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U.K. SF Writers Dominate Hugos
gollum123 writes "The BBC reports that For the first time in its 63-year history, all the writers nominated for the prestigious Hugo award for the best novel are British." From the article: "Mr Stross says that what an author writes is a reflection of his society, and currently US genre writers are mirroring the 'deep trauma' that 9/11 wrought on America. 'What we write tends to reflect our perceptions of the world around us,' he says, 'and if it's an uncertain world full of shadows it's no surprise you get wish fulfilment or a bit downbeat.'"
Hey, I live in Ecuador, and I've always looked for sci-fi written originally in Spanish, but darned if I can find much. What authors write in other languages, and do they ever get Hugo awards?
On a side note, a friend of mine for a very long time didn't know that Octivia E. Butler was a woman. I haven't told him yet that she's also African-American.
Then again, some American conventions are strange as well; like inserting a comma before 'and' in a list, such as 'apples, bananas, and grapes are fruit' compared to the British style 'apples bananas and grapes are fruit'.
As an American, I learned that both are acceptable. However, I prefer the comma, as it adds the potential for an additional shading of meaning with reduced ambiguity, e.g.
"Food combinations that go well together are rice and beans, steak and potatoes, and liver and onions." (note the potential confusion from omission of the last comma)
I'm surprised that you posted this as an AC. You obviously have thought this through quite a bit. Personally I don't agree with your broad characterization of Slashdot as a vehicle for the "cultural elites" (for one thing, a much larger than average chunk of the Slashdot population are died in the wool libertarians), but if you want to change the Slashdot dynamic, why not post under a member name?
You make a solid point about the failure of cultural elites to adapt to the end of the Cold War, but I think you take it a bit far. Clinton cut and ran in Somalia, but he also pushed NATO into action in Serbia and assisted Croatia in booting the Serbs from Krajina. The Fukuyama "end of history" argument lost credence as soon as the first aircraft hit the tower, and nobody in the mainstream American Left would argue that the 9/11 attacks didn't profoundly alter our reality as a nation.
I also agree with your statement about the stupidity of being post-modern and ironic in a world where there is a very real conflict of worldviews. Hell, anyone who joins the volunteer military understands that being tragically cool is a farce, and I support America's soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines for putting themselves on the line for a belief in their country.
But one of the persistent threads I've encountered in discussion after discussion is that supporters of the Bush approach to fighting terrorists can't seem to separate the desire and intention to fight terrorists from the techniques used to do so. The failure of cultural elites to recognize that war is sometimes necessary is matched by the failure of many of their detractors to see that just because war is necessary doesn't mean that it has to be fought in the particular manner our President has selected.
It is no secret that the top military brass were very reticent about going into Iraq, in part because they'd spent the entire decade of the 1990s policing the world. The Bosnia mission, still one of the American military's most underappreciated successes, had been ongoing since 1995. We had the lessons of the Somalia and Haiti missions behind us. Many of the generals had been on the ground as junior officers in Vietnam. These guys knew their jobs inside and out and were part of the most professional and experienced "peacetime" military we'd ever fielded. But when Gen. Shinseki told Congress we'd need several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq, Rumsfeld at best ignored him, and at worst hastened his departure.
Beyond the notion of whether there was any meaningful linkage between Saddam and al Quaeda, the difficult issues of how to handle the reconstruction, security, and political reconstitution of Iraq didn't spring up unforseen after the invasion began. Most of them had been planned for by the Pentagon, by experienced NGOs, and by other well-informed and nonpartisan entitites. That the White House chose to ignore that wealth of expertise to me betrays something beyond "knowing yourself," something that strays into a very dangerous hubris.
The culture war analysis only takes you so far. Cultural elites may not understand Middle America, but that still doesn't really have anything to do with the essential recklessness and lack of sophistication displayed by the Administration in its post-9/11 response.
For example, President Bush referred to the 9/11 attacks as a new Pearl Harbor attack, when it patently was not even remotely like Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack on Pearl was a purely military move designed to wipe out the US Pacific Fleet, while the 9/11 attacks were symbolic attacks designed to cripple us economically, cause panic, and serve as a propaganda tool for the cause of militant Islam.
We have done very little under the Bush Administration to t
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