Okay before I turn you over to the Zamzummims, once more unto Numbers…
Let me just explain something that seem to still pass a few people by. A probability is just the expression of the likelihood of something occurring. It works real well on large samples. In individuals you actually have to apply that weird stuff: observation and judgment. Try to do it in that order. And for heaven’s sake try to stay away from the ‘If I buy kippers it will not rain’ level of non-causative correlations. If the probabilities say that in the US the chances of a black young man engaging in drug related crime are higher than for almost anyone else, do not hit the young black fire-fighter carrying granny to safety from the blaze with your shovel. Against all genetic probability this level of stupid still exists in humans, and if something that ought to kill can survive, other less-than-probable things will too. Observe and engage brain.
Oh, and we’ve had a few drive-by trolls, who seem think derogatory insults add value to the debate. You’re of course welcome to disagree with me so long as you do so according to local custom: politely and with common sense. There seem to be a few new visitors who take liberty for license, and think they’ll swing a wide loop here. Before you set out to impress me with your cussing skill and pithy worldly wisdom, do remember I learned my genteel use of language in that finest of lah-di-dah schools, the commercial fishing harbor and boats, where I started hanging out – because my dad was there – from an early age. I added some depth to my refined tones at an all-male Military-style boarding school, and did a little journeyman time as an Army NCO, where, because we were all delicate fainting violets, we’d tearfully beg our kindly officers, people like Col. Kratman, to come and gently admonish our uncouth men for us, and then I went to finishing school in a large selection of fish processing plants. You’ve heard of fish-wives? It is all true. Someone out there is bound to be able to school me in vituperation, but it probably would not add value to a sensible conversation. I’ve had occasional ill-informed people tell me I’m being passive-aggressive. Actually, sweeties: It’s more like Godzilla trying wristwatch repair. I’m not good at it, but if I was trying anything but a light touch… I might hurt your tender sensitivities and I actually want to know what you think. Stick with polite.
Now onto topic: Political correctness has come to dominate most of publishing with a rod of iron (painted in tasteful, inclusive colors) and of course science fiction and fantasy, and thus, because except in rare instances of Labrador retriever, the tail does not wag the dog, also to what my friend Kate terms TOFKSFWA. To get into the latter you had to pass through the filter of publishing which increasingly has become far left wing, where PC is the golden calf.
It’s been a slow process, but gradually we got to the point where Baen alone among the larger sf/fantasy houses was prepared to publish whatever they thought they could sell, regardless of the author’s openly declared political or religious or ethnic origins. Distributors, retailers and other publishers did their little bit to make things as hard as possible for them, and it is absolutely obligatory to have as many public sneers at their authors as possible, because they weren’t PC to the core.
“But isn’t PC merely about fairness? About redressing the inequities of the past? You’re Australian. I thought your core credo was: “A fair go”?
There is the problem. Political correctness’s central selling point: It’ll fix things and make them more fair, and there is every indication that as a social species the hairless monkeys like fair and understand it. Plenty of good science to back this up. What do you mean you’re not hairless? To me you all are. All things are relative –and this too important. Remember it. Now, let my friend Numbers explain to you why PC isn’t fair, and creates rather than removes inequities. Yes, I know the world isn’t fair, but actually we’ve been putting many centuries of ingenuity into changing that.
Let’s start with the currently fashionable buzzword ‘inclusive’, which is not the same as ‘representative’. It means no matter how small or odd your little subsection of humanity is, it gets an equal seat at the table, an equal place in the book. It is no longer ignored. Isn’t that wonderful? Made you feel all soft and fuzzy inside. Unfortunately, there is this other word ‘demographics’, which has a lot to do with ‘representative’ and my friend Numbers believes it makes great sense to both ‘fair’ and ‘commerce’. After all if—averaged out – it is probable that of any group of people who read, a fixed proportion say 1:100 will seriously want to write, and perhaps 1:1000 of those will have the skill and perseverance to succeed, authors are a measure of readers in your population, and if you aren’t finding about 51% female authors… you’re either not reaching them or stopping them being published, or they don’t read (and if you’re selling books you should want to know which, and why, badly). Taking the above complete thumb-suck figures (which could be established), if there’d be at least one author which fitted your subsection of humanity if your ‘group’ was at least 100 000 strong. And you’d get another for every 100 000. It’d be likely you’d write books which would have special appeal for them, and it’s good business. Of course if there are only 100K – or less — of you, readers might fancy some variation, and a group which has 100 million will have a lot more authors. One could moan they weren’t ‘inclusive’ or politically correct because they have 1000 authors to your one. But it is not _unfair_. Unfair is where you take a substantive section of the populace and you exclude them. Blacks. Gypsies. Jews. Conservatives. And sadly for publishing (and thus SFWA) that ALSO means people you don’t like, who are nasty to you, who hate your guts, who cuss you out, who don’t share your religion, who don’t share your politics, who carry guns, who kill animals for food… It’s not only unfair excluding what amounts to the majority out, it’s just straight out bad business practice, and the shareholders of any large publishing house ought to ask the CEO, and the CEO should be asking acquiring editors what the hell they were doing, just before they get fired – because it’s the CEO or them.
Or that would be true if publishing were all about business. I suspect shareholders might like it if it were. In a command economy – as publishing used to be – they could do whatever stupid they liked. It’s over.
“But… but… but… the historical inequity! You’ve got to redress that. I mean there are lots of old white male conservatives like er… Jerry Pournelle. (Yes, I’m a fan) And they get the reviews and they got most of the awards in the past and… It’s not fair! We need inclusivity to fix that.”
Let Numbers take you for a little walk to the fairground. There’s this ride with all these lovely little dodgem bumper cars. Each of the 100 little cars has a timer on it. Gives you a half hour ride. And the attendant has only been letting on men, because actually they’d been the only ones eager to try it, and they’d been calling their friends – mostly other men, who they thought would like it. The fair owner came along and said he’d had complaints, and he was to let on anyone. So a mixture of folk poured into the little cars, as they came vacant. And yes, the men still outnumbered the newcomer women. And they bumped them mercilessly. After five minutes in the queue women went to the fairground owner and said that it wasn’t right or fair. There were only 10 women on the ride and they were not having a good time. So the fair owner came down and said “we have to redress this inequity! Women first from now on, attendant.” And the women said “so unfair, those bullying men should be kicked off!” But they’re on, and you can’t get them off until the machine’s timer stops. And time passed. The women in the queue chased the men who tried to join the queue away, except for those who wore dresses and red pumps and told them how unfair it all was to women, thereby benefitting themselves. Gradually, all the timers of those who were there first ran out. And as Numbers points out, equity was perfectly restored. And it had been perfectly fair on those men who didn’t wear red pumps who also wanted a go. It was of course their fault that the ride was full of men before they got there.
Numbers says: “If you invent time travel and you can go back and let 50 women onto the ride when it starts its day, you can ‘address inequity by advantaging people’. Otherwise all you can do is create more inequity, punishing people who had nothing to do with the historical inequity, for whom you will try and fix it again, by the same stupid process. Unless of course you want it skewed in your favor and are happy to take advantage of it.”
And you have to ask: who are the real bad guys here? The ones who unwittingly got on the ride first, never meaning to disadvantage anyone, or the ones who knew what it was like to be disadvantaged and deliberately set out to punish and take advantage of… not the ones on the ride, but those who had nothing to do with the earlier situation at all?
Numbers says: “if you want to look at being representative, you HAVE to do so by age cohorts.” I suspect (on the basis of having done a few counts) that, if broken down into age, in fact in the younger cohorts of sf/fantasy if there is overt discrimination and a resultant lack of representative diversity of anyone… it’s Christian white heterosexual conservative males.
Now let’s just talk about this discrimination thing and PC…
“Yes that’s why we believe in PC. To stop discrimination! No matter what you say, we need affirmative action because these victims are persecuted!”
‘Well now,’ says Numbers… ‘I thought discrimination was what set humans… hell, what set animals apart from the rocks. You can tell the difference between hot ‘n cold, wet ‘n dry, full and hungry and sexually appealing and not, and gradients between. It’s called using your judgment, and the more intellectual capacity you have, the more skilled you can be at it. It’s good stuff. Probabilities. I love those.’
“Tch. We mean _unfair_ discrimination. Like not giving someone a job, or the same pay just because they’re a woman. Or gay. Or black.”
“Oh I see,” says Numbers. “Yes, only a fool doesn’t judge on individual merit.”
“Yes and women and gays and black… uh people of color have not been judged on merit for years. It’s not fair, they were persecuted. It cost them jobs, safety, income. We want you authors to redress that in books from now on. Movies too. Be more inclusive and show their positive aspects.”
A moment of silence from Numbers. “So you mean that white men can’t be persecuted.” (and I owe this all to George on Sarah’s I am Spartacus blog post. He thought one should get one’s news from reliable news sources… like the BBC, Al Jazeera, and…. Wait for it… the NYT. And that Christians or whites COULD never be persecuted. That only Gays and blacks could be the victims of discrimination. Thank you, George. So much talent in one little comment.)
“Don’t be an idiot! They’re persecutors. They can’t be discriminated against. Why even the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury said Christians weren’t persecuted in England, because Syria and Iraq.”
Numbers says: “you do realize (even you, ex-Archbishop) that all these things are relative. The woman who gets 5% less for the same job as a man is not as discriminated against as the woman who gets her genitals mutilated, but the guy getting 5% more is at the checkout next along, and the genital mutilation is in Somalia. You judge how rich you feel by comparison to your neighbors, not by comparison to some Sheik in Paris. But that said, you wanted them all included in one book?”
“All books! They need to be more inclusive! So that’s at least one black guy, One black woman, one gay woman (in a happy stable poly-amorous relationship), one gay man (also in a happy stable relationship), one Hispanic man, one Hispanic woman, one disabled person, one Asian couple and one white woman, And one white man. He’s conservative, Christian, middle-aged, married, a homophobe a murderer, a rapist, abuses children, kills puppies and works for a multinational oil company. He’s the murdering villain. You can tell he’s a psychopath because he likes guns.”
“I’d never have guessed otherwise! Now as this is set in the US, and the demographic probabilities are not exactly equal as you suggest they are, anywhere except on a Hollywood set…
“As long as they’re the main characters it doesn’t matter. And you should have guessed he’s the bad guy. It’s … it’s what is that word you’re so fond of? Predictable! They’re persecutors, all of them.”
“Ah.” Says Numbers. “But the only place it is predictable is in modern fiction, where indeed it is predictable with a 99.998% certainty. However… In actual fact, they’re less likely to be the villain than many of your other characters. The only reason they show up at all in crime figures is that actually there are quite a lot of them, compared to almost everyone else in your inclusive list. And by insisting on inclusivity… you’ve made their numbers effectively the same as the most irrelevant group. Which means, even if gay women in stable poly-amorous relationships make up 0.02% of the population and white middle-aged (as in 35-55) Christian conservative married men make up around 10 % in the real world… in your book they’re given as equal probabilities of occurring, of being heroes, and therefore of committing homicide. Now normally it doesn’t look like there is any chance of a 0.02% of having committed a crime. After all, of the 14748 victims, if the probability of them committing the crime was merely the national average… they’d kill 3 people. At the national average (which in fact they are way under) White non-Hispanics (about 64%) would kill nine thousand some change. Only your inclusiveness just made their share of the total very smaller as a probability, and yet… they’re always guilty. Does not compute. You can’t have it both ways. Either the 0.02% occurs in about that proportion in books, in which case they’ll be murderers (or heroes) so rarely that you may as well ignore it, or if they’re equal and equal heroes… they have to get an equal share of murders. ‘Inclusive’ actually makes your permanent villains even more discriminated against.”
“Humph. They deserve it”
“Actually they don’t. There is of course a probability of homicide for each subgroup that you wanted to ‘include’. It’s actually lower than average for whites – a lot less than black Americans for example, and it’s very much lower for men over 25, dropping rapidly as they get older. Wealth reduces the chances further. And despite serious money going into trying to find evidence to the contrary, people with strong religious beliefs (particularly ones which hold the killing of other humans in abhorrence) actually are less likely to kill, and legal marriages are by the probabilities more stable and happier than other folk, and as mental instability and unhappiness and a lack of a support network are major reasons for homicide… and therefore your married church-goer is less likely than his peer group, and far less likely than average to commit murder. And actually there isn’t, also despite attempts to prove otherwise, any evidence that any political mainstream groups are more likely than others to commit homicide (the extremes are – but actually I think you’d be hard put to find the far left less likely than the far right. More like the other way around). And legal gun owners just aren’t trying hard enough to be bad… But he’s always guilty.”
“But he IS! Can so happen sometimes! There is a chance.”
“Yes, there is a chance. A tiny one. One book in 100 … or 50… or 25, that’s plausible, but not damn near every movie, every book. The guy who the real victim of crime is safest running to for help to… is portrayed as a villain. Almost always. That’s really going to help real-life victims isn’t it? It also does affect his chances, his self-image just as much as it affected any of the ‘included’.”
At this point it turns into a chorus of “Numbers you racist, sexist, homophobe etc etc.” which seems to be where every unwinnable argument ends.
However: The one thing about your standard PC villain is that he’s a really, really, really bad at being a whiner. The statistical probability that any other ‘inclusive’ group would be howling blue murder if one tenth of the level of improbable discrimination routinely applied to ‘wicked’ people like him was applied to them is 1000:1. Shrug. He’s got broad shoulders. But don’t think it doesn’t irritate him, and gradually stop him buying your books. And because those are most of what’s on offer, any books at all. From what I can gather, his female counterpart, and their kids, their friends and colleagues (all of whom are more likely to read English for pleasure than any other sector–given public schooling’s demise and the loss of parental input in many other sectors of society — barring the tiny group who can afford to send liberal left wing private schools) are just about sick of a diet that batters their suspension of disbelief too. In economic terms PC has destroyed a lot of writers’ livelihoods.
Now for the ‘why do you beat your wife’ question: Why should many publishers and the organizations supposedly dedicated to promoting the welfare of writers… support PC so vocally? I can see the sense of showing parts of society that are not seen and sometimes have an unfair bad rep… but not at the expense of losing your existing readership, especially if there is no evidence that you gain them, or anything like the same numbers.
Well, time to blow my own trumpet (something I always love doing, SO much, but it goes with the job) and leave, I guess. I’ve written a lot of books. Included a fair number of people of various groups, as people to be judged on their observed actions (which is something I do rather passionately believe in, actually). I think I’ve always managed to either explain why they’re there in that setting, use them plausibly, have the proportions within the grasp of possible reality… and not be exclusive about my heroes… or villains. I don’t think I have had any oil executives, but I did have a conservative Christian pacifist learning to shoot someone when it became necessary Slow Train to Arcturus
and a left-wing modern pastor turning into a closet satanist Soot & Cassandra
And this series,
which is exceptionally rare in a modern fantasy set in Europe, in Earth history, where the heroes are what they probably would have been: Christian Knights, white and male, and being human, fighting, drinking, sometimes making mistakes, womanizing, but still men who believed in honor and the crosses on their armor… and standing as a bulwark against the darkness that seeks to devour the fat little burghers they protect. Buy it and you help to keep me writing. Buy Baen books and you keep them publishing.
Mad Genius Club 
52 responses to “Numbers and the golden calf”
Publishers are often owned by multi-national communications companies (Boo hiss, say the lefties, Corporations!), but they’re usually such a small piece, their growth or shrinkage is unnoticed, and their accounting is so opaque, nobody knows if they’re making or losing money anyway. But they ARE handy to have around to shovel out timed publications to tie in with the movie or game they’re putting out.
On the other hand, Editors and publishers are people too, and they want to get into the right parties (or throw them and have the right people show up), and maybe get jobs in the White House Communications department in the future or something. So they can pay a $100,000 advance for Hillary’s autobiography (or whatever that figure was) and know they’ll get it back when the party buys a million copies of this bomb of a book with campaign money as a promotional give-away) Thus laundering campaign money into private funds.
They were an Oligarchy, they haven’t had to be accountable to the public or their stockholders in decades. They see no reason to start now.
I suspect you’re dead on with the opacity, leverage, and right parties (the ones where the hostess’s coctail frock simultaneously take one step to the left, without her?) and the favored social circles etc. But the big 6 have become the 5, and heading toward 4… and when you look at them you discover they’re the slapped together remanents of many many other publishing houses. It has to end somewhere, hopefully soon.
I never get invited to those parties.
I don’t want to be invited.
At work, we’ve been bought out by a major multinational. Egad the stupidity.
As I tell the guys when they complain about some “solution”. Think of the stupidest yet simplest solution and that is what you are likely to get.
Some moron playing a radio too loud mainly because he doesn’t like hearing spanish singing)? No radios allowed any longer.
See? Simple.
Unfortunately for me, although I ride thousands of miles on a motorcycle wearing earplugs and used to nothing but my own tinnitus as a sound track, I now have to listen to childish singing of non-sense (much of it at the top of ones lungs) as one of the perps cannot go through a day without being an @sshole. Luckily I do often make large amounts of noise that drowns it out but not often enough. But the reason (not that given … Safety of course) is all too PC. Got a trouble maker or three? Punish everyone, then no one can claim to be discriminated against. Same as corporate policies claiming Zero Harm against humans and the environment No matter the cost (got silly posters all over the offices)
“So we are going to get compactors for cardboard and paper trash (we generat a ton a week easily) and something for plastic pails and small drums?”(not as much bulk but a lot anyhow … the big stuff has been sold off from before the buyout)
“Um … we might look into that. Sounds kind of expensive” <— said to me by one of the Corporate bigwigs
as is often the case, those making the PC claims are often not anywhere close to actually being even slightly PC
Talking the talk and walking the walk are two different animals. The guys I can think of who actually DO things to fix situations they see wrong, themselves, on their own (not government) dime, seem to always turn out to be… not the loud shouters.
Eyup, and often enough they are the ones driven away by those that are getting all shouty
Are you a respectable physicist?
I’m not even a disrespectful physicist.
Ir-respect-able. Darn, that joke was funnier on the inside of my skull.
Dave, there are differences between goals and aims. PC – which term actually seems to have been coined on the left, in an unusual fit of self-deprecation – can claim it’s about fairness, and feel-goodism, or anything it wants that it thinks is a selling point. It’s rather like the “workers’ and peoples’ state” where everything is, in practice, owned by the Nomenclatura. PC, however, is really about controlling what we can think by controlling the language in which we think. It is _very_ Orwellian.
Yep. Word meaning theft is one of our dear little left-wing friends favorite ploys. It sounds good so we’ll steal it, make it into a neat trap for people to feel we are on the moral high ground, and allow us to direct what they may do and say.
What they’re oblivous to, most of them, is that there’s no logical and necessary end point. Once you start fucking with word meanings, once you destroy words precedential power and ability to accurately inform, while moderating human behavior, you open the gates for literally _anything_.
“Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.”
Thucydides, Book III, 3.82-[4]
And this is what sets me twitching. I’ve been obsessed with clarity of communication from childhood (my canted brain) and the normal variability and cultural shorthand in the English language leaves me frequently frustrated all on its own.
As the dominant media (small ‘m’ media, not press) warps the meanings you’re left insisting on the original understanding with your discourse becoming increasingly irrelevant and eventually vilified. Or you find yourself chasing the shifting frame to ensure clarity. Either way, they’ve succeeded in limiting the power of your voice.
Colonel Kratman sums the threat nicely. If anything goes, communication can’t realistically occur. And I’ll be stuck in my canted brain trying to parse what all the other meatbag’s ritual preening means…
“The rest is argument — the curse of my profession.”
“I studied Law as well.”
“And how is it you apply that education to what it is you do?”
“It has made me mistrustful of Language — a gun means what it says.”
[Friedrich Kritzinger, and Sturmbannfuhrer Rudolf Lange, _Conspiracy_]
The term was coined by Mao. Politically correct meant it could be drawers-on-head insane, but it was correct because Mao said so. Like, you know, making backyard steel furnaces.
When I was in college in the late ’80’s, the term was used by the left with absolutely no irony. The goal was to have all your political ducks in a row, to be politically correct. The left is not one ideology, but a collection of various ideological pathologies, some more severe than others. The concept of political correctness was to put them all on equal footing, and to basically make them all mandatory. Thus if you were a feminist, to be politically correct, you must also support the “Save the Whales” movement, and get your Free Tibet bumper sticker. If you had one topic out of alignment, say, you were anti-rape and supported arming women, you would be admonished for not being politically correct. One would have to correct one’s politics and adopt an anti-gun stance. The Orwellian language business that has led to PC becoming a joke was just a later manifestation, where one could out-correct one’s peers by being the first to adopt some new terminology.
… and it meant that you’d better agree with it, no matter how crazy it was, because if you didn’t you’d be shot or enslaved for your temerity.
Preaching to the choir, I’m afraid.
Your post is apropos, Dave, in a quasi-Lovecraftian gnawing-cuddly horror sort of way: I’m heading to San Antonio for WorldCon this weekend. Looking over the schedule this morning, I was struck by the number panels desperately seeking to answer “why [Designated Victim Group] is (shamefully) underrepresented in SF today, and what we can do about it.” There’s a Spanish language track that – while not necessarily a bad choice in Texas – seems to be strangely self-limiting, to me. I’d think you’d want to expose more non-Spanish speakers to your work. Maybe get some readers in a different audience. One panel I think I’m going to try to make (and take reinforcements) is the “3D Gun Printing” panel, with the tagline: when you can print your own, how do we regulate it. Demonstrating a deplorable – though rather unsurprising – ignorance of firearms laws.
Deplorable ignorance of law, yes. But I suppose we should be thankful they’re ignorant of the basics of manufacture, as well. (Not to mention ignorant of the basics of the application of violence.)
Or maybe if they understood they’d abandon the silliness? When you can machine your own, how _could_ we regulate it?
Nah. The whole post defines why they can’t understand.
I’m waiting for the calls to regulate hydraulic presses and sheet steel. For the children.
Yes! Don’t you understand? The whole idea of a hydraulic press is a perpetuation of the patriarchy! Its so…so…phallic! Besides, the assumption of your industrio-normative processes being superior to alternative techniques is reflective of society’s continuing oppression. We must act against the normative valuation of industrial manufacturing in order to free our children from these exclusive production mechanisms!
Sorry, I followed some links and polluted my brain this weekend. And I couldn’t help myself. I don’t anticipate the calls to regulate presses or sheet steel, simply because that requires some level of understanding of manufacturing and tool construction. And folks that get aflutter at the dangers of 3D printing have skipped some steps in learning how goods are produced.
I suppose the three hard questions will not be asked. 1)What is the demographic proportion of said victim group? 2)Will they buy the books (because this really is a case of ‘If Bolivian vegetarians are reading sf – they’ll be writing it’ Unless (see 1) the group is small, and/or doesn’t read sf, long odds are they’re there already. And while it is possible that they’ll start reading it because there is now a Bolivian vegetarian in every book, the chances are they aren’t writing it because they don’t read it, possibly because it’s not in Spanish, or some other reason. 3)Will endless Bolivian Vegetarian heroes put off our existing readers?
Dave, I happened to be browsing the job listings (academic type) and came across one that seemed promising until I reached the point about (paraphrasing) “applicant must include statement describing their outreach to under-served communities and their commitment to community diversity.” They’re getting more brazen. This is the second job post I’ve seen in six months where the hiring institution has been this honest about their goals. The other one stated more or less “Conservatives [as we define them] need not apply.”
They’ve remade the TV detective series “Ironsides” and its now PC. And if I see one more “poor [victim group here] abused by eeeeevil White Guy/corporation/religion until saved by heroic [victim group here] with secret powers/law degree” plot synopsis I’m going to hurl something. Or just hurl.
P.S. You gave me the monster I needed for a story that bubbled up early this AM. Thanks!
My pleasure 🙂 I hope she’s a calculating beast.
I’m at the ‘just hurl’ stakes. Sick of it. And the creeping ‘you must be one of us’ in Science as well as academia has been getting worse and more overt 😦
Save your money and don’t go see “Elysium” in the theaters. The whole thing stinks. The rich people–always in suits, women in high heels, mostly white–live on a beautiful space habitat with magic medical care that can cure anything in about 30 seconds. They refuse to allow the “illegals” down on Earth access to their magic machines.
And apparently the concepts of clean streets and 20th century construction methods as well.
There are no heroes. The MC is a multiple felony, former drug addict, pulling himself back together . . . critically injured (Radiation!!!!!) on the job in a Rich Elysium Corporation owned factory . . . and his motive for everything else is “I want to live.” Unstated is, “While getting my best friend killed helping me, and committing murder.”
And of course, in the end, the EMS space shuttles full of magic medicine are shown landing. As if there had been a fleet of them standing by, ready to go. Stopped only by those rich white people in their pretty (space) gated community.
ARG! No, I didn’t walk out. I stayed, hoping the stupid jerk would die.
That’s…actually worse than I anticipated. And I expected horrible. Wow.
The sheer ignorance of economics needed to put that plot together is stunning.
By the way, thank you for suffering so I won’t have to. Very much appreciated.
I was warned. I didn’t listen. I suffered.
PC _and_ progressive overdose. Maybe a Chick-Fil_A for lunch would help. (For non-Americans it’s a fast food place that is closed on Sunday because the owners are staunch Christians. It gets boycotted regularly by the leftists.)
Ugh. The thought of that much incoherency stalls my brain. Might take more than Chick-Fil-A. Maybe a lot more.
It will doubtless garner many awards! Have a Chick-fil_A for me too, just for the thought of it.
After reading your synopsis I need some Chick Fil-A. Sheesh.
I often wonder how much of the income of the latest batch of agit-prop from Hollyweird is from those who go to see just how bad it is.
Don’t do it! I mean, we’re talking “cute little brown kids, mostly female, gazing wistfully up at the huge wheel in the sky from their wheel chairs and hospital beds” level of agitprop. No. I am not kidding.
oh, so basically an extended version of the London Games opening ceremony.
Actually, iirc the last movie I saw in a theater was Red Heat in a dollar show (wanders off to find the release year) way back in 1988.
Some commenter–I think at Instapundit–said Elysium showed how the liberals clearly gained control of Earth because it looked like Detroit, Obamacare was in effect so medical care was close to non-existent, and all the productive people had left for orbit where they worked and produced value.
Umm, more like the bad parts of Juarez. Or as my husband said, the set for District 9.
Isn’t that what Laura just said?
How they work hydraulic presses in China:
If you need to see how bent pc is just look at a workplace or school after the diversity or sensitivity trainers have visited.
Folks who just got along start playing the I’m a bigger victim then you game, normal conversation is suddenly tagged with raciss, sexist or ablest.
Takes about 3 4 months for the fever to pass and everyone to get along like they did before.
Good post Dave.
As I was admonished earlier, you’re attempting the application of reason on a liberal. After your first rhetorical question caused their brain cell to overheat, you’d be interrupted with a “Shut up, you racist!” and that would be the end of the discussion.
[…] how is it possible that the majority of fiction has rather improbable uniformity? You should read Dave Freer’s column on that, where he mentions the villain is always white and male and usually a businessman or […]
David,
Having fairly recently started back buying SF (personal/fiscal issues sent me on an extended absence), I have to say that what you’re describing is exactly what I’ve seen. The first few times of the unreal (in the jarring sense, not in the oh wow sense) demographics I mentally shrugged and said “whatever.” I am, however, becoming sick of it. (Your Slow Train did a nice job of showcasing the downsides of a radical matriarchy, I just think you really should have had them adjacent to the white supremacists, that way they could have killed one another off…) I just picked up and read the first of a series that has a good, potentially really fun premise. I won’t be bothering with the remainder.
The book turned out to be a fairly well written bit of progressive romance in a sci-fi suit. Only the standard romance tropes kept it from being full on progressive schlock. It did have the gay alien in a stable relationship, the I AM WOMAN/SLUT, HEAR ME ROAR heroine, the evil corporations, etc. Yes, she actually ponders how she’s behaved as a slut in the past, and how she’s totally proud to have done so. And the villian? Crazy, religously motivated PATRIARCH who controls a vast multi-national corporation. I kid you not. Oh, and the sex scenes… I only read the first one to see how graphic it would be, and skipped over the next three. Not quite to the level of Penthouse Letters, but definitely up there with trashy bodice ripping romances and A. N. Roquelaure (aka Anne Rice).
Whatever happened to fun science fiction? Science fiction where the only agenda is to have fun and entertain without being raunchy? I know there’s some out there, it’s just frustrating to spend my money on stuff that’s otherwise.
MOST of the REGENCIES are extremely graphic now. I mean zero to anal in three pages. With a virgin. A REGENCY virgin. And none of them manages the heat of Georgette Heyer.
*shudder*
Good thing I left off reading Regency when I did. I read it specifically for restraint. Nowadays, I’m tempted to refrain from all romances printed after 1920. I like human relationships. I don’t need to read about people’s plumbing, and frankly, the relationship is most interesting when people *aren’t* able to indulge their desires.
I read part of a “historical mystery” in a library once. It was a new author. The heroine was married to a cop, and lived “on her own” with a pair of spinsters in a committed relationship. It was fantasy-land with historical trappings, apparently “healing the wounds of the past” ie. historical revisionism. It matters NOT that it was taking place in New York City. This person clearly didn’t even understand why the Stonewall Raid was significant. This revisionism goes so far as to undermine their own arguments.
So how could she get the history of the ambulance right, if she wasn’t picking and choosing for her own fancies? *headdesk* Hint: don’t call it a historical novel if you plan on editing out major facts and sensibilities of history. I think we need the title “historical fantasy” or even “hysterical fantasy”. Oops, that’s politically incorrect, isn’t it?
The tradition was, that authors tinkering with history are up front about their tinkering. Can we keep that tradition going in this our publishing anarchy?
Wild and rampant license is NOT Regency, but Regency flavored p04n.
I’m glad it’s a cruising troll that obeys the house rules ;-D. My own ‘read’ of the problem is partly that this is ‘we all select our editors from same rather shallow puddle’ (East coast liberal arts colleges, English lit, often medium/low quality grad – many of the best go on to do other jobs that pay better) and past the next screen of ‘we follow each other, because we have no tools to assess what would sell’ and through the ‘we’re so jaded with the normal it has to have depraved sex – besides we’re not getting any and it’s what we’d like’ and through the final ‘PC’ filter. What’s left isn’t much good for anything. Baen have been re-issueing some of golden age stuff, including the Schmitz books – and the Karres books I’ve done with Eric and Misty are to the best of my knowledge just about the only thing that doesn’t claim to be pre-teen that has adventure and no sex, that’s come out in the last few years.
Indie is the solution, unfortunately diluted in a sea of everything else. We need to invent some catchy tags that we could start using and start publicizing so people could search for them specifically.
… the Karres books I’ve done with Eric and Misty …
Speaking of the Karres books:
Drat, WordPress stripped out my image tag. Pretend the last thing in my previous comment was a picture of a cute kitten saying “Please Sir, may I hab some moar?” See https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/3799010816/h34C797C2/ if you need a visual reference.
Who can refuse to beexploited by that kitten 🙂
Next book after the current… um two (I am busy with at once). 🙂 Contracted
“I’m glad it’s a cruising troll that obeys the house rules ;D”
burrrrp.
nose pick
& flick
There are house rules?
resonant and highly aromatic flatulence…