(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[David Stockhoff]

On 4/10/2012 4:02 PM, Thomas Bitterman wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 9:35 PM, Nick Lee <starwaterstrain at gmail.com 
> <mailto:starwaterstrain at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     "The crazy right-wing politics. There’s the North American Union, with
>     its single currency. There’s the European Union, where thieves get
>     their hands cut off because of sharia. There’s the UN, which always
>     takes the sides of the poor nations of the world instead of the NAU."
>
>     This childlike view of politics is creeping into all reviews of Wolfe
>     now.
>
>
> Because Wolfe keeps sneaking politics into his works. What effect did 
> the existence of sharia law in Europe really have in the story? It was 
> just another thing for the narrator/author avatar to grouse about. And 
> he goes on and on about this and that, until one wishes the hijackers 
> would just get off this guy's lawn so we could get back to the story.

I took it as an explanation of why Europe was not worth looking to for 
help. As a comparison, /The Hunger Games/ doesn't explain why the reader 
can forget about expecting interference from outside North America. The 
answer is implied but there's still a void. Wolfe at least explains.
>
>     "The tech illiteracy. The setting is Earth, in a resource-poor
>     near-future. Our protagonist has a cellphone, but nobody else seems
>     to, and from what we see in the half of the book I read, it’s just a
>     phone. Websites exist, but there’s no sign of social networking. When
>     pirates hijack an enormous, luxurious cruise ship, the protagonists
>     talk for a while as if there’s a possibility of keeping the news under
>     wraps, as if there wouldn’t have been hundreds of people tweeting “OMG
>     pirates!” within ten seconds of the first shots being fired. When the
>     protagonists talk (via some kind of video-phone communication) with
>     the authorities on shore, they argue a bit over the location of the
>     ship, as if there’s no such thing as GPS. The whole thing could’ve
>     been written in the 1970s."
>
>     And here he turns ageist. Why is everyone on board with the idea that
>     in the future we can have more technology but never the idea we will
>     have less? 
>
>
> Perhaps because we have relativistic rocket ships fighting an 
> interplanetary war? That would seem to indicate that GPS technology 
> would be well within our grasp. An author writing a book set in the 
> non-apocalyptic, non-Singularity near future (where Home Fires would 
> appear to be set) should take pains to cover his bases when using 
> tech. Wolfe doesn't. Even a single throw-away line to the effect of 
> "These pirates were no amateurs - their jammers left us electronically 
> isolated" would have been enough.
>
>     There are fewer cell phones because we're running out of helium and
>     silver, among other things.
>
>
> We can figure out giant spaceships, but not how to make cell phones 
> differently? Again, a single sentence ("The government used its 
> wartime powers to severely restrict cell phones") would have done it.

There's a war on and resources are short. Some high tech is available 
(for the rich). Much is not, including consumer electronics. I'm 
sympathetic to your point, but Wolfe did the same thing in /There Are 
Doors/. The reader is just supposed to figure out an apparent Opposite 
World. Why should it be our future anyway?