Coronavirus Escapism Attempt - Fail!

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Coronavirus Escapism Attempt - Fail!

1Bushwhacked
Bearbeitet: Sept. 12, 2020, 11:43 pm

After some heavy going in recent reading, before Stage 4 kicked off down here in Melbourne I made a last minute foray to Dymocks in Collins Street, deciding to lighten my subject matter with a selection of classic science fiction. Alas I had a false start with Phillip K Dick's execrable "The Man in the High Castle". The operative word in the title is "high", the author being well known for his fondness of recreational pharmaceuticals, as illustrated by the book's characters lighting up a marijuana cigarette at every opportunity. I struggled to understand the plot... the characters... or why it won the 1963 Hugo Award.

Following on, I quickly whipped though Andy Weir's "the Martian" which is actually well worth reading even if you have only seen the movie, and also for getting you in the mood to survive lockdown in isolation. (Though apparently now I am permitted to establish a "single bubble" ... Gee thanks Dan).

Next up a John Wyndham short story collection "The Seeds of Time", science fiction written as only a mid-20th century English gentleman can.

I've just finished working my way through Robert Heinlein's 1962 classic "Stranger in a Strange Land". Hmmm... what to say. Well, to quote contemporary critics of the book: "a disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism... when a non-stop orgy is combined with a lot of preposterous chatter, it becomes unendurable, an affront to the patience and intelligence of readers" and "the book's shortcomings lie not so much in its emancipation as in the fact that Heinlein has bitten off too large a chewing portion". Nonetheless it won the 1962 Hugo Award, sold over 5 million copies and in 2012 was listed as one of the 88 "Books that Shaped America" by the Library of Congress.

Next up, was going to be Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"... now I'm not so sure! I'll have to have a look at the remainder of the pile... which includes two alternate histories "Bring the Jubilee" (Ward Moore) and "Pavane" (Keith Roberts) or Fred Pohl's "Gateway"... suggestions from anyone out there with an SF bent?

2nandadevi
Bearbeitet: Feb. 18, 2021, 6:19 pm

>1 Bushwhacked: I'd give the Moon another chance!

My recollection of Stranger was that it was for the first hundred pages or so a classic SF story, setting up the interesting notion that the baby born on another planet became a citizen of the place they were born in (jus soli in legal terms), and returned to earth the young man was an alien in both law, and culture. Then somehow the story slipped off the rails and became an argument for free sex, drugs, and communalism. Culminating in a Lost in the Andes type moment that was probably meant to bang the final nail into religious sensibility. It could be seen as a (over) reaction to the prudery - and hypocrisy - in US culture in the 50's, but I get the sense that Heinlein saw the counter-culture coming and wasn't content to ride that wave, but wanted to lead it. And to some extent he succeeded. For a while Grok seemed like it was going to be a word, until it became the name of a childrens cartoon character.

Moon on the other hand (written around the same time) employs the good old staples of SF - technology laced with AI, and Earth vs the rest of them politics. I don't remember a single instance in that book of any one having relations with anyone - in that Clintonian sense. It was the book that Stranger should have been, a good yarn that offered some novel notions and opportunity to reflect on the state of society. When Trump set up the 'Space Force' I suggested it wasn't just about fighting back against the Chinese, but making sure that there was someone up there enforcing the collection of taxes from the likes of Bezos and Musk. Puzzled stares. "Read the Moon" I said.

3snail
Mrz. 8, 2021, 8:21 pm

I loved Dick's Man in the High Castle myself and it was an interesting approach to alternative histories. The I Ching featured in it if I recall, and he used it to make key decisions around plot development. A fascinating approach. I've read a lot of his work and that's possibly my favourite, or Electric Sheep. He was great on ideas though his actual writing tended to let him down.

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