15 Years Blogging Today!

Today marks the 15th anniversary of this blog's beginning, on April 23, 2005.  

Since that time, I have written 11,031 blog entries...which is a lot,

I have enjoyed every minute of the blog, and wish to apologize to regular and long-time readers for the fall-off in posting in 2020.  

My deepest hope is to return to blogging on a more regular basis, but I also don't want to over-promise in such an unsettling world. 

This is a crazy time to be alive, and we are all dealing with a new world order because of COVID-19.

I suppose one of the supreme ironies of my professional life is that when people really need more original content, like that featured on this blog, I have less time than ever before in my professional life, to create it.  

That's just how life goes sometimes.

I have come to learn, through a decade-and-a-half of blogging, that the work I compose here ebbs and flows. There are times of great creativity and energy and momentum, and times when that creativity just can't seem to do anything but stick to idle.

Before the pandemic hit, I was growing a lot less enthusiastic about writing on many genre matters. The extremely negative fan responses to The Last Jedi, The X-Files, Star Trek: Discovery and other new programs I found disheartening, and counter to my creativity and writing process. 

Not that everyone must like and appreciate those things that I like and appreciate, but there were over-the-top fan responses to these works of art that exposed a seedy underbelly to a community that I had long supported and believed in, and felt a part of. 

At some point, in 2018-2019, I felt totally sapped and drained by the hostility and anger that I saw growing and thriving on the Internet. The loud voices were crowding out the reasonable ones. It felt easier to retreat than to engage.

Also, oddly -- and perhaps counterintuitively -- in the last few years (pre Coronavirus) I realized that I am writing now from a world in which fans pretty much get everything they want. The X-Files returned. Twin Peaks returned. Mystery Science Theater 3000 returned. Star Trek returned. Star Trek: The Next Generation returned. Star Wars kept returning and branched out to TV.  Jamie Lee Curtis returned in Halloween, and Linda Hamilton returned in Terminator: Dark Fate.

There is a danger, I suppose, in  getting everything you wish for. 

I suppose part of my brand/obsession/style/appeal is writing passionately about the value of programs and films that for whatever reason, left the popular consciousness, and explaining why they should be valued and why they mattered.  

These days, I often think of Spock's comment to Stonn in the Star Trek episode "Amok Time:" "After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."

Now, everything is back in one form or another, and no genre program or film ever really seems to die.  

That's great. 

I'm enjoying it all, but I feel less compelled to write about these things or champion them, I suppose. 

Those battles were won. We are living in a geek world!

So, this blog is fifteen years old, and perhaps going through its mid-life crisis.  

I don't envision ending it, because, since 2005, it has been a positive force in my life, and, I hope, for readers too. I hope it is -- or was -- a place to consider different viewpoints on science fiction, horror, and the culture. Lately, it has not been what it once was, and I know that.  I'm in a period, I guess you could say, of discovering, all over again, where my voice fits in with this culture as it stands.  

Most of all, as I write this, I want to thank all the readers who have visited, stayed, and returned (and continue to return) over this decade-and-a-half.  I'm gonna keep trying if you keep trying!

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Again, we live in strange and upsetting times because of this pandemic. 

My deepest wish to everyone who reads this is that you and your family stay safe and healthy in a time when what we once imagined as science fiction has become unfortunate reality.   

But, also even in the midst of this darkness, remember that out of pain and despair -- out of shocks to the system -- can also grow great good.  

That's why the human adventure, on this blog and elsewhere, is still just beginning.