COVID – Humanist Blog

“I came home to die.” Folklore and Forgetting.

To commemorate World Day of Folklore (22 August).

In 1949, author Joseph Campbell wrote “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, which explored in part: “specific details about the continuing importance of mythic stories in current times, the energies that support such, and how the body of myths and stories can become corrupted, undernourished, assaulted, even destroyed — and yet return again and again in fresh and unusual ways.” (Estes, 2004, p. xxvi). This generational cycle of life, death and new birth is not just biological – it is cultural. Our heroes and villains are reborn or rebooted every generation. This constitutes a large part of our folklore.

What is Folklore? Harvard University tells us:

“Narrowly, the term “folklore” has been traditionally considered the oral tales of a society. More broadly, the term refers to all aspects of a culture – beliefs, traditions, norms, behaviors, language, literature, jokes, music, art, foodways, tools, objects, etc.”

Every culture and every community has its own folklore – from religious ideologies to national cultures; from populist Hollywood storytelling to minority cohorts (for whom folklore is particularly important to provide collective identity and community cohesion). Folklore can not only mirror a culture, but it relies upon its cultural background to fully explain its own context: “the folklore of a people can be fully understood only through a thorough knowledge of their culture” (Bascom, 1954, p. 338). Folklore bridges generations, fuels ritual, inspires literature and art, and – in recent decades – has flavoured and influenced television, film, urban mythology, and social media memes.

In The Beginning

In 1918 in Oakland, warnings to wear a mask.
Photo: public domain, Source: FoundSF.org

“However, as bad as things were, the worst was yet to come, for germs would kill more people than bullets. By the time that last fever broke and the last quarantine sign came down, the world had lost 3-5% of its population.” ― Charles River Editors, The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: The History and Legacy of the World’s Deadliest Influenza Outbreak, 2014.

Folklore has provided a basis for many origins – whether the origin and life cycle of the world, or the ironic origin and death cycle of plague; from the Plague of Justinian (which may have caused the fall of the Roman Empire) to our most recent epidemic to impact the whole world (COVID), stories and cultural traditions thrive. Diane Goldstein explores one example of such origin stories:

“A significant part of AIDS legendary tradition betrays our obsession with origins. Whether the narratives focus on government conspiracies, African or Haitian AIDS, “patient zero” type characters, superbugs transmitting the virus through bites, or hundred-year-old AIDS cases, the concern is the same: establishing a first — a source for this thing that made our world change so irreversibly” (Goldstein, 2004, p. 77).

In seeking to address origins – of nations, of religions, of communities, or of our sporting rituals – folklore provides a secular outlet for the religious impulse. Our folkloric responses and rationalisations for plague (and other natural disasters) is perhaps among the most basic, primal versions of this impulse. Vampires and werewolves are attributed to folklore arising from cholera, rabies, and other diseases. The so-called “Spanish Flu” epidemic of 1914 – 1918 was not Spanish and its victims were not (despite recent COVID-inspired vaccine denialism) victims of poorly administered vaccines. Another, more unexpected example is provided by David Keys, who suggests that the Bubonic Plague may have contributed a macabre background to the stories of King Arthur:

“Contrary to all received wisdom, the sixth-century plague catastrophe may indeed have been preserved in the oral tradition and in literature which, centuries later, acted as source material for particular aspects of the medieval Arthurian romances – especially those associated with the quest for the Holy Grail” (Keys, 1999, p. 158).

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Keys points out that the supposed life and death of King Arthur in the sixth century was contemporaneous with the time of famine and depopulation associated with the arrival of Plague and climatic change. The subsequent Arthurian legends and much of their associated medieval literature refer to the so-called “Waste Lands”, a concept of landscapes and society ravaged by war, pestilence, famine or plague (Keys, pp. 158 – 165). It could be conjectured that the medieval King Arthur stories may have grown from earlier memories of the plague times and the need for society to find a hero and a hope during times of devastation.

One lesson which might be inferred from this Arthurian legacy is that the full effect of modern plagues – such as AIDS and COVID – are yet to be determined and included within our own communal folklore. Perhaps we are yet to find our modern heroic Arthur – or maybe we have simply to recognise that we have already birthed many such heroes amidst their modern sufferings.

Image by Brigitte Vanlerberghe from Pixabay

Common Problems for Common Humanity

“This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it was a sight which I could not but look on from morning to night (for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen), it filled me with very serious thoughts of the misery that was coming upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that would be left in it.”
– Daniel Defoe, “A Journal of the Plague Year”, 1666.

In the nineteenth century, author Henry Murger’s novel, “Scènes de la Vie Bohème” (1851) inspired the 1890s Puccini opera, “La Bohème” and both productions included characters who were living and/or dying of consumption (tuberculosis). A century later, US playwright Billy Aaronson came up with a concept to update this material. The idea was developed into the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway musical, “Rent”, by musical composer Jonathan Larson. Aaronson and Larson agreed that instead of tuberculosis, their afflicted characters would have AIDS (Evelyn McDonnell with Kathy Silberger, 1997, pp. 18 – 21). Thus we see popular art being used to change public understandings and perceptions of two epidemics: TB and AIDS.

Following World War Two, Nobel laureate Albert Camus wrote his story “The Plague” in 1947. His tale concerns a visitation of the Bubonic Plague to a French village of Oran in the 1940s, resulting in a quarantining of the town. This tale is seen as a largely allegorical retelling of the Nazi invasion of France during World War 2. Thus was Camus able to make statements without arousing political or partisan contention.(Tony Judt, Introduction, in Albert Camus (translated by Robin Buss), “The Plague”, Penguin Books, 1947 (2001), p. viii.) His tale remains one of universal truths regarding the nature of isolation, suffering and malevolence:

“From that point on, it could be said that the plague became the affair of us all.”
(Camus, 1947, p. 53).

Historic folkloric links united all people behind the common foe of plague; in recent times we have seen that change. Australia’s early cultural responses to AIDS are an example of this: after reference to the medieval imagery and fear of the Grim Reaper, Australian television (the genuine mass media of the era) was uncertain how to approach a problem that mingled sex, plague, homosexuality and death. Efforts included deferring the problem away from homosexuality, and generally ignoring it altogether. But early fictional approaches on Australian television demonstrated patchwork attempts to address it as a social issue.

The Flying Doctors

“I came home to die. But home isn’t there any more.”
– Les Foster, fictional character dying of AIDS in “The Flying Doctors” (written by Morphett, 1986).

From Skippy and Bellbird on 1960s television; from Boney and Matlock Police to Against the Wind in the 1970s; with films ranging from Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Getting of Wisdom in the 1970s to Crocodile Dundee in the 1980s; Australians appeared to have a love affair with rural lifestyles. Into this tradition came the TV series, The Flying Doctors, fictitiously based upon the real-life organisation, the Royal Flying Doctors’ Service, in the equally fictitious outback town of Cooper’s Crossing (and which is NOT to be confused with the more recent RFDS. which was launched in 2021). After beginning as a 1985 mini-series of three episodes (Zuk, 1998a), The Flying Doctors returned between 1986 and 1991 for a successful run of 221 episodes (Zuk, 1998b). In 1986, during the series’ first year of regular telecast, the episode entitled “Return of the Hero” featured a gay character.

Given that gay characters were quite rare on Australian television at that time, and notwithstanding that this token gay character appeared for only one episode and was dead before the episode ended; his appearance nevertheless marked a courageous stand taken by writer Tony Morphett and all the others who were involved in the episode’s creation. Getting a prominent Australian actor like Gerard Kennedy to play the gay character was also a bit of a coup for Aussie TV at the time.

In the story, a local old boy, Les Foster, returns to Cooper’s Crossing after many years of living in Sydney with his “business partner”, Johnnie. Les is clearly sick but reluctant to reveal the details of his condition to his brother or the other townsfolk. However, he does disclose to Dr. Chris Randall that he is suffering from Kaposi’s sarcoma and AIDS, and that he has come back to Cooper’s Crossing to die.

Encouraged by Dr. Randall, Les “comes out” as gay to his brother Ted, who doesn’t want to know – he prefers to think of his brother as a local war hero. Les dismisses Ted’s hero worship and states that his wartime experience was a very small part of his life. He wants Ted instead to acknowledge and love his whole life. This is a pivotal scene which perhaps could be seen as a metaphor for the battle facing everyone with HIV/AIDS – rather than society making it a “big deal”, their medical condition constitutes only a small fraction of their total life experience and it reflects little upon their actual personality.

In the meantime, the medicos of Cooper’s Crossing discuss Les’ HIV/AIDS status amongst themselves –a breach of Les’ privacy which, in the context of its times, was seen as acceptable and “responsible”. This culminates in a nurse refusing to admit Les to the hospital and telling his friends that he has AIDS. Such breaches of medical ethics regarding people with AIDS were not unheard of in the 1980s.

Following this public exposure, the townsfolk clearly have trouble accepting that Les is a “poofter” and this adds to their fear and stigma. The men folk refuse to drink from glasses at the pub because they fear contagion from the glasses in the dishwasher; and poofter bashers attack Johnnie (with an explicit comparison being made between homophobia and racism). Shortly before he dies, Les faces up to his former friends in the pub. They had not physically participated in the poofter bashing attempt, but their attitudes and bigotry had contributed to the atmosphere which had allowed such violence to thrive. Les implicitly berates them for this by throwing his Korean War medals onto the floor:

“I killed young men in the name of freedom… and look what I got! Well you can find yourselves another hero, fellas. I resign!” (Morphett, 1986).

One surprising incident reveals that Les and Johnnie have their own irrational AIDS fears – in a scene which mirrors the pub incident when others refuse to share glasses, Les and Johnnie attend a communion service but decline to share a communion cup with others. This causes the local priest, Father Jacko, to guess the true nature of Les’ illness. Jacko becomes the only townsman to offer Les, Johnnie and Dr. Randall his unconditional support. During his pastoral chats with Les, Jacko concedes that his church contains both “poofter bashers” and others with compassion. Jacko even assists in a reconciliation between Les and Ted during the penultimate scene when they all share communion (and the communion cup) together. Perfect love evidently casts out all fear.

Les is finally struck down with terminal pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, another opportunistic disease common for people with AIDS in the 1980s. He dies in the arms of his lover Johnnie. Later, when the townsfolk attend his funeral, they admit their shame at their own actions, wherein they had expressed intolerance and fear.

A cursory assessment of this episode might suggest that the storyline mirrors the same concepts evident in those few films coming out of Hollywood during the following decade which dared to touch upon the issues of homosexuality or AIDS (often taken to mean the same thing) – featuring stigmatized gay men and outraged or repulsed heterosexuals as a justification for implicit homophobia. Hollywood movies such as “An Early Frost” (1985), “As Is” (1986), “Our Sons” (1991), “Philadelphia” (1993), “My Brother’s Keeper” (1995) and “In The Gloaming” (1997) largely portrayed gay men as the “other” and used plotlines which focused to varying extent upon their heterosexual relatives, friends or acquaintances coming to terms with this shame and the loss caused by their son/brother/friend’s homosexuality and/or his imminent death from AIDS.

Yet it would be unfair to suggest that this episode of “The Flying Doctors” was implicitly endorsing such views. As such, this storyline paralleled the real-life discrimination faced by some Australian gay men with HIV/AIDS at the time, and it metaphorically compared their battle with that of Les as a war veteran. During the eulogy, one character states that “Les Foster was a genuine hero” and perhaps, by extension, the writer sought to imply that all gay men who faced the double-whammy of HIV/AIDS and societal prejudice were heroes of that modern-day battle.

Perhaps the creators of this episode also wanted to challenge their audience to examine their own prejudices as reflected within the shame felt by the other characters at the funeral. This is further demonstrated by the fact that the creators focused largely on the societal rather than the medical problems faced by Les. They avoided the horrifying stereotypical images which were so common in the mass media at the time – of skeletal, emaciated AIDS figures covered in KS legions and confined to hospital beds. In this medically sanitized world, Les Foster’s skin remained unblemished and generally healthy (except for his pasty white face). And despite his terminal pneumonia, he had no cough or breathing difficulties – just a general malaise and he collapsed a couple of times to demonstrate that he was unwell.

Overall, however, this episode demonstrated to its mass audience that AIDS had potentially reached everywhere in Australia – even the fictitious outback town of Cooper’s Crossing – and that it was being accompanied by an epidemic of fear and prejudice.

Conversely, the limitations in the episode are also worth of note. The gay characters made a token appearance in only one episode for the purposes of facing discrimination and death – a cinematic tradition inherited from Hollywood. They came to Cooper’s Crossing – itself an isolated country town – as a metaphor for the social isolation faced by many gay men from the heterosexual community in real life. Moreover, they were presented as isolated and friendless back in the metropolitan city that had lived – there was no gay support network, no care teams, nobody to support and care for them. Perhaps these errors can be attributed to the heterosexist ignorance of the writer and creators, or possibly to the creative restrictions of a television program with a limited time constraint within each episode; either way, all these shortcomings could have been addressed by a small verbal reference in a passing scene.

Significantly, “Return of the Hero” was only the seventeenth episode of this series to be telecast, and the producers were undoubtedly taking some risk by presenting such a controversial story so early in the run of the series. They should be commended in the eyes of history for their willingness to tackle a very strong and deeply felt societal prejudice.

A similar theme was used in episode 92 (season 4, 1988), “A Shadow of Doubt”, in which a mysterious illness was linked to racist fears and potential scapegoating. Once again, the series producers were willing to address the issue of ‘the other’.

Perhaps most significantly, the theme was revisited during Season 8 (July 1991), “Being Positive”. This story also features a visitor to Cooper’s Crossing – this time as a former patient, anthropologist Jerry Davis, who previously suffered a terrible accident that resulted in “lots of blood” being spilt – who reveals that he has tested positive to HIV, and the doctors who saved his life must await the results of their own HIV tests while battling with questions of patient confidentiality and their own fears. It turns out (unsurprisingly) that none of the medical staff has been infected with the virus, but the word slips out around town and bigot Jock Cavendish leads the outrage. Other characters also express intolerance, presuming that Davis is “one of them” until it is finally revealed that he was exposed to the virus during his work in Africa. He is safely heterosexual, and their biggest concern now is whether or not to tell his female paramour.

This episode made some attempts to address discrimination, leading one character to respond to homophobia with a comment that: “There’s not a sliding scale of respectability among victims of this thing. They’re just victims”, a well-intentioned attempt at eliciting sympathy, but which was ironic given that this was around the time that real-life people with AIDS were seeking to no longer be identified as “AIDS victims” but as “people living with AIDS”. Another response: “You should feel sorry for anyone who’s got it” comes across as patronising and lacking authenticity. A concession was made when confronting homophobia: “People like Jock Cavendish and the AIDS virus have got a lot in common: the less you fight them, the more powerful they become”. These well-intentioned attempts to address discrimination nevertheless remain problematic and flawed.

In seeking to address HIV/AIDS among heterosexuals, this episode contextualises ‘the other’ as themselves, and identifies people with AIDS as including haemophiliacs and infants with paediatric transmission, implicitly pointing out that gay men are not the only cohort impacted by the virus. However, the major flaw in this episode was its failure to explicitly mention or directly acknowledge homosexuality or gay men, effectively contributing to homophobic stigma and helping to make homosexuality invisible (or unmentionable) during an era when a medical scourge was decimating the gay male population. While trying to be rational and level-headed, the episode came across as just another example of TV and films (mentioned earlier) that attempted to reimage AIDS as a heterosexual problem and contextualise the stigma as affecting only heterosexuals. While its overall treatment of AIDS was less hysterical than in the earlier episode, its exclusion of homosexuality served to perpetuate the very homophobia that the earlier episode attempted to address.

A Country Practice

Australian television had also enjoyed a popularity of traditional, family-oriented drama programs. Popular series had included The Sullivans and Bellbird in the 1970s; with the show, Neighbours (commencing in 1980) featuring a number of families living in a fictional Melbourne suburb.

A new addition to this tradition, and combining itself with the previous genre of stories set within rural settings, A Country Practice, (ACP) began on Channel 7 at the end of 1981, coincidentally around the time when AIDS was first appearing on the radar. Set in a small fictional country town of Wandin Valley, the series ran throughout the 1980s to generally healthy audience ratings. Major characters included Molly Jones, a young woman whose on-screen death from breast cancer on 5 June 1985 caused national shock-waves; in the words of one commentator: “a nation was in mourning” (Mercado, 2004, p. 165). The show thereby demonstrated that it had the capacity to rouse within its audience great compassion for people afflicted with terrible medical problems. After the series concluded, creator James Davern was quoted as expressing pride that the show had tackled social issues including gay bashing, AIDS, alcoholism, rape, and domestic violence (ibid, p. 170).

In 1986, however, that same producer of ACP expressed reservations about portraying two social issues: incest and AIDS. Davern explained that topics such as AIDS were deemed unsuitable for a family-oriented show:

“We have given it a lot of consideration, and we find that, at this date, February 1986, still not enough is known about how the disease is transmitted, and I don’t believe in scaring people. And the fact that it’s linked so strongly with homosexuality makes it very difficult to make a homosexual AIDS victim a ‘goody’ and sympathetic.” (Tulloch & Moran, 1986, p. 291).

Davern’s assertion that it would be difficult to portray a gay character sympathetically is somewhat a reflection of his times – as explained by Tulloch and Moran when they clarified that the challenge faced by Davern was in “trying to make social deviants realistic yet sympathetic” (ibid) – but was also somewhat untrue. Australian television had been presenting gay and lesbian characters sympathetically (albeit extremely rarely) – since 1972 when the popular and controversial Number 96 had thrust gay character Don Finlayson onto the screen. Other Australian dramas with sympathetic gay or lesbian characters had included, Prisoner and All The Way. It appears that Davern had wanted to steer away from the stereotype that gay=AIDS, and to avoid a repetition of the storyline from The Flying Doctors which examined the prejudice faced by gay men.

Davern’s other assertion that “…not enough is known…” about AIDS and that he wanted to avoid needlessly frightening his viewers, is an interesting one. Taken at face value, it seems incorrect: by February 1986, medical science had clearly identified the virus which caused AIDS, had identified the risk factors, and had even produced a blood test to help identify those who had been exposed to it. What appears to have worried Davern was increasing public concern about AIDS as a potentially heterosexual problem – a concern which would soon be expressed on Australian TV in the form of the Grim Reaper:

“Davern was also aware of the controversy among the medical profession over whether heterosexuals were even at risk from HIV/AIDS, and he apparently wanted to wait until the medical profession had ‘got its story right’. He decided to wait until a different angle could be found and the ‘story’ of heterosexual transmission had been confirmed.” (Tulloch & Lupton, 1997, p. 102).

Nevertheless, following the appearance of the Grim Reaper and Suzi’s Story, the producers of ACP evidently felt further pressure from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) to finally broach the subject of AIDS:

“According to James Davern, the AMA had been putting ‘some pressure’ on him since 1987, trying to persuade him to produce an AIDS story for ACP.” (ibid, p. 101).

His response was to adopt this ‘new angle’ to AIDS, focusing on the danger suggested by the Grim Reaper: that is, that non-gay Australians were also at risk of exposure to AIDS *(ibid, p. 102). Specifically, the dangers faced by females and injecting drug users became the focus of a four-part ACP story, episodes numbers 591 to 594 (MacAlpine, 2009?a), entitled, Sophie, telecast in 1988.

Sophie was the daughter of the major character Dr. Terence Elliott. She was a news journalist who had travelled the world for her work MacAlpine, 2009?b) – also developing a drug habit along the way. Her death from AIDS gave viewers a glimpse of AIDS which avoided the gay stereotype, but it simultaneously revisited the subject matter of the Grim Reaper advertisement and Suzi’s Story in that it presented a young woman dying of AIDS. The only ‘new angle’ in the story was that Sophie was an injecting drug user – a topic which might raise questions at that time about whether it comprised “wholesome family viewing” relative to homosexuality.

One of the writers of these episodes was Tony Morphett, who had previously written the first AIDS episode of The Flying Doctors. He was reportedly quite keen to produce a story about injecting drug users because he felt that this was a target audience which needed to be informed and educated about the dangers of AIDS.

Despite this, in the context of history, then, ACP can arguably be seen as a disappointment because the story of young Sophie Elliott and her battle against AIDS lasted only 4 episodes – and in the final episode of the series, a “flashback” included recognition of actress Lorraine Bayly who had played the mother of an “AIDS victim” in another story (Mercado, 2004, p. 169) – taking the number of episodes to feature AIDS to a mere 6 in the entire run of 1058 episodes. At the time, gay men were primarily afflicted with AIDS, but ACP evidently shied away from this topic apparently because of Davern’s previously-stated concern that a gay character with AIDS would not attract viewer sympathy. This was not an unwise perspective: societal homophobia was still rampant across Australia, and positive portrayals of homosexuality might easily have led to viewer protests, outrage or boycotts.

This treatment of AIDS ties in with American television’s treatment of the same issue at that time: up until 1988, the only characters to die of AIDS in US daytime soap operas had been women (eg. see Waggett, 1997, p. 36). That did not change until 1988, when the program As the World Turns introduced a gay character whose off-screen lover was HIV-positive (ibid, pp. 62 & 63).

We can see these programs as interacting with communal folklore: although not necessarily folklore in themselves, they were influenced by – and, in turn, contributed to – our national AIDS folklore at the time. Other TV shows that came later (in particular “GP” on ABC television) had more inclusive and diverse perspectives, and will be examined in later blog posts – as will books and films.

How To Have Sex in an Epidemic:

One of the earliest COVID fiction books to be published was Love in the Time of COVID, and its author is attributed with exploring a more individualistic approach to the impact of this most modern of epidemics:

“Have a nice big helping of residual simmering rage (so great for the immune system!) at being abandoned by our ‘leaders,’ at the profiteers and incompetents and liars, at a cleverly murderous microscopic entity that wants to exploit you as a host and strip your organs for parts.” – Kipnis, 2022, quoted by Iglesias, 2022.

This appears to contradict another COVID story which is more in line with the writings of Plague-era Daniel Defoe:

“People were dying in the city. Some more than others. The virus had roamed the earth but had chosen to settle down there.” – Dee Cameron, watching the COVID epidemic from afar, in “Our Country Friends” (Gary Shteyngart, 2021).

It seems our modern folklore of AIDS, and COVID (and its consequent epidemic of loneliness) has yet to be invented and written. Will we remember our heroes, or our denialists?

[EDIT: This blog was edited on 4 September 2024 to add and reinterpret material from its analysis of the “Flying Doctors” episode “Being Positive”.]

Bibliography:

Author Unknown, 2024. Library Research Guide for Folklore and Mythology, Harvard Library, last updated 31 July.

William Bascom, 1954. “Four Functions of Folklore“, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 67, No. 266), October – December, pp. 333-349 (JSTOR).

Albert Camus, 1947. (Robin Buss translator), The Plague, Penguin Books, reprinted 2001.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., 2004. “Preamble: INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 COMMEMORATIVE EDITION”, in Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press, 1949 (reprinted 2004), pp. xxiii – lxv.

Diane E. Goldstein, 2004. “What Exactly Did They Do with That Monkey, Anyway? Contemporary Legend, Scientific Speculation, and the Politics of Blame in the Search for AIDS Origins”, (chapter) in Once Upon A Virus, University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press, pp. 77-99.

Gabino Iglesias, 2022. “Are we ready for COVID-19 as a central theme in literature?”, npr.org, 24 February.

Tony Judt, 2001. “Introduction”, in Albert Camus (translated by Robin Buss), The Plague, Penguin Books, originally published in 1947.

David Keys, 1999. Catastrophe, Arrow Books, (reprinted 2000), chapters 2 & 7.

Laura Kipnis, 2022. Love in the Time of Contagion, Pantheon.

Bevan Lee, 1991. “Being Positive”, The Flying Doctors, Crawfords Productions.

Deborah Lupton, 2022. “Life, death, intimacy and privilege: 4 works of COVID fiction – and what they say about us”, The Conversation, 12 September.

Kitty MacAlpine, 2009?a. “A Country Practice: Episode Guide Index”, ~~http://acountrypractice.com/Guide/gindex.html~~[dead link], accessed 16 January.

Kitty MacAlpine, 2009?b. “A Country Practice: Dr. Terence Stephen Elliott”, ~~http://acountrypractice.com/Char/tselliott.html~~[dead link], accessed 16 January.

Evelyn McDonnell with Kathy Silberger, 1997. Rent by Jonathan Larson, HarperCollins Books.

Andrew Mercado, 2004. Super Aussie Soaps, Pluto Press.

Tony Morphett, 1986. “Return of the Hero”, The Flying Doctors, Crawfords Productions.

Gary Shteyngart, 2021. Our Country Friends, Random House.

John Tulloch & Deborah Lupton, 1997. Television, AIDS and Risk, Allen & Unwin.

John Tulloch & Albert Moran, 1986. A Country Practice: ‘Quality Soap’, Currency Press.

Gerard J. Waggett, 1997. The Soap Opera Encyclopedia, HarperPaperbacks.

T. Zuk, 1998a. “The Flying Doctors Miniseries“, Australian Television Information Archive.

T. Zuk, 1998b. “The Flying Doctors/RFDS“, Australian Television Information Archive, page created 10 November.

= = =

This was preparatory work for my PhD studies on, “A Social History of HIV/AIDS in Melbourne During the ‘Crisis Years’ 1981 to 1997”; this latter work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Gays and God, Stigma and Sin: It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

The Kampala Syndrome: Why Have We Failed to Learn From History?

On a significant AIDS anniversary, a young lesbian refugee reminds me of how we forged nobility in the tragic past, but ignore those lessons today.

Forty years ago today, Australia began its fightback against an epidemic. No, not COVID, nor monkeypox, not SARS nor flu – but a virus that was much harder to catch than any of these others, and many times more lethal.

This virus had attacked the world by stealth, first appearing in impoverished nations and then in disempowered or marginalised communities in the western nations: gay and bisexual men, women and related paediatric cases, trans people, CALD communities, injecting drug users, blood or organ donor recipients, and haemophiliacs. Australian activist Dennis Altman later summarised the problem:

“That AIDS was first diagnosed and named among homosexual men in coastal American cities and not in central African villages, where it probably originated, is hardly surprising, and is due to the dominance of western biomedicine. Dying villagers in Zaire or Uganda were unlikely to be seen by oncologists or dermatologists who could draw the necessary conclusions to conceptualise a collapse of the immune system due to an unknown infection.” (Altman, 1997, p. 182.)

By the time this virus was discovered within the relatively affluent gay male communities of New York City and San Francisco, it had infected and affected many people – and its mortality rate was close to 100%. In March 1983, gay activist Larry Kramer wrote an article for the New York Native about the mounting AIDS crisis. Entitled, 1,112 and counting, the article challenged gay men to rise out of their complacency:

“If this article doesn’t scare the shit out of you, we’re in real trouble. If this article doesn’t rouse you to anger, fury, rage, and action, gay men have no future on this earth. Our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get.” (Kramer, 1989, p. 33.)

The US government was conducting its own campaign of “malignant neglect” concerning AIDS (Stryker & Buskirk, 1993, p. 93), but the gay community was rising to the challenge. The gay community began to publish and distribute its own health information, and AIDS Awareness campaigns and Candlelight Vigils commenced. Although gay men were the dominant cohort of those affected, lesbians in also became involved in AIDS activism: some women donated blood in order to assist gay men who might need blood transfusions. Others, who were nurses or social workers by profession, helped to run the first Kaposi’s sarcoma clinic and the Shanti Project.

The Australian Situation

“I know that prejudices will surface. At times, although I hope not, there will be sounds of ‘poofter bashing’, if you’ll excuse the expression. I guess we will hear from people who think it is God’s revenge for some sort of abomination.” – Journalist Derryn Hinch, 1987, p. 3.

Any LGBT person in Australia over a certain age will undoubtedly recall incidents and events of that era which hark back to times of stigma, homophobia and discrimination. I recall certain politicians calling for the quarantining of all gay men on an otherwise unoccupied island and leaving them there to die, while others called for homosexuality to be outlawed in order to protect children or ‘normal’ people. I recall workers refusing to work with people they suspected of being gay, and hairdressers or ambulance attendants similarly refusing to attend to such clients. Restaurants smashed crockery that may have been used by gay people, and funeral directors refused to bury those suspected to have died of AIDS. Public walls were decorated with slogans like “GAY = Got AIDS Yet?” or “AIDS = Anally Inserted Death Sentence”; one newspaper targeted a front-page headline to a dying gay man: “Die, You Deviate!” Religions proclaimed that “God hates gays” and that homosexuality was unnatural; and they called for laws to reflect their heterosexist morality because of the presumed superiority of their religious views. Families, schools, churches and communities rejected their LGBT children, teachers, clergy, and community members. Families even lied at funerals and proclaimed that their ‘lifelong bachelor’ son (even those who had been in long-term gay relationships) had actually died of cancer or car accidents.

In the gay community, gay venues emptied as rumours and fear spread. Where was Johnny – had he died in Fairfield Hospital? Could we get AIDS from a drinking glass in a gay venue, or from shaking someone’s hand, or from breathing the same air? Many people stopped going out socially. If they got sick, they simply ‘disappeared’ and died alone and in shame. Gay partners were denied hospital visitation rights, inheritance rights, superannuation rights of deceased partners, or even the right to return to their shared home once the estranged biological family of the deceased claimed legal next-of-kin status.

Gay refugees had fled homophobic families and cultures in country towns and sought safety and a new life in the big cities. Tragically, they found themselves part of a deadly locus of concentrated viral infection. Whole friendship networks died out.

The mainstream press filled with almost daily stories of how many gay or bisexual men were suffering from symptoms that might indicate they had ‘prodrome AIDS’ – a suspected, undiagnosed form of the disease in the days before HIV testing became available. It would not be long before the LGBT community rallied here to form care teams, activist movements, and to use its independent LGBT media to publish accurate and unbiased information that was largely absent from the mainstream media. In response to homophobia and hysteria, gay authors tried to alleviate panic within their community by publishing articles with headlines like “Will We All Die of the Gay Cancer?” while trying to actually address the issue in an informed and calm manner. Finally, following the confirmed case of an overseas visitor being diagnosed in Sydney in March 1983, and a forthcoming July 1983 AIDS death in Melbourne, the times were right for a public groundswell in support and response.

Sydney – The AIDS Action Committee

“Silence equals Death” – Old slogan from ACT-UP.

On 15 May 1983 – two months after the brief but turbulent visit to Sydney of someone who was later known to have died of AIDS, and a few days after the NSW blood bank called for gay men not to donate blood – a public meeting was held at the Sydney Gay Centre at 41 Holt Street, Surry Hills (Brass & Gold, p. 101; The News (Perth), 1983).

Fifty people came together to discuss AIDS. Dr. Harry Mitchell-Moore spoke in defence of the Blood Bank’s position and this reportedly “provoked lively debate”, especially after activist Lex Watson postulated that AIDS was being used as a political weapon against gays (Johnston, 2000, p. 3).

Activist Alison Thorne was the lone lesbian in attendance. Although AIDS was an issue predominantly affecting gay men, she voiced her concern that AIDS was a lesbian issue as well:

“…I know that lesbians have been feeling the effects of the media hysteria and the homophobic jokes. We cannot stick our heads in the sand and say this is a ‘boys’ issue’. An anti-gay backlash will affect us all. As lesbians, we have a lot to contribute to gay community action around the AIDS issue.” (Thorne, June 1983, pp. 3 & 39).

She reported in the gay press that a number of outcomes arose from this meeting. Those present agreed to form a number of working groups to assess the available literature on AIDS, and to provide financial and emotional support to anyone with the condition. They also resolved to call upon the State and Federal Health Ministers to convene a meeting of all relevant groups to help meet the challenge posed by AIDS (Thorne, August 1983, p. 5).

Decades later, the AIDS Action Committee (quickly renamed the AIDS Council of New South Wales, or ACON) has overseen medical, health advocacy, and LGBT rights activism that has helped to save countless lives and change civil rights across the country.

Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

Victorian Action

Further action was underway: as one man lay dying in hospital, public meetings were held in Melbourne in June and July 1983 to establish the Victorian AIDS Action Committee (VAAC) – later the Victorian AIDS Council and now known as Thorne Harbour Health.

Other AIDS activist groups were started across Australia, and joined with Sydney and Melbourne to save lives and reshape civil rights to this day. Such organisations – arising from emergency, empowered by activism and anger, helped to change the course of the epidemic, save lives, and introduce new and enlightened attitudes into a homophobic, misogynist and elitist world. They stood alongside the marginalised, the stigmatised, the rejected and those who were dying – and, in doing so, they represented life at its noblest, and humanity at its most vital and vibrant and aspirational. There were many heroes in this epidemic.

Such activists and activist groups deserve a special place in history, and as another generation of LGBT+ and other oppressed peoples face new challenges, we can learn from the accumulated wisdom of these pioneers and the hard lessons of their times.

But are we?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

People today living in lucky countries might be forgiven for thinking that the human rights they enjoy today are the norm. But such gains were only achieved at great expense. We owe those who suffered and died for the relatively good life we enjoy today. Everything from anti-discrimination legislation to marriage equality, from needle exchange programs to the public sale of condoms, from dying with dignity to inheritance laws, have been shaped by HIV/AIDS activism. It look a lot of sacrifice and suffering, but we ultimately learnt a lot from the tragedy of those heroes and those times. It took a worldwide tragedy to help create a better world.

Medically, our world has been transformed by the response to HIV/AIDS. Dr Anthony Fauci, who gained expertise tackling AIDS before he became involved in fighting COVID, acknowledges that government-funding of HIV/AIDS programs probably saved twenty million lives. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation, acknowledges the sea-change in medicine wrought by AIDS activism working collaboratively with the medical fraternity: “We now see steady progress in controlling the [Monkeypox] outbreak based on the lessons of HIV and working closely with the most affected communities.”

Even things that went badly during the era of AIDS could ultimately help us to learn today from our mistakes. As activist Bill Bowtell recalls about the Australian experience:

While there were many lapses in judgment, and many unfortunate stories about HIV/AIDS that gave vent to ignorance and prejudice, the Australian mass media’s coverage of HIV/AIDS was a crucial factor in shaping public opinion to support enlightened and effective national HIV/AIDS policy-making.

But sadly, the ugliest aspect from those times – bigotry and religious-based homophobia – lives on in certain unenlightened minds today, across the world from Kentucky to Kampala. Most dangerously, a lingering after-effect of toxic religious cross-cultural contamination can be found in one of the early epicentres of HIV/AIDS, which today remains a locus of another form of unnecessary suffering and death.

The Kampala Syndrome

“Am I really as evil and unnatural as my parents say I am?”

A couple of years ago, a young lesbian woman sought a confidential discussion with me by social media. Rejected by her family and community, and fleeing her nation for fear of her life, she had wound up in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, where her life and safety remains in danger today. She timidly asked me a painful question: “Am I really as evil and unnatural as my parents say I am?” It’s hard to know how to respond – surely the most unnatural thing on earth is for parents to reject a child.

But the homophobia I remember in Australia when I was this young woman’s age, the stigma, the discrimination, the victim blaming of those being bullied and persecuted, the hatred and violence, the association with disease, the declared sin against man, god and nature, the smug assumed superiority of heterosexuals, and the judgementalism against LGBT+ people as openly proclaimed from pulpit to Parliament – this was her reality today. Kenya and Uganda and Tanzania and aligned (disproportionately Commonwealth) homophobic nations may be geographically far from me, but they are a generation behind the civilised world in terms of political and human rights culture.

While we commemorate the worthy anniversary of local community activism against a biological virus, President Museveni of Uganda and his Parliament seek to spread a lethal mind virus by enacting ‘the most extreme anti-gay laws in history‘ – a deliberate genocide that could potentially kill more than 10% of all Ugandans – greater than the number of Ugandans killed by Idi Amin or AIDS. Encouraged by this bigotry, in neighbouring Kenya (where only 14% of the population accepts homosexuality), the govrernment proposes to institute a similar law. Echoing bigotry from a generation ago, Ugandan and Kenyan churches today proclaim that “God hates gays” and that homosexuality is unnatural; and they call for laws to reflect their heterosexist morality because of the presumed superiority of their religious views. They even call for homosexuality to be outlawed in order to protect children or ‘normal’ people…. and this is in 2023 – not 1983.

Meanwhile, I see LGBT+ communities across the western world today look elsewhere – they are too busy enjoying affluence, narcissism and comfort. Local queer networks are dominated by religious elites who speak for maybe 30% of the LGBT+ communities that they claim to represent, and who respond to human rights abuses (such as those today in Uganda and Kenya) by arguing over whether or not their god really does hate gays. Dennis Altman notes the disparity between affluent nations and the rest of the world, epitomised by a recent LGBT+ walk over Sydney Harbour Bridge with the Australian Prime Minister, even as Uganda enacted a terrible law that promotes hatred and death towards LGBT+ Ugandans, and while countries including Russia, Ghana, Afghanistan and Indonesia all wind back sexual freedoms and diversity.

Seriously, do we care today about our queer family in Africa and elsewhere? Do black lives really matter? Does our compassion for humanity stop at a border?

Silence Still Equals Death

Our response to a pending genocide in Uganda should surely reflect the words of Holocaust survivor Halina Strnad: “Learn of past evils and say NEVER AGAIN. Check your prejudices.” And if you wonder about the rise of homophobic and transphobic prejudice around the world, ask yourself why Ashraf, Sheila or Trinidad Jerry are not as well-known as George Floyd. Perhaps we need to re-read and ponder anew the relevance of gay activist Larry Kramer’s words, which still challenge us from forty years ago:

“If this article doesn’t scare the shit out of you, we’re in real trouble. If this article doesn’t rouse you to anger, fury, rage, and action, [LGBT+ people] have no future on this earth. Our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get.”

Here is one chance to possibly save a life today*:

Humanity in Need – Rainbow Refugees.

(*The views expressed in this article are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Humanity in Need or any other individual or organisation mentioned herein.)

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Bibliography:

AFP, 2023. Most extreme anti-gay laws ever passed in Uganda, news.com.au, 3 May.

Author not attributed, “Will We All Die of ‘Gay Cancer’?” in Gay Community News, Vol. 4 No. 1, February 1982, p. 5.

Author unknown, “Meeting to be held on AIDS” in The News (Perth), 11 July 1983.

Dennis Altman, 1997. Defying Gravity: A Political Life, St Leonards NSW: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd.

Dr Alister Brass & Dr Julian Gold, 1985. AIDS And Australia: What Everyone Should Know, Kensington: Bay Books.

Derryn Hinch, 1987. AIDS: Most of the Questions. Some of the Answers., Port Melbourne: Bay Street Publishing.

C. Johnston, 2000. Notes on the ‘life and times’ of the Gay Rights Lobby…1980 – 1988 (version 6, October).

Larry Kramer, 1989. Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Jacob Poushter & Nicholas Kent, 2020. The Global Divide on Homosexuality Persists, Pew Research Center, 25 June.

Bruce Schreiner & AP, 2023. Lawsuit Targets Kentucky Ban on Gender-Affirming Care for Youth, WKU Public Radio, 4 May.

Susan Stryker and Jim Van Buskirk, 1996. gay by the bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chronicle Books.

Alison Thorne, June 1983. “Bad Blood and Bad Politics”, in Outrage No. 3.

Alison Thorne, August 1983. “Woman and AIDS” in Outrage No. 5.

The Lark Ascended

In Memory of Roger

Photo from the Melbourne AIDS Memorial Quilt Project

On a quiet Sunday afternoon in December 2002, a small group of people gathered in a Melbourne park to have a picnic in memory of Roger, a science fiction fan activist whose fan picnics were apparently quite legendary. Roger was clearly very much loved, and very fondly remembered. This became apparent at the picnic to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his death, when his friends spoke of him with a smile in their voices and a tear in their eyes. They spoke of his active participation in Melbourne’s science fiction community, of his Ditmars and DUFF activism, and his variety of life experiences.

Roger died thirty years ago today, from a medical condition that was rarely spoken about then or now: AIDS. Had he lived, I have no doubt that he would have continued to make his mark in the Australian science fiction community, and who knows what achievements he might have accomplished over recent decades as our creative, communications and digital social media opportunities have evolved?

As a fledgling member of certain SF groups at the time, I barely knew Roger myself, but I caught up with his partner and some of his close friends a year after he died, when they made a panel in his memory and presented it to the Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt Project. They poured their love, trinkets, memories and creativity into every stitch. I felt that they brought a spark of Roger’s soul to the remembrance as well. They created a testimonial which – in the form of a book with pages that could be turned – was distinctive, unique and which stands out from the hundreds of other entries in the AIDS Quilt. I even recall his partner bringing an iron to the Quilt display a year later, in order to iron Roger’s panel as part of his loving maintenance of his memory.

His partner also offered me his tribute, which I publish here proudly today in memory of Roger to coincide with the anniversary of his passing.

THE LARK ASCENDED

by Geoff Roderick

At the funeral, we played one of his favourite pieces of music: Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. It was fitting music, as it is sublimely beautiful, with a soaring freedom of spirit, a little like Roger’s take on life. There is also the obvious Roger pun. Roger Weddall was a lark: the little boy was never far away; cheeky, forever inquisitive, with a thirst for knowledge and a great concern for all those around him – from his family and friends to the nursing staff at Fairfield Hospital – he was genuinely interested in their lives. He was also passionate about puns and very good (or bad) at them.

He discovered MUSFA at university in early 1974 and eventually made his way into general fandom by the late seventies. He became infamous for his parties and, gaining confidence in himself, he became a great socialiser and developed a remarkable skill for helping people to relax and have a good time – if the table of ten wasn’t getting on swimmingly at a restaurant, he would have everybody change chairs. Of course, the waiters were not amused! Roger could hold three conversations with three different people, and not only listen but remember everything. Often, upon meeting an old friend, he would launch straight into the topic they had been previously discussing, sometimes years earlier.

During Roger’s second overseas trip in 1983, still deeply puzzled with his sexuality, he met a man at a London gay bar. While having sex, Roger realised that his partner wasn’t using a condom. He related to me, years later, how he had known exactly what he was doing and wanted to ask for a condom, but didn’t want to appear silly. Also, he couldn’t bear the thought ot the guy dumping him as he was feeling so overwhelmingly lonely. This was Roger’s first male sexual experience. He was 27 at the time.

We met through an ad I had placed in Outrage magazine in June 1988. His was the first of many replies. After an extraordinary two days and two nights together, I turned down all the other replies! It took us only a few days to fall in love.

It took him nearly three months to tell me that he was HIV positive. He had not told another soul… once again, his fear of rejection. He found it extremely difficult to tell me. I was shocked, as I hadn’t seen it coming at all (although I had already dealt with an AIDS-related death; a friend’s lover had stayed at my house before and after city visits to doctors. He had LOOKED sick!) On our way out to dinner, I filled my car with petrol, my mind reeling from Roger’s news, and I forgot to pay the attendant (he ran after us and I paid up, very embarrassed).

We shared exactly four and a half years together. It was the closest I have ever been to another living soul. I had been happy with my handful of wonderful friends. Roger quickly became a great mate to all in our ‘little family’. We played canasta and scrabble and drank cheap wine and bragged of our sexual conquests. He spoke many languages, he joked and laughed in Arabic with my Egyptian friend Osny, and shared deep and meaningfuls with Graham, and later – after Graham was diagnosed – compared their HIV medications and assessed the latest supposed ‘miracle cure’. He made everyone he met feel special.

Roger had friends too – he had THOUSANDS of friends! – from university, and Triple RRR, where he had been an announcer, from science fiction both in Australia and many, many overseas fans he had met on his travels. Friends from his work at Bridge House where he had cared for mentally handicapped adults (his clients respected him greatly, and many came to his funeral) and from Lifeline where he was a telephone counsellor and a highly esteemed counsellor trainer.

I recall the night he came home from a training session and he had performed in a role play, where he had played an HIV-positive gay man. Apart from his sister, he had still not told another soul! That was one of the few times I saw him deeply distressed by his HIV status. That night, he wept and wept.

Roger’s friends were very important to him and he regularly went to restaurant nights and meetings and Nova Mobs, helping to organise conventions and, sometimes – to the annoyance of some fans – the Ditmar trophies. Stuffed cane toads featured at SunCon in Brisbane in 1990, resulting in a rethink, and sparkling new paperweight glass trophies were awarded some weeks later. These closely resembled butt plugs, but this time there were no complaints.

That same year, Roger also introduced a new award category: Best Fannish Cat. His beloved pet, Typo, was voted the winner (Typo passed away on 9th March 2002, aged 17).

Roger spent thousands of hours producing his fanzine, THYME. He kept another fanzine, LHYFFE, waiting up his sleeve.

I sometimes found it daunting with so many people, as I was very shy, and at times I very selfishly regretted having to share his time with others.

He also treasured his time alone, to write and read and listen to music. Breakfast (preferably after 11am) was usually composed of sitting on the floor, listening to Todd Rundgren or Beethoven, with an enormous bowl of Coco Pops, reading comics and playing gleefully with Typo. Late at night, Roger’s brain was ON!!! This was his time to be creative, writing and reading. Often, at about three o’clock in the morning, I would wake up, and he would be sitting up in bed with his postcards and letters and LOCs and books; his cats, Typo and Shelly, purring at his side – and me purring on the other.

A generation after the arrival of HIV, we live in a world where AIDS is largely forgotten and HIV is largely a manageable lifelong condition. As we acknowledge 1st December as the annual World AIDS Day, it is fitting to pause and remember our many friends and heroes and mentors who were lost to this epidemic. In a COVID world, many people seem to think of this newer virus as mainly an inconvenience and they see vaccine denialism as some sort of heroic claim to individual freedoms. How quickly we forget that, within living memory, the earlier epidemic of HIV/AIDS was so terrible and traumatic and devastating, and that real heroism was shown by those affected and infected – as it still is today by many people in many places.

I personally recall Roger telling me that, without forewarning, he had once visited Arthur C Clarke in his Sri Lankan home, and I admired him for his boldness and initiative. I stand with Geoff and so many others in pausing to remember Roger, and, in doing so, I paraphrase HIV/AIDS activist and musician Michael Callen: “Love is all we have for now, What we don’t have is THYME.”

Vale Roger.

Why Science Fiction?

Commemorating International Day of Living Together in Peace.

The Sky Is The Limit

I admit that I have not been blogging so much this year – I have been distracted by a need for activism in the world around me. My desire to help create a better world is not only my human instinct kicking in, but a manifestation of my interest in sci fi.

And in my quieter moments, I have been doing voluntary work for the Australian Science Fiction Foundation, especially helping to create their new website (soon to be launched) as my latest contribution to advancing futurism and cultural innovation. This is a refreshing exploration of other worlds and other realities, far from our mundane world of COVID and war and politics and world poverty.

And no, I have not been seeking mere escapism. I do not subscribe to the cliché that science fiction is a crutch for those who cannot cope with reality. Instead, I have been using the ideals and visions within SF to replenish my optimism for the real-life future and to contribute, in lateral ways, to building a better world by (hopefully) encouraging others to look upwards and ahead. Fictional character Sarah Connor once commented that a storm is coming, and her words should inspire us to prepare for whatever that storm may be – climate catastrophe, nuclear war, pandemic, political upheaval, or whatever the future may hold.

Which of course brings up an obvious question: why science fiction?

The Human Adventure Is Just Beginning

Humans have probably been telling stories since our distant forebears leant how to communicate. Those stories reflect our cultures, our values and our circumstances.

Where Jason and his Argonauts once explored unknown vistas, we now have James Kirk and his astronauts exploring strange new worlds. Where King Arthur or Robin Hood once fought for justice against corruption and oppression, we now have Harry Potter and Leia Skywalker. Superman and the Marvel Avengers police the ethereal skies where Olympian deities or other divinities once claimed exclusive sovereignty.

In the past, we had Pythia or Merlin or Sherlock Holmes as our fictional or mythological guides for morality and rationality responding to technology and circumstance; today Spock or the Doctor or R. Daneel Olivaw serve as transHumanist and secular reworkings of our template Everyman.

Through such timeless motifs – including the use of metaphoric humans disguised as robots, superheroes, artificial intelligence, or other forms of sentient life – science fiction holds up a mirror to ourselves and teaches us what it means to be human.

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4934401

Mission to Planet Earth

Climate change and pollution are hardly new kids on the science fictional block. They have been explored for decades. Through SF films like Silent Running, I became aware of the looming threat of environmental catastrophe, while The Omega Man introduced me to the dangers of epidemics a decade before HIV/AIDS appeared on the world scene and a generation before COVID. Through the Planet of the Apes books and films, I became aware of the power of metaphor and nuance in exploring religious or philosophical themes, while 2001: A Space Odyssey taught me that the Universe’s poetry could be visual if we gaze into the cosmos.

Perhaps most powerfully, Star Trek and Thunderbirds showed me the power of people working together to explore strange new worlds and helping each other out of natural disasters.

And all of this before I hit puberty (which is testimony to the power of sci fi – as a genre that explores the future, it has special power to inspire and empower young people especially).

In the wider world, science fiction has the ability to warn us (The Handmaid’s Tale) or inspire us (Hidden Figures). I have known people whose career choices were inspired by SF: authors, teachers, human rights activists, scientists, doctors, even astronauts. And in turn, the real-life space program has helped to create the technological and scientifically literate cultures in which we live today.

More than all that, space and science fiction have already saved our planet, through NASA’s ‘Mission to Planet Earth‘ (launched in 1991) which led the world response in solving the hole in the Ozone layer.

I have previously written about the inspiration that can be found within science fiction:

I enjoy science fiction because it promises me that humanity has a future, full of dreamers, explorers and heroes. It promotes the joy of diversity – including aliens, robots, cyber citizens, sentients, men and women, [variously] queer and trans and gender non-binary humans – all living together in peace and equality.

We can do more than dream of such a world: we can help to create it. Make it so.