I’ve been going through some of the sci-fi books that I read as a kid — books that had been sitting in my parents’ garage for the last twenty-plus years.
Oh man, I've been reading a lot of SF lately, and Hyperion is one I actually had assigned in high school for a sci-fi English class (it was that teacher's last year at my school, so they finally let him teach it). I think you're pretty dead-on, as I recall (and from overhearing snippets of the audiobook when my wife was listening to it).
But have you read Ilium and Olympios? More Simmons, more space opera, more literary allusions, so many literary allusions. Aaaaaaaand some pretty heavy-handed, ugly Zionism. The Voynix, for example: huge, servile insectoids who we later find out were developed by some global caliphate of the future past; who attack Jerusalem when our heroes are there, repeatedly buzzing "KILL THE JEW;" who later beseige our heroes' tiny settlement, attacking them by...yup, that's right, THROWING ROCKS.
When I read these in 2008 or 9, I didn't put all of that together. But when I started paying actual attention to Israel, and heard "rock-throwing" as the magic justification for use of force, I recall the feeling I had of "SIMMONS YOU MOTHERFUCKER" I had when the penny finally dropped.
Yeah I heard he went full on islamophobe in those books. Haven't read them myself, though. Gotta admit, his overwritten bloated try-hard-I'm-so-literary style puts me on edge. So I might have to pass.
My suggestion is to hold out for someone to make a graphic novel of it, and hope that they tone down the awful politics.
On the other end of sci-fi, I've become a huge fan of Ken MacLeod. He's the rare left-wing crank SF author. I'm waiting for some lefties who have actually Done The Reading to hopefully do a podcast unpacking his Fall Revolution series. See, I'm way behind on my theory, and I can feel some references and allusions sail right over my head, in The Star Fraction at least. In a couple of the other Fall Revolution novels, it's a Trotskyoid world revolution that brings about a mechanical-computing utopia.
I would have expected MacLeod to pick up some more readers, post-2016, but I think it's just me. Ben Burgis said he's a fan too. But that's it. (I know why he hasn't gotten more popular - only a handful of his stuff has had audiobooks recorded)
How much was he influenced by Whole Earth Catalog and related projects (The Well)? I didn't know he was an evangelical, but why does that matter? The Great Awakening in the 1800s was pretty utopian, no?
(The counterculture techies like Stewart Brand were more "libertarian" than statist-left.)
I've seen discussions by anarchists about communism-socialism, there is apparently at least theoretically a form of anti-state anarchism that is voluntarist or something like that that would technically be communist/socialist, but typically on a small scale.
I don't see any evidence that "capitalism" as part of "classical liberalism" and as it first evolved in medieval culture and under manorialism was ever distinct from high-social-trust "national" [secular] institutions that most people now think of as part of "government" (Charter Towns/Free Cities, the Hansa, universities, parliamentary politics, fueros, communas and cortes in medieval Spain), or dependent on Constitutional order and formal courts of law (insurance companies, sea faring investment corporations).
"Leftism" seems more like a romanticist (anti-modernist) attempt at reinventing mythic religion than a serious theory of social order or governance.
The earliest forms of classical/medieval liberalism included things like the Abbeys in Cluny advocating for peasants rights (1300s?) at a time that the Church had massive land holdings.*
After 1492, when imperial power was recentralized by colonilast states, the classically liberal reforms of previous centuries that emerged in more decentralized political conditions, were swept aside by the imperialists, so there is nothing inherently evil about liberalism that makes it necessarily imperialist (as leftists apparently think).
The Philadelphia Society is a membership organization of scholars, educators, journalists, business and professional leaders, clergy–thoughtful analysts of current trends and public policy–all dedicated to the goal of deepening the intellectual foundations of a free and ordered society and to broadening the general understanding of its basic principles among the public at large.
Founded in 1964, The Philadelphia Society holds regular meetings that explore pressing economic, political, cultural and other issues; provides a forum for some of the most original thinkers of our day; and generates incisive analysis that influences the ongoing debate about our national future and about the future of freedom around the world.
Oh THAT Philadelphia Society, R.D Laing and so forth. I would have expected them to use the "phila" abbreviation, rather than "Philly," which I always associated with the city.
Sorry to see you go. Totally understand. Not sure we'll be doing transcripts, though. But I do expect publishing more essays so maybe you'll be tempted back into sinning and subscribing.
Oh man, I've been reading a lot of SF lately, and Hyperion is one I actually had assigned in high school for a sci-fi English class (it was that teacher's last year at my school, so they finally let him teach it). I think you're pretty dead-on, as I recall (and from overhearing snippets of the audiobook when my wife was listening to it).
But have you read Ilium and Olympios? More Simmons, more space opera, more literary allusions, so many literary allusions. Aaaaaaaand some pretty heavy-handed, ugly Zionism. The Voynix, for example: huge, servile insectoids who we later find out were developed by some global caliphate of the future past; who attack Jerusalem when our heroes are there, repeatedly buzzing "KILL THE JEW;" who later beseige our heroes' tiny settlement, attacking them by...yup, that's right, THROWING ROCKS.
When I read these in 2008 or 9, I didn't put all of that together. But when I started paying actual attention to Israel, and heard "rock-throwing" as the magic justification for use of force, I recall the feeling I had of "SIMMONS YOU MOTHERFUCKER" I had when the penny finally dropped.
Other than that they're pretty fun, though.
Yeah I heard he went full on islamophobe in those books. Haven't read them myself, though. Gotta admit, his overwritten bloated try-hard-I'm-so-literary style puts me on edge. So I might have to pass.
My suggestion is to hold out for someone to make a graphic novel of it, and hope that they tone down the awful politics.
On the other end of sci-fi, I've become a huge fan of Ken MacLeod. He's the rare left-wing crank SF author. I'm waiting for some lefties who have actually Done The Reading to hopefully do a podcast unpacking his Fall Revolution series. See, I'm way behind on my theory, and I can feel some references and allusions sail right over my head, in The Star Fraction at least. In a couple of the other Fall Revolution novels, it's a Trotskyoid world revolution that brings about a mechanical-computing utopia.
I would have expected MacLeod to pick up some more readers, post-2016, but I think it's just me. Ben Burgis said he's a fan too. But that's it. (I know why he hasn't gotten more popular - only a handful of his stuff has had audiobooks recorded)
re: Kevin Kelly
How much was he influenced by Whole Earth Catalog and related projects (The Well)? I didn't know he was an evangelical, but why does that matter? The Great Awakening in the 1800s was pretty utopian, no?
(The counterculture techies like Stewart Brand were more "libertarian" than statist-left.)
I've seen discussions by anarchists about communism-socialism, there is apparently at least theoretically a form of anti-state anarchism that is voluntarist or something like that that would technically be communist/socialist, but typically on a small scale.
I don't see any evidence that "capitalism" as part of "classical liberalism" and as it first evolved in medieval culture and under manorialism was ever distinct from high-social-trust "national" [secular] institutions that most people now think of as part of "government" (Charter Towns/Free Cities, the Hansa, universities, parliamentary politics, fueros, communas and cortes in medieval Spain), or dependent on Constitutional order and formal courts of law (insurance companies, sea faring investment corporations).
"Leftism" seems more like a romanticist (anti-modernist) attempt at reinventing mythic religion than a serious theory of social order or governance.
The earliest forms of classical/medieval liberalism included things like the Abbeys in Cluny advocating for peasants rights (1300s?) at a time that the Church had massive land holdings.*
After 1492, when imperial power was recentralized by colonilast states, the classically liberal reforms of previous centuries that emerged in more decentralized political conditions, were swept aside by the imperialists, so there is nothing inherently evil about liberalism that makes it necessarily imperialist (as leftists apparently think).
---
* as per this paleo-libertarian: https://phillysoc.org/liggio-the-hispanic-tradition-of-liberty/
Philly Socialists - are you a Philly person by any chance? (That's where I live)
This was the model it was based on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Pelerin_Society
They are about as 180 degree opposite of "socialists" as you can get:
https://phillysoc.org/about/
The Philadelphia Society is a membership organization of scholars, educators, journalists, business and professional leaders, clergy–thoughtful analysts of current trends and public policy–all dedicated to the goal of deepening the intellectual foundations of a free and ordered society and to broadening the general understanding of its basic principles among the public at large.
Founded in 1964, The Philadelphia Society holds regular meetings that explore pressing economic, political, cultural and other issues; provides a forum for some of the most original thinkers of our day; and generates incisive analysis that influences the ongoing debate about our national future and about the future of freedom around the world.
...
It also doesn't help that there's literally a group that uses the name "Philly Socialists." Or at least there was.
Oh THAT Philadelphia Society, R.D Laing and so forth. I would have expected them to use the "phila" abbreviation, rather than "Philly," which I always associated with the city.
Nope. I've just read a few articles on that site.
Sorry to see you go. Totally understand. Not sure we'll be doing transcripts, though. But I do expect publishing more essays so maybe you'll be tempted back into sinning and subscribing.