(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[Gwern Branwen]

On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 9:41 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:
> 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?

I don't think 'prime' has anything to do with it. This is just
ordinary mind-killing politics. Since people are intent on defending
Wolfe, let me give a liberal example where one could equally claim 'oh
it's just all SF! or alternate history!' (but so terrible SF that
chalking it up to politics is the *charitable* interpretation): the
story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Traders

Fulltext: http://www4.ncsu.edu/%7Emseth2/com417s12/readings/BellSpaceTraders.pdf

I commented (http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/r2334/the_space_traders_et_offers_amazing_technology_in/c42h1ab)

> It was [terribly written]. The author gets in all sorts of political gibes and doesn't even try to hide his ax to grind - the aliens are probably going to eat or enslave the blacks, the whites stand condemned forever for selling them, the Republican president & cabinet (note the oh-so-subtle description pointing that way) are scum, etc. This is just a fine example of [Politics and Awful Art](http://lesswrong.com/lw/m3/politics_and_awful_art/).
>
> A good fable hides its beliefs: you genuinely don't know what the author thinks is right and so you have to think for yourself. For example, in [Ted Chiang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang)'s [excellent](http://lesswrong.com/lw/536/open_thread_april_2011/3thd) ["Hell is the Absence of God"](http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/hell.html), by the end you are disturbed and perplexed but you genuinely don't know what Chiang makes of the Book of Job, the theodicy, or whether the ending is good or bad.

On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 11:21 PM, Matthew Knight <jacobeiserman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> However, I'm currently 100 pages into "Home Fires," and I must say that the
> "sharia law--only in the EU" line punched me in the gut.  It made me start
> asking myself which particular pundits Wolfe has been reading.  As somebody
> who grew up in a very monoethnic fundamentalist Christian milieu, who now
> has several Middle Eastern friends, I have been finding myself forced into
> the role of the "defender of Islam" all too often lately out of basic
> frustration over some of the bald-faced generalizations and lies that get
> peddled as fact, and Europe's Islamic future is a meme that keeps coming up
> in discussions.  Maybe it's just personal experience making me
> oversensitive.

Quoted for truth. You might also find interesting a story of sorts by
SF author Dan Simmons
http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_04.htm and his discussion
of it http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message/2006_05.htm

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net