(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[David Stockhoff]

On 4/9/2012 8:43 PM, Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 7:52 PM, Gerry Quinn<gerry at bindweed.com>  wrote:
>> Is a single North American currency such a right wing concept as all that?
>> Nobody calls one a Nazi for favouring European monetary union – quite the
>> opposite, if anything.  Personally, I don’t really care what currency I hold
>> so long as it is hard and fungible.
> It's a right-wing concept in the same way as writing a story in which
> the literal Antichrist takes over the UN and uses it to prosecute his
> Satanic designs is right-wing. Which is to say, a caricature of it is
> feared and predicted by right-wing nuts to a degree far beyond the
> support the actual idea has in any circles, left or right (especially
> after the Eurozone has proved to be such a mixed blessing, the
> Canadians have not the slightest interest in a unified economic zone).
>
> It is comparable to things in left-wing circles like anti-vaxxers or
> many conspiracy theories during the Bush administration like 9/11
> Truthers or Alternet posters convinced the government was setting up
> concentration camps for liberals.
>
> If I read an ostensibly apolitical novel set in 2020 in which
> President Romney incarcerated all employees of the DNC and major
> donors, mentioned in an side as a mere background detail without
> extenuating circumstances like parody, I'd regard the author as a
> little bit unhinged, for such a detail is so mindbogglingly bad
> worldbuilding that it must reflect the author's own crankery.

Sure, but what about an sf novel?

I took the setting as a type of alternative universe, where many things 
went down just a bit differently from our own---basically the entire 
second half of the 20th century. But the future is different too, mostly 
because of the war. As a result, cultural and economic progress was 
stifled. There's no need to blame any of this on either "wing": I can 
see the damage of rampant post-soviet-style "privatization" as well as 
paralyzing social stratification of rich and poor. I doubt anyone 
planned it this way, which may be part of the point (i.e., unintended 
consequences).

I can also understand interpreting it as the ravings of an out-of-touch 
writer past his prime, in the style of Heinlein. Wolfe might indeed be a 
bit out of touch---it's hard to keep up, and how would one incorporate 
Twitter into sf anyway? And who would want to?

But Wolfe likes to play with conventions, tropes, and expectations way 
too much for me to believe that theory.