Imagine, for a moment, someone in the late 22nd century making a film of this novella. It can happen.
When we write, we understandably focus on the here and now: Is it good? Will it sell? Will anybody even like it? We release it, and we think about it as just throwaway entertainment that no one will care about.
But consider that there’s a group of people reading the throwaway entertainment of yesteryear and being inspired by it. How many of these folks even imagined that people would not only read their works 100+ years later, but praise it as an example to follow?
Then we realize what we are really doing: with our work, we are throwing a signal into the future, communicating not only with our contemporaries in the present, but with those who will come after us.
This is not to say that we will become world-famous superstars renowned by all and sundry; in truth, we will likely be as obscure in the future as we are today. However, focusing on fame misses the magic and wonder of someone in the future finding our work and deriving enjoyment from it. We have no idea who that person will be or what that person will go on to do. When this happens, we will have communicated across the vast gulf of time, influencing people long after the Lord calls us home.
Wrap your head around that — someone, in the far-flung future, seeing your work and being powerfully affected by it. This is the true power of what we do, and what it truly means to have a legacy, long after our expensive worldly possessions end up in a landfill.
It is like planting the seed of a tree, knowing you will never sit under its shade.
Like Moses, who sees the Promised Land but will not enter into it.
Pretty much. It’s a conversation across time.
It’s a glorious sentiment.
Sadly, I don’t think even after the pendulum turns will we or are successors really be fully free of SJWism. The Devil knows full well how which dyscivic ideologies work, and how to preserve or revive them across generations.
The winnowing of tomorrows classics from today’s chaff will consign thousands of the obnoxious propagandists in Lit-Twitter and upwards of 96% of the worthless tokens at Tor to richly-deserved oblivion, but certain elder works with passably well-crafted and subtle subversion will slip in, and the useful idiots of next year will horde the blue-prints of deconstruction until the planets align again.
After all, 83 years have passed, and still we are tormented by the listeners of that damnable screed “Mutation or Death.”
Sadly, I don’t think even after the pendulum turns will we or are successors really be fully free of SJWism.
We won’t.
However, we will be able to influence the people of the future in ways we — and they — won’t expect.