perfidy

this comment thread (from my comment on Pilgrim's Progress and Uncle Tom's Cabin) and haul it onto the main page:

Two-Cents:
Why is that a bad thing? UTC was the best-selling novel in American history. Be careful. You might own the fields of politics, political philosophy, military history, space, technology, and modern jurisprudence, but if you're talking about women in 19th century US culture, you're in MY house.

Buckethead:

The weekly world news is the eighth largest circulating newspaper in the world.

Two-Cents:

What is your problem with Uncle Tom's Cabin? Not to pull a moral-relativism move here, but it was hot shit back in the day. I've read it. I see the problems with it, seen from today's perspective. But honestly, why is it a not-great book?

I mention its sales figures, not by way of measuring its worth as literature, but as a way of measuring its effect on the world, and its success in encapsulating the key debates of its time.

Remember what Lincoln said to Harriet Beecher Stowe when he met her: "So you're the little lady who's caused all these big problems." More than being a literary triumph, UTC was an important cultural landmark. It better have been, because as a piece of writing it's not so hot. Talk about turgid! Innocent blonde babies, a Christ like black protagonist, the evil slaveowners! Everyone's a cartoon.

But, as I say, it was a cultural watershed. Stowe, who was obviously an abolitionist, took all the polemics of Garrison and his group and fit them into the acceptable framework of a suitably dewy romantic novel. It's not the writing that made this book great-- it was that Stowe in one fell swoop collected and restated all the tenets of radical abolitionism, with the internal contradictions nicely papered over, in a way that was eminently palatable for nineteenth-century audiences.

Moral 'suason wasn't generally as effective as people think. But, this is one instance in which it was a thundering success. Regardless of its dated-ness and its shortcomings, it's a "great novel," even more so because it can teach an alert reader so much about the United States in the pre-Civil War era.

Buckethead:

But, as I say, it was a cultural watershed. Gibson, who was obviously a dystopian, took all the ideas of Bester, Brunner and their group and fit them into the acceptable framework of a suitably dewy sf novel. It's not the writing that made this book great-- it was that Gibson in one fell swoop collected and restated all the tenets of radical futurists, with the internal contradictions nicely papered over, in a way that was eminently palatable for late twentieth-century audiences.

This relates to an earlier conversation, the difference between importance and greatness. Neuromancer was fun, but I don't think it was a great novel. As the first cyberpunk novel, it is important, at least within the genre. UTC was important to America and the world, and it is a useful source for studying early nineteenth century America. But it isn't a great novel. It's an important novel. It's a cultural watershed.
Most novels teach us a lot about the time that they were written - manners and mores, fears and hopes, misconceptions, the whole deal. But only a few are great.

And I've spent thousands of dollars finding that out.

Matrix
Bladerunner
Fifth Element
2001
Star Wars
Metropolis
Clockwork Orange
Terminator
Galaxy Quest
Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (even though it rips off Run Silent, Run Deep)
Destination Moon
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Klaatu Barada Nikto! Gort!)
Casablanca

Casablanca belongs on any list of great movies, because it's so damn cool.

Another reason why Gibson is derivative. Sure, Neuromancer is a landmark book, and I very much enjoyed reading it. But Sterling and Williams are better writers. At least in their books that made the list. I'd rather read real Phillip K. Dick, or Raymond Chandler, than most Gibson. I think Shockwave Rider is better written than Neuromancer. Gibson has stylistic flair, but that's all he has. Sterling needs to write more sf, 'cause he has the mojo. 

I am willing to include Snow Crash on the list for one reason, though - by perfecting, inflating, lampooning and puncturing the cyberpunk sub-subgenre with one masterful novel, we no longer have to read stylistically derivative, politically uninformed, dystopic, carbon copy fantasies. We can ignore them. 
 

Buckethead, fair enough. I haven't read the Brin on your list, and I will admit that the ending of The Postman, which used a deux ex machina, was not quite up to the rest of the book. I read I, Robot when I was about twelve, and it is what first kindled my inner fire of geek. So, propers are due there. 

As for abuse of cyberpunk concepts by Gibson and Sterling, you're just baiting the Johnny-bear. Shockwave Rider was a very good book indeed, and advanced many of the same ideas earlier, but Neuromancer especially is the better book. It's not everybody's cup of tea, to be sure, but the atmosphere, ideas, and details really killed me-- it's like "The Long Goodbye" as re-written by Philip K. Dick. I will admit though that Shockwave Rider does have a better plot. 

Regarding Fantasy novels: Dude, you are such a geek. Not that I'm any better. I really dug Katherine Kurtz' first Saint Camber trilogy. 
 

I would agree to items #a, III and four of Johnny's list. I've already explained why Snow Crash didn't make it to my list, and the same applies to Brin's Postman. I thought I, Robot sucked, three stupid suggestions for automata notwithstanding. Never read Pynchon, so can't say. However, his list reminded me of a couple other books:

• Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner
• Voice of the Whirlwind, by Walter Jon Williams If I could establish a precedence in my list, Brunner's book would be near the top. An ur-cyberpunk novel that prefigures most of the concepts later abused by Gibson and Sterling. Whirlwind is a better novel than Neuromancer. On to fantasy - my top five fantasy novels/series:
• Lord of the Rings, by some guy, think his name begins with "D"
• Freedom and Necessity, by Emma Bull and Steven Brust
• Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• Age of Unreason, by J. Gregory Keyes
• The Earthsea Trilogy, by Ursula K. Le Guin (and I do mean trilogy) 
   

I also enjoyed The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, by Stephen Donaldson; the Belgariad by David Eddings, Riftwar, by Raymond Feist; The Silmarillion, by Tolkien; and little else. American Gods would be on this list, were it not on the other one.

Comprehensive as it may be, I would like to add my two cents to buckethead's very potent 22-item top-five list.

• William Gibson-Neuromancer (plus Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive)
• Philip K. Dick- A Scanner Darkly
• Dick- The Man In The High Castle
• Bruce Sterling- Islands In The Net
• Thomas Pynchon- Gravity's Rainbow
• David Brin- The Postman
• Isaac Asimov- I, Robot
• also... Stephenson- Snow Crash. Just to be thorough.

Some might argue that Gravity's Rainbow is not science fiction, being instead a turgid and pretentious turd laid by the biggest charlatan in English-language writing in the years between Joyce and Eggers. Those some are stupid people. It's fiction about science, and it kicks ass besides, so I'm fine with it. The Sterling book, by the way, is touchingly dated in its details. It was written just as computers and faxes were beginning to make speedy communication easier, and the book displays a strange-seeming reverence for and love of the fax machine.

This morning, I saw a man in a Hell's Angels jacket, using a walker.

A man in a very nice suit was standing outside a Starbucks with an empty cup. I put a quarter in his cup. He was sputtering when I turned the corner.

Overheard a small child pointing at some protestors and asking her mother, "What are the strange people doing?"

My mom asked me to give her a list of my favorite science fiction novels, so that she could read them. (Bless her. The only way my dad would read a science fiction novel is if I wrote it, and even then it's a toss up. (Too focused on history. Sheesh.)) So, here is the top five list I prepared for my mom:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
Player of Games, by Iain Banks
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Dosadi Experiment, by Frank Herbert
Dune, by Frank Herbert
A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
Cryptonomicon, by Neil Stephenson
Sundiver, by David Brin
Startide Rising, by David Brin
Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Mother of Storms, by John Barnes
Killing Star, by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebroski
Doorways in the Sand, by Roger Zelazny
The Greks Bring Gifts, by Murray Leinster
Pebble in the Sky, by Isaac Asimov
The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clark

There are probably a couple more, but that is the core of it. The two novels by Neil Gaiman are not strictly sf, but they are very, very good. I have never been able to narrow this list down, this is about as short as I can get it. My top five list, it is large, it contains multitudes.

[Update]

It was brought to my attention over the weekend that I had foolishly left a few deserving novels off the list:

Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter Miller
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
The Earth Abides, by George R. Stuart

I left Stephenson's Snow Crash off the list, despite the fact that I truly love the book, because I think the other two are better, and didn't want to load up too much on any one author.

PS, we are not luddites.

Jacob Levy over at Volokh Conspiracy has more on Rick Santorum. He links the entire Santorum interview and rightly points out that, in context, the speech is unambiguous: Santorum is saying that homosexual sex is the same, morally, as doing Lassie, your sister, or a child, that it's filthy and wrong, and that it should be outlawed. His clutch argument is that privacy rights that protect homosexuals from prosecution are also what led to the priest-sex scandals currently plaguing the Boston Archdiocese and elsewhere. Wha...?

I have a feeling that this isn't going to lose Santorum any votes in Pennsylvania, by the way. I also don't think the Republican Party is going to jeopardize its far-right constituency at all, and will stay mute on this incident.

From the interview come this priceless exchange

And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold -- Griswold was the contraceptive case -- and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you -- this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong, healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality --

AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.

SANTORUM: And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society.

AP: Sorry, I just never expected to talk about that when I came over here to interview you. . . .

Unambiguous, disturbing, and funny to boot!! Woo HOO!!
[update] Over at Matthew Yglesias' discussion, Chris Lawrence comments: "I love a two-party system where one wants to take all my money and the other wants to make sure I don't get laid. No wonder nobody votes..."

Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits---and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Gotta love Omar.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

I've been thinking about this for a bit, as I wrestle with my partially completed novel. In my world, genre killing is when an author (usually science fiction) writes a book that destroys a sub genre for every subsequent author. If you think of the realm of possible science fiction novels as a vast, unexplored continent - some writers are like explorers, their novels open up new territories for development. Their ideas create places where others can settle and develop. Heinlein was probably the biggest explorer in this sense. He wrote important early novels or stories that opened up new terrain for others.

But other authors don't just explore, they discover and lay waste to huge tracts of land, and no one but the insane would ever be able to live in the wasteland they leave behind. David Brin is like this, his Uplift series makes it almost impossible to think of writing stories about genetically engineered smart animals. Charles Pellegrino and George Zebroski leveled the once rich region of alien invasion novels by writing Killing Star. This novel debunks nearly every possible motivation for invasion, and then caps it off by introducing relativistic bombing. The only way that you can write about a topic in the wake of a genre killer is to devote extraordinary effort to overcoming, outthinking, and resisting the influence of your predecessor. And even if you succeed, your work will bear the stamp of the genre killer.

The interesting thing is that this process is not merely about writing, it is also largely about the ideas that are at the center of science fiction. Dune, by Frank Herbert, largely killed the interstellar empire sub genre by interweaving it with ecology, politics and religion (wrapped in superb writing) and the only survivors are barely literate pulp sf war porn novels.

This is a small version of the effect that great writers have on all who follow them. Harold Bloom, in The Western Canon talks about this in great depth. Bloom focuses on how Shakespeare, at the very center of Western Literature, put the thumb on every writer who followed him, and will do so to every writer for as long as we have an English language. Shakespeare, more than anyone, killed the Sonnet by perfecting and transcending it. After the Bard, who could even attempt to best Sonnet 130, or Sonnet 123, or whatever your favorite is?

Since I am writing a novel about war, set in the near future, I must wrestle with Tom Clancy. Happily, he isn't a genre killer, which means that I am not wasting my time. But I must be aware of him, always in the back of my mind, so that I don't end up writing a dull Clancy pastiche of a novel. Hopefully, that will make me a better writer.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled kvetching

And to think, I have been invited to be in a wedding... Perhaps they should reconsider.

Apparently,

I'm French! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king-a?!

What Monty Python Character are you, you English pig-dog?

(brought to you by Quizilla)

As bad as President Clin-ton, Nixon, or Buchanan may have been, none of them were as bad as the tyrannical rule of President Kang.

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!

Mike said about FDR, "His infamy also lies in his role as the savior of American capitalism, and not taking the New Deal far enough to the left." You cannot possibly imagine what that sounds like to me. If you want to blame someone for saving capitalism (gack) then blame our second Irish-American president, Ronald Reagan. FDR was an attempt at socialism that thankfully was aborted by the common sense of the American people.

Also, I really must object to putting Reagan, Thatcher and Coolidge in the same category as Stalin, Hitler and Himmler. Certainly, your political beliefs will ensure that those three are not on your "favorite leaders" list. But Thatcher, Reagan and Coolidge were not responsible for the organized slaughter of millions of their fellow citizens. At absolute worst, they were (elected) misguided leaders of democratic nations, who were replaced by constitutional means. This is a far, far cry from genocidal maniac leader of a totalitarian police state.

A side note: in general, the Soviets who died in vast numbers in combat against the Nazis died to save civilization - although in the process they also preserved (temporarily) the unmitigated evil of communism. American and British troops made the Germans die to save civilization. Like Patton said, "Don't be a fool and die for your country. Let the other sonofabitch die for his." This is, I think, largely a result of the total lack of concern for human life of the Soviet government.

Hunter S. Thompson:

"The Music Business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

I'm just sayin'. That's all.

Awwww yeah! Via Instapundit comes this observation from Rick Klau that Bernard Bailyn has commented about weblogs, in a sense:

"The weblog is a one-man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and 'high-brow' than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. At the same time, since the weblog is always short, it can be produced much more quickly than a book, and in principle, at any rate, can reach a bigger public. Above all, the weblog does not have to follow any prescribed pattern. ... All that is required of it is that it shall be topical, polemical, and short." 

Of course, this isn't really about weblogs. Take the same quote - verbatim - and swap out "pamphlets" for "weblogs". The author is Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn, writing about the "literature of revolution" in his Pulitzer prize winning book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. It's on page two.

I haven't read that book in years, or any of his books for that matter. Although reading Bailyn is like downloading smartness directly into your forebrain, grad school got me in the habit of reading later commentaries on his work instead. It's not possible to breeze through Bailyn. 

Everyone should read this book though, then some Hofstadter. Does a body good! 
 

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