For the love of God, don't talk politics-- and for Chrissake don't share any of your little philosophies of life with anybody down there.
You're heading right into the heart of Jeb Bush country.
                      --My Dad.

The plane is cramped and stifling, even though it's a larger jet.  I'm just a big guy who can never get comfortable anywhere.
        The boarders are paranoid, but efficient.  The guards do their duty with a minimum of interest.
        They pat me down.  I have to fill out forms.

Florida is hot and humid.
        Adrian likes it better than I do.  I keep thinking about how this air ruins books.
        And everything smells vaguely like sweat and urine.  It's the constant moisture and the heat.
        The way the smell of people hangs in the air as their fluids dissolve into clouds.

Fort Lauderdale is like a small town, with all the nothingness of a small town.
        Except that the entire place seems encased in concrete.
        You need a car to cross the street.  You don't walk anywhere in Fort Lauderdale.
        Which is okay, I guess, because there's really nowhere to walk to.

Adrian is annoyed by the general academic flavour of the conference.
        Part of this is because he's nervous, and another part is because he doesn't really have any interest in what most of these people have to say about Science Fiction.
        Adrian isn't really all that interested in Science Fiction in general, but he likes JG Ballard.  His paper is on JG Ballard.
        This is a chance for him to try out his ideas in public.
        Really, he's more interested in art, the history of art, art in literature, surrealism, and maybe philosophy.

When Adrian gets around palm trees he behaves as if he's been narcotized.  The trees smooth out the wrinkles in his brain.
        They don't really do that for me.
        They're just trees.
        And he hangs out on the beach, too.  I wouldn't've minded the beach so much if the air hadn't been so damn hot and wet.  If I could have breathed easier.  And if there hadn't been so many fucking people around.
        People just hanging around, lounging, doing absolutely nothing at all while their stock portfolios increase thanks to the magic of the irreality of money.

The Service Industry:
        Everybody who waits on me, here, is black.
        They all say please and thankyou.  They are all courteous and polite.
        They all call me "Sir."
        This is utterly nauseating and disturbing to someone from Canada, to have Black people wait on me like... well... slaves.
        I know they're getting paid, and probably getting paid fairly well.
        But, still.  All the blacks are serving all the whites.
        Even though I have access to the Internet around the clock, and cable tv and a remote control, and even though Fort Lauderdale is entirely encased in concrete, I still feel like I've fallen back into the 1830s
        I want to tell these people:  Please stop calling me sir.
        But I never do, and so they never do.
        And I'm sure they wouldn't stop if I asked them to anyhow.
        They want their tips.

We go to a reading.
        Brian Aldiss reads from his new book.  It's pretty good.  Something about magic realism in a small town in England.

We go to the beach.
        Adrian lies in the sun.  I wander around, hop a bus to downtown to see what there is to see.
        Turns out there's nothing to see.  Just office buildings.
        I couldn't even find a small coffee shop, or a little store to buy a pop.  Or anything.
        I walk back to the beach and the sun is so hot I feel like I'm dying.
        I give money to a panhandler.  He blesses me.

Adrian gets a sunburn.  That pretty much squashes any remaining time at the beach.

The hotel is in the middle of nowhere.  This is strategic.
        This way you're trapped and you have to eat and drink at the hotel.
        And the hotel is really nice.  There's a beautiful pool and palm trees everywhere.
        And there are geckoes.  And the geckoes are cute.
        But, really, there is nothing else.
        The closest food can be found in two gas stations.  And then the food is just chips and beer and vodka coolers.
        Alcohol here is so cheap it's actually scary.

I deliver my paper, and it goes okay.
        However, the mood at the conference isn't really one of messianic fervor.  And I kind of want messianic fervor.  I want to drag us into a new world.
        Criticism is still very rooted in the old anti-technological world of the 1960s.  Even Postmodernism suffers from this, a desire to go back to a false Eden we were never really kicked out of:
        Everything is text, but there was a time somewhere when things were real, right?  Or at least let's imagine there was.
        Nope.  Sorry, folks.
        But what we have here are a bunch of academics who are doing something that, yes, is cooler and more interesting than the usual University fare because at least this conference is about contemporary culture.  But on the whole the focus is on Science Fiction as warning.  S.F. that says the world is getting worse so we better watch out for technology that will somehow, magically, make us "less human."
        Even though technology is itself human, and so how something that issues from humanity can somehow make us less human is a mystery to me.  But, maybe that's just me.
        And then, of course, there's the fans.  The geeks who are there because it's the place to be.
        I don't begrudge them that.
        They are the future after all.
        And they're having fun

Fox News is insane.  Adrian is addicted.
        And it is kind of interesting.
        However, how Fox gets away with saying the things it says, and doesn't get sued, I just don't understand.  Fox actually kind of borders on slander.
        And they're funny in the same way The Weekly World News is funny, except that Fox News is serious.  It's so overblown, and paranoid, and shrieking.  Histrionic.
        On several of the shows, they seem to mix down the audio of their guests so-- if the guests are Democrats and the Fox interviewers start to yell at and berate them-- they're volume is so weak their protests and rebuttals cannot be heard above the screaming insults of the hosts.
        I can see now.  I kind of have an understanding of a certain type of American citizen.
        If you watch and believe the shit that Fox spits out, you will become a paranoid hillbilly.  Fox in a nutshell:
        The world is evil, there are terrorists around every corner.  Everyone in all the other countries on the planet hates American because everyone but Americans hate Freedom.  The USA has the only God, the real God, the Christian God.  Jesus died so everyone in the United States could be free.  But only ones who actually deserve this freedom are the Republicans, the military, the conservative clergy, and all good citizens who do what they're told and who doesn't need no gawdam book learnin.  And it's our duty as Good Honest Godfearing Christian Americans (TM ©) to bomb and invade the countries populated by all those heathen monkeys and show them who's Boss, show them who's God, and kill the ones who resist the Love of the God's Chosen Empire-- for their own good, of course.  They clearly weren't very happy the way they were, anyway.  What with believing all those lies, and all.
        Join the military, keep all the women at home, bomb the heathens.
        Praise Jesus, Amen.  Long Live George Bush.  Shop At Wallmart.  And DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL!!!

There is a mall, a big concrete outdoor mall that would be within about a 20 minute walk of the Airport Hilton.
        Except that the walk would be 20 minutes of dodging cars and racing across superhighways.
        And we have no desire to play Frogger.
        So we take a taxi.
        The mall is a concrete sprawl and even it is designed to be driven through.
        There's a road through the middle of it, a channel bordered by two concrete walls.
        In order to cross this channel you either need a car, or you have to scale the walls and run across the road, again dodging cars.
        Insane.

And everybody in the hotel is still calling me Sir and making me feel really weird.

And we have an excellent meal at the banquet at the end of the conference.  And we get free books.

And on the way back, I'm felt up by boarder police because I keep setting off metal detectors even though the only metal I'm carrying is maybe some change and a button or two on my jeans.

And months later I discover that Health Canada has issued a warning not to drink or even wash your hands with water when flying on a an plane in North America because there is a 1-in-8 chance that the water you are consuming is contaminated with, among other things, human feces.  This is because planes take on water wherever they land, and different countries have different levels of general cleanliness, and planes get shuttled around fairly indiscriminately.  So a plane flying you to Florida could have been overseas the week before.  And no one, I am assured, really bothers to sterilize the water tanks when the planes come back to home soil.  Therefore there could be trace elements of anything including hepatitis and God knows what else in any of the water tanks of any of the planes in North America.  So drink only bottled water.  On any plane.  And don't wash your hands.  This goes for both American and Canadian airliners, and anything overseas.
        So that's what that taste was.

Next:  Coping with facts....
 

Epilogue 73e.
Epilogue 73c.
INDEX.
HOME.