Bureacratic logic of the security state does seem to resemble Asimov's Three Laws – and, like them, leads to logical conclusion…(1)
— billmon (@billmon1) December 16, 2013
…that freedom, like privacy, is inconsistant with the prime directive to protect the civilian population from harm. (2)
— billmon (@billmon1) December 16, 2013
Mandatory reference: Jack Williamson’s With Folded Hands
For the rebuttal, Tim Kreider, in a New Yorker review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest:
… Science fiction is an inherently political genre, in that any future or alternate history it imagines is a wish about How Things Should Be (even if it’s reflected darkly in a warning about how they might turn out). And How Things Should Be is the central question and struggle of politics. It is also, I’d argue, an inherently liberal genre (its many conservative practitioners notwithstanding), in that it sees the status quo as contingent, a historical accident, whereas conservatism holds it to be inevitable, natural, and therefore just. The meta-premise of all science fiction is that nothing can be taken for granted. That it’s still anybody’s ballgame…
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Apart from the neverending story, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Baud
Are we trying to crash the NSA servers with a multitude of open threads?
Howard Beale IV
Wonder what D.F. Jones would say if he were alive today.
srv
It was all easier to read SF before Wiki said all the great writers were libertarians.
Hillary Rettig
So amazingly funny how sf, which was so marginalized as kids stuff when I was growing up, has become the most serious and relevant genre.
I’m so thankful I grew up reading boatloads of it, because I really think it primed me for life in a rapidly evolving digital society.
Citizen_X
Why is that New Yorker post a rebuttal of Billmon’s points? It’s completely orthogonal to the topic.
NotMax
This just in:
Flash Gordon is white.
kc
@NotMax:
Well, it is a historical fact.
Randy P
I just gave a math talk (in a graduate course) and quoted Robert Heinlein. I was proud of working that in.
And depressed that only 10% of the class claimed to have read him. I suspect the others had never even heard of him.
Matt McIrvin
@Randy P: Thank your lucky stars; they could have considered him their favorite political philosopher.
Matt McIrvin
@Hillary Rettig: The funny thing is that SF in the sense of an adult print literary genre is as marginalized as ever, leading to all manner of hand wringing about the death of science fiction. What’s really happened is that the science fiction that sells is on the Young Adult shelves.
schrodinger's cat
@Hillary Rettig: Since you are a resume expert, I have to ask you is it a good idea to put your citizenship status, on your resume, to let the recruiter/employer know that will not have to sponsor you for a visa.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: My ex was advised to do it by the career services people at her MBA program. In her case, it was because having an undergrad degree from a Euro university would raise flags.
PhilbertDesanex
@Hillary Rettig: I’m glad I lived on it in the early 1960s (and drugs later), to prepare me for the world being FUCKING NUTS!
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Hubcat thinks it should go right under the contact info, I think that is a little bit awkward and a cover letter may be a better place.
ETA: Corrected for spelling and clarity.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Never mind. She did it in pre-MBA resumes. Later, she left it unaddressed. She also left out of cover letters. I found some copies on the hard drive.
dexwood
I knew Jack Williamson. Nice guy. I ran an author’s book signing program for a local independent book store. I encouraged the owner to allow me to host an event featuring the numerous science fiction writers to be found around our state. Williamson responded in a very gracious manner.
thundermonkey
That was an interesting Krieder review, thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Viva BrisVegas
@srv: All the best British SF writers are either socialists or communists.
PJ
@Viva BrisVegas: Probably the greatest British SF writer of the 20th century, JG Ballard, comes across as neither a communist nor a socialist, in their strict definitions, in his writing (though he did seem to have some small faith in social democracy.)
Matt McIrvin
@Viva BrisVegas: Yeah, but the libertarians still give them the Prometheus award for libertarian SF every year.
(And get cross when people laugh at them for this. Folks, we’re not laughing at you because you dared to recognize that a Scottish socialist wrote libertarian SF. We’re laughing at you because of the implications of the probably-true fact that Scottish socialists are the best writers of libertarian SF.)
slippy
LOL. I majored in Eng. Lit, and my BA thesis was a critique of Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia trilogy.
I was mocked in the mid 1990’s by some of my peers but my thinking, then, and now, is that sci-fi is extremely important in our evolving social order precisely because it is about those changes, and what they may portend.
Sci-Fi authors with socially-conservative tendencies are legion, also. I can off the top of my head think of Orson Scott Card, Fred Saberhagen, and Heinlein. It’s been awhile since I really trawled the sci-fi section of a bookstore but it does seem to me that the genre has mostly devolved into shit like the Hunger Games.
It was all easier to read SF before Wiki said all the great writers were libertarians.
LOL. I don’t count Ayn Rand as a sci-fi writer, period. Her work is strictly political. For there to be science fiction, one must have some science, and some fiction. It’s the same reason I often gleefully dig in on L Ron, because he knew nothing about science, and was hamfisted-awful at fiction.
Tehanu
@slippy:
What? You’re not reading Charles Stross or Daniel Abraham or Lois McMaster Bujold or, fer Gawd’s sake, Neil Stephenson or Bruce Sterling? Or Iain Banks? Sure, there are right-wing nuts in the sf world still publishing away — Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle come forcibly to mind (“forcibly” mostly because you’d have to force me to read either one, any more). But — oh, heck, I haven’t got time for this. Go over to Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s blog “Making Light” and read THAT.