something about worldview and prediction

[ritaxis]

I'm reading Frederick Pohl's Dark Star Rising. So far it's a hoot. Though it does the same thing that CHina Mountain Zhang does -- assumes too much will stay the same in terms of social structure -- so we have a Chinese occupation of a devasted US, and their running criticism-self-criticism meetings like it was 1960. Which is a thing about worldview. Pohl definitely doesn't like communism, and he's kind of suspicious about the Chinese culture in general. But this, also like China Mountain Zhang, doesn't have a racist feel to it. Unlike a lot of other works with the "China takes over" trope.
Before I learned how to use my killfiles correctly, I used to keep finding dogawful attacks on things I'd say in usenet posts. The fact that I had a worldview that was distinct would just irritate the hell out of some people. There was an underlying accusation, frequently made in so many words, that my worldview made me a murder, or at the very least complicit with murder. Aspersions were cast on my ability to enjoy reading whose ideological foundation was quite different from mine. I insisted that it wasn't true, that when I objected to ideology my heart was pure. "Everybody has a point of view," I said. If the book was good, I could read it, as long as the worldview wasn't all the way over to the too nasty to contemplate.

I think Pohl proves me right. I don't know directly about its political worldview, but I'm pretty sure it's way different from mine. And not just accounting for twenty years of history since this book was written. Internal evidence points to him being an old-fashioned default moderately conservative guy. And I like his book immensely so far, though there might be deal-breakers farther in. I don't think it's because Pohl attempts to keep his own beliefs hidden and I don't think it's because he doesn't really, concretely comeright out and say "I think you guys are blowing it if you support socialism and socialist realism and that." I think, continuing the way he's started, here, he could have written a more blatant boo, politically, and still haven't gotten censured by people who care.

No, the reason, I think, is that Frederick Pohl has written a book of good will and good faith and good storytelling.

There's more but I'm literally falling asleep at the keyboard so goodnight, those of you who are not in daylight.

Comments

Pohl's politics

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Pohl is a liberal Democrat. In 1960, he was probably at the left edge of liberalism; that edge has moved since then.

He used to be a Communist; quit over the Hitler-Stalin Pact. See his autobiography The Way the Future Was. (Which is also when my mother bailed out, though her parents didn't.)

Re: Pohl's politics

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Huh. So my not being able to tell means what? That's interesting.

Re: Pohl's politics

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Note: Checking, I see that the title is actually Black Star Rising.

As for what it means: I can think of several likely factors. 1) You're not of Pohl's generation. (Neither am I, but I believe I'm enough older than you to have some idea of how political attitudes have changed over the generations.) 2) You live in one of the farthest-left areas of the US, and if I recall correctly you've lived there most of your life.

Re: Pohl's politics

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I fixed the title in the next post, and now in this one.

Maybe the generational thing -- but I'd think it would be because of a different sense of humor or something, though I learned to read on Mike Quin and he was prety old-fashioned in his delivery.

As for the other -- that's just not accurate, except in terms of a conventional map, where west is left.

I'm not finding positions advocated which lead me to guess his politics wrong. I'm finding a political vibe without a sense of what the political vibe is all about. There are no positions advanced. There's a sense of "looky here, these people are interesting and funny."

It's not that he disapproves of and approves of different things, either. It's what he chooses to present as things to disapprove of or approve of. That's how I guessed wrong.

Whatever, I'm enjoying Frederick Pohl's writing a whole lot and wondering where he was all these years when I kept confusing his name with Poul Anderson's.

Re: Pohl's politics

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

"As for the other -- that's just not accurate, except in terms of a conventional map, where west is left."

You're in Santa Cruz, right? On the way to checking your Congressman's voting record, I ran across this news from 9/9/03: "With a sweeping 6-1 vote, the Santa Cruz City Council became the first local government in the country Tuesday to ask Congress to look into impeaching President Bush."

Re: Pohl's politics

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

How my city council votes on national issues is only one aspect of life here. Remember the context. Your implication was that I'd only ever seen leftist politics and didn't have enough to compare it to. I mean to say that life in California is not so progressive as people think. You have to remember this is a town which has no Chinatown because the Chinese were run out of town repeatedly, the most recent time being in the late fifties, when nobody would sell or rent to the Chinese who had been flooded out of their neighborhood. It's a town which has had a few lynchings. It's a town which never unionized to a great degree.

So I'm rejecting the proposal that I couldn't figure out Pohl because I've got some sort of all-progressive sheltered history of my own.