August 8, 2017 – Reality, Good Fiction, and Bad Fiction
Today, as I sat through a meeting I had to chuckle lightly to myself because if an author put what we were talking about in a novel, and how we got to that meeting, the book would be dismissed as bad fiction and totally improbable. The more time we (the 3 Dads) spend in government the more we think, “you can’t make this up – because no one could be that dumb?” I pondered this and other situations going on in D.C. as I considered the books I’ve read lately.
I’ve been reading books about clones cloning themselves, self-aware AI, giant talking hamsters, and mythical gods. None of these seem as strange (or unbelievable) as some of the things I’ve seen or heard lately. If the situations I’ve seen were in a book, I’d put it down and probably give it a bad rating on Goodreads.com based on poor writing and creativity.
It’s a really sad state of affairs when I prefer to read crazy science fiction (based on good writing and story construction) than think about what’s going on at work. I can’t really go into what the meeting was about and all the people in the room were dumb. Rest assured there were smart people in the room who attempted to moderate the rampant stupidity. I’d like to say smart won – I’d like to say that. I can’t.
Hopefully, the race continues and “smart” still has a chance.