One thing I really like about him is that his people never stop behaving like people - he's very aware that, even in the far-flung future, even to some extent in times of crisis, the mechanisms of life go on, people keep having to do laundry and have lunch.
You claim none of the people who hate Rand have read her. Concerned Onlooker says "I've read her, liked her for a time, then realized she wasn't really that good."
Seems relevant to me. Here's another one. I've read Anthem, and a representative sample of Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead. I've also read some of her personal correspondence and a fair amount about her life.
Ayn Rand is a terrible writer, and, while she explicitly used the word selfishness, and made a case (at length) for it as a social value, her "selfishness," translated into the real world, maps perfectly onto "greed" as commonly constructed. The only reason it doesn't look like greed in her novels is that she very, very aggressively manipulates the reader and tries to manage their perception of events at every step. No event or motivation in Rand's books is ever presented to be interpreted in context of the reader's understanding of their own, real world - it's all very explicitly forced into Rand's perspective, with sometimes PAGES of explicit pre-packaged interpretation demanding that you read this character's rape of this other character as the highest form of love because it is purely self-involved which is the highest possible value because only the self is valuable because altruism and other-directed emotion not based on cold value judgements are horrible because...
And it goes on like this. It's not literature, it's not even really a utopian novel - it's propaganda. And, particularly speaking of the Fountainhead, not well written propaganda - I mean, that giant-ass speech in the courtroom? Come ON. Watch the black and white Fountainhead movie some time. Watch that motherf*&king speech, read out by an actual human being. It's intolerable - it's as far from naturalistic, comfortable speech as exists in the English language.
Yes, highlighting the skewing of political speech is reasonable - that's not what "the gun in the room" does, remotely. It's taking complex concepts, filtering them explicitly through the speaker's viewpoint, taking them to an unreasonable extreme, and then refusing to budge from the resulting absurd reductionism. It IS a skewing of political speech.
Also, I'm sorry, but your "fallen soldiers" example is pretty bad - it's an alternate meaning of fallen - no one is actually interpreting it as anything other than "killed." One can argue that it's a positively connoted word; but there aren't really neutral words, and it's not deceptive in any sense; not like, say, telling someone who supports the local teacher's union that they're a jackbooted thug with a knife to your throat.
The ideas of social responsibility, duty, innate obligations to "society", "greater good" are the ideas that hold that is reasonable expect individuals to think and act pro-actively in certain ways for the benefit of others. The demand that an individual love everyone equally is making a claim to an individual's most deepest and intimate emotions. That's a sense of entitlement if I've ever heard one.
Wow, if that in any way actually described social responsibility, you'd really have a zinger there. Unfortunately, social responsibility doesn't remotely mean loving everyone equally - or even loving anyone, particularly. It involves acting responsibly within your wider community, and providing for common infrastructure and safety nets. It's about very practical considerations that deal with external realities. Defining it solely in terms of internal emotional construction is stupid. But, then, as a Rander, you're basically a solipsist anyway - who cares how the external world actually functions, when it can all be about ME ME ME.
This is not Rand's definition of the word "liberty" but it is one that I think she would have liked: "Liberty, in a political context, is an environment in which all relationships are consensual."
But somehow all her sex scenes are basically rapes. Hmmm.
All libertarian thought basically has this problem - it's all based on simple, reductionist models, which is great for rhetorical purposes, but fails to correctly model reality in any meaningful way.
The most extreme extension of this is "the gun in the room," an argument that literally boils down to insisting that there is no subject that's not state coercion, and that nothing else can be discussed or spoken of until libertarian ideals are implemented in their entirety. (Courtesy note: As soon as someone does this, if at all possible leave and never speak to them again. There is no meaningful discussion to be had with anyone who uses this)
And I can hazard a guess that spacemen will drop out of the sky and host a tea party in my living room - doesn't mean it's remotely likely.
Half of America basically refuses to use PAPER money, choosing instead to be subject to the horrors of modern banking for the convenience of debit cards. You think people are going to put up with direct gold/certificate exchange if given a choice?
The thing I really love about this series (well, one of the things) is how, in later books, after many of the main characters from the first are gone or inactive, it becomes more a story of how people in the world are reacting to living in the world that the main characters have radically altered through technology and influence.
Hmmm... That sounds interesting - I only read her elf-fantasy books (name forgotten, I think it was something like The Dreaming Tree) and didn't care too much for them. Another person who did the "FTL but no other physics outs" style of sci-fi is Walter Jon Williamson, in his Dread Empire's Fall series. It's pretty interesting - it's a very, very "everything is grey" world, where the protagonists are trying to keep a pseudo-victorian society based on strict hierarchy and torture from being taken over by other elements of the same empire. The main character is an unprincipled social climber; which is essentially the moral norm in the society he lives in.
Just as an aside - I agree that Karel Capek was a serious writer, but he's not a serious writer - I've seldom laughed the way I did at parts of War with the Newts and The Absolute at Large.
Tad Williams was about the first person whose books felt like they had the same kind of authoritative weight as Tolkien. Fantastic writer, although his later stuff had some structural issues.
I mega-second Dilvish, the Damned and The Changing Land. These are my happy-place books - they're pulpy fantasy with just that touch of wry self-awareness that makes Zelazny so perfect when he's good.
Yay! I love Karel Capek! Have you read The Absolute at Large? It's a similar premise to War With the Newts - I don't think it's quite as thoroughly thought out, but it's a touch more whimsical, and very good.
Yay, Dumarest - the books are a little formulaic, and the string of disposable psychic girlfriends gets on my nerves, but they're genuinely fun space romps, with a lot to recommend them.
Also, it amuses me that roughly half of the roleplaying game Traveller is taken more or less directly from Tubb - high passage, low passage, especially.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing I really like about him is that his people never stop behaving like people - he's very aware that, even in the far-flung future, even to some extent in times of crisis, the mechanisms of life go on, people keep having to do laundry and have lunch.
I LOVE Clifford Simak. And he has the absolute greatest titles - Why Call Them Back From Heaven? being a personal favorite.
Mod parent correct.
You claim none of the people who hate Rand have read her. Concerned Onlooker says "I've read her, liked her for a time, then realized she wasn't really that good."
Seems relevant to me. Here's another one. I've read Anthem, and a representative sample of Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead. I've also read some of her personal correspondence and a fair amount about her life.
Ayn Rand is a terrible writer, and, while she explicitly used the word selfishness, and made a case (at length) for it as a social value, her "selfishness," translated into the real world, maps perfectly onto "greed" as commonly constructed. The only reason it doesn't look like greed in her novels is that she very, very aggressively manipulates the reader and tries to manage their perception of events at every step. No event or motivation in Rand's books is ever presented to be interpreted in context of the reader's understanding of their own, real world - it's all very explicitly forced into Rand's perspective, with sometimes PAGES of explicit pre-packaged interpretation demanding that you read this character's rape of this other character as the highest form of love because it is purely self-involved which is the highest possible value because only the self is valuable because altruism and other-directed emotion not based on cold value judgements are horrible because...
And it goes on like this. It's not literature, it's not even really a utopian novel - it's propaganda. And, particularly speaking of the Fountainhead, not well written propaganda - I mean, that giant-ass speech in the courtroom? Come ON. Watch the black and white Fountainhead movie some time. Watch that motherf*&king speech, read out by an actual human being. It's intolerable - it's as far from naturalistic, comfortable speech as exists in the English language.
Ahem. The end of that was "I love your sig"
Exactly. And they all get silent and mumbly when you ask how those guns get funded.
BTW - I
Yes, highlighting the skewing of political speech is reasonable - that's not what "the gun in the room" does, remotely. It's taking complex concepts, filtering them explicitly through the speaker's viewpoint, taking them to an unreasonable extreme, and then refusing to budge from the resulting absurd reductionism. It IS a skewing of political speech.
Also, I'm sorry, but your "fallen soldiers" example is pretty bad - it's an alternate meaning of fallen - no one is actually interpreting it as anything other than "killed." One can argue that it's a positively connoted word; but there aren't really neutral words, and it's not deceptive in any sense; not like, say, telling someone who supports the local teacher's union that they're a jackbooted thug with a knife to your throat.
Wow, if that in any way actually described social responsibility, you'd really have a zinger there. Unfortunately, social responsibility doesn't remotely mean loving everyone equally - or even loving anyone, particularly. It involves acting responsibly within your wider community, and providing for common infrastructure and safety nets. It's about very practical considerations that deal with external realities. Defining it solely in terms of internal emotional construction is stupid. But, then, as a Rander, you're basically a solipsist anyway - who cares how the external world actually functions, when it can all be about ME ME ME.
But somehow all her sex scenes are basically rapes. Hmmm.
All libertarian thought basically has this problem - it's all based on simple, reductionist models, which is great for rhetorical purposes, but fails to correctly model reality in any meaningful way.
The most extreme extension of this is "the gun in the room," an argument that literally boils down to insisting that there is no subject that's not state coercion, and that nothing else can be discussed or spoken of until libertarian ideals are implemented in their entirety. (Courtesy note: As soon as someone does this, if at all possible leave and never speak to them again. There is no meaningful discussion to be had with anyone who uses this)
Mod parent correct.
Describe this actual utility, please - particularly in context of the average citizen.
And I can hazard a guess that spacemen will drop out of the sky and host a tea party in my living room - doesn't mean it's remotely likely.
Half of America basically refuses to use PAPER money, choosing instead to be subject to the horrors of modern banking for the convenience of debit cards. You think people are going to put up with direct gold/certificate exchange if given a choice?
This is perhaps the most gloriously subtle troll I've ever seen.
The thing I really love about this series (well, one of the things) is how, in later books, after many of the main characters from the first are gone or inactive, it becomes more a story of how people in the world are reacting to living in the world that the main characters have radically altered through technology and influence.
Hmmm... That sounds interesting - I only read her elf-fantasy books (name forgotten, I think it was something like The Dreaming Tree) and didn't care too much for them. Another person who did the "FTL but no other physics outs" style of sci-fi is Walter Jon Williamson, in his Dread Empire's Fall series. It's pretty interesting - it's a very, very "everything is grey" world, where the protagonists are trying to keep a pseudo-victorian society based on strict hierarchy and torture from being taken over by other elements of the same empire. The main character is an unprincipled social climber; which is essentially the moral norm in the society he lives in.
This. Also, I'm totally using your "Contrast with Wyndham" strategy the next time someone defends E. E. Doc Smith with "But he's good for the time!"
Just as an aside - I agree that Karel Capek was a serious writer, but he's not a serious writer - I've seldom laughed the way I did at parts of War with the Newts and The Absolute at Large .
Tad Williams was about the first person whose books felt like they had the same kind of authoritative weight as Tolkien. Fantastic writer, although his later stuff had some structural issues.
Also, he has some of the best book names ever. My favorite is Why Call Them Back from Heaven?
I mega-second Dilvish, the Damned and The Changing Land. These are my happy-place books - they're pulpy fantasy with just that touch of wry self-awareness that makes Zelazny so perfect when he's good.
Have you seen Leiber's stuff on Project Gutenberg? It's mostly short stories, but they're very good - I particularly liked "Night of the Long Knives."
I LOVE Clifford Simak. Why Call Them Back From Heaven? has been begging me for a re-read.
Ahem. Slashdot is still eating unicode, I see. Karel Capek, with a caron on the 'C'
Yay! I love Karel Capek! Have you read The Absolute at Large? It's a similar premise to War With the Newts - I don't think it's quite as thoroughly thought out, but it's a touch more whimsical, and very good.
Yay, Dumarest - the books are a little formulaic, and the string of disposable psychic girlfriends gets on my nerves, but they're genuinely fun space romps, with a lot to recommend them.
Also, it amuses me that roughly half of the roleplaying game Traveller is taken more or less directly from Tubb - high passage, low passage, especially.