[REVIEW] Why John Ringo Threatens the Future of Science Fiction

Unpacking books at work the other day, I was surprised to come across the latest novel of John Ringo, Watch on the Rhine, co-authored with Tom Kratman. Watch on the Rhine is another novel in Ringo's Posleen series, until now notable for the massive carnage inflicted upon the Earth by alien-aided humans set up against the cannibalistic Posleen hordes. Watch on the Rhine is of lasting interest only because it features the rejeuvenated survivors of the Waffen SS as heroes, as a Germany rendered decadent turns to its greatest military heroes in the time of its greatest need.

It's difficult to underestimate just how repellent--and also, repellently stupid--this book is. Anyone who isn't a far-right extremist is a enthusiastic collaborator with aliens willing to eat everyone; almost anyone who is such is a noble person unfairly tarred classified as belonging to the ranks of the génocidaires. Of course, outside the morally-akimbo Ringoverse the Waffen SS is ranked with génocidaires because it was, in fact, a criminal organization deeply implicated in the worst crimes of Nazi Germany. It's difficult to understand why a military body most noted for its ability to round up and massacre Jews and other üntermenschen by the hundreds of thousands could ever be redeemed, or how a military formation most notable for its successes against unarmed civilians would even be capable of any sort of headway against sixty years after its formation. But then, the whole Posleen series can best be understood as a series of books inspired by the same factors which motivated the Nazis, of a final confrontation between the good people of the world and the barbarian inferiors who surround them, a conflict that must be fought if only for the honour of the great and good. Ringo and Kratman make this point explicitly in their afterword, directly connecting the ruthlessness of their book's chosen heroes to the War against Terror (tm) and the need for the West to be strong in the defense of its prerogatives after (one logically concludes) the fashion of the Waffen SS. It's a sad, sad day for science fiction when some of its most popular books potentially have the same sort of relationship to a War against Terror gone horribly wrong as the Western novels of Karl May do to Hitler's dreams of a great German empire on the vast open spaces of Europe, the main difference being that the Posleen novels do so much more directly and dangerously and with rather less empathy save much more directly and dangerously and with much less empathy for their real-world victims. Germany's interest in the novels of Karl May is reflected in a broad vein of sympathy for the First Nations of the New World, after all.

The utter moral nihilism aside, A Watch on the Rhine and other books of its ilk reflect a worrying trend in science fiction, as military science fiction books start to crowd out more worthy and interesting titles. Military science fiction is as valid a subgenre as any, and when done well can be good. Haldeman's Forever War comes most immediately to mind, though others more interested in this sub-genre can doubtless name other candidates, titles marked by strong characterization, good plotting, effective writing styles and an appreciation for the costs of war. Too often, though, this popular sub-genre lacks any sort of appreciation of the requirements of good fiction and is simply interesting in describing a future devoid of anything but killing on galactic scales, a universe of civilizations distinguishably mainly by the calibres of their weaponries, an existence offering nothing but death on a massive scale.

Science fiction is a threatened genre, perhaps a dying one, lacking the large markets and much of the potential for critical respect enjoyed by other genre fictions. The decision of a recent reviewer of a major science fiction novel in the Toronto Globe and Mail to note in passing that this title's awkward writing tyle was about as badly written as other titles and that this was normal says it all. Who is going to be attracted to science fiction if some of the most popular titles are marked by nothing but an immorally amoral fascination with death? There are other genres out there, after all, perhaps more respectable ones in the eyes of some. Genres have lost their popular audiences before. If there ever comes a time when science fiction is intrinsically less deserving of respect, science fiction deserves to follow suit. Ringo, bless his soul, is doing his best to ensure that this day comes.

UPDATE (12:17 AM) : I posted a rough draft on rec.arts.sf.written.

[LINK] pauldrye on Code 46

Right here. Anne of Green Gables? I must see this.

[LINK] Israeli Rastafarianism

From Jonathan Edelstein, who else?

[NON BLOG] CFTAG Report

• Requisite good wishes were extended to attendees not present. So, happy birthday wishes go out to amcrabtree, it was a pity that James couldn't have made it, and best wishes to robertprior in China.


• schizmatic recommends Claude Lecouteux's 1999 Chasses fantastiques et Cohortes de la nuit au Moyen Age for a take on the supernatural in medieval Europe. I recommend Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory for a comparable take on the interaction between geography and culture.
  
• It's never fun when dictionaries cleanse a word of its full meaning. For instance, Merriam-Webster's French-English Dictionary defines the word "pimpant" as "spruce, dapper." The etymology isn't listed, but one would guess that it derives from the English "pimp" and isn't something at the country club when you meet the boss: "Vous êtes pimpant, m'sieur, et ta putain aussi!" You're not told, though, and this is annoying.


• The decline of populations in rural areas around the world is inevitable, between the marginalization of non-corporate farming and the cultural unattractiveness of these areas. How can you reverse this trend? Likely, you can't.


• Cognitive psychology reveals that humans are willing to make bad decisions based on false assumptions and superficial impressions. Humans become addicted to VLT lotteries so long as they can win, at least once. People became agriculturalists even though hunter-gatherers had a higher standard of living, perhaps (as pauldrye once suggested) because farming looked like a secure bet. Rates of HIV transmission among MSM remain high despite the introduction of medicines which sharply reduce viral loads, since people feel more comfortable with the idea of barebacking now that there are these new medicines. People eat fast food even though it's harmful, since it tastes so good.


• It's always annoying when libertarians single out Dresden as an Allied atrocity in Europe, and progressives emphasize Hiroshima as an Allied atrocity in Asia, and never look at what actually happened, seeking to use the facts in isolation from broader reality for their own parochial political goals. This tendency is product of a culture excessively addicted to sampling, to history as a menu.


• People moan and complain about how space travel in the 21st century has proved to be less advanced than we hoped, but by the same measure the extent and sophistication of modern computing technology came as a complete surprise. Lost futures are interesting.


• It's difficult to imagine how the survival of Greenlandic Norse society past the 15th century, at least long enough to be brought under the control of imperial Denmark in the 16th century and guaranteed some sort of survival, would change things. Put baldly, Greenland was a marginal society in a marginal environment, and Denmark's overseas colonial holdings were also more about exploiting trade points than extensive settlement.


• We discussed an old soc.history.what-if posting of james_nicoll's, wherein he wondered what would have happened if Galactic civilization came by and gave us vast amounts of wealth (by our standards) in exchange for wormhole rights. We decided that Earth would either become like Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates, or it would be a dead world.


• "No one ever wanted to play submissive to a commissar." This, the unlimited and unrestrained power popularly associated with the Nazis, may be why gearheads and sexual fetishists alike can be so disturbingly Naziphile.


• Umji Bunsik Thumbs-Up Korean Food (southwest corner of Bloor Street West and Palmerston) is an excellent place to go for Korean fast food. I particularly enjoyed my pork bone soup with potato. schizmatic liked his food, but I think also the chance to impress the waitress by speaking Korean.

[NON BLOG] Fiction Writing

Recent events--that is, reading the Nazi apologist dreck that actually gets published--make me wonder whether or not I should try to write fiction. I know that last year's Nanowrimo entry, still preserved at randynnwm2004, ended prematurely in failure, but that was more because of resolved life issues, simple business, and lack of inspiration than anything else. I've written some decent stuff in the past, I don't think I'm wrong to think that with enough work I can get better, and I certainly think that I can do a better job than some.

I'll keep you all posted.

[BRIEF NOTE] "More Luzon than Hainan," or other East Asias

I've always liked John Wills' 2000 conference paper "More Luzon than Hainan: Taiwan Before Qing Rule" (PDF format). In the 16th century, Taiwan and Luzon were both islands located off the coast of China with Austronesian-speaking populations, both islands taken by a European maritime power to serve as a regional trading bases (the Dutch in Taiwan and the Spanish in the Philippines), both islands acquiring large Chinese mercantile and migrant-worker populations. In the mid-17th century, however, Taiwan was taken by the anti-Qing regime of Coxinga; after Coxinga's death, the Qing felt obliged to occupy Taiwan in order to remove a threat to their rule, leading to the eventual Sinicization of that island. Luzon remained under Spanish rule, however tenuously, and survived to constitute the nucleus of the modern-day Filipino nation.

The genius of the paper lies in the way that it uses counterfactual assumptions (what if the Dutch retained Taiwan? what if the Spanish lost Luzon?) to highlight the extreme contingency of East Asian frontiers and nation-building. If the Dutch had been able to keep Taiwan, quite possibly Taiwan would be an independent state populated mainly by Austronesian-speaking Calvinists, with admixtures of Chinese migrants from adjacent Fujian and perhaps some Indonesians. If the Spanish had lost Luzon, Chinese frontiers might well extend deep into insular Southeast Asia with potentially significant repercussions on global trading patterns and local great-power rivalries. Other outcomes are equally imaginable: an insular Chinese byarchy based on Luzon and Taiwan, perhaps incorporation as a peripheral region of the Japanese state on the model of the Ryûkyûs or Hokkaido, perhaps even a Spanish Taiwan.

The contingency of events was limited by Taiwan's proximity to the Chinese mainland, and knowing that this contingency existed doesn't change the very real question of national identities. This contingency does, as Wills writes, "provide an argument, if any is still needed among academics, against the essentializing of a nation and its boundaries, and for what historians always have to teach: the sense of continuity and discontinuity that we find so strikingly present in the trajectory of Taiwan’s history in 1650 and in 2000." For the world as a whole, I'd add.

[MUSIC] "I Drove All Night"

I happen to own several mp3 versions of the song "I Drove All Night", downloaded for curiosity's sake. Roy Orbison's original, recorded before his death, is a credible song, delineating the processes of passionnate and aggressive sexual desire. I might be wrong to imagine certain echoes of my favourite Joy Division song, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in these lyrics, but certainly the whole romantic idea of lovers unnaturally separated was in the air at the time. Desperate romance is always fun.

I had to escape
The city was sticky and cruel
Maybe I should have called you first
But I was dying to get to you
I was dreaming while I drove
The long straight road ahead, uh, huh

Could taste your sweet kisses
Your arms open wide
This fever for you is just burning me up inside

I drove all night to get to you
Is that alright
I drove all night
Crept in your room
Woke you from your sleep
To make love to you
Is that alright
I drove all night

Cyndi Lauper's 1989 version is equally powerful, with her every sung word coming across as a sultry come-on.

Céline Dion's version? Dion is a good singer, and some of her French material is authentically moving. All that you can hear in her version is her passion for driving--the passion of the song doesn't enter into things at all.