Touring with the banned.

Celebrate your inner rebel! Read a banned book!

Google has a great list of banned books. it's the 21st century and we're STILL banning / challenging books?! I'd rather 'challenge' a book on MERITS *cough*LKH*cough* (and no, I'm not uneducated nor am I a prude, so no, LKH, it's not that I am somehow 'challenged' by your 'content' - I'm appalled at the LACK OF CONTENT. If I want a book on science fiction or fantasy then if that is what your novels are labeled as, that is what I EXPECT to read! I'm an unhappy reader when a flimsy story is filled and padded with pornographic content and then SOLD AS scifi/fantasy. I mean, if I want to read porn, I'll read porn.) than on CONTENT... I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird has been challenged in 2007?! That's the kind of thing that makes me think it's not the book that's challenged... but the people!

And speaking of book challenges...

I think, unfortunately, that I am through attempting to find... literary cyberpunk... or hell, even good cyberpunk. Much of the new stuff coming out labeled as 'cyberpunk' or along those lines - it hasn't been nearly as well written as the earlier stuff (and most of that trash is overblown pulp crap...yiiiiick.) I love the idea, I love the inspirations, and I love much of the underpinnings of the genre... but I have significant problems with the written works. The endings... suck. The writing is pulpy and boring - and outside of some of the 'new' technologies they incorporate as if they were extra additions to the scenery, the stories are contrived and weary.

I wanted new, fresh takes on stories (since 'new' stories don't really exist...) But that's not what I get. I get tired stories with new background paint. I don't want hot little technologies used as paint. Why don't the social structures that have grown with these new technologies change and adapt to them?! It's like - let's take the current socio-political climate and just add a bunch of sexy new cybernetics to the people... but, of course, nothing *ELSE* will change... No no, you can't have people actually *REACT* to the advancement of sciences... because, then, you might need to THINK COHERENTLY as a writer... No, it's much easier to use clever new devices as a fashion accessory.

How disappointing for a genre that's supposed to be cutting-edge.

No, I want to read things like, "the stories of tolkien's world, as it has fallen into a dystopian state after the fall of the information age during the birth of the cybernetics age." I think something like that would force a writer to think about alternate socio-political viewpoints and histories - as well as the differences in psychologies for those people in regard to 'machines' ... what a treasure trove of possibilities!

For now though, I'm going to have to stick with my free-thinking banned / challenged book collections, in order to be truly captured by 'new' ideas. Ha! How's that for a laugh! Reading classics to find the 'new' ... sad, really.