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Fiction less scary than truth

April 20, 2017   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

We science fiction writers necessarily write about an imagined future, often about life here on earth in that future. Some years ago, I wrote a story about many years after the great holocaust, the final war on earth that decimated nearly everything.

In my little tale, The Star of the East, people no longer cohabit but live in individual accommodations which are run by computers supplying them with all their needs. Work is provided online as is communication with other people.

Actual meetings are rare. To satisfy the need for some sort of contact, all accommodations come equipped with a holodeck that provides “imaginary” characters with whom one can safely interact.

The story is about Hypernia,  who is an exception to the rule and the journey she takes as a result.

In this world, where now only women rule, there are no government places for men on the planet. They do have other roles but they no longer rule anything.

Peace, carefully guarded, is planet-wide, the lessons of conflict, even in intimate circumstances, having been thoroughly understood.

In an interview on the CBC Radio 1 program As It Happens, Bill Richardson, formerly a  negotiator with North Korea for previous American presidents, warned that it was time to “cool down the rhetoric” between the States and North Korea rather than allowing matters to escalate further, to the possible annihilation of the planet, resulting from nuclear fall-out, with most of its inhabitants, as often described in futuristic fiction.

The burning question here is: where is everybody else????

Why are world leaders (like ours) not all sounding the alarms about this incredibly dangerous growing hostility between two powerful governments, seemingly with no interest in diplomacy?

Sometimes, I worry that Justin Trudeau was in over his head when he commented positively about the missiles Trump sent into Syria after the alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government,  which was far from proven – and we all now how quickly an American administration  will respond to a set-up of any kind (remember those weapons of massed destruction which simply did not exist in Iraq?). Mr. Trudeau would have been better saying less and learning more. Did he remark on how ill-advised dropping the “mother bomb” was? Is he now in touch, on any level, with the Trump administration about this reckless attempt to bully someone like Kim Jong-un, given his mental state and his potential for disaster?

We know Trump has children – they’re helping him run the country. He claimed to send those missiles as retribution for the dead children in the chemical attack in Syria and now seems prepared to make life really tough for most of the children in the world.

As for Kim Jong -un, that young, young man with unbelievable power at his absolute beck and call – he may have no children but he is young and may want a longer life than next Tuesday. Are his aides not speaking to him in the most unctuous way, cooing and soothing him back into something like sanity for the sake of his dear people and the children everywhere?

In the days of the Bay of Pigs crisis between Russia and the USA, both the leaders proved themselves, at the very last minute, to be grown-ups, who did have children they cared about and did understand the unimaginable reality of the consequences of those bombs.

However, both Trump and Pence asked, on television night shows at different times: “We have those bombs, why can’t we use them?”

Sending 59 missiles into Syria while he dined on the best chocolate cake he had ever had; dropping the “mother bomb” on a mountain side in Afghanistan where, still not  known, there might have been ISIS soldiers camped; now, shaking his fists and threats at the most imbalanced leader of them all (although Trump is not far behind), with Kim’s arsenal of very deadly weapons possibly poised to fly, this is a policy of potential ruin.

Hilary Clinton warned American voters by saying, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

No matter that the gun ships boasted by Trump, erroneously, to be on their way north as watchdogs and threats to North Korea, and actually are going south toward Australia, his intent to bully and show off is the same. This is seemingly a man, a President, who can’t tell the difference between a tweet and firing bombs.

Let there be no mistake about nuclear bombs: their fallout lasts for decades. Geography and distance from the bulls’ eyes will not necessarily soften the blows in the long run.

So, what are world leaders thinking: if they offend Trump, it might affect their trade deals????


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