Science Fiction

Planets

I'm reading about the brouhaha over the Hugo awards this year, and I came across this in a story on The Atlantic by Kameron Hurley. 

The author Ursula K. Le Guin said it best in her National Book Award acceptance speech:

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.

The 'divine right of kings'. Huh, haven't heard that phrase in a long time, and certainly not in reference to the present. People have been trying to come up with an alternative to capitalism for a long time. Communism is the only idea that has gotten any traction, and the implosion of the Soviet Union gave it a big black mark. Red China is still going strong, though all progress seems to be because of liberal capitalist modifications to their system.

From the other side of the aisle we have this on WND by Vox Day (aka Theodore Beale):

Consider the two great laments of the modern American woman. For the unmarried woman, it is the reality that she must marry later in life than ever before, if she is able to marry at all. For the married woman, it is that unlike generations of women before her, she cannot afford to stay home with her children unless she is fortunate enough to have married to a man of the financial elite.

Ok, not all women want to get married, have children, and stay home and raise them, but I believe that is the desire of a large majority. Vox blames this on the women's rights movement, but I'm not sure that's the case. I'm more inclined to blame it on unbridled capitalism and war mongering. But I could be wrong. It might just be that we've plundered all the easily obtained resources, we've been fruitful and multiplied, and now everything is tougher for most everyone. There is yet another way to look at it and that is we have seen how fancy the future could be and we all want part of it, we are no longer satisfied with 40 acres and a cow.

Lastly, Brad Torgersen mentions Judy-Lynn Del Rey. Would that be any relation to Lester? Why yes, it would. She was his wife:

Judy Lynn and Lester Del Rey at Minicon 8 in 1974.

I read some of Lester's books a long time ago and he must have made an impression on me because his name sure stuck. Or maybe it was just his name: Rey, like in Ray Gun. Whatever. I had heard of him, but I had not heard of Judy. Judy may have been more important because she worked as a Science Fiction editor for many years. If she looks a little odd, it might be because she is a dwarf. Which reminds me of my favorite character on Game of Thrones.