- Joined
- May 19, 2018
But the big issue with Marx is that people keep mistaking it for nonfiction.Well that would kind of be a description of Marx.... (and his fiction writing is still winning awards)
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But the big issue with Marx is that people keep mistaking it for nonfiction.Well that would kind of be a description of Marx.... (and his fiction writing is still winning awards)
That 'story' is on some other level of cringe. Reads like being conquered by Islam is his fetish.Sci-fi writers tend to be either left wing jewish parasites writing about how we need to form a one world government and evolve into a commie hive mind or right wing fascists/libertarians writing about how we need to murder all homosexuals.
Anyone remember this story by Dan Simmons?
TLDR: It's about a time traveler from a future where Islam has conquered America
“You can’t have a war with Islam,” I said. “You can’t go to war against a religion. Radical Islam, maybe. Jihadism. Some extremists. But not a . . . the . . . religion itself. The vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceloving people who wish us no harm. I mean . . . I mean . . . the very word ‘Islam’ means ‘Peace.’”
“So you kept telling yourselves,” said the Time Traveler. His voice was very low but there was a strange and almost frightening edge to it. “But the ‘peace’ in ‘Islam’ means ‘Submission.’ You’ll find that out soon enough”
“Let’s imagine,” said the Time Traveler, “that on December eighth, Nineteen forty-one, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke before a joint session of Congress and asked them to declare war on aviation.”
“That’s absurd,” I said.
“Is it?” asked the Time Traveler. “The American battleships, cruisers, harbor installations, Army barracks, and airfields at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere in Hawaii were all struck by Japanese aircraft. Imagine if the next day Roosevelt had declared war on aviation . . . threatening to wipe it out wherever we found it. Committing all the resources of the United States of America to defeating aviation, so help us God.”
“That’s just stupid,” I said. If I’d ever been afraid of this Time Traveler, I wasn’t now. He was obviously a mental defective.“The planes, the Japanese planes,” I said, “were just a method of attack . . . a means . . . it wasn’t aviation that attacked us at Pearl Harbor, but the Empire of Japan. We declared war on Japan and a few days later its ally, Germany, lived up to its treaty with the Japanese and declared war on us. If we’d declared war on aviation, on goddamned airplanes rather than the empire and ideology that launched them, we’d never have . . .”
I stopped. What had he called it? Category Error. Making the problem unsolvable through your inability – or fear – of defining it correctly.
The Time Traveler rose so quickly that I flinched back in my chair, but he only refilled his Scotch. This time he refilled my glass as well. “You probably should give a damn” he said softly. “ In 2006, you’ll be ripping and tearing at yourselves so fiercely that your nation – the only one on Earth actually fighting against resurgent caliphate Islam in this long struggle over the very future of civilization – will become so preoccupied with criticizing yourselves and trying to gain short-term political advantage, that you’ll all forget that there’s actually a war for your survival going on. Twenty-five years from now, every man or woman in America who wishes to vote will be required to read Thucydides on this matter. And others as well. And there are tests. If you don’t know some history, you don’t vote . . . much less run for office. America’s vacation from knowing history ends very soon now . . . for you, I mean. And for those few others left alive in the world who are allowed to vote.”
Jesus God. Did I want to hear such words about 2006 and the rest of the 21st Century from the Time Traveler?
“Ahmadenijad,” he said softly. “Natanz. Arak. Bushehr. Ishafan. Bonab. Ramsar.”
“Those words don’t mean a damned thing to me,” I said as I scribbled them down phonetically. “Where are they? What are they?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” said the Time Traveler.
“Are you talking about . . . what? . . . the next fifteen or twenty years?” I said.
“I’m talking about the next fifteen or twenty months from your now,” he said softly. “Do you want more words?”
I didn’t. But I couldn’t speak just then.
“General Seyed Reza Pardis,” intoned the Time Traveler. “Shehab-one, Shehab-two, Shehab-three. Tel Aviv. Baghdad International Airport, Al Salem U.S. airbase in Kuwait, Camp Dawhah U.S. Army base in Kuwait, al Seeb U.S. airbase in Oman, al Udeid U.S. Army and Air Force base in Qatar. Haifa. Beir-Shiva. Dimona.”
“Oh, fuck,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.” I had no clue as to who or what Shehab One, Two, or Three might be, but the context and litany alone made me want to throw up.
“This is just the beginning,” said the Time Traveler.
“Wasn’t the beginning on September 11, 2001?” I managed through numb lips.
The one-eyed scarred man shook his head. “Historians in my time know that it began on June 5, 1968,” he said. “But it hasn’t really begun for you yet. For any of you.”
hell, one I'd love to see torn down to size is NK Jemisin, who SFWA has DESPERATELY tried to turn into the new face of the genre, despite middling sales and one of the most toxic personalities in publishing.
That's essentially what happens in Star Trek (which I used to believe was a good thing). A more obscure example of that is the My Teacher Is an Alien series by Bruce Coville, where the main theme is really that Earthlings are meant to be a collective hivemind species, and the ills of the species come from the separation.writing about how we need to form a one world government and evolve into a commie hive mind
Also the site that was atThe Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Cliches (a list from Nov 1, 1997)
http://www.erols.com/vansickl/cliche.htm
seems rather "politically correct" for 2000.Hardly. One of the biggest scandals in American political history and in living memory is whether or not a womanizer got a blow job in the oval office. Trump was a mole hill blown up into a mountain.Though to be fair the whole Trump era was an alarming circus for normies used to a G-Man looking dude behind the lectern. All the grab em by the pussy, whores and
"weird fucking crowds" What?YMCA dancing rallies with the weird fucking crowds
Martin skews leftie. The average American didn't give a shit about trump. Didn't think he was a goose stepping Nazi. No matter how much the media screamed otherwise. Martin has compared trump to King Joffrey, said trump was an awful human being and incapable of redemption. Only lefties found the Trump presidency to be outrageous or scary.GRRM does skew normie.
A more obscure example of that is the My Teacher Is an Alien series by Bruce Coville, where the main theme is really that Earthlings are meant to be a collective hivemind species, and the ills of the species come from the separation.
The series came out quite awhile before Current Year took off though. Like around 1990.Is nothing sacred?
Lovecraft for one. For most of his life he never had a real job and was bankrolled by his mother and later his wifeHow many Lovecraft, Howard, or Tolkien equivalents have the backstory "rich parents let them stay in school till they were 27, and they spent the time doing writers' workshops and networking until they started getting given awards for ticking the right demographic boxes despite selling basically nothing?"
Lovecraft for one. For most of his life he never had a real job and was bankrolled by his mother and later his wife
His wife had to sent him an allowance when he was living in New York. Later he moved in with some aunt of his.He wasn't bankrolled by his mother post-childhood, since she was insane and his marriage was very short-lived and didn't involve any bankrolling either given that his letters note that it took six months of him living in New York before he could afford a stove. Plus Lovecraft actually had to sell his work, since sci-fi and horror publishing in his time wasn't exactly a profitable business and couldn't afford charity cases.
"weird fucking crowds" What?
Martin skews leftie. The average American didn't give a shit about trump. Didn't think he was a goose stepping Nazi.
There's a very small-c conserviative idea of what a democratic-nation politician is like, generally - not much of a personality, very low key and yet removing them does not in any way diminish the entire mechanism of The State and The Nation (a bit like Hydra). Then there's the showboating populist that is very much associated with emerging nations - a personality so HUGE that if they were to leave, the system itself suffers a severe failure (and this is not only Trump, Obama had the same fan-worship as well)
We are used to seeing crowds of people in the Middle East going off on whatever grievance they might have against the West, but its quite a cognitive dissonance to see that same passion in western crowds. And whenever the USA gets a centipede in their underpants about anything, the rest of the Western world gets dragged along with it. So yeah, for the rest of us the whole thing was funny like a drunken uncle, but you knew that at some stage all the ho-ho jolliness might turn serious.
Anyway, to get back on topic, GRRM hasn't entirely skewed so left that he is immune to the ire of all the racism/sexism/etc identity crusaders. I'm not from the USA, so in my cultural mindset he is pretty centrist/normie. It's probably why GoT was so successful internationally, there wasn't an overt agenda there, nor did the text have to be so altered because an agenda didn't fit the current *message* (as with Wheel of Time and Halo.)
OK more on topic: @BlankSpaceBaby mentioned Piers Anthony and they are a fucking trip when it comes to weird fetish SF books. 11 year old me didn't know what the fuck they were reading when it came to some weird ghost of Cyrano De Bergerac living up some dude's ass. (Or was it a lady? I've blanked it. The cover helpfully showed a snake-thing with a leering face)
Also why was the local library allowing children to check out MAKE US HAPPY ? - it was like 1984 with sex-pests. I honestly have not seen anything in the current banned book lists that approaches this weirdness.
The first three books are "real neat", involving as they do a singularly interesting and creative premise. By the fourth, however, his misanthropic streak rises from his psyche like Cthulhu from his tomb in risen R'lyeth; he introduces an eeevil Christian fundamentalist church , eeevil U.S. government agencies, and other shittery.
Dangerous Visions had some great stories, but In the Barn was so bizarre and out of place, it winds up being the one you remember decades later.Back in 2014, there was a mild cow-crossover between Ana Mardoll and Piers Anthony. She wrote a blog post calling out the sexism of Xanth and actually received a response from Piers on his blog, way way at the bottom.
Piers is a creep who has written hardcore human cattle fantasies and exhibits a preoccupation with toilet stuff throughout his works. Xanth did well enough that he got a mainstream paperback release from Avon books with this title:
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Pretty sure he had to self publish this one though:
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