Yet another novel I will no longer write

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 8:50 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…

Post by rumanator » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 8:54 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.

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 8:57 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #5

dhosek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not saying that zombie epidemics as a topic are over, just that his take on it has been rendered obsolete by current events. It's sort of like a short short (either written by or edited by Isaac Asimov, I don't remember—I read it forty years ago) that proposed that Everest would never be summited because it had been colonized by Martians. Between acceptance and publication, Everest was summited.

Another similar instance just popped into my brain—in college a friend wrote a piece for the college paper in which, writing about political changes in Eastern Europe, he wrote, "but don't expect the Berlin Wall to come down any time soon." As you might have guessed, the Berlin Wall came down between the writing and the publication.

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

rumanator wrote: post #43

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's pretty much a definition of "elite panick".

Post by throwaway894345 » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #42

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…

> ... that society will devolve into this immediately, every fender bender or bit of road rage turning into life or death conflict. To provide context, here is some data on that: "cases of road rage involving a firearm — where someone brandished a gun or fired one at a driver or passenger — more than doubled to 620 in 2016, from 247 in 2014." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/road-rage-guns.html That doesn't amou…