What are you reading? Erudite Aug 2018 Edition

[Blue]

I've added Vorkosian Saga to my list after reading Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls last month, can I assume this is a positive recommendation for the series? Because the two Chalion books were awesome.

Oh yes, it is.

To me the whole series is fantastic. Because Miles (and for the books before he is born, his mother Cordelia) is such a wonderful protagonist. Full of flaws that he both works around and trip him up, gets himself deeper in trouble regularly. And he grows and changes over the series. I'd put him in my top ten literary protagonists ever.

But there are a few books in the series that are just tangentially related. I find those solid, but the quality can wander all the way down to "good but slow". For example Falling Free is a tearjerker - but is connected to the rest of the series by introducing a people 200 years before you see them in any of the other books.

There's also a few continuity blips because the publication order does not match the chronological order in the least. (I'd strongly suggest reading in the internal chronological order.) Nothing bad, but for example a book that dealt with one culture was written 15 years after a short story with antagonists from that culture, but chronologically the book comes right before the short story and few of the wonderful details in the book are present for that culture in the short story.

All of that said, the books are fairly short - because plots move along at a good pace. The omnibus collections have the short stories, which I really enjoy even though normally I prefer the novel format. The Mountains of Mourning was one I recently finished and hoo boy.

At times I'm cheering or laughing for what's going on in the books, other times I get leaky around the eyes.

 

[Jhaelen]

To me the whole series is fantastic.

In general, I agree, and all of the Vorkosigan novels are well-written and quite entertaining. However, I've grown a bit disenchanted since 'A Civil Campaign' (2000). Since this novel the saga has lost its 'bite' (with the possible exception of 'Cryoburn'). These newer stories contain little more than light romance and comedy.

If the most exciting things in a novel are a plague of bugs and a barely avoided transporter crash, I'm reminded of the episode in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where two nuclear missiles are shot at the 'Heart of Gold': Douglas Adams breaks the 4th wall and tells the reader in advance that nothing really bad is going to happen except that one of protagonists is going to sprain an ankle (or something like that; I forgot the exact details) to avoid any undue excitement...

 

[Celebrim]

Is it collectivist or just totalitarian?

By his own account, Huxley wrote 'A Brave New World' as a response to H.G. Wells 'A Modern Utopia'. 'A Modern Utopia' is explicitly collectivist, with limited private property and means of production centralized and state controlled. All real property is owned collectively. H.G. Wells is writing as a critique of this idea, so presumably 'A Brave New World' shares the same character.

And I guess I'm having a hard time imagining a non-collectivist view of the world that involves total and complete centralized control of reproduction and parenting. What could you possibly have in such a setting that would make the culture non-collectivist?

 

[Kramodlog]

What could you possibly have in such a setting that would make the culture non-collectivist?

A totalitarian dictatorship. It isn't about collectivity. It about maintaining the dictatorship in place.

 

[Celebrim]

A totalitarian dictatorship. It isn't about collectivity. It about maintaining the dictatorship in place.

It's quite possible to be totalitarian without have a dictatorship. "Maintaining the dictatorship in place" seems to suggest its about maintaining a person in power. But the point of Brave New World and similar dystopian fiction is that once a system is put in place, no one needs to actually be in charge to perpetuate the system. There is no Big Brother oppressing anyone. They've collectively oppressed themselves.

But I'm struggling to understand the point you are trying to make. In what sense is 'Brave New World' not a collectivist society? That is in what sense does the society not emphasis the importance of the group over the individual? For example, it produces people in standardized batches, with standardized psychologies, who recite rote standardized lessons in response to hard coded Pavlovian triggers. The society treats individuals entirely as components in the system. It's hard to imagine how this is not collectivism.

 

[Kramodlog]

It's quite possible to be totalitarian without have a dictatorship.

Not really. That isn't possible. There needs to be a body that maintains the totalitarian regime in place and it does so because it benefits the most from the regime.

The real problem is that totalitarianism often is conflated with collectivism because the USSR and China were presented as enemies of the West for quite sometime, and presented as totalitarian and collectivists. The consequence of that is that often someone sees totalitarianism and thinks he sees collectivism.

But I'm struggling to understand the point you are trying to make.

Do not confuse collectivism with totalitarianism. They aren't the same thing. Collectivist societies can be totalitarian, but not always.

For example, it produces people in standardized batches, with standardized psychologies, who recite rote standardized lessons in response to hard coded Pavlovian triggers.

That is just endoctrination and shows how much it is totalitarian. But it also is a individualistic society that focuses on repressive desublimation (soma, sex, consumption) to prevent uprisings from a society based on inequality.

 

[Jhaelen]

I finished reading 'An Artist of the Floating World' by Kazuo Ishiguro. I can't say I'm impressed. I've read a few reviews to see if I missed anything, but apparently I didn't. After my experience with his first novel, I was reading this one extra-careful, watching out for clues that the narrator deviated from the truth. In fact, it happens plenty of times, but there's no big 'wow' moments where the reader's surprised by an unexpected revelation. Ho-hum.

At least it seems to have been a good idea to read Ishiguro's novels in publication order, since 'The Remains of the Day' pretty much resembles a 'new and improved' variant of this story.

Next up is 'The Unconsoled', Ishiguro's third novel. However, I haven't yet decided if I'm going to start it right away. Maybe I'll slip in something else first, for a change of pace.