Because I care

[james_davis_nicoll]

As mentioned in comments, Dan Simmons has a dystopic novel coming out.

Canada, used to dividing itself into smaller parts to appease ethnic groups, languages, and claims to prior ownership, [...]

Is that a snipe at Nunavut?

Comments

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

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

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

"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?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

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

[txanne.livejournal.com]

MEMETIC PROPHYLACTIC RECOMMENDED.

Jeez, warn a girl next time.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

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

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Sir, you are my hero for the day.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

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.

Dooooomed America...

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

wants to file a copyright infringement on this vision.

Re: Dooooomed America...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

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).

[marydell.livejournal.com]

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

Yes. Yes it does.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

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

FTFY.

[jwgh]

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

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

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

Hard to pick out one single piece of stupid

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Hard to pick out one single piece of stupid

[jamoche]

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.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

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

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

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.

[tandw.livejournal.com]

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.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

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.

[jazzfish]

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].

[scott-lynch.livejournal.com]

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.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

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

[sanskritabelt.livejournal.com]

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)

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

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

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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

[(Anonymous)]

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

[(Anonymous)]

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

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

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.

[caper-est.livejournal.com]

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.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

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

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

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)?

Moar teeming hordes

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

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.

Likely!

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

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.)

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

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.

[krfsm.livejournal.com]

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

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

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.