It seems like Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling is dropped into conversation all the time on this board. In every forum, all the time. In fact, in the last few days I’ve seen it referenced in no less than THREE discussions about a hypothetical apocalypse.
But how popular is the book with people outside the SDMB? I don’t really have any connection to the science fiction community (getting most of my suggestions from here or just random stuff I grab off the shelf). How is Stirling (and the series as a whole) considered?
I picked it up on SDMB recommendation and would have thrown it across the room if I hadn’t been stuck in the gynecologist’s examining room at the time with nothing else to read (and the air conditioner on “Antarctica Research Station”.) What a turd!
Stirling is … “not very popular” would be putting it mildly … with South African SF fans that I wot of. I blame the Draka drek, which we took rather personally. Anyway, can’t say too many people here like his other stuff either.
Me, I’ll never read another book by him - took me ages to get round to replastering the dent Domination made in my wall. Don’t want to go through that again.
My all-time favorite SF authors are R A Lafferty, Avram Davidson & Cordwainer Smith. So popularity is not my primary criterion.
But two of Stirling’s alternate histories are in Amazon’s top 25 for the genre. The Sunrise Lands is #6. And *The Sky People * (in a different 'verse) is #25.
I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but my intelligence is still smarting at the insults he threw at it in that one. I will never understand why people will make such allowances for crap in genre fiction and not demand the best.
In rec.arts.sf.written, he (pseudonym is “JoatSimeon”) he comes across as a complete and total horse’s ass. Maybe in person he is “nice” (cue George Carlin rant)…
As for his writing, his books are riddled with thinly veiled strawman insults directed towards anybody who is a liberal or espouses said views. On a closely related note I found most of his protagonists to be insufferably boring.
Why is that, exactly? I mean, I can’t imagine a lot of Americans getting bent out of shape because someone wrote an alternate history of the US that made it turn into some kind of fascist state. Did he misrepresent something of the actual history of South Africa? Did he say somewhere/somehow that current South Africans wish they had a slave society? Do Black South African SF fans have similar dents in walls?
I only know one Black SA SF fan, and he’s never heard of Stirling.
The ones I know really just resented him using SA as a setting for his drek when he’s not, you know, local. It might have made a difference if it was better written. But let’s say it’s a little tedious having people still link your country and racists (see: Lethal Weapon 2, MI:2) without much consideration for the actual history of said country. I realize Turtledove had already cornered the Southern US setting, but damn, man - be a bit more original in where you see the racist übermensch Mary Sues developing.
Check out the** *** & ****** reviews of Dies the Fire at Amazon.com. The Stirling haters find him an anti-Christian Wiccan sympathizer. He’s also possible member of the SCA–and anti-military, too!
None of these people seem to have read the same book I did. But they sure reveal a lot about themselves…
In the Nantucket series, a group of so-called Liberals sail on down to Aztec country in an attempt to befriend their ruler, and all get executed for their trouble. They bought into the “Noble Savage” meme, you see, and assumed that the Aztecs, Enlightened beings that they are, would welcome them with open arms. Yeah I’m not about to put forth the “Litmus Test” argument here, exactly (No True Liberals would have been that obtuse etc.), but I just found it to be an irksome and ham-handed jibe towards the left. There was nobody on Nantucket who espoused reasonable counterpoints to all the “obvious” and “necessary” actions that the Nantucket leaders put forth and accomplished, and I found that hard to believe too.
John DiFool, your example is spot on. To be fair though, they were Massachusetts liberals who could afford property on Nantucket, and I’ve yet to meet a creature more idiotic than a rich Massachusetts liberal.
And MaxTheVool has a point - David Weber (and John Ringo possibly even more so) are far more guilty of creating ivory tower liberals who get what’s coming to them.
