james_davis_nicoll | Because I care

O, Canada,
Dystopic, PC:
We stand in fear
In fear of thee...

"Our primary bank -- China -- was no longer there: split into thirty segments, each with one or more warlord fighting for ascendancy. "

Er, what? This would be likely because?

To move to a new country while carrying your old flag, language, culture, behavior, and national loyalties with you, is to be a colonist."

Well, that about wraps it up for the Irish. And the Germans.

Simmons isn't half as terrified of Chinese hordes as he is of Islam and this way he doesn't have to worry about how China reacts?

From Wikipedia: "The People's Republic of China (PRC) currently administers 22 provinces, 4 municipalities, 5 autonomous regions and 2 special administrative regions. The PRC also asserts [that]...Taiwan [is] a 23rd province."

So if you ignore the 4 municipalities, which are cities and therefore should be absorbed into their local provinces, you get 30. The CPC regional committee secretaries all become warlords instead, as one does, and Bob's your uncle.

Because this is an expansion of something he wrote back in the 80s and wants to leave the Japan-takes-over-the-world plotline intact.

I picture Simmons rubbing himself with pork grease to keep the Muslims away.

MEMETIC PROPHYLACTIC RECOMMENDED.

Jeez, warn a girl next time.

If only he would take that to its logical conclusion and set fire to it (the pork grease)?

He'll set fire to the pig-lard moat surrounding his house when they come. The bacon stapled to the outside of his house is the second line of defense.

Bruce

Fermented pig lard.

Sir, you are my hero for the day.

Dear Ghu, it's like reading the John Birch Society manifesto.

-- Steve didn't make to to the Canada part. The dog-whistles were hurting his ears.

wants to file a copyright infringement on this vision.

I wondering if Brian Francis Slattery was going to get a complimentary Flashback ARC (although I think in Liberation, the total meltdown of the US economy and subsequent collapse of the country had no effect at all on the rest of the world, so at least that part is different).

"Sounds like a boring premise on which to build an exciting dystopian novel."

Yes. Yes it does.

Sounds like a boring premise on which to build a~~n exciting~~ boring dystopian novel.

FTFY.

This seems like a book which could have been written forty years ago.

And probably was, making it doubly unnecessary now...

Maybe someone will write it again in 2050.

Maybe that's the real thing that will be constant throughout the ages: there will always be shitty political screeds that don't even try to masquerade as novels.

but the "tens of thousands of rusting windmills" are probably up there.

(Modern windmills are made of composites. The turbine housing is fiberglass. They don't rust.)

Also, it's unclear why the mountains are covered with windmills that don't work. Did the wind run out of gas?

Doug M.

Oh, but they've been "frozen in place from the day the state utilities finally gave up on them." And turned them off, of course.

I suppose there's also planes sitting in midair near various airports, from when their fuel ran out and their pilots' unions went on strike so they just set the emergency air brakes and left them there?

--Dave, cartoons can actually teach you a lot about the world

I would bet money that was driven by some specific piece of local NIMBYism; Simmons lives in Colorado, not far from what's sometimes called the Wind Line. "Those things are ruining our view! We paid good money for that view!"

Doug M.

Windmills just turn because of the electric motors in them, put there by liberals to fool you into believing in wind power. I hear they got the idea from Kim Stanley Robinson.

Damn that looks to be a serious case of brain-eater. Definitely a nasty thing to be avoided.

I keep wanting to post something, but I can't get past wordless disgust.

That 'Time Traveller" story he put on his website ensured I'll never buy another Dan Simmons book.

That 'Time Traveller" story he put on his website ensured I'll never buy another Dan Simmons book.

+1. Which is too bad, because despite their myriad flaws I kind of liked the Hyperion/Endymion books.

I'm embarrassed to have defended that story now.

A few months ago, I thought to re-read all the Hyperion Cantos. I stopped. A few weeks ago, I thought to take all the Simmons books I own and take them to the used book store. I delayed. I may now tear them, and bury them in my front yard under my son's Linden tree. Hopefully it's Canadian hardiness, used to sharp autumns and long winters, can withstand this poison and continue to flourish.

A few months ago, I thought to re-read all the Hyperion Cantos.

Yeah, that's a common mistake. I only avoided it myself by the knowledge that I needed to unburden myself of unwanted books quickly (impending cross-country move) and it would take too long to read them before deciding they weren't worth the price of hauling them.

I didn't do anything nearly so useful as using them to fertilize a tree. I think they went in the 'donate' pile, because I hate [sick children / soldiers deployed overseas / whoever that particular pile of 'donate' went to].

I'm at the point where I'm not sure I want anyone else encountering these. Damn brain-sucker.

I hung onto the first one, on the grounds that ISTR it being a pretty good example of several kinds of stories I enjoy. So whoever it is is stuck with #2-4, which should be enough to put whoever it is off Simmons's writing forever. On balance I consider this to be of the "cruel to be kind" class of action.

Ah, christ, I read the announcement.

"Is Flashback a novel stating Dan Simmons' political biases?

In a word... no. In two words... hell no."

And yet, here's his old hobbyhorse Eurabia, buried in the quagmire of this extended press release / outline / spoilerfest:

"We also get glimpses that tell us that the Global Islamic Caliphate -- only a fervent fever dream now in a billion or so minds -- is real enough in the post-Die-Ought-If days of Flashback. The Global Caliphate is a giant crescent, its central curve and core and capital in the Mideast where the triumphant states of Iran and Syria struggled toward mere regional hegemony in our own day. It seems that they succeeded. And then some. The northern horn of the Caliphate crescent stretches from the heart of the Mideast (Mecca and Medina, no longer part of the dead state Saudi Arabia at the heart of this heart) across Turkey and eastern Europe and all of Western Europe with the sharp tip of its crescent ending in Canada."

Yep. Doesn't contain a speck of Simmons' real-world positions, no sir.

It's not a bias if you think it'll really happen!

> "We also get glimpses that tell us that the Global Islamic Caliphate -- only a fervent fever dream now in a billion or so minds

``A billion or so'' seems like an overestimate of the Right Wing Psycho Nutjob population.

Well, how many of the RWPNs suffer from multiple personalities?

Rats, you beat me to it.

How is Canada a sharp tip of a crescent? Or is the sharp top of the Caliphate somehow impaled in Canada, possibly stuck in Manicouagan Crater?

What's the other tip? How do Bangladesh, Xinjiang, Indonesia, and Malaysia fit in with this?

As places neither on North America nor poised to invade North America, they don't count and do not appear in the story.

Bah! From Malaysia it's just a small open raft sail to Polynesia, and from there just a little more to Hawaii, and from there to Los Angeles, and from there to Washington and New York, and before long you're poised to invade America! It's the Kon Tiki Domino Theory!

So it's illegal to invade America from the West?

Bruce

::applause::

I would *totally* read that book.

That wouldn't be much less plausible than many books which have been written. I think the best part would be the invasion of Los Angeles. When the Polynesian Muslims (yeah, I know) have taken over Hawaii they can ally with the massive Hawaiian Separatist movement and then, um... Which leads to the invasion of America!

If the author has a sense of humor, we'll see someone trying to advance a column of BMPs through LA traffic. Good luck with that.

It's a hydra-headed crescent, whose tips are constantly multiplying.

Do any of the people sweating over the prospect of a Global Islamic Caliphate notice that the vast majority of firepower wielded by the Muslims of the Middle East is directed at other Muslims?

Any Caliph who inspires loyalty across Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, never mind Europe, would truly owe his kingship to Divine Providence.

I've actually seen a space opera where a view point functionary rues and laments the success the founders of his state had at getting mutually hostile sects to unify under the flag of Islam under one government; the isolation from other religions seems to have given the sects time to really focus on why they hate each other.

Title?

Sorry, that was the only part that was memorable; don't recall the title.

John: (calling up map on laptop) You know, I guess if you start in Spain, swing hard south through northern Africa, you got Algeria, Libya there, Egypt, cross the Red Sea and you're in the Middle East ...

Tyrone: From there, if you spot him the Indian Ocean and India, you're in Indonesia.

John: I am not spotting him eight hundred million Hindus. I call shenanigans.

-- http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-crazification.html

Rather suprisingly, Nippon -- as Japan now prefers to be known -- has brought back the death penalty after almost a century. It applies only to users and sellers of the drug called flashback. Even more surprisingly, Nippon strictly enforces the law: most of the men and women on Nippon's 3-month-max Death Row are teenagers.

(reminder that in our timeline, Japan still has the death penalty)

Wait, are you quoting something there? (If so, presumably Simmons' book?)

It's on the web page James links to.

Yes, but I didn't read it. Well, not past the first several paragraphs. Subsequent comments supported my decision to not do so.

So it wasn't clear that he was quoting, vs just commenting. I actually read the comment in question three or four times before realizing it was probably a quote.

Me, either. But I searched the page for 'Nippon' and found the relevent paragraph after two or three tries.

And now I'm picturing you with your eyes moving towards the search box, then uncontrollably flinching away because they've caught sight of part of the webpage's text, after which you steel yourself and try again, until finally succeeding.

--Dave, not all bravery involves combat

To be honest, I've been giving Simmons the benefit of the doubt since that story, so I started reading the page with a somewhat open mind. But the awfulness of the setting wore me down and I skipped sections of it, including the Nippon paragraph.

I'm not so keen on giving him the benefit of the doubt any more.

It made me wonder "what the hell?" - but asking for explanations would only make things worse.

I can't believe Simmons thinks his politics are concealed-- just about everything in the book is a conservative issue. It's not just the Eurabia.

Boy, he really has pretty much every right-wing nutjob talking point neatly lined up there, doesn't he? It's funny how when they go wingnut, they seem to adopt them wholesale with no annoying heresies like "the Japanese aren't really out to get us."

As reading experiences go, that was like having someone fart in your face.

(BTW, wasn't this expanded from a short story re the detective and the asassinated Japanese guy?)

Bruce

Indeed, did not Carlos, on this very journal, predict that right-wing wingnut discourse would in the end descend to a series of farts? That's the future the far right has in store for us: Dan Simmons farting on a human face, forever.

(Ok, enough with the farts...sorry)

Bruce

My working theory is that wingnuts are eproctophiles. They do everything but raise cards grading themselves "5.8 NOISOME". I shudder to think what a Tea Party bus must smell like.

Ever read Michael Bérubé's 2005 piece, "On the production of fresh wingnuts"?:

It's really quite eerie when you think about it, and I don't believe it can be explained simply by hatred of Muslims or fear of another attack. Because these people don't just go on about the War on Terror and the firmness of Dear Leader; they also go on about Jane Fonda (!) and Dan Rather (!!) and the New York Times and the whole MSM and the United Nations (!!!) and Jimmy Carter and the Clenis® (!!!!!) and Teddy Kennedy and the French. It's just bizarre. (Roger on the subject of the U.N. is especially unhinged.) It's like, "Everything changed for me on September 11. I used to consider myself a Democrat, but thanks to 9/11, I'm outraged by Chappaquiddick." Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised to hear any of them go off one day about our giveaway of the Panama Canal or the insidious plot to fluoridate our drinking water. It's as if the moment they threw in their lot with Bush, they were e-mailed a Wingnut Software Package that allowed them to download every major wingnut meme propagated over the past thirty years.

Yes, I do vaguely remember that article now. It's like a bizzarro catchetism they all must suscribe to for wingnut salvation.

Bruce

Am I in a different universe in which Constantine founded his city in 260, and in which the Byzantine empire didn't fall until 1532? Or where Hagia Sophia was briefly a Roman Catholic church because the Greeks were just feeling friendly?

Of course, he's seriously confused as to the use of "logos", but then writers and words just don't mix, see OSC and "observatory".

William Hyde

It actually was briefly a Catholic church, but not because the Greeks were feeling friendly; it was because the Catholic crusaders occupied the city.

The Hagia Sophia church was in a horrible state of disrepair when the Turks got there.

Yep, and the Catholic crusaders in 1204 did in fact slaughter those who had taken shelter in the church: and the Muslims didn't think to put a prostitute on the imperial seat in the Church, being the sort of low-brow Crusader humor that wouldn't occur to Sultan Mehmet.

Bruce

Which was indeed my point. I don't think that Simmons thinks of 1204 as a conquest, becuase it's conquest by Christians. That is, if he's heard of 1204.

If only he'd read Robert Silverberg, he'd know so much more.

William Hyde

Or if his worldview fit what he reads instead of reading what supports his worldview.

Coincidentally, I'm reading Nightwings.

The phrasing of that paragraph in Simmons's self-advertisement is (as I would put it to a student) uncomfortably similar to the Wikipedia entry on Hagia Sophia. This may be due to the shared influence of a third source. Wikipedia, of course, correctly and repeatedly gives 1453 as the date of the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in that very article; I have no idea where 1532 is coming from.

In fact, it strikes me as very odd that someone who was as obsessed with the clash of civilizations and the scary, scary Muslims as the narrator of that rant is, would would repeatedly screw up the date of the fall of Constantinople. This gives me a tiny sliver of hope that the who thing is an elaborate put-up job by Simmons. More likely, of course, it is all too horribly real, and the loss of a genuine talent to the brain-eater.

Will nobody else appreciate the brilliantly ironic tension between the scourge of the 'Flashback' drug, and the "I wish a buck was still silver" nature of the whole bad trip?

Here is an uncompromisingly in-your-face evocation of the withdrawal symptoms of the addict who has finally run out of mental flash-powder, and left to confront the irreparably broken horror of a universe in which the 1980s died.

Forever.

Members Only jackets will come back in style if we truly believe!! There's a new Cars single out, did you hear???

I saw someone wear one on the subway the other day. It looked great, actually.

(And so did the pair of Jordache jeans I saw elsewhere in NYC, but perhaps not because of the jeans.)

Were the sleeves pushed up?

No, otherwise I might have checked to see if I had slipped through time.

If they're not the author's personal beliefs, then he's pandering to Glenn Beckian conservative fears to make a buck.

Is American conservative dystopian fiction becoming the counterpoint of the USA (Fortress USA seemingly failing in its struggle against ~~godless Communism~~ ~~militant Islam~~ the nihilistic enemy of the day) going out with a whimper rather than the bang of an Apocalypse (nuclear or divine)?

In Mary Beard's review recommended by

oursin, savaging Robert Hughes's Rome, this phrase:

A visit to the overcrowded Sistine chapel has become, he insists, close to unbearable, "a kind of living death for high culture" – which can only get worse "when post-communist prosperity has taken hold in China", and the Chinese flood in by the million.

According to the Homeland Defense Security Agency's annual assessment, the Sierra Club has become a terrorist organization, responsible for more than three thousand suicide and terror bombings a year. (This makes it one of the minor terrorist groups operating in America in Flashback's near-future present.)

Nick Bottom? Really? I know Simmons likes to make allusions to literature but this is an odd choice even for foreshadowing.

Huh. Just how many times is Val Bottom described as sixteen? I count five. How many times is Nick Bottom described as ex-(homicide) detective? Six. He loves Dara more than life itself twice. I realize that this isn't an edited copy, but I still expect better writing than this.

Hmm. "The most common baby name in Canada in the time of Flashback is Mohammed. (Way back in 2010, this was the most common baby name in Sweden.)"

I've checked multiple sites, and maybe not, although it is (counting variant spellings) beating Mitchell out as the most popular boy's name beginning with M. And one site says that it is the most popular boy's name in Oslo, but of course Oslo is not Sweden¹.

And one has to ask: so, one's name is one's destiny?

---
1. It's also not Norway, but that's not as funny.

And, of course, it isn't. Mohamed (the spelling used by SCB) was the 65th most common boy baby name in Sweden in 2010 -- the most common three were Oscar, William, and Lucas. The most popular boy name beginning with M that year was Melvin! If we're gonna rant about foreign influences in baby names, the top "non-Swedish" one was #9: Liam. The Insidious Irish threat is clearly upon us. FUCKERS. (Not that I feel strongly about this piece of stupidity or anything.) If you want to rant about something, consider that Neo got around 30% more takers (313 to Mohamed's 244). In short, I wouldn't piss down their throats if their hearts were on fire.

Source: Swedish Bureau of Statistics, "Baby names 2010". http://www.scb.se/Pages/SSD/SSD_TablePresentation____340486.aspx?layout=tableViewLayout1&rxid=0ac66f5a-92f2-44d1-9a5d-5da67162d3f0

Edited 2013-11-08 23:20 (UTC)

this is also the basic plot of _strange days_, the movie, it just occurred to me.

i expect it to not be as good, though.

Because I care

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Dooooomed America...

Re: Dooooomed America...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Hard to pick out one single piece of stupid

Re: Hard to pick out one single piece of stupid

Re: Hard to pick out one single piece of stupid

Re: Hard to pick out one single piece of stupid

Re: Hard to pick out one single piece of stupid

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Moar teeming hordes