I have put the link in but, whether it works for you, or not, I cannot say. There is no real disadvantage if it doesn’t appear.
In a moment of enforced idleness, rare in itself, I was browsing through a few links and sundry web pages when I read this one.
It was alarming.
The term used, ‘YA’, is, I believe, ‘Young Adult’. It refers to a genre of literature.
Genre. Yes. Hmph.
The alarming part was that they say that YA Sci-Fi is now regarded as ‘dystopian’.
Oh, no. Really? How dismal.
Let’s just take a pace backwards for a moment. There may be people—nice, kind readers, out there who have not swallowed dictionaries. There are, equally, people out there who pronounce the exclamation ‘Oh!’ so that it starts with an ‘e’. Such people will look down their noses at people, like us, who are not familiar with the term ‘dystopian’ and who do not bandy such words around in their day-to-day speech. These are the same people who will use words like ‘trope’ instead of ‘cliché’. Fortunately, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Bacon all wrote in English—more or less.
As did Milton.
It was Milton who made a joke. He called a perfect place: ‘Utopia’.
Why is that a joke? Because Milton used a combination of a couple of Greek words to construct this new, non-word. Words that mean ‘good’ and ‘non’. So ‘Utopia’ is a ‘good place’ that doesn’t exist. A joke. Lovely one, too.
From this was derived the term ‘dystopia’ meaning ‘bad place’.
There is also ‘cacatopia’ spelt in sundry ways—all correct. This uses a puerile and scatological term to describe a place that is.... not nice.
Why is this alarming?
Because the assumption is that all YA Sci-Fi is about a bad place. Post-Apocalyptic wreckage of Earth and Humanity, and all that. Bleak, no?
‘Blade Runner’ starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and the beautiful Joanne Cassidy, may be said to be set in cacatopia. This could prove to be an exception to the YA Sci-Fi rule if ‘Blade Runner’ could be said to be YA!
I am disturbed by the idea that nobody has a cheery view of the future. Is it not possible that there is some good out there? Is it not possible that we humans will overcome and do wonderful things? Is all really lost?
What does this say about the present? Are we so absorbed with negative thoughts that we have given up on the possibility of everything turning out well for everyone?
Have we just accepted that the World is going to hell and there’s nothing we can do about it?
In that case, what price ‘Greenpeace’, WWF’, PEAMM’ and other such organisations? Are they all for nothing? If the World and the people in it are going to be raped to the point of destruction are we saying that it doesn’t matter? That the people who are fighting against these things are lone and unheard voices screaming in the dark?
Do we ignore them or do we say ‘No! We will stand up and we will support you! The Sci-Fi writers are wrong. There is a future, a good one, and we want our children—and their children to be part of it.’
I believe I will write a new story. It starts:
“A golden sun rises in the East, streaming across fields of wave swept corn....”
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