This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

David Stockhoff · 10 Apr 2012, 11:43 · from 2012-April.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:43:29 -0400
Subject: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires
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On 4/9/2012 11:37 PM, Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 9:41 PM, David Stockhoff<dstockhoff at verizon.net>  wrote:
>> I can also understand interpreting it as the ravings of an out-of-touch
>> writer past his prime, in the style of Heinlein. Wolfe might indeed be a bit
>> out of touch---it's hard to keep up, and how would one incorporate Twitter
>> into sf anyway? And who would want to?
> I don't think 'prime' has anything to do with it. This is just
> ordinary mind-killing politics. Since people are intent on defending
> Wolfe, let me give a liberal example where one could equally claim 'oh
> it's just all SF! or alternate history!' (but so terrible SF that
> chalking it up to politics is the *charitable* interpretation): the
> story http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Traders

What makes you think Wolfe either believes in a European sharia future 
or that a fear of such a future is political? I agree that the 
hand-amputation thing is insensitive. But every age produces and writes 
about its own fears.
>
> Fulltext: http://www4.ncsu.edu/%7Emseth2/com417s12/readings/BellSpaceTraders.pdf
>
> I commented (http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/r2334/the_space_traders_et_offers_amazing_technology_in/c42h1ab)
>
>> It was [terribly written]. The author gets in all sorts of political gibes and doesn't even try to hide his ax to grind - the aliens are probably going to eat or enslave the blacks, the whites stand condemned forever for selling them, the Republican president&  cabinet (note the oh-so-subtle description pointing that way) are scum, etc. This is just a fine example of [Politics and Awful Art](http://lesswrong.com/lw/m3/politics_and_awful_art/).
>>
>> A good fable hides its beliefs: you genuinely don't know what the author thinks is right and so you have to think for yourself. For example, in [Ted Chiang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang)'s [excellent](http://lesswrong.com/lw/536/open_thread_april_2011/3thd) ["Hell is the Absence of God"](http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/hell.html), by the end you are disturbed and perplexed but you genuinely don't know what Chiang makes of the Book of Job, the theodicy, or whether the ending is good or bad.
I am not sure what this has to do with HF. The Space Traders story 
sounds like SF written for TV or young adults by a non-SF writer. Its 
point and delivery does seem ham-handed. So what?

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