urth-urth.net Digest, Vol 5, Issue 16

Jeffrey Lefstin · 11 Jan 2005, 14:03 · from 2005-January.txt.gz

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From: jeff.lefstin at stanfordalumni.org (Jeffrey Lefstin)
Date: Tue Jan 11 14:03:37 2005
Subject: (urth) Re: urth-urth.net Digest, Vol 5, Issue 16
In-Reply-To: <20050111200902.698B39893E at che.dreamhost.com>
References: <20050111200902.698B39893E at che.dreamhost.com>
Message-ID: <93025411-641C-11D9-BCD9-000A95969716 at stanfordalumni.org>

I can't say I agree - I would have found it just as jarring if Silk had 
started spouting off about women's rights to control reproduction, or 
how the government of Viron should provide for the poor or rein in the 
merchant class.  Unless the story is a political allegory (and maybe 
not even then) dropping blatantly late-20th-century political debates 
into such a novel does little to improve it.

JL
On Jan 11, 2005, at 12:09 PM, urth-urth.net-request at lists.urth.net 
wrote:

>
>> I wouldn't go so far as to endorse this point of view whole-heartedly,
>> but I was struck by how jarring the paeans to supply-side economics 
>> and
>> universal gun ownership were in Exodus from the Long Sun.  At the time
>> they seemed so clumsily inserted that I wasn't sure if they were 
>> satire
>> or GW's views.... Now I assume the latter?
>
> I didn't think they were clumsily inserted. I think they were jarring
> because the plurality of SciFi writers are politically liberal.
>
> Thus, placing favorable views to gun-ownership and supply-side 
> economics in
> the mouth of a very simpathic and (presented as) wise character might 
> have
> caught you unaware if you did not previously know of Wolfe's 
> conservative
> politics.
>
> ~ Crush

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