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1timspalding
I'm about 30 pages from finishing The Forever War, and I have to say, I'm barely motivated to do so. It's supposed to be this great classic and it's bad. It's inert. It has no affective core whatsoever. You don't care about any of the characters, least of all the narrator. A few interesting ideas—and not that interesting—don't make a good novel.
Will someone explain to me what you see in this novel?
Will someone explain to me what you see in this novel?
2wifilibrarian
I thought it was just blah so I'm no help to answer your question but thanks for starting this thread, as I'm interested to know also. The use of homosexuality didn't impress me, I'm gay, I didn't know what Hadernan wanted me to think. Maybe it was very subversive at the time, but it just felt dated to me. Maybe I don't have the right cultural reference points. The time dilation is the only interesting bit, but you're right, an interesting idea does not make a good novel.
For military sci-fi, you must try Armour by John Steakley the pointless war aspect is also a theme, but the characters are so strongly drawn. Space pirates! Sadly, he only wrote one other novel, not set in the same universe.
For military sci-fi, you must try Armour by John Steakley the pointless war aspect is also a theme, but the characters are so strongly drawn. Space pirates! Sadly, he only wrote one other novel, not set in the same universe.
3timspalding
The sexual stuff seemed very 70s to me, which means it had one foot in the 50s and one foot in a sort of exaggerated (and ultimately piggish) sexual anarchism that now just looks silly. It was mildly interesting, especially realizing the datedness of it, but, again, it didn't involve much else.
4andyl
It has been a long time since I've read The Forever War. But yes, the book was first published in '74 so probably written a year or two earlier.
I think you are probably right about how dated it seems these days. After all the societal changes feeling alienating to Mandella was supposed to reflect the dislocation many Vietnam vets felt when they returned to a society which had changed whilst they were away.
I think you are probably right about how dated it seems these days. After all the societal changes feeling alienating to Mandella was supposed to reflect the dislocation many Vietnam vets felt when they returned to a society which had changed whilst they were away.
5Cecrow
I'd agree the Vietnam allusion is important to note, and I do like a sci-fi novel that doesn't ignore the time factor of close to light travel, but I'm sorry it basically became entirely about that. Alienation as a theme and the character's journey is really where the author's attention lies; I read it as a shot at being literary within the sci-fi genre, the sci-fi elements relegated to window dressing.
6amysisson
Agree with Tim about how the sex stuff comes across, especially in light of the way Haldeman treats sex in later books. His teenage-girl-losing-her-virginity-POV in his Mars-and-beyond trilogy was a big turn-off for me.
However, I disagree that the book has no affective core (although I'm actually not sure what that means).
I think a lot of experiencing this book has to do with when one reads it and at what age. To 20-something me in the early 1990s, it wasn't yet as dated as it seems now, I was interested in the Vietnam War angle, and the relativistic time effects were a big deal to me.
However, I disagree that the book has no affective core (although I'm actually not sure what that means).
I think a lot of experiencing this book has to do with when one reads it and at what age. To 20-something me in the early 1990s, it wasn't yet as dated as it seems now, I was interested in the Vietnam War angle, and the relativistic time effects were a big deal to me.
7dukedom_enough
>1 timspalding:
Like amysisson, I'm not sure what you mean by affective core. Mandella is meant to be an everyman, whose feelings can be intuited given the situation he's in. We'd all feel bad about leaving our familiar world so far behind - and about being drafted to fight an absurd war. Those of us who were draft bait in the late 1960's/early 1970's knew that feeling before reading the novel.
At the time, today's military-SF subgenre didn't yet exist. Haldeman was obviously writing in dialog with Heinlein's Starship Troopers, reminding his readers of what we already knew, that Papa Heinlein was retailing the dulce et decorum est stuff. At least a little bit daring to publish that in Analog, just a few years after John W. Campbell, Jr. died.
That said, the standard of writing excellence in genre SF has risen a lot since then, and many classics couldn't get published today if they were newly written, so it's easy to pick up a better-written contemporary book. The book has been dated by social changes, e.g. the presentation of homosexuality, as you noted.
The presentation of heterosexuality is also a problem. Sexual relations with the other soldiers is required as part of one's military duty? No mention of consent? That's rape. Would be interesting to see if any critics complained about that at the time.
I think there's a generational aspect to one's approach to the book. If you don't remember those years, you may not get the book.
Like amysisson, I'm not sure what you mean by affective core. Mandella is meant to be an everyman, whose feelings can be intuited given the situation he's in. We'd all feel bad about leaving our familiar world so far behind - and about being drafted to fight an absurd war. Those of us who were draft bait in the late 1960's/early 1970's knew that feeling before reading the novel.
At the time, today's military-SF subgenre didn't yet exist. Haldeman was obviously writing in dialog with Heinlein's Starship Troopers, reminding his readers of what we already knew, that Papa Heinlein was retailing the dulce et decorum est stuff. At least a little bit daring to publish that in Analog, just a few years after John W. Campbell, Jr. died.
That said, the standard of writing excellence in genre SF has risen a lot since then, and many classics couldn't get published today if they were newly written, so it's easy to pick up a better-written contemporary book. The book has been dated by social changes, e.g. the presentation of homosexuality, as you noted.
The presentation of heterosexuality is also a problem. Sexual relations with the other soldiers is required as part of one's military duty? No mention of consent? That's rape. Would be interesting to see if any critics complained about that at the time.
I think there's a generational aspect to one's approach to the book. If you don't remember those years, you may not get the book.
8Lyndatrue
I read this when it was new. I've learned a lesson in the past couple of years that I suppose in hindsight is obvious. Some books that moved me, that impressed me, even that were life-changing (at the time) do NOT age well. Some are fine, and it isn't just the skill of the author. I just looked briefly at the list of books by Joe Haldeman, and recognize many of the titles as things I've owned, but that went away in the great purge (where I looked at each and every book, and only kept those I could come up with a reason for keeping).
The Forever War was a part of that time. There was so very much going on in the early seventies, and the premise behind that book resonated with me. Then. I don't think I noticed the sexuality to be honest. It wasn't an important part of the book to me. I'm not willing to make the sacrifice of reading it again. Life is short, and there's a long list of books that I'd like to read. Very few books make it into the "read this again" category. Some that have, I regret returning to.
Sometimes things don't age well. The language is too much a part of the times, or the writing isn't as good as it might be, or the ideas that seemed important at the time have become commonplace, or even trivial.
Of those authors that are still compelling, I find that the words themselves are a part of it. I often pick up, and read, Gene Wolfe's early works (before he got greedy and wrote all those sequels to what was meant as a FOUR NOVEL set). His way with words was and is amazing.
I'm still trying to decide whether I really want to read the Thieves' World series again. I loved them at the time. Do I love them still?
The Forever War was a part of that time. There was so very much going on in the early seventies, and the premise behind that book resonated with me. Then. I don't think I noticed the sexuality to be honest. It wasn't an important part of the book to me. I'm not willing to make the sacrifice of reading it again. Life is short, and there's a long list of books that I'd like to read. Very few books make it into the "read this again" category. Some that have, I regret returning to.
Sometimes things don't age well. The language is too much a part of the times, or the writing isn't as good as it might be, or the ideas that seemed important at the time have become commonplace, or even trivial.
Of those authors that are still compelling, I find that the words themselves are a part of it. I often pick up, and read, Gene Wolfe's early works (before he got greedy and wrote all those sequels to what was meant as a FOUR NOVEL set). His way with words was and is amazing.
I'm still trying to decide whether I really want to read the Thieves' World series again. I loved them at the time. Do I love them still?
10LolaWalser
>7 dukedom_enough:
Sexual relations with the other soldiers is required as part of one's military duty? No mention of consent? That's rape. Would be interesting to see if any critics complained about that at the time.
My memories of the story-and I do think I read a shorter story in a magazine, not the novel--are dim, but my impression was that, as you suggest, Haldeman was satirising the military and the MYTH of the military. I don't remember there was sex, but now that you mention Heinlein, it makes great comical sense to me that Haldeman would have a "band of brothers" parodying Greeky "band of lovers" down to actual sex. As for it being obligatory (surely there can't have been any scenes of it presented as rape, I'd have remembered THAT?!), that makes sense in a satire... or in army. The military is all about raping the spirit, why not the bodies?
Good question about the critics. I'm currently reading a collection of Pauline Kael's film reviews from the sixties, and gasping regularly at the ideas expressed regarding sexual violence, at what sort of stuff was obviously generally assumed about it and could be found casually in daily journalism. Back in that past which is a different country, or so they say.
Sexual relations with the other soldiers is required as part of one's military duty? No mention of consent? That's rape. Would be interesting to see if any critics complained about that at the time.
My memories of the story-and I do think I read a shorter story in a magazine, not the novel--are dim, but my impression was that, as you suggest, Haldeman was satirising the military and the MYTH of the military. I don't remember there was sex, but now that you mention Heinlein, it makes great comical sense to me that Haldeman would have a "band of brothers" parodying Greeky "band of lovers" down to actual sex. As for it being obligatory (surely there can't have been any scenes of it presented as rape, I'd have remembered THAT?!), that makes sense in a satire... or in army. The military is all about raping the spirit, why not the bodies?
Good question about the critics. I'm currently reading a collection of Pauline Kael's film reviews from the sixties, and gasping regularly at the ideas expressed regarding sexual violence, at what sort of stuff was obviously generally assumed about it and could be found casually in daily journalism. Back in that past which is a different country, or so they say.
11scottd
>1 timspalding: I think I have had the same experience as I make my way down the general consensus list of sic fi classics. When you say "no affective core" I think you mean that the characters are lacking in emotional dimension. I know this is an over generalization, but certain sic fi novels, or authors, have such a narrow focus on a concept or plot device that they leave little room for anything else. Larry Niven's ad nauseam descriptions of how nifty a giant floating ring would look suspended in space come to mind, coupled with characters that inspired, for me, no emotional investment. (Coincidentally, it also had antiquated, awkward sexism.) Day of the Triffids was another that I thought had interesting ideas but little else.
For me sci fi is at its best when it takes some aspect of psychology or society and, through an exaggerated lens, gives us a new perspective, providing some insight into human nature. Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick are two that seem to do this well. Sure, they may have wacky devices and plot elements, but these are never ends in themselves; they form the distorted background of our own world that helps to make the characters in the story believable and relatable.
Now it's weird, because personally I kinda liked The Forever War. It seemed similar to Catch 22 or Slaughterhouse Five in it's depiction of the ridiculousness of the experience of war, twisted through a sic fi filter to emphasize and exaggerate certain aspects. But hey, there really is no accounting for personal taste.
For me sci fi is at its best when it takes some aspect of psychology or society and, through an exaggerated lens, gives us a new perspective, providing some insight into human nature. Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick are two that seem to do this well. Sure, they may have wacky devices and plot elements, but these are never ends in themselves; they form the distorted background of our own world that helps to make the characters in the story believable and relatable.
Now it's weird, because personally I kinda liked The Forever War. It seemed similar to Catch 22 or Slaughterhouse Five in it's depiction of the ridiculousness of the experience of war, twisted through a sic fi filter to emphasize and exaggerate certain aspects. But hey, there really is no accounting for personal taste.
12dukedom_enough
>10 LolaWalser: My apologies if I'm telling you something you already know, and I don't have the book at hand, so must go on a decades-old memory, but: in the early chapters, everyone was heterosexual and the military unit was 50-50 male/female. So the "band of brothers" idea did not apply. People bunked two-by-two, as male-female couples, on a rotating schedule. When the unit reaches a distant outpost where staffing is weighted toward the men, the story notes that the few women there are tired of keeping up with multiple partners, and glad to see more women arriving.
In somewhat later chapters, William and Marygay appear to be a steady couple. I don't recall Haldeman specifically saying that regulations have changed, but they appear to have done so; no mention of them sleeping with anyone else. Homosexual soldiers start becoming common in yet later chapters (and thus later centuries), and we learn that Earth's government wants matters that way, so as to better control population levels. At the end, when Mandella is commanding his own military expedition, everyone in the (still 50-50 male/female) unit is gay/lesbian but him - it's a minor scandal that he's straight.
I don't think this was meant to satirize anything. I think the early chapters are a combination of an extrapolation of the (sexist) 60's sexual revolution, plus Haldeman's signature theme that we all get screwed by the powers that be, and also his failure to think through the question of consent. The later, everyone's-homosexual idea is meant to supply sfnal estrangement, since that was hard to imagine in the mid-seventies (at least for me and other straight/cis readers).
Now that we're discussing this, it occurs to me that, additionally, the enforced heterosexuality of the early chapters would have been repugnant to a gay or lesbian soldier, forced to sleep with multiple people of the wrong gender.
I will have to track down a copy to check all this.
In somewhat later chapters, William and Marygay appear to be a steady couple. I don't recall Haldeman specifically saying that regulations have changed, but they appear to have done so; no mention of them sleeping with anyone else. Homosexual soldiers start becoming common in yet later chapters (and thus later centuries), and we learn that Earth's government wants matters that way, so as to better control population levels. At the end, when Mandella is commanding his own military expedition, everyone in the (still 50-50 male/female) unit is gay/lesbian but him - it's a minor scandal that he's straight.
I don't think this was meant to satirize anything. I think the early chapters are a combination of an extrapolation of the (sexist) 60's sexual revolution, plus Haldeman's signature theme that we all get screwed by the powers that be, and also his failure to think through the question of consent. The later, everyone's-homosexual idea is meant to supply sfnal estrangement, since that was hard to imagine in the mid-seventies (at least for me and other straight/cis readers).
Now that we're discussing this, it occurs to me that, additionally, the enforced heterosexuality of the early chapters would have been repugnant to a gay or lesbian soldier, forced to sleep with multiple people of the wrong gender.
I will have to track down a copy to check all this.
13dukedom_enough
>11 scottd: Larry Niven wasn't displaying antiquated, awkward sexism; in 1970 that there was state-of-the-art sexism!
:-)
:-)
14timspalding
However, I disagree that the book has no affective core (although I'm actually not sure what that means).
I just mean there's no emotional punch. You don't care about the main character. He's an no man rather than an everyman. It might work if you didn't know what he was thinking and had to imagine it. But Haldeman let's you know, and it's pretty boring stuff, a lot of it about feeling randy or vaguely surprised at stuff. He's exceedingly brave, but you don't really understand it as the stated motivations are mostly of the "well, I might as well be killed here than there" variety.
That said, the standard of writing excellence in genre SF has risen a lot since then….
If we're talking about quality of writing, I couldn't disagree more! Have you got some examples?
The presentation of heterosexuality is also a problem. Sexual relations with the other soldiers is required as part of one's military duty? No mention of consent? That's rape. Would be interesting to see if any critics complained about that at the time.
I saw that too. But there's something odd about taking the possibility that someone might not want to have sex, and speculation as to what might happen to them if they didn't—all of which are very much outside the mental universe and simple facts of the novel—and making that the big problem. The primary element isn't potentially not-fully-consensual sex, but non-consensual slavery and dying. That is, I'm not sure pressuring teenagers to have sex stands out as a unique injustice against drafting them and requiring them to die.
I think Haldeman was making the not-very-original move of taking present (1970s) change and continuing it into the future. Sex in the 1970s was in many ways less "fraught" than it is now, and obviously less fraught than it was in the 1950s. So he made things even less fraught, where people in the army fuck each other constantly and with official sanction, being no more sensitive about it than they would be about being ordered to practice wrestling on each other. In this, I think the army is being satirized more than sexual attitudes, which seems weird today. Obviously I think the overall point about sexuality being simultaneously a nothing (of no emotional account and not much about the person you have sex with) and a something (the main character is horny all the time) is crazy, but then I think the 1970s idea of which it is an extension is also crazy. Sex can't be tamed; it's always going to carry emotional charge. But well, I'm not a 1970s sci-fi writers.
Day of the Triffids was another that I thought had interesting ideas but little else.
Exactly. I reread it a few years ago. Same reaction.
>12 dukedom_enough:
Excellent description and analysis.
I just mean there's no emotional punch. You don't care about the main character. He's an no man rather than an everyman. It might work if you didn't know what he was thinking and had to imagine it. But Haldeman let's you know, and it's pretty boring stuff, a lot of it about feeling randy or vaguely surprised at stuff. He's exceedingly brave, but you don't really understand it as the stated motivations are mostly of the "well, I might as well be killed here than there" variety.
That said, the standard of writing excellence in genre SF has risen a lot since then….
If we're talking about quality of writing, I couldn't disagree more! Have you got some examples?
The presentation of heterosexuality is also a problem. Sexual relations with the other soldiers is required as part of one's military duty? No mention of consent? That's rape. Would be interesting to see if any critics complained about that at the time.
I saw that too. But there's something odd about taking the possibility that someone might not want to have sex, and speculation as to what might happen to them if they didn't—all of which are very much outside the mental universe and simple facts of the novel—and making that the big problem. The primary element isn't potentially not-fully-consensual sex, but non-consensual slavery and dying. That is, I'm not sure pressuring teenagers to have sex stands out as a unique injustice against drafting them and requiring them to die.
I think Haldeman was making the not-very-original move of taking present (1970s) change and continuing it into the future. Sex in the 1970s was in many ways less "fraught" than it is now, and obviously less fraught than it was in the 1950s. So he made things even less fraught, where people in the army fuck each other constantly and with official sanction, being no more sensitive about it than they would be about being ordered to practice wrestling on each other. In this, I think the army is being satirized more than sexual attitudes, which seems weird today. Obviously I think the overall point about sexuality being simultaneously a nothing (of no emotional account and not much about the person you have sex with) and a something (the main character is horny all the time) is crazy, but then I think the 1970s idea of which it is an extension is also crazy. Sex can't be tamed; it's always going to carry emotional charge. But well, I'm not a 1970s sci-fi writers.
Day of the Triffids was another that I thought had interesting ideas but little else.
Exactly. I reread it a few years ago. Same reaction.
>12 dukedom_enough:
Excellent description and analysis.
15andyl
>14 timspalding:
Examples of better writing in SF.
Well I agree with dukedom_enough - the quality of writing (judged by the mean and median) has gone up. As well as the number of quality writers at the top end. Yes, there was literary SF in the 60s and 70s (Ballard, Le Guin, Delany)
Have you read any Christopher Priest? Gene Wolfe? M. John Harrison? Simon Ings (or at least his more recent work)? Lavie Tidhar? John Crowley? Zoran Živković? etc. etc.
Examples of better writing in SF.
Well I agree with dukedom_enough - the quality of writing (judged by the mean and median) has gone up. As well as the number of quality writers at the top end. Yes, there was literary SF in the 60s and 70s (Ballard, Le Guin, Delany)
Have you read any Christopher Priest? Gene Wolfe? M. John Harrison? Simon Ings (or at least his more recent work)? Lavie Tidhar? John Crowley? Zoran Živković? etc. etc.
16LolaWalser
>12 dukedom_enough:
No, it's fine, I don't remember any of that. I know I have the book in my "old sf" pile so I'll get to it eventually. I wonder now whether the shorter version I think I read wasn't edited or something. The strongest impression is of the "eternal trench war" atmosphere, the futility of returning to the front lines over and over.
Day of the Triffids is EXCELLENT. Dated, but first class.
No, it's fine, I don't remember any of that. I know I have the book in my "old sf" pile so I'll get to it eventually. I wonder now whether the shorter version I think I read wasn't edited or something. The strongest impression is of the "eternal trench war" atmosphere, the futility of returning to the front lines over and over.
Day of the Triffids is EXCELLENT. Dated, but first class.
17lansingsexton
I read The Forever War when it was new, and my recollection of it is that it was a powerful and completely satisfying SF novel which deserved the general acclaim it received. I was surprised when I saw timspaldings thread. Maybe this is the wheels of time slowly grinding literature down to the few works that remain relevant. I do think that Haldeman's relation to Heinlein in his nascent fascist phase and the after effects of the Vietnam War are important touchstones for the importance and emotional power that The Forever War had in it's time.
When I think about the thriving sub-set of Military SF (much too much of it pro-military) now, not to mention the astonishing existence of and love for post-Cyberpunk dystopian SF, The Forever War seems like something of a nexus point. In it's time, I think The Forever War had the same sort of impact that say, Paulo Bacigalupi has now, or that Lucius Shepard's "Salvador" and "R & R" had not too long ago.
>14 timspalding: I notice that your examples of "better" writers consists of writers who are renowned for their
superior writing, but who are not quite a major force in science fiction (Gene Wolfe is a famous special case, with everyone being surprised that he broke through as a major figure). I think the level of writing has improved in SF over the decades too, but contemporary SF isn't running short of popular writers whose work lacks meaningful characterization and conceptual depth.
H.G. Wells's The Time Machine still seems relevent and well written (to me at least). I wonder which of today's books will avoid being seen as hopelessly ('how can they have liked that? They must not have been too sophisticated, or critically demanding in those days") inadequate in the future.
When I think about the thriving sub-set of Military SF (much too much of it pro-military) now, not to mention the astonishing existence of and love for post-Cyberpunk dystopian SF, The Forever War seems like something of a nexus point. In it's time, I think The Forever War had the same sort of impact that say, Paulo Bacigalupi has now, or that Lucius Shepard's "Salvador" and "R & R" had not too long ago.
>14 timspalding: I notice that your examples of "better" writers consists of writers who are renowned for their
superior writing, but who are not quite a major force in science fiction (Gene Wolfe is a famous special case, with everyone being surprised that he broke through as a major figure). I think the level of writing has improved in SF over the decades too, but contemporary SF isn't running short of popular writers whose work lacks meaningful characterization and conceptual depth.
H.G. Wells's The Time Machine still seems relevent and well written (to me at least). I wonder which of today's books will avoid being seen as hopelessly ('how can they have liked that? They must not have been too sophisticated, or critically demanding in those days") inadequate in the future.
18dukedom_enough
>14 timspalding: "...no man" - Mandella is written as a then-standard sort of SF Competent Man. That his type is less common now is one example I might give for how writing standards have risen. That's good, of course; our protagonists can have flaws.
Again on writing standards: maybe what's changed is the sort of book I choose to read, rather than any change in the field itself. I'm sure we can find plenty of trash today, also. Still, in claiming this, I'm drawing on a commonplace observation in the discussion about SF I'm familiar with, in convention panels, podcasts, and the like. Because it's commonplace, I'm having a bit of trouble thinking of examples, but, for one, compare Larry Niven to Charles Stross. Stross occupies a place much like Niven's in the 60's and 70's: popular, lots of ideas, numerous sorts of stories, normally transparent prose. But Stross can write a spectacular scene or infodump, or create an atmosphere, in ways that Niven never did.
This question sounds like it could sustain its own thread, actually. Readercon is happening (PDF document:)next weekend; I will try to pose this question to some people there. Obviously it's dangerous to rely on a commonplace without having lots of examples at hand, though andyl has supplied some above.
"The primary element...non-consensual slavery and dying...unique injustice..." Another characteristic of the sort of SF and SF discussion I follow is that there's a lot of attention paid to certain kinds of unintended subtext. The draftee-slavery question is one of the main themes of the book; Haldeman meant to address it. What he didn't mean to address was the question of sexual consent, and that's something modern writers and critics, or at least the ones who come to Readercon, are interested in. Among many other interests.
Really, you should try Readercon. The Thursday night program serves as a free sample, and you're not so far away.
One might say that concern about consent and gender identity is a luxury that people who aren't being threatened with the draft can indulge in. Being a straight, cis man, I don't know from personal experience, but women care about consent issues. I also understand that the suicide rate in older teens who are gay or trans, who are without support from their community, is quite high. I don't recall hearing about many draftees committing suicide in the Vietnam era. Meanwhile, we no longer have a draft.
You know all that, of course. But, so maybe we should expect what we care about in a book to change?
Again on writing standards: maybe what's changed is the sort of book I choose to read, rather than any change in the field itself. I'm sure we can find plenty of trash today, also. Still, in claiming this, I'm drawing on a commonplace observation in the discussion about SF I'm familiar with, in convention panels, podcasts, and the like. Because it's commonplace, I'm having a bit of trouble thinking of examples, but, for one, compare Larry Niven to Charles Stross. Stross occupies a place much like Niven's in the 60's and 70's: popular, lots of ideas, numerous sorts of stories, normally transparent prose. But Stross can write a spectacular scene or infodump, or create an atmosphere, in ways that Niven never did.
This question sounds like it could sustain its own thread, actually. Readercon is happening (PDF document:)next weekend; I will try to pose this question to some people there. Obviously it's dangerous to rely on a commonplace without having lots of examples at hand, though andyl has supplied some above.
"The primary element...non-consensual slavery and dying...unique injustice..." Another characteristic of the sort of SF and SF discussion I follow is that there's a lot of attention paid to certain kinds of unintended subtext. The draftee-slavery question is one of the main themes of the book; Haldeman meant to address it. What he didn't mean to address was the question of sexual consent, and that's something modern writers and critics, or at least the ones who come to Readercon, are interested in. Among many other interests.
Really, you should try Readercon. The Thursday night program serves as a free sample, and you're not so far away.
One might say that concern about consent and gender identity is a luxury that people who aren't being threatened with the draft can indulge in. Being a straight, cis man, I don't know from personal experience, but women care about consent issues. I also understand that the suicide rate in older teens who are gay or trans, who are without support from their community, is quite high. I don't recall hearing about many draftees committing suicide in the Vietnam era. Meanwhile, we no longer have a draft.
You know all that, of course. But, so maybe we should expect what we care about in a book to change?
19lansingsexton
>18 dukedom_enough: Nicely said!
20anglemark
>18 dukedom_enough: Really, you should try Readercon.
Enthusiastically seconded. I went to Readercon in 2001 and it might be the best speculative fiction convention I've ever been to.
Enthusiastically seconded. I went to Readercon in 2001 and it might be the best speculative fiction convention I've ever been to.
21amysisson
>18 dukedom_enough:
Oh, yes, Readercon! I went several times when I still lived in upstate NY. Lovely convention. And I have to admit, somewhat guiltily, that I really enjoy that bad SF prose contest thing they do, taking real published examples of hideously bad old SF prose, then having the contestants present their made-up stuff -- and the audience has to figure out which one was really published. And usually can't. I don't think I ever laughed so hard in my life.
>14 timspalding:
You said "I just mean there's no emotional punch. You don't care about the main character."
I know you meant yourself when you said you. But I do remember caring about the main character.
Anyway, I agree strongly with dukedom_enough that the level of prose presented in today's best genre books is lots better than the level of prose presented in yesterday's best genre books. Although, yes, there is all kinds of crap being published today too.
Oh, yes, Readercon! I went several times when I still lived in upstate NY. Lovely convention. And I have to admit, somewhat guiltily, that I really enjoy that bad SF prose contest thing they do, taking real published examples of hideously bad old SF prose, then having the contestants present their made-up stuff -- and the audience has to figure out which one was really published. And usually can't. I don't think I ever laughed so hard in my life.
>14 timspalding:
You said "I just mean there's no emotional punch. You don't care about the main character."
I know you meant yourself when you said you. But I do remember caring about the main character.
Anyway, I agree strongly with dukedom_enough that the level of prose presented in today's best genre books is lots better than the level of prose presented in yesterday's best genre books. Although, yes, there is all kinds of crap being published today too.
22dukedom_enough
>20 anglemark: It's changed since then, having become much more of a conference for writers and would-be writers, and less for readers. Also, more oriented to fantasy and horror and less to SF. Still a lot of fun for this reader.
23dukedom_enough
>21 amysisson: The bad-prose competition is no longer at Readercon, alas.
25timspalding
Day of the Triffids is EXCELLENT. Dated, but first class.
So my complaint about Day of the Triffids is that two extremely weird things happen and they aren't connected. That is, everyone goes blind from a meteor shower, which may have been from misfiring orbital weapons AND bioengineered plants escape and take over the world. I kept expecting these things to be related somehow, but they aren't. It's aliens arrive AND everyone can teleport, or a mysterious disease makes dead people zombies AND there's a magical school for children. That just violates a basic rule of speculative fiction.
I notice that your examples of "better" writers consists of writers
Andyl, FWIW, not me.
Yes, The Time Machine isn't dated. War of the Worlds isn't either, excepting that we're well past the time was to take place. I'm not so sure about Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, though.
then-standard sort of SF Competent Man
Snort. Yeah, I know what you mean.
The draftee-slavery question is one of the main themes of the book; Haldeman meant to address it. What he didn't mean to address was the question of sexual consent, and that's something modern writers and critics, or at least the ones who come to Readercon, are interested in. Among many other interests.
I guess I think that's not a very good question. Homer never considers that there aren't really any gods. Such a thing can make a book dated, but it can't really open up interesting questions, when the universe of the book simply isn't in them. To ask questions of book's social structure that the book doesn't itself ask is to fall for a trap—that of imagining the fiction takes place in a real world, not a fiction.(1)
I'm not expressing myself particularly well, but there it is.
I know you meant yourself when you said you. But I do remember caring about the main character.
De gustibus. It might be the sort of thing I'd hear better in a well-acted audiobook. But on the page he just came off as "competent man," as was said. Competent, flip and horny. :)
1. This may work for Homer, whose fiction has an interesting, complex relationship to a world we don't know enough about. But we know enough about 1970s America.
So my complaint about Day of the Triffids is that two extremely weird things happen and they aren't connected. That is, everyone goes blind from a meteor shower, which may have been from misfiring orbital weapons AND bioengineered plants escape and take over the world. I kept expecting these things to be related somehow, but they aren't. It's aliens arrive AND everyone can teleport, or a mysterious disease makes dead people zombies AND there's a magical school for children. That just violates a basic rule of speculative fiction.
I notice that your examples of "better" writers consists of writers
Andyl, FWIW, not me.
Yes, The Time Machine isn't dated. War of the Worlds isn't either, excepting that we're well past the time was to take place. I'm not so sure about Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, though.
then-standard sort of SF Competent Man
Snort. Yeah, I know what you mean.
The draftee-slavery question is one of the main themes of the book; Haldeman meant to address it. What he didn't mean to address was the question of sexual consent, and that's something modern writers and critics, or at least the ones who come to Readercon, are interested in. Among many other interests.
I guess I think that's not a very good question. Homer never considers that there aren't really any gods. Such a thing can make a book dated, but it can't really open up interesting questions, when the universe of the book simply isn't in them. To ask questions of book's social structure that the book doesn't itself ask is to fall for a trap—that of imagining the fiction takes place in a real world, not a fiction.(1)
I'm not expressing myself particularly well, but there it is.
I know you meant yourself when you said you. But I do remember caring about the main character.
De gustibus. It might be the sort of thing I'd hear better in a well-acted audiobook. But on the page he just came off as "competent man," as was said. Competent, flip and horny. :)
1. This may work for Homer, whose fiction has an interesting, complex relationship to a world we don't know enough about. But we know enough about 1970s America.
26andyl
>25 timspalding:
Except the only reason the triffids escape and run riot is because people are blind from the meteor shower. If most people still had their sight then mankind would have carried on exploiting the triffids for their oil with only the odd sting from time to time. I wouldn't call that totally unrelated.
Except the only reason the triffids escape and run riot is because people are blind from the meteor shower. If most people still had their sight then mankind would have carried on exploiting the triffids for their oil with only the odd sting from time to time. I wouldn't call that totally unrelated.
27timspalding
>26 andyl:
Fair enough. But we're still talking about giant, intelligent, homicidal plants being created in the first place. I don't buy it.
Fair enough. But we're still talking about giant, intelligent, homicidal plants being created in the first place. I don't buy it.
28LolaWalser
>25 timspalding:
Huh. If you don't see how the events relate to each other, are you sure you read the book? That reproach misses the very point of that initial plot! In Wyndham's scenario the triffids are strange, little understood plants already existing and exploited widely in Earth's economy, for years. The meteor shower is a single random astronomical event. It causes mass blindness and chaos ensues. In the chaos, triffids get away from human control.
What Wyndham is illustrating is the release of latent danger (the actualization of danger) upon some contingent event. It's no different in concept than a zoo guard having a heart attack while the lion's cage is open--or from the "two-hit" model of cancer.
In the two-hit hypothesis, inheriting a faulty gene is the "first hit". That would be the triffids--or you can (given imagination) substitute nuclear weapons, chemical toxins, Franken-genomes...
There is no cancer at this point--there is a potential for cancer.
Then the second hit happens: in cancer, a second mutation in some crucial antioncogene; here it's the meteor shower that incapacitated most of human population.
Far from violating any basic rules of speculative fiction, in my limited experience Wyndham is without rival when it comes to speculating as tightly as possible from the ground of "reality" up.
Yes, he posits some "things that aren't". Triffids don't exist--although many real dangers similar to their threat do. Even more fanciful is the "blinding" meteor shower. But to understand the book it doesn't need to be taken literally. The blinding shower is any random event that compromises the status quo, knocks your forces out (although I like it for the concretization of the metaphor ETA: about blind humanity). How do you cope? What previously innocuous or controlled elements of your environment can assume what new dimensions?
Huh. If you don't see how the events relate to each other, are you sure you read the book? That reproach misses the very point of that initial plot! In Wyndham's scenario the triffids are strange, little understood plants already existing and exploited widely in Earth's economy, for years. The meteor shower is a single random astronomical event. It causes mass blindness and chaos ensues. In the chaos, triffids get away from human control.
What Wyndham is illustrating is the release of latent danger (the actualization of danger) upon some contingent event. It's no different in concept than a zoo guard having a heart attack while the lion's cage is open--or from the "two-hit" model of cancer.
In the two-hit hypothesis, inheriting a faulty gene is the "first hit". That would be the triffids--or you can (given imagination) substitute nuclear weapons, chemical toxins, Franken-genomes...
There is no cancer at this point--there is a potential for cancer.
Then the second hit happens: in cancer, a second mutation in some crucial antioncogene; here it's the meteor shower that incapacitated most of human population.
Far from violating any basic rules of speculative fiction, in my limited experience Wyndham is without rival when it comes to speculating as tightly as possible from the ground of "reality" up.
Yes, he posits some "things that aren't". Triffids don't exist--although many real dangers similar to their threat do. Even more fanciful is the "blinding" meteor shower. But to understand the book it doesn't need to be taken literally. The blinding shower is any random event that compromises the status quo, knocks your forces out (although I like it for the concretization of the metaphor ETA: about blind humanity). How do you cope? What previously innocuous or controlled elements of your environment can assume what new dimensions?
29LolaWalser
>27 timspalding:
But we're still talking about giant, intelligent, homicidal plants being created in the first place. I don't buy it.
IIRC, they were not "created", or at least, their origin is murky. The seeds were "found".
But, in general, if that's your objection I don't see why you'd read sf at all.
ETA: Also, it is not right that they were fully understood to be intelligent or homicidal until after the catastrophe. In fact, that's, I think, another Wyndham's point--that humanity is playing with making and exploiting things it doesn't fully understand nor control.
But we're still talking about giant, intelligent, homicidal plants being created in the first place. I don't buy it.
IIRC, they were not "created", or at least, their origin is murky. The seeds were "found".
But, in general, if that's your objection I don't see why you'd read sf at all.
ETA: Also, it is not right that they were fully understood to be intelligent or homicidal until after the catastrophe. In fact, that's, I think, another Wyndham's point--that humanity is playing with making and exploiting things it doesn't fully understand nor control.
30timspalding
What Wyndham is illustrating is the release of latent danger (the actualization of danger) upon some contingent event. It's no different in concept than a zoo guard having a heart attack while the lion's cage is open--or from the "two-hit" model of cancer.
It's quite different. Zoo guards have heart attacks all the time, and cages have lions in them all the time. But there's never been a global, mass-blinding event, nor has there ever been an intelligent, homicidal plant species. They are both nutty, unrealistic ideas.
Now, one can have one (or fewer) unrealistic thing in science fiction—that's a basic genre expectation. We all know that people can't make other people explode with their mind, zombie diseases are absurd, aliens haven't arrived to take over earth, etc, but we accept it when we read the book. That's the premise. After the premise, reality is reality, except, obviously, as changed by that initial unreality. We fight the zombies with shotguns, not psionics. Or, if we discover psionics at the same time as the zombies start, we discover that they're actually related.
Take a more contemporary of your theory. Jurassic Park illustrates "the release of latent danger (the actualization of danger) upon some contingent event." But the various victims run from the dinosaurs, they don't fight them with alien monkey robots. The latter would not be more and better invention, it would convert an impossible but fully realized fictional world into the fabulae of an imaginative child.
But, in general, if that's your objection I don't see why you'd read sf at all.
Well, if I may say, this is the attitude of many on both sides. Some people can't read science fiction because they find it absurd. Others imagine that the quality of science fiction lies in the number of cool ideas it has, irrespective of whether anything coheres. De gustibus, of course, but I think the key to good fiction of any sort is working convincingly within a fictional world, which is neither the real world nor a fabulist world.
Incidentally, my other complaint about Day of the Triffids is that it's not that great a novel in other respects. But it was worth reading.
It's quite different. Zoo guards have heart attacks all the time, and cages have lions in them all the time. But there's never been a global, mass-blinding event, nor has there ever been an intelligent, homicidal plant species. They are both nutty, unrealistic ideas.
Now, one can have one (or fewer) unrealistic thing in science fiction—that's a basic genre expectation. We all know that people can't make other people explode with their mind, zombie diseases are absurd, aliens haven't arrived to take over earth, etc, but we accept it when we read the book. That's the premise. After the premise, reality is reality, except, obviously, as changed by that initial unreality. We fight the zombies with shotguns, not psionics. Or, if we discover psionics at the same time as the zombies start, we discover that they're actually related.
Take a more contemporary of your theory. Jurassic Park illustrates "the release of latent danger (the actualization of danger) upon some contingent event." But the various victims run from the dinosaurs, they don't fight them with alien monkey robots. The latter would not be more and better invention, it would convert an impossible but fully realized fictional world into the fabulae of an imaginative child.
But, in general, if that's your objection I don't see why you'd read sf at all.
Well, if I may say, this is the attitude of many on both sides. Some people can't read science fiction because they find it absurd. Others imagine that the quality of science fiction lies in the number of cool ideas it has, irrespective of whether anything coheres. De gustibus, of course, but I think the key to good fiction of any sort is working convincingly within a fictional world, which is neither the real world nor a fabulist world.
Incidentally, my other complaint about Day of the Triffids is that it's not that great a novel in other respects. But it was worth reading.
31LolaWalser
>30 timspalding:
But there's never been a global, mass-blinding event, nor has there ever been an intelligent, homicidal plant species. They are both nutty, unrealistic ideas.
Seriously. Why read science fiction? Or, actually, ANY fiction? A man never turned into a giant cockroach! A man never travelled into the lands of giants, miniature toy people, and talking horses!
Wyndham's point isn't how realistic or not are the triffids or the blinding meteor shower. If that's what you are getting stuck on, you're wasting your time reading.
But there's never been a global, mass-blinding event, nor has there ever been an intelligent, homicidal plant species. They are both nutty, unrealistic ideas.
Seriously. Why read science fiction? Or, actually, ANY fiction? A man never turned into a giant cockroach! A man never travelled into the lands of giants, miniature toy people, and talking horses!
Wyndham's point isn't how realistic or not are the triffids or the blinding meteor shower. If that's what you are getting stuck on, you're wasting your time reading.
32timspalding
>31 LolaWalser:
Each of your listed examples only proves the point—all of them have one thing that changes. They have one premise. You can go through science fiction, and really all high-concept fictions, and find the one-premise principle everywhere. Of course, you can move the clock, allowing new weird things to happen, and if you move the clock a lot, more can happen, but they can't become a second premise. "Aliens invade and monkeys become intelligent and zombie-plague gets loose and dinosaurs break out from the crust of the earth" isn't a better, more imaginative fiction, but a failure to understand what makes fiction work.
If you doubt me, let's try it. Can you name some generally-known and generally-admired science fiction with multiple independent premises? (I can name a few, but they're rare, and, I think, bad.)
Wyndham's point isn't how realistic or not are the triffids or the blinding meteor shower. If that's what you are getting stuck on, you're wasting your time reading.
I'm not "getting stuck" on it. I'm criticizing it.
Each of your listed examples only proves the point—all of them have one thing that changes. They have one premise. You can go through science fiction, and really all high-concept fictions, and find the one-premise principle everywhere. Of course, you can move the clock, allowing new weird things to happen, and if you move the clock a lot, more can happen, but they can't become a second premise. "Aliens invade and monkeys become intelligent and zombie-plague gets loose and dinosaurs break out from the crust of the earth" isn't a better, more imaginative fiction, but a failure to understand what makes fiction work.
If you doubt me, let's try it. Can you name some generally-known and generally-admired science fiction with multiple independent premises? (I can name a few, but they're rare, and, I think, bad.)
Wyndham's point isn't how realistic or not are the triffids or the blinding meteor shower. If that's what you are getting stuck on, you're wasting your time reading.
I'm not "getting stuck" on it. I'm criticizing it.
33timspalding
Twitter came up with the perfect response: Amish Vampires in Space. If you can't see the difference between the imaginative basis of Amish Vampires from Space and The Metamorphosis, well, "why read fiction at all?" You could just throw words into the air and accept whatever they said.
34andyl
>32 timspalding:
Except of course Gulliver's Travels which was one of the books LolaWalser alludes to didn't just have one thing did it. It had talking horses, miniature people, giants plus floating islands and immortals and more.
Except of course Gulliver's Travels which was one of the books LolaWalser alludes to didn't just have one thing did it. It had talking horses, miniature people, giants plus floating islands and immortals and more.
35timspalding
No, fair enough. But Gulliver's travels is fantasy and satire, not science fiction. (I wrote this before checking Wikipedia which, correctly, agrees.)
In any case the premise of Gulliver's Travels is "fantastic voyage!" There is no unified way to describe the premise of Day of the Triffids that doesn't involve an unrelated "and."
In any case the premise of Gulliver's Travels is "fantastic voyage!" There is no unified way to describe the premise of Day of the Triffids that doesn't involve an unrelated "and."
37LolaWalser
>35 timspalding:
In any case the premise of Gulliver's Travels is "fantastic voyage!"
In that case, the premise of Day of the triffids is "man-made disaster"!
Your "rules" are simply ridiculous.
In any case the premise of Gulliver's Travels is "fantastic voyage!"
In that case, the premise of Day of the triffids is "man-made disaster"!
Your "rules" are simply ridiculous.
38timspalding
Gotta agree with this guy:
https://twitter.com/librarythingtim/status/618073308702081024
"it's one way of distinguishing SF from fantasy, for instance. Though when broken more often produces bad SF."
https://twitter.com/librarythingtim/status/618073308702081024
"it's one way of distinguishing SF from fantasy, for instance. Though when broken more often produces bad SF."
39timspalding
Your "rules" are simply ridiculous.
"One Novum," from The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction
https://books.google.com/books?id=VQZtIqYCshEC&pg=PT105&lpg=PT105&dq...
Elsewhere it's called the "one-McGuffin rule." It is well known, and well understood as a genre distinction between science fiction and fantasy.
"One Novum," from The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction
https://books.google.com/books?id=VQZtIqYCshEC&pg=PT105&lpg=PT105&dq...
Elsewhere it's called the "one-McGuffin rule." It is well known, and well understood as a genre distinction between science fiction and fantasy.
40suitable1
> 39
If one reads the Google link, the conclusion is that the "One Novum" is actually rare in novels.
If one reads the Google link, the conclusion is that the "One Novum" is actually rare in novels.
41timspalding
Yes, I'm illustrating the concept and it's currency in the conversation, which cuts agains the "Tim is being stupid and inventing shit" theme.
In the case, "multinovum" narratives are identified as primarily about the future, when, well, multiple things can change because multiple things do change. So the one-novum rule was "outdated by the furious pace of late 20th century technological change." I'd argue cyberpunk and other such narratives actually have one novum—technology advances in unexpected ways. We can believe that computers and genetic engineering make a radically different world. That's the deep premise. But add some Amish vampires and things fall apart, because they don't cohere with the deep premise. And I think science fiction that changes many things gets into trouble when the changes aren't merely improbable, but just stupid and lazy. For me, novels like Snow Crash are an unfortunate mixture of the two.
Triffids, however, is a present-day narrative. It doesn't get to take advantage of "in the far future everything is different!"
In the case, "multinovum" narratives are identified as primarily about the future, when, well, multiple things can change because multiple things do change. So the one-novum rule was "outdated by the furious pace of late 20th century technological change." I'd argue cyberpunk and other such narratives actually have one novum—technology advances in unexpected ways. We can believe that computers and genetic engineering make a radically different world. That's the deep premise. But add some Amish vampires and things fall apart, because they don't cohere with the deep premise. And I think science fiction that changes many things gets into trouble when the changes aren't merely improbable, but just stupid and lazy. For me, novels like Snow Crash are an unfortunate mixture of the two.
Triffids, however, is a present-day narrative. It doesn't get to take advantage of "in the far future everything is different!"
42LolaWalser
>41 timspalding:
Any "rules" in fiction are ad hoc and individual--yours more ad hoc than any, considering how you're flailing after this and that "problem". It's number of "premises", and premises are anything that happens, then it's how "unrealistic" are intelligent plants and global blindness... You are obviously free to choose what's important to you in liking stuff, but nobody else is beholden to those criteria.
I was trying to explain the point of view from which Wyndham's device is unexceptional and the plot works beautifully, but you ignored basically everything I said, same as you obviously ignored the message of the book, or the fact that Wyndham was a superlative writer whom nothing and nobody can turn into "bad sf". It is science fiction markedly of its period, even place (it seems to me very much of a piece with classic British science fiction in every medium), and distinguished through style, uncommon thoughtfulness, and humanity.
Any "rules" in fiction are ad hoc and individual--yours more ad hoc than any, considering how you're flailing after this and that "problem". It's number of "premises", and premises are anything that happens, then it's how "unrealistic" are intelligent plants and global blindness... You are obviously free to choose what's important to you in liking stuff, but nobody else is beholden to those criteria.
I was trying to explain the point of view from which Wyndham's device is unexceptional and the plot works beautifully, but you ignored basically everything I said, same as you obviously ignored the message of the book, or the fact that Wyndham was a superlative writer whom nothing and nobody can turn into "bad sf". It is science fiction markedly of its period, even place (it seems to me very much of a piece with classic British science fiction in every medium), and distinguished through style, uncommon thoughtfulness, and humanity.
43wifilibrarian
>41 timspalding: while reading your comment I was nodding my head and thinking of Snow crash, just before you mentioned it. I just read it and the too many premises problem is one of its faults. Maybe too many unbelievable premises as it's meant to be set only a few decades after it was written in the early 1990s, yet so many changes.
>32 timspalding:
"If you doubt me, let's try it. Can you name some generally-known and generally-admired science fiction with multiple independent premises? (I can name a few, but they're rare, and, I think, bad.)"
Julian May's Many colored land is pretty well known (1600 LT members) and I think does do multiple independent premises well. It's got a lot going on, ESP, time travel, aliens, slavery. But the characters, even the baddies, are fully realized so I could easily deal with all the other fantastical elements.
(edited to fix some spelling)
>32 timspalding:
"If you doubt me, let's try it. Can you name some generally-known and generally-admired science fiction with multiple independent premises? (I can name a few, but they're rare, and, I think, bad.)"
Julian May's Many colored land is pretty well known (1600 LT members) and I think does do multiple independent premises well. It's got a lot going on, ESP, time travel, aliens, slavery. But the characters, even the baddies, are fully realized so I could easily deal with all the other fantastical elements.
(edited to fix some spelling)
44timspalding
>43 wifilibrarian:
I also felt that some premises were serious and some—like the Pizza-delivery stuff—were just dumb jokes. He needed an editor.
I also felt that some premises were serious and some—like the Pizza-delivery stuff—were just dumb jokes. He needed an editor.
45lansingsexton
>25 timspalding: Sorry I confused you with Andyl. Who are a few of your favorite contemporary writers? As for Wyndham's Triffids the two strange situations didn't bother me, but I do see that the book doesn't give you time to accept the Triffids as part of the normal environment before the meteor shower hits.
I was annoyed by your threads' title, because I remember The Forever War very positively, but what I like about this discussion is that it is a discussion involving taste and offering a coherent explanation for that taste. De gustibus may be true for ice cream flavors and mates (not sure about that second one), but not for art, entertainment or politics. LibraryThings' SF group is valuable as a record of what people are reading, especially when it's something with which I'm not familiar, but I'm often bemused (or is that irritated) by the frequency of bare recitations of titles without a single comment regarding quality or enjoyment, let alone a sentence saying what was good or bad in the reader's opinion.
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and I'd like to hear more opinions, without rancor, but, at least some times, with the vestiges of a coherent argument explaining that opinion, with which I could then agree or disagree.
In middle school a classmate of mine gave a book review of Wuthering Heights and said that it was the worst book she'd ever read. Her description of it's many failings sounded so good to me that I read it immediately. It's still one of my favorites.
I was annoyed by your threads' title, because I remember The Forever War very positively, but what I like about this discussion is that it is a discussion involving taste and offering a coherent explanation for that taste. De gustibus may be true for ice cream flavors and mates (not sure about that second one), but not for art, entertainment or politics. LibraryThings' SF group is valuable as a record of what people are reading, especially when it's something with which I'm not familiar, but I'm often bemused (or is that irritated) by the frequency of bare recitations of titles without a single comment regarding quality or enjoyment, let alone a sentence saying what was good or bad in the reader's opinion.
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and I'd like to hear more opinions, without rancor, but, at least some times, with the vestiges of a coherent argument explaining that opinion, with which I could then agree or disagree.
In middle school a classmate of mine gave a book review of Wuthering Heights and said that it was the worst book she'd ever read. Her description of it's many failings sounded so good to me that I read it immediately. It's still one of my favorites.
47andyl
>43 wifilibrarian: Maybe too many unbelievable premises as it's meant to be set only a few decades after it was written
Hmm, for me SF doesn't have to be grounded in reality, to be a direct predictor of a world. Take Philip K. Dick - most of his works aren't realistic in any way, they quite literally cannot ever come to pass (and that was true when he wrote them). BTW look at Ubik for something that uses multiple premises. What a SF novel, well any novel, does need however is internal coherence. As long as it is internally coherent it doesn't matter if we believe that what it is trying to tell us maps on to what we think is reality. For example Turing & Burroughs by Rudy Rucker. We know Turing didn't escape from Britain and hook up with William Burroughs, we know that a symbiotic shape-changing life form doesn't exist, cannot exist. We know that the novel isn't going for a realist frame of reference (Rucker rarely does). That doesn't mean that the novel is a failure.
Hmm, for me SF doesn't have to be grounded in reality, to be a direct predictor of a world. Take Philip K. Dick - most of his works aren't realistic in any way, they quite literally cannot ever come to pass (and that was true when he wrote them). BTW look at Ubik for something that uses multiple premises. What a SF novel, well any novel, does need however is internal coherence. As long as it is internally coherent it doesn't matter if we believe that what it is trying to tell us maps on to what we think is reality. For example Turing & Burroughs by Rudy Rucker. We know Turing didn't escape from Britain and hook up with William Burroughs, we know that a symbiotic shape-changing life form doesn't exist, cannot exist. We know that the novel isn't going for a realist frame of reference (Rucker rarely does). That doesn't mean that the novel is a failure.
48LolaWalser
>45 lansingsexton:
I do see that the book doesn't give you time to accept the Triffids as part of the normal environment before the meteor shower hits.
I was actually thinking this may be the main problem for some readers--they don't seem to notice that the triffids are established as a crop over some length of time. I think it's partly that the book is short and "spare", compared to current bloated fare, and perhaps some just miss it.
By the time the meteor shower happens, the triffids are widely exploited under controlled conditions, but not entirely understood. For example, it's only after the catastrophe, when they start roaming the land, that it becomes generally known that they have intelligence and can communicate among themselves. Which makes sense: cooped up together in one place, who would notice that? Of course, the hero is the one who has some doubts and premonitions.
If we're discussing improbable coincidences in fantastic literature, the biggest one is that the hero--who is an expert on the triffids--was also conveniently shielded from blindness!
I do see that the book doesn't give you time to accept the Triffids as part of the normal environment before the meteor shower hits.
I was actually thinking this may be the main problem for some readers--they don't seem to notice that the triffids are established as a crop over some length of time. I think it's partly that the book is short and "spare", compared to current bloated fare, and perhaps some just miss it.
By the time the meteor shower happens, the triffids are widely exploited under controlled conditions, but not entirely understood. For example, it's only after the catastrophe, when they start roaming the land, that it becomes generally known that they have intelligence and can communicate among themselves. Which makes sense: cooped up together in one place, who would notice that? Of course, the hero is the one who has some doubts and premonitions.
If we're discussing improbable coincidences in fantastic literature, the biggest one is that the hero--who is an expert on the triffids--was also conveniently shielded from blindness!
49timspalding
Well, if that's what you are getting stuck on, you're wasting your time reading.
52gailo
>8 Lyndatrue:
Trust me, you do not want to read Thieves' World again. I speak from experience.
Trust me, you do not want to read Thieves' World again. I speak from experience.
53Cecrow
>52 gailo:, should I read it even once, then?
55Lyndatrue
>54 anglemark: Are you saying that about Thieves' World? I enjoyed the series very much, and having a large and varied group of writers in what was then a new approach (the shared world) was interesting. I named my favorite computer (at work) Tempus, and considered naming another Shadowspawn (but it was too many characters, and too easy to make a typo). I don't (and never did) read a lot of fantasy, but I enjoyed these books, and *some* of the offshoots.
(Edited for typos; it's early, first cup of coffee, stuff like that)
(Edited for typos; it's early, first cup of coffee, stuff like that)
56andyl
>55 Lyndatrue:
The problem with a lot of the books you loved as a much less mature reader is that The Suck Fairy (or one of her relatives) has visited them.
(link to tor.com)
The problem with a lot of the books you loved as a much less mature reader is that The Suck Fairy (or one of her relatives) has visited them.
(link to tor.com)
57anglemark
>55 Lyndatrue: Yes, Thieves' World. As I read them when they came out it's not The Suck Fairy, but different tastes. Of course there must be many readers out there who loved them, as they were really popular in their day. However, I found them a disappointment. I read the first three before giving up.
58Lyndatrue
> 56 When I read Thieves' World, I was already in my thirties...I would think of myself as a mature reader, even then. Some things don't age well, but others fall into the class of "you had to be there" (and the world was just a different place in the early eighties).
I've been reading a couple of the later novels in the Mythadventures series, and after slogging through Sweet Myth-tery of Life, I considered not reading the other two I'd picked up. I'd read all the others as they'd come out, and then gotten bored with it. I'm glad I picked up the later two, though, because Asprin is back in form in Myth-Ion Improbable.
We all have different tastes. Science Fiction doesn't age well if there's too much hand-waving, or dependance on the tech of yesterday to still be around today, but *better*. I think Fantasy ages, often, but it's easier to forgive.
Eh, what do I know, anyway? I still love Harlan Ellison, and I think that Neal Stephenson needs a damned editor (I loved, and still love, Snow Crash, and Cryptonomicon, and Reamde).
I've been reading a couple of the later novels in the Mythadventures series, and after slogging through Sweet Myth-tery of Life, I considered not reading the other two I'd picked up. I'd read all the others as they'd come out, and then gotten bored with it. I'm glad I picked up the later two, though, because Asprin is back in form in Myth-Ion Improbable.
We all have different tastes. Science Fiction doesn't age well if there's too much hand-waving, or dependance on the tech of yesterday to still be around today, but *better*. I think Fantasy ages, often, but it's easier to forgive.
Eh, what do I know, anyway? I still love Harlan Ellison, and I think that Neal Stephenson needs a damned editor (I loved, and still love, Snow Crash, and Cryptonomicon, and Reamde).
60LolaWalser
*raises cup of tea*
And Nikola Tesla's!
And Nikola Tesla's!
63lansingsexton
>59 suitable1: My favorites are Out of the Deeps and The Midwich Cuckoos. I always enjoyed the fact that his collection The Outward Urge was published as by John Wyndham and Lucas Parkes, four of his many names.
>60 LolaWalser: I'd love to have one of his cars.
>60 LolaWalser: I'd love to have one of his cars.
64gailo
>53 Cecrow:
The first two to four would probably still read pretty well. The ones after that, no. It reaches a point where Janet Morris, Lynn Abbey and, to a lesser extent, C.J. Cherryh kind of take over and those are not very enjoyable or good. Janet Morris is ... just really, really not good.
The first two to four would probably still read pretty well. The ones after that, no. It reaches a point where Janet Morris, Lynn Abbey and, to a lesser extent, C.J. Cherryh kind of take over and those are not very enjoyable or good. Janet Morris is ... just really, really not good.
65Carnophile
>30 timspalding: victims run from the dinosaurs, they don't fight them with alien monkey robots.
Why the hell not!?
The latter would not be more and better invention, it would convert an impossible but fully realized fictional world into the fabulae of an imaginative child.
No, it would convert it into sheer awesomeness!
Why the hell not!?
The latter would not be more and better invention, it would convert an impossible but fully realized fictional world into the fabulae of an imaginative child.
No, it would convert it into sheer awesomeness!
66Carnophile
This is one of the things I like about Alfred Bester. He just goes nuts. His finger never comes off the fast-forward button, either with the pacing or the crazy concepts.
67timspalding
>66 Carnophile:
Wow. I totally disagree. I love Bester, but at least his best-known works, Tiger! Tiger! and The Demolished Man, are true "classic sci-fi," with one central novum—teleportation and telepathy, respectively. There are other ideas, but they either flow as consequences from the central novum or from normal future-based speculation. They aren't leaps into the dark the way the central novum is.
Wow. I totally disagree. I love Bester, but at least his best-known works, Tiger! Tiger! and The Demolished Man, are true "classic sci-fi," with one central novum—teleportation and telepathy, respectively. There are other ideas, but they either flow as consequences from the central novum or from normal future-based speculation. They aren't leaps into the dark the way the central novum is.
68andyl
>67 timspalding:
Tiger! Tiger! has a bit more than the jaunting. There is also telepathy, the new element PyrE (which will end the war), the ability to remove all the sensory nerves. Also Olivia is blind and can only see in infrared and some radio frequencies.
That is five nova in my book. There may be more, it has been a while since I have read it. Maybe telepathy could be seen as linked to the central novum of jaunting (both psionic powers) but the others are unlinked.
Tiger! Tiger! has a bit more than the jaunting. There is also telepathy, the new element PyrE (which will end the war), the ability to remove all the sensory nerves. Also Olivia is blind and can only see in infrared and some radio frequencies.
That is five nova in my book. There may be more, it has been a while since I have read it. Maybe telepathy could be seen as linked to the central novum of jaunting (both psionic powers) but the others are unlinked.
69Carnophile
Andyl said most of what I was going to say. Also: Gully, on fire, jaunting back and forth through time throughout the novel, and the robot that spontaneously gives a mini-lecture on free will or whatever due to the presence of that radioactive guy messing up its circuits. Also, the only way to detonate the PyrE is telepathically. Crazy, gloriously crazy.
Bester's The Computer Connection: Immortality plus computer-human interface plus weird cosmic radiation effect on organisms plus more.
Tim, you don't have to choose! You're allowed to like both van Beethoven's Fur Elise and Van Halen's 5150. One just likes them in different ways.
Bester's The Computer Connection: Immortality plus computer-human interface plus weird cosmic radiation effect on organisms plus more.
Tim, you don't have to choose! You're allowed to like both van Beethoven's Fur Elise and Van Halen's 5150. One just likes them in different ways.
70timspalding
>68 andyl:
You're multiplying nova.The novum is extraordinary mental abilities. Once you swallow that people can transport anywhere with the power of their mind, it's not hard to imagine the same world has telepathy, including telepathy at inanimate objects. That telepathy extends across large spaces and time flows from the initial novum and is woven into it from the start. I don't find the others to be that extraordinary within the context of the far future, but, yes, I think we might count the ability for someone to see infrared as a minor novum.
Tim, you don't have to choose! You're allowed to like both van Beethoven's Fur Elise and Van Halen's 5150. One just likes them in different ways.
I think Bester is great. But he makes a semi-convincing world—more convincing perhaps when he wrote it—by keeping the number of major contrivances low. That a world of expanded mental powers is not restricted to one mental power is creativity, not a childish inability to tell a story.
You're multiplying nova.
Tim, you don't have to choose! You're allowed to like both van Beethoven's Fur Elise and Van Halen's 5150. One just likes them in different ways.
I think Bester is great. But he makes a semi-convincing world—more convincing perhaps when he wrote it—by keeping the number of major contrivances low. That a world of expanded mental powers is not restricted to one mental power is creativity, not a childish inability to tell a story.
71Carnophile
>70 timspalding: Once you swallow that people can transport anywhere with the power of their mind, it's not hard to imagine the same world has telepathy... That telepathy extends across large spaces and time flows from the initial novum...
Oh, come on. What does talking at people with your mind have to do with traveling through time?
But he makes a semi-convincing world...by keeping the number of major contrivances low.
Teleportation, telepathy, time travel, a girl who can see in various non-"visible" wavelengths, PyrE, a guy who is so radioactive that he messes up electronics in his vicinity, but who isn't dead yet, amping up a person so that he can move several times as fast as a normal person.
Yet above, you said that gene-engineered dinos plus alien robots would be too much!
That a world of expanded mental powers is not restricted to one mental power is creativity, not a childish inability to tell a story.
I can't tell whether or not you're implying that my view of this is "childish." In either case, I can only repeat that you don't have to do this.
Oh, come on. What does talking at people with your mind have to do with traveling through time?
But he makes a semi-convincing world...by keeping the number of major contrivances low.
Teleportation, telepathy, time travel, a girl who can see in various non-"visible" wavelengths, PyrE, a guy who is so radioactive that he messes up electronics in his vicinity, but who isn't dead yet, amping up a person so that he can move several times as fast as a normal person.
Yet above, you said that gene-engineered dinos plus alien robots would be too much!
That a world of expanded mental powers is not restricted to one mental power is creativity, not a childish inability to tell a story.
I can't tell whether or not you're implying that my view of this is "childish." In either case, I can only repeat that you don't have to do this.
72timspalding
>71 Carnophile:
No, not implying that. I think authors who cram lots of unrelated, unbelievable ideas are childish—as the fellow above said, "it's one way of distinguishing SF from fantasy, for instance. Though when broken more often produces bad SF."
Oh, come on. What does talking at people with your mind have to do with traveling through time?
The main conceit is the ability to travel through space with your mind.The final reveal is that he is the first person to be able to travel through time. They are related, as space and time are related. This isn't Amish Vampires from Space.
Teleportation, telepathy, time travel, a girl who can see in various non-"visible" wavelengths, PyrE, a guy who is so radioactive that he messes up electronics in his vicinity, but who isn't dead yet, amping up a person so that he can move several times as fast as a normal person.
First, you can do stuff in the future you can't do otherwise. We all know the future will be different. Second, most of this is related to the central conceit.
However, if you want to say that Bester is more fantastical than some other sci-fi I'll agree. Genres establish the rules for their own believability. A hard-boiled detective novel has one set of believability expectations, a magical fairy fantasy another. Triffids takes place in the present day, and establishes itself in various ways as realistic. As it does not involve magicians intruding on the world to make everything different, we expect it to look and work like the present day, except for the central conceit. Far-future science fiction isn't under the same constraint.
No, not implying that. I think authors who cram lots of unrelated, unbelievable ideas are childish—as the fellow above said, "it's one way of distinguishing SF from fantasy, for instance. Though when broken more often produces bad SF."
Oh, come on. What does talking at people with your mind have to do with traveling through time?
The main conceit is the ability to travel through space with your mind.
Teleportation, telepathy, time travel, a girl who can see in various non-"visible" wavelengths, PyrE, a guy who is so radioactive that he messes up electronics in his vicinity, but who isn't dead yet, amping up a person so that he can move several times as fast as a normal person.
First, you can do stuff in the future you can't do otherwise. We all know the future will be different. Second, most of this is related to the central conceit.
However, if you want to say that Bester is more fantastical than some other sci-fi I'll agree. Genres establish the rules for their own believability. A hard-boiled detective novel has one set of believability expectations, a magical fairy fantasy another. Triffids takes place in the present day, and establishes itself in various ways as realistic. As it does not involve magicians intruding on the world to make everything different, we expect it to look and work like the present day, except for the central conceit. Far-future science fiction isn't under the same constraint.
73Carnophile
Meh. If I responded I'd just be repeating 71.
74alco261
To address the original question I think several of the posts to this thread have identified the key element - the timing of the novel and the things in the real world that had happened/were happening at the time it was written. As someone who was drafted and who had the good fortune to return safe home the theme of going off to fight a meaningless war and coming home to an unrecoginzable world mirrored my experiences and was the main reason I enjoyed reading the novel. It's been a long time since I last looked at the book but I do know that even now that aspect of the novel would still resonate.
Another author from that period, David Drake, wrote short stories about the merc outfit Hammer's Slammers. At the time those stories were not well received by the general public (or the publishers) but, like other vets, I found them very compelling and realistic and they remain on my favorite SF book shelf.
Another author from that period, David Drake, wrote short stories about the merc outfit Hammer's Slammers. At the time those stories were not well received by the general public (or the publishers) but, like other vets, I found them very compelling and realistic and they remain on my favorite SF book shelf.
75davisfamily
I realize that this is off topic...
I actually liked The Forever War, I found it to be a comfortable book.
Unlike most of you I can't explain why I like something, I just do.
I actually liked The Forever War, I found it to be a comfortable book.
Unlike most of you I can't explain why I like something, I just do.
76sturlington
Regarding The Day of the Triffids, here's an interesting take by Jo Walton: http://www.tor.com/2009/10/14/who-read-cosy-catastrophes/
77LolaWalser
I haven't read Shute or Christopher, but regarding Wyndham's work, that's just rubbish.
78sturlington
>77 LolaWalser: A lot of the comments take her to task for lumping in Wyndham with the others, and they make valid points. I've only ever read Wyndham too, and not enough to judge. However, I do think she's right when she says Wyndham is writing outside of science fiction and that's why he ignores the "rules" that so bothered some up-thread.
I do think there's something to the catastrophe novel being a form of wish fulfillment.
When I was editing a SF magazine, one of our maxims was that the best writing was what caused the most disagreement among readers.
I do think there's something to the catastrophe novel being a form of wish fulfillment.
When I was editing a SF magazine, one of our maxims was that the best writing was what caused the most disagreement among readers.
80LolaWalser
>78 sturlington:
I do think there's something to the catastrophe novel being a form of wish fulfillment.
Surely not every one is that? Surely some are cautionary tales or calls to alarm etc.?
Anyway, I don't think Wyndham's are in any way wish-fulfilment. For one thing, none of his novels end with a better world or even a system of getting at it. The best that happens is that a few people escape immediate danger and survive, although without any promise of surviving for long. It pays to remember when these were written and to try to imagine the grip that the cold war fears had on people (and for a reason).
Honestly, the article is such a shambles I can't muster the energy to poke at all the holes. Take just the apparent premise, that middle class people secretly dream of doing away with the working class--is there anything more nonsensical, even were it not followed by statements about how much the middle class "suffered" after the war because servants became hard to come by?
If you kill off the working class, where will you get your servants THEN, eh? To say nothing of the even more pressing and enormous labour necessary to keep the suffering middle class fed and clothed--who's supposed to do the grunt work? Some wish that is.
No, the middle class and above want to EXPLOIT the lower classes, not eliminate them.
I do think there's something to the catastrophe novel being a form of wish fulfillment.
Surely not every one is that? Surely some are cautionary tales or calls to alarm etc.?
Anyway, I don't think Wyndham's are in any way wish-fulfilment. For one thing, none of his novels end with a better world or even a system of getting at it. The best that happens is that a few people escape immediate danger and survive, although without any promise of surviving for long. It pays to remember when these were written and to try to imagine the grip that the cold war fears had on people (and for a reason).
Honestly, the article is such a shambles I can't muster the energy to poke at all the holes. Take just the apparent premise, that middle class people secretly dream of doing away with the working class--is there anything more nonsensical, even were it not followed by statements about how much the middle class "suffered" after the war because servants became hard to come by?
If you kill off the working class, where will you get your servants THEN, eh? To say nothing of the even more pressing and enormous labour necessary to keep the suffering middle class fed and clothed--who's supposed to do the grunt work? Some wish that is.
No, the middle class and above want to EXPLOIT the lower classes, not eliminate them.
81sturlington
>80 LolaWalser: Of course not every one of them, but the element is there in many, even existing alongside the sense of alarm.
I think she's talking about a very specific post war period in British history where there was a sense of discomfort along with a shift in the class structure. I doubt it was a conscious decision on the writers' part but rather reflected a subconscious anxiety of that time. A lot of horror reflects cultural anxieties that might otherwise be hidden.
Well, it's hard for me to make a strong case typing with one finger on a tablet, but it would an interesting project to read a bunch of these cosy catastrophes and see what emerges.
I think she's talking about a very specific post war period in British history where there was a sense of discomfort along with a shift in the class structure. I doubt it was a conscious decision on the writers' part but rather reflected a subconscious anxiety of that time. A lot of horror reflects cultural anxieties that might otherwise be hidden.
Well, it's hard for me to make a strong case typing with one finger on a tablet, but it would an interesting project to read a bunch of these cosy catastrophes and see what emerges.
82LolaWalser
>81 sturlington:
I can't think of Wyndham's novels as "cosy catastrophes" at all. I see nothing cosy in them.
As for shifts in class structures, how does that topic relate to Wyndham specifically, and why would anyone think he was anxious in any way about the working class, let alone secretly wished for its demise? What's the evidence? That his heroes are (in general only) middle class professionals? Why shouldn't they be?
Arguing like that, I could make a hundred times more of a case against Walton as the enemy of the working class. Her trilogy set in alternative-history fascist Britain (Is THIS wish-fulfilment? ;)) teems with upper class characters, in fact those are all the central characters whose lives we follow most directly. Where are the shoemakers and the peasants? Why does Walton love the nobs and hate the lower classes? At least Wyndham never, to my knowledge, wrote a novel about aristocrats. Or even had a lord swan through one.
But like I said, this whole thing strikes me as pure nonsense starting from her general premise, and it's tough to address nonsense.
"Class" is a trusty bait for debate, especially, it seems, in British culture where it's such a neuralgic point, but I'd say Walton rushed and slapped together something that's much less of an argument than blind smackdown.
Ah--this bugged me no end!--turns out "cosy catastrophe" traces back to that asshole Aldiss, talking about Wyndham in a documentary about the latter!! I found it on YouTube and listened to that point. What bollocks. He talks about the main character in the Triffids as "enjoying himself", "having fun". (Talks (Aldiss) about the Isle of Wight as if it were freaking Ibiza...) Well, at least Walton isn't responsible for the stupid phrase.
Aldiss tried his hand at "catastrophes" too and there's nothing cosy about them, nosirree, it's all serious business of serious rape, murder and women reduced to abject ciphers. No wonder he disdains Wyndham's stories--but he really shouldn't. The two are not in the same league by any means.
Not in the same class, as it were.
P.S. looked at the comments to her post and agree/would point out #40. "Simplistic and shallow" is where I'd leave it at.
I can't think of Wyndham's novels as "cosy catastrophes" at all. I see nothing cosy in them.
As for shifts in class structures, how does that topic relate to Wyndham specifically, and why would anyone think he was anxious in any way about the working class, let alone secretly wished for its demise? What's the evidence? That his heroes are (in general only) middle class professionals? Why shouldn't they be?
Arguing like that, I could make a hundred times more of a case against Walton as the enemy of the working class. Her trilogy set in alternative-history fascist Britain (Is THIS wish-fulfilment? ;)) teems with upper class characters, in fact those are all the central characters whose lives we follow most directly. Where are the shoemakers and the peasants? Why does Walton love the nobs and hate the lower classes? At least Wyndham never, to my knowledge, wrote a novel about aristocrats. Or even had a lord swan through one.
But like I said, this whole thing strikes me as pure nonsense starting from her general premise, and it's tough to address nonsense.
"Class" is a trusty bait for debate, especially, it seems, in British culture where it's such a neuralgic point, but I'd say Walton rushed and slapped together something that's much less of an argument than blind smackdown.
Ah--this bugged me no end!--turns out "cosy catastrophe" traces back to that asshole Aldiss, talking about Wyndham in a documentary about the latter!! I found it on YouTube and listened to that point. What bollocks. He talks about the main character in the Triffids as "enjoying himself", "having fun". (Talks (Aldiss) about the Isle of Wight as if it were freaking Ibiza...) Well, at least Walton isn't responsible for the stupid phrase.
Aldiss tried his hand at "catastrophes" too and there's nothing cosy about them, nosirree, it's all serious business of serious rape, murder and women reduced to abject ciphers. No wonder he disdains Wyndham's stories--but he really shouldn't. The two are not in the same league by any means.
Not in the same class, as it were.
P.S. looked at the comments to her post and agree/would point out #40. "Simplistic and shallow" is where I'd leave it at.
83timspalding
I don't know about all of his works, but I agree Triffids is cozy. This may be a shift in how we read the genre--that competent characters who don't show a lot of emotion seem that way today, when postapocalypse fiction generally involves psychological trauma for the survivors. There's a can-do, adventuring spirit in it, where a contemporary treatment would dwell on the trauma.
84andyl
The thing with Cosy Catastrophe is that if there was just Triffids no-one would have remarked upon it's nature, of it concentrating on the middle class and wiping out both upper and working classes. But it wasn't. There were quite a few, and a number of them sold well in the mainstream market too, and that means that people will group them together and give them a name.
>82 LolaWalser:
As a term Cosy Catastrophe dates back to 1973 in Billion Year Spree, but yes it was Aldiss.
>82 LolaWalser:
As a term Cosy Catastrophe dates back to 1973 in Billion Year Spree, but yes it was Aldiss.
85LolaWalser
>83 timspalding:
Well, that's you. As for "can do", "adventuring" spirit, then anything featuring anyone who doesn't simply roll over and die has it. Fighting back, getting over obstacles, is the least one expects in the genre.
>84 andyl:
But the working class wasn't wiped out in the Triffids.* The hero is middle class, we presume, by virtue of his education (no mention of his background), and it's that education that makes him the ideal expositor of the story (would have been a different story told from the POV of a 14 year old, for instance, or a grandma). But he meets survivors not of his "class" all the time.
but yes it was Aldiss.
The day of the triffids has 4619 copies here, whereas Greybeard has 528. In fact, the long-dead Wyndham consistently outnumbers and presumably outsells anything written by Aldiss. That can't be pleasant for someone pooh-poohing the work as "cosy catastrophe".
*In fact there isn't a sudden massive extinction of population, and certainly nothing that indicates that "the working class" specifically is done away with.
Well, that's you. As for "can do", "adventuring" spirit, then anything featuring anyone who doesn't simply roll over and die has it. Fighting back, getting over obstacles, is the least one expects in the genre.
>84 andyl:
But the working class wasn't wiped out in the Triffids.* The hero is middle class, we presume, by virtue of his education (no mention of his background), and it's that education that makes him the ideal expositor of the story (would have been a different story told from the POV of a 14 year old, for instance, or a grandma). But he meets survivors not of his "class" all the time.
but yes it was Aldiss.
The day of the triffids has 4619 copies here, whereas Greybeard has 528. In fact, the long-dead Wyndham consistently outnumbers and presumably outsells anything written by Aldiss. That can't be pleasant for someone pooh-poohing the work as "cosy catastrophe".
*In fact there isn't a sudden massive extinction of population, and certainly nothing that indicates that "the working class" specifically is done away with.
86paradoxosalpha
>85 LolaWalser: In fact, the long-dead Wyndham consistently outnumbers and presumably outsells anything written by Aldiss.
Eh, I might prefer Wyndham to Aldiss, but the point at which we use those numbers to draw conclusions about literary worth is when we all just agree that Meyer's Twilight is about twice as good as Mann's Doctor Faustus.
Eh, I might prefer Wyndham to Aldiss, but the point at which we use those numbers to draw conclusions about literary worth is when we all just agree that Meyer's Twilight is about twice as good as Mann's Doctor Faustus.
88sturlington
>83 timspalding: Yes, the term "cozy" may be misleading, but it encompasses a sense of "let's get on with it" rather than utter despair or terror or chaos that such a catastrophe might actually cause. I haven't read many British examples, but Alas, Babylon strikes me as a prime American example, and the nuclear war in that story enabled the class stratifications of the time to be frozen.
>84 andyl: I had heard the term several times before so I knew it didn't originate with Walton. The point being that there were quite a lot of them coming out at the time, and they were popular with people who didn't ordinarily read science fiction. They were clearly tapping into something.
>85 LolaWalser: I don't necessarily think the term is a criticism, just a way of categorizing an interesting subset of the genre and talking about what was clearly a trend. I like both Triffids and Alas, Babylon, and I bet the cosy catastrophe still has a lot of fans. I also don't think authors have to be consciously inserting themes into their work in order for their work to reflect cultural themes of the time. That's one thing I highly enjoy about reading, is thinking about those themes.
>84 andyl: I had heard the term several times before so I knew it didn't originate with Walton. The point being that there were quite a lot of them coming out at the time, and they were popular with people who didn't ordinarily read science fiction. They were clearly tapping into something.
>85 LolaWalser: I don't necessarily think the term is a criticism, just a way of categorizing an interesting subset of the genre and talking about what was clearly a trend. I like both Triffids and Alas, Babylon, and I bet the cosy catastrophe still has a lot of fans. I also don't think authors have to be consciously inserting themes into their work in order for their work to reflect cultural themes of the time. That's one thing I highly enjoy about reading, is thinking about those themes.
89LolaWalser
>88 sturlington:
All I want is the idea "the working class must die" pointed out to me in the Triffids, or in Wyndham's biography, or in any piece of evidence that would justify that incredibly offensive, beastly accusation.
If we're going by Walton's handwaving in the general direction of some cold war novels, I'm afraid that's just not good enough.
All I want is the idea "the working class must die" pointed out to me in the Triffids, or in Wyndham's biography, or in any piece of evidence that would justify that incredibly offensive, beastly accusation.
If we're going by Walton's handwaving in the general direction of some cold war novels, I'm afraid that's just not good enough.
90lansingsexton
>89 LolaWalser: I like Wyndham too. My reading of Walton's blog was that she was talking about subconscious underpinnings for the proliferation and popularity of these books, in the same way that 50's SF monster movies reflected anxieties about the bomb. Certainly shifting social norms had a profound effect on English theatre as exemplified by Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey and many others.
91LolaWalser
About Wyndham's (and maybe others') wide popularity: I think what's missing here is the acknowledgement that there's a huge difference between Britain then and the US now (as there also may have been--probably was--between Britain and the US then).
Not only was this a pre-sci-fi-geek era, British reading public--especially those apt to go for thrilling adventure--was very well acquainted with the strain of speculative fiction Wyndham (and maybe others, that I haven't read) was writing. There was the immensely important and famous precedent of Wells, for instance, and of many writers of fantastic and utopian fiction and fables.
So there's nothing remarkable in Wyndham's sf having a wide readership in Britain, particularly considering his inspiration and concern about real world crises. The Lysenko affair in the USSR inspired the Triffids, for instance, and every book is dominated by the cold war tensions. His books channelled the collective fears (and did so excitingly and competently).
The British public didn't parse Wyndham through the lens of American schoolboy pulps, it had its own tradition to which he was far more obviously related.
Not only was this a pre-sci-fi-geek era, British reading public--especially those apt to go for thrilling adventure--was very well acquainted with the strain of speculative fiction Wyndham (and maybe others, that I haven't read) was writing. There was the immensely important and famous precedent of Wells, for instance, and of many writers of fantastic and utopian fiction and fables.
So there's nothing remarkable in Wyndham's sf having a wide readership in Britain, particularly considering his inspiration and concern about real world crises. The Lysenko affair in the USSR inspired the Triffids, for instance, and every book is dominated by the cold war tensions. His books channelled the collective fears (and did so excitingly and competently).
The British public didn't parse Wyndham through the lens of American schoolboy pulps, it had its own tradition to which he was far more obviously related.
92LolaWalser
>90 lansingsexton:
Yes, but Osborne and others took on the class war consciously.
Perhaps there's some talking past each other going on, I'm certainly not claiming one can't figure out that Wyndham was middle class, for instance. Writers will betray their social origin and privilege they grew up with all the time. But that in itself not only doesn't imply that he was secretly wishing that the working class would "go away", it goes directly against the evidence of his personal ideals and character.
Yes, but Osborne and others took on the class war consciously.
Perhaps there's some talking past each other going on, I'm certainly not claiming one can't figure out that Wyndham was middle class, for instance. Writers will betray their social origin and privilege they grew up with all the time. But that in itself not only doesn't imply that he was secretly wishing that the working class would "go away", it goes directly against the evidence of his personal ideals and character.
93LolaWalser
>90 lansingsexton:
P.S. So do you think Walton's analysis concerns the readership more than the authors?
But in that case, how would one explain that Wyndham, as she says, "sold like hotcakes"? Is the implication that the working class doesn't read?
P.S. So do you think Walton's analysis concerns the readership more than the authors?
But in that case, how would one explain that Wyndham, as she says, "sold like hotcakes"? Is the implication that the working class doesn't read?
94lansingsexton
>93 LolaWalser: I think Walton is describing a pervasive unease that has very little, or nothing to do with wishing, but everything to do with successive shocks to the system in Britain going back at least to World War I. I'm reminded of the moment in Dr. Zhivago when his family home is being divided into apartments and he says something to the effect of: 'This should be better, but it's hard to bear". For all I know, John Wyndham, John Christopher, et al. were in favor of a decline in the landed gentry, but that wouldn't mean they and everyone else weren't feeling the jitters social upheaval brings. Perhaps there's a patronizing tinge in Aldiss' coining of the term and Walton's use of it, but I'm not sure it's necessarily an insult. I like cozy British mysteries from the Christie / Sayers / Marsh period and although they've been supplanted by darker more despairing and much more violent works, I'm unmoved by those who sneer at the earlier manner. The same could be said for these earlier disaster SF books and the endless spate of contemporary dystopias and post-apocalypse books, which seem to feed an unquenchable desire to rehearse total disaster and unbearable misery, over and over, in all it's imaginable varieties. At some later time someone will come up with a sociological theory to explain our popular taste too.
95Jargoneer
>94 lansingsexton:>Aldiss did say that The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes "were totally devoid of ideas, but read smoothly, and thus reached a maximum audience, which enjoyed cosy disasters" so I am fairly certain he meant the term to be derogatory. I imagine Aldiss saw himself as writing 'against' Wyndham, it's not uncommon for writers to criticise the previous generation, promoting themselves as something new and exciting. He didn't criticise Ballard for being middle-class despite the fact that his protagonists are probably even more so than Wyndham's.
96LolaWalser
>94 lansingsexton:
I read Walton's post as far more negative than you seem to.
As for Aldiss, I don't know what it is he wrote in the book andyl mentioned, but in the documentary ("John Wyndham: the invisible man of science fiction", 2005) the phrase seems to refer to how "easy" the hero has it, how much he's "enjoying" himself. There's no mention of class that I noticed, but I'd agree that Aldiss meant it entirely patronisingly and dismissively (sneering at people who find that sort of thing attractive). However, I think it may be worthwhile to consider this first connotation of "cosy" as creature comfort separate from the apparent idea (I don't know whether sourcing directly to Aldiss or Walton's own) that what makes a catastrophe "cosy" to the middle class is specifically the elimination of the working class.
What the phrase, as used by Aldiss and Walton, obscures, is that the "cosiness" isn't necessarily inherent in the situation of the fictional characters, but in that of the readers. And that condition need not--does not--depend on the story line, the kind of events described and expected outcome alone. In fact, I'd bet that it primarily depends on language, and direct and indirect references to a situation and a system of conduct and ideas that the readers a priori find "cosy".
ETA: posted without seeing >95 Jargoneer:, thanks for the info.
I read Walton's post as far more negative than you seem to.
As for Aldiss, I don't know what it is he wrote in the book andyl mentioned, but in the documentary ("John Wyndham: the invisible man of science fiction", 2005) the phrase seems to refer to how "easy" the hero has it, how much he's "enjoying" himself. There's no mention of class that I noticed, but I'd agree that Aldiss meant it entirely patronisingly and dismissively (sneering at people who find that sort of thing attractive). However, I think it may be worthwhile to consider this first connotation of "cosy" as creature comfort separate from the apparent idea (I don't know whether sourcing directly to Aldiss or Walton's own) that what makes a catastrophe "cosy" to the middle class is specifically the elimination of the working class.
What the phrase, as used by Aldiss and Walton, obscures, is that the "cosiness" isn't necessarily inherent in the situation of the fictional characters, but in that of the readers. And that condition need not--does not--depend on the story line, the kind of events described and expected outcome alone. In fact, I'd bet that it primarily depends on language, and direct and indirect references to a situation and a system of conduct and ideas that the readers a priori find "cosy".
ETA: posted without seeing >95 Jargoneer:, thanks for the info.
97lansingsexton
>95 Jargoneer: Your assessment sounds right to me. Regarding Wyndham and class, The Midwich Cuckoos is a clear example of a disaster, first experienced as an affront to social norms, which strikes all the women in the area equally without regard to class.
98lansingsexton
>96 LolaWalser: I guess my reading was that while an adjustment in the relations of the classes was the cause of the uneasiness which produced the disasters and their popular acceptance, the books weren't expressing enmity so much as anxiety. I think your remarks regarding language and attitudes is exactly right. Just as in the cozy mysteries, horrible things happen, but in the context of a solid societal norm which can withstand the disruptions they bring, just as the nation has withstood profound disruptions in the first half of the century. The cozy part is partly a "Britain can take it" attitude. That may seem corny in a post-cyberpunk SF world.
99LolaWalser
>98 lansingsexton:
I think what's happening (has happened) is that that arguably comforting vision has become conflated with a non-egalitarian, pre-multicultural/multi-ethnic society.
I think what's happening (has happened) is that that arguably comforting vision has become conflated with a non-egalitarian, pre-multicultural/multi-ethnic society.
100lansingsexton
>99 LolaWalser: I think that's true of much of the U.S. Republican party, but I wouldn't necessarily attribute that attitude even retroactively to John Wyndham. Maybe to Midsomer Murders.
101LolaWalser
>100 lansingsexton:
Oh, no, I meant in the view of public (ours).
In general, I'd have to agree that there's a basis for criticism of class-bound ideologies--it's just that I don't perceive them in the toxic form that Walton is talking about, in Wyndham's work.
Oh, no, I meant in the view of public (ours).
In general, I'd have to agree that there's a basis for criticism of class-bound ideologies--it's just that I don't perceive them in the toxic form that Walton is talking about, in Wyndham's work.
102sturlington
>101 LolaWalser: I've read that piece three times now and I guess I didn't read it as toxic as you did. I think it's a question of intent. I actually don't think the authors intended to express a overt classism or a desire to just kill off all the working blokes. They were reflecting the anxiety of a changing society, probably subconsciously. It's interesting to me because it helps me better understand the time and place they were writing in, their context.
I think it is possible to recognize that greater equality and democracy is desirable, and that it's not right to enjoy privilege at the expense of others, and to still be a bit sad at losing a certain way of life. It's an honest emotion, although I'm sure most people wouldn't admit to feeling it.
The apocalyptic novel has always struck me as equal parts fear and fantasy. It's a safe place to imagine what if your house burned down and you had to start all over from the scratch, except your house is the entire world. Just fantasizing about it idly doesn't actually mean that you want your house, or the world, to burn down, or that it wouldn't be a terrible, traumatic thing if it actually did happen to you, not cozy at all.
I think it is possible to recognize that greater equality and democracy is desirable, and that it's not right to enjoy privilege at the expense of others, and to still be a bit sad at losing a certain way of life. It's an honest emotion, although I'm sure most people wouldn't admit to feeling it.
The apocalyptic novel has always struck me as equal parts fear and fantasy. It's a safe place to imagine what if your house burned down and you had to start all over from the scratch, except your house is the entire world. Just fantasizing about it idly doesn't actually mean that you want your house, or the world, to burn down, or that it wouldn't be a terrible, traumatic thing if it actually did happen to you, not cozy at all.
103RobertDay
As I recollect (and much of my academic literature on sf writers is still packed away after my move), Wyndham was distressed lower middle class, and certainly had no remit to represent the British upper class. I also think there's a misreading of Aldiss' definition of "cosy British catastrophe" going on. In a "cosy British catastrophe", the survivors battle through the adversity of a collapsing society to start to rebuild society from a manor house in the Cotswolds.
The most class-conscious such stories get is to represent the view of the landed gentry and the sort of good farming stock as depicted in the BBC's long-running rural radio soap 'The Archers'; and the working class are certainly central to this (as long as they're the rural working class). That would certainly be in tune with the direction of much British intellectualism of both Left and Right in the pre-war and early post-war years, when it was more a question of city versus country, not upper class versus lower class. (Of course, the Right's view of the rural working class was pretty patrician, verging on condescension, but at least they recognised the need for there to actually be a working class to do the actual work. Unlike now.)
The most class-conscious such stories get is to represent the view of the landed gentry and the sort of good farming stock as depicted in the BBC's long-running rural radio soap 'The Archers'; and the working class are certainly central to this (as long as they're the rural working class). That would certainly be in tune with the direction of much British intellectualism of both Left and Right in the pre-war and early post-war years, when it was more a question of city versus country, not upper class versus lower class. (Of course, the Right's view of the rural working class was pretty patrician, verging on condescension, but at least they recognised the need for there to actually be a working class to do the actual work. Unlike now.)
104timspalding
Yes, the term "cozy" may be misleading, but it encompasses a sense of "let's get on with it" rather than utter despair or terror or chaos that such a catastrophe might actually cause.
Precisely. These are worlds of competent people soldiering on, not broken people trying to find meaning in an utterly changed world.
One might compare Triffids to The Death of Grass by John Christopher. That takes a much bleaker view.
Precisely. These are worlds of competent people soldiering on, not broken people trying to find meaning in an utterly changed world.
One might compare Triffids to The Death of Grass by John Christopher. That takes a much bleaker view.
105LolaWalser
>102 sturlington:
I've read that piece three times now and I guess I didn't read it as toxic as you did.
The FIFTH sentence in her post, italics in the original:
That's in the first paragraph. In the second paragraph:
Enough? It is to me. And yes, I call that toxic and incredibly offensive, in itself and especially because she called out authors by name. I can only stand up for Wyndham but note that I'm not the only one, she got demurring replies from others.
>103 RobertDay:
Right, but I didn't notice anyone claim Wyndham was "upper" class. As far as I can tell, the minimum one can say is that he WASN'T "working" or "lower" class, so he's--at a minimum--"middle class" by default. His Wikipedia entry mentions him trying his hand at various jobs, including farming--I don't know for certain but the impression I have is that that, for instance, would sooner involve his getting up at dawn to milk the cows than ordering serfs about.
I also think there's a misreading of Aldiss' definition of "cosy British catastrophe" going on. In a "cosy British catastrophe", the survivors battle through the adversity of a collapsing society to start to rebuild society from a manor house in the Cotswolds.
As I said, I only heard Aldiss in the snippet in the documentary, here:
https://youtu.be/wQGm-PA3Wfs?t=1m27s
And then Jargoneer wrote in >95 Jargoneer: what looks like a direct quote:
There's no way to spin this to make Aldiss' attitude and use of the phrase seem neutral, to say nothing of complimentary. It's clear he disdains both the "type" of the story and its readership. Which, of course, is his prerogative--but I for one wouldn't let a mean-spirited git define literature for me.
>104 timspalding:
Precisely. These are worlds of competent people soldiering on, not broken people trying to find meaning in an utterly changed world.
No, there is NOTHING "precise" in what you are saying. You are again engaging in ad hoc "ruling". What we now have is at least three different elaborations of Aldiss' phrase:
1. Aldiss' own words, in the video--chap is fine, chap gets girl, he has petrol, enjoys himself, ends up on the Isle of Wight--can't be bothered with transcribing, give it a listen--obviously, he finds the whole thing funny and apparently not deserving of being called a "disaster" novel.
2. Walton's egregious (and patently stupid, as I argued way above) notion that these "cosy catastrophes" were concocted by middle class authors who subconsciously and not so subconsciously wanted the working class out of the way.
3. Your own "These are worlds of competent people soldiering on, not broken people trying to find meaning in an utterly changed world."
You don't say. So is A canticle for Leibowitz a cosy? It's filled with competent people soldiering on. What about The martian? Everything works out just so for the guy! What about Ready Player One?
I could go on till Tuesday, but I'd rather conclude--for myself--and you can make of it what you will: "cosy catastrophe" is a pejorative term invented by someone who, to put it mildly, does not care for the category he so designated or for the authors claimed to be representative of it.
I neither know nor care why others are using it (I wasn't aware of it until now), but I know very well why I won't.
I've read that piece three times now and I guess I didn't read it as toxic as you did.
The FIFTH sentence in her post, italics in the original:
In this paper I argued that the cosy catastrophe was overwhelmingly written by middle-class British people who had lived through the upheavals and new settlement during and after World War II, and who found the radical idea that the working classes were people hard to deal with, and wished they would all just go away.
That's in the first paragraph. In the second paragraph:
The working classes are wiped out in a way that removes guilt.
Enough? It is to me. And yes, I call that toxic and incredibly offensive, in itself and especially because she called out authors by name. I can only stand up for Wyndham but note that I'm not the only one, she got demurring replies from others.
>103 RobertDay:
Right, but I didn't notice anyone claim Wyndham was "upper" class. As far as I can tell, the minimum one can say is that he WASN'T "working" or "lower" class, so he's--at a minimum--"middle class" by default. His Wikipedia entry mentions him trying his hand at various jobs, including farming--I don't know for certain but the impression I have is that that, for instance, would sooner involve his getting up at dawn to milk the cows than ordering serfs about.
I also think there's a misreading of Aldiss' definition of "cosy British catastrophe" going on. In a "cosy British catastrophe", the survivors battle through the adversity of a collapsing society to start to rebuild society from a manor house in the Cotswolds.
As I said, I only heard Aldiss in the snippet in the documentary, here:
https://youtu.be/wQGm-PA3Wfs?t=1m27s
And then Jargoneer wrote in >95 Jargoneer: what looks like a direct quote:
Aldiss did say that The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes "were totally devoid of ideas, but read smoothly, and thus reached a maximum audience, which enjoyed cosy disasters"
There's no way to spin this to make Aldiss' attitude and use of the phrase seem neutral, to say nothing of complimentary. It's clear he disdains both the "type" of the story and its readership. Which, of course, is his prerogative--but I for one wouldn't let a mean-spirited git define literature for me.
>104 timspalding:
Precisely. These are worlds of competent people soldiering on, not broken people trying to find meaning in an utterly changed world.
No, there is NOTHING "precise" in what you are saying. You are again engaging in ad hoc "ruling". What we now have is at least three different elaborations of Aldiss' phrase:
1. Aldiss' own words, in the video--chap is fine, chap gets girl, he has petrol, enjoys himself, ends up on the Isle of Wight--can't be bothered with transcribing, give it a listen--obviously, he finds the whole thing funny and apparently not deserving of being called a "disaster" novel.
2. Walton's egregious (and patently stupid, as I argued way above) notion that these "cosy catastrophes" were concocted by middle class authors who subconsciously and not so subconsciously wanted the working class out of the way.
3. Your own "These are worlds of competent people soldiering on, not broken people trying to find meaning in an utterly changed world."
You don't say. So is A canticle for Leibowitz a cosy? It's filled with competent people soldiering on. What about The martian? Everything works out just so for the guy! What about Ready Player One?
I could go on till Tuesday, but I'd rather conclude--for myself--and you can make of it what you will: "cosy catastrophe" is a pejorative term invented by someone who, to put it mildly, does not care for the category he so designated or for the authors claimed to be representative of it.
I neither know nor care why others are using it (I wasn't aware of it until now), but I know very well why I won't.
106timspalding
>105 LolaWalser:
I hold no brief for the blog piece. Or for Aldiss. I find the class theory stuff silly, although I'm surprised you aren't more interested.
I do find the phrase evocative of a certain sort of post-apocalypse yarn which was once in favor and is now less so favor. Tellingly, even contemporary post-apocalypses that are high on adventure, like World War Z, are much preoccupied with the craziness and brokenness of the fall of civilization.
Whether the chronological aspect is true or false, there is a profound difference between post-apocalypses—between Triffids and Death of Grass, between the Kraken Awakes and On the Beach. Some are essentially adventure stories, which draw their opportunities for adventure from the end of the world. The others are more interested in the apocalypse itself, and in what it does to people and societies. In general, I find the end of the civilization fits the latter approach more plausibly.
So is A Canticle for Leibowitz a cosy?
There's a profound difference between a story about and immediately after the fall of civilization and a story that takes place long after the fall. A Canticle for Leibowitz has three different time frames, the first of which happens 600 years after.
What about The martian?
It does not involve the fall of civilization.
I hold no brief for the blog piece. Or for Aldiss. I find the class theory stuff silly, although I'm surprised you aren't more interested.
I do find the phrase evocative of a certain sort of post-apocalypse yarn which was once in favor and is now less so favor. Tellingly, even contemporary post-apocalypses that are high on adventure, like World War Z, are much preoccupied with the craziness and brokenness of the fall of civilization.
Whether the chronological aspect is true or false, there is a profound difference between post-apocalypses—between Triffids and Death of Grass, between the Kraken Awakes and On the Beach. Some are essentially adventure stories, which draw their opportunities for adventure from the end of the world. The others are more interested in the apocalypse itself, and in what it does to people and societies. In general, I find the end of the civilization fits the latter approach more plausibly.
So is A Canticle for Leibowitz a cosy?
There's a profound difference between a story about and immediately after the fall of civilization and a story that takes place long after the fall. A Canticle for Leibowitz has three different time frames, the first of which happens 600 years after.
What about The martian?
It does not involve the fall of civilization.
107Jargoneer
From an article on Wyndham based on a BBC programme about him -
The full article is available on The Guardian website John Wyndham - The Unread Bestseller.
Wyndham's novels were famously dismissed by Brian Aldiss, championing the New Wave's harder-edged science fiction, as "cosy catastrophes". It's true that Wyndham's preference is for no-nonsense, brisk, wry narrators, and the horrors that visit the books can seem like opportunities to show off good old British pluck. But the books are surprisingly unheroic, and often (notably in the cases of Kraken and Triffids) peculiarly open-ended. And if you look closely, you begin to see that there's something very uncosy, persistently unsettling, about these books, that continues to ask profound questions about the limits of our culture and the foundations of the post-war world.
The full article is available on The Guardian website John Wyndham - The Unread Bestseller.
108sturlington
>105 LolaWalser: I tried to explain in >102 sturlington: what I think Walton's entire piece is saying, but if you're determined to be offended by it, then we are just talking past each other.
109lansingsexton
>107 Jargoneer: Thanks!
110Jargoneer
Jo Walton gives good review of The Chrysalids here but still can't help mentioning her rather stupid idea of these being middle class fantasies about ridding Britain of the working class.
Since Walton is now living in Canada it would interesting to hear her take on Station Eleven which also has a post-apocalyptic world people by the middle-class. Since the traveling symphony in the novel stages Shakespeare plays and classical concerts does this mean that Canadians want to get rid of their working class and their culture?
Since Walton is now living in Canada it would interesting to hear her take on Station Eleven which also has a post-apocalyptic world people by the middle-class. Since the traveling symphony in the novel stages Shakespeare plays and classical concerts does this mean that Canadians want to get rid of their working class and their culture?
111LolaWalser
>108 sturlington:
I'm not "determined" to be offended--I would much rather at any time not be offended by anything. On the other hand, I hope I retain my ability to be offended when someone unjustly, flippantly accuses other people of what I, at least, consider to be the worst thing anyone can be accused of.
If she didn't mean "The working classes are wiped out in a way that removes guilt." and the rest, then she shouldn't have written it. I could be persuaded she's made a rotten job of explicating some subtler argument about class--were it not that she at the start mentions she's already made the same argument. And in >110 Jargoneer: it comes up yet again. I'd say the evidence points to her intending what she writes, in the words she is using.
But I'm not even arguing against some larger argument. I am first of all arguing against falsely accusing the one author I've read.
>110 Jargoneer:
Seems to me she overreached, looking for originality maybe, from the well-trod terrain of pointing out and analysing privilege and class difference into a crass projection of physical intolerance. It's like saying the twelve white male Doctors express an actual wish to "wipe out" women and PoC at the BBC.
And it's irritating like hell because there is obviously a lot to note and criticise regarding class and privilege (at the BBC or in period literature or...) and things like those don't help.
>107 Jargoneer:
Thanks for the article.
Wyndham's use of misdirection, subtext, irony and ambiguity I recognised immediately.
I first read him as a kid (nothing cosy about The Midwich cuckoos at eleven, I can vouch for that) and then not until recently, so I was quite surprised by how much more there is to his writing.
I'm not "determined" to be offended--I would much rather at any time not be offended by anything. On the other hand, I hope I retain my ability to be offended when someone unjustly, flippantly accuses other people of what I, at least, consider to be the worst thing anyone can be accused of.
If she didn't mean "The working classes are wiped out in a way that removes guilt." and the rest, then she shouldn't have written it. I could be persuaded she's made a rotten job of explicating some subtler argument about class--were it not that she at the start mentions she's already made the same argument. And in >110 Jargoneer: it comes up yet again. I'd say the evidence points to her intending what she writes, in the words she is using.
But I'm not even arguing against some larger argument. I am first of all arguing against falsely accusing the one author I've read.
>110 Jargoneer:
Seems to me she overreached, looking for originality maybe, from the well-trod terrain of pointing out and analysing privilege and class difference into a crass projection of physical intolerance. It's like saying the twelve white male Doctors express an actual wish to "wipe out" women and PoC at the BBC.
And it's irritating like hell because there is obviously a lot to note and criticise regarding class and privilege (at the BBC or in period literature or...) and things like those don't help.
>107 Jargoneer:
Thanks for the article.
Wyndham's use of misdirection, subtext, irony and ambiguity I recognised immediately.
I first read him as a kid (nothing cosy about The Midwich cuckoos at eleven, I can vouch for that) and then not until recently, so I was quite surprised by how much more there is to his writing.
112SimonW11
Wyndham's works reflects a society transitioning from rigid to a far more fluid and uncertain thing where people no longer simply know their place. I think it unfair to characterise this as wishing the working class would go away. Rather it reveals trepidation when facing an uncertain future. and a corresponding nostalgia for the past.
But for all that . But for all that It does not present it as a false golden age devoid of faults. the past is not whitewashed. It is not an episode of Happy Days. Wyndham is aware of familiar with the problems of the past. He does not want a world in which the working class knew their place. He is simply reflecting a uncertainty about the future.
https://youtu.be/3AF4rxTGYfM
But for all that . But for all that It does not present it as a false golden age devoid of faults. the past is not whitewashed. It is not an episode of Happy Days. Wyndham is aware of familiar with the problems of the past. He does not want a world in which the working class knew their place. He is simply reflecting a uncertainty about the future.
https://youtu.be/3AF4rxTGYfM
113Tobbi73
I recently read it for the first time.
It just seemed to me that there was a lot of things thrown in there just because the author thought they where neat ideas. Like the shark attack where they fight a big shark and a woman get her legs bitten off. Many things feels a little disconnected and pointless to the main story...
I liked the overall concept, but the story or characters didn't really bite.
It just seemed to me that there was a lot of things thrown in there just because the author thought they where neat ideas. Like the shark attack where they fight a big shark and a woman get her legs bitten off. Many things feels a little disconnected and pointless to the main story...
I liked the overall concept, but the story or characters didn't really bite.
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