A4 - Friday, May 25, 1984 - North Shore News

On writings and wrongs

NE OF THE NICE THINGS about writing
for a living is that it keeps you humble,

believe it or not.

Oh, 1 don’t mean the ego
dissolves. Obviously not. No
ego, no opinions. No op.-
nions, nothing to say.
Nothing to say, nothing to
write. No paycheque.

I’ve been writing since |
was 12 years old. That is, |
started scribbling = science-
fiction novels in notebooks
when I was supposed to be
doing other things in class.
The stories were pretty much
what you'd expect.

A 12-year-old hero is kid-

handy niche and spend the
rest of your life in a state of
vague anxiety.

Anyway, since that first
published article ( an
obituary, by the way) I've
had roughly two and a half
million words published: 352
newspaper stories, 87
magazine articles, 1200 col-
umns and seven books. |!
guess you don’t count scripts.

As it happens, my mother
(Hi, Mom!) kept copies of
absolutely everything. <A

Strictly

personal

by Bob Hunter

napped by a passing space
ship and taken to the heart of
the Galactic Empire where he
is embroiled in an apocalyp-
tic battle which ends in the
total destruction of the
cosmos ... except for you-
know-who and God.

I sul have copies of those
early efforts. A million words
later, I finally got published.
1 was lucky. Not because |
got published, although that
was Okay too, but because |
knew so early what | wanted
to do.

If you don’t have a goal,
you'll just drift into some

while ago, she handed this
massive collection of scrap-
books over to me. efid iuere

it all was. ”
My opinions over 30 years.
- Thankfully, nobody but

my mother and | have ever
looked at all this stuff. If she
stays on my side, she won't
tell anybody. But, gee, it’s
embarassing.

Of course, if 1 thought |!
could get away with it, |
could go through this pile of
pontifications and come up
with any number of accurate
predicuons. In effect, 1 was
the million monkeys banging

at the typewriter all by
myself. How could | miss?

But what is really sobering,
glancing through this, ah,
material, is just how much |
was dead wrong about.

For openers, generally
speaking, the fact that the
sky hasn't fallen is the main
thing | was wrong about. So
far. But there were a lot of
other things.

I specifically predicted the
rise Of something called the
‘*new consciousness’’ to posi-
tions of political power by
this decade. Ho, ho. Ho.
Although, you know, maybe
I was right after all. The only
mistake was that. the new
consciousness would prove to
be neo-neanderthalism. .

] thought the nuclear fami-
ly would be finished by now.
Instead, nearly everybody |
know seems to be into having
babies. Fidelity is the rage.
The divorce rate is actually
dropping.

1 was absolutely convinc-
ed, back in the late Sixties,
that the American Empire
was finished. Instead, Ronnie

Reagan comes along and
launches Star Wars. Some
finish.

Quebec would break away.
Ah yes. It was ‘‘inevitable.’’
As it is now, we couldn’t get
rid of them if we_ tried.
What’s the latest fad? French
immersion.

Canadian political parties
would all merge into a single,
unified environmental force.
What do we get? All-party
agreements in the House of
Commons to bash seal pups.

Speaking of that sort of
thing, get this one. By the
Eighties, environmentalism
would have become the ma-
jor political force in B.C. Go

‘a

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Mass communications
would transform the next
generation (the one now com-
ing On stream) into mental
wizards. What can I say? It

takes my breath away, too.
It’s not that | need to tell
anyone that my viewpoints
have a built-in fallability fac-
tor. Certainly not Mom. It’s
just that every once in a while

(usually in a locked
bathroom) I fantasize that I
have some sort of handle on
“*da truth.”’

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