It’s pretty weird that I’m “on” Twitter and what’s weirder still is that I have reported two tweets as presenting wildly inaccurate and misleading information. The most recent one?
Yep. The other tweet I reported was also one of this guy’s. We’re living in a science fiction world right now. Seriously. Among other things, 1) There is such a thing as Twitter, 2) the (alleged) president of the United States uses it as platform for announcing and making policy, 3) citizens are responding in kind. I find it utterly bizarre that we’re referring to any kind of communication as “tweets.” But there it is. Leadership in 280 characters a pop.
Among my first favorite novels were Fahrenheit 451 and Ayn Rand’s Anthem — both dystopian novels in which individualism is threatened. Later, when I was older (and more replete with vocabulary) I fell in love with Brave New World.
People like dystopian fiction. I think it’s often with the feeling, “Thank God I’m not living in that world. I hope it never happens to us. Of course, it won’t because we’re not as stupid as the people in this novel.”
The people in these novels regard their world as “normal,” and their daily lives as something to get through and even enjoy. People in Brave New World are very happy with the stratified society for which they have been designed. They have sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, enough money to live on, occupation, safety, security. The idea that there might be something “more” and something “deeper” ends up destroying this world.
This is a formula. A dissatisfied protagonist, a rebel with a higher purpose, upsets the apple-cart. Readers of dystopian fiction (judging from my students, friends and self) like to believe they are the rebel, but I think most of us just want to survive the whole mess and are not rebels at all. Complaining to Twitter about OFFAL’s inaccurate claim about mail-in voting does not constitute an existential act that will bring down a society.
Philip K. Dick wrote his share of dystopian fiction. PKD’s protagonists are very ordinary people, the kind we wouldn’t even notice walking around in our “real” world. Most people know Bladerunner which is based on the infinitely less sensational and sexy Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. (I have the T-shirt). I love the film MORE than I loved the book. Ridley Scott opened it up in ways PKD couldn’t.
Netflix made a (an egregious but probably entertaining) miniseries from PKD’s book, The Man in the High Castle which looks at a future in which the Nazis and Japanese had won WW II. The only part of “America” remaining is the backbone of our world, the Rocky Mountain States. In PKD’s book, the “Man in the High Castle” is the center of and organizer of the covert resistance. Members of the resistance are not sure if he is real or not. PKD’s enigmatic leader lives and works in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In the miniseries he lives in Canon City, Colorado and they don’t pronounce Canon right. It’s cañon, not cannon. And I won’t even bother to deal with the other teeth-itching inaccuracies (I guess I have a pretty big loyalty to the novel…) “Let it go Martha. Drop it. Now.”
My favorite PKD novel is Galactic Pot Healer. It’s not a dystopian novel and, on most normal levels, it doesn’t make much sense, but I love it. In this story, God is redeemed by art.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2020/05/29/rdp-friday-leadership/
“Summer is the season of inferior sledding” - Inuit proverb 
I haven’t really read Philip K. Dick before, but I’m thinking I better start!
His writing is strange. He has a tendency to lose steam 2/3 through, but if you know that you can really enjoy his books. My favorites (other than Galactic Pot Healer) are Ubik and The Man in the High Castle. He wrote a LOT. Allegedly he was schizophrenic and some of the books are the result of paranoid schizo visions, but they’re still convincing and interesting. For a couple of years I couldn’t stand to read anything else.
I loved The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which was the expansion of a world he had previously created in a short story. When I was reading a lot of Philip K Dick, I learned that I needed a break after three books or I started to get weird.
Ha ha ha ha! I have a feeling I was weird when I started. A friend looked at me intensely and said, “You’d love Philip K. Dick. I’ll bring you a book tomorrow.” The only book I hated was Confessions of a Crap Artist
I’m not a Twitter user but it seems only fair that if the President can use it to announce policy and affect affairs that any other user can report him. I wonder how many did?
Lots of people report him. And Twitter has now come down on him causing him to have a HUGE temper tantrum! 😀
Yes we heard it from here. 🙂
My son is a huge Phillip K. Dick fan. I seem to purchase at least one or two of his books a year for gifts. I haven’t done more than read the back cover or jacket flap. Perhaps now is the time to borrow a couple from him…
Some of them suck. But the good ones are REALLY good. 🙂
My favourite dystopian movie (I should read the book) is Soylent Green. Prophetic. The “normal” in that story wasn’t one that 99% of the population enjoyed. Women are furniture, etc, etc.
Twitter is a completely different world to reality. What are the rules? A person can speak the truth and be bullied off there. The “Twitter do your thing” mentality.