Science Fiction has always defined some aspect of my life, and so it isn’t surprising that I’d find references to it in everyday life. As a writer working within the genre, and as a reader who commonly enjoys the emotional and intellectual rigors of that genre, I’ve come to learn that Science Fiction (and its close cousins: Fantasy and Horror) represent something that can be called Literary in a broader sense of the word: it must be interpreted as it doesn't tell you (in some clunky thesis statement in the first paragraph) what it's all about. Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror are literary, not because of the particular, almost acrobatic skill required in writing good stories within those genres, but because they depend—at their very core—on a particular, unfettered way of perceiving and then expressing that perception in ways that other people can understand. Mainstream literature: everything from that pretentious “Literary Fiction” to the “realistic” genres of Detective Fiction, Romance, Historical Fiction, and the much-beloved Mystery genre do not rely on a particularly shifted viewpoint: they are genres of fiction firmly rooted in the assumptions we make of the world around us, and as such, they resolve themselves in expected ways: the cop gets the criminal, the guy and his girlfriend get laid, um...I mean, married, the money/treasure/cashier's check falls into the right hands, end of story, all is right in the world. They don’t change our minds, they don’t make us doubt the authenticity of what we perceive, usually by revealing a sucker-punch ending. With Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, readers (and writers) are required to surrender to the unknown. Before you read the first page of a science fictional story, you must leave your assumptions at the door and be ready to have the foundations of your world view fundamentally shaken—if the writer is good enough to be able to do that. I didn’t truly expect a piece of graffiti to do what good science fiction does, but the graffiti in question was probably produced by a reader of science fiction. SF symbolism abounds in the work in question. TH.HQ2 is the companion to a piece simply called “Hybrid”…and where “Hybrid” (shown earlier in my gallery) echoes an Africanized version of one of Frank Herbert’s blue-within-blue eyed Fremen. Mrs. TH.HQ2, bears a striking resemblance to Zephram Cochraine’s assistant, Lilly, as depicted in: Star Trek: First Contact. I doubt that Lilly and a Fremen warrior actually reside on a particular, weathered wall on the South Side of Chicago, but I do find it amusing that an urban image could echo the general science fictional realm so easily. I am amused at the fact that a bit of wall-scrawl has done (to me, at least) what Science Fiction does. It gave me pause and made me actually stop and think. I had to examine the image in front of me in order to find out what it was. This image (to me) is to graffiti what Science Fiction is to the written word. I rather like that! But then, Science Fiction is actually a way of seeing things, and so it’s no surprise that a SF writer would stop and gawk at a piece of graffiti, and wonder what strange new worlds might reside within the imagery. (Exotic ideas come from non-exotic sources, after all!) This image is actually the other half of “Hybrid” posted a few pages back in my gallery. The very edges of “Hybrid” are visible on the right side of this image, and “Hybrid” itself can be seen HERE. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week and a drier, more temperate evening than Chicago is currently enduring, um, I mean, experiencing.