SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY BOOK REVIEWS
There is a glaring error in the opening sentence.
There was a time when the only two Poul Anderson time travel volumes were Guardians Of Time (with four stories) and The Corridors Of Time and they were based on opposite, mutually incompatible, premises. After that, thankfully, the Time Patrol series grew, two more novels were published and other stories were collected.
The review accurately quotes Storm's summary of the Wardens-Rangers conflict:
life as it is imagined versus life as it is;
control versus freedom;
rationalism versus wholeness;
machine versus flesh.
The reviewer rightly says that these are false choices. We value a television (machine), the people that we see on it (flesh), the people who watch it with us (flesh) and indeed ourselves (flesh).
Storm asks:
"'If man and man's fate can be planned, organized, made to conform to some vision of ultimate perfection, is not man's duty to enforce the vision upon his fellow man, at whatever cost? That sounds familiar to you, no?'"
-The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR, p. 34.
Yes, we plan and organize but not on the level of fate! Enforcement and "whatever cost" conflict with perfection. False choices.
23 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I noticed Wagner's error right away, THE CORRIDORS OF TIME is not part of the Time Patrol series. I also thought Wagner was being irritatingly condescending about 20th century science fiction, writing as tho' the quirks and prejudices of the 21st century are allegedly superior to those seen in CORRIDORS.
As for Storm Darroway's comments, it wasn't just her and her fellow Wardens who were so ruthless. That was exactly how Lenin and Stalin behaved, the Plan (Marxist-Leninism) was everything and humans were the raw materials to be used and discarded as needed for advancing the Holy Plan.
Ad astra! Sean
Disagree about Lenin (not Stalin) but we've been through all this before.
Paul: if you'd read Lenin's communications with his subordinates during his rule... I've never heard a man express bloodlust so openly.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, besides what Stirling wrote real historians have shown over and over and over how fanatical, brutal, and evil Lenin was.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree. I have read real historians of the Russian Revolution who show that the masses took action and could have carried social transformation forward if they had not been kicked back by internal backwardness and external isolation. Lenin stood for mass action. I have read texts by and about Lenin, of course:
STATE AND REVOLUTION by Lenin
HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and REVOLUTION BETRAYED by Trotsky
STATE CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA by Tony Cliff
What mattered was the actions of the masses, not the machinations of individuals. If attention is focused only on the individuals, then historical processes are misunderstood and misrepresented.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree, Lenin was a tyrant and monster. I'll have nothing to with the myth of the "noble" Lenin.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Disagree. I am not propagating a myth of a "noble" Lenin. You are still focusing on individuals, not on mass actions.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't care about these mystical "mass actions" which never existed. What matters is how that monster Lenin began the destruction and ruin of a once great nation. You are still clinging to the myth of the "noble" Lenin.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not clinging to the myth of a "noble" Lenin. I have read his STATE AND REVOLUTION and agree with it. I am talking about workers and peasants overthrowing the Tsar and then the Provisional Government. To dismiss mass actions as "mystical" is completely to misunderstand history. One man alone could not possibly have destroyed and ruined a great nation.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Untrue, "peasants and workers" did not overthrow the Tsar and the Provisional Gov't. A series of disastrous mistakes persuaded Nicholas II to needlessly abdicate, surrendering power to a cabal of incompetent politicians from the State Duma. And their mistakes played into Lenin's hands, who used blather about those workers/peasants to overthrow the Provisional Gov't and then set up a one-party totalitarian dictatorship.
What I actually said was that Lenin "began" the destruction of Russia, by setting up institutions and beginning policies that would ruin Russia. All Stalin did was to complete and extend what Lenin started.
Ad asrtra! Sean
Sean,
Untrue. (Can we stop expressing ourselves like this?)
Workers and peasants were not just passive recipients of the actions of individuals like Nicholas or Lenin. The masses themselves took action and forged new institutions of government which replaced the Provisional Government. Lenin did not want workers' councils to become bureaucratized whereas Stalin completed that process.
The theory of workers' self-emancipation is not "blather." The Bolshevik aim was not a one-party totalitarian dictatorship.
One individual alone could not begin the destruction of a country, nor could one other complete it. Russian backwardness and isolation, civil war and armies of intervention were massive forces that overwhelmed what Lenin and the Bolsheviks were trying to do. Your account simply ignores all these factors and names three individuals who played leading roles.
Paul.
(This is not a discussion. It is our usual exchange of uncompromising statements with each able to respond to the other so that it can continue indefinitely with no one getting any the wiser. We have to be able to stand back and assess what is happening, not just get stuck into the exchange.)
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree. Your assertions about Russian politics in early 1917 does not fit the far more complex situation described by Solzhenitsyn in his massive 4 volume work MARCH 1917. Mistakes made by the bunglers in Petrograd, contributing to those made by Nicholas II, were what allowed originally trivial disturbances to metatastize beyond all control.
Again, no, Lenin destroyed those "new institututions," first by taking them over then eliminating the remnants when crushing the Kronstad rebellion. You are still clinging to the myth of the "noble" Lenin. His aim was a one party dictatorship, which is exactly what he set up.
Ruthless and determined fanatics, such as Lenin and his cronies, did exactly that, setting up institutions and implementing policies leading to Russia's destruction. E.g., the first Soviet secret police, the Cheka, was set up barely a month after Lenin seized power. The Red Terror and the gulags goes straight back to the Monster.
Oh, btw, Lenin was also a traitor, accepting money and help from Germany so he could be injected into Russia like a plague bacillus, so he could conspire against the Provisional Gov't. With Germany demanding its reward from Lenin in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Either of the two Provisional PMs, Prince George Lvov and Alexander Kerensky, should have had Lenin shot after the revelation of his treason came out during the July Days.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I disagree.
Paul.
I have not said a word about Lenin's personality. I am not clinging to a "myth."
Sean,
It is important to you to deny that the kind of proletarian self-emancipation and social transformation sought by the Bolsheviks is possible. I believe that it was and remains possible and would have prevented the horrors of the twentieth century and is necessary now. But, if I were to expound this, it would lead to another exchange repeating several that we have had already. This cannot go on forever.
Paul.
Kaor,, Paul!
I deny there ever was such a mystic thing as "proletarian self-emancipation" or that Lenin and his cronies ever sought such a thing.
You should read MARCH 1917, events in Petrograd at that time were far more chaotic, confusing, and contingent than you seem to think was the case.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There are many additional books that each of us could read. You should read STATE AND REVOLUTION. I thought that LENIN IN ZURICH was a travesty.
"Mystic"? Merely a term of abuse. Wage- and salary-earning workers have collective interests and often act in those interests by organizing trade unions, demonstrating, negotiating and striking. It is in their interests to take control of workplaces and to reorganize them for need instead of for profit. This process was far advanced in Russia but was thrown back by circumstances that I have described. Lenin and his cronies as you disparagingly call them encouraged and gave a lead to this process.
But we both know what we both think by now. You seem unable to let go of a disagreement.
Paul.
If it can be demonstrated to me that Lenin was a "monster," I will still agree with what he wrote in various works. He analyzed economic imperialism, explained philosophical materialism and clarified the roles of different kinds of states.
Far from denying that events were chaotic, confusing and contingent, I fully embrace that fact but there is always the question of what is to be done - by whom and in whose interests?
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree, the only way a real world economy, as distinct from socialist theories, cam work is thru market signals regulating demand and supply. Those are the only proven ways for determining what is "needed." No need for clumsy things like committees, commissars, bureaucrats, etc., trying to "plan" how many pairs of shoes to make, how much wheat to grow, or fish to catch, etc. Free enterprise does all that without needing such things.
"Workers" who do as you would like them to would inevitably become politicians and bureaucrats, with all the failures we have seen over and over and over from socialism whenever it's been tried.
I don't care what Lenin wrote, it was all just propaganda to cover up his ruthless drive to set up a totalitarian dictatorship.
Ad astra! Sean
If I can't "let go" its because of the anger I have for all the horrors that monster began/started.
Sean,
I have replied to all this before.
You can read Lenin's mind? Of course he did not write propaganda just to set up a dictatorship.
One man is not solely responsible for all the horrors.
Paul.
As I keep saying, we are not trying to agree. Surely we have learned that deeply held convictions are not changed so easily? You said recently that you would continue to believe as you do about Lourdes. I would be astonished if you did anything else.
Post a Comment