Thinking about the terror that Bush Jr. is about to unleash on the world tonight and the doomsday scenarios that may follow, I wondered — don’t laugh — whether the cautionary capacity to envision a radically different world, either post-apocalyptic or at least post-American, that seems so lacking in current strategic planning might bear some relationship to early exposure to speculative fiction. A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller, Neville Shute’s On the Beach, Brave New World and 1984 of course, Asimov’s Foundation and, decades later, Delaney, Brunner, Zelazny are some of the formative things that come to mind for me. I’m sure you have your own list…

I’m pretty sure that Bush, since his intellectual limitations begin with — although are probably not limited to — dyslexia, never read any science fiction, but might we correlate the nature of the global vision of other U.S. Presidents or world leaders to their embrace of literature considering alternative futures? Does any reader have a clue about which 20th century Presidents might have read science fiction and related genres, if any? (It might be broadly inimical to choosing a career in politics and, arguably, American foreign policy decision making is largely not shaped by global vision at all…) Who might have had a close relationship with a science fiction writer, if any? (I know the reactionary Jerry Pournelle fancies himself a Presidential advisor, I mean other than him…)

For that matter, which American presidents or world leaders were shaped by serious literary pursuits, which might be expected to bear some relationship with ‘thinking outisde the box’, at all? Which did more than lip service to the influence of poetry?