Thursday, May 15, 2014

Science Fiction and the Thought Police

From the Intercollegiate Review:
Science fiction is under the control of the thought police. The chains are invisible, but real. For a genre that glories in counting George Orwell as one of its own, this is ironic, to say the least....

Few of these purge victims are conservative. The leftists are turning on their own. Ideological loyalty is no defense.

The disproportion of the punishment is to deter defiance. If the punishments were predictable, a sheep could make a calculation of whether the suffering was worth the freedom to speak one’s mind. But the punishments are irrational, so the price is unknown.

And making utterly lunatic accusations is done to humiliate not the accused but the accusers. Each sheep is forced to parrot nonsense lest he be scapegoated next. This drives home how powerless he is. He no longer owns his own mouth, nor keep his tongue free from nonsense and blither. This breaks his spirit.

The purpose of all this hogwash is not to aid the plight of minorities. The purpose is power. The purpose is terror.

One need not ignite a suicide-bomb to enact a reign of terror. One need only have the power to hurt a man’s reputation or income, and be willing to use the power in an arbitrary, treacherous, lunatic, and cruel fashion. For this, the poisonous tongue suffices.
At one time, science fiction was an oasis of intellectual liberty, a place where no idea was sacrosanct and no idea was unwelcome. Now speculative fiction makes speculative thinkers so unwelcome that, after a decade of support, I resigned my membership in SFWA in disgust. SFWA bears no blame for all these witch-hunts, or even most; but SFWA spreads the moral atmosphere congenial to the witch-hunters, hence not congenial to my dues money. (Read more.)
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