2021 Year End Update

Since we're getting near the end of a very long year, I thought it would be best to update on the general state of things. This shouldn't take too long. It's been quite a 2021, this being the most active the blog has ever been, and I'd like to talk about about this crazy place today.

Apologies about the lack a of a longer post today but, as I said earlier, activity around here will be slowing down, especially as we head into the new year. 2021's blog output is not going to be the regular around these parts. I'd also like to spend today to give a hint at what we're going to be doing next, if only to show you that there's still much to do.

Let us start in a more general way.

I tried to boost a lot of signals this year due to it really being a bad year for the mainstream entertainment complex, and meeting many people looking for alternatives. The problem is that there are a LOT of alternatives. Almost too many, actually. Finding things to highlight could sometimes be overwhelming. The new publishing spaces from independents to small publishers have really gone out of their own to offer more than ever this year, and I hope I demonstrated it to you by highlighting a good chunk of the creative work out there over 2021.

You don't have to keep giving money to people who hate you, milking tired franchises and series they did not create or had anything to do with making. Not when NewPub and its equivalent spaces offer a far better and deeper spread of works. You can find anything you want out there, if you look hard enough.

That reality won't be slowing down next year, though OldPub and its adjacent industries will definitely continue their downward spiral. Thankfully most are willing to move on to new things. It's been a long time since Cultural Ground Zero, after all. We need new ideas.

We all know this truth is obvious now.

2021 was home to many new posts on Wasteland & Sky, a good chunk of which were the blog's most popular since it s inception way back in 2014. Thank you to the readers for making it such. This could not have been done without you. We also hit 500 posts since starting this whole thing off over seven years ago. It's been quite a wild ride around this place.

One of the posts that blew up abnormally fast was this year's entry The End of Nostalgia, sort of a sequel to my still-most-popular writings on The End of Pop Culture. Whereas that earlier post covered the conclusion of shared pop culture as a concept in this atomized world, this entry was about how shared cultural nostalgia is also on the way out. I would say this year carried out that predication quite well. Once Gen Y wakes up or dies off, shared cultural nostalgia is over.

I am not sure how one can see the absolute detonation of the western world currently going on and not see that the end is near. It couldn't get more obvious. I suppose it is easier if you weren't alive in the 20th century to see just how much things have degraded, but it is hard to turn away from reality as you see decay happen in real time.

This realization opened a gate and gave me the confidence to spend this year both studying what made the old industry and its work succeed as well as giving a boost to what is new and being overshadowed by overbearing nostalgia for faded logos and tired corporate works hinged on dead creators' IP. There is so much we've forgotten and so much we just don't see by keeping up with the joneses, two sides of the same problem.

We either rush blindly to the future or covet a specific era we'd rather be living in instead. Neither will accept the present on its own terms and learn to both adapt to it, and improve on what is lacking. Instead, the middle falls apart. And we crumble with it.

Some of the examples of the past we could mine for the future were rather popular with readers, from action movies, to old books, to even video games. We went all over the map. There is a lot out there we could be doing to both be more original and satiate audiences, but there is just as much we've forgotten that we could learn from but have decided not to. And yes we can learn more than simply resurrecting dead IP names to slap on our tired modern products filled with boring modern ideas. We don't need brand names--we need spirit.

The same city, separated by a decade. Can you even tell?

From old bands that never lost their way to action movies that have very much lost theirs, it was quite a journey through 2021. We even covered why the blog is named what it is. Learn why I'll never quite stop being a weeb by reading that one. We also went over the importance of seemingly unimportant things like aesthetics and basic touch, aspects of ourselves we are losing as we rush into the unknown lands of the 21st century. One should probably check if the tank is full when going on a road trip. Instead, we've forgotten what gas even is.

In fact, if there was a big theme you could pull from this year it would be the realization that the 20th century is not only over, but our refusal to leave it behind is what is doing us in. Not only that, but that we have no plan to move forward.

We spent the 20th century mindlessly plowing towards a utopia that is never going to come, and when it didn't, we kept plowing onward regardless. We threw away the past for a future we don't even understand in order to live in a post-apocalyptic hellscape of alienation, groupthink, and mindless consuming. This is the future we wanted so badly. And don't think this is an issue that doesn't affect your team. It effects everyone, and it will until we realize where we are. Modernity is over. It died a long time ago. We just haven't realized it yet.

The issue is that the revolution did come, it was televised, but we didn't notice or care. Now the television is gone, as is your past and the future you hoped for from back then, and the world is a revolutionary new place. The 20th century is done and never coming back. We celebrated that ending two decades ago.

So why are we still living like the last two decades didn't happen? We are acting like it's still the same as it ever was? Where did all that desire for "progress" go? What past is being "conserved" anyway? Unless you think swirling the drain on the way down, rehashing the same tired, irrelevant political points from a quarter of a century ago is "moving on" or preservation then you have to understand by now that we haven't done either.

We live at the end of the world when we don't have to.

I even wrote a story (free on the blog) that emphasizes just how little (and how much) has changed since the good old days we still emulate 25+ years later. Sure it's a weird tale about a radio and a bunch of dopey kids, but it's still the same as it was then. How long are we going to live like everything is exactly as it was in another lifetime?

And this leads us what was certainly the most popular series of posts this year. That would be my continuation of the series on Fandom I started back when I first found that Sam Lundwall book buried in the corner of a used bookstore. Those posts went over so well that I decided to start a series on the subject. This time I covered the author's first work in the "historical" vein, which turned out to be very unhistorical.

A few readers took note of my tone in this series being far more vicious than previous instalments, and there is a very good reason for that shift.

The main reason is that the book being covered was actually stupid. I was very forgiving of Mr. Lundwall's other book, probably due to the fact that it was written near a decade later when he learned new things, and that I'd never read a book like his before. There was enough good information in that work to salvage it. But by the time I consumed this filth I had more or less had my fill of Fanatic failures attempting to lecture others on how to improve society despite that fact everything they push is anti-social self-destructive nonsense of the sort the 20th century already proved doesn't work at all. It was like looking into a rearview mirror filled with easily avoidable mistakes. Though "mistake" implies that it wasn't done on purpose.

Not only that, but that said book was also very badly edited yet pushed by Donald Wollheim, a man who was supposedly the best editor in the "field" at the time it was published. Why was this work pushed? One would have to guess that it is due to the poisonous message dripping inside its pages. One of massaging the past of any unrespectable ideas in order to build the future utopia they wanted to see. It was a booklet for a materialist cult, and that needed to be addressed.

In fact, this is why I am currently reading Sam Moskowitz's account of the history of Fandom entitled The Immortal Storm, which is proving to be an invaluable resource for understanding just what they wanted. I even managed to find a cheap hardcover (without the sleeve, mind!) despite it going for hundreds online. That this work isn't in print despite detailing why a hive of materialist obsessives took over the publishing industry is quite interesting. Because it says quite a lot without meaning to say it. Naturally, the only written reviews on Goodreads (all 2!) are negative, because one would have to be a fellow cult member in order to not see this farce for what it is.

Nonetheless, this series won't be for a little while. I'm still getting through it. I will mention that it is considerably easier to get through than Lundwall's work, however. In fact, it should be read by anyone in this scene or anyone who has an interest in the weird history of 20th century publishing. A lot of crazy things start to make sense when the pieces are put together for you.

But I digress.

This is a way to say that next year I will be doing another series on the blog focused on this book. I can't say whether it will be the last one ever written, since I still have other works to read from this time period, but it will be very informative as to why things such as Fandom are the way they are today. It gives good examples as to why cultists need to be gatekept out of hobbies and scenes lest you will lose it all. You'll understand it more when we get to the series in 2022.

So while the blog will be lighter next year, it won't be without content. I still have much to share with you.

Don't read this book.

At the same time, I still have a plethora of fiction on the way.

I just finished the first draft of a work I've had spinning away in the background for some time now. I'm considering doing a crowdfund for this one, because it's rather weird and unlike things I've written before. You'll see when it is time to reveal it. It's also the first in four book series that gets bizarre very fast and I'm not quite sure how to describe it just yet. Regardless of how I choose to release this ones, the book will definitely come out next year.

If you're a part of my newsletter (which is free and also comes with a whole novelette for free!) then you already know that Gemini Drifter, the second book in the Gemini Man series, now has a cover and is nearly ready to launch. Looks pretty good, don't it? In this one, our protagonists go on a bit of a road trip to escape the remnants of their enemy's forces. They soon find themselves in a brand new predicament involving another artifact and a freak named Bloodeater. It gets wild. Expect Gemini Drifter in the very near future.

At the same time, Gemini Outsider, book 3, is in the middle of editing. It's going to be out next year, but it's going to be worth it. This one has a heckuva nasty villain that Jason and Matthew are going to have a hard time putting down. Can they finally escape their fate? You'll just have to see when it comes out in 2022!

But those are books. What about short stories? As I've mentioned before, I'm not prioritizing any form of writing over the other. I want to write anything and everything.

I have stories to come in two anthologies: Pulp Rock (successfully crowdfunded!) and another about modern day sword and sorcery stories. Both of these stories are related to an earlier tale that ran in older issue of StoryHack. That would be Black Dog Bend. Will there be more in this series beyond that? We'll just have to wait and see. No one has really opened up submissions recently and I've got a lot of stories on the docket.

On the other hand, I will also have story in Cirsova next year, my first one! This has been a goal of mine since I first starting reading the magazine five years ago after helping to crowdfund the first issue, and I'm proud to state that in 2022 that I will be published with a number of many great and talented writers that have adorned its pages over the years. My story, Dead Planet Drifter, will be in the summer issue! More on that piece when it comes closer to release. If that title sounds enticing, well, it should. The contents definitely match the title.

In other works, I'm planning on writing more with Y Signal. The original plan was to have three stories to form a greater whole, and that is still the goal. I aim to write, edit, and release all three acts as one collection for you in 2022, specifically for the 25th anniversary of Cultural Ground Zero. This whole project was spurred on by it, after all. Nonetheless, it's currently on the way. Don't worry, it'll be worth the wait!

I also have a non-fiction project I'm working on in the background, which is far different from The Pulp Mindset. For one, I'm planning for this one to have input from others aside from myself. It will also be free. More details on that project when it is much further along than now. As for this year, you can always read my piece in Pulp On Pulp for more non-fiction.

Since I'm going to be focused more on fiction next year I'm also going to get a few more short stories, novellas, and novelettes, done and put them out for you. I have more than a few I've wanted to get to but have never quite had the chance this year. It's been quite chaotic, after all.

However, there is a lot on the way.

My previous collection of stories

And that's what is to look forward to in 2022. This past year has been quite the experience in writing, and it is relieving to have it nearly be over. Time to recharge the batteries a bit. The last thing I want to do is be left with an empty tank.

2021 was not all that bad, though I can't pretend real world events of the last couple of years didn't get in the way of certain plans, but that's how life is. They are certainly not going to stop me from doing what needs to be done. There are plenty of stories left to tell, and I'm going to tell them. No matter how long it might take for me to do so. It's just what I have to do.

So thank you for checking out Wasteland & Sky this year, and I hope to see you again next year for more. I'm not quitting as long as I have a say in it.

We're in the 21st century, after all. The old days have long since been left in the rearview mirror. Might as well start acting liking it!

Don't forget 2021's Brutal Dreams, a book readers have called "A violent, sanity-testing fever dream" among other things!