Letters to the Editor
Rocky57
Published Letters: 151 Editor's Choice: 4
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Matters of Authenticity?
[Read the article: Condi Rice never looks back]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry, sugarman but the "bedstuy, do or die" quote is legit and has been around since the late seventies, early eighties, or around the time I came to New York, went to law school and took a job in the Brooklyn DA's office.
I lived with my great aunt, a long time resident on Buffalo Avenue off of Eastern Parkway in the Lincoln Terrace Park area of the borough, while attending school. The slogan was and is commonly used. Again, the poster sounds legit, to me.
As for Rice, she's a fascinating-if perverse-sign of progress, racially; an assessment that isn't vitiated by her undeniable disservice to the welfare of the country. I mean, let's face it, an african-american every bit as adept, not to mention ruthless, at climbing the career ladder as many european-americans have long done would have been an rara-avis, and exceedingly so, thirty five to forty years ago.
Upshot? Perhaps blacks, like their european-american counterparts, are well on their way to navigating what was, initially, an alien cultural landscape in order to attain their share of wealth and power.
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Whooa Boy
[Read the article: Back to the future]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Where do I start with this article? First, Pohl and Kornbluth were part of the merry coterie of dystopians surrounding the great Horace Gold, along with Bob Sheckley, Bill Tenn and, of course, Philip K. Dick, under the Galaxy magazine masthead (where the first novel of theirs cited in your article was serialised under the title "Gravy Planet"). THEY certainly didn't see the future as Disney world. The author cites "the Space Merchants (which, by the way, is set a few hundred years from the 21st century. A fact which sort of renders the reference irrevelant for the author's point and chronological focus)" which envisions a pretty miserable place for the masses (water rationing to the point where, even if you're an Ace-Copysmith Starclass--one of the uppermost of the hoi polloi--you experience the "pleasures" of a sonic shower instead of one with water and pedi-cabs in congested NYC streets) Ditto, "Gladiator at Law," the later novel of SF's greatest double by-line, which is memorable for the images painted by the authors and the interior illustrations of Ed Emshwiller of a world ruled, politically, socially and culturally by corporate boards and inhabited, in part, by feral kids scampering amidst the slums of suburbia (this last imagined just a scant 8 years after the first levittown went up).
Most of the adult SF authors I-as an eight year old kid in early sixties upstate New York-grew up reading were smart enough to know that the human animal was just screwed up enough to meander from the straight line of progress an idealist or a Disneyland World of Tomorrow scrivener envisioned for us. An attitude of healthy cynicism, I'm happy to see, carried forward by the Gibsons, Ruckers and Stephenson's of the present day incarnation of what most of us, here, I'm sure, feel is the most interesting genre in literature
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I Hearya
[Read the article: Back to the future]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I feel the same way, base: I marvel at how archaic the late fifties and early sixties seem, in retrospect, when, at the time, and in juxtaposition to what would be a then young adult's recollection of the thirties and forties, the latter period seemed like TomorrowLand.
To be fair, I think this grousing--which periodically rears its head--is over the absence of dramatic change like the advent of aircars, towering cityscapes with ribbons of soaring highways between the spires and jetpacks. In truth, the best authors--and the best illustrators [see Gil Kane of D.C. comics and the more gritty artists of Marvel's pre-cursor] saw what is, in fact, the more realistic vision: the new amongst the old and gradually subtle but significant advances leading to a tipping point where everything changes. Dick was the only "authentic" SF author who, in my mind, could get away with chronological anomalies like aircars in the latter part of the 20th century and early 21st century soaring cityscapes like the one envisioned above--and even he has, possibly, the escape hatch of alternate realities to explain those apparent gaffes.
I'm afraid most of the complainers aren't true aficionados from the so-called "Golden Age" of adult SF; more likely, they were avid readers of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.
ps: to the commenter gazing on a planet of "incarceration" allegedly missed by SF authors: starting with the late sixties onward and the Ellisons, Spinrads [who has his own "aircar miscalculation" in "Bug Jack Barron"], Dischs and the British "New Wavers," with or without a cue from Orwell, SF authors saw this coming down the pike. I often think of Disch's "Room 323 [or 223, I can't remember the numerical part of the title] when I read of the latest news from Iraq or, when I'm particularly dispairing, the latter's "Camp Concentration" and/or John Brunner's Dos Passosian future trilogy.
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Ditto
[Read the article: Back to the future]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]HH writes:"...Big money means big, slow organizations. It also means big corruption by small-minded self-serving hucksters that worm their way to the top using lies and intimidation. Sorry to say, it’s just the way the world works. It’s a law of physics: the scum rises to the top. Unfortunately, or perhaps from another point of view fortunately, big technological leaps today have the natural governor of the corruption and the inefficiency of the big organizations that create them.
The good news is progress will only be slowed; it won’t be stopped. The first home computers were created by a few guys in a computer club and one of them turned it into a major corporation. This is the exception to my rule, but only because the dream was pure. We need more people like Steve Jobs. And then one day you’ll have your flying cars and rocket belts."
Great piece, HH....I'll bet even money, from the tone of your commentary, your SF patron saint was also that of the futuristic small business entrepreneur. Of course, I'm talking about Bob Heinlein.