FAULT-LINE SKIRMISHING

EDITORIAL. How stands the Empire? In this special issue, we publish the first results of our mystic quest for truth and Vimto. First, a guest writer presents a very typically British threnody on the state of culture here on Airstrip One.

FAULT-LINE SKIRMISHING by Phaedrus

We're too damn polite we British. Culturally, we are a mixed bag -- everything from the most rabid Scots and Welsh Nationalists to the Little Englanders. And yet the country is not shuddering with murmurs of revolt or even reverberating to the roars of mass demonstrations outside 10 Downing Street. And this despite 4 million unemployed. Why? Politeness has a lot to do with it, but fear and insecurity have played their dramaturgical parts -- helped along by Our Leaderene and her corhorts -- to the extent that the populace is being cut apart by cultural fragmentation.

And so it is with British science fiction. British SF writers find a certain bleak joy in their isolation, in writing in a vacuum, and we display little sense of direct involvement in the exploration of ideas. We are certainly less gregarious and confident than our American counterparts, whose works consistently occupy prime places in, for example, INTERZONE.

British writers are not lacking in talent or perception; but unfortunately they are too well endowed with apathy, and let things bumble along pretty much as they have done. They perceive politics and commercialism as fearful and distasteful. These perceptions are perhaps laudable, coming from the older, liberal, literary traditions in British SF that retain critical perceptions that might otherwise vanish. But the times they are a-changing, and not for the better, and apathy and complacency are hampering those who would combat depredations from the politicians and the market vampires.

There is a lack of vital organisation, so serious that the British culture-at-large experiences British SF as some hideous TV porridge of Dr. Who, Blake's Seven, Space 1999 and Gerry Anderson, baked up with a whole load of cardboard sets and topped with a squirting of Essence of Clarke.

Because the printed word is being supplanted by TV, we are slliding into some seriously deep shit. Serious? Why yes. As a medium, TV is utterly different from print: there it sits, in the corner:

BLINK!advertsBLINK!idiocyBLINK!dreckBLINK!drossBLINK!BLINK!B LINK!

Discontinuity is the norm in TV viewing; the acceptance of contradictory thinking, the unified advertising, the debasement of everything -- especially political discourse - to the level of quiz-panel games. This IS television. By its very nature it trivialises the information it disseminates. In presenting a polished version of the 'facts,' it conceals the grounds for criticism. This superficiality is filtering out into the British macroculture of which SF is a part.

Our more immediate problem is to prevent British SF from degenerating into a marketeer's playpen. What I offer up for argument is this:

An organisation called 'Science Fiction Writers of Great Britain.'

Yes! -- you heard me: SFWGB, dammit! We need an organisation to cater specifically to the needs of science fiction and fantasy writers, run by writers for writers in the speculative field. The needs of these writers cannot be met by the BSFA, the Cassandra Workshop, the Writers Guild of Great Britain, or the Society of Authors. Only through a gathering of skills, such as SFWGB, can we properly identify our problems through criticism, create workable solutions, and even (who knows) effectively take an initiative.

Uncompromising criticism with integrity. It is not a safe stance to adopt, for it is the fault-line that cuts right across our society. The problems of the genre are not unique to SF. Modern Britain appears to be breeding a youth that is unemployed, unimaginative, and hopeless, with minds contaminated by stereotypes and wish-fulfillment slammed in by unchallenged television advertising.

The big answers lie in the politcal arena. No amount of ducking and evading will make this reality vanish, because experience has shown us that we can't write our fictional way out of a cultural crisis.

So do something! We'd better start cultivating a sense of urgency, because the Great British Culture Death is approaching critical mass. If we don't organise NOW we'll be cut to pieces by the shrapnel.