No Native Americans in sight.
They were transitioned.
Hmm. I always assumed people were talking about the next president when they say they are looking forward to George W. Bush transitioning.
To be fair, Drake the English hero did destroy an awful lot of Latin American cities.
The Irish and English also have diametrically opposed views on Oliver Cromwell.
my ass hurts, but the views were great.
There's a prison rape joke in there somewhere.
There's a prison rape joke in there somewhere.
I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of it.
The Irish and English also have diametrically opposed views on Oliver Cromwell.
I once accidentally sent an ms meant for the Hellenist Oliver T*plin to the Romanist Oliver L*ne. I wrote L*ne a quick email apologizing for my mistake and suggesting that he just throw it away when he received it. A scholar and a gentleman, L*ne wrote back himself apologizing, insisting that it was really his fault for being named for "our dread regicide."
You messed up, ogged—there's a trace of a human in one of your pictures.
There's a prison rape joke in there somewhere.
I thought that the cowgirl line would work in there better, myself.
Huh. Here in the provinces, "transitioning" is used to describe a transgendered person's, um, transition from living as one gender to living as the gender he or she has chosen to be.
Yes, the grammar in 11 is all wrong.
Yes, the grammar in 11 is all wrong.
And I double-posted. Can't stand up for falling down, I guess.
11: yeah, that's the meaning I'm familiar with.
I have been to that very same Cowgirl Creamery in Pt. Reyes!
No BPL tease. Not even in silhouette or shadow. Ogged doesn't know how to play the game any more.
No BPL feet in high heels. I'm disappointed.
"Transitioning" also means gender transitioning here, just not to West Marin hippies.
45 minutes north of the Golden Gate: middle of nowhere physically, smack in the middle of the Bay Area spiritually, if you will.
I forgot to mention when I did my little "Pittsburgh, not as bad as you might think" write-up during the over/underrated cities discussion, that when I do visit friends in the Bay Area (where the natural trajectory of a previous job would have landed me) I find that I spend a fair bit of effort choking back the gorge of my envy.
19: Yeah, it's pretty rough. Having lived at various places on that coast I'd have to say the bay area isn't quite as beautiful as vancouver (which is, as far as I can tell, the most beautiful city & surrounds on the continent) area, but the weather is milder so it's a difficult trade off. There are things I never miss about living in the bay area, but point reyes and highway 1 up around there aren't one of them
Pittsburgh: 3 beds, 2 baths, nice 'hood = $270,000
Bay Area: 3 beds, 2 baths, nice 'hood = $1,270,000
And yes, having lived in Vancouver, it boasts the finest urban environs that North America has on offer. But the Canadians are a persistent problem.
21: That's would be one of the things I don't miss.
Ari, you're on crack. Even my parents' house in Marin isn't worth that much.
Not to mention the football teams out here stink. But if you're in certain career fields, it really is the place to be...
Maybe Ari doesn't think Marin is particularly nice.
45 minutes north of the Golden Gate: middle of nowhere physically, smack in the middle of the Bay Area spiritually, if you will.
Am I the only person who finds this absurd? Sigh, flatlanders city folk. I mean, I know I'm not the only person here who grew up or now lives in a rural area. 45 minutes north of the Golden Gate is a lot farther from the middle of nowhere than where I'm sitting, 45 minutes south of Burlington, Vt.
3 beds, 2 baths, elite Elgin neighborhood, $99,500.
Am I the only person who finds this absurd?
No.
28: That's Elgin, Texas, not North Dakota.
30: True. You can get reasonable places for not much more than that in Houston for that matter.
That's Elgin, Texas, not North Dakota
I thought that seemed mighty high.
I have a 3 bed 2 1/2 bath house in a nice 'hood in Pittsburgh. If Ari wants to give me $270,000 for it, I'll be up about a hundred grand.
Why I declare. $55,000, 3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1,920 Sq. Ft., Elgin, N.D.
Ari, you're on crack. Even my parents' house in Marin isn't worth that much.
His numbers are a bit off in both cases, but his point isn't.
Why I declare. $55,000, 3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1,920 Sq. Ft., Elgin, N.D.
The "features" section confirms it's got a sewer and everything.
21: [Relative house prices]
Yes, I know, but despite that, the folks I know who took the alternate trajectory ended up OK as far as their housing in the Bay Area. I, through the judicious exercise of Transcendental Material Incompetence™, have managed to end up with a relative shitpile (though admittedly with more sq. ft in house and yard) in a lower-cost area of the country.
I am not immune to the charms of Bay Area living, having snacked on oysters at that open-air yuppie mall in Oakland, and knowing how the Cowgirl Creamery's products sit on the tongue. But on my last visit, I learned what people mean when they say that San Francisco has turned into a "playground". It's like year-round camp!
In no other city are there always activities like there are in San Francisco. "Are you going to the bunny party?" "No, I'm going to the Big Wheels drag race" was a conversation that was repeated by sets of completely separate acquaintance during my last visit.
But not with gentle w-lfs-n, with whom I spoke about the Wittgenstein on his T-shirt, and about his youth.
A problem with the bay area in particular (rather than n. cali in general) is that for every one living in a beautiful place up on the ridge or round half moon area or up in the city, it seems there are 300 engineers working 100+ hour weeks in the butt ugly sprawl along the bay, and never having enough time to fight the traffic out ... paying the penalty to get little benefit.
open-air yuppie mall in Oakland
Is this new?
Please tell me that Cowgirl Creamery's logo is a woman on a horse facing backwards.
38: A little interest of mine is California utopias. One might fruitfully examine by Pat Murphy and A Mask for the General by Lisa Goldstein. Both are rather poorly plotted but kind of interesting as regional literature about city-as-summer-camp. They precede some of the novels I see written up on Boing Boing with all the sort of Bruce Sterling/flashmob wackiness that seem to be in the contemporary CA utopian mode.
My first novel is going to be a Minneapolis radical utopia, believe you me. Of course, radical for Minneapolis will be someone somewhere daring to say directly, "No, actually I don't want to watch your child this afternoon" rather than seething in silence. Bartleby is be some kind of crazy hippie-dippie anarchist in Minnesota terms.
That "city as summer camp for very special boys and girls" thing started to bug me after a while when I lived there. LA has all kinds of problems but, y'know, so does the world. SF is so insular and self-satisfied; it almost seems dishonest.
thinking of n. cali. cheesmakers, this is really good.
Boy do I ever miss working in Marin, though. My god that was an unrealistically wonderful place to have a job.
mmmm cheese is good. Gotta give those goats credit.
46: Yeah, because you can't spell (or look like a) peninsula without "penis". (Though SF is more of a fist on the end of an arm.)
47: I hate that it's good enough you don't care about the pretentious artisinal bullshit.
There was Wittgenstein on my shirt?
My local Whole Foods advertises "artisanal water." I pray that this is because someone misread "artesian" on the Fiji label, but I could be wrong.
In no other city are there always activities like there are in San Francisco
It's important not to interact with, or photograph, any humans in the Bay Area. Partial exceptions can be made for English transplants.
51: hard-working, sweaty artisans personally handcrafted that water. Occasionally you can find one of their hairs in it as a guarantee of authenticity.
sweaty artisans
where else do you think it came from?
The stork? Heaven? The phlogistonic aether?
That Fiji water is the most ridiculous thing ever. Far worse than Evian, which I actually dislike.
50: By Wittgenstein, I mean Gunter Grass. Sorry.
(Also acceptable: "By Wittgenstein, I mean a pile of poo.")
From the links in 42:
Five years after the economic collapse of the United States, the masked tribespeople of Berkeley retain a precarious hold on individual and intellectual freedom until two women, Layla the maskmaker and a newcomer called Mary, take an unprecedented risk to bring down the totalitarian rule of America's dictator,
and...
After a deadly plague sweeps the world, toppling governments in its wake, a few surviving artists who have claimed San Francisco as their home wage an unorthodox war against an invading army intent on bringing the blessings of law and order to a community that has discovered a better way of life. The author of The Falling Woman , a Nebula Award winner, evokes a haunting vision of life after society's collapse, as art becomes magic and combines with the power of love to defeat the engines of war.
All hail the masked tribespeople of Berkeley! NorCal is gonna be AWESOME after the apocalypse! Everyone in groovy costumes, and none of that boring law and order shit!
Post-apocalypse Minnesota will just feature bulky winter garments and regular old social order. Nowhere near as good.
I bet you could make big money selling Whole Foods locally sourced small batch artisanal water, hand poured from your very own faucet.
40: Actually it was the Ferry Building in San Francisco. I was staying with East Bay friends, but we ventured across for the yuppy delights.
Jack London Square in Oakland could be fairly described as an open-air yuppie mall. And there's a Cowgirl Creamery shop in the Ferry Building.
art becomes magic and combines with the power of love to defeat the engines of war in an epic final battle in the stand mixer of metaphor.
hand poured from your very own faucet
It turned out that the initial stories about contaminants in water were inaccurate, and Bay Area tap water was actually uncontaminated (seriously). So drinking tap water is probably your best bet in the Bay Area.
Also, Frowner, speaking of California post-apocalypse novels, have you read the classic "Lucifer's Hammer"? One of the great right-wing books ever, the science fiction counterpart to Red Dawn, and a mighty riposte from the reactionary conservative engineering nerds of the Orange County denfese industry to hippies of Northern California.
An accurate summary from a review site:
Let me summarize this book for you: Catastrophe happens. The good guys [our heroes, complex and human, heir to loneliness of leadership] go off in the mountains to found a new kingdom. The bad guys [liberals, environmentalists, blacks, religious fanatics, cheap politicians] form a cannibal crusade to destroy every thing worthwhile. Astronauts return from space like shining gods. The cannibal horde tries to destroy the good guys. They also try to destroy the magic talisman of technophilic goodness, the Atomic Power Station. In the end the horde is defeated by the devices of the techie genius nerd.
Post-apocalypse Minnesota will just feature bulky winter garments and regular old social order roaming survivalists
NorCal is gonna be AWESOME after the apocalypse!
Someone made a pitch to me recently that Chicago was the post-apocalyptic city par excellence. Something about abundant fresh water and other things. Apparently this is a not uncommon observation. The only thing I could think of was making the trek there after the apocalypse, arriving, and seeing a big sign: "Welcome to Chicago: The City that Works. Roachard M. Daley, Mayor."
You really have to read Lucifer's Hammer to see how racist it is. Post-apocalypse, the black inner city gang invades the white suburbs, eating the men and enslaving the women, only sparing a few sufficiently craven liberal fellow travellers. Until they finally attempt to conquer our astronaut heroes in their survivalist encampment in the Central Valley...
As my daddy said, "Son, it's in the water. That's why it's yellow!" Bear Whiz Beer.
drinking tap water is probably your best bet in the Bay Area. most places.
I'm not really sure Chicago has your ideal post-apocalyptic climate.
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Six-paragraph snarks on popular literature. Neil Strauss's The Game seemed appropriate to post here.
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67: Brought to you by the same halfwits who recently decided that a (the?) major problem with the health care system was illegal aliens who don't pay their bills.
Maybe the idea was that the inhabitants are already inured to nuclear winter.
64, 67: Speaking of Larry Niven: I feel the need to circulate this repellent story about him. (scroll down to "Science Fiction Mavens Offer Far Out Homeland Security Advice").
Unfogged.....Come out to play........Unfogged......Come out to play...
My general theory on post-apocalyptic living is that it'll be doable, kind of, anywhere that had civilization before the industrial revolution. So, sure, I'll probably be among the 99.9% that get killed off, but if I don't, MA isn't fundamentally an awful place to be.
70: I guess that depends how much warming the apocalypse involves. Washington state is probably a better bet.
Those entering passing by post-apocalyptic present day Trenton are greeted by a sign saying "Trenton Makes, The World Takes.
58, 64: Lucifer's Hammer, classic Niven, Pournelle juvenile wish fulfillment tripe.
On the other hand, a truly great Bay Area post-apocalypse novel is Earth Abides by George R Stewart. And yes the Bay Area has a great post-apocalyptic climate as long as your down to so few that you don't tax the water resources.
see what happens when you take time to dig up a link, felix?
Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants. ... "Do you know how politically incorrect you are?" Pournelle asked.
I guess you can't you call a fucking bigot a fucking bigot anymore. Fucking bigot.
Earth Abides by George R Stewart
So, so boring.
great post-apocalyptic climate as long as your down to so few that you don't tax the water resources.
Hence further up the coast suggestion.
82: There are no boring books by George R Stewart, only boring readers.
76: that's assuming pre-industrial MA wasn't awful, which I'm suspicious of.
78: I grew up within walking distance of that bridge, and it's really a mighty neon claim, very true some years ago. Most of the Golden Gate Bridge was manufactured in Trenton. For my sister and I, it could only be "Trenton Poops, The World Scoops", not too trenchant in its political economy but for an eleven- and eight-year-old, quite so in its rhetoric.
70: I'm not really sure Chicago has your ideal post-apocalyptic climate.
As far as I could make out the geography of McCarthy's The Road, they are making there way down from that part of the country across the Smokies (not sure why they were crossing the Appalachians at their highest point) down to the coast.
I met Niven and Pournelle at a science fiction convention back in 1987. They were every bit the drunken right-wing assholes in person that their writing would indicate.
88: Did you have a chance to tell them that?
74: OMG, though, that description is completely hilarious. Wingnuts, meet your U.S. government. U.S. government, meet your wingnut constituency. The only thing missing was Steven Den Beste, who is my favorite member of the nerd sci-fi engineer winger demographic.
Lucifer's Hammer, classic Niven, Pournelle juvenile wish fulfillment tripe.
Have you not yet realized how central juvenile wish fulfillment is in the history of ideas and politics? I also though "Red Dawn" was a great movie...although to be honest it was better than Lucifer's Hammer.
The first listed review of Lucifer's Hammer is captioned "A great story and not as racist as has been claimed." If you say so, pal.
64: I have not read Lucifer's Hammer. Conservative books about the apocalypse are someone else's dissertation, not mine. Although it does sound horrifyingly fascinating. I am astonished that there is actual cannibalism. Have you read Gene Wolfe's "When I Was Ming the Merciless"? Repulsive politics (with some of the same themes--hippies and radicals go bad!), very nicely written.
Actually, both The City, Not Long After and A Mask for the General are somewhat better than the summaries given on Amazon would suggest...The City, Not Long After is quite spooky in parts and A Mask for the General is really interesting about being young and provincial and seeking out an activist mileu. It's also substantially about failure and awkwardness--the main character is kind of creepy and insecure and doesn't have any Character! Changing! Epiphany! either.
I also though "Red Dawn" was a great movie
ow. I didn't need that much cognitive dissonance today, thanks. PGD.
When I lived in rural California, in the eastern Sierras, I could never rent Red Dawn. It was checked out every time I tried.
engineer
Hey now, none of these idiots are engineers. Literature types can keep 'em!
91: re the Amazon page for "Lucifer's Hammer", I enjoyed the suggestion:
Buy this book with Earth Abides by George R. Stewart today!
They've been listening to JP!
85: Awful, in that pre-industrial peasant kind of way, but liveable similarly. This is mostly a "Don't live in the desert of the Southwest" rule.
90: Oh, I should add that all you coastal elites missed the recent Minneapolis five-minute theatrical version of Red Dawn. (It was actually more like ten minutes, but there was a dance number at the end.) That's worth a lot of yuppie cheese-purchasing opportunities, huh? Huh?
My local Whole Foods advertises "artisanal water."
They lovingly handstitch two Os to each H.
89: I was seventeen, and mouthing off to convention guests was not on my agenda. I wrote an essay about it in freshman composition, though. Take that, Niven!
(In 1987, the wingnut sci-fi geek cause du jour was missile defense.)
"Don't live in the desert of the Southwest"
Tell that to the Anasazi.
Oh, right.
95: Pournell has an engg degree, and polysci, iirc. I'm sad to say Niven did undergrad maths, I think.
94: I love rural California loons. Jefferson forever!
They lovingly handstitch two Os to each H.
Surely one of the Os would be between the H and the other O. That might conceivably work but be extremely unstable.
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Blood pressure currently 3,000,000 over 1,000,000 after reading the new New Yorker article on the N*di* *bu *l-H*j tenure battle at Columbia.
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74 was great.
The 45-minute panel discussion quickly deteriorated as federal, local and state homeland security officials, and at least one congressional aid, attempted to ask questions, which were largely ignored.
Instead the writers used their time to pontificate on a variety of tangentially related topics, including their past roles advising the government, predictions in their stories that have come to pass, the demise of the paperback book market, and low-cost launch into space.
Apparently, science fiction writers are wingnuts without the grasp on reality. Well, it's not fair to generalize like that; Niven seems like Glenn Reynolds, but Pournelle and Brin only seem a little odd.
104: Heh. That's how you make fizzy water.
102: and they really can't write, come to think of it.
The Warriors is the only important movie on this topic.
My god that was an unrealistically wonderful place to have a job.
I will be in the Bay Area this summer! With very little money or free time, though, probably.
There's plenty of techie sci-fi authors who aren't raging nutjobs, though, dangit. Who will speak for them?
110: yeah I was talking about Marin specifically; other parts of the Bay Area can be pretty much gross.
Apparently, science fiction writers are wingnuts without the grasp on reality.
I think that's a bit broad, there are left wing nutjobs writing it too.
Also, techie sci-fi authors who aren't nutjobs (of whatever political stripe).
I suspect one salient aspect here is the increased ability of genre writers (relative to random fiction) to construct an impressive fan-base mainly of credulous teenagers (a renewable resource, luckily for them). This can possibly give you an entirely distorted sense of your own intellectual capabilities, and worth.
112 is important (as alluded to in 39).
113: well, there are people groups everywhere.
114: "and worth" should have been "and insight", whups.
111: John Scalzi, maybe. He seems nice enough.
111: Pournelle was a defense industry engineer in SoCal for a while, talks about it a lot. I think that demographic -- postwar SoCal aerospace -- was totally different culturally than e.g. programmers today. Much more authoritarian bunch, and pretty important in the history of American conservatism.
There's an interesting question: how does the technology and organization you work in shape your political ideology? Or maybe I guess it's obvious.
Soup, have you ever seen Red Dawn? It really is very good. It has that deep, soulful craziness that creates fantasy worlds. It tells you much about the dream life of American conservatism too, which I find a fascinating subject. Unfortunately a highly relevant one too. It's also decent depiction of a nationalist rebellion...if you switch the sides you could kind of sort of see a parallel to the Iraq insurgency in there. Minus, you know, all the actual cultural specificity.
OK, I'll stop now.
115: William Gibson, at least. Rudy Rucker has his head on straight... yeah, I dunno. I don't read sci-fi any more, really. But still.
Jefferson forever!
With creameries on both sides of the OR-CA border, the state of Jefferson aims to be a world artisanal cheese power. A quixotic gambit for a would-be sovereign state, but it seems to be working so far. My, that's good cheese.
112: The last time I was driving through Marin itself, there was an interview on the radio with Jared Diamond on Collapse. Found it an interesting counterpoint to the the Edenic surroundings. (Though per soup biscuit, I'd head up more Mendicino way for my own private apocalypse.)
120: Yes, I've seen it. It's not crap, but `great' ??? I'm remembering pacing problems, character problems, a slide into jingoism, etc (it was a long time ago I watched it). I'll agree it is interersting for the insight to `the dream life of American conservatism', as you put it, but that's not the same thing.
120.1 is an interesting point, and reminds me that the same culture gave us Jack Parsons and Scientology.
Vineland, of course, has this all figured out.
115: David Brin. Kim Stanley Robinson. (Just naming two of my favorites, whose politics I know something about.)
124: Corntastic dialogue like "Things are different now."
122: I forgot about the great pot, which would create further demand for the cheese. The Jefferson economic model is making more sense all the time.
The problem with even non-political SF writers is that there's still the attitude of "I'm a rational thinker; I can look beyond the petty distractions of the present day and see the big picture; I can call for what's necessary even when it's unpopular." This can be a road to wingnuthood.
Full disclosure, this is one reason I could posit that "sterilize criminals" idea a few months ago.
I suspect it's a similar mental process that drove Glenn Reynolds over the brink, and simultaneously how he could protest political independence for so long.
120.1 Reminded me that John McCarthy was and is quite the right-winger. He is at least interesting, here is his webpage on progress and sustainability.
Jack London Square in Oakland could be fairly described as an open-air yuppie mall.
Only when the farmer's market is there. No place with this restaurant directly across the street fully qualifies as "yuppie".
Been to the Bay Area in fricking August & Sepember, and that place is just too damn cold. Can't imagine Arctic Portland, Seattle, or rain-forest cold Vancouver. Tougher people than we Texans are needed. 80s this week in Dallas.
Cold. Wet. Windy. Why would anyone want to live where you can't shop in shorts & sandals?
82: There are no boring books by George R Stewart, only boring readers.
Um, I know you are but what am I?
Anyway, I thought the set-up and early part of the novel was pretty interesting - if not "good" - but after quite a while of hoping the protagonist would come to grips with the situation I stopped hoping and started waiting; after waiting an unbelievable amount of time for the protagonist to come to grips with the situation I stopped caring; and then I finished the novel.
And oh crapaud de Nazareth, Orson Scott Card. I remember looking at his Empire at the bookstore when it came out, thinking, "Oh, I've heard he's gone all wingnut, but there might be enjoyable parts to the book anyway." To test this, I flipped through to a random page to see what was there... and it was a rant about academic indoctrination.
So much for that.
124, 128: Yeah, I guess I use different standards for "great" for different types of movies. You obviously wouldn't want to compare it to the Godfather or Truffaut or something. It's sort of like a piece of outsider art, eccentric and off the wall but in touch with this impressively deep vein of fantasy.
Why would anyone want to live where you can't shop in shorts & sandals?
We don't have the legs for it.
127: Poles apart! David Brin is a vapid twit -- albeit not of the wingnut variety -- while Robinson at least some depth, even if the Pacific Edge trilogy was just a rewrite of the Mars trilogy (or is that the other way 'round?).
No place with this restaurant directly across the street fully qualifies as "yuppie".
I don't know. I've been there (at, like, 3am). Am I a yuppie? I think I am.
Full disclosure, this is one reason I could posit that "sterilize criminals" idea a few months ago.
Wait, what?
"Oh, I've heard he's gone all wingnut
That's like saying "I heard Marlon Brando gained a bit of weight towards the end of his life." I mean, I think Card started sort of wingnut, and then veered right off into nutspace.
Tougher people than we Texans are needed.
Well sure, but that's setting the bar low.
141: dunno but it sure is awesome.
Am I a yuppie? I think I am.
There is absolutely no doubt in either of our minds as to whether or not you're a yuppie. Same with me. Doesn't mean we don't stick out like sore thumbs there. Contrast with the Ferry Building.
Emeryville Public Market
Never been.
Doesn't mean we don't stick out like sore thumbs there.
Indeed, indeed. I and my friends were the only white-ish people there. Surprisingly, the other patrons were eating with utensils, just like white people. Amazing.
144: You clearly haven't been there in a while. It's gone downhill, accentuated by the fact that the video arcade has gone out of business. Now I don't know where to go to play air hockey.
L. can take care of herself, and I am not, ogged.
Earth Abides by George R Stewart ... So, so boring.
I still say it's the apocalyptic novel most suited to the Unfoggedtariat.
He's not a predator, L. Of, if he is, he's a totally incompetent one; nothing to fear at all. You two should hang out. Then dish to the rest of us.
142-1: It was in November. Find it yourself, I don't want to talk about it and I suspect my view is shared by many here.
142-2: Yeah, I know, but I enjoyed the Homecoming Saga despite its nigh-incomprehensible religious content, so...
139: I'm curious - what makes you say Brin is a "vapid twit"?
147: really? That's depressing. I used to go there all the time. Bookstore + cheap ethnic food + video arcade = a trinity of awesome.
I and my friends were the only white-ish people there.
You can't dunk, either. It's time to give up this charade.
Surprisingly, the other patrons were eating with utensils, just like white people. Amazing.
I've listened to too much smooth jazz in cars from the Oakland casual carpool to not realize the existence of buppies.
Ben is a perfectly wonderful predator, L. The best you'll ever be preyed upon by, ever. Pay the naysayers no heed.
151.1: in any case, the supreme court ruled long ago that sterilizing chicken stealers is unconstitutional unless you snip the dirty pols, too, and nobody wants that.
156: Interesting, that was never mentioned.
139: I take nerdish issue with you, DS. The Pacific Edge "trilogy" is three novels (all of them quite good, actually; more engaging than the Mars books) with very different themes and totally unrelated characters. Now, yes, the whole "terraforming Mars and having revolutions" thing is a way of discussing political change on Earth, in California, etc, but still, those books share very little with the Pacific Edge ones. Even formally--the Mars books are all about a collective subject; the Pacific Edge ones are more with the individual feels and psychology and nonsense like that.
Or are you thinking of the post-Mars trilogies which I haven't read but which look much more similar to the Mars books?
I really liked KSR's most recent trilogy. He lost control, a bit, but quite a good read.
Other semi-rational SF writers: Charles Stross, Greg Egan, Richard K. Morgan.
Also, Brin is about as self-satisfied and smug a fellow as you will come across, but I do enjoy his Uplift books. Worldbuilding par excellence.
who are the far-leftish SF writers?
All I know is Miéville and Iaini Banks. Seems like there are lots lots more right-wing ones.
160: Stross doesn't count, he's British.
162: There's also Ken MacLeod (not surprisingly, a friend of Banks's).
DS must be pretty far left to have written The Handmaid's Tale.
164: I didn't know we were limiting ourselves to Americans. That makes it a lot harder. Egan is Australian.
135, 149: Did not know that Earth Abides had come up here before. I will admit that it is probably not for everyone. A good test is if you liked Stewart's Names on the Land (placename etymologies ... talk about boring), you'll be OK with Abides. For me it was great to see one of my juvenile wish fulfillment narratives (what happens if everything stops) handled competently. (And Populuxe's point is a good one as well.)
I believe Stross is a Scot.
As for Richard K. Morgan, the rapid decline of the Kovacs novels and the shooting-fish-in-a-teacup style of Black Man/Thirteen left me pretty cold.
162: My question! You've asked my favorite question! Or at least a question I can answer in mind-numbing detail:
Left-wing science fiction authors (I include a few who are borderline fantasy writers but no one who isn't at least sort of SF) include:
Feminist writers such as Joanna Russ (hi-LAR-ious), Suzy McKee Charnass, Suzette Hayden Elgin, Jane Candas Dorsey, Nicola Griffeth, L. Timmel duChamp, Gwynneth Jones (wildly uneven), Eleanor Arnason...
Other left-wing writers: Samuel Delany, Paul Park (the Sugar Rain ones are seriously under-rated), Alistair Gray...gosh, that's enough to be going on with, I suppose.
165: Have you hit every author mentioned in this song yet? (Lyrics here.)
Asimov had a sort of generic science-y leftishness.
Stross lives in Edinburgh, but is a native of (I think) Leeds.
I believe Stross is a Scot.
Yorkshireman. He just hangs out with Scots.
168: "British" encompasses Scots, I thought?
And Ursula Le Guin hasn't been mentioned yet.
171: I'm not just picking names randomly. I'm pretty sure he's Margaret Atwood.
re: 162
Ken Macleod. Lots of in-jokes about lefty splinter politics. Trotskyists take over the solar system, etc.
His most recent one, is set pretty much now, and is not so much with the epic space opera and, I think, better for it.
170: I read one of Nicola Griffith's books a few years ago. I remember the affect being flat in a way that was obviously purposeful but not very well controlled. Are they all like that?
165: Haven't you already done Atwood? You're slipping. And I'm not done with you re. NOLA. (Or maybe I am. I'm tired again today. The downtrodden of the Lower 9 will have to fight their own battles.)
Do Octavia Butler and Cynthia Kadohata count?
Does Alasdair Gray really count as sci-fi, aside from half of Lanark?
180: I totally want to talk about NOLA. The other thread awaits!
176: Nah, he's clearly Robertson Davies.
152: Pretty much all of his attempts at non-novelistic social or artistic commentary.
159: "Rewrite" is maybe a little harsh. I just remember the underlying structure of the two trilogies (progression from dystopia to utopia) being strikingly and eye-rollingly similar.
I haven't read the post-Mars stuff.
178: Which one? Ammonite is terrific--a sort of pastiche of every exploring-a-strange-planet trope evar, but feminist and lesbian!...as well as being a response to those anti-feminist sixties books about planets inhabited exclusively by women--but that's the only one I've read.
Good heavens, what about Ursula Le Guin--she's as left as all get out? Or Marge Piercy? And all those California utopias are left. And the late, very much lamented Octavia Butler. And Nalo Hopkinson. And Nancy Springer.
Sifu never guesses "Nalo Hopkinson," the racist. Not that he'd be right.
A. There's a Cowgirl Creamery outlet in DC.
B. Marge Piercy.
187: It was about a woman somewhere in the American South and then in Scandinavia, and for the next month Amazon recommended novels about lesbians.
182: I think he'd say he does. Poor Things is (in part) an extended commentary on Frankenstein, and The History Makers is very SF. Yeah, he's more "literary" than SF writers are supposed to be, but that doesn't stop people from name-checking Margaret Atwood or encourage "literary" people to read Dhalgren or The Mad Man. Also, the only place in town that stocks his books is our local SF bookstore. Which proves nothing, but I think it's amusing.
I forgot about Poor Things, possibly because I hated it.
190: Never heard of it. (As my grandmother would always say dismissively about a broad range of things--things which would undoubtedly have included Nicola Griffeth's novels had I mentioned them) Now I kind of want to look at it, though.
And then there's that woman who wrote the rather difficult Mindscape...a novel which is certainly the Dhalgren of our era, at least in terms of the number of people who buy it and bog down in the first couple of chapters. It's actually rather neat, though.
I remember Ammonite being a bit flat, and it didn't really engage me when I read it. But I was pretty sleep-deprived at the time.
192: You would, I sneer unreasonably. I just reread it last week. Yah, okay, it's no Lanark, and the silly names get annoying in patches, but I'm very fond of the end-notes. Clydeside forever!
1982 Janine is much, much my favorite. Also much, much the smuttiest.
If we're recommending leftish SF authors, Adam Roberts should go on the list. Usually good or at least interesting, with the exception of Splinter.
The downtrodden of the Lower 9 will have to fight their own battles.
So this is what academic historians mean when they talk about giving people back their agency.
Tangentially, it occurs to me that I seem to be losing my tolerance for books that fail to move something in me, or for books that deploy swaybacked old devices, or for books that betray the authors' politics and prejudices more readily than the authors tend to believe, such that, whatever the genre, I cast a lot more books aside now than I ever did when I was younger. Grizzled, experienced detective? Trash that sucker. Overworked metropolitan yuppie drone exposed to a hidden realm of crime/sexuality/wonder/fear? Fuck you. Medieval village youth dispatched on a quest? No, thanks. Bitter but soulful gourmet Navy SEAL veteran forced to do one last dirty job for the President? Seriously, please stop.
198: Maybe you have read more books now than you had when you had read fewer books.
Michael Moorcock has soundly left-wing politics.
Michael Morecock would be a good name for a porn star.
Grizzly bear exposes medieval seal to a hidden realm of sexuality?
198: it has clearly come time to write your own thriller. Or perhaps movie script.
Overworked metropolitan yuppie drone exposed to a hidden realm of crime/sexuality/wonder/fear? Fuck you.
No, please, wait! This really can happen, can't it? I've been waiting so long...
201: Not many streets named Morecock though. But there are a lot of "Morewood"s.
Overworked President dispatched by grizzled detective?
199: But I seem to be reading fewer and fewer, as more and more disappoint me.
198: Overworked metropolitan yuppie drone exposed to a hidden realm of crime/sexuality/wonder/fear? Fuck you
Little boy and his lovable stuffed bear and other animal friends have adventures in the woods. Stuff them all up your ass!
208: Well two of each at least.
Grizzly bares soulful gourmet Navy SEAL veteran to hidden realms of sexuality, wonder, and fear?
Medieval village gourmet exposes himself to hidden dirty president, leading to bitterness?
Secret muslim half-breed takes control of USA via force of cultish personality, precipitates apocalyptic war through missteps of his financial advisors. Billions die. Blog commenter had predicted every bit of it!
CHIMPEROR EMPOWERED BY IGNORANT CHIMPECTORATE, EVENTUALLY CHIMPEACHED BY HOUSE OF REPRECHIMPATIVES.
Metropolitan yuppie exposed to dirty Dispatch Office?
(the horror!)
Yes, enjoy my alienation from the trash genres. It may happen to you, too, and then how will you get through intercontinental flights? Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost? Infinite Jest? Some tasteful pile of tree pulp by Michael Chabon?
215: the very problem I'm having now. Last plane flight I dug into some light Heidegger, which worked, mmm, okay.
216: I read a good chunk of Safranski's biography on my last flight back from Europe.
Farley Mowat, barred from entering the U.S., is the only Canadian author who's any good. DS is him or nobody.
Some claim that Mowat's books are factually not ideal, but fie on them!
218: Native Canadians often call him "Hardly Know-it." In a story that may or may not be an outright lie, I whupped him in a drinking contest once.
I prefer the version in which you are him. Canadians not banned from the U.S. (e.g. MC-Invisible) are all suspect.
201: I always liked Hugh Mungus as a male porn star name.
Goddamit DS couldn't you just e-mail me with your secret identity? I'm so fucking curious now. I bet you're Pierre Trudeau, or Manbot from Alpha Flight.
I mean, I think Card started sort of wingnut, and then veered right off into nutspace.
I think he actually started out sort of left, and a combination of increasing social conservatism (by which I mean "gibbering homophobic madness") and TEH ISLAMIC THREATS!1! have driven him wingnutty. (This little Nostradamus turn by Dan Simmons' is both hysterical and likely to remove any desire you ever have to read another one of Simmons' books.) Also, from everything I've heard, Pournelle is the more wingnutty of the Niven-Pournelle tandem of Two-Fisted "Hard" SF What Doesn't Like Hippies or Chicks or Those Lazy Blacks.
Second the Pacific Edge recommendation; sorry I missed discussion of The City Not Long After, a pander-monium of a book that I still like very much.
Philip K. Dick was an American science fiction writer on the left (although, you know, crazy), and you could probably take a look at the people involved in the SFWA fight over condemnation of the war in Vietnam to get a list of '70s-era liberals.
I mean, I think Card started sort of wingnut, and then veered right off into nutspace.
I think he actually started out sort of left, and a combination of increasing social conservatism (by which I mean "gibbering homophobic madness") and TEH ISLAMIC THREATS!1! have driven him wingnutty. (This little Nostradamus turn by Dan Simmons' is both hysterical and likely to remove any desire you ever have to read another one of Simmons' books.) Also, from everything I've heard, Pournelle is the more wingnutty of the Niven-Pournelle tandem of Two-Fisted "Hard" SF What Doesn't Like Hippies or Chicks or Those Lazy Blacks.
Second the Pacific Edge recommendation; sorry I missed discussion of The City Not Long After, a pander-monium of a book that I still like very much.
Philip K. Dick was an American science fiction writer on the left (although, you know, crazy), and you could probably take a look at the people involved in the SFWA fight over condemnation of the war in Vietnam to get a list of '70s-era liberals.
In early and mid adolescence (say age 11 to 16) I read an astonishing amount of Larry Niven, and I never noticed the crazy politics. This is similar to all the children who miss the Christian imagery in The Chronicles of Narnia.
More interestingly, the politics didn't even effect me subconsciously. In fact, I have no recollection of plots, characters or messages behind any of the books. I only remember the technologies and the space aliens. And I still the the Pak Protectors are kinda cool.
I mean, I think Card started sort of wingnut, and then veered right off into nutspace.
I think he actually started out sort of left, and a combination of increasing social conservatism (by which I mean "gibbering homophobic madness") and TEH ISLAMIC THREATS!1! have driven him wingnutty. (This little Nostradamus turn by Dan Simmons' is both hysterical and likely to remove any desire you ever have to read another one of Simmons' books.) Also, from everything I've heard, Pournelle is the more wingnutty of the Niven-Pournelle tandem of Two-Fisted "Hard" SF What Doesn't Like Hippies or Chicks or Those Lazy Blacks.
Second the Pacific Edge recommendation; sorry I missed discussion of The City Not Long After, a pander-monium of a book that I still like very much.
Philip K. Dick was an American science fiction writer on the left (although, you know, crazy), and you could probably take a look at the people involved in the SFWA fight over condemnation of the war in Vietnam to get a list of '70s-era liberals.
I mean, I think Card started sort of wingnut, and then veered right off into nutspace.
I think he actually started out sort of left, and a combination of increasing social conservatism (by which I mean "gibbering homophobic madness") and TEH ISLAMIC THREATS!1! have driven him wingnutty. (This little Nostradamus turn by Dan Simmons' is both hysterical and likely to remove any desire you ever have to read another one of Simmons' books.) Also, from everything I've heard, Pournelle is the more wingnutty of the Niven-Pournelle tandem of Two-Fisted "Hard" SF What Doesn't Like Hippies or Chicks or Those Lazy Blacks.
Second the Pacific Edge recommendation; sorry I missed discussion of The City Not Long After, a pander-monium of a book that I still like very much.
Philip K. Dick was an American science fiction writer on the left (although, you know, crazy), and you could probably take a look at the people involved in the SFWA fight over condemnation of the war in Vietnam to get a list of '70s-era liberals.
On sentence from the link in 74 needs to be emphasized:
"Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants."
Holy shit.
Yeah he's such a kidder, eh?
"It would totally work, though!"
Should I make time to finish reading Brin's Kiln People, or just stick with digging through Derek Parfit?
229: I like how he specifies that the rumors need to be in Spanish.
Leave Derek Parfit's internal organs alone.
Yeah he's such a kidderasshat, eh?
I'm going to take 226 and 227 as signs that I have Sifu and John's implicit support on future comments, particularly as regards the importance of procedural liberalism and rebuilding New Orleans. Also, on the Who being the best rock band of all time and Boston sports fans being more obnoxious than even New York's.
By the by, Pournelle/Niven/Barnes' Fallen Angels is available for free on the web, and it's highly illustrative (and hysterical). The plot goes as follows: environmentalists had it completely backwards on global warming and in fact glaciers are wiping out civilization, and only a loose coalition of freethinking, sexxxed up astronauts and filksinging SF nerds can save the world (particularly America) from the evil Fonda-ite hordes who are glad to see the glaciers win, those fuckers.
In early and mid adolescence (say age 11 to 16) I read an astonishing amount of Larry Niven, and I never noticed the crazy politics.
Me too. I think it helps that I didn't read many of his collaborations with Pournelle (I think only Mote in God's Eye).
The politics were not overly didactic. Several of his stories make points that I'm very sympathetic to as a liberal. I take "The Jigsaw Man" to be about human dignity in some way. The Gil Hamilton stories are sympathetic the the fate of someone working in law enforcement who has to enforce that they don't particularly agree with and the fact that laws can be beneficial in the aggregate and unfair and problematic in the specific case. (Note, I never took Niven as advocating in his authorial role for something like the fertility laws, but just presented them as a logical, but deeply problematic idea).
Even "Cloak of Anarchy", say, is more fond of the idea of random hippie attempts at social engineering than dismissive of them.
So, yes, I was shocked and disturbed by that linked quote.
By the by, Pournelle/Niven/Barnes' Fallen Angels . . .
Uggh, I really don't want to be defending Larry Niven today, because I know that's pretty limited ground to be standing on, but it seems worth mentioning that Fallen Angels is explicitly comedic. You may feel like the global warming satire is kidding on the square, but it's hardly equivalent to Michael Chrichton's book on global warming.
Oh, I very much doubt it's serious-serious, but the ressentiment is real.
Tis a Proud and Lonely Thing to Be a Fan, they used to say, laughing. It had become a very lonely thing. The Establishment had always been hard on science fiction. The government-funded Arts Councils would pass out tax money to write obscure poetry for "little" magazines, but not to write speculative fiction. "Sci-fi isn't literature." That wasn't censorship.
Perversely, people went on buying science fiction without grants. Writers even got rich without government funding. They couldn't kill us that way!
Then the Luddites and the Greens had come to power.
It's two heh-indeeds from being a Glenn Reynolds post.
You overplayed your hand with The Who. No, no, no!
You overplayed your hand with The Who. No, no, no!
I think it's pretty obvious that the Who are the best ever at what they did (listen to Live at Leeds), I just am not convinced that what they did is the ideal paradigm for rock music.
I'd love to call them the best ever in their genre, but I'm not sure what to call the genre other than "rock."
Aw, John, c'mon: Live at Leeds!
Truly one of John Martyn's best.
Blue Oyster Cult and Bachman Turner Overdrive were the best ever at what they did too. And Iron Butterfly iwa absolutely the best ever at what they did. We're entering analytic philosophy's closely-packed zone of death, where you can prove anything.
It finally struck me what is so odd for me about Niven as racist -- he wrote one of simplest descriptions of the argument that SF, as a genre, is inherently sympathetic to "the other."
The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently.
It's notable that he would write that and also be racist. People are weird.
Blue Oyster Cult and Bachman Turner Overdrive were the best ever at what they did too.
Don't forget Wolverine!
I could have added that the Who are also obviously not bad. They aren't boring, cliched, trite, or kitsch.
Really my only hesitations are they are overly fond of grand gestures, and they have a limited emotional palette, but there are easy counter-examples to both of those criticisms.
I think he actually started out sort of left, and a combination of increasing social conservatism (by which I mean "gibbering homophobic madness") and TEH ISLAMIC THREATS!1! have driven him wingnutty.
Loath as I am to disagree with snarkout, Emerson, *and* Tweety all at once... how do you account for his opinions on The Satanic Verses? The wingnutty has been there for quite some time.
I presume Sheri Tepper is left from the evidence of Gate to Women's Country.
Joanna Russ, while very funny, is a right-winger who's forced to be on the left by an accident of demographics. No, I cannot defend this statement, yet it is true.
Kiln People is good right until Brin tries to whip up some big dramatic finale. He's never been particularly good at endings.
I presume Sheri Tepper is left from the evidence of Gate to Women's Country.
Have I mentioned my theory that Gate to Women's Country can be read as a working out of the political philosophy of Plato's Republic? I don't think I have.
Philosopher Kings (Queens) -- check
Invented Founding Mythology -- check
Republic which voluntarily appears impoverished so that it won't be a target for its neighbors -- check
I remember working through and thinking that, looked at from that perspective, it was very clever, and impressive how many of the ideas in the Republic were manifest in Gate to Women's Country
Philip K. Dick was an American science fiction writer on the left (although, you know, crazy),
He attempted to shop fellow sf writers to the FBI as communists; hardly leftist.
Old fashioned properly socialist sf/fantasy writers: Mack Reynolds, Steve Brust, W*ll Sh*tt*rl* (who has odd opinions on the late unpleasantness however).
He attempted to shop fellow sf writers to the FBI as communists; hardly leftist.
Didn't he attempt to shop himself to the FBI as Communist?
In the end the horde is defeated by the devices of the techie genius nerd.
"devices" = "home made napalm and mustard gas" for heaven's sake.
But I will say this for Niven: in the 1960s and 1970s he was writing stories about transplantation, based on the thinking: "If transplant surgery goes on getting better, then there will be a stronger argument (in societies with the death penalty) for compulsory use of the organs of executed felons, as a way in which they can really 'pay their debt to society'; and, in fact, a strong pressure for the death penalty to be extended further and further, to provide more and more transplant organs; as well as a flourishing black market in the organs of those who have either died of natural causes or been murdered."
And then, sure enough, in the 1990s we reached that point, and now you can buy stolen human bone (as happened to poor old Alistair Cooke) or take a flight to China and come home with the kidney of a prisoner who's been executed to order. It's a pretty smart piece of prediction.
In a way, it's worse than Niven thought - he envisaged it happening in initially liberal societies, for high-minded motives; the Chinese do it for money.
"The Jigsaw Man", "The Patchwork Girl" and the Gil Hamilton stories are all more or less about this issue- and come across as extremely anti-death penalty and pretty liberal in sentiment. Don't forget that Jack Brennan, the human Protector, a superintelligent creature genetically compelled to care for his fellow humans, spends his time and money agitating for rehabilitation of criminals rather than (say) going round beating them up like a normal superhero would. Gil Hamilton and Jack Brennan make me think that Niven probably at least used to be a liberal.
179
I like Vernor Vinge.
Posted by: James B. Shearer | Link to this comment | 04- 7-08 3:26 PM
this is the greatest comment ever.
252: Has Vinge (either one, for that matter) come up with anything remotely as objectionable as the Niven quote?
"my ass hurts, but the views were great."
I don't think the one whose ass ends up hurting generally has that great a view, where you hanging over some sort of railing?
kinda different.
no, no, there's nothing really wrong with vernor vinge; he's just a certain kind of techno-optimist writer that I would imagine shearer reading.
