John C. Wright's Journal

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. […] A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities — but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.” ~ Winston Churchill

I have always been a little puzzled by overpopulation scares. They were a staple of science fiction in the 1950’s and 1960’s — one of Robert Heinlein’s personal bugbears, for example, showing up in TUNNEL IN THE SKY and FARMER IN THE SKY and it can be seen in Isaac Asimov’s CAVES OF STEEL and in STAND ON ZANZIBAR by Brunner, in the ‘Known Space’ universe of Larry Niven, and in the movie SOYLENT GREEN, and in many places besides.

It was an established staple of the science fiction background, so much so that if you wrote a story set in the future that did not have overpopulation, you had to explain to the readers some reaslistic reason why, in much the same way if you had a future where there was no interplanetary travel, you would have to mention a reason: Otherwise the readers would not find the tale believable.

Why is it so persistent a fear?

That is not hard to see: the writers in the 60’s and 50’s were born and raised in the 30’s and 20’s, and they lived through urbanization, industrialization, and the postwar Baby Boom. It also means that these writers in youth read stories and heard yarns from the previous generation of writers in the 1890’s and 1880’s. This includes the time when the open ranges of the West were still in the process of being fenced in an closed down — the frontier was filled up and closed, the manifest destiny was complete, and the frontier spirit was dying off. They saw highways and factories and parkinglots going up on land that used to be forest where their brothers and fathers had spent time hunting and fishing.

Nothing was more natural but that the science fiction writers would extrapolate from their current circumstances and foretell tales of Malthusian overpopulation.

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• momofthree posted on May 7, 2012
  Hello again. Back on this topic. Friends point to this post http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08friedman.html, as evidence my claims that overpopulation is not…
• momofthree posted on January 6, 2012
  This is interesting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/27/medical-research-health-response. I don't totally agree with him. I think he is not seeing the forest through the…
• momofthree posted on December 23, 2011
  "Do you know how much of the Earth’s surface is currently wasteland?" Yes, I have thought about this with regard…

The esteemed Mike Allen is the editor of the CLOCKWORK PHOENIX anthology series, where my work has been honored to appear more than once. Of all editors I’ve worked with, he is the one most adroit at keeping his writers informed of the various stages of the project, of distribution and good reviews and so on.

CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3 has been selected as part of the “Celebrate Reading in 2011” Free Fiction Sampler hosted at the Underwords website. The link is here: http://emunderwood.com/2011/01/01/celebrate-reading-in-2011-with-the-free-fiction-sampler/

You can read free fiction from four the writers with whom I had the honor to appear in the anthology:

• “The Gospel of Nachash” by Marie Brennan,
  
• “Braiding the Ghosts” by C.S.E. Cooney,
  
• “Surrogates” by Cat Rambo,
  
• “Lineage” by Kenneth Schneyer.

Naturally, if you enjoy these stories, feel free to rush right out and buy a copy of CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3, and read my story, ‘Murder in Metachronopolis” as well. See here.

And if you like that story, rush right out and buy the previous volume, CLOCKWORK PHOENIX, where a story in the same background is also set, “Choosers of the Slain.” See here.