NPR Science Fiction and Fantasy titles vote

[RAMA]

Vote for your favorite titles! These were narrowed down by a nomination process. The feedback has been quite good!

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138938145/science-fiction-and-fantasy-finalists

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873/vote-for-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-titles

 

[Captain Dago]

Thanks for reminding us of this! I'd meant to vote before and forgot.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Hurray, Earth Abides is on the list. But Forever War made it and Forever Peace didn't?

Anyway it's ridiculous to vote for just ten from that list, so I punted and voted for the two I just mentioned, plus anything by Ursula LeGuin and Philip K Dick, and still I didn't have enough votes! It's either that or eenie meenie minie moe.

 

[Stevil2001]

I can't do this! How do you pick just ten?

 

[Mysterion]

Very happy see So many Heinlein titles in the list of finalists.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I can't do this! How do you pick just ten?

I just ignored all the stuff that's gonna get votes anyway, Verne and Heinlein and Asimov and Bradbury and Arthur C Clarke and HG Wells, in favor of titles like Earth Abides, Ubik and The Dispossessed, which I feel are in more need of support.

But I should have voted for Nineteen-Eighty-Four, because I have a feeling that might get a bit overlooked by the sci fi fandom crowd.

 

[Kegg]

I always had the distinct impression that Nineteen Eighty Four was both extremely widely read (in general, but particularly by sci-fi fans) and so highly regarded as to be a banal choice.

Also, yeah, I read The Dispossesed over this summer (had a LeGuin splurge for absolutely no good reason beyond why-not) and it's very, very good.

 

[Australis]

Two Discworld novels, rather than a series nomination?

And I've been s serious reader for years, and there are some of here I've never heard of, like the Acts of Caine series and Armor by John Steakly.

But it does have The Culture, so that's cool.

 

[RAMA]

I was very angry when I ran out of my 10 picks so quickly.


No Gregory Benford titles??

RAMA

 

[stj]

I skipped the three fantasy titles that were good (Lord of the Rings, The Once and Future King and Gormenghast/Titus Groan.) Then I still didn't have enough votes. Didn't vote 1984 because it's canonical status doesn't keep it from being antiCommunist hysteria. But I did vote Brave New World, which is still relevant after 70 years.

But, there should have been James Blish on there too. Norstrilia was on there but it's possibly the worst Cordwainer Smith, who was at his best in short stories.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I always had the distinct impression that Nineteen Eighty Four was both extremely widely read (in general, but particularly by sci-fi fans) and so highly regarded as to be a banal choice.

My impression is that it's not really regarded as "sci fi" in the same way the other titles are. I wouldn't be surprised if it fails to make the cut. I'm sure when the final list comes out, there will be many things to complain about.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Didn't vote 1984 because it's canonical status doesn't keep it from being antiCommunist hysteria.

That's

 

[Goliath]

And I've been s serious reader for years, and there are some of here I've never heard of, like the Acts of Caine series and Armor by John Steakly.

I've read Armor. It was pretty good, and deserves to be compared and contrasted with Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Haldeman's The Forever War.

Each book reflects both a different attitude toward war, and the different period in which it was written. Heinlein's book is, of course, notoriously militaristic. Haldeman's view of war is largely negative, but not wholly so--reflecting, I think, the ambivalence of an actual combat veteran--and ends on an upbeat note. Steakley's book is the most pessimistic of the three: the Antwar described therein is completely senseless.

I didn't know Steakley passed away last year: that's a drag.

 

[Greg Cox]

I mostly went with the classics--I am Legend, The Martian Chronicles, Childhood's End, etc.--although I threw a vote at Watchmen so graphic novels would be represented.

 

[stj]

Didn't vote 1984 because it's canonical status doesn't keep it from being antiCommunist hysteria.

That's

Orwell imagined a moronic Hate Minute because he was too hysterical about Communism to imagine something like Glen Beck and Nancy Grace.

Orwell imagined the ludicrous pneumatic tube Memory Holes because he was too hysterical about Communism to imagine that the media would eagerly ignore commonly known facts and all history if it was profitable.

Orwell imagined that the nations in his world "needed" each other as opponents to justify the endless crusade because he was too hysterical about Communism to imagine that Communist opponents could disappear but the supposedly good guys would just keep on crusading.

Orwell imagined "Big Brother" and his minions reveling in cruelty because he was too hysterical about Communism to imagine that government would portray itself as looking after the security of the citizens.

Orwell imagined the proles as inferior intellects with a deeper intuition about love because he was too hysterical about Communism to imagine that picture was rancid with classism.

And it goes on and on. Every idea in 1984 that superficially bears merit is bent to caricature Communism and evading criticism of his society (which has developed along the same lines he so thoroughly missed into ours.)

The personality of an author is not directly relevant, but in the case of politics it is more so: Orwell served as an informer despite writing a tract condeming informing.

By the way, Animal Farm is a roman a clef about the Russian Revolution that manages to totally leave out World War I, which is epically dishonorable right there. Homage to Catalonia I haven't read because I no longer expect any decency or simple honesty from Orwell. Also, I gather he rather tends to slight the anarchosyndicalists as actors while he pursues his antiCommunist vendetta. This is equivalent to forgetting the Yankees when talking about Gettysburg.

The idea that twenty years after Yeltsin people still can't even see antiCommunist hysteria would make you ROFL, if it wasn't so contemptibly conformist.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

The idea that twenty years after Yeltsin people still can't even see antiCommunist hysteria would make you ROFL, if it wasn't so contemptibly conformist.

Oh, there's plenty of conformism amongst those who squeak on about anti-communist hysteria. They're just conforming to a continuation of left-wing myopia about the true nature of communist regimes. Also, while 1984 was motivated first and foremost by Uncle Joe's regime (do you have a framed picture of him next to your dog-eared copy of Das Kapital?), it speaks to issues of totalitarianism and propaganda more broadly.

 

[Kegg]

Didn't vote 1984 because it's canonical status doesn't keep it from being antiCommunist hysteria.

That's

Orwell imagined a moronic Hate Minute because he was too hysterical about Communism to imagine something like Glen Beck and Nancy Grace.

Orwell was familiar with nasty right-wing extremism. He was a contemporary of such media savvy rightwingers like Josef Goebbels.That the man was actually, you know, a socialist, isn't something one should understate here. Been a while since I read Homage to Catalonia, but I remember it being pretty sympathetic to the Trotskyists (though unforgivably critical of Antonio Gaudi).

Sure, 1984 has been appropriated by anti-communist hysteria. And he did engage in a a little blacklisting, which one can field pretty cogent objections to.

But Orwell's position on contemporary communist regimes has aged far better than George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells... though that he existed at a time when contemporary left opinion thought very highly of the Soviet Union is important. Nazi Germany scarcely needed to be excoriated, but Stalin was another matter.

 

[stj]

Writing a book in 1948, after the Nazis killed millions in Russia and left the country in rubble, about how the Commies were threatening to take us over and they would be worse than the Nazis and they would be here forever, was hysterical hatemongering. It was part of a program across the so call free world to purge labor unions, sharply restrict the acceptable range of political opinion by labeling the left as traitors and attack country after country across the globe in a murderous crusade that itself killed millions at a cost of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars. For nothing, against a pretended threat created from the fevered imaginations of scum like George Orwell.

It is ridiculous to claim his views were superior to Shaw's and Wells. (I've read Wells' account of an interview with Lenin. You can't honestly claim he was pro-Communist.) What you really mean to say, is that his views of capitalism under the alias of democracy has withstood the test of your approval.
People like Wells and Shaw who didn't think capitalism worked too well do not. Orwell was one of the people selling the "totalitarianism" swindle, claiming somehow Nazism=Communism. There are moral cretins who will never accept that shoving people into ovens simply is not comparable to the (latest) enemy the rulers wish to demonize. But it is a false equation, a lie. Worse, the Nazis were the best antiCommunists. How great is antiCommunism, really? The supposedly nontotalitarian capitalist democracies marched millions of men into killing fields in WWI. For what? There wasn't even a famine that was driving men against each other! It was just business.

Orwell's a socialist? Ebert, Scheidemann, Noske were socialists who murdered leftists and created the Freikorps who bred Hitler. Socialists are people like Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The Catholic bigot terrorists of Sinn Fein/IRA all right thinking people hate are socialists.

 

[Kegg]

Writing a book in 1948, after the Nazis killed millions in Russia and left the country in rubble, about how the Commies were threatening to take us over and they would be worse than the Nazis and they would be here forever, was hysterical hatemongering.

Stalin did kill quite literally millions of Russians, with repeated and bloody purges over the course of his career. There's a reason he was privately denounced by Khrushchev (in the new infamously widely leaked statement).

It was part of a program across the so call free world to purge labor unions,

Obviously that's not the case. You're conflating the socialist disillusionment with the brutal reality of Stalin's legacy - which is Orwell's position - with the union busting red scare militarism of the American right. To say that Josef Stalin liquidated large amounts of people does not make one a member of the John Birch Society.

(I've read Wells' account of an interview with Lenin. You can't honestly claim he was pro-Communist.)

I didn't say he was. But was he a socialist? Yes. He was a member of the Fabian Society, for god's sake.

The Catholic bigot terrorists of Sinn Fein/IRA all right thinking people hate are socialists.

A nasty bunch (although their socialism is a rather coarse), but I'd be interested in hearing how Gerry Adams is worse than Josef Stalin.

 

[stj]

1984 isn't about "millions" of deaths in prewar USSR, it's about the terrible threat of the postwar USSR seducing the filthy (but curiously sexy) proles of the Free World with their propaganda and establishing a police state that would last forever. Which was ridiculous. This imaginary terror so lovingly created by scum like Orwell was the Red Scare. And Orwell personally participated in right wing purges of dissent. It is ridiculous to claim 1984 had nothing to do with it then. It is used now as it was always meant to be, no appropriation needed.

The real issue, is that approving 1984 is symbolically approving of the murders of millions of people slain in the antiCommunist crusade, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in smaller numbers in countries too numerous to count, like Chile. You may have persuaded yourself that you are terribly humane to care about the deaths in prewar USSR but you happily approve all the others, which leaves me unconvinced. You may have persuaded yourself that you are terribly wise to believe in some nonsense called totalitarianism that can take over forever but you were refuted by the speech in 1956 you yourself cite. Believing you can get your answers from a hysterical tract may relieve you of the burden of actually knowing anything but you are just conforming to official ideology. Because, 1984 is about as official as it gets. There's a reason it is foisted on high schoolers and it's not because it promotes independent thought.