This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks which fictional things in the books we've read reviewers are glad are not real.
It would be easy just to list ten dystopian "worlds" (Huxley's Brave New World, the world of 1984, the Republic of Gilead, Camazotz, the world of Harrison Bergeron, Planet Abba, any human settlement on any planet like Venus (or otherwise unable to support human life), a fictional world invented by a writer I've forgotten where all women died in childbirth, the hypothetical future Earth in Native Tongue, and the Socialist Realist writers' nasty vision of Earth, and a few hundred more that were as nasty, or nastier, but not as memorably written about) and be done with it.
But let's stick to specific features of the fictive worlds of different books, if I can...
1. Telepathy in the fictional sense of actually reading other people's thoughts--as distinct from reading nonverbal communication and recognizing pheromones, both of which are real, and which allow us to guess each other's thoughts
Douglas Adams made a brief reference to a planet where, as a punishment, the population had been cursed with "that most cruel of social diseases, telepathy." As a result people didn't dare to think when other people were nearby and kept themselves from thinking by chattering. Adams did not actually force any of his characters to visit such a horrid place.
2. Vampires
If they existed vampires would be like any other predator species: The occasional occurrence of a friendly, likable individual would only make it more unpleasant that the species can't be allowed to live where humans live.
3. Dragons
Well, actually large reptiles whose breath may not flame, but whose body secretions are corrosive enough to "burn" on contact, do exist. I'm glad that's as far as nature has gone in that direction. (The telepathic dragons of Pern aren't reptiles, as we know reptiles, but they wouldn't fit in on Earth anyway.)
4. Marriage between humans and mythical creatures
Seriously. In my e-mail yesterday someone was looking for a review of a story about a woman marrying a dragon.
5. Lifelong happiness
We feel emotions in contrast to one another so, although we can look back and say things like "The year I was twelve (or thirty or seventy-five or whatever) was a happy time," we're not wired to feel happy for even a day at a time. We can spend a day or two at a time reminding ourselves "S/He loves me back," or "S/He's home again, safe and well," or "This is what I worked for for so long." Then we adjust. "I wanted to be a doctor. Now I am a doctor! Hurrah! Now...I am a doctor with a broken tooth. I am a doctor who wants to do a study that will need funding. I am a doctor whose grandfather's disability just worsened." Future happiness comes from further moments of discontent that motivate us to further achievements. We can be cheerful people. We can live with people, in places, doing things and having things, that are perpetual sources of good feelings. But we're not wired to feel happy all the time. By accepting that, if we want nothing more in life than we have now, we've reached a plateau from which we soon will want something else, we can enjoy many hours of good feelings, in which we like our homes, jobs, co-workers, families, states of health, etc., and we want to write another book, or remodel the kitchen, or win the tennis club trophy, or whatever.
6. Classy people
It is true that money buys a lot of solutions to life's tedious little problems, such as what we can eat when nothing's growing outside our homes, or where we can sleep if we don't have homes, and so on. It is true that people whose material needs are met enjoy more freedom to think and create and contemplate their ideals. It is not true that any level of wealth and status creates a whole class of people who are creative and spiritual and idealistic and enlightened. Not only are some rich people still petty, greedy, envious, and ignorant of anything that was not positively beaten into them at big-name schools; some rich people intentionally use wealth to do worse things than the average person ever considers doing. A good friend is probably as hard to find among the rich as among the poor. Or, to put it in a more pleasant perspective, the more rich people you know, the easier it is to appreciate the good character a poor person may have.
7. Any future "improvement" of existing computer technology that is currently being proposed, other than "block all uninvited input from other computers while a computer is in use"
We don't need more Plagiarized Intelligence. We don't need more surveillance. We don't need "smart" household appliances, especially if, as has been observed in existing "smarter, more efficient" devices on the market, their working lifespan is hardly a tenth of older "stupid" appliances that did the same thing. We certainly don't need silicon inside even the biologically disposable ears of domestic animals. We need to be training computer technicians to focus on maintenance and suppress thoughts of innovation.
8. People whose emotional problems can really be addressed by any form of "reparations" to a group
Let's take this idea to its logical destination: Women's property rights were denied for a long time, so by way of "reparations," only women can own property. There. Now women don't care how late men stay out or how much of a mess they make in our homes, right? Wrong. Redistributing money to all Black Americans wouldn't make them less bitter, better educated, or more qualified for promotions, either. If anything, more recognition of Black Americans who are free from bitterness, well educated, and amply qualified for promotions would be more likely to have that effect.
9. Space colonies
In the real world, space travel is not fun.
10. Men who are more logical than women
Some men do try to think logically, detached from their hormonal moods, but the question must be asked whether it's possible to imagine detachment from our hormonal moods in the absence of a dramatic hormone cycle that routinely reverses all the merely hormonal moods we feel. Men often make decisions so illogical that only hormonal moods could possibly explain them, and don't realize it because they stay stuck in those moods longer than women do.
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