Dystopias are reactionary!

[bradrn]

Her Aynness

This is a wonderful pun. (And incidentally one which informed me that I’ve been pronouncing ‘Ayn’ wrong all this time…)

[rotting bones]

rb: I don't think it has to be. But I don't mind when it is, as long as it's roughly in line with my own values.

I think it's a mistake for beginner authors to try to become what they wish Ayn Rand had been. Ayn Rand is so big partly because she is shamelessly promoted by moneyed interests. Most authors will never get to that level of popularity, possibly because their works sounded too preachy. There's also the fact that publishing houses auto-reject manuscripts that sound too socialist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVsG_5EKaFU

Here's the best explanation I can come up with for Ayn Rand enjoyers: They grew up in stiflingly religious middle class families. They rejected religion, but they accepted that communism is evil. Their idea of liberation from religion is getting a good job and making lots of money. Why would they consider leftism as liberating when the religious environment they want to escape from is often encouraged by today's know-nothing "left"?

[zompist]

I think it's a mistake for beginner authors to try to become what they wish Ayn Rand had been.

Let the right prove their bad taste by liking Rand. Do you similarly disapprove of George Orwell, or Upton Sinclair or Iain Banks or China Mieville, all socialists? Sinclair's novel The Jungle is widely credited with making real change-- instituting food safety laws and regulation-- though, to his dismay, it didn't inculcate socialism. The more modern SF writers are often pretty left-wing-- to the dismay of the whiny right.

Quite a few people who would never read a political tract have learned about racism, sexism, homophobia etc. from novels. Stories get past people's defenses and preconceptions.

That doesn't mean a writer should try to be didactic. A preaching mood almost always ruins a novel.

[WeepingElf]

Yep!

[Raphael]

Her Aynness

This is a wonderful pun. (And incidentally one which informed me that I’ve been pronouncing ‘Ayn’ wrong all this time…)

Oh, that wasn't intended as a pun. I was just trying to poke some fun at how much some people admire and sort of worship her.

[Travis B.]

Her Aynness

This is a wonderful pun. (And incidentally one which informed me that I’ve been pronouncing ‘Ayn’ wrong all this time…)

Oh, that wasn't intended as a pun. I was just trying to poke some fun at how much some people admire and sort of worship her.

I myself read that as a pun.

[Raphael]

I wasn't even sure how to pronounce "Ayn" when I wrote that.

[Travis B.]

Strictly speaking "Aynness" is not identical to "highness" minus the /h/ for me because the former has a geminate nasal that the latter would lack, but it is close enough for me.

[rotting bones]

Let the right prove their bad taste by liking Rand. Do you similarly disapprove of George Orwell, or Upton Sinclair or Iain Banks or China Mieville, all socialists?

Orwell might not be the best counterexample in a thread against dystopia.

The complete rejection of socialist manuscripts was only implemented after the fall of the Soviet Union. This is the time they started cancelling all plans to publish (edit: new) cheap socialist paperbacks. Paul Cockshott was one of the writers affected by this.

Sinclair's novel The Jungle is widely credited with making real change-- instituting food safety laws and regulation-- though, to his dismay, it didn't inculcate socialism. The more modern SF writers are often pretty left-wing-- to the dismay of the whiny right.

The Jungle is not a utopian story.

Woke manuscripts don't count as socialist. Publishers love idpol and environmentalism. The more Malthusian, the better.

Quite a few people who would never read a political tract have learned about racism, sexism, homophobia etc. from novels. Stories get past people's defenses and preconceptions.

That doesn't mean a writer should try to be didactic. A preaching mood almost always ruins a novel.

I said thought should emerge naturally from exploring the world. Ayn Rand is the preachiest author who is popular.

I'm not saying stories should avoid politics. I'm saying avoiding dystopian storytelling is not always the best idea, and beginning authors might not want to advocate for socialism at a level where even idiotic editors will notice its existence. (Apparently, people working on Deep Space Nine didn't notice that it's an anti-colonial story.)

[Travis B.]

The complete rejection of socialist manuscripts was only implemented after the fall of the Soviet Union. This is the time they started cancelling all plans to publish (edit: new) cheap socialist paperbacks. Paul Cockshott was one of the writers affected by this.

What about the Mars trilogy? The first book in the series was published in 1992, and it presents a socialist vision of the future. And Kim Stanley Robinson has gotten works published after that too.

[MacAnDàil]

I agree that we should focus more on utopias - or eutopias. However, as far as I am concerned, what distinguishes reactionary politics from progress is opposition to emancipation. Therefore what makes one reactionary is not which period one prefers but the reasons one gives therefore. For example, preferring the 1970s to the 2020s may be progressive if the reasons are better income equality and fewer greenhouse gases.

[MacAnDàil]

I generally kind of react to "Mars is colonized, and a while later the colonists declare independence"-stories the way some other people react to "Romeo and Juliet transferred to Scenario X"-stories.

Yes, it is basically a re-run of the American War of Independence.

Ah, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. The Martian society established in the end has many attractive traits, but my main critique of it is that it is a Planet B story. There is no Planet B, and I doubt that terraforming works.

And, if terraforming should work, it should work on a post-ecological-collapse Earth, too. Even a post-ecological-collapse Earth would probably still be closer to being habitable than Mars is now. So, if you could actually use terraforming to turn what-Mars-is-now into a habitable place, you should be able to use terraforming to turn a post-ecological-collapse Earth back into a habitable place, too.

Indeed! If you can change Mars into a habitable world, you can more than ever heal an ecologically collapsed Earth! That should be much easier. Still, I'd better not wager that we can do it, and it is certainly much better still to avoid the ecological collapse of our planet. Much damage has of course already been done, and we probably cannot undo much of it (often, the best solution is simply to let nature heal itself, even if that takes much time).

I think the best wager - the most optimistic and eutopian one - is that we can both heal our planet and make others liveable.

[MacAnDàil]

This leads nicely into a point I wanted to make: most sf is not about the future at all, it's a satire of the present. SF has gotten darker because late capitalism has proven so dire. And most writers— and pundits for that matter— can't get much beyond "Like now, only worse, forever." It's also worth noting that pessimism is always easy, hard to refute, and has a broad market.

The ease and broadness of pessimism I may give you but it is often easy to refute - if people are willing to accept the arguments (due to biases or ego for example). Indeed, pessimism often thinks in black-and-white especially black, only considering one worst-case scenario. Optimism, by considering the possiblity of other solutions, is more open to the nuances of the world.

[Raphael]

I agree that we should focus more on utopias - or eutopias. However, as far as I am concerned, what distinguishes reactionary politics from progress is opposition to emancipation.

Not sure whether the practical results of assuming emancipation will never happen are that different from the practical results of being against it.

[Travis B.]

To me space colonization is necessary if humanity is to survive in the long term because humanity will inevitably render itself extinct on Earth, but if humans live in space and/or on other worlds, humans can survive there, and can once things settle down on Earth after any human extinction event on Earth can return to Earth and effectively terraform it from whatever state humans left it in before.

[zompist]

This leads nicely into a point I wanted to make: most sf is not about the future at all, it's a satire of the present. SF has gotten darker because late capitalism has proven so dire. And most writers— and pundits for that matter— can't get much beyond "Like now, only worse, forever." It's also worth noting that pessimism is always easy, hard to refute, and has a broad market.

The ease and broadness of pessimism I may give you but it is often easy to refute - if people are willing to accept the arguments (due to biases or ego for example). Indeed, pessimism often thinks in black-and-white especially black, only considering one worst-case scenario. Optimism, by considering the possiblity of other solutions, is more open to the nuances of the world.

These aren't contradictory. Pessimism is wrong as a general principle; it just happens to be right frequently about specific things, just as betting consistently on tails wins half the time. The pessimist of course looks only at the things that went wrong.

[Raphael]

What kind of -ist are you if you think you're honestly not sure how things will turn out?

[alice]

What kind of -ist are you if you think you're honestly not sure how things will turn out?

A medi-ist?, from medi-um by analogy with optim-um?

[WeepingElf]

To me space colonization is necessary if humanity is to survive in the long term because humanity will inevitably render itself extinct on Earth, but if humans live in space and/or on other worlds, humans can survive there, and can once things settle down on Earth after any human extinction event on Earth can return to Earth and effectively terraform it from whatever state humans left it in before.

Fair - but it is not a solution to the problems we have now. It may be possible in a few thousand years, but right now we can't move to another planet as we have no other habitable planet in our solar system, we don't have the means to terraform either Mars or Venus, and space travel is so ridiculously expensive that we can't meet the cost of moving an appreciable number of people off Earth. Also, we shouldn't want to become an interstellar locust plague that ruins planet after planet. We have to get things right here.

[Ares Land]

To me space colonization is necessary if humanity is to survive in the long term because humanity will inevitably render itself extinct on Earth, but if humans live in space and/or on other worlds, humans can survive there, and can once things settle down on Earth after any human extinction event on Earth can return to Earth and effectively terraform it from whatever state humans left it in before.

I don't think so -- I don't see humanity rendering itself extinct.

I don't see how we'd even get to the point where Mars looks better than the Earth; I don't think even a dinosaur-killer asteroid would get us there.

We could certainly make ourselves really miserable -- but extinct? I don't really think so.

As for space colonization, I believe if it's technically possible at all it'll happen. In fact, I think it'll be possible at some point, but I'm grateful we're not quite there yet; Elon Musk's Mars colony looks like a horrible prospect.