It's a full life, if a trifle banal

I've spent the past couple of days in the library reading through back issues of Foundation, looking for articles on and reviews of Bujold. (One article, a couple of reviews, some nice leads.) But I wanted to post about the single article I found about Blake's 7, which made me very happy. Titled "Spock, Avon, and the Decline of Optimism" [Foundation 25: 43-45], it had clearly been written as the fourth season was being transmitted, and it regretted the shift of SF TV and general - and B7 in particular - away from the optimistic humanism of Trek and into pessimistic nihilism:

"Consciously or not, the creators of Blake are not only reflecting, but reinforcing the sense of lost hope. Ultimately, all they give us to identify with is a senseof alienation that we can easily find in the objective world. After the dream, the nightmare - carefully designed to win viewers and successful too. Why exactly do so many viewers like it?"

I think I'd probably take issue with the idea that anything about Blake was "carefully designed" (AND YET STILL I LOVE MY MAD OLD SHOW), but what I chiefly thought on reading this was, "Blimey, you're really not going to like the final episode..."

And, to my thoroughgoing delight, in the very next issue [26: 79-80], there was a letter from the author of the article in which she was heartbroken about the ending: that was not what delighted me, but rather the fact that the letter was written in the mode of squee that I found tremendously touching in the middle of a quite serious journal, and which caused me to raise my hand and greet her as "Friend". ("[I]sn't Paul Darrow gorgeous?" she wrote. Yes, sister. Yes.)

I'm just about to give a set of my B7 videos to someone who has never seen it, knows nothing about it, and - particularly - doesn't know how it ends. Can't wait to see what happens.

On Foundation: there was so much material on Le Guin that I had to file these under 'another time' (BUT IF NOT NOW THEN WHEN?); however, I think my favourite was the review of Four Ways to Forgiveness which fretted that it read like a valediction and that Le Guin might be planning to retire. Don't worry, she has The Aeneid to rewrite first.

A brief discussion elsewhere about writing dystopia had me musing about happy-world stories and sad-world stories, what you lot preferred, and why.

Here is the ever-quotable Le Guin on the subject: "It is sad that so many stories that might offer a true vision settle for patriotic or religious platitude, technological miracle working, or wishful thinking, the writers not trying to imagine truth. The fashionably noir dystopia merely reverses the platitudes and uses acid instead of saccharine, while still evading engagement with human suffering and with genuine possibility" (2004: 219).

Are happy-world tales escapism? Do sad-world stories back out on the possibility for action and change? What do you like to read? Why?

[Poll #614661]

Le Guin, U. (2004) A War Without End. In: Le Guin, U., The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. London: Shambhala Publications.

A transcription of her recent online chat organized by The Guardian.