(1) CORE DYSTOPIAS. James Davis Nicoll tempts fate every two weeks with a list of core sf. Today’s entry is “Twenty Core Dystopias Every True SF Fan Should Have On Their Shelves”. The first four items are:
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
(2) SCA JOINS THE 21ST CENTURY. The Society for Creative Anachronism has promulgated “The SCA Harassment and Bullying Policy”.
The SCA prohibits harassment and bullying of all individuals and groups.
Harassment and bullying includes, but is not limited to the following: offensive or lewd verbal comments directed to an individual; the display of explicit images (drawn or photographic) depicting an individual in an inappropriate manner; photographing or recording individuals inappropriately to abuse or harass the individual; inappropriate physical contact; unwelcome sexual attention; or retaliation for reporting harassment and/or bullying. Participants violating these rules are subject to appropriate sanctions. If an individual feels subjected to harassment, bullying or retaliation, they should contact a seneschal, President of the SCA, or the Kingdom’s Board Ombudsman. If a participant of the SCA becomes aware that someone is being harassed or bullied, they have a responsibility pursuant to the SCA Code of Conduct to come forward and report this behavior to a seneschal, President of the SCA or Kingdom’s Board Ombudsman.
The following statement must be posted at gate/troll at every SCA event in a size large enough for people to see it as they enter our events. This language must likewise be quoted in ALL site handouts at every event a site were a handout is made available.
THE SCA PROHIBITS HARASSMENT AND BULLYING OF ALL INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS.
Participants engaging in this behavior are subject to appropriate sanctions. If you are subjected to harassment, bullying or retaliation, or if you become aware of anyone being harassed or bullied, contact a seneschal, President of the SCA, or your Kingdom’s Board Ombudsman.
(3) POTTER SPIRITUALITY. Michelle Boorstein and Julie Zauzmer of the Washington Post discuss the “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text” event at the Sixth and I Synagogue in “Hundreds pack DC hall to discuss podcast exploring Harry Potter as a sacred text”. The podcast is now #2 on iTunes and “has inspired face-to-face ‘Potter’ text reading groups–akin to Bible study rather than book club–in cities across the country.”
Touring the country this summer, the podcasters have been met night after night by adoring, mostly millennial crowds who want to soak up their secular meaning-making. For the growing slice of Americans who label themselves “spiritual but not religious,” Casper ter Kuile and Vanessa Zoltan are kind of pop stars.
The irony is, the pair are skeptical about secularism.
“It doesn’t speak to people’s hearts and souls,” Zoltan said during a recent interview. “I get that people get connection and meaning from Soul Cycle, but will [those people] visit you when your mom is dying?”
Zoltan and ter Kuile are complicated evangelists for their own cause. Even as their following grows, they are still pondering some big questions: Can non-traditional types of meaning-making build community? Can texts that are deeply moving to readers truly hold them to account in the way Scripture has among the God-fearing?
(4) JOB INSECURITY. The Washington Post has a piece by Travis M. Andrews and Samantha Schmidt on the firing of Kermit’s voice, Steve Whitmire. Reportedly, Whitmire was publicly grumpy, as in a 2011 interview on “Ellen” where he said he “was often mistaken for a green fire hydrant.” Also, Howard Stern (!!) has weighed in, saying that “the odds of you making a money-generating career” as a puppeteer are “next to nothing” and “do not lose that job under any circumstances.”
(5) MINDS FOR MISCHIEF. Nicole Hill has picked out “6 Robots Too Smart for Their Own Good” at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.
Robots, man. You can’t live without them (unless you vacuum the old-fashioned way), and quite often, you can’t live with them—at least, not without massive, horrifying, oft-accidental repercussions.
That’s not to say all robots are bad. Quite the opposite. Sometimes, though, their massive brains work in ways that aren’t quite healthy—for them or for us.
Clever 4-1 (Prey of the Gods, by Nicky Drayden)
In a novel chock full of dueling goddesses, genetic engineering, and general mayhem, Clever 4-1 manages to stand above the fray while contributing directly to it. You see, Clever 4-1 awakens both at a troubling time and in the nick of time: the personal assistant robot gains sentience just as his master has awakened his own inner divinity. Just as an ancient demigoddess unleashes a plan to regain her former glory by bathing South Africa in blood. Just as all hell is breaking loose, Clever 4-1 starts out to find others of his kind who have gained sentience, to marshal their forces, to assist and do good. As with any nascent movement, you’ll have your leadership coups, and Clever 4-1 has to balance politicking with near-constant danger on his shoulders. Well, not shoulders.
(6) THE OLD SWITCHEROO. Nerd & Tie’s Trae Dorn found there was a completely obvious reason for Louisville Fandom Fest to announce a last-minute change of venue.
You see, this announcement came in the wake of the Kentucky Expo Center telling the world the con wouldn’t be held there first. After attendees were concerned that the con wasn’t listed on the Kentucky Expo Center’s event calendar, they reached out to the venue asking what was up. The venue’s management responded on Twitter that not only was the convention not being held there this year, but that the con never had a contract for the space.
Although, as JJ points out:
What the Kentucky Expo Center actually said was:
We do not have a contract for FandomFest at our facility.
This leaves open the possibility that there was a contract at some point, but that it was cancelled, due to contractual breaches such as, I dunno, maybe something like non-payment of advance reservation fees.
(7) STREET VIEW. Google Maps adds the International Space Station.
The International Space Station has become the first “off planet” addition to Google Maps’ Street View facility.
Astronauts helped capture 360-degree panoramas of the insides of the ISS modules, as well as views down to the Earth below.
Some of the photography features pop-up text descriptions, marking the first time such annotations have appeared on the Maps platform.
(8) HENDERSON OBIT. LASFS member Lee Henderson, who sometimes handled the gaming room at Loscon, died July 17. He was working on an auto when the car jack became dislodged and the car collapsed on top of him.
He is survived by his wife and two children. His mother, Rita, has started a GoFundMe hoping to raise $10,000 for funeral expenses.
(9) TODAY’S DAY
Space Exploration Day
The origins of Space Exploration Day date back to man first walking on the moon, with the day itself first observed to commemorate this historic event during events held in the early 1970s. It is about more than just the moon landings though and is intended to pay homage to the incredible achievements of the past and fire up enthusiasm for the benefits of space exploration efforts to come in the future.
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- July 20, 1969 — Neil Armstrong became the first person to step foot on the Moon. He also placed the U.S. flag there.
- July 20, 2017 – John King Tarpinian munched his commemorative Moon Pie, as he does each year on this date.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born July 20, 1949 — Guy H. Lillian III
(12) LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARILY EXPENSIVE TOYS. Nerdist doesn’t want you to miss its exclusive news story – about Mattel’s Justice League Barbies.
For almost sixty years now, Barbie has been a Jane of all trades, having had careers as a school teacher, a pop star, a super model, and even an astronaut that one time. Name an occupation, and Barbie has probably had her turn at the wheel at some point. And now, Barbie is getting her chance to be one of the iconic superheroes of the Justice League!
(13) FORMERLY THE FUTURE. Yesterland is a site about retired Disneyland attractions, like the Flying Saucer ride.
If you’ve never looked at this ride closely, you might think it’s just a colossal air hockey table with a fleet of ride vehicles that can scoot above it. But it’s much more complicated—and much more ingenious—than that.
The Flying Saucers ride uses a big, blue oval, bisected into two halves, each with thousands of round air valves, Each half has a movable arm. There are four fleets of 16 saucers. Unlike other “batch load’ attractions, this one loads efficiently.
As the ride cycle begins, a giant arm slowly swings away from the loading area, releasing your group of saucers. Air valves directly below your saucer lift it up.
Tilt your body to make your saucer scoot across ride surface. Wherever you go, your saucer actuates air valves as you pass over them. All the lift comes from below. Your saucer has no moving parts—or, more accurately, you’re the only moving part of your vehicle. You can go remarkably fast. ….
(14) GAME OF THRONES ALUMS FIND THE LOST CAUSE. The New York Times sums up reaction to David Benioff’s and D. B. Weiss’ next project, Confederate.
It was supposed to be HBO’s next big thing: a high-concept drama from the creators of “Game of Thrones,” set in an alternate America where the Southern states seceded from the Union and slavery continued into the present day.
Instead, the new series, called “Confederate,” has provoked a passionate outcry from potential viewers who are calling out HBO and the creators over how they will handle this volatile mixture of race, politics and history. Several historians and cultural critics are also skeptical about whether the “Game of Thrones” team, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, are the right people to address the subject and if it should be attempted at all.
“Confederate” arrives at a time when many minorities feel their civil rights are under siege, and when issues surrounding the Civil War and its legacy — the propriety of displaying Confederate flags; the relocations and razings of Confederate monuments — continue to confront Americans on an almost daily basis.
To its critics, the show’s promise to depict slavery as it might be practiced in modern times is perhaps the most worrisome element of “Confederate.” They say that slavery, a grave and longstanding scar on the national psyche, especially for black Americans, should not be trivialized for the sake of a fantasy TV series.
(15) FOZ MEADOWS ON ‘CONFEDERATE’. Here are the first few tweets in Foz Meadows’ commentary.
Twitter, allow me a smallish thread about this new HBO Confederate series. https://t.co/HzHau75iVT
— Foz Meadows (@fozmeadows) July 20, 2017
– but that doesn't exempt their *ideas* from criticism. And boy howdy, does this particular notion merit some comment.
— Foz Meadows (@fozmeadows) July 20, 2017
(16) JEMISIN ON HISTORY. N.K. Jemisin tweeted her skepticism about the supposed gradual withering away of slavery that’s postulated in both real and alternate history. Well-placed skepticism, I’d say – this is a country that needed almost a full century after the Civil War to pass the Voting Rights Act. The same attitudes would have conserved slavery. Follow this tweet to find her complete statement.
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/888051385585086466
(17) DEL ARROZ ON JEMISIN. Jemisin says at her Twitter account “I use robust autoblockers due to harassment.” No wonder. Jon Del Arroz spent a day this week rounding up people to harass Jemisin after supposedly discovering he was one of those blocked.
New poll. Are you NOT blocked by @NKJemisin
— Jon Del Arroz (@jondelarroz) July 19, 2017
(18) THANK YOU VOTERS OF THE INTERNET. The heir of Boaty McBoatface is a Swedish train says The Guardian — “Trainy McTrainface: Swedish railway keeps Boaty’s legacy alive”.
It’s happened again. A public vote to name four trains running between the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Gothenburg has resulted in one of the four being called Trainy McTrainface in an echo of the name chosen by the British public for the new polar research vessel.
Trainy McTrainface received 49% of the votes in a poll, jointly run by Swedish rail company MTR Express and Swedish newspaper Metro.
That placed it well ahead the other three options: Hakan, Miriam and Poseidon.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Hampus Eckerman, lurkertype, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, John DeChancie and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]
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(1) CORE DYSTOPIAS.
Because real life isn’t dystopian enough.
(17) DEL ARROZ ON JEMISIN.
Wait, is he behaving like an ass. Again?
ETA: Annndddd I’m back in 2017
(17) DEL ARROZ ON JEMISIN.
I see that JdA is following in CUL’s footsteps of not only behaving like an asshole, but also then bragging loudly about what an asshole he is. 🙄
Well, heck, I just used up all my braining on catching up with yesterday’s discussion.
*gvpxl obk*
You need to ask?
12: Too expensive? Just make your own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GBVyVdd_kM
Did someone close the temporal rift? I’m showing the correct day time and year.
I’ve always felt deep suspicion of the judgment and/or intentions of any “the South won” alternate histories. It especially bugs me that it’s such a popular theme–so many examples.
(1) yay, I’ve read half of them! But how did Pride and Prejudice get on list?
(15) what Foz Meadows said: “no win scenario at best and irresponsible incitement at worst”. As if we didn’t have enough of the latter already.
So, is it a common idea to classify Pride and Prejudice as a dystopia?
(13) I flew from Pennsylvania to LA in 1962 with my parents (my first flight – TWA) and have a distinct memory of the Flying Saucer ride; shared a saucer with my dad.
@Lis:
See, now I want to write a story called “The South Rises Again” – in which a curse of some sort causes the newly-dead to rise as zombies, but only within the borders of the former CSA. Maybe President Grump will respond by proposing a border wall… 😉
(1) CORE DYSTOPIAS
I’m still chuckling at James putting Austen on the list.
(5) MINDS FOR MISCHIEF
This list has Murderbot and is therefore correct. (I really liked that story).
Prey of the Gods is on my “maybe check it out” list – anyone read it?
(15) FOZ MEADOWS ON ‘CONFEDERATE’
I think I misunderstood this show – is it meant to be a modern day alt-history setting? I’d originally got the impression it was a “twenty years later” sort of deal, but obviously that was my mind trying to make it sound less odd.
Unless it’s done as Handmaid’s Tale levels of dystopia then it sounds a terrible idea.
(17) SOME GUY ON JEMISIN
Jemisin must be delighted to hear her auto-blockers are 53% effective!
Probably new to someone, but with all the editors here, I cant resist to post this tweet.
(17) You lost me at “Del Arroz”
@Rev. Bob Sounds like a sequel to my more-awful-than-most-nonowrimo-stories first nanowrimo story in which, seeing that slavery was doomed, some confederate officers decide to try zombies as a replacement labor force. The Union, thinking they’re about to face an army of the dead, freak the hell out. And hijinks ensue.
Pride and Prejudice as dystopia: the 1% party away while a continental war rages.
James obviously has his tongue in his cheek, but he’s also got a point.
@Iphinome:
I was thinking more in terms of a modern-day story, where someone utterly disgusted with the yee-haw “the South will rise again!” nonsense lays a curse on the land to make it happen – just not the way the battle-flag-waving yahoos had in mind. “You want the South to rise again, eh? I’ll show you…”
Maybe as an added detail, the curse only affects the offenders – so Grampa Racist has to be put down after his funeral, but his grandkids who don’t care about skin color or Southern Pride would stay dead if something happened to them.
1) Pride and Prejudice as an SF dystopia? Arguments for: portrays a world of elaborate social systems, mostly designed to keep the bulk of the population repressed, unrepresented, and labouring for the good of a ruling elite. Arguments against: neither speculative, nor fiction….
14-16) I can’t help feeling that, even if slavery in the CSA was guaranteed to die out for economically rational reasons, it would be kept alive for economically irrational reasons. Also, I have never been impressed by the glorious romanticism of the Confederate cause. I don’t see anything gloriously romantic about treating other people as less than human.
17) I think I see del Arroz’s master plan. One day, he will do something with his life that is actually productive and worthwhile, and when the news gets out, we will all die of shock. (Fortunately, I don’t think that day is coming any time soon.)
17)
:Sigh:
Nora is not the only person he continues to harass. I’ve privately commiserated with at least one other genre professional about his assholery toward them.
Failure mode of clever? not even that.
14-16) With so many other Points of Divergence…another “What if the South won the Civil War” is, even beyond the problems Foz and others have pointed out, simply intellectual laziness.
14) One (minor) good thing about this is that it’s sparked several good Twitter threads of suggested alt-histories that would be more interesting than confederates or nazis(*). Examples:
https://mobile.twitter.com/HoodAcademic/status/887894919603466240
https://mobile.twitter.com/po8crg/status/887924568253399040
(*) Both of which, someone pointed out, function as a defensive “…but it could have been worse!” from white people.
Thinking about it, my obvious alt-history show suggestion would be to option The Years of Rice and Salt. I found it rather long and boring as a book, but I think it would work well for a big sprawling character-based series. It’s even got a “controversial” premise to generate press coverage.
Turn in dirty syringes for clean ones at any of Comic-Con’s many needle-exchange stations.
In case somebody is interested in Worldcon news published around the world, here’s a link to a long-ish news item by Yle (the national broadcasting company of Finland).
They interview the convention chair Jukka Halme who says, among other things, that “if you read science fiction or fantasy and don’t come to this Worldcon, you might reflect later in your life that it was a tremendously huge mistake”.
And also: “Fandom is love.”
(14) All of these. Really don’t trust these particular showrunners not to muck it up. Unfortunately, I’ve been seeing the reaction to this announcement shading into condemning people who enjoy stories set in dystopias.
Spacefaringkitten: In case somebody is interested in Worldcon news published around the world, here’s a link to a long-ish news item by Yle (the national broadcasting company of Finland).
Thanks for linking to that. I ran it through Google Translate so that I could read it.
Their humorous translation is:
“If you are reading a science fiction or fantasy and you will not come to Finland WorldCon, you may think at some point of life that the light mocha was made”, says Halme. 😀
Interestingly, he says that they are expecting 5,000 attending members — which would mean that the number of attending members has almost doubled in the last 3 months.
@iphinome: thanks for that link; the video was fascinating; now I want to run out to Toys R Us with a bottle of acetone and erase ALL of the doll’s faces…then sit back and film the reaction…
Seriously – I had no idea you could “hack” a Barbie like that….
1) One should note that it’s just “dystopias” not “SF dystopias”. Methinks Mr Nicholl was making a point.
@steve davidson Poke around the interwebs, I’ve seen people do fun things like adding points of articulation to action figures or slipping ball joints into transforming toys to make them more poseable.
Foz Meadows makes a very good point a bit down in her thread: That the most interesting part of a “CSA victory”-timeline is what it means for the rest of the world that USA is weakened.
A split and weakened USA will not be a global superpower, and will not intervene in the rest of the world the way Earth1 USA have. This is particularly true given that the HBO show talks about “the third civil war” and “the Mason-Dixie demilitarized zone”, thus setting up a situation where the two countries have been in near-constant conflict. They will either not get involved anywhere else, having enough with each other – or they will generally be involved on opposite sides. The Spanish-American war, for example, would either not happen, or it would be Spain and CSA against USA, or Spain and USA against CSA. Both world wars would be different. And so on.
(And like Steve, I was fascinated by that doll tutorial video.)
(12) That will be the third Gal Gadot Wonder Woman Barbie. I’ll buy it and put it next to the BvS and WW ones already in my office.
Ah, the KSR novel where he grudgingly allows that the non-Europeans might have done OK had all the white people died off first. In fact, for most of history, western Europe was a barbarian backwater. The weird development is that it isn’t.
The POD I’d use is a deadly equine plague in Central Asia that leaves the Mongols and such rebuilding their herds for the next two centuries. As a result, no invasion and sack of China and no invasion and sack of Persia. Or for that matter Kievian Rus. Quite possibly the Black Death plays out very differently as well.
@James a no-Mongol expansion…mmm, I think gunpowder winds up disseminating into Europe a lot more slowly because there is less of an Ecumene to allow the technology to disseminate.
It’s hard to have much respect for people who condemn (or praise) works they haven’t read/seen yet, but condemning works that no one has seen is clearly worse. An alternate future with a victorious Dixie is no worse, in principle, than an alternate future with victorious Nazis. The question is how well it’s done, and that we won’t know until it comes out.
Robert Charles Wilson’s story “The Peaceable Land”, reprinted in the Hartwell/Cramer Years Best SF 15, is a powerful take on a world where the Civil War never happened and slavery “withered away”.
1 – Huh, I scored higher on this one then most of the rest.
3 –
Sure it can, many following religious scripture don’t use it to hold themselves into account for their own actions but use selective quoting in order to justify their actions and to judge how others should be held into account. Taking deeply moving text from fiction and using that to inspire and question the world while not living in fear of a higher power behind it or using it as a blanket thing that requires others to follow the quotes that move you already seems healthier than how people use Scripture for their own purposes.
15 – I think if anything a show about modern day slavery could really shine an ugly light on things happening today. I mean the Civil Rights act was only 53 years ago and yet we live in an era where states are passing laws allowing people and businesses to discriminate against other citizens based on if they feel their religion wants them to. A lot of those same religious liberty arguments were used then, and the echoes of those same arguments are heard now by nationalists advocating for segregation.
However while I like the Game of Thrones show I haven’t seen anything by these guys that shows they can handle the nuance required to handle delicate topics without reducing them to pure shock value, and a lot of evidence of the opposite.
16 – Agreed with what she wrote. I thought Underground Airlines did a good alt-history job with navigating the world building and impact over continuing slavery after the civil war was essentially aborted. Generations of perpetuating fear of black slaves and possible retribution for what would happen if they were freed. Which still lives on with media and sociological portrayals of minorities in movies and TV as thugs and criminals so that people continue to live in fear and opportunities aren’t given so the only thing left to turn to in order to survive is crime and that keeps propagating a cycle that only benefits a few when it would be better to raise everyone.
17 – Speaking of people who claim to follow scripture but instead use it to justify their own gross actions and cast judgement on others, I wonder if that guy wakes up wondering ‘Who Would Jesus Troll?’.
If you’re building an alternative history timeline based on changes to diseases, one option is to assume Columbus didn’t bring any truly deadly diseases to the New World. Let the European explorers of the 16th and 17th century meet a fully-populated America, not an “empty” land depopulated by diseases.
I’ve read eight of the dystopias. “The Lottery” was particularly memorable, because (minor spoiler) a zvqqyr fpubby Ratyvfu pynff V qerj gur oynpx qbg naq jnf fgbarq jvgu cncre jnqf ol gur erfg bs gur pynff….
@1: back to normal for me: 6/20. At least one of the others is on my TBR and not likely to move off it under current events.
@6: shades of Iguanacon — but at least Iggy finally got a contract with the planned facilities, instead of something 15 minutes’ drive from the hotels (per Dorn’s story).
@13: I first visited the original Magic Kingdom in 1968; I had no idea Tomorrowland was so changed, even though the park had been written up in National Geographic a few years before — memory stutters…. This sounds like an interesting combination of Disney planning win and engineering failure; the sweep arm provides loading while other people are riding and makes the loading compact, both unlike traditional bumper cars.
@Soon Lee: “again”? When did he stop?
@Peer Sylvester: thanks for that tweet; I’ve forwarded to others who will appreciate.
@Simon Bisson:
What point? That the past is another country? Seems a bit clichéd….
@James Davis Nicoll: the late Mark Keller took the opposite slant: one of the two Mongol invasions of Japan is not destroyed by a “spirit wind”, leading to Japanese refugees on the west coast of North America. (Fishing floats show they could drift that far.)They might die out in the drier south or go native in the resource-rich north, but in between they could establish and expand, bringing Eurasian diseases centuries earlier than the Europeans did. Spanish conquests dependent on the collapse of widely sick local forces don’t happen, so the English navy doesn’t grow from raiding Spanish galleons; the entire east coast is untouched because the invaders-from-the-west see no point in expanding into its rocky or clayey soil and harsh climate.
@Paul Weimer: was Silk Road commerce so dependent on the Mongol conquests? Given the cities they sacked, I’d have thought it was the other way around (unlike, e.g., Vlad Tepes allegedly so terrifying bandits that travel was safe within his domain), but I know almost nothing of that time/space.
1) is lathe of heaven a dystopia? Why?
@Chip. The Silk Road always was most active when a strong force held a fair chunk of the territory–the Tang Dynasty, the Mongol Conquests in particular. Without that political unity, the Silk Road was much less active because of all the risks. Things did spread…but much more slowly.
There is unsubstantiated theories that the Mongols actually brought the first gunpowder weapons TO Europe when they came West, but even without that, the trade and commerce they allowed in times of political unity made sure the knowledge spread. Without that unity, that knowledge spreads a lot slower.
@johanP. An “Early” Columbian Exchange (say a Carthage expedition back in the 3rd century BC) would solve that disease vulnerability rather well…
@Chip Hitchcock
They might die out in the drier south or go native in the resource-rich north
If they’re carrying plantable rice, they’d do well in interior CA at that time – there’s a lot of marsh there that could be turned into rice fields. Not south of Point Conception – that’s where you hit “too dry for most farming”.
(3) The other question they are asking themselves is, of course, “how much money can we make out of these gullible people?”
(Honestly, I’m not really that cynical in real life, but hanging around online communities that talk about US Evangelist and New Ager approaches, there’s certainly some familiarity here.)
If all the dead were to rise in the South, the dead white racist masters would be greatly outnumbered by their former slaves. It would be over quickly.
(12) I want the Mera Barbie… but I hate Barbies… so I’m not sure. I’m very conflicted on this.
And… my husband just walked into my room to tell me Deborah Watling, who played Victoria on Doctor Who, has just passed away. I’m going to go drink a toast in her memory now and watch me some Tomb of the Cyberman.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-40684318
Thomas Harlan’s Sixth Sun series is set in a future Aztec interstellar empire. The turning point was when the kamikaze “divine wind” did not appear. One detail of the alternate history that was wonderfully realized was the effect of the Mongol invasion on classic Japanese films. It is also an interesting and unusual space opera. Highly recommended.
Chip Hitchcock mentioned That Worldcon so I don’t have to! Thanks, Chip!
15-16):
There’s a very good reason to argue that slavery would have died out whatever happened (i.e., the south “won”, the Civil War was never fought, et cetera). It would have eventually ended because it was already dying out slowly even before the issue came to a head.
There were 15 “southern states”, where slavery was notably practiced (there were a minor number of slaves, under 20, in New Jersey in 1860 or so). Eight of those states were not in the first wave of the secessionist movement. The seven states which left initially were the deep south, the most heavily dependent on slavery. Slavery was dying out in Maryland and it was effectively dead in Delaware by 1860. The other four states which joined the exodus did so after hostilities commenced and did so as much because of President Lincoln’s call for troops as anything else.
The Civil War sped up slavery’s demise by about 60 years, but it would have died out. The south would have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the industrial age eventually. Blacks would still have been screwed. They just wouldn’t have been property.
As for the CSA surviving for any length of time, whatever happened, that’s a “pipe dream”. The same basic problems found in the Articles of Confederation were showing up in the CSA and the squabbling between states about “state’s rights” would have doomed them, whatever happened between the north and south. The USA survived by the skin of its teeth primarily because of the federal system designed by the framers when they wrote up the Constitution.
*Click* *SIGH*
@James Davis Nicoll Ah, the KSR novel where he grudgingly allows that the non-Europeans might have done OK had all the white people died off first.
Or at least that the overall shape of history wouldn’t have been so very different. It’s not an argument I find at all convincing, but in this time and place it’s probably the least racist view you could get on American TV. And – as with GoT – there’s a lot of potential for scriptwriters to improve on the original.
(1) If Jane Austen counts, then shouldn’t nearly any novel written or set in a premodern period? And what does it say about me that I’ve read more of these than any other of James Nicoll’s lists?
(14) For those interested in going beyond the usual Confederate and Nazi cliches of alternate history, I’d recommend the discussion forums at alternatehistory.com (which include a number of my own humble efforts) – there’s a lot of noise to sort through in order to get the signal, but the range of interests there is extraordinary and the better discussions can be quite rigorous.
Re: 16
The argument for slavery continuing in the South is that the argument as its made by a lot of people relies on the boll weevil being the inevitable end of slavery. It’s an argument that removes the moral agency from Southerners, an argument made them do it, and economics would have ended it without a war.
The arguments against is that slavery had adapted from other week period before – most notably the period just before the invention of the cotton gin. Experiments in slave-worked industrialization were starting in the 1850s, and slave cultivation was used for other crops. Moreover, the lessor productivity of slave labor is less of an issue when it only has to provide profit for an oligarchy and a little for the rest. The South could have been making money from slavery for a good long time.
The argument that they would have comes from the fact that they didn’t have to invent reasons why secession wasn’t about slavery until after they lost. Look at the secession declarations, and you find that slavery was the cornerstone of their republic. In addition, there was an absolute bar on revisiting the legality of chattel slavery in the Confederate constitution.
In a world where they win, they don’t have to invent a myth of the Lost Cause. They rose for slavery, they won for slavery, and they had an economy based on slavery. They’ll find niches for it for a good long time. I think a more realistic alt history of the South would dwell on just what a society built on white supremacy and chattel slavery would do once the eugenics wave hits in the 1880s and 1890s. The South would be on the cutting edge of even more horror, one imagines, if they can own people as chattel and be as “scientific” as they like. And there’s no need for “aw-shucks, economics would have ended it anyway.”
Lastly, someone brought up the South winning from other points of view. At alt-history.com, a fair number of victorious South timelines are used to make sure the US is permanently week. For many of these timelines, this leads to a British Empire where the sun never sets, lording it over suitably grateful natives well into the present day. These tend to be problematic for a whole new set of reasons.
I think Underground Airlines handled the slavery issue fairly well, in part because there were lots of reminders (some subtle, some not at all subtle) that the corruption of slavery spread far beyond the few states in which it was legal in the book. Nearly everyone, and every place, was complicit to some extent. And a number of the overt atrocities were described in a way that made one think of similarities to things that still are way too prevalent in our own world.
I did see some complaints about the book when it first came out, though a lot of what I saw wasn’t so much complaining about the content but that a book by a white author was getting more attention and plaudits than earlier works by black authors covering some of the same ground. There may well be other complaints that I missed, but in general it seems that the book was fairly well-received.
I do wonder how much of the complaints about the upcoming series is over who’s doing it, and how people expect them to handle the subject matter. (I’ve noped out of watching Game of Thrones, in part because of similar sorts of concerns that I’ve heard people have about the creators’ new project– but that also makes me not particularly qualified to critique their work.) The different mediums may also have some effect– it’s easier in some ways for video to be used exploitatively than text.
One of the predecessors of Underground Airlines that readers thought could use more attention was Octavia Butler’s Kindred. I thought that book was excellent, and I could see how it might have influenced Underground Airlines (although it takes the SF-and-slavery theme in a somewhat different direction). I suspect that in the right hands, Kindred could be adapted well to the screen, without the problems that the HBO series might have.
What do other folks think?