Can anyone else take care of this? If I try to copy it all I will end up distracting myself too much by reading it while writing my thesis. And this reminds me with sadness about how great online stories can vanish. Such as the soap opera Blackport Online, based on the Clue series. I used to save the early chapters saved a decade back but lost or erased them at some point. Ahh well. It, and the recent outages on this site, do serve as a good reminder that we need to preserve and backup some of this stuff, though.
Am I the only one offended by S.M. Stirlings Emberverse series?
- Thread starter Spartasman
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Man, I love that Great Patriotic War story. За Родину! За коммунизм! За Советский Союз!
I want to see the continuation where the Draka march face-first into ten million angry Russians and literally the entire world allies to kick Draka ass, with the Soviet Union marching through Egypt and our brave American boys taking Pretoria. That would be awesome.
I want to see the continuation where the Draka march face-first into ten million angry Russians and literally the entire world allies to kick Draka ass, with the Soviet Union marching through Egypt and our brave American boys taking Pretoria. That would be awesome.
Wong's last substantive posts about stuff other than just announcements, board changes, and the like were in late 2012, if SDN's search function is accurate.
I'd have preferred the retaking of Eurasia followed by an armistice and cold war. It's not like there's no precedent for a cold war against an authoritarian power with a continent's worth of resources, and I like less-clear cut 100% triumph endings.
Agricola64
Banned
-- well, it's never actually stated who or what causes the Change. Many people -assume- it's God or Gods; others think it's aliens, or whatever.
Plenty of people worship Gods who are supposed to have caused disasters; Noah's Flood comes to mind.
-- there are many types of government in the post-Change world. Some are democratic, some not; the Clan Mackenzie is a democracy, for instance (rather more so than the contemporary US, in most respects). Others aren't. Various characters prefer various types. Are you complaining that the books aren't preaching more? People differ, systems differ, legitimizing myths differ, and none of them last forever.
-- the peace settlement after the Protector's War/War of the Eye enforces freedom of movement, and it's mentioned repeatedly that the Lady Regent (Sandra Arminger) enacts a number of reforms, quietly killing nobles who object too strongly.,
-- it's mentioned that a large proportion of the nobles die either in the war or the subsequent troubles, and that the Protectorate is largely run either by reasonable survivors, or widows, for most of the next generation.
-- there's an old saying, "Adventure may be defined as someone else in deep shit, far away." It's a post-apocalyptic story in which there is a lot of adventure.
Agricola64
Banned
-- the Founding Fathers of the US ruled a society in which every 5th person was a chattel slave, and in which women and men without property had no political rights and substantially fewer civil rights. It was a republic, but not a democratic republic -- though it evolved in that direction. Women didn't get the vote until the 20th century; black men were slaves until the Civil War, and had severely restricted rights (including effective disenfranchisement) until quite recently.
In the Emberverse, the PPA institute a feudal social order in -part- of a world undergoing an immense cataclysm in which over 90% of the population die within two years; a disaster greater than any humanity has ever suffered.
The premise is that this (and the fact that the ****ing laws of nature have undergone a massive, arbitrary, but obviously purposeful change) sort of renders things fluid; people are, for the nonce, more concerned with stuff like "not dying of hunger", "not dying of plague", "not being killed by bands of roving bandits", and then by "getting a crop in" -- the latter in a situation where most people don't have any earthly idea of how to do it with the tools and techniques available.
Meanwhile, established systems cease to exist and their ideological underpinnings are discredited by the collapse.
Agricola64
Banned
-- Corvallis is a democracy, the Clan Mackenzie is a democracy, the US of Boise is an iron-fisted military dictatorship planning (quite sincerely on the dictator's part) to restore democracy "as soon as the emergency is over", and so forth. The PPA is founded by a brilliant, effective nutcase who happens to be mentally prepared for the situation in question.
Agricola64
Banned
-- mmm, no. Eg., the female p.o.v. character, Adrienne Rolfe, frequently rolls her eyes at the 50's-style gender attitudes still common in her society, having experienced (something roughly like) ours on prolonged trips, and she doesn't make any secret of the fact that she finds the difficulties her home's culture causes her to be a complete pain in the ass, and the assumptions behind them ludicrous.
The two 21st-century types think the Commonwealth of New Virginia is weird and, to a certain extent, creepily retrograde, though they do like -some- things about it; they're pretty upfront about that.
What I think you're misinterpreting is the fact that the p.o.v. characters don't waste time and energy jumping up and down screaming "The horror! The horror!" because the mores of the milieu into which they've fallen don't match their own preferences or the zeitgeist of their social reference group back home.
Nor do they think that anyone who fundamentally disagrees with them is just such an awful person for being raised in a different setting that they have to rage or sulk or stand in a corner rather than deal with them. Nor do they expect the people around them to slap their heads and exclaim: "Yes, now that you mention it, I see how wrong and bad I am and how right and good you are!" when this is pointed out.
They just deal with the situation they're dealt, pushing at it where they can and adapting where they have to, getting on with their lives and choosing between un-ideal alternatives.
Agricola64
Banned
-- the religion of the Russian villains in The Peshawar Lancers isn't supposed to be based on the Yazidis; it uses some bits of terminology from them, but that's a function of the mistaken beliefs of the Russians who did it. Badly managed cultural appropriation, if you will. I'd have thought that was fairly obvious from the text. It's a sort of twisted gnostic inversion of Christianity; literal Satanism as a late 19th-century Christian (who'd gone bugf*** crazy) would imagine it, tricked out with misunderstood terminology from other religions.
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Agricola64
Banned
-- the Change in the Emberverse books presents most of the developed world (and very large chunks of the underdeveloped) with problems... problems that have no solution.
Some of these are obvious; the water stops coming out of the taps, there's no substantial amount within reach, you die in a couple of days. Unless you can fort up somewhere with some water and wait out the die-off, which some people in the books do even in LA.
Another is communications: suddenly the fastest way to send a message is by bicycle. The speed of communication goes into the toilet; the amount of information which can be conveyed does too. There are alternative ways... but there isn't enough time before the collapse in most places to implement them
Some are less obvious.
Eg., there are technological alternatives to a lot of things; the continental US could probably support 300 million people with horse-powered agriculture.
But you can't get there from here. You can't adapt in time. Most places just don't have enough food within reachable distance (20 miles is a long day's walk if you're fit and well-equipped); there isn't time to make the sort of equipment that will work; there aren't enough draught animals or people who know how to train and use them; and so forth and so on.
It's not one problem; it's a set of interlocking and mutually reinforcing problems. (Eg., the Old Order Amish would probably pull through quite well... except that they're mostly within walking distance of a lot of hungry people).
Some areas are just totally screwed; the Atlantic megalopolis, most of California, anywhere within reach of a really big city -- or even worse, within the overlapping death zones around big cities.
Some areas are much better off; the rural interior of the PNW, or parts of the upper Midwest.
Some areas are borderline cases where, if someone manages to get everyone doing the right thing right away, they can pull through if the dice fall in their favor.
Which introduces the psychological problem; most people just don't grasp that the Change is world-wide and permanent, and lose critical time before they adjust. Would you? You can't -tell- what's going on anywhere else. That gives those who aren't as firmly moored in consensus reality an advantage; as one character says, when the going gets weird the weird get going. Someone who fully accepts that things aren't going to change back and that this has happened everywhere has a crucial advantage.
Agricola64
Banned
One of the characters in The Golden Princess notes that not even the Change can undo history, nor can anyone truly bring back the past, "even if they wear its clothes".
There are hints to the same effect throughout the series.
Eg., Castle Todenangst has an elevator and a food court.
Juniper Mackenzie is perfectly aware that Gardner made Wicca up (incorporating chunks of previous mystical and religious systems, including everything from the Golden Dawn to Buddhism), and then back-dated it by claiming to have learned it from wisewomen who'd preserved it from pre-Christian times in the New Forest or something of that nature. As she says about his fondness for "skyclad" rituals, there are two possible explanations: one, the Goddess told him so, two, he liked prancing through the woods with nekkid women, but needed a religious justification for it.
So what? All religions start wth a process something like that, often with a charismatic rogue or a nutjob who hears voices in their head... and the voices will be shaped by elements of the cultural zeitgeist the nutjob was raised in, adapted to their particular needs. Hence golden tablets buried by the 10 Lost Tribes in upstate New York, and so forth and so on.
Some of the societies in the books think that they're recreating the Middle Ages, or the 19th century ranching frontier, or an ancient pagan Celtic tribe, or Deep England, or Edo Japan, but they're all wrong. In the first two cases because recreating the past is impossible; in the second three, because the thing they think they're recreating never actually existed in the form they imagine it. But as a myth, it exists and has power.
People in the books draw on the actual past for useful bits -- hence the tendency of outsiders entering Boise to exclaim "Osprey Men-At-Arms #46!" -- and equally often they draw on myths, stories and legends about the past, which are often psychologically and culturally useful. That's most obvious with say, the Dunedain Rangers, but it's common in many places.
But people in Real Life(tm) do exactly the same thing all the time. All traditions are a 'useful past', often an imagined one, always a selective vision serving present needs and interpreted through contemporary eyes. Washington and the Cherry Tree, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. The ghost of Rome haunted Western civilization for millennia; it's not an accident we're ruled by Senators from a building with a dome and columns, or that the Founding Fathers were often painted as if they wore togas.
There are hints to the same effect throughout the series.
Eg., Castle Todenangst has an elevator and a food court.
Juniper Mackenzie is perfectly aware that Gardner made Wicca up (incorporating chunks of previous mystical and religious systems, including everything from the Golden Dawn to Buddhism), and then back-dated it by claiming to have learned it from wisewomen who'd preserved it from pre-Christian times in the New Forest or something of that nature. As she says about his fondness for "skyclad" rituals, there are two possible explanations: one, the Goddess told him so, two, he liked prancing through the woods with nekkid women, but needed a religious justification for it.
So what? All religions start wth a process something like that, often with a charismatic rogue or a nutjob who hears voices in their head... and the voices will be shaped by elements of the cultural zeitgeist the nutjob was raised in, adapted to their particular needs. Hence golden tablets buried by the 10 Lost Tribes in upstate New York, and so forth and so on.
Some of the societies in the books think that they're recreating the Middle Ages, or the 19th century ranching frontier, or an ancient pagan Celtic tribe, or Deep England, or Edo Japan, but they're all wrong. In the first two cases because recreating the past is impossible; in the second three, because the thing they think they're recreating never actually existed in the form they imagine it. But as a myth, it exists and has power.
People in the books draw on the actual past for useful bits -- hence the tendency of outsiders entering Boise to exclaim "Osprey Men-At-Arms #46!" -- and equally often they draw on myths, stories and legends about the past, which are often psychologically and culturally useful. That's most obvious with say, the Dunedain Rangers, but it's common in many places.
But people in Real Life(tm) do exactly the same thing all the time. All traditions are a 'useful past', often an imagined one, always a selective vision serving present needs and interpreted through contemporary eyes. Washington and the Cherry Tree, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. The ghost of Rome haunted Western civilization for millennia; it's not an accident we're ruled by Senators from a building with a dome and columns, or that the Founding Fathers were often painted as if they wore togas.
and that's the (literal) killer... people just don't realize how damn hard it would be to adapt from our modern electric/engine based agriculture to a medieval one literally overnight. The knowledge and equipment just isn't there, and won't be for a while. Those vast monoculture grain fields just aren't doable anymore. For a while, the best people are going to be able to do is plant vegetable seeds (lots of them) and try to keep a few animals and hope to scrape by. And that's assuming they have some idea in the first place on how to grow anything... the majority of people just don't know, and won't have time to learn...
Stirling's best work is The Peshawar Lancers. I'm going to have to say that it was reasonably good in how it showed the colourful Angrezi Raj, and that whole aspect was quite awesome. However, the exotic Anglo-Indian nature of his India was ruined by other cliches, as @Petike stated better than I can, what with evil Russia, and Sino-Japan coming out of nowhere. I'll also note that he did a very bad job of representing Muslims in that book - the only good Muslim character in a country as Islamic as India was the Pashtun tribal guy from outside the Angrezi Raj, which is not what I expect from locations as Islamic as Peshawar, Kashmir, and Partition-less Delhi. I thought before that Stirling had a research fail in that regard, but now I'm convinced it's his Islamophobia.
@Agricola64 Why the five or six long posts, all in a single row ? You can multiquote, you know.
I find your repeated use of would-be-folksy "There's an old saying..." arguments to be intellectually poor.
I also don't buy arguments like "Well, the tsarists turned into wannabe devil-worshippers because they felt the need to convolutedly misinterpret and randomly adopt elements from the Yazidi religion", or "Hey, people won't lose sight of history, they'll recreate it mythicised, and all that". The problem with looking at it like that is assuming that what the author wrote is 100 % logical and justified. Instead of what's far more possible, i.e. the author coming up with convoluted scenarios and examples to "prove" his ideas are perfectly sensible and bulletproof. To stop readers from questioning his conceits.
Stirling has an annoying tendency to do this over and over and over in his books. The man has contempt for anyone challenging his view on things. He doesn't show a willingness to admit he can occassionally err or misunderstand something, and that others might have a valid point. (Outside of his writing, he displayed this sort of behaviour during his time on AH.com, as well as in some old interviews with him that I once came across. The guy is in love with his strongly held opinions and generally tends to get all defensive and self-righteous over even minor criticisms of his works.) He regularly sets up strawmen who - shock of all shocks - prove his own conclusions and worldviews right every single time. (Hence my earlier criticism that "people don't behave the way they do because it makes a fair amount of sense, they behave the way they do because they're Stirling's characters and he thinks he's doing cool stuff with them".)
To get back to the initially criticised arguments:
1.) Even accounting for what 19th century Russia was like, how it was run, and what potential knuckleheads there were in its nobility and military, I still don't understand what would compel them to drop all the previous decor and religious/cultural traditions and remodel their survivor society along a doomsday cult started from one day to the next. It's extremely contrived and makes even less sense when you compare it with the other survivor cultures of that ATL. We could maybe explain the random apocalyptic cannibal Russians away with "oh, the meteor shower and minor nuclear winter happened, therefore doomsday cults !", but... Why didn't the Angrezi Raj create some crazy post-apocalyptic doomsday religion of their own, then ? (E.g. a twisted form of Anglicanism blended with Kali-worship, based on Temple of Doom-like over-the-top misinterpretation of Kali.) Why is 19th century Russia singled out in this respect, to such an extent, but not Victorian era Britain ? It strikes me as a thinly-veiled generalisation in the vein of "Russians were and are a superstitious, unthinking lot, unlike those always perfectly rational awesomesauce people from the British Empire". Don't laugh. One of the more recurring habits in Stirling's books is their barely hidden Brito-philic streak. Couple the fictional Russian faction's issues with the UK-hero-worship issues and the oddly evasive treatment of Muslim characters, Indian or otherwise, brought up in fjihr's post, and Stirling's writings start to really smack of a rather orientalist attitude. Given what Stirling openly divulged on this board already ten years ago, concerning his own opinions on Muslims as a whole, I'm not going to be extra charitable towards him. There are too many suspicious "coincidences" here. Stirling has his own biases, is unwilling to admit them, and gleefully stereotypes whole groups of people in his works. Whether they be certain ethnicities, religions, social groups, etc.
Furthermore, Stirling generally seems to have something of a fetish for cannibalism. Some lady in the ISOT novels apparently has people cooked and eaten (?!), the Lancers have the aready discussed crazy cannibal Russians who might as well be Reavers-from-Firefly-cum-Mongols-because-lol, the Emberverse has the rather insulting concept of post-Change refugees turning into basically mindless zombies (WTF) purely out of a week's hunger... Knowing Stirling and his Draka-wanking in the Draka series, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the Draka eat other people for dinner. Do I really need to go into bulletpoint reasons why "the villains eat people" is both clichéd as an attempt at "edginess" and makes little sense from a biological/medical perspective ?
2.) As has been pointed out multiple times in this thread, we do understand that Stirling's survivors are doing idealised recreating of the past, we just don't agree with many of his conclusions. While a modern society based around electricity, electronics, combustion engines and intensive monoculture farming would obviously not be viable, Stirling often seems to cherry-pick whatever justifications or elements he likes, and roundly ignores plenty of the more realistic outcomes that could be at hand. The idea that Arminger, the Mackenzies, etc. can literally take over parts of the Pacific Northwest with little to no resistance from any of the other surviving locals, is just childish. Stirling wrote it that way not because it makes inherent sense, not because it passed Occam's razor, but because he just felt writing it that way, damn everyone else's opinions.
I find your repeated use of would-be-folksy "There's an old saying..." arguments to be intellectually poor.
I also don't buy arguments like "Well, the tsarists turned into wannabe devil-worshippers because they felt the need to convolutedly misinterpret and randomly adopt elements from the Yazidi religion", or "Hey, people won't lose sight of history, they'll recreate it mythicised, and all that". The problem with looking at it like that is assuming that what the author wrote is 100 % logical and justified. Instead of what's far more possible, i.e. the author coming up with convoluted scenarios and examples to "prove" his ideas are perfectly sensible and bulletproof. To stop readers from questioning his conceits.
Stirling has an annoying tendency to do this over and over and over in his books. The man has contempt for anyone challenging his view on things. He doesn't show a willingness to admit he can occassionally err or misunderstand something, and that others might have a valid point. (Outside of his writing, he displayed this sort of behaviour during his time on AH.com, as well as in some old interviews with him that I once came across. The guy is in love with his strongly held opinions and generally tends to get all defensive and self-righteous over even minor criticisms of his works.) He regularly sets up strawmen who - shock of all shocks - prove his own conclusions and worldviews right every single time. (Hence my earlier criticism that "people don't behave the way they do because it makes a fair amount of sense, they behave the way they do because they're Stirling's characters and he thinks he's doing cool stuff with them".)
To get back to the initially criticised arguments:
1.) Even accounting for what 19th century Russia was like, how it was run, and what potential knuckleheads there were in its nobility and military, I still don't understand what would compel them to drop all the previous decor and religious/cultural traditions and remodel their survivor society along a doomsday cult started from one day to the next. It's extremely contrived and makes even less sense when you compare it with the other survivor cultures of that ATL. We could maybe explain the random apocalyptic cannibal Russians away with "oh, the meteor shower and minor nuclear winter happened, therefore doomsday cults !", but... Why didn't the Angrezi Raj create some crazy post-apocalyptic doomsday religion of their own, then ? (E.g. a twisted form of Anglicanism blended with Kali-worship, based on Temple of Doom-like over-the-top misinterpretation of Kali.) Why is 19th century Russia singled out in this respect, to such an extent, but not Victorian era Britain ? It strikes me as a thinly-veiled generalisation in the vein of "Russians were and are a superstitious, unthinking lot, unlike those always perfectly rational awesomesauce people from the British Empire". Don't laugh. One of the more recurring habits in Stirling's books is their barely hidden Brito-philic streak. Couple the fictional Russian faction's issues with the UK-hero-worship issues and the oddly evasive treatment of Muslim characters, Indian or otherwise, brought up in fjihr's post, and Stirling's writings start to really smack of a rather orientalist attitude. Given what Stirling openly divulged on this board already ten years ago, concerning his own opinions on Muslims as a whole, I'm not going to be extra charitable towards him. There are too many suspicious "coincidences" here. Stirling has his own biases, is unwilling to admit them, and gleefully stereotypes whole groups of people in his works. Whether they be certain ethnicities, religions, social groups, etc.
Furthermore, Stirling generally seems to have something of a fetish for cannibalism. Some lady in the ISOT novels apparently has people cooked and eaten (?!), the Lancers have the aready discussed crazy cannibal Russians who might as well be Reavers-from-Firefly-cum-Mongols-because-lol, the Emberverse has the rather insulting concept of post-Change refugees turning into basically mindless zombies (WTF) purely out of a week's hunger... Knowing Stirling and his Draka-wanking in the Draka series, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the Draka eat other people for dinner. Do I really need to go into bulletpoint reasons why "the villains eat people" is both clichéd as an attempt at "edginess" and makes little sense from a biological/medical perspective ?
2.) As has been pointed out multiple times in this thread, we do understand that Stirling's survivors are doing idealised recreating of the past, we just don't agree with many of his conclusions. While a modern society based around electricity, electronics, combustion engines and intensive monoculture farming would obviously not be viable, Stirling often seems to cherry-pick whatever justifications or elements he likes, and roundly ignores plenty of the more realistic outcomes that could be at hand. The idea that Arminger, the Mackenzies, etc. can literally take over parts of the Pacific Northwest with little to no resistance from any of the other surviving locals, is just childish. Stirling wrote it that way not because it makes inherent sense, not because it passed Occam's razor, but because he just felt writing it that way, damn everyone else's opinions.
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Well you didn't seem to like the books so I can see how you could have missed out on several dozen points where actually the setting steps back from GRRR BONE CRUSHING TYRANNY in several cases and the whole GODS DID THIS LETS BE OK THAT is repudiated.
The cosmological angle is explained and counter explained. It seems to be one side of pan-dimensional beings who want to look out for Humanity and the Others who are pretty much evil and want to destroy humanity's potential. Again Stirlig here doesn't fit any religion over the other as we see gods working on behalf of the Protagonists and gods working against them.
- The PPA does very much start as the Tyranny Antagonist primarily due to Arminger the Git. However we see the PPA change following the last book of the original trilogy. The draconian laws of Arminger are rolled back, the serfs get free movement and the more tyrannical PPA lords get ganked when they rebel against Sandra between the Meeting at Corvallis and the Sunrise Lands. Still a feudal society but we see something of a more "Enlightened" despotism where you can't go killing and raping without getting consequences no matter who you are.
- The Bearkillers are modeled on a military unit given Havel's military inclinations and we see in the Protector's War Mike is worried about the Bearkillers going Feudal Lord because of the nature of the A-List, it isn't explored sadly but it is implied they do something about that.
- The MacKenzies are described several points as encompassing Wiccan and Non-Wiccan people's. Oh yes many do become some form of Wiccan in their lands but they describe Presbytarians and other Cowans. Further in Sunrise Lands we know the Clan operates o. Democratic principles as even Rudimentary describes that just because he is Juniper's son the Clan has to vote on him to succeed Juniper. I believe after Juniper steps down I can't quite remember who takes the High Chief position, it is either one of Rudi's half sisters or someone else.
- Mount Angel, despite the Monks being the main military arm of the Mt Angel state they describe that the Abbot of Mt Angel Monastery does not rule the town below the monastery who elects their own mayor.
- Corvallis well we know they are the stand In for Renaissance Italy.
- CORA is a confederation of townships and ranches. They seem to go all over the place with styles of government.
- Warm Springs Reservation from whart we hear of them are ruled by a tribal council, so likely democratically elected.
- The Yakima League are opposed to the PPA and seem to be also the stand in for Renaissance Italy City states so they likely have some form of democratic participation.
- United States of Boise appears to epitomize the struggle of Old World America and the world after the Change. General Thurston struggles with having to apply the military style rule he has implemented to protect the people under his rule and also wanting to re-implement the US government (which comes into criticism from his neighbors as Rudi notes many of Thurston's Congressmen haven't been opposed on re-election in decades). This comes to head in the battle between his sons, one wanting to go full feudal "You would hand away your grandson's lands?" And one who wants to keep to his father's vision. Ultimately the latter wins and USB stays democratic.
- The Mormons seem to operate on a Theocratic-Confederation style government.
- Seven Fires Council of the Sioux, tribal democracy,
- Independent Ranchers various forms of warlords,
- Iowa and the other Mid Western States seem to have adjusted to the Change better than USB having gradually shifted toward a feudal arrangement but the events of the book prevents another Arminger (or worse) arising and sets Iowa more toward POA's enlightened Feudalism.
- The Yellowstone Scouts, operate on a tribal council level.
- The CUT at first we see are full blown crazy religious theocracy complete with eugenics program but by the end we see a "Reform" of sorts that steers away from the evils of "The Others".
- Topanga and the Chattswick Lancers, Hippie Commune and Feudal state.
- Kingdom of Capeicornia, Bernie is "King" but he isn't as anyone has the right to say "Up your's" to him.
- The Choosen and Haida, Religious Crazy due to The Others.
- Kingdom of Norrheim, High King but includes at least one Republic.
- Kingdom of Montival, again an essentially Federation.
- Greater Britannia, Constituional Monarchy that again is steered away from despotism thanks to King William.
- Norwegians, seem to be on the style of a Republic.
- Umbrian League, much like Mt Angel has a republican secular government with the Papacy a parallel state within the League.
- Venice, Communist Republic.
- Cyprus, Sicily Monarchies.
- Republic of Pecos seems to be a 1840s style US or Mexico.
- The Dominions appear to also have a democratic framework.
- Louisiana, a patchwork confederacy of various city-states including one "Library of Alexandria" state.
- Florida, King of the Apes. Zoo park workers, local Native Americans, and farmers align to kick out Miami gangsters.
- In between of course are a load of raiders and hangers but they seem to pale in comparison to the other states.
The cosmological angle is explained and counter explained. It seems to be one side of pan-dimensional beings who want to look out for Humanity and the Others who are pretty much evil and want to destroy humanity's potential. Again Stirlig here doesn't fit any religion over the other as we see gods working on behalf of the Protagonists and gods working against them.
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I do have to admit: one thing I liked in those books was certain Native American groups becoming major power blocs. Especially the Sioux.
Agricola64
Banned
-- I find it provides a crisper articulation of points to do it that way.
-- this is what is commonly known as "metaphor" and "allusion" and "figure of speech". People always dislike and find grating the rhetorical flourishes of someone who's disagreeing with them; that's human nature. The more effective the rhetoric, the more the person who disagrees with the argument will dislike it. The concept of "identity-protective cognition" comes into play there.
-- That's not an accurate redaction of what I originally said, which was that the Russian would-be worshippers of Evil simply grabbed for any cool, mysterious-sounding phrase they vaguely knew about and thought would fit and be resonant. And since they (mistakenly, but in tune with the general noise level of European concepts of Yezidism at the time) assumed the Yezidi were Satanists in the sense they had in mind, and they used terms like "Peacock Angel".
The use of the term "Chernobog" is a similar superficial skimming of (the admittedly very poorly recorded) pantheon of pre-Christian Slavic paganism, about which we know little and people in the 1870's knew even less. It sounds ominous, Chernebog was commonly identified with Satan, so go for it. That seems, from the internal evidence in the text, to be the mechanism at work.
The Theosophists were conducting similar raids on the terminology and conceptual store-box of Hinduism and Buddhism at the same time in OTL, though admittedly in a rather more sophisticated way. But then, they weren't traumatized and starving, or trying to find a way to make psychologically tolerable the necessity to do extremely horrible things to survive.
-- well, an apocalyptic catastrophe that devastates the Earth, kills most of the human race, destroys their country and forces them to flee in conditions of madness-inducing horror might, just possibly, leave people feeling somewhat bereft and culturally adrift and vulnerable to a charismatic type who has an integrative "explanation" of what's been going on. That's certainly a plausible hypothesis, IMHO.
How that would play out in detail would depend entirely on random, personal factors. There's no one answer to questions like that.
So yeah, in those circumstances absolutely nothing would compel them to do so. But then, nothing would prevent them from doing so either.
Unlikely things happen all the time; the origins of Wicca, or Mormonism, or Islam, or post-Petrine Christianity, or the Bahai offshoot of Twelver Shiism, all contain unlikely strings of coincidences and low-probability events and people acting in rather weird ways. None could have been realistically foreseen beforehand; they only look plausible in retrospect. There are sects in the Middle East which still venerate a mad 11th century Egyptian ruler. (Who R.E. Howard used as the template for a rather good story.)
Alternate history is a series of non-falsifiable hypotheses. You can't prove or disprove a damned thing, no matter how long you argue. All you can say is that something is more or less plausible... in your opinion, and we all know what opinions are like, eh? For example, I find Terry Bisson's Fire On the Mountain a fantastically unlikely alternate history of the 1860's, but what the hell, I can't prove it, though I could argue the case at length.
-- two reasons; first, they had somewhat less trauma, and second, why not? That's the way it fell out. "Sensitive dependence on initial conditions", to coin a phrase. What would be really unlikely would be to have everyone react in the same way.
-- if they were perfectly rational, would they have a religion at all? Much less a syncretistic mishmash of Christianity and Hinduism? And of course Russia was, in fact, a much more backward and premodern country than the UK in the 1870's; as late as the 1920's, there were witchcraft panics involving multiple murders in villages less than a day's walk from Moscow, and Soviet researchers found that popular conceptions of cosmology were full-blown medieval in the same areas.
-- there's one major Muslim character in The Peshawar Lancers, the disguised Afghan prince Ilderim (or was it Ibrahim?) Khan, and I didn't see anything "evasive" about him; he's a dashing adventurer with his own agenda, who helps the protagonist for perfectly rational reasons of his own. They're enemies who respect and rather like each other, and who fought a common opponent for a while. If the interests of their respective nations/dynasties/whatever require that they fight, they'll fight, without any personal animosity.
-- I take it this is a reference to that well-known work of Alternate History fantasy-fiction with a similar title, by Edward "Munchausen" Said? Oh, really now.
-- in The Peshawar Lancers the only "groups" which don't contain both positive and negative individuals are Jews and French Catholics; I suspect that this is because there wasn't plot-room to have more than one walk-on character for each.
-- that would be Alice Hong, the murdering sadistic nutcase mistress of the Big Bad, William Walker (note the name). There are plenty of well-authenticated cases of people of that stripe doing that sort of thing. Besides which, it's a trope. Someone gets off the stage in an SS uniform, kicks a dog, and eats a baby. Is this the good guy, or the bad guy?[/QUOTE]
-- rather more than a week, though it starts when people get extremely hungry and give way to despair. There's abundant historical cases of both opportunistic and predatory cannibalism in cases of severe famine combined with social atomization and breakdown; and trauma of that depth, with taboo-violation, does have profound psychological consequences, including but not limited to PTSD. See the Volga famine in 1921-22, the Holodomor, the Great Leap, and so forth. Cannibalism is certainly not a viable long-term subsistence strategy for any substantial number of people, but IIRC that's never suggested in any of the books in question. I imagine that the laws of nature going screwy would add to the stress.
The Russians in The Peshawar Lancers are practicing ritual cannibalism, as part of their religion, for which there is considerable historical precedent. Limited cannibalism for symbolic reasons is quite common, often as a social dominance marker.
-- well, as the Germans say, "Na... und?" If all possible outcomes can happen (as in the many-worlds hypothesis) then why should you limit yourself to "likely" ones? Occam's razor visibly doesn't apply to the history that led up to us, which is full of coincidences and long-shots; why should AH be more boring, unless from some weird type of intellectual puritanism?
We're talking about Alternate History here (where nothing can be proved or disproved) and a rather gonzo subbranch of AH at that. The fact that something is unlikely doesn't mean it can't happen, it just means it's less likely to happen... but sometimes the dice roll 6 several times in a row. For example, the outcome of the American Civil War (and hence the whole course of the 19th and 20th centuries) may well have depended on three cigars falling out of a messenger's pocket, to take one well-known example. WWI starting when it did happened because a car took a wrong turn and then the engine stalled.
Likewise, the course of WWII would have been very different if Halifax, rather than Churchill, had been PM in the spring and summer of 1940; Halifax wanted to negotiate, and would probably have taken the terms Hitler was prepared to offer which for reasons of his own were rather generous. But Churchill nearly died repeatedly all through his adult lifespan; he was recklessly brave in combat (charging with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman is just one example) and was very ill and had near misses in traffic accidents during the 1920's and 30's; and he had a very unhealthy lifestyle, guzzling rich food, drinking heavily, and smoking like a furnace.
So the question is not whether the Clan Mackenzie or the PPA are the most likely outcome of the initial circumstances in Dies the Fire; the question is whether they're the equivalent of fate rolling 6 several times in a row, or the equivalent of the dice floating up into the air and spontaneously bursting into flames. Which can be argued (indefinitely) but even that can't be proved or disproved.
If it's "multiple 6's" then the question is not one of AH plausibility, but how well they fit the demands of the narrative structure of the book -- we're talking about fiction here. That's what AH is, a sub-genre of science fiction, emphasis on the second word. It's about stories. Stories are neither true nor false. They fulfill a reader's needs, or don't; it's a matter of taste, which is purely subjective.
-- what value of "everyone" are you using? You? Your immediate social circle? The book-buying market, whose overall opinion seems to be rather favorable? Why should X's opinion count for more than Y's? Why should Stirling pay any attention to X's opinion? Would it make him more money, or give some sort of personal satisfaction, or what? Do you pay any attention to his opinions of what you write? It's human nature to overestimate the size and importance of the pond we hop around in, but really, it's a good idea to resist that temptation.
This is the way it works with fiction writers: mostly, they write for a combination of fun (because storytelling is a compulsion) and reward. Emphasis on the 'fun' part because it's impossible to tell in advance whether a lot of other people will find the product enough fun to part with some of their beer money.
Agricola64
Banned
-- though the groups in question are often referred to as "neo-Sioux". They're more nearly actual Sioux/Lakota than the Mackenzies are actual pagan Celts or the Norrheimers are Vikings (that is, they'd be more recognizable to a 19th-century Sioux than the other two would be to Cúchulainn or Eirik Bloodax) it's a difference of degree, rather than kind. But what the hell, all ethnicities and nationalities are "imagined communities". They exist because their members think they do.
I made my feelings on the Emberverse clear a while ago.
However, I will say that the Emberverse itself isn't awful, but the way Stirling handles it in many ways is. It went from being a fairly original story with some quirky characters you could root for, to a long drawn out and painfully predictable saga with pieces so infuriatingly dumb that I could never be bothered to do more than skim the last few books.
Like others I also took issue with his portrayal of the post-Change world, but for narrative purposes was alright with it. For a while. I agree in the sheer devastating loss of life it portrays, but really had to roll my eyes at some of the results.
However, I will say that the Emberverse itself isn't awful, but the way Stirling handles it in many ways is. It went from being a fairly original story with some quirky characters you could root for, to a long drawn out and painfully predictable saga with pieces so infuriatingly dumb that I could never be bothered to do more than skim the last few books.
Like others I also took issue with his portrayal of the post-Change world, but for narrative purposes was alright with it. For a while. I agree in the sheer devastating loss of life it portrays, but really had to roll my eyes at some of the results.
Agricola64
Banned
-- let's see... a history in which Meiji Japan is a powerful imperialist state... nah, couldn't happen. And if you subtract Russian and American and European counterweights, why, Japanese expansionism becomes even less plausible!
And China having a foreign dynasty imposed by conquering outsiders; why, that's out of the question! There's no historical parallel!
Except for the Xiongnu, and the Xianbei, and the Jie, and the Di and the Qiang, and the Jurchen, and the Yuan Mongols, and the Manchu...
And of course, having East Asia be a major global power center -- absurd!
Seriously, do you have a point you want to clarify there?