Editorial – June 2020: Medical heroes.

Hello everyone

It is a notable fact that in fiction, the hero tends to be of reasonable health. All right, in Science Fiction, we have cyborgs who have been rebuilt to be better than they were before but essentially the same thing applies. An unwell hero is hardly likely to be appealing and the illness itself tends to be either an issue or a crucial point into solving the plot. A blind heroine comes into her own against a killer when there is no light is seen as a necessary equaliser and a cliché. In general, though, the physically sick hero or heroine, at most, can only be effective for one story, rarely more. Equally, the lead character infected with a potentially terminal illness and on a limited number of hours to find the antidote is also a means to an ends. Stories such as these come up as a generational thing as they rarely stick in the population’s mind for long.

In real life, heroism is generally regarded as doing things beyond the call of duty, putting one’s own life in danger to save others and even dying fatally from such actions. We rarely have happy endings or see what happens next. For novels, its more of knowing when to cut-off and allow the reader to think they lived happily ever after. Real life heroics shows the grieving process for the families but it doesn’t necessarily follow that other people can deeply understand this.

Heroism can be attributed to all the medical staff and assisting functionaries in contact with a potentially fatal disease like corvid-19 when they continually put their own lives at risk to treat those infected. Such people don’t go to work thinking they are doing heroic acts. For them, it is their personal survival and ensuring that they don’t return home as potential carriers that could infect their own families. Being infected themselves is the last thing they want. A demonstration of true heroism.

The value of any heroic act is going beyond duty and risking one’s own life to save someone else. No wonder self-sacrifice is so high in the list of qualities of heroism. It should also make us re-think our thoughts as to what constitutes being a hero or heroine.

Any fictional hero or heroine is obviously going to pale in comparison to such acts of bravery and quite rightly so. No doubt when isolation is gone, publishers, TV and film studios are likely to portray medical staff in works of ‘true-to-life’ or composite fiction, although I suspect the real people would rather see something more fictional away from their working lives which they no doubt find routine rather than spiced with danger through the unnecessary lack of the right medical protection.

This doesn’t mean their acts of bravery are forgotten but it does mean we really should be better prepared next time. Protection of such heroes and heroines is the main thing that should be given to them. Without that, where would we be?

Thank you, take care, good night and keep your distance, we haven’t reached the second spike yet.

Geoff Willmetts

editor: www.SFCrowsnest.info

 

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Observation: Keeping with the same film, wouldn’t it also have made sense to have told Schaffer that they were also going to rescue Jim Harper’s Green Beret team as an added incentive. After all, technically they were his back-up team once they were sent in.

Observation: The 1966 Batmobile has a flaming exhaust. It certainly has nothing to do with propulsion but after a think, I decided what it really does is burn up any of its famed bat-nuclear fuel rather than contaminate the citizens of Gotham City.

Feeling Stressed: It’s better than getting the corvid-19 virus.