(urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

[David Stockhoff]

Well put.

It occurs to me, as an aside, that Arthur C Clarke also wrote quite a 
bit about mega-technology and human imperial expansion, but he was (as a 
Brit) plainly very critical of such empires, unlike Heinlein, who was 
more libertarian than liberal, but whose work may have been 
misinterpreted as being more straightforwardly supportive of empire (due 
to its strain of militarism) vs Clarke's, and certainly of capitalism.

Somehow it doesn't surprise me to think that Wolfe may have 
misinterpreted Anarres as a if-only-Stalin-was-a-nice-guy fantasy. 
Observation of Communism even before it collapsed led many people to be 
skeptical of socialism and anarchism, which are related but very 
different systems, and which have long been confused by Americans. 
Anarres is bad enough, but it lacks the authoritarian element.

On 5/1/2011 10:27 AM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>> From: James Wynn<crushtv at gmail.com>
> ...
>
>> Honestly, I was only attempting to consider SF literature from the POV of
>> what I think were Wolfe's problems with 'The Dispossessed'. The
>> counter-argument could be "Oh, then Wes Craven's 'Halloween' is just a Crime
>> Thriller with a supernatural killer", or "Star Wars is just King Arthur with
>> extra shiny swords".
>>
>> But if one see SF (as Wolfe here is arguing it should be IMO) as an
>> opportunity to put Reality on trial to better understand its limits, then
>> "ST" falls short.
> I think you're right about what Wolfe is arguing, but it's interesting that he
> divides things up the way he does.  Lots of Americans take it as axiomatic that
> liberal one-adult-one-vote capitalism is the best possible organization of
> society--probably far more than the number who take it as axiomatic that
> supernatural powers don't affect our lives.  TD (and ST) try to put that
> political assumption on trial, convict it, send it to the oubliette, and hire an
>
> aquastor to replace it.  For Wolfe, though, TD is a realistic Updike novel about
>
> a college professor, maybe because what it puts on trial isn't fundamental
> enough, in his view.
>
>
>> Jerry Friedman:
>>
>>> Both /The Dispossessed/ and /Starship Troopers/ had to be SF because they're
>>> about societies that have never existed.
>> Wolfe's comment was:
>>
>> "It was about the college professor who's married to a college professor,
>> only science fiction, and this planet is Russia and this planet is the
>> United States."
>>
>> Wolfe is saying that *really* the societies are *not* intended to be ones
>> that have never existed. We're supposed to see that they are actually quite
>> close.
> Supposed by Le Guin?  Hardly.  The counterpart of the Soviet Union in TD is the
> nation of Thu, the America-like nation's rival on Urras.  Anarres is obviously
> different from the Soviet Union.  If Wolfe thought the planet of Anarres was
> Russia, he totally misunderstood the book.  The best way I can understand his
> comment is an oblique criticism, something like "Le Guin meant Anarres to be
> different from the USSR, but actually it's the same in crucial ways."  Or "The
> supposedly stable anarchy of Anarres would soon degenerate into a
> dictatorship that differs from the USSR only in the names of its supposed
> principles."
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
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