But a good portion of the Bearkillers (including Mike Havel) were Christian. As were the warrior monks of Mt. Angel. And these were some of the most heroic characters in the series. Saying he’s anti-Christian because the big bad used the Church to spread his evil isn’t bashing Christianity, it’s repeating history.
To John DiFool, I’ve never read the Nantucket series.
I’m agreeing with you–just not communicating very well.
One of the societies we see after The Change is Wiccan. But others aren’t; other good guys are pretty secular and/or somewhat Christian. And one society–the baddies–has a puppet Catholic Church. But, later on, we meet some really excellent monks. And the puppet Church changes its ways as its pseudo-feudal society evolves a bit. The readers who kept harping about the “pro-Wiccan/anti-Christian” Stirling definitely regard him as Liberal Scum!
(I’ve read all the books in the series published so far, so I’m conflating them. And it’s been a while. )
From Stirling’s acknowledgements in Conquistador:
Must be why I like them so much. I have absolutely zero problem with that. 
Sounds like lazy writing to me.
I haven’t read Dies the Fire, but it sure sounds like a rip-off of Steven Boyett’s Ariel.
Lazy how? Because we all know that ivory tower liberals are worthless scum, and they couldn’t and shouldn’t survive any sort of hard times? That kind of lazy writing? Maybe you’re right. It would take a genius of an author to make any kind of tower denezin anything remotely resembling a human, much less a Hero.
Not really.
1)No, it isn’t lazy. Writers have been doing it since writing.
2)No, not really. There’s little magic involved.
Those people weren’t just “liberals”—if you had read more closely, you would have seen that many of the productive members of Nantucket society were also animal rights types and environmentalists. Those people were irresponsible, airheaded “back to nature” idiots who believed a fantasy history. Saying that what happened to them was “liberal bashing” is purely ridiculous.
Consider that the conservative who bested those liberals went on the basically become a bronze-era version of Hitler. So I don’t think anyone can accuse Stirling of favoritism in which ideologies he takes potshots at.
It wasn’t lazy when the first writer did it. For the second, and every one since, it is. Writers are lazy bastards.
Ah; thanks. It’s just that having a sudden change, which everyone calls “the Change”, where modern technology no longer works, and people have to survive on their own and form new communities based on old models, and having a major character who’s a former SCA knight, sounded like a lot for two books to have in common.
Well, as for liberal strawmen, there was the “Janine Ameer” character in Drakon, which was just plain embarrassing, and not to Jane Fonda. (Opposite a hero-figure, yet, transparently based on Ross Perot! :rolleyes: ) And in Island in the Sea of Time, William Walker easily dupes a bunch of Nantucket ecofreaks into being pawns in his schemes (and what is done to them after that is quite incredibly vindictive). And in his T2 novels, a group of self-identified “Luddites” knowingly collaborate with Skynet in its plot to destroy humanity.
If you’re referring to Dies the Fire I don’t know what you mean. If you can suspend belief far enough to swallow the blackbox premise of all powered technology and explosives on Earth being rendered inoperable by Alien Space Bats, the rest follows logically enough, including the die-off of at least nine-tenths of the human race. (Though I don’t believe the built infrastructure of industrial civilization would decay quite as rapidly as he imagines. True, there would be nobody to maintain the paved roads any more, but, considering that there would also be hardly any wear and tear on them any more, they should last practically forever.)
Nitpick: Olmecs, not Aztecs. Which at least gets the time-period right. Little is actually known about the Olmec culture, which gives Stirling a free hand to do what he wants with it.
Guess my point isn’t that he “Spots the Liberal” and portrays them in silly and unrealistic ways, but that he likes to use his broad brush on anybody whom he has quibbles/criticisms with. Like I said I just find it irksome; real life isn’t filled with caricatures like that (tho yes there certainly do exist walking stereotypes who are proud of their stereotype status).
You could make a guilt-by-association case, as he has done collaborations with Jerry Pournelle – most egregiously in the The Prince, which is about a civil war on the planet Sparta between the elite/middle-class “Citizens” and the nonvoting “Helot” underclass, and portrays the latter as brutes duped by fiends. Pournelle, at least, clearly is the kind of conservative who actually regrets the passing of Apartheid in South Africa – and not even out of racism, AFAICT, more out of love of a hierarchical and “civilized” social order as such. Described more fully in this post (spoiler boxed).
Stirling also collaborated with David Drake in the General series. I don’t see how anybody could perceive him as “anti-military.” Dude makes Heinlein look like a hippie.
You must never have been down here. Southern conservatives, rich or poor, are way more idiotic. Even the ones with Ivy League graduate degrees. As we all have painfully learned, these past seven years.
Yes, but in the same book he also portrays the neopagan McKenzies as Good Guys. I guess some Christians just can’t get their heads around that. (In the later novels of the series, the Big Bad is neither Christian nor pagan, but an antitechnological New Agey cult.)
This is obviously a tangent, but (spoilers for the Honor Harrington series coming up) I thought it was hilariously preposterously beyond ridiculous that the following sequence of events could possibly come to pass:
(1) The Star Kingdom of Manticore (which is the “good guys”, and, despite being a monarchy, is the political analog of the US) (at least as far as liberals and conservatives are concerned) has long been in a cold war with the People’s Republic of Haven (which is evil and facist and expansionist with traces of French revolution and communism)
(2) The cold war becomes a shooting war
(3) There is much fighting back and forth. Zillions of people are killed
(4) Finally, due to awesome technology and bold military leadership, the SKoM gains the upper hand, and is charging, unopposed, across the galaxy, and will clearly soon capture Haven itself, finally ending the war.
(5) The prime minister of SKoM is assassinated (in an attempt which was aimed at various members of the royal family, as I recall). In wartime.
(6) Due to the way the government works, the person who now takes over as prime minister is a “liberal”
(7) The new liberal prime minister (and bear in mind that the government is basically parliamentary, but with popular election, so politicians have to respect the will of the people), who took office in the middle of war time, a war against a hated foe, a war where all of a sudden total military victory looks imminent; who took office due to the dastardly assassination of his predecessor (granted, an assassination which was not PROVEN to be due to the enemy, but still…); this liberal prime minister decides to… STOP THE WAR! And offer a peace treaty! And give the enemy time to rearm!
I mean, COME ON! It’s one thing to say that liberals are pacifists who are too hesitant to use military force and too willing to overlook the evil deeds done by others (although in the post-Iraq mindset that seems pretty silly). It’s another to say that anything but a crazy fringe of liberals are so anti-war that they would stop a nearly-won war just out of political spite, AND that the populous would somehow support them. Sheee-eesh.
What do you mean “here”. Tampa is as much a part of the “South” as is New Mexico.
You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever met my Cracker grandparents. Or, to take a living example, Rhonda Storms. Talk about idiots!
Of course, if you mean Tampa is a beacon of liberalism, civilization and sophistication compared to Atlanta, I’d have no choice but to cede the point. 