Fantastical Andrew Fox

I’ve made the decision to switch my fund-raising campaign for HAZARDOUS IMAGININGS: The Mondo Book of Politically Incorrect Science Fiction from Kickstarter to a new crowdfunding platform called Freedomfy. I’m looking to raise $4,000.00 by July 5, 2019 to pay for 60,000 words of original, high-quality fiction that addresses today’s social, political, technological, and cultural taboos.

I think it’s extremely important for the health of our society to have a diversified social media and Internet infrastructure. None of us should be satisfied with our social media and Internet semi-monopolies of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google. That’s why when I heard about a brand-new crowdfunding platform, Freedomfy, I was intrigued and wanted to support them. Also, they expressed a great desire to fund creative projects but hadn’t yet had many sign up. Glancing through their catalog of funded projects, I didn’t see any books. I figured that “the early bird gets the worm” – anthologies might be par-for-the-course at Kickstarter (where I wasn’t making much headway), but at Freedomfy, a free-thinkers science fiction anthology might be both novel and very much welcomed. I’m excited to be a trailblazer for creative projects at Freedomfy. I hope that by being a pioneer, I can both encourage other producers of creative content to use the platform and help ensure that Freedomfy thrives as an alternative to the other crowdfunding sites.

HAZARDOUS IMAGININGS: The Mondo Book of Politically Incorrect Science Fiction is intended to help push open the closing Overton Window of what is acceptable to address in science fiction and fantasy. Science fiction’s strength has always been its practitioners’ flexibility of thought. The genre has traditionally provided its creators virtually limitless freedom to extrapolate trends to sometimes ludicrous or horrifying lengths, and to imagine the social, environmental, and psychological changes that might come about when what is impossible today becomes tomorrow’s reality.

Yet science fiction and the indispensable freedom it provides to thinkers to “stress test” the future face an existential threat. Today’s increasingly popular ideologies of intersectionality and “wokeness,” with their accompanying prohibition against the “sin” of cultural appropriation, have done much to smother the freedom of thought and expression science fiction requires to thrive.

Why do I want to get this anthology done? I love science fiction. I have loved the genre in all its forms since before I learned to read. I grew up on a steady diet of Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Vonda McIntyre, Anne McCaffrey, Barry N. Malzberg, and Harlan Ellison. Our society’s present-day drift towards censorship worries me enormously. I’m not speaking of censorship by the government. Rather, the censorship of which I speak is the de-platforming of unpopular ideas by media companies, commercial publishing, and internet content/social media providers. It is the encouragement of self-censorship by shaming mobs — practitioners of “recreational outrage” who take advantage of the new communication platforms, hoping to bully writers and creators into conforming to the mobs’ political and social notions by inciting fears of ostracism that will demolish any hope writers may have of remaining commercially viable in their chosen field.

Science fiction is often called “speculative fiction.” Speculation and extrapolation – asking what if? and why? or how? – is the life’s blood of science fiction. Science fiction writers can’t wrap themselves in yellow CAUTION tape. They need to be free to follow their what ifs? wherever those speculative rabbit-holes may lead… even if they lead to dark, dank, unpleasant places.

So I hope you’ll join me in re-opening science fiction’s closing Overton Window by donating to or helping spread the word about HAZARDOUS IMAGININGS: The Mondo Book of Politically Incorrect Science Fiction.