Comrades, pass me the champagne.

The Socialist Workers Party makes me laugh. It's made up almost entirely of students and graduates, and it's run by university lecturers and academics. A worker's party with no workers in it?

It's a Walther Mitty organisation really.

Socialism is just a bourgeois hobby horse these days.

Science Fiction's attitude problem

I'm not dead yet.

Every few years someone in the literary industry asks the question - Is science fiction dying? And in the fanzines and the forums the issue is discussed and agonised over, only to always reach the same conclusion - No it's not.

One would have thought that the constant reappearance of the question itself is a sign that something is not right with the genre, regardless of the constant reassurances from fans and writers. And for those who blame its niche status on its seeming inability to break out into wider acceptance or mass market territory, the solution seems to always be that the readers out there need to recognise just how great science fiction is. This of course is a fan view, and the solution involves marketing, often with the view that publishers are simply not pushing science fiction enough or spending enough money on it.

And then of course there's the view that it's the fault of the masses, who are all dumb Dan Brown readers, and that science fiction is overlooked because it's actually a superior genre. The expectation then is that either the masses convert, or that the Booker Prize Literary establishment desist from their snobbish refusal to open the golden gates to their coveted green pastures and recognise science fiction to be their equal. And the irony of accusing one group of snobbery while looking down on others as inferior goes unnoticed in a genre that adopts an identity of such desperate seriousness that it often resembles caricature.

And yet no one has ever worried about the longevity of science fiction in the movie or game world, where it provides healthy returns year on year. For some reason the angst remains confined to the literary world of science fiction.

The rearguard actions fought within literary science fiction to shore up the walls that, apparently, are not coming down, border on the comical. First there was the desire to show off science fiction's uniqueness. Then there was the desire to widen its definition, calling itself Speculative Fiction, presumably to fend off the accusation of being narrow and irrelevant. From there it was a short step to attempt to drag in every other genre within its lofty confines, with a grab bag of great novels past and present being called speculative, and therefore SF. Suddenly science fiction speculative fiction was the grand godfather of all great literature, and shame on you if you didn't know it. George Orwell was an SF author it seems. As was Robert Harris and Tom Clancy. Apparently.

Also dragged into the SF umbrella is the sister genre of Fantasy, in spite of science fiction advocates in the past vociferously denying any connection between the two, though publishers and book sellers begged to differ. The latter won out and we now have the acronym SF & F in marketing. Fantasy of course massively outsells science fiction on all levels, and always has, so if the two are going to be lumped together under one roof, surely SF should become known as Fantasy, rather than Fantasy being known as SF. Because outside the walls of the fan fortress, the average reader sees all science fiction as pure fantasy. And no attempt to macho up SF with the addition of the term Hard Science Fiction appears to be altering that fact.

We are different.

Literary SF has always seen itself as exceptional, with advocates claiming that it is important because it explores the future. Concepts are seen as more important than plot. Fans have written that they want to see 'new ideas', or often just new gadgets. Wafer thin characterisation and dull plots aren't seen as much of a problem by 'proper' SF fans therefore.
Movie and game versions of science fiction however (and their book spin-offs) tend more towards the pure entertainment side of the spectrum. They embrace the simple desires of the masses, who want fun and thrills.

Literary SF's sense of exceptionalism lends itself to elitism. Elites often see themselves as leading the way and setting the trends. There is undeniably an intelligence involved in elitism, but co-existing with that is snobbery and a disconnect from the masses. This disconnect often leaves elites slow or unable to adapt to change, for elites believe that they create their own reality and thus ignore or fail to see larger or deeper trends that can leave them stranded, or simply extinct.
The movie and game versions of science fiction, in embracing the desires of the masses, tend to be more democratic as a result and, rather ironically, tend to birth the trends that literary SF then needs to adapt to. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep did not really change much in the genre, in spite of being much lauded. The movie version Bladerunner on the other hand, with its more traditional, character based plotting, did, and was thus a massive influence on science fiction.

In the ghetto.

The hardcore of science fiction, whilst bemoaning its siege status, has often looked upon its fortress walls with pride. Outsiders to the SF bunker are known as mundanes. Or simply derided as idiots. Science fiction novels that simply want to be entertaining are dismissed as mere tricked out fantasy. Movie and game science fiction is belittled as mere 'sci-fi', with the label being seen as a term of dumbed down ignorance. Authors from outside who dare to write a science fiction novel are criticised for not being well versed enough in the SF canon of venerated tropes. Insiders meanwhile claim that a lifetime's reading of SF gives them a superior perspective that allows them to assess events in the real world with greater percipience.

Hardcore advocates see themselves as enlightened, either defending themselves from the unenlightened or feeling honour bound to preach to them. The echo of their own voices from the fortress walls becomes a form of adulation that confirms their convictions.

And meanwhile science fiction sales fall and science fiction publishing opportunities dwindle.

So what?

Being niche isn't a problem if there are enough fans within it to create demand for what's already being written. Science fiction is just one genre among many and there's no suggestion that there isn't room for them all.

It only becomes a problem if one desires science fiction to grace the fiction best selling lists with the same frequency as the other genres, something that is more of a problem in the UK than in the US, where the market appears to be a little more diverse.

A sense of entitlement will get science fiction nowhere, because nobody is listening. Readers are not stupid. They know what they want. Give a few of them what they want and you have a small clique. Give many of them what they want and you have a mass market. It really is as simple as that. Wanting a prize for being different however is just illogical, especially if the prize givers are those whom you loudly proclaim to be morons.

Literary genres such as Westerns or Second World War adventures have disappeared. No genre is so precious that it can be considered immortal. Science fiction may never again be as great as it was during its golden years. But if it wants to survive at all, the first step should be for it to remember one important and frequently overlooked point: that, for all its pretensions and prognostications, it is just fiction.

And there's nothing wrong with being just fiction.

But if that isn't self-important enough, the earnest types should perhaps consider religion or politics.

The gap between the rich and the poor.

The gap between the rich and the poor is supposed to be getting bigger. Guardian and BBC types frequently point to the sky high earnings of city fat cats compared to the scrapings of the underclass.
There will be trouble and social schism they say, often aligning themselves on the side of the poor against the rich, sometimes even imagining themselves to be part of the masses. Social commentators in the Guardian still cheer or quietly support the agitations of the downtrodden. Some see themselves as 'the workers' on the simplistic basis that 'anyone who works is a worker'. Some look forward to a day of reckoning for the rich.
They ought to be careful what they wish for.

The rich are a tiny minority in this country. To most people they are fairly invisible. How many people have seen a millionaire in their average week? The majority of people around the country are unlikely to come across one in their entire lives. Except on the TV.
The underclass, though much talked about, is also fairly invisible. Very few people are aware of conditions in some estates, or see what police and social workers see everyday. The underclass are fragmented and tend to live in small ghettos. Society is able to ignore their problems, or ignore them as a problem, or romanticise them and their problems, because they remain confined to specific areas, from which they rarely venture far from. And as a percentage of the country's population, they are a tiny proportion of the whole.

There is another category of 'rich' person however who is very visible in everyday life. They live in fairly nice houses. They drive fairly nice cars. They wear fairly nice clothes and have fairly nice gadgets. They go on fairly nice holidays. They are the upper middle class - the occupiers of the overlapping circles of the Guardian and the BBC, as well as Channel 4, the Telegraph and the Times. People who don't actually think of themselves as rich and who are mostly unaware that they are on the other side of a line that divides them from another, poorer group - the lower middle class.

The story of who the middle class is these days in Britain is the story of how the working class fractured and apparently disappeared. It was the decline of manufacturing and the start of the credit boom in the eighties that destroyed the working class. Those who couldn't adapt fell down to become the underclass. Those who could grabbed the credit and stepped up to become the lower middle class - skilled tradesmen who suddenly got to live in semis, drive more than one car that wasn't knackered and go on holiday abroad far more frequently than their parents ever managed.
Those who used to be called the middle class were nudged upwards to become the upper middle class.
This is why New Labour moved to the middle. There was nowhere else to go.

Modeling themselves on the US, the majority of people began to identify themselves as middle class. The 'new' middle class became the majority, taking over from the working class. Middle class sensibilities became the norm, no longer challenged by cruder and less politically correct working class ones. The upper middle class, whether they recognised it or not, were the elite - evangelists for the moral narrative of the country: a distinct brand of soft left liberalism. Which is why the Conservatives increasingly embraced a softer, more liberal conservatism. They had no choice.

And the dividing line between the upper and lower middle classes? A university education. The same line that divided the old working classes from the middle classes. A degree remains the gateway to the higher paying careers. The jobs below that line are nowhere near the same level. And surprisingly, given the meritocratic rise of the past forty years, that line is hardening. A teaching assistant earns a lot less than a teacher. Without a degree, it will soon be impossible for a vocationally qualified teaching assistant to become a teacher. And that's just one example. Throughout the spectrum the lower middle classes will find that the upper middle classes have pulled the ladder up.

Lower middle class lifestyles have only been sustained by credit. There has been no massive revolution in manufacturing innovation or a sustained growth in GDP to fuel the affluence of the masses. Massive inflows of investment cash from a surging East Asia since the eighties has allowed more money to slosh about the investment system. Banks felt able to dish it out even to high risk categories. Credit cards used to be jealously hoarded by banks. By the nineties they were simply giving them away. It was the inflow of money and our enjoyment of it that caused the credit bubble. Its burst was inevitable.

Credit is now being squeezed and this means big problems for the lower middle class. It's their debts that are now a burden. It's their lifestyle that is suffering as they fail to afford the things that they'd only just started to take for granted. The credit boom may not come back and they will discover that their new found wealth was not built on solid ground. They will slide.

The growing gap between the rich and the poor is actually between the upper middle class and the lower middle class.

And if the lower middle class fall out of their middle class lifestyles, will they become the working class again? No, because the industry that gave the working class their identity is gone. In the 'information age', in a service economy, the working class has become the servant class, feeding burgers to, tending the material possessions of and minding the children of the better off. They won't see the upper middle classes as 'one of them'. And they will come to resent them, their culture and their attitude. And their liberal moral stance.

Upper middle class types who have preached egalitarianism have recently stoked up the flames of class war in their desire to 'bash the bankers'. They should be very careful about how they fan those flames. They might find that they are standing on petrol-soaked firewood.

The politics of Accretion

Accretion is the process by which the planets in our solar system formed. When the sun was born, all the left over bits were left spinning around it. Gradually these bits started to clump together. As the formed bodies got bigger, their gravitational mass increased, drawing in more bits and making the mass bigger still until, eventually, a planet was formed that had hoovered up most of the fragments in its orbital path around the sun.

This is why every planet has it's own orbital path.

The Asteroid Belt is an example of what all the planet forming bits look like - the process of accretion was prevented from taking its course here by the disruptive influence of Jupiter's gravity.

The theory of Accretion also works well in the description of the business world. Out of a starting mass of tiny companies, bigger companies start to form, sucking in and taking over smaller failing companies until they grow to the size of corporations. The market is then dominated by a few corporations rather than a gigantic mass of small independent companies all with equal clout.

We've seen this in western business culture that began in the 17th and 18th centuries. And we've seen it recently with the Internet boom.

The Internet was supposed to democratize everything. Ordinary people would have the ability to start up their own venture on the net. Mass ingenuity would outmanoeuvre the less nimble big corporations. The dot.com boom was the result. Yet in just one decade (rather than the centuries needed in older business) most of the startups went to the wall or were bought out, and we now have the giant Googles, Amazons, etc. We start out with a clean slate, and the process of accretion happens regardless.

Capitalism starts out with lots of lizards and ends up with a few dinosaurs taking over.

Socialism simply dispenses with the lizards and replaces them with just one dinosaur.

The process of accretion has also occurred in the history of societies.

Humanity began as hunter-gatherer Bands. Lots of them. And they travelled, and frequently fought (be under no illusion about this last point, the evidence is very clear). Tribes then formed, which were simply groups of bands uniting under one chieftain. There was nothing voluntary about this 'uniting' however. The chieftain was part of an aristocratic elite and the bands were subdued.

Tribes, often united by an elite, a language and sometimes a religion, grew bigger. Failing tribes were conquered or broken up, their fragments sucked in by the larger tribes. The remaining tribes fought amongst each other until one emerged victorious, subduing the others and becoming the ruling elite of a much larger entity that we now call Nations.

Accretion is not the result of 'Will', or the desire to co-operate. It occurs by gravitational force. Or simply force.

One day the world may be run as one complete, indivisible entity, with one world government. But it won't be because all the nation states chose to co-operate and voluntarily subordinate themselves. It will be because one state militarily, economically or culturally - or all three - conquered all the others and made them agree to become vassals.

Are we near that condition now?

No. The UN is, like the EU, mostly voluntary, and therefore doomed to disappear under its own flabby irrelevance. The US, while more powerful than any state in history, shows us that it will take a lot more to subdue the entire world. The process of accretion continues.

Unlike in space however, accretion in business and in governments is accompanied by the constant re-breaking up and re-moulding of entities at periodic intervals.

Whether it was Persia, Rome, Ottoman or Spain, the old dinosaurs were broken back into lizards, only to reconstitute bigger dinosaurs elsewhere.

Looking at history and at all of contemporary world politics, there is absolutely no evidence - not one crumb - to suggest that this will not continue.

Nearly reasonable

"The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite."

G.K. Chesterton. 1908.

Reason redux

In the US, the American Atheists organisation is busy promoting its beliefs in an attempt to fight off the perceived influence of the religious Right. Various atheist and humanist groups will stage a 'Reason Rally' in Washington DC on March 24th.

Instead of worshiping God, they prefer to worship Reason.

This idea that Reason should be venerated as the path to truth is becoming something of a parody. Sherlock Holmes embodies this parody perfectly, with his demonstration that deductive thinking (the hallmark of Reason) would solve any mystery. It was a compelling vision, and a great story, but too many people seem to forget that Holmes was a fantasy figure. Ask any detective.

In Star Trek Spock became the post-war embodiment of Reason in action, with his inelegant and decidedly wooden invocation of deductive thinking. Fans seem blissfully unaware that Spock was a clumsy parody of a parody.

The idea that one can reach a solution entirely in one's head promotes the idea of magical thinking - that simply by a process of deduction and will, and a po-faced manner, one can cut through the chaos and confusion and create order and understanding and, ultimately, harmony.

The post-modern embodiment of this idea currently is Yoda. The journey from Sherlock Holmes to Yoda indicates the slippery slope that a worship of Reason entails.

Reason is just thought. To say that an idea is reasonable is to say that it sounds great, but it remains untested.

It is the testing that uncovers the truth, not the idea. Humanists today risk turning Reason into a superstition.