Highway To Mars

There has been no end of discussion on what people don’t like about modern geek culture and specifically science fiction but less on what is going wrong.  Many think it’s ideology, but in this discussion, I look at something much more fundamental – the basic ability to tell a story.

Far from agreeing with the need to get rid of social justice, as I observed when reviewing Atlas Shrugged, we have been here before, probably will be again.  The strength of any idea is it’s ability to work effectively in the real world and the force with which recent social justice movements have operated to me demonstrates the weakness in their ideas.  Not that I am against social justice, science fiction has long explored social topics of all stripes but always with skill.  That has been sorely missing.

It’s not social justice but quality that is the downfall of current science fiction and fortunately, that’s a problem that can be fixed.

Okay, so that’s a clickbait title.  While it’s true, this is not a negative episode – I have spent much of the past 2-3 years trying to work out what is going awol with science fiction and what to do about it.  This episode doesn’t fully answer that question, but it breaks down what I think is the starting point.

At last we leave the Orbit of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and what can we say about this last instalment, the radio play based on the book “And Another Thing”?  It’s better than the book?

This is one for the completists and those that feel that a man who lays down in front of a bulldozer and somehow manages to create more chaos in the universe than a super massive black hole needs a good ending.

That is not me.  Personally, a story ends where it ends, that has nothing to do with good or bad.

Arthur has never been a heroic figure but here even more so than in Mostly Harmless he is relegated to sitting in the stands and watching events unfold around him.  Which makes you wonder what he does to earn a happy ending, other than cruising to the finish on reputation alone.

This book like so much media doesn’t really know how to do generational change, without either:

a) the older generation becoming chief cheerleader and nothing more

b) the older generation becoming the problem that needs to be solved

On a personal level, this is true, every child needs to transition into adulthood and throw off the chains of their upbringing.  In a healthy transition both move into their new lives as the younger party earns new respect from the elder by solving age old problems in new ways.

Earning respect is so ’80s now.  In these days and times, anything other than fawning respect makes you a hater.  The problem with this theory though is you end up with a person who is built on sand, no matter what age you are things that are earned are solid. They help to temper and focus your actions as you get older.

Or we can just go with outrage, that seems to work now.

There are some good moments in this version, but I am glad that hitchhikers has finished.

Captain Marvel is the latest Disney product to dip a toe into the Culture war and as Disneys biggest money maker it will be interesting to see what the fallout is like.  For the record I enjoyed this movie for what it was and I think that Brie Larson could be successful as the head of the Avengers.  That said, this movie presents some serious traps for Marvel of their own making.  As with Star Wars, if they don’t handle Carol well in End Game, they have put some big hurdles for the movies post end game and overcoming them might be so easy.

In a way Marvel has confirmed the proposition it made in Civil War – in the end the most dangerous enemy they face is themselves.

Atlas Shrugged is a controversial book – as Ayn Rand was a controversial person. In this episode I take a look at a number of key ideas in the novel and how they stand up – noting of course that this book has been the subject of intense debate for over 60 years. Does Rand have important things to say? Yes. Should we live our lives by her prescription? Good luck with that. I consider myself an acolyte of her works, I have used her works in getting my head around many important concepts in my world. I don’t however have Rose coloured glasses. Like most philosophers, the purity of her ideas subverted their implementation in the real world. That’s a shame because she was onto something.

So this is not actually a douglas project but…. we had to do it. And another thing is not awful, it’s just boring and unnecessary.

Anyway… Mostly Harmless is the end of the story, Douglas might have been thinking about pulling a George Lucas and revise – that doesn’t make it a good idea.

In this episode Stefan takes a look at the ways that science fiction is failing us – not in quality but in ideas. Taste is subjective and we don’t aim to pass judgement on the quality of the stories but the big three franchises – Doctor Who, Star Trek and Star Wars are short on big ideas. This is spilling over to books and TV where magic has more and more replaced science as the basis for science fiction.

Science Fiction has missed important moments to be exploring big changes happening in our world in preference to Identity politics. That is not to say that Identity politics isn’t important but there are such a huge range of forums in the real world addressing these issues, SF is not any real value beyond joining the crowd.

With so many changes coming up so fast, now is the time for SF to imagine what our world will be like, so that ordinary people can decide if that is the world they want.

The alternative is to just force that world upon people and well so far that hasn’t worked out really well.

Let’s face it the Hitchhikers movie has some issues – that said we loved it. The challenge with hitchhikers is it doesn’t fit into any kind of three act structure, it starts bounces around and ends. The characters haven’t really learned anything (well arthur has learned how hard it is to get tea in outer space) and there isn’t a clear resolution or something to achieve. The solution to the lack of a three act structure would be a) try and shoehorn in a story or b) go with the road movie theme and make the journey fun.

We ended up somewhere between a) and b) and this is where the movie falls down.

In the years since Mostly Harmless and Douglas’s death there hasn’t been a clear way to take Hitchhikers forward. That to me is in no small part due to the fact that it was a radio play without a plan. The idea took off but Douglas was never one to hold onto an idea for too long before some other idea overtook him.

I enjoyed the movie, but it’s time to put Hitchhikers to bed. That is not to say it should go away, but Douglas lived his life exploring the universe and right now, we are obsessed with closer to home. I think the works of Douglas would be better served treated like the works of HG Wells – they stand the test of time and serve to inspire new writers.

Am I alone in being over the Culture Wars?  In this next set of podcasts I want to move past the dumpster fire that is the culture war to focus on what I think is the most important product of Geek Culture for the past 30 years – the race to catch up with our imagination.   The real problems we have now are not tribal but transformational, we cannot move forward with the tools we used to get here.

In this episode I wrap up why the culture war is largely pointless and misses the point.  The fact that there are a lot of people who can tell you what they don’t like is just as meaningless.  Science fiction has always been about where we need to go, not about what is wrong about the here and now.  True, SF creatives have used the medium to explore political issues but the best did so with art, not with a hammer.

It comes as no shock to me that most creatives now have no idea where they are going.

We are at the dawn of a very magical time in history, I for one do not plan to miss it for the sake of revisiting tribal wars.

Gareth and Stefan continue their examination of the works of Douglas Adams with the Quintessinal phase, the last of the Douglas Adams sourced pieces of the Hitchhikers Guide.  There are two ways you can go with this piece – take the material as it is, or how a later regretful author might have imagined it.  This version travels the later road encountering the same revisionist problems that came with George Lucases star wars.

Like a bad night on the booze, there is no changing what happened – there is only the living with the consequences.  Go eat a greasy breakfast and make the best of it.

None the less beyond too much racing towards an ending that doesn’t warrant rushing towards this is a remarkably faithful rendition of the book.  Maybe it’s fitting that there really isn’t a definitive ending to the Hitchhikers Guide, knowing that somewhere out in the multiverse Arthur is still trying to find a decent cup of team.