What is a Protopia and Why Can't There Be Dragons?

And Woodpecker - Warbler Wednesday

There have been a lot of attempts to steer stories away from dystopia, but we like our apocalypses. Dystopia is familiar, safe, and rewards complacency. You might as well not even try. Keep doom-scrolling and buy more stuff. I began watching The Last of Us, which is very good so far, but the only difference between it and generic zombie dystopia is that this time it’s a fungus. The only government is totalitarian, the nice gay couple have to end their story in murder-suicide, and people don’t really work together at all like they do when there’s a real crisis. You’re on your own, and the only way you can help your loved ones is by going out in a blaze of glory.

Stories matter, and what the hell are we telling people?

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel was a little better in this regard. I have not watched the miniseries, but I enjoyed the novel, set after a pandemic burns its way through much of humanity, leaving immune survivors trying to rekindle civilization. This is the only time I remember actually crying when reading a novel, in recent memory. They were not sad tears, they were tears of hope.

The opposite of a dystopia is not utopia, as utopia is too perfect to ever exist. The opposite is apparently called a “protopia,” a term coined by futurist Kevin Kelly. In this NPR puff piece for Rupert Murdoch’s daughter-in-law Kathryn, they push her PBS special A Brief History of the Future, where she says there are zero positive YA novels out there, so she’s making graphic novels and a PBS special that no young people will watch. Her words:

Murdoch could not find a single YA show or book that portrayed a positive vision of the future, at least not a plausible one that didn't involve superheroes or dragons. "Really, the last time we dreamed about a better future was Star Trek," she said. "It was 1964."

Apparently she didn’t even Google positive YA, as Solarpunk has been around for at least a decade, and a group of science fiction writers got together to write Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future a while ago. But she is correct in saying that we need more of them. Perhaps it galled me that she dismissed books like Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse because they have dragons. One could say Star Trek is just as implausible as it requires faster than light travel, and its peaceful society is dependent upon replicator devices that instantly convert energy to mass. Our imaginations have been so stunted by dystopia and complacency for the status quo, that perhaps we require these for willful suspension of disbelief, to allow us to believe in a more hopeful future.

I hope Murdoch’s plan creates more positive fiction of a hopeful future, but as usual with affluent people with a plan, it seems like she has banded together fellow rich friends to pretend like this was all their idea, instead of reaching out to creators who are already doing the work, and supplying the necessary funding. We’ll see what Futurific Studios produces. I imagine it will be called “content” and be about as interesting as anything worthy of the name… but I’ll try to be hopeful. (I do appreciate that NPR asked why she was making shows for PBS when her family started a media empire. Might as well use public funding and donations, instead of your own riches.)

I promised y’all woodpeckers, and I got woodpeckers! And a Pine Warbler, a glowing golden puffball of suet-sucking sunshine. But first, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that I saw on a walk the other day. They were pecking at a tree and ignoring my proximity as I took their photo, so I observed a while and then walked another lap at the track. When I passed the spot again, they had moved on, but I examined the tree to see why they risked me standing near. They hadn’t pecked a sap well into the tree, as befitting their name, but were dining on a furious swarm of ants that were feeding on the tree sap. In the photos, you can see either an ant or a piece of bark on the bird’s beak:

I’ll share video later. My yard feeder also got a woodpecker visitor, this time a Red-bellied Woodpecker, part of a mated pair who stopped by to fill up on suet before moving on to a better nesting area. I still have daily visits from little Downy Woodpeckers, but they remained in hiding while the larger ones were nearby:

A week ago I went on a five mile walk/hike with my friend Suzanne, and we got a flash of a yellow Eastern Goldfinch, but didn’t get a good look. Merlin identified their song. On my drive home, I stopped at the bird blind at Black Run Preserve, to see what I could photograph, and while I didn’t see a goldfinch, another golden visitor stopped by to enjoy their suet feeders. This is a Pine Warbler, and what a little beauty he is.

I can see why birders go wild for warblers, and try to spot as many as they can during the season. I saw a Black and White Warbler at the end of the season last year, when a birder helpfully pointed them out as they hopped along a branch, and I quickly appreciated their unique plumage and behavior. But I’ll remain a casual birder. I didn’t even venture into Philly to seek that rare Painted Bunting that made the papers, or drive to New York to look for the sea eagle. As I told my friend Chris La Tray, if I start a life list or mention a “Big Year,” punch me in the face. It’s fine if you want to do that, mind you. I’d never police your fun, or yuck your yum, as the kids say. But I’ll remain a fox, not a hedgehog, and flit between my interests as flightily as I can.

Here’s that ant-noshing sapsucker:

Signed copies of all my novels are available directly through me:

Vyx Starts the Mythpocalypse - a rollicking road trip across a fantastical United States where folklore has been fracked into our future.

Blade of Dishonor, an adventure novel that MysteryPeople called “The Raiders of the Lost Ark of pulp paperbacks.”

Bad Boy Boogie and The Boy from County Hell, crime novels which Joe Lansdale called “hardboiled and poetic.”