Politics Kills

"How dare you!"

One of the more entertaining emails I’ve gotten lately in response to the substack was “How dare you talk about politics with your readers!?”

Long time readers of mine will eventually stop laughing.

I’ve spent over a decade trying to avoid politics. Somehow, it never seems to work.

Then again, as the saying goes, “Just because you’re not interested in politics does not mean that politics isn’t interested in you.”

And good Lord, has anyone noticed that politics has an unceasing interest in us?

Once upon a time, I described my politics as “leave me alone and no one gets hurt.” I would have used the word “libertarian” until the Libertarian Party made it a dirty word… also, I met some “big-L” Libertarians, who insisted that I was doing it wrong every time.

But yikes, the government has decided that it needs to be involved in everything. I’m fairly done with it.

I would love—dearly love—to go back to a time when I could be apolitical. I miss those days when I just told everyone to go to Hell, I don’t need to pick a side, be gone with you.

It took several books of Saint Tommy just to get away from politics. Because politics was the scariest s*** I could think of. And some of it was. Some of it is made scarier in that my horror fancies have become current events. Because OF COURSE THEY DID.

One of the nice things about doing science fiction: I can get away from current events.

Sure, there are some things that are still kicking around that are political in nature. Frank Herbert’s quote is still good.

Not to mention that the old axiom “The more government can do for you, the more government can do to you” will still come into play.

Also, that people are stupid, governments are corrupt and power hungry, and the more things change, the more they stay insane.

Things like that.

But I get to play with certain elements that don’t really come up that often. Look at organic technology. How well does it plug into a ship? Or a person?

At the end of the day, the short version is that this is very much Babylon 5 or DS9, if it were written by Baen authors.

This isn’t really a surprise, my main SF influences are Babylon 5 or Baen: Weber, Ringo, Zahn. I’d like to think that this is more space opera than anything else.

Hopefully, I can get through the rest of my life without needing to do politics ever again.