Ted Chiang isn't just a fantastic writer, he's also a fantastic thinker about the world (these don't always go together, surprisingly). Here he is being incredibly smart about this current moment.

https://electricliterature.com/ted-chiang-explains-the-disaster-novel-we-all-suddenly-live-in/

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He reiterates the important observation that "good vs evil" stories are intrinsically conservative in that they are about a good world being upturned by evil, then returned to goodness in the happy ending.

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Whereas sf is progressive in that it is often about the world being changed, not restored.

So the stfnal question about the pandemic is how will things change, not how will we put them back the way they were.

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Irrespective of ideology, no one wants a return to the old status quo inasmuch as no one wants a return to a world where a pandemic leads to ventilator, hospital bed, and mask shortages. So everyone wants some kind of change.

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Which kind of change is the question of the moment. @NaomiAKlein's Shock Doctrine and its disaster capitalism perfectly predict the worst changes we see happening around us: unlimited corporate welfare and profiteering, authoritarianism and surveillance.

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But there are other changes possible. Everyone could see how student debt, weak labor laws, and incompetent demagogues worked, but now we see how they fail.

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It would be nice to convince your stubborn uncle to fix his brakes BEFORE the wreck, but if you can't, then you should seize upon the wreck as a teachable moment to change your uncle's attitude towards his brakes. How things fail is much more important than how they work.

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As Chiang says, if this was an sf novel it would be an "idiot plot":

"...a plot that would be resolved very quickly if your protagonist weren’t an idiot. What we’re living through is only partly a disaster novel; it’s also—and perhaps mostly—a grotesque political satire."

eof/

Image: Arturo Villarrubia

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chiang,_Ted_(Villarrubia)_(cropped).jpg

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