host kept trying to get her to talk about what individuals can do to cut down on waste. It seemed that he was coming from the point of view that all the troubles of the world could be solved if each and every individual, on their own – but still participating in the economy – simply recycled.
The problem with that
belief is that it assents to the economy as
it is: We can continue with the kinds of jobs, the kinds of
corporations, the kinds of business practices that we currently have – we just need to throw in a little more green energy and social justice and everything will work
out fine and dandy.
Ah, but you can’t run
the economy – as it exists now – off
green energy alone. It’s not going to happen. It is a child’s dream. It’s
possible (some day) to have a more just, equitable and green economy (yes, I’m
one of those dreamers…and I’m not the only one…), but it will not look like the one we have now. In fact, it will
look different in different locales, bioregions, and cultures. And it will
require that the Western world live a bit closer to the earth (I mean this
literally...and in all senses).
You can’t have
limitless growth in a finite world. This is another child-like dream. Huge
corporations, especially energy corporations, already understand this. That’s
why they are making a violent and desperate grab for the last of the world’s resources (coal,
oil, natural gas, arable land, water...).
My memory is that the
author of the book on garbage argued with the interviewer, saying that the
corporate world (and the economy they control) was the major perpetrator of
waste. Corporations, and those who benefit from the wealth they generate, are
dependent on waste. Planned obsolescence is built into the system. Still, the
interviewer doggedly insisted that we were all responsible, and that if we all did
our part then surely something in the world would change.
What is wrong with
this guy, I thought. Why is he unable to grasp what the author is saying – that
the problem is systemic? That the problem is the result of the economic system
itself? Half way home, it occurred to me that, just like those who deny climate
change, his mind had faltered in the face of such a huge problem. He had stared
into a terrible abyss and his mind had shut down. The only thing he could do
was fall back on old ideas, spouting some of that good ole American optimism.
I was reminded of those Micky
Rooney/Judy Garland movies from the late 30’s, where the solution to all
problems was to put on a show. Usually in someone’s barn.
Sing!
Dance!
Problem solved!
Sing!
Dance!
Problem solved!
This happens not just
when we are confronted by the effects of the economic system on which we rely,
but also when we are confronted by the gargantuan dismantling of our
constitutional rights by the corporate influenced executive, legislative and
judicial branches of the government; or by the forests, animals, and plants
disappearing at a rate too vast for the human brain to process. When I look at
the photos of the shrinking polar ice cap (almost nonexistent in summer) or see
the videos of the giant ice shelves in Antarctica or Greenland falling into the
sea, my mind wants to shut down. What do we do such information?
And yes, there have
been catastrophes before (world wars, genocide, plagues), but we’re talking
about the end of nature as we have known it since the dawn of man. The human
brain, the human heart, the human spine, the human hand, all developed on a
planet that now, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. What do we do
with that?
Denial is a very human
response. Acceptance, and then becoming endlessly distracted by more trivial
things, is also a tried and true response. Becoming depressed and withdrawing
from the world (dosing yourself with antidepressants) is yet another response. These
responses are all about escape.
But there is no escape.
2. Abandon Hope All
Ye Who Enter Here: An Affirmation?
“When we talk about hopelessness and death,
we’re talking about facing facts. No escapism. Giving up hope is encouragement
to stick with yourself, not to run away, to return to the bare bones, no matter
what’s going on. If we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope of
alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our
lives, an honest, direct relationship that no longer ignores the reality of
impermanence and death.”
Pema
Chödrön
Listening to that interview, I wondered at how I had compartmentalized the enormity of the situation. I drove across town, back and forth each day, to a job I did not like. The drivers in the cars ahead of me, behind me, were, for the most part, doing the same thing. No one was particularly happy. Everyone I knew was mostly living hand-to-mouth. Why continue? What was the point?
Faces in the hospital,
especially those eating in the cafeteria – workers or friends and relatives of
patients – began to haunt me. I began to hear Blake’s London in my head every day while eating lunch:
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does
flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage
hearse.
(It’s important to
remember that in Blake’s time his use of the word chartered referred to chartered companies – what are now known as
corporations. A good explanation of the poem can be found at the 21st
Century Socialism site here)
So, I finally reached
a point where everything had become impossible. How find a way out of that? I kept
returning to that radio interviewer – his optimism, his hope – and how it
seemed to be getting in the way of his ability to see the nature of the problem.
What I eventually realized was that hope itself
was getting in the way of seeing what was right there in front of us all.
So, to cut to the
chase (finally!), it seemed to me that the only way
out of this collapsing world was by abandoning all hope. We can’t leap over the
terrible present by hoping for a just
and green future. First, we have to look at what
is.
And what is?
We’re not living on
the same planet we were fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago. And, because
we’ve spent so much time doing absolutely nothing about climate change, things
are going to get quite a bit worse before they get better. We’re making too few
changes far too late. (A great book on the subject of this new earth we’re
living on is by Bill McKibben, called Eaarth: Making Life on
a Tough New Planet)
NO! NO! Look away, look away!
Oh Great Smiley Emoticon Save Us!
But, as I said before, there’s no escape. Not really. It is only by actually looking at what is that we can figure out what can be done. If we’re always trying to project ourselves out of this reality and into what can be – well, we’re lost.
And so, when I started
to write the second novel, I landed on a strange, barren planet; one that
looked remarkably like the one I was already on…
 |
| Detroit |
Next: Among the Angels’ Hierarchies, Part
III
(A
Question for the Damned: “So...what’s your novel about?”)
No comments:
Post a Comment