johncwright: I wish I had written this sentence

John C. Wright (

johncwright) wrote,
@ 2007-11-12 10:46:00

I wish I had written this sentence
From Matthew Jarpe. He is talking about a story idea concerning a eco-friendly low-tech future and how to write it.
"I know Ursula K. LeGuin could write the story, and has, but I'm not Ursula K. LeGuin. If I tried to write it I'd stick in all kinds of pirates and killer robots and flying cars full of killer pirate robots."

Read it in context here.

I wish I had written that sentence because it pays respects to Ursula K. LeGuin, an author I also respect; but it also admits a weakness for killer robots and robot pirates, a weakness I share.

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jordan179
2007-11-12 06:01 pm UTC (link)

... but it also admits a weakness for killer robots and robot pirates, a weakness I share.

Embrace that "weakness," for it is a strength!

I like stories with pirates in general. Noble pirates, mercenary pirates, evil sadistic pirates -- pick your flavor, I love pirate stories.

Especially space pirates. Who may include robots, cyborgs, or more exotic sorts of beings :)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	xander25 2007-11-12 09:28 pm UTC (link)
	I play a space pirate (evil one) in Eve online :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	iceberg18 2007-11-12 08:28 pm UTC (link)
	Karen Traviss is not UKL[G], but I'd beleive you if you told me that her 'City of Pearl' was inspired by 'The Left Hand of God'/'The Dispossesed'. (Reply to this)

Lefty skiffy writers
(Anonymous)
2007-11-12 11:29 pm UTC (link)

I will never understand the left's desire to build these rural, khimarouge-esque ecotopias. Their ideal world is one where man is diminished and incapable of rising to something greater than what he is. If it were between an eco-friendly, low-tech future and being amalgamated by an out-of-control AI, I'd have to pick being amalgamated by the artilect. At least with the artilect, humanity's creation and legacy will live on rather than being reduced to a few shards of plastic in the soil, a footnote of geological time.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Lefty skiffy writers
(Anonymous)
2007-11-13 04:51 am UTC (link)

I think "never understand" is too strong. I understand, since I have had similar feelings and notions. I also understand that it is a romanticized vision inspired by a vague longing, not by precise memories: a false projection of some sort, perhaps a new form of nostalgia in an age where traditional nostalgia is frowned upon.

Perhaps these people do not like to feel special: it makes them feel lonely. They wish to be as much part of apes and jungles as their imagination permits. Their false God is Nature, and they would rather let man perish than let another species of frog perish---the latter would, in their eyes, diminish the richness and holy variety of Nature, while the former would merely rid Nature of Her devilish enemies.

(Darn, I've been reading this blog too much.)

Anyway, it would be interesting to read more stuff about this (similar to mine or the above). It's good to know that not everyone has gone insane.

TH

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Lefty skiffy writers crumjd 2007-11-13 04:50 pm UTC (link)
	I'm glad somebody said it. Three times I went to post "that's a bad way to deal CO2..." and three times I stopped because I didn't feel like typing up an argument for an alternate approach. Now that I see everyone agrees I can rest peacefully. Well, almost, I still feel compelled to express the argument but I'm crushing it down. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Lefty skiffy writers iceberg18 2007-11-13 09:46 pm UTC (link)
	Don't forget their glaring contradictive beliefs- they subscribe to panmaterialism, yet they also think that atoms in humanoid form are somehow external to nature at the same time. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Lefty skiffy writers

johncwright
2007-11-13 03:37 pm UTC (link)

I can explain the appeal, if you like.

The science fiction writer of this particular taste has the same longings that drove Virgil to pen the his bucolic poems: he recoils with disgust from the stench and closeness of the city (which, in Virgil's time, with its corpses flung in the street and sewerage flung from the unglassed windows of insulae was much worse in stench and closeness than any modern city, including Calcutta) and envisions a rural paradise, inhabited by singing herdsman and pretty shepherdesses, all frolicking and skipping through the leafy green: A golden age because no man cares for gold.

Daydreams about the Age of Saturn, or the Garden of Eden, are an old and respected tradition in poetry. The Back-to-Nature movement of the 1960's, the era future historians will call "The Crazy Years", was part of the craziness that tried to make this rosy poetical vision concrete.

The modern ecology movement is a corrupt and fetid outgrowth of this golden vision. Now having lost all its original poetical character,the Greens merely regret the life of man, and their Arcadia is peopled only with sheep without people.

The irony is that even a wilderness is better cared for by an advanced technological civilization than by hunter-gatherers, who tend to wipe out whole species without noticing. There are more trees in North American today than when Columbus landed. If modern man had been around in the dinosaur times, we would have preserved them from extinction.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Lefty skiffy writers

crumjd
2007-11-13 11:19 pm UTC (link)

I'm glad someone complained about how Jarpe wants to stop climate change. It doesn't sound like a very good SF story, and it sounds like bloody horrid environmental policy. (More nuclear! Travel as fast as you want! The past _stank_! [Both literally and figuratively.])

However, NASA thinks forest cover has declined: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/scienceques2002/20030404.htm . Techno-optimists must always get the facts right since any positive news is automatically assumed to a be a lie.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Lefty skiffy writers

johncwright
2007-11-14 04:43 pm UTC (link)

I was making the point that technological nations have better ecologies than more primitive ones.

Typing the words "forest cover" into google, I see this:

http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0313-forests.html

"But the State of the World’s Forests reports that while forest loss continues in the world's poorest countries, wealthier nations are seeing increasing forest cover after centuries of deforestation."

Which leads me to this:

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y7581E/Y7581E00.HTM

And, reading your article with a skeptical eye, I read this:

"For example, according to American Forests (a conservation organization), the forest cover in the Baltimore-Washington area decreased from 51% in 1973 to 39% in 1997. Although building and construction is somewhat higher in this region than across most of the eastern US, in nearly every urban and suburban area, there are far fewer trees now than just a score ago. Not only have trees been cut down to make room for housing developments and highways, but timbering, diseases (such as Dutch Elm disease) and acid rain have all taken their toll. In the U.S. today, perhaps only 60% of the land originally in forest 400 years ago is still forested."

Please note what the statistic given actually says. forest cover in the BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON area decreased. If this is more than made up for with reforestation elsewhere, it does not affect the overall total North American forest cover.

Also perhaps only 60% of the LAND ORIGINALLY IN FOREST 400 years ago is still forested. Again, if the land not originally in forest 400 years ago is a larger area and if the reforestation in that land is greater than 60% then the total forest cover would show increase, not decrease.

I am not an expert in this field, but since Greens are members of a crusading religion antithetical to my own, I am very reluctant to take their techno-pessimism seriously.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Lefty skiffy writers (Anonymous) 2007-11-14 05:36 am UTC (link)
	Superb diagnosis. TH (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Lefty skiffy writers

the_entity
2007-11-13 03:38 pm UTC (link)

The linked article concerns the best way of maintaining a technological civilisation on limited resources. I did not see any attempt to put forth a utopia in it, or any indication that the author is left-wing.

Nevertheless, off-topic though the matter may be, I will venture to suggest that pastoral utopias are principally a weakness of big-city types and a reaction against city life (you're not going to romanticise the countryside if you actually live there); and that, as big-city dwellers are generally more left-wing than countryside folk, this accounts for at least part of any perceived liberal bias towards rural utopias. Additionally, it ties in nicely with The Environment being a (perceived) liberal concern.

Myself, as I've gotten older, grouchier and more conservative, I find the attractive power of rural utopias has increased, not that being absorbed by a mad AI wouldn't be an interesting prospect.

Regarding the actual article, I agree with the analysis put forth in it. However, Mr. Jarpe is placed in a cruel bind by the fact that creating killer pirate robots would be a very tricky proposition in the resource-rationed world he envisages, and thus 'twould be hard to come up with an excuse for their existence. Unless, maybe, they were left over from the resource-rich era, and couldn't be easily dealt with because no-one had enough metal to build effective antirobot weaponry anymore.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Lefty skiffy writers
(Anonymous)
2007-11-14 04:53 pm UTC (link)

Thanks, it's always refreshing to be understood. I have no particular longing for the country life. I had my fill growing up on a "farm" in New Mexico (http://feedback.matthewjarpe.com/2007/10/15/down-on-the-farm.aspx).

Nor do I have any utopian proclivities. The whole post was just a stroll down the Mundane path, to see where it would take me. Away from the killer robot pirates, unfortunately. Oh, well, we still have LeGuin.

Matt Jarpe

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Lefty skiffy writers

johncwright
2007-11-15 07:05 pm UTC (link)

I like your chicken hunting anecdote. If you used it for the beginning of a SF yarn, it would not be a bad start. Two boys out hunting chickens find the One Ring, or run across a mysterious cylinder from Mars in a crater at Horsell Common, or view the take-off of the Terror from the Devil's Tor, or... well, you get the idea.

You could also use it as a hook for a tale about the even-less-risk-prone kids of the future. What happens to progress when they grow up into the kind of folk who would be too risk-adverse to climb aboard a motorcar, not to mention an aeroplane or moonrocket.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Lefty skiffy writers
(Anonymous)
2007-11-14 09:39 pm UTC (link)

Although now that I come back and re-read this after a few hour's reflection, I can't let the phrase "resource-rationed" go. I wasn't imagining a world where people decided to stop using energy at the current rate to spare the environment. I was taking the hard SF approach and asking what if we simply didn't have the energy? No amount of wishing or hoping will get you that energy. What then? Yes, it's far fetched, but what is science fiction for if it can't fetch far?

Matt Jarpe

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

NIGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN by Gene Wolfe

johncwright
2007-11-15 06:47 pm UTC (link)

Well, the only way to get flying cars and robot pirates in an energy-poor world is to have them be steam-powered! Start chopping wood, Long John Cyber!

A future where the technical knowledge remained on how to build such things, but the lack of cheap fuel made all such projects one-time vanity projects for the relatively wealthy kings and barons could hang together as a logical extrapolation. Printed circuits for AI's might still be around, stuck in long-dead machines that no one has the fuel to start up again.

If you want to see someone who mixes high and low tech in a masterful way, please read NIGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN by Gene Wolfe. The action takes place inside a worn-out multigeneration starship, and so there is really nothing that can be called a high-environmental-impact technology available to the remote descendants of the original passengers. However, hovering cars and mechanical men (called "Chems") still are left over from the now-forgotten launch days.

It is also beautifully written, moving, disturbing, cunning, tricky, and thought-provoking, with shades of Chestertonian "Father Brown" mystery thrown in for good measure.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2007-11-13 10:19 am UTC (link)
	Ecotopias are the lefty version of Tolkien's pastoral nostalgia. (Reply to this)

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