Yet another novel I will no longer write • Hacker News Board

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#71

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

rpiguy wrote: post #20

Barrin92 wrote: post #9

> The survivors/protagonists of the zombie plague are the viewpoint the audience is intended to empathize with, but their response to the shambling horde is as brutal and violent as any plantation owner's reaction to their slaves rising, and it speaks to a peculiarly American cognitive disorder, elite panic. Elite panic is the phenomenon by which rich and/or privileged people imagine that in times of chaos all social…

His observation is wrong. In all societies in which there is a power vacuum gangs take over. Witness Africa, South America, Burma, and the middle Eastern countries in which we have removed the “dictators.” Asia after WW2 was different because the West essentially sponsored state corporate Facism in Japan and Korea until they had 30-50 years to evolve into something resembling a true democracy. Even the term “elite pa…

> Even the term “elite panic” is lie.

FYI, there is at least one book written on the subject based on research of real-world disasters

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/books/21book.html https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6444492-a-paradise-built...

Cory Doctorow writes about it as well:

https://boingboing.net/2013/04/14/elite-panic-why-rich-peopl...

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/cor...

It is hardly Mr Stross's own idea, and I would not dismiss it so glibly after a minute's thought and a very shallow understanding.

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#72

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #54

rumanator wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article defines elite panic as a false panic; a "cognitive disorder", caused by elites who look down on the rest of us and think we're all violent hooligans. Yes. It's a belief based on pseudo-morality, where those who are not privileged are portrayed as being rude uncultured barbarians who, without resorting to extreme violence and oppression, would represent a threat to their pure and pristine existence and s…

History strongly suggests that, in periods of disorder, even elites who did not resort to extreme violence and oppression will get murdered. ISIS didn't grant any leniency to nice elites who were well-loved by their local community.

[deleted]

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#73

Post by Talanes » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #53

What always bugged me about zombie movies is that no one seems to figure out a way to take advantage of it beyond total anarchy. I would expect enterprising individuals to see zombies as a potential tool. Like maybe figure out what makes them tick (they never seem to possess intelligent thought) and leverage them for a labour force or army. What are they fuelled by? Can they be taught to perform complex tasks through…

Zombies also seem to just keep moving without any energy input. Figure out how to keep them moving where you want them and you have a generator that runs as long as the zombie is solid enough to move it. If you're dealing with Walking Dead rules where everyone turns after death, and it's a renewing resource.

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#74

Post by shoo » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

pacman128 wrote: post #8

One of my favorite authors. Listening to his novel, Glasshouse, right now. If you're looking for something to read right now, check him out.

Glasshouse is great. I've enjoyed every Stross novel I've read, and Glasshouse was the first one, after stumbling across a newspaper review when it was released.

Both the Laundry Files & Merchant Princes / Empire games series are also great fun.

You can get a feel for Stross' Laundry Files series from:

"A Colder War" http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm (not Laundry Files, but in the ballpark)

"Equoid" https://www.tor.com/2013/09/24/equoid/

For the longest time I didn't try reading the Merchant Princes series because it _appeared_ to be too much of a fantasy series for my tastes -- boy was I mistaken. It's less "Narnia" and more "what do you reckon would actually happen if a paranoid US administration discovered Narnia" with healthy doses of feuding and economics.

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#75

Post by bsanr » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #15

This is an interesting take on what zombie fiction is about: > The zombie myth has roots in Haitian slave plantations: they're fairly transparently about the slaves' fear of being forced to toil endlessly even after their death. Then this narrative got appropriated and transplanted to America, in film, TV, and fiction. Where it hybridized with white settler fear of a slave uprising. The survivors/protagonists of the…

The "faceless horde" angle is still in line with the "other uprising" allegory. Day of the Dead's predecessor, and the origin of the modern zombie in pop culture, had fairly overt racial undertones, and its sequel, in its concern with barrier-breaching ghouls, made plain the nationalistic undercurrents by setting the action in a military bunker.

There's really no getting around the influence of real-world race and class attitudes in shaping zombie fiction.

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#76

Post by bsanr » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:12 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #62

d_burfoot wrote: post #31

[flagged]

In rhetoric, the revolutionary slogan is "we're going to take money from the rich", but what happens in reality is more like "we're going to take the money from the rich and then murder them". Also: The Kulaks in the Ukraine. Various persons during various Maoist upheavals in China. Everyone has the same illusions to different degrees: "Our side doesn't do these bad things." Then, when the facts come out, "It was jus…

The issue is that this behavior doesn't come out of some inborn bloodthirst, but rather a scenario akin to,

"We're taking you're stuff."

"I'll kill you if you try."

"Well then we must defend ourselves."

Inevitably, stuff is appropriated and the mob, in its losses, learns to pull the trigger first.

"Society" is this but both sides knowing when to stop before the shooting begins.

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#77

Post by shoo » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

plerpin wrote: post #11

pacman128 wrote: post #8

One of my favorite authors. Listening to his novel, Glasshouse, right now. If you're looking for something to read right now, check him out.

I read Neptune's Brood and was hooked. It's a fun surreal sci-fi adventure/romp with a heck of a lot of really interesting, geeky tech interludes. Who knew a novel about futuristic accountancy and forex could be so intriguing?

> The theory of interstellar trade is a well-understood topic, with an extensive literature consisting of one paper (pdf) I wrote in 1978. Interstellar finance, however, is less well covered.

> That’s all about to change, however. I’m reading an advance copy of Charlie Stross’s Neptune’s Brood. (Hey, I have connections!) And it is the best thing by far written on the subject to date, partly because it is, as far as I know, the only thing written on the subject to date.

> It’s also a fantastic novel.

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/the-theory-of-i...

> This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are derived.

https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#78

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #68

sneak wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a world-view you'd expect of unreconstructed pre-Enlightenment aristocrats, or maybe a society dominated by a violent slave-owning elite. This really hit home for me. It has always struck me as supremely odd, the civilization-breakdown fantasies that people have when I suggest that everyone in a society, not just the police, have easy and unrestrained access to arms, as advocated by many throughout history. Th…

The easy access to arms doesn't destabilise, if anything it stabilises. It does, however, result in a constant tick-over of domestic murders, suicides, accidents, people shot dead by toddlers, and (in the US) seemingly purposeless mass murder-suicides. Coronavirus has only just overtaken the US's normal firearms death toll.

[deleted]

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#79

Post by coliveira » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #9

> The survivors/protagonists of the zombie plague are the viewpoint the audience is intended to empathize with, but their response to the shambling horde is as brutal and violent as any plantation owner's reaction to their slaves rising, and it speaks to a peculiarly American cognitive disorder, elite panic. Elite panic is the phenomenon by which rich and/or privileged people imagine that in times of chaos all social…

In the US there is the well-known phenomenon that during big catastrophes the media will concentrate on looting, as if this was a big problem and not the reasonable response to closed stores, full of products that people need.

Re: Yet another novel I will no longer write

#80

Post by coliveira » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #40

rumanator wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even the term “elite panic” is lie. The elite are fine in a disaster and they know it. Look at Venezuela, the rich and elite simply moved behind walls and continue on. Sounds to me that the need to move behind walls is a pretty strong indicator of the elite panic concept you are criticizing. After all, if they didn't panicked then why did they felt the need to coward behind those walls and man them with armed minio…

Because lots of people actually do want to kill them, and the walls keep those people out. It's the same phenomenon you see in South Africa - everyone who can afford it builds high walls and private security, because everyone who can afford it is a target.

Those people inside closed gates are just another symptom of the disease itself.