The densest people on the internet are the ones who say sci fi and fantasy are getting too political. Why can’t we go back to the good old days of The Twilight Zone, with its various episodes about mob mentality and the danger of mass paranoia that totally weren’t about the Red Scare. Or Star Wars and its genocidal empire of racially homogeneous Aryan men. Or Dune with its religious tribal peoples who live in a desert that contains the galaxy’s most valuable resource and the wars with the foreign colonizers, that was purely from Frank Herbert’s imagination. Can you imagine how much Star Trek would suck if it was packed to the brim with ham-fisted allegories of every societal issue of the 20th century. Not like all this modern ultra-political stuff, like a woman hero.
I am glad that I am not alone in the outrage brought by grown-ass-little-whining boys who keep saying that comics and/scifi is too political and it’s not for that it’s meant to be fun. No. I mean, yes, comics are also made to be a medium for stories that allowes more humor than the usual ones due to its own informality, because comics are a “new” genre in literature. Heck comics/graphic novels are not even yet considered literature but that’s so not the point. As always, I degress. It’s like you’ve never picked up one of them and really, actually, paid attention at what was in front of you. And I’m not talking about the trashy stuff - gods may bless the trashy scifi stuff found for 2€ in flea markets- I’m talking about the pillars on which the genre was built, that we still love today. I swear 3/4 of classical scifi novels are, at the core, some kind of discourse about how the british some white-ass empire fucked up and/or fell and know we are in a future, the future is mostly not so good and something ethical about humanity in things/beings considered others. To add to the very VERY well made point above: -Asimov: the empire fell, we’re kinda fucked, thankfully the cultural elites. -Philip K. Dick: what even is reality, humans can transcend reality, probably a trip, not clear; also big-ass corporations/goverments strangling us. -Mary the queen Shelley: the real monster is un-humanity in the humans. -Pretty much anyone save for Mary Shelly from the 19th century: something something the Empire vs others, some racial bullshit about white men something something, maybe the Empire is falling and we are all gonna die. Science Fiction, from its very beginning ENGAGES with reality, the fear about uncertain times and how the society will evolve in the future. Yes, it can also totally disregards current events, but in doing so they 1-indirectly comment on the times they lived in or 2-they do not survive the test of times. this can be said for each and every genre in the history of humanity’s storitelling. No, srsly, think about it, how many of the GreatScienceFictionNovelsTM do not engage in some way with the direction humanity was heading towards when they were written and/or the core of what makes us humans, humans. Name me one, I dare you. Then again I am running on 10 hours of sleep in i think three days working in a bookstore near christmas is no good for one’s health so maybe I AM forgetting something so yes, do lemme know.



















