2010: Odyssey Two

It's 2010. The year of the 2nd odyssey. We are in science fiction country now. Sleek monstrosities of glass and steel invade the sky, personal com-units destroy our reproductive organs, and cloning and cybernetics are well under way. The most important thing to remember is to stay calm.

It is not 2010. It is 2014. You are not a time traveller, and I am not entirely delusional. It is a quote. I nabbed it. I nabbed it from myself. I'm quoting myself. That is what is happening here. That is pretty naff actually. But, it is happening. I'm sticking with it. It is a quote from something I wrote in 2010, so the statement at the time was entirely true. 2010 was the second time that I got involved in this sort of thing. The attempt to engage an online audience. It was more of a brief foray than it was any sort of odyssey. This makes this number three. I wasn't going to wait until 2061, and anyway it was already ruined by my not starting the first one in 2001.

What I'm actually trying to do is set the scene (with the help of Michael Whelan's artwork), so that I can pretend it is 2010 for the purposes of reposting some of those things that I wrote in 2010. Things that are still at a different blog, but I'm of the opinion that they are mine. It is about organisation and ownership, and some other stuff. The other stuff is actually more important. Well, it is more important to me. It is something I have been thinking about for the past two years. So, why am I doing this now? I'm busy. Super busy. I have some other things in the back end that I could be posting instead, but there will be a point to this later on.

It's an entirely selfish activity on my part. It is not so much about continued engagement with my audience, of whom it is often difficult for me to comprehend the existence. I comprehend your existence as sentient organisms populating towns and suburbs and buying ice cream that you are not sharing with me. It's the reading thing that is difficult. Not that I think you're illiterate. It's just that in my mind you're probably reading other things that you are trying not to spill ice cream on.

Where I was going with that, was that it is about my own relationship with the voice I have created for myself, which is my own voice, and I would like the things that I have written to be under the same roof, because of some of the things I would like to talk about later on. There is a relationship with science fiction and my own world views that is important to me, which was where I was headed with the blogging originally. Not at United by Glue, but at Ray-guns and Spandex, which was later moved to Sci-Fi Snot Rash.

Anyway. In the 2010 that I mentioned early, which isn't happening now, but did happen at the time, I started blogging, and amongst the earliest posts (it was the second) I wrote was this two paragraph entry that when held up with other things I have written, gives the impression that I perhaps spend too much time rummaging through garages.

So, this is a prelude to other things, which is what it was the first time around.

Little Black Box

Originally posted 2010-04-08
at 'Ray-guns & Spandex'
later moved to 'Si-Fi Snot Rash'

I am a watcher. For my first two decades I lived and breathed VHS. Coveting the magic bricks that let me watch 'Flash Gordon' whenever I damn well pleased. Even now my fetish blossoms as I rummage through my mother's garage of mislabeled boxes to be rewarded with the black plastic treasures of my youth. I rush to the living room, noticing that my adult hands had grown to the perfect size to brandish the cassette as an extension of my self, only to be denied by the sleek DVD player by the television.

The future comes too fast. After journeying through the distant reaches of science fiction for better part of my life, one would assume this to be less of a shock. Alas, here I stand, Captain Harlock in hand, with the realisation that I will probably have to order DVDs from France and watch it with German subtitles. Why did Blade Runner never prepare me for this?