After watching the I was inspired to re-read the novel (and its sequels) some three dozen years after my first read-Abandoned without prejudice.
After watching the I was inspired to re-read the novel (and its sequels) some three dozen years after my first read-through. I enjoyed that a great deal, discovering I’d forgotten quite a bit (collapsing the two prophets into one, for example).
I continued onto the second trilogy, believing I'd previously read those, too. Nope: there were definitely aspects I'm certain I would have remembered.
Unfortunately, I just ran out of steam. I remain curious about where Herbert took his dueling matriarchal ruling classes, but not enough to plow through quickly, and my other reading has suffered. Back to death in Yosemite, and then on to new texts....more
I like the idea behind this immediately� and then very quickly realized I would not enjoy the execution. Episteletory novels are tough (personal excepI like the idea behind this immediately� and then very quickly realized I would not enjoy the execution. Episteletory novels are tough (personal exception) to do well, and it was apparent very early on how this one would go, even if not where it might go. I’m not rating this, because I think those who have explored further are better guides to the book’s quality....more
I thought: oh, Norse mythology! This'll be great. But I'm sorry to say that the addition of some modern snarkiness and a grating narrative of petulancI thought: oh, Norse mythology! This'll be great. But I'm sorry to say that the addition of some modern snarkiness and a grating narrative of petulance ruined it....more
This joint effort by two of my favorites was, sadly, not interesting at all. It focuses far too much (for my taste) on the possibility of a post-apocaThis joint effort by two of my favorites was, sadly, not interesting at all. It focuses far too much (for my taste) on the possibility of a post-apocalyptic spiritual obsession with the causes and effects of the war. That might have been interesting in the hands of a straightforward author, but it gave these two a chance to indulge in their least palatable obsessions....more
I couldn't be bother to make it past the first few pages of the introduction.
The author quickly claims that this isn't going to be a "get off my lawn"I couldn't be bother to make it past the first few pages of the introduction.
The author quickly claims that this isn't going to be a "get off my lawn" rant, but the nature of his first examples provided too much evidence that he doesn't have a very sophisticated vision of "the problem".
Specifically, he says:
� But first, we need to agree on the problem. � I believe our entire nation is in the midst of a collective coming-of-age crisis without parallel in our history. We are living in an America of perpetual adolescence. Our kids simply don’t know what an adult is anymore—or how to become one. Many don’t see a reason even to try.
First, by limiting the diagnosis to "our entire nation" shows that he hasn't seen the parallels in other nations, some of which have substantially different cultures. Second, by focusing his attention on youth, he's blind to the much more worrisome trends that pervade the rest society.
I suspect his analysis and conclusions will be congruent with Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (which he cites), although less disciplined in its academic analysis. That Sasse choose not to include footnotes is a cheat: he blames his editor, ignoring the simple solution of putting footnotes on a website instead of inside the book.
I don't doubt that he has thought long and carefully about our country's problems, but that doesn't mean he sees beyond his own tribal blinders. (I avoid reading rants from the blinkered left, too, for what that's worth.)
For someone who doesn't have already have a conclusion they are (consciously or unconsciously) , it is pretty easy to find evidence that his critique of young adults is just plain wrong. For example, the rate at which teens have given birth has halved in the past decade, and it has
Source:
The number of teens who have tried smoking has decreased from 70% to under 30% since 1991. The number who rarely or never wear a seatbelt has gone from 25% to 6% in that period. The number that have driven when they've been drinking has fallen from 10% to 5.5%. The number who have carried a weapon to school property has gone from 12% to 4%. (Figures from )
But perhaps, you may be asking, the decline is in the somewhat older cohort, those horrible Millennials. Well, no. Clearly Sasse didn't do the research. You can find plenty of links here:
Does that sound like "perpetual adolescence"? What it sounded like to me was an elaborate condemnation based on a bunch of unexamined stereotypes. I wasn't surprised, even though I was saddened: both the right and the left rely on ideological worldviews, but the right has a larger number that are hostile to secular social progress, so denying evidence — or refusing to examine the data � is going to be .
Because Sasse has read widely (whilst clearly indulging in his god-given evolution-given cognitive biases), I do find his inclusion of sources and a bibliography tempting: I might skim it for titles to read instead of his. (Update: I've got plenty of other sources for my reading list, so� nope.)
I may be wrong about the whole thing, but I'm not willing to spend my time on reading what he acknowledges (in his "Note on sources and methods") is "obviously" not an academic book....more
I picked this up because it contains the short story “�, in which Elvis and JFK (kind of) battle an Egyptian mummy in an old folk’s home, I picked this up because it contains the short story “�, in which Elvis and JFK (kind of) battle an Egyptian mummy in an old folk’s home, which was apparently made into a .
The story was amusing. But as I read the other stories, the tone and style grew tiresome....more
At some point I heard that Cory Doctorow's short story, The Man Who Sold the Moon had won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a pretty significant pAt some point I heard that Cory Doctorow's short story, The Man Who Sold the Moon had won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a pretty significant prize. What I don't remember is why I thought that meant it was worth tracking down (I don't make a point of hunting down most award-winning fiction), but I'm glad I did.
Of the four stories which I actually read within this fat tome, it was the one that made it worthwhile.
Now, I wanna say: the reason I'm abandoning this book is simply lack of time. Many of the other short stories might be quite worthwhile, so I don't want to dissuade anyone else from reading the collection.
But just in case you only want to read Doctorow's story, he's a bit peculiar in that he makes it available for free on his website, boingboing. Read it ; it's very good. Curiously, that's also the name of a book by old-school scifi author Robert Heinlein in which he expounds on his libertarian politics (it isn't particularly good story). Any connection other than the name escapes me, although I probably read Heinlein's story only once, three decades or more ago.
The rest of this is what I started when I expected to read the whole book. It's mildly critical of the preface and first story, both by Neal Stephenson, questioning whether the whole book was going to be like his pieces. Good news: apparently not.
� � � � � � � � � � � � � � �
This is a collection of “stories and visions for a better future�, so as I make my way through it, I expect to be updating this.
But to begin:
The preface and the first story are written by Neal Stephenson, a white American male just a few months younger than I am. Reading both of those pieces left me somewhat disappointed with him, frankly.
First, the preface, titled “Innovation Starvation�. Stephenson relates how he feels let down that the United States no longer appears to be the creative engine of thrilling new technologies that he fondly recalls from his youth. The now cliched narrative arc from NASA’s Gemini missions and moon landing to the retirement of the Space Shuttle is emblematic. What galvanized him into engaging with this was the oil spill of the Deepwater Horizon in 2010 � the people of the United States had been told almost forty years before, in the first oil crisis, that petroleum was politically problematic, yet we’d done very little about it (other than to fight wars and subsidized nations in the middle east).
The goal of the book is to provide conceptual templates to future innovators, the same way the writers of the Golden Age of science fiction had mesmerized and energized the generation of scientists and engineers behind NASA.
The story he writes, Atmosphæ Incognita, is about the engineering of a twenty-kilometer tall building. It is a good story, similar to Ron Howard’s in its focus on the technology. It felt like something written in the 1950s, though (well before the actual mission of Apollo 13 in 1970). The first-person narrator is a lesbian, true, but that doesn’t really seem to matter. In one way, that’s great. Letting people just be themselves is quite post-modern. But that also means that the only element that hinted at being interesting was set aside, and so the entire story ends up being rather bland. Yeah, the technology is interesting, and the failure of some of the technology lends some interest, but no enticing drama.
Which brings me to why I’m mildly disappointed in Stephenson. I thought he would be clever enough to understand that technology isn’t going to save the United States, and that we can’t invent our way out of our malaise. Well, yeah, sure: some fascinating new toys might distract us from the adult problems we’re confronting, and might even boost the economy enough to mitigate some of them, but that isn’t much.
The problems we’re facing are cultural and sociological, and don’t have simple solutions — we really don’t know whether they have solution at all (if you think you know of a solution, then you just need to take a step backwards and recognize that you didn’t see that it is entangled within an even larger problem).
I’ll have to see whether the other stories largely rest on similar false illusions....more
It has quickly become clear that there is no way I'll be able to conjure up sufficient interest in this.It has quickly become clear that there is no way I'll be able to conjure up sufficient interest in this....more
Abandoned. Lynch turns up the volume (to 11!) on the same formula he used in the first book. It one that is initially quite exciting, but eventually pAbandoned. Lynch turns up the volume (to 11!) on the same formula he used in the first book. It one that is initially quite exciting, but eventually palls. His heroes are thieves stealing from economically superior but morally ‘inferior� miscreants. They start out arrogantly overconfident, are foiled and imperiled, but always are more clever than their even more egregiously arrogant opponents and manage � surprise! � to turn the tables....more
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