Science Fiction Fans: Am I being Wooshed? I mean, this IS a gag, right?

[Fenris]

I picked up Sam Lundwall’s Science Fiction: What It’s All About and either Lundwall is stupid, insane, from a parallel dimension or one of the greatest parodists that ever lived.

I’m personally leaning towards the first two options, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

The book is an oh-so-serious collections of essays about Science Fiction, which is “The ‘In’ thing in the world today” and Lundwall proposed to tell the history of the genre and offer commentary at the same time.

Just a brief skim of the book has taught me these “facts”

1. Tolkien’s trilogy in Lundwall’s dimension is called The Fellowship of the Rings (one wonders what the first book of the Trilogy is titled) is about Hobbits who live in Midgard…the center of a hollow earth. Lundwall also sees the trilogy as a struggle between Socialism (Mordor) and Totalitarianism (The Shire/Aragorn).
   :: blinks ::

2. Heinlein’s short story “Coventry” is about a totalitarian state that takes anyone who disagrees with it and locks them up in “concentration camps” where they’re brainwashed.

I don’t know what story Lundwall thinks he read, but it wasn’t “Coventry”. This is not an issue subject to debate: the story he’s describing is simply not the story he attributes to Heinlein (which is about a society that allows people who don’t like it’s more-or-less libertarian nature to withdraw to a large territory set aside for them, where they’re free to do whatever they wish and are left strictly alone by the libertarian state.

3. He seems to think that Sheckley’s hysterical “Ticket To Tranai”(sp) is a polemic on womyn’s rights, not a satire.

4. He thinks that War of the Worlds is an anti-Imperial novel (and specifically, anti-British-colonizing-India imperialism).

5. In the version of Moon is a Harsh Mistress that Lundwall read, the Moon is a patriarchy and there are no women characters that matter: I wonder how story went without Mimi, Hazel, Wyoh and Michelle?

6. Huge passages seem inserted. One wonders if he wrote part of it when he was sane, then went back later and added stuff.

a) He spends about 6 paragraphs on Marvel comics, getting every single detail wrong, and savaging them (“lack any pretense of credibilty and logic”, “bizarre”, “grotesque fantasies”) and concludes by saying how wonderful they are “highly original”, “quite refreshing”

b) He starts a section on Heinlein with some good, valid comments and criticisms. Then he starts attacking Heinlein for being a fascist/racist/Ayn Randian/conservative (gasp!). Then he goes on about how bad Heinlein’s stuff is. His conclusion? "I believe Heinlein has done more than any other writer to prepare youth for the big adventure, the Future.

And this is just from skimming the book. I can’t imagine how bizarre the book must be if actually read front-to-back.

So…was this intended to be a joke? I mean, from what little I know of the guy, he’s supposed to be a humorous SF author and this could be an extremely subtle parody, I suppose.

Th’ only other thing I know about Lundwall is that apparently early in Niven’s career, he was upset that he’d been given a savagely negative review. He called one of his friends who calmed him down and suggested he check the name of the reviewer: when Niven realized it was Lundwall, he laughed and felt much better. (It’s not real clear why though.)

Fenris

[Captain_Amazing]

Well, a lot of the people consider “War of the Worlds” an attack on British imperialism, so I don’t think he’s crazy there. The rest seems kind of strange, though.

[Baldwin]

4. He thinks that War of the Worlds is an anti-Imperial novel (and specifically, anti-British-colonizing-India imperialism).

Okay, that one actually makes sense.

Lundwall’s been writing in the SF world since the 1960’s, both fiction and critical works. And he’s Swedish. Put those together, and I don’t know what you got.

[Little_Nemo]

Heinlein’s short story “Coventry” is about a totalitarian state that takes anyone who disagrees with it and locks them up in “concentration camps” where they’re brainwashed.

I don’t know what story Lundwall thinks he read, but it wasn’t “Coventry”. This is not an issue subject to debate: the story he’s describing is simply not the story he attributes to Heinlein (which is about a society that allows people who don’t like it’s more-or-less libertarian nature to withdraw to a large territory set aside for them, where they’re free to do whatever they wish and are left strictly alone by the libertarian state.

I’ll admit I haven’t read the story in quite a while, but as I recall the society outside of Coventry wasn’t at all Libertarian. It was a relatively regulated and regimented state (albeit certainly not totalitarian) and the protagonist wanted to leave it because he thought he’d prefer a society without laws. The subsequent depictation of Coventry could be regarded as an anti-Libertarian warning.

[Sam_Stone]

2. Heinlein’s short story “Coventry” is about a totalitarian state that takes anyone who disagrees with it and locks them up in “concentration camps” where they’re brainwashed.

Well… In ‘Coventry’, I think we have Heinlein describing two ‘libertarian’ societies. One in which the non-aggression principle is taken to an extreme conclusion, and the other where there are no rules against aggression at all, and anarchy reigns.

I don’t know what story Lundwall thinks he read, but it wasn’t “Coventry”. This is not an issue subject to debate: the story he’s describing is simply not the story he attributes to Heinlein (which is about a society that allows people who don’t like it’s more-or-less libertarian nature to withdraw to a large territory set aside for them, where they’re free to do whatever they wish and are left strictly alone by the libertarian state.

Well, it’s a form of exile. I don’t suppose you can call that a concentration camp, but I suppose someone could stretch the definition. So while it’s wrong, you can see where he got the idea.

As for brainwashing - don’t forget, the only alternative to going into Coventry was to submit to brainwashing. So while he again got the details wrong, this is certainly the story he was talking about.

The book just sounds very poorly researched and sloppily written.

[Malacandra]

*Originally posted by Captain Amazing *
**Well, a lot of the people consider “War of the Worlds” an attack on British imperialism, so I don’t think he’s crazy there. The rest seems kind of strange, though. **

Let me ask for my dissenting vote to be minuted. The British, in India and elsewhere, generally went in, subdued any native opposition where necessary, and got on with making a large profit without actually going so far as enslaving the locals, never mind exterminating them. Wells’s Martians aren’t after anything but displacing the indigenous lifeforms in pursuit of lebensraum.

IMHO, you’d need to be a complete dork to confuse the two, and a worse dork to imagine that Wells couldn’t see the difference. It’s hard to imagine the Martians allowing Earth people as big a voice in local government as, say, the Indians had in India.

[Fenris]

Sam: I don’t think you can stretch the definition of “Concentration Camp” to include “an exile where the state allows you to take anything you want with you so you can have every convienience but otherwise leaves you strictly alone” anymore than one can stretch the definition of “Going to prision” to include “being forced to go on a cruise”

(I’m pretty fussy about the use of the term “Concentration Camp”.)

Little Nemo: you’re misremembering. The outside world in Coventry is a libertarian’s wet dream. it’s almost completely unregulated. Remember, the people who set up The Covenant had just come out of the religous dictatorship of the Prophet: the world of “Coventry” is the pendulum swinging the other way. (And the pendulum swings back in the next story, Methululah’s Children, where, the minute the people see something they want, the non-coersion principal goes out the window and the state starts considering bamboo shoots under the fingernails.)

Per the Judge at the beginning of “Coventry”:

“The Covenant is not a superstition, but a simple temporal contract entered into by those same revolutionists for pragmatic reasons. They wished to ensure the maximum possible liberty for every person.”

“You yourself have enjoyed that liberty. No possible act, nor mode of conduct was forbidden to you, as long as your action did not damage another. Even an act specifically prohibited by law could not be held against you, unless the state was able to prove that your particular act damaged, or caused evident danger of damage, to a particular indiviual.”

“Even if one should willfully and knowingly damage another-as you have done-the state does not attempt to sit in moral judgment, nor to punish. We have not the wisdom to do that, and the chain of injustices that have always followed such moralistic coercion endanger the liberty of all. Instead, the convicted is given the choice of submitting to psychological readjustment to correct his tendency to wish to damage others, or of having the state withdraw itself from him-of sending him to Coventry.”

“You complain that our way of living is dull and unromantic, and imply that we have deprived you of excitement to which you feel entitled. You are free to hold and express your esthetic opinion of our way of living, but you must not expect us to live to suit your tastes. You are free to seek danger and adventure if you wish-there is danger still in experimental laboratories; there is hardship in the mountains of the Moon, and death in the jungles of Venus-but you are not free to expose us to the violence of your nature.”

"Why make so much of it?’ MacKinnon protested contemptuously. “You talk as if I had committed a murder-I simply punched a man in the nose for offending me outrageously!”

“I agree with your esthetic judgment of that individual,” the judge continued calmly, “and am personally rather gratified that you took a punch at him–but your psychometrical tests show that you believe yourself capable of judging morally your fellow citizens and feel justified in personally correcting and punishing their lapses. You are a dangerous individual, David MacKinnon, a danger to all of us, for we can not predict whet damage you may do next. From a social standpoint, your delusion makes you as mad as the March Hare.”

“You refuse treatment-therefore we withdraw our society from you, we cast you out, we divorce you. To Coventry with you.” He turned to the bailiff. “Take him away.”

There’s no way to describe this libertopia as “totalitarianism” (or even “relatively regulated and regimented” ). I believe that the whole point of the story was that Heinlein wanted to contrast a libertarian state with an anarchy.

Regarding the War of the Worlds bit, Lundwall says

The War of the Worlds is an interesting example. The British Empire had a history almost as bloody as that of the U.S.A. and the guilt feelings of an intelligent and sensitive Englishman are as heavy as those of an American.* The Martians had obviously set their minds to conquer Earth the same way the British conquered India,** and would probably been as disasterous for the British as it was for the Indians. The superior war machinary of the British had their counterpart in the heat rays and robots*** of the Martians. Man doesn’t stand a chance.

*:rolleyes:

**“Obvious”? It’s not “obvious” to me, Lundwall. How 'bout supporting your point, rather than just tossing it out, ex cathedra?

***What robots? The Martians had poison gas, heat rays and Tripods. They didn’t have robots.

And finally, by Lundwall’s reasoning every SF war story is an anti-British Imperialism in India allegory. By his rationale, Starship Troopers fits the mold, with the Bugs as the British.

BTW: The Niven anecdote? It was Richard Lupoff, not Sam Lundwall, so never mind regarding that point.

Fenris

[CalMeacham]

You really want to get your dander up? After you finish reading this guy’s book, dig up a copy of John Baxter’s Science Fiction in the Cinema. Outrageous stuff! And, for a time, this was the most widely-printed book on sf cinema.
Baxter later went on to co-author an incredibly stupid book on the Tunguska meteorite, in which he claimed it was (a la Kazantsev) an exploding alien spacecraft. He must’ve drugged Asimov, who wrote a positive foreword to the book. (Forgetting that he’d already made fun of the Tunguska/Alien Spacecraft theory in his intro to More Soviet Science Fiction.)

[Steve_Wright]

Lundwall is known to me for having an … individual … take on many aspects of SF and SF fandom. Very … individual. Sufficiently … individual … for me to be thinking, “Fenris, are you sure you want to read that book? It’s going to be very bad for your blood pressure.”

I mean, although I haven’t read this particular book, my general impression of Lundwall is that he’s sufficiently off-the-wall that his opinions have to be discounted … he can be a mine of historical information, but when he starts interpreting it, it’s time to tune out for a while.

[Michael_Ellis]

*Originally posted by Baldwin *
**Put those together, and I don’t know what you got. **

I don’t know what it is either, but you can keep it.

[RealityChuck]

Ah, Sam. Interesting his name came up here. I’ve been talking a lot about him lately elsewhere, over SFWA’s current tempest in a teapot. He resigned from the organization (he was an officer) because we had reservations about his demand we make an official anti-Iraq-war statement. Others are now claiming we rejected his suggestion, but we never even got a chance to discuss it – he quit the organization less than 24 hours after proposing it.

He’s serious.

Th’ only other thing I know about Lundwall is that apparently early in Niven’s career, he was upset that he’d been given a savagely negative review. He called one of his friends who calmed him down and suggested he check the name of the reviewer: when Niven realized it was Lundwall, he laughed and felt much better. (It’s not real clear why though.)

It wasn’t Lundwall. It was Richard Lupoff. Niven was bothered and asked Jerry Pournelle what books Lupoff had written. When Pournelle told him “Sacred Locomotive Flies,” Niven was able to laugh it off.

[MusicJunkie]

He thinks that War of the Worlds is an anti-Imperial novel (and specifically, anti-British-colonizing-India imperialism

That’s how I always heard this one referred to and I agree with this interpretation.

Let me ask for my dissenting vote to be minuted. The British, in India and elsewhere, generally went in, subdued any native opposition where necessary, and got on with making a large profit without actually going so far as enslaving the locals, never mind exterminating them. Wells’s Martians aren’t after anything but displacing the indigenous lifeforms in pursuit of lebensraum.

IMHO, you’d need to be a complete dork to confuse the two, and a worse dork to imagine that Wells couldn’t see the difference. It’s hard to imagine the Martians allowing Earth people as big a voice in local government as, say, the Indians had in India

It’s admittedly been a while I but I don’t remenber any motivation being given by the martians. The closest I can come to that is that, maybe, it was because Mars was a barren, dead planet and the martians where moving to earth for its resources.

Wells was an outspoken socialist and I can easily see him opposing british or for the matter any other form of imperialism. I actually see more a parallel to the conquest of the Americas than to India.

And, if you admit that it is a critique to imperialism, then it makes sense not to show the “good” sides of it (native representation in government) and only the bad sides (invading a people’s land for something they have and killing large quantities of said people). Especially if you think imperialism is so bad you show imperialists as disgusting inhuman monsters.

I know it’s kinda close to a circular argument the way I put it but I think it makes sense.

[MusicJunkie]

Oh, and what is lebensraum? Is leben people and raum realm? I had german for two y ears some while ago but the experience was so bad I blocked most of my memories that contain anything German in them that’s not Lang or Krautrock.

And Fenris:

Sorry for hijacking the thread and,

Why do you think Lundwall was wrong about this? Unless of course after reading the book you tend to believe the opposite of everything he says is correct, a not meritless position from what you’ve shown.

[Tamerlane]

*Originally posted by MusicJunkie *
**Oh, and what is lebensraum?

Literally “living space”. In Hitler’s conception (others came up with the idea earlier, but in the context of overseas colonization ) it involved the permanent enlargement of Germany by annexing large swaths ( like essentially all ) of Eastern Europe, to provide resources and a place for the German volk to mulitply.

• Tamerlane

[MusicJunkie]

Thanks

[Exapno_Mapcase]

What is it with you, Fenris? Can’t you find a book of sf criticism less than 30 years old to complain about?

Lundwell, as Chuck said, is a rather well-known Individual with a capital I in the sf community. I’m pretty sure that he is at least an ardent socialist, if not farther left on the political spectrum.

I have a copy of Lundwell’s book. Probably haven’t looked at it since it came out in 1971, but in a quick glance I have to say that it sure ain’t a dull read:

Re Farnham’s Freehold:

Heinlein’s archetypical hero functions as a mouthpiece for Heinlein’s anti-Negro philosophy, when he doesn’t stand at attention by the flag or tell his children that Charity Begins at Home and It Should Stay There Dammit!

Yee-hah! Don’t tell me you disagree with this?

Or this:

If a daring member of one of the current women’s liberation movements stepped out into the men’s world of the future, she’d be shot on sight.

Right on, brother!

Or on Sword & Sorcery:

There is sex - but an immature, infantile sex where the copulation is the sword fight, and the orgasm is the death of the opponent. Women are invariably beautiful, desirable, and, beneath their exquisitely sculptured bodies, completely sexless.

He’s got 'em there.

And I dare you to object to this one:

I understand that the words “entertain” and “amuse” are singularly dirty words in literary circles, nevertheless I firmly believe that a good story should do both of thse things.

You’ve got to get off this idolatrous love affair with Heinlein, my friend, and get acquainted with the finer things in life.

[Fenris]

HEY MODS! Exapno’s trolling me!!!

Anyway, the stuff you quoted is opinion. In some cases, stupid opinion (like with the “anti-Negro” crack), but opinion. I was talking about stuff where he’s objectively wrong: no matter how you look at it, Midgard!=Middle Earth. (And I haven’t read the whole thing: just skimmed it, so I missed some of the comments you dredged up!)

I’d still be willing to bet money that he wrote a shorter version of the book as a dissertation or some such years earlier, and the decided to pad it to make it book-legntth. Huge chunks are well-thought out and accurate (like that last comment you quoted about “entertain and amuse”), but others are just insane. It feels padded.

And I can’t help it that a couple of used bookstores I frequent have gotten a ton of SF Criticism recently. I’m enjoying it, mind you, but I can’t help it. (In this last batch I got one by Moskowitz (Seekers of Wonder(?)), one by Knight, the Lundwall, and one by Del Rey (The World of Science Fiction), plus some history of fandom in the '40s and '50s thing by someone who’s name I can’t remember. And you shoulda been on another board that Steve Wright and I were on, when I was < cough > disagreeing with many of Aldiss’s comments in The Trillion Year Spree.

Regarding the “finer things in life” comment: You mean like David Eddings? GD&R

Chuck: I was considering starting a thread on that topic, but didn’t. As long as you’ve brought it up though: what relevance does the SFWA have to this war? I mean, I’d be fascinated to hear their take on how to deal with copyright issues in the coming era of e-books or the problems of foreign book piracy, or health care for spouses of writers, but this? Not so much. What did Lundwall hope to accomplish? I doubt Chirac will suddenly say “Sacre Cour! Ze SFWA iz on our side! Now we shall triumph in zis war of ideas!”

MusicJunkie: My objection is A) There’s no internal evidence in War of the Worlds that I can find that supports Lundwall’s claim and B) Lundwall doesn’t support his claim either. I mean, by what little standard Lundwall gave every “aliens invade” novel/movie is a parallel for British Imperialism in India (“Independance Day”???).

It’s not enough to just say “Wells was a Socialist, he was probably against it”, I’d want textual evidence to show me that that’s specifically what he was talking about. (To paraphrase a well-worn cliche, “Extrordinary claims require at least normal proof.” Lundwall provides none. He just asserts it. )

Fenris

[Exapno_Mapcase]

*Originally posted by Fenris *
**HEY MODS! Exapno’s trolling me!!!
**

Mods, he’s making posts to me.
Mods, he’s talking trash to me.
Mods, he’s almost breaking my balls;
I deride him,
Mercy! Let his conscience find him!
Mods, he wants to parry me,
Be my enemy.
Every post his words grow colder
Now he’s reading over my shoulder
Mods, he’s dissing me!

[MusicJunkie]

MusicJunkie: My objection is A) There’s no internal evidence in War of the Worlds that I can find that supports Lundwall’s claim and B) Lundwall doesn’t support his claim either. I mean, by what little standard Lundwall gave every “aliens invade” novel/movie is a parallel for British Imperialism in India (“Independance Day”???).

I didn’t say India, I said Imperialism in general. Compared to some cases India is pretty mild. If you look at Argentina for example it has a “clean” caucasian demographic in contrast to all the other countries in South America. That’s because they ( the Spanish) sistematically exterminated all the indians in the country for the silver there. Argentina literally means silver. That’s a nice parallel to War of the Worlds, it’s just that there the martians won.

As to internal evidence: A technologically advanced society invades a technologically deficient societiy’s space and kills and slaves it for its resources. That’s basic Imperialism and yeah, as all those books and movies were copies of War of the Worlds they’re, albeit unconsciously, metaphors for Imperialism.

All his other novels that I read were alsp cautionary tales or metaphors for something or other. Time Machine for capitalism, consumerism, etc… The Island of Doctor Moreau was about the dangers of misguided, uncontrolled, ammoral science. Invisible Man had a lot of that also as had A Meal of the Gods(?, the one about the giants). That’s pretty simplistic but it’s IMO at least a bit accurate.

One of the editions I read of War of the Worlds had a preface by Asimov (who’s the SF writer I respect the most) which basically stated it was a metaphor for Imperialism and discussed the book from that premise. Niven’s and Pournelle’s Footfall was admittedly a War of the Worlds rewrite that made explicit the whole Imperialism thing.

All this is not factual but I hope I’ve given you enough circunstancial evidence to make you reconsider. This is obviously not the only possible interpretation and it would be a poor book indeed if it was the only possible one for it. Still I hope I made my case for this particular one and that you now see it as I do as one of the premier possible ways to see this book which is to me at least one of the great ones in the genre.

[sjc]

I have heard the imperialism thing about War of the Worlds. I have not read the book, though some day I plan to, but I think that it makes sense based on what I’ve heard of the plot.

One difference, I had never heard it as an allegory for British imperialism in India but rather as an allegory for European imperialism in the Americas. This makes more sense, especially in the USA. Whether he meant the connection or not it seems plausible.