(Roughly) Daily

Traditional “good vs. evil” stories follow a certain pattern: the world starts out as a good place, evil intrudes, good defeats evil, and the world goes back to being a good place. These stories are all about restoring the status quo, so they are implicitly conservative. Real science fiction stories follow a different pattern: the world starts out as a familiar place, a new discovery or invention disrupts everything, and the world is forever changed. These stories show the status quo being overturned, so they are implicitly progressive. (This observation is not original to me; it’s something that scholars of science fiction have long noted.) This was in the context of a discussion about the role of dystopias in science fiction. I said that while some dystopian stories suggest that doom is unavoidable, other ones are intended as cautionary tales, which implies we can do something to avoid the undesirable outcome…

A lot of dystopian stories posit variations on a Mad Max world where marauders roam the wasteland. That’s a kind of change no one wants to see. I think those qualify as doom. What I mean by disruption is not the end of civilization, but the end of a particular way of life. Aristocrats might have thought the world was ending when feudalism was abolished during the French Revolution, but the world didn’t end; the world changed. (The critic John Clute has said that the French Revolution was one of the things that gave rise to science fiction.)…

The familiar is always comfortable, but we need to make a distinction between what is actually desirable and what is simply what we’re accustomed to; sometimes those are the same, and sometimes they are not. The people who are the happiest with the status quo are the ones who benefit most from it, which is why the wealthy are usually conservative; the existing order works to their advantage. For example, right now there’s a discussion taking place about canceling student debt, and a related discussion about why there is such a difference in the type of financial relief available to individuals as opposed to giant corporations. The people who will be happiest to return to our existing system of debt are the ones who benefit from it, and making them uncomfortable might be a good idea…

How we may never go “back to normal”—and why that might be a good thing– Halimah Marcus‘ (@HalimahMarcus) interviews the estimable Ted Chiang.  Read it in full: “Ted Chiang Explains the Disaster Novel We All Suddenly Live In.”

* Albert Camus

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As we put it all into perspective, we might recall that it was on this date in 1977 that Star Wars was released.  An epic space opera directed and co-written by George Lucas, it was both a box-office and critical success.  The highest-grossing film ever at the time (until the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982), it is, when adjusted for inflation, the second-highest-grossing film in North America (behind Gone With The Wind).

The film won 6 Oscars for a variety of technical achievements.  As film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his book The Great Movies, “Like The Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane, Star Wars was a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after.”  It began a new generation of special effects and high-energy motion pictures.  The film was one of the first films to link genres together to invent a new, high-concept genre for filmmakers to build upon.  And, with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, it shifted the film industry’s focus away from the personal filmmaking of the 1970s and toward fast-paced, big-budget blockbusters for younger audiences.

The film has been reissued many times and launched an industry of tie-in products, including novels, comics, video games, amusement park attractions, and merchandise including toys, games, and clothing. The film’s success led to two critically and commercially successful sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and later to a prequel trilogy, a sequel trilogy, two anthology films and various spin-off TV series.

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