Researchers at the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville just released the results of a study that seems to indicate that optimism is good for your health. Specifically, that feeling optimistic about your health can boost your immune system.
So I’m asking you – for your own good, mind you – to check out SHINE, an anthology of near-future, optimistic science fiction edited by Jetse De Vries. Authors including Alistair Reynolds, Holly Phillips, Kay Kenyon and many more contribute stories that depict a future where our planet’s problems are not insurmountable, although victory over them may be hard-won.
I like post-apocalyptic literature. I’ve always been enamored of end-of-the-world scenarios. Partly it’s because they frighten me so much, I guess. Growing up in the shadow of the Cold War – plus a heaping helping of dizzily eschatological sermons from the church of my youth – absolutely convinced me that the end could come at any moment…a howl of sirens, a flash of heat and light…nothing but dust and ashes forever and ever, amen. I developed this interest as a sort of compensatory facade, perhaps. Maybe my way of whistling past the graveyard. In any case, I fell for apocalyptic fiction really hard.
Still, something about this anthology and the intents of its participants makes even my cold, black, barely beating heart skip and thump anew. It’s nice to abandon my frank pessimism about the future of the planet and our species for a few hours. I’m reading SHINE now, and maybe – just maybe – there could be hope for us yet.
Or not. I’ve still got John Joseph Adams’ Wastelands anthology. Love that book. The sooty Yin to SHINE’s Yang. Adams and his authors – Jonathan Lethem, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin and more – make a pretty good case for a future that isn’t all that SHINEy.
What do you think? What are your own thoughts about the future? Are you feeling positive? Negative? Maybe a little bit of both? Where do you fall between the future optimism of SHINE and the ashes of Wastelands?
Well, since I just got laid off, I am trying very hard to avoid anything depressing, since I’m already feeling down. Give me something upbeat and fast paced to keep me up.
In fact, maybe I’ll see about finding this book. Sounds like what the doctor ordered.