Fantasy writers are perceived as having lively imaginations. Who can deny it? But when it comes to actually putting over one’s fantasies, and making people believe in your fantasy and even order their lives around it–well, we just can’t compete with those folks in science, the government, and the news media.
Our fantasies are clearly labeled as such. No one would dream of introducing a bill in Congress to fund an expedition to Bell Mountain. That money is already spoken for by other fantasies. Here are two of the more outrageous examples.
“Man-made global warming is real–but big government can control it.”
“Life on earth arose spontaneously from non-living materials like mud and gravel, and by an infinite series of totally random mutations, went from bacteria to Beethoven.”
Those are big fantasies! Nothing ever cooked up by C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien comes even close to these for sheer audacity of the imagination.
It’s staggering to realize that millions of people–who would never, never expect to see Mr. Toad in his motorcar passing them on the freeway–have actually been brought to believe in these colossal fantasies. You’d think they would just burst out laughing at a statement like, “Paying teachers’ union members higher salaries, and granting them tenure and fabulous pension packages, will improve your children’s education,” but they don’t. They don’t even crack a smile.
Maybe it’s saying too much, to say that anyone actually believes that particular fantasy. But people act like they believe it.
When it comes down to the serious business of telling whoppers, we fantasy writers are pretty small potatoes. But we like to believe that our fantasies, at least, are edifying: and never cost our readers anything beyond the price of a book.
Spiffy blog, Lee…verrrryyyy eentersting!
Congratulations, Robert–you are the first to post a comment on this blog! I think I forgot to mention that you don’t win anything for that… sorry.
Here’s a fantasy for you. As real jobs are taken over by robots and AI, and the indoctrination system fails to prepare our young people for contribution to society by way of careers/skills/jobs/work, problems will appear at some point down the road. As many of the jobs are civil service and/or educators and/or government, and in nearly all cases unionized, where do they think these promised pensions will come from as the tax bases disappear? Now that’s fantasy! At some point, even this Ponzi scheme topples.
Like Margaret Thatcher said, sooner or later they run out of other people’s money.
Liberals and other Really Smart People have no idea at all how wealth is generated.
I’ve heard the robot fantasy quite a bit, of late. Not only is it fantasy, it’s childish fantasy. Robotic devices can be used to perform certain tasks with great efficiency, but the notion of android robots jauntily walking down the street, working autonomously is a pipe dream on the best of days. Where do I begin?
Powering such machines would require a way of packaging energy which we do not currently possess. Autonomous machines would be a threat. Just look up the accidents involving self-driving cars. A pedestrian was killed by one here in AZ, no too long ago, and the state put an end to further testing. It sounds like a wonderful idea, but don’t hold your breath. Besides that, if I’m going to drive my safety, as well as the safety of others around me is my responsibility, not that of some programmer that would think of an accident as evidence of a coding error.
Humans will remain as we were created and long outlive all of this nonsense.
I have been wondering how long this blog has been in existence – and now I have the honor of posting a comment on it!! The latest from the new Marxists of Silicon Valley is the “homo deos” – man evolving into a god.
Caligula did it first.