Sci-Fu discussion

THANK YOU Lewis Carroll for that unforgettable ditty from “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. Actually the phrase “if pigs had wings” is, according to that contemporary reference of references and font of all modern knowledge, Wikipedia, an adynaton—a figure of speech so hyperbolic that it describes an impossibility. And yet…the ocean temperatures seem to be warming unrelentingly, and genetically (CRISPR) speaking, pigs could have wings. In the same manner of speaking, a recent report on CNN says that kangaroos have been seen asking humans for help. Admittedly, these “wild” kangaroos are in a zoo, so technically they’re not wholly domesticated and simply copying human behaviors. Go figure.

But whether the sea is boiling hot, pigs have wings or kangaroos really are asking humans for help right now, there have always been indications that animals have been trying hard to communicate with us. And they seem to have a lot to say. Consider Koko the sign-language “talking” gorilla’s last words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVuNT...

Think for a moment about the years we’ve attempted to “talk” with elephants, dolphins, whales, dogs, cats, birds…it seems they’ve been trying for years to talk with us, but we’re just to “stupid” to hear, or maybe have just too much hubris to really listen. Do you talk with your plants? Maybe. But do you listen to them? REALLY listen?

Communication is at the very heart of empathy and stewardship, both concepts that have somehow fallen to the wayside during the last four years of scrambling and worship of mammon. One thing about money: it doesn’t speak. It only returns to the listener what he or she wants to hear. Nothing more. In my opinion, it can’t ever “speak” because it is one of the two great human illusions: money and power. Both are human “games” of a kind and nature that can become in the hands of unfeeling people beyond cruel. It is then they become instruments of war. War not just against other humans for the forfeiture of their living birthright, but against animals, plants, nature, even the world itself.

Some have called my newly released novel, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor a dystopian science fantasy. But I would argue that given humanity’s past, unrepentant disregard for nature, the book’s position on the importance of stewardship is neither dystopian nor utopian — though perhaps the whole work is an adynaton — and, while science-based, it represents a plausible future rather than wild fantasy. It’s not about whether the reader has accolades for or is off put by the story — whether the sea will one day boil, pigs will fly and kangaroos will discuss their impressions of THE EDGE OF MADNESS — it’s about whether humans will, as posited in the story, build on the empathy they are born, letting go of our many prejudices and grow into the stewards of the earth we were always meant to be.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859

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