HUGO AWARD-WINNING SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY MAGAZINE
Another Word:
Dear Speculative Fiction,
I'm Glad We Had This Talk
Look.
I'm sitting down to have this conversation with you as a friend, as somebody who loves you. As somebody who's devoted thirty-odd years of her life to you.
We've all made some mistakes. We've all had moments in our lives when we got a little self-important, maybe. Where our senses of humor failed us.
I'm as guilty as anyone of taking myself too seriously.
But for you, it's become an addiction. You seem to think that nothing fun can have value; that only grimdark portentousness and dystopia mean anything. You wallow in human suffering and despair, and frankly—it makes me tired.
I remember when we were younger. You were so clever, so playful. So much fun. We had some good times. You could make me laugh and think at the same time. You made my pulse race.
But we got older and started understanding a little better how complicated the world is. How layered people's motivations are. At first, you seemed to handle the moral complexity well. You'd give me something like The Forever War or The Left Hand of Darkness, and we could talk about it for hours.
I mean, I sensed your ambivalence. But I had some ambivalence of my own. That's the thing about ambivalence—it's a kind of tension. And tension drives a narrative, right?
And I don't know if you got uncomfortable with the tension? Maybe you felt like you couldn't live in limbo anymore, but you'd seen too much to believe in happy endings anymore. I'm guessing, I admit—but I wonder if you felt like had to find some way to resolve things. Get some closure. And escapism . . . just wasn't open to you any more.
You started thinking you had to be cynical and mean to accomplish anything. You got wrapped up in your own history and your long-running arguments. You buried yourself in the seriousness of it all, and you forgot how to tell a joke. You even got—I hate to say it—kind of pretentious. Didactic, even.
The thing is, that kind of cynical pose is really just a juvenile reaction to the world not being what we hoped. We can't have everything—so we reject anything. But it's adolescent, darling, and most of us outgrow it. We realize that as much as the world can be a ball of dung, and horrible things can happen for no reason, there are positive outcomes too, sometimes. I'm not going to say things balance out, because of course they don't—life is not fair—but it's not just awful, either.
I'm not crying out for slapstick, here. You know that's never done it for me. And I'm certainly not saying that I want you to be shallower.
If anything, I'm asking you to be deeper—to embrace more of the range of human experience. Not just the bad times. I mean, sure, we need to acknowledge the bad times, and I've deeply admired your recent willingness to explore new perspectives, to take on issues of race and gender and sexuality that once you would have shied from.
I have never doubted your courage.
But look at Terry Pratchett. (I know, we should all be Terry Pratchett. But then what would he read?) He manages to be incisive without being pretentious. He manages to be sharp and illuminating by being funny. Look at Neil Gaiman. Here's a guy who can tackle some hard subjects and still have a good time. He makes people like him, and because they like him, they listen when he says hard, important things.
I almost hate to bring it up, but . . . J.K. Rowling? I know, you don't take her seriously. She's a woman, and she writes for kids, and in fairness some of the later books . . . could have used a closer encounter with the blue pencil. So it's easy for you to dismiss her. But what you can't dismiss is that she reaches people—and whether you agree with the way she discusses issues like class bigotry or not, the fact is, she does discuss them. Her awareness of them saturates her work, and it gets into people's heads—because millions of people read her work.
I guess what I'm saying here is, look at Lenny Bruce. Look at George Carlin. The angrier they got, the less fun they got—and the less effective they got, because nobody wants to listen to an old man cat-yell at the kids on his lawn.
Oh, honey, I'm not saying you're old. And I'm not leaving you. You're a big part of my life, and I will always be here for you. I'm just trying to make sure that you're always here for me, and sitting there in a toxic stew of your own bitterness . . . it's not good for you. Look at you. When was the last time you left the house? When was the last time you read something because it was fun, not because you thought it was good for you?
Stern-lipped moral uprightness is not a literary value, darling. Sure, theme is. I'm not disputing that. But did you know that John Gardner talked about this thing he called "disPollyanna Syndrome?" He considered it a literary vice—the cynical fallacy that the real world is unrelievedly bleak—and he considered it as great a disservice to art as its opposite. And . . . he cited Harlan Ellison as a chief practitioner in this mode.
Oh, I heard you gasp. But the New Wave is one of the primary influences on the way we live our life and do our work today. And also, I hear you say, Harlan was popular! And funny!
Well, yes, he was funny. That's why he got away with it. But you? I feel like all we have anymore is pus and severed limbs and the eschaton. And that's not something we can build a future on, is it?
Kind of by definition.
I'm just saying that it's right—and humane and morally correct—to harbor a deep and abiding concern for the world around you. And that it's a perfectly normal—even laudable!—trait to express that concern and draw attention to problems by being savagely trenchant, witty, and sarcastic. Caustic, even. I want you to speak out. I want you to say what you mean.
But sometimes lately, spending time with you is like having my face pressed down into a trough of human misery until the bubbles stop.
You can have a sense of humor too. It's okay. We'll still like you. We'll still take you seriously. We just think it'd be best for all of us if you could let yourself unbend just a little.
I know. It's easier to get people to take you seriously when you're all grit and pus and urban decay—or all gut wounds and bureaucratic incompetence, for that matter. It seems like a quick route to street cred. But the thing is, real people generally aren't miserable all the time. Even in horrible situations, they find ways to take a little pleasure, to crack jokes. Dying people and homicide cops and soldiers are generally really funny.
I want us to have a little pleasure again too.
And maybe we'd have more friends if you weren't such a downer to be around all the time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award winning author of over 25 novels, most recently The Red-Stained Wings (Tor Books) and over a hundred short stories. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner, writer Scott Lynch, three adventurous cats, and an elderly and opinionated dog.
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Paul (@princejvstin) wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 6:18 pm:
What, i get to comment first? What are the odds of that?!
Well, my friend, I think you hit the nail on the head. Grimdark all the way down gets old, and fast. And it doesn't make SF a better literature.
I don't want all magical sparkly spaceponies...but I don't want SF to just be unrelenting horror show.
Fantasy still manages to do it, although I see some of that grimness showing up there, too. But SF seems positively shot through with it. Where is the FUN SF? (Maybe that James S.A. Corey chap knows, I haven't read his book yet...)
Caryn wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 6:41 pm:
Oh, yes! Thank you.
Andrew wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 7:00 pm:
And this is why people should read more Ray Lafferty. Or Terry Bisson. Or Connie Willis. Or, really, just anyone who doesn't mope around all the damn time.
Alex Hollins wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 7:03 pm:
She's a woman, and she writes for kids, and in fairness some of the later books... could have used a closer encounter with the blue pencil.
BWAHAHAHAHA!! so true.
Phules company anyone? Callahan? We need more books like those.
Lynna Landstreet wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 7:49 pm:
So very true. The fiction I find most moving and memorable has highs as well as lows - the full dynamic range of human (or inhuman as the case may be) experience and emotion. If it's all grim and depressing all the time, it just gets dull after a while, and even the grimness loses its impact because you become numb to it.
I far prefer emotional roller-coasters, where you can laugh on one page, cry on the next, and be biting your nails from tension or cringing in horror on the one after that, and then cry again on the following one, but from beauty rather than sadness this time. Those are the books that really stay with you.
C. A. Bridges wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 8:32 pm:
Max Barry! And Scalzi and Stross and Doctorow and Varley and Robinson and Steele and...
Come to think of it, ALL my favorite writers, in any genre, have a serious vein of silliness in their works.
Paul Baughman wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 8:39 pm:
Yes, SF can, and should, include social commentary, but without the fun, who wants to read it? Only a bunch of stuffy literary critics.
Personally, I read to *escape* the 'desert of the real', not have it magnified and injected directly into my soul until it overflows out my eye sockets.
Give me Dune. Give me Time Enough for Love. Heck, give me *anything* by Andre Norton. These were all about important subjects, but they were still enjoyable. They were *fun*.
Howard Tayler wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 8:39 pm:
Now I feel all validated and stuff.
Hopefully knowing you've accidentally validated me won't prompt you to recant.
John B wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 9:09 pm:
First reaction- whoooo! Second- a standing ovation. In my mind, y'know, can't be too flippant, they might consign you to the funny farm or discount rack or ...
Scott wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 9:49 pm:
Never underestimate the power of schadenfreude. Many people enjoy reading stories where bad things happen to the main characters. Personally I've never quite achieved that sensation, but in the long run depressing art has given me a more positive outlook on my own life. Because I can compare and contrast, and see that things are actually very good in my life when at first they seemed bad. Hopefully this is compatible with becoming aware of how I can be a better person towards others, which is the ostensible purpose of much depressing art.
I would of course never deny someone the right to enjoy fun literature, pretend to know what's best for them, or lie and say I've never felt good because of some passive and cheery entertainment.
Elise wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 10:41 pm:
"Passive and cheery"? Good gracious. There probably needs to be a corollary to "The insistence upon certain forms of 'realistic' fiction is the compulsion to turn gold into lead because lead is more familiar" that's about what Scott calls "depressing art." Actual depression is pretty much the opposite of deepness, and how is making whole realms off-limits truly speculative, when it gets right down to it?
To the list of writers who can tell a fine tale while being comfortable with humor and unafraid of engaging with topics like honor and loyalty and love, please add Bujold.
Scott wrote on May 1st, 2012 at 11:18 pm:
Sorry Elise, I may have misread you but are you mocking my melancholy moods?
It seems to me I was at my happiest during a period in which I read nothing but Beckett. But googling that quote, I find you have your own Wikipedia page, so I'll have defer to your wisdom in this matter. How can one find happiness?
Tyburn Cross wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 1:29 am:
I liked this, there is plenty of room for comedic science fiction out there. At least I hope so, I'd like to think there's a market for what I'm writing...
Francis Knight wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 5:08 am:
I want to take this post and hug it to death.
Even in grim-dark (tm) there's room for a little levity, a look at how silly the world is, or how funny cynicism/cynics can be. I can be dark at times (okay, a fair bit), but I hope I get some levity in, some silliness too to balance it out.
Books are supposed to be *fun* to read. If you can make me think at the same time, that's a bonus.
And I leave you with my favourite philosophical quote: 'Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.' Wittgenstein.
Lee Maynor wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 9:14 am:
Amazing letter, obviously a work of love.
I can feel the true pain of loss when I read it, just as if it were a letter from a lover that can stay no more, in spite of not loving me any less.
I have been falling into a funk lately, feeling as though the cynical side of myself has become more real than the part of me I cherish. Your post about writing alerted me to aspects of myself in a way I think I can better digest: somewhat removed, yet still intrinsically sharp and cutting. From a personal point of view, I appreciate your sharing it.
Literature that becomes too adherent to self-definition or tritely posed is no longer worth the letters it takes to form the words. Speculative fiction that tries to appear cynical has a place, or at least a purpose, if it brings us to see both halves of the dichotomy. There can be no light without dark, no good without evil, and it is the duty of fiction to hold the mirror in which we can see this truth. To only show the darkness... that is not speculation, that is surrender.
I have to disagree about Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, however. They both knew that the tension they caused with such vitriolic observations only led to a greater release when the stupidity of self was realized with the punchline. They represented the angry, screaming child in all of us, and then showed us the magic mirror, where we could see that it was, indeed, ourselves we were laughing at. To quote from Legend (rather than paraphrasing it, this time!)
"We are all animals, my lady. Most are to afraid to see it!"
I came from a page discussing fiction in a totally different media (video games), but the truth of your words rings clear for speculative fiction be it written, filmed, sung, computer-generated... or the voices we playact within our heads. Thanks for reminding me of the importance of balance.
Christian Schoon wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 10:51 am:
Tough to add to the sentiments already expressed, or the authors-to-be-read as listed, other than to say "thanks." One further consideration might be that for many authors, writing comedy... finely wrought, well-executed comedy...is hard. But good comedy, in SF as elsewhere... well, it's generally funny 'cause it's true.
John wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 11:53 am:
"I want us to have a little pleasure again too."
Yes! And it really ought to go without saying (but it unfortunately does need to be said) that pleasure (humor, happiness, Calvino-esque lightness, etc.) doesn't necessarily diminish artistic value. But I feel like there is a reflexive correlation in the minds of many readers between bleakness/darkness/pessimism/pain/etc. and artistic merit, which leads to the not always explicitly articulated though nonetheless present inverse implication that pleasure doesn't equal art.
Ursula K. Le Guin put it much better than I can in 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas':
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
Jay Ridler wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 12:20 pm:
I guess I'm the odd man out. I'd like some examples so I have a better grasp of the argument. There's some general points on the need for humor I'd say I agree with, but who are the unrelenting bleak authors who she is talking about?
JSR
EMoon wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 12:32 pm:
Mostly agreement: yes, dark/twisted/angsty/gloomy/cynical does seem to dominate some areas the very broad genre. And yes, I agree that the relentlessly sour & bitter has a limited appeal. Tired of it now.
But...the same attitudes had been at the forefront of literary fiction--critically praised, taught in schools & colleges as a virtue for writers--for over decades before the New Wave brought them into SF/F, along with the idea that science fiction (not, originally, fantasy) should be treated with respect by critics, taught in schools and colleges. To the extent that this genre is a subset of all writing, it will be affected by what's going on out there beyond the (now very porous) wall. So we have editors who favor the gloomy and dystopic, critics and reviewers who favor the gloomy and dystopic, and readers who grew up being taught in schools and colleges that anything worth notice is...you guessed it...dark and dystopic. (And along came Terry Pratchett and kicked that can across the street.)
Has the genre sold its soul for literary recognition (and then got only a wizened sour apple, not the golden one?) Not really, because the other kinds of stories are still there...and, like hard SF by women, or strong women characters, or characters of color, or characters of various gender identities, they're there, but regularly dismissed as not being there, or not being...something that the reader/critic/reviewer recognized, the way they wanted that kind of character presented.
The failure of The Hunger Games readers to notice that some characters were black (and thus be shocked by the movie) is instructive here. The prevailing standards emanating from literary fiction tended to give the "serious" label only to SF/F that was dystopic, bitter, sour, twisted (by whatever definitions were in hand) and dismiss other works as trivial, shallow, and obvious. If the book didn't end in grimness--it was supposedly a cop-out. That's not just in SF/F...that attitude began long ago in literary fiction. When I was in college, the one creative writing class at our university turned out uniformly unpleasant works--and admitting to writing SF was anathema..."not really literature" I was told.
So just as Rowling has been dismissed by some serious critics, many works in science fiction that combine seriousness, humor, and (gasp) even a moderately happy ending do not get the critical mention of the next dark exploration of human misery. Yet even in a tragedy, humor has a place. Rollicking has a place. Many more writers than have been mentioned so far are writing works that combine serious examination of a society or human psyche with something more than relentless misery.
To see more of that in the marketplace (and in reviews, for instance) will require convincing editors, reviewers, critics and readers to leave their comfortable black-painted mental cubicles--and their concern for what the literary side will say--and go outside to the books they consider "non-serious".
Elizabeth Bear wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 12:53 pm:
I think Ms. Moon has accurately diagnosed the source of the problem, and it's exactly that attitude (that if it's to have value, it must be GRIM) that I have problems with.
Ben Godby wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 1:22 pm:
Ah, speculative fiction. When will your op-eds cease to be written in cheesy epistolary? When will your authors stop winging about your state and start activating entirely new states? Perhaps when you start seeing: beyond yourself...
Ira Nayman wrote on May 2nd, 2012 at 7:41 pm:
Over the last couple of years, I have attended science fiction conventions to promote my writing in this sub-genre. In talking with fans, I have come across this issue time and time again: "science fiction is so grim - where is the fun?" they want to know This kind of anecdotal evidence suggests that science fiction readership would like a wider array of choices than what the mainstream offers.
The problem, I think, lies with the gatekeepers in the publishing industry, who are loath to publish comic science fiction novels (and, to a lesser extent, short stories). I was on a panel once where one writer said that a publisher had told him: "We've got The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What more could anybody want?" I've been asking friends in the industry if they knew of any publishers who would be open to considering a humourous science fiction novel (I generally write short stories, but I do have one complete novel and others in my head), and they couldn't come up with a single one.
If you are interested in the sub-genre, you can find a lot of humourous science fiction by less known authors published at smaller publishers . Bill Freedman, Hank Quesne, Nicole Chardenet, Mitis Green and Nick Eftimiades, among others, write comic science fiction. You have to look for it, but you may find some of these authors worth the effort.
Sciborg2 wrote on May 3rd, 2012 at 1:32 am:
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/65908-spec-fic-why-so-serious/page__pid__3175425
Discussion on Westeros - anyone have examples to facilitate the discussion on whether this is a problem or not?
Francis Knight wrote on May 3rd, 2012 at 6:11 am:
RE Ira:
"who are loath to publish comic science fiction novels (and, to a lesser extent, short stories)"
Thing is, it doesn't have to be comic to be Not Grim. Actual comedic writing is very hard, and even more subjective than normal writing! But just because something is not a comedy doesn't mean it has to be full on dark with wall to wall blood, guts and cynicism. A book can have a sense of fun without comedy.
Comedy and GrimDark (TM) are two ends of the spectrum, and there's a lot of room between the two. And just to say, there's nothing wrong with either of those two extremes, either. Just be nice to see some more that isn't one or t'other, but a nice mix perhaps.
Lelia Rose Foreman (@LeliaForeman) wrote on May 3rd, 2012 at 2:43 pm:
I like slapstick on occasion. I don't think there is anybody better than Connie Willis at managing both humor and serious. Right now I am reading an anthology of excellently written, thoroughly depressing stories and I about to ditch the whole thing. Some depression is fine, but always? What I always do is grab the next Pratchett.
Thank you for the essay.
There is a new writer coming up, Jenn Thorson with There Goes the Galaxy (I really enjoyed the interview with the compost heap). Oh, and there's Rob Kroese with Mercury Falls and Mercury Rises.
Reanna King wrote on May 3rd, 2012 at 9:18 pm:
Oh gods yes. I've been ranting about this very subject for quite a while, often within my own fantasy tales.
My world has a place called the Swamp of Dire Poets, the home to vengeful ghosts who were once a writers' guild who had decided that all life is pain and suffering, and that all literature should reflect this. They they were forcibly disbanded for breaking into libraries for changing the stories with happy endings, and following this they exiled themselves to a swamp, saying they'd only emerge again when their truth was embraced. They never came back out.
So you could say this issue is something I've taken to heart quite strongly. Thank you for putting it so eloquently.
Ilya wrote on May 7th, 2012 at 10:53 am:
Why is opposite of "grim and dark" supposed to be comical? It is entirely possible to write positive-outlook future stories without them being funny -- or perhaps with occasional humor.
This is similar to another argument for writing dystopias: "Because utopias are boring!" It is incredibly common claim -- and IMO moronic. It implicitely assumes a future must be either utopian OR dystopian. My favorite SF stories are those which are neither. A world where nobody goes hungry and people routinely live to 200 is an improvement on the present. If said world also has inequality, crime, terrorism, kooky cults and airheaded heiresses, it is hardly a utopia -- but is STILL an improvement on the present! Alastair Reynolds and Peter Hamilton write stories like that. (OK, Reynolds also has some unabashed dystopias.) Obviously, they sell.
Elizabeth Bear wrote on May 7th, 2012 at 9:52 pm:
Dear Ilya,
I'm not calling for comical. Just on expanding the critical focus as readers and fans to take work seriously even when it's not wallowing in nihilism and existential despair.
Ira Nayman wrote on May 8th, 2012 at 3:03 am:
That was my doing. Sorry. Since satire is my hammer, everything looks to me like a comic nail.
I do think, though, that comic and positive (not necessarily comic) works face a common problem: a perception in the industry that they are not what the market wants. For this reason, writers of both have difficulty finding publishers.
Ilya wrote on May 8th, 2012 at 10:08 am:
This week's TIME magazine has an interview with Ridley Scott -- producer of "Alien" movies, and of the upcoming "Alien" prequel called "Prometheus". Scott says modern science fiction is dark because (quoting from memory) "unlike 30 years ago, people feel they have no control over the future. Thirty years from now, nuclear holocaust or some other catastrophe seem much more likely than Federation searching the galaxy for new civilizations."
Aside from the fact that "Federation searching for new civilizations in 2042" is an absolute fantasy, so pretty much anything (including nuclear holocaust) is more likely than THAT, the above statement strikes me as bizarre. 30 years ago was the height of Cold War. Nuclear holocaust was not just a possibility -- it was half an hour away, AT ALL TIMES. For Ridley Scott, who was an adult at the time, to say "these were optimistic times" is unfathomable to me. Also, Scott's quote dovetails with what I wrote about utopias/dystopias -- if Roddenbery's shiny Federation is not in the cards (and I admit it is not), why must the alternative be Craptastic World? Ever heard of "excluded middle"?
David K. M. Klaus wrote on May 9th, 2012 at 2:30 pm:
I think the dystopic attitude comes from what we've learned through modern science, that human civilization is not going to last forever, that we wouldn't exist if not for the accident of a huge moon stabilizing our axial tilt, that supervolcanos have come close to erasing us from the planet more than once, and when Yosemite blows, it might be a death blow for civilization if not the race; the odds are that we well be hit with a meteorite large enough to overwhelm us eventually, and that it's just a matter of time.
Every day we wake up alive is a miracle, if you think about it long enough.
And in the STAR TREK universe the years in which we are now living were forseen as craptastic, with semi-utopian society not having its modest beginnings until at least forty years from now, with things getting a lot worse before they get better after first contact with the non-existent-in-real-life Vulcans (the star assigned to them is actually a trinary system, and unlikely to have a Goldilocks orbit at all).
Ilya wrote on May 10th, 2012 at 8:21 am:
I suppose I just have a different mindset -- "Every day we wake up alive is a miracle" makes me excited, not depressed.
I rather like the way Alastair Reynolds summarized his "Inhibitors" series which, after all, has anything but happy ending: "In the long term, humanity is doomed. But we still have several tens of thousands of pretty good years ahead of us." Plenty of room for optimistic stories.
Wakefield Mahon wrote on May 10th, 2012 at 9:42 pm:
Thank you so much for writing this article and letting us know we are not alone.
As a fledgling professional writer, I find the dearth of mirth in SF markets daunting. Admittedly, some of my earlier stories verge on silly but isn't the purpose of speculative fiction to tell the truth in palatable ways?
Prejudice, fanaticism, corporate greed and fear-mongering: these are the topics that Roddenberry and Sterling brought into our living rooms on a regular basis. Provoking thought without inciting the desire to drink the kool-aid; that is what SF means to me.
ficklefey wrote on May 14th, 2012 at 12:35 pm:
Dear Somewhat-Estranged Readers,
My current play partners *like* having their faces pressed down into a trough of human misery. Despair is not a widespread kink, to be sure, but those who like it just can't get enough. The anger, the suffering, the ultimate helpless resignation... it's delicious for me and for them.
-Lord Mistress Spec Fic
Dan Davis wrote on July 28th, 2012 at 5:09 am:
I know I'm late to this party, but it strikes me that this isn't about comedy or tragedy or darkness or humor or misery or inspiration or helplessness or....
I think it's about running after significance. Grim, nihilistic themes feel portentous. They're a shortcut through the woods that we glimpse just when we start to feel a stitch in the side. But the woods are cursed and the path leads us to an imposter. Real significance can't be caught, and besides, that chase is all about the writer, not the reader.
Robin Wyatt Dunn wrote on January 10th, 2013 at 10:14 pm:
Yes, if only we were more entertaining, with more wholesome values. If only we were less communist, and contributed to the GDP more. If only we tried being less speculative with our speculations, and worked hard on pushing fewer boundaries.
Pablum is the new boundary pusher. Invest your children!