The premise of this book sounds like an extrapolation of a Philip K. Dick story of which I forget the name, in which abortion is legal up to age twelve or so, and performed by abortion trucks designed to look like ice cream trucks. It was an effective piece of hallucinatory paranoia, Dick style, but not at all believable, and quite misogynist as I recall. And what you can't sustain for a dozen pages is unlikely to last well in a whole novel.
This premise does not merely break my suspension of disbelief, it makes it stare in stupefied confusion. Did the author who wrote this ever met any humans at all?
Judging from what I've read at Slacktivist, the Left Behind authors seem to think that - there's one bit in the first book, when all children, born or not, have been raptured, that an abortion clinic worker is upset because it means she's out of a job.
As the talk over the ginned-up Planned Parenthood video makes clear, the US religious right has held for decades that abortion is a massively profitable industry that seeks to make as many abortions happen as possible, for the money or just for the thrill of killing fetuses.
The Sarah Silverman joke about how she'd like to have an abortion but she's been having trouble getting pregnant would not be a joke to them.
Making stuff up is so much more entertaining than actually checking facts. I recently found a list explicitly labeled "bat shit crazy" that linked to a site called Liberal Logic 101 which fully fit the description. The creators seem energetically wrapped up in a War on Straw Men that's in no way encumbered by facts or having any idea what real liberals might believe.
Yes, James's comment about the incorporated quotation of a "evil post-Soviets killing babies for stem cells" story suggests that the author genuinely believes that pro-choice people want to kill babies for the sake of it.
Modern Western culture engaging in filicide is absurd, particularly as a compromise over abortion, but a survey of history shows that it's soundly within the realm of human nature. There were officials in ancient Sparta whose job was to examine all newborns and determine which were fit to live; other Greek states left it to the father to decide. In Rome the pater familias held the right to kill any of his children or grand children who displeased him. Tacitus, when he describes Hebrew culture in The Histories, mentions the Jewish prohibition on infanticide on a list of their supposedly barbaric customs.
Well, yes, and we were dealing with an interpretation of modern western culture. But they are not actually killing infants. The point of this book is that they are actually killing teens. For parts.
You asked whether "the author who wrote this ever met any humans at all?" which suggests that your objection to the subject goes beyond modern Western culture.
And even limited to Western culture, the situation in the book is only unbelievable as an outgrowth of the abortion debate. Western civilization has, within living memory, sanctioned the mass murder of children, the use of children for scientific experimentation, and many other things equally odious.
Yes, we did. The thing that I find unbelievable in this particular concept is that it is something that is targeting teenagers that are not actually children of "Others". Because it would mean that not only this particular society condones killing of people for body parts (actually "condones" is not the word, I just can't think of a duly descriptive word for it), it is that it seems reasonable to take an infant, raise it for a number of years, while investing both material and emotional capital and than had it killed.
(And this has absolutely nothing to do with the above argument, but, as a person who did not read this series, it has been driving me crazy: a) Why only teenagers? Why not kids? Why not criminals? b) Do parents get money for the kid they give up for unwinding? and c) Do they find some way to use brain tissue as well? Human has 1:40 brain to body ration, which means that more than 1% of body is unusable for transplants.)
One of the incidental characters was the recipient of a partial brain transplant. The donor was still home enough to be very confused about their situation.
Since given the silly parameters the brains must be transplanted, it seems only logical that after the teenagers are unwound various career criminals are given brain "upgrades" whether they want them or not. After all, those repeat offenders have demonstrated there's something malfunctioning in their heads and it's obviously cheaper for the government if that can be sorted out.
That's better than just killing your unwanted teenagers and leaving them to rot outside town:
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. -- Deuteronomy 21:18-21
Thanks for the lead-in. I don't know why it makes me feel better to find out that your anti-Americanism is not entirely your choice, but it does. Also, thanks for toning it down in your writing.
If you'd like a dystopia that makes *somewhat* more sense, try Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine.
To be honest, I am not that crazy about Canada, although at least for a while it looked like we were toning down the whole nation of xenophobic hicks angle.
I'm reminded of the bit in Out of the Silent Planet in which aliens believe that of course a species can't rule itself, it needs to be ruled by angels. I'm not sure we have evidence that God is ready for self-rule.
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bruce munro (from livejournal.com)2015-10-17 06:57 pm (UTC)(link)
"Not to mention that the law requires that 99+% of each Unwind be used for transplants, which is impossible. Just how many left ear transplants are performed each year?"
Perhaps it's like the situation in "The Midas Plague", and the poor have to take up the surplus of unwanted parts, so trailer park inhabitants usually have four ears, two noses, and feet growing out of their shoulders?
I read the first book and wondered if young people really worried that this was a plausible scenario. Like, were there enough kids who thought their parents would do this, if given the chance, that the book could earn out?
I'm certainly not denying that terrible parents exist, but their kids might not be as inclined to read about terrible parenting as a form of entertainment.
(My friends who have had terrible parents tended to realize it well before age 13.)
The section from the perspective of the person being unwound is in the running for creepiest and most disturbing thing I have ever read, and I've read a whole lot of creepy and disturbing horror stories and novels in my time.
I otherwise really didn't like the book. But that scene, wow.
Also, nice footnoted dig at the Dayworld books. They're one of my guilty pleasures but more nutty than your average box of nuts.
The more things change . . . the bit about being 'dispersed' seems to be a direct steal from The Rakehells of Heaven. And elders preying off the younger, weaker but ever-so-much-more vital members of society? Uh, didn't Silverberg do this in Caught in the Organ Draft?
It strikes me that this would be a world with a lots of closeted gay kids, closeted trangender kids, closeted athiest kids, etc. This world isn't a compromise after an inconclusive war; it's one that the deontologists won.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2015-10-17 10:17 am
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As I remember, Joanna Russ threatened to beat up Dick over that one ...
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:)
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The Sarah Silverman joke about how she'd like to have an abortion but she's been having trouble getting pregnant would not be a joke to them.
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And even limited to Western culture, the situation in the book is only unbelievable as an outgrowth of the abortion debate. Western civilization has, within living memory, sanctioned the mass murder of children, the use of children for scientific experimentation, and many other things equally odious.
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(And this has absolutely nothing to do with the above argument, but, as a person who did not read this series, it has been driving me crazy: a) Why only teenagers? Why not kids? Why not criminals? b) Do parents get money for the kid they give up for unwinding? and c) Do they find some way to use brain tissue as well? Human has 1:40 brain to body ration, which means that more than 1% of body is unusable for transplants.)
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It would be a different form of dystopia ...
(Anonymous) 2015-10-19 09:15 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. -- Deuteronomy 21:18-21
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If you'd like a dystopia that makes *somewhat* more sense, try Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine.
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I'm reminded of the bit in Out of the Silent Planet in which aliens believe that of course a species can't rule itself, it needs to be ruled by angels. I'm not sure we have evidence that God is ready for self-rule.
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Perhaps it's like the situation in "The Midas Plague", and the poor have to take up the surplus of unwanted parts, so trailer park inhabitants usually have four ears, two noses, and feet growing out of their shoulders?
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Kids who deep down irrationally feared their parents might do this, yes. That's what makes it thrilling to read.
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And 13 is about the age when a kid can look around, compare Mom and Dad to other adults, and realize that something's not right.
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(My friends who have had terrible parents tended to realize it well before age 13.)
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I otherwise really didn't like the book. But that scene, wow.
Also, nice footnoted dig at the Dayworld books. They're one of my guilty pleasures but more nutty than your average box of nuts.
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(Anonymous) 2015-10-19 09:20 am (UTC)(link)