New Golden Age
One explicit goal for Scifi.io is to produce and publish works which focus on winning and not losing. Being masters and not slaves. Too many of us are barely useful slaves to this new world where so many evil people work in concord to steal the future of you and your people away from you — to demoralize you, and stifle even your will to live let alone thrive.
Science fiction was originally a way to explain science through fiction. We can do that again and more.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. — Robert A. Heinlein
How many of those things can you do? What can and should we add to that list?
Not only science in general, but useful skills in general. Teaching humans through fiction to be humans in the vision of Robert A. Heinlein. Not insects, but masters capable of many great things, people who are not uselessly crying about being victims but stoic kings who can always find a solution and are willing and able to spend the time necessary to solve all real problems.
John W. Campbell, the true father of the golden age of scifi, led the way through the last great Golden Age of Science Fiction. We can work toward igniting a new true golden age of scifi away from the stagnant reservoirs, the poisoned wells, the vile complacency of the heirs of what once was great.
I’m not interested in victims. I’m interested in heroes. I have to be; science fiction is a problem-solving medium. Man is a curious animal who wants to know how things work and, given enough time, can find out. If science fiction doesn’t deal with success or the road to success, then it isn’t science fiction at all. Mainstream literature is about failure… a literature of defeat. Science fiction is challenge and discovery. — John W. Campbell
Can we do that with fiction in general? Yes.
Humanity, Fuck Yeah!
One of the editorial guidelines John W. Campbell pushed for was to be pro-human when facing other alien races. Even when humanity may lose in a story, it must be a heroic loss.
Of course not just pro-human, but explicitly pro-man. Our modern culture does great and terrible work to destroy the idea of man. It goes to great lengths not only to subvert the will of men, but the very idea of what a man is. All too many young people succumb to this treacherous sabotage. Not just young men, but young women too — their ideas of the ideals are twisted and deformed. Restoring the truth is a simple task. Evil must work constantly to hide reality. Turning the tides is as simple as poking a few holes and allowing the sunlight to come in.
Should we be pro-woman? Of course. Femininity is as essential as masculinity. Mothers and daughters are part of civilization. But our culture also overwhelmingly focuses on pro-female empowerment messages. If anything women need to know more that they don’t have to be a CEO to be happy, that they can live in the spirit of their forebears and be happier. Men are the ones meant to die in war, if women die in war that’s the end of our species. We can produce pro-woman works, but we should work to fill in the gap of the modern zeitgeist which actively works against the idea of inspring great men.
This is about illuminating some few minds through new great works. To inspire them to see the potential in the future, and work to build that great future for themselves and their people.
Even in the depths of darkness and despair, there must always be the struggle to fight and overcome. Flat defeatist pessimism has no place here. That does not mean we cannot ask questions, nor have narratives of doubts, but that they should as a whole be part of stories of humanity’s triumph in some way (even if it’s simply the triumph of the core human spirit of life and survival) if it is a story with humans at all.
Quality Matters
We can’t just make low effort works which people support because they believe in the mission. That’s not sustainable and will eventually have zero or negative growth. We must strive to make such great works that even the people who hate us must admit their great qualities. Even after we do produce great works, there can be no complacency, no resting on our laurels. We must always push for greater greatness.
Making great works does invite the culture vultures and parasites to swarm in and try to destroy everything. So care must be made to maintain the quality of the people who work with us as well. This includes processes like adaptations. It is better for our people to adapt works for comics, games, animations, or live action movies than to sell off the rights so that others can deface and mismanage those works.
Dignity over profit.
Our people are people who understand, respect, and faithfully honor the original work in their adaptations. Making only necessary changes to best fit the new format without betraying the expectations of the true fans of the original work in any way.
Cultural Conquest, Uphill Battle
It’s no secret that now effective vestiges of the global establishment such as the Hugo Awards have long since been subverted and controlled. It’s the same with nearly any awards. We can not expect to win such trifles, let alone want them, as they have been tainted by corruption and lost all value as symbols of merit. The people who run and organize to manipulate them have already preemptively declared people like us their enemy. They declared us their enemy before we were even born.
Remember when the Oscars used to be about movies and was not entirely and simply a death bed ridden cultish, disgusting, torturous, and horrifying skin suit wearing woke cringe compilation of narcissistic former pals of Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein fake crying while lecturing you about their political morality?
It would be silly for us to create our own awards for our own works right now, but we may make our own award system for our writers where the genuine fans directly can vote, and the results are transparent. Anything we make with a public voting process would not be immune to a hostile takeover (which no doubt those who cling to the value of those now corrupted awards would say about any who tried to restore those older awards to dignity) but it is part of an eventual and necessary to building new culture.
Some would rather have total control within a failing society than live in a healthy and prosperous society.
How many of the traditional publishing methods are evidently controlled by destroyers? People who wish to obscure truth and instead uphold lies about reality. To push their selfish agenda above impartial excellence. If you tell the truth you get blacklisted, banned, deplatformed. And so it’s difficult to make a foothold in the places where monopolies of influence have accumulated. Eventually those relics of the past will not be needed, but until then subtly is necessary. As I am now abundantly aware, being even remotely pro-humanity in its authentic form is blasphemy against the orthodoxy of those who control most major platforms. They are anti-humanity to the core.
Even necessary tools such as web hosting, newsletter list hosts are vulnerable to insane radicals who put suppressing creative expression above freedom. It is tragic but our modern world is not one where freedom is paramount, that the few places where there is some semblance of freedom are quickly losing it, and with it lost the net will lose the last of its soul. The Internet broke years ago when many people selfishly pressed the buttons to satisfy their temporary emotional states in a process that can never been undone - only ever overcome. The net itself must continue to grow more resilient to stop its merging, homogenizing death spiral. Even those who press for the orthodox positions of the day to maintain their control would regret losing the true freedom the net can allow — when the controls are in place, but their world-view is no longer dominate.
What people who already hate us have to say doesn’t matter. They’ve already run every useful word into the ground. What they say to suppressive and immobilize you is meaningless. What matters is results. Get to work.
We will do what we can. Not only for the glory of better science fiction, but for the glory of humanity. We will not uphold the harmful illusions of forced equity (we do not deserve the same for unequel work, we deserve only what we are worth) let alone equality (we all have our place, though some people are similar, we are not universally interchangeable) or egalitarianism (which all always leads to ignorant mob rule, the swan song of failing empires), but of the need and path for ever increasing merit, excellence, and action. Do not be afraid to piss the destroyers off. Make them gnash their teeth as people create monumental works outside of the realms they now control. Be good. Be true.
Have you done your pushups today?