Meanwhile, In this Side of America

(Not just his land anymore.)

Funny things happen in this side of America. One day you’re reelecting a 77-year-old as governor, instead of his 38-year-old charismatic challenger. The next day, you decide that despite the roller coaster years you just had, you’ve come to the realization that moving back east is a nonstarter. Shit was tough. My head was blurry, and yet this time, New York was no longer a threat. It was just another vacation place. The horror.

So I decide to focus on work for the foreseeable time. I write stories about the “return” of UCLA basketball. I write a story of the sudden appearance of empty seats at Staples Center (I get called Judah by a reader.), and I write about the new hotbed of science fiction writing: The city of Los Angeles.

You heard right. All the hot new sci-fi writers are making their homes in Venice, downtown, and the outskirts of the San Fernando Valley (and by outskirts, I pretty much mean Burbank). I am surprised as well. This is after all Los Angeles, the land of scriptwriters and theatre writers who are trying to become screenwriters, nevermind the fact that this is the place that gave us Joan Didion, Christopher Isherwood, John Fante, and Charles Bukowski.

So what do they write? Currently, it seems that post-apocalyptic stories are all the rage, sort of. There’s this guy who’s writing this book called “Mumbo Jumbo” which is about a plague that might not be a plague, and it’s all one giant allegory about race. It’s smart, yes, but somewhat confusing, and somewhat overbearing at times, but just like that story about “ Blacknet” that I’m currently reviewiewing for an alt. weekly, it’s full of surprises, and just like any good sci-fi story, it seems to want to say something about today. I can only hope is as good as advertised.

At the Pre-Space Society

*Inspired by: http://goo.gl/wGDHs

Many years ago, when I lived in Los Angeles, I would take the train to go to Pasadena to cover NASA for a science journal.  The then all-almighty Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was one of those things that now feels old and dated, but back then it was full of promise and fascination, or as my dad would, it was “science fiction come to life.”

            Dad was a child when moon landings were a thing to be celebrated, not chastised.  Remember the last time when the moon was not at the center of some kabuki posturing between countries over how much platinum could be extracted from the moon and what were the rules for waste disposal? Yeah, neither do I, although is not as if this was not a problem that was exclusive to the moon, since this all started once we started to run out of asteroids to feed ourselves of the metals we so desire.

            At least the JPL of that time was more fixated with Mars than with what new shiny object could be exploited in the name of the church of profit.   These kids were dorks.  Consumed by math equations and probabilities would only be solved many decades after once we realized that some things did have black and white solutions.  The downside of course is what happened after it, and the fact that we are still paying for it.