Can Science Fiction Lead Us Away from Economic Collapse?

That's the question recently posed by the Guardian.

From the article...

If western capitalism is the victim in much of contemporary science fiction, then China is often the beneficiary. Maureen F McHugh's China Mountain Zhang is surely among the most prescient SF novels of the last century. In McHugh's future, China's command economy dominates the world, and the US has become a secondary power following the Cleansing Winds Campaign, a socialist revolution similar in nature to China's own cultural revolution. At a time when the Occupy movement has taken centre stage in the battle against unbridled capitalism, it's an all too credible scenario (but one McHugh paints in both bright colours and deep shadows; she shows how many of the freedoms and civil liberties now taken for granted in the west might easily be lost in a swing back toward state socialism).

Too often, science fiction views the future from the macro scale, from the standpoints of the movers and shakers shaping its invented worlds. Conversely, McHugh opens China Mountain Zhang with a quote from Albert Camus' The Plague: "A simple way to get to know a town is to see how the people work, how they love and how they die." The novel's protagonist Rafael Zhang faces the dual problems of a mixed-race heritage and being a homosexual in a world where the first defines him as a second-class citizen, and the second merits "re-education" or even execution.

Libya Welcomes Banned Books

The books Gadhafi once banned are banned no more.

From an article in the Toronto Star...

With a fanfare of Libyan bagpipers in full ceremonial flourish, the VIP crowd made its way to the top for of the palace, heaped with table upon table of books deemed unreadable during Moammar Gadhafi’s 42-year rule.

There, Arabic titles including The Secret Life of Saddam Hussein and The CIA Files of Arab Rulers sat alongside censored troves of Islamic literature, theology and philosophy. Books about Israel, Hezbollah, books by Salmon Rushdie. One slim volume was titled Sex In The Arab World.

The palace, converted to a library and museum during Gadhafi’s post-royalist rule, grew quiet as half dozen speakers took turns remembering the dead and wounded that sacrificed for this day.

“Here in this historic place, knowledge was banned. The previous regime called it a national library, but it was more like an indoctrination centre to control our thinking,” said Dr. Salah Abdallah Rajeb al-Aghab, a senior official with the Libyan government archeology section.

“This place was used to distort culture. It was used to terrorize. And so this is the proper place to say Libya now is ready to embrace knowledge and thought without limits.”

Romance Blooms at Occupy Wall Street

Poems about the romantic repercussoins of the demostrations were "found" this month in the Missed Connectoins section of Craig's List.

From a piece in the New York Times...

You are a Cop

I was only visiting the city

during the protest

was with my mom

in Time Square

we chatted about why

I was visiting

and where I was from.

I wanted to ask you

for your number

for a good last hoorah before I left...

but I chicken out.

Occupy Walll Street

They now have a library.

They now have a newspaper, too.

Captain Al Cohol

In 1973, the government of the Northwest Territories, Canada, commissioned a comic book to address alcoholism in the indigenous population. The result was a series featuring “Captain Al Cohol”, an alien who crashed onto Earth. The Captain has a drinking problem.

You can read the entire first issue, here.

Literature After the Revolt

In an interview with Spiegel Online, Moroccan-born author and poet Ben Taher Jelloun talks about the Arab Spring and the burgeoning creativity in post-dictatorship countries. He also describes the challenge of writing from the perspective of Libya's former leader Moammar Gadhafi.

From the piece...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How has the revolt reflected in the literary scene?

Jelloun: I think there will be a creative boom. The fact that people are finally free means that we are seeing a surge in creativity of all sorts.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What was the situation for writers during the dictatorships?

Jelloun: There was a lot of state censorship but there was also the powerful force of auto-censorship. Even those who lived in exile were very, very cautious. Exiled writers from Iraq and Syria, for example, could not talk or write freely out of fear for the safety of family members still in their home countries. For instance, Lebanese writers who criticized Syria and its role in Lebanon have received death threats. Samir Kassir, a Lebanese writer who published articles speaking out against the Syrian dictatorship, was assassinated in June 2005. It is widely thought that the Syrians killed him.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Will there now be a wave of writers in exile returning to their countries?

Jelloun: Yes, that is happening already, for example, in Egypt. This trend is not restricted to intellectuals. We are also seeing a wave of entrepreneurs and high-level businesspeople returning to their native countries because they see new opportunities there. There is reason to be hopeful, but our hopes may be disappointed in the long run.

The Green River Killer - The Graphic Novel?

Yes.

From a piece in the Los Angeles Times...

GB: It took you a while to finish this project and do so in this medium; like your father you were on its “trail” a long time. Talk a bit about the path — it started as a magazine article, correct?

JJ: I’m a journalist, so when I got the idea to tell my father’s story, I thought: magazine article. It was a story with timely, relevant themes that I thought a lot of people would find compelling — the lasting impact of catastrophe; a confrontation with evil — so I pitched it to GQ. In the winter of 2003-04, I interviewed my father, his colleagues, Ridgway’s lawyer, and even got some written answers to written questions from Ridgway himself. But the first draft of the article was a mess. It was too long and the tone was all wrong. I couldn’t figure out if I was writing true crime or memoir. It worked as neither, or as a mutant hybrid of both. By the time I figured out how to approach it, I had missed the window of opportunity, and GQ and I parted ways. That was some hard failure. I remained determined to tell my father’s story. There some powerful moments that I wanted to share with the world — moments I began seeing as comic book scenes. I had written comics in the past for DC and Marvel. And it was my father who introduced me to comics as a little kid. He used to read them to me when he got home from patrol. The more I thought about the more I fell in love with the idea of telling his story in dramatic form, with a graphic novel. It would be a personal, meaningful, creative way to tell the story. It took me a couple years to get around to pitching it to publishers. Just about the time I was ready to do so, I became waaayyy obsessed with “Lost,” and my wife was diagnosed with brain cancer. Strange, tough times. In 2008, I approached Dark Horse about the project — I wanted to work with a Pacific Northwest publisher — and began working on the book, with my father’s blessing.