Profiles in Sci Fi

In the bookstore the other day, I plugged funny sci fi authors into the old Google engine. None of my usual scribblers had anything new out in paperback so I was up for discovering a fresh scribe. I picked out two.

The first read, Another One Bites the Dust by Chris Marie Green, was about a ghost PI who’s trying to find her own killer as well as stop an unstable dude who may or may not be about to join the dark side and start killing. The ghost protagonist was able to enter the guy’s mind and see his thoughts, the tone of his percolating brain. Very Minority Report, very P.K. Dick. Yes, I was mega intrigued.

It was a fine bit of escapism but I was frustrated by Green’s word slinging – I kept rewriting sentences so they’d be more clear or interesting. Also, I found out halfway in, this was book two of a series. The storyteller, in a casual of-course-you-already-know-this way, references events in the first book so much that Another One... gets pretty damned incomprehensible at points.

The next ride, Dragon’s Wild by Robert Asprin, started out as a very enjoyable silly read. Slacker-type recent college grad finds out that dragons actually exist and he IS one and will be, shortly, coming into his big powers. Problem, dragons are apparently Mafioso-ish – territorial and not good at sharing. Our hero is considered a big threat and is targeted by a couple different camps. EEEK!

Thrills, chills, goofiness, FUN!

And then, a convo happened between the young protagonist and a plainclothes dick who’s helping him duck potential assassins. The subject of profiling arises. The cop explains profiling because apparently the white, Northern boy from Detroit has never heard of it.

All too often, the profile includes a reference to a racial or national group, so we we get accused of treating anyone of that group as a criminal. Now, I’m sure not going to try to say that all blacks are criminals that all Arabs are terrorists, but the records do show that a disproportionate percentage of criminals or terrorists do come from those groups. Trying to ignore that fact when you’re looking for potential perps is just plain silly.

Oh…rilly now?

You wanna talk disproportionate percentages? The vast majority of mass shooters, TERRORISTS, living in this country are white men – check the stats man. Given this, why aren’t white men being racially profiled?

For that matter, why was Devin Kelley allowed to purchase an AR-15 semi-automatic when he was court-martialed, jailed for a year and kicked out of the air force for assault on his wife and child.  That'd seem like a big this-guy's-a-murder-waiting-to-happen tip off, don'cha think? Oh wait – he was white and the NRA owns the alt-right party which dominates all three branches of our country now. Nevermind.

Back to the book though. Since I’d enjoyed it up to that point, I tried to read on. Just 15 pages later though, the author spews his right wing take on drugs – the cause, he says, of most of the non-domestic killings (ah, wrong AGAIN Mr. Asprin). His soap box sermon’s specifically targeting weed dealers and OF COURSE doesn’t delve deep into the reality of the issue. Nope, it’s all meme-ish, Facebook-y just say no, make all drugs illegal and weak people who take drugs are at fault.

Yup, that was it for me. I've tossed his thinly veiled screed in the recycling bin. I don’t wanna wade through any more reactionary, right wing, empty bloviating points just to get my silly dragon fix.

I’m, pretty much, at a loss now. Who to read?! I’m not a Douglas Adams fan, I’ve read all of John Scalzi, Jasper Fforde and A. Lee Martinez’s work. Got any suggestions?