Nothing New Under the Sun
Gabriel Parker
“There has, in the present age, come about something which all ages previous have lamented and complained about but which has finally, unfortunately, come true for the science-fiction writer. There are no more gizmos, contrivances, or machines to be imagined. Science fiction as a genre has finally consumed the entire landscape of the imagination, every inch of dirt has been claimed. What is left to us is only the, much lesser, task of remolding and morphing of that dirt. At one time Jules Verne with his pen spoke like God and bade the submarine into existence, into the minds of mortals. Gene Roddenberry directed, and the field of instantaneous transport was created in the minds of men. But now, with this latest bout of science fiction that has been thrust upon the world by the rise of the genre, nothing is left for us who remain. We can no longer be gods, we can only claim to be the basest of mortals, making mud pies in that dirt that was given to us.”
Jackson Crather stopped typing and pinched the bridge of his nose. He stood out of his chair and walked away from the desk to stand and look out the window. The day, contrary to his emotional state, burned bright and he looked, slightly angrily though he recognized the irrationality of it, down from his second story window at the patrons entering and leaving the coffee shop which he lived above. He couldn’t have been more than twelve, much too young to be drinking coffee regularly, but this was the fifth or sixth time that Jackson had seen him patronizing the shop, and since Jackson didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time looking out the window, he figured that the boy must be a regular. He turned back toward his desk piled with unopened, unpaid bills and a letter, he had opened it immediately but found not a check but a request for an article detailing something new from the Science-Fiction Journal of America. The white of the papers on the desktop seemed to make the white of his screen that much more open and insufficient. He had given them galaxies and stars, rockets and moons, and he had received meagre acclaim for his efforts. But he knew, he had always known, and now they knew it seemed that he had never given them anything new. It was always his little mud-pies. His writings weren’t derivative, that was at least one thing he could claim, but his method to research the tiny backwaters of small journals and writers and to creatively acquire the ideas, inventions and technologies that he found there; there, where no one else ever looked anymore, that method was quickly becoming stale. His mines had run dry long ago and what he was pulling was not the pure ore of the vein but the leftovers mixed with dirt and grime. His coal that used to burn so brightly to fuel his mediocre lifestyle now could barely even do that.
He sat down again at his computer to continue the article, but nothing more than the same pathetic point would come out and he was just bel