I’ve been filling my head with short stories, trying to piece together a larger understanding of where the science fiction world is and is heading. I’m trying to figure out my place in all of it–reading and listening instead of creating my own slices of magic. It has been this way for a while now. I read far more than I write, but I am reading a better quality of stuff I think. Garbage in = Garbage out. So, the more and better I consume, the better the quality of the fiction that rises from the bones of what I’ve read.
The downside to all of it is that I’ve noticed a lot of trends–especially in the gamer genre stuff. There is a great deal more of the ‘we are living in a simulation’ stuff that was heavily commercialized by the matrix (though born from french philosophy) as well as the game within a game philosophy that posits that within any game there can be layers of games going deeper and deeper. None of it is new thinking or suggestive of any great push forward towards the, ahem, future of science fiction. It feels more like a genre treading water and waiting for a lifeboat to lead them to a new shore.
I’m not the lifeboat. I don’t have any great sci fi or fantasy piece lurking in my psyche. I’m a sociologist and what I write is largely reflective of the society I live in and the science I see projected towards a possible future use or misuse. I like to think I get by with solid descriptions and good character development. I am not breaking new ground.
So, I’m left with this search to find those who are breaking new ground and try to get a sense of what that looks like, either to model work in that vein, try something derivative, or see that new as the direction not to go and through that find the only path left leading into darkness. In the dark is where you find the new and mysterious. I just don’t know that I belong there.