Sunset Cocktail: H.G. Wells on Science Fiction Day
2 oz Burnside Oregon Oaked Bourbon
1 oz Dolin de Chambery Dry Vermouth
1/2 oz Butterfly Absinthe
2 dashes Bitter Truth Old Time Aromatic Bitters
Stir everything with ice and strain into an ice filled Old Fashioned Glass
Happy February 2nd, it’s Science Fiction Day. It’s also my mother’s birthday, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Lastly, February 2nd is also Groundhog Day and that little bastard saw his shadow this morning predicting six more weeks of winter. #notmygroundhog
While Science Fiction Day itself isn’t a drinking holiday, I see no reason why we can’t toast to those visionaries of Science Fiction who have inspired us and challenged us to see things with new eyes. In this bleak political climate people are rushing to catch up on their favorite old time dystopian fiction. I personally haven’t really liked much of the new dystopian fiction, especially the young adult subgenre as I feel as they’re far less of a glimpse into possible, terrible futures and more about symbolically defying parental figures and dealing with hormones. How can you tell I’m getting old..?
Authors like Aldous Huxley, Ira Levin, Ray Bradbury, and George Orwell all gave us cautionary glimpses into the future with books like Brave new World, This Perfect Day, Fahrenheit 451, and Nineteen Eighty Four respectively, but H.G. Wells filled out that genre of admonitory projection and dystopian joy. Stories like The Time Machine, The Sleeper Wakes, The Shape of Things to Come tagged along with his some good monstrous fun like War of the Worlds, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, and The Island of Doctor Moreau which were also cautionary tales of progress, ethics and obsession.
H.G. was a forward thinker in the context of his day and he had a hell of a moustache. I hoped I could trace my family line to his but it doesn’t seem to. I’m not related to either of the two master storytellers who separately made such an impact with War of the Worlds long before I was born, H.G. nor Orson… who spells his name wrong.
