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Martian Canals.

December 31, 2022 by Exangel

by David D. Horowitz.

 

Earth, at the center of the cosmos, is flat. The universe is approximately 6,000 years old. Phlogiston causes combustion. Women do not deserve the right to vote. Slavery is natural. Canals crisscross Mars. Cats and goats are demonic and evil. The emperor of Rome is a god. Earthquakes and hurricanes reflect God’s anger.

Such views, commonly espoused for decades or centuries or millennia, now have fewer adherents. What caused their popular decline? Direct sensory experience; testing; plagues, famines, and suffering linked to dubious dogmas; and alternative explanations that more accurately described and predicted natural phenomena.

And who allowed alternative explanations to circulate and spread? Some people in positions of power who could profit from them, and a few of these who actually believed in the free exchange of ideas. And what caused them to feel this way? At root: curiosity. And what triggered curiosity? Recognition that the world is complex and that we benefit by exchanging ideas and considering diverse perspectives.

Yes, the world is complex. How many people recognize and accept this? Many perhaps, yet too few. Millions—nay, billions—still seek a perfect dogma, a messiah, an easy one-stop-shopping answer to all of life’s problems. Challenge this, and you might be branded evil. If we all believed in XYZ, we could cooperate to solve our problems. But you ABC believers dilute our perfect unity, so you must be opposed and even destroyed! We must put you all out to sea, never to return to pollute our uniform utopia!

Well, I dare suggest people are out to sea already. Some look for clues, but many are clueless about their cluelessness and merely seek reassurance, resisting challenge. To awaken respect for complexity and show how this should rouse enthusiasm, not fear—that is a challenge. And at heart, that challenge is to help people learn. It’s never easy, but it’s never been more important.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Winter 2023: All Out to Sea. Tagged With: David D. Horowitz

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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