I was a big into science fiction when I was (much) younger: Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark, Richard Matheson. I didn’t get to Philip K. Dick until much later. But there I was, thinking about all those utopian and dystopian futures in paperback. So now, I am ripe.

That photo of a black hole. Out there in space. Looking like, well, a black hole ready to swallow anything and everything, the universe. Of which we are a part. Even though we like to think we’re all self-sufficient and full of capabilities to run in at the last minute and save our little old planet, we’re really just here whirling on the outside edge of an extremely unimportant galaxy at a very dusty, blurry, and extremely cold and far edge of the known universe. 

Whirling toward oblivion. This time it’s not the comet coming to splash down and annihilate us like a pack of unruly dinosaurs. This time it’s our very own greenhouse gases and our own fossil fuel greed—truly the more more MORE that seems to be one of the hallmarks of our species.

And now, The Mushroom That’s Eating Us Alive! It’s all very New York Post.As if our imaginations didn’t have enough negatorious stuff to dwell on, here we are with the reality of our hospitals passing along the news that there’s a new fungus that is resistant to all our best medicines, a fungus that seems to have mutated and kills people, in hospitals. I really can’t think about this too much. I live in NYC, and we’re all crammed together, hurtling through dark tunnels, trying to find our own cubic inches of oxygen… you see what I mean! 

And, well, you get where I’m going. Perhaps where we’re all going. All this and I’m not mentioning the anti-vaxxers who are bringing back measles in what could be epidemic proportions. And let us not forget the continuous undercurrent of the Daily Reality Show Next Steps in Destroying Democracy. There must be an upside to this “living in interesting times” thing we’re inhabiting. Please tell me when you find it. I need some.