A bunch of Sci-Fi authors talk about how sci-fi ought to handle politics and ...

Julian Bond - 2012-01-19 08:32:29+0000 - Updated: 2012-01-19 08:32:29+0000

A bunch of Sci-Fi authors talk about how sci-fi ought to handle politics and the future of politics. Scroll down to Peter Watts because he's not pulling any punches.

I mean, seriously. I’ve got a bit of a reputation for envisioning whacked-out dystopian futures rife with sociopaths and neuroengineered freaks, but none of those characters ever took their marching orders from an invisible homophobic sky fairy and then boasted about it as though it were some badge of honor instead of a symptom of pathology.

MIND MELD: Current Politics In SF/F - SF Signal – A Speculative Fiction Blog

Julian Bond - 2012-01-19 08:34:37+0000

As Harvard physicist Lisa Randall has pointed out, politicians who are perfectly comfortable taking about God and Religion shy away from questions about Science like Rick Santorum fleeing a gay bar.

Julian Bond - 2012-01-19 08:35:03+0000

None of them would be brazen or stupid enough to flagrantly excoriate positions they’d enthusiastically endorsed mere months before. None of them would deny the most basic principles of biology while bragging about their ignorance of science. Hell, not one of my twisted protagonists even started a war of convenience to line the pockets of their friends in the oil industry. And if any of my characters did do anything like that, they wouldn’t get away with it; they’d be widely called out and ridiculed, because I just can’t bring myself to populate my worlds with complete idiots. I guess that’s why they call it fiction.

Politics on this continent are fucking insane.