A short story is a short prose fiction.
A novella has been described as:
a prose fiction intermediate in length and complexity between a short story and a novel;
a long short story;
a short novel.
Poul Anderson wrote prose fiction of every length except maybe one-pagers. Within his Technic History:
my favorite novel is The People Of The Wind;
my favorite short story is "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson." See The Daily Life Of The Future.
"How To Be Ethnic..." should either have been novelized or have become the opening installment of a sub-series about life in the Integrates on Earth in the Solar Commonwealth. James Ching wants to go to space and succeeds. However, there are not only those who fail. There are also the many who do not want to go there in the first place except maybe occasionally as tourists. How do they live? I do not accept van Rijn's slur that the metropolitan masses are unfree merely because they do not emulate the life-styles of van Rijn and his friends. The few pages of "How To Be Ethnic..." give us a welcome glimpse of everyday life and we would like to read several novels, not just one short story.
16 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Considering how much I like Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry, some of my most favorite Technic stories will feature those characters. For Old Nick that would be THE MAN WHO COUNTS. Picking one of the Flandry stories will be harder, tho! If anyone INSISTS, I pick A CIRCUS OF HELLS and THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS.
I think you are missing the point Old Nick was making at the end of "The Master Key." His anger and contempt was NOT for all who did not go to space, as he and his guests had done. Rather, he had in mind weak willed people who wanted a Big Mama gov't to take care of them, to make all the big decisions in their lives. Iow, a top down, heavy handed, increasingly centralized and oppressive welfare/socialist state.
Sean
Sean,
OK as to what van Rijn meant.
To some of us, "socialist" means more democratic, not more bureaucratic but all these words change their meanings.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
What is "socialism" if not the state, the government, in no matter what form, owning and controlling most property and the means of producing and distributing goods and services? That will inevitably mean a crushing and burdensome bureaucracy. And "democracy" in such a regime is a contradiction in terms. Again, the tragic and appalling case of Alfie Evans comes to mind!
Sean
Sean,
People collectively controlling their own productive activity without needing a state.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yet again, this makes no sense to me. HOW does any set number of people control any kind of economic activity if the state is not involved? This sounds exactly like what we see in free enterprise economics, where a man or a group of like minded persons, cooperate in setting up a business, which might start small and then expands if it succeeds.
If by "People collectively controlling their own productive activity" you mean a "society" deciding what goods and services are to be produced or offered, how is that distinguishable from a gov't decreeing such things? Also, this kind of "collectively controlling" runs into the problem of determining HOW, what, and in what quantity any goods or services are to be made/offered. Iow, I still see a heavy handed bureaucracy clumsily and incompetently trying to collect the information needed to make such decisions.
The genius of free enterprise economics, when allowed to work properly, is that you don't NEED any such burdensome apparatus. What people want, demand, will lead to others producing or offering those goods. That, it seems logical to conclude, is far more "cooperative" or even "collective" than any kind of socialism.
Sean
Sean,
One problem is that we have been over this ground before and I try to avoid lengthy repetition so I fell back on a one line answer. Partly, my point is just semantic. Not everyone uses the word "socialism" to mean state control. You need to remember this even if you continue to regard their idea of "socialism" as unworkable. In fact, one view is that the state as an instrument of coercion is a product of (economically) class-divided society whereas "socialism" would be classless society. I think that people in general are capable of far more than the present educational/social system gives them credit for. Also, automation, education and communication technology can make a big difference. Thus, I do envisage an electronically convened World Kruath with everyone who wants to participating - but not tomorrow.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But the classic and original definition of "socialism" was of a STATE owning most property and trying to run an economy. I think it's better to stick with the original and truer meaning of the word. Trying to expand the meaning of that word merely leads to confusion and making it as empty of any real meaning as "fascism" has become.
While I agree economics plays a huge role in any society or state, I prefer how Stirling defined the state, as the means used, under whatever form, of preserving some kind of law and order, of ensuring some kind of security of life and property, large or small, for the people it governs. The institution which has a monopoly on the means of violence.
I certainly don't object to our lives being improved by means of advances in educationa and technology. But a world wide Kruath of the kind we see with the Ythrians won't work, because HUMAN beings are not Ythrians. The Soviet Union was mentioned in THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND as being meant to be something like that, and FAILING BLOODILY. No, I continue to believe the limited state, under whatever form, as worked out in Anglo/American political philosophy, to be the best we can achieve.
Sean
Sean,
But I think that I am using an original meaning of the word!
I agree that states maintain law and order.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But the original defining of "socialism" was that it means vesting the control and ownership of most property, including the means of production and distribution, in the community or society. How is that even thinkable if, concretely and practically, that does NOT mean vesting such control in the STATE?
At lease we agree on the basic job of any state, the maintaining of law and order. That is a start.
Sean
Sean,
The state is necessary to maintain order because material conflicts of interest cause disorder. When those conflicts no longer exist, then the state will no longer be necessary. Much of the time now we can coexist and interact without needing the police to enforce order.
Paul.
Paul: it's conceivable that material goods might become so abundant that nobody has conflicts over them.
It's not conceivable that -power- could become that abundant, because power is a "positional good" -- for one person to have more, others have to have less.
Even nomadic hunter-gatherer bands, where nobody owns much besides a basket and a spear, have violent conflicts over power.
Human beings have evolved in a way that makes them desire power -for itself-. Because this led to reproductive success, but the instinct is to seek power. As usual in these Darwinian kludge-ups, that worked, just as a desire for sex led to reproduction. Even people who are taking precautions not to reproduce still want the sexual pleasure that was evolution's way of making us make babies.
LIkewise, the instinct to be Big Bull Gorilla or member of Tribal Band #1 is just -there-, regardless of its original evolutionary role.
As Orwell put it, "the purpose of power is power". It's an end, not a means, from any individual's p.o.v., though at any given time it may accomplish other ends as well.
We don't need the police to actively intervene all the time because the -threat- of the police is there. Force is most effective as a threat; it's only when the threat breaks down you actually have to use it.
Before there were police, people killed each other at very high rates; usually between five and fifteen times more than people do in the advanced countries now. They usually got away with it, too.
A lot of this wasn't conflict -about- anything in particular, beyond "don't look at my girl" or "I'm drunk and I don't like your face" or "I'm going to prove I'm the Big Bull Gorilla in this room" or "your father shot my father" or "you're from the next village and we hate you".
We also evolved to need to belong to groups that are rivals of other groups. It fulfills basic instinctual-emotional needs. They may fight over turf, over money, over sex, or whether Christ has two natures or one. Anything will do at a pinch.
If you deprive them of anything else, they'll fight over football teams.
Before there were governments it was even worse than that.
Mr Stirling,
Well, maybe. But I know of a lot of human interactions that are friendly, cooperative, respectful, supportive - all that stuff - and not based on competing to exercise power over each other.
Paul.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Exaxtly! You helped to explain more clearly than I would have why I have to disagree with Paul. Even two years old tots in sand boxes know how to fight and quarrel over any little thing.
Paul: but not everybody is interested in competing for power and status. But many are and I see no reason to ever expect that drive to be eliminated from the human race. So, the state will remain NECESSARY.
Sean
Paul: sure, but you can't cherrypick.
Eg., cooperation is quite often cooperation -with- someone -against- someone else.
The instinctual-emotional set that allows wars to happen has altruism as its foundation.
As Montinesque put it, an army of rational individualists would run away. It's love that makes men ready to kill and die.
Poul pointed out that a social system that nobody loved more than themselves wouldn't last a week.
Mr Stirling,
I know that there are two sides to a coin but I am only just understanding the full implications of that. I certainly experienced the feeling of hostility towards strangers as a child but I hope that, individually and socially, we can outgrow that. Indeed, we often do.
I usually argue that cooperation is fundamental to humanity because, without it, we would not be linguistic, therefore would not be human. We have common interests as social animals and have been naturally selected for a tendency to help others either because they bear the same genes or because they might help us in return and we experience that latter motivation as moral obligation, not as calculating self-interest, which is what it sounds like when expressed in biological terms.
However, there is a very perverse streak in people. There is a lot of unwarranted hostility around. I (metaphorically) ask the Lord why He did not create better servants. (I usually apply that last remark to myself, not to others.)
I THINK that a better world is possible but I KNOW that it is very far from being inevitable.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course some degree of cooperation is necessary if any set number of people are to survive. But I also believe the urge or drive to compete, whether for mates, status, or power, etc., is also part of our human nature. And any society/state which is not based on a REALISTIC assessment of human beings AS they are (instead of what we would wish them to be) simply won't survive for long. That includes making allowance for the urge to gain power. Preferably in ways that won't do too much harm.
The various forms of the limited state as worked out in Anglo/American political philosophy was designed to be deliberately pessimistic about human beings. The idea was to enable ambitious people to indeed obtain power, but not too much (and they would be checked by others who had similar ambitions).
The mere fact you admit the kind of society you prefer is not inevitable makes you far more realistic than many others who share your views.
Sean
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