When Lucas escapes, goes elsewhere and interacts with other characters, the narrative moves quickly and again is filled with historical and geographical references, more of these than we can cope with this evening although we expect that we will soon return to them.
It is a commonplace that the early part of a future history series is soon contradicted by our advancing reality although this has not yet happened to Poul Anderson's Technic History and will never happen to his Genesis. We sometimes compare Anderson's several future histories to each other and also to those of other authors including, for obvious reasons, Robert Heinlein.
Another possible comparison is with CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength which is not a future history but is nevertheless relevant to this discussion because it addresses conflicting visions of the future of mankind and is Lewis' reply to Wells' and Stapledon's single-volume future histories. Published in 1945 and set vaguely after the war, Lewis' novel describes a crisis that did not occur in post-war Britain. Thus, it soon became an alternative history. The fictional crisis occurred in a fictional town and university so that not only the history but also the geography is alternative. I would like to read a sequel set in that timeline but that is not going to happen. It has just occurred to me to wonder whether the political crisis in That Hideous Strength is the sort of thing that Lewis might have expected from a post-war Labour government.
The attempted scientific control of society is also relevant to Anderson's Psychotechnic History.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I am totally skeptical of grandiose notions of some kind of "science" being used to "plan" an ideal society. Human beings and their societies/states are too chaotic and contingent for any such plan to work. I also recall Flandry saying in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS that the scientific mentality is simply not good at grappling with something as messy as politics. And I agree with him!
Ad astra! Sean
The scientific mentality might be bad at *running* a government, but it might be useful for looking at various ways of organizing a government & seeing what works least badly in practice.
Eg: My impression is that parliamentary democracy works somewhat better than what the US has. If nothing else it is much easier to oust a poorly performing Prime Minister, than to impeach a poorly performing POTUS. Some comprehensive comparison study of countries with different systems of government would be desirable to refute or confirm this impression.
Kaor, Jim!
I remain skeptical, we have seen so many, many "plans" for reorganizing states since at least Plato and Aristotle, and none has really worked well. Because humans have a genius for bollixing up everything. And, whatever the flaws of the US constitutional system, any attempts at "reforming" are too likely to backfire catastrophically. Leave well enough alone!
Ad astra! Sean!
"Plans" for organizing states have usually been extremely unscientific, like pre-modern medicine.
Early medicine followed ideas like 4 humours without comparing the results of different treatments. The analogy to modern medicine in politics would be comparing the results of different policies that have been tried. The extreme example being the comparison of North & South Korea or East & West Germany.
Deliberately setting up those experiments would never get past the Research Ethics Review Board. Less extreme differences in policy with everyone agreeing on what would count as evidence for or against the policy, can be ethical. See eg: the tests of Universal Basic Income that have been tried on a small scale.
Problems arise when powerful people *insist* that their way is right & damn the evidence. See Lysenkoism.
Kaor, Jim!
Except we don't need elaborate "plans" to get an idea of what really works best for humans in politics/economics. Over and over and over we have seen that the limited state, in whatever form, plus free enterprise, and nothing else, works. The new President of Argentina, given his policy of ruthlessly slashing bureaucratic Peronist socialism, is already reaping solid successes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We have not seen that but you state opinions as if they were facts. Abundance will make free enterprise redundant.
Paul.
Cutting public spending makes the rich richer and widens the gap between rich and poor. That is certainly a criterion of success. The whole issue is so contentious and involves so many conflicting interests that (I think) it is unhelpful to state particular views and interpretations as if they were simple straightforward unadorned raw empirical data.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, it is fact that, when given a chance free enterprise and socialism never has. The genius of free enterprise, when linked with a limited state, is how it creates more and more wealth, which then spreads more and more widely, something socialism has never achieved. That is what the President of Argentina is striving to do.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree.
We have discussed all this many times. It is no good using the mere word, "socialism," as if it had one single clear agreed meaning. Socialism is greater democracy, not bureaucracy. It has been initiated twice and was destroyed both times. You do not respond to this view but proceed as if it had not been said.
Abundance will make free enterprise redundant.
Wealth does not spread more and more widely. Globally, both wealth and poverty increase. When there is a long term crisis of profitability, like now, governments make every effort to slash public spending and to make the people on the lowest incomes pay for the crisis while the number of billionaires increases.
Paul.
BTW, I strongly dislike the practice of beginning a comment with an uncompromising statement of absolute disagreement:
"Disagree."
I respond in kind but only to show that this can work both ways. Of course we continue to disagree. Reaching a simple and straightforward agreement has never been the object of the exercise, surely? However, any kind of discussion should surely be an attempt to work towards some measure of mutual comprehension, some enhanced understanding of a contrary point of view? If, at the end of a lengthy exchange, there has been no increase either in knowledge or in understanding on either side so that the exchange might as well not have happened, then, as I have frequently asked, what has been the point?
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