Post ASex2Rgr0Pdinnke5g by rotopenguin@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by rotopenguin@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #ASeno9vZLocw4RkNtI by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T03:07:47Z
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When you reread a lot of the classic science fiction that you enjoyed as a youth, it's impossible not to notice how fascist-leaning so much of it was.
(DIR) Post #ASenuxDB1jrWeyDtHk by andrea@tryste.ro
2023-02-14T03:08:47Z
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@lauren Mid-20th-century culture absolutely reeked of authoritarian bullshit :(
(DIR) Post #ASeoQXIWuPYNYZmoT2 by mybarkingdogs@ohai.social
2023-02-14T03:14:41Z
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@lauren Honestly, to me, that's *any* media from most of the first world made up until very recently. Mostly *at best* liberal but with a whole lot of failings/dead angles/white or Western bias, troubling language and relationship models, etc, average being heavily colonialist, imperialist, and Extremely White Straight Guy, and the worst being fascist-friendly in the "if you think about it" or "they made the bad guys look TOO cool" senses or even worse, outright propaganda just thinly veiled
(DIR) Post #ASeoSJuFfZ5UbQHUXI by clankgy1@infosec.exchange
2023-02-14T03:14:42Z
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@lauren Aye. Ender's Game and Starship Troopers come immediately to mind.I just started recreationally reading again for the first time in many years, and am reading Roadside Picnic for the first time. I'll also be reading High Rise, and another hard sci-fi book which title has slipped my mind.
(DIR) Post #ASeoU7xf3GMa8QjnOq by resuna@ohai.social
2023-02-14T03:15:24Z
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@lauren Do you think this was particularly an issue for science fiction specifically?
(DIR) Post #ASeoVoYo9ds8Xkuvjs by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T03:15:45Z
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@resuna Affirmative.
(DIR) Post #ASepHGmh2J41gm2Ypk by jef@mastodon.social
2023-02-14T03:24:13Z
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@lauren Also racist.
(DIR) Post #ASer2MUTjpXox1XWWO by tasket@infosec.exchange
2023-02-14T03:43:58Z
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@lauren Just last week I was saying how Star Trek is obsessed with race. OK, they are "anti-racist" but chill dear viewer, let us find ways to understand alien life forms by constantly describing them as "races".That has warped millions of ppl, I am sure.
(DIR) Post #ASer8OfkXUmhSHgo0u by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T03:45:02Z
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@tasket This issue has been widely discussed in the context of the franchise over time, and is ... complicated.
(DIR) Post #ASerUjusEepDiGPwNE by tasket@infosec.exchange
2023-02-14T03:49:03Z
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@lauren If it needs a complicated explanation, then I'd have to say the issue was mis-handled. Its popular entertainment that's not going to get analyzed by many people, they are just going to subconsciously absorb the suggestive language.I think what they did was reify race at a time in history when actual science was saying it didn't exist.
(DIR) Post #ASerbmiEEpMsParVpo by mrcompletely@heads.social
2023-02-14T03:50:19Z
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@lauren this, of course, was the observation behind and the point of what LeGuin and the New Wave authors were doing. Delany, Brunner, Ballard, Moorcock, etc, many of them got well beyond simple liberalism in their attacks on mainstream SF... LeGuin and Delany the two most powerful and effective to my mind, notably neither of em a white guy. Also they're vastly superior prose writers to Heinlein, Asimov etc
(DIR) Post #ASeroWE4qSeb2qpaW8 by colin_rafferty@hachyderm.io
2023-02-14T03:52:36Z
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@lauren it’s John Campbell’s fault.
(DIR) Post #ASes2aBOvkdlN4HlPU by LarryFloop@mastodon.world
2023-02-14T03:55:08Z
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@lauren On the other end of the classic sci-fi spectrum, there are the anti-fascist cautionary tales -- 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Lathe of Heaven...
(DIR) Post #ASes4KrIsOKWQIikiW by gray17@mastodon.social
2023-02-14T03:55:13Z
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@lauren yep, I've decided my reading theme this year will be rereading old favorites, to see how well they hold up and what I missed
(DIR) Post #ASetDOeYEq66kedmXw by misterprotocol@mstdn.social
2023-02-14T04:08:21Z
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@lauren I recently took a dive into earlier SF, before the “Golden Age”, to read things like Seabury Quinn and other such forgotten authors. I am here to tell you that if you thought the Golden Age was racist, man, it’s got nothing on the pulps!
(DIR) Post #ASetFA0dedWzuioSbg by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T04:08:39Z
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@LarryFloop Ray was one of the finest people I ever met.
(DIR) Post #ASetVYzkWg6U2TDbuq by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T04:11:39Z
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@misterprotocol This is to be expected. All this said, many of the earlier pulps and Golden Age works are still great SF, despite their tone in these respects.
(DIR) Post #ASetkwxxgTWWjBieZs by misterprotocol@mstdn.social
2023-02-14T04:14:24Z
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@lauren Oh , I agree, that’s why I stuck with it and read all that Seabury Quinn, and also the “Semi-Dual” stories, which are a complete hoot. Vegan astrologer Superman, anyone?
(DIR) Post #ASetwspisMd1NvYWTQ by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T04:16:36Z
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@misterprotocol Some of the best cover art on those pulps!
(DIR) Post #ASeuu1OufJ3B2gDOIC by LarryFloop@mastodon.world
2023-02-14T04:27:16Z
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@lauren I've heard nothing but wonderful things about him--thank goodness! (Oh, the many authors whose personal lives and beliefs I wish I knew nothing about!)
(DIR) Post #ASex2Rgr0Pdinnke5g by rotopenguin@mastodon.social
2023-02-14T04:51:10Z
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@lauren if there was anything fashy going on in "Farnham's Freehold", it was really hard to find under all the other "themes" of the book.
(DIR) Post #ASexBe2ATtNBgy6iRs by tasket@infosec.exchange
2023-02-14T03:57:36Z
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@mrcompletely @lauren The fash are very hot for Frank Herbert these days.
(DIR) Post #ASexBerDQ6CqFHzU12 by mrcompletely@heads.social
2023-02-14T04:03:47Z
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@tasket @lauren Herbert was a real weird guy and his books are truly strange in their concerns. Dune is of course best read as a deconstruction of the white-savior myth and a warning about charismatic leaders and religion, but I'll be interested to see if the second film makes that explicit, because it'll be an easier sell if they softball the "Muad'Dib becomes a villain too" angle (which David Lynch was seemingly oblivious to)
(DIR) Post #ASexBjV49sSYe2fMga by tasket@infosec.exchange
2023-02-14T04:19:56Z
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@mrcompletely @lauren Herbert had one of those "I was mugged by reality" things after he wrote Dune. He hated liberals and homosexuals more than anything, and books 2 onwards were about rehabilitating religion (the Bene Gesserit and God Emperor) as sympathetic Machiavellians.He buried the original Dune theme about cults of personality underneath a larger theme of "reproduce as much as possible, no exceptions".
(DIR) Post #ASexBkDjToBksZZ2J6 by mrcompletely@heads.social
2023-02-14T04:31:16Z
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@tasket @lauren yeah, like Heinlein or Niven he got more twisted as time went on. He went very far up the ass of his own ideas and got really lost. Too bad. I always wondered if he was kind of running away from his own conclusions, particularly those in Messiah, where Paul's villainy becomes clear. The stuff about the Golden Path etc reads to me like an author trying to retcon the implications of their own writing.
(DIR) Post #ASexBks93YVytuTJIW by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T04:52:42Z
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@mrcompletely @tasket I used to help Jerry Pournelle with the CP/M system he used for his writing at his house in Studio City. As I recall he kept a pistol on the table to the left of his terminal.
(DIR) Post #ASeyJeSSt79zHJmzyq by mrcompletely@heads.social
2023-02-14T05:05:04Z
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@lauren @tasket Niven's association with Pournelle tracks pretty closely with his descent to the dark side. The grotesque racism in Lucifer's Hammer was one of my first realizations as a youth that the genre I was into had a nasty side
(DIR) Post #ASeyxPqocIIXYf8kfA by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T05:12:42Z
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@mrcompletely @tasket This is one reason Ray stands out in my memory as someone I'm so very glad to have met.
(DIR) Post #ASez9ERIs0QVdnqEAC by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T05:14:51Z
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@mrcompletely @tasket I also met Richard Matheson (not all that many years ago, relatively). It was a bit difficult for me to quite pull together that this sweet guy was the source of so much classic horror that terrified me as a child.
(DIR) Post #ASezWyxo3n3wasMyBs by mrcompletely@heads.social
2023-02-14T05:18:50Z
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@lauren @tasket Bradbury? Now there's a proper writer
(DIR) Post #ASezYb51pUG36EW9Ka by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T05:19:11Z
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@mrcompletely @tasket Yep.
(DIR) Post #ASf0bKrKh8Lpc8ytGa by cobalt@awscommunity.social
2023-02-14T05:31:06Z
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@lauren @mrcompletely @tasket I was listening in on this conversation and was interested when Niven came up. I have a collection on most of his novels and co-authored novels. Was a fan for years until 2014 when I realized about his political views, thus as I reread some novels it was there all along with the vile fascism. Never again. Anyone want 60 books for free?
(DIR) Post #ASf0tMioVZpgbTasCm by lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
2023-02-14T05:34:24Z
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@cobalt @mrcompletely @tasket The fact that they were enjoyable in one context -- and disturbing in a later context, does not actually detract from the quality of the writing per se. Writing -- like all art -- is complicated by personality and events.
(DIR) Post #ASf1Kk3jqdtknnR2vI by cobalt@awscommunity.social
2023-02-14T05:39:19Z
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@lauren @mrcompletely @tasket good points. But I have had other writers I adored and then… A few of them I met and realized they were not writing about their novel plot and characters, they actually were them. Yikes.
(DIR) Post #ASf2ZcE9Lk6GoExeq0 by tasket@infosec.exchange
2023-02-14T05:53:12Z
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@lauren @cobalt @mrcompletely The problem is when we change as a society and scifi is no longer a fringe genre. Everyone is expected to consume large quantities of it, so we get this toxic admixture of escapism and reductionist world views that now appear to have immediacy.Scifi and superhero genres have merged and exploded, and we now have a generation whose search for meaning is linked with the idea they are some kind of repressed ubermensch. Who is standing in their way? Why, its democratic government and its rules, of course. This reflects the kind of pop philosophy that spread in Wiemar Germany.
(DIR) Post #ASfZsxmMk28JdmnabY by Maxanadu_MX02@masthead.social
2023-02-14T12:06:23Z
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@lauren Looking back on the “junk” fiction I often read at the school library, that was definitely a trend.I don’t remember the book anymore, but one example that sticks out is a story about an innocent man hiding from a government that has made up reasons to detain him. The dozens of agents who encircle the poor guy are likened to piranha in the story, seemingly so terrified of their own masters they end up ripping him limb from limb.
(DIR) Post #ASfrASurvTGEM2hvZQ by jeffmarkel@mas.to
2023-02-14T15:18:39Z
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@lauren as a kid I was deep into Heinlein. Although it left a mark it didn’t totally warp me😝 I was in for the story-telling but even as a young teen I got that Farnham’s Freehold and Starship Troopers were not to be taken as life lessons- nor, for that matter, were Stranger in a Strange Land or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Or the cringe factor of The Door Into SummerHarlan Ellison was a complicated guy but the Dangerous Visions books gave me a much richer world.
(DIR) Post #ASgjLXN75zUQspeBbk by leadegroot@bne.social
2023-02-15T01:27:10Z
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@lauren or horribly horribly sexist :(