2. Andrew Bolt has a good post on the pessimism of science fiction, brought on by recently re-watching Blade Runner. His conclusion:The children are all too familiar with the apocalyptic warnings of climate change. “A lot of people are going to die” from global warming, a 9-year-old girl from Harlem announced at one point. And a 7-year-old boy from Park Slope said with a quiet lisp, “When you use too much electricity, it kills animals.”Well, it does if you hook up the electrodes right.
Yes, it’s only a film, but it also fits a pattern of imagining of our future.True. I also have heard Orwell's 1984 being read on Radio National recently, while I have been driving around town. It reminded me how much I disliked that book, both from a stylistic point of view (I think it is plain awful writing,) and for its ridiculous over-reach in the dystopia it paints. By taking aspects of totalitarianism, which were bad enough in their current form when Orwell wrote, and then exaggerating them wildly with an imagined technology which is still off the mark, combined with a way of writing characters which robbed them of any realistic humanity, the effect became that I just could not take it seriously. (Even with a one child policy, did China develop an "Anti-sex League"? )We actually wind up not much different in our wants, and not less vigilant on the whole against threats, than is often feared. We remain in the West extremely inventive, and driven more by the wishes of the public than the demands of the leaders.
That probably explains why artists and “seers” so often get us wrong, and imagine us becoming in time so much gloomier, oppressed, bullied, atrophied and poor than we inevitably and eventually turn out. In reminding us of this, Blade Runner is a comfort.
3. Zoe Brain has brought to my attention the very enjoyable site Paleo-Future, which seems devoted entirely to looking at how the future has been imagined in the past. (I think it has been mentioned at Boing Boing before, but maybe I didn't follow the link.) I love this sort of stuff, growing up as I did in the (generally) optimistic 1960's, and expect to visit there regularly.
God, how depressing, listening to 1984! I think part of Orwell's trick was to paint a picture of the future that was so remarkably horrible that it could not but help serve as a warning. The last part in particular - the observations it makes about the human character in the torture scenes are not particularly subtle or even wide-ranging, but probably true. (Incidentally, in a lot of TV shows and movies now, producers seem only too happy to tackle similar themes - alas)
ReplyDeleteI think the writing is amazingly skilful without necessarily having that captivating quality that other books would have. It's perhaps an exceedingly refined version of the workman-like prose affected by many SF authors.
Though I still feel like I'm dissing Orwell! He was a great writer: no doubt about it. I do think 1984 is a great book and a work of genius, but it's not one that I particularly want to read again!
Yes, Tim, I find criticising 1984 very similar to expressing a dislike of Tolkien at a party. It's all chirping crickets for a minute and people change the topic because it is clearly such an absurd position that no one will engage in argument.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, I did recently find on Bryan Appleyard's blogs that there are people who think LOTR is a badly written bore, but gosh it took a long time to find anyone in the world who shared this opinion.
Maybe roughly akin to walking into a Fitzroy bar and saying,
ReplyDeleteSo anyway, I was over at the Costello's the other day, and I said to Pete...
No disagreements from me about LOTR, as I'm sure I've expressed to you before. 1984 tends to be a book that people read their own political prejudices into, but it remains a hugely influential work.
If you want to read an amusing post try C. Van Carter's "analysis" of the U.S. Presidential candidates at Across difficult country
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