Pipe Dreams and Premonitions-Part Three

Conservatism by Peter Viereck (Van Nostrand, 1956) is a companion volume to Liberalism: Its Meaning and History by J. Salwyn Schapiro (1958). Both are designed for college reading.

From Conservatism:

Lord Hugh Cecil, a leading twentieth-century philosopher of conservatism, defined that ism [sic] as "a force called into activity by the French Revolution [of 1789] and operating against the tendencies that that Revolution set up." (p. 10)

That would suggest that conservatism is merely reactionary or counter-revolutionary. However, there is an alternative within conservatism, i.e., Edmund Burke's brand of philosophy that fights "for the sake of traditional liberties" as opposed to the reactionary brand that fights "for the sake of traditional authority." (Italics are in the original, p. 11.) By marrying liberty to tradition, Burke (1729-1797) found a middle ground between the forces of innovation and those of reaction.

[Conservative philosophers] use the Latin term "a priori" for ideas deduced entirely from "prior" ideas, as opposed to ideas rooted in historical experience . . . . Conservatives condemn, with the term "rationalist blueprints," the attempts of progressives to plan society in advance from pure reason instead of letting it grow "organically" . . . like a living plant . . . . (p. 18)

In their theorizing and planning, progressives ignore the fact that they are playing with the lives of other people. To them, those lives are mere abstractions, no more than terms in an equation. (1) "Conservative theory [on the other hand] is anti-theoretical," according to Prof. Viereck. "The liberal and rationalist mind consciously articulates abstracts blueprints; the conservative mind unconsciously incarnates concrete traditions." (p. 17) So the conservative is not essentially, by Prof. Viereck's estimate, a theorist, a planner, or even a rationalist. The conservative, unbound by theory, is free in a way that the progressive can never hope to be.

What in politics is the self-destructive vice of the extreme reactionary--his remoteness from the present--sometimes becomes his virtue in art. The remoteness may give him perspective, the detachment that facilitates imaginative flights. Therefore, the most objectionable and bigoted reactionary may become in his art the most profound psychologist, the most sensitive moralist. (p. 17)

Non-rationalism or anti-rationalism, "remoteness from the present," imaginative flight, profound psychology, sensitive moralism--these would seem the characteristics of the conservative artist. They would also seem to be the foundation for a new movement in European culture to counter the cold, hard rationalism of the eighteenth century. According to Peter Viereck:

In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge published their joint book of poems, Lyrical Ballads. It marked the revolt of the human heart against abstract eighteenth-century rationalists . . . . (p. 34)

It also, by some estimates, marked the beginning of the Romantic Era.

I was surprised in reading Conservatism that William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are considered conservatives. Surprised because I had thought of them as Romantics and enamored of the French Revolution. But Romanticism, as it turns out, is in part a reaction to the rationalism behind the French Revolution. Wordsworth and Coleridge both became disenchanted by that revolution. (More on that in the next part of this series.)

Many of America's greatest literary figures have been cultural conservatives in their anti-optimism, their qualms about external reforms--for example, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Henry James, William Faulkner. (dates removed, p. 103)

The first four authors are of course giants of Romanticism in America, and all six wrote Gothic tales. Poe's successor, H.P. Lovecraft, though a rationalist and a materialist, might easily fall into that list as well. Nietzsche, Balzac, and Dostoyevsky are also on the conservative side of the equation according to Prof. Viereck. I should note that Coleridge, Balzac, Hawthorne, and Poe had works in Weird Tales. I would be a little hard pressed to come up with any Neoclassical or rationalist writer of the eighteenth or nineteenth century who was similarly placed in the magazine. (2)

I'll close by writing about Jakob Burckhardt (1818-1897), an art historian and author who was born in the same year Frankenstein was published and in the title character's home country. (More on Frankenstein next.) Burckhardt was no slouch; his reputation is firm. A friend of Nietzsche, he formulated with Nietzsche the concept of "massman," and, on his own, the concept of what he called "terrible simplifiers," that is, the leaders of massman. His opposite was Marquis de Condorcet, a progressive who believed in the future as a predictable and controllable unwinding of history. As it turns out, Condorcet died in the squalid jail cells of Utopia. He failed to foresee what his theorizing would bring about. It all turned out to be a pipe dream. Jakob Burckhardt, who would have been skeptical of innovation, including any attempt to plan or control the future, nevertheless foresaw it:

I have a premonition which sounds like utter folly, and yet it will not leave me: the military state will become one vast factory. . . . What must logically come is a definite and supervised stint of misery . . . daily begun and ended to the sound of drums . . . . In the delightful twentieth century, authoritarianism will raise its head again, and a terrifying head it will be. . . . My picture of the terrible simplifiers (terribles simplificateurs) is no pleasant one . . . . Naked force in command and the silencing of opposition . . . . (p. 159) (3)

Science fiction and progressivism look to the future, the former by extrapolation, the latter by a priori reasoning. Both would seem to pride themselves on their vision. Yet only conservatives--skeptical of innovation, aware of man's fallen nature, and with their eyes on the past--foresaw the coming of the twentieth-century totalitarian. Jakob Burckhardt foresaw it. So did Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Who, then, had the better vision? Who today? (4)

Notes

(1) Bill Ayers, for example, one of our current president's buddies, has spoken in an offhand way of the necessity of eliminating twenty-five million Americans from the equation, all in the name of progress.

(2) Revision (Aug. 9, 2015): This was to have been a footnote, but now as I think on it, my note has expanded into something more than a note, so I'll write it as a separate posting. You can access it here. (Link not yet ready.)
(3) Here is a preceding quote:

The world approaches two alternatives, either full democracy or an absolute lawless despotism. The latter will no longer be run by dynasties, for these are too soft-hearted, but by a military command disguised as republicanism . . . . (p. 159)

Here is Nietzsche's foretelling:

It is the age of the masses: they lie on their belly before everything that is massive. And so also in politics. A statesman who rears up for them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of empire and power, they call "great" . . . . (p. 168)

and:

The democratising [sic] of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of tyrants . . . . (p. 169)

(4) And if the totalitarian state is a Utopia/Dystopia, and if stories of Utopia/Dystopia lie within the realm of science fiction, and if the perspective of the conservative gives him a better view of the future, who then would make a more accurate writer of science fiction? Him or the extreme progressive whose vision is clouded by his pipe dream of perfection?

Original text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Utopia and Oppression 101

Political correctness is a rapidly spreading and virulent disease that infects every human institution, including science fiction and, as it turns out, comedy on the university campus. It is of course a progressivist movement, a phenomenon exclusively of the Left. Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic boils down into one paragraph a lot of what I have been writing about lately:

O, Utopia. Why must your sweet governance always turn so quickly from the Edenic to the Stalinist? The college revolutions of the 1960s--the ones that gave rise to the social-justice warriors of today's campuses--were fueled by free speech. But once you've won a culture war, free speech is a nuisance, and "eliminating" language becomes a necessity.

She herself indulges in a little PC in her article, but when you get a chance, you should read:

"That’s Not Funny! Today’s College Students Can't Seem to Take a Joke" by Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic, September 2015.

Original text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Pipe Dreams and Premonitions-Part Two

I have two books, two sides of a coin. Both were published in the 1950s by Van Nostrand under its Anvil imprint. First is Liberalism: Its Meaning and History by J. Salwin Schapiro (1958). I'll let Prof. Schapiro speak:

Man's natural goodness was eloquently proclaimed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He developed a theory that man in the state of nature was possessed of goodness which degenerated into corruption as a result of the coming of civilization. The existing social order was therefore the heritage of an evil past created by ignorance, violence, and tyranny. What was essential, according to Rousseau, was to establish a natural social order, one in harmony with man's goodness. Only then will the problems arising from the conflict between man and society be solved. (p. 18)

The whole liberal program seems to have sprung from those ideas, that man in a state of nature is essentially good and pure and that he is corrupted by society, therefore, if the past can be overthrown and society perfected, man can be made happy. It's why liberals emphasize society over the individual, why they believe that the individual is not responsible for and can't be held accountable for his actions, why they're always so busy with their tinkering and meddling, why they despise the past and look forward with such longing to the future. Rousseau's ideas also seem to be the origin of the idea that society and government, i.e., the State, are coterminous. Anyway, every story ever told about the goodness and purity of primitive societies vs. the corruption of civilized societies--Avatar for example, or the below-deck dance scene in Titanic--is, consciously or not, based on Rousseau's ideas.

The new faith in man and the new passion for change were inspired by the idea of progress. By progress was meant that man has moved, is moving, and will move in a beneficial direction. . . . Progress is the leading theme of Marquis de Condorcet's book, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind [1795]. According to Condorcet, progress is an autonomous, linear, inevitable historical movement toward "perfectibility," the golden age of the future. (p. 18)

"[T]he golden age of the future," Utopia, in other words, the progressive dream, the dream also of science fiction writers and fans from the 1920s onward. Note the phrase "golden age," which is here applied to the future, but which has also been applied to the period of science fiction in America from 1938 to the 1950s. Note also the phrase "inevitable historical movement," implying that history is an unalterable force, and like a force--a physical force--measurable and predictable, in other words a science.

According to secularism, man's supreme aim was to attain happiness in this world through mundane ideas and scientific methods. (p. 19)

If happiness is attainable by mundane and scientific methods, then is it, too, material in nature? Liberals would seem to answer yes, and that's why, in their minds, the solution to human unhappiness is material rather than spiritual or familial, or at the very least psychological or emotional.

Finally, quotes from Condorcet (1743-1794) himself:

The aim of the book that I have undertaken to write [Esquisse d'un Tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain], and what it will prove, is that man by using reason and facts will attain perfection. Nature has set no limits to the perfection of the human faculties. The perfectibility of mankind is truly indefinite; and the progress of his perfectibility, henceforth to be free of all hindrances, will last as long as the globe on which nature has placed us. (p. 103)

and:

If man can predict with almost complete certainty those phenomena whose laws he knows; and if, when he does not know these laws, he can, on the basis of his experience in the past, predict future events with assurance[,] why then should it be regarded as chimerical to trace with a fair degree of accuracy the picture of man's future on the basis of his history? (p. 104)

There's the clincher: history is essentially a science. So, too, is the future. Through science we will know and be able to plan the future and to progress inexorably into that future--a future without limits, evermore perfect and perfectible, marked by ever-greater happiness, a Golden Age, a Utopia.

* * *

Here is another quote from Prof. Schapiro:

Liberals in general have believed in the existence of objective truth, discoverable through reason according to the scientific method of research, experiment, and verification. What is known as rationalism endeavors, by using reason, to subject all matters, religious as well as non-religious, to critical inquiry. The rationalist looks primarily to science for enlightenment. (p. 12)

In this age in which liberals believe that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, a person with XY sex chromosomes and male genitalia is a woman, and that race is a real, biological fact rather than simply a useful fallacy, it's hard to imagine that liberalism originated in reason and rationalism. (1) Understanding that liberalism originated in rationalism is one of the keys to understanding the history of science fiction, as well as the divide between science fiction and fantasy. It's also a key to the notion that science fiction may be inevitably political and perhaps unavoidably progressive in its outlook.

One final note before I move on to the conservative side of the equation: Marquis de Condorcet was an aristocrat, also a scientist and mathematician. He sought to apply science to what he believed were the problems of society, especially with the coming of the French Revolution in 1789. He was elected to the French Assemblée in 1791, "hoping," in the words of Wikipedia, "for a rationalist reconstruction of society." (2) Two years later the revolution turned against him, and he died in prison in 1794 either by murder or suicide. (3)

The French Revolution, an exercise in Utopia and a model for all the bloody and utopian revolutions to come, consumed Condorcet as it consumed so many of its revolutionaries. Eventually--inevitably--it came to a disastrous end as all utopian schemes must. Condorcet's vision of progress towards a perfect future turned out to be a pipe dream.

Notes
(1) Our Constitution, for example, is a supreme work of reason and based on classical liberal ideas. It's also conservative in the Burkean sense; its dual nature as both liberal and conservative is one of its great beauties and probably one explanation for its great success.
(2) I'm not sure how reconstruction is possible without a little destruction (or as our current president calls it, "fundamental transformation"), and I don't know why we should submit to "rationalist" plans for our lives, but maybe we're not supposed to ask these questions.
(3) If it was suicide, Datura--jimsonweed, perhaps a favored drug in fantasy and weird fiction--played its part. One example of the place of jimsonweed in genre fiction is in the movie Nightwing (1979).

Original text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Pipe Dreams and Premonitions-Part One

Politics intrudes upon science fiction. That's the issue I'm exploring in this series. But is that really the case? Does politics intrude? Or is science fiction in its essence political? Do political ideas come in from the outside, spoiling the fantasies of the science fiction fan? Or are they already there, built into science fiction, maybe even forming its foundation? If science fiction is about the future and progressivism is also about the future, what is to separate them? You might say that science fiction is fiction--a fantasy about the future--whereas progressivism is a worldview, a philosophy grounded--as its adherents believe--in history and reality. The former speculates on what the world of the future might be. The latter describes the world of the future as it should be, again among those who adhere to that philosophy. Progressivism, then, is utopian; stories of utopia fall within the realm of science fiction. Science fiction, founded on rationalism and a "faith in the infinite future," also tends to be utopian; science fiction authors slide easily into progressivism (1, 2). So I'm not sure they can easily be separated. Science fiction may very well be the literature of progressivism.

I hope that I have shown that Utopia--a perfect society--is impossible, the reason being that we are imperfect and imperfectible, and that if we are to be forced into a perfect society, we must be stripped of our humanity. Every Utopia, then, is a Dystopia. Every one that has been tried has ended either in dissolution or disaster. None has ever succeeded. Millions have perished in the process. There isn't any reason to believe that Utopia is a possibility, yet there are those among us who believe in it and strive for it the way a Christian believes in and strives for his Jesus. But where does the idea of Utopia come from? And what does it have to do with science fiction? As Mr. Owl said, let's find out.

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) Or if they wish to give warning, they write of Dystopia.

(2) I wouldn't want to attempt a list of science fiction authors by their political philosophies, but a list of progressivist, leftist, or socialist authors would include Edward Bellamy, Jack London, H.G. Wells, George Orwell (who nevertheless wrote 1984), Frederik Pohl, Judith Merril, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kurt Vonnegut (paradoxically the author of "Harrison Bergeron"), and Margaret Atwood.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Politics in Science Fiction-Part Two

So yesterday I wrote about four examples of the intrusion of politics into movies, examples that are, I admit, based on my own foggy memory and maybe strained interpretation of four movies. Each of the first three gives an example of a specific kind of intrusion:

Avatar is a movie made by a political person. It is steeped in his view of the world. You can't have Avatar without also being exposed to the moviemaker's politics. In short, Avatar is a kind of propaganda and not truly a work of art. 

War of the Worlds has political commentary inserted in it. The commentary could just as easily have been left out and the movie would still stand. In fact, the moviemakers should have listened to some old advice--"If you want to send a message, use Western Union"--and left it out. Maybe then their movie wouldn't have died in the middle.

Gravity has the opposite problem: it self-consciously (or not) left something out that should have been in there. At its root, that was a political decision, whether the moviemakers realized it or not. The result was a movie that turned out to be about little more than sensation and spectacle.

Finally, Star Trek Into Darkness is just a mess--and in lots of ways. Instead of getting in over their heads by trying to make a political thriller, the moviemakers should have just made some other kind of film. (1) Instead of making a movie set in the future but about the ephemeral (and forgettable) political issues of 2013, they should have made something that will still be watchable in twenty or fifty years.

I don't mean to suggest that movies should be for entertainment only and that there should never be any political content or commentary in them. But moviemakers should not make propaganda, or hit people over the head with their messages, or make their characters do or not do things for the moviemakers' own reasons, or otherwise make their movies serve their own political purposes instead of making them works of art. If you want to see a movie where political content serves the purposes of storytelling, you might try Doctor Zhivago (1965), a beautifully made and uplifting film about love and perseverance against a nightmarish political situation. Or, if you prefer science fiction in which politics serves art, try THX-1138 (1971) or Logan's Run (1976), both of which are--like Doctor Zhivago--about love and freedom. (2)

Notes
(1) They should have learned a lesson from the original television show, in which the most overtly political or (religious) episodes--"The Omega Glory" or "Bread and Circuses"--were so weak.
(2) All three movies are also about Dystopia, Doctor Zhivago at its founding, Logan's Run at its destruction, and THX-1138 about escape from it.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Politics in Science Fiction-Part One

Science fiction seems to have a fatal flaw: its vulnerability to becoming politicized. (1) We have probably all seen examples of politics intruding upon the domain of science fiction. Here are examples from some recent movies:

Avatar (2009)--Billy Wilder famously called Titanic "horsesh_t." Unfortunately, he died before having a chance to comment on the more execrable (and far more derivative) Avatar (which I think should be retitled Ferngully in Space). There is much to dislike about the movie, but I'm not sure that anything about it is more ridiculous than the fact that James Cameron, who presumably holds his own corporation and who made and released Avatar with and through other corporations, so vilified corporations in his movie, or that he did so in such a heavy-handed and sophomoric way. I'm not here to defend corporations. They don't need my help. But Mr. Cameron's unconcealed and self-righteous opinions about them call attention to his total lack of irony or self-awareness. And if it's not a lack of irony, it's a kind of special pleading that goes something like this: "It's okay for me to hold a corporation," he seems to be saying, "because my corporation is good. Those corporations over there, on the other hand, are downright evil." It's obvious that Mr. Cameron holds the military in contempt as well. He simply disguised his feelings in Avatar by making his military men part of a corporation, falling back on the progressive canard about a "military-plutocratic" alliance about which I wrote in my previous posting. It shouldn't come as any surprise that James Cameron is progressive in his politics, that he subscribes to the cult of global warming, or that he is an atheist. However, I would not want to characterize him in a simplistic way, the way he has characterized the military or people, like him, who form corporations.

War of the Worlds (2005)--Steven Spielberg's take on H.G. Wells' classic is not overtly political. Terrifying scenes of a sudden, unexpected, and devastating attack evoke memories of September 11, 2001, but those scenes are devoid as far as I can see of political content. However, they make it clear that the people of Earth in Mr. Spielberg's movie are Americans on 9/11 and that the Martians are the terrorists. But then, in the scenes that take place in Tim Robbins' basement--the place where an otherwise good movie goes to die--political commentary creeps in. It was put there (presumably) by the co-screenwriter, David Koepp, who seems to be speaking through Tim Robbins (the perfect mouthpiece for such commentary). Robbins' character's words are, in effect, that the occupation of Earth by the Martians won't work because occupation never works. Did you hear that, President Bush? Occupation never works. The implication is that in the real world, Americans are the Martians. If it's okay with the makers of War of the Worlds, I'll go on with the understanding that Martians and terrorists are the badguys and that we are not, at least for as long as we stand for human freedom.

Gravity (2013)--Gravity is an exciting movie. It harkens back to the hopeful and determined attitude of science fiction movies from the past. In the end it proves to be a little empty, though, as movies tend to be these days. I don't think that sense of emptiness just happened, though. Like War of the Worlds, Gravity is not overtly political. But despite all the struggles and hazards, Sandra Bullock's character never--as far as I can remember--says even the most obvious of prayers: "Please help me" or "God help me." In fact, the only reference to religion or faith that I remember seeing (other than the death and resurrection of Sandra's lord and savior, George Clooney) is a little Buddha statue floating around in freefall. Some people report seeing an icon of St. Christopher, but that slipped by me. Peter T. Chattaway, on a website called Patheos: Hosting the Conversation on Faith (Oct. 4, 2013), has commented on the issue. I'll let him speak:

. . . I cannot help but note that the way this [St. Christopher] icon functions in the film echoes a pattern that is often seen in Hollywood films: the main white American protagonists are typically secular and have no religion to speak of, while it is often some sort of exotic "other" who represents the spiritual dimension of the story. The Russian cosmonauts bring icons into space, and the Chinese taikonauts bring a smiling Buddha into space, but the Americans, as far as we can tell, bring nothing more than a Marvin [the] Martian toy. 

I doubt that the absence of religion and faith was a political decision on the part of the moviemakers, who are by the way almost certainly secular in their outlook. They just don't think of these things. They wouldn't pray, so why would one of their characters, especially a scientist, resort to such superstitious nonsense? So maybe the decision to keep religion or faith out of Gravity has to do with secular or liberal ignorance, indifference, or squeamishness. Or it could have been a marketing decision in which the moviemakers decided not to risk offending anyone by having a character say something as natural as, "God help me." (2)

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)--I have lots of complaints about Star Trek Into Darkness. First, why, when you have an opportunity to tell any story you want about anything in the entire universe, would you make a remake of a remake? Star Trek Into Darkness is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), a movie based on an episode of the original show (from 1967). That story has already been told. Why tell it again?

Anyway, there is political content in Star Trek Into Darkness, but it seems to me pretty muddled. It all has to do with terrorism and George Bush and/or President Obama and the Middle East and/or Afghanistan and the United States and militarism and national defense and the martial spirit and preemptive attacks and drone-fired missiles and/or other things I can't remember. The terrorist is a white guy named Khan Singh, who is nominally a Sikh, except that Sikhs are usually not white and are not terrorists, but we can't say who the terrorists are because that would be politically incorrect or racist, unless the terrorist is Benedict Cumberbatch, who with his terroristic words used the terroristic phrase "colored actors" when referring to some of his fellows, one of whom he blew up in the movie, but then he (Cumberbatch) prostrated himself before the Tyrants of Twitter, apologizing profusely for "giving offense," but then he was probably okay anyway because of his otherwise enlightened, liberal views on things. There are Klingons in the movie, too. In the original show they represented Asiatic hordes, but now they represent something or other. I guess I'd better watch the movie again to get it all straight.

Anyway again, there's a lot of crying in Star Trek Into Darkness, but the image that really sticks with me is the scene in which the Federation forces, dressed in their best Nazi-gray uniforms and their tall Nazi hats, assemble for some reason or other. That all brings up a question: Do the moviemakers mean to imply that the Federation, and by extension the United States, is a Nazi or fascist or totalitarian organization? Or are they (the moviemakers) just clueless as to appearances? I have seen that question before--Is Star Trek fascist?--but that's a topic for another day.

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) It might be more accurate to say that science fiction is already essentially political and that any non-political science fiction is that way only because the people who politicize things are busy elsewhere at the moment. More on that later.

(2) This all makes me think of Fritz Weaver's character in The Twilight Zone episode "The Obsolete Man," who becomes obsolete himself when in a moment of weakness and desperation he cries, "In the name of God, let me out!"

In the original Star Trek show, the crew of the Enterprise dressed like Nazis because they were going undercover on the Nazi planet Ekos. In Star Trek Into Darkness, they dress like Nazis for some reason I can't think of.

Speaking of Nazi-like uniforms in science fiction, Angelina Jolie's duds looked the part in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), a throwback to Gernsbackian super-science stories, which inspired the futurism of the 1930s and comic books of the Golden Age. Note the forward-looking or progressive title and theme coupled with overtones of fascism, nazism, or totalitarianism. That idea will come again later in this series.

Original text copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Robert Beckhusen on Ghost Fleet

Here's a mild example of the encroachment of progressivism on the territory of science fiction.

A couple of weeks ago, Robert Beckhusen of the website The Week reviewed Ghost Fleet, a new science fiction novel by P. W. Singer and August Cole. The review, entitled "Could China Defeat America in World War III?" and dated July 15, 2015, came out of an interview with the book's authors. You can read it here.

Ghost Fleet is about a future war between the United States and China. The first quote worth noting refers to Mr. Singer: "According to him, we need to get used to the idea that our technology won't save us . . . ." That would seem the first sign that the Golden-Age idea that science and technology will be our salvation is in trouble.

Anyway, in Mr. Beckhusen's words: "The Communist Party no longer rules China. In its place is a plutocratic-military regime known as the Directorate." In other words, a leftist government has been replaced with what some people would call a right-wing or fascist government. That may be a plausible extrapolation. Not being a sinologist, I can't say. On the other hand, it may be a politically motivated decision on the part of the authors. I don't go in for conspiracy theories, so that explanation doesn't seem like a very good one. Whatever it is, it's curious. Is a plutocratic-military government, like Jack London's Iron Heel, really very plausible? And is the idea that communists would start a war so very implausible? Maybe so. After all, other than taking over or invading every country they have ever touched and murdering countless millions of people in the process, communists have been pretty peaceful throughout the last century.

That's not really my point here, though. This isn't exactly my point, either, but I'll mention it. Mr. Beckhusen writes:

I realized after reading it that this is the only cyberpunk war novel I've read. In a way, I hesitate to use the term cyberpunk, but the description fits. Cyberpunk novels, such as William Gibson's Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, depicted a near-future world transformed by computers and information technology--and not always for the better.

A few days ago, a man named Howard left a welcome comment on this blog mentioning Neal Stephenson and his new book Seveneves. You can read his comment by clicking here. By coincidence, I wrote about Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman a couple of days later. Both books describe a society without men [please see the correction in the comments below], a society that perpetuates itself through parthenogenesis. As for William Gibson and Neuromancer--both are on the way, so stay tuned.

Finally, after many, many more paragraphs, Robert Beckhusen closes his article with these needless and condescending (if not insulting) words:

The future U.S. military in the book is also a more diverse place, such as regarding gender and sexual orientation, at the command levels. But the authors present it as simply a matter of fact, much to their credit.

In other words, the authors have shown themselves to be on the right side of history by submitting to or internalizing a progressive diktat. Mr. Beckhusen of course approves and lets us know that we are permitted to read and enjoy Ghost Fleet without fear of committing a thoughtcrime. He might as well have stamped his review copy of the book: Nihil Obstat.

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley