Death crotch panda

If you live long enough, you bump into decades you imagined in your SF stories.

Back in 2000, I started a story cycle. The premise: In 2008, right after the summer Olympics, Yakuza gangsters plan to trick China into invading Taiwan. The Yakuza sell pirated video games; they want to disrupt the flow of intellectual piracy out of China, crush their Triad competitors in Taiwan, and corner the global market. They're betting the UN and USA will intervene with sanctions, blockades and boycotts but stop short of a shooting war. The Yakuza run the risk of starting W.W. III for the most venal, corrupt and petty of reasons.

There's more to it than that. Shit happens.

It was all based on the assumption that the Clintonian peace of the 1990s had extended past Y2K. It's an era of peace and prosperity. War, in 2008, is unthinkable.

I imagined a satire along the lines of Kornbluth.

I imagined the 2000s would look like the 1990s.

Those fuckers with the boxcutters ruined my plotline.

War is very thinkable now.

Of course, the PRC would never invade Taiwan.

That's unthinkable.