I was born in the year of the first Super Bowl, the beginning of USA’s Department of Transportation, Roger Ebert’s first film review, Soyuz 1, Che Guevara was captured and executed, the first issue of Rolling Stone was published, and I’m pretty sure most kids today are mystified as to what those things are.
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I started early on the Stephen King. In high school. But it wasn’t enough, soon I was onto the harder gear.
Someone said try this new stuff from Europe, Clive Barker and James Herbert.
I was hooked.
I started reading any trash I could get my hands on, just to get a fix.
At some point in the early 90s, I woke up on a dirty mattress in a room with a pile of Gor novels next to me and realised I had to make some changes in my life.
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Xennial - or at least a milennial who hangs around Gen Xers too much 
I got into James Herbert a little too young, rather than Stephen King. One of King’s movies came out in the 00’s, and the book was a bag of shite so I never really got into his work.
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You’re my sister’s age; I never did the math before.
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I just realized, another author did even more damage to the psyches of Gen X pre-adolescent males:
Clive Cussler.
Gods, those books are total crap, but we boys grew up reading Raise The Titanic! and other stories like that. Pure macho fantasy bullshit, and there were a lot of similar authors whose names I gratefully can no longer recall. I mean, Ian Fleming was schlock, but the pulp thrillers of the 1970s were the pinnacle of toxic masculine fantasies. And we young, impressional boys ate it up. At least, those of us who went to the town’s public library did.
Stephen King was at least good for interesting twists and turns. And books like The Dead Zone did get me thinking back then. I admit, I have some respect for the man, mainly because he is honest about being an asshole in the past, and keeps trying not to be one.
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Honestly, I think Tom Clancy did a lot more damage than Clive Cussler. At least Cussler was decidedly civilian in his outlook. His hero is a scientist who works for a civilian research organisation with goals of exploration and research (even if he isn’t above killing people in the line of duty) and his supporting cast are people like a gourmand maritime historian and an actually idealistic congresswoman (even if, as you say, the portrayal of women is very much of its time). Clancy on the other hand wrote pure military-worshipping national chauvinistic neo-con fanfic. His supporting cast are special forces operators and CIA agents.
If you bought into Clive Cussler’s macho bullshit you became a marine biologist or offshore ROV technician, if you bought into Clancy’s, you joined the military or grew a beard and opened a special-forces themed coffee chain.
(This is from a millennial who has the benefit of hindsight, although I did read both as an impressionable youth as well, as you can probably tell)
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And for the F/SF inclined GenXer, there’s the damage caused by starting with Tolkien, then in desperation raiding the school library for Terry Brooks, David Eddings, and Piers Anthony.
Or starting with Heinlein, then ending up with Jack Chalker and Piers Anthony.
For some reasons, my school libraries had full collections of Heinlein, Niven, Brooks, Eddings and Oh My God so much Piers Anthony, but I had to find Banks, Philip K. Dick, Zelazny, and Brunner by myself.
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Good point(s) but Cussler is still worse. Gives people totally unrealistic ideas about technology. Is probably disproportionately responsible for a whole crop of douchey techbro dudes.
And while we’re at it, don’t even get me started on Dan Brown.
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Point taken, although I hope it inspired an OceanX or Schmidt Ocean Institute (putting techbro and capital investor money to good use in furthering science and exploring the ocean) for every failed startup.
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Now you’ve made me wonder about OceanGate…
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Wasn’t that just an opportunity to disrupt an overly regulated field?
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Is 15 too young for IT? I read it around that time. It scared the hell out of me to the point I slept with the light on for two weeks and I didn’t live anywhere near a sewer… I guess just answered my own question.
I read Eye of the Dragon a year or two earlier, but that was a fairly tame book.
For me, it was the Clive Barker’s Great and Secret Show. I was 14/15 and there were a handful of moments in that one where I thought, “I probably shouldn’t be reading this.”
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I’m getting the impression here that many of our active mutants are in their late 50s.
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I’d say between their mid-40s to their late 50s… but…
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Rolling Stone is still around online, of course, but that got me thinking about newspapers. I’m sure the GenZs know what they are (there are still free ones around) but those of us a little older not only got our news that way, but lived in a whole culture of freely available paper. Everyone had a stack of newspapers that were not only handy for the proverbial wrapping of fish, but for painting projects, a place to put your wet boots, training a puppy, papier-mâché projects, insulation, packing material, etc. etc. The overflow you packed in bundles for the Scouts’ annual paper drive.
Papers were delivered by paper boys (sometimes girls) every kid’s first job. For those who didn’t subscribe there were street corner kiosks that sold a huge selection, or sidewalk boxes.
As recently as the 1960s newspaper boxes looked like this. You put a coin in the little cash box and took a paper—all on the honour system.
I hate to go all curmudgeonly, and I’ll take today over previous eras any time. But it makes me wonder what we have lost in terms of trust and the social contract.
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When you set out for Ithaka
Hope your journey is a long one…
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
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I think I know that feeling. I’m working on a big yard project, moving tons (tens of tons, if I’m being literal) of earth and stone. The location means it all has to be done by hand, and the expense of hiring it out means if I want to get it done, I have to do it myself. After a summer of sweat, I’m more fit than I’ve been in ten or fifteen years.
At the end of the day, I’m tired and sore and ready for the work to end. But after the sun goes down and I can relax and recover, I find myself unsatisfied. I want to do, and move, and strain, and achieve.
I hope you take some time to recover, and then I hope you find your next journey - whether that’s literal or the next challenge that you set for yourself.
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Oh yeah, I remember the days we got both a morning paper and an evening paper! And who remembers snack delivery services like Charles’ Chips?
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Heck, I remember daily milk and bread delivery.
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You mean Renowned Author Dan Brown?
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