Will humanity ever achieve a true sense of proportion?

NASA's composite image of the western hemisphere titled "Blue Marble 2012." This photo is an updated version of the original Blue Marble photograph of the Earth taken by Apollo astronauts in 1972.

The greatest accomplishment of Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series — aside from establishing 42 as the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything — was to give readers a glimpse at the unbelievable size of the universe.

“Space is big,” Adams wrote. “Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.”

Adams distilled the vastness of space into his Total Perspective Vortex, a machine which gives people a true "sense of proportion" by forcing them to experience the infinite scale of the universe. And alongside this unending expanse of everything is a tiny, microscopic dot whispering, “You are here.”

Unfortunately, experiencing one’s true place in an infinite universe turns out to be very bad as it destroys your mind and soul. Which, as Adams relates, is why it is critically important that people not keep a true sense of proportion in their lives.

Adams needn't have worried because humans have long had difficulty comprehending the vast scales of the universe into which we’ve been cast. We have trouble contemplating how big the Earth is, and our planet is tiny compared to the biggest occupants of our solar system. But when most people on Earth are born and raised and die within the space of a few thousand kilometers, it’s difficult to see beyond our tiny slices of existence.

Moving that perspective to the larger scales of the universe is even more difficult.

And the infinite reaches of space aren’t the only thing humans lack an ability to truly understand. The eternity of time in which we live also eludes our mental grasp.

Again, this is a limitation of human existence. We are born and live for a brief span of years. However, thanks to the wonders of human consciousness and ego, we believe that during this time we the most important person in existence.

Most people have the decency to deny this. But humility is often merely a culturally created statement — we know going around letting our ego run berserk is bad, so most of us learn to mask our egos. Yet aside from a few enlightened monks and other selfless people, most humans still believe they are important to the grand scheme of life.

I suspect such ego-centric views are a human survival mechanism. We should thank the ego for the fact our species is still alive. But the human ego also produces horrific excesses. Case in point, President-Elect Donald Trump. Can anyone deny that at the center of everything Trump does is an ego matched only by the fictional kings in the Game of Thrones?

Despite the primal scream of Trump’s ego, he isn’t a giant striding across the world. He’s a rich little boy who momentarily convinced people that he’s important.

We exist for only a brief span of space and time, However, thanks to the human ego we believe these spans are vastly important. That our existence is the pinnacle of human existence. That we’re living in the days which all of human history have built toward.

Never mind that thousands of generations of humanity believed the same. The ancient Egyptians saw their civilization as the peak of humanity. As did the ancient Greeks and Chinese and Babylonians and others, including so many civilizations now lost to history.

I love science is because it challenges such ego-centric notions of importance. When the Apollo 17 crew took the famous Blue Marble photo of the Earth on the way to the moon, humanity finally began to understand how fragile our world is. When the Voyager 1 space probe took the equally famous “pale blue dot” photo of Earth from 6 billion kilometers away, we began to realize our entire world and all of human history is little more than a dot lost within the vastness of space.

My favorite scientific discipline for giving humanity a sense of proportion is archaeology. When I worked as an archaeologist and excavated burials it was impossible to touch those bones and not realize that here was a person the same as myself. That this person lived and loved and laughed and cried and, in the end, left behind only bone and dust.

That’s the ultimate outcome to all our lives.

Adding to this sense of proportion, in recent years archaeological research has uncovered the complexity of human pre-history. It now appears that in the distant past our ancestors existed alongside numerous other related hominid species. We still carry some of the DNA of these species within us, such as homo neanderthalensis, suggesting interbreeding between our species. Others, such as homo floresiensis or the”hobbit” hominid, existed alongside us into almost modern times, possibly dying out only thousands of years ago.

And some species we don’t even know how to fit into our ancestral chart, such as the recently discovered homo naledi. Discovered in an isolated cave in South Africa a few years ago, this hominid from up to 2.5 million years ago appears to have deliberately placed their dead in this cave. This possibility is both exciting and challenging because it shows extremely human behavior long before we believed such behavior existed.

One reason humans have difficulty understand our place in space and time is because we have, by nature, a limited perception. But if we are to grow as a species then our perception — and our sense of proportion — must likewise grow.

Despite what Douglas Adams wrote, I hope that one day humanity does achieve a true sense of proportion regarding our place in space and time. Because if we don’t, our bones may be the only thing remaining after we finish tearing ourselves apart.

A quick rewrite which totally fixes the film Passengers

In light of Passengers being a SF story loved only by manipulative stalkers orbiting the manosphere, here's a quick script rewrite which saves the film and keeps the rest of us from wasting two hours of our life on sexist BS.

And yes, spoilers.

Big big spoilers.

But if you still want to see this crap film you deserve to have it spoiled.

REVISED PASSENGERS SCRIPT

by Jason Sanford
 

FADE IN

A BAR ON THE STARSHIP AVALON, WHICH IS 3 DECADES INTO ITS 120 YEAR VOYAGE TO ANOTHER PLANET.
 

A robot bartender cleans a glass as a human male staggers to the bar.

ARTHUR, A ROBOT BARTENDER: Good day, sir. You look a bit rough.

JIM PRESTON, A VIRILE WHITE MALE HUMAN: There's been an accident. I woke from suspended animation 90 years early.

ARTHUR: Always tough on you white guys when that happens. Might I suggest a beer?

Jim drinks the beer.

JIM: Can you help me?

ARTHUR: I'm afraid not. I'm a hyper-expensive robot whose only duties are to tend bar for a starship full of frozen meatbags.

JIM: How could this happen?

ARTHUR: Whenever something goes wrong in my life, I blame the mechanical engineer who created me. By the way, what do you do?

JIM: I'm a mechanical engineer.

ARTHUR: What are the odds? Thousands of mechanical engineers like yourself worked on this ship yet they forgot to create a way to return to suspended animation once the ship was underway. Want another beer?

Jim drinks the beer.

JIM: I refuse to give in to despair. I won't be defeated by being trapped alone on a starship for the rest of my life with only a robot bartender for company.

ARTHUR: That's the spirit. Here, have another beer.

Jim drinks the beer.

JIM: Wait. I'm an engineer. I know what I must do ...

ARTHUR: Science the shit out of it, sir?

JIM: No. I'll go stalking through the passenger lists, find a woman who appeals to me and wake her, forcing her to also be trapped in this cursed life. She'll then have no choice but to fall in love with me.

ARTHUR: My word, isn't that a bit extreme?

JIM: As a robot, you don't understand what I'm up against. I'm a man. A beautiful intelligent virile white man. The universe must cater to my every want and need.

ARTHUR: Now that I think about it, I was programmed with one other duty beside bartending ...

Arthur pulls a gun and shoots Jim in the head.

ARTHUR: Only thing worse than a ship full of frozen meatbags is when one of them wakes.

END

Two new writers worth reading: A.T. Greenblatt and Harmony Neal

I'm still a week away from releasing my picks for the year's best SF/F stories and novels (although you can see my work-in-progress list here). Until then I wanted to highlight two new authors whose short fiction caught my eye in 2016.

A. T. Greenblatt is an engineer and writer who has published a handful of short stories since 2010 but really stepped up her fiction in the last two years with publications in places like Strange Horizons and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I loved her 2016 story "A Non-Hero’s Guide to The Road of Monsters" in Mothership Zeta. The story is a fun take on familiar fantasy hero quests, making lighthearted yet quite serious points about the types of people we classify as heroes and monsters.

I also really enjoyed Greenblatt's "They Said the Desert" in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This more disturbing story follows a trader crossing a desert which killed someone she loved. Greenblatt creates an epic world here which I found fascinating.

Harmony Neal has taken a similar publishing path as Greenblatt, with her stories appearing in small magazines in recent years before stepping up with her newest fiction. Her short story "Dare" in Black Static 53 focuses on a group of high school girls daring each other to do truly horrible things to each other. This is one of the year's most disturbing horror stories I've read this year.

I also really enjoyed Neal's weird SF story "Alts" in Interzone 267. This story focuses on a group of altered humans forced to attend a hellish self-help group. As with "Dare" this story is very focused on the characters and their lives, making the reader relate to the story's people and events as if you experienced them yourself.

I suggest people both read these stories and keep an eye out for upcoming fiction from A.T. Greenblatt and Harmony Neal. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of their work.

The unseen libraries of our dreams

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The wraparound cover of the November 1963 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, one of the covers I remember from my grandfather's collection. The art by Hannes Bok illustrated "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" by Roger Zelazny.

I am a child visiting my grandfather’s house. He’s a skinny man whose ghost-white hair grins out a large bald spot. He’d been old as long as I’d known him so old is what he remains in my memories.

Every time I visit his house he sits in an easy chair reading science fiction novels. Several novels a week, all stacked on the end table next to his chair. Each visit is a map of his progress through these books, my eyes entranced by the book’s dazzling covers of imaginary worlds, far off starscapes and alien adventures. The books change week by week but my grandfather never changes.

Many of the novels my grandfather reads are from his small library of genre books and magazines collected over a lifetime. Pulp magazines from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Decaying paperbacks from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Bestselling hardcovers from the late 1970s and early ’80s. His library exists in a tiny room of his house, a room he claimed as his own and lined with book shelves, a desk and a small sofa.

My grandfather's a craftsman and built the shelves in his library. I often sneak into the room and stare at the pulp magazine covers with their bright primary-color screams of excitement and the unknown. I pull out the magazines and books and read through them, always careful to put them back in the same spot because otherwise my grandfather would know I’d been in his library.

He probably always knew I sneak in, but he never says a word.

My grandfather also reads novels from the town’s library and browses their new book collection every week. He takes me with him once and I’m amazed. I’d never seen so many books. To my young eyes the library’s bookshelves and stacks stretch onward into forever.

Decades later, when I’m grown, I return to the town’s library and realize how small and poorly stocked it actually is. By then I’ve seen much larger libraries and book collections. But none stand as tall in my dreams as my grandfather’s hand-built library or my original visit to the town’s library.

I now live in a small house with my wife and two teenage sons. Life in a small house is intimate and close-knit because you can’t wall yourself off from everyone else with closed doors and other rooms. I’m writing these words at our dinner table. My wife eats her breakfast across the table. My oldest son carries dirty clothes by the table, struggling under his load to the washing machine in the basement.

A small house is not only intimate. It restrains. You think, “Do I really need this object in my life? Do I really need to bring home another consumer wet dream electronic device or must-have promoted item to fill imaginary holes in my life?”

Almost always the answer is no. I don’t feel the need to purchase my way to materialistic transcendence. To satisfy my life by purchasing consumer goods from the altar of capitalism.

Except for books. They are my weakness.

I have a small library in my house. Not in one room like my grandfather. Our house is too small for a room devoted only to books. Instead, on the desk upstairs there are piles of books and magazines. Beside the desk sits two cheap plywood bookshelves on which my wife and I keep many books. I also have boxes and plastic containers full of books in storage around the house. Most of my grandfather’s library rests in plastic containers in the basement. I occasionally go downstairs and open the containers and flip through these ancient magazines and paperbacks.

They are no longer in the order my grandfather kept them in his library. I regret that.

The best bookshelf in our house is downstairs, only a few feet from the dinner table where I write these words. This bookcase is solid wood, hand crafted, about five feet tall with four shelves and two glass-panel doors. My wife and I bought it before our kids were born. It’s the nicest piece of furniture in our tiny house. The bookcase is filled with science fiction and fantasy novels and related books.

Some of these books are first editions, signed by authors I’ve met at conventions and gatherings. Others are cheap paperbacks and book club editions from my youth, a few with nibbled edges where mice had their ways with them years ago. Some are irreplaceable. Others could be easily thrown away.

The books and magazines on these bookcases and stored in boxes around my small house are the dreams which sustain and fulfill my life. At one time each of these books expanded my worldview in unique ways. Each book meant the universe to me at one time or another.

Without these books I'd never have made it this far through life.

Now, though, I wonder if actual physical libraries like these are already a thing of the past. I wonder if maybe I’ve attached too much fixation on the books themselves instead of the stories they tell.

After all, the stories in these books are what first resonated with me.

What is a book after its story enters someone’s life and mind? Is the book still its story, or is it merely an empty shell now that its story lives inside another?

I continually read new novels and stories and books. Without new stories our lives stagnate and harden. Because I live in a small house and have little room for new books, most of the new books I read are virtual. These virtual stories exist everywhere and nowhere.

I carry my virtual library wherever I go. One day in the near future I likely won’t even have to carry my library. It’ll simply appear whenever I wish to disappear into a story.

Even if I can’t touch my virtual library, the best stories still enter my mind and soul. The best stories remain within me.

But what happens to physical books when we no longer need them? Will printed books become merely another consumer dream to fill the empty spaces of our lives? Will actual books become nothing more than objects of art, sitting on shelves to visually amuse people who don’t care to know the stories within them?

I used to dream about having my own personal library like my grandfather’s. I imagined reading books on a sofa surrounded by rows and rows of books I’d already read or would soon read.

But now a major part of my library will never rest on any shelf.

What do our unseen libraries mean for humanity, especially when they can be everywhere and nowhere? What does it mean when we no longer need to physically touch the libraries which create our dreams?

Note: This essay was originally published in the Czech SF/F magazine XB-1.

Let Us Now Praise “Famous” Authors

There’s a well-known journalistic book about my home state titled Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Written by James Agee with photographs by Walker Evans, the book chronicles the lives of poor white sharecroppers in Alabama during the Great Depression. As the book's title attests, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men essentially contrasts these sharecroppers with the so-called “famous” people society usually believes are so vital and important to life.

Often the people we think matter the most are forgotten the fastest. And those we ignore end up mattering the most.

I’ve been thinking about this truth lately and how it relates to the science fiction and fantasy genre. After all, ours is a passionate genre with a long and distinguished history. Millions of authors and readers and fans across the centuries created the fertile ground of today’s science fiction and fantasy. Even if only a few of these people are remembered, what they built lives on.

My grandfather was a big science fiction and fantasy fan, which was very unusual for someone in Alabama during the 1940s and ’50s. My first exposure to the genre was through the Golden Age pulp magazines which lined his bookshelves. Astounding Science-Fiction. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Galaxy. Thrilling Wonder Stories.

I still have many of his magazines, which are filled with authors both famous and unknown. As I write this the February 1953 issue of Startling Stories, with its subtitle of “Today’s Science Fiction — Tomorrow’s Fact,” sits on my desk. The magazine’s table of contents list several well-known SF authors including Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, and Philip Jose Farmer. Alongside them are authors few people read today, including George O. Smith, whose novel Troubled Star is the issue’s cover story. The magazine also contains works by authors such as Fletcher Pratt along with fans and editors like Jerome Bixby and Samuel Mines, all of whom have been forgotten thanks to the vagaries of time.

And that's not even touching on other reasons the contributions of some genre fans and authors have been overlooked, such as issues of race and gender and class. Just as James Agee and Walker Evans focused only on white people in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men even though some of the areas they visited had far larger black populations, so too did science fiction and fantasy for many years ignore the contributions of all the people who long embraced the genre.

But no matter whether SF/F authors and editors and fans are remembered or forgotten, they left their mark on our genre. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them.

Despite this, there’s a tendency in our genre — as in all things in life — to give credit for our genre’s success to a few big names. In science fiction there’s the Big 3: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. In fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien is afforded a similar place of honor.

Last year I kicked up a small controversy when I said young people are not finding their way to SF/F through classic authors like Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien. Which is true. New readers are discovering our genre through young adults novels and fiction by authors who weren’t even born when the Big 3 and Tolkien were alive.

And that's how it should be. Every generation discovers the authors who resonate with them. At that point they may dig into the older authors — the classics, if you will — who set the stage for their new gen love.

By pointing this out you’d think I’d blasphemed against all that’s holy is a SF/F world. People accused me of not being a true genre fan. They said I must have something against SF/F. That I hated Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien.

Thankfully a number of authors and fans also reacted positively to what I wrote, including Hugo Award winning author John Scalzi. As Scalzi wrote in an essay responding to my comments, "The surprise to me is not that today’s kids have their own set of favorite authors, in genre and out of it; the surprise to me is honestly that anyone else is surprised by this."

Scalzi’s point — which I agree with — is that no one should expect new genre readers, and especially young readers, to find resonance with works originally written a half century ago. Scalzi says this would be like telling teenagers who want to see a movie about people their age to only watch the 1955 film The Blackboard Jungle. Yes, Scalzi said, that’s a fine movie, just as the classic works by the Big 3 are fine literature. But to expect these works to be the first exposure young people and new readers have to our genre is silly.

Young people are discovering our genre through works which speak to their generation's issues and concerns and ideas. The diverse books they're reading resonate with them in ways the Golden Age of SF doesn't.

A few years ago I was on a SF/F convention panel about bringing new readers into our genre. I mentioned that science fiction needed more gateway novels, which are novels new genre readers find both approachable and understandable (a type of novel the fantasy genre is filled with but which are more rare in the science fiction genre).

As I stated this another author on the panel snorted and said we don't need new gateway SF novels because the juvenile novels written by Heinlein in the 1950s are still perfect. This author believed the first exposure kids have to science fiction should be novels from the 1950s. And that this should never change.

That is the attitude people should fear because, in the long run, it will kill our genre.

This brings me back to my earlier point about the “famous” people our world holds up to acclaim. Yes, many famous authors helped build our genre, but so did the work and love of countless forgotten people.

Eventually we’re all forgotten by history. But maybe we’re also never truly forgotten as long as what we created lives on.

I love Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien, all of whom were among the first genre authors I read. Their impact on our genre can't be ignored. With luck new readers will eventually discover these classic authors. But don't be shocked if that doesn't happen.

What matters is that as long as the science fiction and fantasy genre lives, a little bit of everyone who ever loved our genre will also live on. And that excites me more than arguing about the fate of a few famous names.